Thread by @Matt_Fleming321

1/🧵

People wonder what's wrong with Florida, but the problem is so big you can literally see it from outter space. I'm talking about the sugar farms.

#DemandCleanWaterFL
#Fanjuls

2/ The big three sugar interests in the Everglades Agricultural Area are U.S. Sugar, Florida Crystals, and The Sugar Growers Cooperative. This thread will focus on Florida Crystals which is owned by the #Fanjuls, Pepe and Alfie, who are octogenarian refugees from Cuba.

3/ The history of the Everglades Agricultural Area is a storied one that dates back a hundred years when the first real land rush south of Lake Okeechobee culminated in ppl being sold swamps as farmland, and the deadliest hurricane in FL history in 1928.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everglades

4/ The #Fanjuls alliance with Bush Sr.'s old CIA buddies began after the American mafia and their pedophile friends were kicked out of the country by Castro's communism. But it was communism, so Cuba's landed gentry fled too.

From 2014:
tampabay.com/incoming/exile…

5/ Pepe Fanjul was Bill Clinton's 1992 Florida Campaign Chair...and that problem persists to this day. Here he is having a normal one with Leon Black, formerly CEO of Apollo Global Capital and Jeff Epstein. The West Palm Beach billionaires club is the scummiest in America.

6/ Despite a najority of the #Fanjuls political spending ending up in Lobbyists wallets and Republican campaign coffers, the @FlaDems continues to be swindled and undermined by their political influence...which is exerted primarily via the #BallardPartners.

7/ Nikki Fried, the current Florida Democratic Party chair, is one of their pawns, and happily did their bidding as the Agriculture Commissioner. I did a long thread on her Republican and corrupt proclivities during the primary last year.

https://twitter.com/Matt_Fleming321/status/1552689400294678529?t=L5908PbHid0ybUdhbzJ_MA

8/ Ron DeSantis is touting his billion dollars for the Everglades, but it's not for restoration. Its another billion dollar handout to big sugar, so they can build a retention pond for their fields. It really is quite a virtuous cycle of public money for themselves.

9/ The #Fanjuls are also the largest land owners in the Dominican Republic, under the name "Central Romana" and last year that company's imports were banned after decades of damning reports detailed forced labor, land thefts, and breathtaking corruption.

cbp.gov/newsroom/natio…

10/ Money laundering? Yes.

"...family members of the former president of a sugar producer in the Dominican Republic that has been accused of exploiting laborers and forcibly evicting families from their homes."

icij.org/investigations…

11/ It is not a coincidence that Rick Scott's friend #KenGriffin of Citadel donated 10 million dollars to DeSantis in early 2022, or that he endowed a "komodo dragon" exhibit at the San Diego Zoo. The #Fanjuls have komodo dragons guarding at least one of their FL mansions.

12/ To call the #Fanjuls modern day robber barons is an insult to robber barons. The details of their abuse of workers are prolific and span decades. From 1989:

vanityfair.com/news/2001/02/f…

13/ Is it a coincidence that the Dominican Republic is also a major drug trafficking hub? You can be sure that country's largest landowners at least know about it.
Link 👇
insightcrime.org/investigations…

14/ One of the things I actually dont understand is their friendship with the King of Spain. I imagine it goes back back to the old-time sugar farming days of the Caribbean.

15/ Some more history:

"The roots of Florida Crystals Inc. go back over a century to Andres Gomez-Mena’s arrival in Cuba from his native Spain. Andres made his fortune by milling sugar cane, the main crop of that island country."

encyclopedia.com/books/politics…

16/ Political scandal...

"Matrix billed two major companies for Hentschel's work, labeling the payments "for Florida Crystals, FPL." (Florida Crystals is a huge sugar conglomerate. FPL is shorthand for the giant utility Florida Power & Light.)"

npr.org/2022/12/21/114…

17/ Matrix was the political group that coordinated fake spoiler candidates for Florida Senate in 2020 against Democrats.

link.medium.com/cV4Ti9BvJAb

18/ Florida Crystals connections to FPL go back to the 1990's.

"At a cost of $200 million, the power plant would produce energy from sugar cane stalks and woody waste that would be delivered via Florida Power and Light to an estimated 46,000 homes."

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanjul_br…

19/ I'm guessing that venture to turn waste into dough never really panned out, bc instead of using non-polluting mechanical harvesting methods, they are still burning their fields, which most countries have outlawed.

propublica.org/article/burnin…

20/ I've driven, boated, and camped around the Everglades Agricultural Area, Lake Okeechobee, Everglades National Park, and surrounding coasts quite a bit. The fallout and runoff from Sugar farming affects the entirety of South Florida.

21/ Sugar growing consumes an MASSIVE amount of chemical fertilizer, despite all the raving about how great the peat soil is south of the lake. Also in Florida, Phosphate Mining. #PineyPoint is one of the many radioactive phospate mining dumps.

link.medium.com/nXK9NpOwJAb

22/ I did a thread on Mosaic and the giant phospate mining operation which is about 100 miles from the sugar fields.

https://twitter.com/Matt_Fleming321/status/1667471384505892864?t=nm2XqVA-ZkSbIlUlIQ-Jlg

23/ FL's govt drains the sugar fields into Lake O for them, via the #SFWMD

2007:
"As a result of our victory in court [U.S. Sugar] negotiated with the state of FL to sell its 185,000 acres of lands and shut down the sugar growing and processing ops."

earthjustice.org/case/lake-okee…

24/ But, Florida's Republicans killed that deal, ran Charlie Crist out of their party with a vicious smear campaign, and then replaced him with Rick Scott in 2010.

npr.org/2013/10/10/230…

25/ The "Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan" was the culmination of decades of conservation efforts. Enacted back in 1998, but as of 2021 only 5 out of 65 projects had even had work started on them.

nps.gov/ever/learn/nat…

26/ When the South Florida Water Management District #SFWMD back-pumps excess water from sugar fields into Lake Okeechobee, it feeds massive and toxic "Blue Green Algae" blooms; a misnomer, it's actually a poisonous bacteria called cyanobacteria.

https://twitter.com/calusawater/status/1669662353447694336?t=b-29ZhmkqxEboFvMNSV9Ww

27/ If you've never seen or smelled this stuff, it's worse than you can imagine. The fumes are strong enough to suck the air right out of your lungs, its highly neoro-toxic, and it smells similar to a Florida diaper-and-seafood-filled landfill slowly cooking in the July sun.

28/ When Lake Okeechobee is drained via giant man-made canals to both the east and west coast, it sends plumes of polluted, nutrient filled water out into the ocean feeding toxic RED tide(k. brevis) that creates noxious fumes and giant fish kills.

29/ Additionally, the spraying of cancerous herbicides like #Glyphosate into our waterways is something FL Gov't is doing, but so are MANY municipalities and local government agencies under the guise of "aquatic plant management", "flood control" and "invasive species removal".

30/ Ecocide IS a #CrimeAgainstHumanity, and personally I'd be happy to see some of these people end up at the Hague for what they've done to our state. At least they should be put out of business and forced to pay to clean it up.

reuters.com/business/susta…