… from UD‘s parents’ favorite album.

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Answers to frequently asked questions.

“It is very painful for us,” said Marc Djebali, vice president of the Sarcelles Jewish community. “I know him well. I’ve even seen him seduce a woman, but it was always with gentleness.”

… a devout Muslim!

[A] neighbor, Assetou Kamara, 33, said the woman is a devout Muslim.

… reports Market Watch.

(By the way, note that my earlier Strauss-Kahn post, titled Maid in…, has been updated quite a bit over the course of today.)

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Update: David, a reader, sends UD this headline from BoingBoing:

AMID GLOBAL RECESSION, NEW IMF STRATEGY:
RAPING COMMONERS ONE AT A TIME

And as to immunity:

“Acts immunity only covers actions taken in the course of his duties. Coming out of your bathroom stark naked and attacking a chambermaid probably doesn’t qualify,” Kurt Taylor Gaubatz, an associate professor in the Graduate Program in International Studies at Old Dominion University, wrote in a blog post on Sunday.

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A poem to go with the Strauss-Kahn story.

THE EXPENSE OF SPIRIT (129)

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight;
Past reason hunted and no sooner had,
Past reason hated as a swallowed bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad:
Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

… Manhattan.

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A man with a past.

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“Thunderbolt”? Not quite the word.

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From The Economist:

Leave aside the details of the allegations against Dominique Strauss Kahn, the head of the IMF (his lawyer indicates he will plead not guilty) Just note that the New York Times states that he was staying in a $3,000 a night suite and was taking a first class flight to Paris. This is the IMF, the body that imposes austerity on indebted countries and is funded by global taxpayers. And this was the likely leading socialist candidate for the French presidency.

You remember Fulvia Morgana, the rich sybaritic Italian Marxist in David Lodge’s Small World? She explains herself:

Of course I recognize the contradictions in our way of life, but those are the very contradictions characteristic of the last phase of bourgeois capitalism, which will eventually cause it to collapse. By renouncing our own little bit of privilege we should not accelerate by one minute the consummation of that process, which has its own inexorable rhythm and momentum, and is determined by the pressure of mass movements, not the puny actions of individuals. Since in terms of dialectical materialism it makes no difference to the ‘istorical process whether Ernesto and I, as individuals, are rich or poor, we might as well be rich, because it is a role which we know ‘ow to perform with a certain dignity.

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Wall Street Journal:

If true, this was the behavior of the pathologically entitled. Just imagine the effigies and rage from the Portuguese, Greeks and others who will receive IMF lectures about the “moral duty” of paying one’s debts. Lost authority, lost order.

A couple of somewhat similar observations – first, from Ann Althouse:

Let’s assume that the maid’s story is true. When things like this happen, I suspect that this is a man who has had sexual encounters like this before, many times. He’s gotten more cursory and abrupt over time, because he’s been successful in the past. Here is an illustrious man, staying in an extremely expensive hotel room — a room with many amenities. Seems you can get whatever you want. A woman appears. Is she beautiful? He imagines that the woman is another thing the hotel subtly offers to men who pay $3,000 a night for the hotel.

Second, Adam Gopnik, in the New Yorker:

[F]or lovers of France and French life, there is something deeply depressing not only in the apparent elimination of one of the more plausible alternatives [to Sarkozy], but by what many in Paris see as the “Italianization” of French life—the descent into what might become an unseemly round of Berlusconian squalor…

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Strauss-Kahn is proving a sagacious leader.

Joseph Stiglitz writes the worst-timed op/ed of the year.

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The Socialist Party’s Strauss-Kahn
Is a rather bizarre sort of mahn
He takes fancy trips
At his hotels he strips
And tries to play cahtch as cahtch cahn.

The risk of getting leprosy from an armadillo is low.

Utah Republican Rep. Chris Herrod (Provo) has introduced a bill eliminating tenure for all professors at public universities and colleges in the state.

UTAH: WHERE GUNS ARE MANDATORY, AND TENURE’S NOT EVEN AN OPTION.

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Update: Original article link has broken. Thanks, ricki, for letting me know. I’ve linked to a Bloomberg article.

Mubarak finally resigns.

One student is dead; eleven other people are wounded. Apparently a fight broke out at a party.

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Correction: Not a fraternity house. A private house on the edge of the YSU campus, at which members of a fraternity had gathered for a party.

Years ago, UD snorkeled off the Cairns coast.

Cyclone update.

… at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport has killed at least 31 people.

… is the center of attention today, where President Obama will give a speech about the Tucson massacre. People began lining up for seats for the event early Tuesday evening; it begins at six tonight.

Various University of Arizona interns who worked with Giffords reminisce about her.

ALCOHOL, DRUGS, BIPOLAR DISORDER: A BAD COMBINATION

(Headline in Psychology Today.)

FLORIDA SAYS FOOTBALL ARRESTS
SHOULDN’T DEFINE ITS PROGRAM OVERALL

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headline, usa today

K-STATE MISTAKENLY CITED
AS ONE OF THE 25 BEST
LARGE PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES
IN COUNTRY

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Thanks, Dave.