An unconvincing but resonant tale, Bluebeard's
Castle: A beautiful young woman marries a strange
but captivating aristocrat: Before leaving on a
journey, her new husband entrusts her with a magic
key to a locked room. Curiosity overcomes her. Inside,
she discovers the horrifying remains of her murdered
predecessors. Relocking the door, she stains the
key with blood. Nothing she does can clean it. Bluebeard
returns, discovers the truth from the bloodied key.
He is about to cut her to pieces. Her brothers arrive
at the last minute and save her.
Writing in 1971,
the cultural critic Geroge Steiner used the story
as a symbol for the irreparable gap between the
high moral claims for Western culture and its practice
of torture, pogrom and massacre. He wrote:
"We come
immediately after a stage of history in which
millions of men, women, and children were made
to ash. Currently, in different parts of the earth,
communities are again being incinerated, tortured,
deported. There is hardly a methodology of abjection
and of pain which is not being applied somewhere,
at this moment, to individuals and groups of human
beings. Asked why he was seeking to arouse the
whole of Europe over the judicial torture of one
man, Voltaire answered, in March 1762, "c'est
que je suis homme. " By that token, he would,
today, be in constant and vain cry."
That was true in
1971. How much more so it is now. Despite the high
cultural lit. crit. context of Steiner's remarks,
pretty arcane for anyone remote from his particular
background, it is hard, at first, to disagree when
he adds,"The numb prodigality of our acquaintance
with horror is a radical human defeat."
Well, yes. But a
defeat for whom? For all of us, of course. Of course?
But wait, the metaphor of Bluebeard's Castle can't
be cast off so glibly. And since the time Steiner
wrote, the Castle has been redeveloped.
The interior is
more luxurious than ever, while the locked rooms
have been extended over the Castle grounds and made
more secure. Overwhelming and readily used destructive
military power awaits popular dissent in the enclosed
boneyards. Corporate media blather drowns out inconvenient
reality.
Squads of bureaucrat
chatelaines and butlers from international financial
and trade institutions, all with bloody keys of
their own, make sure the doors stay locked. They
have no need to open up to discover the wretchedness
within. They already know all too well the deepening
poverty and intractable misery that lies inside.
Their job is not
to improve things in the locked rooms. Their job
is to organize the servants to better manage the
misery and horror. The prime task is keeping peripheral
unpleasantness in the distant Castle wings from
encroaching on the party in the great halls, far
from the darkened corridors. They have not done
very well lately. Even so, the terrible events of
2001 in New York and Washington and this year in
Madrid, bear little comparison with the daily toll
exacted by our contemporary Bluebeards.
They prate tirelessy
with truly gobsmacking hypocrisy about freedom and
prosperity. But from the vast locked rooms in Asia,
Africa and Latin America people gaze undeceived
into the narcissistic hearts of Europe, the United
States and their partners. More than ever, the gaze
is one of scepticism not far short of contempt.
For the US, because it behaves like a quixotic mendacious
homicidal ogre, and for Europe as its paunchy, craven
Sancho Panza.
Now and then Bluebeard
retainers visit the Castle library, usually when
they need to check out pretexts and excuses. Lately,
shelf-loads of obsolete inconvenient texts have
been sent to the Castle furnace for disposal - the
Geneva Conventions, the International Covenants
on Civil and Political and on Social, Economic and
Cultural Rights, the US Constitution, the United
Nations Declaration. But it is still possible to
consult them as they lie in the bins before going
up in smoke. Among them is another document, so
mouldy from neglect at this stage that one can hardly
read it at all, the 1986 UN Declaration on the Right
to Development.
It seems an incredible
fantasy now after a quarter century of discredited,
factitious neoliberal fakery, but back then it was
the same year the International Court of Justice
found the United States guilty of mass terrorism
against Nicaragua. It seemed possible to think that
international law and institutions might be a force
for progress. A pathetic hope really, in retrospect
: Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Colombia and Chechnya
tell us pretty much all we need to know about the
"new" world order.
Reading the Right
to Development Declaration (1) now
one almost gasps with incredulity. Did the world's
governments really vote for all this? Through the
smelly encrusted blue-green efflorescence of privatization
and deregulation, brushing off the dank black-spot
of "free trade" pillage and piracy, under
the desiccating white serpula lacrimans tendrils
of unjust external debt, one can still make out:
Article
1. 2. The human right to development also implies
the full realization of the right of peoples to
self-determination, which includes, subject to the
relevant provisions of both International Covenants
on Human Rights, the exercise of their inalienable
right to full sovereignty over all their natural
wealth and resources.
Art.
2.3. States have the right and the duty to formulate
appropriate national development policies that aim
at the constant improvement of the well-being of
the entire population and of all individuals, on
the basis of their active, free and meaningful participation
in development and in the fair distribution of the
benefits resulting therefrom.
Article
4. 2. Sustained action is required to promote
more rapid development of developing countries.
As a complement to the efforts of developing countries,
effective international co-operation is essential
in providing these countries with appropriate means
and facilities to foster their comprehensive development.
Article
5. States shall take resolute steps to eliminate
the massive and flagrant violations of the human
rights of peoples and human beings affected by situations
such as those resulting from apartheid, all forms
of racism and racial discrimination, colonialism,
foreign domination and occupation, aggression, foreign
interference and threats against national sovereignty,
national unity and territorial integrity, threats
of war and refusal to recognize the fundamental
right of peoples to self-determination.
Article
6. 2. All human rights and fundamental freedoms
are indivisible and interdependent; equal attention
and urgent consideration should be given to the
implementation, promotion and protection of civil,
political, economic, social and cultural rights.
Article
7. All States should promote the establishment,
maintenance and strengthening of international peace
and security and, to that end, should do their utmost
to achieve general and complete disarmament under
effective international control, as well as to ensure
that the resources released by effective disarmament
measures are used for comprehensive development,
in particular that of the developing countries.
Article
8. 2. States should encourage popular participation
in all spheres as an important factor in development
and in the full realization of all human rights.
"Self-determination",
"Sovereignty over all their wealth and natural
resources", "free and meaningful participation"
"fair distribution" "resolute steps
to eliminate the massive and flagrant violations
of the human rights of peoples", "general
and complete disarmament under effective international
control", "popular participation in all
spheres". Were they possessed? All those government
UN representatives?
The original vote
in the UN was 146 in favour with just one solitary
country against, the United States of America, as
usual. That is well in tune with what one has come
to expect from a country that long ago forgot its
founding declaration which demands, as William Blum
once reminded us, "a decent respect to the
opinions of mankind". What are we to make of
all this nearly 20 years later?
It is almost as
if somone sat down and drafted a manifesto against
every single tenet of neoliberal economic practice
as implemented by the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund and their other more local, more junior
mobs. The Declaration reads like a conscious provocation
directed at the gangsters who run those rackets,
the governments of member countries of the OECD,
G8, the "Western Group" or whatever their
latest quasi-legitimate front happens to be called.
For the inhabitants of the locked rooms, the nitty
gritty is the gangsters have a virtual monopoly
on overwhelming military firepower, what US Marine
General Smedley Butler once described as "high
class muscle".
Legitimacy is based
on a voluntarily accepted division of rights and
duties, not on firepower. Breaching that mostly
unspoken rule, ignoring the duties, claiming only
the rights. has been the downfall of every despotic
regime in history. Now with oil prices at US$44+
and heading higher as the oil runs out and demand
outstrips supply, the old despots will progressively
shed whatever vestiges of legitimacy they ever had.
Their bitter resistance to the Right to Development
is symbolic of that.
Since 1986, the
Right to Development has been tossed around from
out-tray to trash can and back again. In April this
year there was a vote on a process towards making
the Right to Development legally binding. Those
for: India, Malaysia and 46 other countries, including,
shamefully "reluctantly" the European
Union (represented by, of all countries in this
context, Ireland). Those against: Australia, Japan
and the United States. (2)
As a result the Declaration remains a poor majority
wish, forever overruled by the wealthy few.
So it's business
as usual, only more so. While the great majority
of the world's countries vote willingly to strengthen
decisive moves towards peace, security and equitable
prosperity, the imperial plutocrats and power brokers
fight back as efficiently and slickly as ever. Welcome
to Bluebeard's Castle, remodelled under the same
old bloodthirsty management. Don't expect fraternal
rescue in a hurry. Those brothers now hustle for
the World Bank and the IMF.
Toni solo is an activist based in Central America. Contact
via www.tonisolo.net.
All
censorships exist to prevent any one from challenging
current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress
is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and
executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently
the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships. - George Bernard Shaw
