DSK as hubristic protagonist.

 
"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"  NY Post

--------------------------------

The NY Post goes on to say that they don't actually know as yet if "Ophelia" is HIV positive.  Now, that would have a splendid "twist" would it not?  This would be something out of Athenian drama.  This would be a plot in which spiritual pride and arrogance of place and position led to a great fall.  That description assumes, of course, that he did the deed(s).  That remains to be proven.  Will there be a chorus at the trial?  I don't quite know what finding his DNA in the suite will prove.  He stayed in the room over night.  His DNA will be all over the suite.  Even if they found his DNA on her person, that will not prove the sex was not consensual.  I presume that even in New York some actual proof must be offered to a jury.

"Le Figaro" has an interesting piece about this.  This French newspaper has discovered the victim and the more they look at her in the light of her reputation and the opinion of Sofitel management, the better she looks.

DSK is well and truly f----d. (Green Beret speak) or "sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you (more of the same).  He was set up?  How? By secret agents feeding him hallucinatory drugs that cause him to think he was king of the world?  pl

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/imf_accuser_in_apt_for_hiv_vics_oZmUkbtouJ14RHw1434HvJ

http://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/2011/05/17/01002-20110517ARTFIG00717-ophelia-la-victime-sans-visage.php

Comments

[linda]

her story has (apparently) been consistent throughout the many police questionings; i suspect we'll hear the same re her testimony before the grand jury currently underway (secret though it may be -- yeah right). her neighbors have described her as being very hardworking and quiet. she didn't have a freakin clue who he was until reading news reports.

a single mother; an african immigrant working as a maid in a premiere hotel in a climate where jobs are very difficult to attain. i really don't think such a woman would jeopardize that for a quickie with some departing guest. and it enrages me that 'consensual' is being floated as a possible defense.

[Medicine Man]

If he was set up, he participated in his own ensnarement to some extent. Almost poetic.

But I agree—wait for the DA to present evidence before passing judgment.

[William R. Cumming]

Time Magazine reporting victim does NOT test positive for HIV!

[confusedponderer]

I was inclined to be conspirational on this one, but indeed, it appears it was indeed nobody but DSK himself who contributed to his downfall. Good riddance then.

[rjj]

Who named her Ophelia and when? She has fallen into the same world game worm-close (Albonics for snake pit) as her namesake.

That IS tragic.

How sensitive are West African Muslims to their family honor?

[Green Zone Cafe]

The Daily News published a denial by her lawyer that she was HIV positive. There will be a coordinated effort to smear her. DSK is fighting for his life.

He is an extreme flight risk and should be kept in custody, with the possible alternative of bail set so high as to impoverish him and his wife if he flees. That would give her a tough choice - risk the family fortune on him?

To hell with France - I like the lesson in egalite and the rule of law in favor of a hard-working Muslim woman wearing a headscarf more.

With regard to Athenian drama - there was also another kind of play which might be appropriate:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyr_play

[Matthew]

Col: After the conspiracy theories started dropping out, I immediately thought of Occam's Razor: the simplest explanation is probably correct. He is a serial philanderer who has been called "boorish" even in France. It's not like Billy Graham is being accused, is it?

[J]

Colonel,

There are rumblings about that this whole DSK affair has to do with the crumbling Euro/Euro Monetary Union. DSK is well known as a 'power house' in Europe who has also been knee-deep in finalizing Greece's bailout. A 'heap' of Euro bankers/power brokers who want to see DSK go down in flames (and be permanently eliminated from the 'major' power broker scene), and are rumbled to be involved in the DSK 'conspiracy' that is unfolding before our eyes.

A lot of powerful Euro types want to see DSK 'sink' and sink in a 'big way'.

[VietnamVet]

Colonel,

It is the Oligarchs and Greek Gods who have tragedies.

The hoi polloi have pay freezes, unemployment lines or they enlist.

[William R. Cumming]

Always remember that the FEDERAL RESERVE shipped overseas several trillion dollars to rescue the EU banks. Totals not yet fully disclosed and analyzed. Much of the IMF operation is designed to rescue USA banks that have made risky investments in EU banks and therefore the chicken is the egg when it comes to the FED and IMF. The Bretton Woods Conferences in 1944 were designing a system for development funding (the World Bank) and a currency stability and monetary stability operation (the IMF) and if the IMF standards for the third world were ever fully applied and not subjected to back door influence by the USA and the EU those two bastions of international finance would long ago have been revealed as what they are--banking systems that reward certain nations and individuals that run them. It is again the case of who regulates the regulators?

[Stephanie]

Well, part of the reason we and Le Figaro know that the alleged victim is such a awesome person is that her attorney, Mr. Shapiro, is all over the airwaves telling us so. Personal injury lawyers tend not to be shrinking violets, of course.

(Not that such considerations of the lady’s character should make a difference. Attempted rape is attempted rape even if the victim turns out to be a lousy mother with a chlamydia infection who cleans the hotel bathrooms poorly and a misbehaving Muslim hussy who doesn’t bother keeping her head covered.)

DSK’s attorneys have submitted a waiver of extradition. Even without that there are a number of ways he can be monitored without imprisonment and it would be reasonable for the judge to look at those.

The simplest explanation probably is the right one in this case and I’m repelled by the arguments offered by some of DSK’s defenders, but I’m reserving judgment until we know more. And of course we may never know everything.

[michael brenner]

By a serendipitous route originating in Paris, I have been made privy to a draft of the strategy to be followed by the defense team for Dominique Strauss-Kahn. I admit that my original reaction was to hawk it to the National Enquirer. In the end, my principled conviction that news of such public interest should not be the object of commercial trafficking prevailed.. In addition, I had doubts that it would pass the strict tests set by the Enquirer's meticulous standards of fact checking - especially since relevant photographs have been withheld.

Here is the essence of what the defense attorneys plan. The strategy is designed to unfold in three phases as circumstances dictate.

Defensive Position I. Irresistible Impulse. The plaintiff was sexually so aroused by the sudden appearance of this virile fat old man stepping from the shower that she dropped her Ajax container and threw herself madly on him; in effect she raped him. The defense will assert that similar behavior has been provoked by DSK from nearly 1,000 other women. Several hundred are prepared to testify to this effect.

Defensive Position II. Deal-making. The plaintiff engaged in consensual sex with DSK once he responded positively to her proposal. She offered to exchange sex for 'terms of conditionality' on a loan to her mother country of Guinea that would impoverish only half of the population.

Defensive Position III. Trauma. The defendant was in an emotional state of extreme stress that disabled his ability to control his behavior and to know right from wrong. The cause was a trauma that occured behind the scene of fundraising rally for victims of the Japanese earthquake. DSK was sexually molested there by another celebrity - Lady Gaga. Her deposition is awaiting a break in her very active schedule.

There it is.

MORE SERIOUSLY

I find it unconscionable -
other, shorter words come to mind - that the press and so-called commentators are playing along with DSK's defense attorneys by playing up aspersions cast at this poor woman. How dare the august New York Times headline a front-page story that "Glare Now Placed on Women In Sex Cases." Whose glare? their circulation managers?
How dare they sub-headline "Defense To Claim Consensual Sex?" The same line used by every rapist since Jack the Ripper.

The New Yotk Times has gotten into the unfortunate habit of doctoring its headlines and coverage on a host of issues. Palestine being the most egregious - but there are many, many others.

[Walrus]

The important thing is that he has resigned as head of the IMF. The next question is who will replace him and what policy changes might the IMF make?

What happens to DSK now is immaterial. Conspiracy theories are unlikely, but I don't think they can be entirely ruled out until the evidence is presented and tested.

[Fred]

MB,

Unfortunately the NYT and the rest of the press haven't spent much time actually talking to working people lately, other than perhaps the waiter, bartender and clerk at the checkout counter. Not that that is much of a conversation?

[Matthew]

Michael: So DSK's defense is essentially an letter to the Penthouse Forum?

[robt willmann]

Here is a theory about how Dominique Strauss-Kahn could have been set up--

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2011/05/case-for-imf-chief-dominique-strauss.html

I do not promote it or reject it, but would elaborate a little.

The theory is based on the concept of perception management (which also has caused great harm to this country since September 2001).

DSK is said to employ expensive "ladies of the evening" from time to time, including from Kristen Davis, who claimed to have provided such women to former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. Warning: racy clothing worn by the "former" madam--

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1388447/Dominique-Strauss-Kahn-quits-IMF-chief-Kristin-Davis-claims-paid-2-500-escort-girls.html

Hotels make a special effort to cater to VIP guests. This may have been the situation with DSK as well, indicating that the hotel staff was advised of his presence and had seen his picture--

http://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/2011/05/17/01002-20110517ARTFIG00697-sofitel-new-york-etrange-scene-de-crime.php

Knowing this, the operators of the setup either had someone call DSK and tell him he was going to receive a female "gift" at his room before he left, or by eavesdropping, they learned he had arranged for a prostitute to stop by before he left. Then, the operators arrange for the maid to go up to his room to clean it at the appointed time.

DSK takes a shower to get revved up for his anticipated encounter, the maid enters the room, and he exits the bathroom buck naked and sees a woman he thinks is there to provide him pleasure by prior arrangement. Since he likes "rough stuff", he gets it on in that fashion right away. The maid, thinking she is there to clean the room, is shocked and reacts accordingly, but DSK thinks she is a good actress playing her assigned role, especially at a price of $1,000 an hour or more. She finally gets away, perhaps after appeasing him with some sort of sexual contact to facilitate an escape, and runs out of the room. DSK then realizes that she might not have been acting, since an authentic high-priced hooker would calmly gather her things after the job was done and leave. So he hurriedly grabs only part of his belongings and takes off.

There are tricky timing issues with such an operation, and the maid's initial reaction in the room would be unpredictable, as she might run off before he could grab her. In addition, DSK apparently claims that he had lunch with his daughter that day, possibly establishing an alibi.

But if the theory is correct, Strauss-Kahn thought he was doing consensual acts with an "escort"; the maid thought she was being raped. And what is he going to say? Is the jury going to believe that he arranged for a prostitute or one was to be provided to him and he thought the maid was her? Or that the maid, a Muslim woman, was suddenly so smitten by him that she decided to engage in consensual sex?

Pretty slick.

Mission accomplished.

[Phil Cattar]

I think it is quite possible DSK made his mistake because she was from "French" west africa .He is from there also.Because he considered her somewhat culturally French and perhaps talked to her in French he may have felt much more comfortable in approaching her in the way he supposedly did.Just a wild guess.

[highlander]

God Almighty! What a clusterfuck!

DSK could be innocent as the driven snow, but I seriously doubt it. In my misspent youth, I set up a few honey traps. But I sure a hell, didn't use an early middle age african woman, with aids and a 15 year old child as bait. What a pathetic old bastard DSK is, in all probability.

And he is, what the western elites have chosen to head up the world monetary system during its greatest crisis in 100 years.

With this kind of leaders, we can all bend over, and kiss our butts goodbye! Its probably closer to the unpleasant truth, than most of you want to admit.

[Stephanie]

I think that any scenario that involves DSK leaving the hotel in a panic owing to guilty knowledge doesn't work with what we currently know, because it makes little sense for a man in flight to call the hotel to ask them to find his cell phone, tell them his whereabouts, and call them again to ask them to please hurry because his plane is about to take off. (This reportedly happened.)

Of course if he wasn't in a panic, it may be because he assumed that the maid wouldn't dare tell.

The timeline is also interesting. A lot seems to have happened in that room very quickly.

[Michael Brenner]

It is noteworthy that an earlier electronic edition of the NYT yesterday had a headline with somewhat different wording, something like 'Women In Sex Scandal Under Scrutiny." 'Scrutiny' definitely was there. How damning - for the editors of the Times.

I have been following the French coverage and the mainstream press reporting has generally played it straight. They have, though, been giving considerable space to DSK's "character witnesses." The French so-called 'left' has disgraced itself utterly. All the celebrities from every profession have come foreward to disparage the very idea that that good, wise, honorable DSK (who always traded favor for favor)could ever have done anything as 'common' as rape a chambermaid. (He raped a reporter in 2002 in his office who was coerced into shutting up and then could find no publisher for her retrospective book. Another interviewer ran from his office where she was groped declaring that DSK was like a 'chimpanzee in rut").

Most disheartening is that none of the Socialist women leaders have said a word at all critical of DSK or expressed a word of concern about the chambermaid. That includes two putative candidates for the Presidency (Royal and Aubry)and prominent former minister Guigou. The last has not shut her mouth for four days, declaring to every TV show she can inveigle her way onto that in her judgment DSK was innocent and that the charge itself was 'borderline.' The one women politician who has spoken up is Marine Le Pen, now head of the National Front. When the FN comes in 2nd, or 1st, in the first round next year, all these political geniuses will be back in front of the cameras with instant diagnoses of how things went wrong.

French party politics today is a contest between two clans of elites clutching for the perqs of high office. One of them finds it necessary to throw a few crumbs (mostly rhetorical) to the hoi poloi. Sound familiar?

[William R. Cumming]

Again DSK apparently made bail and the rest soon will be history.

[confusedponderer]

robt willmann,
that's a devious scenario.

[arbogast]

More importantly, I like the mask. Excellent. Where did you find it?

If anyone ever has a chance, the Roman theater in Orange, France is one of the most impressive things you will ever see.

[clifford kiracofe]

A French Berlusconi wannabee or just a common sex offender type? Appears Strauss has a record and pattern of attempted rape and etc. Perhaps SST readers with forensic psychiatric background could shed light.

1. "Interviews and documents paint a picture of the fund as an institution whose sexual norms and customs are markedly different from those of Washington, leaving its female employees vulnerable to harassment. The laws of the United States do not apply inside its walls, and until earlier this month the I.M.F.’s own rules contained an unusual provision that some experts and former officials say has encouraged managers to pursue the women who work for them: “Intimate personal relationships between supervisors and subordinates do not, in themselves, constitute harassment.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/business/20fund.html

2. "A French writer who claims Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexually assaulted her nine years ago is to file an official complaint, her lawyer has announced.

Tristane Banon previously described the attack, which happened when she was in her early 20s, in a television programme in 2007, when she called Strauss-Kahn, whose name was bleeped out, a "rutting chimpanzee."

She says she consulted a lawyer at the time, but was persuaded not to take action by her mother, a regional councillor in the Socialist party and friend of the Strauss-Kahn family. Banon is goddaughter to Strauss-Kahn's second wife."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/16/dominique-strauss-khan-tristane-banon

[confusedponderer]

robt willmann,
that said, that scenario depends on DSK being into this sort of role play with chamber maids.