My Star Wars!

I have written only four reviews on Google. So I am no veteran of the star front, nor any marshal of Google Maps. But my four ratings share one characteristic: they are extreme. When I have really liked a place, I have given it five stars. When I have left dissatisfied, I have given it one.

Among my positive ratings is a modest byrek shop in Mbrostar, which has now become a pit stop whenever I pass that way. I also gave five stars to a simple, almost makeshift, place in Borsh. The beach was clean, the food was very good, and so was the service. I even mentioned by name the young waiter who served us.

I take pleasure in the fact that this positive rating has been seen by thousands of people. Perhaps someone stopped there because of those few lines. But I have also written two one-star reviews, both for luxury restaurants. One was for a restaurant in Durrës that used to be very good, where I waited almost an hour and where the quality of the food was disappointing. Even so, I rated the waiter’s behavior highly.

The other was even harsher, but fully deserved. I had been invited to a dinner with a group of foreigners at what is perhaps one of the most expensive venues in Tirana. The music was so loud that I could not hear the person sitting next to me. I asked several times for the volume to be lowered, just a little, but my requests had about as much effect as someone hoeing in the sea.

The review was very negative, but not blindly so. I gave the food a 4 out of 5, while I gave the service and atmosphere a 1. So the chef was declared innocent. The manager and the waiter were penalized. Nearly two thousand people have seen the review.

From the restaurant? No response, not a question, not an apology, not an attempt to understand what had happened. Not even the standard formula: “We are sorry that your experience did not meet expectations,” that sentence which artificial intelligence can now produce before the manager has even taken a sip of his morning coffee.

This strikes me especially today, when Albania has been caught up in what we might call a war of the stars. Following the public reactions of a handful of business owners to the protest and the protesters, an organized campaign of negative reviews has begun against a limited number of restaurants and hotels.

I understand the anger. I even sympathize with it. When a business owner decides to enter the public debate, to show contempt for or insult protesters, they cannot expect to calmly return behind the counter and say: politics is politics, business is business. Especially not in capitalism, where the customer is king, not a shooting target.

Yesterday, the director of the State Police said that the police would investigate the issue of reviews. In a country with problems of organized crime, wanted persons, drug trafficking, and corruption, the idea that the police would spring into action over restaurant stars is, at the very least, an interesting choice of priorities. Threaten the Prime Minister’s life on social media and nothing happens to you. Dare to give a restaurant one star and the police rise to their feet, led by the top official with two stars.

But precisely because the police reaction is disproportionate, we should not fall into the same trap of losing all sense of proportion.

A negative review from a customer who has been to the venue, paid the bill, and describes their experience is one thing, but a thousand negative reviews, coordinated by people who have never set foot in that business, are something else. In the first case, the customer speaks; in the second, the crowd speaks. And the crowd, even when its anger is justified, does not always have the right target.

If the war of the stars goes off the rails, the innocent may be burned along with the guilty. Behind a hotel there is not only the owner who made an IDIOTIC and arrogant statement. There are receptionists, waiters, chefs, cleaners, suppliers, and families who live on those wages. It is an entire chain.

This does not mean the customer should remain silent. On the contrary. The review is one of the most democratic instruments of modern capitalism. A single customer can tell thousands of people about their experience. They do not need television, a newspaper, a party, or, until yesterday, even permission from the police. My best experience with reviews is not connected to luxury restaurants. It is connected to the satisfaction that a positive rating for a modest business has been seen by thousands of potential customers.

The worst experience is not the poor food, nor the one-hour wait, nor the music that made you want to seek acoustic asylum. It is the silence. The indifference. The fact that a customer writes publicly about a bad experience, thousands of people read it, and the business has no interest at all in understanding what happened. I believe the owners who want to do politics by showing contempt for customers or protesters have received the message. The yellow card has been shown. But regardless of the yellow card, the game goes on; it is not a signal for everyone to run onto the field. Because when the crowd decides to dispense justice with stars, the only thing that ends up with five stars in the end is chaos.

By: Lutfi Dervishi

The post When the Customer Shows You a Red Card appeared first on Albeu.com.

Rama and his people felt offended by the symbolism of a coffin, as a metaphor for political death. In fact, peaceful protests, through powerful symbolism, are expressing the urgent need to be heard and to receive concrete solutions.

The citizens in the square today represent the dignity of the nation; they are the embodiment of a resistance that disregards the cynicism of the times and proves that this people’s ability to react remains alive.

However, after 36 days of mass mobilization, the lack of a more energetic stance from the international community is disappointing. Those who once spared no praise, support, and even kisses for the prime minister now have a moral duty to take a clear position on this delicate crisis. In the spirit of the Chinese wisdom that “he who hung the bell on the tiger must also remove it,” the internationals must become aware that their investment in leaders like Rama cannot outweigh the will of a people exhausted by corruption and misgovernance. The call for “civility” toward a government that has exercised systematic “violence” against its citizens is a paradox that the coffin in the square demystifies perfectly.

SPAK’s role also remains critical. This institution holds the keys to the solution; the immediate investigation of electoral crimes, which are documented and gathered in their drawers, could render the last elections legally invalid. Hope for an awakening among some deputies in a motion of no confidence remains slim, as long as their mandates are held hostage by criminal groups rather than the will of the citizens. Beyond rhetoric, the internationals must monitor SPAK, which, through silence and inaction, is holding the fate of Albanian democracy hostage.

Faced with this deadlock, where neither the protesters nor the government are backing down, more radical democratic methods are required. Escalating civil disobedience through a nationwide “blackout” — in which businesses suspend operations to paralyze the machinery of power — may be the necessary next step. As an entrepreneur, I am ready to accept temporary financial sacrifice in exchange for liberation from a fiscal and administrative burden that is suffocating the economy. I am sure that such paralysis would bring down the government very quickly.

Now is the moment for another level of resistance. If the challenge is who can endure longer, then the sacrifice must be shared and escalated, until a secure and final solution is achieved.

The post Nikollaq Neranxi: The coffin in the square; when the people bury a finished regime! appeared first on Albeu.com.

The collective conscience offended and outraged

I feel a sense of disgust and misery toward certain analysts, professors, or moralists who openly or indirectly, like hyenas or foxes, pretend not to understand and essentially formulate the idiotic question: How did they suddenly revolt like this, for heaven’s sake?

Because for decades they have kept their ears and eyes closed, though not their mouths, they think popular discontent did not exist, had not been growing, and had not become a scorching volcano. Now they pretend to find the causes, when in fact they themselves are the causes.

The consciousness of public opinion, especially outraged public opinion, is not formed in a second, nor without reason, nor stirred up and sustained by conspiratorial factors. It is created gradually until it takes shape as a shared public opinion.

Without claiming to be exhaustive, this discontent that today is pouring into the squares and streets of the capital, onto social networks, into homes and neighborhoods across the country, was created little by little and replaced the illusions and utopias that after the fall of the dictatorship Albania would now, immediately, automatically become like the whole of Europe!!!

1. Discontent came and grew stronger from social reality itself, which instead of confirming the propaganda, openly contradicted it. Demographic emptying, the ruin of education, the degradation of the country’s productive infrastructure, stagnation in European integration, manipulated elections, an aging political class that would not accept political rotation and the citizens’ will, the degradation of healthcare, unemployment — in short, everything bleak that the mass of citizens carries on its shoulders.

2. Emigration became a bridge linking the lived experience of the large masses of Albanians who live abroad, in European countries and beyond, with the people who live in Albania. Public opinion learned from this that life with dignity, civil liberties, the state as a servant of citizens, freedom of speech, and so on, in Europe are not what a backward political class offers us in Albania.

3. Social networks, so heavily anathematized by the propaganda of all regimes in Albania, pointed at by all sorts of ignorant scholastics, proved their power as the people’s media, as the people’s universal cafés, where they pour out their troubles. Popular discontent found in social networks the place where it solidified.

4. Albania’s degraded parliament nevertheless gave the opposition, in its fight for power, the opportunity to criticize the government and bring a good deal of corruption and everything anti-people into the open. This should not be denied to the opposition, even if all of this was a battle of words with no practical political role whatsoever. As I have said, for various reasons the opposition is currently not a political factor in parliament, but only a speaker. This rhetorical aspect nevertheless helped ignite popular discontent, while through its own political action it blocks it.

5. Through anti-constitutional codes and laws, the population has understood that the vote in Albania has no value. What the opposition regarded as vote-buying devalued it, but every purchase also has a seller, and the sale of the vote was in itself an act of popular revolt against the inflation of the vote, which even today is worth nothing. Meanwhile, the government controls the vote as much as it needs to, even choosing those opposition MPs it wants, through mechanisms that citizens know very well! When the political system resembles a closed system, then citizens’ energies will flow especially outside it, outside politics, into a revolt and popular discontent that in its anger and rage includes the entire political class of the country, and not only that.

6. It is known that the consciousness of discontent and revolt is fed among the masses especially by the scandals and sins and vices of the ruling classes. That is how it has been and that is how it continues to be. However faint and infrequent SPAK’s accusations may be, they showed that corruption was not an artifact of political rhetoric, but a tangible reality. Billions of lek stolen, looted, mismanaged. Let us not forget that the people see the luxurious life led by those who call themselves their servants. The servant has climbed onto the master’s neck and says to him: Come on, act like a horse! Neigh and clatter along!, while striking him in the sides with his heels! MPs’ salaries in the stratosphere, the public administration filled with friends, patronage operatives, and militants, some of them socio-political euphorics to the point of idiocy. The quarrels within the ruling political class, the mutual accusations between government and opposition, have often been about who was the bigger thief than the other, more incapable than the other, a greater looter of votes than the other, more violent toward squares and people than the other. This long story over two or three decades one day rooted in the people the idea that they are all the same, and it has naturally radicalized the revolt and dissatisfied public opinion!

The masses of citizens realized that they had been left abandoned; power had abandoned them, politics as such — which only spins and spins in parliament and in media studios at night — had abandoned them, and the civil servant had abandoned them.

1. Ah, the civil servant! Just listen to what citizens say, to the hundreds and thousands of cases they recount where in a state office you cannot get anything done without flattering the civil servant, without saying: oh how handsome you are and how beautiful you are, how clever you are, without promising that you will be grateful for the service being done for you, which you pay for with your taxes, and finally, finally, by putting into his or her hand the money that he or she asks for with their eyes, with their words, with their behavior.

2. Revolt and dissatisfied public opinion did not come because citizens read the theoretical treatises of Locke, Spinoza, or Rousseau, but because life taught them, because they feel abandoned in hospitals, in pharmacies, in land registry offices where property is taken according to the law made by the MP, the politician, who then tells others: Have I broken any law? What’s wrong with you, populists? A people stripped of every property, which accumulates in the hands of those appointed by political decisions or simply because they have the ability to be puppets to hide the real owner, hand back one by one to the politician or administrator the money they supposedly earn through tenders.

Hopeless, abandoned, abused, paid as if receiving alms, insulted in every office, left dressed in used clothes, offered medical drugs that are not infrequently useless, left out in rain and sun, watching the wealthy glow of those who tell them every day: We are your servants!, disappointed, when after 35 years the promises have been trampled underfoot, when natural resources are given away, sold, gifted for personal interests, when they are told: Stay there because you do not know, I know! — what else is left for civic conscience, for public opinion, other than to be dissatisfied, other than to revolt?

The post Artan Fuga’s analysis: Citizens realized the authorities had abandoned them. The people’s servants living in luxury! What is left but revolt? appeared first on Albeu.com.

We need to stress that, according to the democratic concept of a country like Albania, when student youth rise up in mass protest, the government can no longer withstand it, and the country moves toward a technical government. Meanwhile, speculation has begun with the question: “Who is financing the students?” But this is a backward way of thinking, because to explain a social phenomenon such as political protest, you have to analyze the cause and not the money.

The cause of a protest with a political character is the mass rejection of the current government in power. And this is now happening in Albania as well. This may weaken a government, but it cannot bring it down, because it is known that peaceful protest is not a revolution.

But certainly, if the protests become massive in four or five of Albania’s major cities, the situation may lead to the replacement of the prime minister with a person who has value in public opinion; or to new elections through a joint government – but a joint government still shows no signs today that it could happen in Albania. And it cannot happen, because the Socialists today have 83 deputies in Albania’s Parliament, out of the 140 deputies that make up the Albanian Assembly. But…

We need to stress that an ongoing peaceful protest may weaken a government, but it cannot bring it down and create another one, because that is called a coup d’état, which turns the country into a dictatorship.

Nevertheless, we must wait and see how long the support will continue for the students who are currently protesting in Tirana; because great and sustained mass numbers against a government have historically brought either the replacement of the prime minister with a new government, or new elections.

But in Albania there is no possibility for new elections, therefore, if the student revolt against the Rama government continues, with growing numbers, the situation will lead to the creation of a new Socialist Party government. Because if the student revolts, enlarged in scale, continue to grow numerically, Prime Minister Rama is forced to leave through resignation. And this is a well-known phenomenon of democracy, from its very birth as a political system. But is Edi Rama that capable in the logic of political power?

So far Rama has not had that ability, because it is clear that he is guided, and has been guided, by the instinct of his absolute power. Then nothing.

Yes! Because as long as he continues to be dominated by the blind instinct of absolute power, an instinct which in fact is a clear pathology (a pure illness); Rama may be heading toward a fatal end.

By: Spartak Ngjela

The post Massive Citizen Protests / Spartak Ngjela: As long as Edi Rama continues to be dominated by the blind instinct of absolute power, he may be heading toward a fatal end! appeared first on Albeu.com.

This protest is not merely giving public actors a “chance”; it is holding up a mirror to them.

1. It is showing the government the limits of arrogance.

The vote won last year is not a hunting license for four years. A parliamentary majority does not replace social legitimacy, nor does it make listening to citizens unnecessary.

When thousands of people come out every evening, without parties, without buses and without pay, the system cannot blame the discontent on polls, algorithms or foreign agents, even though it has tried them all.

2. It is showing the traditional opposition something that until yesterday seemed unthinkable: the square is not its property.

The protesters did not ask for party membership cards or permission from opposition headquarters. In many cases, they even distanced themselves from them.

If the opposition does not understand why it was rejected, it will find it even harder to convince citizens that the alternative it offers will be anything different from the power it seeks to replace.

3. It may be sending the media its last possible warning.

This protest, too, was reported mainly through a partisan lens, either for or against, often depending on who pays the bill. Citizens noticed.

Credibility is not restored by changing the tune for a day. One news story is enough to lose it, and it takes years to win it back. It must be understood that the square is not against journalists, but against the “media product.”

These 34 days were a test for the media. How many outlets passed it will be shown by the audience in six months.

4. It is showing big business that capitalism without social responsibility is self-destructive.

A sustainable economy cannot be built on an impoverished and dissatisfied society.

Business that has grown on monopolies, concessions, favors and state capture has not built sustainable capital, but dependency. And dependency on favors becomes especially dangerous precisely when the state begins to fear its own citizens.

5. It is reminding civil society of the distance between the project and the problem.

Organizations that have worked for years on democracy, transparency, accountability and good governance often found themselves outside a movement that was demanding precisely these things.

Perhaps because the language of projects is one thing and the language of problems is another. It is one thing to talk about civic participation in a hotel conference room and another to recognize it when it appears, uninvited, in the square.

6. It is reminding the police that a uniform is no guarantee of immunity.

The way a peaceful protest is managed, the communication, proportionality, restraint and respect for the citizen all become part of the collective memory.

A police force that protects the state while respecting the citizen gains authority. A police force used as an instrument of political pressure may win a clash in the street, but it loses something far harder to restore: trust.

7. It is asking the justice system the question it cannot avoid indefinitely.

When will the case files be ready for the publicly known cases, for suspicious contracts, for decisions taken outside procedures, and for flagrant violations of the law and of logic?

SPAK does not owe anything to the square and should not be rushed by pressure from the street. Justice dictated by the crowd is not justice, but slow-moving investigations, by candlelight, into calamities committed in broad daylight make the question increasingly legitimate: who benefits from the delay?

8. It is offering new parties their hardest test: not to become like the old ones.

The first signs are not always encouraging; even among new voices, old reflexes are appearing: the search for a savior leader, emotional rhetoric without a program, the personalization of the movement and the temptation of a cult of the chairman.

Change is not proven by a new logo, nor by the leader’s young age. It is proven when the number two figure in a movement, if such a figure exists, can oppose the number one figure and survive politically.

9. To the protesters themselves, these 34 days are showing that anger can turn into endurance.

But endurance without organization and without a negotiating structure has an expiration date. The demands exist. The way to impose them is still unclear. The square can generate pressure, but pressure that does not achieve concrete results, over time, produces fatigue and attrition.

After the courage to take to the square comes another kind of courage, perhaps even more difficult: organization.

10. And to the entire system, without exception, it is showing that the cost of indifference has risen.

Not every protest brings down a government. The history of Albania’s transition bears witness to that. But the success of a protest is not measured only by the mechanical fall of a government, especially if it is replaced by another that governs in the same way.

Success is also measured by the rising cost of arrogance and the lack of accountability.

It is measured by the fact that, next time, anyone making a decision in the name of citizens must know that the price of arrogance is no longer zero.

P.S.

Whatever path this movement follows, partial reform, a change of government or quiet exhaustion, one thing has already happened and will be difficult to reverse: the collective expectation has changed.

Not yet the institutions, not yet the way of governing, but the expectation.

People who took to the square for 34 consecutive nights have learned something about themselves that the system cannot easily make them unlearn: that they can come out, they can stay, and they do not have to comply when they are told that everything will be fine. The protest may end, it may shrink, but what is certain is that it can return in other forms, over other issues and at a higher cost for those who choose to ignore it.

By: Lutfi Dervishi

The post This protest mattered, and so did what it revealed appeared first on Albeu.com.

According to the government decision, the area of state-owned land will be made available for the establishment of a free economic zone in Vlora. The Ministry of Economy and Innovation, the Albanian Investment Development Agency, and the State Cadastre Agency have been tasked with implementing the decision.

The company “RAMS Albania” appears to be linked to Mehmet Faruk Burbul, the owner of the international corporation “RAMS Global,” headquartered in Almaty, Kazakhstan (See the company details RAMS ALBANIA). The planned project in Vlora is worth around $100 million and aims to build an integrated economic zone, conceived as an industrial and technological park.

The zone is expected to include components of automation, artificial intelligence, and light industrial production, while the spaces within it will be rented out to various economic operators.

However, the government’s latest decision to make 88.5 hectares of state-owned land in Vlora available to RAMS Albania comes at a sensitive political and geostrategic moment, as diplomatic and security sources speak of dissatisfaction in Ankara with the Rama government due to Tirana’s growing ties with Israel in the defense and tourism sectors, as well as with Italy in the field of defense, including Pashaliman.

But what makes this project even more “exotic” is RAMS Global’s connection to well-known Turkish actor Burak Özçivit. According to information published earlier, since March 2025, Özçivit has become the face and partner of RAMS Global. The partnership was presented by the company itself, linking the actor to several of the group’s projects, including “Pavilion by RAMS” in Northern Iraq and “RAMS Beyond Almaty” in Kazakhstan.

Burak Özçivit is not an unfamiliar name in Albania. In the summer of 2025, the Turkish actor spent his vacation in our country and also stopped in Vlora, where he was received by the then-mayor, Ermal Dredha.

At the time, Dredha wrote on social media that Vlora had left an excellent impression on the Turkish actor, while his visit sparked major public interest, with dozens of citizens waiting to take photos with him.

“I had never seen so many people in Vlora waiting in line to take a photo with Burak Özçivit. It was a pleasure to welcome him today at the office, together with the municipal staff, and to spend time in Vlora, which left him with excellent impressions,” Dredha wrote at the time.

It is still not known whether the Turkish actor’s visit to Vlora was only for vacation and tourism promotion purposes, or whether it was also connected to his business interests as a partner and face of the RAMS Global group. /albeu.com/

The post Government Gives 88.5 Hectares in Vlora Free of Charge to Turkish Company RAMS Albania appeared first on Albeu.com.

Imagine for a moment that Dritan Goxhaj were the former director of AKSHI, accused of being part of a “criminal organization.”

Or that he were the mastermind behind the incinerators that, just like legends, are endlessly talked about, but no one has ever seen.

Or that messages had been found on his phone saying things like: “X gets this tender.”

Or that some 500 thousand euros had turned up in his home chimney.

Or some 3 million euros in the trunk of a Toyota Yaris, arranged so neatly that the car would not even have needed shock absorbers.

Or that he had appeared in Sky ECC wiretaps ordering murders with the same ease as ordering a macchiato in the Bllok area.

Or that he had been declared a strategic investor and built on some “tiny little spot” in a protected area in the South.

In short, imagine if he had one or several of these “merits.” At the very least, he would be an MP or an independent television analyst.

But no.

Dritan made one fatal mistake: he read out the five points of the protest and, worse still, he read them without spelling mistakes. Now that truly could be considered a national threat.

That’s all.

A man with no accusation, no file, no investigation, no hidden wealth, no ties to gangs or cartels, no wiretaps in which he promises jobs and tenders, no concessions and no special status.

A man who once left behind comfort, work and salary and went to fight for the liberation of Kosovo has now reached the most dangerous status in the Republic: he is being targeted.

And they have targeted him from morning till night.

Because to be clean, to be without accusation, is a provocation, an insult to the system, a disturbance of the ecological balance of corruption.

As Fishta would say: “If you have a tail, they cut it off; if you do not, they attach one to you.”

They are so talented at attacks that, if given a free hand, they would not only make the priest carry the burden, but then ask him to pay the costs of raising the child as well.

The post Dritan Goxhaj as an Anomaly of Normality appeared first on Albeu.com.

“The Bënja Baths between revelry and the ruin of Albanian nature”

The images shared a day earlier, showing people singing, dancing and celebrating atop the ruins of Albanian nature in the Langarica Canyon, brought to mind the film “The Fall of Rome.”

In one of the most powerful scenes of that 1960s cinematic masterpiece, the citizens of Rome dance drunk with joy while the barbarian hordes are already at the city gates. The ending is known: Rome is sacked, civilization collapses, and Europe enters what history knows as the Dark Ages.

Today, the Langarica Canyon and the thermal waters of Bënja are a living example of how we Albanians, as a nation, are heading toward a Dark Age in the protection of natural heritage. Bënja is a reflection of how a visionless government, aggressive toward nature and blind to heritage, can destroy the essence of a country called Albania.

I first went to Bënja around 1987, with the Partizani basketball team. From that time on, returning there became a ritual, a pilgrimage to one of Mother Nature’s masterpieces. The landscape was untouched. Green meadows, shady trees, Mato Gruda’s water mill, and a cobbled road built during the Ottoman period led you toward the mouth of the canyon. There stood the elegant stone bridge, a masterpiece of local architecture. Beneath it, the natural pools, surrounded by river-smoothed stones, gathered the healing waters. It was a landscape that brought to mind Japanese shrines, where nature and the human spirit coexist in silence. Anyone who saw Bënja in those years was left breathless. Years later, I also had the good fortune to explore more than ten still unstudied caves, where traces of human life go back as far as the Early Paleolithic. An archaeological, scientific and tourist treasure, almost unknown.

The damage to the area began when the medieval cobbled road was covered with asphalt. It was the first blow to the site’s historical memory.

The second blow came two years ago. The Albanian Development Fund, with financing of more than two million euros from the World Bank, launched an intervention that not only destroyed the natural character of the area, but turned Bënja into a symbol of a development philosophy that confuses concrete with development. Excavators entered the bed of the Langarica. The river’s ecosystem was altered. Centuries-old stones were removed and turned into retaining walls. The natural pools were replaced with concrete basins, alien to tradition and unsuitable even for the thermal springs themselves. The Ottoman bridge did not escape either. Its smooth stones, which had carried hundreds of caravans, were replaced with slabs, creating a restoration that respects neither history nor the basic principles of conservation. Across this landscape rose a giant parking lot, several alpine-style buildings and, of course, a restaurant. As if every public project in Albania is somehow fated to end with a restaurant. But the greatest damage is not aesthetic. It is economic. Anyone who knows rural tourism understands well that after spending more than two million euros, the economic impact for the local community will be almost negligible.

This area has been designed to become a camper van parking lot. Anyone involved in tourism knows that camper tourists spend little. They usually travel with their own food, use very few local services, and do not create a sustainable economy for residents. The numbers may rise, but the community’s well-being will not.

Meanwhile, just a few kilometers away lies the medieval village of Bënja. The monumental houses made of tuff stone are collapsing. The village’s medieval church is falling into ruin. The school was closed long ago and has turned into a pile of stones. And this is where the question arises. What if those two million euros had been invested in reviving this village? What if the houses were restored and turned into guesthouses? What if local families were supported with gardens, livestock and produce that would supply these guesthouses? What if the church were restored and opened to visitors? What if, through this benevolent work of the government, emigrant families returned and, with them, the voices of children to the village school? What if Bënja became a center of mountain tourism, with well-maintained trails and local guides? What if the ten caves of Langarica were studied by international universities, bringing students, professors and scientific expeditions that would stay for weeks in the village’s guesthouses? What if they were followed by cultural tourists, the kind who seek authenticity and not asphalt? That would be development, not only for tourism, but also as an example for other areas.

These are two completely different visions for Albania. One sees nature as a space where concrete must be poured. The other sees it as a heritage that must be preserved, because authenticity is precisely the greatest wealth we have. Let the reader judge for himself.

Therefore, Mr. Prime Minister, Bënja is not a debate about thermal waters. It is a debate about the way we understand civilization. A people that begins to celebrate the destruction of its own natural beauty is not yet ruined. But it has begun to grow accustomed to ruin. And this is the most dangerous stage of any barbarism. Those citizens dancing in your colorful photographs do not know that music over ruins is the last hymn of a civilization.

The post Auron Tare harshly criticizes Edi Rama: The interventions at the “Bënja Baths” are a reflection of how a visionless government, blind to nature and heritage, destroys the essence of a country called Albania appeared first on Albeu.com.

Because the drama is not only on the coast. It is not only about the flamingos, the lagoon, the luxury resorts or the iron fences. The drama is also in Tirana, in the heart of an area that was once sold as peace, greenery and clean air, but is now turning into an endless construction site. Dry Lake is not drying up from a lack of water, but from an excess of concrete. It is being suffocated every day by trucks, dust, noise, heavy machinery and permits that come down from above like orders to destroy even the little nature the capital has left.

Residents are not complaining about one more apartment block or one less. They are complaining about a way of governing. They are complaining that the roads are blocked by heavy-duty vehicles, that children can no longer go outside as they used to, that windows cannot be opened because of the dust, that the peace they invested in has been replaced by the noise of cranes. So the problem is not simply urban planning. It is social, economic, environmental and political.

In the olive-covered hills near Dry Lake, as Albeu.com has learned, excavation of the hillside has begun for the “Centaurea” project by the company “Bega-07” sh.p.k., owned by businessman Arben Muçobega.

This is a major construction project with 15 buildings of up to 9 floors, on an area of about 31,000 square meters of land and with nearly 94,000 square meters of construction above and below ground. This is not “development integrated with nature,” as marketing brochures usually package it. This is the classic formula of Albanian concretization: first you call the area green, then you advertise it as luxury, and in the end you hand it over to concrete.

This is where the greatest hypocrisy lies. For every such project, there is always a beautiful vocabulary: “harmony with nature,” “green lifestyle,” “new urban landscape,” “European standard.” But when the olive trees are removed, when the hills are flattened, when the landscape is destroyed and when residents live amid dust and without parking spaces, there is no marketing language left that can cover up the truth. The truth is that Tirana is losing its lungs, neighborhood by neighborhood, hill by hill, lake by lake.

Zvërnec shocked us because we saw violence in a brutal way: a citizen being dragged along the ground, private guards, fences, spray, a state appearing powerless in the face of private interests. But at Dry Lake the violence is quieter. It does not come with punches, but with permits. It does not drag people along the ground in front of cameras, but drags their lives through traffic, dust and noise every morning. It does not use pepper spray, but uses concrete as a weapon against the city.

And that is exactly what makes it more dangerous. Because when violence is visible, the citizen reacts. When violence comes with documents, decisions, signatures, 3D projects and luxury advertising, society often remains silent. This silence is our biggest problem. We are outraged when we see a body being dragged along the ground, but we do not react when an entire neighborhood is dragged toward concrete.

Dry Lake is the mirror of a Tirana that is being built without ideas, without soul, without infrastructure and without mercy for the citizen. Apartment blocks are built, but not schools. Luxury apartments are sold, but quality of life is not guaranteed. Construction sites are opened, but the community is not asked. Property prices rise, but the value of living falls. In the end, the citizen is left surrounded by walls, while those in power boast of development.

That is why Albanians have even more reason to protest, because it is not only Zvërnec. The same mentality that surrounds Zvërnec with fences is flattening the olive-covered hills at Dry Lake. The same government that talks about elite tourism on the coast talks about green residences built on concrete in Tirana. The same system that sees nature as merchandise sees the citizen as an obstacle.

Unfortunately, the years-long silence over unchecked construction in Tirana brought us the Zvërnec scandal. And today, you are protesting for Zvërnec, but turn your head toward Dry Lake as well. Because there, in silence, the same story is unfolding: Albania is being covered in concrete with permits, advertising and institutional smiles. And when a city loses its greenery, it does not lose only nature. It loses reason, breath and the future. /albeu.com/

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About 4.6 million entries are recorded annually from Kosovo; from North Macedonia, around 750 thousand. Together, they make up nearly half of the “miracle” of 12 million tourists that the government proudly trumpets in its statistics.

Then comes the diaspora. These are the very people who have kept the economy afloat for decades through remittances, who buy homes, open businesses, and fill the airports and beaches every season.

When they send money, they are hailed as the “engine of development.” When they promote Albania abroad, they are proclaimed “our best ambassadors.” When they say good things about the government, the red carpet is rolled out for them and a place is made ready for them in television studios.

But it takes only for some of them to appear in a protest square for the magic to be broken. Overnight, they turn into “people coming from abroad,” “manipulated,” or “agents” of dubious agendas.

And we are not talking about strangers with no connection to this land.

Kosovo gave us the League of Prizren and the foundations of modern national history. Albanians in North Macedonia remind us of the Congress of Monastir and the alphabet we write with today. Meanwhile, the diaspora has kept alive the lifeblood of thousands of families in our hardest days.

Therefore, this double standard is as absurd as it is offensive: when they bring foreign currency, investments, or praise, they are model Albanians; when they dare to bring criticism or join a civic cause, they are treated as foreigners with no right to a voice.

If they have the legitimate right to contribute to this country, they have the same right to care about it and speak about it. The public square and public debate cannot have customs checkpoints. Or should we put up another barrier in Skanderbeg Square as well?

By Lutfi Dervishi

The post When They Come With Euros They Are Brothers, When They Come With Banners They Are Foreigners appeared first on Albeu.com.