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Shinzo Abe, Japan's former prime minister, shot and hospitalized
Japanese former prime minister Shinzo Abe was shot on Friday while campaigning in the city of Nara, a government spokesman said, with public broadcaster NHK saying he appeared to have been shot from behind by a man with a shotgun.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said he did not know Abe's condition. Kyodo news agency and NHK said Abe, 67, appeared to be in a state of cardiac arrest when taken to hospital.
See also: Former Japan PM Abe Unconscious After Shooting; Man in Custody
Live Updates: Shinzo Abe Is Unconscious After Apparently Being Shot
NHK, citing the police, said a suspect, Tetsuya Yamagami, 42, had been taken into custody. He was a Nara resident, the report said. Images shared on social media showed a man being tackled after the shooting.
Boris Johnson Agrees to Resign as Prime Minister
Boris Johnson said on Thursday that he would step down as Britain's prime minister, after a wholesale rebellion of his cabinet, a wave of government resignations and a devastating loss of party support prompted by his handling of the the latest scandal that has engulfed his leadership.
Mr. Johnson said he would stay on in his post until the Conservative Party chooses a new leader, which could take several months. He said he expected the timetable for his departure and the selection of a successor to be decided on Monday by a committee of senior Conservative lawmakers.
"It is clearly now the will of the parliamentary Conservative Party that there should be a new leader," Mr. Johnson said in remarks outside Downing Street. "The process of choosing that new leader should begin now."
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday July 08 2022, @08:38AM (11 children)
I have mixed feelings about Johnson -
* he made some progress with Brexit (like it or loathe it, he pushed it through). Unfortunately he seems to have fluffed up the post-Brexit negotiations pretty badly. Average.
* his handling of the pandemic was average. He mis-timed the lock downs a couple of times but the vaccine came through pretty well. Average.
* his handling of Ukraine - so far - has been quite good.
Unfortunately, he has failed on ethical grounds. Parties while in lock down. Messing up (either deliberately or by accident) on HR issues. He lost a lot of support in the party for lying or pseudo-lying in parliament, which is very much frowned upon - it is more-or-less a law court so lying is considered akin to perjury.
Putin must be happy. Let's hope is successor doubles down on Ukraine.
ps: I really like the Westminster system, where we elect a party who then choose a PM. It means we don't get the US problem of deadlock. If the PM is a dead duck he gets shot.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Friday July 08 2022, @09:01AM (1 child)
It turns out that prime ministers under Westminster systems don't get away indefinitely with being pathological liars. They do get away with it for far too long though.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday July 08 2022, @09:51AM
Unlike presidents under US system...
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Friday July 08 2022, @10:20AM
> elect a party who then choose a PM
Works only with party of individuals who can distance themselves from the leader at will. Herd of sheep with a wolf for shepherd can also be declared a party but won't behave the same way.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Thexalon on Friday July 08 2022, @11:05AM (5 children)
About that: He became prime minister because his predecessor Theresa May also fluffed up the pre-Brexit negotiations, and he kept calling her incompetent, more or less, because of it. When he took over, promising that he'd fix it, he instead no-deal Brexited, and then fluffed up the post-Brexit negotiations, now without any leverage to work with. Smooth move, ex-lax.
The fundamental problem that Cameron, May, and Johnson all had in those negotiations is quite simply that the UK needs the EU trade a lot more than the EU needs the UK trade, and the EU negotiators all knew that and thus saw little need to make concessions.
By the numbers [who.int], his handling of the pandemic was significantly below average, resulting in the 29th-highest death rate due to Covid in the world. I'd suggest that holding unmasked parties while allegedly in Covid lockdown was a good way to prevent Britons from taking those lockdowns seriously.
On this point, everybody in Parliament seems to be quite clear that UK support for Ukraine will continue regardless of what happens in the power shuffle. As in, all the prominent Conservatives and Labour leaders agree on that policy.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday July 08 2022, @11:23AM (4 children)
> the UK needs the EU trade a lot more than the EU needs the UK trade
On the other hand EU is politically rather unstable - UK can play the EU member states against each other. OTOH I don't see any evidence that this has been done.
If it were me, I would have gone for a "no change" Brexit and then renegotiated over a decade or so; one can put a deadline in law even, if required for political reasons. Trying to negotiate such a complicated thing in a few months seems like insanity.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Friday July 08 2022, @01:31PM (1 child)
The point I'm making here, which you seem to be missing: Power in a negotiation is largely determined by what happens if either side says "no deal, at all". Between the two of them, the EU is far less screwed than the UK if there's no deal. Hence, Brexiting with no deal really demonstrated how little power the UK actually has in this relationship, and it didn't matter what the PM said. But Boris had essentially promised that Brexit would give the UK all of the benefits of EU membership with none of the obligations, and that the only reason that it hadn't happened is that he wasn't in charge of it. And then the UK put him in charge of it, and he still couldn't make it happen, because the promises were ridiculous to begin with.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday July 08 2022, @02:12PM
I understand your point, and it is probably true. However, a clever UK negotiation can play on internal EU structural issues to put pressure on EU, which EU is more vulnerable to than UK (but Scotland). So the economic power is with EU, but UK has some political buttons it can press. It isn't only one way traffic. OTOH I don't think this government is "clever".
(An Irish colleague indicated Ireland might be forced to leave EU in the case of a no-deal Brexit, for example. I haven't checked whether that is true, but it is an example of the sort of buttons UK can try to press on.)
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday July 08 2022, @01:49PM (1 child)
The reason the EU really needed to negotiate was Ireland. It's divided partially EU and partially UK, and there's no real border between them. Re-establishing the border would lead to lots of violence, so a way needed to be found to avoid that. Johnson didn't really care about that problem, and was satisfied with just lying to everyone about how the problem would be handled. Eventually an agreement was reached, and Johnson promptly started to sabotage it.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday July 08 2022, @02:13PM
Reminds me - during the Brexit referendum someone asked Gove (IIRC) "What about the land border with the EU?" to which he replied "What land border?"
(Score: 2) by RedGreen on Friday July 08 2022, @05:31PM
"* his handling of Ukraine - so far - has been quite good."
If you do not count him being his normal lying sack of shit by saying he will let the Ukrainians into the UK then putting in place impossible conditions for that to happen. The Westminister system is just as much garbage as the American is, I live in a country that uses it the problems are the same you basically have to catch the person to be kicked out committing a murder on camera for it to happen. Otherwise the party in power rallies around the scumbag and blocks all attempts at getting them out as you have seen demonstrated with that clown Johnson. Then you have the problem of manufactured elections so the timing for the party in power is very good for their re-election, I could fill the page with the garbage in it...
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday July 08 2022, @05:36PM
That's a feature not a bug. Deadlock is a bad thing until it's your home in the way of that highway bypass.