The police and the prostitute media have made it impossible for Dominique Strauss-Kahn to get a fair trial. From the moment of the announcement that he had been arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting a hotel maid, and before he was ever indicted, the accounts given by the police were designed to create the impression that the director of the International Monetary Fund was guilty. For example, the police told the media, which duly regurgitated to the public, that Strauss-Kahn was in such a hurry to flee the scene of the crime that he left behind his cell phone. The police also put out the story that by calling airlines and demanding passenger lists, they managed to catch the fleeing rapist just as his plane was departing for France.
A New York judge denied Strauss-Kahn bail on the basis of police misrepresentation that he was apprehended fleeing the country.
Once he was imprisoned, the police announced that Strauss-Kahn was on suicide watch, which is a way of suggesting to the public that the accused rapist might take his own life in order to avoid the public humiliation of a guilty verdict from a jury.
But what really happened, assuming one can learn anything from press reports, is that Strauss-Kahn, upon arriving at JFK airport for his scheduled flight, discovered that he did not have his cell phone and telephoned the hotel, the scene of the alleged crime. It boggles the mind that anyone could possibly think that a person fleeing from his crime would call the scene of the crime, ask about his left behind cell phone, and tell them where he was.
Then in rapid succession, reeking of orchestration, a French woman steps forward and declares that a decade ago she was nearly raped by Strauss-Kahn. This was followed by Kristin Davis, the Manhattan Madam of the prostitute who did in Eliot Spitzer before he could get the banksters on Wall Street, stepping forward to announce that one of her call girls refused to service Strauss-Kahn a second time because he was too rough in the act.
With hunting season opened, any woman whose career would benefit from publicity, or whose bank account would bless a damage award, can now step forward and claim to have been a victim or near victim of Strauss-Kahn.
This is not to deny that Strauss-Kahn might have an inordinate appetite for sex that did him in. It is to say that long before a jury hears from the maid, or from a prosecutor speaking for the maid “who is too traumatized to appear in court,” the jury has been programmed with the verdict that he is guilty.
Why would he run away if he didn’t do it?
Look at all the women he has accosted!
You get the picture.
I have written about the anomalies of the case. One of the most striking is the confirmed reports in the French and British press that a political activist for French President Sarkozy, Jonathan Pinet, tweeted the news of Strauss-Kahn’s arrest to Arnaud Dassier, a spin doctor for Sarkozy, before the news was announced by the New York police.
Pinet’s explanation for how he was the first to know is that a “friend” in the Sofitel Hotel, where the alleged crime took place, told him. Is it merely a coincidence that the men assigned the task of removing the Strauss-Kahn threat to French President Sarkozy’s re-election had a clued-in friend in the Sofitel Hotel? Did the police clue-in the “friend” before they made the public announcement? If so, why?
What bothers me about the Strauss-Kahn affair is that if the police have evidence that supports their insistence on his guilt, it is pointless for the police to set Strauss-Kahn up in the media. Generally, set-ups like this occur only when there is no evidence or when the evidence has to be fabricated and cannot withstand examination.
As a person who had a Washington career, I find other aspects of the case disturbing. Strauss-Kahn had emerged as a threat to the establishment. Polls showed that as the socialist candidate, he was the odds-on favorite to defeat the American candidate, Sarkozy, in the upcoming French presidential election. Perhaps it was only electoral posturing to help defeat Sarkozy, but Strauss-Kahn indicated that he intended to move the International Monetary Fund away from its past policy of making the poor pay for the mistakes of the rich. He spoke of strengthening collective bargaining, and of restructuring mortgages, tax and spending policies in order that the economy would serve ordinary people in addition to the banksters. Strauss-Kahn said that regulation needed to be restored to financial markets and implied that a more even distribution of income was required.
These remarks, together with a likely win over Sarkozy in the French election, made Strauss-Kahn a double-barreled challenge to the establishment. The third strike against him was the recent IMF report that said China would surpass the US as the world’s first economy within five years.
People who haven’t spent their professional life in Washington may not understand the threat to Washington that is in the IMF report. Whether deserved or not, the IMF has a lot of credibility. By placing China as the number one economic power by the end of the next US presidential term, the IMF thrust a dagger through the heart of American hegemony. Washington’s power is based on America’s economic supremacy. The IMF report said that this supremacy was at its end.
This kind of announcement tells the political world that, as the headline read, “the age of America is over.” For the first time in decades, other countries can see the prospect of escaping from US domination. They don’t have to be puppet states, part of the hegemonic empire. They see the prospect of serving their own people and their own interests instead of those of Washington. European countries, for example, forced to fight for Washington in Afghanistan and Libya, see light at the end of the tunnel. They can now think about refusing.
Although rich and a member of the establishment, and independently of his behavior toward women, Strauss-Kahn made the mistake of revealing that he might have a social conscience. Either this social conscience or the hubris of power led him to challenge American supremacy. This is an unforgivable crime for which he is being punished.
My friend, Alexander Cockburn, an intelligent and civilized person who is derided by right-wingers as a communist, lacks my experience of Washington. Consequently, he thinks that the facts will come out, although he seems to prefer that they come out on the side of the maid and not Strauss-Kahn.
If Alex were the Bolshevik he is said to be, he would know that no high-ranking figure who was serving the establishment would be destroyed on the basis of the word of an immigrant maid living in a sub-let apartment in a building for aids victims. The very notion that the US establishment craves justice to this extent is a total absurdity. Americans are so indifferent to injustice that the American public shrugs off the hundreds of thousands and millions of women, children, and village elders who are murdered, maimed, dispossessed, and displaced by the US military in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and wherever Washington and the military/security complex, while feeding on power and profit, can claim to be protecting Americans from “terrorists” or bringing democracy to the heathen.
The American criminal justice system is riddled with wrongful convictions and stinks of injustice. The US has a much higher rate of incarceration than alleged authoritarian regimes, such as China, and routinely destroys the lives of young people, and even mothers of small children, for using drugs.
Strauss-Kahn’s indictment serves emotional needs of conservatives, left-wingers, and feminists as well as establishment agendas. Conservatives don’t like the French, because they did not support the US invasion of Iraq. The left-wing doesn’t like rich white guys and IMF officials, and feminists don’t like womanizers. But even if the government’s case falls apart in the courtroom, Strauss-Kahn has been removed from the French presidential race and from the IMF. This, not justice for an immigrant, is what the case is about.
Many Americans are unable to comprehend that authorities would remove a threat with a frame-up. But far worst has occurred. Francesco Cossiga, a former President of Italy, revealed that many of the bombings in Europe during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, which were blamed on communists, were in fact “false flag” operations carried out by the CIA and Italian intelligence in order to scare voters away from the communist party. Cossiga’s revelations resulted in a parliamentary investigation in which intelligence operative Vincenzo Vinciguerra stated: “You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple: to force the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security.”
If democratic governments will murder innocents for political reasons, why wouldn’t they frame someone? Whether innocent or guilty, Strauss-Kahn has been framed in advance of his trial.
Dr Roberts, your virulent sexist views expressed above are on the level of the tired, Polanski lapdog BHL –how shameful.
“Then in rapid succession, reeking of orchestration, a French woman steps forward and declares that a decade ago she was nearly raped by Strauss-Kahn.”
You would do better to construct your arguments by being truthful. Tristane Banon publicly accused DSK in a television program years ago, a program available for anyone to see today. The producers were obliged, by French law, to blip out his name. The media did not pursue the accusation–because they are in collusion with any and all unethical acts regarding sexuality in France.
Although the DSK scandal has had a shock effect to make several French press professionals stop and reflect, perhaps in the first time of post-WW II history, on their “shield the perpetrator” system, and several press bigwigs paraded themselves on television doing a collective mea culpa this week, none of them even suggested that France change its harmful, archaic privacy laws.
Banon’s mother, another French socialist (ah, that Putin conspiracy!), has publicly taken responsibility today for dissuading her daughter to press charges at the time. The crime: attempted rape. Not seduction, not flirting, rape. Banon’s mother also reported that she confronted DSK at the time, who was, on top of it, a friend of her family, and that he *acknowledged* he tried to assault her daughter. His excuse: “I don’t know what came over me.” Obviously, his story will change now.
“Americans are so indifferent to injustice that the American public shrugs off the hundreds of thousands and millions of women, children, and village elders who are murdered, maimed, dispossessed, and displaced by the US military”
Just like you shamefully shrug off the millions of women and children (and a lesser number of men) who are sexually assaulted, not to mention harassed, around the world and who have been victimized from time immemorial. The difference between you and the Americans you correctly criticize is that they choose to the blind to one gigantic group of victims, while, you, to another.
“The American criminal justice system is riddled with wrongful convictions and stinks of injustice. ”
And this number is quite small compared to all the sexual assault victims who are refrained from pursuing justice because this same system is so virulent towards disenfranchised victims. And that is in the United States, where things have progressed much more than France. In France, the collusion from the system with sex-related criminals is almost absolute.
As for a conspiracy from Putin or Sarkozy or the CIA? Really, although it cannot be ruled out at this stage, if any of these people wanted to set up DSK, I’m sure they would be able to think of ways of doing it which would be much more incriminating right from the start of the alleged assault.
Dear Alessandra, If I were rude and blindly emotional I could accuse you of being a man-hater to such an extent that you want men deprived of the presumption of innocence and convicted in the media by police lies prior to their indictment and prior to their trial.
Unlike you, I don’t shrug off anything, especially due process and the presumption of innocence.
Paul Craig Roberts
It seems to me that the gist of the story above is, and it is confirmed by the comment above, that this man is being found guilty first and then some time in the future he will be given a “fair trial”. Being innocent until proven guilty is obviously not a consideration. And so there has to be a motive and I would not exclude the IMF.
Paul Craig Roberts:
Dear Alessandra, If I were rude and blindly emotional I could accuse you of being a man-hater to such an extent that you want men deprived of the presumption of innocence and convicted in the media by police lies prior to their indictment and prior to their trial.
Unlike you, I don’t shrug off anything, especially due process and the presumption of innocence.
================
Dr Roberts,
Although there is a certain imbalance between the total number of men and women perpetrators of sexual assault, this imbalance is highly reduced when we consider all kinds of assaults, not only sexual, and we include underage victims. Women perpetrate a lot of violence in the world, something society has yet to reckon with.
Moreover, it is a proven fact that many women are instrumental in facilitating that certain men abuse minors and other women, and in guaranteeing their impunity. And on top of this we have homosexuals who perpetrate their share of abuse to same-sex victims (including many heterosexuals). Women homosexuals sexually harass other women on the same level of heterosexual men.
The case at hand, however, is a man allegedly raping a woman, allegedly having tried it before (Banon), perhaps having done it more than once (Debré), aside from having behaved like a pig towards countless other women. I see that the latter issue doesn’t seem to bother his defenders.
But there are far from just DSK and the maid in this case. There’s an entire society of men and women, and a large share of them really do think in despicable, sexist ways about sexual violence and harassment.
Also, in the Banon case, it was a woman, not a man, who dissuaded her own daughter (Banon) to press charges. I am inclined to believe the mother when she says she did it to protect her daughter in the future, from all the slime that would be hurled at her daughter had she not.
Some French people, however, are quite suspicious and accuse the mother of putting the socialist party and the alleged rapist (DSK ) ahead of her own daughter. Quite possible as well, if you ask me.
As for presumption of innocence, it goes both ways, for him and for her. Since there has been no trial, and you insist that without a trial everyone is innocent, so the maid and so are all her reported allegations.
Lastly, with all the money the accused has, you also seem to forget he has the means to buy or forge testimonies to destroy an innocent victim. As far as conspiracy theories go, and the way the powerful play the justice system, it’s not such a bad theory after all, especially when a powerful and wealthy man’s entire future is at stake.
I don’t doubt Mr Brafman’s competence in terms of exposing any possible lies from the police. However, if the lies come from the other camp, I wonder how easily they could get away with it.
Anyways, it’s basically all speculation at this stage.
Allesandra,
As for presumption of innocence, it goes both ways, for him and for her. Since there has been no trial, and you insist that without a trial everyone is innocent, so the maid and so are all her reported allegations”
Are you saying that in the interests of equality the maid also should have to go through the humiliation of being brought to court, imprisoned and “convicted” in the media without hearing her side of the story. The logic of your statement eludes me.
Edward, try talking to an experience prosecutor or psychologist who works with sexual assault cases one day. You might learn that the alleged victim is up against a mountain of obstacles and miscarriages of justice a thousand times more often than the allegedly accused. The majority of real rapists and sexual abusers are never even charged, much less prosecuted. This is not a inexplicable coincidence…
Without enormous and varied types of protection and support, such as this alleged victim is getting, but which is quite rare for many others, the latter will not press charges in order to protect themselves from a variety of further harm.
It is a great tragedy that plagues society.
I really don t believe Trsitane Banon. It’s very strange to wake up 8 years after…