All-purpose news and politics thread

[Vibranium]

is there any group in Syria that doesn't want violence?

[JCAll]

is there any group in Syria that doesn't want violence?

I imagine the people with bullets going into them would object, but they're beyond the point of caring by then.

[Iangould]

is there any group in Syria that doesn't want violence?

The overwhelming majority of protests in Syria are nonviolent - at least until the government forces start shooting at the protesters.


But pretending otherwise feeds westerners' anti-Arab prejudices and provides a handy excuse for doing nothing.

[mikekerrIII]

Wang Weilin (Tank Man) was almost definitely executed.

As for Cheng, if he isn't residing in the US three months from now I will give you $10.

I will take that bet, and if he is not and is still alive in 2 years I will double that back to you

[Iangould]

I'm not sure about the hundred million pounds figure.

His probate report shows he left a gross estate of £410k in 1952. That's about £10m in today's money before any death duties.

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/arti...&searchLimits=

It translates into around $13,000,000 Australian, which sounds ludicrously low for someone who owned several major metropolitan newspapers. Keith Murdoch had been selling off assets for several years and had probably transferred a major part of his assets into family trusts prior to his death.

[dupersuper]

If I was a conservative, I'd feel insulted that a Tory minister thinks he could win my vote through homophobia.

In that case, you'd clearly be a bad conservative.

[king mob]

That was a weird judgement since he pretty much built the company from a small Australian outfit into a huge multinational by himself.

Labour's old bruisers are still bitter about the 80s.

Bollocks. Murdoch's a nasty piece of work, and he's built his company through employing equally nasty pieces of work.

And frankly the quicker Murdoch has his influence over politics in this country broken forever it'll be a better place.

[king mob]

That's the impression I got from her appearance on HIGNFY last year.

"How dare they protest against corporate greed! They've got iPhones, and they drink coffee!"

Umm...so?

She's clearly hovering around waiting for the moment Cameron stands down as Tory leader (or as it may well be after the local elections, his party gets rid of him) to launch a bid for herself as party leader, But yes, that performance (and it was a performance) was rightfully ripped apart by Hislop, Merton and Danny Baker.

And here is that wonderful clip.

[king mob]

The Tories and Lib Dems have been mauled in the local elections by Labour. The Lib Dems were already walking wounded from last time, they're simply losing the local government base they spent decades building up.

The Tories also lost vote share to UKIP but UKIP won few seats, unlike Labour which got many. What's the Tory response? To say the coalition needs to be more righty because of UKIP. Quelle surprise!

Or as one twat said it:



If I was a conservative, I'd feel insulted that a Tory minister thinks he could win my vote through homophobia.

People were expecting a low turnout and expecting the Lib Dems to start to vanish off into oblivion, but the scale of the Tory twatting is larger than anyone really thought, and it's not going to help them get voters to turn out by saying 'well, it's the poofs really' while most voters are fucked off with just being skint while watching the rich get deal after deal cut for them.

I saw Hague on breakfast news yesterday wittering on about how this isn't a big deal and how Labour fucked up, and how they have to make tough decisions, and how being in a coalition is fucking them up and on and on and on. It was bloody desperate.

[king mob]

Which is an even bigger middle finger to the Tories and Lib Dems, but throws Labour into the bargin.

From reading various sites which have all been asking the question "why didn't you vote" the overriding response is "why bother? There's no-one that reflects what I stand for."

Its the Westminster same old same old thats been giving a real shooing in these elections.

A mate in Edinburgh tells me that there's a huge amount of spoiled ballots with variations of 'fuck the trams' (the city has a horribly expensive tram system) and he also pointed out this gem of a story where a man dressed as a penguin won more votes than the Lib Dem candidate.

[king mob]

* Most cities have voted against elected mayors, except Bristol.

I voted no because we're still to get a clear answer as to what exact powers the mayor is going to have but now we've been lumbered with one, let's hope it's not Carol Voderman, Banksy or Tony Robinson who were all proposed during the campaign.

[king mob]

So the Green's increase - they're now beating the Lib Dems mayoral candidate too - is more likely to be that the Lib Dems (and Labour) aren't getting as many votes while the Greens are still getting the same amount of people, rather than people defecting to them?

I think it's simply people who won't vote Tory, and can't face voting Labour or Lib Dem.

[Spike-X]

Bollocks. Murdoch's a nasty piece of work, and he's built his company through employing equally nasty pieces of work.

And frankly the quicker Murdoch has his influence over politics in this country broken forever it'll be a better place.

Your country, my country, their country...the evil old cunt needs to just fuck off and die already. Preferably as slowly and painfully as possible.

[Charles RB]

now we've been lumbered with one, let's hope it's not Carol Voderman, Banksy or Tony Robinson who were all proposed during the campaign.

What? Proposed by who, and were they drunk at the time?

I saw Hague on breakfast news yesterday wittering on about how this isn't a big deal and how Labour fucked up, and how they have to make tough decisions, and how being in a coalition is fucking them up and on and on and on. It was bloody desperate.

And Hague's one of the more moderate Tories, so if he's spouting the right's crap then this must be the new party line. I wonder if he believes it?

Then someone decided to

1. Shut down the main university with no notice and use live ammo on students protesting this and then

2. to shoot people protesting the previous violence.

An extension of violence to Aleppo would make things even more difficult for the Syrian government which is trying to pay its security forces despite a virtual economic collapse.

Assad and Co are scared of losing Aleppo, then they did something that will make it more likely that Aleppo will see protests and violence. Add that to the unending crackdown, the economic collapse, foreign backing for dissidents, Russia getting fed up with them - how long can they possibly keep this up before they just collapse? They can't win this, just kill more people before they lose.

[cactusmaac]

I voted no because we're still to get a clear answer as to what exact powers the mayor is going to have but now we've been lumbered with one, let's hope it's not Carol Voderman, Banksy or Tony Robinson who were all proposed during the campaign.

Somewhat weirdly I got postal votes both for where I live in Herts and for Bradford. I voted yes for a mayor for Bradford since our council's historically done a f**king awful job. They demolished half the town centre in preparation for Westfield to build a shopping centre which surprise, surprise is still "in the works" six years later.

Anyway in other news, Boris won. I didn't think Ken Livingstone did much of a job in opposing him. He looked like a tired, desperate old man. I thought the tax avoidance charges the media went with were pure bollocks but he played the class warrior for so long, he couldn't make the obvious responses. The only thing he went on about was lowering fares and it was as ridiculous as Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan.

More importantly today I saw Simon Furman and the Transformers crew at Orbital and told him he was awesome.