lupercal wrote:
Anyway Hugh does this much better ....
Well there ya go.
That's all you need to say regarding your credibility.
Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by Nordic » Fri Jul 15, 2011 4:25 am
lupercal wrote:
Anyway Hugh does this much better ....
by Jeff » Sat Jul 16, 2011 9:22 am
A bas le socialisme francais!
GERALD CAPLAN
Globe and Mail, Friday, July 15
As one of the few remaining earthlings to happily call himself a socialist, I have now decided that if anything (Stalin and Mao aside) were to drive me away from my lifelong ideology it’s the way it’s practiced in la belle France. If you jump to the conclusion that I’m referring to the squalid case of “DSK,” you are not wrong but only one-third right. (An audience in Rwanda understood instinctively last week when I compared Dominique Strauss-Khan’s alleged violation of an African maid to the way the International Monetary Fund has treated Africa for the past many decades.)
Beyond the DSK scandal, it so happens that I have had the great misfortune of running into socialism a la France on other piquant occasions.
Older readers will recall without much nostalgia that among the great causes of the entire left wing during the Cold War era was the demand that nuclear testing not continue. Okay, that’s not completely accurate. The nuclear powers in those innocent times were few – the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, France and Israel – and while socialist parties in opposition were passionate advocates of Banning the Bomb, becoming government as always had a way of changing their perspective.
Accordingly, during the 1980s, France was carrying out underground nuclear tests in a big way and, in order to safeguard French citizens, did so far from home where only Pacific islanders would suffer. In 1985, Greenpeace decided to send a ship, the Rainbow Warrior, into the area to protest the tests. In order to show these meddling activists who was running the show, the French government proceeded to blow the Rainbow Warrior out of the water, in the process killing a photographer on board. The president of France who authorized these nuclear tests and who, according to the head of French intelligence, personally authorized the attack on the ship, was François Mitterrand.
Do I have to add that Mr. Mitterrand was, of course, a socialist.
It transpired that I had represented the NDP at a Socialist International meeting in Europe shortly before this incident, as did Lionel Jospin, then (like me) first secretary of the French socialist party and eventually (unlike me) prime minister of France. During one discussion of world peace, which most SI delegates quite favoured, I took the floor to report that while I couldn’t speak for socialists everywhere, in Canada at least part of the unchallenged catechism of every lefty was to make the ending of nuclear tests a huge priority. So I was somewhat confused, I explained fraternally, to figure out why the socialist government of France didn’t share this passion.
Seated on either side of me were Michael Harrington, the wonderful American socialist intellectual, and Olof Palme, the remarkably principled prime minister of Sweden, a man who scandalized everyone by actually practicing in government much of what he had preached in opposition and whose untimely murder on the safe streets of Stockholm has never been solved. Both, I’m thrilled to report, warmly congratulated me on being innocent enough to express publicly what all in the hall strongly believed. Okay, not all. Mr. Jospin rose immediately, and with an icy stare that suggested the same fate for me as soon after befell the hapless Rainbow Warrior photographer, announced that he was not prepared to discuss, let alone defend, internal French policies at such a meeting. And he never did.
Mr. Mitterrand remained in power for many many years, until 1995, which meant – you’ll see where I’m going, I imagine – he was president throughout the entire period in the early 1990s when Hutu extremists in Rwanda were plotting the genocide against their Tutsi co-citizens. Under this socialist head of state, France armed, trained, advised and publicly lied about the Rwandan genocidiaires whom Mr. Mitterrand had made his beneficiaries. Without the French president’s intervention, the genocide may never have occurred at all. In fact, I have little doubt that he could have halted the entire diabolical conspiracy in its tracks with a single phone call to his cher ami and dependent, Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana, threatening to withdraw his political and military advisers, to end all military shipments, to refuse foreign aid and in general to make offers to Mr. Habyarimana and his venomous family that they could hardly refuse.
Not only did Mr. Mitterrand never try to stop the genocidaires, he never ceased his active complicity in their terrible mission. Why would he? Musing on what he made possible in Rwanda, and reflecting presumably something of the curious world of French socialism, Mr. Mitterrand said: “In such countries [as those in Africa], genocide is not too important.” An interesting French twist, I’ve always thought, on the central socialist value of egalite. (Neither Mr. Palme nor Mr. Harrington lived long enough to witness another example of French socialism in action in Rwanda.)
Enter Dominique Strauss-Khan. For all I know, he's as innocent as the driven snow and Stephen Harper really is a trained economist. In my little corner of the universe, however, everyone accepts his accuser's word, at least when it comes to him. It's not HER background that’s at issue here; it’s his. It’s his reputation that should convict him, and anyone who has even a smidgeon of sympathy for him should look at New York magazine’s issue of June 29 with its long list of what we are obligated to call allegations about DSK’s well-known history with women. If you care for a larger perspective on his accuser, I also recommend a column in the July 6 issue of The New York Times called “Before you judge, stand in her shoes.”
As far as I can make out, just about everyone in France who ever heard of this man is fully aware of his tawdry record, including his many brothers in the French socialist party who can hardly jump fast enough to embrace him as their forthcoming presidential candidate. It’s not that they think he’s innocent. It’s that they don’t give a damn what he allegedly did to a hotel maid and what he has allegedly (as we’re forced to say) done before.
I give you the words of Jack Lang, a prominent and respected member of the French party and an excellent culture minister for many years: “There was,” he declared definitively, “no loss of life.” Oh, that’s okay then. My old Socialist International comrade Lionel Jospin, now the grand old man of the French socialist party, still full of deep compassion for the vulnerable, was outraged that DSK “was thrown to the wolves.”
There are many varieties of socialisms around the world. I’m by no means proud of all of them. And then, helas, in a class of its own, there is France.
by Peachtree Pam » Tue Jul 19, 2011 10:37 am
Tristane Banon’s mother had ‘brutal’ sex with DSK
Strauss-Kahn acts with ‘the obscenity of a soldier’ says politician Anne Mansouret revealing long-ago tryst
By Venetia Rainey
LAST UPDATED 12:20 PM, JULY 19, 2011
In another twist to the story of Dominique Strauss-Kahn's sex life, it has been claimed that the 62-year-old, who is alleged to have attempted to rape French writer Tristane Banon (left), had already had a "brutal" encounter with her mother, politician Anne Mansouret (right), by the time he met Banon.
Mansouret, a high-ranking member of the Socialist Party - the same party Strauss-Kahn belong to and had hoped one day to lead - made the claim while being questioned by police during a preliminary investigation into her daughter's complaint.
French weekly L'Express reports that Mansouret, 65, told them she had a "sexual relationship" with the former IMF chief in 2000 that was "consensual but clearly brutal". It was an encounter, she said, that she never wanted to repeat.
Mansouret, who was running for the Socalist nomination for the presidency until she dropped out on July 1, told her interrogators that DSK is a predator who seeks not to please but to take, and acts with the "obscenity of a soldier". According to her, his sexual needs trigger some sort of domination instinct.
This fits with her daughter Tristane's account of DSK as a "rutting chimpanzee" who was "very violent".
But why did she choose to stay silent about the tryst, even when her daughter came to her in 2003 complaining that he has assaulted her?
The answer apparently lies in the fact that hardly anyone, including Banon, knew about the encounter between Mansouret and Strauss-Kahn. This was because Mansouret was close friends at the time with DSK's former wife, Brigitte Guillemette, who was also godmother to Banon.
But in the light of the Sofitel incident, and with DSK's friends and family still painting a picture of a man that is "a seducer, not a rapist", Mansouret said she felt compelled to come forward to support her daughter's case.
Ironically, it was Mansouret who originally discouraged Banon from filing a complaint against Strauss-Kahn in 2003.
Before advising Banon to keep quiet, Mansouret says she spoke first to Guillemette, who apparently confided that she knew DSK often misbehaved with students, but that she never thought it would go this far. Guillemette then rang her ex-husband, who reportedly told her: "I don't know what came over me. I slept with the mother, I lost it when I saw the daughter."
Mansouret then went on to consult a local magistrate who told her that her daughter should complain but that she would probably not be believed, and a fellow Socialist politician known for her feminist beliefs, who urged her to get Banon to come forward.
Meanwhile, Banon had sought advice from a lawyer, who told her that the lack of physical evidence coupled with the ease with which the case could be dismissed as a publicity-seeking stunt meant that her chances of succeeding with it were "practically nil".
It also appears that Francois Hollande, then leader of the Socialist Party, knew of the incident.
DSK has dismissed Banon's allegations as "imaginary", and has filed a lawsuit against her for slander. At the time of posting, he has yet to respond to the mother's story.
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/81895,peo ... -with-dsk-
by Peachtree Pam » Tue Jul 19, 2011 11:11 am
http://www.slate.com/id/2299520/
DSK's MILF?
snip.....
But there's a big problem with Mansouret's story: Guillemette denies it. L'Express says that when investigators asked Guillemette about Mansouret's version of events, she told them, "All this is false." And if Guillemette rejects Mansouret's account of their conversations, that could undercut Mansouret's credibility about her own incident as well as Banon's.
Mansouret's sordid tale, as reported by L'Express, deepens the portrait of Strauss-Kahn as a sexual aggressor with a pattern of pressure and violence, including the sequential pursuit of a woman and her daughter. But precisely because this portrait is so grotesque and so reliant on a mother and daughter whose stories are now sexually intertwined—and now challenged by another woman—Mansouret's allegations could make Banon's story harder to believe. That doesn't mean Strauss-Kahn will walk away a free man. It just means that some other woman will have to come forward. And if the portrait of him is accurate, that woman almost certainly exists.
by barracuda » Mon Jul 25, 2011 12:10 am
The Maid's Tale
She was paid to clean up after the rich and powerful. Then she walked into Dominique Strauss-Kahn's room—and a global scandal. Now she tells her story.
by vanlose kid » Mon Jul 25, 2011 3:14 pm
Dominique Strauss-Kahn's accuser goes public as case nears collapse
Nafissatou Diallo threatens to launch civil action if case against former IMF chief falls apart
Dominic Rushe in New York and Kim Willsher in Paris guardian.co.uk, Monday 25 July 2011 19.09 BST
On the morning of 14 May Nafissatou Diallo, an illiterate single mother from Guinea, entered suite 2806 of the Sofitel hotel in New York to clean the room. Hours later news of her alleged sexual assault by Dominique Strauss-Kahn was broadcast around the world. Diallo became "the maid", one of the most mysterious and famous – or infamous – women in the world.
Until this week the US and UK media have protected the identity of Diallo, a 32-year-old refugee and mother of a 15-year-old daughter. But now she has gone public, fighting to get her day in court as her case against the former French presidential hopeful appears close to collapse.
"I want justice. I want him to go to jail," she said in her first television interview. "I want him to know that there is some places you cannot use your money, you cannot use your power when you do something like this."
ABC will air Diallo's full interview in the US on Tuesday. It follows an interview with Newsweek in which she describes in harrowing detail the alleged attack.
Diallo has also described the aftermath of the attack. She said she had no idea who the then head of the International Monetary Fund was. "I was watching the news and they were saying he's going to be the next president of France. And I say 'oh my God' and I was crying, they're going to kill me, they're going to kill me, I'm going to die." She said that if this had happened in Guinea with "a powerful man like that" she would have been killed.
Diallo's case has been severely damaged after revelations that she lied to the authorities and a grand jury about her background. It was also revealed that she had fiddled her taxes and had a relationship with Amara Tarawally, a convicted drug dealer who used her bank account to deposit large sums of money. Strauss-Kahn is due back in court on 1 August and the Manhattan district attorney is believed to be considering dropping the case.
Diallo has threatened to launch her own civil action against Strauss-Kahn.
In the interviews Diallo is vague about her past life in Guinea, as well as the exact nature of her relationship with Tarawally, whom she called after the alleged incident in a conversation taped by the authorities. Diallo allegedly said: "Don't worry, this guy has a lot of money. I know what I'm doing." But Newsweek reports that the prosecutors did not have a translation of the full conversation, conducted in a dialect of Fulani, Diallo's first language, and that subsequent investigations have cast doubt on that interpretation.
She also appeared close to tears as she denied allegations made by the New York Post that she had worked as a prostitute. "I'm not. God is my witness, I'm telling the truth, from the heart. God knows that." She is suing the paper.
Strauss-Kahn's defence had been strengthened by doubts about Diallo's account of the attack. She reportedly went to clean another room after the incident.
But according to Diallo's account in the interviews, backed by information from the Sofitel's electronic room keys, she visited another room only briefly, apparently to retrieve personal effects. Her lawyer Ken Thompson told ABC: "There's no mystery, there's no hiding the fact. This man attempted to rape her."
Strauss-Kahn's legal team hit back at Diallo's decision to go public. "Ms Diallo is the first accuser in history to conduct a media campaign to persuade a prosecutor to pursue charges against a person from whom she wants money," said Strauss-Kahn's lawyers William Taylor and Benjamin Brafman. "It is time for this unseemly circus to stop."
Stuart Slotnick, defence attorney and managing partner of Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney, called Diallo's decision to go public "outrageous" and said it could damage the case. "She is violating all the rules. There aren't many cases where the victim goes on the PR offensive; usually it's the defendant." The defence team would now be scrutinising the tapes for inconsistencies in her story and building an argument that she is out for financial gain, he said. "Her lawyer has already attacked the district attorney's office. He isn't doing this because he's a women's rights activist; he stands to make a lot of money."
Slotnick said he expected the district attorney's office and Strauss-Kahn's lawyers to subpoena ABC and Newsweek as they sift through the interviews for more evidence.
Diallo's decision to waive her anonymity was barely newsworthy in France, where the media have been naming her and giving personal details, including the name and age of her daughter, their address and even photographs, since her identity was first known. On Monday, French radio France-Info described her decision to give an interview as a "media offensive".
David Koubbi, the lawyer representing the French writer Tristane Banon, 32, who claims Strauss-Kahn sexually attacked her when she went to interview him for a book she was writing in 2003, met Diallo in New York last week. Banon has lodged a lawsuit for attempted rape against Strauss-Kahn in France, which is currently under preliminary investigation to see whether the case should go ahead.
Koubbi has said he found Diallo credible. "She told me she had not lied. She said it forcefully and she repeated it."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ju ... ks-silence
by barracuda » Mon Jul 25, 2011 3:19 pm
by Jeff » Thu Jul 28, 2011 10:12 am
Tape clears DSK maid over money: lawyer
Colleen Long and Jennifer Peltz
July 28, 2011 - 1:44PM
AFP
The hotel maid accusing Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sex assault has been wrongfully portrayed as a money grubbing opportunist in newspaper accounts of her recorded remarks to a friend in prison, her lawyer says.
The tapes also established that housekeeper Nafissatou Diallo recounted the attack to the man during their first conversation, a day after the alleged attack - showing, her lawyer said on Wednesday, that her focus was on what had happened to her, not on the former International Monetary Fund leader's wealth or stature.
"Information has been put out there about Ms Diallo that now I know was false. She never was scheming to take DSK's money, and that's a fact," said her lawyer, Kenneth Thompson, referring to Strauss-Kahn by his initials.
...
The tapes have not been released, and Thompson said he was allowed to hear them on Wednesday but didn't get copies of them.
They contrast with a New York Times account of what Diallo had said, according to Thompson.
The newspaper has reported, citing an anonymous law enforcement official, that Diallo said "words to the effect of, 'Don't worry, this guy has a lot of money. I know what I'm doing'" to her friend shortly after Strauss-Kahn's arrest.
But on the tapes, her mentions of Strauss-Kahn's resources and her knowing what to do are made at different points, and in contexts that cast them in a considerably different light, Thompson said.
In her first conversation with the man, she didn't mention Strauss-Kahn's wealth at all, instead telling her friend that "someone tried to rape me, and that he's a powerful, big man," who had tried to take her clothes off, pushed her, and ultimately made her do something against her will, Thompson said.
In a subsequent conversation, she told her friend that her attacker "is powerful and rich," her lawyer said.
But it was earlier in that conversation - and not in connection with any mention of Strauss-Kahn's status - that she said "I know what to do" to signal that she gone to authorities, planned to hire a lawyer and would be all right, Thompson said.
"Her primary focus was on what happened to her, how she was coping with the fact that she had almost been raped," he said.
by JackRiddler » Sat Jul 30, 2011 2:17 pm
http://counterpunch.org/martens07282011.html
July 28, 2011
Carnal Confusion
The Strauss-Kahn Handlers Crank Out the Lawsuits
By PAM MARTENS
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and aspirant to the Élysée Palace, has left a trail of DNA from Davos to Paris to Gotham (and that’s just what he’s acknowledged). But that’s not the only mess he’s left others to clean up.
Putting aside the criminal charges and allegation of attempted rape on two continents for a moment, Strauss-Kahn, or DSK as his compatriots like to call him, has singlehandedly humiliated the International Monetary Fund, the luxury Sofitel Hotel, his current wife (Anne Sinclair), his daughter (Camille), his second wife (Brigitte Guillemette), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (where he is alleged to have had sex between the file cabinets), the luxury Porsche auto brand (prior to his arrest in New York, the French Socialist Party member was tooling around Paris in a Porsche Panamera which is priced in the range of $150,000 and whose ownership was tied to a French media/armaments conglomerate, Lagardère), his fellow Caviar Socialists, the lovable entertainer Zippy the Chimp (accuser Tristane Banon called DSK a “rutting chimpanzee”). He’s accomplished for the image of powerful French politicians what Guantanamo accomplished for the image of U.S. justice: a law free zone.
Given this trail of smoldering ash, one might expect a little humility from DSK and his take-no-prisoners lawyers and advance men. But no. The whole pack is suing left and right – that’s literally the political left and the political right.
In May 2010, the French publishing house, Plon, released the book DSK: Les Secrets d'un Présidentiable (Secrets of a Presidential Contender) by an anonymous author, Cassandre. The book contained allegations involving Strauss-Kahn and women, including a hotel housekeeper in Mexico. The author, who claims to have been an insider, paints the following portrait of DSK:
“When he enters a room, whether a café, an office or a private place, the ritual is always the same. He surveys the room for attractive women and having spotted his prey, bombards them with text messages, usually with the opener: ‘I want you.’ He is direct and makes no concessions.”
Cassandre also profiles employees of the big public relations and marketing house, Euro RSCG, implying they are a “gang” that deftly molded the image of Strauss-Kahn to create a candidate capable of being elected President of France. The gang of four consisted of Ramzi Khiroun, Stephane Fouks, Gilles Finkelstein and Anne Hommel, all working for Euro RSCG during the periods described in the book. The four filed a lawsuit against Plon and this past December the police went to the offices of the publisher to ascertain the real name of Cassandre. Of course, the publisher refused. But, really, a police action at a book publisher over a pseudonym? Have they not heard of Deep Throat and Watergate and Washington Post and Pulitzer in Paris judicial circles?
The Euro RSCG communicators, through their lawyer at the time, said the word “gang” suggested the four were “gangsters.” The defense team might want to sprinkle their briefs with less offensive examples: Spanky and Our Gang, Wedding Bells Are Breaking Up That Old Gang of Mine, or the U.S. Senate’s current “Gang of Six,” who have had that name splashed in thousands of newspapers, magazines and web sites with no attendant lawsuits to my knowledge.
In an email exchange on July 12-13, I inquired as follows of Euro RSCG:
“Reuters previously reported that Euro RSCG had stated it was not working for DSK.
“There are press photos showing Stephane Fouks and Anne Hommel arriving at DSK's townhouse in New York recently. Is it correct to say that Euro RSCG is currently working for DSK?”
A spokeswoman for Euro RSCG responded:
“Following upon your request about Mr Dominique Strauss Kahn, I am sorry to inform you that there is no positive continuation granted to the demands of interview.”
I didn’t translate the above sentence from French to English; that response came precisely as you’re reading it from this global communications firm. The publisher, Plon, has confirmed that the lawsuit is still ongoing but would not comment further than that.
One of the gang of four is now soloing as le petite gang. Ramzi Khiroun is suing over a tweet; that’s right, a tweet. According to multiple French press reports, Khiroun has hired a lawyer, Marie Burguburu, to file legal complaints for defamation or insults against a tweeter, another journalist, and multiple French media outlets that suggested he used heavy handed tactics to smother negative press coverage of Strauss-Kahn.
On June 1 of this year, the French publication, Le Point, explained the charges against the journalists as follows:
“…two charges are directed first at the Atlantico site’s editor,
alleged to have accused Ramzi Khiroun of making unspecified ‘threats’ and ‘inflammatory remarks’ during the France 3 television program Ce soir ou jamais…hosted by Frederic Taddei (May 18), and secondly at Arnaud Dassier… whose Twitter message mentioned Ramzi Khiroun’s ‘possible misappropriation of public resources in working for Lagardère or perhaps Euro RSCG (it is not clear which) while employed by
DSK.’ "
The threatened lawsuits by Khiroun against the media and journalists have likely had a silencing effect on the press. But in the almost two months since they were announced, have the lawsuits actually been served? I sent an email query to Arnaud Dassier, the tweeter that the press believed had been served with a lawsuit. He responded that “…my personal conviction is that it was just a media strategy in order to scare people and journalists.” To his knowledge, none of those mentioned have been served with a lawsuit. (Humm; threaten to file but never actually serve the lawsuit so that it is never actually entered into the court docket and a real judge never sees it? Hold that thought to the end of this article.)
In the U.S., if a lawyer files a frivolous lawsuit, a judge can levy fines and sanctions. That’s a big negative for a lawyer’s career. There are two additional books on Strauss-Kahn where Khiroun either brags or admits to getting negative information about Strauss-Kahn removed in the press. If you have admitted to manipulating press coverage, how can you claim defamation for others saying it? The books are Le Roman Vrai de Dominique Strauss-Kahn (The True Story of Dominique Strauss-Kahn) by French writer Michel Taubmann, released in May of this year ; and Sexus Politicus, by journalists Christophe Dubois and Christophe Deloire, published in 2006.
The French press also reported earlier this year that Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers were suing France-Soir, a Paris newspaper, for reporting that DSK was using a certain tailor whose suits cost upwards of $7,000 to $35,000. (Is that really a legitimate legal issue for a man spending $3000 a night for hotel accommodations, $50,000 a month to rent a townhouse in New York City, and cruising through Paris in a $150,000 sports car?)
Then there is Strauss-Kahn’s publicly announced slander lawsuit against the French novelist, Tristane Banon, who has presented corroborating support for allegations he attempted to rape her in 2003. I was unable to learn if that lawsuit has now been officially served but it was not filed after Banon first made her allegations public on television in 2007. (Strauss-Kahn’s name was bleeped by the television station but just whom she was accusing was known to many as a result of that broadcast.) Strauss-Kahn’s ex-wife, Brigitte Guillemette, has recently publicly threatened a lawsuit against Banon’s mother, Anne Mansouret, for making allegedly false accusations related to Strauss-Kahn that present Guillemette in a bad light.
Let’s face it, police demanding a book publisher turn over the name of an anonymous source; suing over the price of a suit and a tweet are not going to get you named the Communication Industry’s Man of the Year or win over voters for Strauss-Kahn. Why this heavy handed effort?
There is the strong suggestion that what we’re looking at here is a clumsy campaign of press censorship and intimidation to effectuate the same kind of continuity government in France that we’ve had in the U.S. Whether it’s Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, or Obama, we’re still looking at corporate controlled continuity government. Granted, the corporate puppet masters are much more subtle about it here in the U.S. Instead of running around threatening to file or actually filing lawsuits against the press, corporate funded front groups posing as grassroots citizen movements, feed their stories to the corporate media and watch with admiration as their progeny gobble it up and spit it out as hard news.
Karl Laske is an investigative reporter for the three year-old Mediapart, an independent French news site with hard-hitting investigative articles available in English. Writing on June 3 of this year, Laske reveals the following:
“Ramzi Khiroun is a principal communications advisor for Strauss-Kahn and a consultant for the marketing and communications agency Euro RSCG. He is also employed fulltime as spokesman and member of the management committee of the Lagardère media and armaments group, led by Arnaud Lagardère, a member of President Nicolas Sarkozy's close entourage.
Lagardère? Wasn’t that where the Porsche Panamera came from? Sarkozy? Isn’t that the guy on the right that Strauss-Kahn would be running against from the left ? Here’s what the Lagardère web site says about its aerospace and defense business, EADS :
“EADS was created in July 2000 following the merger of Aerospatiale Matra, DaimlerChrysler Aerospace AG ("Dasa") and Construcciones Aeronáuticas SA ("CASA"). Lagardère owns a 7.5% stake in EADS, over which it exercises joint control with the company's other shareholders.
With consolidated sales of €42.8 billion in 2009, EADS leads Europe and ranks second worldwide in the aerospace and defense industries. In terms of market share, EADS is one of the world's top two manufacturers of commercial aircraft, civil and semi-public helicopters, commercial launch vehicles and missile systems. It is also a major supplier of military aircraft, satellites and defense electronics.”
Think Dick Cheney, Halliburton, and a President that had so much dirty linen in his closet that he was most pleasing to the corporate controllers.
And, finally, as I’ve noted in prior articles in this series, when a Wall Street law firm, Morgan Lewis, has played a pivotal role in exonerating Strauss-Kahn in the past and the Sofitel housekeeper alleging attempted rape against him is represented by lawyers who were previously at that same law firm (and the law firm refuses to answer the very basic question as to how they came to take over her legal representation) there is a legitimate basis for red flags.
Supporters of the Sofitel housekeeper, Nafissatou Diallo, who has this week gone public, were buoyed by the news that her lawyers, Kenneth Thompson and Douglas Wigdor of the law firm, Thompson Wigdor, had filed a libel suit against the New York Post for the paper’s unsupported front page allegations that Diallo worked as a prostitute at the Sofitel and her union had placed her there for that very purpose. Equally incredible, the Post alleged she continued to do tricks while under the protection of the New York County DA’s office.
In an email dated July 9, Erin Duggan, spokesperson for the DA’s office, had confirmed to me that the DA had been providing a hotel and security for Diallo. So it struck me as nonsensical for the Post to be suggesting that Johns went sneaking by the DA’s security detail to have a go with a material witness under protective custody. (Who would write this stuff?) Further, her Union, which had been recklessly slammed by the Post for placing her at the hotel to do tricks, had provided the Post with advance documentation showing it was the International Rescue Committee, a respected humanitarian organization, that had given her a referral to the hotel. The union had nothing to do with placing her there. According to the New York Daily News, Diallo has never missed a day’s work or shown up late for her job. And it is only common sense to know that one doesn’t get assigned the most important suites in the hotel, the Presidential suites, unless one is a meticulous worker, leaving no extra time for quickies.
So why would a Murdoch paper publish not one but three of these stories based on a single anonymous source who offered zero evidence. A libel lawsuit could prove malicious intent and render the Post the joke of the newspaper business. And that libel lawsuit has been filed by Diallo’s lawyers, right? I mean, we have all read that very fact how many times. But when I could not find the lawsuit on the web site of the Bronx Supreme Court, I called the court clerk’s office. I was told that the lawsuit, Index Number 305953-2011, was filed with the county office. Their office shows it has not been served on the defendants and until it is served with an affidavit filed to say it was served, it will never make its way into the court system to be assigned an RJI, Request for Judicial Intervention. Without an RJI, the case will never be assigned to a judge.
The lawsuit was filed with Bronx county on July 8. Why wouldn’t a lawyer seeking justice for his client serve the defendants and expedite getting the case before a judge to clear Diallo’s name? An email request to Kenneth Thompson for clarification went unanswered.
In the meantime, Diallo met with the DA on July 27. The next court hearing for Strauss-Kahn which had been scheduled for August 1 has now been postponed by agreement of both the DA and his lawyers to August 23.
Pam Martens worked on Wall Street for 21 years, retiring in 2006. She has been writing on public interest issues for CounterPunch since that time. She has no security position, long or short, in any company mentioned in this article. She can be reached at pamk741@aol.com
Read related articles:
Conspirators Unmasked in the DSK Drama by Pam Martens
Dershowitz Promotes Settlement for Strauss-Kahn As Hotel Housekeeper Lawyers Up by Pam Martens
Will France Tidy Up After Housekeeper Charges by Pam Martens
by Peachtree Pam » Sat Aug 20, 2011 7:12 am
New Holes Emerge in Tattered DSK Rape Case
August 19, 2011 1:37pm | By Murray Weiss, DNAinfo Columnist
There are new holes in the rape case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn and more inconsistencies regarding the hotel chambermaid at the center of the sensational sex charges, DNAinfo has learned.
Sources tell "On the Inside" that these new revelations are proving to be the final tipping points on the scales of justice, pushing the Manhattan District Attorney to drop the case against the disgraced former head of the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday when he appears in court.
Among the latest revelations surfacing in the case:
• The final translation of the controversial jailhouse telephone conversation between chambermaid Nafissatou Diallo and her con-man ex-boyfriend the day after the alleged attack has raised yet another credibility issue for the accuser.
According to sources, her boyfriend, Amara Tarawally, told her how wealthy Strauss-Kahn is and how much money she might make. "He suggests she can make a lot," one source said. Rather than brushing off the notion, she says she is well aware of the financial prospects.
There is nothing wrong with a victim knowing their assailant has money, and that there is the possibility the attacker can be made to literally pay for a crime. But the problem for Diallo is that she swore in interviews to investigators and prosecutors that the thought of cashing in on this incident never crossed her mind. Yet it's clear from the final translation that those very words not only crossed her mind, but they crossed her lips one day after the incident in the Sofitel Hotel.
• There is now another plausible answer for what many people claimed was one of the strongest pieces of physical evidence in the case – the bruises Diallo suffered. She asserted the injuries occurred when Strauss-Kahn attacked her and clawed at her and ripped her panties while unsuccessfully trying to rape her before forcing her to perform oral sex.
But Diallo apparently engaged in sexual activity as recently as one day before the assault took place, and that might account for some of the bruising, one source said.
The prosecutors have already accused Diallo of making up a story about being gang-raped in her homeland, Guinea, that she used to get into the U.S. and that she convincingly recounted to veteran investigators after the Sofitel incident.
She also filed false tax forms claiming additional dependents besides her one daughter, and bank accounts with her name attached to them showed $100,000 of unexplained cash passing through them.
My sources say there are "even more issues" involving inconsistencies in her statements and her background than have been laid out here. And filing a civil lawsuit in the Bronx seeking financial damages and telling her story to a national magazine and television morning program has further eroded confidence in her criminal case.
It all further confounds a case that was once viewed as rock solid for DA Cyrus Vance, but now seems like sand.
Diallo's attorney, Kenneth Thompson, did not return calls for comment.
To be sure, something sexual occurred between Diallo and Strauss-Kahn, then a potential candidate to become the next president of France.
His semen was in the room and on her clothes. Even his lawyers concede something happened, but claim it was consensual.
No prosecutor should knowingly move forward with a case that they do not fully believe in or have the rational expectation of winning beyond a reasonable doubt.
That is the way the system is supposed to work.
But DSK has not been your typical case. From the start it presented challenges. Strauss-Kahn had to be taken from a plane about to leave for France only hours after the incident. And his international status separated this case from all others.
But in the end the evidence will tip the scales. And unless something changes by Tuesday, those scales are leaning heavily in Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s direction.
by Peachtree Pam » Tue Aug 23, 2011 7:25 am
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/n ... sault.html
Prosecutors seek to dismiss Strauss-Kahn charges
Early in the sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, prosecutors held out his accuser as its strongest point. Her account was "compelling and unwavering," complete with "very powerful details" and corroborated by a medical exam, they said.
By JENNIFER PELTZ and TOM HAYS
Associated Press
Early in the sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, prosecutors held out his accuser as its strongest point. Her account was "compelling and unwavering," complete with "very powerful details" and corroborated by a medical exam, they said.
When they moved Monday to drop the biggest case on their docket, the woman was portrayed as its fatal weakness. She "has not been truthful on matters great and small" and has an ability to present "fiction as fact with complete conviction," and medical and DNA evidence is "simply inconclusive" as proof of a forced sexual encounter, they wrote.
"Our grave concerns about (her) reliability make it impossible to resolve the question of what exactly happened" between the hotel maid and the former International Monetary Fund leader, they wrote.
With that, the Manhattan District Attorney's office asked a judge to put an end to a case that created a cross-continental sensation. A formal dismissal is expected at Strauss-Kahn's court date Tuesday, though the maid, Nafissatou Diallo, is asking the judge to boot the DA's office off the case and put it on hold until a special prosecutor can be appointed.
Still, if the criminal case is dismissed, efforts to shed light on what transpired in Strauss-Kahn's luxury suite May 14 are bound to continue in civil court, where Diallo has sued Strauss-Kahn.
Echoing and expanding on concerns they had raised previously, prosecutors said Monday in court papers that Diallo repeatedly gave false information to investigators and grand jurors about her life, her past and her actions following her encounter with the French diplomat.
She gave three different versions of what she did right after the alleged attack and showed that she was a troublingly convincing liar by telling a phony tale of a previous rape, prosecutors wrote. She also was evasive about nearly $60,000 that other people had moved through her bank account and insisted she had no interest in getting money from Strauss-Kahn - once telling prosecutors no one could "buy" her - only to sue him within three months, they said.
Prosecutors met briefly Monday with Diallo and her attorney, Kenneth Thompson, who emerged blasting their decision.
DA Cyrus Vance "has not only turned his back on this innocent victim, but he has also turned his back on the forensic, medical and other physical evidence in this case," Thompson said.
Strauss-Kahn lawyers William Taylor and Benjamin Brafman, meanwhile, said he and his family were grateful for prosecutors' decision.
"We have maintained from the beginning of this case that our client is innocent," they said in a statement. "We also maintained that there were many reasons to believe that Mr. Strauss-Kahn's accuser was not credible."
Strauss-Kahn, 62, was arrested after Diallo, 32, said he chased her down, grabbed her crotch and forced her to perform oral sex. Strauss-Kahn's lawyers have said anything that happened wasn't forced.
The case pitted the word of a promising French presidential contender, known in his homeland as "the Great Seducer," against that of an African immigrant and widowed mother who had come to clean his plush suite at the Sofitel hotel.
After trumpeting the strength of the case early on, prosecutors told a judge last month it had taken a serious hit because the maid had told them a series of worrisome falsehoods, including a fabricated tale of being gang-raped in her native Guinea and a shifting account of what she had done right after her encounter with Strauss-Kahn. After telling a grand jury she had hovered in a hallway, she later said she had returned to a nearby room and then to Strauss-Kahn's, they said.
They elaborated on those and other concerns in Monday's 25-page filing. Diallo had a recorded phone conversation, with a jailed man in her life, in which "the potential for financial recovery" from Strauss-Kahn was mentioned, prosecutors wrote. And she was evasive about nearly $60,000 that other people had deposited in her bank account, initially failing to disclose it to prosecutors and later saying she'd let the jailed man to use her account to make deposits and have her withdraw cash to give to a person she thought was his partner in a clothing and accessory business, prosecutors said.
Diallo has told interviewers the man used the bank account without telling her. As for the phone call, Thompson said, she mentioned Strauss-Kahn's money only to say that her alleged attacker was influential.
Overall, she has acknowledged some lies and said other remarks were misinterpreted. But she says none of that should keep prosecutors from pursuing the case.
Strauss-Kahn's semen was found on her uniform dress, his DNA was identified on pantyhose and underwear she was wearing, and a gynecological exam found an area of "redness," according to prosecutors. But they said none of that was incontrovertible proof of a sexual assault.
In asking for a special prosecutor, Diallo's lawyer said the DA's office has "sabotaged" the case, accusing prosecutors of leaking damaging and false information about Diallo to reporters, among other claims. Many echo issues he had raised in asking Vance last month to step aside.
Special prosecutors are most often appointed when a DA has a personal conflict of interest, such as when a DA's office staffer is arrested or the DA represented a defendant while in private practice. Thompson notes that one of Brafman's partners is married to one of Vance's top deputies.
Vance's office has said there's no basis for recusing it from the case. Legal experts have given Thompson's request slim chances.
Meanwhile, Diallo sued Strauss-Kahn Aug. 8, seeking unspecified damages and promising to air other allegations that Strauss-Kahn accosted and attacked women in other locales.
His lawyers called her suit a meritless claim that proved she was out for money.
The Associated Press generally doesn't name people who report being sexually assaulted unless they agree to be identified or publicly identify themselves, as Diallo has done.
by norton ash » Tue Aug 23, 2011 9:16 am
by Stephen Morgan » Tue Aug 23, 2011 11:53 am
by LilyPatToo » Wed Aug 24, 2011 1:28 pm
by Peachtree Pam » Mon Sep 19, 2011 4:10 pm
French writer Tristane Banon, who has accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of attempting to rape her in 2003 will appear on primetime television Monday, a day after the former IMF chief broke his media silence.
Tristane Banon, a 32-year-old French author who is the daughter of a family friend of Strauss-Kahn, has filed a formal complaint alleging that Strauss-Kahn tried to rape her in a Paris flat eight years ago.
She will be interviewed on Canal+ television news which starts at 7:10 pm (1710 GMT), the day after Strauss-Kahn's interview on TF1 television over recently dismissed charges he attempted to rape a hotel maid in New York.
Banon, who will be accompanied by her lawyer David Koubbi, brought her case in July after the New York charges. Police have already interviewed Strauss-Kahn concerning the allegation.
On Sunday, Strauss-Kahn claimed during his interview, conducted by a friend of his loyal wife, that his encounter with the New York hotel maid was "a moral failing" rather than attempted rape.
Strauss-Kahn also did not deny there had been an encounter with Banon, but said: "I was interviewed as a witness. I told the truth that in this meeting there had been no aggression, no violence, I will say no more.
"The version that has been reported is imaginary, slanderous," he added.
Paris prosecutors have not decided whether or not to charge Strauss-Kahn in the Banon case, but legal observers here feel it would be a hard case to prove eight years after the events and without physical evidence.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/se ... al-failing
DSK insisted there was no "aggression or constraint" involved in his sex with a hotel chambermaid who accused him of attempted rape, but admitted he was guilty of a "moral fault".
In his first public explanation of events leading up to his arrest in New York in May and imprisonment on charges – later dropped – of attacking the woman, Strauss-Kahn swung from punchy to contrite.
The chambermaid, Nafissatou Diallo, a single mother from Guinea, had, he insisted, "lied about everything". "That's what the prosecutor's report says. You have to read it carefully," he told news presenter Claire Chazal, a friend of his wife, the former television star and wealthy heiress Anne Sinclair, during the prime-time 8pm news programme on TF1.
Several times during the interview, the former head of the IMF, dressed in a black suit, white shirt and navy tie, waved what he said was the report from the New York prosecutor, Cyrus Vance, justifying why the charges against him were dropped. Strauss-Kahn had denied forcing Diallo, 32, to perform oral sex in his hotel suite in the seven minutes after she arrived to clean the room and he left to have lunch with his daughter, insisting that the relationship was consensual.
"There was nothing violent, no constraint, no aggression, nothing criminal about what happened; that's what's the prosecutor said, not me," he said at the beginning of the 23-minute interview, and repeated shortly afterwards.
He added: "What happened was not only inappropriate, it was more than that, it was a fault; a fault towards my wife, my children, my friends, but also a fault towards the French people, who placed in me their hope for change."
Asked if he had paid for sex with Diallo, he replied, "No."
"It was worse than a weakness, it was a moral fault of which I am not proud. I regret it infinitely. I have regretted it every day for the last four months and I don't believe I have finished regretting it," he said.
"The prosecutor's report – and you have to read it attentively – accuses me of nothing that caused injuries. There is no trace of violence or injury either on her on me."
Asked why he thought Diallo had made the accusation, he said: "That is for her to say. People have put forward various hypotheses: the financial hypothesis …"
"Nafissatou Diallo lied about everything. It's not me saying that – it's in the prosecutor's report. She didn't just lie about her background – that wasn't important – she lied about the facts."
Waving the report, he insisted: "It's written here in his report that she 'presented so many versions of what happened, we cannot believe her … every interview we had with her she lied'.
"He said it was 'surreal' – that was the word he used, 'surreal' – to see at each interview that she went back on what she had said the interview before. The whole story she invented was a lie."
Before the interview, Diallo's New York lawyers, who have filed a civil suit on her behalf, went on the attack.
"If Mr Strauss-Kahn thinks that people in France will really believe that he was able to convince Ms Diallo, who had never met him before and did not know that he was in the room, to engage in sexual acts with him within a matter of minutes, then he should describe how that happened," Diallo's lawyers said in a statement.
On Sunday night, Strauss-Kahn said the French might find it "curious" that when criminal charges had been dropped, someone could still bring a civil case, but added: "That's the way it is in the United States."
Asked how he had felt being paraded by the New York police in handcuffs, he said: "I was afraid. I was very, very afraid. When you are in a crunching machine like that [the US justice system], you have the impression it is crushing you to death. I felt ground under its heel, humiliated, and I wasn't able to say a word. I have suffered a violent experience."
Some in France have suggested that Strauss-Kahn, the man seen as the opposition socialists' hope of ousting Nicolas Sarkozy in next year's presidential election, was a victim of a conspiracy. Asked if he agreed, he again waved the prosecutor's report. "We will see," he said. "We will see."
After this point, Strauss-Kahn became less combative and defiant and more reflective, almost emotional.
He praised his wife as an "exceptional woman" whom he was lucky to have at his side. "She would not have supported me if for one second she thought I was not innocent," he said.
Strauss-Kahn justified spending £35,000 a month on a town house while released on bail, saying he had no choice: "It was that or returning to Rikers Island," he said, referring to the the notorious New York prison where he was held for several days after his arrest.
The former French government minister is facing a second allegation of attempted rape in France. Writer and journalist Tristane Banon claims he jumped on her like a "rutting chimpanzee" when she went to interview him in February 2003.
Strauss-Kahn described the 32-year-old Banon's accusation as "imaginary and slanderous" and said he was taking legal action against her.
He also denied that he had a problem with women, as claimed by Piroska Nagy, a Hungarian economist who worked at the IMF and who had a brief affair with Strauss-Kahn in 2007. In a letter to the IMF afterwards, Nagy, who was married, suggested he had used his power to have a relationship with her. "I was damned if I did, and damned if I didn't," she wrote, adding that Strauss-Kahn was "a man with a problem that may make him ill-equipped to lead an institution where women work under his command".
"Au contraire. I respect women," Strauss-Kahn insisted to Chazal.
Strauss-Kahn admitted he had wanted to stand in the presidential elections, but said he would not comment on the current Socialist party primary campaign to select a replacement candidate.
Chazal moved on to safer ground with questions about the current financial crisis, during which Strauss-Kahn appeared to perk up and regain the stridency he had shown at the beginning of the interview.
Asked what the future held, he refused to rule out a return to politics, saying he had "devoted his life to being useful to the people".
"We will see," he concluded.
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