Category: Violence

The French Correction – “Le Grand Séducteur,” IMF’s Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Not So Grand

Michael MatheronLeave a comment

May 20, 2011         

The Back Story.  Sixty-two year old Dominique Strauss-Kahn, retired Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has not been managing very well lately. A man known not as much for his professional reputation as for his lively, yet often butterfingered, participation in the bataille des sexes. Last Saturday night, however, the Grand Séducteur apparently took a wrong turn at his Manhattan hotel room’s bathroom door and, perhaps accidentally, perhaps not at all, grabbed the 32-year-old African American femme de chambre who was cleaning his $3,000 per day suite. Allegedly, he then forced her into his bedroom and attempted to rape her. When she managed to escape briefly, the gracious Mr. Strauss-Kahn ran her down and then, according to the maid, forced her into the bathroom where he demanded, and received, oral sex. She then successfully fled and called in the police.

Strauss-Kahn also fled, and with high velocity, leaving behind his cellphone, and his job at IMF. The police rounded him up a short time later as he sat on an Air France flight waiting to take off for Paris, and his nation’s patriotic policy of “non-extradition” of French citizens. After the maid identified him in a lineup, he spent the next 24 hours in the slammer. Presently indicted, he has been granted bail, subject to 24/7 surveillance;  $1 million cash bail;  $5 million insurance bond secured by Strauss-Kahn family property; surrendering of all travel documents; and 24-hour confinement in a Manhattan apartment rented by his wife, Anne Sinclair; wearing an electronic monitor; allowing video cameras in the apartment and building entrances; and be under around-the-clock supervision by at least one armed guard, and paying for it to boot.

J’accuse conspirateurs!   Thus, in one fell swoop, Mr. Strauss-Kahn was downgraded from Grand Séducteur to Grand Défenderesse. The IMF, in haste, replaced him with his deputy, John Lipsky, now acting managing director. Strauss-Kahn subsequently resigned, setting off what is considered a crisis at IMF.

Also, in France, a political crisis ensued.  Strauss-Kahn was heretofore considered the Socialist party’s front runner in their race to depose President Sarkozy in next year’s election. Some believe there is a conspiracy still flying beneath the radar, perhaps initiated by rivals of the IMF, or the Sarkozy camp, or his rivals in the Socialist party, or even the New York police and judicial system. Perhaps al-Qu’ida will take responsibility.

J’accuse les puritains américains!  Gilles Savary, a Member of the European Parliament representing Île-de-France, blames the Puritans, and makes some other observations:

“Indeed, everyone knows that Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a libertine, and that he is distinguished from others by the fact that he doesn’t try and hide it. In France, until further notice, the public wisely confines this kind of life to the realm of privacy when it does not involve indecent assault, nor [deny] the free consent of adults. Catholic heritage without doubt tolerates sin as long as we do regularly contrition.

In Puritan America, steeped in rigorous Protestantism, gambling is tolerated infinitely better than the pleasures of the flesh. So, there, it is easy to trap a personality with as little resistance to the attractions of the fairer sex than Dominique Strauss-Kahn. For it would be hallucinatory that he [having endured a number of sex scandals, leaving him dubbed “the Great Seducer”] would rush after a maid.

Of course, as head of the IMF and a  possible center-left Socialist party 2012 presidential candidate, Strauss-Kahn, has many competitors who benefit from his latest – and most serious – pratfall. Conspiracy theorists rise to arms on all sides, within Sarkozy supporters, to IMF rivals, to rivals in his own Socialist party.”

J’accuse tout le monde! The International Business Times reports: “If Strauss-Kahn was indeed set up, the list of beneficiaries is large, including Sarkozy (who would have removed a huge obstacle to his own re-election) as well as other French Socialist politicians seeking to become the party’s presidential candidate. Rivals and enemies within the IMF would also benefit by seeing the haughty Strauss-Kahn embarrassed and deposed.”

And let’s not forget the Housewives of New Jersey.

Egypt Interior Ministry Fire: FOX News, After a Full Four-Hour Investigation, Names the Culprits, Because They Can

Michael MatheronLeave a comment

March 22, 2011

CAIRO — An Egyptian security official says police protesting in front of Egypt’s Interior Ministry have set fire to part of the downtown complex. TV footage shows flames licking up the building’s top floors and a huge plume of black smoke filling the sky. The official says protesters lit Tuesday’s fire in the building housing in the ministry’s personnel department. It then spread to an adjacent building. The fire followed a protest by thousands of low-ranking police officers calling for better wages and working conditions. Mass demonstrations that toppled former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Feb. 11 have set off frequent protests by laborers seeking to improve their lot.

As of 2:15 pm (EDST) the investigation of the fire at the Ministry of the Interior in Cairo concluded. FOX Newsiness announced its findings after nearly four hours of digging through its predispositions. FOX pinpointed the culprits as the “police protesters” who had assembled earlier in the day to demonstrate for better wages and living conditions. FOX positively named an unnamed Egyptian “security official” as their source. This compelled the closing of their investigation.

FOX also exposed that this latest example of criminal and civil disobedience fits within the larger conspiracy of those continuous mass demonstrations by other ungrateful “laborers seeking to improve their lot.” FOX has completed so thorough an investigation that the thousands of police and interior ministry protesters at the ministry site today will soon be apprehended and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. For the less disobedient among them, re-education will follow so that each learns how well off one is when compared to many others, such as those lost for years in caves in the Sinai. 

Breaking: Libyan No Fly Zone – First Engagement by French Fighter Against Ground Target

Michael MatheronLeave a comment

March 19, 2011

1:33 pm (EDST). CNN has just reported that a French Air Force fighter engaged a “military vehicle” in Libya, apparently the first engagement under March 17th’s U.N. Resolution 1973. The resolution authorizes establishment of “a ban on all flights in the airspace of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya in order to help protect civilians. . . [and] to take all necessary measures to enforce compliance with the ban on flights.”

The interesting and provocative aspect of this engagement is its apparent French Rafale fighter attack on a “military vehicle,” apparently a tank.  Does this indicate a variance, intentional or incidental, from the wording of Resolution 1973, which outlines a no fly zone? If not a tank, as just reported by CNN, a Libyan “military vehicle,” however, may be tasked with air surveillance, or directly in air defense, and, in that case, armed with military ordnance related to air defense. Also, a “military vehicle” may be used in air defense supply.  If so, in these cases, ground vehicle would be directly within the terms of the resolution.

If the attack was against a Libyan tank, as confirmed, and if that tank were not involved in air-related defense, it would appear to go beyond the plain words of Resolution 1973.  However, the clauses “in order to help protect civilians,” “to take all necessary measures to enforce compliance with the ban on flights,” and to “protect civilians and civilian-populated areas under threat of attack” provide a clear path to ratify the attack on a ground target. The resolution, in particular, names Benghazi, the rebel stronghold in the east of the country. In a legal sense, the resolution is broad enough to validate such an attack on a Libyan tank in operation around Benghazi (as this tank was).

A no fly zone, in general, requires “scrubbing” or “sanitizing” of the battle theater, and that necessarily requires the surveillance and probable destruction of air-to-air defense assets such as targeting facilities, electronic support systems, mobile air defense and supply – basically anything that supports Libyan air operations, offensive and defensive. This fact also emphasizes the full military impact of a no fly zone.  This operation against Qadhafi and his forces will likely have very extensive consequences for Libya, of course, an also for the credibility of the U.N., the safety of the region, the no fly zone partners, and its effect on uprisings across the Middle East.

SOS Egypt: Violence Begins, Thugs = Police

Michael MatheronLeave a comment

February 2, 2011

We are no longer sleeping atop a volcano.

“Thugs” = Police. This evening in Cairo a sleeping volcano erupted, spewing lava. Pro-government protesters broke the back of the past week of peaceful revolution with Molotov cocktails and men carrying whips atop camels. Presently, in Tahrir Square, anti-Mubarak demonstrators are surrounded by surging pro-Mubarak crowds, and unable to leave the square as the army stands by, presently motionless.  And then there’s this tweet a few minutes ago, as the Mubarak government tries to shift blame:

Breaking: #Egypt state TV accuses #MuslimBrotherhood of throwing fireballs at #Tahrir. CNN sees NO EVIDENCE of this.

“Thugs,” among the Egyptian people these days, means the state police and the secret security forces. It is very likely that the counter “demonstrators” are seeded with these thugs. Moreover, it is beyond any possible suspension of disbelief that this is a spontaneous outpouring of support for Mubarak. This gathering of weapons-toting thugs has been some time in the making and would have required the acquiescence of the secret police, who, after all, have proved themselves very adept at rooting out opposition parties and individuals.  This “demonstration” required exacting preparation.  And where was Mubarak? And, especially, where was Vice President Omar Suleiman? He’s not without interest here since he was the head of the Mukhabarat, or General Intelligence Directorate; Suleiman was Mubarak’s go-to man for spying, torturing, misinforming, and disrupting.

What Next?  Frankly, it’s an absurd exercise to speculate. “What next?” includes not only Egypt but the region, note the demonstrations in Jordan, the unease in Israel, and the stirrings in Yemen. Yet, one can be sure that Mubarak himself is the only one who can decide whether Egypt burns or heals. And even that is uncertain; the revolution genie is out of the bottle, yet, Egypt without Mubarak is rife for instability. Nevertheless, if Mubarak truly loves his country, as he affirmed in last night’s speech, then the time to leave is now.

The Egyptian Military – Mubarak’s Friend or Foe?

Michael MatheronLeave a comment

January 27, 2011

Mubarak says he’ll fire govt
but people are asking for regime change
not a change in the regime!

#egypt #jan28
about 21 hours ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®

Ah, Egypt. The land of various and sundry mysteries where, this week, the newest mystery is 82-year-old President Hosni Mubarak’s future – and Egypt’s. Yesterday, in response to the riots throughout the country, Mubarak disbanded his government (exempting himself), and promised reform, hinting at promoting better living conditions, encouraging fewer horrific beatings by his police force, and rooting out corruption.

His strongest words, however, stressed that his first responsibility was to restore order, and this he did by dispatching the army to back up his police force. Punching up the police with the army would seem to provide Mubarak a modestly reliable cohort, yet news reports indicate soldiers, particularly conscripts, were doing little to control the riots, and were often on friendly terms with the demonstrators they are there to suppress and control.

This isn’t too surprising since the Egyptian all male army is largely manned by conscripts between the ages of 20 and 30. Their loyalty to Mubarak, demographically, appears to be another mystery not yet solved. Given that the average age in Egypt is 20, demographically, this young conscript army has far more in common with the rioting revolutionaries than with a leader they may consider well past his prime.

A key, perhaps the key, to this revolution – whether Mubarak stays or goes – will be the soldier in the ranks and where he places his ultimate loyalty. Will he, if ordered, fire into crowds of people more like him than like the octogenarian Mubarak and his corrupt crew? A necessarily related question arises: Will army personnel engage the police force? Both forces are massive – Egypt’s police force and army both have hundreds of thousands of actives and reserves; Egypt’s armed forces are among the larger in the world. The question of loyalties of the armed forces and the police is not merely academic, it’s strategic.

The police force, with its reputation for brutality and corruption, is widely hated, while the armed forces are generally viewed with respect. It is the police force (and the secret police) that has done the dirty work in Mubarak’s Egypt. The army, by contrast, has rarely been used for internal security – the last time was in 1986 to quash a mutiny by security forces in Cairo. Moreover, on the ground today and yesterday, individual soldiers have offered aid to demonstrators, as you’ll see in the video below.

One may also be certain that brass of the armed forces are not making decisions in an international vacuum. As the United States’ strongest ally in the region, Israel’s peace pact partner, and the recipient of $1.4 Billion in U.S. military aid this year, Egypt’s strategic importance is obvious and vital. The U.S. government, speaking through Secretary of State Clinton and the President, presently are tacking carefully through a howling headwind – no firm commitment to protect Mubarak, no commitment to explicitly ally with the protesters. The U.S. message is the usual superpower message, urging calmer heads on all sides, although asking – pleading – with Mubarak to listen carefully to his people’s grievances and to act on them.

Yet, we know how the security apparatus works, in this, and any other powerful country with a stake in virtually everything that occurs in the Middle East.  Surely, there are back channels operating here. Undoubtedly the reach all major players in this unfolding  – may we say? – revolution.  Actually, if the latest Egyptian mystery is to be decided anywhere outside of Egypt, the U.S. government would like to believe that it is here, employing the “usual suspects”  —  CIA analysts and their in-country contacts; State Department fixers and diplomats;  Pentagon warlords;  White House “special advisers this,”  “special advisers that,” and campaign 2012 prognosticators;  and, yes, Treasury officials, IMF mavens, business titans, and craven bankers. 

What will they decide that Egypt may be “allowed” to do? Are they already too late to make a difference?

Tribal Partisanship, Authoritarianism, And Violent Rhetoric

Michael MatheronLeave a comment


January 26, 2011

Tribe Trumps All.   At Slate.com on Monday, Shankar Vedantam’s interesting article, Partisanship Is the New Racism, revealed how recent psycho-sociological scholarship is changing the way partisanship is understood. Primarily, he explains, academics have begun to believe that partisanship is not the result of matching our thinking about the issues of the day to the party that supports them. It’s quite the opposite, Vedantam writes. Evidence is emerging that “our party loyalties drive our views about issues, not the other way around.” And this effect is the result of social identity: “I’m a Democrat because people like me are Democrats, or I’m a Republican because people like me are Republicans.” This helps explain why partisanship of a group’s slow-to-change social identity remains intact “even though each group’s rational interests might be better served by the other party.”

Social identity as a member of a tribe is the trump card, not the issues of the day: “race, gender, religious affiliation, geographical location—play an outsize (and largely hidden) role in determining our partisan affiliations.” And like racism, partisanship implies discrimination against “those who do not belong to our group.”  Moreover, given the moral taint that accompanies open bipartisanship, like racism, we try to appear non-partisan as much as we possibly can; Vedantam calls it that old familiar plausible deniability.

He concludes: “If partisanship and racism are both tied to social identity, then a post-partisan America is about as likely as a post-racial America. Our views on issues may change, but our identities remain stable over decades. Democrats and Republicans sitting together in Congress will no sooner put an end to partisanship than gay men, black women, and Alabama hunters will give up their tribes.”

The Emboldening Effect of Violent Rhetoric.  One commenter on Vedantam’s article, Martin Kobren, offered a different analysis, one we’ve heard over the years, the authoritarian personality. And, if the academic research is accurate, the highly ingrained partisanship through social identity will get worse, not better, despite the recent cooling off period in response to the Tucson shootings. Kobren wrote:

“The thing is that authoritarians who feel that group integrity is being threatened tend to react most strongly against outgroups . . . If you crank the threat up enough, the literature shows that people with lower authoritarian tendencies begin to behave like people with higher authoritarian predispositions. You can see immediately why our politics is as nasty as it is. Politicians who stoke up fear and loathing of the other party are actually preparing their parties for battle. It mobilizes the hard core and gets the lower authoritarians in the party to begin thinking like their higher authoritarian comrades. [All emphasis added]

Quo Vadis?  And if, as Vedantam writes in Partisanship, The New Racism, social identity trumps national issues on a person’s route to partisanship, one can imagine that the violent GOP rhetoric will grow (and especially among the Tea Party). This follows from the commenter’s observation that with more “cranking up” of the threat by “alpha” authoritarians, the more emboldened the lesser authoritarians become. To be sure, there are authoritarians in all political movements, but if, for example, the Tea Party’s success in the midterm elections emboldens those more timid TPs, their rhetoric of violence and destruction is likely to reassert itself after the Tucson effect wears off. Vedantam closes with an excellent diagnosis:

“Poor Barack Obama. From the standpoint of authoritarianism, he’s doing everything wrong! He keeps talking about there not being a red American or a blue America, but only a United States of America. It’s unilateral disarmament. On the other hand, the Republicans keep doing everything right. Authoritarians respond when they think that existing leadership is weak, ineffective or illegitimate (that’s where the birthers and all the people who insist that Obama is a socialist or a muslim come in). They mobilize when they see that there is an ‘us’ (the real Americans) who need to protect themselves against ‘them’ (everyone else).“

If the Democrats – and President Obama, in particular – decide to ramp up their anemic political rhetoric, and finally stand up as a group to fight the good fight for more progressive policies, then the emboldening effect among Democrats will energize the party, and provide some pushback against the GOP and the Tea Party. Democratic leaders and back benchers, one and all, must engage the GOP and, especially, their red-headed stepchild, the TP.  Engage them with tough speech, if not hate speech. But engage them!

So, despite the recent increase in violent imagery in political “discourse,” it appears that the pot of violent and destructive oratory is nowhere near the boiling point. Many timid Democrats, Republicans, and Tea Partiers still remain sidelined waiting to be “emboldened.”

And what is the next step when all the timid are alpha dogs?

Just In – Jordan’s King Abdullah II Dismisses Government

Michael MatheronLeave a comment

January 23, 2011

Et tu Jordan? According to a palace statement, in responding to street protests last week, Jordan’s King Abdullah II advised his government that “openness, frankness and dialogue on all issues is the way to strengthen trust between citizens and their national institutions.” Apparently, as the heat rose in the entire region, King Abdullah II decided that a cooling breeze of change was needed.  According to AP:

Jordan’s king sacks Cabinet amid street protests

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — Jordan’s Royal Palace says the king has sacked his government in the wake of street protests and has asked an ex-army general to form a new Cabinet. King Abdullah’s move comes after thousands of Jordanians took to the streets – inspired by the regime ouster in Tunisia and the turmoil in Egypt – and called for the resignation of Prime Minister Samir Rifai who is blamed for a rise in fuel and food prices and slowed political reforms.

The Royal Palace says Rifai’s Cabinet resigned on Tuesday. Abdullah also nominated Marouf al-Bakhit as his prime minister-designate. No other details were immediately available.

Spoons: The Unexamined Cause of Deaths, Only Second to Firearms

Michael MatheronLeave a comment

January 11, 2011

“We have spoons that are too big and too numerous.
It’s not the spoons that make people fat
and it’s not the guns that kill people,
it’s people that kill people.”
Congressman Louie Goehmert (R-TX)

NOTE: The always dependable Texas congressloon, Mr. Gohmert, who spends much of his time perfecting the field of logic, recently “logicked” the syllogism above. In my earlier version of this blog, I posted this as an explanation to my many readers who, obviously not logicians, failed to follow his meaning. I post this again here in commemoration and admiration of Mr. Gohmert’s demonstration of logic. Read it and learn. . .

Try taking down a warthog with a spoon. Spoons do not have triggers, so, unlike bullets expelled from guns at high velocity, spoons cannot kill a wart hog from a distance of more than approximately three inches and not without an abnormal amount of exertion on the attacker’s part and an equally abnormal passivity on the warthog’s part. Without a doubt, a spoon-armed attack on a warthog is a nasty task, as I found out.  I still wake up running through the neighborhood screaming like a guy in a Wes Craven movie.

I looked this up.  Statistics bear out the Congressman’s observations: In the United States, from 1990 to date the number of accidental deaths/homicides/suicides by spoon are swamped by bullet-related deaths.  Swamped. (Although, please note, I do not wish to imply that spoon crimes and negligence ought to remain unaddressed.)  Also, from the FBI website, arrests in the 50 states for carrying a concealed spoon track quite closely Health and Human Services data on obesity. 

Try eating a pudding with a bullet. I did so, forthrightly testing Congressman Goehmert’s logical argument. For a full 10 minutes, using a highly recommended Remington 9mm 124 grain FMJ (full metal jacket) bullet, I attacked a 12-oz. bowl of room temperature chocolate pudding. I was able to stuff the concoction into my gullet, but the  bullet’s small size caused me to consume far less pudding than I had in the pre-test whilst employing a spoon. Clearly, this validates the Congressman’s observations.

I hope this helps. Never forget:

All men are mortal.
Louie Gohmert is a man.
Therefore, all men are spoons

The Brilliant Life of Christina Taylor Green And “The Why Above All Whys”

Michael MatheronLeave a comment

January 11, 2011

“The whys of this story, why Johnny should have been struck just in that part of him that would have been most fruitful, why his clock should have been broken just at this particular time in his life,  . . . the why above all whys which is why any child should die, the whys and wherefores of the celestial bookkeeping involved, if any, I will not go into here.”
Death Be Not Proud, By John Gunther

On September 11, 2001, Christina Taylor Green entered a violent world on a violent day. Yesterday, nine years later, her brief life ended as it had begun, on a day of sudden violence. Unlike the day she was born, though, this day Christina was not sheltered safely in the arms of those who loved her, those who welcomed her. What were they thinking while gazing at the new life before them, distracted as they were by history unfolding in the destruction of the World Trade Center towers? Tiny Christina had just arrived as others were leaving, buried beneath megatons of rubble not too far away. Sudden violence and the deaths of innocents have always been with us. There’s no hiding from the chaos around us. Christina’s family knew that upon her arrival on 9/11; that day underscored the random and merciless choices that death often makes.

So, yesterday, in a Safeway parking lot, as amoral chance would have it, Christina Taylor Green, recently elected a member of her elementary school student government, sidled up to her Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, for a “meet and greet.” And there, within a few feet of her, Christina’s life ended in chaos purposely unleashed through the end of the barrel at the end of a string of declining fortunes of a madman, Jared Laughlin. Green attended Mesa Verde Elementary School. She was the only girl on the CDO baseball team – she loved the sport, as well as horseback riding and swimming. There are other criteria for measuring a life as well as its duration – quality and intensity, she exemplified that. She also, tragically, exemplified the bookends of violence so common in the world, born into violence, stolen away by it.