European Social Forum
On 14 July 1789 King Louis of France wrote one word in his diary Rien (meaning nothing). Like a member of Britain's Countryside Alliance avant la lettre, the King's preoccupation with an unsuccessful hunt meant that he missed out on other events. For on that same day the Bastille was stormed, unleashing one of the most momentous revolutions in world history.
Globolog is playing King of France this week. This is Globolog lite. Readers should hunt elsewhere for heavy stuff.
What was achieved at last week's European Social Forum (reported in Globolog)? The French film director Francois Truffaut used to tell a story. A screenwriter was always coming up with his best ideas in the middle of the night but forgetting them by morning. Eventually he put paper and pen by his bed. The next time he woke up in the middle of the night with a flash of inspiration he wrote it down. Next morning he looked at the notepad. There were three words: "Boy Meets Girl".
"Boy Meets Girl" is an important event for those involved, and the ESF was, not least, a high libido zone for many young people there. Was it more than that? John Vidal, writing in the UK's Guardian newspaper, thinks so. It was a participatory system "completely different to the established organising of political ideas", says Vidal. [Participants] sought a demilitarised Europe at peace with itself and world, an ethical continent that takes a high moral stance against US Imperialism... They imagined a Europe that rejected the crude ideology of the market".
Does imagining deliver? Geoff Mulgan, Head of the Strategy Unit, a think tank attached to the Cabinet Office and at the heart of the British government, is sceptical. He told a international conference in London on the impact of internet and digital technology that networks have not turned out to be as influential as once predicted, including by people like himself (last week, openDemocracy published The future is navigable: South African lessons for a digital world from this conference). Hierarchy remains powerful, said Mulgan, while pure network movements like the anti-globalisers have proved to have little influence on policy .
You don't have to agree with Mulgan (who is taking part in an upcoming debate on openDemocracy about how governments learn) to believe that activists achieve more when they focus onto particular issues, both at the local level (such as the Centri Sociali or Social Centres to which Naomi Klein refers to her in her new book Fences and Windows) and at the level of global governance.
And the ESF did host some serious thought at both levels. On global topics, to take just two examples, there was intelligent discussion of what could be achieved with respect to the World Trade Organisation (NGOs were particularly concerned about what they saw as a lack of accountability at the WTO mini-ministerial in Sydney, Australia on 14-15 November, prior to a full meeting in Cancun, Mexico next September), and fertile if not febrile exchange as to whether a Tobin Tax on international financial flows could be administered 'democratically' through a participatory budgeting process.
It is hard to find constructive debate - as distinct from sloganeering on such topics that also is accessible to wider communities of citizens. openDemocracy will try to help fill this gap in coming months by bringing together people from significantly different positions who will exchange ideas in a spirit of open enquiry. We even think that the organisers of the World Social Forum and the World Economic Forum may have things to learn from each other. Answers do not come fully formed.
For many at the ESF, corporate capitalism is the problem. But, as Benjamin Compaine argued in openDemocracy's global media ownership debate, its not clear that condemning corporations tout court is very helpful. Lately, even George Monbiot, a British writer and activist known for sharply worded attacks on corporate control in books such as Captive State: the Corporate Takeover of Britain, sees their utility in some circumstances. His forthcoming agenda for world government The Age of Consent is to be handed down next June through the earthly medium of Harper Collins, an imprint of News Corporation - a company that makes even some defenders of capitalism blush for its avoidance of tax and sharp practice (it also publishes Naomi Klein).
Perhaps this is a nostalgic journey for Newscorp Chairman and Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch, who kept a bust of Lenin on his mantelpiece at Oxford. Perhaps Murdoch has more than a passing interesting in What Is To Be Done? Or perhaps Harper Collins executives understand the commercial potential of what The Baffler dubbed Consolidated Deviance, Inc:
"ConDev" is the nation's leader in the fabrication, consultancy, licensing and merchandising of deviant subcultural practice. With its highly successful "SubCults", mass-marketed youth culture campaigns highlighting rapid stylistic turnover and heavy cross-media accessorization, ConDev has brought the allure of the marginalized to the consuming public. Before modern techniques of youth culture fabrication were developed, stylistic subcultures often took years to achieve profitability. Today, by contrast, ConDev can devise, package and introduce a profitable SubCult into any geographical, class or racial market in a matter of months. Antarctica
Penguin lovers the world over may have been distressed by the news this week that Emperor Penguins are in big trouble.
This follows earlier fears that tens of thousands of baby penguins could starve to death because their parents were having to walk up to 50 kilometres (30 miles) further than usual to get food. The normal route to feeding areas was blocked after two giant icebergs broke off the Antarctic ice sheet and floated between Ross Island and the open ocean.
The Antarctic environment is always changing. Blame for the death of particular group of penguins cannot be laid at humanitys door. The continent has been harsh and unforgiving for millions of years.
Emperor Penguins. Copyright Guillaume Dargaud
But human action can have an additional, severely destabilising effect. A big hole in the stratospheric ozone layer over the southern continent caused by manmade gases known as chlorofluorocarbons showed that the industrialised nations of the north could seriously mess up the planet in unexpected ways in very short periods of time.
Unlike many environmental problems, the hole in the ozone layer was met with a reasonably prompt and effective response. An important factor in reaching international agreement was shared respect for scientific method and its findings. There is a little inspiration here for dark times.
Since the coming into force of the Antarctic Treaty in 1961 at the height of the Cold War - the continent has been universally recognised as nature reserve devoted to peace and the spirit of scientific enquiry that asks, with Montaigne, What do I really know?. Resource exploitation and fantasies of empire (British, Argentinian, even Ukrainian ) have largely been put on hold. Effort goes instead to delightful enterprises such as detecting cosmic neutrinos particles without charge or mass that may provide evidence of six extra dimensions in space time and for a long cherished theory of everything.
But respect for science does not extend to the leaders of the newly triumphant Republican party in the United States. Tom DeLay, the new House majority leader, mocked the award of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to the discoverers of link between chlorofluorocarbons and ozone depletion as the "Nobel Appeasement Prize". If only Christopher Columbus had believed in a flat earth too: we might have been spared Mr DeLay.
Do you have a story about globalisation? Are you outraged or elated? Contact globolog@opendemocracy.net