This video about Swaziland is called The Corrupted Kingdom.
Another video. no longer on the Internet, used to say about itself:
AND Swaziland Daily News Brief 25/04/06
Headlines -> King Mswati spoils himself to US$1.5 m birthday bash -> Swazi King orders lawyer to drop Queen’s US$250 000 lawsuit -> Workers’ rights threatened in Swaziland
Today, Dominique Strauss-Kahn has resigned as International Monetary Fund boss, as he is in Rikers Island jail in New York as a suspect of attempted rape and cannot effectively be boss from his cell.
However, Strauss-Kahn guilty or innocent, Strauss-Kahn in prison, in an expensive New York City hotel room or in Paris, Strauss-Kahn boss or someone else boss: the IMF continues to push anti-worker and pro-fat cat cutbacks all over the world.
Including in oppressive dictatorships like the Swaziland absolute monarchy.
From the Times of Swaziland:
‘IMF WANTS 7,000 SWAZI JOB CUTS’
19 May 2011
Retrench 7 000 now
MBABANE –Swaziland has been advised by the IMF to implement the enhanced voluntary early-retirement scheme – EVERS – without delay.
This will be one of government’s means to try and reduce its wage bill, which is considered to be one of the highest in Southern Africa.
About 7 000 civil servants have to go home for the process to have an effect on the wage bill.
The Fiscal Adjustment Roadmap that was adopted by Swaziland last year aimed at reducing the civil service by 20 per cent through implementation of EVERS but the scheme was suspended after government workers’ unions vehemently opposed it.
So, what the Swaziland royal dictatorship government and the IMF hypocritically call “voluntarily retirement” are in fact mass sackings, making thousands of Swazi families destitute.
So, the workers and their unions strongly opposed those cutbacks. Very courageous in a bloody dictatorship.
Instead of the IMF now telling the king and the rich elite around him to cut back on themselves, the IMF advises His Majesty Mswati III to continue his attacks on workers. Workers, so poor already in Swaziland, including most lower and middle level government workers. The IMF pro-fat cat lobby wants to make Swazi workers even more destitute.
Swaziland: Support the Free Maxwell Dlamini Campaign: here.
Free Maxwell Dlamini of the Swaziland National Union of Students: here.
Another day another demo in Swaziland: here.
Swaziland Needs Regime Out Before Bailout : NewsTime : South Africa: here.
South Africa announced on Wednesday that it will lend Swazi King Mswati III’s autocracy 2.4 billion rand (£217 million) to help it weather an economic crisis which has sparked massive pro-democracy protests: here.
Ivory Coast: Former IMF economist Alassane Ouattara was sworn in on May 6 after a military confrontation with supporters of former President Laurent Gbagbo in April: here.
The Pakistan Muslim League (Q)—the civilian face of the military regime that ruled Pakistan till 2008—has joined the country’s deeply unpopular Pakistan People’s Party-led federal government, so it can implement an IMF austerity program: here.
Former International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has now been accused of hiring prostitutes: here.
Accusing DSK of Sexual Assault Took Guts – But Union Protection Is Essential. Adele M. Stan, AlterNet: “Arrested last week for allegedly assaulting and forcing sex on a housekeeper at a luxury hotel in New York, a man [Dominique Strauss-Kahn] who once ranked among the world’s most powerful now sits, forlorn, in a jail cell on Rikers Island – all because an immigrant woman in a lowly position had the temerity to tell a superior that one of her employer’s very important clients had done, by her account, terrible things to her. By any measure, it was a risky thing to do. There’s a reason most rapes go unreported. But there was one thing that housekeeper knew could not be done to her for reporting her account, observes a colleague in the labor movement: she could not be fired for having done so, because of the contract between her union, the New York Hotel Trades Council, and the Sofitel Hotel at which she works”: here.
Paparazzi drive another alleged Strauss-Kahn victim out of her home: here.
Judges of rape conviction appeal of former Israeli president named: here.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
Strauss-Kahn quits as head of IMF
UNITED STATES: Dominique Strauss-Kahn resigned as head of the International Monetary Fund on Wednesday night.
The French politician said he quit “with infinite sadness” in order to protect the IMF.
He was arrested on an Air France flight in New York on May 14 after a maid at the hotel he had been staying at accused him of sexual assault.
He denies the charges but his lawyers have said he will admit to having consensual sex with the maid.
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/104853
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Cable plays down Brown’s IMF hope
POLITICS: Gordon Brown’s prospects of taking over at the IMF suffered a blow today when Business Secretary Vince Cable suggested the top job should go to someone from within the eurozone.
Asked about the vacancy after Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s departure, Mr Cable refused to comment directly on the former PM’s prospects.
But he told BBC radio: “I think promoting national champions, whoever they are, probably isn’t the best way of dealing with this.”
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/104857
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Sex and Bankers
By Danny Schechter, Reader Supported News
19 May 11
Strauss-Kahn and the secret culture of aggressive sexuality in the high-pressure world of bankers and banksters.
My colleague Mike Whitney asks: “So, what are the chances that Strauss-Kahn will get a fair trial now that he’s been blasted as a serial sex offender in about 3,000 articles and in all the televised news reports?
Do you remember any Wall Street bankers being dragged off in handcuffs when they blew up the financial system and bilked people out of trillions of dollars?”
The answer to both questions is certainly “Non,” in French, or “No,” in English, but there’s more to the connection between Sex and Wall Street. Without commenting on the evidence in this case – which has been asserted, not proven – there is a deeper context that is being ignored.
I call it the Testosterone Factor in “The Crime of Our Time,” my book about how Wall Street criminally engineered the financial crisis.
Interesting, isn’t it, that there have been so few references to the link between the pervasiveness of salacious sex and the highly-charged life of a class of “entitled” wealthy bankers who live off of others with few rules or restraints.
There is also often no news about that, or the practices of the IMF, which is often accused of raping poor and vulnerable countries with unfair structural adjustment programs. The IMF chief is now experiencing what many in France feel is an unfair “personal adjustment program” at the hands of the New York cops and courts.
Odd, isn’t it, that there have been so few references in the coverage also to Eliot Spitzer, the one-time “Sheriff” of Wall Street who was denouncing criminal financial practices by the Bush administration when he was brought down in a sex scandal.
Strauss-Kahn had also been in the news lately as a possible Socialist presidential candidate to topple our pal Sarkosy in France, as well as a critic of US banking practices. He recently outraged official Washington by asserting that the Chinese economy was surpassing ours.
In both cases, powerful forces have motives to bring down such potential reformers, but, it is also true that in each case these men themselves were, on the surface anyway, sexually obsessed and prone to illegal behavior that put them – and others – at risk.
Both are Alpha Males known for pushing the envelope of personal responsibility. Both were known for personal arrogance and living in highly-secretive sexualized personal cultures. Writer Tristan Banon claimed she had to fight DSK off in an earlier incident, calling him a “strutting chimpanzee.”
Bear in mind also that part of what intelligence agencies do these days in targeting people is to prepare sophisticated psychological profiles before they intervene. They know that the knowledge of the secret lives – and kinks – of public figures can easily discredit them. They specialize in foraging for dirt and can leak information or use it opportunistically.
Remember Richard Nixon’s authorized break-in at the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist pursuing highly personal information?
Nothing is off-limits, as people like former weapons inspector Scott Ritter learned as well when he became embroiled in a mini sex-caper.
When people are highly stressed they are prone to making mistakes. The agencies shadowing them know that, and from time to time encourage it or just wait for the opportunity to help them bring themselves down.
What needs to be examined is how the crimes of the rich and powerful are treated. Bush’s bombing and Geithner’s tax maneuvers were ignored.
But when sex is involved, all bets are off.
Sex scandals have become a staple of media exploitation with personal morality plays trumping political morality confrontations every time.
They are both great distractions and effective tools of character assassination which are often more effective than more violent ways to neutralize people considered dangerous.
That’s why the FBI was so hot to discredit Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with leaks of so-called wiretapped sex tapes. In his case, this tactic failed but the other worked.
In some cases both tactics are deployed, as in the physical assassination of Bin Laden and then the character-killing aimed at his supporters through the release of porn allegedly found in his “lair.”
Intense sexual appetites are an extension of the “culture” of an avaricious financial world. Illegal sex and Wall Street (or in La Defense, France’s financial district) has long been linked, writes Heidi Moore:
“This is all a reminder that the financial district hasn’t always been gleaming skyscrapers and Starbucks.”
Consider this passage from City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920: “Adjacent to the Wall Street business district, prostitutes worked in saloons along Greenwich Street, taking men upstairs. In addition, immediately south of Wall Street was the Battery Tender-loin, on Whitehall Street. The Water Street area, however, remained the most significant and poorest waterfront zone of prostitution. Amid the rookeries, rat pits and dance halls, prostitutes exposed in each window to the public view plied their trade.”
In the modern era, many of the Street’s most macho traders are, according to David Russell who worked in the industry for two decades, known as “swinging dicks.” It is well known that the big money in Wall Street has kept a vibrant, upscale sex industry alive and well.
There has been one scandal after another. Here are a few cases cited by Moore before Spitzer’s demise:
BP Chief Executive John Browne left both his post at the oil company and his directorship at Goldman Sachs Group last year after it was revealed that Lord Browne had lied to a court about his young male lover, whom he had met through an escort-service Web site.
A group of six women sued Dresdner Kleinwort in 2006 for $1.4 billion on allegations that male executives entertained clients at strip clubs and even brought prostitutes back to the office. The case was settled out of court in 2007.
Canadian hedge fund manager Paul Eustace in 2007, by his own admission in a deposition filed in court lied to investors and cheated on his wife with a stripper.
In 1987, Peter Detwiler, vice chairman of E.F. Hutton & Co., was, according to court testimony, instructed by his client, Tesoro Petroleum Corp. Chairman Robert V. West, to hire a blonde prostitute for the finance minister of Trinidad & Tobago, which had been supporting a tax issue that would have hurt Tesoro’s profits.
A woman claiming to have been Bernard Madoff’s mistress published a book about their secret liaisons. Earlier his secretary said he had a fondness for massages in an article in Vanity Fair.
Wall Street’s fall is said to have brought down the sex industry almost as if it had been a fully owned subsidiary, if not an extension, of the financial services business.
To find out more, I spoke to Jonathan Albert, a psychologist practicing in mid-Manhattan.
He told me, “I see a lot of clients in NYC who are impacted by the economic crisis. People deal with stress in many different ways. Some people exercise, some people over-eat, some use drugs and alcohol, some even sexualize those feelings.”
“Sexualize?” I asked him, “How do they sexualize these feelings?”
His response, “I’ve seen a lot of Wall Streeters who sexualize feelings of anxiety and stress and depression. So for example they might rely on adult sexual services to deal with those feelings.”
Loretta Napoleoni, an Italian author who worked on Wall Street for years, offers a provocative thesis for how the need for paid sex “on the wild side” became part of the culture of irresponsibility.
“I can tell you that this is absolutely true because being a woman, having worked in finance 20 years ago I could tell you that even at that time – when the market was not going up so much – these guys, all they talk is sex.”
She complemented her personal experience by citing a study by researchers from Oxford University.
“The study discovered, that an excessive production of testosterone, in a period of fantastic financial exuberance, creates a sort of confusion. It is what people in sports call ‘being in the zone,’ which means you get in a certain situation where you feel that you will always win. That you are infallible.”
I asked Dr. Albert if that finding may have indeed had relevance to Spitzer or be endemic in the industry? His reply, “I do see this a lot in the finance industry, yes, people in positions of power often feel as if they can perhaps get away with it. There is sometimes a sense of entitlement.”
“They feel entitled to take part in risky behavior?” I pressed.
“High-risk behavior. It’s similar to what they do on a daily basis. They invest millions and millions of dollars and there is a great risk involved with that. The same is true with using the services of a prostitute. Obviously there are great health risks; their relationship is in great danger if they are using the services of a prostitute.
“A lot of people skate on the excitement, on that euphoric rush.
“The culture of risk on Wall Street was intoxicating to many in the same way that gamblers become addicted or report a rush when they are winning.
“The euphoria of life in the fast lane often implodes when one’s luck runs out leading to depression and family breakups. One remedy is going to self-help groups like ‘The Wall Street Wives Club,’ formed to empower and serve the needs of wives and girlfriends whose husbands or significant others work in the stressful and volatile brokerage community.
“Men are often uncomfortable expressing their feelings.”
Some of Dr. Albert’s clients coped with the pressures on them to perform in kinkier ways.
“…. they just want to let loose, relax and take a very passive role in their sexual practice. So they may seek out the services of a dominatrix, where they are at the mercy of this sex worker. I’ve had clients who seek out services where they get whipped, cuffed, put on a leash like a dog.”
Beating others can also be part of this culture. There is violence lurking to the surface that can easily erupt when desires are denied.
I am not being moralistic here, but a climate of narcissism and living secret lives often desensitizes its practitioners leaving them little time to think of how their actions may affect others. (Or how the policies they promote impact on their customers or the poor!)
None of this context excuses anything that Strauss-Kahn may or may not have done, but what it does do is shine some light on a culture of aggressive power-driven hyper-sexuality that our media is often too hypocritical to investigate.
News Dissector Danny Schechter elaborates on this issue in his book, “The Crime of Our Time,” and in a DVD extra to his film “Plunder – The Crime of Our Time” (PlunderTheCrimeOfOurTime.com). You may contact him at dissector@mediachannel.org.#
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IMF Has Culture of Harassment, Say Police Reports
Former International Monetary Fund (IMF) Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, awaiting trial on charges of sexual assault, may not be the exception to the rule at the IMF. According to a 2008 internal review obtained by The New York Times, the IMF has a reputation for sexually aggressive scandals between supervisors and the people, often women, who are their subordinates. Another internal document obtained by The New York Times said: “Intimate personal relationships between supervisors and subordinates do not, in themselves, constitute harassment.” IMF officials declined to investigate charges in 2007 that a supervisor had pressured an administrative assistant into sleeping with him because the supervisor was close to retirement, and in 2009, officials took no action after a woman employee said she was receiving sexually aggressive emails.
http://truthout.org/news-brief-new-texas-bill-will-force-women-take-sonogram-abortion-and-more/1305914393
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On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 11:59 AM, W.A. Halabi wrote:
> forwarded by Al Sargis; note IMF ‘bail-out’ of Greece as well
> *Strauss-Kahn Screws Africa*
> *by Greg Palast
> New York, Friday, May 20, 2011*
> Now that I’ve dispensed with the obvious and obnoxious teaser headline,
> let’s drop the towel and expose Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s history of arrogant
> abuse. The truth is, the grandee of the IMF has molested Africans for years.
> **
> On Wednesday, the *New York Times* ran five – count’em, FIVE – stories on
> Strauss-Kahn, Director-General of the International Monetary Fund. According
> to the Paper of Record, the charges against “DSK,” as he’s known in France,
> are in “contradiction” to his “charm” and “accomplishments” at the IMF.
> *Au contraire, mes chers lecteurs.*
> Director-General DSK’s cruelty, arrogance and impunity toward African and
> other nations as generalissimo of the IMF is right in line with the story
> told by the poor, African hotel housekeeper in New York City.
> Let’s consider how the housekeeper from Guinea ended up here in New York.
> In 2002, this single mother was granted asylum. What drove her here?
> It began with the IMF rape of Guinea.
> In 2002, the International Monetary Fund cut off capital inflows to this
> West African nation. Without the blessing of the International Monetary
> Fund, Guinea, which has up to half the world’s raw material for aluminum,
> plus oil, uranium, diamonds and gold, could not borrow a dime to develop
> these resources.
> The IMF’s cut-off was, in effect, a foreclosure, and the nation choked and
> starved while sitting on its astonishing mineral wealth. As in the sub-prime
> mortgage foreclosures we see today, the IMF moved quickly to seize Guinea’s
> property.
> But the IMF did not seize this nation’s riches for itself. Rather, it
> forced Guinea to sell off its resources to foreign corporations at prices
> much like the sale of furniture on the lawn of a foreclosed house.
> The French, Americans, Canadians, Swiss (and lately, the Chinese) came in
> with spoons out and napkins tucked in under their chins, swallowing the
> nation’s bauxite, gold and more. In the meantime, the IMF ordered the end of
> trade barriers and thereby ruined local small holders.
> As a result of the IMF attack, Guineans who could, fled for freedom and
> food. This week, then, marked the *second* time this poor African was
> molested by the IMF.
> Now we have the context of how these two, the randy geezer of globalization
> and the refugee ended up, in quite different positions, in that New York
> hotel room.
> Since taking over the IMF in 2007, erstwhile “Socialist” Strauss-Kahn has
> tightened the screws in an attempt to maintain the free-market finance mania
> that ruined this planet in the first place. *[That’s worth a story in
> itself – and that’s coming. Our team has a stack of inside documents from
> the IMF that we will be releasing in my new book in the Fall.]*
> DSK’s lawyers say the relationship with the housekeeper was “consensual.”
> But DSK says that about all IMF agreements with nations over whom it holds
> life and death powers. That’s like saying a bank robbery is consensual so
> long as you don’t consider the gun.
> Whether it was agreed-upon sex or brutal rape, it could only have been
> “consensual” in the same way that the people of Guinea consented to
> IMF-ordered financial rapine.
> The Times article quotes an IMF crony of Strauss-Kahn saying DSK gets his
> way by “persuasion” not “bullying.” Tell that to the Greeks.
> It was DSK who, last year, personally insisted on brutal terms for the
> so-called bail-out of Greece. “Strong conditionality” is the IMF term.
> Strauss-Kahn demanded not just a devastating cut in pensions and a
> deliberate increase in unemployment to 14%, but also the sell-off of 4,000
> of 6,000 state-owned services. The DSK IMF plan allowed the financiers who
> set the financial fires of Greece to pick up the nation’s assets at a
> fire-sale price.
> The Strauss-Kahn demands were not “tough love” for Greece: The love was
> reserved solely for the vulture bankers who received the IMF funds but were
> not required to accept one euro in lost profit in return. DSK, despite the
> advice of many, refused to ask the banks and speculators to reduce their
> usurious interest charges that were at the root of Greece’s woes.
> Requiring Greece to sell assets, drop trade barriers, and even end the rule
> that Greek ships use Greek sailors has nothing to do with saving Greece, but
> everything to do with DSK’s continuing the right-wing free-market mania that
> got this planet into trouble in the first place.
> I do not consider it a stretch to say that a predator in the bank boardroom
> suite assumes his impunity applies to the hotel suite.
> *****
> *Forensic economist and journalist Greg Palast, author of the New York
> Times bestsellers, *Armed Madhouse
> * and *The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
> *, has broadcast investigative reports on the IMF and World Bank for BBC
> Television Newsnight (London) and Democracy Now (New York). *
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Ex-IMF boss enters not guilty plea
UNITED STATES: Former International Monetary Fund director Dominique Strauss-Kahn pleaded not guilty today to trying to rape a maid at a New York City hotel.
The maid told police Mr Strauss-Kahn had chased her down in his hotel suite and subjected her to a sustained sexual assault.
Defence lawyers have said they have information that would “gravely undermine” her credibility but haven’t given details.
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/105547
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