THE
ROVING EYE Sex, power and American
justice By Pepe Escobar
So Osama bin Laden won't be the main
character in the trial of the century after all;
by a simple twist of fate, that role will be
played by Dominique Strauss-Khan (DSK), the
all-powerful head of the International Monetary
Fund (IMF), now languishing at "Alcatraz" Rikers
Island in New York.
The fact that this
acronym soup has just been auditioning, despite
himself, to the world-famous New York Police
Department, complete with the last-minute snatch
in the first class cabin of a trans-Atlantic
flight, police line up and perp walk, makes it the
ultimate sociopolitical global scandal.
On
a nastier, New York tabloid level, it was hard to
escape the
scintillating metaphor of the
IMF - with its reputation for screwing the world's
poor - literally applying a structural adjustment
in a Manhattan hotel suite to a discreet African
Muslim immigrant widow who lives in the Bronx with
her teenage daughter. The merciless media
execution had to be as massive as the event
itself.
Arguably, DSK is luckier than
Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, because
he'll be facing a New York jury and not the
International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
Unlike Gaddafi, DSK - at least in theory - is
innocent until proven guilty, although he has
already been convicted by the gutter press.
Less visible on both sides of the Atlantic
have been sane intellects pointing out that Wall
Street crooks swindling average people out of
trillions of dollars; BP executives destroying the
Gulf of Mexico; and as a matter of fact the George
W Bush administration bankrupting the US by
launching a war that killed over 1 million Iraqi
civilians - none of them were slapped with a perp
walk.
That much is established; as far as
"American justice" is concerned, the chances of
seeing Bush administration or Goldman Sachs
perpetrators in handcuffs are zero.
Making whoopee To follow in
detail the media hysteria on both sides of the
Atlantic has been more fascinating than a trip to
Mars. In France, it was all but certain that DSK
would become the next president in the 2012
elections, beating sagging neo-Napoleonic
liberator of Libya Nicolas Sarkozy. DSK - the
weapon of choice of the financial powers behind
the throne - was about to announce his candidacy
this month.
The overall tone of French
mainstream media - by the way largely subservient
to Sarkozy and his minions - is that the
Americans, confirming all existing anti-French
stereotyping, humiliated the country by parading a
handcuffed DSK in a perp walk (illegal in France)
and refusing his US$1 million bail.
American justice, Law and
Order-style, is being dragged into the mud as
much as American Puritanism. Meanwhile, among
catatonic sympathizers of the Socialist Party,
conspiracy theories inevitably swirl.
At
least most of France apparently has established
that the Sofitel chambermaid from Guinea was not a
Mata Hari. But maybe she is a Central Intelligence
Agency agent. Then there's the nagging twitter -
amplified by a Sarkozy minion - announcing DSK had
been "arrested" even before the New York police
uttered a peep; a worldwide scoop. No less than
57% of French voters and 70% of socialists believe
DSK was framed.
Cui bono - in case
of a conspiracy? Certainly Sarkozy benefits, his
presidential re-election campaign and his
ultra-conservative American connections; the
neo-fascists of the National Front in France,
whose candidate, the businesslike Marine Le Pen,
stands a greater chance of getting to the second
round in 2012; and global financial sharks unhappy
with the more "liberalizing" IMF stance under DSK.
Ultra-charismatic DSK is a suave Moet
& Chandon socialist. If he were a bank, DSK
would be in the "too big to fail" category. He did
fail - but not as a bank.
If he were an
American politician, he would be like former
president Bill Clinton - penchant for making
whoopee included. "Bubba" was almost booted out of
supreme power by a gang of rabid puritans for a
mere blowjob in the White House. The Paris
cocktail circuit simply cannot fathom that
notorious womanizer DSK would be foolish enough to
risk a presidency for a French-speaking African
Muslim housekeeper.
Thus the thesis that
this was all a misunderstanding; DSK was waiting
for a high-class New York call girl when the
unsuspecting chambermaid entered the lion's den
and found the lion fully armed. This close
encounter between the IMF and a sub-Saharan
African developing economy does not imply that DSK
is a champion of the poor, or the working class.
Far from being a socialist, DSK has been a prime
companion of the global financial elites and
multinational capital. But there was a very
interesting twist to it.
The sorriest
aspect of the whole sordid affair is that DSK was
really trying to reform the IMF - turning the
unrepresentative behemoth towards a more
progressive line. He was widely praised as a top
manager. His interim successor is American John
Lipsky - a former vice president at JP Morgan;
talk about a regression.
DSK was trying to
steer the IMF away from its nefarious role during
the Asian financial crisis. At that time in 1997,
the IMF's harsh US Treasury Department-inspired
medicine, immensely profitable to creditors,
almost destroyed whole economies, from Thailand to
Indonesia. Brazil and Russia also suffered.
Then it was time to "tame" Argentina - but
Argentina defaulted in late 2001. The IMF did
everything possible to sabotage the country; but
Argentina's economy stabilized and the country
started to grow again in 2002.
Emerging
markets are fed up with the IMF being led by a
European. A Frenchman has run the IMF for 26 out
of the past 33 years. The distribution of power is
Medieval; there are nine Europeans among the 24
directors; the Brazilian director represents nine
countries, but his vote weighs only 2.4%; the US
vote counts four-fold.
Those 24 executive
directors now will choose the next IMF head. The
Europeans are already involved in a vicious
catfight - they don't want to surrender the prize.
Prospects anyway are bright for Kemal Dervis from
Turkey, or candidates from India and South Africa.
China is still weighing whether to enter
the ring. Were DSK's demise to open the door for
an emerging economy leader of the IMF, what
spectacular poetic justice, that it will be thanks
to an African Muslim immigrant woman.
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