DEVELOPMENT-EUROPE: Social Forum on Anti-War Alert

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

FLORENCE, Italy, Nov 8 2002 (IPS) - The European Social Forum focused its criticisms Friday on the U.S.-led international anti-terrorism campaign and the apparently imminent attack against Iraq, as attendance at the Forum’s events surpassed all expectations, drawing nearly twice the predicted number.

The more than 160 seminars and workshops that began Thursday in this Italian city were preceded Wednesday by a concert, and will wrap up Sunday with other events, all under the slogan ?Another Europe Is Possible: Against Neoliberalism, War and Racism?.

The five-day European Forum is a sort of regional mirror of the World Social Forum – whose slogan is ?Another World Is Possible? – , which began meeting yearly in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in 2001.

?We don’t have anything against the United States. We are against terrorism,? but we do condemn ?the method that (U.S. President George W.) Bush is using to eradicate it, using war,? Italian journalist Rossana Rossanda said Friday during the Forum conference titled ?Europe in the New World (Dis)Order?.

Tobias Pflueger, an activist with the German anti-military association Imi, accused the European Union of being ?dependent on the will and interests of Bush,? and slammed what he says is the ?imperialist war? that Washington intends to launch against Iraq to overthrow the Saddam Hussein government.

Pflueger asserts that at a base near Brussels, 12,000 French, 12,500 British and 18,500 German troops are training in preparation to take part in a military offensive against Iraq.

?The European Union has gone from being an economic alliance to a military alliance. From a defensive alliance it has transformed into an attack alliance. A militarised EU is not the Forum’s choice. We want a Europe constructed from below,? he said.

Colleen Kelly, of the U.S.-based Peaceful Tomorrow, an association of the families of the Sep 11, 2001, terrorist attack victims, also condemned the anti-terrorist campaign the Bush administration is pushing.

She argues that the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York was not an act of war, but a terrorist act, ?and should be tried in a court of justice.? Kelly announced peace demonstrations outside the White House in Washington to begin Nov 17.

?I cried about the death of my brother (the day of the attacks), but I also cried on Oct 7, 2001, when the U.S. government launched the war against Afghanistan,? she said.

The European Social Forum organisers had projected that some 18,000 people would register to attend the seminars and workshops, but by Friday 35,000 participants could be counted.

Gathered in Florence are intellectuals, labour unionists, environmentalists and representatives of non-governmental organisations of all stripes from more than 100 countries. But the strongest representation comes from France, Spain, Britain, Germany, Greece, Austria and Hungary.

Some of the activist-luminaries taking part in the events are French farm activist José Bové, Canadian author Naomi Klein, and Susan George, a U.S.-born writer specialising in social development and globalisation issues.

Adding to the massive flow of humans in this central Italian city are 18,000 accredited journalists, representing some 1,800 Italian and foreign media outlets.

On Saturday, organisers hope to draw as many as 200,000 people to take part in a protest against Washington’s plans to attack Iraq.

The United Nations Security Council voted Friday 15 to 0 in favour of what critics say is a vaguely worded resolution to dispatch UN arms inspectors to Baghdad in search of weapons of mass destruction.

Peace activists are concerned that potential Iraqi non- compliance could be an ?automatic trigger? for a military attack.

To bring the protesters to Florence for the Saturday protest, 20 special trains and hundreds of buses have been mobilised in Italy and in other European countries.

Also on the Forum’s calendar for Saturday is a seminar on the responsibility of the transnational giant Dow Chemical for the 1984 gas leak at its pesticide plant in the Indian city of Bhopal.

An estimated 20,000 people died due to direct exposure to the toxic gases, and more than a half-million continue to suffer the effects of the toxic cloud, the result of what is considered the worst chemical disaster in human history.

Members of the international environmental organisation Greenpeace scaled the walls of a Dow Chemical plant Thursday in the city of Livorno, near Florence, and hung an enormous banner bearing a skull with the company’s logo and the words: ?Dow: Pay your debt to Bhopal?.

?We will continue our fight until Dow Chemical promises to clean up Bhopal and ensures that the population has potable water and pays adequate restitution to the survivors,? said Greenpeace activist Vittoria Polidori.

The otherwise peaceful gatherings and protests of the Forum gave way to nervousness among the organisers and the city authorities about the possibility of disturbances after the so- called ?black blocks?, small cells of Italian anarchists, announced a series of acts of civil disobedience.

But those groups have carried out peaceful protests so far, and the 6,000-strong security force deployed throughout Florence has kept at bay the ?spectre of Genoa?, a reference to the massive and sometimes violent mobilisations which took place in that city last year in protest against the summit of the Group of Eight most powerful countries.

A young Italian demonstrator, Carlo Giuliani, was killed during the police crackdown on the disturbances.

Around 100 anarchists gathered Thursday outside the Solliciano prison, near Florence, to protest the Italian incarceration system. Others took over a bulldozer factory, a symbolic protest against the demolition of Palestinian homes by the Israeli army using such machinery.

Meanwhile, the controversy unleashed by Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci continued to heat up on Friday.

Fallaci published an ”open letter” to the residents of Florence in the daily Il Corriere della Sera on the eve of the Forum, urging residents to ?close up everything. Close the shops, the bars, the restaurants, the markets, the theatres and the movie theatres…”, inciting unfounded fears, say her critics.

She described the Social Forum activists as ”false revolutionaries?, adding, ?They live off Daddy’s money, spout foolishness about poverty, and blame all ills on the United States.”

Haidi Giuliani, mother of the activist killed by the Carabiniere militarised police last year in Genoa, responded to Fallaci, calling her a ?terrorist?.

?Whoever sows terror is a terrorist. Hers is a cheap, counterproductive and absolutely unjust terrorism,? Giuliani said in an interview with the Italian daily La Reppublica.

?The only thing we feared in Florence was Italian disorganisation, but, it has been quite the opposite. The Forum is coming off wonderfully. So far, I can only applaud the organisation,? she said.

Dario Fo, Italian playwright and Nobel Literature laureate, agreed with Giuliani’s comments on Fallaci. In an address during the Forum, he said, ?cultivating the hate that she has cultivated with her article is a terrorist operation. Ms. Fallaci is a terrorist.?

In even stronger words, Luca Casarini, of the Italian civil disobedience group known as Tute Bianche, said Fallaci is ?the Osama bin Laden of the West?.

DEVELOPMENT-EUROPE: Social Forum on Anti-War Alert

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

FLORENCE, Italy, Nov 8 2002 (IPS) - The European Social Forum focused its criticisms Friday on the U.S.-led international anti-terrorism campaign and the apparently imminent attack against Iraq, as attendance at the Forum’s events surpassed all expectations, drawing nearly twice the predicted number.
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