Around New England

Communist Albania Was A Green New Deal Paradise, Lowell Sun Columnist Says

February 17, 2019

Albania under the Communists was the cleanest, greenest, and unhappiest place Lowell Sun columnist Peter Lucas had ever seen when he visited in August 1986.

The country had no cars for anyone except the rulers, and almost no airplanes.

“But Albania was green. There was no fossil-fuel pollution, and the air was fresh and clean. There was no freedom, either,” writes Lucas, whose parents were born there.

“… The roads, streets and sidewalks were clean as well. There was no litter because there was nothing to buy or throw away. There were no shops, bars, cafes or restaurants. There were no places for people to gather. Parks were green, but there were no people in them,” Lucas writes in the Lowell Sun.

Moreover:

“Everything was free in Albania. The Communists controlled everything, from birth to death — health care, shoddy as it was, education, packed with propaganda, the vast military, which couldn’t fight its way out of a paper bag, religion, which was abolished, a free press, which did not exist, and dissident-packed prisons.”