Bond versus Bono

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Counterpunch, June 17, 2005
When White Band Spells White Feather
How Glo-Bono-Phonies and Trojan Horse NGOs Sabotage the Struggle Against 
Neoliberalism

By PATRICK BOND, DENNIS BRUTUS and VIRGINIA SETSHEDI

Despite the global hype associated with reversing aid, debt and trade 
injustices during the past few days, it hasn't been an easy time for the 
huge Non-Governmental Organizations at the centre of the action.

A front-page London New Statesman article on May 30 revealed that Oxfam's 
revolving-door relationship with chancellor Gordon Brown has neutered the 
demands, strategies and tactics of the 450-member NGO campaign, 'Make 
Poverty History'. The website of the British magazine Red Pepper followed 
up with a devastating political critique of the campaign, including a 
refusal to countenance any anti-war message that will embarrass Brown and 
Tony Blair.

Embarrassment of this sort seems endemic amongst the charity-minded. The 
Bob Geldof superstar concert series 'Live 8' correctly stood accused of 
being 'hideously white' (as Black Information Link put it), since only one 
band from Africa was scheduled amongst dozens at the five major 
performances. (A hastily arranged additional concert in Johannesburg may 
lead to a kind of outsourcing for black bands.) In any case, Sir Bob's 
mid-1980s Live Aid famine relief strategy is widely understood to have 
flopped because it ignored the countervailing roles of imperial power 
relations, capital accumulation, unreformable global institutions and venal 
local elites ­ problems repeated and indeed amplified in Live 8.

There was another PR disaster in early June, just a month before the Group 
of 8 (G8) leaders meet in Gleneagles, Scotland: white wristbands favoured 
by Blair as a mark of his commitment to Africa were revealed as products of 
Chinese forced labor at a Shenzhen firm, Tat Shing. According to the London 
Telegrap, 'Christian Aid, which bought more than 500,000 wristbands from 
Tat Shing, claims that Oxfam failed to tell other charities that it had 
decided to stop ordering from the Shenzhen company. Oxfam said it told its 
coalition partners of its decision, but "perhaps could have put it in 
writing".'

Do these gaffes signify something deeper? Merely careless paternalism? Or 
perhaps a sense that the main outcomes of this campaign are to be 
celebrated in media buzz, fashion statements, celebrity chasing and the 
NGOs' proximity to power?

(clip)

More Bilge from Bono

After all, the danger of NGO-lubricated ideological alignment with the 
neoliberal forces is serious. At a time men like Jeffrey Sachs are 
celebrated as saviours of the world's poor ­ for example, in a Bono song 
dedication at last month's big New York City concert - a deeper critique of 
markets and the NGOs which legitimate them is desperately needed.

Bono in particular has been obsequious. At the last New Labour party 
convention, Bono labeled Blair/Brown the 'Lennon and McCartney of poverty 
reduction'. According to Quarmby, 'some groups involved in Make Poverty 
History were horrified. John Hilary, director of campaigns and policy at 
War on Want, was in the audience. "When Bono said that, many NGO leaders 
who were there put their heads in their hands and groaned It's a killer 
blow for us. To see the smiles on the faces of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair! 
This is exactly what they want - they want people to believe that this is 
their crusade, without actually changing their policy."'

Are the Make Poverty History campaign objectives for Gleneagles - greater 
Third World exposure to market mechanisms, a few crumbs of debt relief and 
a doubling of (neoliberally-conditioned) aid ­ actually worth endorsing as 
a reformist step forward ­ or should they be condemned as more of the same? 
In his book Deglobalization, Bello has convincingly set out the justice 
movement's case for disempowering and defunding the global-scale 
institutions that push capitalism down Third World throats.

So when Sachs, Oxfam, Mbeki and others continue to insist that the way to 
cure poverty is to expand the world market and reverse Africa's alleged 
'marginalization', they elide the reality that Africa's trade/GDP ratio has 
for many years topped the world charts, and the reality that ever-greater 
reliance upon exporting cash-crops and minerals ­ most of which have 
suffered huge declines in price due to gluts ­ is a recipe for 
underdevelopment.

When debt relief comes with more Western neoliberal conditionality, the 
reality is that people often end up in worse shape after relief than before.

And when G8 'phantom aid' continues to foster Northern interests above 
those of the Third World's people, it should be rethought entirely. In late 
May, Christian Aid's brilliant Ghanaian researcher/campaigner Charles 
Abugre declared ­ personally not organizationally - to a Globalise 
Resistance conference in London: 'Stop the aid! It's done too much damage!'

full: http://www.counterpunch.org/

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