...the honeypot defense is as stupid as it comes:
"...But I will say, the whole matter smells rather fishy, just like the Eliot Spitzer story smelled fishy. Spitzer, you may recall, was Wall Street's biggest adversary and a likely candidate to head the SEC, a position at which he would have excelled. In fact, there's no doubt in my mind that if Spitzer had been appointed to lead the SEC, most of the top investment bankers on Wall Street would presently be making license plates and rope-soled shoes at the federal penitentiary. So, there was plenty of reason to shadow Spitzer's every move and see what bit of dirt could be dug up on him. As it turns out, the ex-Governor of New York made it easy for his enemies by engaging a high-priced hooker named Ashley Dupre for sex at the Mayflower Hotel. When the news broke, the media descended on Spitzer like a swarm of locusts poring over every salacious detail with the ebullient fervor of a randy 6th-grader. Meanwhile, the crooks on Wall Street were able to breathe a sigh of relief and get back to doing what they do best; fleecing investors and cheating people out of the life savings.
Strauss-Kahn had enemies in high places, too, which is why this whole matter stinks to high-Heaven. First of all, Strauss-Kahn was the likely candidate of the French Socialist Party who would have faced Sarkozy in the upcoming presidential elections. The IMF chief clearly had a leg-up on Sarkozy who has been battered by a number of personal scandals and plunging approval ratings."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28103.htm
Why is it so hard to believe that men with money and power abuse women? And why are leftists like Whitney, or our good friends over Corrente way, peddling this story with such credulity?
I know "the left" is in pretty desperate straights, but the guy is the head of the IMF. The fucking International Monetary Fund, damn it.
That makes him the enemy. Full stop. It doesn't matter if he calls himself a communist, a syndicalist or the best friend trade unions ever had. I don't care if he drapes himself in pages from The Communist Manifesto while burning copies of The Fountainhead. He got paid to impose austerity and heap abuse upon the people of Greece.
He took corporate's dollar, euro and pound. He takes a very good salary to make life worse for people on a daily basis. It's quite literally his job.
Or it was, until he (allegedly, allegedly) attempted to rape a maid.
Is it really that hard to believe that a man who got paid to abuse whole nations might also feel inclined to abuse singular women? Is the notion really that unbelievable?
I don't think so.
Not one bit.
Not at all.
UPDATE, wee damned hours:
Via BlackDogRed's blogroll, I've just learned that someone else has written nearly the same complaint, and better than I. Sorry for the redundancy.
Crow's Eye: Maintaining a commitment to Pointless Acrimony™ and Hate Filled Invective™! Also available in corvid mischief and traditional sly dog's mistrust.
12 comments:
I agree with this. Stilgiz's comments make this a depressing coincidence
Heh. Call me a cynic, but my spidey sense starts tingling when someone tries to tell me that the masters of the universe handed the keys to the vault to a flaming radical. Even if that someone has a Nobel.
The guy might talk a good game, but from reading about the PIGS in Europe, I haven't seen much change.
Is there something in particular that's supposed to make me believe that Kahn is The Great White Hope?
He said things which appeal to leftists who haven't seen through to the deeper cynical truths, Happy Jack?
I don't know.
You make a fucking seriously good point. Are we really supposed to believe that the chief handpicked SAPper for the banking aristocracy was a out and out pinko?
Jack- I agree that he is cooing sweet nothings into receptive ears. Just like Obama, he might be just the man the situation called for to sell the project.
My question was directed to the specifics. I'm certainly not a wonk who follows the intricacies of IMF policy. I don't see where the deeds match the words. I'm willing to concede that he might be 2% less shitty than some other hack, but I'm not aware of any concrete policies that represent a major change.
"Innocent until proven guilty" matters. More than 90% of women tell the truth about rape, but some lie. Maybe this guy is the most evil asshole in the universe. Maybe one of his political opponents wanted to sabotage the French Socialist Party. Maybe the maid has a personal reason to say she was raped. At this point, no one knows the truth.
I agree completely with Will. There is no need for a conspiracy theory because he is innocent until he or a jury says otherwise. This is not to say that the head of the IMF would be a good president of France. I'm sure he will be as big a union busting, benefits shaving, bomb dropping pig as Sarkozy.
And I haven't read the link, but Spitzer is an arrogant bastard, though he wasn't involved in rape, at least. He would have put some rich people in prison until he wanted to do something else. He was no answer to problems of the 95% of Americans getting screwed by the other 5%.
Will,
That's a reasonable position, but I'm really taking aim at the sexual conspiracism. Way I see it, we've got a pattern stretching back as far as Clinton (as a frame of reference) which involves wealthy men getting cover from liberals and leftists on account of them not making speeches that sound like something Trent Lott would say.
And, it's really very hard to accuse a man - never mind a wealthy, powerful man - of rape. It takes courage to do it.
I have no illusions about the efficacy of a blog complaint in altering the moral environment, but I'm not inclined to view favorably those arguments which suggest that powerful men with weak wills and violent appetites are really just the victims of even more powerful forces.
The head of the IMF is by definition the opposite of an exemplar or paragon. As Happy Jack argues, we're not even discussing a man who has made demonstrable alterations to how that tool of oppression is wielded. It wouldn't excuse his alleged violations of a poor, powerless woman's body - but it would at least allow us to separate out reasons for understanding the urge to defend him, as holds true with Mr. Assange by comparison.
drip,
"Legally still innocent" is not the same as "objectively culpable." If he did attempt to rape her, he's not innocent, right now - whether or not the law treats him as such.
I'm not a believer in rights or law, which obviously colors my approach, but I'm wary of the treatment a powerful man gets on account of the law's glacial approach to its routine mockery of justice.
Happy Jack,
As best I can tell, he's made a number of claims about his affinity with trade unions, and still gone on to enforce the same policies. His comments about the Greek people and their plight seem instructive, in this case. He blamed them for what was demonstrably a set of conditions imposed by bankers, international money houses and the EU.
But Jack, the folks arguing conspiracy (as in the case of Spitzer and Julian Assange) are actually contending that one powerful group is using the law to advance its interests. The fact that the target may himself be powerful, is not enough under these theories. The target is not powerful enough to defeat the scheme, irrespective of true culpability. And the people pushing the entrapment theory do accept the legal niceties as the right of the accused and must account for it in their explanations.
And to be clear, the legal process may not reveal the truth, but without it, the maid gets no voice at all. Whether that is a right or the use of a corrupt system designed to keep her oppressed, it is something that will allow us a glimpse into the world of second tier functionaries.
DSK is a pig without regard to this allegation. He's just a different kind of big if it's true. Either way, he shouldn't be calling himself a socialist, whatever that means.
Yet if this man is formally punished in any way, it will be only for rape. The far greater suffering he caused at IMF isn't even a crime. (Rape, of course, is barely a crime in most cases.)
drip,
I have little patience for conspiracism. Successful conspiracies don't look conspiracies. Unsuccessful conspiracies look like what they are: failures.
Peter,
An exact truth, that.
But being a psychopathic warmonger with a sense of entitlement is practically a requirement for a head of state. Poor guy. He was only fulfilling his destiny.
Post a Comment