In his column in the June edition of "Le Monde Diplomatique", Ignacio Ramonet refers to the mega-mergers being undertaken by large corporations, underlining that this has enabled them to become giants, while -through privatization- States are becoming dwarves. "The main phenomenon of our era, globalism, is not led by States. In the face of giant firms, States are progressively losing their prerogatives", writes Ramonet, who closes his article with the challenging question: "Can citizens tolerate this new kind of planetary Coup?" (our translation).

Without a doubt -or so we hope- the response to this question should be a resounding no. But the point is that citizenship itself has been put in parentheses by the present dominant tendency, which has as its central reference point the total market. The logic with which the market moves leaves no alternatives: everything must have a price, an owner and generate profit. In other words, for the market, what counts are consumers, not citizens. Therefore, those who do not qualify for the first group are simply excluded, and in the worst of cases, considered "disposable".

THE IMPACT OF COMMUNICATION

The speed and intensity of the changes that characterize the contemporary world cannot be understood without taking into account the so-called "technological and scientific revolution" that broke out about two decades ago and has found in communication one of its main fields of development - not to say the most important one.

The most visible result of this process is the configuration of a planetary system of communication that can operate indistinctly through diverse channels (the basis of multimedia) and has the capacity for simultaneous merging of the local and the global spheres. This has reached the point where the notion of time and distance has been redefined, which has given rise to a new space- time dimension: cyberspace.

The changes registered in communication have been so influential on every sphere of social life and on the international order -inasmuch as they are both a cause and effect of globalization- that several analysts consider we have entered the "communication era". To make their point, they underline that the technological factor, based on information and knowledge, has come to occupy the predominant place that human work once held in productive procedures, and also therefore, in the organization of society.

Beyond the debate that this characterization has unleashed, it is easy to verify empirically that today, the emblems or icons the predominate socially are related to communication technologies: computers, video games, mobile phones and a whole panoply of digital goods (watches, calculators ... not to mention tamagotchis).

In this context, it is little wonder that the main business mergers are taking place in branches linked to communication, which have also become a highly profitable and cutting-edge sector. Nor is it surprising that the traditional power of the media has grown to the point where today they define their own agendas and determine what is or isn't socially relevant.

With this brief outline, we hope to have underlined how important the dual issues of communication and citizenship have become, and consequently, the relevance of the "International Forum" on these themes, that will take place in San Salvador, El Salvador, on September 9-11 1998. We could add that this Forum, understood in the sense given to the word in ancient Greece, should not be seen just as an event, but aims to be part of a process of accumulating forces around the Right to Communicate. In this spirit, the exchanges we can establish through this list do not necessarily need to be restricted by our eventual presence or absence in El Salvador; on the contrary, even over distances, we can advance the cause of "communication for democracy and democracy in communication".

Osvaldo Leon (ALAI)