South Korea’s Education System, “Amounts to Child Abuse”
August 3rd, 2014Via: New York Times:
After my older brother fell ill from the stress of being a student in South Korea, my mother decided to move me from our home in Seoul to Vancouver for high school to spare me the intense pressure to succeed. She did not want me to suffer like my brother, who had a chest pain that doctors could not diagnose and an allergy so severe he needed to have shots at home.
I was fortunate that my mother recognized the problem and had the means to take me abroad. Most South Korean children’s parents are the main source of the unrelenting pressure put on students.
Thirteen years later, in 2008, I taught advanced English grammar to 11-year-olds at an expensive cram school in the wealthy Seoul neighborhood of Gangnam. The students were serious about studying but their eyes appeared dead.
When I asked a class if they were happy in this environment, one girl hesitantly raised her hand to tell me that she would only be happy if her mother was gone because all her mother knew was how to nag about her academic performance.
The world may look to South Korea as a model for education — its students rank among the best on international education tests — but the system’s dark side casts a long shadow. Dominated by Tiger Moms, cram schools and highly authoritarian teachers, South Korean education produces ranks of overachieving students who pay a stiff price in health and happiness. The entire program amounts to child abuse. It should be reformed and restructured without delay.
China Says Violent Xinjiang Uprising Leaves Almost 100 Dead
August 3rd, 2014Via: Wall Street Journal:
Chinese police forces last week gunned down 59 people and arrested another 215 during a violent uprising in the country’s far western Xinjiang region that left almost 100 dead, the government said Sunday, in a statement that shed fresh light on an incident that dissident groups had described as a major clash.
Police described coordinated predawn attacks on July 28 by unnamed assailants on civilians, government buildings and vehicles in two Xinjiang towns including Elixhu, according to government-run Xinhua News Agency.
In addition to the 59 suspected terrorists killed by police, 37 civilians died during the incident, it said. The statement called the assailants terrorists and said the”organized and premeditated” attack had foreign support.
Obama: “We Tortured Some Folks”
August 1st, 2014
Via: Time:
On Friday, President Barack Obama previewed the upcoming release of a Senate report into the CIA’s rendition, detention and interrogation after the attacks of September 11, 2001, saying “we tortured some folks.”
U.S. Government Seeking to Test Ebola Vaccine on Humans
August 1st, 2014Via: Reuters:
The U.S. government will begin testing on people an experimental Ebola vaccine as early as September, after seeing positive results from tests on primates, according to media reports on Thursday.
The National Institutes of Health’s infectious disease unit is working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to put the vaccine into trial as quickly as possible, according to CNN and USA Today. The director of that unit could not be reached for comment.
NSA Spy Tools Were Set for NZ Installation
August 1st, 2014NSA wouldn’t need to tap the cables since the agency is already inside the boxes in the U.S., New Zealand and Aussie landing sites. What do you think Snowden was supposed to be doing at his NSA job in Hawaii? Working on his tan? Look at where the Southern Cross cables go.
So let’s cut the BS about how they supposedly need access to the Southern Cross network. That is a limited hangout if I’ve ever seen one.
My guess is that this is about traffic inside NZ—traffic which wouldn’t be transiting the Southern Cross network.
While we’re on the topic of submarine cables serving NZ, what about the new Hawaiki cable that’s about to be built?
See: US Military Interest in NZ Cable:
The United States Defence Department could help pay for a new cable linking New Zealand, Australia, the United States and several Pacific Islands, an Auckland source says.
He said the department had an interest in spending about US$100 million (NZ$120m) to directly or indirectly acquire a pair of optical fibres between the US, Australia and American Samoa to link its defence bases.
The interest has not been confirmed by the US Government or the Hawaiki company, which have been approached for comment.
The US said in 2011 that it would build a permanent base for thousands of US Marines in Darwin.
The Australian Government said in June that the number of Marines at the base would rise from between 200 and 250 to 1150 next year. By 2016, it would support a 2500-strong Marine Air Ground Task Force.
*sigh*
Via: New Zealand Herald:
The most instrusive and powerful tools in the United States’ electronic spying armoury were being lined up for installation in New Zealand last year, according to a document obtained by the Herald.
An engineer visited a GCSB base near Blenheim in February 2013 to talk about setting up a “Special Source Operations” site.
The SSO is the division of the United States’ National Security Agency which carries out cable tapping and has vast resources to trawl and capture massive amounts of internet content and electronic communication, including the PRISM system.
Disclosures of its powers were the most controversial of those made by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden when he began revealing its capabilities last year. Use of the powerful tools has created diplomatic rifts and forced US president Barack Obama to talk of reigning in his electronic spies.
The GCSB has refused to say whether it went ahead with plans to install the SSO site.
Related / Real Reason Why Pacific Fibre Failed: Trans-Pacific Cable Plans Mired in Geopolitics and Kiwi Pacific Fibre cable project sunk by US fears about Chinese investment, espionage; ‘It was made clear US authorities would not allow Chinese investment,’ Pacific Fibre’s Drury says
Research Credit: CP (She was first)
U.S. GOVERNMENT JET FLYING PEOPLE INFECTED WITH EBOLA BACK TO U.S.
July 31st, 2014Update: Ebola Evacuation Planes Will Land at Dobbins Air Force Base
Via: NBC:
Ebola-infected Americans being flown from Africa to the United States will land at a military base outside Atlanta, officials said Friday. The patients will not be transported on U.S. military aircraft, but Dobbins Air Force Base in Marietta will receive the planes because it can provide security and isolation from the general population, officials said.
—
Via: CNN:
The fear began just after news broke Thursday that a long-range business jet with an isolation pod left the United States for Liberia, where it will evacuate two Americans infected with Ebola.
Twitter exploded with questions about the deadly virus, which according to the World Health Organization is believed to have killed hundreds in four West African nations. And with reaction to news that two infected Americans would soon be on their way back to the United States.
“Why are they doing this?” Robin Hunter asked in a post on Twitter.
While U.S. officials have remained mum on the issue, a source told CNN that a medical charter flight left from Cartersville, Georgia, on Thursday evening.
A CNN crew saw the plane depart shortly after 5 p.m. ET. The plane matched the description provided by the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
It was not immediately known when the two Americans — identified by the source as Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol — would arrive in the United States, or where the plane would land.
At least one of the two will be taken to a hospital at Emory University, near the headquarters of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, hospital officials told CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
The patient will be cared for in an isolation unit at the hospital that is separate from patient areas, Gupta said.
With the return of Brantly and Writebol to the United States, it will be the first time that patients diagnosed with Ebola will be known to be in the country.
Brantly and Writebol are described as being in stable-but-grave conditions, with both reportedly taking a turn for the worse overnight, according to statements released Thursday by the faith-based charity Samaritan’s Purse.
CIA Admits to Improperly Hacking Senate Computers
July 31st, 2014Via: National Journal:
In a sharp and sudden reversal, the CIA is acknowledging it improperly tapped into the computers of Senate staffers who were reviewing the intelligence agency’s Bush-era torture practices.
Colorado Nurse Sues After Being a ‘Hostage’ in Police Drill
July 31st, 2014Via: Reuters:
A Colorado woman is suing the nursing home where she worked and local police for allegedly not telling her that a gunman who held her hostage was a police officer conducting a safety drill, court documents show.
Michelle Meeker claims in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Denver that she was terrorized when an armed man confronted her last October at the Heritage Park Care Center in Carbondale, Colorado.
Meeker, a registered nurse, was tending to one of her long-term patients when another employee told her to see what a “suspicious” man sitting in the center’s day room wanted, according to the complaint.
The man then showed her a handgun he had in his waistband and ordered her into an unoccupied room.
Although the man told her in hushed tones that he was a police officer, the lawsuit says, Meeker was not informed beforehand of the drill and was unsure whether he was telling the truth.
“In a desperate plea for her life, she begged the man not to hurt her, telling him she had a young child,” the complaint says.
The officer, the Carbondale police chief, and executives of the center are named as defendants.
Argentina Defaults Again
July 31st, 2014Via: Forbes:
Things couldn’t have come out worse. Everyone lost: Argentina defaulted on its sovereign debt for the second time in 12 years, the holdout bond holders were left empty handed, and Federal Judge Thomas Griesa’s strategy to force Argentine to negotiate a settlement with the so-called venture funds failed. Furthermore, a least ditch effort by a group of Argentine bankers led by Banco Macro’s Jorge Brito fell through at the last second.
The decade-long legal battle between a group of hedge funds led by billionaire Paul Singer’s Elliott Management and the Argentine government, which is by no means done, resulted in the worst possible scenario. At the stroke of midnight on Thursday in New York, Argentina once again entered into a state of default, as holders of its restructured debt didn’t receive interest payments for $539 million. Credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded the country’s rating to selective default.
Panasonic and Tesla Sign Agreement for the Gigafactory
July 31st, 2014Via: Tesla Motors:
Panasonic Corporation and Tesla Motors, Inc. have signed an agreement that lays out their cooperation on the construction of a large-scale battery manufacturing plant in the United States, known as the Gigafactory.
According to the agreement, Tesla will prepare, provide and manage the land, buildings and utilities. Panasonic will manufacture and supply cylindrical lithium-ion cells and invest in the associated equipment, machinery, and other manufacturing tools based on their mutual approval. A network of supplier partners is planned to produce the required precursor materials. Tesla will take the cells and other components to assemble battery modules and packs. To meet the projected demand for cells, Tesla will continue to purchase battery cells produced in Panasonic’s factories in Japan. Tesla and Panasonic will continue to discuss the details of implementation including sales, operations and investment.
The Gigafactory is being created to enable a continuous reduction in the cost of long range battery packs in parallel with manufacturing at the volumes required to enable Tesla to meet its goal of advancing mass market electric vehicles. The Gigafactory will be managed by Tesla with Panasonic joining as the principle partner responsible for lithium-ion battery cells and occupying approximately half of the planned manufacturing space; key suppliers combined with Tesla’s module and pack assembly will comprise the other half of this fully integrated industrial complex.
