“The man must be presumed innocent until proven guilty, and in any event, there is still some chance that the whole sordid affair turns out to have been a political set-up, in which case he might even emerge from this bizarre scandal with credit and sympathy. Yet it is about time Europe’s ownership of the International Monetary Fund, and particularly France’s apparently divine right to the top job, was brought to a close. If Mr Strauss-Kahn’s nemesis in a New York hotel room loosens Europe’s grip, then that may be no bad thing. Whatever the truth of otherwise of the allegations, Mr Strauss-Kahn’s spectacular fall from grace is widely seen as a near catastrophe both for the IMF and the delicate negotiations around further rescue packages for the stricken eurozone periphery. This it is definitively not. To the contrary, it might even bring about a rethink of the currently doomed strategy of throwing good money after bad.”
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A good article. But if it was a political set-up, we should ask the question cui bono – who benefits?
I’ve been following this in Le Monde and Figaro as well as the UK MSM. It is certainly true that this has pulled the rug from under the Left in France: while DSK’s reputation as a stylish Grand Seducteur was part of his statesman image, raping a black chambermaid would be not merely barbaric but verging on ridiculous.
An anonymous source in the Sarkozy camp denied it was anything to do with them (well they would, wouldn’t they) and added that apart from anything else, from a strategic point of view it was much too early for Sarko to try to knock out an opponent.
Also as regards timing, as Warner pointed out DSK was ably carrying out the French agenda at the IMF at a fairly critical phase in the Euro bail-out process.The very last thing France could want at this juncture is to diminish its influence.
So if it was a set-up, I’d rule out the French. The whole thing is a national humiliation for them in any case, which no doubt will please many in the US.
So who else could be culprits? Other unspecified elements at the IMF have been fingered as a possibility. And in the light of Warner’s article, this could well include any person, group or government who wished to alter the IMF’s current approach to its role.
Could it have been a set-up? There has to be some evidence or he would have already walked. But consider this scenario: the maid leads him on, which would appeal to his vanity as well as lust (and who knows, perhaps a taste to try some chocolate), and has consensual sex – obtaining all biological evidence necessary – then cries rape and bolts. Why should she do this? With a 16-year old daughter she would be completely vulnerable to threats. Easy.
I’m not usually a conspiracy theorist but this seems to me infinitely more plausible. There was opportunity and, as Warner describes, there was motive.
The other women to accuse this man of attempted rape is a life long socialist.
So a chambermaid in New York and a socialist lady in France were got out by dark forces (no doubt financed by the Koch brothers) to smear this noble chap ……..
Errr – I doubt it.
Although, of course, he is innocent till proven guilty.
Agreed, if it is a honey-trap, it is least-likely to be the French. DSK was doing sterling work for them at the IMF, insulating the French as far as possible from the disaster that is the Eurozone, and if he had indeed departed the IMF in the next few months (as widely predicted), by the feudal succession policies of the IMF, he would likely have left it in the ‘safe pair of hands’, namely, the current French finance minister (whose name temporarily escapes me).
The Americans? Why? To what possible end?
If it is a honey-trap, I would finger the Russians or the Chinese.
But I don’t believe it is.
It’s reported that the accuser is a native of Guinea, and therefore a French speaker to a greater or lesser degree. I discount the suggestion that her race was somehow a factor – living in France and moving in the circles that he does, I suspect that this would not be what you’d call a new and unknown area for DSK – but I suspect that her culture might have been. DSK speaks English correctly but with a strong accent that can be hard to follow. And the French are among the most racist folks you’ll find anyplace, especially when it comes to black Africans.
My working theory is that there was a glorious misunderstanding about why she was there and/or what her intentions were.
I doubt that she was looking for a bit of part-time h**king work on the side – would you go into hotel housekeeping work if that was your goal? – or even that she was looking for a rich target for blackmail or extortion. It’s the Times Square Sofitel, FHS – there’s much-more recognizable and much-more vulnerable celebrities passing through their doors every day. The chairman of the IMF – who he? If that was her goal, she would have picked a high-profile US celebrity.
No, I think he misunderstood – given his reputation, I find that much the easiest to believe. And the most-likely answer is usually the correct one.
If she’d tried to entrap him – why run? He knows that nobody at home cares a whit what he does as long as it’s consensual – why would he run away from a false accusation that he knows to be false, and thereby lend it credence?
I suspect – we shall see – that the prosecutor has a whole lot more than he’s letting on – else he would have gotten bail, he could get a thousand of the US great-and-good to stand surety for him – and that the case is pretty-much a slam-dunk, and someone whispered in the judge’s ear ‘here’s what’s coming in this case, you don’t want to be the judge who let this moke out on bail’ . . . .
and here we are.
llater,
llamas
The maids vulnerability to threats is prob less than her vulnerability to financial compensation.
She will remain anonymous under any circs–unless she can be proven to be a false accuser. She agrees to have some sort of sex with the vain old fart and then cries rape.
In the US, street punk rapists without 2 pennies to their name have ordered by the courts to pay their victims millions in compensation. This man HAS that kind of money.
That is at least as plausible as the idea that a sex crazed man in his 60s runs naked down his hotel suite corridor to fling himself on a maid who has just walked in by mistake. The stories about his high interest in sex paint him as a seducer, a sex pest who won’t take no for an answer until it has been put on him forcefully enough. That is not the same thing as the wild attack he is supposed to have made in this case.
To get to be head of the IMF and contender in the French elections he must have a high degree of animal cunning (if not true intelligence). Nobody with the brains/nouse of a gnat would think they could get away with what he is alleged to have done without being charged as a rapist.
Why did he run and leave his phone (assuming that is true–certainly wouldn’t take the cops word for it)?
Suppose that, as she turns to leave , she tells him what she is going to do to him. That would be a bit of a risk in case he panics and tries to silence her permanantly. However it would also psych him out very effectively. What if you yourself were in that possible situation?. You have just had casual but voluntary sex and are told that you are going to be reported as a rapist. Are you going to stay and have some ambitious DA try to make his/her career by getting you decades of jail time (and proving that even the rich and powerful are not above the law without having to roust one of America’s rich and powerful)? Or are you going to make a run for it back to France, from where you will very likely not be extradited. The media may ruin your career but at least you won’t get 20 years in hell or be taking it up the backside on a regular basis. Under those circs he might have decided it was worth a run for it.
Mr Ecks
I had intended to imply that by “crying rape” she was telling him what was happening, as you suggest.
You raise an interesting point in the US position on compensation. My suggestion of threat was based on this being a covert operation. If DSK is to be found guilty on a my word against yours basis they would need a woman of good character. Anonymity or not, if he is found guilty the French will have her finances and lifestyle under scrutiny for the rest of her life and I didn’t see a way for her to be given a carrot as well as a stick.
Now we see it. He is to pay for it himself. Elegant.
The Chinese would be the ones to benefit so this was evidently a Chinese operation.
God, I LOVE conspiracy theories.
I too love these conspiracy theories. This gets more fun by the day. RW makes a good point: who would benefit from destroying DSK and the IMF? The Chinese are certainly one possibility. But my bet is on George Soros: he loves to cause trouble and certainly has the resources to pull this off. And he’s probably positioned to make a killing if the Euro crumbles. Any other likely candidates?
Nobody with the brains/nouse of a gnat would think they could get away with what he is alleged to have done…
Unless he is a high-ranking énarque – a member of a sociopolitical elite with a nearly infinite sense of entitlement, who forgot that he was not in the country that his clique dominates.
There is a long list of powerful and apparently intelligent people who have destroyed or damaged themselves by outrageous conduct and the assumption that their “importance” granted them immunity from any consequences.
Hmm … my daughter’s theory on this is that perhaps the concierge had arranged for a high-class hooker to make a last-minute personal service call to Mr. DSK’s room, but through a mix-up on the last day of his stay, the housekeeping department thought that he had gone already … and the maid walked into to clean the suite instead, instead of the person that he was expecting. This accounts for him being stark naked and ready to rock’n’roll.
I think he was just a perv who liked to sexually demean relatively powerless women, and perhaps this time the powers that be who have hushed up his previous “dalliances” have just washed their hands of him.
Regarding that whole “presumption of innocence” thing: that’s a legal doctrine, relating to the burden of proof, which must be observed by courts and juries. It does not apply to private citizens, however, who are perfectly free to presume his guilt. Which I do.
Encore un fois smite-ee. Pourquoi, je me demande?
J’entends le train arrivant,
Arrivant autour du coude . . .
plus tard,
llamas
[plants tongue firmly in cheek]
This alleged rape would never have happened if we had a Land Value Tax. 😉
Hey, who are you calling a “plus tard”, hombre?
The IMF is a pointless, aristocratic bureaucracy of use to no one. Furthermore, it is unelected and elitist and avoids accountability.
To become head of the IMF, you need only be a loyal servant of the banking sector. Hence why it is often headed by politicians.
DSK, like Tony Blair, is not by any serious and true definition a socialist; you cannot be a socialist and head the IMF. He’s despised by most on the serious Left.
Quite how anyone can take seriously an organisation which single-handedly crashed Argentina’s economy is baffling to any sane human being.
Abolishng the IMF would solve many of the world’s problems.
The head of an organsiation which is totally unaccountable and above the law, behaving as DSK is alleged to have, is hardly surprising.
It seems Kahn took his day job home with him.
The French should be ashamed of themselves for even considering allowing an IMF clown to head their country.
To be brutally frank if faced with the choice between voting for a rapist or voting for the head of the IMF to be leader, I’d choose the rapist.
To address various conspiracy theories.
The maid seems to have an employment record at the hotel going back a couple of years so she wouldn’t seem to be a ‘plant’.
Trying to turn an insit employee to work this sort of honeytrap is a non starter. She’s got to lie under a lot of pressure & very few people are any good at this. You need a narrative with no major contradictions but enough small ones to reflect how a victim actually reacts to a situation like this. Then you have to stick to it under questioning by experts who know all the techniques of cracking a false story. They’ll have interviewed hundreds of rape victims & have a keen knowledge how genuine victims respond. If I was interrogating & suspected a set-up I’d be pointing out to her that she would never be getting paid because too many interested parties would be watching her spending patterns & lifestyle to make it worth risking. More likely she might find herself having a convenient traffic accident.
The mistaken for a hooker theory doesn’t fly. Girls don’t put out until their paid. Even for heads of the IMF. Some punters get off on bilking the girl. If he used an agency & carded, the carding is done over the phone when the girl is accepted & the payment is verified to her by the agency. By all accounts he’d be familiar with the routine.
Regardless of who is the head of the IMF (although if anyone is considering me…..) IT SHOULD NOT EXIST.
Nor should the “World Bank” = and nor should national Central Banks either.
This is the point.