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So, the World Bank has finally released its World Development Report on Agriculture. It's a how-to manual on exploitation, and a manifesto for emptying the countryside. I'll be writing about it more at Stuffed and Starved in the next couple of weeks, but if you're interested in how one of the world's most powerful organisations is looking to transform agriculture in the Global South, you're in luck. Together with the good folk at ActionAid I've written a critical response to the Bank, which you ... read more »

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Posted on 23 October, 2007 - 16:48

Here's advance warning of protests against the World Bank and IMF in October 2007, in Washington DC. Find out more at www.octoberrebellion.org.

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Posted on 29 July, 2007 - 21:43

I've written a few posts to date on the World Bank, here and here for instance. Well, Paul Wolfowitz inevitably resigned (soon, I'm sure, to begin a stellar career at FEMA), and we've a new Wolf in his stead: Robert Zoellick. Another Robert, Weissman, wrote this fine oped on the World Bank's new boss observing that, unlike predecessors Macnamara (see Vietnam) or Wolfowitz (see Iraq), the new incumbent isn't a war criminal. But that's about as good as it gets.

WELL, AT LEAST HE'S NOT A WAR CRIMINAL* ... read more »

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Posted on 29 June, 2007 - 22:29

The World's Greatest Economists founded the World Bank in 1944 while wearing matching blue jumpsuits. This is why we no longer have poverty in the world.

Find out about more in these two videos from from Comedy Central's Daily Show and their analysis of the Bank, and Wolfowitz.

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Posted on 2 May, 2007 - 15:58

The wags at Avaaz.org have been drawing attention to their Fire Paul Wolfowitz campaign by mashing up some pop culture with footage of the Embattled World Bank President. (I think they're making "Embattled" a permanent feature of the job description.) Here's the result - thanks to Dan for sending it on. And Dan's right. The British version is funnier.

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Posted on 22 April, 2007 - 21:47

The World Bank is in the news of late. Its president, Paul Wolfowitz (pictured), has been pilloried for making confetti out of the Bank's ethical rulebook, and showering his sweetheart with it. While this is generally unremarkable behaviour in Washington, he has attracted more attention than his peers because of his institution's crusade against corruption, and his saying things like “to make poverty history, we need to make corruption history”.

The real muck, however, doesn’t come from annals of hypocrisy. The bigger story is one that the media are ill-suited to find. It’s about what happens when the limelight is off the Bank, when the Bank goes about its normal business, and enforces policies that impoverish millions, while saying things like “Our Dream is a World Free of Poverty”, (the World Bank’s slogan). And although it’s tempting to blame the fourth estate and their habits of sensationalism, part of the reason there's no scandal is because the World Bank is in the business of hiding the evidence.

Over the past two weeks, for example, at the very same time that Wolfowitz has been pilloried, the Bank has been quietly airing a draft of its World Development Report which, for 2008, covers agriculture. Few outside a small circle of policy junkies got a chance to look at it (and even they were rushed – pointing out what’s good and bad with a dense 500 page report takes more than two weeks). Yet the report will do far deeper, and more lasting, damage than any Beltway bedroom farce.

To see how it all happens, here's a review of some recent salary-related scandals, which rehearse some of the techniques of scandal and subterfuge that are to be found, on a deeper and more covert scale, in the Bank's latest thoughts on agriculture. ... read more »

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Posted on 17 April, 2007 - 18:14