Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Friday, April 25, 2014
Putin is Losing Eastern European Energy Gamble / Politics / Energy Resources
By: OilPrice_Com
Russian President Vladimir Putin said he doesn't think the European community can do without the natural gas it gets from energy monopoly Gazprom. With a Russian economy starting to decline, however, it may be Gazprom that's too strongly interconnected to the European market to break free.Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, April 25, 2014
The Big, Bad Market: A French Psychosis? / Politics / France
By: MISES
Louis Rouanet writes: There is a cliché according to which the French are genetically against classical liberalism and free-market economics. However, that wasn’t always the case. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, most French politicians and bureaucrats admitted that the State is globally inefficient and should be as small as possible. Even a large number of leftists, inspired by the anarcho-socialist Pierre Joseph Proudhon, were strongly opposed to taxation and big government. They criticized the wastefulness and the parasitism of the State. In his Théorie de l’impôt (Theory of Taxation) published in 1861, Proudhon described taxation as an “illusion” and accused the progressive income tax of being a “joujou fiscal” (tax plaything) used by self-proclaimed progressives in order to amuse the people.
Friday, April 25, 2014
The Great American Giveaway / Politics / US Debt
By: Andy_Sutton
What do the national debt and a designer Hepatitis C drug have in common? This question actually spans two areas near and dear to my heart: economics and medicine. What I’m going to be covering this week is something that I feel is going to be part of a growing trend in America over the coming decades. You see, too many – myself included for quite a while – were asking the wrong questions. Many still are. We shouldn’t be asking what we can do, conventionally speaking, to pay off the national debt because it cannot be done. Consider the unfunded liability portion and that should be obvious to everyone. So what? We just default? That has been suggested. With devaluation we’ve already been doing it, albeit with sleight of hand. Don’t count on the fact that the debtors are ignorant though because they aren’t. This article is going to prove that.
Thursday, April 24, 2014
Rome Wasn't Burnt In A Day / Politics / Global Economy
By: Andrew_McKillop
The Sack of Rome
With highly suspicious precision on dates, and disputed by many sources, Wikipedia gives the date of Rome's fall as August 24th, 410 AD, following a two-year siege. In fact, Rome had been falling for a long time. It had fallen in different ways at different times, but at each event and in each of the run-up intervals, the Roman Empire had suffered repeated economic and monetary crises, and partial recoveries. The Sack of 410 by the Visigoths can be called the definitive or final fall of Rome but, here again this was in no way an overnight event. The complete loss of Imperial power and its exercize from the city of Rome is placed by many historians at about 435-445 AD. The process of terminal decline and fall therefore took at least 25 years.
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Thursday, April 24, 2014
Putin’s Secret Weapon – How Russia Could Take Down America Without Firing a Single Shot - Video / Politics / US Politics
By: Casey_Research
Here’s a startling fact most investors have never heard: During the last financial meltdown in 2008, when the U.S. economy was on the brink, Russian leaders met with China to persuade them to dump the dollar – and destroy the world’s reserve currency.
Before they could act, the Fed pumped over $700 billion into the economy and delayed their day of reckoning. Still, the threat remains. China holds over $1.2 trillion in U.S. debt today. And with their Russian allies, they could drop the dollar at any moment. This excerpt from our eye-opening documentary called “Meltdown America” explains the severity of this imminent threat:
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Thursday, April 24, 2014
When Does Government Policy Become Criminal Behavior? / Politics / Government Intervention
By: Raul_I_Meijer
That’s always a hard question to answer. At what point does government policy become criminal? Since governments make the laws, perhaps never. But then again, countries tend to have constitutions, and government actions can violate those. Still, before you know it, you get trapped and stuck in lawyer lingo limbo, and that’s not what I’m looking for. I’m wondering to what depths a government can go in its actions vis à vis it own people. So maybe I should rephrase this, maybe a more relevant question would be when government policy becomes morally repugnant. There I sure have a few candidates.
Thursday, April 24, 2014
The Great Recession Grinds On - Measuring Misery around the World / Politics / Social Issues
By: Steve_H_Hanke
The Great Recession grinds on. And as it does, politicians of all stripes ask, usually behind closed doors, "Just how miserable are our citizens?" The chattering classes offer a variety of opinions. As it turns out, there is a straightforward way to measure what is termed the misery index.
The late Arthur Okun, a distinguished economist who served as chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers during President Johnson’s administration, developed the original misery index for the United States. Okun’s index is equal to the sum of the inflation and unemployment rates.
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Thursday, April 24, 2014
The U.S. Is Now a Global Satanic Empire / Politics / US Politics
By: Jack_D_Douglas
The rulers of the U.S. have just celebrated the most holy day of Christianity, Easter, by massive secret murders of Muslims from the skies by firing Hell Fire missiles into their impoverished homes, village gatherings, and old family automobiles.
These massive killings of the poor around the world with Hell Fire missiles from the heavens have become a Satanic Celebration for the U.S. totalitarian rulers. It fills them with blood lust, power lust, and blinding hubris.
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Tony Blair Backs Dictators Over Freedom in New Fundamentalist Christian Crusade / Politics / Religion
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Britain's former Prime Minister who betrayed Britain by taking the country into an illegal 10 year Iraq war on the basis of lies that resulted in more than 150,000 civilians deaths all in the lunacy of praising his own version of the 'man in the sky' cult that goes by the name of the Roman Catholic church, today emerged to further his evangelical fundamentalist message of siding with Russia's Czar Putin in his latest East European war of conquest that first consumed former Tartar Crimea and looks set to ultimately annex half of Ukraine's land mass.
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
The Death Of Capital / Politics / Resources & Reviews
By: Andrew_McKillop
Elite Psychosis Again
Rather predictably, the elite-serving glove puppet media has decided it is right and good at this time to wheel on its handpicked, most obedient and servile journalists to opine about Piketty's new book “Capital”. This coincides with David Stockman's almost triumphant declaration of Greenspan-and-Bernanke's come-uppance Truth Moment (“America's Housing Fiasco Is On You, Alan Greenspan”).
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Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Bank Depositors Take Up Arms to Protect Their Savings / Politics / Banksters
By: Pravda
The Bank of Russia revoked the license for banking operations from the Moscow-based bank Zapadny ("Western").
The reason for the revocation was the failure of the bank to execute the federal laws regulating bank activities and regulations of the Bank of Russia.
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Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Cold War 2.0 / Politics / New Cold War
By: Stephen_Lendman
A previous article said welcome to Cold War 2.0. The first one never ended. Since Soviet Russia's 1991 dissolution, Western policy remained hard-wired in place.
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
The JIS – Junk Ideology Syndrome / Politics / Social Issues
By: Andrew_McKillop
Global Reach
What I call the JIS has been studied and commented under different names, but the start and end points of political mass movements and political ideology, crystallized as JIS at a peak point, is a process driven by crisis conditions. These can be economic, cultural or national security and geopolitical, or other shocks to society. The examples are numerous and well-documented, and certainly extend from Antiquity. They also exist at a smaller scale in so-called pre-modern non-Western societies.
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
How to Avoid Losing All Your Money / Politics / US Politics
By: Jeff_Berwick
You know what's easier than making millions upon millions of dollars? Losing it...
This is the story of one sports great who thought he was investing conservatively. The problem? He was not investing conservatively at all. In fact he was investing in one of the riskiest assets available today - government bonds. His financial advisor did not advise him of that.
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Tuesday, April 22, 2014
U.S. Mainstream Media Propaganda Setting the Stage for War With Pakistan / Politics / Propaganda
By: Global_Research
Tony Cartalucci writes: Attempts to paint Pakistan as a dangerous enemy of the West and a prime candidate for military intervention has been made once again by those in the Western media. ABC News, in an article titled, “‘Double dealing’: How Pakistan hid Osama Bin Laden from the U.S. and fueled the war in Afghanistan,” claims that:
What if the United States has been waging the wrong war against the wrong enemy for the last 13 years in Afghanistan?
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Japan - The Twilight Of The Rising Sun / Politics / Japan Economy
By: Raul_I_Meijer
US President Barack Obama begins a three-day visit to Japan on Wednesday. As for what he’s going to be talking about, I can give you a hint or two. First of all, there are ongoing tensions between Japan and China, something both nations have a very long history of. And second, these tensions risk flaring up as they move towards intensifying domestic economic troubles, as their exports dwindle.
Monday, April 21, 2014
Ron Paul on Nevada Standoff a Symptom of Increasing Authoritarianism / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
The nation's attention has for the past few weeks been riveted by a standoff in Nevada between armed federal agents and the Bundys, a ranching family who believe the federal government is exceeding its authority by accessing "fees" against ranchers who graze cattle on government lands. Outrage over the government's use of armed agents to forcibly remove the Bundys' cattle led many Americans to travel to Nevada to engage in non-violent civil disobedience in support of the family.
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Monday, April 21, 2014
Extreme Climate Change And Life On This Planet / Politics / Climate Change
By: Andrew_McKillop
Elite Climate Change and Global Warming (CCGW)
There is no need to dwell on the political elite theory and fear of CCGW except that its main goal is to enrich the crony capitalist “carbon finance” industry and reward techno-geek start ups rushing their newest gimmick able to store sunlight for nighttime use to market, and then to IPO, powered by free sunshine! The elite doomster theme of CCGW is essentially no different from that of former Nazi ideologist Gunther Schwab. In his 1958 book “Dance With The Devil” he melded Goethe's Faust with Svante Arrhenius' original CO2 global warming theory, which by 1908 was defined, debated and discussed – and disputed – in scientific circles. Schwab used his Nazi-flavored version of CCGW theory to make an “Appeal to Humanity”, to abandon non-Aryan industry and cut CO2 emissions.
Sunday, April 20, 2014
The CIA Through The Looking-Glass / Politics / Intelligence Agencies
By: Stephen_Merrill
The US Empire’s Eyes and First Sword
“The distance is so great between how we live and how we ought to live that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done learns his ruin rather than his preservation; because a man who wants to make a profession of goodness in everything is bound to come to ruin among so many who are not good.” Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (1513)
The Central Intelligence Agency was established in 1947. For the first time, a separate civilian organization became the command center for all US intelligence rather than the Pentagon. Covert operations were explicitly authorized by the new law.
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Sunday, April 20, 2014
Ukraine, War Fever, Sanity and a Daisy / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Michael_T_Bucci
The Ukraine imbroglio has left this writer and others swimming against two mutually opposing perpetual tides preempting objectivity.
Firstly, war fever has been induced in the U.S. population as it has in the Russian people, this is a given. Secondly, to geopolitical analysts there are no independent sources of news to be found in the world (including Asia). One either believes Mr. Obama or one believes Mr. Putin and the web will provide every rationale needed to support either side, as well as provide a smorgasbord of conspiracy theories that support one or the other side, but not both sides.
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