Actually, I spent this last week in Windhoek, Namibia with excellent radical thinktanks and NGO folk allied to the regional labour movement, and that was precisely the recommendation they came up with too.
> Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 18:49:29 -0800
> From: Barbara Laurence <cns at cats.ucsc.edu>
> I do believe, and am presently working on this question and lots of related
> ones, that the choice is between a plurality of national/regionalist models
> of development, where first things come first, like eradicating poverty, on
> the one hand, and a single global model of development under the rule of
> the US, on the other.
This is also being pursued by Bello, Amin and the like...
> The big question it seems is, has the latter,
> relatively young in historical times, developed to the point at which the
> former becomes impossible? Impossible without taking apart or breaking
> down a wide range of economic, social, political and cultural arrangements,
> interrelations, etc?
Sure, "breaking down" = "nix it" in relation to WB/IMF/WTO, agreed.
> Now is the time to deal with the big question and all the little questions
> that need answers before it is possible to answer the big question. It may
> be that we need a "best practices" center, on internet, in person on the
> ground, everywhere, where people from different countries that know
> something about inward vs outward looking development, what is needed to
> succeed, the pitfalls, etc. so that the collective wisdom, on a world
> scale, of left economists to unions to village or farmer organizations to
> progressive ecologists, government officials, statisticians, etc., et al.
> could teach and learn from one another. the World Social Forum would be
> the ideal place, perhaps. Wherever it is, it has to be truly bottom-up to
> be credible and also to work. And whatever it is, it has to be
> "red-green." Such a World Alternatives Center - or TIAA in place of TINA -
> would freak out the North esp. the US ruling classes.
A wonderful start along these lines in Africa is the "African People's Consensus," which got a big boost in the Dakar meeting two months ago. Stay tuned!
(One website I like to advertise, pushing our goodies, is http://aidc.org.za )