June 14th 2007 | Sameer Dossani | More on Mr W's cronies, Wolfowitz | 3 Comments
Amid reports that the Volker Panel’s audit of Suzanne Rich Folsom’s INT is likely to be a whitewash, the Government Accountability Project is doing its own audit. more…
June 11th 2007 | Sameer Dossani | More on Wolfowitz | 1 Comment
In this insightful Salon.com piece on Bush administration figures who’ve written in support of former Cheney advisor Lewis “Scooter” Libby (you have to go through their ‘click on sponsor’ page), Sydney Blumenthal offers this damning insight on the lengthiest of those letters of support, written by World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz: more…
June 7th 2007 | Sameer Dossani | More on Wolfowitz, Zoellick | 34 Comments
OK, confession time. I grew up in a World Bank household. My mother started working there when I was two; my father joined the International Finance Corporation when I was four. As a child I heard snippets of conversation about West African travels and poverty around the world. I also picked up talk of “golden handshakes” and benefits such as my own private school education being subsidized by the Bank. At some later point, I hope to capture a lot of these contradictions in a book. At the moment, it’s worthwhile asking whether these benefits and high salaries are necessary for an institution that claims to be about “poverty reduction”. In this article, Wolfowitz’s Golden Parachute, I look at Wolfowitz’s attempt to take these policies to an extreme, and argue that it’s time to end the hypocrisy.
June 1st 2007 | Sameer Dossani | More on Zoellick | Comments Off
Lawrence MacDonald at the Center for Global Development has some insightful questions for Bob Zoellick. Among them (mine are the abridged versions): Will you oppose U.S. subsidies and the enforcemet of Intellectual Property Rights for lifesaving medicines? Will you go continue moving the Bank’s health sector towards Bush’s inane abstinence only policies? more…
June 1st 2007 | Sameer Dossani | More on Uncategorized | 5 Comments
Our friends at the Social Justice Committee Canada have set up a website, www.worldbankpresident.ca to formally make suggestions on who should succeed Wolfowitz. The poll’s results will be sent to the Canadian Finance Minister, who will be urged to make a nomination based on them. more…
May 31st 2007 | Sameer Dossani | More on Zoellick | Comments Off
Sarah Anderson has a piece at Foreign Policy In Focus on Zoellick’s track record of pushing a trade as counter terrorism agenda. The best line: “But is a tone-deaf, name-calling steely opportunist a good choice to lead the World Bank?”
May 30th 2007 | Sameer Dossani | More on Zoellick | 3 Comments
One common theme among journalists I spoke with today is their frustration at getting anyone from within the Bank to say anything on Zoellick. I know people would and should be cautious, but if I had anything to do with the WB Staff Association, surely this would be a time to flex muscles, no? more…
May 30th 2007 | Sameer Dossani | More on Wolfowitz | Comments Off
As many of us suspected, European countries agreed not to challenge the U.S. “divine right of appointing” as part of the bargain that saw Wolfowitz resign, according to Canada’s Globe and Mail. This line in the article on Zoellick caught my attention: more…
May 29th 2007 | Sameer Dossani | More on Zoellick | 1 Comment
Aahh! One neocon replaces another. The end is nigh!!! Bloomberg has the scoop. In case anyone’s forgotten, Zoellick is another Project for the New American Century, Iraq war hawk, who had a reputation of being the opposite of a diplomat (whatever that is) when he was the head of USTR….
May 29th 2007 | Sameer Dossani | More on Wolfowitz | Comments Off
[Apologies in advance for the shameless self promotion.] The Scripps Howard News Service has picked up an op-ed I wrote with editorial help from the good folks at Foreign Policy In Focus. more…
