458 Strauss-Kahn: Who Does The Law Serve? - Paul Craig Roberts-

Strauss-Kahn: Who Does The Law Serve? - Paul Craig Roberts

The arrest in New York of a 72-year old Egyptian banker on sex charges, just a few weeks after Strauss-Kahn, makes both cases suspect.

The Strauss-Kahn incident received world-wide coverage; it's inconceivable that Mr Omar, the Egyptian banker, would not have heard of that case. Why then would he try the same antics, in the same place? And at 72 years old?

(1) Maid came not from Ghana, but Guinea
(2) Strauss-Kahn: Who Does The Law Serve? - Paul Craig Roberts
(3) Vladimir Putin claims Dominique Strauss-Kahn is the victim of a conspiracy to force him out
(4) Strauss-Kahn news coverage: American adversarial justice system cf France's Napoleonic code
(5) Ex-Egypt Bank Chairman Omar held on sex charges in New York
(6) Egyptian banker arrested for sexually assaulting hotel maid in New York - just weeks after Strauss-Kahn
(7) Strauss-Kahn Screws Africa

(1) Maid came not from Ghana, but Guinea
From Jos <Web.of.Debt@kpnmail.nl> Date: 1 June 2011 08:43

The raped woman did not come from Ghana, as I by mistake remembered, but from Guinea.

As it happens, my sister has a good friend who lived there for years, and just now this friend is visiting my sister.

I checked my assumptions, but the friend (a woman) told me that the culture in Guinea is a bit archaïc, and that rape rarely happens in Guinea.

(2) Strauss-Kahn: Who Does The Law Serve? - Paul Craig Roberts

From: Paul de Burgh-Day <pdeburgh@harboursat.com.au> Date: 27.06.2011 03:18 AM
Subject: Paul Craig Roberts: Who Does The Law Serve?

Comment {Paul}

In the matter of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case, I hold no brief for the guy. But when one looks at the blatant police and media manipulation to convict him without trial, I am appalled and disgusted. This is, tragically, not unusual in the USA - and many other places. The unusual thing here is that the victim is so high profile, it was bound to attract sensational headlines - inflamed by the blatant police and media acts that made a mockery of any sense of rights or sense of justice.

For this to have taken place, DSK can only have had very powerful enemies

I rather tend to agree with PCRs suggestion that this was a strategy to remove from the scene the man most likely to replace Sarkozy as French President.

Do not expect any investigative journalism by the MSM to expose the reality behind all this.

Frankly I feel rather sorry for DSK - puffed up and powerful though he might have been.

I do not think ANY of the accusations against him should be given a shred of credibility.

Was he a 'ladies man'? I do not know. But if yes, so what - the world has many of them?

Paul
{end comment}

Who Does The Law Serve?

by Paul Craig Roberts

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25404

June 26, 2011

When my book (with Lawrence Stratton), The Tyranny of Good Intentions, was published, progressives and the left-wing refused to believe that the rich suffer frame-ups from prosecutorial abuse. Their response was that law is controlled by the rich and functions in their service. Only the poor and minorities suffer at the hands of the law.

The political left knew that Michael Milken was guilty, because the rich "junk bond king" financed takeovers of corporations that threw workers out of jobs. Leftists accepted the Justice (sic) Department's fanciful claim that the Exxon Valdez oil spill was a criminal act, not an accident for which civil damages were the remedy. Leona Helmsley was guilty, because she was a rich bitch. So was Martha Stewart. The left-wing was firm: all rich white people in prison are guilty, and the only reason they are in prison is that they are so obviously guilty that the system couldn't let them off. In other words, they were so audacious in their crimes that the crimes couldn't be covered up.

The same mentality now dominates discussions of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case.

Strauss-Kahn, who was at the time of his highly publicized arrest the head of the International Monetary Fund and the expected winner of the next French presidential election, was arrested on sexual abuse and attempted rape charges on the word of an immigrant hotel maid in New York.

Whereas the police are required to respond to charges by questioning the accused, they are not supposed to make a public spectacle of him in order to create the impression that he is guilty before he is even charged. Yet DSK was arrested aboard an airliner as it was about to depart for France and portrayed by the police as a fleeing criminal. Photos were released of him in handcuffs and stripped of his business attire.

The judge refused bail to one of the West's most high profile persons on the basis of the prosecutor's statement that DSK would flee the country and hide out abroad. All of this quickly was passed to reporters, who obliged the prosecutors and police by portraying DSK as obviously guilty as he was apprehended fleeing from the country.

The police even planted the story that DSK was in such a hurry to flee that he left behind his cell phone and that that is how they found him. This was a ball-faced lie. The fact of the matter is that when DSK arrived at the airport, he discovered that he had left his cell phone and called the hotel, the scene of the alleged crime, to ask that it be retrieved and brought to him at the airport. When the police boarded his flight, he asked them, "Did you bring my cell phone." He had no idea the police were there to detain him for questioning.

DSK's treatment raises serious problems for the leftist myth that law serves the interests of the rich and powerful. If law was the preserve of the rich and powerful, DSK would never have been taken off a departing airliner and made a public spectacle on the basis of an immigrant hotel maid's accusation. The airliner would have been allowed to depart and the case would not have been pursued. If the maid's story was ever reported, the police would have dismissed it as the story of a hysterical person or a person out for money. In the unlikely case that the police were pressed by reporters, the police would say that DSK had left the country before they could find him and that they were arranging to question him in France. In the very least, DSK's detention would have been very discreet, and he would have been given the benefit of "innocent until proven guilty" and granted bail.

Clearly, in DSK's case, the law is not serving the rich and powerful. Moreover, there are powerful biases against him. Feminists "know" that DSK is guilty, because "all men are sexual predators." Progressives and leftists "know" that DSK is guilty, because "as a person of wealth and power, he is used to getting away with everything."

When it became known that the police had "found" DSK only because the alleged fleeing suspect telephoned the hotel and asked for his cell phone, leftists did not wonder why the police had painted DSK guilty with a false story. Instead, they explained the alleged criminal's revelation of his whereabouts on the basis of their myth that as one of the rich and powerful, he expected to be able to rape women at will with nothing ever done about it. Soon the story was that attempted rape was ordinary behavior on DSK's part. But leftists did not explain why this time the law failed to protect him from a hotel maid when it had protected him from higher placed women.

As readers know by now, I have little patience with those who let their emotions determine their analysis. Let's look further at this case. It is a known fact that Sarkozy's political operatives in France knew of Strauss-Kahn's arrest before it was announced by the New York police. French, but not American, newspapers have wondered how this could be.

Perhaps the hotel maid thought to call up Sarkozy's people and tell them.

Note also that the alleged victim has a very high-priced major league lawyer representing her that she not only does not need but also obviously cannot afford to pay. It is not up to the maid to prosecute the defendant. That job is done at public expense by the New York attorney general. The alleged victim has another high-priced lawyer in France whose job is to round up Strauss-Kahn victims among French women with the prospect of sharing in a settlement.

These facts mean one of two things: The "victim" is after money, not justice, and the lawyers are operating on contingency with shares in a settlement between DSK and whatever the collection of women turns out to be. Alternatively, Strauss-Kahn was set-up, as he predicted that he would be, but there is no evidence other than a disheveled woman performing for the hotel security camera. Therefore, whoever is behind the set-up sent the fancy lawyer to the maid--certainly the emigrant maid would not have known how to find such a lawyer--with the instructions to drive the case toward settlement.

The public regards large financial settlements as evidence of guilt, and thus a settlement is all that is needed to terminate Strauss-Kahn's career. The left-wing would scream that money again had defeated justice. As DSK has already been convicted in the media, he no doubt would welcome a settlement rather than risk a trial by jurors prejudiced by the media.

A settlement, of course, has to be blamed on DSK, not on the maid or her attorneys. This is impossible to do, because if the maid was not after a settlement, she would not have two attorneys driving the case in that direction. How to pull this rabbit out of the hat?

If CounterPunch's accounts are correct, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz has stepped up to frame the story. If a crime actually occurred, a settlement between the two sides' lawyers would be obstruction of justice, itself a crime, and the lawyers know it. But the maid's attorneys know that the big money belongs to DSK's wife, not to DSK.

This rules out the maid getting much out of a civil suit for damages following a felony conviction of DSK. To get a settlement, the maid needs to get money from DSK's wife by agreeing not to testify, thus collapsing a trial. The path to a settlement, Dershowitz, says, is for DSK's lawyers not to negotiate with the maid or the maid's lawyers, but with the maid's family as long as it is done outside of New York and her home country of Guinea.

Notice that in Dershowitz's explanation, it is DSK who initiates the settlement talks. Dershowitz says that the maid's lawyer "may want to see justice done, but ultimately, money is more important." If justice were the goal, the maid would not need a lawyer.

So who is using the law against who? In the event of a settlement, the left-wing will say that DSK or his rich wife bought his way out of a crime. They will not consider the possibility that the law served an immigrant maid who bilked a wife out of millions of dollars and destroyed the reputation of a member of the establishment who was in the way of those more powerful than he.

The only way the left-wing's myth about law being the servant of the rich can be saved is by seeing the case as a set-up of DSK by someone who is richer and more powerful than he is. This someone could be the current president of France and the financial and political forces behind him, which includes the US government for which Sarkozy has been a reliable puppet.

Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

(3) Vladimir Putin claims Dominique Strauss-Kahn is the victim of a conspiracy to force him out

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1392463/Vladimir-Putin-claims-Dominique-Strauss-Khan-victim-conspiracy-force-out.html

By DAVID GARDNER

Last updated at 12:04 PM on 31st May 2011

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has claimed that Dominique Strauss-Kahn may be the victim of a shadowy conspiracy to force him out of his job as head of the International Monetary Fund.

Mr Putin is the first world leader to display any serious doubts over the sex charges against the 62-year-old Frenchman.

But his remarks will certainly surprise the disgraced former IMF boss, who reportedly said before his arrest that he believed Mr Putin was actively plotting his downfall.

The prime minister jumped to Mr Strauss-Kahn's defence in comments posted on the official Kremlin website.

He suggested that charges that the French presidential candidate sexually assaulted and tried to rape a 32-year-old chambermaid may have been trumped up by the U.S. authorities.

Mr Putin said: 'It's hard for me to evaluate the hidden political motives but I cannot believe that it looks the way it was initially introduced. It doesn't sit right in my head.'

American prosecutors put the claims down to mischief making by the Russian premier.

Days before his arrest on May 14 for the alleged attack at a hotel in Times Square, New York, Mr Strauss-Kahn reportedly told friends that Mr Putin was seeking to oust him from the IMF. ...

(4) Strauss-Kahn news coverage: American adversarial justice system cf France's Napoleonic code

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/31/us-strausskahn-rapeshield-idUSTRE74U73B20110531

How French and U.S. laws affect Strauss-Kahn news coverage

By Caroline Humer

NEW YORK | Tue May 31, 2011 6:57pm EDT

(Reuters) - Within days of the arrest of former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn on attempted rape and sexual abuse charges, details about the alleged victim appeared in publications around the world.

At first, the facts were sparse. It was clear she was a 32-year-old New York hotel maid. But within days, the woman's name and photo were published in France and could easily be found through Internet search engines. Le Journal du Dimanche -- a French weekly newspaper -- ran a front-page story complete with her name and photo, and French reporters camped outside her New York home.

In the United States, however, details about the victim in the press were limited. It was only after more than a week of news stories that some media organizations, including Reuters, ran interviews with the maid's family, and the New York Post published a photo of them. So far, a self-imposed U.S. media convention to protect the name of the victim is still in place.

The difference in how the media in the United States and in France have approached the alleged victim so far underscores the divide that exists between the two countries, both in their media cultures and their legal systems.

The American justice system has its roots in British common law and relies heavily on the jury system and an adversarial relationship between defense and prosecution. France, meanwhile, bases its law on the Napoleonic code, which offers suspects much more privacy, rarely involves a jury and puts an investigating magistrate in charge of collecting evidence for both the defense and prosecution.

LAW, AMERICAN STYLE

In the United States, an organized effort to protect rape victims got its start as part of the broader feminist movement in the 1970s and 1980s. It was spurred by concerns among women's rights advocates about systemic underreporting of rape, and how rape victims were treated by the police, the government and the press. The federal government responded by directing funding to rape-crisis hot lines and expanding the development of domestic-violence shelters. A variety of state and federal rape shield laws, which limited the introduction into court of information about a victim's prior sex life, were introduced.

"What you saw was both legal change and social change around rape law and you saw an increased sensitivity in terms of how prosecutors and police deal with allegations of rape," said Michelle Anderson, dean of CUNY Law School in Queens, New York.

Privacy laws that prohibited government employees, such as police and prosecutors, from releasing the identities of rape victims, were also introduced.

The same groups that advocated for rape victims helped persuade the press to adopt policies that kept rape victims' names a secret. The agreements, however, are a courtesy, not enforceable by law, because of the First Amendment right to free speech.

That means the silence does not always last for long, especially if high-profile defendants are involved. In those cases, the victims are sometimes identified, first in the tabloid press, and then in the general media. Depending on the outlet, the victim can be portrayed in a negative light.

THE FRENCH DIFFERENCE

In France, the treatment of rape victims has followed a different path. After the feminist movement of the 1960s, public concern about sexual violence receded until about 10 years ago. That coincided with an increase in crimes against young women in some of the poorer areas in France, according to Christophe Regnard, president of France's largest union of magistrates, which includes judges and prosecutors.

The development spurred an anti-rape government campaign that dispersed information, created crisis telephone lines and domestic-violence shelters, he said, similar to what exists in the United States. It also led to a government law that prohibited prosecutors and judges from releasing information about the victim to the press.

But that law is infrequently enforced because information tends to leak out, and it is difficult to identify the source. The facts that do make it into the media tend to be simple, such as the accuser's name, age and nationality, Regnard said. Sometimes photographs are also published. French reports typically shy away from salacious or accusatory details about the victim because the victims have much stronger legal protections than the press does. Often the victim will speak to the press herself. ...

(5) Ex-Egypt Bank Chairman Omar held on sex charges in New York

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-06-01/ex-egypt-bank-chairman-omar-held-on-sex-charges-in-new-york.html

June 01, 2011, 11:16 AM EDT

By Karen Freifeld
(Updates with Riker's Island in first, third paragraphs.)

June 1 (Bloomberg) -- The former chairman of Egypt's Bank of Alexandria was held overnight at New York's Riker's Island jail complex after being arraigned in Manhattan on charges of sexually abusing a maid at the Pierre Hotel in New York.

Manhattan judge Gerald Lebovits around midnight last night set bail for Mahmoud Abdel Salam Omar, chairman of El-Mex Salines at $50,000 bond or $25,000 cash, according to the Manhattan District Attorney's office. Omar also was ordered to surrender his travel documents, prosecutors said.

Omar, 72, was taken overnight to Riker's Island, New York City's main jail complex, located off the shore of northern Queens opposite LaGuardia Airport, Sharman Stein, a spokeswoman for the New York City Department of Correction, said in an interview. He can post bail there, she said.

Riker's is where Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former International Monetary Fund chief, was locked up last month on charges of sexual assault and attempted rape against a Midtown hotel maid.

Strauss-Kahn was later released after posting $1 million cash bail and $5 million bond, and surrendering his passport. He also must wear an electronic monitoring bracelet and is under 24-hour armed guard at a rented townhouse in Lower Manhattan.

Omar was arrested May 30 after a 44-year-old female housekeeper alleged he attacked her the day before, according to a police spokesman.

Midtown Hotel

Officers were called to the hotel, located in Midtown Manhattan, after she informed security of an alleged incident when she went to Omar's room after he requested tissues. Prosecutors said Omar is 72; police previously said 74.

Omar "wrapped his arms tightly around the informant's body and while holding the informant, kissed the informant's neck and lips," Detective Efrain Curet said in the criminal complaint. Omar grabbed the maid a second time and groped her, according to the criminal complaint.

Police charged Omar with sexual abuse in the first degree, sexual abuse in the third degree and forcible touching. He allegedly asked the maid for her telephone number and she gave a false one before leaving the room, police said. If convicted of the top charge, he faces up to seven years behind bars. ...

(6) Egyptian banker arrested for sexually assaulting hotel maid in New York - just weeks after Strauss-Kahn

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1393028/Egyptian-banker-Mahmoud-Abdel-Salam-Omar-denies-sex-attack-hotel-maid.html

Egyptian banker denies sex attack on hotel maid as bail is set at $25,000 in midnight court appearance

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER

Last updated at 2:36 PM on 1st June 2011

The Egyptian banker accused of locking a maid in his $900-a-night Manhattan hotel suite and sexually assaulting her has denied the charges.

Mahmoud Abdel Salam Omar appeared in court just before midnight on Tuesday charged with sexual abuse, unlawful imprisonment, forcible touching and harassment.

His lawyer Liz Beal told the court that her client 'adamantly denies the charges against him.'

She said: 'He realizes these are very, very serious charges, and he denies them. He wants to fight this case,'

Ms Beal, a Legal Aid attorney who said she was only representing Omar at his first court appearance and that he would seek private counsel.

Prosecutors called Omar an obvious flight risk. Judge Gerald Lebovits ordered Omar to surrender his travel documents, including his passport.

Authorities say a maid was called to Omar's room at the plush Pierre hotel in the upmarket Upper East Side of Manhattan on Sunday night to drop off tissues.

The former head of the Bank of Alexandria is said to have asked the 44-year-old maid to put the tissues on the table as he locked the door to the 10th-floor suite.

He then groped her breasts and ground his body against hers, according to reports.

'When she came to his room, he got carried away. He started grabbing at her. He wouldn't let her go,' a hotel bellman said.

The maid told him 'I'm not up here for that' but Omar persisted.

Dressed only in his pyjamas, he asked the maid for her number to which she replied with a fake one, before letting her go.

The incident is alleged to have happened just two weeks after IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was held over similar allegations. ...

(7) Strauss-Kahn Screws Africa

*by Greg Palast for *The Guardian

24 May 2011

http://www.gregpalast.com/strauss-kahn-screws-africa/
http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/business/artikel.php?ID=208859

Now that I've dispensed with the obvious and obnoxious teaser headline, let's drop the towel and expose Dominique Strauss-Kahn's history of arrogant abuse. The truth is, the grandee of the IMF has molested Africans for years. **

On Wednesday, the *New York Times* ran five – count'em, FIVE – stories on Strauss-Kahn, Director-General of the International Monetary Fund. According to the Paper of Record, the charges against "DSK," as he's known in France, are in "contradiction" to his "charm" and "accomplishments" at the IMF.

*Au contraire, mes chers lecteurs.*

Director-General DSK's cruelty, arrogance and impunity toward African and other nations as generalissimo of the IMF is right in line with the story told by the poor, African hotel housekeeper in New York City.

Let's consider how the housekeeper from Guinea ended up here in New York. In 2002, this single mother was granted asylum. What drove her here?

It began with the IMF rape of Guinea.

In 2002, the International Monetary Fund cut off capital inflows to this West African nation. Without the blessing of the International Monetary Fund, Guinea, which has up to half the world's raw material for aluminum, plus oil, uranium, diamonds and gold, could not borrow a dime to develop these resources.

The IMF's cut-off was, in effect, a foreclosure, and the nation choked and starved while sitting on its astonishing mineral wealth. As in the sub-prime mortgage foreclosures we see today, the IMF moved quickly to seize Guinea's property.

But the IMF did not seize this nation's riches for itself. Rather, it forced Guinea to sell off its resources to foreign corporations at prices much like the sale of furniture on the lawn of a foreclosed house.

The French, Americans, Canadians, Swiss (and lately, the Chinese) came in with spoons out and napkins tucked in under their chins, swallowing the nation's bauxite, gold and more. In the meantime, the IMF ordered the end of trade barriers and thereby ruined local small holders.

As a result of the IMF attack, Guineans who could, fled for freedom and food. This week, then, marked the *second* time this poor African was molested by the IMF.

Now we have the context of how these two, the randy geezer of globalization and the refugee ended up, in quite different positions, in that New York hotel room.

Since taking over the IMF in 2007, erstwhile "Socialist" Strauss-Kahn has tightened the screws in an attempt to maintain the free-market finance mania that ruined this planet in the first place. *[That's worth a story in itself – and that's coming. Our team has a stack of inside documents from the IMF that we will be releasing in my new book in the Fall.]*

DSK's lawyers say the relationship with the housekeeper was "consensual." But DSK says that about all IMF agreements with nations over whom it holds life and death powers. That's like saying a bank robbery is consensual so long as you don't consider the gun.

Whether it was agreed-upon sex or brutal rape, it could only have been "consensual" in the same way that the people of Guinea consented to IMF-ordered financial rapine.

The Times article quotes an IMF crony of Strauss-Kahn saying DSK gets his way by "persuasion" not "bullying." Tell that to the Greeks.

It was DSK who, last year, personally insisted on brutal terms for the so-called bail-out of Greece. "Strong conditionality" is the IMF term. Strauss-Kahn demanded not just a devastating cut in pensions and a deliberate increase in unemployment to 14%, but also the sell-off of 4,000 of 6,000 state-owned services. The DSK IMF plan allowed the financiers who set the financial fires of Greece to pick up the nation's assets at a fire-sale price.

The Strauss-Kahn demands were not "tough love" for Greece: The love was reserved solely for the vulture bankers who received the IMF funds but were not required to accept one euro in lost profit in return. DSK, despite the advice of many, refused to ask the banks and speculators to reduce their usurious interest charges that were the root of Greece's woes.

Requiring Greece to sell assets, drop trade barriers, and even end the rule that Greek ships use Greek sailors has nothing to do with saving Greece, but everything to do with DSK's commitment to protect every banker's balance sheet from unwanted violations.

I do not consider it a stretch to say that a predator in the bank boardroom suite assumes his impunity applies to the hotel suite.



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