Bought with western cash

Publication date: Friday 07 April 2006

Tariq Ali
Friday April 7, 2006
The Guardian

If civil society posed any real threat to the elite, the plaudits it receives would rapidly turn to menace.

It was thus no surprise that the WSF too had been permitted and facilitated by the local administration in Karachi. The WSF is now part of the globalised landscape and helps retrograde rulers feel modern.

The NGOs are no substitute for genuine social and political movements. In Africa, Palestine and elsewhere, NGOs have swallowed the neoliberal status quo. They operate like charities, trying to alleviate the worst excesses, but rarely question the systemic basis of the fact that 5 billion citizens of our globe live in poverty. They may be NGOs in Pakistan, but on the global scale they are western governmental organisations (WGOs), their cash flow conditioned by enforced agendas: Colin Powell once referred to them as "our fifth column".

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