Entries Tagged 'upside down' ↓

Wolfowitz will no doubt be gone from the World Bank soon enough, but it will be on his terms, not theirs.

Today, he got a ringing endorsement in the NYT from the Nigerian politician Nuhu Ribadu:

Over the last two years, Mr. Wolfowitz has effectively directed the bank’s energies toward fighting poverty and improving human life. He is a champion of using international development institutions to deal with some of the world’s major problems. And he has been a steadfast supporter of the efforts of African organizations to rescue our people from the scourge of misrule, which leads to poverty, disease and early death. …

 When disgruntled lawmakers here tried to cut off our financing and shut down critical aspects of our operation, a World Bank grant of $5 million allowed us to bring to closure important cases of political corruption involving key members of Nigeria’s ruling elite, including members of the executive branch and Parliament.

 

In this fucked-up world, where the dedicated and driven are burned at the stake

and the mind-bogglingly ignorant, crass, and incompetent

 
are offered countless venues in which to strut their very wrong stuff (really, Rosie?), just for the sake of our amusement (because Infotainment Rules), it is refreshing to watch Wolfowitz, a dignified human being, take a three-week-long pounding and still have the stuff to stand up for himself:

The goal of this smear campaign, I believe, is to create a self-fulfilling prophecy that I am an ineffective leader and must step down for that reason alone, even if the ethics charges are unwarranted,” he said. “I, for one, will not give in to such tactics. And I will not resign in the face of a plainly bogus charge of conflict of interest.”

And I for one enjoy hearing him call out certain of his enemies by name

Wolfowitz’s defense was striking in that it singled out three longtime bank officials as having specifically ordered him to handle Riza’s compensation package himself in 2005. He said they were Roberto Danino, the general counsel; Xavier Coll, vice president for human resources; and Ad Melkert, head of the bank board’s ethics committee.

and to clarify the actions he took:

“…In working to resolve the potential conflict of interest that was created by my and Ms. Riza’s relationship, I acted, transparently, sought and received guidance from the bank’s ethics committee, and conducted myself in good faith in accordance with that guidance,” he said. Riza’s salary, in excess of $190,000, is in the same range as that drawn by about 1,000 other bank employees, Wolfowitz said.

Indeed, Wolfowitz’s final point was most interesting. It was elaborated upon in a New York Sun piece that throws light on the gravy train that is known as the World Bank.

A closer look at bank pay packages suggests that the trouble here is not that Ms. Riza gets a “girlfriend” salary, a mysterious wage not quite tethered to market reality. It is that World Bank staffers also do — and almost all without spending a minute alone with the bank’s embattled president.

The bank’s administrative budget is $1 billion a year. It employs well over 10,000 people. Thousands of others consult.

The bank doesn’t publish current salaries. But according to its annual report for 2006, a senior professional, or “G” level employee, starts at $92,230 and can go up to $167,860, a little more than the $165,200 for a member of the 110th Congress. A manager, or “H” level staffer, can make $226,650. This was the category for which Ms. Riza was on the shortlist.

There are aproximately 1,000 H level staff at the bank. So the portrayal of Ms. Riza as receiving compensation unheard of is inaccurate.

The next salary level, “I,” includes directors or senior advisers, who earn up to $268,650. There are more than 200 of these, and they supervise many others. Mr. Wolfowitz stirred ire by bringing two allies into the bank at salaries of, reportedly, $240,000 and $250,000. He may have misstepped in the execution, but the “I” data suggest those pay levels were not out of line.

Move up a tier to the 25 or so professionals, the “J” level employees, or vice presidents: Top salary, $289,540. Senior vice presidents and managing directors who have made it to the “K” class received as much as $311,000. The president’s pay, when you include expenses, lands in the mid-$400,000 range.

In other words, Mr. Wolfowitz is paid like the American president, a foundation head, or a not-very-good securities analyst.

Of course you may not want to take this at face value, since the New York Sun, where this story ran, was recently smeared by Gawker as a “Zionist daily rag.” And the otherwise decent-seeming but always hostile to Israel Robert Wright, he of bloggingheads.tv fame, voiced similar disapproval by referring to the Sun as a “neocon paper.”   

There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.***

I’m stumped and, as I said, tired. But even if I have nothing illuminating to say, I’m still reading the papers and the blogs and watching some of the infotainment that passes for news. Now that I’ve lifted the self-imposed pressure to produce, on average, four posts a day, I find myself gaining a bit of perspective and maybe seeing more of the forest.Time will tell. Check back.

Also: I took another 20 pictures this morning. I’m sure to post more of them by tomorrow.

———————- 

***Thank you, Buffalo Springfield, for the lyrics.

Radar outs the Imus “Loyalists” and “Defectors” … and then updates with the news that CBS dumped him.

I guess we know the real name of the game now: Gotcha!

Compared to this, Ann Althouse has had it easy with only five or six episodes of Bloggingheads devoted to her one-minute reaming-out of Garance Franke-Ruta.

Knowing that I am virtually alone, I’ll go on the record and say that I sympathize with Ann, because the same thing happened to me recently … except that it happened in real life. With a friend, who recoiled. Literally.

Face it, Ann. They’re just not that into you. If they read me, they wouldn’t be into me, either. Fuck ‘em.

Speaking of Ann, she’s got this right:

Imus fired, ushering in a new era, where racist talk will no longer be tolerated in mainstream entertainment media.

One Englishman’s feelings about the British hostage crisis:

I feel humiliated by the impotence of our government and armed forces in the face of naked aggression, a humiliation compounded by the disloyalty of our European partners and the refusal of Russia and China to support British forces kidnapped while carrying out a UN mission.

I feel soiled by the apologists for Iran who pervade our airwaves and press, led by the former Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont, now chairman of the British Iranian Chamber of Commerce. Lamont claims that Tony Blair’s support for American policy is to blame for Iran’s hostility, and that the release of the hostages proves that “neocons” were wrong to urge a tough line.

I feel contaminated by the sight of Ahmadinejad posing as a benefactor even as he orders yet more terrorist attacks in Iraq. One of the most recent: a bomb that killed four British soldiers and an interpreter in Basra just as the hostages were being released.

I feel ashamed of Patricia Hewitt, our health secretary, who criticized the woman sailor held hostage for smoking a cigarette, but said nothing about the indignity of her being deprived of her uniform, forced to wear a Muslim headscarf, and patronized by Ahmadinejad because she was a mother.

Tony Blair waited until the sailors and marines were safely home before reminding the British people that Iran is arming, financing, and inciting terrorism throughout the region while defying the will of the international community in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. The BBC’s Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, reported the prime minister’s remarks as responding to a gesture of friendship from Iran with “a slap in the face.”

In reality, Blair has been frustrated by his inability to respond more robustly to the Iranian provocation. America’s former ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, told the BBC that the Iranians were testing the British to see if there would be any price to pay for their outrageous behavior. Now they had their answer, said Bolton: “Softly, softly.” I don’t think he meant it as a compliment.

I’m on the story, as promised. Here are the latest headlines from Google News about the status of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston, who was kidnapped in Gaza on Monday, March 12:

SNP predicts big win in May election
Times Online, UK - 14 minutes ago
Rival Palestinian factions held a joint rally yesterday to condemn the kidnapping of the BBC’s Gaza correspondent, Alan Johnston. …

Search goes on for kidnapped BBC reporter in Gaza Middle East Times, Egypt - 19 minutes ago Alan Johnston, 44, was forced from his car by gunmen Monday while driving home from his Gaza office, the latest in a spate of abductions foreigners in the …

Hunt continues for Gaza reporter
BBC News, UK - 1 hour ago
Efforts continue in the Gaza Strip to find BBC correspondent Alan Johnston, who has been missing since Monday afternoon and is feared kidnapped. …

Gaza officials claim to know who is responsible for the abduction …
New Criminologist, UK - 1 hour ago
The Hamas-led administration said it identified the abductors of Alan Johnston and hoped to locate him soon. Security officials said four masked gunmen in a …

DEBKAfile Exclusive: The Sword of Islam (al Qaeda) kidnapped and …
DEBKA file, Israel - 1 hour ago
Our counter-terror sources report that Johnston, 44, was snatched Monday, March 12, in Gaza City, by the same group which together with Hamas kidnapped the …

Hamas government acts to free kidnapped BBC man
Mail & Guardian Online, South Africa - 2 hours ago
The Hamas-run Palestinian government said on Tuesday that it was working to release Alan Johnston, the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) Gaza …

As I write, at 8:30 a.m. on March 14, some 48 hours after the abduction, CNN’s American Morning is airing a clip from its Middle East correspondent Ben Wedeman. It’s about the Jesus tomb story. Wedeman also appears live and talks to Miles O’Brien about his canned piece.

Nada—nada—about his fellow journalist, who was kidnapped in Gaza. I guess it’s not on CNN’s “news” menu for the day.

For what it’s worth, in direct contradiction to yesterday’s narrative, in which it was said that “criminals” kidnapped Johnston, Debka (linked above and notoriously tendentious but often enough knowledgeable) writes the following:

The Sword of Islam (al Qaeda) kidnapped and is holding BBC reporter Alan Johnston

Our counter-terror sources report that Johnston, 44, was snatched Monday, March 12, in Gaza City, by the same group which together with Hamas kidnapped the Israeli soldier Gilead Shalit in June 2006. It is led by the brothers Mumtaz and Muetaz Durmush.

Palestinian security units have been going through the motions of hunting for the missing journalist, throwing up roadblocks and searching vehicles. In actual fact, they know exactly who is holding him. Although it is an open secret, the Palestinian authorities, like the British, who maintain a broad intelligence presence in the Gaza Strip, and Israel all feign ignorance about the party behind the kidnap.

The BBC is counting on a private deal for freeing Johnston, thereby giving the Durmush brothers another boost. Every few weeks the al Qaeda group they head targets a Westerner as a hostage. All of them, excepting the Israeli soldier, have been ransomed for hundreds of thousands of dollars, a supply of weapons and guarantees of safety for the Durmishes and their Sword of Islam gang.

Here comes the tendentious part:

DEBKA file’s counter-terror sources see this process, which repeats itself periodically, as abject surrender by the United States, Britain, other European governments and Israel to a virulent form of al Qaeda terror instead of fighting it.

Indeed, this story isn’t being reported on American television, as far as I can tell. Should we call this an “abject surrender” or mere suppression of the news?

It’s hard to watch and read the news. Every day there are a dozen signs that the Enlightened West’s desire to avoid confrontation with the totalitarian menace of Islamism is manifesting itself as an uncontrollable urge to give in to the forces of darkness.

The West is humiliating Iran, says Hans Blix, and we need to get out of our “neo-colonial” attitude, stop issuing military threats (which are “dangerous”), and get down to negotiating successfully with Iran (just like we did with North Korea, which clearly is no longer a threat—right?).

“British court affirms order to deport cleric to Jordan,” reports the NYT. Human Rights Watch objects, because he might be tortured in Jordan. Never mind that he is among 10 clerics named by British authorities as responsible for spreading the scourge of extremist Islamism in Britain. This freak’s human rights are obviously more important than our public safety—right?

There is nothing for us to learn from a movie about resistance to totalitarianism. We should ignore it, because it “whitewashes” Germany’s past.

I could add three dozen news items to this post, but I won’t. Instead, I will point to the most hideously depressing trend of all—the one that makes me want to unplug from the news, stop blogging, and retreat into the considerable comforts of my life.

The thing that might send me into internal exile is the betrayal and abandonment of everything we believe in by European public intellectuals such as Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash, for whom the freedom to condemn and warn against Islamism in the starkest terms is “fundamentalism”—and anathema.

Because “Enlightenment fundamentalism” is just as bad Islamism. Right?

I’ll probably take a short break from blogging. But I’ll tell you all something: my personal freedom to retreat into the considerable comforts of my life was paid for by the blood, tears, and enormous sacrifices of my family. I think about those sacrifices every day. And if my intellectual peers think that I will leave my children to live in a world with fewer freedoms than the ones my family sacrificed to give me, they are dead wrong.

They don’t want to fight? Never mind. I will fight.