Monday, January 4th, 2016
Stephan: I think the world is building up to a new major paroxysm of violence in the Middle East, partly brought on by the collapse of oil prices. Here is a presentation on some of the relevant issues.
Credit: Forbes
A glut of oil, the demise of Opec and weakening global demand combined to make 2015 the year of crashing oil prices. The cost of crude fell to levels not seen for 11 years – and the decline may have further to go.
There have been four sharp increases in the price of oil in the past four decades – in 1973, 1979, 1990 and 2008 – and each has led to a global recession. By that measure, a lower oil price should be positive for the world economy, with lower fuel costs for consumers and businesses in those countries that import crude outweighing the losses to producing nations.
But the evidence since oil prices started falling from their peak of $115 a barrel in August 2014 has not supported that thesis – or not yet. Oil producers have certainly felt the impact of the lower prices on their growth rates, their trade figures and their public finances butthere has been no surge in consumer spending or business investment […]
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Monday, January 4th, 2016
, - Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Stephan: The issue of death is no longer the clearcut demarcation line it has been for all the centuries in the past. Today an entirely new field of medicine, resuscitation medicine, has arisen and depending on the hospital you are in, you may have more of a chance -- or less -- than you realize. Here is a report on the issues surrounding these new developments
According to a study that was published in the journal JAMA Neurology, not all hospitals have adopted the American Academy of Neurology’s guidelines for determining brain death.
Credit: AJC.com
The narrow, inscrutable zone between undeniably still here and unequivocally gone includes a range of states that look like life but may not be: a beating heart, a functioning digestive system, even moving fingers and toes. Death is less a moment then a process, a gradual drift out of existence as essential functions switch off, be it rapidly or one by one.
It was exactly midnight when Colleen Burns was wheeled into the operating room at St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center in Syracuse, N.Y. She had been deep in a coma for several days after overdosing on a toxic cocktail of drugs. Scans of electrical activity in her brain were poor, and oxygen didn’t seem to be flowing. Burns was brain […]
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Sunday, January 3rd, 2016
Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate Economist and Op-ed Columnist - The New York Times
Stephan: As is so often the case, Paul Krugman has once again nailed the relevant issue. The reason the French Revolution took place was that the entrenched ultra-rich became a class of narcissistic, self-referential cretins, who lived in a world that had almost no tangency or relevance to France as a whole. We are reaching that point again, as Krugman describes.
Shooting ranges, an indoor tennis court, a bedroom bigger than many houses: For a small cadre of very wealthy owners, building big is back.
Credit: lloydkahn-ongoing.blogspot.com
Wealth can be bad for your soul. That’s not just a hoary piece of folk wisdom; it’s a conclusion from serious social science, confirmed by statistical analysis and experiment. The affluent are, on average, less likely to exhibit empathy, less likely to respect norms and even laws, more likely to cheat, than those occupying lower rungs on the economic ladder.
And it’s obvious, even if we don’t have statistical confirmation, that extreme wealth can do extreme spiritual damage. Take someone whose personality might have been merely disagreeable under normal circumstances, and give him the kind of wealth that lets him surround himself with sycophants and usually get whatever he wants. It’s not hard to […]
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Sunday, January 3rd, 2016
German Lopez, - Reader Supported News/VOX
Stephan: A first report on the impact of Marijuana legalization on the vicious drug cartels that have so devastated Mexico, and killed tens of thousands of people. Surprise. Surprise: The same thing that happened to bootleggers when Alcohol Prohibition ended. Another crazy Theocratic Rightist myth blown away by the winds of fact.
Prediction: Marijuana Prohibition was a scheme to justify the budgets of the DEA, the courts, prosecutors, prisons, and police. Everybody lived like a vampire off the blood and wellbeing of society as a whole. As Marijuana legalization spreads watch how those agencies and leeches begin to squirm and complain.
Mexican cartel members.
Credit: Libertyjuice
We’re still not sure of the full impact of marijuana legalization, in terms of pot use and abuse, in the states that have legalized. But a report from Deborah Bonello for the Los Angeles Times shows one way that legalization for recreational and medical purposes is working:
The loosening of marijuana laws across much of the United States has increased competition from growers north of the border, apparently enough to drive down prices paid to Mexican farmers. Small-scale growers here in the state of Sinaloa, one of the country’s biggest production areas, said that over the last four years the amount they receive per kilogram has fallen from $100 to $30.
The price decline appears to have led to reduced marijuana production in Mexico and a drop in trafficking to the U.S., according to officials on both sides of the border and available data.
As Bonello reports, the drop in price — and competition from higher-quality US-made marijuana — is hitting drug […]
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Sunday, January 3rd, 2016
Matt Agorist, - The Free Thought Project
Stephan: Yet another report on the kill rate of America's paramilitary police forces compared to the rest of the developed world. When I ran the last story a few days ago a half dozen readers in other countries wrote me to tell me that they consider the U.S. the most "dangerous country in the world that isn't an active war zone."
As one man from Scotland put it, "I am an American expat and have family in the U.S.. My wife is Scottish and we used to come to the U.S. all through the 7os to the early 90s at least once a year. Now , frankly we think it is too dangerous to visit, and we'd rather buy tickets for my nieces and nephews to come here than go there."
Note also the linkage between police killings and the War on Drugs.
Unarmed British Bobbies. Most police in Great Britain do not even carry guns.
Credit: businesinsider
In all of 2011, British police killed 2 people. In 2012, 1 person. In 2013, a total of 3 bullets left the barrels of British police guns, and no one was killed. In the last two years, a total of 4 people have lost their lives because of British cops, bringing the total number of citizens killed in the UK to 7 in the last 5 years.
Since Christmas, police in America have killed 14 people. In 1 week, American cops have killed twice as many people as the British police have killed since 2011!
But if we zoom out just a little further, those numbers become even more shocking. Since 1990, police officers in the United Kingdom have killed exactly 58 people.
Since the 14th of December, police in America have killed 60 citizens — It took English cops 25 years to do what American cops […]
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