whoo hoo!

Hat and gloves time here, too, Alan.
I was invited to be facebook friends with a gent from Ontario last night. I have no idea what face book is, or what my password was, but maybe since people like Gorthos and cm are nuts about it, I should have a look at my profile and do something with it. But then again, the litterbox needs cleaning and the breakfast dishes too...

I'm not nuts about it, but it is a handy way to keep track of what my friends are up to, and I do spend an inordinate amount of time each morning updating my status. I don't join groups, however, and all my facebook friends are real. Even though I'm not.

I am up to 71 friends right now and have suceeded in beating my wife in the game. My friend from college (former well radio guy from Moncton) is now at war with me.. he is actually trying to steal friends of mine that he has never met.. successfully I may add, as well as adding persons he only ever met through work (hockey players etc). As childish as it is, it is fun as I am actually meeting people I lost track of that I actually liked.

Parliament.. oy vey.. I am wondering if Mister Dion's advisors are on valium because seriously, there is so much material to work with and diddly is being done..

Thing is, gorthos, I don't want to be found, which is why I used a pseudonym. Sometimes I think I have too many friends as it is. (Anti-social? Me? Never!)

Hey, Gary! Welcome to the family! LOL

I keep finding high school and college friends and it's a cool way to keep up to date on the nieces and nephews. Heck, I've had my first "actual" conversations with my one nephew there .

Parliament is a mess and has been suffering a dearth of "ideas" for years. Not just under "Canada's New Government".

Add Fiji to the list of net censors. They started filtering dissident blogs a couple of days ago.

Hey gorthos! Shoot me an email and we can be friends too! Yee haw! That will get you up to 72!

I know cm's real name: Cookie Monster.

My cousin Gordo!

Since no is bothering to report it ... except sketchy mentions of an "ethics committee" ... it's worth hearing Wolfwitz's side of the story, ably reported here.

<blockquote>
The paper trail shows that Mr. Wolfowitz had asked to recuse himself from matters related to his girlfriend, a longtime World Bank employee, before he signed his own employment contract. The bank's general counsel at the time, Roberto Danino, wrote in a May 27, 2005 letter to Mr. Wolfowitz's lawyers:

<p>
"First, I would like to acknowledge that Mr. Wolfowitz has disclosed to the Board, through you, that he has a pre-existing relationship with a Bank staff member, and that he proposes to resolve the conflict of interest in relation to Staff Rule 3.01, Paragraph 4.02 by recusing himself from all personnel matters and professional contact related to the staff member." (Our emphasis here and elsewhere.)
</blockquote>

That's the start - Wolfwitz asked not to be involved.

<blockquote>
That would have settled the matter at any rational institution, given that his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, worked four reporting layers below the president in the bank hierarchy. But the bank board--composed of representatives from donor nations--decided to set up an ethics committee to investigate. And it was the ethics committee that concluded that Ms. Riza's job entailed a "de facto conflict of interest" that could only be resolved by her leaving the bank.

Ms. Riza was on a promotion list at the time, and so the bank's ethicists also proposed that she be compensated for this blow to her career. In a July 22, 2005, ethics committee discussion memo, Mr. Danino noted that "there would be two avenues here for promotion--an 'in situ' promotion to Grade GH for the staff member" and promotion through competitive selection to another position." Or, as an alternative, "The Bank can also decide, as part of settlement of claims, to offer an ad hoc salary increase."

Five days later, on July 27, ethics committee chairman Ad Melkert formally advised Mr. Wolfowitz in a memo that "the potential disruption of the staff member's career prospect will be recognized by an in situ promotion on the basis of her qualifying record . . ." In the same memo, Mr. Melkert recommends "that the President, with the General Counsel, communicates this advice" to the vice president for human resources "so as to implement" it immediately.

And in an August 8 letter, Mr. Melkert advised that the president get this done pronto: "The EC [ethics committee] cannot interact directly with staff member situations, hence Xavier [Coll, the human resources vice president] should act upon your instruction." Only then did Mr. Wolfowitz instruct Mr. Coll on the details of Ms. Riza's new job and pay raise.
</blockquote>

<p>
The bank's solution? Seems reasonable enough: she is to be given a raise and shown the door; obviously being laid of without cause is rather nasty, so one can reasonable expect this to be generous. Note also that the ethics committee is not just some random bunch of guys but board members. The EC, and this is rather important, told Wolfwitz <i>he</i> had to do it.

<p>
If this happened to any of us, we would well consider ourselves well and ably being fucked over. The fact that CBC, etc., don't bother to report this side of the story is ... bizarre and inexplicable.

Would you characterize your information gathering on this point as fulsome and independent or would you characterize it as being somewhat pre-determined?

It's certainly part of the story, would you not agree? Even if it's not true, or distorted, or made up bullshit, it's certainly part of the story to that "Wolfwitz, in his defense, claims X, Y & Z". And if X, Y, & or Z are sourced, then it's reasonable enough to say "Wolfwitz was advised by the WB's EC that he had to give his girlfriend a raise and fire her".

I certainly agree and you are quite right to point out the lack of proper reporting. But I wonder (separately) if Mr. W. is really not the source of his own undoing. Is he a serial scotch-taper, the sort who strings tenuously related principles or rules while ignoring the core principle, something of a neo-con symptom.

And separately also, I actually (believe it or not!) actually know nothing about the guy beside lefties don't like him and Europeans mispronounce his name and sometimes think he's Jewish. This story is the first time I ever looked up anything about him.

Me too! Like so many things, I am utterly ignorant in fact.<p>What a relief to be allowed to write that.

Okay, while we are in the mode for admitting things:

Finish the following sentence:

I know absolutely diddly squat about the following and if the powers that be can be so persuaded, be they supernatural or Neo-Con in derivation, I wish to never use up cranial memory space in the knowledge of such:

1. Scrapbooking
2. How to make Poutine
3. Why neo-cons are so baffled when one of their own are caught..

Easing into the Long Weekend....a gallon of beer sounds about right. But there is the issue of cooling.

I wrote at my usual length (bullet points are unheard of at chez Currie) about the dearth of ideas here. I'm not worried about a lack of ideas, I am worried about the fact the boys on the Hill are just making stuff up.

Mr. W. was pretty much doomed the instant he set foot in the door of the WB. The girlfriend - about whom he behaved as properly as a conflicted CEO can - was the first available stick. The problem was that Mr. W was not a "WB" kinda a guy. For rather a long time the WB has competed with the UN for the Miss International Feckless award. Mr. W was not likely to buy into that. Combined with the general hatred of neo cons amidst the chattering classes who staff the WB and the irritation that the Oil for Food lolly had been cut off the knives were out from day 1.

Now, onto that gallon of beer.

The masses that staff the WB are anti-neo-con? Maybe you should write about that a bit and sell some books to the granola crunchers that keep protesting against it. If they only knew they had insiders running the show, man, just watch Fight Club.. boom. Anarchy, Zombies, cats and dogs living together!!

w00t

Sure - neocons are anti-regulation anti-public-spending types while WBers are pro-regulation anti-public-spending types.