[RD] News Thread of the Americas

[Takhisis]

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1673474-el-mapa-de-los-paros-de-los-gremios-docentes-en-todo-el-pais

That is a map of the current on-and-off-going teachers' strike in Argentina. Up to two weeks of classes have already been lost, and more are to come. Classes should have started on the Wednesday before last (5-03-2014) and this hasn't happened at all yet in some of the most populated districts including Buenos Aires province.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Oh, Joy...

Warning: Stocks Will Collapse by 50% in 2014
Tuesday, 18 Mar 2014

It is only a matter of time before the stock market plunges by 50% or more, according to several reputable experts.

“We have no right to be surprised by a severe and imminent stock market crash,” explains Mark Spitznagel, a hedge fund manager who is notorious for his hugely profitable billion-dollar bet on the 2008 crisis. “In fact, we must absolutely expect it."

Unfortunately Spitznagel isn’t alone.

“We are in a gigantic financial asset bubble,” warns Swiss adviser and fund manager Marc Faber. “It could burst any day.”

Faber doesn’t hesitate to put the blame squarely on President Obama’s big government policies and the Federal Reserve’s risky low-rate policies, which, he says, “penalize the income earners, the savers who save, your parents — why should your parents be forced to speculate in stocks and in real estate and everything under the sun?”

Billion-dollar investor Warren Buffett is rumored to be preparing for a crash as well. The “Warren Buffett Indicator,” also known as the “Total-Market-Cap to GDP Ratio,” is breaching sell-alert status and a collapse may happen at any moment.

So with an inevitable crash looming, what are Main Street investors to do?

One option is to sell all your stocks and stuff your money under the mattress, and another option is to risk everything and ride out the storm.
....

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Google encrypts Gmail to safeguard against NSA snooping

“Your email is important to you, and making sure it stays safe and always available is important to us,”Gmail engineering security chief, Nicolas Lidzborski, said in a blog post.
“Starting today, Gmail will always use an encrypted HTTPS connection when you check or send email.
“Today’s change means that no one can listen in on your messages as they go back and forth between you and Gmail’s servers — no matter if you’re using public WiFi or logging in from your computer, phone or tablet.”
The internet giant’s announcement is the latest attempt to bolster the company’s widely used email service and follows a similar step in 2010, when the company made HTTPS the default connection option.
At the time, however, users had the option to turn this protection feature off. Starting from Friday, Gmail is HTTPS-only. The move is a response to a disclosure made by National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower, Edward Snowden, that the agency had been secretly tapping into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world.

 

[peter grimes]

This will do nothing to prevent the NSA from sniffing data transferred between google servers. Our gmail is no less vulnerable than it was a year ago.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Agreed.

 

[peter grimes]

Actually, I stand corrected!

I think the article I read didn't mention this:

As an added barrier between you and the NSA, Google is making another change: every single email message Gmail users send or receive will now be encrypted as it moves internally between the company's data centers. That would seem to defeat a popular strategy of the NSA, which involves the agency intercepting email messages as they move between data centers and servers. Google says this change became "a top priority after last summer’s revelations" from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Source: http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/20/5530072/google-encrypts-gmail-between-data-centers-to-keep-out-nsa

To me, that's a bigger deal than just encrypting from user to server. It means that Google acknowledges that their private internal networks aren't secure.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Good... or at least better.

Now, from the "No surprises" department:

As Wells Fargo is Accused of Fabricating Foreclosure Papers, Will Banks Keep Escaping Prosecution?

A new internal report says the Justice Department massively overstated its successes in targeting mortgage fraud while in fact ranking it as a low priority for investigation. The Justice Department’s inspector general says despite playing a central role in the nation’s financial crisis, mortgage fraud was deemed either a low priority or not a priority at all. This comes as a recently revealed internal Wells Fargo document appears to guide lawyers step by step on how to fabricate missing documents to foreclose on homeowners. Wells Fargo is the country’s largest mortgage servicer and services some nine million home loans.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Slow thread... Here's something from my FB Newsfeed:

The President of Uruguay, José Mujica, said on Monday that the decision for Guantanamo detainees in Uruguay is already taken and denied that it depends on the order that asked Washington to release three Cuban prisoners convicted illegally in United States course espionage.

 

[Takhisis]

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1673474-el-mapa-de-los-paros-de-los-gremios-docentes-en-todo-el-pais

That is a map of the current on-and-off-going teachers' strike in Argentina. Up to two weeks of classes have already been lost, and more are to come. Classes should have started on the Wednesday before last (5-03-2014) and this hasn't happened at all yet in some of the most populated districts including Buenos Aires province.

It's jsut out on the radio that the official trade union committee meeting will take place next Friday, so a mere seventeen days fo classes will have been lost by then. Effectively, three to five million kids will have lost most of March by then.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

I saw that on the teacher's strike. What about this, from The Buenos Aires Herald:

Teachers' union defiant despite BA injunction

March 23, 2014
UDOCBA Secretary-general Miguel Ángel Díaz has insisted that members of his union will not be returning to the classroom on Tuesday, in spite of a court order ruling the end of strike action for teachers in Buenos Aires province.

"Classes will not be starting on Tuesday. I am sure class will not start, some of our companions might go but key members [of the union] will not, you can not be forced back at gunpoint," Díaz fired in an interview held today with Nacional Rock.

"We will go to our assembly on Tuesday and we will speak out on the information we have," he added.

"If I have to betray my companions I will go home, I am not going to be scared by a judge. If I get scared by that, peronism has no use in this country."

Díaz saved his harshest words for Buenos Aires Ombudsman Carlos Bonicatto, who presented the injunction before courts in order to break a strike which has been running for 13 consecutive days.

"Bonicatto is incredible, who is this ombudsman? He is Scioli's. Who is he? The school's director-general? Kapanga Bonicatto," the union leader seethed, following the official's assertion that classes would be starting this week.

 

[Takhisis]

Oh, yes. The government has made an art out of ignoring court orders, such as paying minimum wages and pensions. Meanwhile, they intend to pay a lot of money to the Paris Club and other bondholders, and want to spend a couple billion in buying new fighter jets, but paying tachers a decent minimum wage is not feasible.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Well, they'll get money by hosting Russian military bases.

So, who are the teacher's union and why have they gone so long like this? I mean, a 31% pay hike is significant, but obviously something else is going on...

 

[Takhisis]

50% yearly inflation is going on. Also, only a small part of the salary is counted for pension purposes, so after they retire they get less than half of what they were making as active workers. And, of course, that is if the government pays retirement pensions. Sometimes, they randomly decide not to follow salary rises so pensions are more or less a joke these days.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Sounds like the US.

Thanks for the info.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Found this gem while doing a search for Jen Psaki... she gets grilled by journalists over the State Department's interest in denying Eric Snowden his right to free speech and assembly...

State Department Hottie Grilled by Journalists

 

[BirraImperial]

Found this gem while doing a search for Jen Psaki... she gets grilled by journalists over the State Department's interest in denying Eric Snowden his right to free speech and assembly...

State Department Hottie Grilled by Journalists

Lol that's golden.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

UN hammers US human rights record on spying, torture, drones and death penalty

China is not alone in pointing out my nation's current government foibles...

A UN report hammers the United States’ human rights record, denouncing vast surveillance, ongoing unaccountability for torture, deadly drone strikes, one of the world’s highest death penalty counts, and mass incarceration, among other black marks.

The United Nations human rights committee issued its assessment of the US and how it complies with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), a UN General Assembly treaty in force since 1976.
The committee, led by British law professor Sir Nigel Rodley, focused most prominently on the National Security Agency’s global surveillanceregime, revealed via classified documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden last June....

 

[bugwar]

Link to video.


From the article:

Stanford bioengineering professor Manu Prakash was worried that because the developing world could not afford microscopes, they were prescribing malaria pills without identifying specific strains, and unwittingly boosting the resistance of some of the bugs. So he set out to make the best possible disease-detection instrument he could and make it cheap enough to distribute almost for free.
He and his students came up with an origami-like folded cardboard device called the "Foldscope".
It can be produced with just 50 cents for materials and is so durable that it can be stomped on and dropped into a bucket of water, and it still works.
The bookmark-sized piece of layered cardstock with a micro-lens can magnify up to 2,000 times and detect dangerous blood-borne diseases like malaria, African sleeping sickness, schistosomiasis and Chagas.
"They're literally as good as many research microscopes you can buy," said Prakash.

Source: http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/eart...-microscope-could-save-millions-of-lives.html

 

[peter grimes]

Where can I get one? That's awesome

 

[bugwar]

From the article:

With voters depressed over the economy, upset with Obamacare and greatly disapproving of President Obama, Democrats are in a sweat over lackluster voter turnout in November when control of the Senate will be up for grabs.
New polling shows that Republicans are super-charged at getting a chance to vote against Democrats and Obama while two key Democratic voting groups, unmarried women and younger Americans, are checking out of the process.
“Turnout will be a major test for Democrats,” said pollster Celinda Lake. She called new polling data showing a 64 percent to 57 percent enthusiasm gap between Republicans and Democrats “pretty sobering.”
In midterm elections, Democrats typically lag Republicans in intensity by 10-15 points, but the gap is 17 points, she said.
...
The voter enthusiasm gap played out in the recent special election in Florida’s 13th Congressional District, where the GOP surprised the Democrats with an effective get-out-the-vote program — and victory.
...
In the poll, a majority disapprove of Obama’s handling of the economy, his ability to solve problems, and his effort to create jobs.

Source: http://washingtonexaminer.com/democ...m-single-women-younger-voters/article/2546446