Ignacio Ramonet is a specialist on geopolitics, economics and the history of culture and a professor of communication theory at the University Denis Diderot in Paris. He is the long-time editor of the French leftist magazine, Le Monde Diplomatique, one of the founders of ATTAC international and a key player in organizing the first World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. ATTAC began in France in 1998 and has since grown to an international organization of approximately 65,000 members. It proposes a reform tax (the Tobin Tax) of between 0.1% to 0.5% of currency transactions in order to dampen currency speculation and as a way of raising revenues to address global poverty.