Brazilian President Lula da Silva Speaks at World Social Forum Debates
Porto Alegre, Brazil, Jan 27 (Prensa Latina) Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will speak Thursday at the World Social Forum (WSF) as four days of debates begin with a formal opening and huge march.
Lula, promoter of the WSF as leader of the Workers Party, will launch in his speech a campaign against hunger and misery in the world, an objective he has prioritized in his two years of mandate.
A six-year-old Cuban girl focused the attention of tens of thousands of people at the official opening of the debates. The child is Ivette González, daughter of René González, one of five Cubans imprisoned in the United States for allegedly spying against that nation. The fact of the matter is they were gathering intelligence to prevent terrorism against Cuba, but US authorities have been denying her a visa to visit her father in prison.
The rally on Wednesday brought the joy of large bands and posters as people chanted slogans rejecting the war, the US President George W. Bush, neoliberalism, debt, militarization and the Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement promoted by the United States.
Demonstrators also expressed their solidarity with Cuba, Venezuela, Palestine and Iraq and called for equality, peace, the right to education, and respect of the environment, among others.
More than 100,000 people from 5,700 organizations of hundreds of countries are participating in the forum. International activists are here to celebrate successes, discuss common problems, and plan future directions and actions in more than 2,000 seminars over four days of conferences.
The seminars are divided among 11 themes, including permanent autonomy, diversity, arts and creativity, communication, the environment, alternative democracies, peace and demilitarization, sovereign economies, human rights and dignity, and ethics and spirituality.
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World Social Forum Includes Space for Peace and Against War
Porto Alegre, Brazil, (Prensa Latina) The World Social Forum (WSF), a meeting of the world social movements that will begin here Wednesday, includes in its agenda a space for peace, demilitarization and against war.
Representatives from over 100 countries include several nations" presidents who will discuss 11 issues on common worries.
About 700 Paraguayans members of trade unions, farmers, workers, indigenous people, youth and human rights organizations moved to the capital of Rio Grande do Sul to denounce the militarization that affects some South American nations.
The delegations will debate US diplomats´ most recent accusations of an alleged financing to terrorism from Rio Grande do Sul in a workshop called "what is there behind the Triple Border news".
US Congressman, Christopher J, Dodd reiterated the theory spread by the government saying that the Triple Border is a settlement of Islamic terrorist cells.
Heading the group of militaries and senators visiting Asuncion early this month, Dodd asserted that from the Eastern Paraguayan city, extremists groups are financed but without giving any evidence at all.
Political analysts agreed the campaign against the referred bordering territory matches with the US political pretext to develop a military operation base at the service of its strategic interests.
Besides those reflections, the Paraguayan delegation will open a debate on police violence in the social struggles. In many occasions the population has been victim of soldiers" repression.
Every annual anti globalization meeting promotes and consolidates the agreement between the struggle to go forward in the creation of alternatives for another possible and necessary world.
(From Prensa Latina)
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