Originally published at NewsReal

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The size of her breasts, the shape of her backside, and of course, her name. These are some of the details Le Monde, the French “journal de référence,” and its subsidiary Le Post published about the woman who says IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn groped her genitals and forced her to perform oral sex on him in a room at the Sofitel near Times Square.

France-Soir described the cut of her hotel maid uniform and how good she looks for a woman in her thirties, while France’s RMC radio reported that Strauss-Kahn’s attorneys were surprised by how “unattractive” she is.

And a bevy of friends and supporters rallied to the defense of Strauss-Kahn, a leading figure in the French Socialist Party, hoping to discredit his accuser lest she derail their plans for him to oust Sarkozy in the 2012 presidential elections.

A photo of the alleged victim is all over Twitter, and a Facebook profile in her supposed name was deleted shortly after links to it began to appear on blogs and social media sites. It’s unclear whether the Facebook profile was hers or a hoax account set up to smear her name. Today, another name and photo are circulating in the French media. It doesn’t matter if they get it right–the effect is the same. Just as they did to the accusers in the Julian Assange rape case, the “pro-woman” Left has launched a vicious campaign to terrorize and shame this woman into silence.

The despicable Bernard-Henri Lévy, author of the “Free Roman Polanski” petition, called Strauss-Kahn “a friend to women” who “bears no resemblance to this monster, this caveman, this insatiable and malevolent beast.” Henri-Levy tapped into his own inner monster by assailing the accuser on his blog and at the Daily Beast:

I do not know—but, on the other hand, it would be nice to know, and without delay—how a chambermaid could have walked in alone, contrary to the habitual practice of most of New York’s grand hotels of sending a “cleaning brigade” of two people, into the room of one of the most closely watched figures on the planet.

“Bernard-Henri is scandalized that a mere chambermaid can get a ‘great’ man like Strauss-Kahn in trouble with the law merely by credibly accusing him of sexual assault,” writes Jonah Goldberg. Decades of carefully constructed class narratives are tossed out the window in the service of the Left’s political goals. The downtrodden worker is exalted only so long as it’s convenient, only so long as she remembers her place in the power structure.

Commenters at the American “feminist” blog Jezebel smell a “honey trap.”

Why would someone throw away a decades long career and reputation for something they had no chance of getting away with.

Well, if the Sarko campaign offered the maid $100k, she might lie about it at the station and then disappear to live someplace else.

This almost NEVER happens. You almost NEVER hear tales of high level politicians sexually assaulting and raping random women like maids, waitresses .

An accusation does not a conviction make, and I’d argue it’s important to see every angle before making some snap judgment about anyone here. Especially when political powers are involved. There’s nothing wrong with saying, “This smells fishy.” Especially when, well, it does.

Meanwhile, French politicos are in full damage control mode:

Socialist Party MP Jean-Marie Le Guen:

Seduction, yes, but no way would he use constraint or violence. A certain number of facts, and certain aspects of the story we are hearing from the press, make this not credible.

Michelle Sabban, Strauss-Kahn supporter and senior councilor for the greater Paris region:

I am convinced it is an international conspiracy … It’s not like him. Everyone knows that his weakness is seduction, women. That’s how they got him.

Socialist MEP Gilles Savary:

“Everyone knows it’s true to say that Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a hedonist (libertin), who is distinguished from others in that he doesn’t try to hide it.” The problem, wrote Savary, is American prudery. “In puritanical America, where everything is shaped by unforgiving Protestantism, they tolerate white-collar crime more than they do pleasures of the flesh.” Mind you, this is DSK’s flesh, not that of the chambermaid whom he allegedly assaulted. Maybe she was just too Protestant to enjoy M. Savary’s idea of pleasure.

Even Christine Boutin, head of France’s Christian Democratic party weighed in (perhaps fearing similar scandals in her own party):

I really believe that somebody set a trap for Dominique Strauss-Kahn to fall into… That he could be taken in like that seems astounding, so he must have been trapped.

And on it goes as Strauss-Kahn’s allies in the media and political world scramble to paint him as a ladies man snared by an international conspiracy, the “Great Seducer” rather than a sexual predator. They will chip away at his accuser’s credibility and dignity, doing whatever it takes to rescue their anointed Socialist savior from what the New York Times called “tawdry allegations.” She is nothing to them when her accusations mean everything to the their political future. Strauss-Kahn’s abusive sexual history and forensic evidence be damned.

Socialists: for the women, for the underdog, for the worker … until one of them gets in the way.

Cross-posted at NewsReal.

Originally published at NewsReal’s That’s What She Said

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Four Afghan women have achieved something that would have been unimaginable a decade ago: they are training alongside male recruits to become pilots in the Afghan Air Force. Amidst headlines about poverty, illiteracy, and breathtaking levels of violence against women, their accomplishments are beyond heartening.

Second Lt. Sourya Saleh hopes to serve as a role model for other Afghan women after completing her aviation training in the United States.

“We are very happy to be going to open these doors for the other women to come and join the military, to show them you can do this and make our country proud,” she said. “We want for all Afghan girls to know they can do anything.”

Another newly minted officer, Second Lt. Mary Sharifzada, told the Air Force Times that becoming a pilot has been her dream since she was a little girl:

“I want to show the people of Afghanistan that women are strong,” Sharifzada said. “We want to show the people of the world that the women of Afghanistan are strong and they can do anything they want.”

“They said I’m as brave as a man,” said Second Lt. Masooma Hussaini.

As brave as men, and according to Lt. Col. John Howard of the Thunder Lab training program, as capable as their male counterparts. But these women and future recruits may not get the chance to prove “they can do anything they want” if the United States selects Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer to supply turboprop planes for the counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan.

In the April 2011 issue of Smart Girl Nation, my friend Ashley Sewell explains how the Brazilian plane would bar skilled female pilots from flying Light Air Support (LAS) and light attack and armed reconnaissance (LAAR) missions:

The front-runners are the American-made Hawker Beechcraft AT-6 (a plane like the T-6 training aircraft that would accommodate 95% of women pilots) and the Brazilian-made Embraer EMB-314 (a plane that sticks to older standards thus eliminating the possibility of being flown by a woman).

Those older standards exclude more than 80 percent of women (and small men) from safely flying the planes that will be used to train and equip the Afghan Air Force.

There’s no question that operational performance and pilot safety should be the primary criteria in choosing between the Embraer and Hawker Beechcraft planes. But if the two aircraft perform comparably, can we afford to indulge the Commander-in-Chief‘s childish love affair with Brazil, forcing the struggling Afghan Air Force to sideline much needed talent?

That’s not the only reason the Hawker Beechcraft proposal is superior. The assembly of the Hawker Beechcraft AT-6 planes would result in an estimated 1,400 American jobs, while the Embraer proposal will create a comparatively paltry 50 assembly line positions in the U.S.

And even more compelling are the risks of contracting with a company controlled by Brazil, a country that doesn’t have especially warm and fuzzy feelings about American foreign policy. Embraer’s corporate by-laws give Brazil a controlling interest known as the “Golden Share.”

The Golden Share allows the Brazilian government to maintain direct control and veto rights over the “creation and/or alteration of military programs, whether or not involving the Federative Republic of Brazil” as well as the “interruption of the supply of maintenance and replacement parts for military aircraft.”

Next month, the Department of Defense will make its decision. Will we put the Afghan Air Force at the mercy of a foreign government that has, at times, been hostile to the War on Terror? Will President Obama exchange friendship bracelets with Brazil as he promises them even more American jobs? And will the ambitious and capable women of the Afghan Air Force be relegated to second-class status before they’re given a chance to shine?

These are the women whose dreams of flying could be crushed by the “most feminist administration ever” before they even leave the ground:

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In 1989, the offices of my neighborhood newspaper were firebombed by a terrorist. Molotov cocktails ignited a blaze that gutted the first floor of the building, incinerated furniture, and left computers and telephones all but vaporized.

A short time later, a man called 911 and said, in an accent the FBI later identified as Pakistani, “Can you please listen to my message very carefully. Very very important. You know that British author who wrote the book The Satanic Verses. For to protest I throw the bomb. I’m sorry but we got to do more bombs pretty soon if they don’t stop from publish that book. That’s it.”

Two weeks earlier, the novelist Salman Rushdie had gone into hiding when Iran’s “supreme leader” Ayatollah Khomeini pronounced a death sentence on him for writing a novel that questions the founding myth of Islam. Khomeini’s fatwa offered a bounty of more than $5 million to anyone who could kill the author. It also threatened “all those involved in its publication.

The bombing of The Riverdale Press occurred shortly after the editors published “The Tyrant and His Chains,” a scathing criticism of America’s largest bookstore chains for responding to the Ayatollah’s threat by pulling all copies of The Satanic Verses from their shelves.

The chain store executives excuse their surrender to the Ayatollah by expressing concern for the wellbeing of their employees, but by knuckling under they’ve put others at risk. If a threat can knock the books from the shelves of the Big Three, terrorists may reason, think what a bomb in an uncompliant bookstore could do.

Moreover, terrorism feeds on its successes. What will Waldenbooks do when a homegrown would-be tyrant demands the removal of a politically controversial book from its shelves? And how will it handle the next step, a demand that stores stock a particular book?

The day after the firebombing, the Press published its weekly issue on schedule. Headlining the front page was an editorial titled “We Will Not Be Silenced.”

Mayoral candidates Ed Koch, David Dinkins and Rudy Giuliani gathered with hundreds of community residents to offer their support for the Press, and newspapers around the country reprinted “The Tyrant and His Chains.” As “a statement of solidarity with the publishers of the Riverdale Press,” Democratic Senator Daniel Moynihan asked that the editorial be printed in the Congressional Record alongside a resolution “condemning the threats against the author and publishers of the Satanic Verses.”

Speaking on the Senate floor just before the resolution passed, Republican Senator Bob Dole said:

Terrorism is terrorism. It is abhorrent. It must be condemned. There is no justification for it, period.

That is the policy of this country, and of civilized countries everywhere. That is the essence of this resolution.

Let us underscore our continuing commitment to this policy, this strong and necessary policy, by passing this resolution. And let that act be encouragement to those who refuse to buckle under to the threats of terrorists, and a rebuke to the Khomeinis of the world, who care not a whit for anyone’s rights or beliefs but their own.

If the Senate voted on that resolution today, would Lindsey Graham, Harry Reid, and President Obama give it the full-throated, bipartisan support it received in 1989?  Who would today’s leaders hold responsible for the attack on The Riverdale Press?

Would Graham call Rushdie’s novel “a terrible thing” that “put our troops at risk”? Would he say, “Freedom of speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war”?

Would Reid kowtow to Khomeini as he did to Karzai? Would he promise to “look at” passing a resolution to censure the editors of The Riverdale Press and Rushdie for exercising their First Amendment rights?

Would the president denounce Rushdie for blasphemy against Islam and call the publication of his book “an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry“?

These are the words Graham, Reid, and Obama used to criticize the Florida pastor who burned a copy of the Koran. Rather than blame Afghan President Hamid Karzai for igniting hostilities or a barbaric culture in which violence is often the default setting, they are holding one law-abiding demagogue in Florida responsible for deadly riots in Afghanistan.

22 years after Democrats and Republicans came together to support freedom of expression and condemn the terror attack on a Bronx newspaper, we are watching the formation of a new bipartisan coalition, one that advocates wartime suspension of First Amendment rights and submission to the demands of Islamist street thugs and leaders. 22 years later, we’re announcing to the world that our Constitutional rights are fragile enough to crumble in the face of threats, intimidation, and unspeakable acts of violence abroad.

First they came for the Koran burner …

The Ohio man, who became famous during the U.S. presidential campaign after asking Barack Obama about his tax plan, is heading to Israel as a war correspondent for a conservative Web site called pjtv.com.

Dubbed “Joe the Plumber” by McCain’s campaign, Samuel “Joe” Wurzelbacher was held up as an example of an American worker who would be hurt economically by Obama’s election.

Wurzelbacher says he’ll spend 10 days covering the fighting and explaining why Israeli forces are mounting attacks against Hamas.

He tells WNWO-TV in Toledo that he wants “go over there and let their ‘Average Joes’ share their story.”

Michelle Malkin has begun the countdown to death wishes aimed at Joe The Plumber from his far left “admirers.” I’m taking bets on who will be the first to suggest he’s heading to Israel to help Bristol Palin cover up the exact date of Tripp Palin’s birth.

Vladimir Putin: “I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls.”

Mikheil “Aweome” Saakashvili: “They wouldn’t have enough rope.”

Move over AC/DC.