[Al Jazeera] Maria Fekter, Austria's finance minister, has suggested that the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) should consider stepping down to avoid damaging the institution in the wake of his arrest for alleged sexual assault.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn was tossed in the clink in New York on Saturday for allegedly attempting to rape a maid in his hotel room.
A New York judge refused to release him on bail on Monday and he spent the night in the city's Rikers Island jail.
"Considering the situation, that bail was denied, he has to figure out for himself, that he is hurting the institution,'' Fekter told journalists as she arrived at a meeting of European finance ministers in Brussels on Tuesday.
Elena Salgado, Spain's finance chief, said Strauss-Kahn had to decide for himself whether he wanted to step down, considering the offenses he is accused of are "extraordinarily serious".
"If I had to show my solidarity and support for someone it would be toward the woman who has been assaulted, if that is really the case that she has been," she said.
'Good friend'
Other European officials were more supportive of the IMF's managing director.
"I'm very sad and upset. And he's a good friend of mine," said Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg prime minister.
"I didn't like the pictures I've seen on television," Juncker added, referring to footage that showed Strauss-Kahn in handcuffs being escorted by police outside a New York precinct house.
Strauss-Kahn has not yet officially stepped down, but few analysts expect him to remain.
His arrest is not expected to impede the IMF's day-to-day functioning, with the executive board still able to approve loan packages.
The board is expected to authorise rescue loans to Portugal as part of a larger package that European finance ministers negotiated on Monday.
"An element of uncertainty has been injected at a time when the situation is extremely fragile," said James Rickards, senior managing director at Tangent Capital Partners.
Before his arrest, Strauss-Kahn was widely expected to step down within months and run for president of La Belle France, so the IMF's executive board is likely to have already been considering replacements.
A new managing director could be selected as early as June or July, Rickards said.
China's foreign ministry said on Tuesday that the selection for leadership of the IMF should be based on "fairness, transparency and merit", but declined comment on the charges against Strauss-Kahn.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/18/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
Well he could try and employ the general population of Rikers Island. Lots of them will have a much better understanding on how the market economy works than a French champagne socialist.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
05/18/2011 2:35 Comments ||
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#2
News reports are that they pulled him off an aircraft headed home, hell yes jail him, honest folk don't run away.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
05/18/2011 21:32 Comments ||
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[Straits Times] POLICE have detained a businessman who purportedly installed himself as sultan of the southern Philippines province of Sulu. "And what do you do for a living?"
The man, known as Datu Mohd Akjan Datu Ali Muhammad, was detained here on Sunday. "I'm a sultan."
Akjan was produced before magistrate Noorhafizah Mohd Salim on Monday and remanded for seven days. "You're a sultan?"
Magistrate Noorhafizah issued the remand order based on a request by investigating officer Asst Supt Azizul Mansor under Section 117 of the Criminal Procedure Code. "Yep. Wanted to be one since I was a kid..."
Police said Akjan was held to assist in investigations following a series of reports lodged against him in the wake of a ceremony at his Kampung Likas house here on Feb 2. He was reported to have been installed the 33rd sultan of Sulu in the presence of 60 people. "... Then one day I enrolled in this correspondence couse, 'How to be a sultan.' Did all the lessons, got my diploma..."
Sabah Police Commissioner Datuk Hamza Taib previously said police were investigating the matter under the Penal Code and the Internal Security Act. He also said Akjan could have committed an offence by having dual citizenship. "Then came the big day! I hung out my shingle, hired some henchmen and a grand vizier, and I was a sultan! Been happy as a clam in chowder ever since!"
Posted by: Fred ||
05/18/2011 19:25 ||
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#1
hmmm. The High School team name my kids attended was "The Sultans". Wonder if he attended too?
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/18/2011 18:18 Comments ||
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#2
I declared myself king of the world once. All it got me was a bigger tax bill.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
05/18/2011 20:07 Comments ||
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[Arab News] Former Caliphornia Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has acknowledged that he fathered a child with a member of his household staff, a revelation that apparently prompted wife Maria Shriver to leave the couple's home before they announced their separation last week. Turns out he was porking the maid, she got knocked up, had offspring, blamed it on her husband, and Arnold secretly supported them whilst trying to keep it from his wife. That's never happened before, of course...
Schwarzenegger and Shriver jointly announced on May 9 that they were splitting up after 25 years of marriage. Yet, Shriver moved out of the family's Brentwood mansion earlier in the year after Schwarzenegger acknowledged the child is his, The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday.
"After leaving the governor's office I told my wife about this event, which occurred over a decade ago," Schwarzenegger told the Times in a statement. "I understand and deserve the feelings of anger and disappointment among my friends and family. There are no excuses and I take full responsibility for the hurt I have caused. I have apologized to Maria, my children and my family. I am truly sorry.
"I ask that the media respect my wife and children through this extremely difficult time," the statement concluded. "While I deserve your attention and criticism, my family does not." Schwarzenegger's representatives did not comment further.
A front man for the former first lady told the Times she had no comment.
The Times did not publish the former staffer's name nor that of her child but said the woman worked for the family for 20 years and retired in January.
In an interview Monday before Schwarzenegger issued his statement, the former staffer said another man -- her husband at the time -- was the child's father. When the Times later informed the woman of the governor's statement, she declined to comment further. At least Maria wasn't dying of cancer.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/18/2011 00:00 ||
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"I told Maria she had been on my staff for more than 10 years. How can she be surprised now?"
Shamelessly plagiarized Borrowed from Frank G's Tuesday comment. It just can't be improved on.
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
05/18/2011 1:56 Comments ||
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[Al Jazeera] The house of Uganda's main opposition leader has been surrounded by police, effectively placing him under house arrest for leading protests against soaring food and fuel prices, his party said.
Kizza Besigye has been at the forefront of walk-to-work protests in Kampala, the capital, where demonstrators have opted to forgo motorised transport and walk to work in protest over rising fuel prices.
"We consider Besigye under house arrest," Anne Mugisha, deputy foreign secretary of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), told the Rooters news agency on Monday.
The protests, staged every Monday and Thursday since April 11, have led to festivities between opposition politicians and security forces and resulted in the deaths of at least 10 people, according to local media, and left hundreds injured.
A heavy contingent of police blocked the road to Besigye's house on Monday, anticipating another protest, according to witnesses.
But the opposition leader, who returned home last Thursday from neighbouring Kenya after receiving treatment for injuries inflicted on him by security forces, had decided not to walk due to a heavy flu, party officials said.
Besigye came a distant second to Museveni in the February election, winning 26 per cent of the vote, while Museveni, in power since 1986, took 68 per cent. The opposition dismissed the election as a sham.
Mugisha said Besigye's wife Winnie Byanyima, a United Nations ...an idea whose time has gone... employee, was blocked by police as she tried to drive to the airport on Monday to fly back to her office in New York.
"When Winnie tried to leave the house this morning the car was immediately blocked by police with water cannon trucks. They towed the car to the cop shoppe, opened it and were shocked to find he wasn't inside," Mugisha said.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/18/2011 00:00 ||
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[Al Jazeera] The UN court for Rwanda has handed the general who was army chief during the country's 1994 genocide a 30-year jail term for his role in the mass killing, including calling for the murder of ethnic Tutsis.
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) found that Augustine Bizimungu had complete control over the men he commanded, who were involved in the massacres that started on the night of April 6.
Augustin Ndindiliyimana, the former head of the paramiltary police, was also convicted of genocide crimes but the court ordered his release as he had already spent 11 years behind bars since his arrest.
Bizimungu and Ndindiliyimana are among the most senior figures to be tried by the tribunal, based in the Tanzanian city of Arusha, for the genocide in which 800,000 people, mostly minority Tutsis, were killed.
The genocide targeted mostly minority Tutsis and was orchestrated by machete-wielding Hutus calling themselves the Interahamwe, meaning "those who work together".
It was triggered by the shooting down of a plane carrying Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu president who was returning from peace talks with the now-ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) in neighbouring Tanzania.
All people on board, including the president of neighbouring Burundi, were killed. It is not clear who shot down the aircraft.
PM's murder
The ICTR sentenced two other senior officers to 20 years in jail for war crimes and crimes against humanity for ordering the murder of Agathe Uwilingiyimana, the Rwandan prime minister.
The judges found that Major Francois-Xavier Nzuwonemeye and Captain Innocent Sagahutu instructed an armoured unit to kill Uwilingiyimana and made no attempt to punish the soldiers who killed the Belgian UN Blue Helmets protecting her.
The killing of the Belgians triggered the withdrawal of the UN force stationed in Rwanda.
The long-running case, known as the Military II trial, had been effectively adjourned since June 2009 when prosecutors requested life sentences for all four defendants while their defence lawyers asked for their acquittal.
In the Military I trial, Colonel Theoneste Bagosora, presented by the prosecutor as the brains behind the genocide, was sentenced to life in prison in December 2008, along with two other senior military figures.
Bagosora appealed, with the hearing running from March 30 to April 1, but the appeal verdict has yet to be handed down.
The ICTR was set up in 1994 and tasked only with trying those who bear the greatest responsibility for the genocide.
Lower-ranking officials and citizens accused of taking part in the massacre have been tried in Rwanda, either in the normal court system or at grass roots tribunals called "gacaca".
The gacaca are a revamped version of traditional tribunals that settled disputes in villages. The accused have no lawyers and locals considered to be upright citizens form panels of judges.
The gacaca have come in for a barrage of criticism from rights groups but have, according to the Rwandan authorities, enabled over one million people accused of involvement in the genocide to be tried.
They were set up as a solution to what became a crippling backlog of genocide cases.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/18/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
Maybe NYPD could release him into the general population of Rikers Island, just to give him a better perspective of what being a victim really means.
I feel for the real victim. Mr Brafman will rape her again at court.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
05/18/2011 8:29 Comments ||
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That would cure his rutting chimpanzee sex addition.
The IMF chief's alleged sex-assault victim lives in a Bronx apartment rented exclusively for adults with HIV or AIDS, The Post has learned.
The hotel maid, a West African immigrant, has occupied the fourth-floor High Bridge pad with her 15-year-old daughter since January -- and before that, lived in another Bronx apartment set aside by Harlem Community AIDS United strictly for adults with the virus and their families.
The Post has not been able to ascertain whether the maid, 32, has HIV/AIDS because of medical confidentiality laws.
But the agency rents apartments only for adults with the disease. A Harlem United worker said at least one adult in the household has to be HIV-positive or have AIDS to qualify for one of their units. A healthy adult with a child with HIV or AIDS is not eligible.
#5
Remember that the French media is far more leftist socialist than even MSNBC. They will beat the drum hard for this rapist.
Ironically, this has given Marine Le Pen a huge opportunity, and she is on it "like a duck on a June bug", running on a women's platform that the "elitist men in the two main parties of France are pigs who mistreat women."
A very powerful message, made more so because to a large extent it is true.
#8
from the same morals that made Roman Polanski a "victim"
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/18/2011 9:55 Comments ||
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No sense for Dom to deny anything happened. According the the HIV story, there is DNA on the (blue?) carpet. He better hope the maid wasn't a biter.
#10
I've read some French gossip (published before the event) that DSK seems to have a knack for escorts playing hotel maids and one French politician hinted at more incidents that have occurred at the Sofitel with him.
It might just be that he had special reasons to spend 500 dollars on a hotel in New York (with upgrade to the 3000 dollar suite) despite the fact that he has a flat in New York.
And this time he stumbled upon a real maid.
Also read that the hotel didn't alert police for hours. Probably wanted to hush up everything but the girl wasn't willing to.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
05/18/2011 10:13 Comments ||
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He better hope the maid wasn't a biter.
If that HIV / AIDS story pans out it looks like she won't even have to bite.
So I guess he'll sue because she didn't notify her rapist she was HIV positive.
#12
Dominique Strauss-Kahn's life just got even more interesting (in the Chinese proverb sense)
...You may not be interested in Karma, but Karma is interested in you.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
05/18/2011 10:57 Comments ||
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The best part will be if he goes into a profound rant before the press at Rikers, demanding the best treatment for HIV that exists, no matter the cost, because he is one of the elite, an important person, who does not deserve to die of a filth disease like some peasant (insert racial epithet here).
#14
Just like karma, egalite' can be a real bitch.
Free advice to DSK: do not wear your $20,000 suit to the jury trial.
Posted by: Matt ||
05/18/2011 11:44 Comments ||
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#15
"I've read some French gossip (published before the event) that DSK seems to have a knack for escorts playing hotel maids and one French politician hinted at more incidents that have occurred at the Sofitel with him."
Oddly enough, my daughter also had that thought - that there was a professional already on her way to the hotel for a bit of scheduled afternoon amusement, but somehow the wires got crossed, and Sofitel housekeeping thought that the room was empty. At any rate, this explains why he was stark naked and all ready for fun'n'games when the maid came in, expecting the room to be empty.
#16
Moose: He CAN'T ask for any HIV testing because he wasn't there and never touched her.
Pass the popcorn.
Posted by: Chris W. ||
05/18/2011 13:16 Comments ||
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I am very pleased and proud of the NYPD.
Name a country in Europe in which the police 1) would have listened to the victim 2) taken her seriously 3) mustered the necessary resources to check out her story 4) gotten to Kahn before he left the country 5) ignored Kahn's protests of how important and powerful he was 6) locked him up in a standard jail cell in a standard jail 7) done a perp walk.
By Geoffrey it's great to be an American.
And it gets better: we'll make sure Kahn has a fair trial. He'll have his high priced lawyers. They'll use the law to their best advantage, as they should. The prosecutor will have to prove his case, as he should.
And if he is convicted, if, he'll enjoy the comforts of a standard New York prison cell. No judge will release him on compassionate grounds, or in recognition of his status, or because of a deal.
Enjoy, Mr. Kahn. I am.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/18/2011 13:32 Comments ||
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Steve White:
You forgot the most important: Upon learning of the raper's identity didn't pretend they had been unable to arrest him before the plane's departure. Just look the other way for 10 minutes and DSK was safe.
#19
Mmh they could still have sent two fighter jets and escort Air France back...
Posted by: European Conservative ||
05/18/2011 15:35 Comments ||
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#20
Right now, in his small smelly cell, it must be dawning upon him that he won't walk free on Friday.
Suppose he'll beg for a plea bargain and I hope he won't get any.
And I think France should be grateful that the U.S. saved them from electing a rapist to the Elysee.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
05/18/2011 15:38 Comments ||
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#21
"Name a country in Europe in which the police ..."
I'd nominate the police of Geneva. Gaddafi's hellspawn tried to bring Libyan tyranny to Geneva and they stopped him.
They had to know that it was far more dangerous to cross Libya than e.g. France. Switzerland's western 'friends' subsequently sided with Libya, tolerating outrageous violations of international law. If Gaddafi had sent assassination squads to Geneva to murder the policemen involved in Hannibal's arrest (and their families) there would not have been a peep of protest.
France will not take American hostages, threaten to storm the American embassy in Paris or announce sponsorship of terror attacks on the US.
The NYPD did the right thing. So did the Geneva Police, in the face of clear danger to their lives. Meanwhile the political class in all major western nations had been corrupted by and was enabling Gaddafi's crimes.
Officials confirmed that DHS will begin tapping into Canadian radar feeds, part of an effort to bring military-grade radar to the Canadian border to detect low flying planes that could be used to smuggle drugs or illegal persons. The radar feed should be operational by November 2011, greatly enhancing our ability to detect and stop low-flying planes that might be loaded down with drugs, nukes, terrorists, anthrax dust, etc. No mention of why this wasn't initiated right after 9/11, if not before that.
Since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, thousands of Iraqi students have fled north to the much more stable Kurdish area. As a result, universities have proliferated throughout the regiona boon for the local economy.
Over the past five years, at least 10 new universities have opened in the area, bringing the region's total to 20, and another five public universities are in the works, including one in the town of Hamdaniya to accommodate Christian refugees.
Universities in this area, controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government, allow students from Baghdad and other unstable parts of Iraq to complete their education without leaving the country, a factor that has reversed the brain-drain that typically comes with conflict.
Since 2003, the KRG has been engaged in a "visiting system" under which state university students from the south can transfer to the north and receive a degree from their home university.
The American University of Iraq-Sulaimani was founded in 2007 in Iraq's Kurdish region by a group of Iraqis and foreigners, inspired in part by the landmark American University of Beirut in Lebanon. Its executive M.B.A. program for working professionals is run in conjunction with Germany's Furtwangen University, and is accredited in Germany by the Foundation for International Business Administration.
Another new university attracting refugees from the south is the Lebanese French University in Erbil, the provincial capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. Founded by academics from Beirut in 2007, the institution offers a four-year, French-style education in English. Its French partners are the University of Picardie-Jules Verne and the University of Nîmes. It will soon move into a new 50,000-square-meter campus.
At the same time, with a $100 million grant from the Qatari government, the KRG is sending 1,400 students abroad on full scholarships, to study for undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, with the stipulation that they will return home upon completion. Students qualify for this program based on their academic records. Most are Kurdish, but some are exiles from the south. In addition, professors will go on six-month training programs to Europe and the U.S. This is how a modern nation is built.
#1
"Lift Every Voice and Sing" was publicly performed first as a poem as part of a celebration of Lincoln's Birthday on February 12, 1900, to introduce its honored guest Booker T. Washington. The poem was later set to music. Singing this song quickly became a way for African Americans to demonstrate their patriotism and hope for the future. In calling for earth and heaven to "ring with the harmonies of Liberty," they could speak out subtly against racism and Jim Crow laws.
The first verse is the one most commonly heard.
Lift every voice and sing,
'Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on 'til victory is won.
Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chast'ning rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
'Til now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.
Still victims.
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/18/2011 5:52 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Al Jazeera] Maria Fekter, Austria's finance minister, has suggested that the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) should consider stepping down to avoid damaging the institution in the wake of his arrest for alleged sexual assault.
[Straits Times] POLICE have detained a businessman who purportedly installed himself as sultan of the southern Philippines province of Sulu.
