Epstein Island 2

I cannot understand why the Albanian people are so upset about Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump stealing the largest Albanian island on the Aegean.

Actually, I can understand why there are massive protests in Tirana.

The plan to gift the Sazan Island to the Trump Crime Family is infuriating to me, and I am 7 time zones behind the Balkan nation.

There is a nonzero chance that Jared Kushner will play a pivotal and entirely accidental role in bringing down the government of Albania. Over the last several weeks, the Balkan nation has been roiled by protests stretching from the capital, Tirana, to rural coastlines and cities around the world. The demonstrations were sparked by the government’s giving the green light to firms linked with Kushner to develop a 10,000-bed luxury resort near the city of Vlorë on the Narta Lagoon and protected wildlands in Zvërnec. Kushner and Ivanka Trump also have plans to turn Sazan Island, which belongs to a national park, into a smaller coastal enclave for the wealthy. On Saturday, some 200,000 people turned out as anger spread from the Kushner project to other luxury developments. Roughly 200 protesters in northwestern Albania tore down barbed-wire fencing around the construction site of a non-Kushner-linked five-star resort on the Adriatic Coast. As one participant told Reuters, they were demanding “compensation” for 200 local families whose “land has been seized.”

International coverage of the protests in Albania—a country relatively unfamiliar to many in the United States—has focused largely on the environmental concerns being raised by demonstrators, and the projects’ ties to the Trump family. The fledgling Kushner resorts threaten pristine wilderness and critical ecosystems that sustain a rare colony of the world’s largest freshwater birds, endangered Albanian water frogs, and loggerhead turtles. Among the species that stand to be affected are flamingos, whose last remaining habitat in Albania could be threatened by the developments. But the “Flamingo Revolution,” as the wide-ranging, horizontalist movement has become known, is about much more than flora, fauna, or Donald Trump. As Albania vies to become a top tourist destination and a member of the European Union, the ongoing protests aim to do nothing less than upend its political system. “At the core of this protest is not just environmental issues,” said Gresa Hasa, a doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Law and the Center for Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz. “This is a fight for freedom and democracy, and a future where the resources and the state works for all of us and not just for some of us, and where we are not excluded from our own beaches and public spaces.”

………

It’s no secret that the Trump family has been eager to make itself richer while the patriarch occupies the White House. Here in the U.S., awareness of these activities hasn’t yet made much of a dent in Trump’s grasp on power. Abroad, however, it may help bring down politicians who thought they could use that grift to their advantage. Let’s hope Americans take note.

The Trumps are a cancer on the entire world.

How About a Vacation in Iraq?

They have restored the ancient city of Babylon.

Now that's a good way to get your archeology freak on.

Mentioned in the sacred texts of all three Abrahamic faiths, the ancient Mesopotamian city of Babylon, in modern-day Iraq, is today undergoing a revival. Two World Monuments Fund (WMF) projects are nearing completion and much-needed cultural tourism is returning.

One project mitigates groundwater damage to the north retaining wall of the Ishtar Gate. The second is a restoration of the Temple of Ninmakh, dedicated to the Sumerian mother goddess. The team hopes there will be an official reopening for the temple this autumn, after which it will be available for gatherings such as weddings and concerts, as well as for the Babylon Festival, a celebration of international cultures that takes place every spring.

Largely funded by the US embassy in Baghdad, the restoration of the temple and the north retaining wall are part of the Future of Babylon Project, initiated 15 years ago, which aims to document, waterproof and stabilise structures throughout the 2,500-acre site. (The US embassy cancelled funding for a planned walkway spanning the site of the Ishtar Gate in July due to budget cuts.)

Headline of the Day

Jeff Bezos Alters Venice Wedding Plans After Threat of Inflatable Crocodiles

—The Guardian on protests against the Amazon founder's wedding excesses.

This Bezos wanted to take over the famous Scuola Grande della Misericordia in the center of Venice for his wedding.

Protesters threatened to block the canals with their copious cache of crocodile toys to prevent guest access through the canals.

I am amused:

Campaigners in Venice have claimed victory after Jeff Bezos was reportedly forced to change the venue for his wedding celebrations in the city as his guests started arriving on Tuesday for the three-day jamboree.

The main reception for the wedding of Bezos and Lauren Sánchez, a former TV journalist, was due to be held in the Scuola Grande della Misericordia, a majestic 16th-century building in the city centre.

But according to the No Space for Bezos group, the couple relented after activists threatened to fill the canals with inflatable crocodiles to block their celebrity guests from entering.

The event will instead take place in Arsenale, a historic complex of shipyards surrounded by fortified walls that will be much harder for the protesters to penetrate. 

 I am amused.

バカにつける薬はない*

Dateline, Mt. Fugi, Japan. A student climbs the iconic Japanese mountain before the start of the official climbing season, loses his climbing equipment, needs a helicopter rescue, realizes that he left his mobile phone on the mountain, so he climbs back up the mountain to recover his cell phone and needs to be rescued again. 

An inexperienced climber became stranded on Mount Fuji last week, after climbing to the top of the Japanese mountain and losing some of his climbing gear. As if that weren’t bad enough, the man subsequently returned to the peak a few days later because he’d forgotten his phone at the summit. He then had to be rescued again.

BBC reports that a 27-year-old Chinese university student (whom authorities have mercifully declined to name) was initially rescued last Tuesday near the summit of the mountain after losing his crampons. Crampons are a kind of spiked cleat that allows for safe traversal of icy environments. He was at a height of some 12,388 feet when he had to be rescued by helicopter and flown to safety, authorities told CNN.

However, the student then made the dubious decision to scale the mountain again a few days later because he had forgotten his phone at the top, officials said. He had to be rescued yet again, after climbing to a height of 9,842 feet and experiencing altitude sickness, CNN writes. Altitude sickness occurs as the body’s response to climbing in elevation too quickly. Some climbers can have trouble adjusting to the more limited oxygen levels and may experience disorientation and difficulty breathing.

This guy is cruising for a f%$#ing Darwin Award.

^*This translates to, "There is no medicine for stupidity."

In a Place that Sounds Like a Disease

My niece Zahva is getting married on Sunday in Suffern, New York, and we are staying in an Airbnb in Teaneck, New Jersey.

I can imagine to a doctor delivering the bad news,  "I'm sorry Mr. Saroff, but you had be been diagnosed with Teaneck, there's nothing we can do."

We are going to hit to the City this weekend, and because we I do not want to upstage the happy couple, I will not be urinating on Ayn Rand's grave, Kensico Cemetery, 273 Lakeview Ave, Valhalla, NY 10595.

Maybe later.

About F%$#ing Time

Italy has finally decided to ban cruise ships the Venice lagoon in August, which should mitigate the damage created by the massive vessels:

Aiming to protect a “national monument,” Italy’s government Tuesday moved to ban massive cruise ships from sailing directly into Venice and limit access to its fragile lagoon, definitively altering mass-scale tourism to the City of Canals.

The government’s decision, which will take effect Aug. 1, will put a stop to the contentious image that has come to symbolize many of overtouristed Venice’s problems: fuel-guzzling ships, taller than the city’s bell towers, passing through the historical waterways and depositing thousands of passengers in the heart of the old city.

Prime Minister Mario Draghi called it a “step for the protection of the Venetian Lagoon.”

The move was made under pressure, just days before the United Nations’ cultural protection agency, UNESCO, was set to discuss listing Venice as an endangered World Heritage site. A UNESCO document from June specifically called on Italy to ban big cruise ships from the lagoon and move with the “utmost urgency.”

The cruise ships have long posed a conundrum in Venice, pitting economic needs — the cruise industry in Venice employs several thousand people — against a fragile ecosystem. Opponents of the cruise ships in Venice have protested for years, saying that the wakes caused by the ships contribute to erosion and that day-tripping, mass-scale tourism is incompatible with a relatively small, compact city.

The ban applies to ships of more than 25,000 tons. The massive cruise ships that have sailed into Venice’s harbor can be nearly four times that weight.

………

“The continued deteriorating effects of human intervention, combined with climate change on the vulnerable lagoon ecosystem, threaten to result in irreversible change,” UNESCO had said last month.

These ships have been shaking the city and the lagoon to pieces for decades.  It's good that they will be excluded from the region now.

Training Will Not Help.

Training does not reduce incidences of abusive law enforcement conduct. This has been shown over, and over, and over, and over again

What DOES help is firings and prosecutions, because the misconduct arises from the perceived impunity of police officers.

They don't do this because they are poorly trained, they do this because they CAN do this, so the brutality of the Ocean City police needs to be treated as the crime that it is:

A year before video of the violent arrests of six Black teenagers in this Maryland resort town went viral, spurring calls for reform and demands for an investigation, a police lieutenant grabbed a White man who was shouting insults at officers and punched him in the face.

The Ocean City Police Department said the lieutenant’s actions were “within policy” that day on the crowded boardwalk, where the population swells with nearly 8 million visitors each year, and officers on foot and bicycle are charged with maintaining a “family friendly atmosphere.”

This is the problem.  The Police think that thier behavior is OK, and it is NOT.

………

Records released by the department show its officers use force a couple hundred times a year during arrests that are concentrated in the summer season. Policing experts say such confrontations illustrate the importance of de-escalation techniques, especially in today’s charged law enforcement environment. While limited, publicly available data shows the violent arrests in Ocean City have involved both Black and White civilians, with a disproportionate percentage of use-of-force incidents involving Black people.

At a time when Maryland and other states are launching new efforts to hold police officers accountable, and the nation is paying closer attention to police treatment of minorities, the June 6 and 12 arrests of several young Black men have drawn national attention.

The incidents — in which unarmed teens were shocked by Tasers, held down on the ground and repeatedly kneed in the rib cage — are generating questions about how a popular vacation spot polices its visitors, and whether officers should do more to de-escalate confrontations before resorting to force.

The real question should be about how a popular vacation spot polices its police.

Ocean City Mayor Rick Meehan says that if people obey the law and are courteous to each other, they have nothing to worry about. “We have ordinances, and we do need to enforce those ordinances,” he said. “Our goal is compliance, and if people comply there’s really no issue. The majority of people do.”

And here is the crux of the issue:  The people of Ocean City, as represented by the Mayor, see the job of the police as being keeping the n*****s down, with a secondary roll of keeping non-townies in their place.

Welcome to the Brotherhood of Sh%$-Hole Nations

Much of the Caribbean is rolling up the welcome mat to American tourists because of our bungling of the Covid-19 pandemic:

As Caribbean beaches and resorts begin welcoming back international tourists, there’s one group that’s increasingly being left out: Americans.

Tropical vacation spots across the region are giving U.S. citizens the cold shoulder amid fears they might spread the coronavirus, cutting Americans off from one of the few regions that was still accessible to them.

This week, the Bahamas will begin barring commercial flights and passenger ships from the U.S., even as it invites Canadian and European tourists to visit. The Dutch countries of St. Maarten and Curacao have also reopened to almost everyone but U.S. travelers.

So much winning.

Welcome to the Brotherhood of Sh%$-Hole Nations

As a result of an abysmally managed pandemic response, it is looking increasingly likely that the EU is giving serious consideration to banning travelers from the United States.

This is some definition of, "Making America Great Again," that I was previously unaware of:

European Union countries rushing to revive their economies and reopen their borders after months of coronavirus restrictions are prepared to block Americans from entering because the United States has failed to control the scourge, according to draft lists of acceptable travelers reviewed by The New York Times.

That prospect, which would lump American visitors in with Russians and Brazilians as unwelcome, is a stinging blow to American prestige in the world and a repudiation of President Trump’s handling of the virus in the United States, which has more than 2.3 million cases and upward of 120,000 deaths, more than any other country.

European nations are currently haggling over two potential lists of acceptable visitors based on how countries are faring with the coronavirus pandemic. Both lists include China, as well as developing nations like Uganda, Cuba and Vietnam. Both also exclude the United States and other countries that were deemed too risky because of the spread of the virus.

Welcome to the 3^rd world, folks.

What the People of Amsterdam Have Discovered

They have discovered that they are sick of these motherf%$#ing tourists in their motherf%$#ing city!!!

Amsterdam has been catering to tourists, for the weed, for the sex shops, the canals, and for the wonderful architecture, for years, and now its citizens have discovered that they like their city a lot better without the hoards of overbearing tourists:

Amsterdam’s historic Red Light District is rife with English-language city signs admonishing tourists: “Don’t pee in the street”; “No alcohol in public spaces”; “Put your trash in the bin”; “Fine: 140 euros.”

But the cartoonish black-and-red warnings on the 17th-century canals look strangely out of place these days. There are no visitors to heed them.

Beginning in mid-March, when the Netherlands went into semi-lockdown to combat the covid-19 pandemic, tourism vanished from Amsterdam almost overnight. A social and economic crisis has hit the country and its capital hard. But for residents of Amsterdam’s historic city center, there is a clear silver lining: temporary relief from the burden of overtourism.

………

Nowhere is the difference more clear than in the now-deserted alleys of the Wallen, as the red-light district is called. It is a major tourist draw, famous for the sight of sex workers soliciting from behind their windows and the many coffee shops where visitors can light up a joint. Here, noise is permanent, and nuisance a given. Tourists often leave trash and urinate in public.

………

“It’s just lovely. I’ve lived here five years, and I’m now getting to know neighbors I didn’t know I had. They used to blend into the crowd,” she says. “Now, when the sun is out, people take a chair and sit out front. It’s so gezellig,” she continues, using the common Dutch adverb that translates to “having a good time together.”

………

“It’s like the city is ours again,” she says, echoing a common sentiment among Amsterdammers who feel like their interests had become subordinate to those of visitors.

………

Seeing the pristine metropolis, many citizens feel like they are wandering through the Amsterdam of the past. Tim Verlaan, an assistant professor of urban history at the University of Amsterdam, draws a parallel to what it looked like in the 1970s and ‘80s.

“The lockdown, of course, is unprecedented. But many Amsterdammers are reminded of a time when the city first and foremost was a place to live, and not to consume or play tourist,” he says.

………

Through a combination of economic prosperity, a lowered crime rate and shrewd marketing, tourism to Amsterdam exploded. Global trends contributed further. Airfare became ever cheaper as the traveling middle classes of Europe and the United States were joined by those in Asia.

From the 21st century on, the balance in the inner city was definitively skewed toward visitors. Hotel rooms multiplied, streets felt permanently overcrowded. The canal cityscape became the domain of tours, ticket offices and souvenir shops. And perhaps the biggest offense to locals? The ever-multiplying sellers of ice cream and waffles sauced with Nutella chocolate, now the dreaded symbol of a monocultural tourism industry.

Last year, 9 million tourists, mostly foreigners, visited Amsterdam, a city of 820,000 people.

………

With tourism down and out, many are hoping things will be different after the current crisis.

“This is such an opportunity to reflect on where we go from here,” says Els Iping, spokeswoman for VVAB, an organization that protects cultural heritage in the inner city and has been a vocal advocate of restoring the balance in favor of residents. “We are proud of our city, and we like to see others enjoy it. But the superficial type of tourism that has people pay pocket change to fly out here has to stop.”

………

“You’ll likely see changes already in the making accelerated by this crisis,” Verlaan says.

To be on the safe side, Iping’s organization is already petitioning the city to stick to its guns. “Some in the tourism industry, of course, will now want to reverse these policies, citing the need for economic recovery,” she says.

“But almost everyone else agrees that Amsterdam should seize this moment to never return to the old situation again.”

I've wonder if the people who live in colonial Williamsburg feel the same way.

If you wonder why people live in tourist traps seem to hate tourists, this is it.

Proof that AirBnB is Destroying Cities

In tourism-heavy cities (I used Nashville, Honolulu, New Orleans, and Savannah) the rental market is exploding, as AirBnB owners are suddenly forced to put their houses on the market.

This surge in supply is going to dramatically cut the rates of monthly rentals. pic.twitter.com/Zyh3AYouyH

— Shane Morris (@IamShaneMorris) March 22, 2020

For years, AirBnB lobbyists and "advocates of the free market" have argued that AirBnB has a negligible impact on the prices of rentals, arguing that they were two totally different commodities.

Now we're seeing they were totally full of shit.

— Shane Morris (@IamShaneMorris) March 22, 2020

"BuT wHeRe WiLl peOplE sTaY wIThoUt aLL tHeSe sHoRT tErm RenTAlS?"

Hotels. That's the answer. People will stay in hotels.

The coronavirus has put on full display, these houses and condos were ALWAYS reducing rental supply, and making housing less affordable.

— Shane Morris (@IamShaneMorris) March 22, 2020

Shane Morris did a drill down on Zillow data for furnished rentals, and found that there has been an explosion of long term rentals now that AirBnB has cratered. (Read the whole Twitter thread)

This is the real world experiment which shows that, notwithstanding the

It turns out that the service does take huge amounts of residential rental properties out of the market by moving them to short term rentals (hotels).

To those who argue that hotels take up space too, it should be noted that for a given area, a hotel will house tens, if not hundreds, of times more guests than an AirBnB listing.

People are buying converting residential rentals to hotels, or in an even more destabilizing development, long term renting properties to secretly sublease as AirBnB's, which means that when there is a downturn, there are suddenly dozens of landlords who are about to discover that their "tenants" are actually speculators who are going to walk away from their leases.  (And I agrew tiht hte poster that, "The sudden collapse of AirBNB has been, legitimately, the funniest f%$#ing thing I’ve watched play out this past month."

This will not end well, but it is the inevitable result of using regulatory arbitrage to facilitate leverage, speculation, and looting.

As I have noted before, the "sharing economy" has turned out to be little more than sucking the marrow out of society.

Authorities need to stop buying into the whole "internet disruption" bullsh%$.

All it does is enrich a few at the expense of the bulk of society.