Friday, July 01, 2011

Now France Is Ticked At The American Main Media For Mindless Assumptions About Another Case

Posted by Peter Quennell


Above is the former French head of the IMF Dominique Strauss-Kahn with US Treasury Secretary Ben Bernanke.

The New York police were indeed hard on Mr Strauss-Kahn when an African maid in a hotel who is here on a work viza accused him of rape. He was paraded before the camera several times in handcuffs, and he spent time in New York city’s tough prison on Rikers Island.

But he did get to be released on bail, and the cautious police investigators did continue to dig.

Now they have announced that the maid in question is engaged to a major drug dealer, that huge sums have passed through her bank account, that she called someone several nights later to ask them how to play her claim for maximum gain, and that she lied repeatedly in her testimony to police.

Mr Strauss-Kahn is already having his bail conditions reduced to near-zero, and he is likely to be a free man later this month, and presumably then back in France as a popular hero.

Statements throughout by the New York police on the hard facts were in fact always fairly cautious but the media here really had a field day.

They ran new reports almost daily on what a monster this foreigner Mr Strauss-Kahn really is. A lot of the reporting seemed prissy and prudish, even by American media standards, but damage was indeed done. Mr Strauss-Kahn’s American and IMF friends backed off, and were refusing to be quoted in his support.

Though the US main media all knew who the accuser was they did not dig into her very questionable background at all. The police alone did all of that and the “responsible media” including the New York Times none at all.

No wonder that today the French sound ticked.

[Below: an ABC News report six weeks ago]

Posted by Peter Quennell on 07/01/11 at 03:00 PM in The wider contexts

Comments

An insightful comment that Paris-based PMF poster Thoughtful posted on PMF. The Tribeca reference is to his temporary place in downtown Manhattan.

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Wow - now that is news! Far from damaging Dominique Strauss-Kahn, if he really emerges pure as snow from all this, the French are simply going to love him! He probably did have sex with the maid, but if it can be insinuated or proven that it was a trap, then this can only increase his popularity in France, where extramarital affairs are winked at and somehow considered to prove that the man has the kind of drive and power that is needed in politics.

If this is true, he’ll have it all, the hero stature, standing up and facing down those mean Americans, the righteousness, and the victimization that’ll get him sympathy. It may even be strong enough to wipe out the negative effect of the 600 square meter house in TriBeCa complete with cinema and sauna - not really a Socialist symbol - but he was forced into it, poor dear.

President Strauss-Kahn?

Posted by Peter Quennell on 07/01/11 at 04:54 PM | #

Considering Sarkozy’s possible involvement in this set up case, my Hungarian wife laughs when we non-Hungarians pronounce his name “SAR-KOZY”

Posted by Ergon on 07/01/11 at 10:51 PM | #

Oops, to continue: It should be “SHAR-KOZY”
The name originates from the Sarkoz region, and means a fertile alluvial area.
SHAR means “mud or soil”, and KOZY is “from”
SAR is “Shit” in Hungarian 😊 so I guess the French are not so far off when they call him a “little shit”

Posted by Ergon on 07/01/11 at 11:03 PM | #

whoever said truth was stranger than fiction would be blown away by the 21st century! just when you think nothing will surprise you…it does!

Posted by mojo on 07/02/11 at 01:46 PM | #

Saturday’s NY Times article on the phonecall that upended the case. It was to her boyfriend in a prison in Arizona.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/02/nyregion/one-revelation-after-another-undercut-strauss-kahn-accusers-credibility.html

Investigators with the Manhattan district attorney’s office learned the call had been recorded and had it translated from a “unique dialect of Fulani,” a language from the woman’s native country, Guinea, according to a well-placed law enforcement official.

When the conversation was translated — a job completed only this Wednesday — investigators were alarmed: “She says words to the effect of, ‘Don’t worry, this guy has a lot of money. I know what I’m doing,’ ” the official said.

It was another ground-shifting revelation in a continuing series of troubling statements, fabrications and associations that unraveled the case and upended prosecutors’ view of the woman. Once, in the hours after she said she was attacked on May 14, she’d been a “very pious, devout Muslim woman, shattered by this experience,” the official said — a seemingly ideal witness.

Little by little, her credibility as a witness crumbled — she had lied about her immigration, about being gang raped in Guinea, about her experiences in her homeland and about her finances, according to two law enforcement officials. She had been linked to people suspected of crimes. She changed her account of what she did immediately after the encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn. Sit-downs with prosecutors became tense, even angry. Initially composed, she later collapsed in tears and got down on the floor during questioning. She became unavailable to investigators from the district attorney’s office for days at a time.

Now the phone call raised yet another problem: it seemed as if she hoped to profit from whatever occurred in Suite 2806.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 07/02/11 at 04:48 PM | #

The Daily Beast.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/07/01/dominique-strauss-kahn-rape-accuser-s-african-connections.html?om_rid=DYrbwW&om_mid=_BODc-TB8cK3e4J

Connecting the dots all the way up to the beleagured President Sarkozy?

Via his supporter the president of Guinea, no less?

Posted by Peter Quennell on 07/02/11 at 05:20 PM | #

the timing is staggering. if the case goes ahead and DSK cannot enter the race (deadline is the 12 July IIRC) then the socialists are left with whoever they get, but they’ll be screaming foul on every rooftop in the country and the shadow will follow sarko to the polls and well after. ah politics - the dirtiest game of all?

Posted by mojo on 07/03/11 at 10:54 AM | #

When a Predator Collides With a Fabricator

Posted by mojo on 07/03/11 at 11:05 AM | #

When a Predator Collides With a Fabricator

Posted by mojo on 07/03/11 at 11:05 AM | #

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