Workshops

1 – Workshop on the support to the Resistance of Middle-East Peoples

This workshop aims at developing topics insufficiently dealt-with in the current political literature, especially the right to resistance in terms of an intrinsic value; a necessary condition for the return to equilibrium on the international scene. The workshop will also deal with the experiences and evaluation of resistance, as well as the social conditions that have favoured identity consciousness and the establishment of cultures and of economical, social and political systems that are more equitable and more human.

The workshop will revolve around the elaboration of an objective solidarity between different resistance movements built on a revolutionary vision of class and not on compassion.

2 – Worskhop on Anti-imperialism and Solidarity between Peoples

This workshop will focus on Imperialism and the dark chapter it represents in the history of humanity. The workshop will reveal the reasons that Imperialism has for warmongering, invading countries, imposing market laws, controlling resources, submitting Peoples, militarizing the economy, and imposing neo-liberalism as the destiny of Peoples on the planet.

The workshop will have for ambition to trigger a converging process between the anti-imperialist resistance struggles, social movements, political forces, and alternative networks… in view of installing a united world-wide struggle against Imperialism and neo-liberalism.

It will seek to promote joint actions among Peoples to face the imperialist projects of the Grand Middle-East, the Union for the Mediterranean, of ALCA/FTAA, and other strategies of invasion.

3 – Building alternatives to neo-liberalism

The uncontrolled privatisation and merchandisation yield unprecedented devastating effects: the destruction of bio-diversity, ecological threats, the wasting of renewable or non-renewable resources (in particular, oil and water), the annihilation of rural communities threatened with massive land spoliation. All these areas must be managed as part of the common heritage of Humanity. In these areas, decisions must not come out of the market for the most part, but out of the political powers of Nations and Peoples.

Two themes will be debated in this workshop 

A – Alternatives and proposals on an international or regional scale in all areas concerning the management of common goods (water), food security (farming, small-scale fishing…) and the whole suite of ecological matters… The need to exclude these areas from the WTO negotiations… and to evolve from the collective realization of the challenges to the construction of social agents that are active in the transformation.

B – Regionalisation:

For a regionalisation at the service of Peoples, which will reinforce the South in global negotiations. To define the conditions for an alternative of cooperation within each wide region, in close relation with the actions of social movements. To think about the question of regional integration from a new perspective, based on cooperative benefits, and no longer on comparative edges. To study the Latin-American model (reinforce ALBA against ALCA/FTAA).

4 – Parliamentarian Workshop

This workshop is devoted to parliamentarians, to members of elected councils of the EU, members of the Union of Parliamentarians of South America, members of the Union of Arab Parliamentarians, and parliamentarians from all countries of the South.

Participants will seek to establish the basis of a South-South partnership and of an equitable North-South partnership, to exchange experiences in view of building a political, economical and cultural consensus as an alternative to neo-liberal and militarized globalization and to the hegemonism of the United States and their allies.

The workshop will also deal with the responsibility of elected representants in committing themselves to build alternatives, to strengthen public services, and defend public goods…

It will also debate on political issues of parliamentarian interest and of far-reaching consequences for the Peoples of the Middle-East, such as the enforcement of the resolution from the International Court of Justice in Den Haag demanding the removal of the separation wall in Palestine, as well as the enforcement of any other resolution leading to the restoration of the legitimate rights of the Peoples.

5 – Workshop on the defence of civil and political rights  

The workshop will aim at discussing the continuation of the activities of the International Citizens Tribunal that took place in Brussels to judge Israeli war crimes, in view of prosecuting the criminals and to file individual complaints in European courts.

We will examine the experience of the Permanent Peoples Tribunal, and the possibilities of holding other tribunals to judge international institutions responsible for famine, poverty, illegal indebtment of Third-World countries. Also to judge multinational companies responsible for ecological crimes (Monsanto, Bechtel…) and/or private security agencies committing crimes under the guise of occupation…

6 – Workshop on Media and Telecommunications

The right to information collides with the general logic of the media system. We must therefore fight against this enterprise of “conformism” and take legislative measures to guaranty the autonomy of newspapers with respect to share-holders and owners, in encouraging, wherever it does not exist, the creation of journalists associations, and favour alternative media in all possible forms (newspapers, radios, television channels, internet), which already play an important role in offering a pluralist information not submitted to the diktats of finance and multinational firms. That is why we must demand from governments that these media benefit from special fiscal and reglementary privileges. An Alternative  Media Observatory could identify the most advance existing legislation in the world. The workshop will be led by alternative Media such as Télé Sour, Ajjazira, Vive TV, Al-Manar…

7- Culture Workshop: Cultural diversity vs. monoculture

The neo-liberal policies lead to the merchandisation of cultural products and to the privatization of important public services, notably education and health-care. This option fosters the mass production of low-quality para-cultural products, the submission of research to the exclusive priorities of short-term profitability, and the degradation of education for the popular classes – or even to their exclusion from it.

This workshop will deal with the forms of cultural identification in the face of policies of exclusion and reduction of the freedom space. It will examine the question of democracy from a cultural perspective. Experience shows that political democracy that is not based on an economical and cultural democracy is useless. The idea of a cultural democracy has been replaced by that – no less obscene – of a massification of culture, a pseudo-melting pot used to mask the predominance of one of them.

For more practical information, please write to:
beirutforum2009@gmail.com