Europe to Bush: dump Wolfie, or we’ll dump him for you
European officials want to end the tradition of the United States picking the World Bank leader. However they will let Bush pick the next president if Bush dumps Wolfowitz.
Bush has refused to comply.
Bush also insists that World Bank presidents must continue to be Americans. With incredible hypocrisy, he also says IMF presidents should not be Europeans only (traditionally, World Bank presidents are American, and IMF presidents are European).
A special bank committee (consisting of 7 of the bank’s 24 board members) concluded that Wolfowitz acted improperly when he arranged for his bedmate Shaha Ali Riza to have pay raises and promotions. European officials will probably a vote to sanction Wolfowitz later this week. Even if the vote is just a reprimand, it could make it impossible for Wolfowitz to stay on.
Wolfowitz’s lawyer, Robert S. Bennett, is complaining that the bank gave him too little time to think up excuses that might save Wolfowitz’ job.
Wolfowitz’s top communications aide, Kevin Kellems, resigned Monday (May 7) saying the current environment made it very difficult to do his job. Kellems was close to Wolfowitz when the latter was deputy secretary of defense.
The senior European official said Wolfowitz’s credibility was “beyond repair.”
Hundreds of bank employees assembled at an auditorium on Monday to hear Mark Malloch Brown, the former top aide to Kofi Annan at the United Nations, say that with Wolfowitz in charge, Europeans were balking at the financing the World Bank.
No bank president has ever resigned in a crisis atmosphere like the current situation, but no bank president has been as big a scumbag as Wolfowitz.
A 24-member board chooses the president of the World Bank. The United States has 16.4 percent of the voting share. Europeans would have a 32-percent share if they stuck together, which they appear to be doing in this case.
Wolfowitz’s selection in 2005 drew enormous criticism in Europe. However France and Germany wanted to repair the wounds left from their opposition to the Iraq war, so they bowed to him.
That mood has changed.
The Netherlands and the Nordic countries have been most critical of Wolfowitz. Last month the European Parliament called for Wolfowitz to reign. However, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is the current chief of the European Union, and dares not anger Bush or israel.
As of now, only the United States, Japan, and Canada want to keep Wolfowitz. They represent less than 30 percent of the voting shares. Most directors want Wolfowitz gone, but some countries, mainly in Africa, are wavering under direct threats from Bush and Wolfowitz.
Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/08/washington/08wolfowitz.html?ex=1336276...
He should never have been given that position in the first place.
Wolfowitz' only experience away from his lifelong career as a warrior was his stint as US ambassador to Indonesia, where he oversaw and actively contributed to the financial, social and political defeat of that country.
Read the last World Bank report on Indonesia published only months before the "crisis broke" and you will see that the crisis was an engineered attack. Read the following, much delayed World Bank report, and you will clearly smell political arm twisting and corruption in the Bank. Chief Economist and Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz left as the only honest man, I believe that the Bank and its staff never recovered.
I encourage everybody to research and write about Wolfowitz' role in the act of aggression to bring down the largest Muslim nation in the world. Bring it out in the open in the name of transparency, which is now one of the most important products of the Bank! It used to be infrastructure, education and health!
If his Indonesia experience is supposed to qualify Wolfowitz for the job as head of the World Bank we can only strongly advise its borrowers to cut their ties with the Bank.
Comparing the World bank's current project portfolio with that of 30 years ago they should give up the Bank anyway. It has become an expert in nonsense, does more harm than good in its semi-religious zeal for privatization of water distribution etc. In the best of cases it is irrelevant.
Let us close down the Bank and the Fund asap.
Agreed. The World Bank and IMF are the two biggest loan-sharking operations in world history.
When we consider all dimensions of human suffering (not just death and dismemberment) these two organizations have caused more suffering than World Wars I and II combined. Their function is to serve the rich and powerful by enslaving the world through debt.
Many people think zionists control the world by owning all media outlets. QRS and I disagree. We say the real means of control is the international banking system, which none can escape. One can always switch off the TV or ignore the media, but one cannot so easily dismiss debt and fiat currency. These are the "dark side of the force," to use a Star Wars analogy.
We can ignore the face of the emperor, but we cannot ignore the emperor's power. Nor can we ignore the emperor's cult (consumerism).
The real "storm troopers" don't come in combat fatigues.
They come in bankers' suits.
Wolfowitz in Indonesia is a textbook example.