Speaker after speaker told a packed plenary session on "sovereignty, nation and state" that the United States was behind the worst aspects of globalization. Michael Hardt, a professor at Duke University who said the United States did not control world globalization or capitalistic oppression, was politely received and quickly challenged.

Edgardo Lander, University of Venezuela in Caracas, said that despite reports that globalization limited the sovereignty of governments, that of the United States has "not only a high level of sovereignty but a sovereignty that goes beyond even the point of international illegality and they allow themselves the luxury of doing things like make laws in relation to Cuba, Iran and Libya." He added "The American senate has empowered itself the right to legislate over the world. The trend shows us that all states are becoming less democratic, all states are taking their decisions with less participation of the people involved whether inside their territories or outside it."

Hardt tried to shift the focus from American imperialism to the concept of "empire" which is also the title of his book that has been well received in intellectual circles around the world. He said the new form of dominance of the classes is really international and "without a center." He also said the resistance to domination and oppression should also be international.

He said to label "the contemporary power that dominates us as imperialism, specifically 'US imperialism', implies political practice of anti-imperialism, and also anti-US and also makes possible the notion of a national solution to the problem, national liberation and national sovereignty as a goal."

The solution is not national, he said, and it has already begun. He said demonstrators protesting against the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in Seattle and Genoa "have been experimenting with new enemies."

"They have understood it is not the United States as a nation-state that is responsible," he said. " If the demonstrations were aimed at the United States, they should have taken place at the White House, or at Wall Street, or at the Pentagon. But instead they went to the G8 and the IMF, and to experimentation with understanding the new enemy."

"Empire," he said, "means a new power that exists in a network form, a distributed form of power--a form of unlimited rule that tends to encompass the entire globe."

And the answer, he said, is in constructing what he called a "multitude."

"The movements from the North Atlantic, from Seattle to Genoa, are experimenting with constructing multitude, a counter-power that is also in network form."

He said it was necessary to "construct a subject powerful enough to challenge the form of domination under which we suffer." But Daniel Bensaid, of the University of Paris, vehemently disagreed that the United States is the wrong target.

He drew loud cheers when he said, "The United States not only dominates, but dominates the international organizations."

"When it is not possible to get what they want through the United Nations and other international organizations, they act without it. They are like the Holy Ghost in heaven, in the air, everywhere. And their multinational companies benefit from the dominance of the dollar in its (American) military support."

And Alex Callinicos of the University of York said, "Power is enormously concentrated in the United States."

He said the United States openly shows how it mistreats prisoners in Guatanamo Bay in Cuba "as a kind of political theater, to demonstrate what will happen to anyone who seeks to challenge U.S. domination."

Nizar al-Anbaqi of the University of Baghdad, said, "The United States wants to impose a world imperialism. What is even more dangerous and affects all states is the fact that the United Nations is used as an instrument of American policy. One example is what they did against Iraq. The United States and England forced the United Nations to maintain the embargo against Iraq. They make their own decisions about the future of other places. On a daily basis, 4,500 children die in Iraq because of it."

Isabel Monal of Agora magazine in Cuba said the new US--led imperialism, just like the old imperialism, needs to keep states weak.

"States are intentionally kept defective, weak and deformed," she said, "to allow the World Bank and the IMF to play outside the rules.

"Politicians claim they have nothing to say in the decision-making because they decisions are technical ones, made by the international technicians. And many people, even from the left, accept that and blame only the World Bank and the IMF for our problems.

"This is an ideal situation for the imperialist system because they can thereby weaken the nation states, especially in the peripheral areas, where they need these states to be weak."

Speaking loudly and gesticulating strongly, Monal drew cheers and applause when she shouted that the United States had used September 11 and the fight against drugs as "justifications for new interventions into the rest of the world."

All that happened," she shouted, "in the Colombia plano, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere is purely political and has nothing to do with ethics. It is hypocritical and should be stopped. Imperialism should be stopped."

Xavier Gorostiaga of Guatemala said "Today we are in the age of knowledge, when the power over life on research and in bio technology. But the percent of control over this has grown from 50 percent in the hands of governments ten years ago to 70 per cent in the hands of six major corporations."

On the last day of their forum, thousands of activists prepared Monday evening to launch a huge march against the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas which they see as an attempt to impose US domination across the Hemisphere. Organizers said the march was only the beginning of a campaign against the idea, and that demonstrations would be held in several capitals demanding a referendum in every country before any agreement is signed.

In other fora: Naomi Klein, activist author of the book "No Logo," said that if the demands of the WSF were ignored, the people should look to "civil disobedience" as a main weapon. Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel of Argentina proposed the creation of a new entity to mediate conflicts and avoid wars, now that "the United Nations has been dismembered by the economic power of the United States."

A second Nobel Prize winner, Rigoberta Menchu, said that globalization had "dehumanized" the enemy.

"Before, we used to confront the rich man on the corner because we knew him," she said. "Now we don't have anyone with whom we can fight."

Menchu also accused the Brazilian government of imposing "an absolute silence" on the condition of indigenous people throughout the country.

A seminar on multinational corporations voted to recommend a boycott of ten major companies it said treated workers poorly. The plenary of the World Social Forum, however, has usually decided to make no final declarations and there is no body to which the seminar could present the list.