Which part? Like, the whole thing happening, or was something reported to have happened that didn’t?
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My guy, there’s a coronation spoon.
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I don’t know how any of it works or the significance of how the traditions started, so I’m at a full blank on any of it.
A jury has found Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll, but did not find him liable for rape.
The jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages.
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Then this was ultimately meaningless. Yeah, Carroll gets some vindication and compensation, but looking at the wider aspects of this, if that jury did not find him liable for rape after all of this, and did not order that he provide a sample of DNA to match with what Carroll says she has, then it is still not actually showing that he did it, just that they think it’s most likely that he did, and he gets yet another slap on the wrist when all is said and done, instead of officially being forced to provide the sample that will prove once and for all that he truly is a rapist and have him labeled as that forever. I’m glad Carroll got her moment and ultimately won, I’m glad Trump ended up looking like a fool and a coward yet again in front of the world, but this needed to go so much worse for him at last, to show conclusively how awful he was before he ever entered show business or politics, and it failed to do that, meaning not much happened here at all.
It is another nail in Trump’s coffin for any plans of re-election though (on top of the avalanche of other stuff). Overall with all of Trump’s failings and PR disasters and Desantis’s disaster with education reform and Disney dealings its shaping up to be a fantastic 2024 for Democrats with a presidential election that will likely be a landslide for Biden as republican failings become more transparent and as more young people become of voting age (and Baby Boomers exit voting). Although Biden has had some PR trouble with his age he has had a really overall well rounded and expertly handled term legislatively especially given some of the situations he was handed
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All true. Its just infuriating that once again the harshest possible outcome has not been reached for this most awful of wealthy and powerful offenders.
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Sometimes it’s good to have some pettiness in diplomacy.
Poland’s government on Wednesday said it will stop calling Russia’s neighboring enclave Kaliningrad and instead refer to it by the historical name Konigsberg (‘Krolewiec’ in Polish) — a move Moscow described as “close to madness.”
(Konigsberg is the prussian / german name)
Also I don’t know how things are in everyone else countries but here in France after the pension reform and protests we have the executive (via the prefects) forbidding protests left and right, to the point that 8th may celebration were basically empty in Paris…
But the Paris Prefect still authorized a fucking 600 neo nazis and other fascists march the day before, because, to paraphrase, “they were peaceful, contrary to others”.
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World’s Largest Daycare or a Reservation for Idiots?
Closer to Kyiv than to Moscow I bet.
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Russian nationalists speak like the worst of American right-wing media. Maybe that’s why Republicans want Kyiv to burn.
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Other way around, it is the Yanks that parrot what the Russians say. They are a fifth column and they don’t even know it.
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“We’ve estimated it’s a fireball 100 times the size of the solar system with a brightness about 2tn times the sun’s,” Wiseman said. “In three years, this event has released about 100 times as much energy as the sun will in its 10bn-year lifetime.”
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Some of you might remember the small write up I did about Mali last year, part of it was about a massacre made in March 2022, by Wagner, and blamed by the Junta on France.
This is the important bit I then wrote about, click to expand,
Mali is currently changing their entire alliance. They are now allied to the Russian Federation, and the combat is now helmed by the Wagner group.
This shift is understood to have been a deliberate effort from the russian. And started when a Junta took power of the country in 2020.
This was done through the (now) usual propaganda, social medias… But also through direct actions.
In March the russian mercenary group Wagner massacred a town, and buried the victims near an withdrawn french base. Propaganda then ensued to accuse the french troop of war crimes.
We know that because a french drone captured it on camera.
The reaction of the Malian authorities ? They blamed France for violating their airspace.
The European Union is accusing Wagner to deliberately destabilizing the region.
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you can also look at the whole post for some more context
Today, the UN Human Right Office of the High Commissioner relesed its report, confirming it :
Malian troops, foreign military personnel killed over 500 people during military operation in Moura in March 2022
GENEVA (12 May 2023) – A fact-finding report from the UN Human Rights Office has concluded there are strong indications that more than 500 people were killed – the vast majority summarily executed – by Malian troops and foreign military personnel during a five-day military operation in the village of Moura in the Mopti region of central Mali in March 2022.
“These are extremely disturbing findings,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk. “Summary executions, rape and torture during armed conflict amount to war crimes and could, depending on the circumstances, amount to crimes against humanity.”
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Sunday was election day. Editing in the update that the Supreme Election Council has confirmed that Turkey will indeed have a runoff on May 28 as Erdogan has failed to secure a majority.
And in Thailand, pro-democratic opposition parties secured major victories over the military-aligned ruling parties.
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And they didn’t even have to unionise.
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You say that but I literally saw a supposed feel good story about a group of primary school kids in the US who organised simply as a way to not accrue lunch debt. I would try to find it but it is buried under the news of all the higher education students that are protesting for their not wanting to have crippling debt.
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It’s G7 season!
And a good write up by AP journalists (the hypothesis of an intentional and concerted “debt trap diplomacy” is seen as less and less probable):
And a bit of French horn tooting (AFP via F24)
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