Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Where Might the NSA Whistleblower, Edward Snowden Be Relatively Safe? / Politics / Intelligence Agencies
By: Don_Miller
By Nick Giambruno, Editor, International Man
The recent events surrounding Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower, gives us the chance to engage in an interesting thought experiment.
Where would you go if you were Edward Snowden and were being hunted by the most powerful intelligence agencies on the planet?
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Obama's Crazy Climate Change Plan / Politics / Climate Change
By: Andrew_McKillop
NO TIME FOR FLAT EARTHERS
Saying he had no time for Flat Earth Society meetings, but in fact running one himself, US President Barack Obama laid out his so-called climate action plan to 2017, which is subtitled “Taking Action For Our Kids” on the White House website.
Plenty of commentators, including the Wall Street Journal said Obama's pitch was above all “surreal”, in fact the WSJ said that unreality was the “particular hallmark” of Obama's climate plan. Noting that 12 million Americans still can't find work, real wages have fallen for five years, three-quarters of Americans now live from paycheck to paycheck, 48 million Americans depend on food stamps and the economy continues to struggle after four years of so-called recovery, critics including the Wall Street Journal slammed President Obama for getting his priorities wrong. However, for reasons that are perhaps “surreal”, that is political, Obama has soldiered along with vintage and extremist global warming fear, using it to justify a radical increase in energy taxes and energy regulatory mandates that will ensure fewer jobs – analysts suggest as many as 160 000 - will reduce incomes, and will slow down economic growth. Why did he do this?
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Wednesday, June 26, 2013
The Federal Reserve after Ben Bernanke / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: BATR
Speculation is mounting that "Helicopter Ben" will exit the Fed at the end of his current term. When the Bernanke era ends, what expectation will the next head of the central bank face? Remember the In Greenspan We Trust experience, and the designed pump and dump, crash and burn markets that led to the need to inflate the debt bubble. Bernanke did not save the economy; he merely bailed out the international banksters at the expense of productive main street enterprises. Throwing money to the air currents, when the prevailing winds only blow to Wall Street is the true legacy of Ben Bernanke.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
What The Shadow Banking System Knows / Politics / Banksters
By: Andrew_McKillop
GLOBAL REACH
PIMCO's Paul McCulley defines the shadow banking system as follows; “I coined the term “shadow banking system” in August 2007 at the (US) Fed’s annual symposium in Jackson Hole. Unlike conventional regulated banks, unregulated shadow banks fund themselves with uninsured short-term funding, which may or may not be backstopped by liquidity lines from real banks. Since they fly below the radar of traditional bank regulation, these levered-up intermediaries operate in the shadows”, outside the regulated conventional bank system. Paul McCulley summarized shadow banking as: "The whole alphabet soup of levered up non-bank investment conduits, vehicles and structures". These financial intermediaries operating off the radar screen of international financial regulators were therefore “unknown” to, and credited by the official banking system with a near-zero role in 2002, but were worth about $60 trillion and turnover-wise represented about 25% of the global bank-finance system at end-2011.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
US - UK Digital Totalitarianism. What is to be Done? / Politics / US Politics
By: Michael_T_Bucci
All past warnings about NSA and GCHQ are now confirmed. It is a crisis of American and British democracies. A political columnist writing about an earlier AP spy scandal warned: "Anyone who speaks to the media about any matter has to assume that their phone numbers and contact information have been or could be made available to the government by secret court order."
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Moody’s Downgrades Hong Kong Over Snowden / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Patrick_Henningsen
Yesterday the world made some sense, but then you wake up today and realise how far-reaching the international white collar mafia truly is…
International financial ratings agency Moody’s is not known for being a political enforcement arm of Washington DC… until now that is.
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
... / Politics / Social Issues
By: Nadeem_Walayat
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Monday, June 24, 2013
Why People Tolerate a Total State / Politics / Social Issues
By: Jeff_Berwick
Wendy McElroy writes: “Why do so many people not realize America has become a total state?”
Anyone who points out the politically obvious and is accused of panic-mongering has considered this question. The NSA's massive spying, the TSA frisking their children, the IRS targeting people politically, the longest war in American history, the militarization of law enforcement, the indefinite detention of prisoners at Gitmo...nothing, nothing seems to budge some people from the belief that the US is the freest, grandest nation on earth. It is an article of faith as deeply held as any belief in God.
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Monday, June 24, 2013
Latest Obama Outrage - First Family's $100 Million Vacation Trip! / Politics / US Politics
By: Money_Morning
Frank Marchant writes: How much do you spend on your summer vacation? American households usually spend about $1,200 per person on summer vacations, according to a recent American Express survey.
Presidents spend more on their vacations than you or I. They have to. Air Force One and security does cost more than loading the Honda and heading to the beach.
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Monday, June 24, 2013
Ron Paul - Talking to the Taliban, What We Have Learned From Afghanistan? / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
Last week the Taliban opened an office in Doha, Qatar with the US government's blessing. They raised the Taliban flag at the opening ceremony and referred to Afghanistan as the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" -- the name they used when they were in charge before the US attack in 2001.
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Sunday, June 23, 2013
GCHQ at the Heart of Britain’s Secret Surveillance State / Politics / UK Politics
By: Global_Research
Colin Todhunter writes: “The innocent have everything to fear, mostly from the guilty, but in the longer term even more from those who say things like ‘The innocent have nothing to fear.’” Terry Pratchett (British author), in Snuff (Doubleday, 2011).
For many people, personal privacy vs widespread surveillance has been a major issue for decades. However, some thought it might have been happening but chose to downplay it. Others didn’t want to know and just didn’t care. Edward Snowden’s recent revelations indicate it is happening and that we should all care.
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Saturday, June 22, 2013
How Currency Wars End in Violence as Brazil Erupts / Politics / Brazil
By: Mike_Shedlock
The flareup in Brazil erupted in violence overnight as millions protested corruption, inflation, bus fares and a seemingly growing list of items.
Unsurprisingly, the Brazilian real weakened against the dollar now in its sixth consecutive day of decline.
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Saturday, June 22, 2013
Peak Soil Desertification, Between Us and Extinction / Politics / Climate Change
By: Richard_Mills
Desertification is a phenomenon that ranks among the greatest environmental challenges of our time, unfortunately most people haven't heard of it or simply don't understand it.
Desertification and land degradation is a global issue with desertification already affecting one quarter of the total land surface of the globe today
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Friday, June 21, 2013
NSA Arm of Your Friendly Neighborhood Totalitarian State / Politics / US Politics
By: Walter_Brasch
It makes no difference if Edward Snowden, who had fled to Hong Kong and revealed that the American government was spying upon American citizens, is a traitor or a hero.
Intelligence agencies from China, Russia, England, Israel, and maybe even Lichtenstein, probably already know that the National Security Administration (NSA) is collecting data of all the phone calls and emails of Americans, and linking them to conversations with foreign nationals. What is unsettling is that everything the NSA is doing is legal. Secret federal courts can issue secret warrants to agencies that maintain secret files.
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Friday, June 21, 2013
Even Sesame Street Can't Ignore America's Economic and Social Collapse / Politics / US Politics
By: Jeff_Berwick
Things have gotten so bad in the US that Sesame Street has its first character, Alex, who has to try to deal with the torment of having his dad in jail. This, believe it or not, is par for the course for Sesame Street.
Sesame Street has helped kids open up about all sorts of serious subjects that are commonplace in the USSA today, from hunger and divorce to their parents going off to commit terrorist acts on the part of the financial and political elite (military deployment). In fact, one in 28 children in the United States now has a parent in a rape camp (jail) -- more than the number of kids with a parent who is sent overseas to commit acts of terrorism (military).
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Friday, June 21, 2013
The Cancer of Online Gambling, Really Toxicity / Politics / Online Gambling
By: Bloomberg
Las Vegas Sands Corp., Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson joined Bloomberg TV's Deirdre Bolton on "Money Moves" today to discuss why he's come out swinging against online gambling and said: "I think it is a train wreck. It's really toxicity. It is a cancer waiting to happen."
Adelson on poker being skill based: "That skill base is, in my opinion, just a bunch of baloney. To get a card is not skill base. I know people say it is skill based, but it's just so they can categorize it in a certain segment"
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Thursday, June 20, 2013
German Car Industry Says 'Nein Danke' To Carbon Correct / Politics / Climate Change
By: Andrew_McKillop
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
Barack Obama, perorating and posing at the Brandenburg Gate felt obliged to put on his most somber look and gurgle a few lines about the glorious quest of all civilized countries, led by the US and Germany, fighting the menace of global warming. Obama has rebranded this the “struggle against bad weather” - possibly because there has been no warming of the Earth for over 10 years - but Germany's industrial chiefs call European Carbon Correct a suicide pact.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
U.S. Creates Al Qaeda 2.0 in Syria: The Obama Administration is a “State Sponsor of Terrorism” / Politics / US Politics
By: Michel_Chossudovsky
A major transition in US counter-terrorism doctrine is unfolding.
While Barack Obama, following in the footsteps of George W. Bush, remains firmly committed to waging a “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT), his administration is now openly supporting selected rebel units in Syria which are part of the Al Qaeda network.
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Wednesday, June 19, 2013
When the Scales Fall - U.S. Government is Losing Credibility / Politics / US Politics
By: Fred_Sheehan
That is both an obvious and a useless observation without a sense of the consequences. Maybe, there are none. Maybe, the accumulating doubt concerning Benghazi, IRS intrusions, and NSA confiscation of privacy are wearing thin. If the latter proves correct, how will the people express their disillusion: "Voting with their feet," so to speak? A glaring vulnerability is the gap between falling income and inflation. The government's numbers are propaganda, and seem to have worked. The Fed, Bureau of Labor Statistics, reporters, and the academics who are paid to polish Goebbelism into a scholastic veneer, state that annual price inflation is short of 2%. John Williams, proprietor of Shadow Stats, estimates that if the Bureau of Labor Statistics used the same methodology for calculating the CPI as in 1980, the monthly figure released and disseminated to the public would be 9.4% (as of November, 2012).
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Why And How The Young Are Screwed / Politics / Social Issues
By: Raul_I_Meijer
Last week I read a few lines in a Dutch newspaper article about pensions that immediately took me back to something I wrote in early May about youth unemployment - especially in southern Europe, where it's often 50% or more -. There is a common thread that links pensions to employment to stimulus measures: the younger generations invariably get the short end of the stick. Until they don't, of course, for they have one thing going for them. Age. Before they can play that ace, however, their parents seem intent on milking them for all they got. And I can’t help finding that curious, because it’s not at all what parents say they want for their children.