Insults fly during Internet debate

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil -- A live satellite debate between one of the world's capitalist icons, George Soros, and anti-capitalist opponents descended into a shouting match.

The "videobridge" on Sunday was aimed at promoting dialogue between the world economy's elite currently gathered at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos and its counter movement, the World Social Forum meeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

But the event turned into a raucous debate, with mutli-millionaire Soros being branded a "hypocrite" and "monster".

The financier Soros, in turn, told the Africans that much of the blame for their misery lay with their continent's alleged corrupt governments.

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The social forum organisers had hoped to launch a serious, alternative economic platform to unhindered global capitalism and had attracted 10,000 conference-goers.

The battle lines, drawn early on in the debate, continued with the Porto Alegre participants blaming unfettered capitalism, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund for the suffering of the Third World.

And Davos saying that wealth must be created -- by capitalism -- before it can be re-distributed.

The Porto Alegre contingent called for debt forgiveness for developing nations and the adoption of the Tobin Tax, a tariff on cross-border financial transactions named after the Nobel laureate in economics James H. Tobin.

It is designed to tame rapid international capital flows and protect poor nations from world market crises.

Davos responded, saying that in all recipes for the reduction of poverty, there must be a component of economic growth.

Walden Bello, representing Focus Global South, told the Davos panel of Soros, U.N. officials John Ruggie and Mark Malloch, and Swedish entrepreneur Bjorn Edlund: "You are on the planet of the super-rich ... we are on the planet of the poor, the marginalised, the oppressed."

Soros sidestepped a question on how many Third World children die daily.

"You are our enemies, you are a hypocrite, " yelled Hebe de Bona Fini, a representative of Argentina's Madres de la Plaza de Mayo. "Answer me, you monster!"

Soros replied: "I am looking at your face and all I can do is smile.

"You have broken off all dialogue. We were here prepared to open a dialogue with you."

He also said that Africa's corrupt governments were just as much to blame for the continent's misery as global institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The Porto Alegre forum has presented itself as legitimising and formalising the anti-globalisation lobby that has been growing worldwide since protesters disrupted the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in December 1999.

But it has come in for criticism as a vehicle for Brazil's socialist Workers' Party, which governs Rio Grande do Sul state and its capital, Porto Alegre.

Earlier on Sunday, organisers also found themselves unexpectedly the targets of protesters.

A group of demonstrators, singing, dancing and chanting black power slogans, disrupted the forum's news conference.

About 60 black activists from Brazil, Africa and other Latin American countries were protesting to press their complaints that black issues were being sidelined by the forum.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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