IMF managing director arrested, accused of sexual attack

[kenoma]

Video of the original allegation of rape by Tristane Banon on French TV in 2007; Strauss Kahn's named was censored but apparently known to everyone:



The levity with which the whole thing is treated is somewhat unsettling.

[Joe Hillshoist]

In related news, diplomatic consuls from Honduras, El Salvador, Nicarauga, Guatemala, Haiti, Chile and Paraguay have announced their intentions to join in the procedings against Strauss-Kahn to include the IMF itself, which has been raping their contries for years with bald faced impunity.

Thats a rather spot on comment.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Hmmm... manufactured DNA, body doubles: all because DSK's unproven 'alibi' must be true?

It seems anyway like he is going to claim consent rather than denying there was an encounter:

"The evidence we believe will not be consistent with a forcible encounter," said defense lawyer Benjamin Brafman before a judge remanded his client to no bail.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manh ... z1MY8SSENm

The alibi was likely an early attempt to muddy the waters as part of his bail plea, rather than a real defence strategy.

It is absurd to suggest that this is orchestrated by Sarkozy. Besides all the practical impossibilities, and the discreditable a priori assumption that the alleged victim must be lying, it is based on the assumption that Strauss-Kahn was otherwise a shoo-in for the Presidency. But DSK was an eminently challengeable opponent:
1) intensely disliked by the left activists in his own party, or what remains of them, as a neoliberal moneybags. Elite champagne-socialist image a boon to far-right petit bourgeois populism
2) the "bailouts" of the PIGS will be an important issue in the French election, with a lot of xenophobic rhetoric promising further austerity in Greece etc. DSK is seen as having being relatively 'soft' towards the peripheral countries. This would have been a line of attack from the centre and the right.
3) look at what's come out in the last 36 hours about him: you think the UMP hasn't got a thick dossier prepared on him documenting yet more sexual (and financial) scandals involving DSK? It would have been much more productive to let all that drip out once he'd been confirmed as candidate, closer to the election. Socialists now have a year to regroup and decide a new candidate.
4) He's Jewish, and an avowed Zionist. Yes, sorry, it matters.

As it is, rather than Sarkozy benefitting much, it seems that Le Pen has made most hay from this affair.

Cheers.

[eyeno]

This great find by semper occultus stuck with me for some reason. Might be interesting to see if this becomes a theme of some sort.

Quote:
Gordon Brown 'not most appropriate person' to head IMF, says Cameron

www.guardian.co.uk
Tuesday 19 April 2011

Brown has emerged as the favourite to take the £270,000-a-year role when the incumbent managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, stands down.

He suggested that the IMF should look to "another part of the world" for its next leader in order to increase its global standing.

"If you think about the general principle, you've got the rise of India and China and south Asia, a shift in the world's focus, and it may well be the time for the IMF to start thinking about that shift in focus," he said.

[82_28]

wow, how strange, all this time my brain read drvolin's name as drviolin. so it actually wasn't a typo but a brain fart, a long-term one.

Me too a few weeks ago. Good cat that volin, though. And Kenoma FTW. Very well done. RI is the shit. Thanks for all the awesome play by play and speculation everyone, as usual.

[Peachtree Pam]

Thanks Jack. The whole thing is just patently ridiculous anyway: the theory that he was framed has been cooked up by the media-political French elite, who are shell-shocked. From what I've been reading, this early defensive reaction has not really broken down party lines, but is more a chauvinistic rush to defend la gloire de la patrie. One of those who has given most credence to the set up theory is Henri de Raincourt, a UMP minister in Sarkozy's government,* while the renewed allegation of a prior rape came from the daughter of a Socialist representative.





*and a descendent of the Marquis de Sade, for those who can't get enough of that kind of thing.

Spot on analysis!

[lupercal]

^ how about some links with that baloney? Come on folks, where's the rigor?
.............................
IMF chief Strauss-Kahn caught in "Honey Trap"
by Mike Whitney - Global Research, May 16, 2011

I have no way of knowing whether the 32-year-old maid who claims she was attacked and forced to perform oral sex on IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, is telling the truth or not. I'll leave that to the braying hounds in the media who have already assumed the role of judge, jury and Lord High Executioner. Ahem. But I will say, the whole matter smells rather fishy, just like the Eliot Spitzer story smelled fishy. Spitzer, you may recall, was Wall Street's biggest adversary and a likely candidate to head the SEC, a position at which he would have excelled. In fact, there's no doubt in my mind that if Spitzer had been appointed to lead the SEC, most of the top investment bankers on Wall Street would presently be making license plates and rope-soled shoes at the federal penitentiary. So, there was plenty of reason to shadow Spitzer's every move and see what bit of dirt could be dug up on him. As it turns out, the ex-Governor of New York made it easy for his enemies by engaging a high-priced hooker named Ashley Dupre for sex at the Mayflower Hotel. When the news broke, the media descended on Spitzer like a swarm of locusts poring over every salacious detail with the ebullient fervor of a randy 6th-grader. Meanwhile, the crooks on Wall Street were able to breathe a sigh of relief and get back to doing what they do best; fleecing investors and cheating people out of the life savings.

Strauss-Kahn had enemies in high places, too, which is why this whole matter stinks to high-Heaven. First of all, Strauss-Kahn was the likely candidate of the French Socialist Party who would have faced Sarkozy in the upcoming presidential elections. The IMF chief clearly had a leg-up on Sarkozy who has been battered by a number of personal scandals and plunging approval ratings.

But if Strauss-Kahn was set up, then it was probably by members of the western bank coalition, that shadowy group of self-serving swine whose policies have kept the greater body of humanity in varying state of poverty and desperation for the last two centuries. Strauss-Kahn had recently broke-free from the "party line" and was changing the direction of the IMF. His road to Damascus conversion was championed by progressive economist Joseph Stiglitz in a recent article titled "The IMF's Switch in Time". Here's an excerpt:

"The annual spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund was notable in marking the Fund’s effort to distance itself from its own long-standing tenets on capital controls and labor-market flexibility. It appears that a new IMF has gradually, and cautiously, emerged under the leadership of Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Slightly more than 13 years earlier, at the IMF’s Hong Kong meeting in 1997, the Fund had attempted to amend its charter in order to gain more leeway to push countries towards capital-market liberalization. The timing could not have been worse: the East Asia crisis was just brewing – a crisis that was largely the result of capital-market liberalization in a region that, given its high savings rate, had no need for it.

That push had been advocated by Western financial markets – and the Western finance ministries that serve them so loyally. Financial deregulation in the United States was a prime cause of the global crisis that erupted in 2008, and financial and capital-market liberalization elsewhere helped spread that “made in the USA” trauma around the world....The crisis showed that free and unfettered markets are neither efficient nor stable." ("The IMF's Switch in Time", Joseph Stiglitz, Project Syndicate)

So, Strauss-Kahn was trying to move the bank in a more positive direction, a direction that didn't require that countries leave their economies open to the ravages of foreign capital that moves in swiftly--pushing up prices and creating bubbles--and departs just as fast, leaving behind the scourge of high unemployment, plunging demand, hobbled industries, and deep recession.

Strauss-Kahn had set out on a "kinder and gentler" path, one that would not force foreign leaders to privatize their state-owned industries or crush their labor unions. Naturally, his actions were not warmly received by the bankers and corporatists who look to the IMF to provide legitimacy to their ongoing plunder of the rest of the world. These are the people who think that the current policies are "just fine" because they produce the results they're looking for, which is bigger profits for themselves and deeper poverty for everyone else.

Here's Stiglitz again, this time imparting the "kiss of death" to his friend Strauss-Kahn:

"Strauss-Kahn is proving himself a sagacious leader of the IMF.... As Strauss-Kahn concluded in his speech to the Brookings Institution shortly before the Fund’s recent meeting: “Ultimately, employment and equity are building blocks of economic stability and prosperity, of political stability and peace. This goes to the heart of the IMF’s mandate. It must be placed at the heart of the policy agenda.”

Right. So, now the IMF is going to be an agent for the redistribution of wealth.... (for) "strengthening collective bargaining, restructuring mortgages, restructuring tax and spending policies to stimulate the economy now through long-term investments, and implementing social policies that ensure opportunity for all"? (according to Stiglitz)

(snip)

Check this out from World Campaign and judge for yourself whether Strauss-Kahn had become a "liability" that had to be eliminated so the business of extracting wealth from the poorest people on earth could continue apace:

"For decades, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been associated among anti-poverty, hunger and development activists as the poster child of everything wrong with the rich world's fiscal management of the rest of the world, particularly of poor nations, with its seemingly one-dimensional focus on belt-tightening fiscal policies as the price of its loans, and a trickle-down economic philosophy that has helped traditional wealthy elites maintain the status quo while the majority stayed poor and powerless. With a world increasingly in revolution because of such realities, and after the global financial crisis in the wake of regulatory and other policies that had worked after the Great Depression being largely abandoned, IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn has made nothing less than stunning observations about how the IMF and the world need to change policies.

In an article today in the Washington Post, Howard Schneider writes that after the 2008 crash led toward regulation again of financial companies and government involvement in the economy, for Strauss-Khan "the job is only half done, as he has been leading the fund through a fundamental rethinking of its economic theory. In recent remarks, he has provided a broad summary of the conclusions: State regulation of markets needs to be more extensive; global policies need to create a more even distribution of income; central banks need to do more to prevent lending and asset prices from expanding too fast. 'The pendulum will swing from the market to the state,' Strauss-Kahn said in an address at George Washington University last week. 'Globalization has delivered a lot... but it also has a dark side, a large and growing chasm between the rich and the poor. Clearly we need a new form of globalization' to prevent the 'invisible hand' of loosely regulated markets from becoming 'an invisible fist.'" (Link - http://wcampaign.org/issue.php?mid=625&v=y )

Repeat: "...a fundamental rethinking of economic theory".... (a greater) "distribution of income"...(more) "regulation of financial companies", "central banks need to do more to prevent lending and asset prices from expanding too fast".

Are you kidding me? Read that passage again and I think you'll agree with me that Strauss-Kahn had signed his own death warrant.

There's not going to be any revolution at the IMF. That's baloney. The institution was created with the clear intention of ripping people off and it's done an impressive job in that regard. There's not going to be any change of policy either. Why would there be? Have the bankers and corporate bilge-rats suddenly grown a conscience and decided to lend a helping hand to long-suffering humanity? Get real.

Strauss-Kahn broke ranks and ventured into no man's land. That's why he was set up and then crushed like a bug. That seems obvious, no?

(Note: Strauss-Kahn has been replaced by the IMF's number 2 guy, John Lipsky, former Vice Chairman of the JPMorgan Investment Bank. How's that for "change you can believe in"?)

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24784
...................................

It seems pretty clear what's going on, why, and who's behind it. Why peeps are so eager to hop on the Murdoch bandwagon with nothing more than the NY Post to wave around is puzzling.

[Joe Hillshoist]

It seems pretty clear what's going on, why, and who's behind it. Why peeps are so eager to hop on the Murdoch bandwagon with nothing more than the NY Post to wave around is puzzling.

Cept we're also talking about a member of the elite raping someone who is effectively domestic staff.

So while you may be right that its a set up you may also be wrong. Yet you're certain.




FWIW tho:

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andr ... mf_is_rip/

Well, that’s embarrassing .. and rather career ending:

...

It’s astonishing how the urge to procreate can so overwhelm the survival instinct.

and

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andr ... ght_suite/

Sociallsts tend to believe in redistributing the income of everyone except themselves. Take Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the International Monetary Fund chief:

Bolt is a murdoch mouthpiece. Whatever the truth of the assault murdoch will use it to put the boot in as much as he can.

I like how the implication is that being a socialist is worse than being a rapist btw.

[8bitagent]

There may be deep state shenanigans and behind the scene power plays going on in France, sure.

But the main headline people need to be taking away is that the IMF is doing what it does best: raping people. Be it the IMF's debt enslavement of country after country, United Nation's and Dyncorp's deep involvement in global child sex slavery, big banks like Wachovia deeply involved in the global drug trade, the World Bank's destruction of Albania or the WTO's cut throat stranglehold of many impoverished and enslaved nations under corporate slavery; this is who is running the show. I guess the only good thing is this was a 32 year old woman, as usually the elites prefer underage victims.
Ron Paul on Fox News last night said it best, that "these are the kind of people running the IMF".

I mean, were the Republicans accused of wrongdoing in the Franklin coverup "framed"? When the leaders of Portugal and Chile get caught running child kidnapping sex slavery rings, when a large portion of Catholic priests and officials have long been involved in child sex abuse, and when the UN and Dyncorp have been involved in mass rape rings from Europe to the Muslim world...there's a problem.
I mean Italy for goodness sakes is entirely ran by a sexual deviant into underage hookers who has turned his whole damn country into a hostile environment for women.

Many people laugh at books like Tranceformation of America or other books alleging the perversion of the elite...haha, yeah right, where's the proof? Well here we go, the rare time they actually get caught.
These sick scumbags never get caught...look at that thread about the billionare Bilderberg/Davos elite who got caught with child sex slaves overseas but got off scott free? That's what these people do.
It's Eyes Wide Shut on a global scale, with an ironclad conspiracy of silence.

[barracuda]

As it turns out, the ex-Governor of New York made it easy for his enemies by engaging a high-priced hooker named Ashley Dupre for sex at the Mayflower Hotel. When the news broke, the media descended on Spitzer like a swarm of locusts poring over every salacious detail with the ebullient fervor of a randy 6th-grader. Meanwhile, the crooks on Wall Street were able to breathe a sigh of relief and get back to doing what they do best; fleecing investors and cheating people out of the life savings.

Are we holding up Eliot Spitzer as some kind of a model for the valiant, embattled and unfairly treated fighter for truth and justice? I hope not. I hate to tell Mike Whitney, but Ms. Dupre wasn't the only assignation of Spitzer's career. "Investigators believe Spitzer paid up to $80,000 for prostitutes over a period of several years — first while he was attorney general, and later as governor."

If you gonna fight the power, better get your peccadillos on the leash. Spitzer is a scumbag. But no, I don't have a citation for that particular sentiment at hand.

[lupercal]

8bit I support your right to free associate until the cows come home and you can take that to the bank.

It seems pretty clear what's going on, why, and who's behind it. Why peeps are so eager to hop on the Murdoch bandwagon with nothing more than the NY Post to wave around is puzzling.

Cept we're also talking about a member of the elite raping someone who is effectively domestic staff.

So while you may be right that its a set up you may also be wrong. Yet you're certain.

I'm certain this stinks, yes. As for the class consciousness you play that up when it's convenient, just like Murdoch does, 'cept when it isn't, like when your pal Jules is cavorting in the clover on his Lordship's million-acre manor. Strange.

FWIW tho:

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andr ... mf_is_rip/

Well, that’s embarrassing .. and rather career ending:

...

It’s astonishing how the urge to procreate can so overwhelm the survival instinct.

and

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andr ... ght_suite/

Sociallsts tend to believe in redistributing the income of everyone except themselves. Take Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the International Monetary Fund chief:

Bolt is a murdoch mouthpiece. Whatever the truth of the assault murdoch will use it to put the boot in as much as he can.

I like how the implication is that being a socialist is worse than being a rapist btw.

How is spewing a load of Murdoch crap supposed to show you're not spewing a load of Murdoch crap? Sorry, I don't get it.

[8bitagent]

@lupercal: I am aware of the danger of believing any major news story at face value or intended propaganda value.

I'm just saying...I mean, if this was Erik Prince, Dick Cheney, or Saudi royals would we be assuming it was a frameup?

[kenoma]

It seems pretty clear what's going on, why, and who's behind it. Why peeps are so eager to hop on the Murdoch bandwagon with nothing more than the NY Post to wave around is puzzling.

Whitney's instincts are often quite good, and I respect Stiglitz, but that article is way off. Since I actually live in one of the IMF's latest client states, and since my salary and future job security as a public service worker is partially dependent on their policies, I have learned to ignore the rhetoric and look at what they actually do. Have a look for instance at their latest report on Europe: you'll see the usual recipe of privatizations and cuts:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/55492876/IMF- ... 011-Report

The idea that DSK was driving the IMF in some radically new era of redistributive justice and equality is preposterous. That the rhetoric has changed is undeniable; "Washington consensus" is a tarnished brand, but so is the "War on terror".
They didn't change the rhetoric because Strauss-Kahn had a 'road to damascus conversion'. They changed it because
a) Ecuador, Venezuala and other Latin American countries have told them to fuck off. They are widely reviled and losing hegemony in places they once treated as their private playground
b) their new and prospective clients are stable European parliamentary democracies in which the usual overtly thuggish tactics won't work quite as smoothly

And why did DSK specifically change his rhetoric? Because he was about to run for election as a Socialist. It would not be credible for him to suddenly switch from neolib propaganda to redistributive equality after he left the IMF: so he gave a few speeches in which he shared his sincere desire to buy the world a Coke.
Big deal.
He was about to leave the IMF anyway - it was a matter of a few months. So why entrap him for these purely rhetorical commitments to social justice?

But anyway, the whole theory is based upon a really simplistic view of how the IMF works, and the actual power of the MD in a complex multinational agency with a board of governors 48% controlled by the US and EU, with the US alone having veto powers. Have a look at how a recent attempt by the IMF to 'flex its muscle' went down:

...
Ireland’s Last Stand began less shambolically than you might expect. The IMF, which believes that lenders should pay for their stupidity before it has to reach into its pocket, presented the Irish with a plan to haircut €30 billion of unguaranteed bonds by two-thirds on average. Lenihan was overjoyed, according to a source who was there, telling the IMF team: “You are Ireland’s salvation.”

The deal was torpedoed from an unexpected direction. At a conference call with the G7 finance ministers, the haircut was vetoed by US treasury secretary Timothy Geithner who, as his payment of $13 billion from government-owned AIG to Goldman Sachs showed, believes that bankers take priority over taxpayers. The only one to speak up for the Irish was UK chancellor George Osborne, but Geithner, as always, got his way. An instructive, if painful, lesson in the extent of US soft power, and in who our friends really are.

The negotiations went downhill from there. On one side was the European Central Bank, unabashedly representing Ireland’s creditors and insisting on full repayment of bank bonds. On the other was the IMF, arguing that Irish taxpayers would be doing well to balance their government’s books, let alone repay the losses of private banks. And the Irish? On the side of the ECB, naturally.

In the circumstances, the ECB walked away with everything it wanted. The IMF were scathing of the Irish performance, with one staffer describing the eagerness of some Irish negotiators to side with the ECB as displaying strong elements of Stockholm Syndrome.

The bailout represents almost as much of a scandal for the IMF as it does for Ireland. The IMF found itself outmanoeuvred by ECB negotiators, their low opinion of whom they are not at pains to conceal. More importantly, the IMF was forced by the obduracy of Geithner and the spinelessness, or worse, of the Irish to lend their imprimatur, and €30 billion of their capital, to a deal that its negotiators privately admit will end in Irish bankruptcy. Lending to an insolvent state, which has no hope of reducing its debt enough to borrow in markets again, breaches the most fundamental rule of the IMF, and a heated debate continues there over the legality of the Irish deal.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opi ... 72123.html

(Note: Strauss-Kahn has been replaced by the IMF's number 2 guy, John Lipsky, former Vice Chairman of the JPMorgan Investment Bank. How's that for "change you can believe in"?)

Lipsky is retiring in August. How's that for a coup? Most people think Christine Lagarde will get the job, which signals very little change in the IMF

[Joe Hillshoist]

I'm certain this stinks, yes. As for the class consciousness you play that up when it's convenient, just like Murdoch does, 'cept when it isn't, like when your pal Jules is cavorting in the clover on his Lordship's million-acre manor. Strange.

Jules is a great name and thats enough. Or to put it another way if I was gonna be locked up or had the choice to take bail in a rich fellas mansion I would too. Make a change from usual digs.

How is spewing a load of Murdoch crap supposed to show you're not spewing a load of Murdoch crap? Sorry, I don't get it.

There's a guy spewing a load of crap and from that perspective that you suggest - that murdoch is more concerned about getting rid of Strauss-Kahn than worrying about a crime of sexual assault.

I would have thought that load of crap supported your contention cos there it is straight from the horse's arse. This is about a socialist not a sexual crime.

of course if you just want to argue for the sake of it I won't bother posting stuff that I concede supports your contention.


In which case:

Up yours knob jockey.

[jingofever]

How is spewing a load of Murdoch crap supposed to show you're not spewing a load of Murdoch crap? Sorry, I don't get it. :shrug:

Are you talking about Rupert Murdoch? If so, what is the point in bringing him up? Where does he fit in this story?