Christos Delivorias

Dad, husband, geek, perennial learner, FullStackQuant | RT/follows are not endorsements

[ArtButMakeItSports @ArtButSports]

Hercules and Nessus, by Giambologna, 1599

[Alexander Stahel 🌻 @BurggrabenH]

I doubt the barefoot hike. I'm no fan of the Christopher Columbus complex, and I happen to admire elites who develop a country rather than exploit one. So let me explain what is actually going on here.

I did, among others, property across Eastern Europe during my years at Babcock & Brown, and I spent the better part of a decade fighting a court case in Romania against people who tried to defraud my land title. I won. And here is the lesson I paid for: the one thing that separates an investable Eastern Europe from an uninvestable one is European Union membership. It is the guardian of the rule of law in an otherwise wild East, the easiest place in the world to lose your money.

That is the lens through which I read what is happening on Sazan Island.

You see, there was a time when Western elites saw themselves as custodians of institutions, rules and the places they touched. That instinct is fading. What remains too often is the Columbus reflex: arrive by yacht, "discover" land that people already know perfectly well, and treat the rules as obstacles reserved for everyone else. And then have the wisdom to go on camera and brag about it. Jesus. No wonder Albanians are now on the streets in their thousands.

"We were on a friend's boat and stopped for a swim. That's how we found it. We swam to the island. We went on a hike, barefoot all the way up to the top, and we were just captivated."

What she "found" has been there for millions of years, in the Adriatic, not "the Mediterranean." It has a name. Sazan Island sits where the Adriatic meets the Ionian: a former military base, Italian and then Cold War, including a Soviet submarine base, inside a protected national marine park that has been open to the public since 2017 via boat tour from Vlorë. An island crawling with snakes, including the nose-horned viper, Europe's most venomous. So much for the barefoot hike.

Nothing was discovered, and nothing justifies any entitlement. Quite the contrary.

What actually happened is that Jared Kushner set out to cash in on his father-in-law's temporary power as President of the United States. That status means precisely nothing in Switzerland, with its seven centuries of direct democracy and institutions no outsider can buy. But it means everything to a weak man like Albania's prime minister, Edi Rama, cornered at home, courting Washington, and now under criminal investigation for how his government handed this deal away. Kushner understands that asymmetry perfectly. And he wants to exploit it. Period.

In Albania, he can. Albania is chronically bureaucratic, the long tail of its communist heritage, a home-grown Stalinism so absolute it broke even with Moscow and sealed the country off from the world. That legacy is the same one that ran, and still runs at times, from Sarajevo to Tirana, from Bucharest to Belgrade: decades of one-party rule that hollowed out the courts, the press and property itself, and left a vacuum filled by the personalised, strongman power of a connected few. It is the soil in which corruption flourishes, and Albania's greatest vulnerability.

And on that soil, in one of Europe's poorest countries, the island's protected status was suddenly changed in December 2024, in the weeks between Trump's election victory and his inauguration. Just like that. The public-tender rule was bypassed. "Strategic Investor" status went to a Kushner-linked SPV before the inauguration: no business plan, no feasibility study. Wonderful. Because Ivanka "discovered it". Right? Wrong.

A country vulnerability like that can be met in two ways. A responsible investor sticks to the rules and ties his fortunes to the country's long-term development, because that is what makes returns durable in the first place. And that will take a lot of time and upfront investment, with a highly uncertain reward. That's called risk-taking.

A powerful one, on the other hand, willing to bend the rules, as this deal suggests the Trump family is content to do, sees only something to exploit.

The subsequent damage runs far deeper and longer than a few harmless bungalows built without a proper concession. What is happening here is that Kushner is becoming part of the problem that corrodes Albania's path into the European Union. That is the real issue here. Just like the issue when JD Vance travelled to Europe and openly campaigned for illiberal politicians while lecturing Europeans about democracy. Who do these people think they are? Guardians of democracy?

Consider what the Albanian path actually looks like right now. The Balkans, like much of post-communist Europe, are chronically corrupt. But they are also full of people fighting to turn their countries toward something better, and EU accession is the single most powerful tool they have. It forces the one thing that actually develops a country: predictable rules, secure property, contracts that hold, and the credible belief that the same rules apply to everyone.

That belief is what brought the great wave of investment into Poland. Its absence is why Romania and Bulgaria remained under special monitoring for years after accession. The rule of law that eventually held in that Bucharest courtroom, and saved me, exists because membership forced it into being. Brussels learned the lesson. Today enlargement runs on a "fundamentals first" basis.

Which is exactly where Albania stands.

Last month it became only the second candidate after Montenegro to clear those rule-of-law benchmarks, with the EU's own enlargement commissioner describing SPAK, the very prosecutor now investigating this deal, as the country's "most trusted institution." The concession lands squarely on the chapters that decide membership: the judiciary, justice and public procurement. So this is not a side issue to Albania's European future. It is a direct test of it.

And that is why this does not help. It does the opposite. A single family connected to the presidency of the United States showing that the rules bend on demand corrodes the one asset a poor country cannot afford to lose: the belief, hard-won and easily lost, that the rules are real.

Then those same people have the chutzpah to complain about corruption in Eastern Europe and lecture the world about American exceptionalism. It is all so deeply wrong. And make no mistake, it erodes our democracies too, ever so slightly.

The thousands in the streets of Tirana understand all of this instinctively. They are not protesting a resort. They are defending the only thing that gives their country a future and hope: the rule of law applied equally to all.

And make no mistake about who the brave ones are. They are not on a yacht. They are on the street of Tirana and inside SPAK, because in Albania, stepping on the toes of the powerful is done in the knowledge that the danger is real. Confronting entrenched corruption in the Balkans has cost prosecutors, judges and journalists their their lives. That is the issue here, ladies and gentlemen!

I doubt Ivanka loses any sleep over any of this. Her concern is closing the deal while her father remains in office. And on a timeline that tight, a public tender, one they may well have won fairly, becomes an inconvenience rather than a safeguard.

That is the difference between a custodian of capitalism and democracy like Warren Buffett and the late Charlie Munger and a primitive land-grabber without any moral compass and integrity.

[₯M@rios🇮🇷🇨🇺🇵🇸🇷🇺🇷���🇬🇱 🇪🇸 🇭🇺🇨🇿🇱🇧 @epan_e_kinisi]

Μας πέρασε η Ρουμανία σε Α.Ε.Π, μάς πέρασε η Βουλγαρία σε αγοραστική δύναμη & τώρα μας πέρασε η Αλβανία σε εθνική υπερηφάνεια.🇬🇷

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

Incredible Albanian people.

[Arno About @basedbrickpush1]

Took a Greek cab today.

We take off and the Fasten Seatbelt alert starts blaring.

I check mine all good. Check my wife's, all good.

Look around, turns out it's the taxi driver who isn't strapped in.

This man completed the entire 25 minute drive listening to rythmic DING DING DING sounds.

Unfazed. Unbothered.

Zen masters are envious of this level of inner peace.

[Christopher DeMorteau (Constantine Mortopoulos) @demorteau]

Βγήκε, λέει, βρώμα ότι ο Βαξεβάνης εκβιάζεται ή/και τα μαγκώνει.
Αυτός που μπαινοβγαίνει στα δικαστήρια αποκλειστικά για δημοσιογραφικές αποκαλύψεις κι ένας καργιόλης ή μια καργιόλαινα "Αριστεροί" δεν πήγε να συμπαρασταθεί απ'όξω.
Για να το κάνω απλό μάγκες: Ο Βαξεβάνης...

[Paul Graham @paulg]

This is an actual page on the White House web site. It reads like something written about a third world dictator. So embarrassing. I have not seen any branch of the federal government sink this low in my lifetime.

[daz @MetamateDaz]

Albanians just showed the world how it's done.

The government was selling off prime coastal land and protected islands to Jared Kushner and linked investors for a massive luxury resort turning public beaches and nature reserves into private playgrounds for the ultra-rich. The people said: HELL NO. Thousands poured into the streets under “Albania Is Not For Sale.” Protests turned fiery. They stormed government buildings and burnt down the Prime Minister’s house. This isn’t just about a deal. It’s about sovereignty. It’s about refusing to let your country be auctioned off to foreign billionaires while locals lose access to their own coastline. When elites sell the nation’s future for kickbacks and luxury resorts, the people have every right to push back hard. Respect to the Albanians for refusing to be colonized by cash. Other countries should be taking notes.

[Thanasis Koukakis @nasoskook]

Η κυβέρνηση δίνει αυξήσεις 120% στο μισθούς των Αρχιερέων, ένεση ρευστότητας στους παρόχους ρεύματος, τα τέλη των τυχερών παιγνίων, το backlog της ΓΕΚ ΤΕΡΝΑ και τι αλλάζει στη παραχώρηση του ΣΕΦ https://t.co/oSNkHUulZF

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

It’s all talk. Just withhold foreign aid to Israel for a month and they’ll stop bombing their neighbors - instant peace, the Strait of Hormuz can be opened, and gas drops $2 a gallon. Israel has been, and continues to be, the biggest welfare recipient from American tax payers.

[Christopher DeMorteau (Constantine Mortopoulos) @demorteau]

Δύο λέξεις που συνήθως -και κακώς- μπερδεύουμε είναι ο "αλήτης" (εκ του αλώμαι=περιπλανιέμαι) και ο "αλιτήριος" (εκ του αλιταίνω=βλάπτω με πρόθεση).
Η διαφορά φαίνεται χαρακτηριστικά στην πρόταση "η Δεξιά είναι γεμάτη αλιτήριους και η Αριστερά γεμάτη αλήτες".

[Gergely Orosz @GergelyOrosz]

What I’m hearing: Instagram’s Trust and Safery org absolutely gutted the last few weeks. ~60% of the org gone - between layoffs and forced reassignments to data labelling.

All while “AI maxxing” pushed a bunch of bugs to prod. And hence why today’s massive Insta account takeover happening.

[Gergely Orosz @GergelyOrosz]

It’s wild how Meta - a company going all-in on AI - somehow missed the memo on how AI can generate images and videos that renders “take a selfie of yourself” verifications utterly useless

So now Instagram accounts hacked at scale. 2FA also fully bypassed - by Meta’s own design

[Oxford Union @OxfordUnion]

A statement from the President, Arwa Elrayess:

[Jeremy Corbyn @jeremycorbyn]

Banning Cenk Uyghur and Hasan Piker from entering the UK is an absurd and cowardly decision from an increasingly authoritarian government.

Let us call this what it is: an attack on the freedom to criticise Israel, as well as the UK government’s own complicity in genocide.

[Ash Sarkar @AyoCaesar]

I was supposed to chair the @hasanthehun discussion at SXSW this week, who's been banned from entering the UK by Shabana Mahmood. First of all, @sxsw must facilitate a way for Hasan and Cenk to contribute remotely, as a bare minimum refusal to comply with government censorship.

[Cenk Uygur @cenkuygur]

I’ve been banned from the UK. I tried to get on a flight to London to attend SXSW London and give a speech at Oxford. I’ve been banned for criticizing Israel. Are we free anymore? This is oppression of Western citizens by our own governments on behalf of a different country!

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

Artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships, and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate or even simulate, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational, and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom. #MagnificaHumanitas

[Christopher DeMorteau (Constantine Mortopoulos) @demorteau]

Ας πω και τούτο για να το ανασύρω εύκολα στο μέλλον:
Δεν θεωρώ (σε αντίθεση με πολλούς) τον Τσίπρα ούτε άχρηστο, ούτε ανόητο, ούτε οκνηρό, ούτε μη έντιμο.
Αντιθέτως:
Τον ��εωρώ άνθρωπο με αγνότατες προθέσεις, ευθύτητα, προσωπική ακεραιότητα, εργατικότητα και θέληση, συν μία...

[Бианка @BiankaB12]

Piece of advice: if you are a parent, watch out what the Finns are doing and copy them. It's one of the few countries that pays closer attention to their youth. They observe, study, and adjust all the time!

For example, they are now gradually reversing their decade-long, tech-heavy education model to combat declining cognitive performance and severe classroom distractions. Schools are scaling back on devices in favor of printed textbooks, handwriting instruction, and pen-and-paper assignments.