Bush and Sharon have Unified All of Us

By Joao Pedro Stedile (*)

The Third World Social Forum takes place in a world marked by growing militarisation, a military-economic offensive by the United States, innocuousness and servility on the part of the international organisations, and the looming possibility of a new war, now against Iraq. The consequences of this for all humanity are tragic.

The World Social Forum has been a grand arena for debate, reflection, and protest by thousands of intellectuals, militants, and leaders, young and old, who share an opposition to neo-liberalism and all forms of oppression. While there is a great plurality of opinion among the participants, they are united in their opposition to the current offensive of the US empire.

Bush and Sharon have succeeded in one great achievement: unifying all of us against them.

The objectives of the US and its business class are clear: to maintain their imperial power at any cost. They want to find a way out of the capitalist crisis, shifting its costs onto the peoples of the Third World. They want to monopolize access to energy sources to their own exclusive benefit. And they want to restore their profit levels as fast as possible.

Every time the capitalism system has found itself in a prolonged crisis, it has resorted to war and the arms industry to bolster its ability to accumulate capital. The capitalists have discovered that the arms industry is the only one that produces a unique commodity that is designed to self-destruct and destroy accumulated labour, making room for new commodities.

Since the lamentable events of September 11, 2001, Washington has transferred more than 400 billion dollars to the arms industry and augmented its offensive in the Middle East; it fought a war in Afghanistan, is stoking war in Palestine, and demanding war against Iraq.

In Latin America the US is operating on three fronts:

- It is financing and providing arms for the interminable war in Colombia, which can only be ended with a political solution

- It is setting up a military network in the Latin America.

- It has installed military bases in Ecuador and Bolivia and is now trying to do so in Argentina and Paraguay. It worked out an agreement with Brazil to use the airforce base in Alcantara but this was subsequently denounced in Parliament as a violation of national sovereignty. Washington pressured the outgoing government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso to install a surveillance system for the Amazon with satellites, radars, and powerful computers (SIVAM, System for Vigilance of the Amazon) built by its companies, with access to all information captured in the area.

Not satisfied with this, the US government also wants to push through a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) -- which, incidentally, would not be limited to trade and has nothing ''free'' about it. Rather it is a strategy designed to subjugate the territory, wealth, economy, investments, agriculture, seeds,culture, currencies, central banks, public services, and even public spending of Latin America to the profits of US companies.

With this agreement they could obtain comparative advantages that would help them emerge faster from the current crisis and be better positioned to face their competitors in Europe and Asia.

What the US was unable to achieve through the (aborted) Multilateral Agreement on Investment and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) it will now try to get with the FTAA.

Behind the FTAA and the militarisation of the continent lies a plan to gain total control over Venezuelan, Colombian, and Ecuadorean oil as well as the biodiversity of the Amazon and potable water. To this end, the US wants to introduce into the FTAA a law that guarantees private ownership of living matter and control of patents on transgenic seeds. It wants to introduce private property rights not only to land and mineral resources but to water as well, which will be transformed into an endless source of profits for monopolistic companies.

All of these measures directly affect family farming,food production, food sovereignty, and access to natural resources; they also threaten the future of peasant farmers as a social class and as citizens who want to live in rural areas.

But the US offensive on these fronts is politicising and unifying the peasant movement all over Latin America. Peasant farmers are organising around the Via Campesina to fight on every front the FTAA and regulation of Latin American agricultural production by the WTO, and to prevent the installation of new military bases and remove those already in place.

Fortunately the people are waking up. A powerful and unified continent-wide movement against the FTAA is gathering strength. Recent elections in the region have gone decidedly against liberalism and US proposals. This was the case in Ecuador, Brazil, and Bolivia and will be so in Argentina and Uruguay this year.

The Forum should be a space for the exchange of ideas between all social, intellectual, and academic movements to create a united continental and global front against the imperialist offensive. No empire has lasted forever, and neither will this one.

(*) Joao Pedro Stedile, leader of Brazil’s Movement of the Landless (MST) and Via Campesina-Brazil, is a member of the organising committee of the World Social Forum.