To Porto Alegre in Brazil, to be specific. Yes, it's the "World Social Forum" which is the latest gathering of the clowns and jugglers of the left that has converged upon the hapless South American city. David at Samizdata has the scoop. Part of their concerns, along with making sure that every single cause gets its own parade, is something called the "landless peoples' movement." Say, I've got no land; I rent an apartment. Can I be part of this cool movement? You know, if these jokers had pooled together all the money that it cost putting this "World Social Forum" together, they could have bought the landless people some land.
Posted by Andrea Harris at January 26, 2003 10:30 AMthe worst part is these jackasses cant figure out why anyone with half a brain doesnt take them seriously...
Posted by: mr. helpful at January 26, 2003 at 11:44 AMSounds like Carnaval is coming early this year.
Posted by: Ken Summers at January 27, 2003 at 09:27 AMI just read an interesting book on the "landless people" called The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto. His research team concluded that the world's huddled masses actually control trillions of dollars worth of land, but have no access to a legal system like ours, with formal property rights, and therefore cannot use their possesions to create capital. The problem is that no one seems to really know exactly how our system came into being - it sort of just happened bit by bit over the last couple hundred years - and therefore it has been difficult to recreate in developing countries. I highly recommend to book, at any rate.
Posted by: Aaron at January 29, 2003 at 09:33 PM