As a kid, I had trouble understanding why my parents and siblings lived in Montreal and the rest of my family – grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins – were scattered across the United States. On long car trips to visit relatives in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, my parents would tell us about the Vietnam war, and the thousands of US peace activists who, like us, snuck across the border to Canada in the late sixties.

I was told that the Canadian government not only stayed officially neutral during the war, it offered sanctuary for US citizens who refused to fight in a war they believed was wrong. Derided as “draft dodgers” at home, we were welcomed in Canada as conscientious objectors.

My family’s decision to emigrate to Canada was made before I was born, but these romantic stories planted an idea in my head when I was far too young to fend it off: I believed that Canada had a relationship with the world that was radically different from that of the United States; that despite cultural similarities and geographic proximity, more humane and less interventionist values guided our dealings. In short, I thought we were sovereign.

On a muddy piece of squatted land in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, Florencia Vespignani is planning her upcoming tour of the United States, where she will be speaking with students and activists about Argentina's resistance movements.
"I'm a bit scared," she confesses.

"Of the war?" I ask.

"No. Of the plane. We have wars here all the time."

Vespignani, a 33-year-old mother and community organizer, is a leader in the Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados (MTD), one of dozens of organizations of unemployed workers, known as piqueteros, that have emerged out of the wreckage of Argentina's economy. When Florencia describes life as war, it is not a metaphor. In a country where more than half the people are living in poverty and 27 children die of hunger each day, she has simply learned that to stay alive, you have to go to the streets and fight-for every piece of bread, for every student's pencil, for every night's rest.

At the Pentagon they call it the “Voila Moment.”

That’s when Iraqi soldiers and civilians , with bombs raining down on Baghdad, suddenly scratch their heads and say to themselves: “These bombs aren’t really meant to kill me and my family, they are meant to free us from an evil dictator!” At that point, they thank Uncle Sam, lower their weapons, abandon their posts, and rise up against Saddam Hussein. Voila!

Or at least that’s how it is supposed to work, according to the experts in “psychological operations” who are already waging a fierce information war in Iraq. The “Voila Moment” made its first foray into the language of war last Monday, when a New York Times reporter quoted an unnamed senior U.S. military official using the term.

Poor Endy Chávez, outfielder for the Navegantes del Megallanes, one of Venezuela's big baseball teams. Every time he comes up to bat, the local TV sportscasters start in with the jokes. "Here comes Chávez. No not the pro-Cuban dictator Chávez, the other Chávez." Or "This Chávez hits baseballs, not the Venezuelan people."

In Venezuela, even color commentators are enlisted in the commercial media's open bid to oust the democratically elected government of Hugo Chavez. Andrés Izarra, a Venezuelan television journalist, says that the campaign has done so much violence to truthful information on the national airwaves that the four private TV stations have effectively forfeited their right to broadcast. "I think their licenses should be revoked," he says.

The key word at this year's World Social Forum, which ended yesterday in Porto Alegre, Brazil, was 'big.'

Big attendance: more than a hundred thousand delegates in all! Big speeches: more than 15,000 crammed in to see Noam Chomsky! And most of all, big men. Lula da Silva, the newly elected president of Brazil, came to the Forum and addressed 75,000 adoring fans. Hugo Chavez, the controversial president of Venezuela, paid a 'surprise' visit to announce that his embattled regime was part of the same movement as the forum itself.

"The left in Latin America is being reborn," Mr. Chavez declared, as he pledged to vanquish his opponents at any cost. As evidence of this rebirth, he pointed to Lula's election in Brazil, Lucio Gutierrez's victory in Ecuador and Fidel Castro's tenacity in Cuba.

But wait a minute: how on earth did a gathering that was supposed to be a showcase for new grassroots movements become a celebration of men with a penchant for three hour speeches about smashing the oligarchy?