I’m not sure exactly what you’re referring to here. Just the fact that he’s a prominent politician who was arrested?
Housekeeper lives in apartment house for people who have HIV
Who gets the last laugh?
Does he qualify as a diplomat? He isn’t here as the representative of a foreign nation, but as the head of the IMF. Isn’t diplomatic immunity reserved for people working out of an embassy?
ETA: No, he doesn’t qualify. At least, not according to wiki, which isn’t the best source always, but is the quickest.
It’s not that hard to believe to me. Rape only seems boneheaded and self-destructive if you think there’s a real chance you’d get in trouble for it. Highly successful people tend to be risk-takers; that’s why they are so successful. And many also often suffer from delusions of invisibility and self-entitlement. If you’ve gotten away with it before, maybe numerous times, then why would you think this time would go down any different.
When any sex scandal ensnares a public figure, I always wonder what they could have possibly been thinking. Larry Craig comes to mind. And then I remember the above.
I mean, invincibility. Not invisibility. Lord.
I saw through it.
Are you trying to create a strawman? Of course I don’t disagree that they might be painful in some cases. Why does any of that matter? How in any way does something coming with strings attached have any relevance to whether or not this guy should be called a banker? Do you have any idea what having strings attached means? It simply means there are conditions that come with something. There are countless things in this world that have conditions attached that bear absolutely no resemblance to banking activities.
I would disagree slightly less with calling Ben Bernanke a banker, but I would think it is an awful descriptor for him. If I wanted to use a really general term to say what he is, I would call him an economist. Also, the Fed is supposed to make a profit.
It is a completely bogus term unless you want to eliminate the concept of having a descriptive language. The term “banker” is already used to mean so many different things including commercial lending, retail lending, deposit gathering, capital markets activity, financial advisory, trading, and all of the back office and executive management positions associated with all of those. Do you really want to water it down further and include economists and any political position that involves money? What is the point of that? All it does it makes using it a worthless term since it doesn’t in any way describe what the person does. Do you honestly believe that using the term banker is even remotely as accurate a term as politician? Taking it further, when you hear the term “rich banker” used as an insult what kind of job do you think that person has?
Honestly it is just crazy that you are even arguing this. Are you arguing just to argue or do you really believe the position you are trying to defend? It seems just impossible that someone could really believe what you are trying to say. What’s the next debate topic, whether it is okay to call a construction worker a professional athlete since they get paid to do physically strenuous activities?
Yes, he qualifies for immunity (as a UN rep, not for France). You’ll have to believe me over wiki on this one 
Having said that, immunity is always a can of worms, and open to all kinds of interpretation. My point was more along the lines that the authority which made the decision to detain him seems to have ignored this issue. Either they got a high-level green-light (probably), or were clumsy enough to have simply overlooked the issue (unlikely in NY).
I take your point, and generally agree with it - but this was in the guy’s hotel room, completely unplanned, no effort to cover-up, no serious effort to flee - that goes beyond invincibility - I think you were right when you called it ‘invisibility’, you’d have to be The Invisible Man to get away with this one.
I’m not saying it’s impossible mind you, just that it’s seriously surprising.
How do you call running to the airport minutes after 911 was called, leaving many personal effect behind, not a “serious attempt to flee”? How much more serious does it get than being arrested on a departing airplane?
His hotel room would have been the logical place that this would’ve occurred, right? If the claim was that she was raped in a truly public place, like the hotel lobby…now that would be surprising.
Completely unplanned? We don’t know that. For all we know, he was living out a fantasy he’s had since the age of 15.
No effort to cover-up or flee…these are actions someone who is worried about being caught would do. If he’s not burdened by any those particular concerns, then it would not occur to him that he needed to flee or hide evidence.
I know nothing about this guy or the accuser…just sayin that nothing in this story rings that unusual when you look at other messes public figures have made of their lives. Exhibit A: John Edwards. Having an affair and siring extramarital children while running for president and married to a dying woman. Maybe not as boneheaded and self-destructive as rape, but not that far from it.
Nor does being rich mean you will make intelligent decisions . Ask Arnold the Gropenator.
I did a little more research. The IMF has waived any immunity he might have had and says he didn’t have it to start with, the U.S. Government says he never had it - both say that diplomatic immunity in cases like this only extend to actions undertaken in your official role. Apparently, the official role does not extend to what you do in your hotel room suite with the maid.
Did he leave “many personal effects?” The original report just mentioned a cellphone, which I imagine plenty of non-rapists have left in their hotel rooms.
And I’ve heard different things about the plane ticket. Was it reserved ahead of time or did he buy it after the incident? If the former, it hardly seems like an “attempt to flee” and more like an attempt to catch his pre-planned flight.
I was listening to a news report yesterday and they mentioned that someone else has come forth with a similar story (something about her mother told her to keep it quiet as it would adversely affect her daughters career…which probably deserves a pitting right there, if true)?? Has anyone heard any details on this? I only heard it in passing.
-XT
I find the last sentence of that article interesting. Max Gallo decries DSK’s treatment, but then “notes that the American system is more egalitarian.” Does he mean simply in the matter of perp walks (i.e. that we’ll perp walk anyone) or does he mean the justice system in general? If the latter, to what is he referring, exactly. Iknow very little about the French justice system.
Timing the incident so that its convenient with his pre-arranged departure time doesn’t strike me as that implausible, and would achieve exactly the same thing as buying the ticket immediately afterwards. Except the former would actually be a whole lot smarter, because then he’d know for sure he’d have a seat on the plane.
They were making a big deal in the news about while DSK can’t have diplomatic immunity, the IMF is insisting that any IMF documents he may have must be returned to them, as well as that cellphone he left behind if it’s an IMF-issued phone. The authorities have the phone and are trying to determine if it was issued by the IMF. What difference that would make, I dunno. Maybe he calls his rape victims?
That was with reference to a post of Themenin and I don’t know what his/her answer is, but I’d like to offer a comment on perception, as another European.
As some aspect of the treatment of criminal suspects in the US look, seen from abroad, to be dialed up to 11 across the board it is easy to misunderstand procedure to be aiming at particular humiliation in a given case.
Putting myself into the shoes of a criminal suspect in a Western European country (say, someone caught red-handed at assault or theft), I’d expect
- discretion to be used in deciding whether to arrest me or (weighing flight risk etc.) just to take my ID for later prosecution. (this obviously does not apply to the DSK case)
- if arrested, discretion to be used in deciding whether to handcuff me in transit (from press photographs it looks like DSK was even handcuffed behind the back at times, which looks particularly humiliating)
- police, prosecutors and courts not publicly identifying me by full name prior to trial (cannot fully expect that if I am a public figure), let alone making my booking photograph publicly available
- the judicial hearing on whether to authorize to keep me on remand, and futher pretrial hearings, to be in camera
- the press not identifying me by full name in trial reports (cannot expect that if I am am a public figure)
Regarding handcuffing, that’s a particularly sore point in public perception (in Germany, and I suspect also in France) - I remember periodic outraged press reports of people not just being refused entry into the US (the US’s right to to), and being detained pending a plane for leaving being available (neccessary absent provisions for sterile transit), but, in the process, being handcuffed, like violent criminals.
He’d need to know when the maid would come and clean his room, which I guess isn’t impossible but doesn’t seem super-likely. But in anycase, I was responding to a poster that seemed to think it was a sign of his fleeing in a hurry that he was pulled off a plane. But reserving a plane ticket a week ago, adn then getting on that plane aren’t exactly signs of a mad flight from justice.
“It’s like he’s posing for his own political cartoon!”
– Jon Stewart