Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: July 24, 2021 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because, morning reads | Tags: anti-maskers, Donald Trump, Olympics, Paul Manafort, Tom Barrack, United Arab Emirates, vaccine holdouts |
Arsen Kurbanov, Russian artist
Good Morning!!
It’s going to be interesting to see what happens with the case against Trump ally Tom Barrack, who was arrested on Tuesday and charged with acting as an agent of a foreign power. Politico:
Tom Barrack, a longtime supporter of and adviser to former President Donald Trump, was arrested Tuesday on charges he secretly acted in the U.S. as an agent for the United Arab Emirates.
Barrack, 74, is accused of failing to register as a foreign agent, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and four counts of making false statements to the FBI.
A federal indictment issued by a grand jury in Brooklyn, N.Y., charged that Barrack put pro-UAE language into a Trump campaign speech in May 2016, took direction from UAE officials about what to say in media appearances and an op-ed piece he published just before the 2016 election, and agreed to promote a candidate for ambassador to UAE backed by UAE officials.
Prosecutors say Barrack used his insider access to White House officials that he gained through roles like his position as chair of Trump’s inaugural committee to give the UAE “non-public information about the views and reactions of senior U.S. government officials following a White House meeting between senior U.S. officials and senior UAE officials.”
Also charged in the case were an aide to Barrack at his investment firm Colony Capital, Matthew Grimes, and a businessman from UAE, Rashid Al-Malik.
Prosecutors allege that early in the Trump administration, Barrack sought to be appointed to a high-profile role in Middle East policy, while telling his allies in UAE that such an appointment would be good for them.
“In his communications with Al Malik, the defendant framed his efforts to obtain an official position within the Administration as one that would enable him to further advance the interests of the UAE, rather than the interests of the United States,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.
Carel Willink, Wilma with a cat, 1940
Barrack has now been released on a massive bail and will have to wear a gps monitoring bracelet. CNN: Trump ally Tom Barrack strikes a $250 million bail deal to get out of jail.
Also see these Emptywheel pieces: Paul Manafort Shared Trump Energy Speech with Tom Barrack and Paul Manafort Knew Tom Barrack Was Working with “Our Friends”
Columnist Michelle Goldberg at The New York Times: A Foreign Agent in Trump’s Inner Circle?
…[W]hen the billionaire real estate investor Tom Barrack, one of Trump’s biggest fund-raisers, was arrested on Tuesday and charged with acting as an unregistered agent of the United Arab Emirates along with other felonies, it might have seemed like a dog-bites-man story. Barrack was once described by longtime Trump strategist Roger Stone — a felon, naturally — as the ex-president’s best friend. If you knew nothing else about Barrack but that, you might have guessed he’d end up in handcuffs.
Nevertheless, Barrack’s arrest is important. Trump’s dealings with the Emirates and Saudi Arabia deserve to be investigated as thoroughly as his administration’s relationship with Russia. So far, that hasn’t happened. When Robert Mueller, the former special counsel, testified before Congress, Adam Schiff, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said to him, “We did not bother to ask whether financial inducements from any Gulf nations were influencing U.S. policy, since it is outside the four corners of your report, and so we must find out.” But we have not found out.
A Barrack trial, if the case goes that far, is unlikely to answer all the outstanding questions about how Gulf money shaped Trump policy. But it could answer some.
Portrait of Edward Gorey by Sam Kalda
Let’s recall that Russia was not the only nation to send emissaries to Trump Tower during the presidential campaign offering election help. The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Russian election interference discusses an August 2016 Trump Tower meeting whose attendees included Donald Trump Jr., George Nader, then an adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, the Emirates’ de facto ruler, and Joel Zamel, owner of an Israeli private intelligence company, Psy-Group. (Nader is currently in prison for child sex trafficking and possession of child pornography.)
“Zamel asked Trump Jr. whether Psy-Group’s conducting a social media campaign paid for by Nader would present a conflict for the Trump campaign,” said the Senate report. “According to Zamel, Trump Jr. indicated that this would not present a conflict.”
Zamel told the committee that his company never actually performed such work. “Nonetheless, as described below, Zamel engaged in work on behalf of Nader, for which he was paid in excess of $1 million,” said the report. Zamel claimed the payment was for a postelection social media analysis, all copies of which were ostensibly deleted.
If the allegations in the Barrack indictment are true, it means that while an adviser to the Emirates was offering the Trump campaign election help, an Emirati agent was also shaping Trump’s foreign policy, even inserting the country’s preferred language into one of the candidate’s speeches. Prosecutors say that Barrack told a high-level figure they call “Emirati Official 2” that he had staffed the Trump campaign. (It was Barrack who recommended Paul Manafort, later to be convicted of multiple felonies, to Trump.) When an Emirati official asked Barrack if he had information about senior Trump appointees, Barrack allegedly replied, “I do” and said they should talk by phone. He is said to have traveled to the Emirates to strategize with its leadership about what they wanted from the administration during its first 100 days, first six months, first year and first term.
Read more at the NYT.
Yesterday Dakinikat focused on the latest pandemic news as well as the growing anger against the idiots who are refusing to be vaccinated. I want to follow up on a some of the stories she posted. First, in the comment thread, she posted a horrifying story about an anti-mask demonstration at a cancer clinic.
Here’s more on that from Vice News: Breast Cancer Patient Attacked by Violent Anti-Mask Protest Outside Clinic.
A breast cancer patient says she was sprayed with bear mace, physically assaulted, and verbally abused outside a cancer treatment center in West Hollywood, Los Angeles by far-right activists who were angry over the clinic’s mandatory mask policy.
Andrea Kowch, Queen’s Court, 2019
Dozens of anti-maskers holding signs with anti-vaxx and QAnon-adjacent conspiracy theories amassed on the sidewalk by the Cedars-Sinai Breast Health Services building on Thursday afternoon, and harassed patients and doctors.
In one exchange captured by local videographer Vishal Singh, a woman who has since publicly identified herself as Kate Burns, a cancer patient, approached the protesters and told them to leave.
“I get treated here, get the fuck away,” Burns said.
One protester, who was filming the scene on his phone, asked her why she was so angry, as a man holding a cardboard sign saying “End the Censorship of Vaccine Risks” smirked.
“Because I’ve just gone through fucking breast cancer,” Burns said. “And you motherfuckers are here.”
After a few more exchanges, the a “protester” actually punched Burns in the chest.
Tensions continued to rise as more far-right, anti-maskers arrived on the scene. A small group of anti-fascists also arrived, and got into altercations with the far-right. A woman holding a megaphone shoved Burns, and then punched her several times. Burns said, on social media, that the woman hit her in the chest and struck her scars….
Thursday was the second time that anti-maskers had targeted that particular breast cancer clinic over its mask policy. The ugly scenes and casual political violence that unfolded there on both occasions have become troublingly common across the U.S.
Can someone explain to me why unvaccinated athletes are being permitted to compete in the Olympic games? NBC News: About 100 U.S. athletes in Tokyo unvaccinated as Covid-hit Olympics begin.
Five out of 6 U.S. athletes competing in the Tokyo Olympics have been vaccinated against Covid-19, the team’s top doctor revealed Friday just before the Games officially begin.
That information was culled from the health histories that 567 of the athletes filled out before they departed for Japan, said Dr. Jonathan Finnoff, who estimated that 83 percent of those competitors were fully vaccinated.
“Eighty-three percent is actually a substantial number, and we’re quite happy with it,” Finnoff, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s medical chief, said.
That’s higher than the national rate, with about 56 percent of Americans having received at least one dose of a vaccine. But it still means that about 100 of the total contingent of 613 U.S. athletes have not yet been vaccinated.
The news came as the opening ceremony of the pandemic-hit Games got underway in Tokyo’s Olympic Stadium, marking the official launch of the global sporting event.
But why aren’t they all vaccinated? This makes no sense to me. We really need to stop coddling these holdouts. They are putting themselves and everyone else in danger.
Chelin Sanjuan Piquero, Spanish artist
Dan Diamond and Tyler Pager at The Washington Post: ‘Patience has worn thin’: Frustration mounts over vaccine holdouts.
Seven months after the first coronavirus shots were rolled out, vaccinated Americans — including government, business and health leaders — are growing frustrated that tens of millions of people are still refusing to get them, endangering themselves and their communities and fueling the virus’s spread.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) on Thursday lashed out amid a surge of cases in her state, telling a reporter it’s “time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks.” The National Football League this week imposed new rules that put pressure on unvaccinated players, warning their teams could face fines or be forced to forfeit games if those players were linked to outbreaks.
“I think for a lot of leaders, both in government and in business, patience has worn thin,” said Matt Gorman, a Republican strategist. “There is an urgency that might not have been there a month ago.”
Meanwhile, exhausted health providers say they are bracing for casespikes that are largely preventable, driven by the hyper-transmissible delta variant. “We are frustrated, tired and worried for this next surge — and saddened by the state we find ourselves in,” said Jason Yaun, a Memphis-based pediatrician, who said his colleagues are grappling with an “accumulation of fatigue” since the outbreak exploded in March 2020.
Biden administration officials increasingly frame the current outbreak as a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” seeking to persuade and perhaps even frighten some holdouts to get the shots.
But after months of careful cajoling, a growing number of Democrats and Republicans are venting about the sheer number of Americans who remain unvaccinated, particularly as hospitals are becoming overwhelmed in states with low vaccination rates.
Read the rest at the WaPo. These people need to grow up!
That’s all I have for you today. What’s on your mind?
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Have a nice weekend everyone!!
You too!! It’s warmed up here significantly so I’m just staying in with the fans blazing the window shades down!
Here’s more depressing news:
Like everybody else, I’m puzzled why all the Repubs turned on a dime about vaccination, all within the time of what feels like about 24 hours.
It implies they’re all mainlining the same orders from up top.
I wonder if what got to the hive brain was polling showing the Repubs were going to be blamed for this viral surge? So they quick got on the other side of the vax issue so people would go back to blaming the virus?
Maybe it finally dawned on them that killing their own voters wasn’t such a great idea.
That’s what I thought at first too. But they’ve contemplated the deaths of their voters calmly for months, so that could hardly be it. Plus, different Repubs would have had their aha! moments at somewhat different times, say a month apart. Not all within a day of each other. This just smells of central messaging coordination, and I want to know from whom? From where? !!
The subhumans heckling cancer patients need to be in jail! That’s a crime, even if it’s not on the books yet.
That bully punching the woman needs to be charged with assault.
There should be a way to kick him out for conduct unbecoming.
Especially since the flamboyant black woman (forget her name) got turfed out for nothing but smoking weed!
I’m glad to see a Rethug governor said blame the unvaccinated because that will prod some to take the vaccine. Our side is always reluctant to “blame “ anyone and the refuseniks are often Rethugs. So good for Ivey to address them. Surely they don’t want all their supporters to die?
I think the Republican are mostly beyond rational thought.
I think it’s the Hindus who say death is a great teacher.
Sad that it has to come to that.
I’ve seen more articles on this phenomena, and can’t understand it. If anything, people should be more appreciate of services.
Awwwww. Cats make the best nap partners.
BB, I especially like the calico cat’s face markings in the 2nd painting.
It is unusual.
That is a great column.