Life under Capitalism

A Very Expensive Fumble In The Stationery Cupboard

Capitalism, Corruption, Economy, Life under Capitalism, Poverty
Published on 1 Comment on A Very Expensive Fumble In The Stationery Cupboard

Phwarr, what a hunk of spunk. NOT.

I must say I’m enjoying seeing loyal Bushie and PNAC zealot Paul Wolfowitz left twisting in the wind at the World Bank over giving a job and pay rises to his mistress.

So far so typically corrupt, or at least that’s how this is being framed by the major media.

But it’s not as though his relationship with Shaha Riza wasn’t known about when he took the job and she’s hardly some brainless bit of arm candy. World bank employees complained at the time of his appointment in 2005:

From Inside the WB: Discontent over Riza We hear from Bank insiders that Shaha Ali Riza, whom Paul Wolfowitz has been dating for a couple of years, is not popular with her colleagues. As acting manager for External Relations and Outreach in the Middle East/North Africa region of the World Bank, she is to some degree the institution’s public face on that region.

Her personnel file at the Bank reportedly contains several complaints about her job performance as well as about a certain “lack of people skills.” This, we are told, is part of what is behind the World Bank Staff Association’s relatively more open disagreement with the U.S.’s choice.

The WBSA raised loud complaints a few years ago when Wolfensohn named Nick Stern as Chief Economist. Several staffers pointed out the Bank’s strict anti-nepotism laws should have prevented that move, since Stern’s brother was on staff at the Bank. Their complaints were never addressed seriously.

It should be noted that at least one civil society organization believes that Riza is one of the most effective gender experts working at the Bank.

But what’s not being reported is just how closely his Riza is connected in neocon and Bush/Cheney circles – she’s held some very powerful positions in the White House working alongside Liz Cheney on mid-east polcy and is closely connected to the total fuckup that is the Iraq invasion and occupation. No wonder she’s been called the most powerful Moslem in Washington.

A perfect match for Wolfowitz, himself instrumental in the Iraq debacle – truly these two are a poisonous pair.

2005:

Shaha Ali Riza, lately in the news as World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz’s Saudi-born girlfriend, has been assigned to the U.S. State Department. The move, which has not been announced by either huge agency controlled by the Bush regime, means that she’ll be working with Dick Cheney’s daughter Liz Cheney, a top official in the key Near East Affairs bureau.

That’s the word from one of my moles in the World Bank. This significant assignment — a hardened link between the money of the World Bank, which is supposed to focus on poverty, and the neocons’ aims of trying to salvage their privatization plans for Iraq — has not be reported anywhere else, to my knowledge, and I see no word of it on the World Bank website either.

This new loan by the World Bank is strictly from hunger, and it’s sure to do nothing to help us in the Arab world. Wolfowitz’s girlfriend and Cheney’s daughter, in charge together of the U.S. State Department’s Near East bureau? [My emphasis] W.B. Staffer One, as I’ve referred to this particular source, copied me on a September 16 internal memo from Christiaan J. Poortman, the W.B.’s vice president for Middle East and North Africa (MENA, in bank parlance), that says in part:

The Bank has received a request from the US State Department for the secondment of Shaha Riza — on external service — to the Near East Affairs Office of Partnership Initiative. In accepting this assignment Shaha will be responsible for setting up and managing an International Multilateral Foundation that will support reform in the MENA region.

I have agreed to this request which will allow Shaha to continue her work with civil society, complementing our own work on the reform agenda of our partners in the region. Shaha’s assignment will be effective September 19, 2005. Please join me in wishing Shaha the best in her new assignment.

Yeah, Poortman “agreed to this request.” At least it gets Riza out of the office. Wolfowitz got a grand sendoff by the Pentagon in late April, when he left to take over the World Bank. Maybe co-workers had cake for Riza, but maybe not. A similar public pronouncement of a new post didn’t happen for Riza, whose job at the World Bank — basically, head flack for the MENA office — caused plenty of grumbling about nepotism by other W.B. staffers.

More…

It’s not the nepotism that’s most important here, or the minor scandal of venality in office. That’s hardly anything new for Republicans.

What is important is the way all this corrupt manoeuvring has tied World Bank lending policy to White House foreign policy like a horse to a buggy. Where the neocons drive, Wolfowitz and the bank follow – Bushco, by using Wolfowitz’ besottedness with his girlfriend, has managed to subvert the bank’s putative independence and to the great consternation of international development NGOs and governments worldwide the World Bank (not that the it was exactly a fair insitution to begin with) from being previously just US-inclined, has now become the de facto banking arm of Bushco neoconnery and imperial expansion.

This is a lot more important than than just a quick bit of illicit nookie over the desk.

Shit, Hot Damn, Get Off Your Ass and Organise

Activism, Life under Capitalism
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As politics and antiwar sentiment heats up on both sides of the Atlantic an issue that comes up time and time again on blogs and blog comments is the difficulty of translating opinion into action.

I’m not talking the Kossackian, big politics, Crashing The Gates type of organising – I’m talking about thinking globally and acting locally, building low-level. mostly single-issue, community political organisations in which it’s possible to maintain the principles of equality and democracy whilst still projecting a coherent message. It’s myriad small local organisations like this, banding together in democratic solidarity, that form the bedrock of left activism.

Small organisations are more secure too, in a climate where any dissenting political activity can get you spied on or worse.

It’s so much easier to sit and pontificate from behind the PC at the huge injustices than to actually get out and challenge the little ones: don’t I know it. But we can at least try and make a difference: all the rest is just so much verbiage. It might only be a tiny difference you make, it might even fail, but at least you stood up for what you believed. Better a moment as a lion than a lifetime as a sheep.

So having made your mind up to action, where on earth do you start? Right at the bottom.

Educate yourself. Do you know how your local government works, or national government for that matter? How can you protest something or hope to inluence a decision when you don’t know who to protest to? How can you influence a decision if you don’t know who by, where or when the decision is made? Find out what the political structures are, who is in charge, and learn as much about them and their departments as possible.If you don’t make it your business to find out where the levers of power are, however can you expect to push them?

That done (she says, waving her magic wand) define your goals. it’s no good saying “I’m against Bush”, or cruelty to fluffy bunnies or world poverty. What is it exactly about those things that your’e against? What is it exactly you’re in favour of doing to remedy that? What can you realistically hope to achieve? More to the point, who else is already doing it? No point wasting effort and resources starting up something when it’s already there.

There are some excellent web resources on grassroots organising: they’re not bibles, and some may not suit your particular circumstances, but all contain useful tips. here’s a handful to start with:

One thing I noticed while looking for meatspace organising resources online is that there are many political organising handbooks out there of varying usefulness, but they’re mostly for sale, so right away you have to spend money you may not have. So if you’re not somewhere where the Patriot Act applies, use your library if you have one or your university library if its accessible.

The key is to start small, you and a few like-minded others, even if it’s only inviting a few mates over for coffee or a beer to put together a flyer against dog poop in the playground or a dangerous intersection. Trying to organise a big public meeting in an age of apathy is a futile effort, Informal messaging is where it’s at – viral messaging, word of mouth, water cooler gossip. Talk to your neighbours and workmates, you might be pleasantly surprised at the views they hold. You might not, but then you’ll at least know what you’re up against.

Define your message, your goals and your audience and remember that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Stridency and anger might get you a 5 second spot on the news as you get dragged away by police, and there is a place for that in politics, but you’ll then have to rely on escalating outrage to get any attention in the future and you’ll be forever labelled as crackpots. Be nice and forceful where you can and civil but forceful where you can’t. Start small and sedate – that’ll make any later noisy protests that much effective, coming as it does from a group of normally sober citizens.

Politics is alll about commucating effectively and persuading others to your point of view. Have a media and online strategy. Any idiot can spam any number of websites and activist orgnaisations with emails so know who it is you’re talking to. Make a personal approach where possible, especially with the press: have a prepared statement or talking points ready and put your most eloquent and persuasive person on press duty. Get to know your local reporters. If one calls you and you don’t know them, take a number and ring back to check their bona fides.

Speaking as a someone formerly involved in high profile anti-nuke, anti-Halliburton, antiwar and antifa protesting and organising I’m well aware of the prevalence of right infiltrators and police, so a big issue for me in organising is security, both of the organisation and the individuals involved. However open and innocent your cause you have a right to peacefully express your opinion free of government spies and surveillance or attack from counter-protestors or police.

First be mindful of online security. Use as much technology as you can, it is a cost efficient way of getting your message to a large audience after all, but put the most technically adept amongst you in charge of online communications and email. Encrypt your email and use specific email adresses for all political organising and between group members. Keep archived files and email records and lists offsite and regularly clean up your pc. Use a firewall, antivirus and anti-spyware software. Take sensible precautions.

Be mindful of personal security – don’t hand out contact lists of emails and phone numbers to just anyone. Don’t use a home phone as a contact point for the group: try and acquire a pay as you go SIM card or cheap mobile phone and use it for organising and only that.

What about group members themselves? How can you ensure they’re not ringers? The short answer is you can’t, not entirely. You have to take people and their stated motivations at face value, but what you shouldn’t do is be so desperate for volunteers that you fail to take some basic precautions. At the very least check that they are who they say they are and don’t give anyone that you feel at all doubtful about any key responsibilties.

That of course can be difficult at a puiblic demo, should you hold one. One way to deal with this is to beg, rent, borrow or liberate a video camera and record the whole event. Not only do you then have photographic, timed and dated evidence of all that occurs, including any police actions, you’ll also have film of any agents provocateurs. Simply look for the person that’s deliberately, repeatedly avoiding the camera. (You could attempt to winnow them out by asking them to commit an illegal act but that’s a very dangerous tactic that could net you a conspiracy charge. Not worth it. Just being alert will usually be enough.) If you see anyone videoing you, video them right back. They don’t like it up ’em.

Before holding any public demonstration (having obtianed any necessary permits, naturally) hold a briefing on safety and security. If you can get someone to outline basic techniques for non-violent resistance. Inform particpants of their legal rights and what they might expect if arrested and who to call. Assign participants to affinty groups with one person with a mobile phone in charge of each, all reporting to the demo organiser. Have recognised rendezvous times and points and make sure all involved have an emergency number to call in case of any unfortunate incidents.

Last but not least, find a friendly lawyer if you can. Law schools and universities, law societies and lawyers’ guilds are often willing to do some pro bono work for activists – at the very least they’re very good to have along with you on a demo. (Indeed that’s how I started protesting politically, as a final-year student legal observer on the Stephen Lawrence anti-BNP demo in 1993.)

These days given the minefield of restrictions placed around free speech and public assembly legal advice is essential so that you know exactly what you can and cannot do. It also helps that someone’s got your back should the police get heavy-handed.

Lest all my paranoia about the chilling effect of the WoT on political actvism put you off, I’d like to say that I’ve met some of the best people ever (plus some of the worst) in political organising and it has opened my mind to the sheer power that’s unleashed when ordinary people act in concert. Political activism can change your life and the world – it may be a truism but like whoever it was said, think globally, act locally. You’ll do OK and you may even win, and small victories accumulate.

Mind the Gap

Blogs, Internet, Life under Capitalism, Poverty, Women
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‘Sofia Coppola feminism’, and its close relative ‘hipster feminism’ is a phrase being used by some bloggers to describe the phenomenon of the feminism of the privileged – who mean well, but really, they have no idea of the pyramid of suffering that their comfy positions depend on.

Super Babymama, (via Donna) illustrates this and the massive class differences and gaps in perception that still exist between American women in the US, in response to a Pandagon. post by Roxanne on tourism and ‘ugly Americans’.

(Speaking of which, I saw a prime example puking up his guts outside one of my former favourite Amsterdam coffeeshops last week. Yes, it’s spring again. But I digress.)

[…]

I don’t begrudge those with money their money. Depends on how they got it, and except for the very wealthy I’d imagine most people who have saved enough to do a bit of travelling for a week or two probably worked hard for their stuff. So let ’em go on their jaunts.

One commenter, though, said what I’d been thinking:

I don’t usually comment, but this post somewhat bugged me, because it’s written only from the perspective of someone who has the freedom and resources to “acquire” foreign cultures firsthand. Sure, it must be nice to have an illuminating conversation with an Indian woman over breakfast in the Himalayas, but most people in America will never be able to do that, not necessarily because they don’t want to, but because they can’t afford to. Until everyone can afford a trip around the world, “remote control acquisition of culture” will remain the best way to find out about non-American cultures for a lot of people.

Whoo boy! That brought out the middle class defensiveness in some people!

And Amanda said this:

I’m sorry, but your comment aggravated me, seeing as how you are privileged enough to use a computer to make it. Until everyone has that opportunity, I don’t see why you should get on the computer and just comment. It’s very insensitive.

Oh bullshit, Amanda. Just…bullshit. And I suspect you know that was some bull, so maybe you were being post-modernly ironic or something. But then again–well, fuck that.

This “you can’t be too broke or you wouldn’t have a computer/tv/fat belly/car,” business is such tired nonsense. You know as well as I do that not everybody who comments on a blog is doing so from their super-fast deluxe home internets system; lots of people get internet at their jobs. Lots of people use computers at the library. Lots of people had a bit of extra money, one time in their lives, and bought themselves a computer, and just hope that the damn thing keeps working cuz they’ll probably not be able to afford another one any time soon. Lots of people maybe got a computer as a gift. Or their internet access is underwritten by some government program.

The point is that those of us with limited resources, or those of us with no resources, deserve to have those little luxuries that make us happy just as much as the rest of the world. And if we decide to do without this, in order to have that, because having that makes us happy, then fuck you for questioning our right to that little bit of what the middle class has. Perhaps you’d like to see us all pay less rent on our little apartments and team up together, real old-school, five families to a flat and a toilet down the hall. And then we’d be authentically poor enough to spit out an opinion that fucks with your comfort zone.

Well, quite.

Even when at my absolute poorest, a lone parent over my head in debt and late with the rent, I paid for internet access. I got my first computer, a 286, through a very cheap deal and used nearly all my student grant to pay for it; the eventual replacement was bought with a very unexpected small legacy. Through all the late phone bills and cutoffs I kept the connection going because I realised it was important to my and my children’s future that we be computer and and internet literate. It was an investment and it proved a wise one. I have to say that to accuse someone of being insufficiently deprived because they can access a computer may be one of the more condescending, asinine online remarks I’ve read recently and smacks of blinkered complacency.

There are those self-described liberals and feminists who are so smugly enamoured of their own particular copacetic niches in life that they fail to acknowledge the reality of others’ situations and their right to choose how to best employ their own meagre resources to their own and their families’ best advantage.

Equal access to computers and the internet is essential to lift people out of poverty because in this modern global society, to be out of communication, to have no access to digital media, no mobile phone or landline or email address, is to be a non-person, as that exchange so amply proves.

Still, Superbaby Mama is anxious to bridge the divide and in the interest of furthering feminist amity offers the tourists commenting on Roxanne’s post a unique tour of her home town:

[…]

For entertainment we’d have our choice of sitting on the porch and listening to my neighbor’s radio playing salsa, or my other neighbor’s radio playing R & B, or maybe the random hothead behind tinted windows, driving down the street bumping Jay Z.

I could point out the weed house, and its awesome history of having been a weed house for the entire 12 years I’ve lived here. How many nickle bags do you suppose have changed hands on that porch? I could take them on a guided tour of the street memorials that pop up, here and there, sad reminders of gunfights past.

For the horny guys, there’s no shortage of working girls, most of whom have been walking the neighborhood so long they’ve watched my kids grow up. Rosie, Woodie-woo, Cheyenne, Dellia, always good to run an errand for you if there’s a dollar at the end of it. Always good for a blowjob in the front seat of your car if there’s a dime at the end of it.

And before my tourists leave, I’d impart some good old-fashioned local wisdom on them, so they can feel truly enlightened. Something like, “don’t believe that guy hanging out at the gas station who says he just needs 50 cents for a phone call,” or, “the best place to buy arros con gondules is at Pueblo foods over on Holton.” Maybe I’d even let them touch my daughter’s exotic, curly mass of hair, and exclaim over how smart and well-spoken she is.

I think that would be a vacation to remember. Don’t you?

Indeed it would. I’d go further and make it a mandatory six weeks every summer in a poor urban neighbbourhood as soon as the temperature hits 85 degrees and the kids are out of school. That might exercise the empathy muscles a little bit.

Welcome to Mr Lee’s Greater Hong Kong

Life under Capitalism
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From this European political media junkie’s perspective, life in America seems to increasingly resemble a Neal Stephenson novel. International corporations are so drunk with power they are usurping to themselves the powers of government at home and abroad.

Commenting on articles in the NYT and on Jeffrey Goldberg’s piece on Walmart’s attempt to co-opt liberals in the current edition of the New Yorker, Barbara Ehrenreich illustrates how the the quasi-military corporate uber-states that lie behind the smiley faces of the likes of Walmart and Target work at the employee level:

[…]

…the illusion of state power is not confined to Wal-Mart. Justin Kenward, who worked at a Target store in Chino CA for three years, wrote to tell me about his six hour interrogation, in 2003, by the store’s “Asset Protection” agents, who accused him of wrongly giving a fellow employee a discount on a video game a year earlier:

After about an hour of trying to tell them that I don’t remember any thing about that day let alone that transaction, I had to use the restroom. I asked if I could and was denied. This goes on for about another hour when I say “Look I have to pee, bad, can I go to the restroom?” Once more I was told no. So I stand up and start walking out the door, and was stopped. At this point I thought to my self “They’re looking to fire me!” So I start to think of ways that transaction might have came to be. I say something like “I would never give a discount unless an L.O.D. (Leader On Duty aka: a manager) or a Team Lead (aka: supervisor) told me to ……” I was interrupted and told that it sounds like I was trying to place my mistake on other people. 3 hours in to this and still needing to pee I was told that I need to write an apologetic letter to the company with the details, every detail, that we just went over and then I could use the rest room…

Kenward not only lost his job, but faced charges of theft.

My efforts to get a comment from Target were unavailing, but I did manage to track down a person who worked in security for the Chino store at the time of Kenward’s detention. Because she still depends on Target for her health insurance, she asked not to be named, but she writes that Kenward’s experience was not unusual:

What I know for a fact is that they took each of the twelve youngsters [Target employees] to their office separately. They locked them in an office without a telephone, would not let them phone their parents or anyone, and kept them there browbeating them for six to ten hours. They never told them they were being arrested…only that Target was disappointed in them and if they would write a letter of apology that they’d dictate they could go and all would be forgotten. None of these children knew their rights…all of them ended up writing the stupid letter. Of course this too was a lie…as soon as they had the letter in end the police were called and that person was hauled off in handcuffs and arrested.

This is the workplace dictatorship at its brass-knuckled best. When companies start imagining that they are nation-states, entitled to spy on, stalk, and imprison their own employees, , then we are well down the road to an actual, full-scale dictatorship.

Read whole thing

As above, so below.

One might almost be tempted to call them Sovereignty Corporatists; myself, I like to think of this developing style of international corporate government as Devolved Dictatorship.

There. Doesn’t that sound kinder and gentler already? Now smile, you buggers, it’s the weekend, get out there and shop till you drop. The corporate state is depending on you.

– Palau

Life During Wartime

Culture, Life under Capitalism
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Via Boingboing:

7-11s to be re-made as Kwik-E-Marts
11 7-11 stores are going to be refurbished as Kwik-E-Marts to coincide with the Simpsons movie:

If all goes as planned, the convenience store chain plans to refit 11 stores across the U.S. — Richmond is an unlikely choice — to resemble the front of the Kwik-E-Mart, the convenience store that Homer and other characters frequent in the classic cartoon TV series.

Customers also will be able to buy products inspired by the nearly two-decades-old show, including KrustyO’s cereal, Buzz Cola and iced Squishees (the cup says Squishee, but the contents will be Slurpee).

The chain also will use pictures of Simpsons characters to promote 7-Eleven’s line of fresh foods, such as placing the face of Homer and his classic “Mmmm . . . sandwich” quip on sandwich wrappers.

Link (Thanks, JMT!)