As much as I dislike the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the story of the arrest of the IMF makes no sense.
The “facts” presented so far are…
Dominique Strauss-Kahn has been a leader of the Socialist Party in France, and seen as a future rival of France’s Sarkosy. He had been staying at a French Hotel near Times Square.
The maid let herself into his $3000 a night room at 1 PM, not knowing that he was naked in the bathroom. Check out time is Noon, but the hotel offers guaranteed late checkout as late as 4 PM.
He reportedly forced her onto the bed and made her perform a Monica Lewinsky on him. She left the room and talked to her supervisor, who called police. He left his cell phone and belongings in the room, and was arrested in the first class section of a plane shortly after 4PM.
[He’s living pretty good for a socialist – I guess he’s more equal than others].
So what safeguards do 5 star hotels to have to prevent incidents like this? I’ve never stayed in one, so I’ll have to guess 🙂
Doors normally have a keychain that would stop the door from opening even if the maid uses the lock. Every time I’ve been in a hotel/motel in the late morning, the maids knock on the door before they open it, and go away if you yell at them. If the maid enters the room and the lights are on, there is luggage in the room, the TV is on, etc… she’ll be very careful to announce herself and make sure nobody is in the room/suite. Most places these days have communications in place connecting the front desk to the cleaning staff. They would have known that it was past normal checkout time and he hadn’t checked out. Had he walked out of the bathroom naked, I’m thinking she had several options available to her to avoid being assaulted.
Being the cynic I am, my guess is he confused the “Prostitute wearing a french maid costume that comes included with the room”, with the actual French Maid.
His subsequent behavior suggests guilt – or that he was tricked into compromising his position by a ruse.
France is “Upset” over this arrest.
I sure hope they don’t pressure the IMF to “freeze” all assets of the United States until he is released. Of course, it’s the United States that lends money to the IMF, so that might work out all right 🙂
Until today, I didn’t know that the head of the IMF was a stooge from France. That might explain how cooperative the IMF was in “freezing” the assets of a sovereign nation convicted of no crime.
In the interim, the deputy is taking over. He’s an American named John Lipsky with a long resume in banking (not politics). This might work out very well, indeed.
Reports this morning describe the maid as an African Immigrant.
The reports do not say she is black or a citizen or a descendant of slaves, yet some of the folks in the media are already calling her “African Amercan”
Wouldn’t it be a hoot if she is Libyan?
I’ll go one better — what if she is Afrikaner?
The whole story gets more “interesting” with each hour that passes. A French lawyer is now adding her own sexual assault claims against Strauss-Kahn:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/16/dominique-strauss-kahn-tristane-banon
Was Strauss-Kahn set up? Who stands to gain (or not lose) by this widening scandal?
I’m sure that our bobble-head Ken & Barbie types in the mainstream media will get to the bottom of this story… /not.
error correction: the new claim of assault comes from a French writer (not lawyer) named Tristane Banon. The alleged rape attempt took place in 2007.
New details… She lives in the Bronx with her “husband” (first reports said she is a single mom). She is 32 and their child is 16, which suggests she was probably 15 when she got pregnant. She has been in the country for 3 years (early reports), so don’t apply Western standards to her.
A French Hotel catering to rich French tourists would likely prefer to hire maids fluent in French – that would suggest Tunisua or Ivory Coast… Or possibly she is an “African” from the Carribean – perhaps Haiti or the Dominican Republic.
NY Post quotes her brother saying she is a West African Immigrant…
Further details – she’s a devout follower of the religion of peace, and is apparently from Guinea. The official language of Guinea is French (Tada!) and the country is 85% Muslim.
The female literacy rate of Guinea is 18%. The average number of children per woman is a bit over 5. It has one of the lowest life expectency rates in the world, and is a hotbed of HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases.
Strauss-Kahn has been denied $1 million bail and remanded to Riker’s Island for holding.
(this might sting a little…we will see if he survives the holding cell until his trial.)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/dominique-strauss-kahn/8517759/Dominique-Strauss-Kahn-arrest-IMF-head-taken-to-Rikers-Island-jail.html
It just keeps getting deeper… NY Times reporting that Sarkozy political insiders were the first to tweet about the incident:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/world/europe/17france.html?_r=1&hp
Meanwhile “emerging market” nations are pushing to have the new head of the IMF hail from outside Europe. China or Russia perhaps?
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c3b52610-7fe4-11e0-b018-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1MYzUr39v
None of these events are at all related to anything else that is going on in the world at present and are mere coincidences. Right?
It is becoming increasingly evident that the BRIC nations want to run the IMF.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/18/us-strausskahn-succession-idUSTRE74H00120110518
Conveniently for them, the head of the IMF seems to have fallen into a bit of a scandal. Imagine that!
Quote from article:
“A long-standing agreement between the United States and Europe has ensured that a European has always headed the IMF and an American its sister organization, the World Bank.”
I wonder if China possibly has some leverage over a certain debtor nation that might cause them to forget the above agreement and endorse a non-European for the post.