Youpe Last Week

Former wives, younger brothers, and quasi nazis

Another week and another look at another week’s goings-on in Europe, or as Grandma Riva, born in Horadenka, Ukraine, circa 1888 — featured here holding a very young Jack Friedman after being called away from her weekly poker game — called it, “Youpe.”

In Normandy, France at the 82nd anniversary of the D-day landings, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the beaches in Spain, Italy, Greece, and Bulgaria were now being invaded by immigrants. “When will European capitals do something about that invasion, or is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not.” Historian Simon Schama described the secretary’s remarks as a “special kind of loathsomeness: a blend of historical deafness, grotesque stupidity and comically ludicrous self-importance,” adding, “as if the little people’s rage against immigration somehow is superior to the war against the 3rd Reich and entitles this comic book nobody to lecture the actual heroes.” Greece plans to modernize the Old Archaeological Museum of Sparta, built in 1874. In Tiranë, Albania protestors turned out in opposition of a luxury resort being built by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, who said it would be a “very high-end product” and the “the ideal resort that I’d want to be at with my family and with my friends.” The $1.6B property is being planned for the uninhabited Sazan Island, an environmentally sensitive area, home to 200 species of birds, including flamingos and Dalmatian pelicans. “There is not such a thing like the family of the American president taking over protected areas where flamingos will be killed by them,” said the country’s Prime Minister Edi Rama.