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Mentionable News

The place where some Qanon group stormed. Retargeted?

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Protests in the Streets in Russia over the detention of Alexei Navalny.

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Good report here:

Russia’s national Investigative Committee said it had opened an inquiry into violence against police officers on Saturday evening. A spokeswoman for the US embassy condemned the violence against demonstrators, accusing Moscow of suppressing Russians’ rights to peaceful protest.

No one is reported to have died, but several protesters appeared to have been seriously injured, including one pictured bleeding from the head and another who appeared to be unconscious when he was put into a police van. Another protester, who was rubbing snow on a bruise below his right eye to reduce the swelling, told the Observer he had been hit in the face with a nightstick twice.

The largest protests took place in Moscow, where a crowd estimated by Reuters at 40,000 mobbed a downtown square dominated by a statue to the poet Alexander Pushkin. “Leave!” the protesters chanted, calling on Putin to step down.

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This helps untangle how people perceive their beliefs and how hard to get at some core truths for people.

Hint - it is not through reasoning.

Worth a read.

Complicating the Narratives

What if journalists covered controversial issues differently — based on how humans actually behave when they are polarized and suspicious?

https://thewholestory.solutionsjournalism.org/complicating-the-narratives-b91ea06ddf63

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Myanmar held elections in November of last year. The National League for Democracy won a landslide victory securing 396 seats out of 476 seats. The military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party won just 33 seats. However they (like someone else we know) could not accept defeat. And in a military take over has taken place. What might have been on 6 Jan!

Aung San Suu Kyi calls for Myanmar protests in wake of coup | Global development | The Guardian

Aung San Suu Kyi has called for public protests against a military coup in Myanmar, hours after she and other figures from the ruling party were detained by the army.

The leader, who was seized in a morning raid, said the military was trying re-impose dictatorship. “I urge people not to accept this, to respond and wholeheartedly to protest against the coup by the military,” a statement released in her name said.



Ten years of freedom ends: Myanmar’s tarnished heroine sees dark days return
Read more

Military television announced on Monday morning that the army had taken control of the country for one year, with power handed to commander-in-chief General Min Aung Hlaing. It said the army had declared a state of emergency, and had detained senior government leaders in response to “fraud” during last year’s general election .

Phone and mobile internet services in Yangon were down on Monday morning and military trucks, one carrying barbed-wire barriers, were parked outside City Hall. State-run MRTV television said it had been unable to broadcast. Banks were closed across the nation.

The military’s actions brought swift condemnation from leaders and human rights experts around the world.

US president Joe Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, said the US opposed “any attempt to alter the outcome of recent elections or impede Myanmar’s democratic transition, and will take action against those responsible if these steps are not reversed.”

US secretary of state Antony Blinken also called for the release Aung San Suu Kyi and other detainees. UN secretary general Antonio Guterres said the developments represented “a serious blow to democratic reforms in Myanmar”.

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Mentionable News

High school principal works overnight at Walmart to help students in need

North Charleston High School principal Henry Darby calls his students his grandchildren. Every paycheck goes toward helping them.

Pls don’t take this as shade @ dragonfly b/c I do appreciate and feel true love for the beautiful humans who bust their asses to help out their communities! but jesus christ all I can think of is that all of our “feel good stories” are just whitewashing how our system fucks over its own citizens.

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Suspected far-right extremist with ‘white privilege’ card charged; pipe bombs found at Napa business

A suspected far-right extremist who carried a “white privilege” mock credit card has been charged with possessing pipe bombs and accused of threatening to bomb Democrats, the state Capitol and social media companies in an attempt to keep Donald Trump as president.


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I agree…

But it highlights the hypocrisy- and that is the message I believe.

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Yes, more gloom I suppose. We’re used to it. :frowning:

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Two FBI agents killed and three agents injured in shootout in Sunrise, Florida

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It was 181 years yesterday since the initial signing of The Treaty of Waitangi.

This is now our Independence Day.
This was especially pleasing and am posting here and sending a big “thank you”.

“Just got home from Waitangi to find a letter from President Joe Biden to mark Waitangi Day,” Ardern said in an Instagram post.

“Given it was intended for everyone, I thought I’d share it here,!” she said in her post.

and I’m sharing it here because you need to know how generous this message was.

“Dear Prime Minister. The American people join me in offering warmest regards to the people of New Zealand on the occasion of Waitangi Day on February 6," the letter from Biden read.
“New Zealand is one of our closest friends and partners. The unbreakable bond we share was established when the first US Consul to New Zealand was on hand to witness the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi on February 6, 1840.

“We have since partnered together to build the multilateral framework that benefits our nations as well as the global population. I look forward to strengthening the US- New Zealand relationship and cooperating to overcome the greatest challenges of our time…I have fond memories of my trip to your country in 2016 when New Zealand’s legendary reputation for friendliness and hospitality was on full display.

“I wish you and all New Zealanders well on this Waitangi Day. Sincerely Joseph R Biden.”

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There were two suicides after the Jan 6th insurrections. One Officer Smith was suffering from pain associated with the Capitol Hill insurrection as described within the article. :cry:

Contee named three officers. One was Brian D. Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer who collapsed after engaging rioters and later died. Another was Howard Liebengood, 51, a Capitol officer who took his own life three days after the riot.

The third was Smith.

That two police officers had died by suicide after confronting rioters thrust the most private of acts into the national spotlight and made clear that the pain of Jan. 6 continued long after the day’s events had concluded, its impact reverberating through the lives removed from the Capitol grounds.

The suicides have also renewed attention on another troubling and often hidden issue: Police officers die by their own hands at rates greater than people in other occupations, according to a report compiled by the Police Executive Research Forum in 2019, after at least nine New York City police officers died by suicide that year. That report said officer suicides outpace deaths of law enforcement members killed in shootings and vehicular crashes.

Since George Floyd’s death at the hands of police in Minneapolis and the sometimes volatile demonstrations that followed in cities across the country, “the occupation has been under tremendous scrutiny by the public,” said John Violanti, a research professor at the University of Buffalo School of Public Health and Health Professions.

“I think that officers are suffering from this,” said Violanti, who studies suicides by police officers. “There’s a feeling of a huge lack of support, not only from the public but from administrations.”

Even before the Capitol riot, police officers in the District were exhausted after months of sustained demonstrations for racial, social and political justice, some of which turned violent. Later, there were more violent confrontations when right-wing extremists came to rally in support of President Donald Trump.

About 850 D.C. police officers — nearly a quarter of the force — responded to the Capitol riot, and 65 were injured in hours of hand-to-hand combat. More than 70 Capitol Police officers were hurt.

Newly released audio from D.C. police at the riot shows how police were overwhelmed. “Multiple Capitol injuries, multiple Capitol injuries,” one officer screamed over his radio. Later an officer shouted, “We’re still taking rocks, bottles and pieces of flag and metal pole.” And an officer pleaded for help: “We lost the line. We’ve lost the line. All MPD, pull back to the upper deck, ASAP.

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The Lincoln Project has had a bunch of scandals happening lately where their board members are resigning over illicit behavior with young boys, and others who may be caught up in knowing/not knowing about it, and others who profited off the fund raising for it. Needless to say, it has had a lot of dirty laundry out for grabs.

I liked to read one of the employees who stood firmly and praised the work they did. Some polls say they did not sway Republicans very much, but I am certain they helped ignite the entire voting body of the US to get out the vote.

Here’s some commentary.

A major pile up of bad news for TheLincolnProject

In case you hadn’t noticed, the Lincoln Project — an organization as pointedly anti-Trump as any other, its rise and political relevance symbiotically tied to his — is unraveling.

It’s unraveling because one of its founders, John Weaver, was using his position to proposition young men. It’s unraveling because peers of his in the organization apparently sat on complaints about that, too pumped up by their currency as Trump slayers to let accusations against Weaver impede their mission and kill their buzz.

It’s unraveling because it can no longer hide what a financial boondoggle it was for some of its central players, who spoke of principle while lining their pockets. Yes, they made dynamite ads and an eloquent case about Trump’s betrayal of America. Their firms also made money from the hero status that they were accorded by Trump haters the world over.

But the Lincoln Project is unraveling for an additional reason. It’s unraveling because Trump is out of office, and that not only deprives the organization of its fiercest mission and tight focus. His departure also opens the political actors there — and political actors everywhere — to more scrutiny and more reproach than they received when he was still around. Trump urgently demanded and rightly sopped up so much of the public’s contempt and the media’s attention that there was limited space left over for other scandals. In that way he was like a concealer slathered over pox and warts beyond his own.

He was also in instances a get-out-of-jail-free card. If you raged against him, your past was wiped clean. Your own preening and avarice were laundered by your denunciations of his.

The Lincoln Project isn’t the only example of this, but it may be the best one, and I say that as someone who had his own hand in celebrating it. I wrote a column in July about the Lincoln Project’s founders as the quintessential NeverTrumpers, which was the designation for Republicans who had broken with their party, permanently or temporarily, because of Trump. My take on them was flattering.

I expressed some skepticism, noting that they possibly had a mix of motives, that they had found themselves “in high demand as commentators and book authors” and that “through some of their anti-Trump organizations, funded by donors, some of them have arranged employment no longer available to them in conventional Republican circles.”

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Texas has power outages and is freezing cold. Here is what one mayor says to his constituents. But he resigned.

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Texas seems to breed a special kind of stupid. The governor is in that category too.

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And this one broke the mold for diabolical.

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LOL

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