IMF Boss a Rapist: How Ironic

The “managing director” (boss) of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, appears to be a rapist. He tried to rape the cleaning woman at his $3,000 a night suite in a New York City hotel, forced her to blow him, then immediately fled, hopping an Air France jet destined for Paris. But the police held the plane and pulled him off.

Oh sure, we have to “assume” he’s innocent. Actually just the jurors, if he ever goes to trial, have to assume that. The rest of us can make assumptions based on information available to us. The guy takes it on the lam, leaving his cellphone and other items behind. The car service driver who took him to Kennedy Airport says he was nervous, stressed, and in a big rush. And do you really think the cops are gonna drag an important poohbah like him off a plane unless the charges are solid? Today he was denied bail!

By the way, he’s done this before, in France, but it was hushed up. The victim that time was Tristane Banon, a journalist and novelist, in 2002. Le Parisien reported the attempted rape, and the victim described it on TV cable channel Paris Premiere in 2007.

Plus he’s a serial adulterer, including during his stint at the IMF.

The irony here is that the IMF is a rapist of entire countries. It rapes them on behalf of the top strata of finance capital, headquartered in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. It was set up, with the World Bank, at the end of World War II, to enforce big capital’s domination of the world.


P.S. We all assume Osama bin Laden and others like him are guilty. So the “presumption of innocence” is a nicety reserved for the privileged.