Must watch video: Fareed Zakaria on CNN: Global Lessons on Guns

Repost from Youtube

CNN: Global Lessons on Guns – A Fareed Zakaria GPS Special

Breaking CNN News Today Nov 25, 2018

An incredibly important and informative analysis of gun violence in the U.S. and in various countries around the world.  Zakaria has been following this deadly issue for years, and presents here a carefully researched study with alarming results.  [NOTE: as of August 2019, the VIDEO that was previously viewable on Youtube can no longer be found anywhere on the internet.  If you can stand the obnoxious ads at the beginning of this audio, you can listen to Zakaria’s excellent analysis.]

NO LONGER AVAILABLE (saved here in case it returns somehow…)

Canada Is Now A Land Of Oil Trains… wonder where it’s all going?

Repost from Huffington Post Canada
[Editor: …and this Canada news is relevant here in the U.S. because…?? Well, check out the map below.  – R.S.]

Canada Is Now A Land Of Oil Trains

This is happening even as Canadian crude sells at prices not seen in the oil markets since the 1990s.

By Daniel Tencer, 11/21/2018 12:04 EST

Crude oil and other petroleum products are transported in rail tanker cars on a Canadian Pacific Railway train near Medicine Hat, Alta., Sept. 10, 2018.
Crude oil and other petroleum products are transported in rail tanker cars on a Canadian Pacific Railway train near Medicine Hat, Alta., Sept. 10, 2018. LARRY MACDOUGAL/CANADIAN PRESS

Canada’s oil industry is facing record-low prices for its exports, a glaring lack of infrastructure to bring its product to market, and an uncertain long-term outlook.

But none of that is stopping the oil patch from increasing production. And as one pipeline project after another fails to launch, the industry is relying more heavily than ever to ship its oil by rail.

According to Statistics Canada, the volume of oil on Canada’s railroads has soared by 64.6 per cent in just the past year. And in the past seven years, the number of rail cars carrying oil across Canada has quadrupled.

Oil-by-rail shipments in Canada reached a record high of nearly 20,000 rail cars in August this year. By volume, oil-by-rail is up by more than 64 per cent in the past year. HUFFPOST CANADA 

The spike in oil trains began around 2011, a few years before the July, 2013, disaster in which a 74-car oil train derailed in Lac-Megantic, Que., killing 47 people.

Besides the obvious risk to the environment and to human life, there is also the fact that oil producers are crowding out other industries that rely on rail.

This leads to “higher costs and shipping delays for other industries,” Bank of Montreal senior economist Sal Guatieri wrote in a client note Tuesday.

“Surging railway loadings of oil contrast with flat loadings for shipments of wheat, copper, machinery and many other products in recent years.”

And if you think these oil trains don’t come through your neighbourhood, that they’re somehow limited to Alberta, take a look at this map of the oil rail network in Canada, provided by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers:

A map of Canada’s oil-by-rail network and its connection to U.S. terminals. CANADIAN ASSOCIATION OF PETROLEUM PRODUCERS  [click to enlarge]
This massive expansion of oil-by-rail took place even as oil prices remained relatively weak, Canadian oil exports particularly so. This is especially true today; North American oil prices have dropped by some 31 per cent since a peak in early October, and closed at around US$53 on Tuesday.

Canadian oil has been selling at an enormous discount to that, recently trading below $14 a barrel. The last time global oil prices were anywhere near that low would have been the late 1990s.

But it’s not just Canada that seems to be desperate to get as much of its oil out of the ground right now as possible.

“Saudi Arabia is pumping oil like never before, its output surging to a record 10.6 million barrels per day in October,” National Bank of Canada economist Krishen Rangasamy wrote in a client note Wednesday.

“Iraq’s output is also on the rise as production from the Kirkuk region comes back online. Those are more than offsetting declines in sanction-hit Iran.”

Not to mention, U.S. oil extraction has surged in recent years to the point it is now the world’s largest producer of crude.

Meanwhile, traders are losing faith in oil’s prospects as the global economy shows signs of weakening.

“The deceleration of world economic growth ─ as evidenced by ugly (third-quarter economic) results in places such as Japan and the Eurozone … has clearly hurt demand for oil,” Rangasamy wrote.

Amidst all this, some executives in Canada’s oil patch have called for the Alberta government to use its existing powers to limit the amount of oil being pumped. So far, the province hasn’t indicated it plans to follow that advice.

Hey, at least we get cheaper gas

But there is one benefit to consumers from crude producers’ race to the bottom of the oil deposit: Lower fuel prices.

“The free-fall on energy markets … helped force down pump prices across Canada by 2.1 cents a litre to $1.13, their lowest since October 2017,” analyst Dan McTeague of GasBuddy wrote this week.

“As pump prices now stand 5.6 cents a litre lower than on this same day last year, much of the credit can be given to the unexpected and likely temporary decline in oil prices, which could be subject to an upturn once OPEC and Russia agree to production curbs beginning in December.”

Vice Mayor Steve Young: letter from former City Attorney of Santa Rosa

Repost from a Benicia Nextdoor post

City Council Meeting on Air Monitors

By Steve Young, Benicia Vice Mayor, November 21, 2018
Steve Young, Vice Mayor, City of Benicia

It’s not often that the Council receives the kind of letter copied below. It is from Brien Farrell, the former City Attorney of Santa Rosa, who has retired here in town. I thank Mr. Farrell on behalf of my colleagues. After 4 hours of testimony and deliberation on Tuesday, the Council unanimously adopted a motion advancing what I hope is the mutual interest of the City and Valero in providing enhanced air monitoring for the public, as well as better communication between the two parties. We also appreciate the donation to the City Fire Department by Valero of three mobile air monitors.

Brien Farrell 4:34 PM (7 hours ago)
To Mayor, Steve, Mark, Alan, Tom

Mayor Patterson and Councilmembers:

I watched portions of last night’s council meeting on line and I watched the entire discussion surrounding the motion that was adopted.

I have attended hundreds of city council meetings. Your preparation, civility and thoughtful crafting of a compromise was a model of good government.

Our family thanks you. Air quality and economic stability are important to all of us. Our middle son is the special education coordinator at Robert Semple Elementary School. He had to be rushed to the hospital the day of the flare-up in May 2017. He did not know whether he was having a cardiac or pulmonary emergency. He had never experienced anything similar.

Evacuation planning and air quality monitoring are both critical. We strongly support local, state and federal oversight. In my past career as a city attorney, I routinely observed that local government is the most responsive and accountable.

Our son has been cleared to donate his kidney to another Benicia teacher on December 17, 2018, at the UC Davis Hospital. Upon his return to work, we worry that he might be exposed to another major air quality event or cumulative harm. Everyone assures us that his health will be normal after the kidney transplant. We would like all foreseeable risks to be minimized.

Your ongoing efforts to promote maximum transparency and protections that are fair and reasonable are much appreciated. We urge the city to impose local regulations, if it is not possible to reach compromises in six months.

Thank you for your service and dedication.

Doctors clash with NRA over gun deaths – #thisisourlane

Repost from the Vallejo Times-Herald
[Editor: For fuller coverage and graphic images, see the Chicago Tribune.  – RS]

Doctors clash with NRA over gun deaths

By Lisa Marie Pane, The Associated Press, November 22, 2018
Dr. Deborah Greenhouse of Palmetto Pediatric in Columbia, S.C., works on her laptop. Greenhouse is one of several doctors joining a social media storm over guns and doctors, sparking a fight between the physicians and the National Rifle Association.  BRISTOW MARCHANT — THE STATE VIA AP

The photos from doctors came quickly and in succession: blood-stained operating rooms, blood-covered scrubs and shoes, bullets piercing body parts and organs.

The pictures on Twitter were an emotional response to a smack down by the powerful gun industry lobby, which took issue with the American College of Physicians’ call late last month for tighter gun control laws. The recommendations included bans on “assault weapons,” large capacity magazines and 3D printed firearms.

“Someone should tell self important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane. Half of the articles in Annals of Internal Medicine are pushing for gun control. Most upsetting, however, the medical community seems to have consulted NO ONE but themselves,” the National Rifle Association tweeted.

Physicians across the United States seized on the phrasing, taking to Twitter with 22,000 comments and the hashtags #thisismylane and #thisisourlane, posting photos of their encounters with gun violence and offering their own personal stories of treating such
wounds.

The debate gained new urgency this week with the shooting death of an emergency room doctor outside the hospital where she worked, as physicians argue shootings are a public health crisis that they must play a key role in trying to stem. Dr. Tamara O’Neal was killed Monday outside a hospital in Chicago in what police say was a dispute with her ex-fiance. The shooter and two other people — a responding police officer and a resident in the hospital’s pharmacy — also died.

“It just shows that not only is this is in our lane, but this happens to us,” said Dr. Joseph Sakran, a trauma surgeon at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore who as a 17-year-old was shot in the throat by a stray bullet fired during a dispute at a high school football game.

Sakran created a Twitter account @ThisIsOurLane which in just two weeks has attracted nearly 15,000 followers. They include Dr. Peter Masiakos, a pediatric trauma surgeon in Boston, who wrote “The Quiet Room” just hours after the mass shooting at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, about breaking the news that a loved one has died.
“We need to start talking about this as a public health issue. Politics aside, we have a problem that no other country has, and we shouldn’t,” Masiakos said.

About 35,000 people each year are killed by guns in the United States, and about two-thirds are suicides. That’s about 670 people per week and among the largest number of civilian gun deaths in the world.

The world’s highest rate of gun deaths is in El Salvador with a rate of 72.5 per 100,00; the rate in the U.S. is 3.1 per 100,000. Among all European countries, the rate never breaks 1 gun death per 100,000, according to Small Arms Survey, a Switzerland-based research organization that examines firearms and violence.