who will be next World Bank President What will they do
 
 

     
 

This site subject to attack, but now we're back. Many readers have contacted us in the last four hours wanting to know what has happenned to our blog. It seems we were targeted by a coordinated internet attack wanting to take us off air at this crucial time in the Wolfowitz saga. Our hosting company says that the connections pattern seems to indicate a 'denial of service attack causing load spikes on the server'. more...

Alex Wilks ~ May 16, 2007


A busy month at worldbankpresident.org. In the interests of transparency - and because we feel like doing some self-promotion - here are the stats for this blog. In the month since we restarted it - after putting it on ice for two years - there have been 32 million hits and around 90,000 unique visitors. A huge number of journalists are using the site as a source (a priority original aim), and roles have become interestingly reversed. Normally I have to work hard to persuade media outlets to publish my NGO's material. In recent days, however, TV channels, major newspapers and others have been lobbying us to ensure worldbankpresident.org covers their output - and fast. more...

Alex Wilks ~ May 12, 2007


worldbankpresident.org is … the site you need to track the media coverage, insider gossip, official reactions and civil society activity on the World Bank president. If you are a journalist, activist, official, student or anyone wanting to follow the details of this story in real time, you've come to the right place.

This blog was originally set up the day in January 2005 that former World Bank president James Wolfensohn announced he would be retiring. We wanted to shine a light on the medieval process for choosing the head of this very powerful institution - the fact that the position is in the gift of the US government.

Sadly despite our efforts to expose the behind the scenes manouevres and dealings, George W. Bush did get to tap a candidate on the shoulder and put him at the top of the Bank.

We tracked and informed the global reaction to the Wolfowitz appointment, almost entirely of alarm, but decided in April 2005 to put the site on ice and let the tracking of Wolfowitz in office take place elsewhere.

The predictions on this site about the problems Wolfowitz would cause proved true and in April 2007 bubbled up very dramatically in the world's media. The time had come to start blogging again.

With new members in our blogging team, and masses of energy, we have fed journalists tips for stories, inspired activists to ramp up their challenges, and emboldened more officials to speak out.

Don't hesitate to get involved or get in touch.

Alex Wilks ~ May 05, 2007


Contact us. Journalists or others are welcome to contact the site editor or authors for a quote, comment or contact. They may do so by posting comments to our posts, by e-mail on contact@worldbankpresident.org or by phone on
+32 4 98549482 (Alex Wilks - site editor),
+254 723 151 541 (Soren Ambrose),
+44 781 718 4435 (Jeff Powell),
+1 202 340 0216 (Sameer Dossani).

Some of our authors prefer to remain anonymous, for reasons that will be obvious on such a sensitive matter.

Please note that David Steven is currently focussing on other issues, so please don't bother him about the World Bank president.

Alex Wilks ~ May 05, 2007


It's a hit! (Updated) On Saturday many of our readers wrote to say the site was down, displaying a 'bandwidth limited exceeded' notice. We were not sure of the reason: but know we know that it is indeed because of a huge amount of visitors to the site. more...

Alex Wilks ~ April 23, 2007


It's been great, but we're putting this blog on hold. I've enjoyed blogging about the World Bank president contest, and we've made much more of an impact than I'd expected, despite the appalling result. But now the process has concluded, we're stopping. more...

Alex Wilks ~ April 28, 2005


 
 
 
   

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