The foreign ministers of France and Poland plan to ask the US to help free the Franco-Polish film director, Roman Polanski, after his arrest in Switzerland. Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski on Sunday (27 September) told the Polish Press Agency that he and his French counterpart, Bernard Kouchner, aim to submit a joint appeal to US secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Mr Polanski picking up an award earlier in his career "[We are] considering approaching the American authorities over the possibility of the US president proclaiming an act of clemency which would settle the matter once and for all," he said. The French foreign ministry issued a statement saying that "Bernard Kouchner has contacted [Swiss foreign minister] Micheline Calmy-Rey to express the French authorities' wishes that Mr Polanski's rights be fully respected and that the matter quickly finds a favourable outcome."
The foreign ministers of France and Poland plan to ask the US to help free the Franco-Polish film director, Roman Polanski, after his arrest in Switzerland.
Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski on Sunday (27 September) told the Polish Press Agency that he and his French counterpart, Bernard Kouchner, aim to submit a joint appeal to US secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
Mr Polanski picking up an award earlier in his career
"[We are] considering approaching the American authorities over the possibility of the US president proclaiming an act of clemency which would settle the matter once and for all," he said.
The French foreign ministry issued a statement saying that "Bernard Kouchner has contacted [Swiss foreign minister] Micheline Calmy-Rey to express the French authorities' wishes that Mr Polanski's rights be fully respected and that the matter quickly finds a favourable outcome."
Diplomatic war brewing as politicians and filmmakers lobby for release of Oscar-winning director after arrest on 1978 US warrantA diplomatic war was brewing today over the arrest of the filmmaker Roman Polanski, who was detained in Switzerland on a decades-old warrant relating to the rape of a 13-year-old girl in 1977.France and Poland urged Switzerland to free the 76-year-old director on bail and said they would be lobbying the US government all the way up to the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.Frédéric Mitterrand, the French culture minister, said the arrest was proof of the "frightening" side of America."In the same way as there is a generous America which we love, there is also a certain kind of America which is frightening, and it is this America which has now shown us its face," he said.
A diplomatic war was brewing today over the arrest of the filmmaker Roman Polanski, who was detained in Switzerland on a decades-old warrant relating to the rape of a 13-year-old girl in 1977.
France and Poland urged Switzerland to free the 76-year-old director on bail and said they would be lobbying the US government all the way up to the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.
Frédéric Mitterrand, the French culture minister, said the arrest was proof of the "frightening" side of America.
"In the same way as there is a generous America which we love, there is also a certain kind of America which is frightening, and it is this America which has now shown us its face," he said.
Mr. Polanski pleaded guilty in 1978 to unlawful sex with the girl whom he had lured to the home of Jack Nicholson on the pretext of a photo shoot and plied with Quaaludes and Champagne.
= Polanski is lucky because that girl could very well have aspirated her own vomit and died. This could well have been a fatal rape.
Polanski is without doubt a great director. But Ezra Pound was a great poet, and talent was a poor moral compass in his case as well. The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman
The fact that the victim says she wants him freed is irrelevant. After all, she has been outed as a rape victim, no anonimity for her. Everytime it's been in the news she's had her humiliation rubbed in her face. She wants it to be over. I imagine she wants it gone from her life, she wants to be who she is, not Roman Polanski's victim. and nobody will let that happen. keep to the Fen Causeway
It would be easy to file them under conspiracy-theory paranoia if it weren't for the way that the stories and reports keep surfacing, and the apparently inconsistent standards that apply to famous people.
This whole campaign against Polanski must have something else behind it.
Why would he be singled out when, during the 1960s-80s Los Angeles 'free love' movement, any number of prominent movie and music stars - Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Denis Hopper, Jim Morrison, to name only a few - were engaged in luxury home, pool-side, drugged out orgies? Virtually all of this took place in notorious Laurel Canyon where, for several decades, underage girls were consumed like hors d'oeuvres.
How many parents are on record as having objected?
This is not to condone Polanski's act, by any means, but the LA police department might have done better to do a thorough investigation of the murder of Polanski's pregnant wife, which was studiously thwarted, than to have pursued Polanski for what was known to authorities to be common Laurel Canyon practice.
One might wonder even whether Polanski knows a thing or two about the Laurel Valley drug / sex / murder racket that authorities would prefer to ensure were kept under wraps. .
I'm quite sure Samantha regrets the mistake of coming out in 1997 but her present notoriety is largely her own undoing. She relinquished her "right to be forgotten."
For a thorough treatment of the case I suggest reading Gerald Posner's Polanski's Next Escape and related articles linked on the dailybeast site.
In the end, this is not something that Hillary or Barry can touch. In addition to lock-stepping seniors into happy euthanasia camps, they can't take on a label of letting old geezers get away with raping teenagers.
This will run its course. The Superior Court in California will have to drop the case for lack of something, and that will be that. Unfortunately for Polanski, since he has run from sentencing before, he probably won't be allowed free on bond. So he will do some time until it all winds through the system...starting now, I presume. Never underestimate their intelligence, always underestimate their knowledge.
Frank Delaney ~ Ireland
Smoking Gun has put up the minutes of Gailey's grand jury testimony detailing the sexual assault.
