Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Newsvine
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiIt's not the act itself, it's the hypocrisy. That's the line on Paul Wolfowitz, coming from editorial pages around the world. It's neither: not the act (disregarding the rules to get his girlfriend a pay raise) nor the hypocrisy (the fact that Wolfowitz's mission as World Bank president is fighting for "good governance").First, let's dispense with the supposed hypocrisy problem. "Who wants to be lectured on corruption by someone telling them to 'do as I say, not as I do'?" asked one journalist. No one, of course. But that's a pretty good description of the game of one-way strip poker that is our global trade system, in which the United States and Europe--via the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization--tell the developing world, "You take down your trade barriers and we'll keep ours up." From farm subsidies to the Dubai Ports World scandal, hypocrisy is our economic order's guiding principle.
Wolfowitz's only crime was taking his institution's international posture to heart. The fact that he has responded to the scandal by hiring a celebrity lawyer and shopping for a leadership "coach" is just more evidence that he has fully absorbed the World Bank way: When in doubt, blow the budget on overpriced consultants and call it aid.
The more serious lie at the center of the controversy is the implication that the World Bank was an institution with impeccable ethical credentials--until, according to forty-two former Bank executives, its credibility was "fatally compromised" by Wolfowitz. (Many American liberals have seized on this fairy tale, addicted to the fleeting rush that comes from forcing neocons to resign.) The truth is that the bank's credibility was fatally compromised when it forced school fees on students in Ghana in exchange for a loan; when it demanded that Tanzania privatize its water system; when it made telecom privatization a condition of aid for Hurricane Mitch; when it demanded labor "flexibility" in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami in Sri Lanka; when it pushed for eliminating food subsidies in post-invasion Iraq. Ecuadoreans care little about Wolfowitz's girlfriend; more pressing is that in 2005, the Bank withheld a promised $100 million after the country dared to spend a portion of its oil revenues on health and education. Some antipoverty organization.
But the area where the World Bank has the most tenuous claim to moral authority is in the fight against corruption. Almost everywhere that mass state pillage has taken place over the past four decades, the Bank and the IMF have been first on the scene of the crime. And no, they have not been looking the other way as the locals lined their pockets; they have been writing the ground rules for the theft and yelling, "Faster, please!"--a process known as rapid-fire shock therapy.
Russia under the leadership of the recently departed Boris Yeltsin was a case in point. Beginning in 1990, the Bank led the charge for the former Soviet Union to impose immediately what it called "radical reform." When Mikhail Gorbachev refused to go along, Yeltsin stepped up. This bulldozer of a man would not let anything or anyone stand in the way of the Washington-authored program, including Russia's elected politicians. After he ordered army tanks to open fire on demonstrators in October 1993, killing hundreds and leaving the Parliament blackened by flames, the stage was set for the fire-sale privatizations of Russia's most precious state assets to the so-called oligarchs. Of course, the Bank was there. Of the democracy-free lawmaking frenzy that followed Yeltsin's coup, Charles Blitzer, the World Bank's chief economist on Russia, told the Wall Street Journal, "I've never had so much fun in my life."
When Yeltsin left office, his family had become inexplicably wealthy, while several of his deputies were enmeshed in bribery scandals. These incidents were reported on in the West, as they always are, as unfortunate local embellishments on an otherwise ethical economic modernization project. In fact, corruption was embedded in the very idea of shock therapy. The whirlwind speed of change was crucial to overcoming the widespread rejection of the reforms, but it also meant that by definition there could be no oversight. Moreover, the payoffs for local officials were an indispensable incentive for Russia's apparatchiks to create the wide-open market Washington was demanding. The bottom line is that there is good reason that corruption has never been a high priority for the Bank and the IMF: Its officials understand that when enlisting politicians to advance an economic agenda guaranteed to win them furious enemies at home, there generally has to be a little in it for those politicians in bank accounts abroad.
Russia is far from unique: From Chile's dictator Augusto Pinochet, who accumulated more than 125 bank accounts while building the first neoliberal state, to Argentine President Carlos Menem, who drove a bright red Ferrari Testarossa while he liquidated his country, to Iraq's "missing billions" today, there is, in every country, a class of ambitious, bloody-minded politicians who are willing to act as Western subcontractors. They will take a fee, and that fee is called corruption--the silent but ever-present partner in the crusade to privatize the developing world.
The three main institutions at the heart of that crusade are in crisis--not because of the small hypocrisies but because of the big ones. The WTO cannot get back on track, the IMF is going broke, displaced by Venezuela and China. And now the Bank is going down.
The Financial Times reports that when World Bank managers dispensed advice, "they were now laughed at." Perhaps we should all laugh at the Bank. What we should absolutely not do, however, is participate in the effort to cleanse the Bank's ruinous history by repeating the absurd narrative that the reputation of an otherwise laudable antipoverty organization has been sullied by one man. The Bank understandably wants to throw Wolfowitz overboard. I say, Let the ship go down with the captain.
Naomi Klein's website Nologo.org.
© 2007 The Nation
27 Comments so far
Show AllWelcome back Naomi - missed you insights - you always give all the background info nobody else does. thank you.
Why is this Nazi here?
don't you fret therzal, it is only Americans being kept in the dark
I always picture Wolfie in that part of Farenheit 9/11 where he sponges the flat of his comb over his tongue, loads it up and combs his hair. If cleanliness is next to Godliness, in personal hygiene this stinker's twice a devil. A fit as president of Mammon's spoils.
Re-affirms what John Perkins says in "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man".
Naomi is right, the World Bank has no ethical credentials. If anything, the World bank has increased suffering and inequality.
Let the ship go down with the captain.
Dr. Zimmerman,
It looks like workers of the world have no other choice.
I am not sure about the grand red flag. Last time it wasn't so great.
In general, I have no idea why we're repeating the last century - it wasn't the greatest century.
But are repeating. Exploitation, insane accumulation of wealth ... and the consequences.
AD,
I wasn't entirely serious about cloning.
May 1, 2007
As IWW songwriter Joe Hill wrote in one of his most powerful songs:
Workers of the world, awaken!
Rise in all your splendid might
Take the wealth that you are making,
It belongs to you by right.
No one will for bread be crying
We'll have freedom, love and health,
When the grand red flag is flying
In the Workers' Commonwealth.
Cloning is a sorry idea, even though she is so right on the mark here. Having read a more than a bit of what she's written, I'm convinced she'd want all us in the progressive movement to use our unique and individual talents and just be ourselves in making our contributions to a better world.
We need to concentrate more on debt relief for the Third World which the developed world has done so much to cause through big corporations in those countries.
Hey, Scientists,
Can you clone Naomi?
:)
A simple point but something nobody has touched upon yet..
For a religion that represents 0.25% of the world total population, the Jewish/Zionist element amongst all these evil wrong doers is extraordinarily massively, disproportionate.. Strange..
"What we should absolutely not do, however, is participate in the effort to cleanse the Bank’s ruinous history by repeating the absurd narrative that the reputation of an otherwise laudable antipoverty organization has been sullied by one man."
This is very true.....there is nothing virtuous about the World Bank's history but I firmly believe that the forced installation of one of the main architects of the Iraq War has given world citizens more reason to investigate the bank's reputation and underlying purpose, which in large part is to promote WTO articles (rules) that were written by and for the benefit of global corporations, and not to eliminate global poverty.
According to economist and author, Michel Chossudovsky: "WTO articles provide legitimacy to global banks and multi-national corporations in their quest to destabalize institutions, drive national producers into bankruptcy and ultimately take control of entire countries."
Robert Settgast 12:36 am
"Wolfowitz was only following orders from the administration that planted him . . ."
I strongly disagree: As a member of the American Enterprise Institute (or its spin-off, the PNAC)Wolfie very likely planted himself at the World Bank as a way to fulfill the neo-con, neo-liberal fantasy. I believe the proper way to view the situation is W as the puppet and the AEI-PNAC as the puppeteer.
By the way, I nominate Naomi Klein for US Treasury Secretary '08 (I believe she holds dual citizenship, doesn't she?)
As always, Ms. Kline’s observations are astute and well stated. She really does have an admirable command of the facts.
While I believe you she's restating the obvious to all well informed, compassionate, and decent citizens of the US, sadly there are so very few that share those qualities in this country. The Bank, while it was perhaps instituted after WWII with the best of intentions and in its infancy may have actually serve its well intended purpose, has become an instrument of the first world, lead by the US, by which to redistribute the capital assets of the third world (not to mention the second world) to the first. It has become an instrument of Europe and the US, primarily the US, to foist their grand economic principals of kleptocapitalism on the poorer majority of the world.
The best example for me of reasons for nations to avoid the IMF and the Bank is poor Argentina and the inordinate economic damage those bloated and self serving institutions did to it. The best that could happen would be for those ships to sink.
I couldn't have thought of a better ending: "Let the captain go down with the ship." Thank you, Naomi Klein.
Wolfowitz was only following orders from the administration that planted him, and is now their scapegoat. Until responsibility falls on those who had commisioned and directed him, as well as others who assist in promoting the unprecidented abusive and deceptive policies of this adminisration, reform will never be possible.
The Wolfowitz scandal has to be viewed in the context of the whole Bush administration. A totally unqualified flunky with no experience whatsoever is put in charge of a giant bank. Compulsive kleptomaniac that he is, he immediately starts stealing, a little here, a little there, and gets caught. Ironically, his peccadillos cause people to focus on an institution that does not like publicity. For a good reason. The World Bank's mission is to force resource rich, third world countries into intolerable debt so they can foreclose and "privatize" the assets. Wolfowitz is a scumbag but the World Bank itself is a criminal organization that should be immediately dissolved.
All of the above is true, but - and its a big butt - it really feels good to think we can at least make Wolfie's life a little bit unpleasnat for what he really did - in Iraq. I know it is petty, but I can't help gloating. It really is like getting Al Capone for tax evasion.
George Bush is holding our troops hostage in Iraq. The ransom he demands from the American people is enough money to secure the oil fields long enough to divide them among his friends.
Someone better send out for pizza and cigarettes before he kills them all.
I love Naomi Klein, so it was so good to see her in print once more. I too think she is dead right about the systemic corruption of these international financial organizations she roasts so well. The World Bank's employees who are upset with Wolfowitz are right about their worker's rights, but they have been a major part of a major problem for too long time for me to feel sorry for them. But am glad to see them speak out.
Where corporate interests have been busy crafting international laws to favor themselves, where has the international effort been to establish standards of health care, or international environmental protection, or educational minimums for everybody? Why has there not been an international effort to ensure that the people of the world are the ones that run its democracies? These are the fundamentals that should be paid attention to. All else is wasteful in the long run.
Naomi Klein is just the best- she can see what's happening and tells it true.
outstanding as ususal.
At least we know the whole world was watching as Wall Street aided and abetted the oligarchs in robbing the Russian people. The Chinese certainly were watching and they have absolutely no trust of the World Bank or Wall Street, and that is part of the reason they survived the currency meltdown in Asia a few years back and why their economy has been humming along (along with the Malaysians, who also learned from watching that great crime as well as others).
The Chinese seem to be making it up as they go along now. Better for them to trust their own judgment than that of known liars and thieves.
Naomi Klein is exactly right on both the big picture & the details. She's uncompromising in her accuracy.
The article mentions in passing an incident of great significance -- Yeltsin's bombing of the Russian Parliament in 1993. In the West, this was presented basically as "Mr Yeltsin admirably defending Russia's new-found democracy, & getting tough with the old hard-line Commies." In reality, it was Yeltsin using violence in an authoritarian manner, in a way which ripped apart Russia's social safety net, & opened Russia to plundering by the West.
That's why it was so lavishly praised in the West -- not because it had the slightest thing to do with "democracy." In the West, anything advancing the interests of big Wall Street bankers is equated with "democracy." Anything that's an obstacle for them is called "dictatorship."
As with the old adage that the victors in wars write the history, it is true that the predators in charge write the laws and determine the rules, standards, and common perceptions.
Every syllable is true and accurate. I only wish that Ms. Klein had delved a bit deeper into the Russian scandal and unearthed the names of some of the culprits who contributed mightily to the economic catastrophe which plunged Russia into another century of misery and hardship. Those names include Professor Sleifer and his cabal from the Harvard Economics Department, Robert Rubin, Treasury Secretary at the time who quarterbacked what is perhaps the greatest economic crime ever perpetrated, the Wall Street bankers like Sandy Weill who made fortunes underwriting the feeding frenzy which stripped the Russian people of their most valuable assets, The dozen billionaires created in this blitzkreig of criminality who are now, unsurprisingly, the protagonist darlings of a sleazy media campaign in this country against Putin and anyone who hates what they have done. If the truth be known about this bunch and their secret orgy of theft, it would surpass the crimes of the Iran-Contra mafia of the Regan years, and that's saying something.
Naomi you have expressed my thoughts exactly--thank you!
Brilliant, as always