Zimbabwe’s “Surprising” AIDS Success, The Catholic Thing (Matthew Hanley)
Islam Will Find Its Own Way to Freedom, Public Discourse (Mustafa Akyol)
Strauss-Kahn Case Seen as Near Collapse, New York Times (Jim Dwyer, William K. Rashbaum, and John Eligon)
US Gen David Petraeus confirmed as CIA director, BBC News
Smells Like School Spirit, New York Times (David Brooks)
Abortion and the Missing 160 Million, New York Times (Ross Douthat)
July 1st, 2011 | 11:15 am
It’s ridiculous that somebody can just falsely accuse somebody of rape and get away with it. It’s Duke Lacrosse all over again.
July 1st, 2011 | 1:08 pm
I’m speechless. And if any of these claims by the NY are true, what will it mean for every hotel maid who is harassed or raped?
They will be immediately smeared and covered in mud.
Yet, the Egyptian bank executive pleaded guilty to his sexual assault charge of that hotel maid in France.
July 1st, 2011 | 1:39 pm
Upon further reading of the news, which I hadn’t before, this is quite interesting:
He [one of the lawyers] also laid out details she described of an attack by Strauss-Kahn in the Sofitel suite and said her account has remained consistent.
“From day one has described a violent sexual assault that Dominique Strauss-Kahn committed against her,” attorney Ken Thompson said.
Thompson took a throng of reporters outside court through the details of the incident from his client’s perspective, saying Strauss-Kahn bruised her genitals, tore a ligament in her shoulder and ripped her stockings.
“She has described that sexual assault many times, to prosecutors and to me, and she has never once changed a single thing about that encounter,” he said.
He also addressed media reports that his client was involved with a drug dealer, calling them lies.
The New York Times, quoting law enforcement officials it didn’t name, reported that the woman was recorded on the phone with an incarcerated man around the day she made the allegations, discussing whether to press her case in court.
The newspaper said the man had been arrested on marijuana possession charges and had deposited cash in the woman’s bank account.
=========
DSK’s lawyers had warned they would go for a smear campaign of the alleged victim to discredit her–well, here it is.
Firstly, I believe the prosecutor wouldn’t commit career suicide by lying about the physical evidence of rape or assault. He continues to assert the evidence is there. So it seems that the rape (or some form of it) likely occurred.
However, if she had been involved with some kind of drug dealer, and she had entered the US as an asylum seeker through some kind of false allegations, I can see why she would be afraid to go to the police, even if she had been raped. This might explain her phone call to the prison guy.
Aside from the testimonies, of course, I am most curious about what kind of medical evidence exists and what is in this recorded conversation with the man in prison. Is every conversation with someone in prison recorded?
Jeremy quickly called the woman a liar above, but the rape charges have not been dropped.
And, really, if you were dirt poor and were living in war-torn Africa, where brutal violence is not just something people watch on the news, who can judge any woman to allege something that would enable her and her daughter to move to a place where they could work and live in peace?
But what if she is either willingly helping or being coerced to help drug dealers? How complicated.
July 1st, 2011 | 5:17 pm
@Jeremy
It’s also ridiculous to think how many rapes go unprosecuted, because the victims fear being humiliated and suffer all their personal history being dragged into the public eye.
But, then again, this is why it’s best left to trial and not to the information we only get through the media.
July 1st, 2011 | 8:18 pm
It’s ridiculous that somebody can just falsely accuse somebody of rape and get away with it. It’s Duke Lacrosse all over again.
You know they had a betting pool on how long it would take for the smears to utterly discredit the girl, right?
Rich people simply are not guilty – whether it is OJ Simpson, the Duke LaCrosse team, William (or Michael) (or Ted) Kennedy -
The only problem is that you can only hear the same faux outrage so many times before you just wonder why it is that convictions never seem to happen to wealthy people.
July 1st, 2011 | 8:34 pm
uh, fellahs: The only way the number of cases of HIV in a country can decline is if the folks with HIV are either dead or have left the country.
With the economic collapse of Zimbabwe, ten percent of the population, mainly the young, have fled. The health care system also collapsed, meaning folks died of simple diseases that wouldn’t be fatal otherwise.
Many others who were sick but thrown out of their homes (e.g. in operation Murambatsvina, “throw out the trash”) returned to their villages where they probably died from one of the many common diseases made worse because of the lack of retroviral drugs in rural areas…
Yes, behavior changes have helped lower NEW cases, but receiving retroviral medicine does that also, and may be the reason for fewer new cases in infants.
July 2nd, 2011 | 2:39 pm
I’ll say one thing: Feminism has really permeated every group in our society, regardless of how socially conservative they are.
July 3rd, 2011 | 5:20 pm
I’ll say one thing: Feminism has really permeated every group in our society, regardless of how socially conservative they are.
Not really – not if you’re talking about me.
It could be any crime – rape, murder, embezzlement – if the alleged victim is poor, then there’s going to be slander and smear.
There is no other possible outcome. The idea that a wealthy powerful world leader would be jailed for mistreating the peasants is simply not something that happens in this world.
But it tells us nothing about whether such assault took place. I happen to lean toward the idea that this assault did, simply because I find the evidence implausible (and predictable). But I have no doubt he’ll be found innocent on all charges.
Do I think all the Kennedy boys and Clinton and Duke boys etc. etc. etc. are guilty? Not necessarily – but we can’t ever know. We can only guess.
I would like for us to have a world where we all face real justice. Equally. I would view that as a worthy goal, worth pursuing – worth sacrificing for, event. But that world has not yet been invented, and may never be.
July 5th, 2011 | 8:03 am
The case of the “Gay sports league” is interesting.
They compare it explicitly to the Boy Scouts – if Scouts can exclude gays, they can exclude heteros.
But I seem to recall the Scouts being barred from using public facilities, etc., because of their stance.
It’s going to be funny when the day comes (and it will) when gays are forced to be as “inclusive” as they expect others to be.
Somehow – for all their complaints about “wanting equal treatment, not special treatment”, I think they are going to find that their own standards could (and no doubt will) be used against them: if it’s wrong and bigoted to discriminate against someone just because they are different from you/have different beliefs/have different needs/dare to deviate from your own “narrow rigid moral code”, then it theoretically is wrong in both directions.
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