Albania has greenlit a Trump-connected resort that could endanger bird and turtle species

Albania has greenlit a Trump-connected resort that could endanger bird and turtle species

“You see those white pinkish dots in front of us?” asked Xhemal Xherri, peering across a lagoon along the southern coast of Albania, across the Adriatic Sea from Italy.

“Dalmatian pelicans,” said Xherri. “Around 20 of them.”

The area is a vital breeding and feeding ground for southeastern Europe’s distinctive waterbirds — like the Dalmatian pelican, pink flamingos, ospreys and spoonbills — and a crucial stop on the Adriatic migration route for birds heading to North Africa.

Xherri comes to the area regularly to study and collect data on some 220 different bird species — some, like the pelicans, endangered — as project manager with the Protected and Preservation of Natural Environment in Albania (PPNEA). The NGO is part of a coalition of environmentalists, lawyers and opposition politicians trying to protect the last untouched Mediterranean wetland from destruction.

They’re doing so through protests, campaigns, lawsuits — and most essentially, Xherri says, by monitoring the 220 bird species in the Vjosa Narta Protected Landscape. It’s a hidden haven of beaches and cliffs; the sparkling Adriatic Sea on one side, the tranquil lagoon on the other.

“Through the monitoring, we have seen the intensity of the wildlife here and how important it is for bird migration,” said Xherri.

The area is now under threat by two luxury real estate projects — worth an estimated $1.5 billion Cdn — proposed by Ivanka Trump, daughter of U.S. president-elect Donald Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner.

“We have this 1,400-acre island in the Mediterranean,” Ivanka Trump told podcaster Lex Fridman this summer. “We’re going to have the best architects, the best brands … it’s going to be exceptional.”

WATCH | Ivanka Trump talks about the Albania resort on Lex Fridman’s podcast: 

Trump was referring to Sazan, a former military base off the coast of Albanian wetland, which along with the Narta lagoon in the delta of the Vjosa River would be transformed into an opulent resort of curved stone and glass villas overlooking a bay that will float with luxury yachts.

Environmentalists say the plans would destroy everything from the bird sanctuary to sand dunes where loggerhead sea turtles breed and nest.

‘Just the tip of the iceberg’

Xherri and other environmentalists have sued to halt the construction of Vlore International Airport. The airport is not only under construction within the protected area, but it is adjacent to another fragile ecosystem, the Vjosa Wild River National Park. Environmentalists say these plans would block birds from flying from one protected area to the other.

Construction began in 2021 without a permit, which has since been obtained, and a court decision to suspend it is still pending.

“Our fear is that it’s not going to be just the resort or the airport, but that there’ll be the whole infrastructure, too — the roads, the water supply,” said Xherri. “This is just the tip of the iceberg.”

But many in this struggling Balkan country see the development plans as essential in helping pull Albania out of poverty. In 2023, Albania’s GDP was $19 billion US, while that of its Italian neighbour across the Adriatic stood at $2.25 trillion US.

Until the early 1990s, after the Iron Curtain fell, Albania was one of the most cut-off nations in the world, ruled by paranoid communist dictator Enver Hoxha, who had 750,000 bunkers built, at massive cost, along the coast to protect it from an imaginary imminent invasion.

Now, the country is eager to develop its hundreds of kilometres of breathtaking coastline.

“I want Vlora to become a top tourist destination,” Mayor Ermal Dredha of Vlore, the town where the airport is being constructed, has told Reuters. “The quality starts with building something, not destroying, but building something in a sustainable way.”

PM sought Donald Trump’s business in the past

The government passed a new law in February that permits luxury hotels on land once set aside to protect sensitive wildlife and environmental zones. Critics say it was specially designed for the Kushner-Trump development, after Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama met with them to discuss the possibility.

Agron Shehaj, leader of the opposition party Hope, says the deal is more evidence that Albania has become what he calls “a typical illiberal democracy.” That is, a country that on paper at least has democratic rights and a free press, but is in fact ruled by an autocrat, he says, referring to Rama, who has been in power for the past 12 years.

“It is a private deal of Rama using an important asset of Albania, [the] property of everybody, for himself, just to obtain political support from the United States,” Shehaj said in an interview with CBC.

Both Rama, who sought to work with Donald Trump during his first term as U.S. president, and Kushner have denied special treatment because of their connection to Trump.

Alongside suspicions of privileged access, the prospective development is also raising land ownership issues in Zvernec, an adjacent village where inhabitants fear traditional lands will be taken away by people outside the village.

“My forebears have lived here as far back as the Ottoman Empire, more than a century ago,” said an 80-year-old retired workman, who didn’t want to give his name for fear of reprisal.

“Outsiders are trying to steal it out from under us with false documents,” he said, referring to a real estate developer with a deed to the grazing and seaside land surrounding the village, which an Albanian court found fraudulent.

Locals worry about ‘wonderful birds’

The case is still under appeal, but many villagers, most of whom don’t have deeds, have little trust in their government.

On a new street of freshly built homes on the outskirts of town, Vera Biba, 62, and her husband, Vasil, 67, stood chatting in front of the house they’ve built and now retired to after 35 years of working in Greece.

“We want our village developed, we want more electricity, potable water and roads, not to have land taken away,” said Vera.

“When the airport is finished, all these wonderful birds will be gone,” said Vasil, pointing in the distance. “A group of environmentalists came and recommended the airport not be built, and they built it anyway.”

A two-hour drive up the coast, in the Albanian capital of Tirana, Vathi Besnik oversees a bustling travel agency near the sprawling Skanderbeg Square, which was built in communist times.

Besnik’s tourism career began in the early 1980s, under Hoxha’s isolated regime, when only small, strictly monitored groups of foreigners from select countries were allowed to visit, and men were required to cut their hair and shave to align with national dictates.

Besnik is also opposed to the luxury development in the Vjosa delta, but for different reasons.

While Western Europe grapples with over-tourism, Besnik says Albania can only dream of having to cope with such challenges. He said if Prime Minister Rama truly cared about Albania’s future, he’d push for deals that bring towering hotels to the wetlands — not exclusive resorts for the affluent few.

“It’s a political decision,” said Besnik. “To develop tourism, you need to have hotels to bring in revenues. There is only one reason to destroy nature: to live better, with more money. Sacrificing nature to have a better life.”

Xhemal Xherri knows that many Albanians, eager to see their country catch up to Italy and other EU nations across the sea, share his view. That’s why, he says, it’s up to the government to protect what much of Europe has already lost.

“There is huge pressure to build all over, but still, there is a way,” he said. “There are alternatives for sustainable development as well, but the government doesn’t aspire to that.”

Published at Sat, 09 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

U.S. law enforcement investigating racist mass texts targeting Black people after election

Several federal and state agencies in the United States are investigating how racist mass texts were sent to Black people across the country in the wake of the presidential election this week.

The text messages invoking slavery were sent to Black men, women and children, prompting inquiries by the FBI and other law enforcement departments.

The anonymously sent messages were reported in several states, including New York, Alabama, California, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Tennessee. The FBI said it has communicated with the Justice Department about the messages, and the Federal Communications Commission said it is investigating alongside federal and state law enforcement.

“These messages are unacceptable,” said a statement from FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel. She said the agency takes “this type of targeting very seriously.”

While the texts varied somewhat, they all instructed recipients to “board a bus” that would transport them to a “plantation” to work as slaves, officials said. They said the messages were sent to school-aged children and college students, causing significant distress.

Whoever sent the messages used a VPN to obscure their origin, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said Thursday morning. Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown said his office is fielding multiple reports of racist text messages being sent to Black residents, including children.

Officials said the messages appear to be part of a nationwide campaign targeting Black people in the wake of the election.

Brown said in an interview that it’s disturbing that children were targeted, sometimes by name, in mass texts that typically rely on datasets collected on adults, such as campaign donors or magazine subscribers.

“This is an intimidating, threatening use of technology” that likely violated multiple laws, Brown said.

He said investigators will use “all the tools and resources available to us to hold accountable whoever is behind these text messages.”

Accounts disabled 

Phone service provider TextNow said that “one or more of our accounts” were used to send the racist text messages and that it quickly disabled those accounts for violating its terms of service.

“As part of our investigation into these messages, we learned they have been sent through multiple carriers across the U.S. and we are working with partners and law enforcement co-operatively to investigate this attack,” the Canada-based company said in a statement Friday.

Major providers AT&T and Verizon both said it was an industry-wide problem and referred comment Friday to the CTIA, a wireless communications trade group.

The U.S. wireless industry has been working in recent days to block thousands of the texts and the numbers sending them, said CTIA spokesperson Nick Ludlum. An industry group initiative is working with law enforcement and has “identified platforms bad actors used to send these messages,” he said.

‘Slap in the face’

Nicole, a mother in North Carolina who asked not to use her last name because of her profession, said she was disturbed and concerned by the messages her high school daughter showed her Thursday night. The texts instructed her to get ready to go back to the plantation.

“It’s like a slap in the face and it shows me that it is still an issue that has not changed at all,” she said.

Nicole said her daughter didn’t really say much after the text, deleted the message, and went to bed. As for Nicole, she said she had to sit and process her feelings. She said the situation was so shocking that it didn’t feel real, and she felt sad for her daughter.

“She has a lot of friends of different races. She’s the one that doesn’t see colour and she doesn’t see a difference. So, I feel like for her, it really showed her that everyone isn’t like her,” Nicole said. “Racism is still a very prominent thing in our country right now.”

Several students at historically Black colleges received a message with a similar tone but varied wording. Robert Greene II, an assistant professor of history at Claflin University in South Carolina, said he thinks it’s not just the timing of this mass messaging that is intentional, but also its focus on young Black students.

“It’s a way to say to, especially Black college students, that this is the world they are now living in, that this kind of outright racist intimidation is coming back to the norm in American society and American politics,” Greene said.

How did they do it?

Those responsible for sending the messages took advantage of a bulk-messaging industry designed to help legitimate marketers reach people on their phones.

“This is the primary way now that most Americans will communicate,” said Cori Faklaris, an assistant professor of software and information services at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. “So people who need to advertise or market services, they go where the people are.

“Unfortunately, the scammers and the haters also follow suit.”

Faklaris said the perpetrators likely made use of collections of personal data that can be bought relatively cheaply on some corners of the internet. When combined with other data, such as places of residence or past purchases, Faklaris said it can be easy to use machine-learning algorithms to infer demographic information.

“All of this means it might be easier than most people realize to make a really good guess about the race or ethnicity of the person attached to that phone number,” she said.

Unlike email or social media, the U.S. regulates text messages like a utility and tries to remain neutral about content shared via text. As a result, there’s little filtering that could have blocked this week’s spree of racist messages, Faklaris said. There’s no universal system in the U.S. to flag texts as suspicious or unwanted before they are viewed, she said.

But after an explosion of texting scams that accelerated during the pandemic, Faklaris said law enforcement agencies have developed better investigative tools and it should be “relatively easy for the authorities to trace this particular attack.”

Published at Sat, 09 Nov 2024 15:03:29 +0000