Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Has Obama Changed His Mind About Syria? / Politics / US Politics
By: Mike_Whitney
The ISIS siege of Kobane continued overnight while cities across Turkey were set ablaze by Kurdish protestors. At least 19 civilians were killed by Turkish riot police who were trying to disperse angry crowds that had gathered to protest the government’s unwillingness to defend the predominantly Kurdish city. According to Hurriyet, “The worst violence was seen in Diyarbakır during a reported gunfight between the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) supporters and Hizbullah, a radical Islamist group whose members are mostly Kurdish and who allegedly aided the state in the torture and killing of Kurdish activists in the 1990s.” (Hurriyet)
Saturday, October 11, 2014
Ebola Terror Threat Suicide Bio-Weapons Threatens Multiple 9/11's, Global Plague / Politics / Ebola
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Whilst President Obola has been busy stoking up a hornets nest of angry jihadists in Syria and Iraq vowing revenge for the U.S. military Industrial complexes bombing of the self professed Islamic State, meanwhile the Ebola virus continuous its out of control rampage across West Africa with now over 20,000 infected and more than 4,000 highly infectious dead bodies, a number of whom of have been left on the streets to rot that amount to instant bio-weapons for the angry revenge seeking jihadists which could be used to wreak havoc across whole nations never mind individual cities as armies of infected jihadists embark on their Ebola suicide missions.
Saturday, October 11, 2014
American the Broken State and How to Fix It / Politics / US Politics
By: Casey_Research
The United States of America is not what it used to be. Unsustainable mountains of debt, continuous meddling by the government and Fed to “stimulate the economy,” and the US dollar’s dwindling status as the world’s reserve currency are very real threats to Americans’ standard of living. Here are some opinions from the recently concluded Casey Research Fall Summit on the state of the state and how to fix it.
Marc Victor, a criminal defense attorney from Arizona and a staunch liberty advocate, says there’s really no such thing as “the state”—“it’s just some people bossing other people around.”
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, October 10, 2014
Decline Fear And The Unique Nation / Politics / Social Issues
By: Andrew_McKillop
The Mass Psychology of Decline
Unknown to some, the fear of decline and a highly developed theory of decline is certainly one of the longest-running features of modern western society and culture. The decline paradigm can be claimed as emerging either before, or simultaneously with what the Oxford Dictionary defines as “the dominant social paradigm” - in which “progress” features as the supreme value of western society.
Friday, October 10, 2014
America is Truly a Country Run for the Few / Politics / US Politics
By: Paul_Craig_Roberts
The Bureau of Labor Statistics headline this morning reads: “Payroll employment increases by 248,000 in September; unemployment rate declines to 5.9%.”
How can this be? US corporations are investing in buying back their own stocks, not in new business ventures that produce new jobs.
According to the Census Bureau’s Poverty Report, US real median family income has declined to the level of twenty years ago. Consumer credit and real retail sales are not growing. Construction is limited to rental units. Construction shows 16,000 new jobs, half of which are “specialty trade contractors” or home remodelers.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, October 09, 2014
America’s Terrorist Academy in Iraq Produced ISIS Leaders / Politics / Iraq War
By: Mike_Whitney
The Obama administration’s determination to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is pushing the Middle East towards a regional war that could lead to a confrontation between the two nuclear-armed rivals, Russia and the United States.
Last week, Turkey joined the US-led coalition following a vote in parliament approving a measure to give the government the authority to launch military action against Isis in Syria. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made it clear that Turkish involvement would come at a price, and that price would be the removal of al Assad. According to Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, October 09, 2014
Putin Seeks Solitude Amid Russia's Perfect Storm / Politics / Russia
By: STRATFOR
Russian President Vladimir Putin celebrated his 62nd birthday Tuesday in a peculiar fashion: by himself in the Siberian forests. For the past few days, Putin's spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, has brushed off journalists' questions about why the president decided not to celebrate his birthday in Moscow or do other work as he has in previous years. This is just another odd piece to an increasingly complex puzzle surrounding the stability and future of the Russian president and his government.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, October 09, 2014
NHS Baldrick Plan to Spread Ebola Across UK - Sheffield, Newcastle, Liverpool, London Hospitals / Politics / NHS
By: Nadeem_Walayat
The Baldricks that manage the NHS have formulated a cunning plan to defeat the Ebola virus by effectively bussing infected patients to literally every corner of Britain, Added to the Royal Free Hospital in London will be Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield, Royal Liverpool hospital and Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle upon Tyne as the first of eventually upto 160 UK wide hospitals that Ebola patients will be disbursed across.
Wednesday, October 08, 2014
Will Ukraine Commit Economic Suicide? / Politics / Ukraine Civil War
By: OilPrice_Com
Ukraine is on the brink of committing economic suicide after imposing a crippling 55 percent tax on private gas producers, while parliament prepares to vote on next year's budget, which aims for a continuation of the same.The Oct. 14 budget vote—which is already a month late—is a major condition for Ukraine's next credit tranche from the European Union, but if the 2015 budget goes through as proposed, it will decimate independent gas production, remove any potential for Ukrainian energy independence and deal a further blow to the already struggling economy.
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, October 08, 2014
Financial Regulators Bend Rules for Banksters / Politics / Market Regulation
By: BATR
The cozy relationship between financial institutions and their respective regulators has long been known. Concern from reformers and activists comes from all stripes of ideological perspectives. With the attention that Carmen Segarra, the whistleblower of Wall Street, has gained, the noise from the banking establishment pushes back. Here comes the expected spin from the Fed, The New York Fed Slams Tape-Recording Whistleblower, Says She Was Fired After Just 7 Months Over Performance. Read their Statement Regarding New York Fed Supervision. So what is this controversy all about?
Wednesday, October 08, 2014
What the Feds and Bernie Madoff Have in Common / Politics / Government Intervention
By: MISES
Brandon Dutcher writes: Through the years, Bernard Madoff, the convicted ponzi schemer who defrauded his investors, “generously” donated millions of dollars to charity — cancer research, hospitals, theaters, schools, and more. At least one of these charitable organizations invested with Mr. Madoff, where the invested funds disappeared.
But Madoff is not the only one who gives money to people after first taking it from them. Today’s political leaders win votes and plaudits by giving goodies to little Johnny, but they don’t bother to tell little Johnny that they’re putting it all on his credit card.
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, October 08, 2014
The Consequences of the Economic Peace / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: John_Mauldin
This week’s TTMYGH is going to be a little different.
After several weeks on the road and staring down a couple more, I am going to make an attempt to turn the presentation I have been delivering into written form, after many requests for a version that people can look at in the comfort of their own homes (and, presumably, without my annoying voice clouding the issue).
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, October 08, 2014
UK NHS Ebola Catastrophe, Out of Control Outbreak Within Weeks / Politics / NHS
By: N_Walayat
The case of the Spanish nurse contracting Ebola from a Spanish patient flown into Spain from West Africa and going onto infect others as patient zero for the outbreak with more than 50 being monitored, illustrates the myth of competency that surrounds the western public sector health services in that at least for 1/3rd of the time the public health services only tend to go through the motions of providing a health service which whilst most of the time the consequences for lack of consistency in competency is only to the detriment of the patient, however Ebola is completely unforgiving where any lack of competency can result in a disastrous outcome as Spain is realising today that there is a huge gap between what it's health service states it can do and what it actually delivers.
Tuesday, October 07, 2014
Obama Abandoning the Saudis for Iran and Dooming the Petrodollar - Video / Politics / US Politics
By: Casey_Research
By Alex Daley, Chief Technology Investment Strategist
I sat down with Jim Rickards, author of many best-selling economics and investing books, including his latest, titled The Death of Money. In this exclusive interview, Jim shares his view on the changes in US foreign policy—the newly announced partnership with Iran to help fight ISIS and recent moves away from the petrodollar deal with Saudi Arabia—and what they mean for the dollar, gold, and investment markets in general.
Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, October 07, 2014
Turkey, the Kurds and Iraq: The Prize and Peril of Kirkuk / Politics / Turkey
By: STRATFOR
Reva Bhalla writes: In June 1919, aboard an Allied warship en route to Paris, sat Damat Ferid Pasha, the Grand Vizier of a crumbling Ottoman Empire. The elderly statesman, donning an iconic red fez and boasting an impeccably groomed mustache, held in his hands a memorandum that he was to present to the Allied powers at the Quai d'Orsay. The negotiations on postwar reparations started five months earlier, but the Ottoman delegation was prepared to make the most of its tardy invitation to the talks. As he journeyed across the Mediterranean that summer toward the French shore, Damat Ferid mentally rehearsed the list of demands he would make to the Allied powers during his last-ditch effort to hold the empire together.
Tuesday, October 07, 2014
U.S. State Sponsored Assassination Culture / Politics / US Politics
By: BATR
The ongoing failures of the Secret Service to provide proper protection for the President have political careerists in a tizzy. Scares that harm could come to the commander-in-chief, also worries the press. Ordinary citizens on principle, accept that the White House should be secure grounds. Rotating blame usually means that the buck does not stop on the oval office desk. Indeed, who could expect any President to be responsible for their own safety? Surely, policy decisions made as a government could not possibly have any bearing on the lunatics that harbor ill will towards our fearless leaders.
Tuesday, October 07, 2014
Dawn of The Quantum Age? State-of-the-Art Quantum Technologies 2.0 or QT2 / Politics / Technology
By: DK_Matai
We are at the beginning of a new era in the application of Quantum Physics which is going to be dominated by subtle effects. From computing to cryptography and from healthcare to energy, many very significant innovations and inventions of our time are manifest at the Quantum Level. Does this herald the onset of the new Quantum Age? Possibly... now that billions upon billions of dollars are being committed to Quantum Technologies 2.0 (QT2) by G20 governments and Multi-Nationals collectively with multiple announcements in recent months and many more overt and covert projects in the pipeline on which sovereignty, national security and industrial competitive advantage depend.
Monday, October 06, 2014
Ron Paul - The Real Status of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan and Iraq / Politics / US Military
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
After 13 years of war in Afghanistan - the longest in US history - the US government has achieved no victory. Afghanistan is in chaos and would collapse completely without regular infusions of US money. The war has been a failure, but Washington will not admit it.
More than 2,000 US fighters have been killed in the 13 year Afghan war. More than 20,000 Afghan civilians were also killed. According to a study last year by a Harvard University researcher, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will cost in total between four and six trillion dollars. There is no way of looking at the US invasion of Afghanistan and seeing a success.
Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, October 05, 2014
Escape From New York - Fragility and Delusions / Politics / Social Issues
By: James_Quinn
I live only a two hour drive from New York City, but it is a world apart from my daily existence. I’ve visited the Big Apple probably a dozen times in my life, but never for longer than two or three days. I have a soft spot in my heart for NYC because it is where I proposed to my wife on a bitterly cold December evening in a horse drawn carriage ride in Central Park, twenty five years ago. But, I can honestly say that I never feel comfortable in the city.
Thursday, October 02, 2014
Hong Kong’s Battle for Democracy, Beijing’s War Against It / Politics / Hong Kong
By: Submissions
Ted Baumann writes: One spring day in 1988, I stood in a crowd of thousands of young people. Over us hovered helicopters; in front of us stood armed riot police. We sought democracy. The power of the state sought to deny it to us, with pepper spray, batons and rubber bullets. Unstoppable force met immovable object. Friction ensued, with all its heat and light. I can still perceive its imprint in my mind’s eye.
The first years of the 21st century have seen this drama repeated on every continent. Yugoslavia in 2000. Georgia in 2003. Ukraine in 2004. Lebanon and Kyrgyzstan, 2005. The Arab Spring of 2001. Venezuela in 2013.
Read full article... Read full article...