When thieves fall out

[UPDATE: Today it is reported that Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump organization, has also been given immunity by the Mueller investigation in return for testimony.

Mr Weisselberg reportedly oversaw the reimbursements Mr Cohen received from the Trump Organization for paying adult film star Stormy Daniels. Depending on how the financial transfer was accounted for, it could run afoul of a number of campaign finance and accounting laws.

What’s more, Mr Weisselberg has been at the beating heart of the Trump Organization since the 1970s. He handles the president’s private trust, is the treasurer of the family’s charitable foundation – currently under investigation by the state of New York – and has, at times, reviewed the Trump presidential campaign’s accounting books.

He’s the man who knows things – and now he’s talking.

Is there going to be anyone close to Trump who is not convicted of a crime or given plea deals and immunity in return for testimony?]

Many people have been involved in the Byzantine world of corruption and sleaze that surrounds this administration like a thick fog. Donald Trump is finding out that he has very few true and loyal friends. This should not surprise him since he himself seems to have no sense of loyalty to anyone but realizing that requires a sense of self-awareness that he clearly does not possess. We are now seeing the classic situation of thieves falling out, when they turn on each other to save their own skins. The latest people to do this are of course Omarosa Manigault Newman and Michael Cohen.
[Read more…]

The last days of ‘Peter Bergmann’

There is a haunting short documentary about a mysterious man who appeared in 2009 in Sligo, a small seaside town in Ireland, with a carefully laid out plan to get rid of all traces of his identity. He was successful in that no one has since been able to figure out who he was, which is quite surprising in this day and age when it is so hard to hide our traces.

This revelation was no surprise

I started hearing about political commentator Paris Dennard at the time Donald Trump became a candidate for the presidency. Dennard was a vociferous supporter of Trump and appeared frequently on NPR as his spokesperson. He was quite obnoxious, one of those people who aggressively counter-attacks when anything negative is said about his hero rather than use thoughtful arguments. Hence he is ideal for the conflict-based talk shows that cable news thrives on, though I was annoyed with NPR for giving him so much airtime.
[Read more…]

Trump’s obsession with Canadian milk

We know by now that Donald Trump’s bonnet has a very large number of bees. Several of his unshakeable beliefs relate to economics and all of them are highly dubious. One is that budget deficits are bad (unless they are caused by tax cuts for the wealthy) and another is that any trade deficit with any country is bad. He also seems to think that there is close relationship between the two. He also seems to believe that if any country has a trade surplus with the US, it must be because they are indulging in unfair trade practices such as currency manipulation, or providing subsidies for their domestic manufacturers and producers so that they can undercut the prices of US producers, or they are imposing tariffs to make US goods more expensive.
[Read more…]

Saudi Arabia seeks death penalty for female activist

Mohammed Bin Salman, the person who has emerged as a powerful figure in Saudi Arabia and even as the de facto ruler, has managed to get a lot of favorable press in the west by allowing women to drive, and the media have fawned over him as a reformer, suggesting that his friendship with Jared Kushner is a sign that he has modern values and that he is leading the country away from its ghastly and barbaric practices. But today comes word that the government is seeking the death penalty for a woman activist merely for participating in protests.
[Read more…]

Who would you be shocked to see accused by the #MeToo movement?

The recent spate of accusations of sexual harassment and abuse has netted many prominent people. While this has of course caused considerable consternation, it struck me that once the names were revealed, there was no one for whom I was utterly shocked. I want to distinguish being shocked from deeply disappointed, which is what you feel when people whom you admired for their skills (such as Kevin Spacey’s acting) or thought were on the right side of issues you care about turn out to have done such things. I mean being shocked because what you could glean about the person from their public persona seems utterly at odds with such actions.
[Read more…]

Brace yourselves for a Trump Twitter blizzard

This afternoon saw two major developments in cases brought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, though the two cases are separate. In the case in Alexandria, Virginia against Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s one-time campaign manager, the jury brought in guilty verdicts on eight counts but could not agree on the other ten. Manafort is due to face another trial in Washington DC next month.
[Read more…]

No wonder the British oligarchs hate Jeremy Corbyn and want him ousted

Take a look at this short video sent out by him on his Twitter account.

I don’t know if Corbyn was also behind the creation of the video or just tweeted it out.

The only quibble I have with it is that it seems to depict the austerity advocates as well-intentioned but misguided. In reality I think they know exactly what they are doing and that is to shift wealth away from the lower income groups to the rich. All the ‘concern’ about the deficit and growth is just window dressing.

The video, with a few tweaks, would apply well to the US too.

Correcting false assertions about the history of science

As a scientist interested in the history of science, I have become acutely aware that much of the science ‘history’ we picked up in the course of our scientific training is largely folklore (what Richard Feynman referred to as ‘myth-stories’) and highly unreliable. Hence it is advisable not to make sweeping conclusions based on them. Via PZ Myers over at Pharyngula I came across an interesting article that looks at a recent discussion between Sam Harris and Ben Shapiro, where they use history to draw conclusions about the relationship of science to religion. You could not pay me enough to listen to these two people but Tim O’Neill, an Australian atheist who writes the blog History for Atheists: New Atheists Getting History Wrong did, and he has done a thorough analysis of the historical assertions made by both and finds them, especially those of Harris, utterly wanting.
[Read more…]