Inspired by the principles of Malcolm X / Malik El-Hajj Shabazz. A 'Third Worldist' perspective focusing on the increasing pace of south-south co-operation which is challenging and defeating US hegemony, and the struggles of those oppressed by neo-colonialism and white supremacy (racism) who fight for their social, political and cultural freedom 'by any means necessary'
Some of the Guardian's readers will, for all her faults, have shed a few tears at the departure of our development secretary.
Clare Short may have failed, in March, to act upon her threat to resign over the war with Iraq. But even those who have turned against her will miss that splash of colour on the front benches, the old Labour warrior who still spoke the language of feeling, and who, as if by magic, had somehow survived the control freaks and the little grey men for six vivid and tumultuous years. Westminster will be a bleaker and a colder place without her.
Well, dry your eyes. Clare Short survived because she was useful. She was as much a creature of the control freaks as any of the weaker members of the frontbench. To understand her role in government is to begin to understand the nature of our post-oppositional, postmodern political system.
Short was a licensed rebel. She was permitted, to a greater degree than any other minister, to speak her mind about the business of other departments. She was able to do so because she presented no threat to them or to Blair's core political programme. Within her own department, where her decisions made a real impact on people's lives, she was more Blairite than Blair. She would emote with the wretched of the earth for the cameras, then crush them quietly with a departmental memo.
She was useful to the government because she behaved like someone guided by impulse rather than calculation. As a result, she permitted it to suggest that it remained a broad church, and the prime minister a broad-shouldered man. Her outbursts allowed the control freaks to pretend that they were not control freaks.
We have, in other words, been sold Short. Blair told us she had integrity, and, correctly interpreting her role, she acted as if she did. But she knew precisely where the limits lay, and when that "integrity" needed to be jettisoned. Her authenticity was prescribed. As a result she was, in some respects, a more dangerous figure than visibly ruthless ministers such as Alan Milburn or John Reid.
If you think this sounds harsh, you should examine her record. Clare Short's approach to overseas development was more authoritarian than that of her Tory predecessor, Lynda Chalker. "Who represents the people of the world?" she asked the BBC World Service in November 2001. "It's the governments who come from civil societies. Having lots of NGOs squawking all over the place won't help. They don't speak for the poor, the governments do." Her deputy, Hilary Benn, repeated the sentiment: "The future is a matter of political will and choice, and only governments have both the legitimacy and the opportunity to exercise that will."
There is, in other words, no such thing as society, unrepresented by government. The people's organisations that seek to question governmental decisions - the trade unions, peasant syndicates, associations of shanty dwellers or indigenous people - are an irrelevant nuisance, the surly and recalcitrant natives who cannot interpret their own best interests. If a government, however corrupt and unrepresentative it may be, says it wants a particular kind of development, then the people are deemed to want it too.
Throughout her tenure, delegations of squawking NGOs came from the poor world to beg Clare Short not to destroy their lives. They were often brushed aside with a ruthlessness that made Peter Mandelson look like Bagpuss the cat.
Last year, a group of peasant farmers from the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh travelled to Britain to ask the department for international development not to fund the state government's Vision 2020 programme. Its purpose was to replace small-scale farming with agro-industry. While a few very wealthy farmers, seed and chemical companies, some of them closely connected to the government, would make a great deal of money from the scheme, some 20 million people would be thrown out of work. A leaked memo from Short's own department revealed that the project suffered from "major failings", threatened the food security of the poor, and offered no plans for "providing alternative income for those displaced".
A citizens' jury drawn from the social groups that the scheme is supposed to help rejected it unanimously. Yet Short ignored their concerns and instructed her department to give the state government £65m.
In 2000, a group of Bagyeli pygmies from Cameroon came to Britain to alert the department to the dangers associated with the oil pipeline the companies Exxon and Chevron were planning to build through their land. The World Bank was preparing to help the oil companies to pay for it, and Clare Short was intending to provide some of the money the World Bank would use. The Bagyeli claimed that their land would be seized by incomers, that they would be attacked by the pipeline workers, exposed to new diseases and denied their hunting and gathering rights.
Clare Short intervened personally to ensure that the pipeline was built. "Britain," she claimed, "will use its influence to insist that all appropriate controls are in place and that they are implemented rigorously." The pipeline is now being constructed, with the department's money, and everything the Bagyeli predicted has come to pass. They are suffering from epidemics of Aids, malaria and bronchitis, brought in by the workers. They have lost much of their land and are rapidly losing their forests.
When, at the end of last year, a pressure group called the Forest People's Programme reminded Clare Short of the promises she had made, she responded that such campaigners were "opposed to the interests of people in developing countries", by which, of course, she meant the governments.
She also championed the Chinese government's plan to move 60,000 Han farmers into the predominantly Tibetan region of western Qinghai. The World Bank's own inspection panel found that the project would be catastrophic for the indigenous people: it offended the bank's guidelines on consultation, the protection of ethnic minorities and the defence of the environment; but Short, as a director, continued to argue that the bank should help the Chinese government to fund it.
To facilitate such projects, Clare Short has pressed for the weakening of the World Bank's guidelines - for which people's movements in the poor world have fought so hard - which prevent it from funding schemes that force tens of thousands from their homes, trash the environment and enrich only the elites. In future, her department has suggested, the bank should give its money to governments with fewer strings attached.
There was, in other words, no conflict between Short's work and that of the government as a whole. The central project of Blair's foreign policy is the appeasement of the powerful. Clare Short ensured that this principle informed the business of her department. She was forced to resign yesterday not because she had rebelled, but because she had destroyed her credibility as a rebel. Having squandered her old Labour credentials, she was of no further use to the New Labour government. Goodbye Clare Short, and good riddance.
Ahmajinedad wasn’t the candidate of the establishment, but of the lower classes
1. From an anti-imperialist point of view, the overwhelming victory of Ahmadinejad in the elections is positive, because the incumbent and president-elect stands for confrontation with the U.S.-led new order for the “Near East”.
2. Even the Western media had to admit that it is the poor who strongly support the president. His allegations of corruption promptly gained him the epithet “populist” in the West—an indirect admission that he enjoys broad support from below.
3. The capitalist establishment around Rafsanjani (number two of the regime and chairperson of the Assembly of Experts) and a broad coalition of Islamic forces from the “left” to the “right” actually didn’t support Ahmadinejad, but his contender Mousavi. Ayatollah Khamenei (number one and successor to Khomeini), after the elections sided with the victor; however that doesn’t mean that Ahmadinejad was his favourite candidate, because Ahmadinejad’s fiery attacks against the ruling elite gave everyone in the establishment the creeps. Khamenei’s decision was made to reinforce the stability of the system.
4. We cannot rule out electoral fraud. Fraud happens in almost any elections in the Third World and even in the West, when opposing interests clash—and not only then. The West overlooks such imperfections if the “right” candidate wins. Only when this is not the case, they scream bloody murder. There are strong political indications that Ahmadinejad actually won by a large margin: First, he doesn’t control the state apparatus, but at most one faction within it. In a certain sense he is not part of the establishment. Reversing the results of the elections would have required a sort of coup. That in turn would have required the full support of the state apparatus, or Ahmadinejad would have had to take preventive action against those parts that oppose him. That didn’t happen. Under the conditions of a complicated factional relations and conflicts within the ruling elite the alleged giant fraud is very unlikely.
5. The extremely high turnout of over 80 percent is a sign of the strength and the stability of the political system of the Islamic Republic despite the strong factional fights. Such heavy polls are absolutely unheard of in the West. This high voter turnout is as much a slap in the face of Western double standards as Ahmadinejad’s victory, because the West on one hand denigrates Iran as a dictatorship and on the other hand legitimises and supports the worst dictatorships in the region, and particularly as in elections in the West there is no real opposition and only the various candidates of the elite compete, while the elections in Iran actually were about deciding the course.
6. It is not clear whether Moussavi’s broad coalition is going to give up or not as the rift is very deep. It is obvious that important sectors of the middle class hope for a political liberalisation and cultural latitude, and these are legitimate demands; however, the current opposition organically mixes them with concessions to the West and an expressly capitalist line of the economic elites. It is this combination that is unacceptable and eventually is the millstone around the necks of those who actually demand more political freedom. Uncompromising anti-imperialism is the prerequisite for any democratic movement. The middle-class mainstream—despite some “leftist rhetoric”—is in every respect moving towards adaptation to the West.
7. Our joy over the success of Ahmadinejad does not mean that we overlook the deep-seated problems of Iran and its regime. The lack of democratic and cultural freedoms also means oppression of national and religious minorities. Ahmadinejad transferred some wealth to the lower classes, but he was not able to relieve the economic difficulties and the structural poverty. He has nothing to offer to deviate from the capitalist path of (under)development on the fringes of the global economic regime of free trade. In addition there is the dreadful game his regime plays in Iraq, where Teheran has been supporting the U.S.-led occupation and the creation of a paradoxical U.S.-Iranian joint “protectorate.” When confronting the U.S., Iranian foreign policy often supports anti-imperialist forces (e.g. Hizbullah and Hamas), but its fundamental line is regional hegemony with a sectarian element. Because of this, the interests of the masses in pursuing a social revolution in the framework of a global anti-imperialist project often fall by the wayside.
A more detailed analysis of the election results should follow.
