The World Economic Forum, Warsaw, 28-30/04/2004

It is little known that institutions like the World Bank and the World Economic Forum [pl] play a significant role in the taking of socio-political decisions in Poland. For example:

• the premeditated usage in the reforms of retirement pensions [pl/en] of strategies such as a "strategy of confusion,"
• the preparation of new decrees and law projects without the participation of the Ministry of Work,
• the desire to keep hidden the failures of the World Bank in latin America, as well as the strategy of 'divide and conquer,'

are little known. Next time, each of these strategies would be able to fail if the practice of radically transparent, clear and horizontal communication between citizens was only used.

This is why it is probable that there will not only be militant manifestations [pl] against the WEF summit, the "European Economic Summit" (EES) from 28th to 30th April 2004 in Warsaw, but there will also be an "alternative economic Forum [pl/en]" to discuss alternative models of economics like the participative economy ("the parecon") [en] and the Local Exchange Trading Schemes (LETS) [pl].

It is possible that the authorities will panic ahead of this freedom of expression and that they will cancel the meeting of the WEF like in October 2003 in Dublin [en], but we can only wait and see what promises to be a grand media battle, and it will be wise to not be confident of only a single media source like Poland Indymedia but also to remember that there are other Indymedias in other locations and also other websites like Smash WEF! and other Polish pages like, for example, neoeconomicus [pl], other lists on most.org.pl [pl], poprostu.pl [pl], prawda.pl [pl], ichuj ("...and fuck it!") [en/pl], Kupuj Odpowiedzialnie! ("Buy Responsibly!") [pl], ATTAC Pologne [pl] and Recykling Idei ("Recycling of Ideas"). Independent media outlets are also able to make use of our WikiPage [pl/en] in the overall coordination of the project. Of course, it would be better to organise other, independent pages specifically for the EES and the alternative summit...

And if you are gifted with being able to synthesise information, you may like to write or correct the pages of the Widipedia on the World Bank [en] and the World Economic Forum [en]. The neoliberals will also be able to write on the Wikipedia, but the strategy of confusion is not so effective as it this is a documentary space where clarity and transparence are highly valued.

original [pl] | french | translations.indymedia.org