General World News Dumping Ground

Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in a state of cardiopulmonary arrest after shooting, fire department says

Tokyo (CNN)  — Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been rushed to hospital after being shot during a campaign speech in Nara, Japan.

An official from the Nara City Fire Department confirmed to CNN that Abe is in a state of cardiopulmonary arrest.

It means the former prime minister has a sudden loss of heart function and breathing.

Abe was shot while giving a campaign speech on a street in Nara City at around 11:30 a.m. local time, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said.

“Former Prime Minister Abe’s condition is not currently known, and we are checking the situation,” Matsuno told reporters at an emergency news briefing at the prime minister’s office.

He said Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who was on a tour of duty, was immediately informed and will return to his office urgently. Matsuno said he has instructed ministers who are in various parts of the country to return to Tokyo immediately. The prime minister is scheduled to speak later today.

Prior to the news today about the US droning an Al Queda leader I can’t recall the last time I’ve even thought of that particular group.

I’m terrified of every other white guy I pass on the street being strapped and ready to do an act of mass violence but I can’t imagine anyone feeling a sense of relief from this.

This could be a horrible perspective though because it’s possible people in that region of the world suffer more from a group like Al Queda now?

Drone strikes suck but if you are going to do them this is the kinda guy you reserve them for.

This week sure has shown the left going off a cliff, eh?

https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/lifestyle/turkey-animal-bear-honey-high-b2144078.html

Finland’s very attractive PM dancing and partying on video knowing it would absolutely get leaked but still not giving a fuck is exactly how a hot leader should behave.

People are criticizing her online. Sad!

Gonna mosey on off to google now.

Should we give money and weapons to Ukraine?

Maybe I just don't have the imagination to come up with any alternatives to preserving a free Ukraine* or the liberal world order. Sorry, for my constant negativity but I think the dominos start to fall pretty quickly after this if Putin gets his way.

*I think the last Chapo I ever listened to had one of the hosts saying "fuck Ukraine, lol, who fucking cares, let 'em die!" or something like that and laughing about it because it was hilarious that the sovereignty of this worthless dumb shitty little country they'd never been to was somehow going to lead to WWIII. Now is that totally cool or what?

Who said that on Chapo? I don't listen to every single episode but that seems like a really out of character position for them to be taking. There has been some debate about this piece online. They were pretty critical of it. Honestly, so am I. Although it is not a debate that really animates me too much.

I have a hard time really talking about this conflict. It is obviously atrocious for the civilians involved. Ukraine is a country. They have a right to defend themselves. And also to petition for outside support. Beyond that, I am pretty uncomfortable with the really bellicose rhetoric that is starting to leak out of the State Department, which has made it really explicit that their ultimate objective is to "humiliate" Russia and weaken Putin's Kremlin. The reality is that any credibility that NATO and the U.S. State Department had as 'democracy promoters' was torched decades ago. You'd have to be delusional to take their own rhetoric at face value. So it's a tough situation...

But honestly, I don't really think you have any obligation to formulate an opinion. We can be informed and empathetic of the Ukrainian civilian populations' struggle against Russian imperialism while also remaining critical of the actual interests at play in facilitating billions of dollars of armament to their army (and various militia groups that might have some pretty fringe political leanings as well).

The continued functionality of Truth Social, or at least I assume so since I have never visited it, makes me skeptical of the whole idea that "white hat" hackers actually exist.

Anonymous had so many chances to show their stuff over the last 6 years and they did next to nothing.

I wonder how WP is feeling about the vote in Italy?

Calling it now, Snowden - now a proud citizen- gets called up to defend the motherland. Deployed to SIGINT shop, defects to west with dope Russian secrets. 6 dimensional chess motherfuckers!

BGwaves wrote:I wonder how WP is feeling about the vote in Italy?

Not good! But also this is really predictable and so it is kind of hard to get that animated about it. It is very different than Trump's electoral victory, which was truly shocking. So we have all just prepared ourselves for this inevitability. There are a lot of really intricate dynamics within the right-wing coalition. Meloni and FdI are really, really bad. But she has also "moderated" on certain security questions. When it comes to questions of political economy her government is going to be really hamstrung by the country's inability to continue financing its debt without complying with the demands of international investors, which is only going to further radicalize and alienate the majority of the national electorate.

I am sure abroad everyone is talking about how this is the first "right-wing" government since Mussolini and how significant it is that a founding member-state of the European Community is being led by a post-fascist party. All of that is very true and attention grabbing. There are two important qualifications though. In reality the right-wing bloc only got about 43-45% of the vote, which is no different than past years. The difference is that the right-wing electorate is becoming increasingly radicalized. Berlusconi's first governments normalizing the post-Fascist fringes by inviting Fini's Alleanza Nazionale into government, for example. In many ways Berlusconi (and to some extent Bossi's Lega Nord) were the antechambers to whatever right-wing populism we are living with today.

But while the right-wing bloc is certainly radicalizing it is not expanding its appeal. The more worrying reality is the precipitous decline in participation, especially amongst the poorer and more marginalized regions of the south. Only about 1/2 of residents in Calabria bothered to vote (for Americans that might seem normal but it is pretty unprecedented in most western European democracies). Some constituencies in Sardinia and Sicily saw a 16% decline in voter turnout. It is notable that this is the first ever election to take place after the summer holidays but it is more likely that this is a consequence of the continued hollowing out of the public sphere and the increasingly lack of credibility of national political leadership/parties.

When mass democratic parties are unable to fulfill this mediating role, it is inevitable that citizens will find vehicles to express their discontent. Now it is Meloni, who has a really dubious political background but will nonetheless continue to play by the democratic rules. But the future looks increasingly bleak...

thank fucking christ

Same day I change my screen name to “Little Neddy goes to war” that fuckface Putin shoots missiles into Poland. If I end up causing WW4 I’m gonna be so depressed.

If it's you I won't get mad about it

Anyone else is a different story

Trump already being reinstated is the most predictable shit ever

Wanna rejoin twitter so I can quit all over again.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/29/victor-bout-gru-sechin/

This Russian arms dealer has a lawyer called Steve Zissou, and I think that is important.

Horrible news from Turkey and Syria. Just saw the death toll is over 3K now and will surely rise. Hard to fathom that level of destruction.

Heard Erdogan talk about looking past this disaster to a bright future or something and it's like dude, maybe get a final count on how many of your constituents died before floating that idea. Awful.

The East Palestine train derailment story seems weird to me. From what I can read online there is still a haunting plume of death in the air, animals are dying off and people are having difficulty breathing. Yet, residents have been told it is fine to return home. And there is not much being reported in major newspapers right now.

I guess I don’t understand how you can release a significant level of poison into the air, evacuate the area and then a couple days later be all, “Nothing to worry about folks! The air is fine!”

This story is fucking bonkers... almost seems written with intent instead of an actual conversation with an AI bot. You know some rogue programmer is laughing their ass off at the way this conversation went (alternatively, this is a standard, rogue sentient AI situation, and we are all doomed).


The new Bing told our reporter it ‘can feel or think things’