Albania Is Not for Sale: Kushner's $4B Resort Triggers'Flamingo Revolution'

https://www.yacnews.com/albania-is-not-for-sale-kushners-4-billion-resort-triggers-flamingo-revolution-asset-freeze-and-an-eu-warning/

by ortr • 1 month ago

454 190 1 month ago

yacnews.com

jeffbee2• 1 month ago

Are we sure they're not just negotiating over the price?

ddorian435• 1 month ago

Yes. The whole bought media, party in-power, the opposition are against the protests and are trying to downplay them.

Source: I live there. It's very easy to tell if you do.

jeffbee2• 1 month ago

I'll take your word for it! But I reflexively add "... at this price" to such statements.

tmaly• 1 month ago

Is the project more of a private residence or something that would bring tourism to the local economy?

bkovacev• 1 month ago

Jared Kushner tried a similar thing in Serbia[0] and failed after a public outrage.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/12/17/serbia-trump...

rapind2• 1 month ago

That Ivanka podcast interview about this island will go down as a masterpiece in tone-deafness. I assume there are already memes of it.

LearnYouALisp2• 1 month ago

Oh, 'highlights'?

airstrike• 1 month ago

My absolute favorite, for those who missed it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBEDGJE0_yI

port11• 1 month ago

tl;dl We found a true paradise and want to destroy it to build a resort.

joquarky2• 1 month ago

It doesn't matter how tone deaf it is, they are so wealthy they don't care.

dieselgate2• 1 month ago

The short segment I saw on reddit, I believe, of Ivanka talking about an island gave VERY strong AI vibes. Is this interview real and are there links? This is the first I've seen it referenced so haven't given it much thought.

FireBeyond3• 1 month ago

And Trump's plan to build a skyscraper on Australia's Gold Coast was nixed a month or two ago because his partner on it bailed because of its "toxic associations".

dzhiurgis2• 1 month ago

If you ever been to Gold Coast, that place is perfect fit for Trumps toxicity.

adf-aslk• 1 month ago

This island was a Russian naval base in the cold war with hundreds of underground nuclear bunkers.

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...

abirch• 1 month ago

It looks like Thiel is betting on Argentina.

shevy-java2• 1 month ago

That would explain why Milei got so much US money already. I wonder when the people in Argentina wake up and realise this is a problem.

java-man• 1 month ago

as the custom goes, since 1945.

water-data-dude2• 1 month ago

If things ever get bad enough that the wealthy need underground nuclear bunkers, the underground nuclear bunkers aren't going to be enough to protect them. The ordinary people who did the electrical, plumbing, security, etc. know where you are, and no level of security will protect you from an angry mob with nothing to lose.

stevenpetryk• 1 month ago

automated war machines are plenty to stop an angry mob imo.

graphime• 1 month ago

The ordinary people who did the electrical, plumbing, security, etc. know where you are, and no level of security will protect you from an angry mob with nothing to lose.

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?

olmo23• 1 month ago

What about drones though

hedora7• 1 month ago

I once saw a news article with interviews of anonymous bunker tenders; essentially, there is a small industry of former special ops folks that are paid to live in the bunker and maintain it.

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.

treis• 1 month ago

A billionaire resort with 10,000 hotel rooms...

hedora7• 1 month ago

The people supervising the help need some rooms.

Epstein 2.0 would at least double occupancy on their own.

layer8• 1 month ago

There are around 3500 billionaires in the world. With family those rooms will quickly fill up.

42jag16• 1 month ago

Maybe they have human shields on one end of the island and the billionaire reservation on the other. Also, note that Kushner, like Trump, is always lying. We'll only know what is actually built after it is done.

shevy-java2• 1 month ago

The USA is currently run by oligarchs. They try to buy their way into other countries via corruption. How much kickback did the government of Albania get already? It is highly suspicious how supportive they are of Trump.

ddorian435• 1 month ago

When Trump was running for the first time, the prime minister was extremely against Trump and even ridiculed him publicly on interviews "shame of our civilization" https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/13/albanian-prime-minister...

Which backfired after Trump won twice in US. But it's just business.

andix• 1 month ago

Incompetent oligarchs. If you can't even successfully bribe the Albanian or Serbian government, you are just really bad at corruption. Those are (sadly) among the most corrupt countries in the world.

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.

nullorempty2• 1 month ago

You can be sure they are getting paid off. It's sickening.

In the past the wealthy families would fund building churches, hospitals, housing for poor.

Nowadays' oligarchs aren't that kind.

totetsu• 1 month ago

I wonder how many more things like this are happening under the radar around the world

1over137• 1 month ago

This is hardly under the radar, it’s all over the news.

frereubu• 1 month ago

They mean an attempt like this, but one that they manage to keep quiet and out of the press.

pavel_lishin• 1 month ago

I wonder, if I asked the next dozen people I meet, whether they would have any idea about this.

ToucanLoucan• 1 month ago

Every time you hear about some corpo or another getting to "play a role in the development of $nation" it's pretty much always going to be some kind of bullshit that will employ a lot of locals for shit wages to provide a product or service to residents of the Global North.

There are exceptions of course but the vast, vast, vast majority are tourist trapping and wealth extraction.

billfor• 1 month ago

The article says: "If it was not Jared, they would not give a shit about what is happening in Albania," Rama said."

FireBeyond3• 1 month ago

Oh, this Rama?

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.

cosmicgadget7• 1 month ago

Jared or some of the other White House insiders trying to offshore their recent financial gains.

pjc503• 1 month ago

Somewhat higher stakes version of the Trump Aberdeen golf course:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-she...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Forbes_(farmer)

partial225• 1 month ago

This led to the greatest trolling of an individual ever when they deliberately stuck a windfarm directly off the coast of his new golf course. He's spent a couple of decades spending countless millions in losing a bunch of court cases, and of course, to this day, constantly moans to anyone who will list about "windmills".

As far as trolling goes, it's one of the greatest achievements in the history of mankind.

fooblaster• 1 month ago

unfortunately this trolling has caused trump to try to halt all large offshore wind projects in the United States in federal land grants. it's terrible.

cosmicgadget7• 1 month ago

On par with publicly embarrassing someone's birtherism at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

That blowback though.

amiga3862• 1 month ago

For the gory details, see

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

thih9• 1 month ago

Wow! I especially like this:

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...

qwlart• 1 month ago

Weird flagging in this submission. Pointing out that billionaires build nuclear bunkers is not allowed even though it is public knowledge.

appplication• 1 month ago

This is off topic and I understand we’re not supposed to comment on such things, but was anyone else mystified by the decisions that went into the scroll progress bar up top (on mobile)? It seems to be two part, where part of it would accurately reflect your scroll state, while the other had some weird latency associated with it. And then it ended up hidden behind the top of page blur unless you scrolled very aggressively, to the point where the blur could not keep up.

antiframe• 1 month ago

It works for me. I didn't dismiss the first dickover, but did dismiss the second dickover. Scrolled all the way to the bottom smoothly (minus the pause for the second dickover).

mythrwy• 1 month ago

Headline: "A large comet is approaching the earth and all life is expected to be wiped out within 20 days"

HN: "The scrollbar is two pixels too narrow on the article!"

annagio_2• 1 month ago

Half of Albania is butchered like this, beaches and green being destroyed to make resorts for the tourists to come. Go see Dermi or Vuno and then go see Borsh how clean it is, with no excavations at all or resorts being build.

whatever12• 1 month ago

Don't forget that resorts et al typically belong to international capital, and the tourists rarely leave the premises.

So what does the local economy get out of it? A few maids salary to clean up the tourist's shit?

dominotw2• 1 month ago

what about tax revenue ?

hammock2• 1 month ago

Don't forget that resorts et al typically belong to international capital. What does the local economy get out of it?

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

1234letshaveatw2• 1 month ago

such a stark contrast with all the hysteria over foreign tourists avoiding the US due to Trump that was posted here a few days ago. "Oh noes Trump is destroying the tourist economy!!!" vs. "only a few maids salary to clean up the tourist's shit"

skinfaxi2• 1 month ago

Same in Greece. Right off the coast of Albania, Corfu is seeing heavy development as well.

tweetle_beetle• 1 month ago

Corfu has been a mainstream holiday destination for Europeans for half a century. I don't think it's really in the same category as Albania.

esquire_900• 1 month ago

We happened to be in Borsh beach around a week or so ago, and that will be a tourist wreck in 2 years. Multiple working sites, 70% of the beach already claimed by beds.

Quite laid-back in May / start of June, but I do not want to be there in the high season.

annagio_2• 1 month ago

Yes, it will be sadly, and maybe the last beach to be clean(IMO).

Those beaches, those villages, used to be pure nature, but as the time passed, they saw the potential of making money, and started building and drilling. Spring and Summer is all the fuss, after that it's empty, dead, only locals live in villages.

Unfortunately, they will become ghost villages as people living there are very old.

icar• 1 month ago

All coastal zones are. Mallorca is the same, for example. Eivissa as well. Many parts of València, etc. And that's just the ones I know.

HumblyTossed• 1 month ago

Some of the messaging around this by the people trying to build this out is so tone deaf. I think they know and that's why they're building bunkers.

Sharlin2• 1 month ago

These poor billionaires are just trying to make ends meet like any of us.

kilroy123• 1 month ago

Which is actually pretty shortsighted.

What if we just made a strong middle class? Made sure they had a LOT more money? Then they could just buy more stuff and services.

roysting6• 1 month ago

[flagged]

hereweare26• 1 month ago

This kind of talk used to be a lot more common in our grandparents' time. It's sad to see the best and the brightest of our times going back to it.

toasty2283• 1 month ago

lmao, every. single. time.

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".

dopple• 1 month ago

It would indeed be surprising to hear people say this if you completely ignore the words and actions of the Epstein class and the overwhelming amount of pain and suffering they afflict on everyone else.

superloika2• 1 month ago

Our grandparents were right, and right to say this.

hedora7• 1 month ago

Your point is that the rhetoric of the late 1800s running into WWII was, by far, the worst thing that happened during that time period, just like now?

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.)

RobotToaster• 1 month ago

You mean when the industrial revolution put a lot of people out of work, and lowered living standards for most workers?

Gee, I wonder what could be happening that's similar to that.

roysting6• 1 month ago

You mean the talk that got us all out rights and freedoms? You know, like what started 250 years ago this year, and everyone has taken for granted to the point that it’s all just quietly being slipped out from under people who have no understanding for the value and contract of things??

kevin_thibedeau• 1 month ago

They want to upstage Putin's Black Sea palace in a place where they can bribe their way out of extradition.

dang3• 1 month ago

If you've read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, this is obviously not what this site is for, so please don't post like this.

roysting6• 1 month ago

I get that the guidelines are just about the most subjective black hole you could drive a quasar through, but what exactly is the offending aspect? Is it the “Epstein island 2.0”? I mean, who believes that these types of people will not be trying to rebuild that same kind of capacity in some other place by some other, albeit similar means?

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?

gigatexal• 1 month ago

YES! More of this. Such places and people are not for sale. What kind of sickos think they can just see a place and say "I've got money, these know-nothing-barefoot-fools will take our money and let us rape their lands!"?

And on top of that it's Trump kids, yeet them into the sea.

toasty2283• 1 month ago

The rich are getting too openly greedy and complacent again, they're slowly forgetting about history, can't wait to see how it pans out in the next decades.

https://www.prosperosisle.org/spip.php?article1196

renegade-otter2• 1 month ago

Which is ironic because Rae Kushner - his grandmother - is a legend. She has gone through some things.

Now her grandson is wrecking Europe.

https://www.npr.org/2018/05/04/560224531/trump-stories-kushn...

lifestyleguru3• 1 month ago

Present America is real estate developers all the way down.

justin66• 1 month ago

Never heard of her. His father, the tax evading felon recently pardoned by Trump, is rather more well known I would think. (But hardly a legend)

agnosticmantis• 1 month ago

Would you elaborate why she's considered a legend?

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?

nullorempty2• 1 month ago

All the great art should teach us that we can't take riches to the grave, it's too bad that this is being forgotten.

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.

avgDev• 1 month ago

Different people are driven by different things. Some people genuinely want to serve their nation and being a president is a huge honor to the family. You become part of history.

Others may be serving their own interests as it gives them access to all information.

Others may just want the power.

sys_64738• 1 month ago

I thought Albania still had concrete bunkers around the coast to keep unwanted invaders OUT.

hereme888• 1 month ago

The evidence so far hints more at Albania’s weak rule of law/property/environmental governance and ugly conflict-of-interest more than Kushner being part of some evil conspiracy.

cmrdporcupine3• 1 month ago

Seems like a bit from both column A and column B, personally.

lifestyleguru3• 1 month ago

The T family acts as everyone expected and warned, they are not stopping, and they are even accelerating. I'm not sure what is the conclusion from this.

0x59• 1 month ago

Silver lining - It's not oil/gas extraction or mining.

armchairhacker2• 1 month ago

[flagged]

joewhale• 1 month ago

how do you define social media?

armchairhacker2• 1 month ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48446007

the_doctah• 1 month ago

It's becoming more like Reddit, that's for sure

iwontberude• 1 month ago

Wow what an insightful comment we haven’t heard repeated for over a decade here.

dang3• 1 month ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=66057

Havoc• 1 month ago

It’s crazy that the US is now run by these clowns out to enrich themselves

ifjfkfkfkfj• 1 month ago

It is just Russia trying to undermine US president! We seen this type of protests several times!

throw343• 1 month ago

Trump is gonna put tariffs on Albania very soon

hedora7• 1 month ago

And somehow do more damage to the US than to Albania.

I predict… just a sec… footwear and insulated wire shortages and a rebar glut [1]

[1] https://oec.world/en/profile/country/alb

Kapura• 1 month ago

I hate these rich motherfuckers so much. They are openly corrupt, and move through the world with impunity on a magic carpet of wealth. Not only must the individuals be stopped, but the systems that allow nonstate actors to wield effectively unlimited funds must be rebuilt.

adjejmxbdjdn• 1 month ago

I simply don’t understand how American voters are fine with being robbed blind.

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.

superloika2• 1 month ago

It's because the massess are cattle themselves.

swed420• 1 month ago

'The Century of the Self' really drives this point.

https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-century-of-the-self

Then corporate social media took things to the next level.

hedora7• 1 month ago

I don’t get it either. I think it is a combination of the two party system, and short attention span / tribalism.

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.

stevenwoo• 1 month ago

There’s one bright spot, the Los Angeles mayoral race eliminated the MAGA candidate so it’s a corporate Dem versus more left Dem.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 1 month ago

Most voters aren't fine with it.

https://www.economist.com/interactive/trump-approval-tracker

philistine• 1 month ago

Donald Trump was re-elected because too many voters who voted against him the last two times stayed home. That they don't approve, yet did not go vote, is the textbook definition of fine with it. America does not have a wellspring of anti-Trump voters just waiting to be awakened.

America is Trump.

skybrian3• 1 month ago

Americans aren’t “fine with it.” Trump’s approval ratings are very low.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/trump-approval-stays...

cosmicgadget7• 1 month ago

Which is weird because this is pretty much what they voted/abstained for. I think we have to trust the ballot box more than opinion polls.

insane_dreamer• 1 month ago

Many countries have far more corrupt administrations than the current U.S. one

not sure that "many" applies anymore; we're almost up there with DRC and Zimbabwe at this point

mrKola• 1 month ago

RnB, BnB

Brendinooo• 1 month ago

What is this news source? I've never heard of it before and there are no names associated with it on their site. Two of their social media links are broken. Their YouTube channel was only active for like a year, 4-5 years ago. It all feels strange.

unharmed474• 1 month ago

The news is everywhere, I don’t know why they picked this source.

https://www.nbcnews.com/world/europe/kushner-luxury-resort-p...

Just google Albania Flamingo revolution.

rnxrx• 1 month ago

Maybe it’s naive, but there’s something incredibly hopeful that there are folks not only protesting this kind of corruption, but also that there’s a government actually responding to the voice of the people. That the EU’s own legal frameworks might positively (if indirectly) affect things is even better.

nikolay2• 1 month ago

Was this going to Epstein Island 2.0?

nikolay2• 1 month ago

Albanians should realize that $4B will not change their lives a bit, but they will look like submissive sheeple. I hope they prove to be brave and determined. Their president is a total madman - I'm not sure why they elected him, which makes me think Trump's corrupt family will get what they want.

Albania Is Not for Sale: Kushner's $4B Resort Triggers'Flamingo Revolution'

Related Stories