Judy Mandelbaum's Open Salon Blog

Eyes Wide Shut redux: DSK back in jail

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 07:02:28 -0500

Getting an eyeful:
Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut

Who ever would have suspected that Stanley Kubrick's final masterpiece, Eyes Wide Shut, was a documentary? But it's starting to look less like a movie and more like a simple slice of life. Case in point: Former IMF boss and accused rapist Dominique Strauss-Kahn isn’t just back in the headlines today, he’s also back in jail. The French press is reporting that he was arrested in the northern French town of Lille this morning for his alleged participation in “organized criminal procuration,” i.e. pimping, and conspiracy to embezzle company funds. This all comes in connection with nude sex parties the 62-year-old former presidential hopeful celebrated at luxury hotels in Paris, Vienna, and Washington DC, usually in connection with IMF events.

The Belgian call girls, together with the travel and hotel expenses for the lavish, “Eyes Wide Shut”-like events, were paid for by two French businessmen from Lille, Fabrice Paszkowski and David Roquet, who were likely using the sex to bribe the mighty Strauss-Kahn for favors. The call girls were allegedly paid between 500 and 1,600 euros for their services. Paskowski and Roquet have organized several of these parties in the past, and have likely been providing DSK with a steady stream of discreet sex workers during his visits to Lille. There, the local police chief regularly hired prostitutes, some of them underage, to service him - DSK has been known to cavort with four at once in the jacuzzi. Last November, a prostitute who claimed to have celebrated eleven orgies with the economist, testified to police that he "showed exceptional energy" and normally had sex "with every girl in the room." At these parties, Strauss-Kahn "was treated like a messiah."

Under French law, it is legal to have sex with a woman over the age of eighteen in exchange for money, but it is unlawful to pimp. The French authorities have already shut down three luxury hotels implicated in the pimping affair over the past year.

Strauss-Kahn will likely be held for forty-eight, possibly up to ninety-six hours while the court decides whether or not to prosecute. The man himself claims he was unaware the women were prostitutes (a very tall tale indeed) and has asked for a complete investigation to clear his name.

Will it be as easy as that? He already has a small army of lawyers and public relations experts at his beck and call to scrub is besmirched reputation. If he asked me, I’d suggest buying a gallon of Clorox and take it from there.

While the seemingly endless DSK saga is distasteful, it nonetheless opens a window onto the sensibilities and corruptions of the rich and powerful, a.k.a. "The One Percent," who are increasingly laying claim to the planet we all share. In researching his case, I feel more than a little like Tom Cruise's "Dr. Bill Harford" on his wide-eyed odyssey through a phantasmagorical vision of a city he no longer recognizes. I, for one, want to know more about this shadow world. Not for titillation - I can't think of a less titillating plutocrat than Monsieur DSK - but rather to get some idea of where all that money is going. I'd like to hold on to some of mine, if it's okay with you.

Madame Strauss-Kahn tells her side of the story

Tue, 7 Feb 2012 07:02:56 -0500

Anne Sinclair and her horny hubby

Discretion is the better part of valor, as Falstaff used to say, and for journalist Anne Sinclair, the long-suffering wife of world-champion skirt-chaser and former IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn, it is also the essence of her virtue. Finally, more than half a year since her husband’s arrest and imprisonment after allegedly raping an African hotel housekeeper in New York City, Sinclair has not only burst back into journalism as the editor of the French edition of the Huffington Post, but she has also given her first full press interview since those events first hit the fan. In an exclusive interview with editor-in-chief Anne-Cécile Sarfati of Elle magazine, appearing in Paris today, Sinclair – whom a French website named “woman of the year” last December for her stoicism under extreme pressure – answered questions about how she has handled her husband’s scandal and also responded to charges by feminists that she has played the role of shrinking violet – I mean, devoted wife – just a little too convincingly.

How does Sinclair view herself? “I’m neither a saint nor a victim, I am a free woman!” she says. When asked whether one can be a feminist and still support one’s husband unconditionally, she responds: “There is no such thing as unconditional support. One only supports [him] if one has already decided to support him. No one knows what occurs within a couple’s intimacy, and I deny anyone the right to judge my own. I feel free in my judgments, in my actions. I determine my own life in complete independence.”

She admits that many women, particularly feminists, have taken her to task for how devotedly she has stood by her man, Tammy Wynette-style. “If women feel deceived by me, then I’m sorry to say it, but that’s their problem! … I don’t have to understand them, they express positions and feelings, I listen to them, but the idea of allowing others to judge my private life is utterly alien to me.”

“I claim my choices,” she adds. “The notion of people appropriating my life is intolerable to me.” She concludes: “I understand very well that this business attracted a lot of attention and that the press has been all over it. But it seems to me that, in this case, all the dikes protecting one’s private life have been breached.”

Not that her private life is going to be any better protected in the future: American director Abel Ferrara has just announced that he is making a major motion picture about the DSK affair, starring Isabelle Adjani opposite Gérard Depardieu.

But it doesn’t look like Sinclair is losing all that much sleep over her husband's most notorious impropriety. She’s now got bigger fish to fry. She says she regards her return to journalism at the head of the French Huffington Post as “a return to the light.” “It gives me pleasure to return to my profession, in the euphoria of participating in something new. (…) I think I can still bring something to this profession! What worries me is the launching of a newspaper, not being ready in time, the stress, all that. … (But) the professional light is always the most pleasant one.”

So for those of us who have been wondering how – and why – Anne Sinclair puts up with it all, there we have it: It’s her life, it’s her business, life goes on, and for Sinclair, at least, being a woman includes being granted her own discretion to deal her own hand in life as she sees fit. That may not be very satisfying to the rest of us, but who among us wants to start judging her? Are our lives ultimately all that different?

Yes, I know, there are some differences, such as that pesky little detail about the couple’s vast fortune in cash and art – and the fact that Sinclair knew all about her husband’s special interests long before they tied the knot in 1995. But can’t we allow the lady her moment “in the light” for just one day?

May we all experience such a moment - but without the disgusting prelude, if you don't mind.

So women can park after all?

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 07:01:37 -0500

People can never get enough of the endless debate over the alleged innate differences between men and women, probably because there’s so little really hard data on the subject (I already wrote about this topic here). Now a new study from England, conducted under actual field conditions, proves that one of the most popular canards, namely that women don’t know how to park cars, is not only untrue but actually hides a much more interesting story.

As reported in The Telegraph over the weekend, the British parking lot company NCP hired a team of researchers with hidden cameras to examine the parking habits of 2,500 drivers at 700 parking lots and ramps nationwide over the course of one month. Based on their observations, they developed a “parking quotient” to analyze the finesse of both sexes.

The results in a nutshell: Women take time with their parking, carefully identifying and selecting potential parking slots before they gently ease their cars into them, maneuvering until they find the most mutually satisfactory fit. Men, on the other hand, prefer a quick in-and-out approach (now where have I heard that complaint before?).

A fundamentally different relationship to one’s environment and the individuals within it was a key difference turned up in the study. It first

analysed people’s ability to find spaces. Researchers found that impatience caused many men to drive too quickly around car parks, meaning they missed free bays. Meanwhile, women’s slower approach meant they were better able to notice spaces, or spot when other drivers were about to leave.

It also found that 39% of women excelled at rear parking, whereas only 28% of men could claim expertise in this art. What’s more,

Men were much quicker at parking, taking 16 seconds on average against the 21 seconds women needed to complete the manoeuvre. However, the extra time paid off leaving 52 per cent of women parked in the middle of each bay, compared to 25 per cent of men. This category proved particularly punishing for the men’s rating as it was the most heavily weighted in the coefficient.

Strangely, though, only 18% of women thought they parked better than men. Maybe it’s the product of all those books out there about why women “can’t” do it?

It really depends on the data you look at, of course. Last September the Daily Mail published a study of British driving test results, saying that women are far more likely to fail the parking section of the exam than men. As always with this kind of research, we all have to weigh the evidence and then head out the door and do our best, the scientists be damned.

The designer of the new study, driving teacher Neil Beeson, told the Telegraph:

In my experience men have always been the best learners and usually performed better in lessons. However, it’s possible that women have retained the information better. The results also appear to dispel the myth that men have better spatial awareness than women. It shows that us men need to give our partners more respect when it comes to parking. The facts don’t lie.

So is he saying that men and women really can learn something from one another? Who woulda thunk it?

About those conspiracy theories...

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 07:01:47 -0500

The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.

= William Colby, CIA director (1973-76)

Let’s get real: Who among us doesn’t love a good conspiracy theory? Our lives would sure be dull without them. And we’ve got plenty to choose from: The Kennedy and MLK assassinations, the faked Apollo moon landing, that crashed alien spaceship and autopsy at Area 51, everything to do with 9/11, certain vaccinations that cause autism, and today’s biggie, the great “Caliphate” conspiracy among Muslims the world over (which I like to call “the protocols of the elders of Mecca”). And while we’re at it, what about the Jews – not to mention the Freemasons and the Illuminati? Then there’s that business about Jesus’s and Mary Magdalene’s descendants…

Possessing secret knowledge makes us feel special – even powerful.

Conspiracies are nothing if not convincing – at least at face value – and we all have our favorites. But what happens when individual theories start contradicting one another? I mean, could Kennedy really have been assassinated by the CIA and the Mob, all in one day? How can conspiracy theorists hold two radically opposite ideas in their heads at the same time? A group of British researchers decided to find out. In an article published in Social Psychological & Personality Science last week, Michael J. Wood, Karen M. Douglas, and Robbie M. Sutton determined that “conspiracy theories can form a monological belief system: A self-sustaining worldview comprised of a network of mutually supportive beliefs.” They found “that even mutually incompatible conspiracy theories are positively correlated in endorsement.”

A conspiracy, the researchers write, “is defined as a proposed plot by powerful people or organizations working together in secret to accomplish some (usually sinister) goal.” In their study they examined two widespread conspiracy theories: Ideas concerning the death (or not) of Osama bin Laden in 2011 and the death (or not) of Princess Diana in 1997.

Regarding Diana, they note that “some claim that she was killed by MI6, others allege that she was killed by Mohammed al-Fayed’s business enemies, still others that she faked her own death. How does a conspiracy-believing observer reconcile the presence of these competing, mutually contradictory accounts?“ In order to understand this phenomenon better, the team examined 137 undergraduates (83% female) at a British university.

They also examined the notion that 1) Osama bin Laden died years ago, and 2) his killing last summer was faked and he’s still alive, which some people apparently don’t regard as a contradiction. For this, they surveyed 102 undergraduates (58% female) at a British university.

In the end result, the researchers found that persons believing in one conspiracy theory are not only much likelier than the general population to believe in several such stories at once, but are also liable to accept mutually contradictory versions of the same tale. The only thing they can’t believe is that the official narrative could ever be true. “The coherence of the conspiracist belief system,” they write, “is driven not by direct relationships among individual theories, but by agreement between individual theories and higher-order beliefs about the world. For instance, the idea that authorities are engaged in motivated deception of the public would be a cornerstone of conspiracist thinking due to its centrality in conspiracy theories. Someone who believes in a significant number of conspiracy theories would naturally begin to see authorities as fundamentally deceptive, and new conspiracy theories would seem more plausible in light of that belief.”

Where does the idea arise that certain unpopular groups, such as Jews or Muslims, are responsible for all the evil in the world? The renowned German-Jewish sociologist Theodor Adorno and his colleagues examined anti-Semitism in 1950. They “found strong positive correlations in endorsement between contradictory negative stereotypes of Jews, such that highly prejudiced participants found them to be both too isolated from the rest of society and too eager to participate in it. Adorno proposed that this paradoxical perception has its roots in ‘a relatively blind hostility which is reflected in the stereotypy, self-contradiction, and destructiveness’ of anti-Jewish stereotyping. In spite of their contradictory nature, both stereotypes drew enough credibility from their one common element—a negative perception of Jewish people—to end up with a strong positive association.”

The same goes, I would say, for the idea that “the Jews” are both capitalists and Marxists – meaning that they have ordinary working people in their grip, both coming and going. I imagine this would have been news to Jewish capitalists and Marxists – but I digress.

Not only Nazism, but also Marxism and – nowadays – Republicanism are predicated on conspiracy theories, and devote extensive effort to indoctrinating their constituencies accordingly. Remember Glenn Beck and his 2010 TV presentation about “puppet master” George Soros? Of course, Lewis Carroll figured this mechanism out long ago in his Alice in Wonderland:

Alice laughed: “There's no use trying,” she said; “one can't believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven't had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

In their article the British scholars ask us to

imagine that someone is heavily invested in conspiracism and strongly believes in a wide variety of different conspiracy theories. A view of authority as fundamentally deceptive is coherent with all of these theories, and as such draws activation from them until it becomes a strongly held belief in itself. When a novel conspiracy theory is presented, it immediately seems more credible because it agrees with this now strongly held view and disagrees with the officially endorsed narrative. Such higher-order beliefs may be so strongly held that any conspiracy theory that stands in opposition to the official narrative will gain some degree of endorsement from someone who holds a conspiracist worldview, even if it directly contradicts other conspiracy theories that they also find credible. In other words, a natural consequence of the explanatory coherence approach to social explanation is an instantiation of the principle ‘‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend.’’

Conspiracy theories, particularly false and downright irrational ones, quickly take on a dynamism of their own - and that's when they can become extremely dangerous. Once they take root, they are almost impossible to suppress.

Just as an orthodox Marxist might interpret major world events as arising inevitably from the forces of history, a conspiracist would see the same events as carefully orchestrated steps in a plot for global domination. Conceptualizing conspiracism as a coherent ideology, rather than as a cluster of beliefs in individual theories, may be a fruitful approach in the future when examining its connection to ideologically relevant variables such as social dominance orientation and right-wing authoritarianism.

Interestingly, the Kent researchers make a distinction between general anti-government conspiracism and the age-old canard of the Jewish threat. “Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are a notable and historically important exception; instead of alleging abuse of power by elites, historical theories of Jewish conspiracy usually detailed supposed attempts by a minority to seize power for themselves.”

The researchers themselves admit that some conspiracy theories are genuine, and who can deny it? Lincoln was murdered by a conspiracy, Nixon certainly conspired with his “plumbers,” the Holocaust was a blatantly obvious conspiracy, Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mosaddegh was toppled by a conspiracy (Operation Ajax) in 1953, and for many of us the “Project for the New American Century” of 1997 looks like more than just your neighbor’s laundry list. And answer me this: Why should we believe anything “the authorities” tell us? Are the official stories our governments placate us with any less fanciful than the wild stories cooked up by our most imaginative conspiracy theorists? The same goes for the reporting in our “lame-stream media,” let alone our “alternative” media, such as NPR and Mother Jones Magazine, which may very well be financed and stage-managed by the CIA.

My own problem with some of our more elaborate conspiracy theories, of course, is that they presuppose a degree of competence and foresight on the part of our masters that they are sorely lacking in their other endeavors. Regarding the most pervasive conspiracy theory of our own times, the “Truther movement” that has formed around the 9/11 incident, let me – for the purposes of this article – concede all their points. I simply don’t know enough about the dynamics of “controlled demolitions” and the melting point of steel to join in the conversation.

Let me instead postulate my own 9/11 conspiracy theory (which applies to the others too, by the way): There are people in Washington who not only delight in the Truthers’ claims, but are eagerly embroidering them further in an endeavor to make anyone who challenges the official report look like a crank. I mean, do you really believe that all those brilliant Truther websites are run by concerned citizens? That, I would claim, is the true conspiracy here: To keep ordinary citizens from asking the utterly basic question of why Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and the entire defense establishment were caught with their pants down during what should have been an easily avoidable cataclysm – assuming that the Defense Department has ever given any thought to our “defense,” rather than obsessing about how best to export war beyond our borders.

Now that question smells far worse than cordite in my opinion.

Why did Raoul Wallenberg have to die?

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 07:01:08 -0500

Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg (1912-1947?)

One of the final lingering questions about the Second World War might possibly find an answer in the coming months. It concerns a Swedish architect and hobby diplomat who single-handedly turned what we think we know about twentieth century history entirely on its head. Most of us have long since forgotten him, but we do so at our own risk.

Raoul Wallenberg was a hero in an age of villainy. The 31-year-old Swede was horrified by the bloodletting he witnessed in Europe, particularly among the Jewish population of eastern Europe. He had studied architecture in Ann Arbor, and later worked for a lumber company in South Africa and for a Dutch bank in Haifa, Palestine, where he first encountered Jewish refugees from Germany. In 1942 and 1943, working for his family’s banking business, SEB, he travelled to Hungary, where he experienced fascism and government-orchestrated anti-Semitism firsthand. He also visited Berlin in 1938, where he insisted on rescuing a German-Jewish engineer from a concentration camp.

It was only his family connections, and his single-minded ambition to put an end to the slaughter, that enabled Wallenberg (who himself had some Jewish ancestors on his mother’s side) to have himself appointed First Secretary of the Swedish mission to the fascist, Nazi-allied Hungarian government. Arriving in Budapest on July 9, 1944, and financed by the American War Refugee Board, which sought to rescue Jews through neutral states like Sweden, Wallenberg presented the Hungarians with a list of 800 Hungarian Jews possessing some sort of (usually tenuous, if not downright imaginary) relationship with Sweden, whom the Swedish government promised to accept within its borders. He also worked together with the Swedish Red Cross and Swiss authorities, who likewise saved many thousands of Jews and other enemies of the Third Reich.

Over the next several months, Wallenberg and his staff of 300 – mostly local Jews – issued over 20,000 Swedish passports to Hungarian Jews, thus saving them from certain death. At the same time, he cooperated closely with leading members of the local Jewish community and also used his considerable diplomatic skills to drive a wedge between Hungarian fascists, many of whom had doubts about the Nazis’ anti-Jewish policy and saw the tide of war turning against them, and their more fanatical German allies. His influence over Hungarian dictator Miklós Horthy also helped stop the transport of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. Thanks to Wallenberg’s direct and indirect actions, some 70,000 Jews survived the Budapest ghetto. No one knows for sure, but is is possible that Wallenberg saved up to 100,000 Hungarian Jews from the gas chambers and the bullets of Himmler’s Einsatzgruppen.

Jewish couple in Budapest

In November of 1944, Wallenberg personally – and at appalling personal risk – rescued 200 Jews from a Nazi death march. Even though SS Holocaust coordinator Adolf Eichmann raved against “that Jewish dog, Wallenberg,” and swore he would have him shot, the diplomat miraculously continued his work without disruption.

Despite what you might think from the movies, Holocaust is a story of murder, not heroism, and not even Wallenberg could avert the ultimate disaster of Hungarian Jewry: In January of 1945, armed members of Hungary’s fascist Arrow Cross party, which had seized power in October of 1944 and was now about to be run out of the capital by the approaching Soviets, slaughtered up to 20,000 Jews on the bank of the Danube after first stripping them naked and then tossing the bullet-ridden bodies into the icy river. But Wallenberg was there too, pulling as many Jews as he could out of the killing zone, and even reclaiming their clothing.

Just shoes - Budapest's Jewish memorial on the banks of the Danube

But the Swede’s incredible luck was quickly running out. On January 13, 1945, Raoul Wallenberg left Budapest to meet the regional Red Army commander, Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, who had just arrived in southern Hungary. He hoped to convince the marshal to liberate the Budapest ghetto as soon as possible in order to prevent even more murders at the hands of the fleeing Arrow Cross militia. Marshal Malinovsky received him cordially. Wallenberg had his doubts, though. “I don’t know if they are protecting me or guarding me,” he told a friend in those confusing days. “I don’t know if I’m a guest or a prisoner.” On January 17, Nikolai Bulganin, Stalin’s deputy defense minister, issued a warrant for Wallenberg’s arrest. The Swede would never return to Budapest, nor would he ever taste freedom again.

Wallenberg’s fate remained uncertain throughout the Cold War, rather like Princess Anastasia and other cold cases. For years, Soviet officials claimed that he had either fallen in battle somewhere around Budapest or that he had died of a heart attack in a Moscow prison. It wasn’t until the Gorbachev era in the late 1980s that the Soviet government began releasing information. In 1989, Wallenberg’s half-siblings Nina Lagergren and Guy von Dardel, who had been demanding answers since the 1950s, received the diplomat’s passport, clothing, money, and personal diary from Moscow.

The post-Soviet government opened an investigation in 1991 together with Swedish investigators. Both sides issued a final report in 2000: Raoul Wallenberg presumably died in Moscow’s Lubyanka prison on July 17, 1947. Probable cause of death: A bullet to the back of the neck, the standard execution method for suspected foreign agents. The Swedish version of the report surmises that Stalin ordered the execution personally. Wallenberg’s American connections (e.g. with the War Refugee Board and the Organization of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the CIA), as well as his contacts with the British and Swedish secret services, were probably his undoing. But it was more than just that. The trouble with Wallenberg is that he wasn’t very particular about which Jews he helped keep alive. A Soviet military intelligence report from February 1945 stated: “Instead of protecting the Soviet Union’s or Hungary’s interests, the Swedish Red Cross is protecting enemies of the Soviet Union and of the Hungarian people or is providing them with asylum or protection.” People were shot for far less in Stalin’s Soviet Union.

The announcement of Wallenberg’s "liquidation" remains controversial, however. It is possible – but not proven – that Wallenberg lived on for several years as a Gulag inmate under a different name. The Swedish version of the report states that “the burden of proof that Raoul Wallenberg is dead lies with the Russian government.”

Now, in 2012, the Swedish government is looking for solid answers. Foreign minister Carl Bildt is sending one of his top diplomats, Hans Magnusson, Sweden’s director of international development cooperation, who already examined Wallenberg’s fate in the 1990s, to Moscow one last time. “We have asked him to go there to see if he can find something,” Bildt told reporters yesterday, the sixty-seventh anniversary of Wallenberg's disappearance. “But we don’t have high expectations.”

But some of us still do. What we want to know is: Why did Bulganin have Wallenberg arrested? Why did Stalin have him shot? Who else was involved in the Jewish rescue operation? What role did Himmler and the senior SS leadership play in all of this? If the Nazis really were determined to exterminate every last Jew on the planet, then why did they ever let Wallenberg get away with his utterly implausible errand of mercy?

Now, in the one hundredth year of Wallenberg's birth, I think it’s time we found out.