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One topic summary w/ link to specific articles, no summaries for specific articles.

4 (44.4%)

Article summary w/ link to only the article.

5 (55.6%)

Total Members Voted: 9

Voting closed: April 04, 2012, 03:44:35 pm

[Mr. Palau]

Zimmerman stoped by the police Video at ABC, link provided by Aquizzar, http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/trayvon-martin-case-exclusive-surveillance-video-george-zimmerman/story?id=16022897 , Does not have broken nose, his back is not wet, his head is not bleeding. He did not have a fight with Trayvon!

Yes that's right, there was a Coup d’état (I hate the pronunciation of that word so much) in Mali yesterday, today being March 22 obviously. So apparently for a while some nomads have been rebelling in the north of Mali, and the army has been fighting them. The army asked the government for more weapons so they could go kill some more angry nomads, and the government was like no. So then the army began protesting, because the soldiers felt the government wasn't supporting them. Then some Malian government guy tried to diffuse the protest yesterday, when the soldiers were all like the equivalent of "fuck no" In bambara, 'cause that’s the lingua franca in Mali, which is ironic because French is the official language, people also speak 40 other African languages in Mali, and began to throw stones at him and bow him. He got out ok but later that day some other guys in the capital also decided they’d had enough and stormed the presidential palace, only to find out the president had left.

Here I was thinking West Africa couldn't get any worse, but then some guys in Mali decided to prove me wrong.

* Link to good summery of Malian situation provided by Servent Corps  http://sahelblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/22/on-the-apparent-coup-in-mali/ . Will add highlights of article to main body of info when I have more time
*  Link likelihood of coups provided by Servent Corps  http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/03/22/coups_making_a_comeback , same as above.
*links to Mali: For Mali: http://www.voanews.com/english/news/US-Joins-Condemnation-of-Mali-Coup--143839706.html

Then there was Trayvon Martin who was shot in Florida, specifically Sanford, by a Hispanic man named George Zimmerman. George was suspicious of Trayvon because he was wearing a hoodie, holding some skittles, some ice tea, oh and I forgot to mention he was black so obviously he must be doing something wrong /sarcasm off. The police chief just decided to believe Zimmerman that it was in self defense even though he chased after Trayvon. He also didn't arrest Zimmerman nor check Trayvon's phone number, so they didn't know who he was for around 3 days and just let his corpse sit unidentified in the morgue (don't know if it was the morgue but wherever they brought his corpse to from the crime scene). He was also talking to his girlfriend who heard her boy friend running from the man who was going to kill him. Apparently if you amplify the video you can hear Zimmerman say the n-word while he is chasing after Trayvon to boot. Zimmerman was also a self appointed neighborhood watch man, he called the police, which is all they are supposed to do, and the police said to not go after Trayvon. He decided "screw it I ain't letting this guy get away" (that’s just an approximation of his thought process, not actually on the tape) and ran after him as I said before. today the police chief stepped down temporarily, but Zimmerman still has a gun, roams free, and a concealed weapons permit. Trayvon also got As and Bs in high school, as well as playing on the football team. Model American if there ever was one.

* to those people who looked at the thread before the Trevon stuff was up sorry I accidenly posted after I wrote the Mali stuff
* edited police chief fired to step down, although activists still demand he be fired and in the end I think he will be as Trayvon's murder has enraged everyone, because he was so innocent and could have been anyone's son. Unless your white in which case your son can walk around in a hoodie anywhere and never look suspicious.
* True the news refers to the conceanceled weapon permit as a gun permit.
* links For Tevon, first two provided by Captntastic: http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/03/what-happened-trayvon-martin-explained       http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/21/us/justice-department-opens-inquiry-in-killing-of-trayvon-martin.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all%3Fsrc%3Dtp&smid=fb-share    http://www.examiner.com/beauty-in-richmond/trevon-martin-self-defense-or-murder

* THIS IS IMPORTANT: Zimmerman's defense claim rests on the Stand Your Ground Law passed in Florida. Which essentially is a version of the castle law, which is a type of that says that if someone is going to harm or kill you in your home you can kill them, but applied to everywhere. If you looked at me funny in a movie theater (first place that came to mind could easily be a kindergarten, under Florida law it's all the same) and I shoot and killed you and was able to make a reasonable argument that the look you gave me was bad enough to make me believe you were going to kill me, whether or not you were actually going to do it, I would likely walk free. Oh by the way Florida's rate of Justifiable homicide rate, the rate at which people are lawfully killed by normal citizens, has tripled since the passage of the bill (http://miami.cbslocal.com/2012/03/20/deaths-nearly-triple-since-stand-your-ground-enacted/).

* Today there were also protests in NYC called the Million Hoodie March, based off the fact of that Trayon was wearing a hoodie when he died. (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57402318-504083/million-hoodie-march-held-in-nyc-in-memory-of-trayvon-martin/) Trayvon's parents were also there and appeared on Politics Nation with Al- Sharpton, who also held a rally in Florida today with the National Action Network, this is a link thier home page which at the time of linking the title story was about the Reverend and his rally (http://nationalactionnetwork.net/) and will likely remain so for a while and be updated if it changes.

[Capntastic]

I feel like I forgot somethin, but can't rember what.

If you're aiming for discussion it's usually good form to actually post news sources rather than repeating them second hand.

[nenjin]

The police chief wasn't fired. He has stepped aside on temporary leave for the duration of the investigation. There's an excellent chance that he'll be back in his position after this issue comes to a conclusion. (Excluding lawsuits and crazy revelations.)

[Frumple]

The Zimmerman thing's came up a couple times in other threads so far, yeah.

Only thing I see odd about your information is the mention of a gun permit, which Florida doesn't have/require. Might be talking about a concealed weapons permit, though.

[Capntastic]

Even if it's trivial to google things, linking the news source you're using actually lets people get the same picture as you.

Here's two good ones for the Trayvon situation:

http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/03/what-happened-trayvon-martin-explained
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/21/us/justice-department-opens-inquiry-in-killing-of-trayvon-martin.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all%3Fsrc%3Dtp&smid=fb-share

[Mr. Palau]

I feel like I forgot somethin, but can't rember what.

If you're aiming for discussion it's usually good form to actually post news sources rather than repeating them second hand.

I do rember what I forgot now though. Trevon had As and Bs in school, as well as playing football, model american kid. Here are links if people want to see a story about it though.
For Tevon: http://www.examiner.com/beauty-in-richmond/trevon-martin-self-defense-or-murder
For Mali: http://www.voanews.com/english/news/US-Joins-Condemnation-of-Mali-Coup--143839706.html

* sorry ninja'd by your links, this is what I saw, and then look'd at the Mali coup page on wikipedia, but that only realy had additional information about what happened to the government guy. Also apperantly the news has been using both Trayvon and Trevon interchangeably so if what I used was wrong I appoligize.

[Aqizzar]

I'm not really sure what relevance these events share, aside from being things that happened.  But I did hear an interesting point of note today.

Suburban white kids made Joseph Kony a household name, by talking about how vile his past is.  It took almost a month before anyone outside of Miami and ThinkProgress ever heard of Martin, and only now is anybody even looking at the mile-long list of completely disregarded murders of perfectly innocent black people across the country perpetrated under these "stand your ground" laws.

There's probably a point somewhere in there, but fuck if I know it.

[MaximumZero]

Suburban kids have their priorities fucked up?

[Mr. Palau]

I feel like I forgot somethin, but can't rember what.

If you're aiming for discussion it's usually good form to actually post news sources rather than repeating them second hand.

Hey sorry you are totally right, and I saw you do this to someone else and them replay saying you where mean blah blah (it was that post about sponsoring the girl he liked for a schoolorship rember?) it spiral out of control which is not what I want to happen, but somehow that came across as paternalistic and I think its the refering to good form, like thats a written rule or something, and then the rather than bit. Although you are right and I was aiming for discussion and long term your suggestion will help the discusion, in the future being more diplomatic would ultimatly insure that more people foollow your suggestions and thus further increase the quality of the discusion ( which for some reason I can't spell now).

* also for those who haven't noticed I have been updating the OP with information in the Trayvon case as it comes out, and will do the same for information about Mali. If anyone has any additional information for the OP just say so.

[Aqizzar]

As long as you're updating the OP, you might want to update the title to spell the name right.

[nenjin]

I don't know if I have a real opinion on Martin yet, other than the obvious one that it's a tragedy. I'm pretty much anti-open or concealed carry laws, and was against SYG. It's pretty clear someone didn't have to die that day, and I think at the end of this that's what will be discovered. Whether it was federal hate crime or not is where a lot of the attention is going to go.

[Mr. Palau]

As long as you're updating the OP, you might want to update the title to spell the name right.

Face-Palm

[Servant Corps]

...am I the only person concerned about the military coup in Mali?  Here's a decent summary of said coup as well as its possible effects. There's also an article on FP about the likelihood of coups (answer: coups are not occurring more than usual and today's coups respect the democratic process).

I admit there's not much to talk about because 1) none of us live in Mali, and 2) power now rests with the military dictatorship, who is likely to hold elections on schedule anyway, and 3) there's a little Turaeg insurgency in Mali that gained military skills by serving as Qaddafi's mercs back during the Libyan Civil War. But Mali is a state that holds...oh, 14.5 million people. I think the events in Mali probably impacts my life far more than the death of Martin...a state is very privileged within international law.

[Leafsnail]

The Trayvon thing just seems so awful though.  It's like they've effectively legalised murder against certain classes of people if they seem suspicious (considering that this is a clearcut case of chasing after and gunning someone down and yet which is apparently not being treated as a homicide).

[Mr. Palau]

hey guys I realized I have to fill out a big MUN application so I won't be able to update this with any serious modifications or new inforamtion or news stories for a while, sry. If anyone wants to post things they want added to the OP feel free to do so.