Sarkozy vs. Strauss-Kahn: Sex as a Weapon?

Nicolas Sarkozy and Dominique Stauss-Kahn were never friends - one conservative, the other Socialist, their political ambitions setting them on a collision course. Yet, soon after Sarkozy's 2007 election as President of France, he surprised most people by nominating Strauss-Kahn to be Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, a heartening reach across party lines. Others, however, saw a more devious motive: Sarkozy was moving his most potent challenger to the IMF's Washington, D.C. headquarters and depriving the freshly defeated Socialist Party of his charisma and leadership. The last four years, according to political observers in France, have been full of similar subtle and not-so-subtle maneuvers as both men prepared for what had been prophesied as a fierce battle for the French Presidency in 2012.

Sarkozy has taken the requisite "innocent until proven guilty" position about Strauss-Kahn and his catastrophic legal situation in the U.S. But few observers believe the French President is grieving. Sarkozy knew he had been lucky back in 2007 not to have faced the popular Strauss-Kahn at the polls (instead, the Socialists fielded the attractive but disorganized SÉgolÈne Royal.) During a 2006 lunch discussion, a Sarkozy adviser told TIME how relieved he and his boss were that Strauss-Kahn was not running. "Of course," said the adviser with a smile, "if he did run, he'd probably ruin his own chances by getting caught in some woman's bed." (See pictures of Sarkozy in the U.S.)

Indeed, certain analysts argue that the French President may have been betting on rather cynical odds: that by sending a notorious libertine to the puritanical Mecca of America in the first place - and to the political correct strictures of the rigid IMF in particular - Sarkozy was simply giving Strauss-Kahn enough rope to hang himself with...In 2008, Strauss-Kahn was forced to admit he'd engaged in a sexual affair with Hungarian economist Piroska Nagy - who was his subordinate at the IMF...Sarkozy allies decided to escalate the sex war, voicing overt warnings in the press that they'd go public with proof of Strauss-Kahn's lamentable private behavior if he chose to run for president - referring to long-rumored incriminating photos of Strauss-Kahn caught in flagrante delicto...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20110519/wl_time/08599207248100

Guess I can go to France and bang every chick I feel like, then? Is that what the sophisticated set does?

but I don't know. It's not something that I, as a woman at my age, would have any reason to think about.

But I have lived in France, and the attitude toward sex is different than it is here although I think that Americans are publicly prudish and privately not so much. I think we Americans think it is fun to be prudish. Europeans I have known, other than some British, think it is silly to be prudish.

to think that rape is wrong or that having sex with a 13 year old girl is wrong, then I guess we are prudish.

Otherwise, most Americans I know personally have no problem with sex between two consenting adults.

"Libertine" does not equal "rapist" - except to someone with serious issues with interpersonal relationships.

Rape is very wrong.

Condemning those things is not prudery. But, we tend to be far more critical of people who have extramarital affairs. And we don't accept public nudity at our beaches and elsewhere as readily as many do in Europe. I'm very American with regard to my attitudes about sex, but I lived in Europe and had to adapt and accept the fact that not everyone in the world agrees with me. I virtually had to keep my head down and my eyes pointed straight ahead when I took my children to our local swimming pool. But I was the exception. No one around me seemed embarrassed at all.

Wear a disguise.

I guess that's why they left, to avoid all the raping back in europe.

Honestly, if French elites were held accountable for their actions, DSK would have been banished from public life long ago.

Cheney, Dubya, Rummy, Condi and the whole foul gang would be doing hard time.

Murdering bastards (it's spelled the same)

I don't understand any rapist, but if the charges are indeed true, what was a man of his position thinking? Did he expect the victim to suddenly enjoy what he did? Did he think that he was so powerful that she would never go to the authorities? It boggles my mind.

But I'm not entirely closed to the idea there's more to this than meets the eye at the moment.

Go read Machiavelli, I guarantee Sarkozy has.

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set up, it was all dependent upon DSK RAPING.

That's his fault, and his fault alone.

There was nothing of defense.

I'm fairly certain you didn't.

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And that at some point Strauss-Kahn would encounter a maid during one of those hotel stays. And knowing that this guy was Le Great Seducer, that he would probably do something like chase the maid down a hallway, grab her, and forcibly jam his penis into her mouth, and end up getting arrested, completely neutralizing him as a political threat to Sarkozy.

Oh that devious Sarkozy. His plan worked to perfection.

that sarkozy's team has been involved in a "dirty tricks" campaign v. dsk for years.

The Sunday Times December 6, 2009

The head of the International Monetary Fund has threatened Nicolas Sarkozy with legal action over a dirty tricks campaign that, he claims, the French leader’s lieutenants have mounted to discredit him as a potential rival in the next presidential election. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a French Socialist politician who heads the IMF in Washington, took Sarkozy to task over the spread of rumours about his alleged extramarital exploits when they met during a G20 summit in Pittsburgh on September 25.

According to one account, an indignant Strauss-Kahn erupted in fury at Sarkozy when he bumped into him in the lavatory. He told the French leader that he was fed up with gossip about his private life and talk of photographs of him with women that the Elysée Palace supposedly could use to smear him in an election campaign. “I know that all of it comes from the Elysée,” he told a dumbfounded Sarkozy, according to Le Point magazine. “Tell your boys to stop it or I’ll go to court.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6945960.ece


just like it's common knowledge that sarkozy's half-brother is a bigshot at the carlyle group and his mother (the brother's) married into a bigshot cia family (frank wisner jr).

who also happened to be the vice-chairman of AIG & a bigshot at Enron.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frank_Wisner

frank wisner sr. was the head of oss & head of the cia's covert ops section. in this capacity he was responsible for operation mockingbird, the cia's program of media infiltration & cooption. then he became head of the cia's directorate of plans, where he managed the overthrow of mossadegh in iran & arbenez in guatemala.

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


frank wisner jr:

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

- obama's envoy to egypt in the recent egyptian uprising
- enron board member beginning 1997 (he reportedly was helping enron get business prior to this in his role as ambassador to the philippines and india as well)
- vice-chairman AIG until 2009 (AIG has historic ties to OSS/CIA)
- intelligence/state department
- rockefeller brothers foundation trustee

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frank_Wisner
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5437617


carlyle group was ranked "in 2007 as the largest private equity firm in the world...the firm moved down to second largest as of May 2010."

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

cia connections:

Frank Carlucci, chairman of the Carlyle Group from 1992–2003, and chairman emeritus until 2005.

Carlucci...graduated from...Princeton University in 1952, where he roomed with Donald Rumsfeld, and attended Harvard Business School for an MBA in 1954-55. He was a Naval officer from 1952-54. He joined the Foreign Service, working for the State Department from 1956 until 1969. In 1961 he participated in a CIA mission to Congo, in which he helped to rescue US citizens from mobs.

Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of independent Congo, was assassinated in January 1961 during The Congo Crisis. During that time, Carlucci was the second secretary at the US embassy in the Congo and, covertly, a CIA agent. His participation in Lumumba's assassination is implied with the release of US government documents revealing that President Dwight Eisenhower ordered the CIA to murder Lumumba. Minutes of an August 1960 National Security Council meeting confirm that Eisenhower told CIA chief Allen Dulles to "eliminate" the Congolese leader. The official note taker, Robert H. Johnson, testified to this before the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1975.<3><4>

Carlucci = Deputy Director of the CIA 1978-81, Dep. secretary of defense 1981-83, assist to the president for national security affairs 1986-87, secretary of defense 1987-89.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_C._Carlucci

You certainly seem invested in throwing as much doubt on the victim as possible.

I don't necessarily buy it but the idea of a sting is to put someone in a situation where you have reason to believe they will act badly, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

I think people who are discounting the very possibility of any sort of added dimensions to this case are being a bit naive.

Sarkozy was actually executing a "sting operation" on the poor guy? Simply because Sarkozy knew that at some point DSK would encounter a woman and behave like a "chimpanzee in heat"?

Unless maybe he DID know, but then, we don't know anything about this case yet, so everyone is speculating. The Europeans, who know Sarkozy and his far right thugs better than anyone, would not be surprised if Sarkozy did 'know' who is political opponent might meet. Some interesting things are developing around this case. People might want to wait before glorifying Bush pal, Sarkozy.

on DSK and had spies in position at the NY Sofitel hotel. To say the least.

Who is the employee who was in the suite when the housekeeper entered, and told her the suite was unoccupied?

That's how they were the first to tweet the news (although they'd expected him to be arrested at the hotel).

Good question btw. The two rightwing bloggers have been defending themselves, not very convincingly. They can't quite explain how Pinet had the news about the arrest less than 19 minutes after it happened. Two French bloggers of little importance, get that huge story even before Rupert Murdoch's Rag the NY Post.

When questioned, Pinet claims he had a friend at the hotel. But it didn't happen at the hotel. So, did the NYPD take the time to call the hotel in the middle of taking such an important person into custody? Or, is someone in the NYPD connected to these Sarkozy people. That would not be a surprise, especially if there's money in it. NYPD are already involved in a big corruption scandal themselves. So, anything is possible.

But if you believe these two French versions of Breitbart/O'Keefe, that hotel was filled with 'friends' who knew DSK and who knew these Sarkozy political operatives. Lots of questions which I'm sure will eventually be answered. I'm sure the defense team will want to talk to those two.

I mean, it shocks me to be frank. Indicted by a grand jury and still defended over some tenuous conspiracy. The tweeters got it half wrong, they were making shit up based on rumors, otherwise they'd provide their "source."

And it's not like the money was coming out of Sarkozy's pocket, plus he put a political rival somewhere he wouldn't be quite so visible to French voters all the time.

I would suggest reading Machiavelli, I have no doubt Sarkozy has.

This kind of crap (plotting) goes on in every government, it's part of the game of power.

I've been around enough bureaucratic infighting just in the workplace not to take much at face value anymore, get into national level politics and as Finley Peter Dunn said "Politics ain't beanbag".

maybe it was not so hard to predict and say... hey dude, united states, you get in trouble for forcing your dick in a random womans mouth

If it is puritanical to believe that men shouldn't jump women and force them to engage in sex acts, there are going to be an awful lot of proud female puritans around.

If he was prescient enough to forsee this, then I take my hat off to him. If your enemy is a scumbag, hand him a length of rope and sit back while he hangs himself. And make sure he does it in a country with "puritanical Anglo-Saxon morals"...you know, a quaint, parochial, backwards country that frowns upon enlightened, sophisticated diversions like raping hotel maids.

comes to women? Not to mention a neocon, rightwing new world order, anti-everything that helps the poor Bush buddy. And his army of French Breitbart/O'Keefe clones, far right funded operatives did not conduct a smear campaign against his most popular political opponent?

I'm thinking the French may be right about this country where we don't need 'no rule of law'. The guy was ACCUSED, Dammit, why do we need a trial? :eyes:

If the guy turns out to be innocent (which I doubt), then the whole OP is irrelevant, since its primary thesis is that Sarkozy appointed Strauss-Kahn to the IMF in an ingenious scheme to let the guy entrap himself.

If he turns out to be guilty, and the article's thesis is correct, then Sarkozy will have rather elegantly killed two birds with one stone: he will have gotten a sexual predator thrown in jail, and in doing so he will have gotten rid of a major political rival, all without lifting a finger. Anyone with that kind of Machiavellian foresight gets a nod from me.

Then you have the question of whether he was deliberately set up in the hotel.

I personally think he did it, but I've read enough history of various court intrigues to know that plotting against rivals is continuous and intense in many and maybe all political systems.

the reports of his past are coming from people who have pretty questionable pasts themselves, the latest being the Roger Stone connected Madame who was involved in the Spitzer case eg, and who is not someone whose word can be taken with anything but a grain of salt, big holes already discovered in her claims, I would definitely reserve judgement at this point.

Uh huh.

If they weren't guilty they wouldn't be suspects.

Given the fact that trials are rare in New York (people plead after the indictment because the evidence is displayed and the defendant seeing said evidence changes his tune, DSK can afford to bullshit for years if he wants to, and he still has the ability to privately pay off the victim).

goes to some people, pleads his case and asks them to let him go forward with a trial. The defense does not get to argue their case until the trial. However, most good defense attorneys I know prefer to have GJ indictment as it locks in the testimony of witnesses who often deviate under cross-examination from their GJ testimony and are easily discredited at that point. For a good defense attorney, a GJ indictment provides a treasure trove of information which can be later used to the advantage of his client.

That you put so much significance on something that is so common, shows a lack of knowledge not only of the judicial system. I'm sure the prosecutor would love a plea deal, most are not that good in actual trials. But the defense attorney in this case is a superb trial attorney and most likely would not cop a plea if he believes in his client's innocence.

As for the baseless claim that this woman can be paid off, it further demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the law. Anyone tampering with a witness, and that is what she is at this stage, in such a manner would get more jail time than he would even if found guily in this case. But I suppose you're setting it up so that if he is found not guilty, or makes a deal, we can 'speculate' that it must have been a pay-off. And what, might I ask, would that say about the woman, already being accused of being in it for the money, considering how quickly she hired a personal injury attorney? Are you saying she IS in it for the money then?

:sarcasm:

There are photos of Ahnold also, but they did not prevent his election -- and in the puritanical Mecca of America no less.

Ahnold did not do a very good job as governor, and in spite of his sexual escapades and the photos that proved some of them, was re-elected.

So, Sarkozy could be wrong about the effect of this. Clinton managed to stay quite popular in spite of Monica Lewinsky and his womanizer reputation.

And marital fidelity is not Sarkozy's strong point. The pot calling the kettle black, I think.

Obama seems to be a wonderful exception -- quite the family man. But then you never know.

They often stick their penises into inappropriate places. Some men feel / believe they are entitled to sex anytime they want it, with any attractive woman they see, because they are wealthy, famous or powerful and seldom hear the word "no" from anyone. Then they, and their supporters, want to blame everyone and anyone else. If DSK were an average man he probably would have been arrested a long time ago.

feed us some more bullshit hannah

It's really sickening to come see that day in and day out here. They never admit to being wrong either. They just move on to defending the next disgusting fuckers who makes the news.

:shrug:

Thanks

If DSK believed they were "out to get him" the great reformer of the IMF and savior of France wouldn't fall for such nonsense.

thru marks ect... scratches

defence will use this bullshit conspiracy to get another man off with rape regardless of blind evidence and people will allow it for their love of power and enabling misogynism.

people knew arnie assaulted women. they pretended they didnt know or believe in order to vote for the man. worked for their agenda to bury head and make jokes. regardless, those women were assualted.

this whole feel of finding something to blame for this forced rape other than the man the perpetrated is the same feel

The evidence is likely overwhelming and he will not be able to really formulate a defense. The only defense he has is the "black woman tried to take my money" defense, and that won't hold. This will fall off the radar in a few more days (with the occasional morning WSWS propaganda). I'll keep tabs on it though.

experience this bullshit, allowing power of white man to win out.

:patriot:

Of course!!! Sarkozy's connections to the CIA are to blame for DSK's charges!

Just like Assange is being persecuted by a CIA operative.

And Polanski is being persecuted by the feds, too! The 13 year old was probably paid by the CIA.

Let's blame America First for the inability of these Leftists to refrain from rape!!!

Those poor Comrades, so persecuted by the capitalist Amerikka New World Order and its imperialist puritanical ideas that women should consent to having penises shoved in them.

Using force isn't enough, using drugs on a minor isn't enough.

Maybe raping a drugged child, knowingly infecting her with HIV, while claiming American wines are superior might earn their condemnation.

Huh?

First of all, it sounds as if there were plenty of ammo for Sarkozy to use for dirty tricks rather than using such an elaborate "scheme" with a zillion things that could go awry to set him up.

Why are you so invested in spinning this utter crap? Are you implying that this woman was in the employ of the madam? What the heck are you saying? Is it fine with you that S-K could come to this country and violate a woman and the law without sanction? What exactly are you trying to accomplish here?

Let's just create another realm of birther-type freakiness, shall we? Huge conspiracies of global reach over perhaps decades. Did the woman seek asylum here for the purpose of setting up the sainted S-K? Was she a Manchurian mole sent to blow up the global economy.

Let's talk about who is being cynical.

this is the one i choose. it has gotten that ridiculous.

I logged on late this morning. I read a couple of the latest bits of poo flung at the wall and wondered if I hadn't taken the wrong turn on the internets.

what the hell kind of socialist is that? For that matter the French Socialist Party is utterly compromised, not quite to the degree that the Democratic Party is but ya sure can't call it Marxist.

We got no dog in this fight.

said that several times. he's obviously not a socialist in fact or principle.


don't assume.

his phony 'socialism' is not of interest to me. the power relations which may or may not be involved are.

It's so nice to know the despicable misogynist lengths to which the commie crowd will go to defend a comrade in arms. :puke:

notwithstanding Hannah Bell's relentless attempts to pardon the guy.