Ivanka Trump’s Private Island Dream Faces Massive Blowback

Source: The New Republic · Bias: Left

Summary

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner want to plop down a luxury resort off the coast of Albania, and the locals aren’t too happy about it.Trump’s daughter said she and her sleazy husband fell in love with an uninhabited island called Sazan while on a sailing trip.“We were on a friend’s boat, and we stopped for a swim—effectively, that’s how we found it,” Ivanka gushed on David Senra’s podcast. “We swam to the island. We went on a hike, barefoot all the way up to the top, and we were just captivated.”And what do you do when awestruck by the beauty of untouched nature? Bulldoze it for a luxury resort, of course!To be fair, the island isn’t totally empty of infrastructure; it’s actually a designated military exclusion zone, with a few bases and bunkers still lying around. A grand total of two soldiers were apparently deployed there as of 2017—one wonders what they think of all this.Sazan contains lots of plant and animal life, as does a part of Albania’s southern coast where the Kushners want to literally cut through a wildlife reserve to build hotels, apartments, and a marina.“Since late May, excavators and other heavy machinery have entered the area,” reports the Associated Press, “opening access routes, digging into the sand, clearing land among pine trees and installing fencing.”While Albania has an extensive and largely underutilized coastline, a MAGA luxury resort doesn’t seem like the best solution, especially in one of the country’s most important ecological areas.Pink flamingos and other migratory birds could be threatened by the projects, which have inspired groups of demonstrators to hold up cardboard flamingos at rallies in Albania’s capital, Tirana. One local environmental group told the AP that the coastal habitats are being “irreversibly destroyed.”For now, Kushner’s investment firm has been given the go-ahead by national authorities, including Prime Minister Edi Rama, who has been in office for over 12 years and expressed public support for the project. But the development may still face roadblocks; the country’s anti-corruption agency launched an investigation into it on Monday.

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Ivanka Trump’s Private Island Dream Faces Massive Blowback
The New Republic

Ivanka Trump’s Private Island Dream Faces Massive Blowback

Left

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner want to plop down a luxury resort off the coast of Albania, and the locals aren’t too happy about it.Trump’s daughter said she and her sleazy husband fell in love with an uninhabited island called Sazan while on a sailing trip.“We were on a friend’s boat, and we stopped for a swim—effectively, that’s how we found it,” Ivanka gushed on David Senra’s podcast. “We swam to the island. We went on a hike, barefoot all the way up to the top, and we were just captivated.”And what do you do when awestruck by the beauty of untouched nature? Bulldoze it for a luxury resort, of course!To be fair, the island isn’t totally empty of infrastructure; it’s actually a designated military exclusion zone, with a few bases and bunkers still lying around. A grand total of two soldiers were apparently deployed there as of 2017—one wonders what they think of all this.Sazan contains lots of plant and animal life, as does a part of Albania’s southern coast where the Kushners want to literally cut through a wildlife reserve to build hotels, apartments, and a marina.“Since late May, excavators and other heavy machinery have entered the area,” reports the Associated Press, “opening access routes, digging into the sand, clearing land among pine trees and installing fencing.”While Albania has an extensive and largely underutilized coastline, a MAGA luxury resort doesn’t seem like the best solution, especially in one of the country’s most important ecological areas.Pink flamingos and other migratory birds could be threatened by the projects, which have inspired groups of demonstrators to hold up cardboard flamingos at rallies in Albania’s capital, Tirana. One local environmental group told the AP that the coastal habitats are being “irreversibly destroyed.”For now, Kushner’s investment firm has been given the go-ahead by national authorities, including Prime Minister Edi Rama, who has been in office for over 12 years and expressed public support for the project. But the development may still face roadblocks; the country’s anti-corruption agency launched an investigation into it on Monday.

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