Head of International Monetary Fund Arrested for Sex Attack 2

The American Police State Strides Forward  -  by Paul Craig Roberts

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28122.htm

"...Strauss Kahn was the first IMF director in my lifetime, if memory serves, who disavowed the traditional IMF policy of imposing on the poor and ordinary people the cost of bailing out Wall Street and the Western Banks. Strauss-Kahn said that regulation had to be reimposed on the greed-driven, fraud-prone financial sector, which, unregulated, destroyed the lives of ordinary people..

Perhaps the most dangerous black mark in Strauss-Khan's book is that he was far ahead of America's French puppet, President Sarkoxy in the upcoming French elections.."

Could Canada's Carney Be Tapped to Head IMF?

http://www.thespec.com/news/canada/article/534285--could-canada-s-carney...

"Prime Minister Harper thinks Mark Carney is a wonderful central banker - others think so too. The Bank of Canada governor who was named by Time magazine as one of the world's most influential men is being taken seriously in international circles as a possible replacement for disgraced International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn.."

And who is Tim Geithner? He's a Wall Street insider with revolving door access to the halls of power in Washington and previously a convenor of the President's Working Group on Financial markets sometimes referred to as The Plunge Protection Team by its critics. They are Democrats, Republicans, Bilderbergers, central planners, "masters of the universe" and Wall Street bankster king pins delivering on socialism for superrich and powerful people. Whatever they say goes when it comes to expanding massive social programs for rich and powerful people. These are some of the people on the right who will ensure that the bad old days of laissez-faire capitalism never return. I supose we can at least be thankful for that. Meanwhile the financial pillaging and looting of Rome continues from within.

Thanks, Ghislaine. This thread and its precursor were badly in need of some feminist analysis. Your post is much welcomed. That disgusting article even quotes Henry Kissinger to buttress its point that DSK is irresistible. What utter crap.

The problem is not that this very famous man has a life outside of this sexual assault charge. Nor that we shouldn't be concerned about the rest of his life.

Its just that those other things aren't relevant, or certainly shouldn't be the focus of attention. 

The real focus of this thread - the charge, the alleged victim, and the accused - is being all but ignored by political junkies who are far more interested in the effect it will have on his other exploits. Or worse - casting doubt on the validity of the charge and the reputation of the alleged victim,  and questioning how they might fit into conspiracy theories to bring down the accused, who for some reason is being made the centre of attention here.

So Fidel... I know it is tempting, and obviously this has a bearing on DSK's work. But it is important and respectful to keep this in its proper perspective.

Ditto - thanks Ghislaine!  That article is a pile of shite.

I agree it's important not to attack the victim's integrity. But what about the people speaking for her who keep reminding everyone of where she comes from and just how poor she would have been had she remained in Guinea? My god what a racist thing to be pointing out - that she is a poor black woman, as if poor black women from Africa are incapable of the same human behaviours white people might also be. I'd fire those guys off the job PDQ.

Or, you know, these powerful, entitled men could actually be guilty of rape. 

Fidel, in case you aren't aware it is NOT JUST RIGHT WING MEN WHO RAPE. Leftists (and it is still unclear whether this guy really is a leftist) rape as well. People who take political action we may agree with sexual assault women. It is pervasive. (Many of us have personal experience of this - with men we formerly admired and trusted). To say "oh, well he must have been set up because he was taking action on issues we agree with!" is completely offensive and contrary to everything feminist know about sexual assault.

The victim-blaming going on is atrocious.

How does it compare with the Assange case?

IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn: The French Believe It's A Plot

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24857

"...here is a review of the most substantial articles in the French Press.."

Regime Change At The IMF: The Frame Up of DSK?  - by Michel Chussodovsky

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24866

"...in the Eurozone monetary system as well as Wall Street's resolve to exert a decisive influence on the European monetary architecture is also at stake.."

As a feminist and a socialist I find many of these comments quite offensive.  If the accused had been a right wing capitalist what would Rabblers have said?  DSK is, of course, innocent until proven guilty, so those who say he was set up or a victim of some conspiracy by international bankers are presuming his innocence.  And what does that then say about the working class victim?  Some people wonder why he would do such a thing and place his entire career in jeopardy.  Why?  Because he, like so many men in power (left and right and in between) feel they can get away with it.  Surrounded by fawning fans to whom they can do no wrong they have no moral compass.  I am also disturbed by those who question why he would rape a woman when he could have his pick of so many others, which perpetuates the myth that rape is about sexual desire when it is always about power, control and violence.  Personally, I applaud the woman for coming forward and even the Hotel which took immediate action to protect its employee.

I was entirely unaware of that. Thanks for setting me straight. I'll think twice about saying these things from now on.

It's a basic historical fact that rape accusations have been used as a propaganda tactic for thousands of years. To reiterate over some examples, the British did it in the Sepoy mutiny in India, the Americans did it against Natives when they wanted to motivate white men to go commit genocide, the Europeans are currrently doing it against Ghadaffi's forces, et cetera.

Perhaps you don't believe that truth is the first victim of war, or that we live in a world where the imperialist powers will stop at nothing to maintain their vampiric grip on power. Character assassination is part of the toolbox. You've seen made-up character assassinations so many times, so why fall for it?

Your position on this issue is unilateral disarmament against a very powerful CIA/MI6/Interpol tactic. They will keep removing left-wing figures from positions of influence throughout North America and Europe, and if people like you fall for it every time, there will eventually be nothing left (even less than right now), facilitating the ongoing transition to fascism.

******

I also suspect that the more frequent use of rape accusations to engage in character assassination has a dual purpose. Aside from destroying the careers of troublesome-to-imperialism individuals such as DSK and Julian Assange, it comes off as ludicrous in the eyes of the general public and will serve to further reduce the legitimacy of women in the general public who get raped.

Oh bullshit, I'd believe the maid before I'd believe any of your conspiracy BS. Sorry.

You know, this conspiracy theory stuff about Struass Kahn offers up no evidence, just questions.   And, believe it or don't, unanswered questions are not evidence. 

A chain of unanswered questions and suppositions.  Even if they all hung together, one link after another, it's still not evidence.  But even as that, there is no chain.

The idea that Strauss Kahn is some kind of socialist, that he was changing the IMF from within, or from the top, or challenging the banking system cannot be evidentially supported.  In fact, as the statement from DSK himself on the Irish bailout package indicates, he is a full blown capitalist, making sure those in the banks and those bondholders are sure to face no consequence for their crapulance, and to face absolutely no reduction of income or status.  

Meanwhile the workers and poor of the Republic of Ireland are paying and paying, taking wage cuts, cuts to social programs and cuts to basic services.

 This canard about DSK being a socialist or being someone the bankers or those in power wanted rid of is nonesense on stilts.  As Pauli would say, it's not even wrong.

As I have stated before, like anyone else Dominique Strauss Kahn is innocent until proven guilty.  But if we are to entertain the question on what we think is the likelyhood of him being a rapist, or being the victim of a conspiracy, it is far removed from reason to put any wieght on the victim explanation.

But is this "historical fact" a literal truth?  The sexual assault of women has been systemically under-recognized or not even acknowledged as rape for millennia.  These "false accusations" may in fact have been allegations of real behaviour that were swept under the rug or attributed to political enemies.

And yeah; the head of the IMF is vetted by the world's top money-based sociopaths.  The notion that DSK, the man of $6000 suits and $3000/night hotel rooms, was somehow speaking truth to power is beyond laughable.

I know it often seems like ducking the issue when politicians or other figures say they can't comment on something because it is before the courts (and indeed sometimes they are ducking). 

But there is also some wisdom to it. A case like this is (and likewise, the investigation against Julian Assange) are two examples where it is probably a good idea to just resist the urge, and stay completely away from the case itself until we know what the facts are.

I don't know if it is that people are so used to TV and fiction that they just assume that everything has to fit together even though it might be completely unrelated. And the problem with any case involving a public figure is that the temptation is always to fit it together around HIS life, and the alleged victim is either ignored, treated as some pawn, or accused of being an attacker. 

Likewise the sentiment that the legalities of this case aren't so important, and the assumption that the main thing is that he wind up behind bars because his political crimes are what he should really be punished for. As I said before, if it is okay to bend the law to get your enemy, it can eventually come back to bite you too.

I don't mean to say that we shouldn't talk at all about cases, or that sometimes (as with the Assange case) there may not be those who seek to manipulate the legal process.

But when that discussion extends to bending the law, or treating the alleged victim as either a minor player in someone else's game, or with outright suspicion when there is absolutely no evidence to that effect (as Tommy_Paine rightly pointed out) it becomes a real problem - and very disrespectful.

And that disrespect, and the tendency to resort to it,  is far greater in matters of sexual assault and violence against women.

Because I am certain this case - not the IMF or French  politics -  is the most central and very painful thing for the alleged victim, and in all likelhood this has absolutely nothing to do with anything in the perpetrator's professional life, There is certainly no evidence of it.

If we can't discuss Mr, Strauss-Kahn's fortunes without keeping that in its proper perspective we should probably not be talking about this at all. And we should probably change the title of the thread to reflect what it is really about. 

Besides, the real world isn't always as neat and tidy as TV. Julius Rosemberg may have been the victim of a show trial, but as was revealed a few years ago, he was also almost certainly guilty as charged (and Ethel was probably innocent).

As I said.... 

He was the victim of a show trial. And I agree with your assessment of it.

But those who assumed he was innocent, and that he was framed, are probably mistaken. It may have seemed the likeliest conclusion because the whole process was railroaded by the U.S. government. But the truth is not always so cut and dried.

In 2008, Morton Sobell, who was convicted with the Rosenbergs, admitted that he and Julius were spies, and that Ethel probably knew about it but was not involved. 

Might he be lying? perhaps. But given his age (91) and the time that had passed there is a fair chance he was telling the truth. After all, I would think there is more reason for him to clear the air than smear a couple of dead people and perpetuate the lies of the cold war.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/nyregion/12spy.html

I think conspiracy thinking has become part of the zietgiest lately, and it takes a conscious effort to not engage in it.  It's easy to resist when the facts as we know them support something we want to believe.  And a tempting debating tactic to resort to in support of something we want to believe when we find ourselves at odds with the facts.  And, more of us are probably guilty of giving into that temptation than we care to admit.

So I don't think those who support a conspiracy or who are entertaining it to an unfathomable degree are seeking to blame the victim or discredit her with that as a prime motive.  But it is an inexcapable element that has to be included in any conspiracy scenario.

For all we know it is indeed possible she is Bigfoot.  Prove me wrong.

No, I was trying to colourfully draw attention to the idea that you can't prove a negative, which is what all these conspiracy ideas are asking us to do.

What, you've never ever read any post here by me showing were governments lie?  Of course they do, and of course we know that from evidence.

To entertain all these conspiracies without a shred of evidence is a clear violation of reason.

@ 500 Apples

Evidence?

You are just making up stories about someone who has likely been sexually assaulted, and is now overshadowed by her much more important and famous alleged attacker.

And the worst part of it is that she is not even being thought of as a person, but as a piece in a puzzle. If you're wrong about her being an agent or someone paid to entrap him? Well too bad... no harm done. She can deal with it.

I don't know how you would feel if you were attacked in the street and someone started a rumour that you had somehow deserved it, or were the instigator because of the reputation of the attacker hwo is far more important than you.... or if your house burned down and someone accused you of doing it yourself... or indeed if you had come under suspicion in a family member's death because "well these things don't just happen by themselves".

I'm sure the victims of former pathologist Charles Smith understand what it is like to be falsely accused by someone who feels the need to make random incidents fit patterns that aren't really there and play games with other peoples' lives.

While it is true that false accusations of rape can be used as a tool to smear and discredit a powerful person, my point is that actual rape is a weapon against women.  Rape has sometimes been used as a weapon of war, but in the main it transcends politics, perpetrated by men of ALL political afflilations/ideologies to degrade and humiliate women.

Look at the recent Arnold Schwartznegger scandal.  Arnold has a long history of groping and molesting women, but some of the women who came forward in the past were pilloried in the media, accused of being agents for the Democrats.

There's an interesting article in yesterday's Globe about why men in positions of power risk everything for transient encounters.

Since rape is about power, makes sense that a man who has or wants power would use rape as a kind of affirmation.  Politics has nothing to do with it.

I wonder how many "false" accusations of rape were based on real events, the victims unfortunate enough to accuse a man for whom such allegations were considered to be too conveniently timely for his detractors.

Once again, no one here is saying DSK did not rape. That's a very real possibility. 

What some of us have a hard time with is those saying DSK is not also loathed by some superrich and powerful people from this side of the ocean to the other.

There is a war going on for control of the monetary system. There are no socialists involved in this war. 

Money is how countries have been waging the larger wars since decades ago. There have been bombings and fascist armies marching into sovereign countries and false flag terror before and since the end of cold war for sure. But most of the pillaging and sacking of countries has been done by marauding international capital. Whether DSK is guilty of rape or not, he's definitely done. This is the end of DSK political aspirations for sure. Am I happy or sad? It makes no real difference to us on the left. They are all corrupt and dirty.

Some of us here are attempting to provide a full analysis of the DSK situation against a prevailing undercurrent.

But I think this thread (and other threads) is more about pre-existing babble skirmishes and mollycoddling of feuding vendetta specialists with non-related axes to grind than anything else.

Okay, Rebecca. We should stop paying so much attention to DSK. He's just another one of them anyway.

[off topic] Yes rape is about power. And it is well known that rape has also been used as a coercive tool for political ends according to the Historical Clarification Committee, an independent human rights commission that studied the Guatemalan conflict of late last century. Military officers are taught specifically about rape and torture as tools for subduing populations and especially indigenous women of Latin America. Rape is a tool for terrorizing those representing about half of any normal population of people in women. Male peasants are terrorized as well by the police and military brutality against their wives and children. In this very hemisphere today, this kind of stuff is still happening without provocation by armed left wing rebels as was claimed by the right in the 1980s and 90s. They raped and tortured pregnant socialists in Argentina and Chile and oftentimes resulting in death. Rape and torture are methods of terror. The infamous School of the Americas/WHINSEC based in the USA needs to be closed down for all time.[/]

Fidel,

I think it's a major issue that white liberal moderates think any discussion of imperialism is "off-limits". They don't want to hear it, and as long as this culture of denialism permeates the so-called left in North America and Europe, there will be no progress on progressive issues, just further moves backwards like we've had non-stop in the past 30 years. Your example of the South American cases is a good one. A lot of people on this thread are putting a lot of attention onto one ostensible rapist, DSK, even though they have ignored the thousands of definite rapists operating on behalf of the empire... THEIR empire. That alone should make them realize the role of the media and of their complicity.

I'm through with this thread, I find the attitude of the apologists to be revolting quite frankly. A lot of them have never even heard of special drawing rights, and they think they have some sort of credibility in posting on an IMF thread.

ETA: And for some reason I can't send you a private message.

Fatal error: Call to undefined function subscriptions_hold()

in /var/www/rabble/rabble.ca/sites/all/modules/privatemsg/pm_subscriptions/pm_subscriptions.module

on line 106

Wtf? This thread is about  Dominique Strauss-Kahn, which is why we are "putting a lot of attention onto one ostensible rapist." Some here would prefer to concoct elaborate conspiracy theories which rely on the laughable contention that DSK is an enemy of imperialism, rather than one of its architects. Also laughable is the idea that those here denouncing the attempt to recast this conversation away from one of rape and towards one of this entitled prick's reputation have ever "ignored the thousands of rapists operating on behalf of empire."

No such ruling has been made nor should be. The OP is quite capable of handling ALL apects of the DSK affair. At least that was my intention when starting it. ALL contributions enrich the thread even those contending.

Was DSK Stiched Up?  -  by Alexander Cockburn

http://counterpunch.org/cockburn05202011.html

"...As a conspiracy it doesn't look as though there's much in the way of lift to keep it in the air in any sort of convincing shape. These are early days..."

more details from the maid's point of view:

http://fr.news.yahoo.com/affaire-dsk-femme-chambre-aurait-%C3%A9t%C3%A9-...

There's no wild speculation going on with regard to the accusation of rape. For starters, a man with an apparent history of predatory conduct toward women has been arrested, a woman who was videotaped fleeing from the alleged crime scene has come forward with testimony after a trip to a hospital for treatment of injuries, and reports suggest that the investigators have subsequently collected biological evidence from the scene. The difficulty you're having pertains directly to the other intricacies you've been developing here at the expense of what is known about this incident so far. Certainly it wouldn't hurt to consider that all things are possible in a world run by competing gangs of crooks and mass murderers, and that nothing should be cancelled out by discussing other potential intrigues, but especially and including sensitivity to the issue at hand.

Trivializing rape, accusing babblers of wild speculation (well, you've done a fair bit of that), insinuating that talking about rape in this thread is off-topic, you've earned yourself a 48 hour vacation from babble.

Yes, when I remarked how it's possible that these conspiracy theories have possibly tainted historical accounts and discredited real allegations of rape, did you notice how he edited his reply to add an [off topic] tag?

Anyway, it's not looking good for the maid:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/dominique-strauss-kahn-case-wife-anne-sinclair-family/story?id=13663802

Given the investment she's already made in DSK, Sinclair isn't going to let something so petty as a sexual assault charge stand between her and the power and prominence she so obviously craves.

Diana Johnstone's piece is excellent and perhaps has additional cautionary resonances for Canada as well:

"...The Mitterand era in reality buried socialism, or even social democracy, but the Socialist Party went on calling itself 'the left'. This no longer referred to economic policies favoring the working class but above all to moral issues such as anti-racism and all sorts of vague good inentions.

With Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the mere absence of socialism evolved into something more vigorous: unabashed promotion of global capitalism. The fact that he was clearly an eager champion of mulitlateral finance capital posing as a socialist was not the problem: the problem was that it showed..."

I find the "pro-feminist" claims very odd? Very odd indeed.

Does Pro-feminism trump fact, logic or truth?
Apparently here it does?
Odd

Penny2, I have a feeling you won't be around here for very long. However, how can someone be "set up" for sexual assault?

Regardless of whether someone told this maid to go into his room or not....he still allegedy sexually harassed her.

If he wasn't inclined to sexually assault, it wouldn't have been possible to set him up.

Ghislaine:

Your forgetting he allegedly sexually assaulted her.
From all I have read, and it's been lots he has been a philanderer but not an attacker.
So why say he is inclined to sexually assault
Perhaps he was inclined to paying for sex?
What if he simply mistook the woman for a bought and paid for hooker?

I find it odd because feminism is just another ism.
It is meaningless.
Does feminism trump truth?
Is DSK automatically guilty because according to feminists he is a "filthy man" A pervert.
Thereby according to feminists he is automatically guilty?

Catchfire: no this place is definitely not for me, to childhish and to full of "isms"

" There, you are free to posit any wild ol' theory you like."

As you are here, free to post a wild theory of bad men and innocent women, of feminism.

"And can I again remind everyone, as this thread is drained to its lees, that there is no evidence whatsoever that the victim was set up."

There is actually no evidence that she was attacked just lots of speculation.
Lots of trial by media. Lots of he said, she said.
Nothing else.