I decided to write this, en français, seeing as there are so many in France who still don’t understand what the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case is really all about:
Celà que DSK a fait,
n’est pas du tout une “liberté”
parce qu’il y manque fraternité,
et aussi donc l’égalité!(What DSK did
isn’t a “liberty” at all,
because it lacks fraternity,
and also equality!)
Apropos the ridiculous conspiracy theories: I heard this morning that the alleged victim in this case, the hotel maid, is not a seductive CIA “honey trap” agent (who would, most likely, be white and blond), but a refugee from Guinea. (Common Dreams has her down as an “African immigrant” of unspecified nationality and immigration status.) Which not only debunks a great deal of the “entrapment” nonsense floating around out there in the French blogosphere, but makes this all the more emblematic of what the IMF does to people from poor countries, especially the women (who always and invariably bear the brunt of economies gone to hell from capitalist interference).
And may I remind you that a real Socialist would be talking not of reforming the IMF, as was DSK’s wont, but abolishing it, for those very reasons?
I hope this clears up all confusion. Carry on, mes amis.
A poem for those who don’t get it…
What does “l’az it” mean? Just curious…
“I haz it” is a common phrase on LOLcat pictures where a cat has something (which it may or may not be proud of). Eg. this one:
http://icanhascheezburger.com/2010/10/07/funny-pictures-broken-heart/
Or this one:
http://icanhascheezburger.com/2010/08/19/funny-pictures-coolnezz/
It’s sometimes spelled “Ai has it” or “Ai haz it” — LOLspeak is often misspelled.
I have read, and I forget where, that the primary difference between Old World Socialist and New World Socialists is that Old World Socialists want to ‘revise’ Capitalism to make it more civilized and more ‘Socialist’. New World Socialists know that such an idea, the term ‘revise’ when used as a descriptive term with Capitalism results in a non sequitor. New World Socialists know that the only time change can occur is after the idea of a clean break with any thoughts of Capitalist ‘revisionism’.
If true, and in this case it seems to bear out the hypothesis, the it would explain why DSK was at the IMF. It would NOT explain his raping women (or men for that matter) both physically and hypothetically. The latter with the inhuman policies of the IMF.
I think you’re onto something there, Jim. The socialists in South America, in particular, have a lot of contempt for “revised capitalist” models of “socialism”; their style isn’t reformist, it’s revolutionary. All these countries have seen their share of Marxist guerrillas, either in the hills or in the cities. So they have a fair bit of leftist revolutionary thinking and tradition already to draw upon. Ironically enough, some criticize Chavecito and Evo, etc., on those very grounds — these guys are too “revisionist” and not “revolutionary” enough for them!
Likewise, in those parts of Asia where socialist revolutions are taking place, the well-behaved European “socialism” à la DSK isn’t cutting it — which is why we’re seeing redshirts in Thailand and Maoists in Nepal. Their impatience is understandable in light of what’s going on in Europe right now: they don’t have the luxury of longstanding democratic tradition to buffer them; they are in the Marxist guerrilla stage of revolutionary struggle right now. If they had to wait for capitalism to finish revising itself until it gets somewhere close to their liking, they’d never get anywhere. They’d have to wait too long — and in a fast-paced globalized economy, that would be disastrous. The world isn’t waiting for them to catch up, and in the meantime it would only turn them into wage slaves, so they must evolve strategies to cut global finance out of their affairs. A kinder, gentler IMF (which would still impose capitalist conditionalities on them, and lots of ’em) would set their evolution — and their revolutions — back indefinitely.