In the News

[Jubal]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21974426

This really does not look like fun.

[Jubal]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-22652402

Norfolk County Council not led by a Conservative, probably for the first time in my life and certainly for the first time in over a decade. 

[Pentagathus]

Hell yeah.

[Clockwork]

Wow, conservative got burned!

[Jubal]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22673156

This is really disturbing/worrying. For a party that claims to be about individualism and a party that claims to be for the people, Labour and the Tories sure do have a lot of people who wouldn't know civil liberties if they smashed them in the face with a claw hammer.

[Clockwork]

Typical governmental knee jerk reaction. I really hope this blows over as usual.

[Jubal]

It's certainly very concerning, particularly since with terrorist attacks and so on popular opinion tends to swing behind whatever politicians claim will keep us safer.

[Clockwork]

True. Fear makes people stupider than usual.

[comrade_general]

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/30/world/asia/siberia-mammoth-blood-discovery/index.html

[Clockwork]

That would be awesome, if it's at all possible.

[Pentagathus]

I can't be bothered to provide a link, but basically there are large scale protests in Istanbul and a couple of other Turkish cities in response to police use of tear gas on a fairly small group of peaceful protesters. There some are violent clashes going on now, with police using rubber bullets and tear gassing the crap out of everything. The army has been handing out gas masks to protesters and reportedly offering shelter (the army has traditionally been a strong supporter of secular control within Turkey and has not got on well with the current government who are accused of being an islamic movement rather than secular.)
So far the Turkish President has done nothing to prevent the police brutality and has asked protesters to cease protesting on the grounds that he was elected democratically.
Edit:
I bothered to find a link http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22739423

[Jubal]

The police are retreating from the main protest area (Taksim square in Istanbul) now, this is huge.

Historical background here is that Turkey's cities & west tend to be more secularist, the countryside and south/east more religious. Istanbul is particularly secularist; the idea of Turkey according to its founder, Kemal Ataturk, was to be a fully secular state, and this is upheld by the judiciary and military mostly. The democratic government are more Islamist now though and a lot of secular Turks are worried about a greater public role for religion. Apparently there are protests in Ankara as well as Istanbul (Ankara is the actual capital, Istanbul is the largest city but not the capital).

[Pentagathus]

It seems to be dying down, although a lot of turks from TW seem to think a fair amount of armadillo is still going down. Trouble is the Turkish media isn't covering the riots at all (apart from the newspapers.)
And ironically enough Erdogan is apparently getting criticised by Syria for his heavy handed approach.  Facepalm.
Edit:
And it seems like its not dying down so much. Apparently some protesters have got hold of a demolition vehicle and are chasing riot vans around.

[Othko97]

You mean like that? ^

http://imgur.com/a/JvJD3
http://imgur.com/a/gKAsu

Those two just show what's going on in a nice image medium as opposed to walls of text

Edit:

This was Turkey today:

Spoiler

[Pentagathus]

I can't help imagining the benny hill theme tune as that excavator chases riot vans around.