Head of IMF arrested and accused of sexual assault

[Peter Lemkin]

The NYPD have changed the time of the events from about 13:30 to about noon, when I believe he has an alibi of a luncheon date. More and more this seems like a grand set-up....and the French are justly disgusted by the way the American "legal" system works. Having been a victim of it myself, I quite agree. The much touted presumption of innocence is the biggest pile of bullshit around. If a man like that can't get bail, what hope is there for the poor inner-city man picked up for having the wrong skin color? If true that he committed the acts, it is not pretty, but everyone in the USA is now treated as just one step short of a killer. The look from Europe is troubling, as with most going on in the Heimat.

Whether true or not, they have put him [and announced that he is on] suicide watch.....so his career is over....forever. The IMF is talking of removing him before trial.... The assassination is complete. Next!

[Jan Klimkowski]

Via Zero Hedge:

Is This Why DSK Is Housed In A Ward For Inmates With Infectious Diseases

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/18/2011 10:10 -0400

Yesterday when we broke the news that DSK was housed in Rikers Island "West Facility" reserved for inmates with infectious diseases, we speculated, jokingly we hoped, that this may be due to his affliction with a certain sexually transmitted disease. Alas, if what the the NY Post reports this morning ends up being true, the situation may be substantially more serious: "Dominique Strauss-Kahn may have more to worry about than a possible prison sentence. The IMF chief's alleged sex-assault victim lives in a Bronx apartment rented exclusively for adults with HIV or AIDS, The Post has learned. The hotel maid, a West African immigrant, has occupied the fourth-floor High Bridge pad with her 15-year-old daughter since January -- and before that, lived in another Bronx apartment set aside by Harlem Community AIDS United strictly for adults with the virus and their families." Oops.

From the Post:

The Post has not been able to ascertain whether the maid, 32, has HIV/AIDS because of medical confidentiality laws.

But the agency rents apartments only for adults with the disease. A Harlem United worker said at least one adult in the household has to be HIV-positive or have AIDS to qualify for one of their units. A healthy adult with a child with HIV or AIDS is not eligible.

"The [current] apartment isn't rented under her name. Harlem [Community AIDS] United places their tenants in our building," explained an employee of the apartment building's property manager, Chaim Gross, of Brooklyn.

The maid had previously lived in another High Bridge apartment rented by Harlem United, a source said. She had moved there with her child in 2008.

According to the agency, it is not uncommon for people with HIV/AIDS to move around.

Her lawyer, Jeffrey Shapiro, and a close family friend said the chambermaid is a widow who lives alone with her daughter. Public records list her as the only adult in the current apartment and the only adult having lived in her previous apartment.

Neighbors also say it was just her and the child in both places.

While as some insinuate this could explain why DSK has been on suicide watch, the reality is that for the HIV virus to manifest itself in blood serum takes several months, so if indeed true and if the maid does carry the HIV virus, there would be no way to know if DSK hismelf is infect if indeed he did have sex and if such sex was unprotected and so forth. Look for much more media hysteria on the topic imminently.

[Ed Jewett]

Strauss-Kahn simply had to be eliminated.

The Amerikan Police State Strides Forward

By Paul Craig Roberts


May 18, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- The International Monetary Fund's director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was arrested last Sunday in New York City on the allegation of an immigrant hotel maid that he attempted to rape her in his hotel room. A New York judge has denied Strauss-Kahn bail on the grounds that he might flee to France.

President Bill Clinton survived his sexual escapades, because he was a servant to the system, not a threat. But Strauss-Kahn, like former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, was a threat to the system, and, like Eliot Spitzer, Strass-Kahn has been deleted from the power ranks.

Strauss-Kahn was the first IMF director in my lifetime, if memory serves, who disavowed the traditional IMF policy of imposing on the poor and ordinary people the cost of bailing out Wall Street and the Western banks. Strauss-Kahn said that regulation had to be reimposed on the greed-driven, fraud-prone financial sector, which, unregulated, destroyed the lives of ordinary people. Strauss-Kahn listened to Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz, one of a handful of economists who has a social conscience.

Perhaps the most dangerous black mark in Strauss-Kahn's book is that he was far ahead of America's French puppet, President Sarkozy, in the upcoming French elections. Strauss-Kahn simply had to be eliminated.

It is possible that Strauss-Kahn eliminated himself and saved Washington the trouble. However, as a well-travelled person who has often stayed in New York hotels and in hotels in cities around the world, I have never experienced a maid entering unannounced into my room, much less when I was in the shower.

In the spun story, Strauss-Kahn is portrayed as so deprived of sex that he attempted to rape a hotel maid. Anyone who ever served on the staff of a powerful public figure knows that this is unlikely. On a senator's staff on which I served, there were two aides whose job was to make certain that no woman, with the exception of his wife, was ever alone with the senator. This was done to protect the senator both from female power groupies, who lust after celebrities and powerful men, and from women sent by a rival on missions to compromise an opponent. A powerful man such as Strauss-Kahn would not have been starved for women, and as a multi-millionaire he could certainly afford to make his own discreet arrangements.

As Henry Kissinger said, "power is the ultimate aphrodisiac." In politics, sex is handed out as favors and payoffs, and it is used as a honey trap. Some Americans will remember that Senator Packwood's long career (1969-1995) was destroyed by a female lobbyist, suspected, according to rumors, of sexual conquests of Senators, who charged that Packwood propositioned her in his office. Perhaps what inspired the charge was that Packwood was in the way of her employer's legislative agenda.

Even those who exercise care can be framed by allegations of an event to which there are no witnesses. On May 16 the British Daily Mail reported that prior to Strauss-Kahn's fateful departure for New York, the French newspaper, Liberation, published comments he made while discussing his plans to challenge Sarkozy for the presidency of France. Strauss-Kahn said that as he was the clear favorite to beat Sarkozy, he would be subjected to a smear campaign by Sarkozy and his interior minister, Glaude Gueant. Strauss-Kahn predicted that a woman would be offered between 500,000 and 1,000,000 euros (more than $1,000,000) to make up a story that he raped her.

The Daily Mail reports that Strauss-Kahn's suspicions are supported by the fact that the first person to break the news of Strauss-Kahn's arrest was an activist in Mr Sarkozy's UMP party who apparently knew about the scandal before it happened.
Jonathan Pinet, a politics student, tweeted the news just before the New York Police Department made it public, although he said that he simply had a friend' working at the Sofitel where the attack was said to have happened.

The first person to re-tweet Mr Pinet was Arnaud Dassier, a spin doctor who had previously publicised details of multi-millionaire Strauss-Kahn's luxurious lifestyle in a bid to dent his left wing credentials.

Strauss-Kahn could just as easily been set up by rivals inside the IMF, as well as by rivals within the French political establishment.

Michelle Sabban, a senior councillor for the greater Paris region and a Strauss-Kahn loyalist said: I am convinced it is an international conspiracy.'

She added: It's the IMF they wanted to decapitate, not so much the Socialist primary candidate.

It's not like him. Everyone knows that his weakness is seduction, women. That's how they got him.'

Even some of Strauss-Kahn's rivals said they could not believe the news. It is totally hallucinatory,' said centrist Dominique Paille.

If it is true, this would be a historic moment, but in the negative sense, for French political life. I hope that everyone respects the presumption of innocence. I cannot manage to believe this affair.'

And Henri de Raincourt, minister for overseas co-operation in President Nicolas Sarkozy's government, added: We cannot rule out the thought of a trap.'


Michelle Sabban is on to something when she says the IMF was the target. Strauss-Kahn is the first IMF director who is not lined up on the side of the rich against the poor. Strauss-Kahn's suspicions were of Sarkozy, but Wall Street and the US government also had strong reasons to eliminate him. Wall Street is terrified by the prospect of regulation, and Washington was embarrassed by the recent IMF report that China's economy would surpass the US economy within five years. An international conspiracy is not out of the question.

Indeed, the plot is unfolding as a conspiracy. Authorities have produced a French woman who claims she was a near rape victim of Strauss-Kahn a decade ago. It would be interesting to know whether this allegation is the result of a threat or a bribe. As in the case of Julian Assange, there are now two women to accuse Strauss-Kahn. Once the prosecutors get the odds of two females against one male, they win in the media.

It has not been revealed how the authorities knew Strauss-Kahn was on a flight to France. However, by arresting him aboard his scheduled flight just as it was to depart, the authorities created the image of a man fleeing from a crime.

The way Amerikan justice (sic) works is that prosecutors in about 96 percent of the cases get a plea bargain. US prosecutors are permitted by judges and the public to pay for testimony against the defendant and to put sufficient pressure on innocent defendants to coerce them into making a guilty plea in exchange for lesser charges and a lighter sentence. Unless the hotel maid has a spell of bad conscience and admits she was paid to lie, or gets cold feet about perjuring herself, Strauss-Kahn is likely to find that Amerikan criminal justice (sic) is organized to produce conviction regardless of innocence or guilt.

On May 16, the day following Strauss-Kahn's arrest, the US Supreme Court threw its weight behind the Amerikan police state by destroying the remains of the Fourth Amendment with an 8-1 ruling that, the U.S. Constitution notwithstanding, Amerika's police do not need warrants to invade homes and search persons.

This ruling is more evidence that every American is regarded as a potential enemy of the state, not only by Airport Security but also by the high muckety-mucks in Washington. The conservatives' "war on crime" has created a police state, and conservatives, who originally stood for limited government and civil liberty, are euphoric over the expanded and unaccountable powers that a conservative Supreme Court has handed to the police.

On the same day the federal government reached the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling, which forced the Treasury to "borrow" money from federal employee pensions in order to continue funding Amerika's illegal wars and crimes against humanity. The breached debt ceiling serves as an appropriate marker for a country that has squandered its constitutional heritage and has arrived at moral as well as fiscal bankruptcy.
UPDATE -

In the several hours since I wrote this article, authorities have announced that Strauss-Kahn, who was refused bail on specious grounds, has been put on suicide watch. Why announce it unless it serves an agenda? From the beginning every statement and action of the authorities is designed to convey the impression of guilt. Is putting Strauss-Kahn on suicide watch a way to paint a picture of a person who can't face the public humiliation of his crime? Is it a way to use the humiliation of constant interruption to break down his character and resolve? Or might it be to plant the idea that should he expire in prison, suicide is the explanation?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info...e28122.htm

[Jan Klimkowski]

From Paul Craig Roberts' article:

Perhaps the most dangerous black mark in Strauss-Kahn's book is that he was far ahead of America's French puppet, President Sarkozy, in the upcoming French elections. Strauss-Kahn simply had to be eliminated.

It is possible that Strauss-Kahn eliminated himself and saved Washington the trouble. However, as a well-travelled person who has often stayed in New York hotels and in hotels in cities around the world, I have never experienced a maid entering unannounced into my room, much less when I was in the shower.

In the spun story, Strauss-Kahn is portrayed as so deprived of sex that he attempted to rape a hotel maid. Anyone who ever served on the staff of a powerful public figure knows that this is unlikely. On a senator's staff on which I served, there were two aides whose job was to make certain that no woman, with the exception of his wife, was ever alone with the senator. This was done to protect the senator both from female power groupies, who lust after celebrities and powerful men, and from women sent by a rival on missions to compromise an opponent. A powerful man such as Strauss-Kahn would not have been starved for women, and as a multi-millionaire he could certainly afford to make his own discreet arrangements.

As Henry Kissinger said, "power is the ultimate aphrodisiac." In politics, sex is handed out as favors and payoffs, and it is used as a honey trap. Some Americans will remember that Senator Packwood's long career (1969-1995) was destroyed by a female lobbyist, suspected, according to rumors, of sexual conquests of Senators, who charged that Packwood propositioned her in his office. Perhaps what inspired the charge was that Packwood was in the way of her employer's legislative agenda.

Even those who exercise care can be framed by allegations of an event to which there are no witnesses. On May 16 the British Daily Mail reported that prior to Strauss-Kahn's fateful departure for New York, the French newspaper, Liberation, published comments he made while discussing his plans to challenge Sarkozy for the presidency of France. Strauss-Kahn said that as he was the clear favorite to beat Sarkozy, he would be subjected to a smear campaign by Sarkozy and his interior minister, Glaude Gueant. Strauss-Kahn predicted that a woman would be offered between 500,000 and 1,000,000 euros (more than $1,000,000) to make up a story that he raped her.

Strauss-Kahn clearly likes a shag. Indeed, one of his new French accusers accuses DSK of behaving like a "rutting chimpanzee". Which conjures a memorable and highly damaging image, ridiculing DSK and transforming him into an uncontrolled, irrational, beast.

If DSK raped, or attempted to rape, the maid, then he can rot in Hell (an American private for profit prison).

However, as this thread has clearly demonstrated, there is a deep political rationale for the ruling elites to "get Strauss-Kahn" , and the sexual blackmail of a man with an established track record as a "womanizer" (curiously suppressed by conventions of the French press), is an obvious play.

None of us were in the hotel room with DSK.

However, the chances of this being a (character) assassination of a man who refused to do as he was told are very high.

Strauss-Kahn has, most probably, been Spitzered.

[Peter Lemkin]

I vote sexual assassination at this point. Interesting also that the 'maid' has gone into 'hiding'. While many a man has a wandering eye or libido, this man was married and happily so, had not long ago slept with his wife; could have hired [at no loss to his 'bank account' the most voluptuous [however he defined this] women in NYC. It is very hard to believe he came out of the shower, happened to see a maid who thought the room was empty and 'pounced' on her. He'd know better - and know how to silence the event if it happened - which I think it did NOT! It was a Spitzer-like; Hart-like op. Sexual assassination pure and simple.

Just wait until we see this irresistible siren and hear who she was associated with!!!!! :hitball:

Sadly, someone who wanted to [mildly] reform the neo-liberal, neo-fascist, Chicago-School IMF and oppose USA's buddy Sarkozy runs into career threatening trouble for the crime of taking a shower. Let that be a lesson to all men.....never shower or undress in your hotel, if you have enemies. Double lock your door from inside. Leave a webcam running.

This has all the overtones of the Assange affair....

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. 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 Joesph 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)

Good luck with that.

Can you imagine how much this kind of talk pisses off the Big Money guys? How long do you think they'd put up with this claptrap before they decided that Strauss-Kahn needed to take a permanent vacation?

Not long, I'd wager.

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.'" (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.

(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"?)
________________________________________________________________
Regime Change at the IMF: The Frame-Up of Dominique Strauss-Kahn?

by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, May 19, 2011

The arrest of IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn has all the appearances of a frame-up ordered by powerful members of the financial establishment, in liaison with France's Nicolas Sarkozy, whose presidency has served the interests of the US at the expense of those of France and the European Union. While there is for the moment no proof of a plot, the unusual circumstances of his arrest and imprisonment require careful examination.

Immediately following Strauss Kahn's arrest, pressures were exerted by Washington to speed up his replacement as Managing Director of the IMF preferably by a non-European, an American or a handpicked candidate from an "emerging market economy" or a developing country.

Since the founding of the Bretton Woods institutions in 1945, the World Bank has been headed by an American whereas the IMF has been under the helm of a (Western) European.

Strauss-Kahn is a member of elite groups who meet behind closed doors. He belongs to the Bildeberger. Categorized as one of the world's most influential persons, he is an academic and politician rather than a banker. In contrast to his predecessors at the IMF, he has no direct affiliation to a banking or financial institution.

But at the same time he is the fall guy. His "gaffe" was to confront the Washington-Wall Street Consensus and push for reforms within the IMF, which challenged America's overriding role within the organization.

The demise of Strauss-Kahn potentially serves to strengthen the hegemony of the US and its control over the IMF at the expense of what former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called "Old Europe".

Blocking Strauss-Kahn, the Presidential Candidate

In recent years, a major shift has occurred in Europe's political landscape. Pro-American governments have been elected in both France and Germany. Social Democracy has been weakened.

Franco-American relations have been redefined, with Washington playing a significant role in grooming a new generation of European politicians.

The presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy has, in many regards, become a de facto US "client regime", broadly supportive of US corporate interests in the EU and closely aligned with US foreign policy.

There are two overlapping and interrelated issues in the DSK frame-up hypothesis.

The first pertains to regime change at the IMF, the second to Strauss-Kahn as a candidate in France's forthcoming presidential elections.

Both these processes are tied into the clash between competing US and European economic interests.

Strauss-Khan as a favorite of the Socialist Party, would have won the presidential elections leading to the demise of "Our Man in Paris" Nicolas Sarkozy.

As documented by Thierry Meyssan, the CIA played a central undercover role in destabilizing the Gaullist party and supporting the election of Nicolas Sarkozy (See Operation Sarkozy: how the CIA placed one of its agents at the presidency of the French Republic, Reseau Voltaire, September 4, 2008)

A Strauss-Kahn presidency and a "Socialist" government would have been a serious setback for Washington, contributing to a major shift in Franco-American relations. It would also have contributed to weakening America's role on the European political chessboard. It would also have changed the balance of power between America and "Old Europe" (namely the Franco-German alliance). It would also have had repercussions on the internal structure of the Atlantic Alliance and the dominant hegemonic role of the US within NATO.

The Frame-Up?

Fifty-seven percent of France's population, according to a May 17 poll, believe that Strauss Kahn was framed, victim of a set-up. He was detained on alleged sexual assault and rape charges based on scanty evidence. He was detained based on a complaint filed by the Sofitel hotel where he was staying, on behalf of the alleged victim, an unnamed hotel chamber-maid:

The 32-year-old maid told authorities that she entered his suite early Saturday afternoon and he attacked her, New York Police Department spokesman Paul J. Browne. She said she had been told to clean the spacious $3,000-a-night suite, which she thought was empty.

According to an account the woman provided to police, Strauss-Kahn emerged from the bathroom naked, chased her down a hallway and pulled her into a bedroom, where he began to sexually assault her. She said she fought him off, then he dragged her into the bathroom, where he forced her to perform oral sex on him and tried to remove her underwear. The woman was able to break free again and escaped the room and told hotel staff what had happened, authorities said. They called police.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/busi...z1MfFWFlnY

Challenging the Washington Consensus

What is at stake in the immediate wake of Strauss Kahn's demise is "regime change" at the IMF.

The Obama administration has demanded his replacement by a more compliant individual. U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, former CEO of the New York Federal Reserve Bank is pushing for the replacement of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, "suggesting he can no longer perform his duties" as IMF Managing director.

"Geithner called for greater formal recognition by the IMF board that John Lipsky, the fund's second-in-command, will continue serving as temporary managing director for an interim period. Although Strauss-Kahn has yet to resign, sources say the IMF is in touch with his legal counsel to discuss his future at the organization."

What lies behind the frame-up scenario? What powerful interests are involved? Geithner had a close personal relationship with Strauss-Kahn.

On the floor of the US Senate (May 18), Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois, called for the resignation of DSK while calling upon the IMF's deputy managing director John Lipsky to "assume full responsibility of the IMF" as interim managing director. The process of "permanent replacement should "commence at once," he said. John Lipsky is a well connected Wall Street banker, a former Vice Chairman at JPMorgan Investment Bank.

While the IMF is in theory an intergovernmental organization, it has historically been controlled by Wall Street and the US Treasury. The IMF's "bitter economic medicine", the so-called Structural Adjustment Program (SAP), imposed on countless developing countries, essentially serves the interests of creditor banks and multinational corporations.

The IMF is not the main architect of these devastating economic reforms which have served to impoverish millions of people, while creating a "favorable environment" for foreign investors in Third World low wage economies.

The creditor banks call the shots. The IMF is a bureaucratic entity. Its role is to implement and enforce those economic policies on behalf of dominant economic interests.

Strauss Kahn's proposed reforms while providing a "human face" to the IMF did not constitute a shift in direction. They were formulated within the realm of neoliberalism. They modified but they did not undermine the central role of IMF "economic medicine". The socially devastating impacts of IMF "shock treatment" under Strauss-Kahn's leadership have largely prevailed.

Dominique Strauss Kahn arrived at the helm of the IMF in November 2007, less than a year prior to September-October 2008 financial meltdown on Wall Street. The structural adjustment program (SAP) was not modified. Under DSK, IMF "shock treatment" which historically had been limited to developing countries was imposed on Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

Under the helm of DSK as Managing Director, the IMF demanded that developing countries remove food and fuel subsidies at a time of rising commodity prices on the New York and Chicago Mercantile exchanges.

The hikes in food and fuel prices, which preceded the September-October 2008 Wall Street crash, were in large part the result of market manipulation. Grain prices were boosted artificially by large scale speculative operations. Instead of taming the speculators and containing the rise in food and fuel prices, the IMF's role was to ensure that the governments of indebted developing countries would not in any way interfere in the "free market", by preventing these prices from going up.

These hikes in food prices, which are the result of outright manipulation (rather than scarcity) have served to impoverish people Worldwide. The surge in food prices constitutes a new phase of the process of global impoverishment.

DSK was complicit in this process of market manipulation. The removal of food and fuel subsidies in Tunisia and Egypt had been demanded by the IMF. Food and fuel prices skyrocketed, people were impoverished, paving the way towards the January 2011 social protest movement:

Fiscal prudence remains an overarching priority for the [Tunisian] authorities, who also see the need for maintaining a supportive fiscal policy in 2010 in the current international environment. Efforts in the last decade to bring down the public debt ratio significantly should not be jeopardized by a too lax fiscal policy. The authorities are committed to firmly control current expenditure, including subsidies,... (IMF Tunisia: 2010 Article IV Consultation - Staff Report; Public Information Notice on the Executive Board Discussion; and Statement by the Executive Director for Tunisia)

"[The IMF] encouraged the [Egyptian] authorities to press further with food and fuel subsidy reforms, and welcomed their intention to improve the efficiency and targeting of food subsidy programs. [meaning the selective elimination of food subsidies].

"Consideration should be given to introducing automatic adjustment mechanisms for domestic fuel prices to minimize distortions [meaning dramatic increases in fuel prices without State interference], while strengthening cash-based social programs to protect vulnerable groups. (IMF Executive Board Concludes 2008 Article IV Consultation with the Arab Republic of Egypt Public Information Notice, PIN No. 09/04, January 15, 2009)

Under the helm of DSK, the IMF also imposed sweeping austerity measures on Egypt in 2008, while supporting Hosni Mubarak's "efforts to broaden the privatization program".(Ibid)

The Frank G. Wisner Nicolas Sarkozy Connection

Strauss-Kahn was refused bail by Judge Melissa Jackson, an appointee and protégé of Michael Bloomberg, who in addition to his role as Mayor is a powerful figure on Wall Street.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. charged (using scanty evidence) Strauss-Kahn "with seven crimes, including attempted rape, sexual abuse, forcible touching and unlawful imprisonment".

Who is Cyrus Vance Jr.?

He is the son of the late Cyrus Vance who served as Secretary of State in the Carter administration.

But there is more than meets the eye. Nicolas Sarkozy's step father Frank G. Wisner II, a prominent CIA official who married his step mother Christine de Ganay in 1977 served as Deputy Executive Secretary of State under the helm of Cyrus Vance Senior, father of District Attorney Cyrus Vance Junior.

Is it relevant?

The Vance and Wisner families had close personal ties. In turn Nicolas Sarkozy had close family ties with his step father Frank Wisner (and his half brothers and sisters in the US and one member of the Wisner was involved in Sarkozy's election campaign).

It is also worth noting that Frank G. Wisner II was the son of one of America's most notorious spies, the late Frank Gardiner Wisner (1909- 1965), the mastermind behind the CIA sponsored coup which toppled the government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran in 1953. Wisner Jr. is also trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Trust.

While these various personal ties do not prove that Strauss-Kahn was the object of a set-up, the matter of Sarkozy's ties to the CIA via his step father, not to mention the ties of Frank G. Wisner II to the Cyrus Vance family are certainly worth investigating. Frank G, Wisner also played a key role as Obama's special intelligence envoy to Egypt at the height of January 2011 protest movement.

Did the CIA play a role?

Was Strauss-Kahn framed by people in his immediate political entourage including President Obama and Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner?

District Attorney Cyrus Vance Junior, son of the late Cyrus Vance, Secretary of State in the Carter administration

Sarkozy's Step Father Frank G Wisner II, Deputy Executive Secretary of State (1976-79)
under Cyrus Vance Senior during the Carter administration

In this courtroom drawing, Dominique Strauss-Khan, next to his lawyer

Benjamin Brafman, in front of Criminal Court Judge Melissa Jackson during his arraignment at the Manhattan Criminal Court (AP)

DSK and Timothy Gaithner

Fair Trial?

Innocent before proven guilty? The US media has already cast its verdict. Will the court procedures be manipulated?

One would expect that Strauss-Kahn be granted a fair trial, namely the same treatment as that granted to thousands of arrests on alleged sexual aggression charges in New York City.

How many similar or comparable alleged sexual aggressions occur on a monthly basis in New York City? What is the underlying pattern? How many of these are reported to the police? How many are the object of police follow-up once a complaint has been filed?

What is the percent of complaints submitted to police which are the object of police arrest? How many of these arrests lead to a judicial procedure? What are the delays in court procedures?

How many of these arrests lead to release without a judicial procedure?

How many of the cases submitted to a judicial procedure are dismissed by the presiding judge?

How many of the cases which are not dismissed are refused bail outright by the presiding judge? What is the basis for refusing bail?

How many are granted bail? What is the average amount of bail?

How many are imprisoned without bail based on scanty and incomplete evidence?

How many of those who are refused bail are sent to an infamous maximum security prison on Rikers Island on the orders of Michael Bloomberg.

Diplomatic Immunity

Press reports state that full diplomatic immunity does not apply to officials of the United Nations and the Bretton Woods institutions, namely that the US did not ratify the protocol.

"U.N. convention on privileges and immunities for international agencies that most countries have ratified. It gives the heads of U.N. agencies broad immunity in the countries where they are based. But the U.S. government never became a party to that treaty. Employees of international agencies are covered by a U.S. statute that gives only limited immunity."

The relevant question is how has this limited immunity provision been applied in practice? Namely how many people with limited immunity (UN officials, officials of the Bretton Woods institutions) have been arrested and sent to a high security prison?

Has Strauss Kahn been given the same treatment as those arrested under the provisions of "limited immunity"?

Does the Strauss Kahn arrest fit the pattern? Or is Strauss Kahn being treated in a way which does not correspond to the normal (average) pattern of police and judicial procedures applied in the numerous cases of persons arrested on alleged sexual assault charges?

Without a frame-up instrumented by very powerful people acting in the background, the head of the IMF would have been treated in an entirely different way. The mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg and Timothy Geithner would have come to his rescue. The matter would have been hushed up with a view to protecting the reputation of a powerful public figure. But that did not happen.

Rikers Island Prison where DSK was imprisoned.

[Peter Lemkin]

..granted bail...conditions:
$1,000,000 bail
electronic anklet
24 hour armed guard [Thane Ceasar, are you still working?!]
Not allowed to leave domicile [I think his daughter's in NYC] = house arrest

[Ed Jewett]

"In life, events tend to follow patterns. People who commit crimes tend to be criminals, for example. Can anyone tell me any economists who have been convicted of violent sex crimes? Can anyone tell me of any heads of nonprofit international economic entities who have ever been charged and convicted of violent sexual crimes? Is it likely that just by chance this hotel maid found the only one in this category? Maybe Mr. Strauss-Kahn is guilty but if so, he is one of a kind, and criminals are not usually one of a kind."

-Ben Stein, 5/17/11

http://jamesurbaniak.tumblr.com/post/5586097856/oops

[Magda Hassan]

Dominique Strauss-Kahn Was Tying to Torpedo the Dollar

By Mike Whitney

May 19, 2011 "Information Clearing House" ---- -It's all about perception management. The media is trying to dig up as much dirt as they can on Dominique Strauss-Kahn so they can hang the man before he ever sees the inside of a courthouse. It reminds me of the Terry Schiavo case, where devoted-husband Michael was pegged as an insensitive slimeball for carrying out the explicit wishes of his brain-dead wife. Do you remember how the media conducted their disgraceful 24 hour-a-day Blitzkrieg with the endless coverage of weepy Christian fanatics on the front lawn of the hospital while Hannity, Limbaugh and O' Reilly fired away with their sanctimonious claptrap?

And now you're telling me that that same media is just "doing their job?"

Give me a break.

Whoever wants to nail IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has really pulled out all the stops. Their agents have been rummaging through diaries, hotel registries, phone records, yearbooks, yada, yada, yada. The UK Telegraph even paid a visit to a high-priced DC knocking shop to get a little dirt from Madame Botox; whatever it takes to make a randy banker look like the South Hill rapist. And they're doing a pretty good job, too. The cops have made sure that the "Great Seducer" always appears handcuffed and dressed in a "pervie" raincoat with 3-days stubble before they parade him in front of the media. On Wednesday--more grist for the mill--they released his mug-shot, an unflattering, deadpan photo that makes him look like Jack-the-Ripper. Was that the intention?

And, that's not the half of it. The Big Money is exhuming every woman he's ever had contact with for the last 30 years hoping they can glean some damning tidbit of information that will convince the doubters that beneath that sophisticated manner and $25,000 suit lurks a closet Bluebeard ready to snap up your daughters and defile your wives. Next thing you know, they'll be trotting out Paula Jones and Tanya Harding claiming they spent a torrid night with the Marquis de Kahn in a trailerpark outside Winamucca.

Where does it stop? Or does it stop? Are we in for another year-long Clinton-Lewinski feeding frenzy where everyday we hear more lurid details about the sexploits of people who don't really interest us at all?

Aren't you at all curious about who's behind this "lynching by media" scam? This is an all-out, no-holds-barred, steel-cage, take-down. The big boys save that kind of action for the worst offenders, that is, for the insiders who have broken "Omerta" or wandered off the reservation. I mean, they locked him up on Riker's Island without bail, for Chrissake. What does that tell you? Even Bernie Madoff was allowed to stay in his $7 million Park Avenue penthouse while he waited for trial, but not Straus-Kahn. Oh, no. He get's the royal treatment, even though he has no criminal record and nothing but the sketchy accusations of a chambermaid against him, he's carted off to the state slammer where he can mingle with hardened criminals while dining on corn flakes and Wonder Bread.

You call that justice?

Can I tell you what this is all about? It's about the dollar. That's right. Strauss-Kahn was mounting an attack against the dollar and now the wrath of the Empire has descended on him like ton-of-bricks. Here's the scoop from the UK Telegraph:

"Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, has called for a new world currency that would challenge the dominance of the dollar and protect against future financial instability.....

He suggested adding emerging market countries' currencies, such as the yuan, to a basket of currencies that the IMF administers could add stability to the global system....Strauss-Kahn saw a greater role for the IMF's Special Drawing Rights, (SDRs) which is currently composed of the dollar, sterling, euro and yen, over time but said it will take a great deal of international cooperation to make that work." ("International Monetary Fund director Dominique Strauss-Kahn calls for new world currency", UK Telegraph)

So, Strauss-Kahn finds himself in the same crowd as Saddam Hussein and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, right? You may recall that
Saddam switched from dollars to euros about a year before the war. 12 months later Iraq was invaded, Saddam was hanged, and the dollar was restored to power. Gaddafi made a similar mistake when "he initiated a movement to refuse the dollar and the euro, and called on Arab and African nations to use a new currency instead, the gold dinar." ("Libya: All About Oil, or All About Central Banking?" Ellen Brown, Op-Ed News) Libya has since come under attack by US and NATO forces which have armed a motley group of dissidents, malcontents and terrorists to depose Gaddafi and reimpose dollar hegemony.

And now it's Strauss-Kahn's turn to get torn to shreds. And for good reason. After all, DSK actually poses a much greater threat to the dollar than either Saddam or Gaddafi because he's in the perfect position to shape policy and to persuade foreign heads of state that replacing the dollar is in their best interests. And that is precisely what he was doing; badmouthing the buck. Only he was too dense to figure out that the dollar is the US Mafia's mealticket, the main way that shifty banksters and corporate scalawags extort tribute from the poorest people on earth. Strauss-Kahn was rocking the boat, and now he's going to pay.

Here's a clip from CNN Money:

"The International Monetary Fund issued a report Thursday on a possible replacement for the dollar as the world's reserve currency.

The IMF said Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, could help stabilize the global financial system....SDRs represent potential claims on the currencies of IMF members.....The IMF typically lends countries funds denominated in SDRs. While they are not a tangible currency, some economists argue that SDRs could be used as a less volatile alternative to the U.S. dollar.

"Over time, there may also be a role for the SDR to contribute to a more stable international monetary system," he said.

The goal is to have a reserve asset for central banks that better reflects the global economy since the dollar is vulnerable to swings in the domestic economy and changes in U.S. policy.

In addition to serving as a reserve currency, the IMF also proposed creating SDR-denominated bonds, which could reduce central banks' dependence on U.S. Treasuries. The Fund also suggested that certain assets, such as oil and gold, which are traded in U.S. dollars, could be priced using SDRs." ("IMF discusses dollar alternative", CNN Money)

Wow. So DSK was zeroing in on US Treasuries as well as the dollar? That's the whole shooting match.

So, what type of progress was he making in converting USDs to SDRs? According to Reuters: "The IMF general resources credit outstanding increased to 65.5 billion Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, ($104 billion) on May 12 from 6.0 billion SDRs at December 2007. The so-called new arrangement to borrow, which came into effect on April 1, increased the IMF's available lending resources to 269 billion SDRs on May 12 from 120 billion SDRs on March 31." (http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/05/17...onomicNews)

Not a bad start for such an ambitious project. It looks like DSK's dream of dethroning the dollar as the de facto "international currency" was beginning to gain momentum. (Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has said that the transition from dollars to SDRs "could be phased in within the next year.") But didn't he know that his actions would anger some very powerful and well-connected people?

Well, if he did; he never let on. In fact, he started mucking around in other stuff, too, like when he intervened on behalf of Irish taxpayers, trying to protect them at the expense of foreign bondholders. That's a big "No no" in banker's world. They keep a list of "people who count", and taxpayers are not on that list. Here's an excerpt from the Irish Times:

"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. (Irish finance minister) 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." ("Ireland's future depends on breaking free from bailout", Morgan Kelly, Irish Times)

So, Strauss-Kahn stuck up for Irish taxpayers over the banks, the bondholders, the ECB, and the US Treasury. Naturally, that made him persona non grata among the ruling throng.

And, there's more, too, because Strauss-Kahn's vision was not limited to currency alone, but involved broad structural changes to the IMF itself that would have reversed decades of neoliberal policies. DSK had settled on a new approach to policymaking; one that would abandon the worst elements of globalization and put greater emphasis on social cohesion, cooperation and multilateralism. Here's an excerpt from the speech titled "Human Development and Wealth Distribution" he gave in November 2010:

"....Adam Smithone of the founders of modern economicsrecognized clearly that a poor distribution of wealth could undermine the free market system, noting that: "The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful and…neglect persons of poor and mean condition…is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments."

This was over 250 years ago. In today's world, these problems are magnified under the lens of globalization....globalization also had a dark side. Lurking behind it was a large and growing chasm between rich and poorespecially within countries. An inequitable distribution of wealth can wear down the social fabric. More unequal countries have worse social indicators, a poorer human development record, and higher degrees of economic insecurity and anxiety. In too many countries, inequality increased and real wages stagnatedfailing to keep up with productivityover the past few decades. Ominously, inequality in the United States was back at its pre-Great Depression levels on the eve of the crisis....

An immediate task is to end the scourge of unemployment....Progressive taxation can also promote equity through redistribution, and this should be encouraged...."Inequality is corrosive" ...."it rots societies from within…it illustrates and exacerbates the loss of social cohesion…the pathology of the age and the greatest threat to the health of any democracy." ("Human Development and Wealth Distribution", Dominique Strauss-Kahn, IMF)

Can you believe it? DSK is lecturing bankers about redistribution? That's not what they want to hear. What they want to hear is why ripping off poor people actually makes the world a better place. DSK's speech just shows that he wasn't drinking the Koolaid anymore. He was becoming a nuisance and they needed to get rid of him.

Does that mean he didn't rape the woman who was in his hotel room?

Of course not. He could be guilty. But he deserves a fair trial, and someone's making damn sure he doesn't get one.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info...e28135.htm

[Jan Klimkowski]

Mike Whitney articulates the deep political rationale for taking out DSK and our inability to know for sure what happened in that hotel room:

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." ("Ireland's future depends on breaking free from bailout", Morgan Kelly, Irish Times)

So, Strauss-Kahn stuck up for Irish taxpayers over the banks, the bondholders, the ECB, and the US Treasury. Naturally, that made him persona non grata among the ruling throng.

And, there's more, too, because Strauss-Kahn's vision was not limited to currency alone, but involved broad structural changes to the IMF itself that would have reversed decades of neoliberal policies. DSK had settled on a new approach to policymaking; one that would abandon the worst elements of globalization and put greater emphasis on social cohesion, cooperation and multilateralism. Here's an excerpt from the speech titled "Human Development and Wealth Distribution" he gave in November 2010:

"....Adam Smithone of the founders of modern economicsrecognized clearly that a poor distribution of wealth could undermine the free market system, noting that: "The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful and…neglect persons of poor and mean condition…is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments."

This was over 250 years ago. In today's world, these problems are magnified under the lens of globalization....globalization also had a dark side. Lurking behind it was a large and growing chasm between rich and poorespecially within countries. An inequitable distribution of wealth can wear down the social fabric. More unequal countries have worse social indicators, a poorer human development record, and higher degrees of economic insecurity and anxiety. In too many countries, inequality increased and real wages stagnatedfailing to keep up with productivityover the past few decades. Ominously, inequality in the United States was back at its pre-Great Depression levels on the eve of the crisis....

An immediate task is to end the scourge of unemployment....Progressive taxation can also promote equity through redistribution, and this should be encouraged...."Inequality is corrosive" ...."it rots societies from within…it illustrates and exacerbates the loss of social cohesion…the pathology of the age and the greatest threat to the health of any democracy." ("Human Development and Wealth Distribution", Dominique Strauss-Kahn, IMF)

Can you believe it? DSK is lecturing bankers about redistribution? That's not what they want to hear. What they want to hear is why ripping off poor people actually makes the world a better place. DSK's speech just shows that he wasn't drinking the Koolaid anymore. He was becoming a nuisance and they needed to get rid of him.

Does that mean he didn't rape the woman who was in his hotel room?

Of course not. He could be guilty. But he deserves a fair trial, and someone's making damn sure he doesn't get one.

His words below detail the sheer magnitude of the onslaught on DSK.

On the Media Richter Scale it's a 7 or 8:

Aren't you at all curious about who's behind this "lynching by media" scam? This is an all-out, no-holds-barred, steel-cage, take-down. The big boys save that kind of action for the worst offenders, that is, for the insiders who have broken "Omerta" or wandered off the reservation. I mean, they locked him up on Riker's Island without bail, for Chrissake. What does that tell you? Even Bernie Madoff was allowed to stay in his $7 million Park Avenue penthouse while he waited for trial, but not Straus-Kahn.

I agree with Mike Whitney and Peter Lemkin. The thunderous media storm unleashed on DSK, and the deep political rationale for eliminating DSK, make it highly likely that he has been taken out for rediscovering his moral conscience and threatening elite interests.

[Ed Jewett]

Strauss-Kahn and the CIA's Frank G. Wisner: Another Democracy Destabilization Act by the CIA?
Posted on May 20, 2011 by willyloman
by Scott Creighton
UPDATE 2: In the original article I mention Jon Stewart's ambush of Rod Blagojevich in service to the banking interests. Ironically, fake "progressive" Jon Stewart did the exact same thing last night, attacking those who would dare not convict DSK in the press before the man has a chance to defend himself at trial. Perhaps Jon forgot to mention that his brother is a Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer, Americas Equities of the UBS Investment Bank, one of the very same institutions that would have suffered tremendously had DSK restructured Greece's debt. So Jon has a personal family interest in making sure DSK is tried in the court of public opinion and there is no denying that.
I have always said that Jon Stewart is a fraud, a fake "liberal", and a mouthpiece for the globalist banking cartel, this just goes to prove it even more.
UPDATE: Case in point, the "progressive" media outlet, AlterNet has 2 stories about DSK today… the first lumps DSK in with the Governator and Newt, and the second praises the victim and openly convicts the accused based on absolutely no evidence prior to his trial. So much for innocent until proven guilty when the CIA gets involved.
Schwarzenegger, DSK, and Gingrich: Do We Have Psychopaths Misruling Our World?
Accusing DSK of Sexual Assault Took Guts
-
Here's a little more information about the Struass-Kahn case. What do Strauss-Kahn's recent history with Ireland and Sarkozy's family ties to the CIA have to do with African chamber maids in New York? Inquiring minds want to know.
Apparently during the Irish crisis, Strauss-Kahn had put together a plan with Irish leaders to reduce their debt by a considerable amount by devaluing unguaranteed bonds, effectively making global banks pay for some of their own "stupidity". The Irish loved the plan, Tim Geithner did not. Mike Whitney over at Global Research explains it:
"In fact, he started mucking around in other stuff, too, like when he intervened on behalf of Irish taxpayers, trying to protect them at the expense of foreign bondholders. That's a big "No no" in banker's world. They keep a list of "people who count", and taxpayers are not on that list. Here's an excerpt from the Irish Times:
"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. (Irish finance minister) 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." ("Ireland's future depends on breaking free from bailout", Morgan Kelly, Irish Times)
So, Strauss-Kahn stuck up for Irish taxpayers over the banks, the bondholders, the ECB, and the US Treasury. Naturally, that made him persona non grata among the ruling throng.
And, there's more, too, because Strauss-Kahn's vision was not limited to currency alone, but involved broad structural changes to the IMF itself that would have reversed decades of neoliberal policies. DSK had settled on a new approach to policymaking; one that would abandon the worst elements of globalization and put greater emphasis on social cohesion, cooperation and multilateralism. Here's an excerpt from the speech titled "Human Development and Wealth Distribution" he gave in November 2010:
"….Adam Smithone of the founders of modern economicsrecognized clearly that a poor distribution of wealth could undermine the free market system, noting that: "The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful and…neglect persons of poor and mean condition…is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments."
This was over 250 years ago. In today's world, these problems are magnified under the lens of globalization….globalization also had a dark side. Lurking behind it was a large and growing chasm between rich and poorespecially within countries. An inequitable distribution of wealth can wear down the social fabric. More unequal countries have worse social indicators, a poorer human development record, and higher degrees of economic insecurity and anxiety. In too many countries, inequality increased and real wages stagnatedfailing to keep up with productivityover the past few decades. Ominously, inequality in the United States was back at its pre-Great Depression levels on the eve of the crisis….
An immediate task is to end the scourge of unemployment….Progressive taxation can also promote equity through redistribution, and this should be encouraged…."Inequality is corrosive" …."it rots societies from within…it illustrates and exacerbates the loss of social cohesion…the pathology of the age and the greatest threat to the health of any democracy." ("Human Development and Wealth Distribution", Dominique Strauss-Kahn, IMF)" Mike Whiney
The ruling one tenth of one percent have long since known that Strauss-Kahn had strayed off the reservation and with the impending resolution of the Greek crisis (that they created by design), they weren't about to see the fruits of their labor pissed away by a bleeding heart reformed globalist.
Remember, Strauss-Kahn is not a banker, he's an academic and a politician. And also remember that the head of the World Bank is appointed by the United States (remember the appointment of Paul Wolfowitz?) but not the head of the IMF so Strauss-Kahn was never a favorite choice of our elites in the first place.
Whitney brings up another interesting point and that is that Strauss-Kahn was clearly on record as trying to move the global reserve currency away from the dollar. His reasoning was that the dollar is too unstable and as most of us know, it's being propped up artificially by Tim Geithner and the Fed buying trillions of our own treasury bonds. We all know the implosion is coming, it's another housing bubble waiting to burst and with the elites keeping the dollar as the reserve currency, many nations will once again be imploded when they finally pull the plug. Perhaps Strauss-Kahn sees this coming and was acting to avoid a new global depression. Who knows.
But as Whitney points out, the future is never bright for those who dare question the dollar.
"So, Strauss-Kahn finds himself in the same crowd as Saddam Hussein and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, right? You may recall that Saddam switched from dollars to euros about a year before the war. 12 months later Iraq was invaded, Saddam was hanged, and the dollar was restored to power. Gaddafi made a similar mistake when "he initiated a movement to refuse the dollar and the euro, and called on Arab and African nations to use a new currency instead, the gold dinar." ("Libya: All About Oil, or All About Central Banking?" Ellen Brown, Op-Ed News) Libya has since come under attack by US and NATO forces which have armed a motley group of dissidents, malcontents and terrorists to depose Gaddafi and reimpose dollar hegemony.
And now it's Strauss-Kahn's turn to get torn to shreds. And for good reason. After all, DSK actually poses a much greater threat to the dollar than either Saddam or Gaddafi because he's in the perfect position to shape policy and to persuade foreign heads of state that replacing the dollar is in their best interests. And that is precisely what he was doing; badmouthing the buck. Only he was too dense to figure out that the dollar is the US Mafia's mealticket, the main way that shifty banksters and corporate scalawags extort tribute from the poorest people on earth. Strauss-Kahn was rocking the boat, and now he's going to pay." Mike Whitney
Strauss-Kahn is no angel, don't get me wrong. He took over the IMF in 2007 and since then he has been overseeing the end-game of the global elite's plans in many nations. They forced the end of subsidies on food in Egypt and Tunisia which devastated the populations and created what we now refer to as the Muslim Spring. But the plans were well underway long before DSK took over in 2007 and his attempt to rectify what was expected of Ireland and his recent statements about changing the way the IMF does business goes a long way to explain what he was probably going to do to help Greece at this very dangerous time for them.
Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, also of Global Research, brings up another interesting aspect to all of this: the CIA/French connection.
France is no longer the kind of country where we would have to rename side dishes to Freedom Fries. They are now a full-on partner in the Global Free Market Wars and as Sarkozy's actions taking the lead in the contrived regime change is Libya indicates, he himself is completely on board with no reservations.
"The presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy has, in many regards, become a de facto US "client regime", broadly supportive of US corporate interests in the EU and closely aligned with US foreign policy."
…"As documented by Thierry Meyssan, the CIA played a central undercover role in destabilizing the Gaullist party and supporting the election of Nicolas Sarkozy (See Operation Sarkozy: How the CIA placed one of its agents at the presidency of the French Republic, Reseau Voltaire, September 4, 2008)
A Strauss-Kahn presidency and a "Socialist" government would have been a serious setback for Washington, contributing to a major shift in Franco-American relations. It would also have contributed to weakening America's role on the European political chessboard. It would also have changed the balance of power between America and "Old Europe" (namely the Franco-German alliance). It would have had repercussions on the internal structure of the Atlantic Alliance and the hegemonic role of the US within NATO." Michel Chossudovsky
Sarkosy and the CIA have an interesting historical relationship.
"But there is more than meets the eye. Nicolas Sarkozy's step father Frank G. Wisner II, a prominent CIA official who married his step mother Christine de Ganay in 1977 served as Deputy Executive Secretary of State under the helm of Cyrus Vance Senior, father of District Attorney Cyrus Vance Junior.
Is it relevant?
The Vance and Wisner families had close personal ties. In turn Nicolas Sarkozy had close family ties with his step father Frank Wisner (and his half brothers and sisters in the US and one member of the Wisner family was involved in Sarkozy's election campaign).
It is also worth noting that Frank G. Wisner II was the son of one of America's most notorious spies, the late Frank Gardiner Wisner (1909- 1965), the mastermind behind the CIA sponsored coup which toppled the government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran in 1953. Wisner Jr. is also trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Trust.
While these various personal ties do not prove that Strauss-Kahn was the object of a set-up, the matter of Sarkozy's ties to the CIA via his step father, not to mention the ties of Frank G. Wisner II to the Cyrus Vance family are certainly worth investigating. Frank G, Wisner also played a key role as Obama's special intelligence envoy to Egypt at the height of the January 2011 protest movement. " Michel Chossudovsky
Here is yet another fine example of the "heroic" CIA spinning their special brand of "pro-democracy" magic through-out the world. Installing the step-son of one of their own into the presidency of France while undermining that tedious thing called "national self-determination"
This entire operation has all the hallmarks of a CIA op. The way the media immediately jumped on board the "demonize DSK" train, and I mean ALL of the media without exception, indicates to me that the old ways of Project Mockingbird are still very much alive and well in the United States today. Even "alternative" media outlets jumped on-board right out of the gate, no matter how odd the story seemed to be at the time.
The damage is done. Like the torpedoing of Rod Blagojevich after he announced he would end all state contracts with Bank of America if they didn't fix the situation with Republic Windows and Doors, one thing seems to be certain; you don't mess with the banks and their agenda or you will be cast out on your ass and everyone, everyone right, left, or "center", will tow the CIA line so that the same thing doesn't happen to them.
Strauss-Kahn is effectively gone. Bloomberg's friend gave him bail after he resigned from the IMF and is allowing him to remain under house arrest somewhere in New York city. And why not? Once he was out of power, there's no sense in crippling him even more. As a matter of fact, showing him some mercy at this point does these globalists some good. It shows future problematic individuals that they can still be shown mercy by the masters even after they fall, just so long as they wise up and play ball.
My guess is they will keep him from talking to reporters, the few that would write an honest article about what happened, and in time the charges will simply go away and the news cycle will simply state that the accuser was "mistaken" or something like that and Strauss-Kahn will be allowed to roam free like Blago trying to tell his story to a bunch of CIA owned media personalities like Jon Stewart who won't listen or will simply continue the lies regardless of the truth having come out (just like Jon Steward did with his ambush interview with Blago)
As long as the media is in on the fix, nothing is beyond these people. They will violate any law, any code of decent human behavior, in order to achieve their financial and global agenda.
The message of DSK ultimately is that any amount of compassion and decency toward fellow human beings will not be tolerated, no matter small, no matter how minor, by the elites who run this planet. The hope we can glean from this is that Strauss-Kahn did try and that just goes to prove that there are those even among the elites who are opposed to this global agenda and perhaps others who may have been sitting on the fence up until now have seen this public lynching and become more committed to ending this banking empire, to finally taking a side. If the lynching of DSK is a threat to others then remember that powerful people often react altogether differently to threats than most of us. You won't see it, you won't hear about it, but perhaps there is a growing dissent movement within the global halls of power that we just don't know anything about… yet. We will have to wait and see.

http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2011/05/...y-the-cia/