Jade and rubies: How Myanmar’s military amassed its fortune

np_file_69320-870x489.jpeg

Mines, banks, petroleum, agriculture, tourism: Myanmar’s ruling junta has vested interests in large swaths of the country’s economy, providing it a colossal — and closely …

Teachers union chastises San Dimas school board member for anti-mask social media posts

The Bonita Unified Teachers Association has rebuked school board member Krista Chakmak for recent social media posts in which she apparently encouraged others to join her in refusing to wear masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

“As the Bonita Unified School District works to create a plan in which students, faculty, and staff may return to in-person learning as safely as possible, Ms. Chakmak’s publicly-stated position on pandemic safety and her encouragement that others follow suit is counterproductive and even detrimental to that mission,” the union said in a Thursday Facebook post.

The union statement went on to say its executive board “will continue to follow the guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control, as well as the wisdom and expertise of health care professionals in order to keep our students and their families safe while continuing their education.”

Chakmak, who was appointed to the Bonita Unified School District board in May 2020 and elected to her first full term in November, could not be reached for comment.

On Feb. 8, Chakmak complained on her personal Instagram account about being harassed for not wearing a mask while shopping at a Big 5 Sporting Goods store in Pomona.

“What would I like right now?” Chakmak asked, according to a screenshot of the post obtained by the Southern California News Group. “To shop without being harassed, personal choice, a peaceful experience and respect. What I want most? My children to know that I fought everyday for their rights and freedoms, to not be told what’s “best” for my personal health and the freedom to live how I want. My sons and I were followed around the store, asked several times to wear a mask “because they want everyone in the store to be comfortable also, no one was near us or even in the store.”

In a separate post, Chakmak recounted another unpleasant shopping experience involving COVID-19 mask requirements.

“Just got back from the grocery store where I have worn a mask for almost a year,” she said. “Today, no more. I have been miserable for most of the past year. I know there are so many more people feeling this also but just feel stuck, scared and like you’re going to be judged. But if we don’t start taking our power back now, this will only get worse. So, judge me, hate me, talk about me or join me! Most importantly do what ever your soul tells you to do!.”

Chakmak, who received criticism on social media for her anti-mask stance, has since apologized and removed the posts.

“In a moment of frustration, I stated that I would no longer be wearing a mask, taking back my power,” she said, according to a screenshot of the post. “After reflecting on the impact of my words, I have deleted the post. Like so many of us, I am anxious to resume our way of life that existed before the pandemic. However, I realize there are still stages to go through to reopen our school safely. I do intend to comply with state and local regulations to allow the safe reopening to happen. My words do not reflect Bonita Unified School District or our fellow board members’ opinions.”

Carl J. Coles, superintendent of the Bonita Unified School District, said Friday preparations are underway to safely reopen schools for 5,000 elementary students on April 5.

“In light of a recent private social media post by an individual board member concerning not wearing a face covering, the board of education and the district want to assure the community that we are fully committed to following all laws and rules set by our governing bodies, which includes wearing face coverings on all district properties,” he said in a statement. “Board members may participate in public discourse on civic or community interest matters and have a right to express their personal views freely. To be clear, the comments made regarding not wearing a face-covering do not represent those of the board of education or the district.”

Related Articles

Sweeping Arrests Net Hundreds in Myanmar As Anti-Coup Protests Swell

Crowds in the big cities of Yangon, Mandalay, and the capital Naypyidaw have topped six figures for several days, and were still growing on the 12th day since the military deposed and arrested leader Aung San Suu Kyi, suspended parliament, and imposed a one-year period of emergency rule.

U.N. rights officials are tracking more than 350 politicians and state officials, activists, civil society members, journalists, monks, and students who have been taken into custody, Nada Al-Nashif, deputy U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said Friday.

Myanmar authorities snatched a doctor from his clinic and rounded up bureaucrats as the ruling junta moved to arrest professionals and state staffers for joining days of growing mass protests against military rule in scores of cities across the country in defiance of crowd limits, curfews, and increasing shows of force by police.

Crowds in the big cities of Yangon, Mandalay, and the capital Naypyidaw have topped six figures for several days, and were still growing on the 12th day since the military deposed and arrested leader Aung San Suu Kyi, suspended parliament, and imposed a one-year period of emergency rule.

U.N. rights officials are tracking more than 350 politicians and state officials, activists, civil society members, journalists, monks, and students who have been taken into custody, Nada Al-Nashif, deputy U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said Friday.

The Feb. 1 seizure of power by the military over claims that last November’s election was fraudulent “constitutes a profound setback for the country, after a decade of hard-won gains in its democratic transition,” he said.

The junta has detained 220 government officials and members of civil society, including Aung San Suu Kyi, President Win Myint, and members of the Union Election Commission, said Thomas Andrews, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar.

“Many of these detentions have occurred in the dark of night and many times by plain-clothed police,” he told a special session on Myanmar at the Human Rights Council on Friday.

“These actions are a violation of the basic right to be free from arbitrary arrest and detention. The military must release them all immediately,” said Andrews.

The U.N. Human Rights Council passed a resolution denouncing the 12-day-old military coup and subsequent violations of civil and human rights.

The Assistance Association of Political Prisoners (AAPP) on Friday put the number those arrested and detained in relation to the coup at 326, with three having been sentenced and 23 others released.

As part of an amnesty by the military regime, more than 23,000 prisoners, including many drug offenders and four political prisoners, were released Friday in honor of Myanmar’s Union Day, according to the AAPP.

“There is a genuine worry that this amnesty is being used to make space in prisons to detain more political prisoners, and that the released prisoners will be called up to engage in the pro-military counter-protest movement,” the group said in a statement on its website.

myanmar-forest-dept-workers-protest-naypyidaw-feb11-2021.jpg
Workers from Myanmar’s Forestry Department hold signs calling for the release of State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint in Naypyidaw, Feb. 11, 2021. Credit: RFA

‘They took him away so fast’

Despite a ban on public gatherings of more than five people and increased security, mass protests against the military junta drew tens of thousands of people in cities across the country of 54 million that is the size of France or Texas.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered in three main area of Yangon — in front of City Hall, at the Hledan junction near Yangon University, and at the Myae Ni Gone junction — while smaller rallies were held in other townships.

Protests continued in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, and in Naypyidaw where government workers, attorneys, medical personnel, and education workers joined rallies.

“We are participating to show support for government staffers who are participating in civil disobedience movement campaigns,” said a lawyer at the scene. “We encourage government workers to defy the military regime regardless of what it has announced. We are campaigning to protect them in accordance with the law.”

On Thursday, some government workers in Naypyidaw reported that senior officials had pressured and threatened them to abandon the civil disobedience movement and return to work. Others who participated in rallies and strikes were detained overnight by security forces who forcefully entered their homes.

Military regime leader Senior General Gen Min Aung Hlaing warned in a speech on Thursday that civil servants who failed to carry out their duties at work due to instigation by disruptive forces would be dealt with severely.

Thet Thet Khine, a history professor at Meikhtila University in Mandalay region, told RFA that soldiers on Thursday night arrested mathematics professor Aung Kyaw Min who had participated in the movement.

Soldiers who arrived in seven military vehicles asked young men at the university’s front gate at gunpoint for keys to the professor’s quarters, she said.

“They took him away so fast that his wife and son didn’t even realize it,” she said.

Authorities in Ayeyarwady region arrested Dr. Pyi Pyi Naing around 3 p.m. while he was seeing a patient at his private clinic in Ingapu township, a resident said

“A group of men in mufti took him away in a car, and local residents followed it,” he said. “They found the car at the Ingapu police station and demanded that he be freed, but they couldn’t find the doctor there.”

myanmar-engineers-protest-naypyidaw-feb11-2021.jpg
Myanmar engineers march along a road during a demonstration against the military coup in Naypyidaw, Feb. 11, 2021. Credit: RFA

Police fire at protesters

In southern Mon state’s capital Mawlamyine, police fired rubber bullets at demonstrators and arrested student leaders and supporters, injuring three people, according to news reports.

“The police have arrested nine of our protesting students this morning,” said a student demonstrator who requested anonymity for security reasons. We are now staging a sit-in protest against the authorities. We will leave only when they release our detained friends.”

Meanwhile, a doctor treating Naypyidaw protester Mya Thwe Thwe Khaing, who was shot in the head by police on Tuesday, confirmed that the 20-year-old woman died in the hospital, though her family refused to have her taken off life support after a failed attempt to remove the bullet fragment from her brain.

“We pronounced her brain dead,” said a doctor from the 1,000-bed hospital where she was being treated. “We informed her family and asked them when we should take her off the life support machine.”

The military regime denied that riot control police uses live bullets against protesters, but an x-ray provided by the hospital showed a metal bullet lodged in the young woman’s head.

Saung Hnin Wai, a protester in Thandwe town in western Rakhine state, said police there began cracking down on peaceful demonstrators Friday morning, detaining one person.

“They hit two kids who were holding flags and marching at the front,” she told RFA. “Then, they tried to disperse the crowd. As the protestors withdrew from the scene, a police vehicle tried to drive into the crowd at a road junction.”

A man tried to use his motorbike to block the single police car accompanied by military vehicles, but authorities arrested him, she added.

In Kengtung, a town in eastern Shan state, authorities nabbed six protesters on Tuesday and another two on Thursday amid a growing number of arrests in various cities, a local High Court lawyer said.

“This civil disobedience movement can be interpreted as a people’s duty to repel unjust laws,” he said. “The military is itself breaking the law by arresting people who have the right to freely protest. They don’t have the right to make these arrests. This is the nature of these military takeovers. From their point of view they think they are right, but in the view of the people this is not right. “

Tun Win and Thingyan Moe, two assistant managers at the Civil Aviation Department in Yangon were arrested around 11 p.m. Thursday night along with deputy general manager Aung Zaw Thein for taking part in the civil disobedience movement, their families said.

In Mandalay, police, armed soldiers, and local authorities tried to arrest Dr. Khin Maung Lwin, rector of the Institute of Medicine, after midnight, but they had to turn back when residents drove them away, a source close to the family said. The rector managed to escape custody.

Cybersecurity law in the works

Fears are growing that the military regime will enact a repressive cybersecurity law that would require online service providers to store user data at a location accessible to the government.

The ruling State Administrative Council installed after the Feb. 1 coup submitted a draft law to telecommunications operators on Tuesday and requested their input by Feb. 15.

The draft law requires online service providers to retain users’ names, IP addresses, phone numbers, ID card numbers, and physical addresses for up to three years in a yet to be designated place and to provide the data to authorities when requested “under any existing law,” according to New York-based Human Rights Watch

Online service providers also are required to block or remove information if instructed by authorities, which would allow military authorities to remove any content they don’t like, HRW said.

Reported by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung and Khun Maung Nyane. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

GOP Senate jurors caught helping Trump impeachment lawyers plot their legal strategy | Salon.com

“The reason why these three Republican senators are meeting with the attorneys … is because they’re worried,” he said. “The House managers have put together a powerful case against this president. They have a mountain of videotape to back up what they say, countless tweets, all sorts of information that really is not in the best interest of the president, so I’d imagine they’re pretty desperate to come up with a good defense strategy.” The meeting comes after the Trump attorneys, who were hired at the last minute after Trump fired his legal team amid a pay dispute, unsuccessfully argued that the hearing was unconstitutional in a presentation that was widely panned, even by Trump’s allies.

Source: GOP Senate jurors caught helping Trump impeachment lawyers plot their legal strategy | Salon.com

College campuses emerging as ‘COVID-19 super-spreaders,’ infecting surrounding towns – Study Finds

STANFORD, Calif. — A troubling new study finds the first two weeks of college semesters represent a serious viral challenge in terms of containing the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers from Stanford University say college campuses could be so-called “superspreaders” responsible for upticks in coronavirus cases throughout their entire local county. Study authors examined 30 U.S. college campuses…

Source: College campuses emerging as ‘COVID-19 super-spreaders,’ infecting surrounding towns – Study Finds

What the crackdown on farmers’ protests says about the future of democracy in India

They touch on why Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi so fiercely pushed the reforms, the legitimate policy debate at the center of it all, and how the vile online reaction to Rihanna’s and Thunberg’s statements in support of the farmers from pro-Modi trolls shows the rot at the core of India’s democracy.
Indian farmers’ protests continue
Indian Youth Congress workers shout slogans during a protest against the new agricultural laws, the rise of unemployment, and the rising price of goods and services in New Delhi on February 9, 2021. | Imtiyaz Khan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

On this week’s episode of Worldly, we discuss how a real policy debate in India turned ugly.

The farmers’ protests in India had already turned ugly — and then global celebrities like Rihanna and Greta Thunberg stepped in.

In this week’s episode of Worldly, Vox’s foreign affairs podcast, co-hosts Zack Beauchamp, Jennifer Williams, and Alex Ward explain why thousands of Indian farmers have spent months protesting recent agricultural reform laws passed by the government.

They touch on why Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi so fiercely pushed the reforms, the legitimate policy debate at the center of it all, and how the vile online reaction to Rihanna’s and Thunberg’s statements in support of the farmers from pro-Modi trolls shows the rot at the core of India’s democracy.

Hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers and their supporters have been occupying major roads surrounding the capital, New Delhi, since November in protest of the agriculture reform laws.

Under the new policies, introduced by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Indian farmers must sell goods and make contracts with independent buyers outside of government-sanctioned marketplaces, which have long served as the primary locations for farmers to do business.

Modi and members of his party say the reforms are needed to help India modernize and improve its farming industry, which will mean greater freedom and prosperity for farmers. But the farmers, afraid they will be at the mercy of big business, remain unconvinced.

Modi’s government offered to put the laws on hold for 18 months, but the farmers have refused, demanding a full retraction of the laws to end their standoff.

After an 11th round of talks between the farmers and the government failed, the farmers unions decided to up the ante with a tractor march into the capital on India’s Republic Day, which commemorates the signing of India’s constitution. Miscommunication led to violent face-offs with police, who used tear gas and batons to try to turn them back.

Hundreds of police officers were injured. A farmer was also crushed when his tractor was among the many vehicles overturned in the violence.

Then Rihanna posted a February 2 tweet about the Indian government shutting off internet access to squash debate about the Republic Day violence. And all hell broke loose.

The singer’s tweet angered the Indian government, which responded that foreign celebrities should know the facts before weighing in on Indian affairs. That paved the way for even more vitriol, with online supporters of Modi’s right-wing nationalist government, and one of Bollywood’s most famous actresses, Kangana Ranaut, lashing out on Twitter and in the media with nasty personal attacks against Rihanna, many of which were racist and sexist.

The ugly response to celebrities asking legitimate questions about the treatment of farmers and the suppression of farmers’ freedoms shows just how deep the divisions are within Indian society.

To hear more about what led to widespread farmer protests in India, how the protests became violent, and what the government’s heavy-handed tactics for quashing dissent say about India’s future under Modi, listen to Worldly below.

And don’t forget to subscribe to Worldly wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

You can find specific links for Vox podcasts here.

How do i find my purpose?

Words from Walden

What is the purpose of life? What is my purpose and how do I find it? Why are we here? What’s the meaning of it all?

If you have asked yourself any or all of the questions above then you are well on your way to figuring it out. Hopefully, this article will accelerate the answers for you.

The truth is that the purpose of life is the same for everyone. In its simplest form, the answer is Love. That is the real purpose and meaning of life. Living is not supposed to be a struggle. We are all here to create and once you realize this it makes it easier to do so.

Everyone’s purpose is to love. It doesn’t matter if you are a professional baseball player or an auto mechanic. A Teacher or a CEO. You are that thing because of love. If you don’t have a…

View original post 130 more words

Second Look Behind the Headlines – News you can use…

Baldacchino di Perla

"Luce di parole, ombra di sogni."

Northern Desert Photography

Living on the Edge of the Sagebrush Ocean

Susana Cabaço

Spiritual Insights & Personal Empowerment

Barbara Picci

Artist & Art Blogger

craft journey

Furnicraft, woodwork, and art

musings corner

reveries and rants

Japão para Românticos

Bem Vindos a este espaço onde compartilhamos um pouco da realidade do Japão à todos aqueles que desejam visitar ou morar no Japão. Aqui neste espaço, mostramos a realidade do Japão e dos imigrantes. O nosso compromisso é com a realidade. Fique por dentro do noticiário dos principais jornais japoneses, tutoriais de Faça você mesmo no Japão e acompanhe a Série Histórias de Imigrantes no Japão. Esperamos que goste de nossos conteúdos, deixe seu like, seu comentário, compartilhe e nos ajudar você e à outras pessoas. Grande abraço, gratidão e volte sempre!

Leben als Mensch

Willkommen auf Elke´s Glücks-Blog

Sharpshot Nature .Com

- Specializing in the great outdoors, capturing nature at its finest!

Diane Ravitch's blog

A site to discuss education and democracy

Expansão e Percepção

Seu Guia de Inspirações e Reflexões Diárias

noga noga.

my-health-and-beauty.com/

Uğurcan'ın Ütopyası

Benim Gezegenime Hoş geldiniz !!!

AKILS

Blog de viajes y lugares

Ed Mooney Photography

The official blog of Ed Mooney Photography. Dad of 3, Photographer, Blogger, Powerlifter. Exploring the historical sites of Ireland.

everything Explored on the earth

It has new aidias,news, about education , motivation, social, historical, culture, marketing creation new aidias education of language science culture and history

Born to die

L'unico modo sensato di vivere è senza regole

Early Morning Memories

by Anuran (A) & Sayoni (S)

My thoughts

Fun for the Brain

Neo Vision College

An exemplary learning community.

Anthony’s Crazy Love and Life Lessons in Empathy

Loves, lamentation, and life through prose, stories, passions, and essays.

Episodic Squalid Rants

public tantrums by a non-two-year-old

The Street Art Directory

Public, street and urban art worldwide

Artie & Stu

all the rules of free form

Everyone read that they fell in love first

<script async src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-2937106805202763" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>

davidscottmoyer

Lapsed Painter, Occasional Photographer, Compulsive Writer

Health & Fitness

Health Blogs

Buildings Tell Tales

Exploring the hidden architectural heritage of Budapest

Divit kalem

Yaşamdan

Roy's Weblog

The third incarnation...

Thought Pukes

More than a thought less than a question

"بوصلة الحياة"

"بوصلة الحياة: مدونة متعددة المجالات، من السياسة إلى الرومانسية، ومن تطوير الذات إلى الأدب وأكثر!" بقلم مشاعر بنت عبدالرحمن

parallax

The view from here ... Or here!

ClearingSpace4Joy

Bringer and seeker of joy

Belladonna’s Flashlight

The One Where She Stumbled Through Her 40's and Faced Her Demons

~ Trivial Music Silliness ~

Baw wit da baw. Just sayin'.

mo mnsoor blog

Website storys

Chronicles of an Anglo Swiss

Welcome to the Anglo Swiss World

gnaddrig ad libitum

Querbeet und ohne Gewähr

Peace & Truth

KINDNESS IS FREE, sprinkle it all over the world, and 😁 smile

Ética de la vida diaria

Nuestra ética de todos los días...

Elizabeth Gauffreau

Fiction Writer in Poet's Clothing