Showing posts with label nepotism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nepotism. Show all posts
Thursday, August 13, 2020
Thursday, April 13, 2017
Eric Trump Admits Nepotism Got Him This Far In Life, But Swears He’s Not Incompetent
Thursday, March 30, 2017
US - "First Daughter" Ivanka Trump to Become Official President Advisor
Trump is running the US as a family business. Why do Americans put up with this nepotism? – Mark
Monday, March 27, 2017
Ivanka Trump And The Politics Of Nepotism | MSNBC
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle has furiously rejected accusations of nepotism being levelled at him by opposition politicians and the media. Commentators wonder whether Germany's top diplomat, so prone to shrill tirades, is diplomatic enough for his job.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, under fire from opposition politicians and media commentators for taking party donors and his partner Michael Mronz on official trips abroad, hit back at his critics over the weekend, dismissing the accusations as "slander" that was damaging Germany.
"Such slander by the opposition against a foreign minister while he is on a foreign trip in the interest of German jobs damages Germany," the leader of the country's pro-business Free Democrat Party (FDP) told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper in an interview published on Sunday. "Political culture has hit a low point when the opposition even attacks the relatives of political opponents for party political gain."
"I've got a very thick skin," the leader of Germany's pro-business FDP said. "Party political defamation campaigns just make me fight harder."
SPIEGEL reported last week that Westerwelle, who is also deputy chancellor in Angela Merkel's government, has been taking friends and party donors on official trips abroad, and that he took part in a ceremony that Mronz had helped organize to mark the opening of a luxury hotel in Bonn.
It also emerged last week that the manager of a company in which Westerwelle's brother, Kai Westerwelle, owns a stake was part of the business delegation accompanying the minister on a trip to Asia in January. Ralf Marohn, the majority owner and managing director of Far Eastern Fernost Beratungs- und Handels GmbH, a trading consultancy, was on Westerwelle's government jet for the four-day trip to Estonia, Japan and China. According to a corporate register seen by SPIEGEL ONLINE, Kai Westerwelle took a €15,000 ($20,600) stake in the consultancy in 2007.
The allegations, together with Westerwelle's controversial remarks about benefits paid to the long-term unemployed, have hit the FDP's opinion poll ratings ahead of a major regional election in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populous state, in May.
Several media commentators say the accusations against Westerwelle are exaggerated, but that he hasn't done himself any favors with his shrill reaction to them. >>> David Crossland | Monday, March 15, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
ZEIT ONLINE: Die Schlagzeilen über die Verquickung von Privatem und Politischem bei Westerwelle vergrätzen zunehmend die Außenamtsmitarbeiter. Der Dienstherr weist die Kritik zurück.
Die Südamerika-Reise von Außenminister Guido Westerwelle (FDP) wird durch neue Vorwürfe wegen der Mitnahme von befreundeten Geschäftsleuten überschattet. Dies sorgt nicht nur für wachsende Kritik von Seiten der Opposition, sondern Medienberichten zufolge auch für zunehmenden Unmut bei den Mitarbeitern des Auswärtigen Amts.
Demnach sind diese besonders verärgert darüber, dass das Ministerium fast fünf Monate nach Westerwelles Amtsübernahme seit Wochen nicht aus den negativen Schlagzeilen herauskommt. Die Mitarbeiter beklagen, dass wichtige außenpolitische Fragen im Haus derzeit kaum noch eine Rolle spielten. Wie es in der AA-Zentrale weiter heißt, haben die Anträge auf Entsendung auf diplomatische Auslandsposten in letzter Zeit zugenommen. Die Zahl liege deutlich höher als sonst nach einem Regierungswechsel. >>> Zeit Online, dpa, Reuters, AFP | Donnerstag, 11. März 2010
DIE PRESSE: Westerwelle bestreitet Vorwürfe der Vetternwirtschaft: Deutschlands Außenminister Guido Westerwelle wird vorgeworfen seinen Lebenspartner politisch zu begünstigen. Westerwelle soll Privates mit Dienstlichem vermischen. Er spricht von "persönlichen Attacken". >>> Ag. | Donnerstag, 11. März 2010
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
TIMES ONLINE – BLOG: The term banana republic has been used by a couple of French friends in reaction to the news from Paris this week. They were referring to the high-handed way that France's ruler and his caste have been behaving in two or three current matters.The latest involves an astonishing act of nepotism by Nicolas Sarkozy. His barons are about to elevate Jean Sarkozy, the President's 23-year-old, undergraduate son, to a powerful and prized executive post. Sarkozy rules, okay >>> Charles Bremner | Sunday, October 11, 2009
TIMES ONLINE: President Sarkozy complained today that his son Jean was being hounded unjustly as controversy continued to rage over the appointment of the 23-year-old student as head of France's premium business district.
Mr Sarkozy blamed the media and opponents for persecuting Jean over his imminent appointment as chairman of Epad, the development agency that administers La Défense, the business quarter on the western edge of Paris.
"It is never right for someone to be thrown to the wolves without reason," he said. His first comment on "the Prince Jean affair" came after he made a speech in praise of France's egalitarian tradition.
Napoleon Bonaparte had rendered France a great service in "ending the privilege of birth", the President told a group of sixth-formers. "That means that what counts in success in France is not being well-born, it is to have worked hard and proved by one's studies and worth."
The pupils and dignitaries struggled to stay solemn. France has been riveted for days by the sudden ascent of the President's second son, who is repeating his second year of undergraduate law studies. >>> Charles Bremner | Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Jean Sarkozy partout d’avenir >>>
LE TEMPS: Jean Sarkozy à la tête du plus grand quartier d’affaires d’Europe? L’annonce d’une probable accession, à 23 ans, du fils du président français à la direction d’un organisme au chiffre d’affaire d’un milliard d’euros, provoque un tollé qui ne cesse de s’amplifier. Le président s’est indigné mardi que son fils soit jeté «en pâture».
L’arrivée possible de Jean Sarkozy à la tête de la Défense, le grand quartier d’affaires à l’ouest de Paris, n’en finit pas de susciter remous et sarcasmes. Dans les médias étrangers, c’est le terme de népotisme qui revient le plus souvent. Un journaliste du Times n’hésite pas à parler de «république bananière». Et déjà la télévision chinoise CCTV ironise sur ce «petit Sarkozy» et se demande dans un reportage repéré par Rue89 «comment un homme aussi jeune qui n’a même pas fini ses études peut diriger un organisme aussi important?» >>> Simon Pittet | Mardi 13 Octobre 2009
LE TEMPS: Accusations de népotisme contre Nicolas Sarkozy : Le fils cadet du président proposé à la tête du plus grand quartier d’affaires du pays >>> AFP | Mardi 13 Octobre 2009
Saturday, October 10, 2009
THE GUARDIAN: French president's son Jean tipped to head France's powerful La Défense development agency but critics say he lacks legitimacy
The Sarkozy dynasty was embroiled in another nepotism row today , after the French president's 23-year-old son Jean was tipped to head the public agency running Paris's La Défense , one of Europe's biggest business districts.
The young Sarkozy, who has not yet finished his university degree, is currently a local councillor in the wealthy Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, where his father rose to power 30 years ago. Dubbed "Prince Jean" by his critics, he has had a meteoric rise to power in his father's old fiefdom and currently leads the rightwing council majority in the Hauts-de-Seine, the richest department in France. >>> Angelique Chrisafis in Paris | Friday, October 09, 2009
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Never in the history of the world has so much been earned by so few; and never in the history of the world has there been so much corruption.
Nowadays, we hear about corruption at the top all the time; indeed, almost on a daily basis, we hear some new titbit about the goings on of this CEO or that, or this politician or that. Political appointments are handed out based on nepotism and cronyism. Fat salaries are paid to people who have little experience, and sometimes even little understanding, of the positions to which they have been appointed.
We hear about this sort of thing all the time: one day it’s the slush fund that BAE is alleged to have set up, the next, it’s the enormous salary raise awarded to one’s fancy woman, yet another, we hear about the extraordinarily extravagant lifestyle of the gay head of Head of British Petroleum (BP), Lord John Browne, the socialist peer, who, it has been alleged, ran that oil company as though it had been his private enterprise, and who financed an extravagant gay lifestyle beyond any normal person’s wildest dreams: private jets to take the gay couple to the place or country of their whim and choosing; three-thousand-pound bottles of claret for lunches; trips to the Salzburg festivals; and so on and so forth. All, of course, on company expenses. Lord John Browne took the term ’gay lifestyle’ and gave it its full meaning! Pity he didn’t think of giving the term its full meaning out of his own pocket. Indeed, so gay was his lifestyle that his gay French-Canadian lover, Jeff Chevalier, couldn’t keep up with Lord Browne and is said to have had to go into therapy!
The evidence coming to light about the goings on at the World Bank apropos of the shenanigans of Paul Wolfowitz paints a depressing picture of corruption at the very top, in places one would hope would be corruption-free. Fat salary increases to one’s bed partner should surely be left to one's colleagues to decide; further, where such vested interests lie, they should be handed out by those other people on the basis of merit, and merit alone.
Then we have all those millions which are said to have been laundered in Switzerland to pay members of the royal family of Saudi Arabia in return for contracts and extensions of contracts pertaining to the Al-Yamamah contract which Mrs Thatcher initiated many years ago. It was a very large contract even then; now it is colossal. Funny that the name of the contract - Al-Yamamah- has such a whiter than white name; for in Arabic, the name means ‘the dove’. Doves, as we all know, have such a pure, often white, connotation. There seems to be little white and pure about the goings on behind the scenes between BAE and the Saudi government. Anyone would think that those already fabulously wealthy Saudi princes needed even more money!
The funny thing is that there are hundreds and hundreds (maybe even thousands and thousands) of ex-employees of BAE who have been treated shabbily. BAE is famous for its bad treatment of any employee who happens to fall foul of their autocratic management style. How many innocent ex-employees of BAE have had their careers washed up because of BAE, I wonder? How many lives has BAE destroyed? How many sacrificial lambs have there been since the inception of this so-called Al-Yamamah contract? One can only hazard a guess.
Then we have the Bush-Saudi connection. The relationship between these two parties seems most unhealthy to me and to many I know. Bush keeps harping on about terrorism and the need to win the war against it. Have you noticed, though, that he avoids calling that same terrorism by its proper name: Islamic terrorism? One can only wonder why.
The sad thing about the ‘war on terror’ is that Bush is all for beating it on the one hand, but on the other is allowing the Saudis to pump untold millions, nay billions, into the US to finance the propagation of Wahhabi Islam, known to be the most pernicious brand of Islam around. On this score, Bush speaks with bifurcated tongue. So Islam-friendly have his policies been over the time he has been in office that Islam has grown in the States like never before. Doesn’t the president realise that Islam is out to destroy the US constitution? Does he not realise that Islam and democracy are totally and utterly incompatible? Does he not realise that Islam is as much a political system as it is a religious one? Can Mr Bush really be that naïve? Or is there something else going on behind the scenes which we, the ordinary people, just don’t get to hear about?
Then we have the vast inequalities of wealth created here in the United Kingdom by no less than a so-called socialist government under Tony Blair’s watch. It has recently been reported that the top echelons of society have seen their riches increase threefold in the past decade! And they call that socialism! That’s ‘Champagne socialism’ if ever I saw it.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am no friend of socialism. Socialism is one of the worst forms of government ever dreamed up by any political thinkers. But nor am I in favour of a form of unbridled capitalism which treats people unfairly. It cannot be right for foreigners to be allowed to come to this country and not be taxed on their earnings from abroad, when ordinary people, you the voters, have to be taxed on any small amount of money you might be able to earn from that self-same source.
In London, there are many who have to slave away for a full week for as little as £400, and often less, whereas there are the fat cats who earn upwards of £46,000 in that very same week!
If the corruption I have referred to is allowed to continue, then we should not be surprised if one of these days the people will turn on the people who govern them. Nor should we be surprised if the pendulum will swing in the favour of socialism in the years to come. Even the very best of parties come to an end, sometime. Our politicians should be aware that people’s tolerance is not infinite. It used to be said that poverty was the breeding ground of communism. In those days, they were speaking of absolute poverty, of course. But I should like to add that relative poverty could also one day become the breeding ground of communism. We should all be aware that this is a distinct possibility. Fairness still counts for something. No sensible person wants to live in a political system that treats the rich differently from the poor. Any country that legislates so much in favour of the rich at the expense of the poor is heading for political turmoil. Those odious systems of government – socialism and communism – are not dead; they are simply lying dormant. And in some countries, most notably in Venezuela, we can see extreme socialism beginning to raise its ugly head even as I write this.
Capitalism is by far the best political system around; though it is far from perfect. The greatest weakness in capitalism is that it plays to man’s greedy nature. In years gone by, this wasn’t such a problem, since in years gone by, the influence of the Church and Christianity were far greater: they acted as a counterbalance to man’s greed, and checked people’s lack of principle, thereby keeping corruption, nepotism, and cronyism in check. Alas, in today’s increasingly secular world, there are few such checks and balances. The Western capitalist world has become a ‘free for all’: you take what you can, when you can.
Corruption, nepotism, cronyism, unbridled greed – these are the sad realities of life in the twenty-first century.
©Mark Alexander
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