The Oil Price, Russia and OPEC.

(Transcript from The Viewpoint Podcast)

The price of oil has made a major shift downward in recent weeks, falling to around $60 a barrel for North Sea Brent Crude, and below $60 for West Texas Intermediate. For most of us, it will mean that it will cost us less to fill up our cars, and prices for the goods on our shelves should start falling because transportation will start costing less as well.

But there's much more to it than that, especially for Russia. Oil revenues are a big part of their government's income, and the drop from over $120 a barrel to around $60, means that Russia's budget, which was calculated at a higher price, will not be able to spend as much money as they previously thought. The drop in the Oil price even sent the Russian Rouble shooting up against the dollar, to almost 80 roubles to the dollar, before settling OPEC even decided not to cut production to force prices higher, and whilst most saw that as a shot across the bows of US shale oil producers, Russia's aggression against Ukraine may have also played a part as neither the US nor Russia are part of the international cartel.

Russian President Vladimir Putin held his usual end of year press conference this week, and like previous Soviet Premiers and dictators worldwide, blamed the West for what is happening with his economy. And whilst it's true that the West's economic sanctions have hurt Russia to some degree, OPEC's refusal to cut production of oil in order to raise the price on international commodities markets will do far more to damage the Russian economy than the west's sanctions.

And who are these OPEC members who will hurt Russia's economy so badly? Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Venezuela and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Not a single western country in the cartel, not even the UK. Maybe Putin should get some of his Russia Today buddies to start going after Iran's Press TV.

Russia goes backwards on LGBT

Russia Today are reporting that the the lower house of the Russian Parliament, The Duma, has voted for a ban on promoting non-traditional sexual relations to minors.  Now whilst this might sound sensible, it is one of those ideas that in practice causes a lot more problems than it solves.

The situation in Russia regarding LGBT relations has been pretty stable since 2003.  The age of consent is 16, for both heterosexual and LGBT relationships, homosexual sex is legal, as is the right to change your gender, but there is still a long way to go. 

There are no anti-discrimination laws in place for the Russian LGBT community, and this new law seeks to take the issue further back into the dark ages.  People start to express their sexuality as early as their early teens, and they will want to find out information.  Blocking access to that information will not promote heterosexuality, but will make LGBT relationships, and other non-traditional sexual relations more interesting.  It's classic reverse psychology, tell somebody they can't do something and they want to do it all the more.

Some ideas sound eminently sensible.  However, most of those ideas end up causing more problems, especially when those measures are directly against a person's sexuality, and also, trying to place societal controls on something that Mother Nature decides.  It comes across as being a fool's errand to try and place societal controls, such as laws, on things that are not decided by societies, but by nature.

What's worse is that the public backs this ban.  88% back it, and 42% think homosexuality should be made a criminal offence.  This is a backward step for Russia, and it will come back and bite them, when they least expect it.

US Elections 2012: More international coverage

I've been scouring the internet for any information that I can find about coverage.  ABC in Australia is airing an extended Breakfast on ABC1 until 10am, with additional coverage of the election between midday and 1.30pm and between 3pm and 4pm, all times for Sydney.  Meanwhile ABC News 24 airs Breakfast until 10.30am and then rolling coverage until 6pm Sydney time.

CBC News Network is airing coverage from 5pm ET with a 3 hour long Power and Politics special, then Peter Mansbirdge takes over at 8pm until 6am with all night National special.

EuroNews has rolling coverage from 8pm UK, 2100 CET.  France 24 and RT are expected to have special coverage as well.  In RTs case, the likelihood of coverage coming from RT America in Washington would be quite high, but so far nothing has been explicitly advertised.

Politico have coverage online from 7pm, which is being simulcast on C-Span from 8pm ET.  Democracy Now also has online coverage from 7pm for 6 hours. 

In America itslef, there's lots of coverage.  Each of the main networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, have coverage beginning at 7pm ET, whilst CNN's main coverage begins at 4pm.  FOX News Channel's coverage begins at 6pm ET and MSnbc's coverage also begins at the same time.  Current has their "Politically Direct" coverage anchored by Al Gore, starting at 8pm ET.

Over on twitter, I'll be tweeting coverage during the night using the hashtag #vpus2012.  I will see you there.

Thom Hartmann: Politicians lying on corporate media

I hadn't been a big fan of RT. But in the last couple of years, they have upped their game significantly. At times they still feel like a Russian national broadcaster rather than an international broadcaster. But they launched a version of RT aimed at the US called RT America.

The channel features news and programming output from Washington DC during the US East Coast prime time. Amongst the shows produced for RT America is The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann. Thom is a liberal talk radio host whose radio show airs live on many stations across the US, such as WWRL in New York, from 3pm to 6pm ET.

At the end of The Big Picture, Thom presents a feature called The Daily Take. Yesterdays was about Mitt Romney's lie about a President Obama campaign speech from 2008, the previous presidential election.



This is why I always say be very careful just who you trust to give you your news. Many sources = better informed.

News Roundup: Wednesday 21st November 2007

Australian Broadcasting Corporation: The Australian Labouor Party is accusing senior members of the Australian Liberal Party of being involved in the distrubting of fake flyers from the non-existant "Islamic Australia Foundation", which attempted to link the Labour Party with islamic terrorism.

Fox News Channel: Three men who jad been previously arrested back in 2005, have been re-arrested over the disappearance in Aruba of teenager Natalee Holloway.

Russia Today: A female politician has repeatedly slapped a journalist live on national TV in Venezuela, leading to concerns over press freedom.

MSNBC: Opposition politician Imran Khan has been released along with over 5000 lawyers and political activists.

And Finally...

Fox News Channel: A group of Swedish women have staged topless protests over what they call gender-biased rules on swimwear!

Russian supermodel's site linked to porn site

I just teased in my News Roundup that I would be following up on this story from Russia Today about a russian supermodel who has been named the world's best dressed woman by Harper's Bazaar.

Well, on some of these stories I like to do a little rudimentary investigating. Not to any real depth, just a little peek around to see if there's anything interesting there. Oh boy, was there something interesting this time!

Russia Today showed a photograph of the model and creditied it to a site linked here. Now, this looks like an official-ish site, but there's nothing definite to say it is. Lots of pictures are on the site, and every one of them is linked to a page called free.html.

I refuse to link to that page directly, as having examined it for myself, it is revealed to be a page that wants you to sign up for a selection of porn sites.

And what of the other sites that are linked to hers? Most of them are exactly the same. Now, if these are official sites, and these models agree to having their sites linked to this porn site, then fine. But if not, then I wonder if they would be very happy to have their names linked to porn.

Either way, websurfers, a gentle reminder, be aware that not everything is as it seems on the outside. Know which sites to trust, and stick with them.