Brazil’s first working-class president got a hero’s welcome at the World Social Forum, wowing 10,000 leftists with a vow to reproach the rich and famous for causing the global meltdown when he meets with them this week.
Former radical union leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva — known almost everywhere as Lula — was greeted on Tuesday night like a rock star by activists in a sports stadium chanting “Lula, Lula, the warrior of the Brazilian people!”
And he got more cheers after promising to scold world leaders and bankers at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland — and tell them the free market policies they have espoused for decades were to blame for the global financial crunch.
PHOTO: AFP
“The financial system can’t parade itself as a good example, because it ended up provoking the biggest crisis in recent years,” he said.
Lula said the Davos gathering doesn’t have as much glamor as it did when he first attended it just after his inauguration in 2003.
Now, he said, developing nations like Brazil only recently viewed as second-class countries will have a strong hand in setting a new world economic order.
As a storied leftist union leader, Lula was a popular fixture at the World Social Forum — started in Porto Alegre a decade ago as a counterpoint to the yearly gathering of the business and political elite at the World Economic Forum — although he has grated on some activists since being elected Brazil’s president.
Lula turned to the center after taking office and embraced free market economic policies loathed by the forum’s leftists, but he also spent heavily on social programs that have lifted millions of Brazilians out of poverty. Brazil is also riding an unprecedented economic boom.
Lula was booed at the social forum in 2005 by activists who felt he had betrayed his leftist roots and were more impressed with the presence of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a strident socialist.
But Chavez didn’t show up at the social forum this year, and Brazilians attending the event said Lula should get most of the credit for Brazil’s rapid advance on the world stage during his administration and for extremely strong economic advances that have helped most of the nation’s more than 190 million citizens.
Brazil was also among the last nations to be hit by the financial crisis and among the first to emerge with strong growth prospects based on heavy domestic consumer demand.
“He’s made friends for Brazil with all of the countries in the world, and he’s created harmony for the rich and poor,” said Noe Melo Hernandez, a retired police officer. “It’s really remarkable.”
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is constructing a new counter-stealth radar system on a disputed reef in the South China Sea that would significantly expand its surveillance capabilities in the region, satellite imagery suggests. Analysis by London-based think tank Chatham House suggests China is upgrading its outpost on Triton Island (Jhongjian Island, 中建島) on the southwest corner of the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), building what might be a launching point for an anti-ship missile battery and sophisticated radar system. “By constraining the US ability to operate stealth aircraft, and threaten stealth aircraft, these capabilities in the South China Sea send
HAVANA: Repeated blackouts have left residents of the Cuban capital concerned about food, water supply and the nation’s future, but so far, there have been few protests Maria Elena Cardenas, 76, lives in a municipal shelter on Amargura Street in Havana’s colonial old town. The building has an elegant past, but for the last few days Maria has been cooking with sticks she had found on the street. “You know, we Cubans manage the best we can,” she said. She lives in the shelter because her home collapsed, a regular occurrence in the poorest, oldest parts of the beautiful city. Cuba’s government has spent the last days attempting to get the island’s national grid functioning after repeated island-wide blackouts. Without power, sleep becomes difficult in the heat, food
Botswana is this week holding a presidential election energized by a campaign by one previous head-of-state to unseat his handpicked successor whose first term has seen rising discontent amid a downturn in the diamond-dependent economy. The charismatic Ian Khama dramatically returned from self-exile six weeks ago determined to undo what he has called a “mistake” in handing over in 2018 to Botswanan President Mokgweetsi Masisi, who seeks re-election tomorrow. While he cannot run as president again having served two terms, Khama has worked his influence and standing to support the opposition in the southern African country of 2.6 million people. “The return of
SOUTH CHINA SEA TENSIONS: Beijing’s ‘pronounced aggressiveness’ and ‘misbehavior’ forced countries to band together, the Philippine defense chief said The Philippines is confident in the continuity of US policies in the Asia-Pacific region after the US presidential election, Philippine Secretary of Defense Gilberto Teodoro said, underlining that bilateral relations would remain strong regardless of the outcome. The alliance between the two countries is anchored in shared security goals and a commitment to uphold international law, including in the contested waters of the South China Sea, Teodoro said. “Our support for initiatives, bilaterally and multilaterally ... is bipartisan, aside from the fact that we are operating together on institutional grounds, on foundational grounds,” Teodoro said in an interview. China’s “misbehavior” in the South
RSS