November 29, 2014

Juan Cole: Oil Price Fall: Saudi Arabi targets US Shale Oil, Iran, Iraq, Russia

By Juan Cole


It is clear that among the major losers in the fall in the price of Brent crude petroleum from $115 a barrel last summer to about $75 a barrel today are Russia, Iraq and Iran. Petroleum sales are 50% of Russia’s income, and are also central for Iran and Iraq.

But the big loser will likely be shale oil producers and prospectors in the US, who probably cannot make a profit if the price falls into the 60s.

The cause of the fall, by $40 a barrel, in petroleum prices since last summer is almost completely on the demand side. Asian economies, especially China, are dramatically slowing, and won’t be requiring as much petroleum to fuel trucks, trains and cars to deliver people and goods around the country. Most petroleum is used to fuel transport. Some is used for heating or cooling, as in Saudi Arabia and Hawaii, but that practice is relatively rare. US journalists seem to feel it obligatory to mention US shale oil production as a contributor to the price fall, since prices are a matter of supply and demand, and US supply has increased by a couple million barrels a day. But frankly that is a minor increase in world terms– global production is roughly 90 million barrels a day. Between Iran, Iraq (Kirkuk), Libya and Syria, enough oil has gone out of production to more than offset the additional American oil. It isn’t that there is more oil being pumped, it is that the world doesn’t want it as much because of cooling economies.

The Russian and Iranian governments are said to be panicking , because both need high prices to support their bloated government budgets and popular subsidies. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.juancole.com/2014/11/targets-shale-russia.html

November 29, 2014

I've already read a number of news stories downplaying Black Friday sales expectations......

...... all the commercial hype in the world won't help when people's incomes aren't increasing, n'est-ce pas?

November 29, 2014

Viggo Mortensen Helps Mark 10 Years of Howard Zinn’s "Voices of a People’s History"

&list=UUzuqE7-t13O4NIDYJfakrhw


http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/viggo_mortensen_marks_10_years_of_zinns_voices_of_a_peoples_history_2014112

Actors including Viggo Mortensen, Peter Sarsgaard and Kelly Macdonald gathered in New York on Friday, the 10th anniversary of the publication of “Voices of a People’s History of the United States”—a work based on the late historian Howard Zinn’s million-title selling book “A People’s History of the United States”—for a reading of “Voices.” Mortensen spoke with “Democracy Now!” about “history’s corporate takeover[s].”

In particular, Mortensen discussed a selection from Zinn’s work that he read during a 2005 reading of “Voices.” The author was the 16th century Spanish historian Bartolome de las Casas, who wrote a short account of the destruction of the Indes. “Into this sheepfold,” wrote de las Casas of the people who once populated the island of Hispaniola, “into this land of meek outcasts there came some Spaniards who immediately behaved like ravening wild beasts, wolves, tigers, or lions that had been starved for many days—killing, terrorizing, afflicting, torturing, and destroying the native peoples, doing all this with the strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty, never seen or heard of before, and to such a degree that this Island of Hispaniola, once so populous (having a population that I estimated to be more than three million), has now a population of barely two hundred persons.”

Mortensen went on:

Bartolomé de las Casas was a priest, a religious man, who accompanied some of the first Iberian expeditions to what we call the New World, you know, and what he’s talking about in that text, where he talks about extreme cruelty and basically that period in history’s corporate takeover of what we now call Haiti, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Jamaica, that region, it’s really–it is very disturbing, what he describes. And he wrote these texts and presented them to the court, to the king in Spain, and complained about it. Nothing really changed, because economic interests are what they are, just as they are in this country and other places. Citizens have to do something, have to demand change, you know.

And, you know, this book, Voices of a People’s History of the United States, is unusual in that it has to do with firsthand accounts, contemporary accounts, throughout this nation’s history by people that maybe we’ve never heard of, events that we’ve never heard of, unfortunately. You know, I think that all tribes, all nations have what some call foundation myths, you know, which are—foundation myths, I think, are—well, Anthony can correct me, he’s the scholar here, but they are stories that we like to tell, or that governments like to tell, to protect, to further, to enforce a status quo, you know, established states of affairs. And what this book presents, however, are texts that are, as I say, firsthand historical accounts, reactions by more or less regular people to real social, political events. I think what I call this is foundation facts, you know, which is, I think, what you guys deal with or try to every day here.

November 28, 2014

John Nichols: An Inconvenient Political Truth: That St. Louis Prosecutor Is a Democrat

from The Nation:



St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch’s handling of the Michael Brown shooting case has inspired a storm of controversy.

After a grand jury refused to bring charges against Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson in the August 9 shooting death of the African-American teenager, an attorney for the Brown family told the Associated Press, “We said from the very beginning that the decision of this grand jury was going to be the direct reflection of the presentation of the evidence by the prosecutor’s office.”

Long criticized for failing to adequately investigate complaints about the police, and for failing to demand accountability in cases of officer-involved shootings, McCulloch’s approach to the grand jury inquiry was the subject of concern from the start. And the prosecutor sparked anger at the finish by delaying the announcement of the grand jury’s decision deep into Monday evening. The prosecutor seized his prime-time platform to delivera rambling and frequently defensive forty-five-minute speech. He went on and on about aspects of the case. Yet he failed to mention that Brown was unarmed when he was killed.

.....(snip).....

What has not been much discussed is the fact that McCulloch is a Democrat—a member of the same party as President Obama, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon and Congressional Black Caucus chair Marcia Fudge, the Ohioan who on Monday evening referred to the failure to bring charges against Wilson as “a slap in the face to Americans nationwide who continue to hope and believe that justice will prevail.”

Across America, counties elect top law-enforcement officials as state’s attorneys, district attorneys and prosecuting attorneys. Hundreds of them are Democrats. Some, like Kings County (Brooklyn) District Attorney Ken Thompson and Bronx County District Attorney Robert T. Johnson, have impressed progressives by taking bold stands and developing innovative policies on everything from the drug war to the death penalty to gun violence and domestic abuse. Former San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan, a “wild Irish rogue” who was arrested sixteen times as a civil rights campaigner before his election to the DA post, often clashed with the police on accountability issues during his tenure. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/blog/191593/inconvenient-political-truth-st-louis-prosecutor-democrat

November 28, 2014

Drug Shills Dispensing Pills

from In These Times:


Drug Shills Dispensing Pills
A psychiatrist questions Big Pharma’s influence on her profession.

BY JEAN KIM


In 2009, as an eager young psychiatry professor at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, I presented to faculty on the need for a moral dimension to psychiatric diagnoses. I was laughed out of the room.

One psychiatrist, a schizophrenia specialist, said he didn’t see the point. The acting medical director said he felt I’d called him immoral. A top research psychiatrist said, incredibly, “Morality and psychiatry should be kept separate.”

So a few years later, when ProPublica launched its Dollars for Docs database to track the drug company money doctors were taking, I typed in their names. The acting medical director received $12,550 in 2010 and 2011 for speaking gigs. The researcher received more than $212,489 between 2009 and 2012 for speaking gigs and consultations. The schizophrenia specialist made more than $323,300. And the database only includes disclosures from 17 of the more than 70 drug companies in the world. According to Dollars for Docs, hundreds of thousands of doctors have raked in a total of more than $4 billion since 2009, with the top earner, psychiatrist Dr. Jon Draud, netting at least $1.2 million.

As a psychiatrist who “grew up” in the last decade, I was not surprised.

I started my residency training in New York City in 2000. Lunches and dinners provided by drug company reps were astaple of my diet. For a hungry, harried resident on a paltry salary, a free pit stop at a steaming Chinese buffet was heaven. All around me in Manhattan, investment bankers and freshly minted lawyers were living it up, and I admit that I wanted a piece of the pie as well. By mid-decade, academic psychiatry had become glamorous. A resident might schmooze with a drug rep and get invited to a trendy spot—Nobu, Olives, Tao—where we could imbibe Sex and the City-style cocktails and sample the freshest sushi. Drug reps, selected for their looks and charm, were the popular, beautiful best friends we geeky docs never had. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/17353/drug_shills_dispensing_pills

November 28, 2014

Viggo Mortensen Helps Mark 10 Years of Howard Zinn’s "Voices of a People’s History"

&list=UUzuqE7-t13O4NIDYJfakrhw


http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/viggo_mortensen_marks_10_years_of_zinns_voices_of_a_peoples_history_2014112

Actors including Viggo Mortensen, Peter Sarsgaard and Kelly Macdonald gathered in New York on Friday, the 10th anniversary of the publication of “Voices of a People’s History of the United States”—a work based on the late historian Howard Zinn’s million-title selling book “A People’s History of the United States”—for a reading of “Voices.” Mortensen spoke with “Democracy Now!” about “history’s corporate takeover[s].”

In particular, Mortensen discussed a selection from Zinn’s work that he read during a 2005 reading of “Voices.” The author was the 16th century Spanish historian Bartolome de las Casas, who wrote a short account of the destruction of the Indes. “Into this sheepfold,” wrote de las Casas of the people who once populated the island of Hispaniola, “into this land of meek outcasts there came some Spaniards who immediately behaved like ravening wild beasts, wolves, tigers, or lions that had been starved for many days—killing, terrorizing, afflicting, torturing, and destroying the native peoples, doing all this with the strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty, never seen or heard of before, and to such a degree that this Island of Hispaniola, once so populous (having a population that I estimated to be more than three million), has now a population of barely two hundred persons.”

Mortensen went on:

Bartolomé de las Casas was a priest, a religious man, who accompanied some of the first Iberian expeditions to what we call the New World, you know, and what he’s talking about in that text, where he talks about extreme cruelty and basically that period in history’s corporate takeover of what we now call Haiti, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Jamaica, that region, it’s really–it is very disturbing, what he describes. And he wrote these texts and presented them to the court, to the king in Spain, and complained about it. Nothing really changed, because economic interests are what they are, just as they are in this country and other places. Citizens have to do something, have to demand change, you know.

And, you know, this book, Voices of a People’s History of the United States, is unusual in that it has to do with firsthand accounts, contemporary accounts, throughout this nation’s history by people that maybe we’ve never heard of, events that we’ve never heard of, unfortunately. You know, I think that all tribes, all nations have what some call foundation myths, you know, which are—foundation myths, I think, are—well, Anthony can correct me, he’s the scholar here, but they are stories that we like to tell, or that governments like to tell, to protect, to further, to enforce a status quo, you know, established states of affairs. And what this book presents, however, are texts that are, as I say, firsthand historical accounts, reactions by more or less regular people to real social, political events. I think what I call this is foundation facts, you know, which is, I think, what you guys deal with or try to every day here.

November 27, 2014

London Calling ...... to Ferguson

London (AFP) - Thousands protested in London on Wednesday in sympathy with demonstrations across the US over the killing of a black teenager by a white police officer.

The decision not to prosecute the officer for shooting dead unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, sparked anger and racially-charged unrest in cities across the United States this week.

The roughly five thousand London protesters held signs reading "Black lives matter" and chanted "Hands up, don't shoot", the slogan adopted by protesters in the US.

At a rally outside the United States embassy, relatives of black men killed by police in Britain addressed the crowd.

"We need to send a message to Mike Brown's family," said Carol Duggan, the aunt of Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old black man whose shooting by police in 2011 was followed by riots. ........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://news.yahoo.com/hundreds-protest-us-embassy-london-over-ferguson-case-213035276.html

November 26, 2014

Detroit: Tour the David Whitney Apartments and Hotel Rooms

from Curbed Detroit:


Tour the David Whitney Apartments and Hotel Rooms
Friday, October 24, 2014, by Sarah Cox




If you've already perused the David Whitney leasing site, photos of the model apartment unit on the 18th floor are not new to you. The model unit was completed in September. But this week's media tour finally revealed what the interior courtyard views really looked like. Behold! A lot of very comtemplative white space. Calming? Yes? As exciting as the spaces with clear views into Comerica Park? Well not everyone is a sports fan. The 18th floor hallway, pictured, shows the character of the office building is in tact and rather lovely. Apartments have nicely detailed doors and windows.


[font size="1"]The model hotel room[/font]









...........more pictures at: http://detroit.curbed.com/archives/2014/10/tour-the-david-whiteny-apartments-and-hotel-rooms.php

November 26, 2014

Why Ferguson outcome should haunt every parent

from the Detroit Free Press:


By Stephen Henderson, Detroit Free Press Editorial Page Editor


The smolder of injustice sparks to flame again in Ferguson, Mo.

It's happened before. It will happen again. And until we quell the still-burning fires of America's racial strife, we'll live with the smoke and ashes.

Every parent of a child of color lives, every day, in fear that a hoodie, a certain gait or an offhand remark might inspire authorities to see menace, and to strike with lethal force. I can't begin to know how to explain that to my son, now 11 and brown-skinned and beginning to look like some of the older kids I see in news reports like those from Ferguson.

Every parent in the nation should live with unease over the sustained and wretched dehumanization that assigns expendability to some children. Can we respect each other, let alone live together, if it's OK to kill some of our kids?

........(snip)........

The fear sweeping black families across the country is not about their children's innocence or guilt, but about the brutality with which authority is exercised, and the insistence that it's always justified. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.freep.com/story/opinion/columnists/stephen-henderson/2014/11/26/ferguson-michael-brown-race/70122128/

November 26, 2014

More Splendid Zinn

[font size="5"]“I was astonished, bewildered. This was America, a country where, whatever its faults, people could speak, write, assemble, demonstrate without fear. It was in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. We were a democracy...

But I knew it wasn't a dream; there was a painful lump on the side of my head...

The state and its police were not neutral referees in a society of contending interests. They were on the side of the rich and powerful. Free speech? Try it and the police will be there with their horses, their clubs, their guns, to stop you.

From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong in this country--not just the existence of poverty amidst great wealth, not just the horrible treatment of black people, but something rotten at the root. The situation required not just a new president or new laws, but an uprooting of the old order, the introduction of a new kind of society--cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian.”[/font]

-- Howard Zinn, from You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train