Greater Prosperity for All in the Digital Age, II - Phishing for Phools Part 7 in the IMF/WB Annual Meeting 2016

As seen in my last blog, Greater Prosperity for All in the Digital Age, I - Phishing for Phools Part 6 in the IMF/WB Annual Meetings 2016, not only are the omission of action of IMF HR Directors (Mark Plant and Kalpana Kochhar), effectively covering-up for abuses of power within the IMF, but as seen with the “Respectful Workplace” seminar of The Winters Group bullying in the IMF is being ACTIVELY promoted and encouraged—in violation of human rights standards.

As I explained in my complaint and report to IMF HR and the Ethics Committee, headed by Olivia Graham, workplace bullying creates not only mismanagement at all levels of an organization, but engenders slothfulness of workers, as well as rampant human rights violation between employees, as well as towards constituency. The amount of superfluous civil servants in the workplace at present is INCREDIBLE, with taxpayers footing the bill for all the havoc and chaos the narcissistic, queen/king-for-a-day civil servants are creating. One of the saddest cases that I am “assisting” is James Ryan in Tokyo, as he fights for the life of his son, Jimmy Ryan, with the American Consulate and Embassy—noting that Caroline Kennedy is the American Ambassador in Japan at present, with a constituent request for James Ryan “sitting” in Barbara Boxer’s office. Please see my blog Jimmy's Wish for Life Shows the Reality Behind the Rhetoric of the Women in Power.

It cannot be stressed enough the importance of “cleaning-up” bureaucratic agencies in effectively implementing laws at national and local levels, as well as international levels. Not only is my complaint to the IMF an EXCELLENT case study for the global mobility industry, but the reaction—ostrich-playing of managers within the Institute for Capacity Development (ICD), as well as upper Management in the IMF—is also an important lesson for global mobility experts concerned with eradicating bullying in the workplace, as well as taxpayers who are footing the bill for all of the games and manipulations of the various actors.

Additionally, what my present “stand-off” against ICD employees, namely Imel Yu and Carolina Griffiths, who by illegally black-listing me from the Annual Meetings have convoluted the legal liability of the IMF even more than it already was—yet just like children, everyone is trying to figure out how, and where, to sweep everything under the carpet, instead of deal with the issues at hand. My case against the IMF (highlighting my case against the IMF Family Association (IMFFA)) presented in my complaint for workplace bullying, additionally provides an excellent example, and analysis of how and why the nepotism networks in Washington are built, work, and are maintained by the apathy and inertia of everyone involved.

When James Ryan first contacted me at the end of 2015, he said “Oh, my God, someone with a heart!” when I did NOT brush him off, too important, and too busy to assist my constituency. And, I use the word “assist” loosely. And, herein lies the problem. I, nor Global Expats, have the power or authority to challenge the failure of a government to respect or defend the rights of citizens under their jurisdiction, except through the international courts (and why I am preparing cases, and would certainly appreciate some assistance.) Only another government, through its consulates for my constituency (families living abroad), can assure that public authorities and civil servants are respecting rights of their citizens residing or travelling abroad. EVERYONE in the development community “loves” my rhetoric, recognizing it is “right on the money,” yet when I challenge the actions, or inactions, of the major players at national and international levels, I am bullied, ostracized and defamed.

When the Greenberry’s coffee shop manager (who “ejected” me from the coffee shop yesterday because of my “offensive protest banners”) he told me he had “heard all sorts of versions from all sorts of people”—I could not help but laugh. I am well aware of all of the maneuvering of everyone in ICD at present, and could probably write the script, because tactics of bullies are always the same regardless of nationality, or skin color. In my blog Hypocrisy at its Height this Week-end’s Schedule: Phishing for Phools Part 3 at the IMF/ Annual Meetings, I explained how, and why, Hindu and Afro-American/black women are providing an “invisible-hand” of bullying in societies and the detrimental effect they are having in my blog Governance Gap, Why Half the World Distrusts Governments: Phishing for Phools Part 4 in the IMF/WB Annual Meeting 2016.

However, the active bullying and discrimination of minority women towards Caucasian, “trophy” women and the detriment to society at large, as well as to the victims of these crimes, is only half the story. One of the points I make in my blog Fractured Fairytale Deb vs. Deb of the Decade: Observations of a CSO Rep at IMF/WB Spring Mtgs – Part 28for which Cornelia Guest received an Ostrich award—noting that one of the reasons mothers are resorting to animal rights laws in efforts to protect their children in American courts is because of “famous” people like Cornelia who is “cheer-leading” for the social conservative forces, as her mother taught her to do. One of the reasons I contact Cornelia years ago about assistance in creating Global Expats, is that I know who is in her network from the Foxcroft “gang.” One of these people is Leigh Brady, daughter-in-law of former Secretary of Treasury Brady, and socialite in Atlanta—calling attention to the fact a demonstrator I met last week in front of the Fund was complaining about Bond deals in Zimbabwe, which is reminiscent of why the Brady Bonds were invented.

Names of actors change, but the games remain the same!!  

The inertia, and “let them eat cake” attitude of upper, and upper-middle class women is just as responsible for a status quo of bullying, social conservatism, and even violence against women. Carolina Griffiths avowed in one of the ICD “party games” that she had been a debutante in Washington. When I found out, I approached her about working on domestic violence issues. And, while she found my work “admirable” she did not “have time” (too busy organizing all of the parties for ICD). Not only have I received great animosity from minority women in the past decade, but also from “career” women towards “stay-at-home” moms, with an employee of the Mexican Consulate trashing me in the Spanish courts under the contention that “I should be ashamed of myself for never having worked.” This woman’s children run wild, she was doped up on all sorts of pharmaceuticals, with her life a mess; and SHE was calling ME a sin verguenza!! Leslie Morgan Steiner explores the animosities and hostilities between these two groups of women in Mommy Wars: Stay-at-Home and Career Moms Face Off on Their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families.   

So as one can see the traditions and norms which support and encourage bullying and violence against women, in all its forms (NOT just sexual harassment from the likes of Donald Trump splashed all over the press at present) MUST BE DENOUNCED AND CHALLENGED BY EVERYONE AT ALL LEVEL OF SOCIETY. The chaos and havoc being produced by the bullies must stop, as must the apathy and inertia of those who remain silent to the abuses of power in their midst.

The many forces at play here was included in my complaint to the IMF for workplace bullying—a complaint I do not think anyone in the IMF has even read, and I quote,

Any effective analysis of the issues, necessitates examination of the effects bullying has on the health of the employee and his/her family members. First, as seen in a poll by the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI) in 2013, WBI Poll-I: Offsetting the Pain from Workplace Bullyingbullying not only effects the employee, but also his/her family in a very detrimental (at times fatal) way,

The empirical research literature on workplace bullying clearly demonstrates the painful impact on recipients, targets. The stress-related physical and psychological health consequences are more extreme than effects of other types of workplace harassment. Thanks to recent advances in neuroscience, we know the effects of psychosocial stressors like interpersonal bullying activate pain pathways in the brain. That is, bullying literally causes pain.

This single-question survey asked bullied targets to describe how they chose to offset the pain.

Top Five behaviors, in rank order based on sample size n=609:

1.  .537 Withdrew from family & friends

2.  .453 Overeating

3.  .332 Drank alcohol more heavily

4.  .310 Took it out on family & friends

5.  .287 Turned to religion, faith or spirituality

Second, the traditions and customs which sustain bullying are the same that sustain abuses of power in all their forms, at all levels of society, from the largest bureaucratic organizations all the way down to the smallest family units. Without a holistic approach to combating these traditions and customs, which aggregately support the social conservative forces that dominate the planet, economies will never become productive and stable.

As seen in the following slides from the ICD’s 2nd Respectful Workplace workshop, the presentators built on their message from the 1st workshop, that victims of bullying should question their perception of the situation, rather than the actions of the bully. The rhetoric, and advise of the Winters Group compared to the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI) are completely opposite. Unfortunately, this dichotomy—with Winters instructing victim blaming, as opposed to explaining the issues and effective courses of action—is the same dichotomy as seen within the domestic violence arena and violence against women arenas.  

What the presentators were instructing IMF employees to do, is exactly what victims should not do. And, from a human rights perspective—advising victims to confront their aggressors, and to confront them alone—violates standards under the Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power and I quote,

Cognizant that millions of people throughout the world suffer harm as a result of crime and the abuse of power and that the rights of these victims have not been adequately recognized,

Recognizing that the victims of crime and the victims of abuse of power, and also frequently their families, witnesses and others who aid them, are unjustly subjected to loss, damage or injury and that they may, in addition, suffer hardship when assisting in the prosecution of offenders,

1.  Affirms the necessity of adopting national and international measures in order to secure the universal and effective recognition of, and respect for, the rights of victims of crime and of abuse of power;

2.  Stresses the need to promote progress by all States in their efforts to that end, without prejudice to the rights of suspects or offenders;

3.  Adopts the Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power, annexed to the present resolution, which is designed to assist Governments and the international community in their efforts to secure justice and assistance for victims of crime and victims of abuse of power;

4.  Calls upon Member States to take the necessary steps to give effect to the provisions contained in the Declaration and, in order to curtail victimization as referred to hereinafter, endeavour:

(a) To implement social, health, including mental health, educational, economic and specific crime prevention policies to reduce victimization and encourage assistance to victims in distress;

(b) To promote community efforts and public participation in crime prevention;

(c) To review periodically their existing legislation and practices in order to ensure responsiveness to changing circumstances, and to enact and enforce legislation proscribing acts that violate internationally recognized norms relating to human rights, corporate conduct, and other abuses of power;

(d) To establish and strengthen the means of detecting, prosecuting and sentencing those guilty of crimes;

(e) To promote disclosure of relevant information to expose official and corporate conduct to public scrutiny, and other ways of increasing responsiveness to public concerns;

(f) To promote the observance of codes of conduct and ethical norms, in particular international standards, by public servants, including law enforcement, correctional, medical, social service and military personnel, as well as the staff of economic enterprises;

5.  Recommends that, at the international and regional levels, all appropriate measures should be taken:

(a) To promote training activities designed to foster adherence to United Nations standards and norms and to curtail possible abuses;

(b) To sponsor collaborative action-research on ways in which victimization can be reduced and victims aided, and to promote information exchanges on the most effective means of so doing;

(d) To develop ways and means of providing recourse for victims where national channels may be insufficient;

Figure 2: Winter's Group Respectful Workplace Workshop

One telling aspect of the Winters Group’s presentation above is that it very concisely reflects the “magic wand” mentality of governments in dealing with, or rather not dealing with, the problems of the modern world. The attitude of “we tell everyone not to bully and to be respectful... And, voila it just happens, because we told everyone to be respectful.” The belief that by saying something in a speech, or presentation, or directive, or law... will simply make it come true by osmosis, with absolutely no effort; is THE biggest problem in getting people to integrate new ideas and research into their daily actions, and omission of actions.

As you can see the basic message of the presentation was that anyone who felt bullied was actually experiencing a perception and cultural diversity issues, rather than an actual situation of bullying. This also high-lights the fact that HR efforts are seeking to trivialize bullying in the workforce, rather than address the underlying issues.

Just like seen in the debate surrounding false accusations of domestic violence, workplace bullying is transformed into “false allegations”—with authorities telling victims to question themselves, rather than to take action. While abusers are successfully using the false allegation defense in court, time and time again, false allegations are extremely rare (between 1% and 5%[1]). Unfortunately, when the courts, or workplace, trivialize domestic violence and bullying, they are in turn perpetuate the myth within the courts, and society in general that the majority of accusations are nothing more than vindictive accusations of disgruntle spouses, or employees.   

It is clear from the scholarly literature that effective anti-bullying programs and initiatives must examine more closely the tactics and agendas of a bullying rather than simply take the easy road and brush off allegations as nothing more than “disgruntled” employees. David Yamada provides some in sight in his article The Sociopathic Employee Handbook.

Table 14: The Sociopathic Employee Handbook by David Yamada

The Sociopathic Employee Handbook

I once had an opportunity to review provisions of an employee handbook from a large, mostly non-union employer in the non-profit sector. Like many employee handbooks, there were sections devoted to employee rights, obligations, and performance expectations. On the surface, this handbook seemed to provide a good number of safeguards for workers to prevent unfair treatment and evaluations. But then I read the document more closely, and a chill ran up my spine. It was a cleverly, nay, ingeniously worded document that exposed workers to severe remedial measures, substantial discipline, or even termination for relatively minor inadequacies and transgressions. 

Among my reactions was that this read like the work of a sociopathic lawyer! The handbook contained a lot of cool, calm, bureaucratic-sounding language, mixed in with deftly worded provisions that would allow the employer to make mountains of molehills and to quietly knife people in the back — figuratively speaking, of course.

Employee handbooks are legally significant. During recent decades, state courts have consistently held that handbook provisions can be contractually binding upon employers and employees alike. For better or worse, employee handbooks heavily weighted toward management prerogative are pretty much the norm these days.

However, much worse are those handbooks that have a distant appearance of fairness while actually being loaded with details that can be used to roughhouse rank-and-file employees. I think there is a special place in a certain hot spot for those who write and impose such documents on workers. It is, to be sure, a twisted abuse of power.

Of course, the fact that corporations and managers are failing to implement programs and initiatives that will effectively combat the abuses of power in our workplaces, begs the question of why. The Workplace Bully Institute also provides some insight in to Why U.S. Employers Do So Little to Combat Bullying in their article below.

Table 15: Why U.S. Employers Do So Little to Combat Bullying by the WBI

Poor Leadership, Inept Managers

The majority of bullies (72%) are bosses...

·        Bullies derive most of their support from...HR. It's a club, a clique, that circles the wagons in defense when one of their own is accused.

·        Some executives command bullies to target particular employees. Bullies are simply good soldiers following orders in a blind fashion.

·        Supervisory training is nearly nonexistent. No budget. No time. Few good skills taught. OJT transmits bad habits.

·        Executives blame the problem on a "few bad apples," deflecting blame for systemic causes and denying responsibility for systemic cures.

Employers Don't Know How to Stop Bullies

Everyone walks on eggshells and is afraid to confront "the golden" bully, the boss's favorite. HR misapplies the tools of traditional conflict resolution, for example, mediation. Wrong solution for the actual problem. The workplace culture holds no one accountable. Confronting bullies is unthinkable. Executives and senior managers have been badgered by the bully, too. They are afraid of an emotional confrontation. They loathe conflict and remain paralyzed. By not acting, they tacitly endorse the bully. They fear lawsuits brought by the bully if they dare investigate or punish the bully. There is rarely a basis for such suits. The fear is irrational.

Bullying Is Underreported

Forty percent (40%) of targets never tell their employers...

·         Bullying is erroneously branded as "conflict" or a mere "difference in personality styles."

Both are true, but bullying is also a form of violence. Simple labels minimize its impact on both people and the organization.

·         Historically, complaints lead to retaliation (revengeful hurting) or reprisal (taking away of rights or status).

Knowing this, targets are reluctant to use internal employer processes.

And, finally the Workplace Bullying Institute provides insight into how bullying at the upper echelons of our societies contributed to the global economic crisis, emphasizing the dire necessity for governments and companies to attack this problem head on, rather than with their head in the sand like an ostrich—which is the advice of the Winters Group in their presentations to ICD.

Table 16: It’s Time to Start Standing up to the Bullies by the WBI

British journalist Jackie Ashley, writing for the Guardian newspaper (link here), warns about the dangers of “big-man, celebrity politics” and urges us to stand up to the bullies in our society.

Bullying silences dissent and dialogue

Ashley draws from British politician Alistair Dowling’s newly-published political memoir, Back from the Brink (2011), to examine the sycophantic behaviors of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s cabinet members. As I wrote last year, Brown is said to be quite the workplace bully. Ashley reports that he apparently intimidated his top lieutenants to the point where they simply went along with all his directives, instead of engaging in exchanges that “produce better decisions and help avoid worse mistakes.”

This problem reaches way beyond the politics of a single Prime Minister, and it extends into the business world as well. Ashley observes:

The people who rise to the top tend to be the scary bullies. They’re the ones with personalities so large, and self-belief so shocking, that people around them shrivel and go quiet. They promote yes-men and yes-women. Their mistakes are unchallenged.

The smarter approach, she suggests, would be “to concentrate on the merits of the arguments, and welcome the fact of the discussion.”

Sound familiar?

Ashley closes with a call to action, directed at fellow Brits:

A culture of big-man, celebrity politics, riding on the back of short-term, high-risk celebrity banking, came crashing down between 2008 and 2010, the years at the heart of Darling’s self-critical account. As a result we are in a darker, more worrying place: in politics and in business, it’s time to start standing up to the bullies.

Wise advice for those of us across the pond, as well.

AS EINSTEIN SO APTLY POINTED OUT, THEIR IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THOSE WHO DO NOT KNOW HOW TO READ, AND THOSE WHO DO NOT! IT IS ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL THAT THE IMF, WORLD BANK, UN, ETC. BE FILLED WITH PEOPLE WHO KNOW NOT ONLY HOW TO READ, BUT WHO UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY ARE READING AS WELL AS HOW TO IMPLEMENT WHAT THEY ARE READING UNDER HUMAN RIGHTS STANDARDS!!

[1]https://warondomesticterrorism.com/category/report-domestic_violence/

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