Albanians Reject Trump Mafia Land Grab – The Monday AM Quickie 6/8/26
I’ve been listening to Pulitzer-winning composer and drummer Tyshawn Sorey nonstop after hearing him live the other day. Join me! Here’s a set he played last year with one of my favorite living musicians, bassist Linda May Han Oh. -Whitney
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THE BIG NEWS
Trump Crime Family Land Grab Threatens Albania’s Protected Wildlife, Bid to Join EU
Yesterday marked the seventh day of mass collective action in Albania, where thousands of people are taking to the streets to protest slumlord Jared Kushner and former pretend first lady Ivanka Trump, who are destroying an ecologically sensitive Mediterranean site for a multi-billion luxury tourist resort, NBC News and Politico reported. Their development would raze a breeding ground for flamingos, prompting protesters to refer to the movement as the “Flamingo Revolution.” It also threatens the nation’s bid to join the European Union, the bloc warned, because the development may violate EU environmental rules. Albania has one of the lowest GDP rates per capita in Europe and Albanians strongly support joining the EU to increase their economic stability, among other things.
Protesters throughout the weekend chanted “Albania is not for sale” and “revolution” as they rallied outside Prime Minister Edi Rama’s house and demanded his resignation. Cops behaved like they do everywhere in the world and responded with violence, including shooting them with water cannons; protesters also went to the construction site, where a private security guard punched and dragged a protester and inflamed public outrage even further, according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, which put the development project’s cost at $4 billion. NBC put it at $1.6 billion.
Whatever the actual price tag, Kushner’s investment firm, Affinity Partners, is leading the project, which Ivanka said is an “unbelievable, beautiful 1,400-hectare private island in the middle of the Mediterranean” that will include a beachfront resort and hotel. The entire island she wants to destroy is 2.2 square miles, about twice the size of Central Park in Manhattan. A spokesperson for Albania’s environment minister told Politico that construction had not yet started because officials have not yet approved a construction permit. But CNN reported that conservationists spotted bulldozers already at work in May. “There was no sign whatsoever, neither by the lagoon where they were cutting the road, nor on the beach where the machinery was working… there were no signs of any kind of license or permits or even just declaration of who they were,” said Ariel Brunner, Europe director for the environmental charity BirdLife.
Lacking a license or permit is par for a Kushner/Trump venture; in 2018, for example, Kushner Cos. caught $210,000 in fines from NYC for regularly falsifying construction applications at 17 work sites. But that’s small change for a guy with billions to burn. Affinity has more than $6 billion in its coffers, which Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) pointed out comes almost entirely from investments by foreign nationals, including the governments of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. As it happens, there’s a Qatari connection with the project in Albania. According to the OCCRP, Albania’s anti-corruption prosecutors froze the bank account of the landholding company Albania Land Development. That outfit is owned by major Qatari entrepreneurs Moutaz and Ramez Al-Khayyat, who bought beachfront plots in the area Kushner and Trump want to wreck. Is it the another case of the billionaire class colluding to plunder the world for profit? Who can say. What I can say is this: the Trump crime family is an international scourge.
MORE STORIES TO WATCH
Israeli Military Shoots, Kills Palestinian Baby in West Bank
Seven-month-old Sam Fahd Abu Haikal was in his mother’s arms when soldiers shot into the family’s car at close range on Friday, even though the family had complied with an order to stop, the Associated Press and the Guardian reported. The family had been driving in Hebron when the soldiers opened fire, shot the infant in the face and injured both parents. It was daylight and the windows were not tinted, said the father, university lecturer Fahd Abu Haikal, so the soldiers could clearly see that he had his hands up. The Israeli military, known for repeatedly lying, said they were scared because they thought the car was going to run them over. The Israeli military has killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since they began their genocide in Gaza. At least 240 were children. Nine countries will announce a package of sanctions against Israel this week meant to halt some of the violence in the West Bank, where settlers are joining soldiers to murder Palestinians with impunity. Australia, France, the UK and others say the sanctions are aimed at stopping companies from participating in building the E1 settlement, which “would split the territory in two and render the concept of a two-state solution near impossible,” the Guardian reported yesterday.
Pestilential Health Secretary Has ‘Little Interest’ in Health
RFK Jr. is spending his time “hunting for evidence to support his long-held beliefs that vaccines are harmful” and not much else, the NYT reported yesterday. In interviews with multiple colleagues, the Times showed that the anti-vaccine crusader has zero interest in the purpose of the Department of Health and Human Services, namely, protecting the health of 340 million Americans and running Medicare and Medicaid, which provide healthcare to 40 percent of the population. Per the Times: “He rarely engages with members of Congress, colleagues said, unless he is asked to testify. He has made just one known visit to the C.D.C., after a gunman opened fire on its headquarters and killed a police officer last August.” As a result of his nonexistent leadership, HHS is in a major crisis. There is no surgeon general and only acting directors to run about half of the 27 institutes and centers at the National Institute of Health. Meanwhile, cases of measles hit 2,030 on Friday and almost 60 people got sick in Idaho from drinking raw milk.
QUICKEST QUICKIES
- Trump Has Temper Tantrum on Meet the Press In an interview aired yesterday and staged among farm equipment and bales of hay, ol’ boy grew increasingly louder and redder when host Kristen Welker asked him for proof that the 2020 presidential election or last week’s California primary were rigged; they argued for a bit until he called her “crooked” and “darling” and walked out. Very STABLE genius. Get it? Because of the hay. via NBC on YouTube and the Washington Post.
- American Diabetics Association Sicced Cops on Researchers Who Criticized Regime Funding Cuts Steven Kahn, director of the University of Washington Diabetes Research Center, was at the association’s national conference in New Orleans when he tried to pass out copies of an editorial on Trump’s cuts to biomedical research. The association had local cops force him and other experts to leave, saying that his behavior violated the code of conduct and that they had “no choice” but to censor him. via The Seattle Times.
- Peter Brian Hegseth Tricks Family of Dead Soldier Into Thinking He Cares About Them Hegseth texted with the grieving family of 42-year-old Cmdr. Job Price, whom the military concluded died by suicide in 2012, said he shared their suspicion that something was off and suggested he would investigate or at least get it some air time. But then he ghosted them because he had nothing to gain. via the Washington Post.
- 12 Shot, Injured at Ohio Street Festival Sunday, No Suspect In Custody “As far as violence, this is over the top, right?” said Lt. Dan Gerken of the Toledo Police Department, which is searching for at least two suspects after the shooting on Sunday. via the AP, the Columbus Dispatch and the Toledo Blade.
SOME NUMBER
2.7 million
That’s how many living people, “including some US citizens and lawful permanent residents,” the Trump regime wanted to classify as dead to make life so hard that they would leave the country, according to the Washington Post. The plan, which did not ultimately succeed, was to move the people to the Death Master File, a database that banks, employers and governmental agencies use. If you’re alive and you’re on that list, “...you can’t have a bank account, you can’t get credit, so no apartment, no way to save money, no way to get paid, no way to get on insurance or carry health insurance,” one person told the Post. “It has a ton of devastating effects.”
ON THE SHOW TODAY
6/8: Sam and Emma are in the studio today and their guests are Whitney Wimbish (it me), on to discuss her (my) piece in The American Prospect about NYC immigration courts speeding up deportations and the striking detainees at Delaney Hall Detention Facility in Newark; and Jonathan Cohn, author and writer of The Breakdown, a Bulwark newsletter, discusses his piece on the cancer research machine being gutted by the Trump administration despite delivering a major breakthrough on one of the deadliest cancers.
DON'T MISS MR CLIPS
Platner Smear Flops | Jeet Heer | TMR
I can’t wait for this race to be over.
Shut Up, Mark Cuban!
Stop asking the $6 billion net worth Shark Tank frat boy his opinion on politics. Who cares what he thinks?
PARTING WORDS
“And about four hours after our deadline, Bari Weiss sends an email to my boss, Tanya Simon. Two of the things in the email include: Can we make the protesters look more violent? Now, I’m paraphrasing. I don’t have the quote, but that’s what was communicated to me. And the other thing, Renee Good’s car – you need to describe her as driving toward the officer.”
-- Scott Pelley, a 37-year veteran at CBS, where he was a “CBS Evening News” anchor and a “60 Minutes” correspondent before editor-in-chief/minister of propaganda Bari Weiss fired him last week, describing just one of the ways Weiss used her position to manipulate the news in favor of MAGA lies.
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