First he nominates a self-confessed UN-hater to be the US’s ambassador to the United Nations and now Bush nominates one of America’s leading Straussians, current Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, to be the next head of the World Bank. Not a bad move for Wolfowitz considering he has no discernible economic background.

You don’t need to know what a Straussian is to know that this is yet another middle finger to the world community. Bush, with a straight face, even went as far as to describe Wolfowitz, one of the main architects of the Iraq misadventure, as a “compassionate, decent man”. Having said that, Bush also once described Ariel Sharon, the man who stood by and allowed the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps to take place in 1982, as a man of peace, so I suppose he has previous for provocative non sequiturs.

Wolfowitz, lest we forget, betrayed his Straussian philosophy - that dictates that if you don’t have a good reason for doing something you are justified in manufacturing that reason - when he uttered the immortal words in trying to justify war with Iraq: “For reasons that have a lot to do with the US government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on: weapons of mass destruction.” And: “Let’s look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil”.

(And, as Michael Moore showed us in Fahrenheit 9/11, Wolfowitz licks his comb to keep his quiff in place.)

According to its website. the World Bank’s “mission is to fight poverty and improve the living standards of people in the developing world.“. But the bank’s crimes are numerous. Investigative journalist Greg Palast’s book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, should be the first port of call for the unitiated, folowed by Globalization and Its Discontents by former senior vice president of the World Bank, Joseph E. Stiglitz.

Palast described World Bank polices - see the impoverishment of Argentina and Ecuador for starters - as “designed for you schmucks on lesser continents”. He has a maxim when investigating this shenanigan or that: “follow the money” - meaning the money trail will lead you to all kinds of interesting places.

I have another one that admittedly doesn’t take as much digging - I don’t have Palast’s time, resources or access to whistleblowers - it runs like this: in whose interests do this shenanigan or that serve? Remember, the World Bank’s “mission is to fight poverty and improve the living standards of people in the developing world”. At an even cursory glance, current US policy - with its cluster bombs, insistence on abstinence programmes and other aid-with-strings-attached initiatives - hasn’t gone a long way to improving the standards of people in the developing world.

“Exporting democracy” US-style, when not through the barrel of a gun, has involved, via the auspices of the World Bank and the IMF, such euphemisms as “flexible job markets” (meaning poorer working conditions), “opening of markets to foreign capital” and “deregulation” (meaning capitalism at its reddest in tooth and claw), regardless of the cost in lives and living standards.

So clearly, from the Bush Administration’s perspective, having Wolfowitz in the driving seat at the World Bank ensure continuity but is also another piece in the neo-con jigsaw.

He could have been grown in a test tube for the job.

UPDATE: He’s on a roll:

The Guardian: Bush ally to head US media watchdog

US broadcasters were today bracing themselves for the opening of a new front in the war against TV indecency after Kevin Martin, a republican with close ties to George Bush and a staunch advocate of family values, was named head of America’s media watchdog.

Would you let this man tell you what to watch? He looks barely old enough to shave.

Posted on March 17th, 2005 at 7:35 am

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