The buzz about Karachi Forum has started, star guests will include the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu and Arundhati Roy, say Pakistan's Daily Times.

One of the most interesting articles on the WSF I've read in a while, by Hanna Dahlstrom in Upside Down World, discusses the Alternative Social Forum, state appropriation of social movements in Venezuela, and criticizes the glamour oil politics of Chavez from an environmental and indigenous rights standpoint. She feels Venezuela's state oil company, PDVSA, was too tied in with the Forum in Caracas. It may have been worth adding that the Brazilian oil company, Petrobras, was a major funder of the Forum in Porto Alegre. How to raise the hundreds of thousands of dollars to organise the Forum is a constant headache for organisers. Seems to be that most bodies with enough money to help, amassed their wealth through activities anathemous to the left.

Plus, another article about the WSF and Chavez in The Nation.