PRAGUE DECLARATION - 28 Sep 2000

Jim heartfield jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk
Mon Oct 2 10:52:09 PDT 2000


In message <p04330104b5fe40af3264@[166.84.250.86]>, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> writes Against Russell


> But the reaction of the bourgeois press - and bourgeois
>opinion leaders - is a hint that your analysis (that the "movement"
>is one of "morally indignant elites") isn't grounded in reality.

I'm not so sure. The press often denounce protests that are, for all that, no direct challenge to the powers-that-be.

Whether the motivation for the protests comes from those that it purports to speak for, the poor of the South, or from mostly educated middle class westerners is something that has to be adjudged in its own right. I wasn't there, so I don't know who the protesters were.

All I can say is that the declaration posted bore the hallmarks of the latter rather than the former. The document certainly suggests to me that the dynamic of this relationship is between the world bank and its radical fringe in the NGOs, with the southern poor merely rhetorically present as the moral justification for the action. That said, it was just one manifesto. -- James Heartfield

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