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PEOPLE
Mr. Mandela, I presume?
Some personalities you might bump into at a World
Social Forum. Doctor's advice kept Nelson Mandela away from the WSF 2004 in Mumbai.
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Noam Chomsky
 POLITICAL ACTIVIST, LINGUIST
Chomsky needs no introduction. He is the author of numerous books and articles on U.S.
foreign policy, international affairs and human rights. In his own words, "The WSF
offers opportunities of unparalleled importance to bring together popular forces from many
and varied constituencies from the richer and poor countries alike, to develop
constructive alternatives that will defend the overwhelming majority of the world's
population from the attack on fundamental human rights, and to move on to break down
illegitimate power concentrations and extend the domains of justice and freedom."
"When a nation is down and out, the IMF takes advantage
and squeezes the last pound of blood out of them. They turn up the heat until, finally,
the whole cauldron blows up. It has condemned people to death."
Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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Susan George
 AUTHOR
Has written widely on development issues and international
affairs. She is Associate Director of the Amsterdam based Transnational Institute and has
a long list of books including How the Other Half Dies, A Fate Worse than Debt,
Tand Faith and Credit: The World Bank's Secular Empire.Susan feels that
the WSF "is not building a new society of governments, nor a new society of nations,
(but) …. a new society of societies." She adds that "while the road ahead
toward some sort of global equity and a better humanity is long, arduous and uncertain, it
is, nevertheless, the only route out of barbarity." |
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Jose Bové
ACTIVIST FARMER
"Big conglomerates are trying to standardize
food production and consumption to their exclusive advantage"
His activism against a local McDonald's outlet has made him into a national hero in
France. But it has also gotten him into trouble. He was sentenced to six months in jail
for helping to destroy genetically modified rice plants.
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 Joseph E.
Stiglitz
ECONOMIST
Winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize for economics.
Mr. Stiglitz served as a World Bank Chief Economist from 1997 to 1999. He left the World
Bank as he disagreed with it's policies.
Aruna Roy
MAGSAYSAY AWARD WINNER
"Leadership has to be redefined to include the
collectives of ordinary people and the ideas they generate."This former IAS
officer has now set up the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sanghatana to "to struggle for the
empowerment of disadvantaged people". She was instrumental in getting the Right to
Information Bill passed in Rajasthan. She dedicated her Magsaysay for community leadership
to the "ordinary people" in Rajasthan. |
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Jaggi Singh
ANARCHIST FROM CANADA
Arrested by Canadian Police, kidnapped
and beaten by Israeli immigration officials
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P Sainath
JOURNALIST
Sainath is the author of Everybody Loves a Good Drought, a book on living
conditions in the 10 poorest districts of India.
"..the word dalit means oppressed. I think it's very bad for the rest of society to
remain both unsympathetic and without understanding of what's happeninG." |
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Asma Jehangir
HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST
The name of Asma Jehangir, human rights activist, commands respect, admiration and
affection in the Indian sub-continent—comprising India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.  She
has fought numerous cases against the Pakistan government to uphold the rights of
minorities like Christians and Hindus.
She once saved a Christian boy of 12, sentenced to death for blasphemy from being
hanged; she has saved women charged with adultery from being stoned to death; she leads
agitations against public flogging, executions and chopping off of limbs ordained by
hooded ordinances promulgated during the regime of President Zia-ul Haq.
Mullah elements hate her guts.
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"I
wasn’t elected by a TV commercial, or by a collection of powerful interests. Nor was
I elected because of my intelligence or personality. I was elected by the intelligence and
political consciousness of the Brasilian people, who have fought for 40 years for what
they have wanted."Lula da Silva
PRESIDENT OF BRASIL
 PORTO ALEGRE, Brasil — It’s hard not to be moved — deeply moved
— when you hear Brazil’s new president speak. As the man who now presides over
this country of 175 million, with the eighth biggest economy in the world, but with wealth
so radically ill-distributed that as many as 30 million live at sub-Saharan levels of
poverty, Lula focused his talk on the injustices of the global economy.
"There are those who eat five times a day," he said, (speaking at the last
WSF 2003 in Brasil), "And those who eat maybe once in five days."
During the 21 years of Brazilian military dictatorship, Lula toiled as a metalworker.
He courageously defied the regime and helped rebuild a powerful national trade-union
movement. Since 1980 he has been leading another of his creations, the idiosyncratic
Workers Party, an amalgam of Marxists, liberals and Christians. After three earlier failed
attempts, Lula swept to a 61 percent landslide presidential victory, propelled by an
electorate fed up with the "Washington consensus" — the dogmatic and
disastrous application of free-market recipes that in this country has led to mounting
unemployment and inflation, a consuming debt and shaky currency.
(Excerpts from an LA Weekly column written by Marc cooper in Jan 2003) |
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 "...you all are fighting a war for the rich
and powerful"
Anonymous
PEACENIK
Jeremy Corbyn
UK’S ANTI-WAR LABOUR MP
Has termed the conditions the WB nad IMF sets on countries are "cruel". Has
taken on McDonald’s over their "appalling" behaviour towards the people of
Britain, opposed Prime Minister Blair for his support to the US-led war on Iraq. Corbyn
was at the forefront of the campaign to have dictator Augusto Pinochet extradited.
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Shirin Ebadi
IRANIAN HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER & 2003 NOBEL
PEACE PRIZE WINNER
"Any person who persues human rights in Iran must live
with fear from birth to death. I have learned to overcome my fear." |
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'Hibakusha'
SURVIVOR OF THE ATOMBOMBAn aging survivor of the first atomic bomb, actually used in
war time, dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945 that killed between 130,000 and 150,000
people by the end of that year.
THE MAHATMA
GHOST OF GANDHI
"...sorry for constantly turning up like a bad
penny."
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