Strauss-Kahn - an alternative narrative

Warning: speculation in progress

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If ever, bored with reality, I decide to write political thrillers, this is how I would break down the Strauss-Kahn case.

The hotel is French owned... when I heard that my antennae went all aquiver... I was  invaded by the spirits of Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, Len Deighton and John LeCarré... this has all the ingredients for one of their tales.

When we talk about the the New York Sofitel, we are talking about a little piece of France in the middle of Manhattan, a little piece of France, which comes under American legal jurisdiction, which is something that has both advantages and disadvatages, depending on how you play them.

New York in case you weren't aware of it, is a spook's paradise, it being simultaneously America's financial center and the home of the United Nations. Imagine the goodies available for the diligent gleaner. Think how convenient it would be for the French intelligence establishment to be able to listen to all the conversations, make video recordings of all the amorous liaisons in a luxury hotel... especially those of the most wealthy and influential French guests. It would seem probable to me that French intelligence has assets of theirs working in the hotel... microphones and video cameras installed or removed along with the dirty towels. To do this they would have to have the tacit permission of the hotel's French owners, if an appeal to their patriotism were not enough to convince them, it would not be difficult to make them an offer they couldn't refuse. So I think it would have been very easy for French intelligence to have organized the downfall of Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Why in the world would they want to do that?

Do I think Sarkozy is behind all this?

No, I don't, I don't think they would do this for Sarkozy, I think that they are doing it precisely because of the weakness of Sarkozy.

Most Americans reading about this affair think it is about the IMF, but in fact, true or false, it is about France.

And American readers who have understood that much may think that the coming French election was going to be between Sarkozy and Strauss-Kahn, when in fact Sarkozy's popularity has sunken so low that it is quite possible he won't even make it to the second round of those elections.

So again, imagine if a scandal like this were to break during the campaign, or was staged by people close the French far-right, it would, in the case of DSK still winning, leave France in the hands of a totally disgraced and crippled politician or hand the election to Marine Le Pen... This might lead to the break-up of the European Union, the collapse of the euro... either result would be a Pandora's box... a disaster for France and for its establishment. The merest possibility would be too terrible to contemplate.

In my alternate scenario, the downfall of DSK could be seen as the controlled demolition of a building in ruins, before it collapsed on its own, killing innocent pedestrians passing by. Doing it in New York would be simply be using America's implacable legal system to do their dirty work for them.

Happy ending. It gives the Socialist party time to recover from the shock and choose a candidate. Like him or not the French establishment can live with Sarkozy if he survives and wins again and the Socialist contenders: Aubrey, Hollande and Royale are all solid, clean, members of the French establishment and any of them could trounce Marine Le Pen in the run-off.

Is any of this political thriller true? Probably not, but, se non è vero, è ben trovato, it would make an entertaining read on a long flight. DS

PS: In an interview in the Spanish Newspaper El País, the pioneer of  America's "New Journalism", Gay Talese said that in his opinion the leading character of the Strauss-Kahn drama isn't the head of the IMF, but the chambermaid.

Who is the maid?

She is reported to be 32, and an immigrant from Africa, living with a teenage daughter. Investigates the Times: ““They’re good people,” said one neighbor, another African immigrant. “Every time I see her I’m happy because we’re both from Africa. She’s never given a problem for nobody. Never noisy. Everything nice.” Business Insider

Africa is a big, place, I would want to know if she is from francophone Africa, and if she is, does she have family in France, and if so would she or they be interested in obtaining French nationality?

The bigger they are the dumber they fall

David Seaton's News Links

Until this incident, Dominique Strauss-Kahn was favored to take the presidency of France away from Nicholas Sarkozy. Maybe he was set up... Sarkozy would be perfectly capable of that. 

But whether the chambermaid's story is true or not, I can't believe how dumb the head of the IMF is... He was in such a hurry to get away, he even left his cell phone... Not to mention samples of DNA.

I thought that only presidents of the USA did this kind of thing.

The way he behaved was panicky and dumb. A president may be required at times to be criminal, but to be panicky and dumb is unforgivable. DS

Milton Friedman's "Full Monty" makes its European tour (soon in theaters near your home)

Deep down, the crisis is yet another manifestation of what I call “the political trilemma of the world economy”: economic globalization, political democracy, and the nation-state are mutually irreconcilable. We can have at most two at one time. Democracy is compatible with national sovereignty only if we restrict globalization. If we push for globalization while retaining the nation-state, we must jettison democracy. And if we want democracy along with globalization, we must shove the nation-state aside and strive for greater international governance.  Professor Dani Rodrik, Harvard University

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"Economic globalization, political democracy, and the nation-state are mutually irreconcilable." You might say it louder, but it would be difficult to say it more clearly. Here, in one sentence, Dani Rodrik has encapsulated the cross currents that are creating the turbulence we are living through today.

If you mull over the entire quote at the top of the page you can see that of all the "trilemma", democracy has the roughest row to hoe.

Right now now the IMF style austerity programs are beginning in Greece, Spain and Portugal, with severe cuts in public spending, pensions and other entitlements, labor rights reform.  Next will be Italy and the United Kingdom. But, carrying the debt it carries, even the United States can expect to see it "playing soon in a theater near your home".

This is perhaps the first time that the IMF's full Monty has ever been performed on  rich and a powerfuldemocracy... not just one, but several simultaneously. The financial disaster brought on by irresponsible, if not criminal, speculators, who are making millions at this very minute, is now going to be paid for by widows and orphans (literally).

As Naomi Klein points out in her groundbreaking book, "The Shock Doctrine", extreme Friedmanism normally is executed (choice of word) by people like Indonesia's Suharto, Brazil's military dictatorship of the 1960s, Pinochet or the Argentinian junta. This could be taken as a working illustration of Rodrik's "trilemma".

Now some of the most developed and democratic and historically creative countries in the world are going to experience the Shock Doctrine in full.

I find it simple to predict that many people in these countries are going to rebel and that the new technologies are going to empower that protest, and that the sort of protests seen in Seattle, instead of being confined to activists, will begin to mobilize the same masses of ordinary folks that filled the streets of Europe's cities before the invasion of Iraq. Will democracy survive? Will globalization? Will the nation state? Very dramatic questions, but as theater people would say, it reads better than it plays.

What all this reminds me of is the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of "real existing socialism". The same feeling of exploring terra incognita.

I wrote this awhile back:

When the USSR went down, most observers read it ideologically, that we in the west had "won". Our merit had caused it all to happen. This was probably a big mistake. Perhaps that collapse did little more than reveal that a huge, powerful, system, one that had industrialized an enormous, backward country and made it into a scientific, political and military superpower, one that had defeated Nazi Germany almost single handed in WWII, a power like that could just simply collapse mysteriously. Just up and die. Just like that. The United States, instead of taking a victory lap, might have been more prudent to murmur then, "there but for the grace of God go I" and gotten busy looking to its own vulnerabilities instead of crowing and preening, because it appears that good ol' Grace is seeing somebody else these days.

What is really happening? It's hard to say, but Rodrik and Naomi Klein have the neatest explanations of this supremely confusing moment that I have seen. DS