He is an extraordinarily wealthy man who has a platform that many will listen to.

And he did quite some of that indeed before his coronation. Couldn’t shut up, some would say. Among other things, he’s never been opposed to Australian republicanism. Now he’s bound to protocol, and the protocol says that the King is not to voice any even remotely political opinion whatsoever. He can comment on how nice the food was, that’s about it.

Regarding wealth he’s something like the 2000th wealthiest person on earth. Theoretically, can’t find him on the billionaire list though he reportedly just about makes it. Lots of people have inherited more money and done way worse with it. I don’t think it should be possible to inherit that kind of fortune but that applies in general, not just to monarchs.

Everyone has agency, stop pretending one of the richest and most privileged people in the world just doesn’t have any other choice.

The crown is not a person, it cannot choose anything. As said: If Charles abdicates, Parliament will just recognise the next in line (William) as King. And push come to shove there’s no end to that line.

Tell them “no thank you, I don’t think my role as king of a colony is appropriate”.

First off, Australia is not a colony, it is an independent Kingdom. Secondly, it’d still be up to Australia to then abolish the monarchy, or force-retire him for behaviour unbefitting for a king and go with William, or whatever.

The monarchy exists because people are lazy and just let it keep existing,

Then blame the people. Blame them for being lazy. Blame them for not agreeing. But why blame a monarch for not needlessly causing a constitutional crisis? He’s a mascot, he’s doing his job just as in other countries a President is doing their job, and when you compare what he says and does before and after coronation it also becomes obvious that he’s playing a role. He literally shut up about absolutely everything ever since he got that crown.

People calling him illegitimate is the right and proper response to him pretending he has some special place in Australian society.

If Aussies want to get rid of the monarchy then they can. Noone but themselves is stopping them. Until they do, you can’t blame the monarchy for not telling its subjects what they’re supposed to do with the monarchy. For one simple reason: If the monarchy were to abolish itself it would be committing an undemocratic act.

Best I know according to their legal tradition the monarchy cannot possibly do that, only Parliament can, because only it has the power. Charles himself could abdicate but that would not abolish the monarchy, the title would instead move to the next one in line.

He dissolved parliament based on what rules written by whom, on whose orders?

Hint hint: Based on the Australian constitution, written by Australians, on the order (well, “advice”, same thing in this case) of the Australian Prime Minister.

Prosecutors have a lead against someone holding Ukrainian citizenship. That doesn’t say anything more than that someone with Ukrainian citizenship was involved, in particular it doesn’t say that he’s not a Russian operative. Or Polish, for that matter, the Poles were uncharacteristically uncooperative.

In any case it’s not like Germany would be mad it’s the wheels of justice churning as usual. Heck at this point I haven’t ruled out that it was a German operation. The whole yacht theory is in general on shaky ground because one does not just lower some sea mines with a yacht. Or smuggle them to a Polish port. etc., etc.

No blame on Westminster, at all? Like, we’re ignoring that the UK was a (flawed, but still) democracy for most of Australia’s colonial period?

And how would him abdicating help the situation in Australia?

He’s taken up a duty, and he’s fulfilling it. That includes being a symbol, and as such getting attacked for the past and present wrongs of Britain, Australia, etc. Still doesn’t make him responsible, though, in precisely the same way that Bugs Bunny is not responsible for the acts of the board of Warner Brothers.

The kingdom is 2.210.403km², it’s huge, 12th largest state in the world, larger than Saudi Arabia or Mexico. Most of it is Greenland though and it’s going to be difficult planting forests on glaciers so I think they mean metropolitan Denmark.

I’m not saying he deserves anything I’m saying he has no choice but to be the king, best he could do is abdicate but that only would put his son in the same position. It’s up to Australia to abolish the monarchy, not House Windsor.

Last I checked Australia is independent, and last I checked I also said that Australia has to account for a lot of failures when it comes to addressing indigenous concerns.

Nothing of which has anything to do with Charles who has literally zero power over the situation. I’m pretty much as republican as people can possibly be but let’s not blame on powerless monarchs what’s actually the fault of elected representatives. Gets into the way of holding them accountable.

Noone’s forcing Charles on Australia. Aussies are generally in favour of becoming a republic, thing is they can’t agree on what kind of head of state they want so for the time being it’s gonna continue to be the British Monarch.

There’s lots to be said about the failure of Australia to properly address indigenous concerns, literally nothing Charles can do about that but be a symbol to throw ire at to get some press coverage. He can’t even tell “his government” to deal with the issue, the thing he tells “his government” to do is whatever the government tells him to. They’re writing their own marching orders.

Without Swan Lake, how can there be putsch in Kremlin? Truly, genius move.

lemm.ee currently even proxies links to external images, sunaurus identified some issues with it, storage wasn’t one of them. Storage requirements are going to look quite differently if you’re lemmynsfw.com but it’s not particularly hard to get enough donations to afford a couple extra TB a month. Much, much cheaper than paying admins an actual wage where I think the actual scaling pain will be.

hink about how angry people get at the idea of tipping for ANYTHING and then wonder how many of those are throwing significant cash at your favorite lemmy or mastodon instance per month.

a) it’s not significant amounts, it’s quite cheap, per user, to run lemmy, e.g. lemm.ee is one of the bigger instances and costs 200 Euro a month, b) tipping 20% on a bill that doesn’t even include any service is not the same as donating to a service you like. This is more like a patreon which doesn’t lock anything for non-donating users.

US gets to appoint Ukrainian politicians […]

LMFAO so if, say, Scholz says to Macron “I don’t think Trump should be US president, he’s not suitable, Harris is a much better option” then it necessarily follows that the EU is controlling US politics.

i’m an individual with imperfect knowledge doing my best to reach the closest thing to truth i can with the information i have available

No you aren’t, or you wouldn’t just take those “US appoints Ukrainian politicians” talking points at face value. You’d use your own head and assess for yourself what that tape means.

She’s a good science communicator in her specialised area from a particular POV (No, Sabine, physics, also theoretical physics, has made progress in the last 50 years) but past that she neither has a clue nor the discipline to work towards having a clue, or the sense to work with people who have a clue.

She lacks that one crucial virtue of a scientist: Considering herself to be clueless. And as a science communicator you need to be a good scientist – not in pedigree of your degree, but approach to knowledge.

Note before I get the inevitable Russian shill comments - I’m not justifying any aggressive invasion by Russia.

No, you’re just parroting their BS propaganda.

Some of those organizations just happen to be associated with the far-right groups that were part of the initial government that was unconstitutionally appointed In 2014 after Euromaidan- a series of violent protests that forced the pro-Russian president to flee the country.

The constitutionality of the confusing as fuck situation is quite irrelevant (the Rada had the power to do what it did, it did have the votes, but procedure was not necessarily followed properly when disposing of the AWOL president) because there were new elections right after, healing any hiccup. Elections which tanked the results of those far-right parties which weren’t exactly impressive in the first place.

Elections which solved a popular uprising caused by the president to renege on the country’s path to EU accession. That was the sparking point for the protests, which at that point could’ve been solved without an erm special electoral operation, but the Russian puppet ordered Berkut to fire on protestors, which those didn’t appreciate and consequently failed to calm down and disperse.

After said puppet went AWOL and got disposed and the interim government did nothing much really but organise elections, Poroshenko got elected (yay, another oligarch, as is tradition), trying to solve Russia’s invasion (the green men one) militarily. Zelensky pushed him out of office in the next elections, on a peace ticket, as a Russian native speaker… and then Russia invaded even more. They fucking hit Kiev. The Ukrainian army had re-grouped extensively after the little green men operation, the SBU had identified and neutralised gazillions of Russian operatives, either the FSB didn’t notice or they didn’t want to tell Putin what he didn’t want to hear. The rest is taxi memes.

If that – those totally irrelevant right sector fucks – is the US’s influence in Ukraine then it truly is pitiful. Compare the influence of glorious Europe: Ukraine actually wants to join up!

We’re not supporting Ukraine because of democracy and sovereignty and human rights, we’re doing it for geopolitical motives.

You should be supporting Ukraine because of democracy, sovereignty, and the security guarantees you gave them by signing the Budapest memorandum, remember, when Ukraine gave up its nukes. You are supporting them not because you care about any of that including your promises, agreed, you’re too fickle for that, but because you don’t want to lose Europe as an ally, a geopolitical motive, because boy can I tell you Europe cares about all four points, more than everything Europe cares about Ukrainians caring, about supporting a rightful struggle by a people dreaming of a better future, and Russia re-igniting imperialist BS. And you’ll continue to support Ukraine even if you don’t care about Europe because you care about Ukraine not nuking up.

All this, ultimately, just amounts to a French win. They wanted strategic autonomy for Europe for a long while, they considered NATO braindead for a long while, getting the US out of the equation, having everyone see how fickle, unreliable, and of course self-absorbed and self-righteous or self-hating (depending on how that exceptionalism swings) you are, is just what’s needed to for the rest of Europe to fully buy into French doctrine. The US is driving nail after nail into the coffin of Atlanticism and the French are loving it.

…and that’s another reason why you won’t be dropping Ukraine: Because then your military-industrial complex would lose a very affluent customer. Currently European states get shouted at by the French when they buy US instead of European, that voice would fall completely silent because noone would be buying US, any more. Who’d have thunk in the face of Trump greed might just save your geopolitical standing.

Relevant Indian Metal.

The actual leader is Bernd das Brot.

The EU is plenty strong enough to defend itself – and Ukraine – against Russia. Several times over. Without switching to a war economy. Your maths fall flat once you realise that much of those 70% are aircraft carries in the Pacific and random research projects into fusion or whatever, utterly irrelevant to the question at hand.

On the contrary without the US in the game expect Poland to put boots on Ukrainian soil pretty much instantly, and that’s after the rest of the EU convinced them to not march straight on Moscow.