This document by Matti Kohonen (Tax Justice Network/NIGD) is a draft inviting for comments from participants - Do comment and join us! A mailing list is currently being set up as well as a working space at www.cttcampaigns.info for the Otro Sistema Financeiro platform. Please send us a message to join the mailing list (nigd@nigd.org), we will furthermore also actively invite others on board

Dear friends,

This platform follows the discussions on the same theme that took place at the WSF 2005 in Porto Alegre, where the platform was initiated by Liberdade Brasil with the support of Attac France, NIGD, Unafisco (Brazil) and Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (Germany / Brazil). At the forum the platform grew to include the Tobin Tax Initiative, and Tax Justice Network. The TJN was launched by Association for Accountancy and Business Affairs (UK), Kairos Europe (Belgium), Attac Quebec, Attac Madrid (Spain), Attac Germany, Allience Sud (Switzerland), Berne Declaration (Switzerland), Citizens for Tax Justice (USA), and Attac Jersey (UK). The Tobin Tax Initiative, was launched by War on Want (UK), 11.11.11 (Belgium), WEED (Germany) and various groups within Attac Europe.

The objective of Otro Sistema Financeiro is partly to continue the work done by the platform in Porto Alegre in 2005. But more specifically, we'd like to take on board the initiatives on world financial issues that have taken place during the year that have developed our thinking on the Another Financial System and link up with new partners especially in the World Socil Forum VI in Bamako. The Bamako forum is the first global WSF event on the African continent and anticipates the work towards building WSF 2007 in Kenya. We particularly also want to invite the organisations and movements working around the debt issue to join our platform.

The objectives for collaboration are as last year

Continue the work of elaborating our vision of the Another Financial System and sharing experiences of our activities;
Create ways of coordinating our work;
Keeping up an internet list to facilitate our work.

Timeline of progress in the objectives

The website www.cttcampaigns.info was created by the initiative of Mikael Böök and launched the 5th WSF, to collect both news and stimulate debate on the currency transaction tax.

Gleneagles G8 Summit in July, where the Tobin Tax initiative launched the "Stamp out poverty" campaign including a much wider platform of supporters for a UK-only stamp duty on currency transactions www.stampoutpoverty.org

At an event of the "Democratising Globally" happening in Helsinki, Finland in September, the Draft Treaty for the Currency Transaction Tax was relaunched, now with translations in Catalan, Finnish, Portuguese, Swedish and Japanese, and other translations are underway with a focus on linguistic diversity and a global reach of the treaty to new audiences. The Democratising The UN Millenium Summit +5 in September, where the Millennium Development Goals were discussed, saw the rejection of the Landau report by the wider UN membership. Only an air ticket tax is likely to be implanted, and probably won't have a global reach. At the same time, the Tax Justice Network launched its publication "Tax Us if You Can", which looks at the problems of tax evasion and tax competition with a special focus on the offshore economy and the selling of national sovereignty by small jurisdictions.

(Please give your comments and add missed out important events!)

The developments can be classified in the following manner:
Opening the political space to discuss and make more ambitious proposals for global taxation and financial regulation:
The Landau report gained extra signatories and expands the topic of global taxation

Better understanding of the neo-liberal global financial architecture:
"Tax Us if You Can" exposes further the role of the offshore economies and specific measures that can be taken on different levels to stop it, and how it sets the pace on the global trade system as well. It is a basis of a global tax revolt.

Moves deepen strategies for changing the financial system:
The "Stamp out poverty" which links currency transaction tax and the current UK government agenda of increasing aid flows to developing countries.
The relaunch of the "Draft Treaty" continues the work to establish a new authority to collect global taxes and start a global constitutional process for its realisation.

In the past year after the 5th WSF there wasn't enough co-ordination or communication within the platform, as the mailing list went silent after Porto Alegre and campaigns went to their own directions. The WSF therefore has the unique role where all the campaigns do come together to debate their strategies and their advances from the past year.

Objectives for the 6th WSF

The Key role of the Another Financial System platform is to continue our discussion on the nature of the neo-liberal financial system, define the key players of the current system (both sovereign jurisdictions and corporations, multilateral institutions) that exist. The system is extremely co-ordinated and structured with the sole purpose of financial gain of the corporations and wealthy individuals and governments who organise it around their financial centres. It is not an uncoordinated system, it just exists in secrecy. We have the task of uncovering this secretive system for the benefit of the wider population.

We wish to organise large public debates in all of the polycentric forums (Bamako, Caracas, Karachi), where we can share ideas and our struggles with thousands of the participants in the different locations - both with persons who are already involved in the struggles against the tyranny of the financial markets, and those who wish to learn more about this indispensable aspect of the global justice movement.

On the need to organise ourselves

The hierarchies that are part of the financial markets, and the tendency of this system to produce a concentration of wealth, inequality, poverty, capital flight and capital theft leads to the breakdown of our systems of social protection. In developing countries the breakdown of societies robs them of the chance to keep the wealth that is produced in those locations for national development either through national use of resources or through effective taxation of income, natural resource extraction and profits.

In the state of social crisis and enduring poverty, the only services that are left are provided by the market, which leads to a commoditisation of our social relations and a disappearance of wider social solidarity. This is seen in the erosion of public services, and commercialisation of public institutions including utilities, education, libraries, transport and communication. Aid donor and loan giving relations increasingly dictate the shape of public institutions in developing countries, especially in Africa.

The USA due to the predominance of the dollar in global reserves and international trade is able to keep up a massive external trade deficit, and receive cheap money through the holding of US treasury bonds in other countries' reserves. The most powerful economy can act in such an aggressive, belligerent, and uncooperative manner because it controls the global financial system and receives cheap domestic money to fuel its own economy as a result. Even for its allies the global financial system is rather a curse, as the UK loses so much tax revenue out of its offshore markets both in London and in crown dependencies that it would gain from shutting down the neo-liberal system. Other countries have even a clear interest in changing the system, though most of them have their hands tied in donor or debt relations (Africa especially), or military and political alliances (NATO or EU) or don't realise the changes in the global financial architecture.

The 6th WSF offers a fantastic opportunity, once again not only to denounce the barbarism of the system, but to articulate the alternatives and especially our strategies on how to achieve them. It also allows us to gain a better knowledge of the secretive workings of the accountancy, legal, offshore, and banking worlds. The campaigns for the currency transaction tax, capital controls, tax co-operation and closing down the offshore world, opposition to the Third World Debt, and the policies of the IMF and the World Bank, etc. Our task, together, is to reinforce our campaigns with a better understanding of other initiatives and their interlinkages, to overcome neo-liberalism. At the same time it allows us to reach out to the wider society by persons attending to the seminars, and also reporting about them to audiences we can reach through participating media networks.

The planned events

At the moment the participating organisations of Otro Sistema Financeiro are registering events at the WSF at the www.wsf2006.org site, and in addition to the individual sites of the three organising committees of the polycentric 6th WSF. Each forum (Bamako, Caracas, Karachi) will have events of the platform.

The objective is to organise debates at the 6th WSF in the largest possible spaces available as this platform is at the heart of the WSF as a whole, both of its founders and the participating public.

The other method of debate at the WSF are testimonials, it would once again be very interesting if anyone is capable to express, with the greatest visibility and personal involvement on one hand the dictatorship of the market, and the alternatives for another financial order.

How to work together

The registration of events by organisations will close on the 15th of November, as announced on the www.wsf2006.org website. However, after that we can still merge, alter and debate the content of our events as further deadlines approach. Participating organisations should get registered and propose events freely before this deadline, as we should strive to be a participatory network. We can register our events under the common title of "Otro Sistema Financeiro", followed by topic specification. We hope that all the networks listed above are onboard continuing this initiative.

Since the 6th WSF is polycentric, though Bamako will take place from 19-23 January, and then Caracas and Karachi from 24-29 January, the communication between the three continents is crucial for the success of our platform. In this case the role of independent media will be crucial in recording our events (audio, video, text), and creating methodologies for participation (on-line forums, mailing lists, and collaborating work spaces) that allow to gather the work done in different forums together as one single platform. This will be a major challenge, and a crucial point for the polycentric forum to succeed in a wider sense as well.

A mailing list is being set up and should be the place of discussion for the speakers, merging of events. Furthermore, on the website www.cttcampaigns.info a workinspace is being designed for the Otro Sistema Financeiro platform. The proposed working languages last time were Spanish and English, and there is perhaps no reason to change this system. Spanish is largely understood by Portuguese speakers (especially those going to Caracas), and West African participants are in their majority both Francophone and Anglophone. On the other hand, media participation should concentrate on the ways of creating a memory of the events.