Socialists always label themselves the compassionate ones, the group who will bring healing to the world and end the suffering brought about by those evil capitalists. It was in that spirit that socialists gathered in Brazil and cheered the current global recession that they blame on capitalism. Chanting slogans like 'socialism is liberty' and 'spread the wealth', the protesters revealed themselves as just a tad uninformed….remember it was their leader who blamed the world's economic problems on people with blue eyes.
Green is the new Red.
Now in its 10th year, the social forum is the annual counterpoint to the World Economic Forum starting Wednesday in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, and leftist leaders are gleefully criticizing the bankers and business titans hit hard by the financial crisis. They are happy about this. Not very nice people.
"Capitalism's unsustainability has never been so obvious," said Brazilian philosopher and sociologist Candido Grzybowsky, one of the forum's leaders. "We need to create a system based on social and environmental justice."
Grzybowsky and others said nations that have exerted greater state control over economies as a result of the meltdown must go further.
"We need to make sure the neoliberals never take over again," said Arthur da Silva Santos, president of Brazil's largest confederation of labor unions. "There are just a few hundred companies today that hold all the cards for the global economy."
In a sweltering conference hall filled with activists — some wearing bright red shirts with the image of legendary revolutionary and murderer Ernesto "Che" Guevara and others opting for Vladimir Lenin — Hildebrando Velez Galeano drew raucous cheers when he urged citizens of developing nations to seize control of the global economy "from the hands of the capitalist speculators who are destroying it."
"We have to decolonize our territory and declare it free of Coca-Cola and Monsanto," said Galeano, a leader of the Colombian chapter of the environmental group Friends of the Earth.
Tens of thousands were expected to mass inside a soccer stadium Tuesday night for a speech by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has received mixed responses in years past at the social forum.
Galeano said activists must try to convince Silva that "he can't abandon the path toward socialism."
source: Yahoo News/AP
American capitalism gone with a whimper
