Harvey Weinstein sentenced to 23 years in prison

The sentence was handed down after he was convicted on counts of a first-degree criminal sex act for forcing oral sex on an assistant and third-degree rape of another woman .The judge rejected a plea by the 67-year old former media mogul’s attorney for a minimum sentence of five years based on his supposedly poor health (he came to court in a wheelchair).

Lawyers for Weinstein pleaded with the judge for the minimum sentence of five years in prison. Donna Rotunno, his chief defense attorney, cited his work in the film industry as well as his failing health as mitigating factors.

The sex offender also addressed the court personally in a rambling address in which he expressed remorse as well as implying he had been “confused” in his dealings with the women. “I’m totally confused, men are confused about all of this issue.”

Weinstein went on to say: “I really feel remorse for this situation, I feel it deeply in my heart,” adding: “We may have different truths.”

At the end of the proceedings, Weinstein was cuffed to his wheelchair and led away. Several of the accusers who had testified could be seen at that moment sobbing.

Within a few hours of the stunning sentence being delivered, Weinstein was hit with a further withering blow. The district attorney in Los Angeles announced that it has begun extradition proceedings to bring him to face two charges relating to two additional west coast accusers.

It may be true that some men are ‘confused’ by some aspects of their relationships with women, but the things that Weinstein was accused of doing were so egregious and took place on so many occasions with so many different victims that the idea that he was confused as to whether his conduct fell within accepted norms of behavior is hard to accept.

The once and future Taliban

The longest war in US history is in the process of finally winding down, at least as far as the US is concerned. The US has begun the first stage of the process of withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan from 13,000 to 8,600, one of the elements of the peace deal signed by the US with the Taliban. Another element is that the Taliban begin negotiations with the US-backed Afghan government to begin today in Oslo and that the government release 5,000 Taliban prisoners it is holding. The Afghan president signed a decree yesterday authrorizing the release of just 1,500 prisoners. It is not clear if this will satisfy the Taliban enough to start the talks.
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This is not the leadership that the times call for

Seth Meyers says that we are in trouble because at a time of concern over a pandemic when we need sober leadership, we have a president who thinks that he can lie the problem away and we have people around him who are enabling his delusions.

While driving yesterday, I turned on the radio listened on the radio and found it was broadcasting a live press conference in which vice president Mike Pence was giving an update on the coronavirus. In between providing bits of information, he gushed over the leadership of Donald Trump in dealing with the coronavirus. I was not at all surprised to find that Trump had been there the whole time because Pence then handed it over to Trump who then boasted about how well he is dealing with the situation. It was sickening.
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Another case of projection by the US

One thing that you can be reasonably sure of is that when the US government and the media focus relentlessly on the actions of an adversarial foreign government, it is often to distract from the fact that the US does exactly the same things, sometimes on a much larger scale. A case in point is all the righteous indignation over Russian meddling in US elections while left unsaid is that the US, usually through the CIA, has a terrible history of doing much worse to countries all around the world over a long time and still continues to do so today.
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Palace intrigues in Saudi Arabia

Lost in the news about the coronavirus is a big story emerging from Saudi Arabia about the arrest of several members of the family of the 84-year old ruler King Salman, along with other leading figures.

Among those held in the sweeping crackdown are two of the most prominent royal family members: Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, a younger brother of Saudi King Salman, and Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the king’s nephew and former crown prince.
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The sweep broadened on Saturday, the Journal later reported, to include dozens of interior ministry officials, senior army officers and others suspected of supporting a coup attempt. Prince Nayef bin Ahmed, a former army head of intelligence, was also among the detainees.

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When personal identity and politics collide

We have yet another case of someone acting against the interests of a group they belong to.

Former Republican member of Congress Aaron Schock came out as gay on Thursday in a long statement posted to Instagram and his personal website.

Schock spoke about his years of struggling with his sexuality and estrangement from his conservative family, and added that if he were in Congress now, he would “would support LGBTQ rights in every way [he] could.”

During his six years in Congress representing Illinois, Schock consistently voted against policies supported by the LGBTQ community, including the 2010 repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” which allowed gay and bisexual people to openly serve in the military, and the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

It had been widely speculated that he was gay at the time he was a congressperson but we should not be too quick to judge and condemn Schock as yet another right-wing hypocrite. When he says that he was “struggling with his sexuality”, it is not clear whether his votes against providing justice to the LGBT+ community occurred during the time when he was in denial about his own sexual orientation and was trying to convince himself that he was not gay by going to the other extreme of overt homophobia. That condition is not that uncommon and reflects the sad fact that homosexuality still carries with it a stigma in many quarters.

But if he was cynically throwing the LGBT+ community under the bus and using those votes as a cover to hide his identity for the sake of advancing within the homophobic Republican party, then he deserves all the opprobrium he gets.