[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/12/17/serbia-trump...
Many countries have far more corrupt administrations than the current U.S. one, but even in the most degenerate ones none of them are as open about it.
And it’s not just a political thing.
Consider how the Chinese owned Smithfield’s is polluting lakes and land all over the Midwest with their highly intensive (and incredibly cruel) pig farming that is causing high cancer and mortality rates for the people living there, and yet the locals tend to support whatever Smithfield wants.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/trump-approval-stays...
https://www.economist.com/interactive/trump-approval-tracker
Look at the California primaries. In every race I can name, the right wing (like funded by the same people as Trump levels of right wing) and the republican token candidate are advancing to the general election.
We have open primaries, so, in theory, there could be a corporate democrat vs. a populist/progressive democrat in the general elections.
I say “token” republicans because they are clearly sending the B team. One ran on “too many dogs get to vote” and another (who advanced) on a transphobic platform.
Typical breakdowns of California primaries in Silicon Valley, translated to European norms: 5% left, 15-25% center left, 30-35 moderate to hard right, 35-40 right wing nationalist.
In the general, the first three categories will collapse, and the moderate to hard right democrat that gets elected will claim they have a mandate from the voters.
Edit: The narrative dominating the news cycle is Trump’s claim the elections are rigged because the results were so far to the left. I guess he wants two republicans facing off in every general election race, despite the state being overwhelmingly blue.
Also, on ballot initiatives, the state overwhelmingly votes left, not moderate right, so, when presented with an actual policy decision, they vote completely differently than they do when given a choice of candidates.
https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-century-of-the-self
Then corporate social media took things to the next level.
So what does the local economy get out of it? A few maids salary to clean up the tourist's shit?
Same goes for any natural resource. Oil, precious metals, water, etc. Globalization feeds this behavior, but that’s a conversation people don’t usually want to have
Quite laid-back in May / start of June, but I do not want to be there in the high season.
> Rama, a long-time friend of the Trump and Kushner families
> The protests, which civil society and international media have called the Flamingo Revolution, have grown well past their environmental starting point into a challenge to Rama himself
(because of accusations he's bending regulations for Kushner that exist for other companies).
> On 30 December 2024, a Strategic Investment Committee chaired by Rama granted strategic investor status to Atlantic Incubation Partners, a firm affiliated with Kushner's Affinity Partners ... Reuters, which saw the written decision, reported .... the terms include no tax during the construction phase while the Albanian state underwrites the water, electricity and sewage infrastructure.
Yeah, forgive me if I don't exactly see his opinion as unbiased.
There are exceptions of course but the vast, vast, vast majority are tourist trapping and wealth extraction.
Now her grandson is wrecking Europe.
https://www.npr.org/2018/05/04/560224531/trump-stories-kushn...
She was certainly a victim and a refugee, of which we have many today, most being denied admission to the US. Are those all legends too?
Then again, may be they already figured out how to make their lives meaningfully longer. I often think what drives 80 year old Bidens and Trumps to live the stressful POTUS life.
And I can think of only one incentive. Weird thoughts, but otherwise the dots just don't connect.
Others may be serving their own interests as it gives them access to all information.
Others may just want the power.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-she...
As far as trolling goes, it's one of the greatest achievements in the history of mankind.
1. Donald Trump's Ego Trip - lessons for the new Scotland (2011) https://andywightman.scot/docs/trumpreport_v1a.pdf
2. You've Been Trumped (2011) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vr6efmndvps
> Scottish people formed a Tripping Up Trump Campaign to make it more difficult to transfer the title to the land, and hundreds of people bought small interests in Forbes' property and became co-owners.
Continued in another article[1]:
> When it emerged at the end of January 2011 that Queen guitarist Brian May had agreed to the use of the band's song "Bohemian Rhapsody" in a film highlighting the plight of the families, Trump appeared to deny in a media statement that there had ever been an eviction threat, declaring "we have no interest in compulsory purchase and have never applied for it."
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_International_Golf_Links...
I predict… just a sec… footwear and insulated wire shortages and a rebar glut [1]
Kushner apparently wants to build a billionaire resort with the protections required to insulate billionaires from their actions. Maybe UAE is too dangerous now.
Here is another article. Try not to be put off by the Rothchild connections, they are mostly irrelevant and based on Kushner's own statements:
https://tomselliott.substack.com/p/what-is-jared-kushner-act...
Source: I live there. It's very easy to tell if you do.
In the past the wealthy families would fund building churches, hospitals, housing for poor.
Nowadays' oligarchs aren't that kind.
edit: the governments appear to be supportive, but obviously aren't as supportive as they could be. Probably taking the bribe and not doing as much as they could.
Which backfired after Trump won twice in US. But it's just business.
And on top of that it's Trump kids, yeet them into the sea.
HN: "The scrollbar is two pixels too narrow on the article!"
The main point they made during the interviews: If things ever get bad enough for the owner to want to move into the bunker, the #1 priority of the guards will be to neutralize the owner. They worked out detailed contingency plans while twiddling there thumbs and rotating cans of caviar.
It turns out you cannot eat electronic money that’s sitting in the middle of a bank’s bombed out business continuity vault.
Governments around the world already keep many locations/facilities secret and hidden from the public.
They will simply arrest you, or worse, just kill you.
What’s your solution to that?
Epstein 2.0 would at least double occupancy on their own.
If I were tasked to do it, the Albanian coast would be a top choice for me too; it has near perfect conditions for such an enterprise.
Don’t we discuss viruses, exploits, dark patterns, scammers and fraud when it comes to other things? Why would it be objectionable to call out the top civilization hackers and scammers and exploits? Everyone can talk about meaningless scams and exploits. Is there any bigger, worse exploit and hack than hacking a whole country and civilization and extracting trillions in sum?
I emphatically disagree.
However, there was widespread vilification of cephalopods on all sides of multiple wars during that time period:
https://neverwasmag.com/2017/08/the-octopus-in-political-car...
(To be clear, I don’t hate any sea creatures.)
Gee, I wonder what could be happening that's similar to that.
Criticise a jewish person for something completely unrelated: infinite amount of green accounts created on the spot come in and start vaguely referencing "ThE DaRkEsT TiMe In HiStOrY".
But what has happened before is that:
The government gives free/cheap/exclusive public land to someone to build apartments/villas. They sell these to whoever wants to buy before starting construction. At the end of construction, with the profits, they build nice hotels at the frontline and keep for themselves without investing any of their own money in anything.
So they will most likely build apartments in Narta, sell them to the populace, and keep Sazan for themselves as luxury resort.
Something worse than this has started happening for high rises too, where they start selling before getting the permit even. So they don't invest their own money even to get the initial permit to start building.
Those cold war bunkers only had one purpose: to keep high ranking government and military peeps alive just long enough (up to 2 weeks or so) to make sure that mutual destruction is actually 'assured'. They were not meant as some sort of cradle of a new civilization or as a safe haven to survive a nuclear war (because there would be no place to return to anyway).
Also as the sister comment says: Eastern Europeans already have shown how it's done and can do it again.
Look at what happened to Ceaușescu for example. He went from being confident in his rule to dead 24 hours later.
For that matter, what did you think gun control was for, exactly?
In my area which is over 1/3 retired people this is where the majority of their investments seem to lie. Those who are simply relying on 401k or other investments are also at risk due to the lack of diversification. Since their investments are tied to those 3 things.
If any of the legs of the stool go out...the whole thing goes down.
It's too luxury, most likely will pay no taxes for years, you can import workers from elsewhere, etc etc.
It's not the first time this kind of thing happens in Albania and we've already seen results.
Normal people will just never be able to go there again. People in power will either get millions or 1+ free apartment/villa, or heavily discounted price (depends on how much power you have).
I was literally kitesurfing when they came and added fences to the road to block access to the beach.
(Or if you prefer because you are unable to compute that, the price is upfront $70,000 trillion (2025 prices) - cash only)
Which I don't think is the intent of anybody in this thread. We're just talking about them being privileged and rich.
I do think it's important to avoid accidental or deliberate anti-Semitism when talking here though. Epstein and Kushner being Jewish has zero to do with their vileness, but for a segment of the population it's all too easy to unconsciously (or worse, consciously) make a linkage between old vile anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Rothschilds or whatever.
They see the checks and balances that we used to have, and assumed those structures would constrain the administration to mostly tow the line.
On the one hand, it’s true they came from places with weaker institutions. On the other hand, they’re used to leaders that face real threats of coup, asset seizure, assassination, etc. The current US administration has publicly stated it is permanently above the law, and it has also dismantled most checks and balances.
I raised concerns about your framing, and I think you'll find I'm not a green account. By far.
Please don't drag this forum down. With my own opinions... I wouldn't complain about "Class War" language, but your posts concern me.
If my 15k karma account wasn't banned I'd happily use it. I rotate new accounts every few months now, it's much more convenient
So no tax the locals. During the construction phase there is some legitimate economy uplift (similar to datacenters). But after that nothing.
is this just pure old corruption. govt not working for ppl stuff.
With all that being said, I still think that overreliance on tourism is bad for a place in principle. Those places fossilize, the wealth of tourists overwhelmes local culture, it will create wrong incentives, draw in junk vendors, pick-pocketers, and AirBnB vultures making life more miserable for the locals. One can also be certain that the local hospitality operators will try to pass the least possible amount to locals by finding even cheaper employees from god knows where.
The secret ingredient is always money. Spain looks the way it does because that country was desperate for foreign currency and jobs in the 60s and 70s. Economic development is hard and Albania does not have much going for it unfortunately.