The Joy of Trump: July 2017

Monday, July 31, 2017

Donald Trump pal Tevfik Arif busted in Turkey for allegedly running hooker ring aboard yacht

Real estate mogul Tevfik Arif, with Ivanka and Donald Trump in 2007, allegedly supplied women like ones pictured below for prostitution encounters aboard $60M yacht Savarona (bottom).
(Von Holden/WireImage)

Ed. Note: In April 2012, Tevfik Arif was acquitted by a Turkish court of all charges in connection with the incident reported here. The court also found that none of the women on the yacht was under the age of 18. –Updated October 19, 2012.
A New York real estate mogul with ties to Donald Trump is at the center of an international sex scandal - suspected of running a high-priced prostitution ring.
Tevfik Arif, 57, has been detained in Turkey on suspicion of setting up trysts between wealthy businessmen and Eastern European models - some underage - aboard a $60 million yacht once used by the nation's founder, Mustafa Ataturk.
Arif, whose Bayrock Group co-developed the Trump SoHo and the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Fort Lauderdale, was among 10 people rounded up in Tuesday's raid on suspicion of running a prostitution ring.
Prosecutor Yusuf Hakki Dogan said the Savarona yacht was used twice for sexcapades, the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported.
"This is the man who defiled the Savarona," read the headline on the cover of the Turkish paper Milliyet, beside a photo of Arif.
Ten models from Russia and Ukraine were detained, but one was released, Bloomberg News reported. Two of the women were underage.
The businessmen reportedly paid $3,000 to $10,000 per night to bed the women aboard the 450-foot yacht.
The luxury vessel, which boasts 16 suites, a 282-foot gold-trimmed grand staircase, a movie theater, Turkish bath and helicopter pad, was used by Ataturk before he died in 1938.
In 1989, Turkish businessman Kahraman Sadikoglu paid the government for the right to operate the yacht, which he reportedly rents out for $30,000 to $40,000 a day.

Russian, Kyrgyz and Kazakh businessmen and top government officials were also among those detained, Bloomberg News reported.
Last night, Arif was being questioned at a police station near the Mediterranean resort town of Antalya.
Antalya provincial spokesman Mahmut Deniz said there's been no decision on whether to press charges.
Arif is the victim of a "smear campaign" and will "vigorously defend himself in any court of law," his lawyer, Engin Agyuzlu, said in an email to Bloomberg News.
In addition to the Trump properties in New York and Florida, Arif's firm developed the Trump International Hotel and Tower Phoenix, the Waterpointe, a residential development in Whitestone, Queens, and the Riverhead Resorts in Suffolk County, L.I.
In an interview in 2007, Arif extolled the benefits of his relationship with The Donald.
"He's been very helpful to us from the beginning and he's been very helpful in opening some doors," Arif told Real Estate Weekly.
Photos from the 2007 launch party for the Trump SoHo Hotel show Trump and Arif palling around together. Arif was also photographed beside Trump and his three kids: Eric, Donald Jr., and Ivanka.
A spokeswoman for Trump declined to comment on his relationship with Arif.

A source said Trump hasn't spoken to Arif "in years."
The Kazakh-born Arif worked for the Ministry of Commerce and Trade in the former Soviet Union for 17 years, serving as the deputy director of its Department of Hotel Management, according to Real Estate Weekly.
After moving to the U.S., Arif's first project was the redevelopment of a 280,000 square-foot waterfront shopping center in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. Loehmann's Seaport Plaza was sold in 2008 for a reported $24 million.
Arif founded Bayrock in 2001, which he operates out of an office on Fifth Ave.
"Bayrock knows nothing about the matter," said a spokeswoman for the firm.
Arif owns a three-story mansion in Port Washington, L.I., worth more than $6 million, records show.
In recent years, Bayrock has been the target of multiple lawsuits.
In suits filed in New York and Delaware, former Bayrock finance director Jody Kriss claims that the firm defrauded the IRS and embezzled millions from its subsidiaries.
In a separate lawsuit filed in August in Manhattan Federal Court, 15 buyers of the Trump SoHo Hotel sued Arif, Trump, his children, and Arif's partner, Alex Sapir, charging they had inflated sales in their marketing pitches to encourage them to buy into the condo.
rschapiro@nydailynews.com

SOURCE: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/trump-pal-busted-allegedly-running-hooker-ring-yacht-article-1.191136

Sunday, July 30, 2017

Stupidity and evil in the times of Trump

Stupidity and evil in the times of Trump

Bonhoeffer on stupidity (entire quote)

May 11, 2016 at 10:23 am

Taken from a circular letter, addressing many topics, written to three friends and co-workers in the conspiracy against Hitler, on the tenth anniversary of Hitler’s accession to the chancellorship of Germany.

‘Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force.

Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease.

Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed- in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental.

In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.

For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.

‘If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature.

This much is certain, that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one.

There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid. We discover this to our surprise in particular situations.

The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect, but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them.

We note further that people who have isolated themselves from others or who lives in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or condemned to sociability.

And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem. It is a particular form of the impact of historical circumstances on human beings, a psychological concomitant of certain external conditions.

Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or of a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity.

It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other.

The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail.

Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence, and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances.

The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being.

Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.

‘Yet at this very point it becomes quite clear that only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity. Here we must come to terms with the fact that in most cases a genuine internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it. Until then we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person.

This state of affairs explains why in such circumstances our attempts to know what ‘the people’ really think are in vain and why, under these circumstances, this question is so irrelevant for the person who is thinking and acting responsibly.

The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity.

‘But these thoughts about stupidity also offer consolation in that they utterly forbid us to consider the majority of people to be stupid in every circumstance. It really will depend on whether those in power expect more from peoples’ stupidity. than from their inner independence and wisdom.’

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from ‘After Ten Years’ in Letters and Papers from Prison (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works/English, vol. 8) Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010.

Important: if you're into Political Twitter, by now you've probably seen this re TrumpCare. It's not true. 1/

Source:

Chad Bolt‏ @chadderr

Thursday, July 27, 2017

An albino hummingbird.

An albino hummingbird.

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Trump the Reader?

The completely insane last 24 hours in Trump's America.

Photo published for Trump slams AG Sessions' 'weak' position on Clinton emails

The completely insane last 24 hours in Trump's America.

A scout is trustworthy, helpful, courteous, reverent...well, that disqualifies Trump #morintoon #BoyScoutSpeech #GOP #TrumpScoutBadges

Monday, July 24, 2017

Let’s hope Robert Mueller investigates Trump’s long-life of crime...

Spam 4 Trump‏ @Spam4Trump

Let’s hope Robert Mueller investigates Trump’s long-life of crime, corruption + treason #SundayMorning The Mooch and the Mogul #Sunday