Wednesday

This sure has been an eventful week. Short on the heels of the Iowa results was the State of the Union Address. As several commentators have pointed out, the President kicked off his re-election campaign promising security against terrorists without doing much to tackle security at the basic, economic level. Indeed, the statistics on job creation, and many other critical economic indicators, have been dismal. Significantly, the Iowa vote can be interpreted as a signal that middle America is at least as concerned with the second type of security as the first. In other words, it might still be possible to give Mr. Bush a run for his money (no pun intended), should the nominated candidate be able to spin a positive vision for economic security without compromising on political security. Such a platform is going to have to bold and sophisticated. It is going to have to engage Bush’s new medical and immigration policies, for example, and steer people away from paranoia and inertia to hope and action. Can one of the current democratic bunch do it? I remain pessimistic but, am happy to be proven wrong.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, in Bombay, India, this was the week of the World Social Forum – a gathering of thousands of people from the world over, who claim that “another world is possible.” Despite a rape scandal involving a South African judge and a female member of his staff garnering a great deal of the coverage columns, the WSF, from all reports, seems to have been one heck of a party to celebrate being anti-Bush. There was no repeat of Seattle – but perhaps that was because the organizers were smart enough not to allow any obvious soft targets of “imperialism,” e.g., Pepsi or Coke, to be present at the venue, opting instead of home brewed lemonade, cane sugar juice and the Linux OS. However, this was as big a demonstration against the US policy on Iraq as any.

Did the Forum however produce any concrete ideas on how to make another world possible? Apparently, the many presentations by the little known folks from around the world, talking about their local achievements in a variety of sectors, did engender an inflorescence of possibilities. However, the speeches by the plenary speakers did nothing but to reiterate the old, tried, tested, and clichéd rants against the US, imperialism, corporate hegemony, and globalization. Like the Pakistani fusion rock band that opened the Bombay party, these moments of unadulterated polemic served to entertain and serve opium to their faithful followers. Sadly, despite their politically correct mien, they seem to offer little to concretely address what the WSF was among other things, set up to do – offer concrete alternatives to the neo-conservative view of global governance. And so, from Bombay, on we go to the other party, the one in Devos – from the party of the Left who are always right, to that of the Right who are always wrong.

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