Month: January 2015

Oil Price – by Steve Brown

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”

Politico – by Jake Sherman

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”

Telegraph – by Henry Samuel

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”

USA Today – by Kim Hjelmgaard

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”

Mail.com

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”

Mail.com

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.”

Zero Hedge

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”

IB Times – by Athena Yenko

Continue reading “NATO Readies Forces On Short Notice As Russia Stations 3000 Ground Forces, 39 Ships, 45 Submarines”