While thousands protested in the streets of New York City during the first World Economic Forum (WEF) to be held outside Davos, Switzerland, nearly 500 other activists from the U.S. spent those first few days of February in southern Brazil among about 80,000 people attending the second annual World Social Forum (WSF).

The protests at the WEF assured both supporters and opponents of the global justice movements, including those who had tried to write our obituary, that the movements' passion and relevance has not decreased in the post-September 11th world. The fact that such protests could take place in New York City, successfully pinning their message on the financial crisis in Argentina and the Enron debacle, and denying the media's hunger for sensationalism and conflict, was a crucial step, and was celebrated by the activists in Brazil.

What does "ENRON" mean?

"Capitalism's triumph is self-declared - because it got rid of misery in the west. That's triumphing too - at the expense of others. In Haiti, where misery rules on a daily basis, how can one speak of triumphant capitalism - it doesn't mean anything in Haiti. All you have in Haiti is gross inequality between the majority - who have nothing - and the rich minority. Where is the triumph here?"

After emerging from a devastating 24-year Indonesian military occupation, East Timor will finally gain its official independence on May 20, 2002. It is an exciting time for the country, but as with so many impoverished nations scrambling to survive under corporate globalization, the struggle is entering a new phase with daunting challenges.

If it were up to Soros, there would be an international bankruptcy procedure that could resolve Argentina's debt crisis in an orderly way, and allow the country to make a fresh start. But Argentina's international creditors are not so forgiving, and they are determined to get their pound of flesh. In the 19th century, this might have been accomplished through gunboat diplomacy. Today, the world is more civilized: we have the International Monetary Fund.

You could almost hear the yelp when the U.S. Treasury yanked the IMF's chain. On the first of April, IMF deputy managing director Ann Krueger told Washington's Institute for International Economics that she supported the creation of a "single international judicial entity" to oversee and arbitrate debt restructuring of bankrupt governments.

In what is rapidly becoming a familiar pattern, the World Bank started, under Wolfensohn's early leadership in the mid-1990s, publicly embracing citizens' groups, including long-time opponents, as part of initiatives designed to address controversial Bank policies -- only to distance itself from the results of those initiatives when they have come in.

The debate over the shape and future of the global economy was focused in Monterrey, Mexico from March 14-22. There, the official United Nations-sponsored Financing for Development (FFD) Conference was preceded by an energetic, interesting, productive and very well-organized "NGO Global Forum on Financing the Right to Equitable and Sustainable Development." The Global Forum brought together 2600 persons representing 700 organizations from all the regions of the world and generated an excellent exchange of experience, analysis and proposals on the major themes of the U.N. process: mobilizing domestic resources for development; investment and trade; debt; and systemic issues.