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![activist: Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel
This story is a real bombshell. Reporter Ryan Grim
reveals that one of the biggest culprits of Amazon
destruction is a US company, Blackstone, whose CEO
is close friends with Trump and bankrolls the US
Senate leader Republican Mitch McConnell
A Top Financier of Trump and McConnell Is a Driving Force Behind Amazo...
Steve Schwarzman is the CEO of the Blackstone Group, which partially owns
a Brazilian firm that is helping transform the Amazon from jungle to ...
theintercept.com
3:27 AM Aug 28, 2019 Twitter Web App
6.5K Likes
6K Retweets
spaceconveyor:
feelingbluepolitics:
feelingbluepolitics:
catbirdseat4u:
➣ Go HERE for the dirt — There’s plenty.
Highest recommendation.
https://theintercept.com/2019/08/27/amazon-rainforest-fire-blackstone/
“The companies have wrested control of land, deforested it, and helped build a controversial highway to their new terminal in the one-time jungle, all to facilitate the cultivation and export of grain and soybeans.”
“Schwarzman, a founder of Blackstone, owns roughly a fifth of the company, making him one of the world’s richest men. In 2018, he was paid at least $568 million, which was, in fact, a drop from the $786 million he made the year before. He has been generous toward McConnell and [t]rump with that wealth. In 2016, he gave $2.5 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, McConnell’s Super PAC and put Jim Breyer, McConnell’s billionaire brother-in-law, on the board of Blackstone. Two years later, Schwarzman kicked in $8 million to McConnell’s Super PAC.
“Blackstone employees have given well over $10 million to McConnell and his Super PAC over the years, making them the biggest source of direct financing over McConnell’s career. McConnell’s Senate campaign declined to comment.
“Schwarzman is a close friend and adviser to [t]rump, and served as the chair of his Strategic and Policy Forum until it fell apart in the wake of the Charlottesville neo-Nazi rally, in which [t]rump famously praised 'very fine people, on both sides.’ In December 2017, as the final details of the GOP tax cut were being ironed out, Schwarzman hosted a $100,000-a-plate fundraiser for [t]rump. Some of [trump’s] dinner companions complained about the tax bill, and days later, [t]rump slashed the top percentage rate in the final package from 39.6 to 37.
…"Bolsonaro has plans to pave significantly more roads in the Amazon that have otherwise been impassable much of the year, a project made feasible by international financing.
…"Of course, Hidrovias is also involved in paving B.R.-163 and other development projects in the region. Those projects, such as the paving of the highway, have additional indirect — though entirely predictable — consequences, as they spur side roads that make previously difficult-to-reach areas of the Amazon accessible for mining, logging, or further deforestation.
…"A Blackstone spokesperson noted that the fund only owns 9.3 percent* of Hidrovias. But that ignores the 55.8 percent of Hidrovias that is owned by Pátria Investimentos. On Hidrovias’s website, Pátria is described as a company ‘in partnership with Blackstone,’ and it is known in the financial industry to be a Blackstone company.”
*Pay no attention to claimed percentages of ownership. What goes on behind ownership curtains is fluidly incestuous. For example, from April 2019:
Blackstone Transfers 35% Stake in Brazil’s Alphaville Urbanismo to Pátria (em português)
“Blackstone transferred its 35% stake in Brazilian real estate developer Alphaville Urbanismo to its partner Pátria Investimentos. Blackstone and Pátria originally invested R$1.4b in June 2013 for a 70% stake in the company. The two firms formed a partnership in 2010 and Blackstone retains a 40% stake in Pátria.”
—–
Keep in mind,
It’s not like this graft flows directly, or just one way.
Trump USDA is paying millions to a shady Brazilian meatpacking company under DOJ, SEC investigation
Brazil Subsidiary Hoovers Up $62 Million In Trump Trade War Aid Intended For Farmers
Every American farmer who has lost their Chinese market for soybeans – all of them – should be wondering how it was that trump “woke up” one morning with his idea of a trade war with China. Had his close friend Schwartzman told trump the Brazilian road and terminal were ready?
There is no question that the Amazon rainforest is burning right now to open new farm land in order to meet China’s soybean market.
I wanted Blackstone to get fucked prior to this, now…now I want them to
SUFFER.](https://pics.awwmemes.com/jason-hickel-jasonhickel-this-story-is-a-real-bombshell-reporter-62717870.png)
![activist: maireddog:
Mark Ashton died on this day, the 11th of February, in 1987.
Mark
was born on the 19th of May, 1960 in Oldham, but grew up in Portrush, Northern Ireland. He moved to London in 1978, where he worked in
a bar in King’s Cross, in drag as a barmaid with a blonde beehive.
In
the 1980s, he volunteered for London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard,
campaigned for CND and joined the Communist Party, becoming the first gay secretary of the Young Communist League. Though Mark transformed the Party’s approach to LGBT rights, he and Mike Jackson, who he’d met through Switchboard, wanted to be active as openly gay people. They formed
Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) when they collected donations for miners on strike at 1984 Gay Pride.
In the evening of 1984 Pride, a miner spoke at a rally, and they were struck by the similarities between the two struggle, of LGBT rights and the Miners’ Strike. Having collected about £150, they advertised a meeting in Capital Gay. 11 people turned up and from the meeting they made a leaflet to launch LGSM - the leaflet was accepted except with an amendment to ‘one in ten miners is gay.’
As LGSM, they supported the miners as lesbian and gay people. At the second meeting, they decided to focus on one community, of the Dulais Valley, as one of the members, Hugh Williams, was from there. They then met David (Dai) Donovan, who also had thought through the similarities of their struggles and how LGSM could help. A month later, 27 lesbians and gay men, arrived at Onllwyn village in Dulais Valley.
Other than some hostility (and confusion towards vegetarianism), they experienced warmth, friendship and solidarity. LGSM raised £20,000 for families of miners on strike, and based on The Sun writing that “a group of perverts” were “supporting the pits,” they organised the Pits and Perverts concert in December, 1984, headlined by Bronski Beat. The miners marched with LGSM at Gay Pride in 1985.
Mark was admitted to hospital on 30th January, 1987, and died 12 days later from pneumonia, aged 26. At his memorial, there were banners from the Communist Party, Anti-Apartheid, anti-nuclear, Caribbean and community groups, as well as from LGSM. The Mark Ashton Trust was created to support individuals
diagnosed with Aids; Mark is also remembered on the UK Aids Memorial
Quilt and by Terrence Higgins Trust, with the Mark Ashton Red Ribbon
Fund and a plaque at their London headquarters. In 2017, on what would have been his 57th birthday, he was honoured with a blue
plaque above Gay’s The Word bookshop.
[Images: 1. Mark Ashton at Gay Pride 1981. 2. Mark Ashton at Gay
Pride
1985, wearing a LGSM t-shirt and holding a pink “Communist Party” banner
with the words “pinko commie queers.” 3. Blue plaque reading: “Lesbians
and Gays Support the Miners. Mark Ashton 1960-1987. Political and
Community Activist. LGSM met at Gay’s the Word bookship on this site
1984/5.”]](https://pics.awwmemes.com/maireddog-mark-ashton-died-on-this-day-the-11th-of-42056555.png)
