Month: January 2015
The recent collapse in oil prices has taken pundits and oil producers by surprise. It was only six months ago that prices were over $100/bbl and at that time they had been above $100/bbl for three and a half years. In fact the stability had become uncanny, so perhaps we should have seen the collapse coming. I would like to claim I had been prescient but sadly I wasn’t.
There are lots of conspiracy theories on offer, but it seems to me the root of Saudi Arabia’s refusal to defend the oil price lies in its fear of a repetition of the loss of market share that OPEC suffered in the early eighties. But there are good reasons why the 2010’s are not the 1980’s. Continue reading “Be Prepared For An Oil Price Spike”
The Free Thought Project – by John Vibes
Indianapolis, Indiana – For at least six months now, the SWAT team for the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department has been deployed full-time, responding to routine calls and conducting investigations.
It was reported by WishTV that in the past six months, the Indianapolis SWAT division has been on nearly 300 calls, and conducted over 700 interviews with people on the street. The police department has boasted that the implementation of the SWAT team has taken 36 guns off the streets, but there has been no mention as to how much this is all going to cost for taxpayers. Continue reading “Major Cities Across The US Becoming Equipped With “Full-Time” SWAT Teams”
HERSHEY, Pa. — House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday that secret government surveillance had helped stop an alleged plot to bomb and shoot up the United States Capitol.
Christopher Lee Cornell of Ohio was arrested Wednesday after federal authorities said the 20-year-old had bought guns and 600 rounds of ammunition as part of a plan to attack the Capitol, while expressing allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Boehner said the case could help Congress renew the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act later this year. Continue reading “Boehner: Surveillance helped foil alleged plot on Capitol”
Washington’s Blog – by David Swanson
Since Tuesday and continuing for the coming three weeks, an amazing trial is happening in U.S. District Court at 401 Courthouse Square in Alexandria, Va. The trial is open to the public, and among the upcoming witnesses is Condoleezza Rice, but — unlike the Chelsea Manning trial — most of the seats at this somewhat similar event are empty.
The media is mostly MIA, and during lunch break the two tables at the cafe across the street are occupied, one by the defendant and his lawyers, the other by a small group of activists, including former CIA officer Ray McGovern, blogger Marcy Wheeler (follow her report of every detail at ExposeFacts.org), and Norman Solomon who has organized a petition at DropTheCharges.org — the name of which speaks for itself. Continue reading “CIA on Trial in Virginia for Planting Nuke Evidence in Iran”
A hostage taking is under way in a post office in Colombes, a suburb of northwest Paris.
According to police, an armed man is currently detaining two hostages, but they insisted there was no link to terrorism.
The man is known by the authorities, and had contacted the police himself, they said.
Continue reading “Hostages taken in Paris suburb post office”
The Washington Post – by Donna St. George
It was a one-mile walk home from a Silver Spring park on Georgia Avenue on a Saturday afternoon. But what the parents saw as a moment of independence for their 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter, they say authorities viewed much differently.
Danielle and Alexander Meitiv say they are being investigated for neglect for the Dec. 20 trek — in a case they say reflects a clash of ideas about how safe the world is and whether parents are free to make their own choices about raising their children. Continue reading “Parents investigated for neglect after letting kids walk home alone”
Association for Psychological Science
Evidence from some wrongful-conviction cases suggests that suspects can be questioned in ways that lead them to falsely believe in and confess to committing crimes they didn’t actually commit. New research provides lab-based evidence for this phenomenon, showing that innocent adult participants can be convinced, over the course of a few hours, that they had perpetrated crimes as serious as assault with a weapon in their teenage years.
The research, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, indicates that the participants came to internalize the stories they were told, providing rich and detailed descriptions of events that never actually took place. Continue reading “People Can Be Convinced They Committed a Crime That Never Happened”
UT San Diego – by Susan Shroder
PALM DESERT, Calif. — The body of Omar Meza, a finance company vice president and San Diego native who went missing a week ago during a business trip in Palm Desert, was found Thursday, his family said.
Palm Desert police said in a statement only that the body of a man was found in a “body of water” off Country Club Drive about 2:15 p.m. The cause of death was not yet determined pending an autopsy by the Riverside County Coroner’s Office. Continue reading “Body of missing AIG vice president found in Palm Desert”
Authorities in France, Belgium and Germany arrested more than two dozen people in anti-terror raids across continental Europe on Friday.
The police raids in Belgium came after authorities Thursday night moved swiftly to pre-empt what they called a major impending attack, killing two suspects in a firefight and arresting a third.
Prosecutors in Brussels on Friday gave more chilling details about the case. Continue reading “Two dozen arrested in anti-terror raids across Europe”
Share Everything – by Rasha B. Fada
“Racism is a vital weapon employed by this government” . . .
“While [other] weapons are created and owned by this government[,] they are harmless without people willing to use them” . . .
“They need soldiers who are willing to kill and be killed without question.”
Racism is what makes them do it. Continue reading ““Racism is a vital weapon employed by this government””
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — Former national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told jurors Thursday she was stunned to learn that a classified mission to thwart Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions — now at the heart of a criminal leak trial — had been disclosed to a reporter.
Rice testified for the prosecution in U.S. District Court at the trial of ex-CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, 47, of O’Fallon, Missouri, who is charged with illegally disclosing details of the program to New York Times reporter James Risen. Sterling denies leaking any information to Risen. Continue reading “Condoleezza Rice says she was stunned CIA mission was leaked”
PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona became the first state in the nation on Thursday to enact a law requiring high school students to pass the U.S. citizenship test on civics before graduation, giving a boost to a growing nationwide effort to boost civics education.
Both the Arizona House and Senate quickly passed the legislation on just the fourth day of the legislative session, and newly elected Republican Gov. Doug Ducey signed it into law Thursday evening. The swift action in Arizona comes as states around the country take up similar measures. Arizona’s law requires high school students to correctly answer 60 of 100 questions on the civics portion of the test new citizens must pass. Continue reading “Arizona passes law requiring students to pass civics test”
NECN – by Tim Jones and Marc Fortier
Twenty-nine protesters with the Boston contingent of “Black Lives Matter” who were arrested after shutting down two sections of a busy Boston highway on Thursday morning were arraigned and released on personal recognizance later that day.
Police say protesters blocked I-93 northbound at East Milton Square south of the city and I-93 southbound at Mystic Avenue in Medford north of the city around 7:30 a.m. The protests caused massive backups during what is already typically a busy commute. Continue reading “29 Arraigned After Protesters Shut Down 2 Parts of I-93 in Mass.”
MEMPHIS — A disturbing video has surfaced online showing a police officer unabashedly trying to steal money from a family’s make-a-wish foundation fund.
The money was reserved for a sick child who was about to be cared for on a make-a-wish trip.
The make a wish foundation is an organization devoted to fulfilling the wishes of children who are dying from life-threatening illnesses. Continue reading “Cold-Hearted Cop Caught On Video Stealing Money From A Sick Child”
The Daily Sheeple – by Mac Slavo
With the debt obligations of the United States at over $118 trillion dollars, it has become obvious that the collapse of our economic powerhouse, starting with the U.S. dollar, is a foregone conclusion. While it’s impossible to predict when such an event will occur or what the final trigger will be, at this point it won’t take much to send the whole thing tumbling down.
And when it finally does happen, as noted in the short video report from Future Money Trends, the resulting shift to a new system could very quickly devolve into the worst of what humanity has to offer. Continue reading “Market Crash Looming: “Riots Worldwide, Wars, Extreme Volatility… Even Global Depression””
The Daily Sheeple – by Melissa Melton
Remember this? After Colorado legalized marijuana for recreational use, Nancy Grace found it within herself to claim that people who use it kill whole families. Of course, back when she was covering the Trayvon Martin case and found out Mr. Martin had used it, she had a whole different take on the matter… Continue reading “Nancy Grace Flashback: ‘Marijuana Users Stab, Strangle and Kill Whole Families’”
Back in November, before most grasped just how serious the collapse in crude was (and would become, as well as its massive implications), we wrote “How The Petrodollar Quietly Died, And Nobody Noticed“, because for the first time in almost two decades, energy-exporting countries would pull their “petrodollars” out of world markets in 2015.
This empirical death of Petrodollar followed years of windfalls for oil exporters such as Russia, Angola, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. Much of that money found its way into financial markets, helping to boost asset prices and keep the cost of borrowing down, through so-called petrodollar recycling. Continue reading “Russia Just Pulled Itself Out Of The Petrodollar”
NATO will be able to deploy forces on short notice – in any moment that an attack against one of its allies is launched – with its “high readiness spearhead force” in place for 2015. Troops from Netherlands, Norway and Germany were deployed to NATO’s eastern allies to provide “a very rapid response force” to be able to protect all allies against any threat, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told press in Berlin on Jan 14.