Photo by James Wheeler via Pexels
Welcome back to this bi-weekly 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 World
“A dictator” for whom I have “a lot of respect”
What a difference a couple of weeks can make, or so it appears as US President Trump goes from calling Zelensky a dictator to saying that he “can’t believe” that he said such a thing. Within a very short period of taking office Trump took a phone call with Putin, reestablishing diplomatic contact after 3 years of US led isolation of Russia.
Here’s a great breakdown from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on the minerals deal between the US and Ukraine. The deal comprises a reinvestment fund funded by half of the revenues from Ukrainian state owned natural resource firms. This bi-lateral agreement differs from the more unilateral initial deal which proposed $500 billion in assured natural resource revenues from Ukraine to the US and included security guarantees.
At risk of stating the blindingly obvious, outright bullying one’s allied nations into acquiescence, by tying security guarantees to tremendous quantities of compensation, is a damn sight of a divergence from the world order for the past 70 years or so. It will be worth watching how this deal plays out as similar deals are potentially on the horizon for the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and other nations.
A New Global Disorder
As the BBC wondered whether or not “the Europeans can still count on the US?”, to paraphrase a recent headline, Ukrainian President Zelensky endured a bizarre “diplomatic” session at the White House that included US Vice President Vance haranguing Zelensky for “not saying thank you”. There were also bizarre status games involving criticism of the Ukrainian head of state for not wearing a suit, with a dipshit conservative “news” outlet correspondent Brian Glenn continuing on to ask Zelensky if he owns a suit. This would be funny if it wasn’t so thoughtlessly mean. Zelensky has been wearing pseudo-military fatigues since Russia invaded Ukraine “in solidarity” with the troops on the front line. Zelensky’s attire says “my country is at war” and this is an intentional choice that’s been publicly stated many times. So it doesn’t present any surprise to us that Marjorie Taylor Green’s (remember, of Jewish Space laser conspiracy infamy) boyfriend (Brian Glenn) would be the asshole making such points in apparent willful ignorance of some of the biggest news stories in the past few years.
The Internet
Ground Control to Lunar Craft
Here’s this excellent video footage of the moon from a Texas based private company. On March 2nd this spacecraft, the “Blue Ghost”, will attempt to land on the moon. If successful this will be the second time (first time being 2024) a private company has put a craft on the moon via a “soft landing” (average touchdown speed around a couple of meters per second), as opposed to a hard landing (likely resulting in damage or total destruction of the craft).
Information wants to be Free
The white house has been positioning itself to undermine the Freedom of the Press in the United States, and the world, by manipulating the White House Press Pool processes and procedures. The Trump White House has moved to handpick the reporters that will be included in the press pool that’s granted privileged access to White House press conferences in order to propagate this information out to thousands of journalists and policy professionals. This stands in stark contrast to the normal rotations of reputable journalists, think AP, Reuters, the New York Times.
CNN’s longtime correspondent Jim Acosta, who served as the Chief White House Press Correspondent during the Obama and first Trump administration, has been strongly critical of the current administration’s stifling of the 1st Amendment (specifically, “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”). Acosta has roundly criticized
“We’re here to ask the hard questions, and honestly, it’s why the First Amendment is there,” said Acosta. “[Trump] can’t just throw that out the window… and have just fawning propagandists and sycophants in the Oval Office with him.” Source: MSNBC
The US
The Justice Department?
Stories of heroism and the very opposite of “just following orders” are starting to become apparent, and fortunately so in the public record, as the new administration continues to egregiously break laws and undermine the US constitution.
Now we’re all familiar with the West Coast’s left-leaning and progressive culture, ideology and population; what we could perhaps do with a playful reminder of, these days, is the spirit of dissent and almost instinctive distrust of authority that runs through the PNW in particular.
Taking inspiration from Pearl Jam, Seattle’s pride and joy, and their famous sticking it to the man (/conflict) with Ticketmaster in the 90’s, can the PNW continue to challenge unchecked authority? Apparently the answer is yes as a Greyhound bus driver told an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent to “gargle his balls” as the agent attempted to board their bus to search for undocumented residents to deport.
Greyhound announced that they did not consent to warrantless searches of its buses or non-public property at bus stations. Setting the stage for well intentioned individuals to stand up to authority figures themselves. Sure, Greyhound is headquartered in Dallas, Texas but we’re still going to take this story as a win for the PNW.
A perhaps more meaningfully significant protest, and certainly much higher level and more officious, comes from the outgoing US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Danielle Sassoon. Upon receiving a scandalous request, from the US deputy attorney general Emil Bove, to dismiss the federal case against Eric Adams (the Mayor of New York City) in an incredibly well throughout and principled letter which you can read here.
Some hero at the Department of Housing and Development (HUD) made their displeasure known on the first day of the Trump administrations’ ban on remote working, by hacking display screens throughout HUD’s offices to show a looped AI-generated video of Trump fellating Elon Musk’s feet, accompanied by the caption “Long Live the True King”. Consider our hats off to you.
One man’s Roman Salute is another’s Autism
As we touched on in January (see: “How strong are the Checks and Balances?”), the Controversy Surrounding Elon Musk’s Nazi salute, which now has its own dedicated wikipedia page and sub-section on the Nazi Salute wiki page, has been adding fuel to the fire and legitimizing the weirdos.
For instance, the construction company (Engineered Structures, Inc.) building the Boise State University construction management building (in Idaho) had their moronic CEO forced to resign after giving not one, but two (a la Musk), nazi salutes while on stage at a corporate event. While a video of Trump speaking plays in the background.
Some (many) might reasonably consider this the natural order of things: someone in a position of influence and authority performs a Nazi salute; swiftly followed by clear condemnations from their business partners; before resigning.
Who knows why this didn’t happen for Musk….
“My heart goes out to you” is what you typically say to express sympathy to somebody. You say to wildfire victims, “My heart goes out to you.” It’s not something you say when you’re thanking a roaring audience for supporting a politician. It was an ill-fitting line, combined with a jaw-drop gesture. Source: The Hollywood Reporter
National Farce
The US National Park Service (NPS), which is a sub-department of the Department of the Interior, and National Forest management system protects an incredible resource for the US and ~90 million visitors annually. The NPS relies on almost 300,000 volunteers, which suggests the system is pretty darn well cost-optimized, at risk of understating the situation. The NPS has leveraged budgets of ~$3 billion to return approximately $13 billion in sales, before mentioning a great deal of other benefits to local economies. That is to say, the National Park service is about as profitable as one could reasonably expect any government enterprise to be.
With an annual budget of almost $11.5 billion (2024) the US Forest Service (which sits under the US Department of Agriculture) manages almost 200 million acres of land (just shy of 800,000 km2) which is about 3 times the size of the UK (~250,000km2). Some ~3,400 workers representing 10% of the Forest Services staff have been laid off by the new administration. This is in addition to about 5% of the NPS staff, some ~1,000 employees, being laid off. In an image that will go down in history, some Yosemite staff hung an upside down US flag from the top of the El Capitan symbolizing a distress and a threatened nation.
Make America Healthy Again
A Measles outbreak in the US claimed a life for the first time in 10 years as a child died in Texas. In addition to the hospitalization of 20 individuals and some 164 cases (between Texas and Kentucky) logged by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the whole backwards and antiquated affair puts RFK and the vaccine-skeptic crowd in an uncomfortable and difficult situation. Some 95% of cases were in those who were not vaccinated against Measles.
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