Dominique Strauss-Kahn Arrested At JFK In Sexual Assault of Maid

RedTracker| The head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was arrested late Saturday afternoon, minutes before he was lifting off for Paris from JFK.

10 minutes before Air France Flight 23 was scheduled to take off, authorities boarded the plane, taking Mr. Strauss-Khan into custody, reports the NYTimes.

The Port Authority officers were acting in unison with the NYPD, whose detectives had been investigating a brutal attack of a woman employee at the hotel Sofitel New York, at 45 West 44th Street, in the heart of the city’s theater district.

The 32-year-old woman told police that she entered Strauss-Kahn’s room at about 1pm on Saturday and he emerged from the bedroom naked, threw her down and tried to sexually assault her, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said. She broke free and escaped the room and told hotel staff what had happened who called the police. via The Guardian

NYPD officers arrived immediately on the scene at the hotel, but Strauss-Kahn was gone, leaving behind his mobile phone and other personal items.

We assume that Strauss-Kahn will not be meeting tomorrow with German Chancellor Angela Merkel as scheduled.

As well as the problems of the euro zone, the two were scheduled to discuss the upcoming summit of the Group of Eight industrialized nations, the group of 20 most industrialized and emerging economies, Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert said at a regular government press conference Friday.

Germany’s government will only come up with its conclusions on Greece once the troika of the IMF, European Central Bank and European Commission have published the findings of their current ongoing review of the Greek rescue program, finance ministry spokesman Martin Kotthaus said.WSJ

It was widely expected that Dominique Strauss-Kahn intends to run for president of France on the Socialist ticket. Strauss-Kahn (widely known as DSK) had an affair with Piroska Nagy, a Hungarian economist, while working at the IMF in 2008. He is married to Anne Sinclair, a famous French TV anchor, who has more or less condoned his affairs.

In an interview with L’Express magazine, she (Anne Sinclaire) explained: “It’s important for a politician to be able to seduce.” She also wrote a blog post in 2008, right after DSK’s affair with the IMF’s economist, claiming this kind of incident can happen to a couple, and that they still love each other like at the early beginning. The post has since been deleted. via The Guardian

Just yesterday, The Guardian published information not related to today’s events that young French author Tristane Banon interviewed Strauss-Kahn for a book about public figures and claimed that she had to fight him off physically.

This side of DSK’s life has almost become folklore in France. In 2009, humourist Stéphane Guillon even dedicated his comedy slot on the popular morning radio show La Matinale de France Inter (the French equivalent for Radio 4) to this particular side of the politician: “Exceptional measures have been taken at Radio France in order not to awaken the Beast. Here are the measures, as detailed by the trade unions. I quote: ‘In order to guarantee the safety of the personnel, female workers are asked to wear long, unrevealing and anti-sex clothes’.” This made Guillon famous, and almost got him fired. Unsurprisingly, DSK was not amused and expressed it bluntly when he entered the studio 20 minutes later.

Update on Sun, May 15, 2011 by Anne

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said Mr Strauss-Kahn had been charged with a criminal sexual act, attempted rape and unlawful imprisonment relating to an incident involving a 32-year-old woman.

BBC News reports details from Browne:

“We received a call that a chambermaid in a hotel in midtown Manhattan had been sexually assaulted by the occupant of a luxury suite at that hotel, and that that individual had fled,” Mr Browne told the BBC.

“The maid described being forcibly attacked, locked in the room and and sexually assaulted,” he said.

Speaking to Reuters, Mr Browne gave more details on the allegations against Mr Strauss-Kahn.

“She told detectives he came out of the bathroom naked, ran down a hallway to the [suite] foyer where she was, pulled her into a bedroom and began to sexually assault her, according to her account.”

“She pulled away from him and he dragged her down a hallway into the bathroom where he engaged in a criminal sexual act, according to her account to detectives. He tried to lock her into the hotel room.”

Update on Sun, May 15, 2011 by Anne

Arrest Throws French Politics Into Disarray NYTimes

For months, France has been buzzing with speculation that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the popular chief of the International Monetary Fund, would quit his job in Washington to take on President Nicolas Sarkozy in next year’s presidential elections. But on Sunday, French politicians and media met news of his arrest in New York for alleged sexual aggression with stunned disbelief and expressions of national humiliation.

The incident threw Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s political party, the Socialists, into confusion and set the stage for a new political calculus that could allow the National Front, the far-right party led by its founder’s daughter, Marine Le Pen, to become a more dominant force during the election campaign.

AOC article on Le Pen April 30, 2011

Marine Le Pen Works To Redefine French Nationalism

Le Pen is a French nationalist, anti-EU politician, not to be confused with Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann or even Margaret Thatcher.

NYT writes that French intellectuals are in awe of this woman, and I can see why. Rather than reject the cloak of secularism, Le Pen embraces it, saying the problem isn’t Muslims but that they want France to accept their values.

“For a long time, the National Front upheld the idea that the state always does things more expensively and less well than the private sector,” she told me (writer Russell Shorto). “But I’m convinced that’s not true. The reason is the inevitable quest for profitability, which is inherent in the private sector. There are certain domains which are so vital to the well-being of citizens that they must at all costs be kept out of the private sector and the law of supply and demand.” The government, therefore, should be entrusted with health care, education, transportation, banking and energy.