News/Current Events, discussion (Bullets, Ballots & Bombs)

[rublev]

i'm trying to think of a suitable metaphor for gove saying he's just figured out that boris might be incompetent as a leader. this kind of behaviour (boris resigning from accountability, gove going back on his 'I'd never be PM') is exactly what people felt they were voting against in referendum.

i think boris is finished - too much baggage to come back from this. pretty sure gove is done too. both damaged goods, gove now coming across as A+ untrustworthy. gove has repeatedly said he'd take us completely out of single market and seems to have written a doc about how the good friday agreement was an embarrassment to UK pride. avoid.

the sad reality is that we (the UK) will probably have little to say about 'real world problems', like the stuff that actually matters, for the foreseeable future while we clean all this up. although it also looks like brexit won't be happening for the foreseeable future either.

[pirxthepilot]

confusing times for the left tho. only a year ago the EU was the embodiment of authoritarian neoliberalism, slapping syriza around and imposing austerity on the southern countries

[rublev]

frustratingly i think the centre left are generally in identity crisis mode all over europe because they're struggling to find exactly where they now sit in relation to state / labour / free movement etc. the difficultly with syriza as a test case is that what happened there was so specific and 'never seen before' - in broad terms they were offering something they couldn't really deliver (not surprising for insurgent populist parties). perhaps in greece the story is less syriza and more pasok - the social democratic party that was 'the left' for decades until the crash and have now simply evaporated. there are a few exceptions in coalitions across the continent i guess, but most centre left have seen support leak away (just look at front national, 5 star movement, freedom party, party for freedom, podemos, green etc). simple left/right divide seems pretty precarious. most of our economies have had fundamental shifts in how they're arranged (manufacturing to majority services etc) and a lot of the original areas of centre leftism have been co-opted by the broader political spectrum (even UKIP). i think the referendum highlighted quite quickly the divide in 'identity' on the left too - a cosmopolitan liberal london vs. larger cities in the north and pretty much anywhere else that has previously voted labour. the addition of scotland makes it even more confusing. mixed demographics, lots of ex-industry, ex-labour heartland (labour are now finished and i see no way back), but clearly identifying different 'left' principles.

UK labour seems to represent many centre left parties throughout europe in that that they're struggling to hone in on what they're doing, who they represent, why they WANT to represent, and how to get there. i'm not a londoner but i like sadiq khan and his pragmatism, and my impression is he has broad appeal - maybe all this isn't manageable within labour, who knows (of course mayor is v different). i'm neither french nor italian but in france, in italy etc, seem to be trying to dig out new distinctive centre left answers to eurozone problems, which i guess is encouraging (but i'm aware they're controversial characters, macron and labour reform especially, and may be seen as not addressing 'traditional left' issues).

tl;dr... dunno mate, wish my lib dem vote mattered once in a while (edit: actually, need to think about that more... maybe mean more in the sense of a credible left alternative / opposition that pressured both lab and con to be less repellent and more open minded)

[rublev]

but coming back to your point - incredible turn out of pro EU sentiment (but mostly in london) yesterday

seems worlds away from , etc



is my fear

[WussWayne]

[rublev]

monday

[rublev]

so tomorrow sees the release of the 'highly anticipated but in reality of little consequence' chilcot report. doesn't rule on war crimes, won't seek ways to resolve current iraqi instability, and probably won't change any minds in general about the iraq war.

will:

- give insight into memos between bush and blair before the invasion (did he commit before 2002 / parliamentary support etc), potentially also highlight more of his drivers / core arguments
- cast a critical eye over intelligence community, particularly in regard to weapons knowledge pre-invasion
- more info on reasons behind the disaster that followed - military / political / diplomatic failures etc

there will also obviously be various levels of political fallout within the ongoing clusterfuck of a political situation we're currently wading through (like corybn wanting blair to be prosecuted at the ICC etc)

[rublev]

[Ques]

interesting take but i disagree -- i feel that she did the best that she could while working within the confines of the system. if she wasn't there i feel certain that things would have turned out worse.

[rublev]

- only a short clip but interesting considering the above

[hirokinakamura]

RIP Alton Sterling

[eufemism]

so we're supposed to wait for facts with breaking news before placing blame except for when white cops get shot

[hirokinakamura]

RIP Brent Thompson, he was a former Marine and a grandfather

RIP Patrick Zamarippa, he was an Iraq veteran and a new father

RIP Michael Krol, he was a son and a brother

RIP Michael Smith, he was a former Army Ranger and the father of two girls

RIP Lorne Ahrens, he was the father of two young children

edit: lol you are a bitch motherfucker. my fucking bad man, do i have to go back and edit in that sterling was loved by his family. should i post something else about philando castile (whom i didn't post about, guess i was wrong there too huh) and that he was a beloved cafeteria supervisor and son and brother and honours student and UMinn alum. in fact let me put together a short life history of all of them, that way you'll be satisfied. as if i'm being selective or some shit in random pointless reaction posts on some random pointless internet fashion board. you need to get fucked bro.

[thephfactor]

[rjbman]

I think everyone can agree that the spurt of violence this week was horrific, for all the victims and their families. Alton Sterling and Philando Castile are both dead, and it's a shame. Neither of them was doing anything remotely deserving of their deaths or any violence whatsoever. Likewise, all the cops trying to keep the peace at a protest were doing their job. Not all cops are bad people.

[CheerUpBrokeBoy]

american race relations are a meat grinder for nuance. people are going to keep trying to boil the issue down to these tidy little "us vs. them" narratives that a 5-year-old could understand. black people vs. cops, cops vs. black people, black people vs. black people, gun control vs. the 2nd amendment, etc. this isn't fucking star wars, there's so many shades of detail that immediately go out the window when people get angry.

if nothing else, good cops need to start denouncing and condemning incompetent, corrupt and/or racist cops. that's a first step that most people can agree on, at least, but the blue code of silence keeps good and bad cops indistinguishable from each other. there's a mentality of "solidarity at all costs" where police officers will stand with each other no matter what, which makes it so much easier for people to buy into the belief that all cops are pigs, and good cops often pay the price – just as innocent black men pay the price of bad policing, creating a vicious cycle of violence.

[rublev]

labour are apparently on 'general election footing'.... it would be funny if it wasn't so depressing

corbyn is ruining the party, and ruining the idea of effective opposition (also a maniac)

see ya in 30 years, labour

[rublev]

don't know whether to laugh or cry at the appointment of boris as foreign sec

boris johnson, david davis and 'disgraced former cabinet minister' liam fox are in charge of the UK speaking to the wider world

[rublev]

boris in the telegraph





he also won the spectator competition for most insulting poem about erdogan and described clinton as a "sadistic nurse in a mental hospital"

( thanks, fixed)

[Ques]

thoughts? im sincerely hoping SCOTUS doesn't have to decide this election, too

[adiabatic]

[rublev]

reports of dozens dead and many more injured in nice after a truck drove into crowds nooooo no no :(

france was due to lift the state of emergency on july 26th

lots of twitter rumours (which are just rumours)

[ramseames]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/ ... is-vehicle

84 dead so far...

Could have been even worse, the truck was full of guns and grenades apparently.

https://berniesanders.com/press-release ... s-clinton/

This is some good news, long overdue as it may be

[rublev]

something weird going on in turkey

turkish fighter jets flying low over ankara (streets apparently empty) and what seems to be the turkish army closing both bridges over bosporous in istanbul

[rublev]

[rublev]

helicopters opening fire over ankara

military now saying they have full control of the country



turkish state news looping the weather forecast

anyone witnessed a coup live before?

[rublev]

still don't know enough about what is actually really happening (now hearing the attempt might be being organised by gulen factions). military coups in generally are not a good thing (look what happened in egypt). ramifications could be huge at a time when the region is so unstable. if successful could potentially change war against ISIS / syria dynamic. i'll type something out longer about what it could mean for turkey when i get a chance (fyi, turkey have a history of military coups)!

[rublev]

army at state new offices (TRT)

announcement just said a new constitution is being drawn up now



troops in taksim square

twitter, youtube, and facebook are being blocked

[Ques]

erdogan using facetime to speak to turks through CNN



says this is a coup and to take to the streets

[rublev]

NBC is reporting erdogan has been refused landing rights in istanbul - seeking asylum in germany

just reports, so who really knows