Film review: The Laundromat (2019)

In 2016 there was the explosive leak to the ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigate Journalists) of a massive trove of documents called the Panama Papers from the firm Mossack Fonseca that revealed how that company created massive numbers of offshore shell companies to move money around all over the world to hide the wealth of the global elite so that they could avoid paying taxes. It led to a series of news reports (see here, here, and here) that showed that this was just the tip of the iceberg, that there were many legal and accounting firms operating in small and big countries around the world who were taking advantage of convenient loopholes placed in the tax codes of thosecountries. The US turns out to be one of the biggest tax havens, with the state of Delaware (Joe Biden’s home state, incidentally) being the most accommodating of all these shenanigans.
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The implications of the Canadian elections

The Canadian elections took place yesterday. Prime minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party, hammered by its leader’s political and personal scandals, lost 20 seats and its majority but still managed to remain the single largest party. It won 157 of the 338 seats with 33% of the popular vote and will have to cobble together a coalition with other parties to get a parliamentary majority and form a government. The opposition Conservatives gained 26 seats and now have 121. They also won a narrow plurality of the popular vote with 34.4%. The Bloc Quebecois won 32 seats and the New Democratic Party won 24.

Cory Doctorow analyzes the result and says that Trudeau deserved his comeuppance because for the longest time he has managed to project a progressive image while tacking towards neoliberal policies.
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And … Boris Johnson loses yet another major Brexit vote

The UK parliament has just rejected Boris Johnson’s three-day timetable for debating his Brexit withdrawal deal.

MPs have voted to reject the government’s timetable for the passage of the bill that would implement the prime minister’s Brexit deal.

They voted against by 322 to 308; a majority of 14.

Boris Johnson said earlier today he would withdraw the bill and seek a general election if he lost the vote.

Confusingly, the government had earlier won approval for the withdrawal deal during its second reading by a comfortable majority of 329-299, giving the government hopes that its timetable would also pass.

Johnson now says that he will hit the ‘pause’ button on the legislation but insists he will proceed with the withdrawal plan.

I have no idea what happens now. With Brexit, there never seems to be any final outcome.

We are all Russian assets now

Matt Taibbi writes that Democratic party establishment and its media allies have resorted to Cold War fear mongering rhetoric, epitomized by Hillary Clinton suggesting that Tulsi Gabbard and Jill Stein are “Russian assets”,

Hillary Clinton is nuts. She’s also not far from the Democratic Party mainstream, which has been pushing the same line for years.
…

Everyone is foreign scum these days. Democrats spent three years trying to prove Donald Trump is a Russian pawn. Mitch McConnell is “Moscow Mitch.” Third party candidates are a Russian plot. The Bernie Sanders movement is not just a wasteland of racist and misogynist “Bros,” but — according to intelligence agencies and mainstream pundits alike — the beneficiary of an ambitious Russian plot to “stoke the divide” within the Democratic Party. The Joe Rogan independents attracted to the mild antiwar message of Tulsi Gabbard are likewise traitors and dupes for the Kremlin.

If you’re keeping score, that’s pretty much the whole spectrum of American political thought, excepting MSNBC Democrats. What a coincidence!

Democrats now are assuming the role once played by Republicans of the Tom Delay era, who denounced everyone opposed to the War on Terror as “Saddam-lovers.”
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Reality TV is corrupting everything

I am not an instinctive hugger of people, even when I know the other person well. It is not that I object to hugs or shy away from physical contact but to me a hug implies a level of intimacy that may not be mutually shared. So I wait for the other person to initiate it before engaging in it. I am also mindful of what female faculty members have told me of male faculty colleagues who hug too closely, too long, and in too encompassing a way, so that they felt uncomfortable. One female faculty member volunteered to demonstrate to me what she often experienced. She played the role of the male hugger, and I could immediately sense why it would feel awkward to be at the receiving end of such hugs.
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Donald Trump bungles even the simplest photo op

Given the horrendous couple of weeks that Donald Trump has had, his advisors must have been pleased to have the opportunity to schedule a feel-good photo op with the two American women astronauts who did the first all-female space walk. It should have been a slam-dunk, where all Trump had to do was congratulate them on achieving a milestone. And yet he managed to bungle even that when he thought it was the first time that any woman had done a space walk. The astronaut had to gently correct him.


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The other battle in the UK over abortion and LGBT rights

Confusion reigns as usual in the UK over Brexit, After Boris Johnson’s defeat on Saturday and his subsequent childish behavior in sending an unsigned letter requesting an extension from the EU as required by law, his government had hoped to bring up his Brexit deal for another vote today but a few hours after his party said so, speaker John Bercow said that parliamentary rules did not allow for a motion that had been defeated once to be brought up again before parliament without substantial changes and this bill did not meet that standard, thus stymying Johnson’s attempt. Of course, there may be other maneuvers that Johnson can try and the situation keeps changing by the hour.
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How the ratings agencies triggered the financial meltdown

Matt Taibbi has come out with an excellent article that looks at the role of the ratings agencies, those institutions that are supposed to protect the interests of investors by providing accurate ratings for the investments issued by companies, in causing the financial collapse of 2008. Their role has been criticized before (I wrote about it back in 2008 here and here) but Taibbi says that recent revelations show that their culpability is even worse than was thought.
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Surprising backing down by Trump

One of the things that Donald Trump is notable for is the way he acts on wrong-headed impulses and then his reaction to criticisms of them. His tendency is to double down, to lie and make up stuff to support his earlier decisions, since his whole mode of operation is to give his followers the impression that his judgment is infallible and that any fault lies with his critics. Given that he and his family are grifters who see nothing wrong with using their positions for private gain, I was not surprised that he decided that the next G7 meeting that the US is hosting would be held at his own Doral resort in Miami. It would be a huge windfall for the property that has had declining revenues since 2015.
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