>Czech President Vaclav Havel offered to "mediate" talks between World Bank
>president James Wolfensohn and the protesters planning to disrupt the
>bank's September 26-28 meeting in Prague.
Does anyone know the outcome of Vaclav Havel's offer?
It sounds a clever ploy, potentially dangerous to the momentum of the movement because it may split the anarchists and the NGO's.
>Part of the problem is structural. Among most anarchists, who are doing a
>great deal of
>the grassroots organizing (and who got online way before the more
>established left),direct democracy, transparency and community
>self-determination are not lofty political
>goals, they are fundamental tenets governing their own organizations. Yet
>many of the
>key NGOs, though they may share the anarchists' ideas about democracy in
>theory, are
>themselves organized as traditional hierarchies. They are run by
>charismatic leaders and
>executive boards, while their members send them money and cheer from the
>sidelines.
(Naomi Klein in The Nation 10 July 00)
Chris Burford
London