The French were dumbstruck at the arrest in the United States of the most popular political leader of their country, Dominique Strauss Khan. Former Economy Minister, he had become the highest-paid public official in the world (base salary, excluding bonuses and expenses: 461 510 USD) and was, reportedly, about to enter the French presidential race. This affable VIP, reputed for his appetite at the table as well as in bed and often accused of being a political amateur because of the time he dedicated to satisfying his lust for life, has been charged with the precipitous sexual assault on a chamber maid in a Manhattan hotel.

For six days, the French remained glued to their television screens watching in a daze the judicial harassment against a man they considered to be a hopeful alternative to the catastrophic first five-year term of Nicolas Sarkozy. DSK’s fall marked the end of their illusions.

The spectacle of this shattered destiny is suggestive of ancient tragedy. The Roman saying: "Arx tarpeia Capitoli proxima" comes to mind: the Tarpeian Rock from which a convicted person was hurled to his death was close to the Capitol, the symbol of power and greatness.

Leaving aside any considerations of his innocence or guilt, the steamrolling of such a high-profile personality can only provoke anguish in the ordinary citizen. If someone like him is unable to defend himself, then how can we hope to succeed if we were to be accused like him?

The rise and the fall

Nevertheless, as a politicized people raised on Machiavellian lessons, without ever having read his works, it didn’t take the French long to start questioning the solidity of the charges brought against their compatriot DSK. According to the opinion polls, 57% didn’t buy the rutting-season story that the U.S. media have taken delight in dishing out. Some started imagining all kinds of manipulation scenarios, while others are asking "cui bono?" (who benefits?).

At that game, the first name that comes to mind is that of Nicolas Sarkozy. It is impossible not to think of him knowing that he became president by pressing charges against his chief rival, Dominique de Villepin, and entangling him in a forgery scandal just as convoluted as the current one. Therefore, why not another plot to move a new competitor out of the way?

Cartoon by Plantu published in Le Monde of 25 May 2011: "DSK and Villepin, two friends to which I am very attached."

Never mind if DSK and Sarkozy have needed each other to prepare the forthcoming international summits, or if they were both subservient to the United States. It is well known that the worst crimes are perpetrated against one’s own friends or even family.

As is happens, the French are unaware of DSK’s ties [1] or, for that matter, Sarkozy’s when they voted for him [2]. The media have never informed them that in the 1990’s, during his political wilderness, he was hired as professor at Stanford University by a certain... Condoleezza Rice. They also don’t know that he and his lieutenants Pierre Moscovici and Jean-Chrisophe Cambadélis were in charge of raising funds for the Socialist Party from the National Endowment for Democracy - a legal CIA front [3]. Nor did they follow his activities and various contracts with Atlanticist think-tanks, such as the German Marshall Fund of the United States [4] or the Bilderberg Group [5]. Finally, they are oblivious about his commitment to integrate France and Europe into a vast transatlantic market dominated by the United States.

The French are also ignorant about DSK’s close ties with Israel. Within the Socialist Party, he steers the Cercle Léon Blum, named after a former Jewish prime minister. The role of this discreet and powerful lobby is to eject from the political scene any individual who is likely to criticize the Zionist project. Thus, it can make heads roll, like that of political scientist Pascal Boniface who highlighted the electorally counter-productive implications of supporting Tel-Aviv in a country where 10% of the population is of Arabic culture. Yet, DSK is very open about it. Without beating around the bush, he asserted: "I deem that every diaspora Jew must support Israel. For that reason, it is important for Jews to take up political responsibilities. In short, in my functions and in my everyday life, in everything I do, I endeavor to make my modest contribution toward the construction of Israel." It’s rather disconcerting from someone who aspires to become president of France. But who cares? He’s so jovial!

Nonetheless, Dominique Strauss-Khan and his loved ones were spared no humiliation: while kept incommunicado under protective police custody, the New York prosecutor’s office was distributing to the media copies of the detailed indictment.

It contains a clinical description of the alleged crimes: "The defendant engaged in oral sexual conduct and anal sexual conduct with another person by forcible compulsion; the defendant attempted to engage in sexual intercourse with another person by sexual compulsion; the defendant subjected another person to sexual contact by forcible compulsion; the defendant restrained another person; the defendant subjected another person to sexual contact without the latter’s consent; and in that the defendant intentionally, and for no legitimate purpose, forcibly touched the sexual and other intimate parts of another person for the purpose of degrading and abusing such person, and for the purpose of gratifying the defendant’s sexual desire.

The offenses were committed under the following circumstances:

Deponent states and deponent is informed by an individual known to the District Attorney’s office that defendant 1) shut the door to the above location and prevented informant from leaving the above location; 2) grabbed informant’s breasts without consent; 3) attempted to pull down defendant’s pantyhose and forcibly grabbed informant’s vaginal area; 4) forcibly made contact with his penis and informant’s mouth twice; and 5) was able to accomplish the above acts by using actual physical force."

All these spicy details were splashed all over the evening news for days on end before wide-eyed parents just back from work, and horrified children who buried their noses in their bowl of soup.

The cultural shock

It is difficult to know who was more traumatized: the brilliant economist who was going to save humanity from the financial crisis and has been abruptly relegated to the ranks of an infamous criminal, or the French people who were looking forward to a respite by choosing him as their leader, and have been compelled once again meet head-on the violence of the United States.

In this regard, the French are trying to find excuses for the nature of the Anglo-Saxon judicial system to which they are just beginning to awaken. They had already seen such a parody of justice in their favorite television series, but they never imagined it could actually exist in reality. As for the extra-judicial system, Guantánamo and the secret prisons, they have always preferred not to know. Some commentators have speculated that the harsh treatment at the hands of the police and the first judge denotes a will to treat the powerful and the weak on an equal footing. Yet, surely, they must all be familiar with the works of illustrious sociologists explaining that in this unjust system money is king and that justice may be blindfolded, but is not class blind.

Furthermore, the French unflinchingly went along with the criticisms relayed by the Anglo-American press, laying all the blame on its French counterparts for having failed to investigate Mr. Strauss-Khan’s life of sexual depravity in the name of his right to privacy. And yet - the puritans comment further - a man who ostensibly seduces a women, squeezes or even jostles her is obviously a potential raper. "He that will steal a penny will steal a pound." On its cover, Time Magazine depicts DSK and his peers in the guise of a pig. However, no one has pointed out that the defendant was IMF Managing Director and a Washington D.C. resident for the past 3 years, but whose hidden vices the moralizing Anglo-American press has also failed to dig into.

The accusation against DSK having opened up suspicions, now everyone remembers - albeit somewhat late - that in 2002 DSK had tried to force himself on a beautiful French journalist, Tristane Banon. When she asked him for an interview, he gave her an appointment in a private apartment located in the Marais, a historic district of Paris. He received her in a huge loft, completely unfurnished except for a big bed. Since the beauty refused to submit to the libertine, he bashed her.

Could it be that, in New York, the gentleman was overwhelmed by his own violence and transformed into a criminal?

Nothing seems to point in that direction, all the more since DSK is not a frustrated bachelor. He is married to television star Anne Sinclair, a French top-notch journalist, who abandoned her profession to accompany her husband in his career. The French saw her again during Dominique Strauss-Khan’s court hearings, as beautiful and determined as ever despite the extra years. The grand-daughter of a major art merchant, she sits on a cushy family fortune. Without hesitation, she flew to Paris to pay the one-million dollar bail and provide the court with an additional 5 million in collateral. At that moment, this wealthy woman was prepared to sacrifice everything to rescue her husband from the crushing jaws of United States justice. She was all the more admirable for it; a wife who didn’t hold his escapades against him and who even liked to go with him to the Chandelle, a Paris swingers club.

DSK, the fall guy.

Any nation worthy of that name would not have endured to see a political figure, who was slated to become president and represent their country, walking handcuffed between two FBI officers, shoved in the back of a car like a thug, and paraded in court shaggy and unshaven. In any other country, people would probably have staged a rally in front of the U.S. Embassy chanting patriotic songs. But not in France. The "Americans" are far too admired. The French look up to them like a rabbit hypnotized by a cobra. And they have a hard time accepting that they are not the navel of the world, that if indeed there was a plot, it was not necessarily hatched on the banks of the Seine but on those of the Potomac.

The confinement

Is DSK guilty of rape or is he victim of a machination? One only has to think in order to answer the question.

The defendant allegedly spent the night with a call-girl, then raped the chambermaid at brunch time before calmly going to have lunch with his daughter, a student at Columbia University. Finally, he is supposed to have boarded his flight, booked several days in advance, bound for Berlin where he was to meet Chancellor Angela Merkel. Comfortably settled in his Air France business class seat, he was arrested ten minutes before takeoff.

According to the cabin crew, the officers of the Special Victims Unit (the same as in the NBC "Law and Order SVU" serial) didn’t delegate the questioning procedure to their airport counterparts, insisting on doing it themselves despite the risk of arriving too late. However, to prevent any warning from reaching DSK, they ordered the cell phone jamming of the zone until their arrival [6]. Now, this kind of jamming operation exceeds the scope of a vice squad. It could only have been ordered by national security services.

As soon as the suspect was placed under police custody, he was cut off from any external contact, with the exception of his lawyers, as prescribed by U.S. law. But when Judge Melissa Jackson moved him into protective custody, he was again cut off from the outside world. With no reason. It was explained that DSK’s detention was warranted for fear he might flee to France, with which Washington did not sign an extradition agreement and which has protected another sexual offender accused of rape, film director Roman Polanski. The decision to isolate him was therefore not taken with the aim of preventing him from influencing the witnesses. Nonetheless, the judge decided to lock him up at Rikers Island, one of the largest prisons in the world which houses 14 000 detainees, and one of the bleakest. A hell on earth. "For his protection", he was assigned to a single cell and kept incommunicado.

The IMF Managing Director was held in confinement for 10 days. During this period the functioning of the international institution was blocked in want of a signature. For 10 days the problems related to the euro and the dollar, Greece’s default, and many others crucial issues were put on standby at the mercy of the police, judges and prison guards.

According to U.S. jurisprudence, considering that he had no criminal record and is domiciled in Washington, DSK should not have been placed in protective custody but should, instead, have been released on bail. He obviously quickly assessed the situation and, through one of his lawyers, sent a letter of resignation to the IMF. On the very next day, against all expectation, a new judge acceded to his request and released him on bail, under house arrest and tight surveillance, pending trial. Indeed, it was no longer necessary to keep him locked up now that the IMF had recovered its freedom to act.

Christine Lagarde salutes all those who believed in Washington’s promises to Mr. Zhou.

French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde, who made a career in the United States defending the interests of the military-industrial complex [7], is sounded out to succeed the defendant at the helm of the IMF, despite Russia’s and China’s cries of outrage.

Incidentally, DSK’s second lawyer Benjamin Brafman didn’t visit him in prison and was not present at the second court hearing. The star of the New York Bar Association departed precipitously for Israel. Officially, it was to celebrate a religious feast with his family [8]. To claim his fees, Mr. Branfman didn’t simply limit himself to lighting candles on Lag BaOmer, he also must have negotiated to obtain assistance for his client.

The Zhou project

Why were Hollywood-like means deployed to block the IMF during 10 days? There are two possible answers, and they may be linked.

In the first place, on 29 March 2009, the governor of the People’s Bank of China, Zhou Xiaochuan, challenged the predominance of the dollar as reserve currency. Deploring that the objective of economist John Maynard Keynes to create an supranational currency (the Bancor) was not achieved at the end of World War 2, he suggested that the IMF Special Drawing Rights could be used to fulfill this function [9]

Mr. Zhaou Xiaochuan has not said his last word.

At the London G20 summit on 2 April 2009, yielding to pressure, the United States agreed to the tripling of IMF resources and to the issuance by that institution of Special Drawing Rights (SDR) for a value of 250 billion dollars. They also acquiesced to the principle of a Financial Stability Council associating the major emerging countries.

This idea was debated at the G8 summit at L’Aquila (Italy) on 8 July 2009. Pushing the pin further, Russia submitted that the new world currency should be minted rather than being virtual. Dmitry Medvedev, who had a few sample of coins minted, slapped them on the table. One side displays the faces of the eight Heads of State, whereas the flip side bears the motto "Unity in Diversity" [10].

The project was submitted to experts from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Their report, in which Professor Popov of the New Economic School of Moscow took part, was examined on 25 April 2010 by a joint IMF and World Bank meeting [11].

This project should have seen the light of day on 26 May 2011 at the G8 summit in Deauville (France). The dollar would thus have met its demise as the reserve currency against the backdrop of an imminent cessation of payments on the part of the U.S. Federal Government. As for Washington, it would have had to give up financing its super-powerful military apparatus through debt and to start concentrating on its domestic restructuring.

The Libyan dinar is the first (and last?) currency backed by gold and by IMF Special Drawing Rights. In 2000, Colonel Gaddafi had thought of creating a pan-African currency based on gold, but was unable to pursue his idea. Also, in 2009, he had spontaneously availed himself of the Zhou project and adopted it unilaterally for his country.

The spanner in the works

Unfortunately, in the final months of this process, military and political initiatives disrupted the plan. Countries such as Russia and China were double crossed. DSK’s arrest exposes Washington’s bad faith, and shows that its concessions were a only ploy to gain time.

Although the exact details of Dominique Strauss-Khan’s device for the creation of the new currency sustained by IMF Special Drawing Rights remain secret, it would appear that Libya had a key role to play. On an experimental level, the Libyan Central Bank was the first to base its currency, the dinar, on gold and later on SDRs. This aspect is especially important considering that Libya possesses one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world, exceeding even that of Russia.

By waging war against Libya, France and the United Kingdom generated a theoretical asset freeze targeting not only the Gaddafi family but also the Libyan state. Worse, Paris and London dispatched HSBC bank executives to Benghazi to set up a rebel Libyan central bank and attempt to grab the national assets [12]. Without knowing whether Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron got carried away by their own hubris or acted on instructions from their bosses in Washington, the fact remains that the fragile edifice developed by Dominique Strauss-Khan has collapsed.

According to our contacts in Tripoli, at the time of his arrest, DSK was headed for Berlin in order to work out a solution with Chancellor Angela Merkel. Afterwards, he and a German envoy were supposed leave to negotiate with Colonel Gaddafi’s representatives, and very possibly with Gaddafi himself considering that his signature was indispensable for unblocking the situation.

We are now witnessing a financial war on an unprecedented scale. While the economic situation of the United States is on the brink and the dollar could rapidly turn into monkey currency, the agreement concluded at the G8 and endorsed by the G20, implemented by the IMF in conjunction with the World Bank and the international banking circles, of which DSK was the architect, has been suspended. The hegemony of the dollar remains intact albeit more artificially than ever. The dollar which the emerging states wanted to resize but on which the U.S.-Israeli industrial-military complex rests its power.

In that context, what is one man’s honor worth?