Men's Lifestyle June 5, 2026 0 Comments

Exclusive: How Trump’s Family Plans to Swap a Pristine Nature Preserve for a Lavish Coastal Paradise—And What It Means for Us All

Is it just me, or does the phrase “swam to the island and fell in love with the view” sound more like a line from a cheesy rom-com than the beginning of a billion-euro development plan? Yet here we are, watching as Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s latest beachside escapade threatens to ruffle the feathers (and the flamingos) of an Albanian bird sanctuary. While they claim it’s all about “responsible stewardship” and job creation, protesters aren’t exactly buying the sales pitch—especially when water cannons start making an appearance. How do you turn pristine wetlands into luxury resorts without the locals throwing more than just shade? And does this saga mark the next chapter in political grift or just another episode of “Who owns the coast now?” Buckle up; it’s a wild blend of power plays, environmental battles, and a dash of barefoot hikes that might just make you question reality itself. LEARN MORE

7 min read

Out on the Weekend

(Permanent Musical Accompaniment to the Last Post of the Week from the Blog’s Favourite Living Canadian)

It appears that the efforts of our First Family of Grift go merrily on all over the world. Now, they are threatening an Albanian bird sanctuary because the Jared and Ivanka subsidiary like the beaches there. From the CBC:

A massive coastal development project linked to Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of U.S. President Donald Trump, is facing growing resistance from protesters in Albania.

Police fired water cannons and clashed with protesters Wednesday in the capital, Tirana.

The government says the development on the Adriatic coast would be transformational for the former communist nation as it seeks to enter the high-end tourism market and pursue European Union membership.

But the venture, spanning an abandoned island and a nearby stretch of seafront on Albania’s southern coast, has drawn opposition from environmental campaigners and critics of longtime Socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama.

The luxury project has two components: a coastal development in the Narta Lagoon area, a wildlife reserve, and a smaller resort on the nearby uninhabited island of Sazan, a communist-era military base.

It seems that the property caught the eye of the Czarina, and that appears to be all it takes.

The planned development of hotels, apartments, villas, and a marina is linked to Kushner and Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump. In an interview this week with U.S. podcaster David Senra, Ivanka Trump said they discovered the site by accident.

“We were on a friend’s boat, and we stopped for a swim. Effectively, that’s how we found it,” she said. “We swam to the island. We went on a hike, barefoot all the way up to the top, and we were just captivated.”

Do you believe they swam to the island? Yeah, I don’t either. In any event, the fix already appears to be in.

An investment firm linked to Kushner has been granted special investor status by Albanian authorities.

And the flamingos and sea turtles get sold out. From Reuters:

The €1.4 billion ($1.6 billion) resort is being led by Kushner’s investment firm Affinity Partners on an island off Albania and an undeveloped stretch of coastline near the Vjosa-Narta protected landscape, a wetland home to flamingos, seals, and sea turtle nesting sites. Environmentalists oppose the plan, which they ⁠say would impact several hundred hectares of pristine beaches.

Developers say they will progress responsibly.

“Our focus remains on responsible stewardship, environmental enhancement, job creation, and creating long-term value for local communities. We respect the ongoing public and institutional processes,” said Asher Abehsera, chairman of Sazan Real Estate Development LLC, which is developing the plans in partnership with Kushner’s firm.

I’m certainly convinced.

Affinity Partners and Kushner did not respond to requests for comment.

No kidding.

Protesters gathered outside the office of Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama on Tuesday evening, holding inflatable flamingoes and signs that read “Nation is not for sale” and “I don’t want Albania like Dubai”.

I’m more worried about Albania turning into West Palm Beach.

Apparently, mortgage-fraud fabulist Bill Pulte has as his portfolio as temporary Director of National Intelligence to be as much like a termite as humanly possible. From Politico:

Trump said in a Wall Street Journal interview published Friday he believes the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is too bloated, and has tasked Pulte, who will take over for Tulsi Gabbard, with overseeing staffing cuts.

The Journal reported Trump suggested Pulte prioritize firing staff who served during the Biden and Obama administrations. Trump told reporters on Friday he “wouldn’t mind” staffing cuts at ODNI.

“I’ve heard that’s way too high for way too long,” he said on Air Force One of the staff levels at the agency. “If he cut, I wouldn’t mind that.”

I have my issues with the intelligence “community,” but I don’t think it deserves to be led, even temporarily, by a solid-gold hack like Bill Pulte, and the Journal story isn’t going to do Pulte any favors in Congress, where doubts about him already abound. And, of course, Pulte will be charged with doing whatever he can to advance the president’s favorite delusion.

Trump also said he wants Pulte to focus on releasing information related to the 2020 presidential election, which Trump regularly and falsely asserts was stolen from him. He told reporters on Thursday that “you may find out some things about the rigged elections” following Pulte’s appointment. When asked by the Journal what information he hopes Pulte will release, Trump said, “I would say everything—he should look at everything and make a determination.”

The structures of belief in this administration are a real funhouse.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: “Save The Roach For Me” (Buck Washington): Yeah, I still pretty much love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit to the Pathé Archives: Saturday is, of course, the 82nd anniversary of the Allied landings on the beaches of Normandy. Here, from 1944, is a British newsreel just brimming with triumphal sarcasm.

The German POW’s herded into a sheep paddock were particularly amusing to our narrator. History is so cool. (This was a big week for WWII memorials. Thursday was the 84th anniversary of the Battle of Midway, which turned the Pacific war around. Here is the arrival of wounded personnel from the USS Yorktown, which was sunk during the battle. Here, also, are underwater videos of the four Japanese fleet carriers sunk by American aircraft.)

Look, science marches on and all that, but I am not going to eat Caveman Yeast Sourdough bread. From 7News:

Scientists have successfully baked sourdough using yeast taken from Otzi the Iceman, a 5300-year-old mummy discovered frozen in the Austrian Alps.

Researchers found yeast inside the ancient mummy’s remains and after months of painstaking work, managed to bring the prehistoric fungus back to life. The result was a tasty loaf of sourdough bread, made from yeast that had been dormant for more than five millennia. The team behind the extraordinary experiment says brewing beer from the ancient yeast is next on the menu.

If I’m not eating Caveman Yeast Sourdough bread, I’m sure as hell not washing it down with Caveman Yeast beer. You guys lost me at the phrase, “prehistoric fungus.” Sorry, gang.

Discovery Corner: Hey, look what we found! From the AP:

In 2019, fire brought Notre Dame’s spire crashing down as the world watched. The cathedral was rebuilt and reopened in late 2024, and now Paris wants to soften the hot, bare square in front of it with trees and shade. But in a city this old, the soil cannot be turned until what lies beneath it is excavated, in case it is damaged during works. So a slice of Notre Dame’s forecourt has become an excavation site—an open pit ringed by barriers and crossed by a wooden walkway, a few steps from the line-up.

French media have dubbed it the “dig of the century.” “It’s a rare opportunity for us to work on something that’s tangibly going to make a difference to the history of Paris,” Lucie Altenburg, a conservator with the Paris archaeology unit, told The Associated Press.

Among the hundreds of objects already found: a fourth-century coin stamped with the face of the Emperor Constantine, and shards of medieval pottery painted on the inside with marks no expert has yet deciphered—like a modern Da Vinci Code. “Here you can see the layers—medieval Paris, Roman Paris, maybe even before that,” said Yasmine Benali, 22, an archaeology student watching from behind the barriers. “It makes the city feel less like a postcard and more like something still being discovered.”

C’est magnifique, as we say along Wollaston Boulevard. And wouldn’t “Roman Paris” make a great Double-Aught spy name?

Hey, Live Science. Is it a good day for dinosaur news? It’s always good day for dinosaur news!

The predator, named Jian changmaensis, was a close cousin of Velociraptor and belonged to a strange group of small birdlike dinosaurs called microraptors. Unlike the large and scaly Jurassic Park version of raptors, these animals were feathered, lightweight and glided to get around. Based on fossil evidence, J. changmaensis had long feathers on both its arms and legs, giving it the look of a tiny dragon with four wings.

The fossil, described Thursday, June 4, in the journal Annals of Carnegie Museum, is only a partial left shoulder and forelimb. But those bones were enough to reveal a new dinosaur species, and possibly solve a longstanding mystery at China’s Changma Basin, a site packed with ancient bird fossils and broken bird bones that look a lot like the pellets coughed up by modern owls.

So, there were the early birds and then there were these critters. For every creature that develops, there’s another one that eats it. Evolution is a tough room.

I’ll be back on Monday for whatever fresh hell awaits. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line and wear the damn masks, and take the damn shots, especially the boosters and any New One. In your spare time, spare a thought for the Iranian people, and the Lebanese people and all the other people downrange in our newest war, and all the people in ICE detention, and the Epstein victims, whose trauma is back in the news again, and Eric Swalwell’s victims, and the victims and their families in the Tumbler Ridge school shooting in Canada, and for the shooting victims in Austin, and for the families of the victims of the mosque shooting in San Diego, and in Michigan, and in Virginia, and in Louisiana, and for the brilliant journalists of the Washington Post, and for the citizens of the occupied city of Minneapolis and South Burlington, Vermont, and for all the people and the people in the flooded areas of southern Africa, and in the flooded areas in Ireland, and in the flooded areas of Brazil, and for the storm-clobbered, flooded areas of the upper Midwest, including my alma mater, and in Georgia, and for the people affected by the tornados in Mississippi, and for people suffering from the hantavirus outbreak on the Hondius, the outbreaks of measles, a particularly brutal flu, and the Legionnaire’s disease outbreak in Harlem, and for our LGBTQ+ citizens, who deserve so much more from this country than they’re getting.