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Dear President Cardoso:

As a political sociologist in a prominent institute of Third World development studies, I have read, with interest and admiration, your speech on globalisation to the Colegio de Mexico one year or so ago. I have even refered to it in my writings, pointing out the irony of the president of a major state producing a better analysis of globalisation than many social scientists or labour movement supporters.

However, I have just heard that police have been moving against the dockers of Santos, themselves protesting against the globalisation you yourself critique. In confronting neo-liberal threats to their jobs, moreover, the dockers of Santos find themselves in a position similar to dockers in Amsterdam, Liverpool (to take current examples) and other parts of the world. There is now, indeed, a growing global network of dockers and their friends, which has already taken effective international defence action in support of the Liverpool dockers. They are thus contributing to the construction of some kind of `global civil society' that is reacting against `Casino Capitalism', or `International Monetary Fund- amentalism'. I assume that you, as a man of the centre, if not the left, approve of such common resistance, global solidarity, and the effort to create a humane and socially-minded `globalisation from below' against the brutal neo-liberal globalisation from above.

As a specialist on both dockworker struggle (in Nigeria and Spain), and on the new global solidarity movements of workers, women and other social movements - and as a lifelong member of the trade union and broader labour movement, I appeal to you to intervene forcefully and urgently against the destruction of jobs, lives and communities now taking place in Santos.

Yours,

`Communication is the nervous system of internationalism
and solidarity' (Jose Maria Mariategui, Lima, c.1923)

Institute of Social Studies,                    Jacob v.d. Doestr. 28
POB 29776 The Hague,                            POB 2518XN The Hague
Netherlands.                                    Netherlands
Tel:  +31-70-4260-579,                          Tel:  +31-70-363-1539
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Emb: waterman@iss.nl.