Photo by Natalia S from Pexels
Welcome back to this week’s installment of What Just Happened?!, a semi-comical digest of the most important news from the UK, US and the World. Look out for us every now and again, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
The US
Getting a few ungraceful words in on the Way Out (did the octogenarian scupper the Democratic Presidential Campaign?)
“The Whole Garbage Affair” as one BBC reporter put it, so eloquently and amusingly, describing the democratic party’s panic in late October as Biden called Trump supporters garbage. The Democrats have an historically poor record of behaving like the grown-ups in the room with regards to talking smack during election seasons (and otherwise); take this example of Hillary Clinton saying that half of Trump’s supporters are a racist “Basket of deplorables”. The thing about having the Moral High-ground is that if you use it, you lose it.
Here’s the scariest video you’ll see from Halloween: it’s Trump on October 30th, 2024 opening the door to a garbage truck to go about his regular campaign business. The President Elect looks like a 78 year old man opening that door, almost falling over in the process. It remains this publication’s position that elder abuse is wrong. Joe Biden (at 81 years old) was considered much too elderly to continue to occupy the highest office in the land.
At least there’s going to be a peaceful transfer of power in 2024
To the extent that America is a democratic country, it’s possible that Minnesota is the most American state in the U.S. in virtue of their leading turnout rate of 76.3%. Oklahoma came in last place for participation in the democratic process with 53.44% turn out. Across the US as a whole, voter turnout was just over 62%, meaning that almost 38% of eligible voters did not vote in the 2024 election. That’s 91 million eligible voters who did not vote in the 2024 General Election. That’s considerably more people than voted for Harris or Trump in 2024 (about 70 and 75 million respectively, to make an educated guess before the very last of the count is totally complete).
Of the eligible voters in the US, how many voted for the Democratic party? About 28.6%. And the Republican party? About 30.4%. This is worth remembering in the event that you feel overwhelmed by any claims or suggestions that a “majority” of Americans support a convicted felon occupying the highest office in the land, or that women shouldn’t have the right to choose what happens to their bodies. From the perspective of the democrats, who would’ve only had to have won over ~4.5 million of these enfranchised individuals who decided not to vote, to have swung the election for the democrats. That’s 1 in 20 people that ultimately decided not to vote. Now bear in mind that the democrats spent $5 billion on advertising in 2024, about $1 billion more than the Republican party.
In the future, the path to victory (for anyone) is surely to better enfranchise this remaining third of the US population that isn’t currently interested in participating in democracy. We remind everyone of this to hopefully help motivate bringing the temperature down a bit, politically speaking. Washington D.C. saw a 7% vote for the party formerly known as the Grand Old Party (GOP) by straight-faced earnest and respectable conservatives. What does that tell us about the civil servants and the “political establishment” and their view of the better of the routes just presented to the U.S. and the world?
The World
“He must be the King… he’s the only one not covered in mud”
Spain declared 3 days of national mourning after flash floods killed well over 100 people, where years worth of rain fell in a matter of hours. The authorities are being criticized for a delayed emergency response. The Spanish King was confronted by crowds of angry protestors in Valencia; “You’re four days late, you should have been here earlier” says one of the young people in a direct conversation with the King. Angry crowds throwing mud at the King suggest that reassurances such as “we have an organized national system for this” are not exactly convincing. In one of the most European videos your author has ever seen, a local reflects with peace in their heart that everything, and the river, shall return to normal.
The UK
In for a Penny, in for a Pound!
Britain’s major telecoms business (BT) and one of the largest supermarkets (Sainsbury’s) have announced that they expect to raise prices in order to pay for increased National Insurance (British Social Security) payments following Labour’s UK budget. This is the sort of predictable outcome that had many people sighing when Prime Minister and Labour Leader Keir Starmer carried on at length about what constituted a “working person” to attempt to not publicly renege on a campaign pledge to not raise taxes on simple, working Brits.
The Internet
One Person’s Alternative Facts are another’s Misinformation
The FBI felt compelled to take action on the basis of fake videos circulating on the web around the US election. Videos purporting to be from the FBI contained misleading content aimed at undermining confidence in the US electoral process, which prompted the FBI to issue a statement that these fake videos were not in fact coming from the FBI. Finnish research firm CheckFirst investigated the source and origin of the videos.
There were also a number of bomb threats issued to polling stations in the US around the November 5th election. The FBI announced their awareness of these threats and that they were linked to Russian email accounts.
The English Disease gone global? Football Hooligans aren’t good ambassadors.
Football hooliganism (aka the English Disease) is a scourge in many European cities, and further afield. Amsterdam saw an unfortunate bout of geo-politics meets good-old-fashioned yob-ism as Maccabi Tel Aviv played Amsterdam’s Ajax. Videos circulated online of the Israeli football fans chanting anti-arab slogans, and generally behaving like football hooligans. This would not be the first instance of football hooliganism from Maccabi’s fans, with prior coverage of previous public displays of grotesque racism.
Reuters verified a video of Maccabi fans chanting “Ole, ole, let the IDF win, we will fuck the Arabs!”, while letting off flares (of course, the IDF is the Israeli army). Deeply disturbing sentiments of locals going on something resembling a “Jew Hunt”, beating up the visiting football fans, have prompted a national outrage and no unclear condemnation from the Dutch king. With about 5 people hospitalized and dozens arrested, it’s not hard to see why the Dutch are rather concerned about evoking devastating memories of European persecution of Jewish people.
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