Paul Wolfowitz World Bank helping his girlfriend?

[chucky2]

Originally posted by: Turkish
Chucky2: as a former World Bank employee, I can assure you that Wolfowitz just didn't care. WB is nothing like a billion $ corporation.

How do you explain the WSJ article that RedChief posted then?

Chuck

 

[wirelessenabled]

So let me understand you.

At your work HR comes to you or your boss and says "Tell all the people who work for you with red hair that they just took a 50% pay cut. Tell all the people with short hair they get a 25% increase, and negotiate a fair deal with the rest." You guys would go along with this?

Maybe my example is a little different than the Wolfowitz story but not much. I keep coming back to ..... if Wolfowitz was so uncomfortable with this request of the HR Committee why didn't he just say "no, sorry, I am not comfortable with that arrangement and I won't do it."

As for the WSJ article remember this is Wolfowitz and his attorney's statement with the benefit of many months of hindsight. We have no way of knowing if what he says really happened, or happened they way he says, or in the order he says. I an sure the WB Board will have a different version of the events.

Time will tell.

 

[chucky2]

We have at my work an HR approved review process where managers are forced to rate people on their team as below expectations, even if everyone on their team did a outstanding job for the year. This way, everyone is always running around making sure to stay on their toes. Great deal for the company, pretty unfair for the average worker.

To answer your question, No, HR does not do that. But people in IT that are in charge of other people just don't do whatever they want whenever they want. HR sets guidelines and rules, and everyone is expected to follow them.

Your example is not even close to what happened to Wolfowitz according to the WSJ journal article.

I'm sure the WB board will have a different version of events, because they'll be in CYA mode. But the WSJ article made a point Wolfowitz had documented proof.

Personally, I hope the WB gets burned on this one so the rabid anything American and especially Bush related attitude that keeps circulating can start getting lessened. It's way over the top and not realistic...

Chuck

 

[Paddington]

Wow, a Jewish-Muslim couple?

 

[Lemon law]

Found the following on yahoo news---

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070508/ap_...witz;_ylt=AhphOrcfIOCDZtjE9TD4xAqs0NUE

And this is a supposedly leaked version of what the special panel investigating this will now send on to the World bank's board---but the panel does not seem to be buying Wolfies version of the facts. With Kellums, Wolfies number two already bailing out for undisclosed reasons. And the white house has also renewed support for Wolfie.

But without any further ado, all can read the link and draw your own conclusions. With the only important opinions being those drawn by the board of directors.

But bottom line, another GWB sycophant and neocon may be about to bite the dust.

 

[Stifko]

Originally posted by: Lemon law
But bottom line, another GWB sycophant and neocon may be about to bite the dust.

Good riddance to Wolfowitz but GWB can just appointe another cronie, no? You don't think it was a major concession by the WB in letting the USA select the next top World banker?

Wolfowitz is not giving up that job without a fight, but I think that he is out of that job and not a minute too soon.

 

[Lemon law]

Stifco may well be right----but I find it hard to believe that Wolfie can hold his job if the board gives a thumbs down---with the entire process proceeding with the speed of a snail.
Once Wolfie gets the boot, then we can worry about who GWB&co. appoints next. But at least Wolfie will be out of a job.

 

[BMW540I6speed]

The discussion of the irregularities with regard to the security clearances involved in the various positions and agencies is fascinating.

Being cynical and contrarian by nature, I would propose that the entire matter be examined recognizing the possibility that a foreign national, involved in an illicit sexual relationship with a high-ranking official with national security responsibilities, just might have loyalties to a foreign government or NGO.

Given the fact that the relationship was the means by which said foreign national was able to evade our system of national security clearances, it seems only reasonable.

If anyone in Washington deserves a guilty until proven innocent, post 9/11 style investigation, it has got to be Wolfowitz.

Wolfowitz himself admits to "errors of judgement" & regrets that he hadn't followed his "initial instinct" to remain uninvolved in his girlfriend's lucrative (unauthorised, possibly illegal) re-employment.

He gets the U.S. into a disasterous war by over ruling Shinseki's objections, then slithers out the back door to cozy up with his Libyan Girlfriend.

What Wolfowitz did, regardless of his paramour's gender, race, religion, unattractiveness or ability was unauthorised, possibly illegal & in clear contravention of the anti-corruption agenda Mr. Wolfowitz was allegedly & zealously pursuing.

 

[Stifko]

Wolfowitz will not resign from World Bank: lawyer

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz will not resign under the current "cloud" and would rather push the matter to a vote of the bank's board to clear his name, his lawyer said on Wednesday.

"Mr. Wolfowitz will not resign under this cloud and he will rather put this matter to a full vote," Wolfowitz's lawyer, Robert Bennett, told Reuters.


He sure is dragging this whole process out and going down swinging, eh? Pushing it to a full vote to clear his name! IIRC, the WB did not want him in the first place, when GWB appointed him. Step down a battle corruption elsewhere Wolfowitz! You name is tarnished, there is no clearing for you.

 

[Lemon law]

To Stifko,

I just posted a yahoo link on a parallel thread saying that Woflie was already negotiating the terms of his resignation. And will not get into any pissing contest with you on what you heard to the contrary. In this strange slow motion crisis of confidence, we will end up seeing what we see. This already defies all conventional wisdom and has gone on for far too long.

The binary end can't be too far off now. Stay or go should be something we should soon know.

 

[wirelessenabled]

Wolfowitz gone. Leaves WB at the end of June.

 

[HombrePequeno]

Originally posted by: wirelessenabled
Wolfowitz gone. Leaves WB at the end of June.

Now with 100% more linkage.

 

[bdude]

He should take his girlfriend with him.

 

[feralkid]

Originally posted by: HombrePequeno

Originally posted by: wirelessenabled
Wolfowitz gone. Leaves WB at the end of June.

Now with 100% more linkage.

Thanks for the link.

 

[GrGr]

CNN

snip

Wolfowitz, the White House and bank officials held talks Wednesday afternoon to work out details of his resignation. Wolfowitz's lawyer, Bob Bennett, had left the door open for departure if Wolfowitz wasn't singled out for blame. "He will not resign under this cloud and that remains his position," Bennett said Wednesday.

In its statement, the board praised Wolfowitz's work on anti-poverty and anti-corruption programs.

"Mr. Wolfowitz has stressed his deep support for and attachment to the World Bank and his responsibility, as its president, to act at all stages in the best interests of the institution," directors said. "This sense of duty and responsibility has led him to his announcement today."

Wolfowitz said in his statement his successor would have "my full support."

"Hopefully the difficulties of the last few weeks can actually strengthen the bank by identifying some of the areas of governance and human resource management where reform is needed," he said.

Earlier Thursday, President Bush sounded as if he was resigned to the fact that Wolfowitz's tenure was coming to an end.

"I regret that it has come to this," he said. "I admire Paul Wolfowitz, I admire his heart, and I particularly admired his focus on helping the poor."

Bush applauded Wolfowitz for having made sure the bank "focused on things that matter -- human suffering, the human condition."

As the largest shareholder in the bank, the United States appoints its president. After the announcement, the White House said Bush "reluctantly accepts" Wolfowitz's resignation and would announce a replacement soon.

Clearly being a a compassionate republican is hard work. Good job there are such upstanding people like Wolfowitz to show us the way. :brokenheart:

 

[GroundedSailor]

Originally posted by: bdude
He should take his girlfriend with him.

Actually she seems to be talented and an asset to an institution like the WB. Too bad her choice of boyfriend has ruined her reputation (and probably her chances of doing good work in the future).

Wolfowitz's Girlfriend: Smart & Angry
By CALVIN WOODWARD 05.17.07, 7:34 PM ET


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 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 n 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.

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/05/17/ap3734543.html

 

[dyn2nvu]

Man oh man, I thought his gf was someone hot until I looked at pics of her. If I had his money, I'd try getting a hotter girl than her. He has money right?

 

[jpeyton]

Originally posted by: HombrePequeno

Originally posted by: wirelessenabled
Wolfowitz gone. Leaves WB at the end of June.

Now with 100% more linkage.

Bwahahahahahaha :laugh:

Two high profile resignations linked to the corrupt Bush administration (the other being the deputy AG).

C'mon Gonzales, you're next!

 

[tweaker2]

and the membership list of the neocon's hall of shame just keeps on getting longer and longer.

there's a lesson to be learned here that the neocons simply refuse to acknowledge. for them though, it's business as usual...."stay the course".

i guess it doesn't really matter to them how awful they look right about now. they have this wonderful ability to look down their noses at the rest of the world even from behind those cold bars down at the hoosegow.

they must've taught paris hilton everything they know.

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