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And, yes, I DO take it personally: DSK resigns from IMF... Good guy...? Creep...? No matter... An erect penis is STILL a tool of power and domination... [UPDATE]
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Wednesday, May 18, 2011

DSK resigns from IMF... Good guy...? Creep...? No matter... An erect penis is STILL a tool of power and domination... [UPDATE]

hmmmmmmm...
Strauss-Kahn Resigns From I.M.F. in Wake of His Arrest

Dominique Strauss-Kahn resigned Wednesday as head of the International Monetary Fund after explosive accusations that he had sexually attacked a housekeeper in a Midtown Manhattan hotel room.

i've read a number of things about the whole dsk soap opera, everything from "he totally deserves whatever he's got coming" to this from paul craig roberts...
The Amerikan Police State Strides Forward

The International Monetary Fund’s director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was arrested last Sunday in New York City on the allegation of an immigrant hotel maid that he attempted to rape her in his hotel room. A New York judge has denied Strauss-Kahn bail on the grounds that he might flee to France.

President Bill Clinton survived his sexual escapades, because he was a servant to the system, not a threat. But Strauss-Kahn, like former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, was a threat to the system, and, like Eliot Spitzer, Strauss-Kahn has been deleted from the power ranks.

Strauss-Kahn was the first IMF director in my lifetime, if memory serves, who disavowed the traditional IMF policy of imposing on the poor and ordinary people the cost of bailing out Wall Street and the Western banks. Strauss-Kahn said that regulation had to be reimposed on the greed-driven, fraud-prone financial sector, which, unregulated, destroyed the lives of ordinary people. Strauss-Kahn listened to Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz, one of a handful of economists who has a social conscience.

Perhaps the most dangerous black mark in Strauss-Kahn’s book is that he was far ahead of America’s French puppet, President Sarkozy, in the upcoming French elections. Strauss-Kahn simply had to be eliminated.

It is possible that Strauss-Kahn eliminated himself and saved Washington the trouble. However, as a well-traveled person who has often stayed in New York hotels and in hotels in cities around the world, I have never experienced a maid entering unannounced into my room, much less when I was in the shower.

In the spun story, Strauss-Kahn is portrayed as so deprived of sex that he attempted to rape a hotel maid. Anyone who ever served on the staff of a powerful public figure knows that this is unlikely. On a senator’s staff on which I served, there were two aides whose job was to make certain that no woman, with the exception of his wife, was ever alone with the senator. This was done to protect the senator both from female power groupies, who lust after celebrities and powerful men, and from women sent by a rival on missions to compromise an opponent. A powerful man such as Strauss-Kahn would not have been starved for women, and as a multi-millionaire he could certainly afford to make his own discreet arrangements.

ok, believe what you want...

could dsk have been the champion of the poor and downtrodden that roberts claims...? hey, i suppose it's possible... could dsk have rubbed our super-rich elite handlers the wrong way because of that view...? sure... but here's where the story comes apart... if dsk was any kind of stand-up guy, he wouldn't have fallen for the "honey trap" and neither, goddamit, would eliot spitzer... if those guys were all that smart, all that committed to doing good and all that focused on what's right, they certainly would have to be smart enough not to fall for such obvious crap...

here's what i think... whether or not dsk's heart was in the right place, i think he was still totally enamored of his own position, his power, his money and his status in the global elite... so enamored, in fact, that he believed he could take what he wanted when he wanted it without suffering any consequences...

what's most interesting to me at this particular point in history is that the cycle for dealing with one's karma is becoming shorter and shorter -- and THAT'S a VERY good thing...!


[UPDATE]

i stumbled across what i think is a very astute article describing exactly the dynamic of unfettered, unaccountable power that i was pointing out above...

a couple of short excerpts...

Where there is shocking news, there must be a conspiracy theory. So it is that the arrest of IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn for sexual assault has spawned its own spate of wild speculation.

[...]

As it turns out, Dominique Strauss-Kahn may not like women very much. He appears instead to be a classic megalomaniac who thinks all women should be at his disposal. Power breeds hubris, both in men and women (See: Indira Gandhi, Jayalalithaa et al). But in a number of men, this arrogance becomes a form of sexual entitlement. Perhaps those simian analogies are indeed apt. Much like an alpha gorilla or chimp, DSK feels he should be allowed to readily take any female who catches his fancy, be it a fellow politician or the daughter of a family friend or a hotel maid.

Power also breeds a sense of immunity. Why did he do it? Because he could. If he got away with attacking a privileged member of the French elite, then why not a semi-literate African immigrant?

yep... that's pretty much the way i see it too...

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