Bart De Wever was never the chairman of Vlaams Blok. He’s never been a member of Vlaams Blok/Vlaams Belang, which makes it kinda hard for him to have ever been their party leader.

It still needs repeating to counter propaganda from Russia and Russia’s western supporters. If you leave propaganda unchecked, worse things tend to happen.

Not that hard, just got to look up how Crassus did it.

The russian assets in the White House want to portray Zelensky and Ukraine as insufficiently thankful for USA aid and as disrespectful towards the usa, and to use those supposed slights as justification for cutting off aid. To reinforce this narrative with their audience, other fellow travellers are now repeating those lies.

This goes back to the white house meeting where Trump and Vance claimed that Zelensky was disrespectful because of how he was dressed (normal) and how he didn’t thank anyone according to them (he had, profusely, there’s video of it). It was a clown show and the meeting didn’t deliver the desired images + soundbites, so now the usa republicans are working overtime in providing the necessary soundbites for fox news etc.

One USA metropolitan area has as many as many people in it as many small countries. All these excuses that you’re making as to why there are no large protests because of American exceptionalism, they just sound hollow. Protesting or not comes down to people and ATM there seems to be a severe lack of high level activist pro democracy leadership.

Edit: I do appreciate your answer about it taking 2 years to prepare that march, that’s new info for me. But even then, I’d expect pro democracy protest everywhere and the Washington DC metropolitan area (or other densely populated areas) shouldn’t need to depend on further away regions to get large numbers to turn up.

So why was it possible to organize such a protest in 1963 but not in 2025?

Lack of democratic leadership is not a geographic problem. In your previous comment you claimed that it was because of distance that there were no large protests, but it’s pretty obvious that those distances are not the reason.

The civil rights movement managed to organize a massive march on Washington in the early 1960s. It should be far easier to organize something similar or even larger with the current technology and larger population.

Trump’s fascist coup d’état appears to be progressing nicely (for the fascists that is).

Hitler only needed 53 days to secure absolute power after having been appointed chancellor. Trump is now 33 days into his second presidency.

Trump and Putin their relationship isn’t going to reverse. Trump is a gullible idiot and Putin is not, if they meet and negotiate face to face, then Putin is going to get what he wants. Especially because Trump has said before negotiations even started, that he wanted to give the occupied lands to Russia. Trump is such a “master negotiator” that he sells out his own side before the talks even start. This is why Putin wants to negotiate alone with the usa, without the eu countries or NATO present.

The Observer is one of the oldest news papers in the world. Generally quality journalism I think, though I’m not a regular reader. Since a few decades under the same ownership as the guardian, but apparently sold 2 months ago.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Observer

And articles changing after first publishing happens quite a lot. It beats putting out a separate article for every small development in an ongoing story. For example: entity A said x about B, and later there’s an update wherein B denies x happened. In quality journalism it used to be done in clear updates at the bottom and/or top of the article. But now with Trump, A is claiming x and then later A realizes how dumb that was, so A claims they never said x and that they’ve always been saying y. Good luck reporting on that in a clear and concise manner.

Many thanks for the links, was interesting.

Just by the existence of food standards laws, we know that there must have been food standards problems. Stuff like mayonnaise composition being put into law, must mean that there had been a mayonnaise quality problem or worries at a certain point in time, I just can’t find any specific info on when or what. Those scandals were probably recorded just as well in the news papers of my small country, but if no one writes a new article or paper about the scandal 50+ years after it happened, then that info won’t turn up in an internet search query.

Redheads are probably less genetically diverse than the rest of the population, iirc it’s mostly caused by a recessive gene. So if someone is a redhead, then the chances are high that they share other special genes with other redheads.

Africans on the other hand are more genetically diverse than people from other continents. It’s possible that some African population groups require different levels of medications, but you won’t be able to tell those population groups apart by the color of their skin.

Do you have examples of this stuff happening in continental European countries? I’d love to jump down that rabbit hole.

In the past I’ve read descriptions of systematic bad practices in the industrialized Uk, but I can’t recall reading about similar things happening in other western European countries. Nothing systematic anyhow. I’d image that the french would have had a(nother) revolution if anyone had tried that stuff with their food.

It’s a self-coup, so people are correct in calling it a coup. It’s still in progress, so it’s not clear how much power the white house will end up usurping, but with what they’ve done so far, it’s imo already enough to call it a coup.

From Wikipedia: A self-coup or coup from the top, is a form of coup d’état in which a political leader, having come to power through legal means, stays in power through illegal means through the actions of themselves and/or their supporters. The leader may dissolve or render powerless the national legislature and unlawfully assume extraordinary powers. Other measures may include annulling the nation’s constitution, suspending civil courts, and having the head of government assume dictatorial powers.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-coup

The wiki article also contains a long list of other historical self coups. Germany in 1933 is the most famous example.

In a system where men and women are treated equally (double surnames, same parental leave etc), it might no longer be needed for central governments to register people’s sex, only the healthcare system would need to know. I’m just thinking out loud here, this might be a bad idea for other reasons.

If you’re curious what their official children are up to: https://english.elpais.com/usa/2021-04-20/nicaraguas-political-dynasty-heirs-in-a-golden-cage.html

Tldr: the eldest daughter accused her father of sexual abuse and had to run to Costa Rica. The lives of the other 8 adult children + the lives of their families are mostly controlled by the president’s wife.

Caged is already no longer available where I live, so the price I gave is for perchery eggs, medium sized. I would have added that it was for perchery, but I only learned that word 5 minutes ago from your post ;). In the last few years when caged eggs were available, a 6 pack of perchery eggs usually was the same or almost the same price as caged. I remember the price difference being so insignificant that I always bought perchery.

But there’s bound to be so many regulatory differences, that probably even the perchery label will have different rules. And some of those labels are pretty empty. So imo for a simple comparison, it’s still best to just compare cheapest with cheapest of the same size and ignore labelling/marketing.

The cheapest I can find atm are 2.1 euros for a 12 pack of store brand eggs, 0.175 per egg. Eu.

Edit to add: imo the only relevant comparison is comparing the cheapest with the cheapest available chicken eggs. If you add in branding, location, … Then you’re no longer comparing eggs, but rather cost of living & marketing.

2nd edit: perchery, medium size.

Also the same category as Reagan’s election and the embassy hostages + Iran contra affair. It’s part of the standard republican playbook now.