Dominique Strauss-Kahn gave an unpublished interview only two weeks before his arrest in which he suggested he could imagine a scenario in which he might be set up for rape, it emerged on Monday.
The International Monetary Fund chief in court on monday Photo: EPA
By Henry Samuel, Paris and Christopher Hope9:12PM BST 16 May 2011
1 Comment
Mr Strauss-Kahn remained in custody on Monday night facing charges of sexual assault on a New York hotel maid after he was dramatically arrested on a plane bound for Paris on Saturday.
While he has denied the charges, which include committing a criminal sexual act, attempted rape and unlawful imprisonment, conspiracy theories abounded in France yesterday following the publication of a curiously premonitory interview in Libération newspaper.
In the then off-the-record discussion on April 28, the International Monetary Fund chief said he could imagine a scenario where he was framed for a rape he did not commit.
The 62-year old was clearly worried about receiving "low blows" from allies of President Nicolas Sarkozy, whom a series of polls suggested prior to the scandal he would beat in next years' elections should he run.
He told reporters he only kept his encrypted IMF one for fear of being eavesdropped by the president's allies.
Related Articles
Dominique Strauss-Kahn 'acted like chimpanzee on heat', woman claims
16 May 2011
Mr Strauss-Kahn then said there were three obstacles to his election: "Money (he is vastly wealthy), women and my Judaism." Starting with the female question, the former Socialist finance minister said: "Yes, I love women, et alors?"
A recent book on the Socialist party quotes the former spokesman of Mr Sarkozy's UMP party as boasting about incriminating photographs of Mr Strauss-Kahn. But Mr Strauss-Kahn said: "For years people have talked about photos of giant orgies (involving me), but I have never seen anything come out...So why don't they show them?"
He went on to evoke an incident in which he met Mr Sarkozy in the men's room during a G20 summit in Pittsburgh in 2008 and reportedly warned the President to "tell your boys to stop (spreading rumours about my private life) or I'll go to court".
Then Mr Strauss-Kahn told the journalists that he could easily imagine "a woman (who I supposedly) raped in a car park and who had been promised 500,000 or a million euros to invent such a story."
His remark was not the only revelation fuelling conspiracy theories. Another was a Tweet from a French-Canadian political science student in Paris, which appeared on Twitter well before world media broke the story.
Jonathan Pinet, a youth activist in President Sarkozy's UMP party, wrote "a mate in the US just told me that DSK's been arrested in a hotel in NYC an hour ago". A second, three minutes later, read: "I got it from a friend of his who works at the hotel".
A blogger on Le Post, a news website, pointed out that the tweet was posted at 4.59pm New York Time, just 10 minutes after Mr Strauss-Kahn was seized on an Air France plane. Mr Pinet had said he had been arrested an hour previously in his hotel, raising questions on how he had obtained the information so fast.
Commentators and legal experts questioned why the French public had been so little informed of his past run-ins with women.
Le Monde journalist and author Christophe Deloire said he had been astonished at the lack of media coverage of his 2006 book Sexus Politicus, which contained a chapter on Mr Strauss-Kahn that went well beyond "mere salon seduction".
Jean Quatremer, a journalist at Libération newspaper, was the first French journalist to warn that Mr Strauss-Kahn's treatment of women risked causing his downfall in Washington. He was only allowed to publish the article on his blog.
On Monday, he told the Daily Telegraph the Strauss-Kahn affair could be a "turning point" in France's notoriously cagey coverage of its politician's private lives.
Critics in Britain said last night that recent slew of super-injunctions could have worked to protect Mr Strauss-Kahn, if he had taken one out.
John Hemming, the Liberal Democrat MP who has been campaigning against the use of super-injunctions, said: "Privacy law in England is now worse than in France and it has allowed serious offences to conceal what would historically have been revealed."
The current use of super-injunctions served to protect "rich people who committed offences" in the UK, he said.
When Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then director of the IMF, fled his Manhattan hotel room in a vain attempt to take an Air France plane to Europe, Roman Polanski style, he inexplicably left his cellphone in the room where he had alledley attempted to rape a hotel maid. The cellphone was of course loaded with a list of very interesting names and numbers, pored over by New York police and Federal US officials.
Why was Stauss-Kahn in New York ? He went there instead of flying direct from Washington to Berlin, first stop on a European tour and first meeting set with chancellor Merkel of Germany. To reassure Merkel that the next bailout of Greece would cost little to German finances, that the euro would stay strong and credible because the US dollar was now close to terminal meltdown - and was receiving special treatment from the IMF.
The special treatment was designed in ultra-secret conditions with the US Federal Reserve, led by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the foremost link in the Fed's debt and deficit recyling program, in place since 2005-2006. The program is described, in coded messages, by many Fed Bank of NY publications, vaunting its role in recycling gray and off-white capital flows from non-OECD countries. In premier place, these include the Arab oil exporter and small island tax haven countries, but the Fed's activities in propping the dollar and diluting US overseas debt are also linked with and rivalled by Russian, Chinese and Indian capital laundering banks and institutions.
THE DEBT CRISIS CRESCENDO
Strauss-Kahn had played a kingpin role is reassuring capital markets, debt-strapped governments and opinion formers by operating a global-size version of what started in the USA with the Paulson plan in the dying days of the G W Bush presidency, late 2008.
This was a losing quest, but Strauss-Kahn's failure was only known to insiders - and his enemies. The scope of the challenge resumes in a few figures.
After a declining trend in the 1990s, US national debt dramatically increased from US$ 5.7 trillion in January 2001 to $10.7 trillion at the end of 2008, and then $14.3 trillion through April of 2011 when the debt reached 98 percent of 2010 GDP of the USA.
The approximately US$ 3.6 trillion added to US national debt since the end of 2008 is more than double the market value of all private sector manufacturing in 2009 ($1.56 trillion), more than three times the market value of spending on professional, scientific, and technical services in 2009 ($1.07 trillion), and nearly five times the amount spent on non-durable goods in 2009 ($722 billion). Only taking interest paid on Federal debt in the first six months of the present financial year (October 2010-April 2011), nearly $245 billion, this is equal to more than 40 percent of the total market value of all private sector construction spending in 2009 ($578 billion).
Compared with the bugaboo of olden times - the price of oil - the world's biggest oil importer country faces a debt crisis that is out of control. The US ran an oil trade deficit in March 2011 estimated by the Commerce Dept. on the basis of gross oil imports - before re-exports of higher value refined products - of 333,831,058 barrels in March at a month-average barrel price of $ 93.67, giving a gross deficit before re-exports of $ 31.3 billion for the month. Taking only interest paid on US Fed debt as approximately $ 490 billion-per-year in 2011, almost certainly set to rise, this comfortably covers 1.5 times the total gross cost of all US oil imports at a record-high average price of $ 93.67 per barrel.
Taking the growth of debt since December 2008, about $ 3600 billion, this amount would cover almost exactly 10 years of gross total oil import costs for the US at current volumes and current record high oil prices. While recycling petrodollar capital surpluses is a key need for the US Fed, with the Fed Bank of NY in the lead role, and the siphoning of illegal capital exports from the world 20-leading tax haven small island states is also useful, total amounts cannot match the USA's runaway debt growth.
THE STRAUSS-KAHN PLAN
Right through his tenure as IMF chief, Strauss-Kahn not only trawled the comfort ladies, but also worked hard to ramrod the ultimate in shock treatment for the global economy: the selective demonetization of the US dollar, the world's prime reserve currency. The basic plan is simple: cancel and dishonor debts in US dollars through reducing or completely stopping dollar convertibility, for example by limiting the use and the holding of the US dollar to US citizens, only. Another version is to create and launch a new reserve currency, linked with the dollar, at a very favourable double conversion rate for the dollar: debts in dollars will be depreciated; holdings in dollars by US citizens and US-favoured corporations will be appreciated, when the new money is introduced. The inflation which comes with this will help mask the depreciation of debt and appreciation of holdings. Within six months, a fait accompli will be created, with no way back.
From December 2009, Strauss-Kahn went public with his new money initiatives, under the imprimatur of the IMF, with the Green Energy Fund proposal to fight climate change in low income countries with a fund built from the IMF's own printable money - SDRs - starting at the equivalent of $ 100 billion. Other versions of this plan by Strauss-Kahn and his personal team were advanced, at growing scales and declining credibility, through March-April 2010, but were each time shot down by capital surplus countries led by China and including the Arab petro states, Russia, India, Brazil and Argentina.
Each time, the Straus-Kahn target was to exchange US dollars for new money, and dissolve US debt in new and printable fiat paper money. recycling wealth from the few capital surplus countries to the OECD debtor countries, headed by the US but including all EU27 states and Japan.
From mid-year 2010 the European PIIGS crisis only got worse, as US debt also worsened, forcing Strauss-Kahn to shelve public airing of his pipedreams and concentrate on saving both the euro and the dollar. The role of recycling and siphoning capital surpluses from smaller players with big holdings, starting with the Arab petro states and small island tax haven states, became more important than ever, as remarks by Strauss-Kahn and variable geometry allies and friends like George Soros, at the 2011 Davos Forum suggested to observers able to cut through the counter-noise. Likewise the role of SDR allocations and plans for radically increasing the production or issuance of SDRs most surely placed Strauss-Kahn in private conflict with very big players, starting with the US and China.
The latest plan was almost ready for launch, 14 May. Federal officials invited Strauss-Kahn to New York, arranged the hotel and travel, and set the agenda for a final review before going public on Strauss-Kahn's last plan to roll US debt into European debt, in which the Federal Reserve, and all its State banks, as well as European central banks would disappear. We know what happened, next.
How did the chamber maid start to clean the room with the man inside?
How come he has appeared in the media without the maid appearing and who was she?
We have one sided publicity to create the image proving that the Americans are just really a developed military banana republic as you are proving guilty by media even before you are tried.
Why hasn't the IMF chief been tried for crimes against humanity for economic genocide by this organisation which has been involved in since its inception?
The close relationship with the Greek PM appears to be the issue here. They are both being dumped in order to prepare the next round of the Euro crisis which is unsolveable. More financial genocide measures are to be imposed on Greece, Portugal just signed off on its 'bailout' and Spain is to be added to the banksters bloodlust.
When Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then director of the IMF, fled his Manhattan hotel room in a vain attempt to take an Air France plane to Europe, Roman Polanski style, he inexplicably left his cellphone in the room where he had alledley attempted to rape a hotel maid. The cellphone was of course loaded with a list of very interesting names and numbers, pored over by New York police and Federal US officials.
Recently by Peter Schiff: The Institutional Gold Rush
Today the U.S. government officially borrowed beyond its $14.29 trillion statutory debt limit. And even though the Obama administration has assured us that accounting gimmickry will allow the government to borrow for another few months, the breach has given seeming urgency to Congressional negotiations to raise the debt ceiling. Republicans are making a great show of acting tough by linking their "yes" votes with promises for future budget cuts (that could even slow the rate of debt increases at some uncertain point in the future). But as we go through the process, many novice observers may wonder why we have a debt ceiling at all when our government has never shown the slightest inclination to respect its prior self-imposed limits.
The ceiling was first imposed in 1917 as part of a deal that passed the Liberty Bond Act that funded America's entry into the First World War. To make it easy for the Treasury to sell those bonds, Congress also amended the Federal Reserve Act to allow the Fed to hold government bonds as collateral. But given the potential for unchecked Federal deficits, Congress sought to limit taxpayer exposure to $11.5 billion.
The problem was that Congress never passed a law to prevent future Congresses from raising the ceiling. And even if it had, that law could have been rewritten by future legislation. Sure enough, when the Second World War rolled around the debt limit was raised frantically, leaving it at $300 billion by 1945. But believe it or not, after the War ended, the limit was actually reduced to $275 billion.
Despite the costs associated with the Korean War, the next increase did not come until 1954. And over the ensuing eight years, the ceiling was raised seven times and reduced twice, finally getting back to $300 billion in 1962. Since then, Congress has voted to raise the ceiling 74 times without a single reduction.
Practically speaking, a ceiling that is raised automatically is no ceiling at all. Given that, why not dispense with the pretense? The reason is politics. No Congressman wants to be on the record voting for unlimited debt, yet most are willing to rail against fiscal recklessness while raising the ceiling every time it's reached. Any Congressman who gives lip service to a balanced budget Amendment but votes to raise the debt ceiling is a hypocrite. No one needs constitutional help to hold the line on the debt right now!
But epic levels of Federal red ink and the approach of the 2012 elections have raised the stakes. Despite the newfound urgency, nearly all Democrats and a very large chunk of Republicans argue that failure to raise the ceiling will be tantamount to economic suicide. They argue that such a rash move will cause the U.S. to default on outstanding debt obligations, thereby sending interest rates sharply higher across the board. Higher interest rates they argue would cripple the economy and permanently increase debt service costs. As a result, they predict capping debt now will precipitate a far deeper economic contraction than what we have already seen in the last few years.
Few see the inherent absurdity in the notion that taking on more debt improves the economic health and creditworthiness of the United States. I would argue for the much simpler idea that more debt weakens a nation's financial position. More importantly, capping U.S. debt at current levels means bringing a future crisis into the present where it can be dealt with in practical terms. This is something that nobody in Washington actually wants.
If we do today what we have failed to do in the past, we very may well default on a portion of our debt. No doubt our creditors will suffer. But such near term pain will lead to a quicker and healthier recovery. Out of control Federal spending will have to be dealt with now. A downgraded credit rating will make it harder for the United States to continue borrowing, and as a result should be viewed as a blessing in disguise.
A reduction in debt levels is good economics. Remember, taxpayers will have to repay with interest anything the government borrows now. The more the government borrows, the larger it grows, and the larger it grows, the weaker the economy becomes. The less money the government borrows, the more that is available for the private sector to borrow to increase production and create jobs.
Failing to raise the debt ceiling will force Congress and the President to tell the truth to Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries who have been promised more than taxpayers can deliver. They will have to concede that so-called government "trust funds" are mere accounting gimmicks, and that benefits will need to be cut if the programs are to be solvent. They will have to tell the truth to our creditors that the U.S government has borrowed beyond the ability of its citizens to repay. And lastly, the stark reality will force the government to tell the truth to Federal employees whose salaries and benefits are unsupportable given our fiscal weakness.
But, on the other hand, if we raise the debt ceiling, we can postpone the crisis into an indefinite future. All of these tough choices could be avoided. Government pay and benefits will flow unabated, and our creditors will continue to get their interest payments now. But in the future, the value of principal repayments and government benefits and paychecks will lose purchasing power. That's because if we keep raising the ceiling indefinitely, we risk destroying our currency. But the long slow death of a currency and the ebbing of a nation's economic vitality doesn't make for huge headlines.
It is for that reason I am 100% confident that Congress will do the wrong thing and raise the debt ceiling for the 75th time in 50 years. In the end there will be some kind of phony compromise with each side claiming victory. But while the politicians celebrate another dodged bullet, the U.S. economy will continue to be shot full of holes.
May 18, 2011
Peter Schiff is president of Euro Pacific Capital and author of The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets and Crash Proof: How to Profit from the Coming Economic Collapse. His latest book is How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes.
The Strauss Kahn Frame-Up: The Amerikan Police State Strides Forward
by Paul Craig Roberts
Global Research, May 18, 2011
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. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1387625/IMF-chief-Dominique-St rauss-Kahn-feared-political-enemy-pay-woman-allege-rape.html
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.
Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Last edited by conspiracy analyst on Thu May 19, 2011 10:06 pm; edited 1 time in total
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 have had repercussions on the internal structure of the Atlantic Alliance and the 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.
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 1, 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 the 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 Geithner
DSK and Timothy Geithner
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.
It is impossible to understand the downfall of Dominique Strauss-Khan without linking it to his project for the creation of a new international reserve currency, which was to be launched on 26 May 2011 at the Deauville G-8 summit. The project was paradoxically anticipated as much by the Emerging States as by stateless capital, but rejected by the U.S.-Israeli military-industrial complex. Thierry Meyssan exposes the chicanery of the Obama administration to dodge its commitments.
28 May 2011
The French were dumb struck at the arrest in the United States of the most popular political leader of their country, Dominique Strauss Khan. Former Economy Minister, he had become the highest-paid public official in the world (base salary, excluding bonuses and expenses: 461 510 USD) and was, reportedly, about to enter the French presidential race. This affable VIP, reputed for his appetite at the table as well as in bed and often accused of being a political amateur because of the time he dedicated to satisfying his lust for life, has been charged with the precipitous sexual assault on a chamber maid in a Manhattan hotel.
For six days, the French remained glued to their television screens watching in a daze the judicial harassment against a man they considered to be a hopeful alternative to the catastrophic first five-year term of Nicolas Sarkozy. DSK’s fall marked the end of their illusions.
The spectacle of this shattered destiny is suggestive of ancient tragedy. The Roman saying: "Arx tarpeia Capitoli proxima" comes to mind: the Tarpeian Rock from which a convicted person was hurled to his death was close to the Capitol, the symbol of power and greatness.
Leaving aside any considerations of his innocence or guilt, the steamrolling of such a high-profile personality can only provoke anguish in the ordinary citizen. If someone like him is unable to defend himself, then how can we hope to succeed if we were to be accused like him?
The rise and the fall
Nevertheless, as a politicized people raised on Machiavellian lessons, without ever having read his works, it didn’t take the French long to start questioning the solidity of the charges brought against their compatriot DSK. According to the opinion polls, 57% didn’t buy the rutting-season story that the U.S. media have taken delight in dishing out. Some started imagining all kinds of manipulation scenarios, while others are asking "cui bono?" (who benefits?).
At that game, the first name that comes to mind is that of Nicolas Sarkozy. It is impossible not to think of him knowing that he became president by pressing charges against his chief rival, Dominique de Villepin, and entangling him in a forgery scandal just as convoluted as the current one. Therefore, why not another plot to move a new competitor out of the way?
Cartoon by Plantu published in Le Monde of 25 May 2011: "DSK and Villepin, two friends to which I am very attached."
Never mind if DSK and Sarkozy have needed each other to prepare the forthcoming international summits, or if they were both subservient to the United States. It is well known that the worst crimes are perpetrated against one’s own friends or even family.
As is happens, the French are unaware of DSK’s ties [1] or, for that matter, Sarkozy’s when they voted for him [2]. The media have never informed them that in the 1990’s, during his political wilderness, he was hired as professor at Stanford University by a certain... Condoleezza Rice. They also don’t know that he and his lieutenants Pierre Moscovici and Jean-Chrisophe Cambadélis were in charge of raising funds for the Socialist Party from the National Endowment for Democracy - a legal CIA front [3]. Nor did they follow his activities and various contracts with Atlanticist think-tanks, such as the German Marshall Fund of the United States [4] or the Bilderberg Group [5]. Finally, they are oblivious about his commitment to integrate France and Europe into a vast transatlantic market dominated by the United States.
Nor do the French know anything about DSK’s close links to Israel. Within the Socialist Party, he steers the Cercle Léon Blum, named after a former Jewish prime minister. The role of this discreet and powerful lobby is to eject from the political scene any individual who is likely to criticize the Zionist project. Thus, it can make heads roll, like that of political scientist Pascal Boniface who highlighted the electorally counter-productive implications of supporting Tel-Aviv in a country where 10% of the population is of Arabic culture. Yet, DSK is very open about it. Without beating around the bush, he asserted: "I deem that every diaspora Jew must support Israel. For that reason, it is important for Jews to take up political responsibilities. In short, in my functions and in my everyday life, in everything I do, I endeavor to make my modest contribution toward the construction of Israel." It’s rather disconcerting from someone who aspires to become president of France. But who cares? He’s so jovial!
However, Dominique Strauss-Khan and his loved ones were spared no humiliation: while kept incommunicado under protective police custody, the New York prosecutor’s office was distributing to the media copies of the detailed indictment.
It contains a clinical description of the alleged crimes: "The defendant engaged in oral sexual conduct and anal sexual conduct with another person by forcible compulsion; the defendant attempted to engage in sexual intercourse with another person by sexual compulsion; the defendant subjected another person to sexual contact by forcible compulsion; the defendant restrained another person; the defendant subjected another person to sexual contact without the latter’s consent; and in that the defendant intentionally, and for no legitimate purpose, forcibly touched the sexual and other intimate parts of another person for the purpose of degrading and abusing such person, and for the purpose of gratifying the defendant’s sexual desire.
The offenses were committed under the following circumstances:
Deponent states and deponent is informed by an individual known to the District Attorney’s office that defendant 1) shut the door to the above location and prevented informant from leaving the above location; 2) grabbed informant’s breasts without consent; 3) attempted to pull down defendant’s pantyhose and forcibly grabbed informant’s vaginal area; 4) forcibly made contact with his penis and informant’s mouth twice; and 5) was able to accomplish the above acts by using actual physical force."
All these juicy details were splashed all over the evening news for days on end before wide-eyed parents just back from work, and before horrified children who buried their noses in their bowl of soup.
The cultural shock
It is difficult to know who was more traumatized: the brilliant economist who was going to save humanity from the financial crisis and has been abruptly relegated to the ranks of an infamous criminal, or the French people who were looking forward to a respite by choosing him as their leader, and have been compelled once again meet head-on the violence of the United States.
In this regard, the French are trying to find excuses for the nature of the Anglo-Saxon judicial system to which they are just beginning to awaken. They had already seen such a parody of justice in their favorite television series, but they never imagined it could actually exist in reality. As for the extra-judicial system, Guantánamo and the secret prisons, they have always preferred not to know. Some commentators have speculated that the harsh treatment at the hands of the police and the first judge denotes a will to treat the powerful and the weak on an equal footing. Yet, surely, they must all be familiar with the works of illustrious sociologists explaining that in this unjust system money is king and that justice may be blindfolded, but is not class blind.
Furthermore, the French unflinchingly went along with the criticisms relayed by the Anglo-American press, laying all the blame on its French counterparts for having failed to investigate Mr. Strauss-Khan’s life of sexual depravity in the name of his right to privacy. And yet - the puritans comment further - a man who ostensibly seduces a women, squeezes or even jostles her is obviously a potential raper. "He that will steal a penny will steal a pound." On its cover, Time Magazine depicts DSK and his peers in the guise of a pig. However, no one has pointed out that the defendant was IMF Managing Director and a Washington D.C. resident for the past 3 years, but whose hidden vices the moralizing Anglo-American press has also failed to dig into.
The accusation against DSK having opened up suspicions, now everyone remembers - albeit somewhat late - that in 2002 DSK had tried to force himself on a beautiful French journalist, Tristane Banon. When she asked him for an interview, he gave her an appointment in a private apartment located in the Marais, a historic district of Paris. He received her in a huge loft, completely unfurnished except for a big bed. Since the beauty refused to submit to the libertine, he bashed her.
Could it be that, in New York, the gentleman was overwhelmed by his own violence and transformed into a criminal?
Nothing seems to point in that direction, all the more since DSK is not a frustrated bachelor. He is married to television star Anne Sinclair, a French top-notch journalist, who abandoned her profession to accompany her husband in his career. The French saw her again during Dominique Strauss-Khan’s court hearings, as beautiful and determined as ever despite the extra years. The grand-daughter of a major art merchant, she sits on a cushy family fortune. Without hesitation, she flew to Paris to pay the one-million dollar bail and provide the court with an additional 5 million in collateral. At that moment, this wealthy woman was prepared to sacrifice everything to rescue her husband from the crushing jaws of United States justice. She was all the more admirable for it; a wife who didn’t hold his escapades against him and who even liked to go with him to the Chandelle, a Paris swingers club.
DSK, the fall guy.
Any nation worthy of that name would not have endured to see a political figure, who was slated to become president and represent their country, walking handcuffed between two FBI officers, shoved in the back of a car like a thug, and paraded in court shaggy and unshaven. In any other country, people would probably have staged a rally in front of the U.S. Embassy chanting patriotic songs. But not in France. The "Americans" are far too admired. The French look up to them like a rabbit hypnotized by a cobra. And they have a hard time accepting that they are not the navel of the world, that if indeed there was a plot, it was not necessarily hatched on the banks of the Seine but on those of the Potomac.
The confinement
Is DSK guilty of rape or is he victim of a machination? One only has to think in order to answer the question.
The defendant allegedly spent the night with a call-girl, then raped the chambermaid at brunch time before calmly going to have lunch with his daughter, a student at Columbia University. Finally, he is supposed to have boarded his flight, booked several days in advance, bound for Berlin where he was to meet Chancellor Angela Merkel. Comfortably settled in his Air France business class seat, he was arrested ten minutes before takeoff.
According to the cabin crew, the officers of the Special Victims Unit (the same as in the NBC "Law and Order SVU" serial) didn’t delegate the questioning procedure to their airport counterparts, insisting on doing it themselves despite the risk of arriving too late. However, to prevent any warning from reaching DSK, they ordered the cell phone jamming of the zone until their arrival [6]. Now, this kind of jamming operation exceeds the scope of a vice squad. It could only have been ordered by national security services.
As soon as the suspect was placed under police custody, he was cut off from any external contact, with the exception of his lawyers, as prescribed by U.S. law. But when Judge Melissa Jackson moved him into protective custody, he was again cut off from the outside world. With no reason. It was explained that DSK’s detention was warranted for fear he might flee to France, with which Washington did not sign an extradition agreement and which has protected another sexual offender accused of rape, film director Roman Polanski. The decision to isolate him was therefore not taken with the aim of preventing him from influencing the witnesses. Nonetheless, the judge decided to lock him up at Rikers Island, one of the largest prisons in the world which houses 14 000 detainees, and one of the bleakest. A hell on earth. "For his protection", he was assigned to a single cell and kept incommunicado.
The IMF Managing Director was held in confinement for 10 days. During this period the functioning of the international institution was blocked in want of a signature. For 10 days the problems related to the euro and the dollar, Greece’s default, and many others crucial issues were put on standby at the mercy of the police, judges and prison guards.
According to U.S. jurisprudence, considering that he had no criminal record and is domiciled in Washington, DSK should not have been placed in protective custody but should, instead, have been released on bail. He obviously quickly assessed the situation and, through one of his lawyers, sent a letter of resignation to the IMF. On the very next day, against all expectation, a new judge acceded to his request and released him on bail, under house arrest and tight surveillance, pending trial. Indeed, it was no longer necessary to keep him locked up now that the IMF had recovered its freedom to act.
Christine Lagarde salutes all those who believed in Washington’s promises to Mr. Zhou.
French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde, who made a career in the United States defending the interests of the military-industrial complex [7], is sounded out to succeed the defendant at the helm of the IMF, despite Russia’s and China’s cries of outrage.
Incidentally, DSK’s second lawyer Benjamin Brafman didn’t visit him in prison and was not present at the second court hearing. The star of the New York Bar Association departed precipitously for Israel. Officially, it was to celebrate a religious feast with his family [8]. To claim his fees, Mr. Branfman didn’t simply limit himself to lighting candles on Lag BaOmer, he also must have negotiated to obtain assistance for his client.
The Zhou project
Why were Hollywood-like means deployed to block the IMF during 10 days? There are two possible answers, and they may be linked.
In the first place, on 29 March 2009, the governor of the People’s Bank of China, Zhou Xiaochuan, challenged the predominance of the dollar as reserve currency. Deploring that the objective of economist John Maynard Keynes to create an supranational currency (the Bancor) was not achieved at the end of World War 2, he suggested that the IMF Special Drawing Rights could be used to fulfill this function [9]
Mr. Zhaou Xiaochuan has not said his last word.
At the London G20 summit on 2 April 2009, yielding to pressure, the United States agreed to the tripling of IMF resources and to the issuance by that institution of Special Drawing Rights (SDR) for a value of 250 billion dollars. They also acquiesced to the principle of a Financial Stability Council associating the major emerging countries.
This idea was debated at the G8 summit at L’Aquila (Italy) on 8 July 2009. Pushing the pin further, Russia submitted that the new world currency should be minted rather than being virtual. Dmitry Medvedev, who had a few sample of coins minted, slapped them on the table. One side displays the faces of the eight Heads of State, whereas the flip side bears the motto "Unity in Diversity" [10].
The project was submitted to experts from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Their report, in which Professor Popov of the New Economic School of Moscow took part, was examined on 25 April 2010 by a joint IMF and World Bank meeting [11].
This project should have seen the light of day on 26 May 2011 at the G8 summit in Deauville (France). The dollar would thus have met its demise as the reserve currency against the backdrop of an imminent cessation of payments on the part of the U.S. Federal Government. As for Washington, it would have had to give up financing its super-powerful military apparatus through debt and to start concentrating on its domestic restructuring.
The Libyan dinar is the first (and last?) currency backed by gold and by IMF Special Drawing Rights. In 2000, Colonel Gaddafi had thought of creating a pan-African currency based on gold, but was unable to pursue his idea. Also, in 2009, he had spontaneously availed himself of the Zhou project and adopted it unilaterally for his country.
The spanner in the works
Unfortunately, in the final months of this process, military and political initiatives disrupted the plan. Countries such as Russia and China were double crossed. DSK’s arrest exposes Washington’s bad faith, and shows that its concessions were a only ploy to gain time.
Although the exact details of Dominique Strauss-Khan’s device for the creation of the new currency sustained by IMF Special Drawing Rights remain secret, it would appear that Libya had a key role to play. On an experimental level, the Libyan Central Bank was the first to base its currency, the dinar, on gold and later on SDRs. This aspect is especially important considering that Libya possesses one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world, exceeding even that of Russia.
By waging war against Libya, France and the United Kingdom generated a theoretical asset freeze targeting not only the Gaddafi family but also the Libyan state. Worse, Paris and London dispatched HSBC bank executives to Benghazi to set up a rebel Libyan central bank and attempt to grab the national assets [12]. Without knowing whether Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron got carried away by their own hubris or acted on instructions from their bosses in Washington, the fact remains that the fragile edifice developed by Dominique Strauss-Khan has collapsed.
According to our contacts in Tripoli, at the time of his arrest, DSK was headed for Berlin in order to work out a solution with Chancellor Angela Merkel. Afterwards, he and a German envoy were supposed leave to negotiate with Colonel Gaddafi’s representatives, and very possibly with Gaddafi himself considering that his signature was indispensable for unblocking the situation.
We are now witnessing a financial war on an unprecedented scale. While the economic situation of the United States is on the brink and the dollar could rapidly turn into monkey currency, the agreement concluded at the G8 and endorsed by the G20, implemented by the IMF in conjunction with the World Bank and the international banking circles, of which DSK was the architect, has been suspended. The hegemony of the dollar remains intact albeit more artificially than ever. The dollar which the emerging states wanted to resize but on which the U.S.-Israeli industrial-military complex rests its power.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 12:09 am Post subject:
Dominique Strauss-Kahn was trying to ruin US dollar
Tuesday, 24th May, 2011
By Dr Kihura Nkuba
FOR those unfamiliar with America’s war on Black people, America listening to the woes of a Black woman who has been sexually harassed shows a form of justice for all.
A woman from West Africa, assaulted by a famous white male, a future president of France, to be listened to by the New York Police, is amazing. But is it?
Dominique Strauss Kahn or DSK as he is known is a global sacrifice for the world’s poor and has been humiliated in a manner reserved for Black icons. His crime, he has been masterminding a global project for dumping the US dollar.
New York police has been rummaging through DSK’s diaries, hotel registries, phone records, yearbooks and have made sure that the “great seducer” always appears handcuffed and dressed in a “pervie” raincoat with three-days stubble before they parade him in front of the media. He gets this treatment even though he has no criminal record and nothing, but the sketchy accusations of a room service cleaner.
What is his real crime? Strauss-Kahn was mounting an attack against the dollar and had called for a new world reserve 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 will administer to 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.”
So, Strauss-Kahn finds himself in the same category as Saddam Hussein who switched from dollars to euros about a year before the war.
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.” We know what has happened to Libya. DSK actually posed a much greater threat to the dollar than either Saddam or Gaddafi because DSK was in a perfect position to shape policy and to persuade foreign heads of state that replacing the dollar is in their best interest. And that is precisely what he was doing; dumping the dollar.
For a man who was at the top of the financial institution that is part of the new world order of financial chaos, he should have figured out that the dollar is the US main way in which shifty banksters and corporate bigwigs extort tribute from the poorest people on earth. Strauss-Kahn was rocking the boat, and now he’s going to pay.
In Khan’s words: “The IMF’s Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, could help stabilise 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 US dollar.
His goal was 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 US policy.
DSK had settled on a new approach to policymaking; one that would abandon the worst elements of globalisation and put greater emphasis on social cohesion, cooperation and multilateralism.
Why hasn't the IMF chief been tried for crimes against humanity for economic genocide by this organisation which has been involved in since its inception?
Johann Hari: It's not just Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The IMF itself should be on trial
Imagine a prominent figure was charged, not with raping a hotel maid, but with starving her, and her family, to death
Friday, 3 June 2011
Sometimes, the most revealing aspect of the shrieking babble of the 24/7 news agenda is the silence. Often the most important facts are hiding beneath the noise, unmentioned and undiscussed.
So the fact that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is facing trial for allegedly raping a maid in a New York hotel room is – rightly – big news. But imagine a prominent figure was charged not with raping a maid, but starving her to death, along with her children, her parents, and thousands of other people. That is what the IMF has done to innocent people in the recent past. That is what it will do again, unless we transform it beyond all recognition. But that is left in the silence.
To understand this story, you have to reel back to the birth of the IMF. In 1944, the countries that were poised to win the Second World War gathered in a hotel in rural New Hampshire to divvy up the spoils. With a few honourable exceptions, like the great British economist John Maynard Keynes, the negotiators were determined to do one thing. They wanted to build a global financial system that ensured they received the lion's share of the planet's money and resources. They set up a series of institutions designed for that purpose – and so the IMF was delivered into the world.
The IMF’s official job sounds simple and attractive. It is supposedly there to ensure poor countries don’t fall into debt, and if they do, to lift them out with loans and economic expertise. It is presented as the poor world’s best friend and guardian. But beyond the rhetoric, the IMF was designed to be dominated by a handful of rich countries – and, more specifically, by their bankers and financial speculators. The IMF works in their interests, every step of the way.
Let’s look at how this plays out on the ground. In the 1990s, the small country of Malawi in south-eastern Africa was facing severe economic problems after enduring one of the worst HIV-AIDS epidemics in the world and surviving a horrific dictatorship. They had to ask the IMF for help. If the IMF has acted in its official role, it would have given loans and guided the country to develop in the same way that Britain and the US and every other successful country had developed – by protecting its infant industries, subsidising its farmers, and investing in the education and health of its people.
That’s what an institution that was concerned with ordinary people – and accountable to them – would look like. But the IMF did something very different. They said they would only give assistance if Malawi agreed to the ‘structural adjustments’ the IMF demanded. They ordered Malawi to sell off almost everything the state owned to private companies and speculators, and to slash spending on the population. They demanded they stop subsidising fertilizer, even though it was the only thing that made it possible for farmers – most of the population – to grow anything in the country’s feeble and depleted soil. They told them to prioritise giving money to international bankers over giving money to the Malawian people.
So when in 2001 the IMF found out the Malawian government had built up large stockpiles of grain in case there was a crop failure, they ordered them to sell it off to private companies at once. They told Malawi to get their priorities straight by using the proceeds to pay off a loan from a large bank the IMF had told them to take out in the first place, at a 56 per cent annual rate of interest. The Malawian president protested and said this was dangerous. But he had little choice. The grain was sold. The banks were paid.
The next year, the crops failed. The Malawian government had almost nothing to hand out. The starving population was reduced to eating the bark off the trees, and any rats they could capture. The BBC described it as Malawi’s “worst ever famine.” There had been a much worse crop failure in 1991-2, but there was no famine because then the government had grain stocks to distribute. So at least a thousand innocent people starved to death.
At the height of the starvation, the IMF suspended $47m in aid ... ... ...
A one a more a time ah:-
Link _________________ "We will lead every revolution against us!" - attrib: Theodor Herzl
"Timely Demise to All Oppressors - at their Convenience!" - 'Interesting Times', Terry Pratchett
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2011 8:37 pm Post subject:
conspiracy analyst wrote:
All so-called 'sex' charges dropped against DSK as announced on CNN. The circus is about to leave town.
The real charges of economic genocide are still outstanding...
New questions have been raised about the events in the New York hotel room where the former International Monetary Fund head and French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn was alleged to have sexually assaulted a hotel maid.
The case against Strauss-Kahn was eventually dramatically dropped by a Manhattan court, but the scandal forced him to resign his IMF post and destroyed his chances of becoming the leading leftwing candidate to challenge Nicolas Sarkozy for the French presidency.
An exhaustively researched article in the New York Review of Books, published by veteran American investigative journalist Edward Jay Epstein, has cast fresh doubt on exactly what happened in the Sofitel hotel room on 14 May between Strauss-Kahn and his accuser, Guinean-born maid Nafissatou Diallo.
In passages sure to delight Strauss-Kahn supporters and conspiracy theorists, Epstein's lengthy article studied hotel door key and phone records and traced links to Strauss-Kahn's potential political rivals, appearing to suggest the possibility that he had been set up.
Such allegations have been raised before, especially by some French media commentators. Some polls taken in France as the scandal dominated world headlines revealed sympathy for Strauss-Kahn. One showed that 57% of French people thought he had been the victim of a smear campaign. Diallo and her lawyers, however, have maintained that she was the victim of an unprovoked attack. She is now suing the French statesman in a civil court, which could result in a hefty damages award.
But Epstein's article does appear to raise some odd questions about the case. It points out numerous holes and discrepancies in the accounts of those who portrayed Strauss-Kahn as an attacker, identifies a missing BlackBerry which may contain warnings to the Frenchman that he was being set up, and examines possible links between Sofitel staff and Strauss-Kahn's political opponents.
The most unusual evidence described by Epstein is a security video of the hotel's engineer, Brian Yearwood, and an unidentified man apparently celebrating the day's events. Earlier, Yearwood had been communicating with John Sheehan, a security expert at Accor, which owns Sofitel, and whose boss, René-Georges Querry, once worked with a man now in intelligence for Sarkozy.
The unidentified man with Yearwood had been spotted previously on hotel security cameras accompanying Diallo to the hotel's security office after the alleged attack. The video shows the men near the area where Diallo is recounting her story and, less than two minutes after police have been called, they seem to congratulate each other. "The two men high-five each other, clap their hands, and do what looks like an extraordinary dance of celebration that lasts for three minutes. They are then shown standing by the service door … apparently waiting for the police to arrive," Epstein writes.
Epstein meticulously pieces together the movements of hotel staff and Strauss-Kahn by examining the electronic records left by their room keys and phones. These show Diallo entered the room between 12.06 and 12.07pm. At 12.13pm, Strauss-Kahn called his daughter about having lunch. During those six or seven minutes, Diallo said she was brutally sexually attacked and dragged around the room.
Strauss-Kahn has conceded that a sexual encounter took place but that it was consensual. By 12.28pm, he had left the hotel and by 12.54pm he had arrived at a restaurant to meet his daughter. Meanwhile, the records show that at 12.26pm Diallo entered a nearby room – number 2820 – which she had visited several times that morning before its guest had checked out. A few minutes later, she returned to Strauss-Kahn's vacated room and soon after reported an attack to her supervisor. Sofitel has refused to name the occupant of room 2820. During her account to investigators, Diallo did not reveal that she had visited 2820, so the room was not searched by police.
Another potentially odd fact turned up by the room-key records Epstein examined was that another hotel employee, room service worker Syed Haque, also entered Strauss-Kahn's hotel room just one minute before Diallo, apparently to pick up dishes. The keys only record entries, not exits, so it is not known when Haque left. Haque has refused to be interviewed by Strauss-Kahn's lawyers.
A final twist is provided by Strauss-Kahn's missing BlackBerry. Sources close to Strauss-Kahn have told Epstein that the Frenchman believed the device might be the subject of electronic surveillance. They claimed that a friend of Strauss-Kahn working as a researcher for Sarkozy's party in Paris had sent him a text that morning, warning him that at least one email possibly sent from that BlackBerry to Strauss-Kahn's wife had turned up at her party offices and been read by her colleagues.
They also claimed another friend in the French diplomatic corps had warned him that he might be embarrassed by a scandal. That morning, Epstein claims, Strauss-Kahn rang his wife and asked her to ask a friend to arrange for his BlackBerry and iPad to be seen by experts. However, the BlackBerry, with all its messages, went missing that day. It was about this phone that Strauss-Kahn rang the hotel from his taxi on the way to the airport, which allowed staff to tip police off about his whereabouts. He also asked his daughter to search for it at the restaurant where they had lunch. A security video shows her looking for it under tables. Records kept by BlackBerry show the device was disabled at 12.51pm, stopping it from sending out signals showing its location. The phone, which does not appear to have left the Sofitel, has never been found.
Sarkozy's ruling UMP party has dismissed allegations of a political plot. The secretary-general of the UMP, Jean-François Cope, said allegations of a political plot were a clumsy manipulation. "As long as these are just allegations based on anonymous testimony we know nothing about, you will understand that we remain extremely cautious and are not fooled," Cope said. "Let me say that it's a bit obvious as a manipulation."
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum You can attach files in this forum You can download files in this forum
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Chat
Usergroups
Calendar
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
, 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.