| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
stevemcgarrett
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
|
 Posted: Thu May 17, 2007 9:36 pm Post subject: World bank scandal |
 |
|
From the start, some officials had it in for Paul Wolfowitz behind the scenes at the World Bank. They didn't like his politics, his association with Bush, and his zeal.
They wanted business as usual like the scoundrels who arranged the food-for-oil program with the wink and nod of the U.N. This meant continuous corruption leading to misapplied loans. The most needy were not served in too many instances in the developing world.
These officials proved once again how leftists always put ideology ahead of principle. For whatever Wolfowitz's transgressions (the ethics board knew of his involvement with raising the salary of his girlfriend but did not act on it until it became politically expedient to do so).
So, fine, let's assume for a minute that Wolfowitz isn't being tarred and feathered for having the temerity to clean house at the World Bank (what he was sent in to do).
For all those who cry out for minority rights and diversity in the workplace, consider the other victim in this chicanery:
| Quote: |
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Mystery surrounds Shaha Riza's personal life, by her design, yet two things are beyond doubt. She's smart, exceptionally so. And angry.
"Very angry," Paul Wolfowitz said of her recently. Wolfowitz lost his job as World Bank president Thursday over an ethical entanglement arising from his yearslong relationship with the former bank employee.
Riza, an Oxford-educated Arab Muslim feminist in her early 50s, has worked for years for democratic change in the Middle East and for sexual equality both in repressive societies and within the bank. She's done so most of that time without drawing enormous attention to herself.
"I simply do not know how to blow my own trumpet," she says.
Yet, in statements to World Bank officials, she came out fighting against the "vicious public attacks on me" that flowed from her relationship with hard-line conservative Wolfowitz, a bond that has been as notable for its quiet unfolding in gossipy Washington as for its longevity.
Riza began working for the bank eight years before Wolfowitz took over as president in June 2005. She was moved to the State Department that fall to avoid a conflict of interest but stayed on the bank's payroll. The bank's ethics panel concluded she subsequently received salary increases at Wolfowitz's direction that were higher than allowed under bank rules.
Riza bristled at being forced to leave the bank in 2005, arguing that as senior communications officer for the Middle East and North Africa office, she did not report to Wolfowitz in any capacity and no bank regulations prohibited her continued employment. "I felt under attack by a powerful group that had no right to make assumptions," she said in a statement to a special panel investigating Wolfowitz.
And she noted the "irony of my working to ensure women's participation and rights through the work of the World Bank and to be then stripped of my own rights by this same institution."
Wolfowitz went so far as to suggest that the bank's ethics committee members put the onus on him to arrange her outside employment because they were afraid to cross her.
They "did not want to deal with a very angry Ms. Riza," he wrote in a biting assessment of the panel's actions. "It would only be human nature for them to want to steer clear of her."
He hinted, too, that she was none too happy with him. He quoted her as telling the panel that he should have stood up for her rather than accepted an arrangement that moved her out of her job.
"He became them -- you -- the bank," she told the panel, "and I had to fend for myself in the same way I'm now fending for myself."
In her bank and academic work, Riza has promoted the link between freedom and feminism, reasoning that the fall of dictators in male-dominated societies in the Arab world and elsewhere would give rise to equality for women.
In that spirit, she organized a conference three years ago of Middle Eastern and North African democracy advocates that declared dictatorship a "crime against humanity," and she went to Iraq a year earlier to try to draw more women into the post-Saddam Hussein government.
The feminist Muslim and the Jewish conservative formed an intellectual connection on the advancement of democracy and a personal one that flowered this decade, years after they had met while both were connected to the National Endowment for Democracy in the early 1990s.
Riza speaks Arabic, French, Italian, Turkish and English, and she majored in international relations at the London School of Economics and in social studies at Oxford. She has a grown son.
After about a year at the State Department, Riza became a board member of the Foundation for the Future, a pro-democracy group financed in part by State. Since leaving the bank, her salaries -- still covered by the institution -- have risen to over $193,000 from close to $133,000. |
So how would you have dealt with this situation? If they're going to be consistent, a few of those officials should lose their jobs too.
But you can bet your sweet a-ss they don't. |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
contrarian
Joined: 20 Jan 2007
Location: Nearly in NK
|
| Posted: Thu May 17, 2007 11:21 pm Post subject: |
|
|
They wanted Wolfowitz's head on a pike for being a conservative and a Jew, not for arranging a job for his "girlfriend". I would expect that nepotism, favoritism and outright fraudulent theft are rampant in the World Bank. I also expect that they were afraid he might really clean things up.
Think about Khofi Annan and his theiving son.
I can only hope that Bush gives them someone even less palatable to them than Wolfowitz. Someone like Jesse Helms (ex Senator) or Orrin Hatch (Senator) would do very nicely. Richard Perle, or Simon Legree would be nice too. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
jinju
Joined: 22 Jan 2006
|
| Posted: Thu May 17, 2007 11:31 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| I agree ... but Paul should have been smart enough not to give them ANYTHING to hang him over. He must have known he was a target befeore he even took the job. Its too bad, but thats life. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
stevemcgarrett
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
|
| Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 12:27 am Post subject: |
|
|
jinju wrote:
| Quote: |
| I agree ... but Paul should have been smart enough not to give them ANYTHING to hang him over. He must have known he was a target befeore he even took the job. Its too bad, but thats life. |
Yep. He gave them the excuse they needed to do their dirty deed.
And you can bet if the roles were reversed the Left would be crying foul and BLT would be having a conniption fit right about now. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
riverboy
Joined: 03 Jun 2003
Location: Incheon
|
| Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 1:34 am Post subject: |
|
|
| I still don't know whether or not I should call my self left or not. But conflict of interest is conflict of interest. My feeling is that this kind of thing happens all too often and the pressure of the Bush regime is really the issue. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
endo
Joined: 14 Mar 2004
Location: Seoul...my home
|
| Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 3:20 am Post subject: |
|
|
So the people who were in charge ofthe oil for food scandle were all left.
Was William Cho left?
Adolph Hitler?
Stalin?
My cheerleader ex-girlfriend?
The Devil?
Damn you lefties, you're the curse of the world!!!!!
Quit putting all your thread titles in caps you moron.
You're my little biatch Stevie. I already ownded you severely on another thread. Don't make me have to do the same on this one. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
stevemcgarrett
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
|
| Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 3:33 am Post subject: |
|
|
endo wrote:
| Quote: |
| You're my little biatch Stevie. I already ownded you severely on another thread. Don't make me have to do the same on this one. |
You've really outdone yourself this time.
You've managed to set a tone that is even more sophomoric than EFLT. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Roch
Joined: 24 Apr 2003
Location: Seoul
|
| Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 6:08 am Post subject: |
|
|
| stevemcgarrett wrote: |
endo wrote:
| Quote: |
| You're my little biatch Stevie. I already ownded you severely on another thread. Don't make me have to do the same on this one. |
You've really outdone yourself this time.
You've managed to set a tone that is even more sophomoric than EFLT. |
You can say that again. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
twg
Joined: 02 Nov 2006
Location: Getting some fresh air...
|
| Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 10:39 am Post subject: Re: THE OTHER VICTIM IN THE WORLD BANK 'SCANDAL' |
|
|
| Well, it's a good thing liberals are to blame for it and not his past as a dirty rat bastard who's going down with the sinking of the SS Neo-Con. Because that'd be like admitting being wrong about the morality of certain political philosophies. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
|
| Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 7:01 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| The scandal is that this ever was a 'scandal.' My sympathies are with the unfortunate woman. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
|
| Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 9:17 pm Post subject: ... |
|
|
| Quote: |
| So how would you have dealt with this situation? If they're going to be consistent, a few of those officials should lose their jobs too. |
WELL, THE FIRST THING I WOULD DO IS PORTRAY WOLFOWITZ AS A VICTIM.
THEN, I'D CONGRATULATE MYSELF FOR MY TRIUMPH OF RATIONALE OVER IDEOLOGY.
AFTER THAT, I'D GO ADMIRE MYSELF IN A MIRROR AND PONDER MY MATURITY.
NEXT, I'D PUT ANOTHER OF MY ERUDITE POSTS ON THE ESLCAFE FORUM.
THE DARING, NO BS KINDS OF POSTS THAT DEMONSTRATE I'M NOT AN IDEOLOGUE. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
|
| Posted: Sat May 19, 2007 1:24 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Big_Bird wrote: |
| The scandal is that this ever was a 'scandal.' My sympathies are with the unfortunate woman. |
I agree. Not gonna blame leftists as such for it, though. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
endo
Joined: 14 Mar 2004
Location: Seoul...my home
|
| Posted: Sun May 20, 2007 8:28 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| stevemcgarrett wrote: |
endo wrote:
| Quote: |
| You're my little biatch Stevie. I already ownded you severely on another thread. Don't make me have to do the same on this one. |
You've really outdone yourself this time.
You've managed to set a tone that is even more sophomoric than EFLT. |
sophomoric?
Are you seriously trying to call me out?
This comming from a much older man who insists on putting all his thread titles (granted some of them are quite clever) in caps in order to gain attention?
A man who cannot make a political point without bashing liberals? Sure you can blame the liberal ideology for a lot of the worls problems, but how about you balance your viewpoint and see the problems stemming from the other side of the political spectrum?
You're an ideologue Stevie, and as a result you fail to see a wider picture and in turn strengthen your own ignorance. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Alias
Joined: 24 Jan 2003
|
| Posted: Sun May 20, 2007 9:47 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
So the people who were in charge ofthe oil for food scandle were all left.
|
I know. I guess the corporations involved in the oil for food scandle were all left wing too. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
