Posts Tagged ‘crime’
“By gold all good faith has been banished; by gold our rights are abused; the law itself is influenced by gold, and soon there will be an end of every modest restraint.”*…
Timely etymology from Dan Lewis…
If you follow politics (or, more likely, a politics-themed TV sitcom or drama) you’ve probably heard the term “slush fund” — and usually, it’s tied to something shady. A slush fund is money set aside for unofficial, often unethical, and sometimes illegal uses. It’s the kind of fund that no one really wants to talk about, and if they do, they don’t want to explain too much about it. If someone has a slush fund, you could say that there’s something fishy going on.
And you’d be right — literally speaking.
The word “slush” dates back to at least the mid-1600s, referring to the cold, wet muck that is formed when snow begins to melt. It’s unpleasant texture must have made an impression of the people of the day because a century or two later, “slush” took on a new, second meaning — at least, if you were on a boat.
Salt pork — salted (for preservative reasons) pieces of pork belly — was a staple on fishing and whaling ships of the early-to-mid 1800s. Crews aboard those ships spent a lot of a time at sea, and salt pork was a good, long-lasting protein source in an era before refrigeration. Salt pork was typically fried, and as the ship’s voyage continued onward, fat, grease, and other waste products would build up in the cooking vats. This residue became known as “slush,” likely because of its similarities to the melted snow seen back on land.
But this pig-created slush wasn’t just thrown overboard as waste — it turned out to be useful; as One Word a Day notes, “sailors used it as a lubricant and to waterproof the rigging and sails on their ships.” So they kept it around, and when their whaling or fishing expeditions ended, they typically still had a large amount of slush left over. And it turned out, there was a market for the stuff. Other ships could also use it to help their sailing efforts (before they started cooking up their own salt pork). As The Straight Dope notes, it could also be used by candle and soap makers. Once back on land, there were plenty of people who would gladly buy the slush off the ship’s cooks or other sailors.
That turned out to be a boon for the crew. Because the slush was a byproduct of the efforts to feed the crew, ship owners rarely, if ever, cared about the value of the slush itself — to them, it was waste created by the cost of doing business, not an asset. So when the sailors sold off the slush, they kept the money for themselves and their crewmates. Per Merriam-Webster, “The money from the sale of slush was reserved for the crew of the ship, and would be used to purchase items, such as musical instruments or books, which were not considered necessary enough that a country’s navy, or a ship’s owner, had to provide them for a crew.”
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, as a result of this usage, the phrase “slush fund” first appeared in our collective lexicon in 1839. It would take a generation or two before it gained its current, negative connotation often implying bribery. And with that came another term for financial shenanigans, which also comes from the use of salt pork byproducts to fund sailors whims: “greasing,” meaning “bribing.” The Etymology Dictionary explains “The extended meaning ‘money collected for bribes and to buy influence’ is first recorded 1874, no doubt with suggestions of ‘greasing’ palms.”
The term “slush fund” didn’t originally imply anything untoward — the association with bribery came later, as noted above. And the same is likely true for the word “bribe” itself. Per the Online Etymology Dictionary, “bribe” comes from the Old French term of the 14th century of the same spelling meaning “a gift,” and specifically, “bit, piece, hunk; morsel of bread given to beggars.” It took 200 or so years before the modern, sketchy meaning developed, and it’s unclear why…
“The Original Slush Fund” It was greasy. Literally. @nowiknow.com
(Image above: source)
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As we lament lawlessness, we might recall that it was on this date in 1972 that an 18-1/2-minute gap appears in the tape recording of the conversations between U.S. President Richard Nixon and his advisers regarding the recent arrests of his operatives while breaking into the Watergate complex.
Still, the tapes were damming. The White House released the subpoenaed tapes on August 5. One tape, later known as the “Smoking Gun” tape, documented the initial stages of the Watergate coverup. On it, Nixon and Haldeman are heard formulating a plan to block investigations by having the CIA falsely claim to the FBI that national security was involved.
It’s a measure of how different those times were from ours that, once the “Smoking Gun” transcript was made public, Nixon’s political support practically vanished: the ten Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee who had voted against impeachment in committee announced that they would now vote for impeachment once the matter reached the House floor.
“Black money is so much a part of our white economy, a tumour in the centre of the brain – try to remove it and you kill the patient.”*…
The informal, or shadow, economy (and here and here)– economic activity, both casual and criminal, that is neither recorded nor taxed– is a feature of life virtually everywhere. Dorothy Neufeld (in Visual Capitalist) unpacks the league table…
The world’s $12.5 trillion informal economy covers nearly every corner of the world, seeing the highest concentration in emerging economies.
Yet in absolute terms, China, the U.S. and India are home to the largest black markets—covering everything from street vendors to illegal activities that evade governmental oversight. Overall, this generates lower tax revenue and poorer working conditions given the absence of worker protections, leaving millions exposed to poor working conditions…
… Since 2004, workers employed in China’s informal economy have nearly doubled, reaching approximately 200 million.
Driving this trend are jobs are found in the labor-intensive services sector, such as drivers, nannies, and roadside repairmen. As a result, China’s income tax revenue accounts for about 6% of GDP—far lower than the 24% OECD average.
Ranking in second is the U.S. shadow economy, valued at $1.4 trillion. Overall, states with lower real GDP and higher regulatory burdens tend to have more active underground economies.
Meanwhile, Brazil leads in Latin America, with a shadow economy valued at $448 billion. In Europe, Germany is home to the largest at $308 billion, equal to 6.8% of GDP…
Ranked: “The World’s Biggest Shadow Economies.”
* Rohinton Mistry, Family Matters
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As we contemplate commerce, we might recall that it was on this date in 1988 that three 50 pound snapping turtles were found in a Bronx, New York sewage treatment plant. They had probably been pets that were flushed down the toilet when very small. One might imagine that this story helped spawn the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but the Ninja Turtles are actually a bit older than that. Comic book artists Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird published the first Ninja Turtles comic in 1984.
“I seen my opportunities and I took em”*…
Since he kicked off his campaign, Trump’s business empire has landed billions of dollars of deals at home and abroad. Max Abelson and Annie Massa bring the receipts…
The way Donald Trump sees it, he’s the greatest businessman to campaign for the White House.
“I’m the most successful person ever to run,” he told an Iowa reporter in 2015. “I have a Gucci store that’s worth more than Romney.”
That might have been an exaggeration, but this isn’t: A decade later, no modern American president has positioned his family to make so much money while in the White House. Already, since the early days of his reelection campaign, he’s more than doubled his net worth to about $5.4 billion.
In that time, the Trump name has powered more than $10 billion of real estate projects, a multibillion-dollar valuation for his money-losing social-media company, more than $500 million in sales from just one of his crypto ventures and millions of dollars more from stakes in companies that offer financial services, guns and drone parts. Family members have also scored an array of corporate positions — at least seven new roles as an adviser or executive for his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., alone.
Compared with the tumult of the presidency, the empire’s approach is consistent and clear: Sell the family name. In any other era, this scale of presidential moneymaking would threaten to be the story of the year, but political uproar has hogged most of the attention.
In his first months in power, Trump put tariffs on and took some off, blamed Ukraine for Russia’s attacks, sent immigrants to a foreign prison and teased a third term that the Constitution doesn’t allow. And as he’s hacked away at the government’s workforce and budget, he’s shrunk the agencies and offices that oversee his public company, crypto projects and even conflicts of interest.
Trump has loosened constraints on overseas dealmaking that were put in place in his last administration. (He also let Elon Musk, the billionaire leading an effort to slash government spending, police his own conflicts). This week, he’s scheduled to dine with his new memecoin’s top holders.
What makes this era even more remarkable is how close Trump came to ruin. His first term ended with a riot at the Capitol, later followed by a $454 million civil fraud judgment and his conviction for falsifying business records. Trump has appealed both.
Now, his assets are in a trust overseen by his oldest son. And despite talk of a recession, the clan stands to get richer than ever.
“President Trump has been the most transparent president in history in all respects, including when it comes to his finances,” said a White House spokesperson. “President Trump handed over his multibillion-dollar empire in order to serve our country, and he has sacrificed greatly. President Trump has disclosed his financial holdings through his annual financial disclosure report and he will continue to do so.”
Trump Jr. said he shouldn’t be expected to change his career on account of his dad’s power.
“I’m a private citizen who has been a businessman and serial investor my entire adult life,” he said in a statement. “It’s ridiculous to expect me to stop doing what I’ve always done to provide for my five children just because my dad was elected president.”
These are the corporate connections, crypto projects and licensing deals — all of them since the 2024 campaign began — that the Trumps are using to climb higher than ever…
The gory (and mind-boggling) details: “The Trump Family’s Money-Making Machine” (gift link) from @bloomberg.com.
Apposite: “A World of MAGA Liquor Is Exploding Online. But What If It’s Not Real?“
* “Everybody is talkin’ these days about Tammany men growin’ rich on graft, but nobody thinks of drawin’ the distinction between honest graft and dishonest graft. There’s an honest graft, and I’m an example of how it works. I might sum up the whole thing by sayin’: “I seen my opportunities and I took ’em.” — George Washington Plunkitt, New York State Senator and “Sage of Tammany Hall” (See also)
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As we ponder probity (and its absence), we might spare a thought for Jonathan Wild; he died on this date in 1725. An English thief-taker and a major figure in the organization and growth of London’s criminal underworld, he was notable for operating on both sides of the law: posing as a public-spirited vigilante known as the “Thief-Taker General,” he simultaneously ran a significant criminal empire, and used his crimefighting role to remove rivals and launder the proceeds of his own crimes (fencing, but also selling goods he’d stolen back to their owners).
“In the world of art, authenticity is often just an illusion”*…
Kelly Grovier with the simple rules to use in identifyng art forgery…
It’s everywhere: fake news, deep fakes, identity fraud. So ensnared are we in a culture of digitised deceptions, a phenomenon increasingly augmented by artificial intelligence, it would be easy to think that deceit itself is a high-tech invention of the cyber age. Recent revelations however – from the discovery of an elaborate, if decidedly low-tech, art forger’s workshop in Rome to the sensational allegation that a cherished Baroque masterpiece in London’s National Gallery is a crude simulacrum of a lost original – remind us that duplicity in the world of art has a long and storied history, one written not in binary ones and zeroes, but in impossible pigments, clumsy brushstrokes and suspicious signatures. When it comes to falsification and phoniness, there is indeed no new thing under the Sun.
On 19 February, Italy’s Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage uncovered a covert forgery operation in a northern district of Rome. Authorities confiscated more than 70 fraudulent artworks falsely attributed to notable artists from Pissarro to Picasso, Rembrandt to Dora Maar, along with materials used to mimic vintage canvases, artist signatures, and the stamps of galleries no longer in operation. The suspect, who has yet to be apprehended, is thought to have used online platforms such as Catawiki and eBay to hawk their phoney wares, deceiving potential buyers with convincing certificates of authenticity that they likewise contrived.
News of the clandestine lab’s discovery was quickly followed by publicity for a new book, due for release this week, alleging that one of The National Gallery’s highlights is not at all what it seems. According to artist and historian Euphrosyne Doxiadis, author of NG6461: The Fake National Gallery Rubens, the painting Samson and Delilah – a large oil-on-wood attributed to the 17th Century Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens and purchased by the London museum in 1980 for £2.5m (then the second-highest price ever paid for a painting at auction) – is three centuries younger than the date of 1609-10 that sits beside it on the gallery wall and is incalculably less accomplished than the museum believes.
Doxiadis’s conclusion corroborates one reached in 2021 by the Swiss company, Art Recognition, which determined, through the use of AI, that there was a 91% probability that Samson and Delilah is the work of someone other than Rubens. Her assertion that the brushwork we see in the painting is crass and wholly inconsistent with the fluid flow of the Flemish master’s hand is strongly contested by The National Gallery, which stands by its attribution. “Samson and Delilah has long been accepted by leading Rubens scholars as a masterpiece by Peter Paul Rubens”, it said in a statement given to the BBC. “Painted on wood panel in oil shortly after his return to Antwerp in 1608 and demonstrating all that the artist had learned in Italy, it is a work of the highest aesthetic quality. A technical examination of the picture was presented in an article in The National Gallery’s Technical Bulletin in 1983. The findings remain valid.”
The divergence of opinion between the museum’s experts and those who doubt the work’s authenticity opens a curious space in which to reflect on intriguing questions of artistic value and merit. Is there ever legitimacy in forgery? Can fakes be masterpieces? As more sophisticated tools of analysis are applied to paintings and drawings whose legitimacy has long been in question (including several works attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, such as the hotly disputed chalk and ink drawing La Bella Principessa), as well as those whose validity has never been in doubt, debates about the integrity of cultural icons are only likely to accelerate. What follows are a handful of handy principles to keep in mind when navigating the impending controversies – five simple rules for spotting a fake masterpiece…
When a work of art isn’t what it appears to be: “Rembrandt to Picasso: Five ways to spot a fake masterpiece,” from BBC. Eminently worth reading in full.
* B.A. Shapiro, The Art Forger
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As we ferret out the faux, we might send carefully-secured birthday greetings to Linus Yale, Jr.; he was born on this date in 1821. After launching a promising career as a portrait painter, Yale joined his father’s lock business and became the nation’s leading expert on banklocks. He created many locks, among them, the one for which he is best remembered, the “safe door lock,” the first modern “pin tumbler lock” (AKA “the Yale lock”).
“Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand”*…
(Roughy) Daily has looked before at that most common– and essential– of substances, sand. (See here, here, and here.) Today, via Michaela Büsse, an update…
After water, sand is the second most used material in the world. Each year, approximately 40-50 billion metric tons of sand are consumed worldwide.
This accounts for 79% of all aggregates extracted and traded, making sand the literal foundation for global human infrastructure. Sand plays a vital role in the production of glass, steel, and concrete. Silica, one of the most common minerals found in sand, is the key ingredient in silicon chips and thus for the development of digital technologies. But sand is also fundamental to the creation and maintenance of land itself, rendering it constitutive to processes of urbanization. Artificial islands, port expansions, and beach nourishment projects consume vast quantities of sand. As the bedrock of urban infrastructures, sand is embedded in the very fabric of modern life. Yet, its ubiquity belies its complexity. As a sediment, sand is foundational for the functioning of ecosystems. The relentless expansion and intensification of cities is starving rivers and coasts of sediment, depleting sand at a rate that far exceeds its natural replenishment.
Intensive dredging of rivers and seabeds has fundamentally altered sedimentation patterns, disrupting the delicate equilibrium that governs ecosystems. Rivers, which once carried sand from mountains to coastlines, now struggle to replenish beaches and wetlands. This depletion has far-reaching consequences. Without sufficient sand deposits, coastlines are left vulnerable to erosion, rising sea levels, and the devastating impact of extreme weather events. In ecosystems already on the front lines of climate change—like deltas, wetlands, and estuaries—the effects of sand extraction are compounded. Delta regions, for instance, rely on continuous sediment deposits to counteract the natural sinking of land. When sand is removed faster than it can be replaced, these regions are exposed to subsidence, where land sinks at an accelerated rate, amplifying flood risk and increasing the salinization of freshwater resources. Such impacts are often delayed, manifesting years or even decades after extraction, making them challenging to monitor and mitigate effectively.
As global sand consumption surges to unprecedented heights, the profound and far-reaching consequences of extraction come sharply into focus. Numerous journalistic and scientific accounts warn of the “looming tragedy of the sand commons,” highlighting environmental concerns related to dredging and mining sand, such as pollution, biodiversity loss, and soil disturbance, as well as illegal practices in the sand trade. The reality of the sand trade is both dirty and messy, intertwining national and transnational politics. In regions like Southeast Asia, rapid urbanization and investments in large-scale infrastructure projects have spurred an unprecedented demand for this essential resource. Here, land reclamation has emerged as a flashpoint where extraction practices intersect with issues of sovereignty, livelihoods, and environmental justice, transforming sand into a highly sought-after and contested commodity. Building new land for some means taking old land from others. The exploitation of sand goes hand in hand with exploitative labor and geopolitical maneuvering.
Sand’s impending scarcity has fueled a black market, giving rise to “sand mafias”—criminal organizations that exploit extraction and trade through corruption, violence, and intimidation, often circumventing national mining and export bans. It is not uncommon for sand to become a matter of life and death for those who mine it as well as for those who seek to prevent it from being mined. Across the world, activists and local communities have mobilized against sand extraction and land reclamation, fighting the prevailing narratives of development and progress that often justify environmental exploitation. However, these initiatives are rarely successful, resulting (at best) in compensation payments to the affected communities. A transboundary governance of sand would require international standards, which many researchers and organizations have requested. Even so, it is nearly impossible to control the natural flow of sand.
As sand transitions from a sediment to a precious resource, it has become instrumental in urban ideals of late modernity. Cities like Dubai and Singapore epitomize how architectural ambitions is built on vast quantities of imported sand. Land built from scratch, towering skyscrapers, and sprawling infrastructure are testaments to sand’s transformative potential. Yet, these urban landscapes are haunted by their materiality: each grain is a silent witness to the ecological and social disruptions that enabled its journey. The sand in these structures embodies the persistence of environmental degradation, displaced labor, and the exploitation that made them possible. In this way, sand is both an architect and a specter of modernity’s unrestrained ambitions, leaving us to confront the shadows cast by our own constructions…
Eminently worth reading in full: “Granular Power: The Gritty Politics of Sand,” from @michaelabussey.bsky.social and @eflux.bsky.social.
* Jorge Luis Borges
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As we get grainy, we might send insightful birthday greetings to James Hansen; he was born on this date in 1941. An atmospheric physicist, he was Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (from 1981-2013). He is best known for his (June, 1988) testimony to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that there was 99% certainty the cause of climate change was known with 99% certainty to be the buildup of carbon dioxide and other artificial gases in the atmosphere– helping raise broad awareness of global warming– and for his advocacy of action to avoid dangerous climate change. (Hansen has since proposed a revised explanation of global warming, where the 0.7°C global mean temperature increase of the last 100 years can be to some extent explained by the effect of greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide (such as methane).
Currently the Director of the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, he remains a climate activist.
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