Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
America’s Descent Into Poverty / Politics / US Politics
By: Paul_Craig_Roberts
The United States has collapsed economically, socially, politically, legally, constitutionally, environmentally, and morally. The country that exists today is not even a shell of the country into which I was born. In this article I will deal with America’s economic collapse. In subsequent articles, i will deal with other aspects of American collapse.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
The US Dollar, the World's Controller / Politics / US Dollar
By: Pravda
The administration of Britain's Standard Chartered Bank has been accused of violating U.S. laws this week. The bank allegedly concealed illegal operations with Iranian financial institutions in circumvention of U.S. sanctions against Tehran. How can one accuse a non-US company of violating U.S. law? It can be possible due to the use of dollars in settlements.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Inventing an Iranian Threat / Politics / US Politics
By: Stephen_Lendman
Iran threatens no one. Western and Israeli leaders know it. So do over 100 Non-Aligned Movement countries coming to Tehran. They'll be there from August 26 - 31. They'll participate in NAM's 16th summit.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
America Goes Fundamentalist / Politics / US Politics
By: Andrew_McKillop
The unfunny thing is that it was fundamentalist, already. The Todd Akin's definition of "legal rape", the death of Neil Armstrong removing an ikonic symbol of American technological prowess, and a recurring spate of gory killings have all been given the usual mix-and-mingle media treatment to tweak out the most sensational fundamentalist themes, to a backdrop of news from Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, Afghanistan and elsewhere that runs along the same lines. Outside America, the world is run by scary, violent, bearded and begowned religious nutjobs who know nothing about technology. But inside the USA the fundamentalists are clean-shaven, wear a suit and tie and are techno geeks: the US media tells its witless viewers and listeners that America is so very different.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Baby Boomers Are Breaking the Deal, A College Degree is No longer Enough / Politics / Demographics
By: John_Mauldin
There is something missing from this thing we are calling a recovery. For most in the US it does not feel like a recovery, and for good reason: the jobs aren’t there. But for some groups it is a recovery, and more. And that reveals an even bigger problem. Today, in a summer-shortened Thoughts from the Frontline, we look at the trends in employment as well as take note of a signpost we passed on the way to finding out that we can’t pay for all the future entitlements we have been promised. It’s a short letter but hopefully thought-provoking. At the end, I note a webinar and a few speeches I’ll be giving in the near future.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Dear Angela Merkel , It's Time To Do The Right Thing / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Raul_I_Meijer
Dear Angela,
You know, it's sort of funny that just as I started to write this letter, I read about a plan (yours?) for a possible temporary Greece exit from the eurozone.
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Sunday, August 26, 2012
Propaganda, Politics, and the Gold Standard / Politics / Gold and Silver 2012
By: Andy_Sutton
It wouldn’t be a normal day in the life of the 24-hour news cycle if there weren’t some type of campaign against gold and its proper role as money. True to form, The Financial Times stepped to the plate to launch a rather hilarious attack on gold in the context of an article which discusses the idea that one half of our Diet Coke/Diet Pepsi political system is contemplating adding what is the equivalent of a feasibility study on returning to the gold standard to its political platform.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
If you Like NAFTA, You’ll Love the Trans Pacific Partnership / Politics / US Politics
By: Rudy_Avizius
We, the transnational corporations and the ruling elites are on the verge of a wonderful new dawn that will bring us immense power and untold wealth.
We have been secretly negotiating a new agreement called the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) with the United States Australia, Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam and are nearing completing the final details of this agreement. We have had 600 of our corporate lobbyists providing input and have successfully excluded Congress, our own corporate media, and the general public from the negotiations. Once implemented, this agreement will hard code corporate dominance over sovereign governments into international law that will supercede any federal, state, or local laws of any member country. This agreement will grant new corporate privileges and rights, while limiting governments and protective regulations. This agreement will far exceed anything we have been able to achieve with NAFTA, CAFTA, or any other free trade agreement.
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Friday, August 24, 2012
Welcome to Soviet America, Naomi Wolf on the Crackdown of Dissent / Politics / US Politics
By: Videos
Naomi Wolf: With the world watching the case of Wikileaks Julian Assange, Russia Today sat down with American author Naomi Wolf to discuss why journalists are finding it increasingly difficult to publish information the US government doesn’t want them to. Indeed, the Pentagon has been ordered to begin monitoring major news stations in the US to see if any media outlets are disclosing classified information. With the entire government now over-classifying everything, it's a heavy-handed attempt to silence truth tellers and whistle blowers with threats of imprisonment, or worse. Wolf's reaction is: "My immediate take is a profound feeling of nausea and a sense that somehow, the United States has collapsed into the Soviet Union circa the mid-1930s. This was horribly foreseeable, but I can’t believe it’s come to this."Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Unsettling Development for Washington, Venezuela Ramps Up China Oil Exports / Politics / Crude Oil
By: OilPrice_Com
The biggest geostrategic change of the past decade overlooked by Washington policy wonks in their fixation on their self-proclaimed "war on terror" is that Latin America has been throwing off the shackles of the Monroe Doctrine.
These ignored developments may well soon refocus Washington's attention on the Southern Hemisphere, as Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez reorients his country's to China.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
What Do the Rise and Fall of Empires Suggest? / Politics / Social Issues
By: DK_Matai
The summer respite is an interesting time to read history and to reflect on the lessons to be learned from empires long gone in preparation for empires yet to come. As the British Prime Minister William Pitt, the French poet Alphonse de Lamartine, and the Baron Acton said in different ways: "All power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely!" The greatest mistake, oft repeated by those in power throughout history, has been the sin of "Hubris."
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Who Rules America? Class Warfare in 2012 / Politics / US Politics
By: Paul_Craig_Roberts
The media are filled with stories claiming that the Obama vs. Romney race is all about class warfare. I have my doubts. Here is why.
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, in their then-anonymous tract, The Manifesto of the Communist Party(1848), began chapter 1 with these words: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."
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Wednesday, August 22, 2012
America – Governed by Organized Crime! / Politics / Conspiracy Theory
By: Submissions
John Rolls Submits, David J. Meyer Writes: “For among my people are found wicked men: they lay wait, as he that setteth snares; they set a trap, they catch men. As a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit: therefore they are become great, and waxen rich. They are waxen fat, they shine: yea, they overpass the deeds of the wicked: they judge not the cause, the cause of the fatherless, yet they prosper; and the right of the needy they do not judge. Shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord: shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this? A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land; the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?”
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Power Politics vs. American Prosperity / Politics / US Politics
By: Ian_Fletcher
I had one of those “Aha!” moments recently.
I was engaged in an e-mail dialogue with a moderately prominent individual active in America’s international trade relations. He’s a former high-ranking public official, important enough to matter but not a household name. You might recognize him if you follow trade politics closely. Democrat, left-of-center, but nothing radical.
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Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Going Beyond The Global Financial Crisis, Self-Assembling Dynamic Networks / Politics / Social Issues
By: DK_Matai
2012 is a watershed year in the history of humankind. The cumulative effects of Self-Assembling Dynamic Networks or SADNs are not only changing the very nature of our existence but also the perception of each other via our unprecedented super-connectivity across communities and continents. Does this herald the end of the status quo? No-thing appears to remain the same as this contagion-of-transparency and flat-hierarchies spreads faster and faster: accelerating, assimilating and absorbing every aspect of our joint and inter-linked global existence.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
The French Fake Global Warming 'Crisis' / Politics / Climate Change
By: Andrew_McKillop
Through the four days 15 - 19 August, many French towns and cities experienced high, and in a certain number of cases record high temperatures for mid-August. For French media and quite a few politicians - either "leading" or would be "leading" - this was however nowhere near enough. For them, what in French is called a "canicule" or hot summer weather, was the start of a probably, almost certainly long period of record-high temperatures, of course due to anthropogenic global warming. French media and politics went on to tell 'the people' that this special canicule might cause high, or even extreme high losses of life among vulnerable sections of the population - especially old persons and children. Urgent public advisory and communication measures were needed.
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Monday, August 20, 2012
U.S. Extortion Against Standard Chartered Bank Shows Bias Against Iran / Politics / US Politics
By: Danny_Schechter
Is This Incident A Retaliation Because A Bank Official Made A Disparaging Comment About US Hostility To Iran?
Johannesburg, South Africa: On the surface, it looked like a simple game of “Gotcha,” when New York Bank regulators blew the whistle on London’s Standard Chartered Bank for laundering money. The fact that the money was allegedly tied to Iran cast a major shadow on the allegations, given the Islamic Republic’s “bad guy” image in American policy circles.
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Monday, August 20, 2012
India Power Black Out: The Shape of Things to Come? / Politics / India
By: Raul_I_Meijer
The enormous power cut recently seen in India, which affected perhaps 700 million people, serves to highlight the degree of the structural dependency we have built into our lives in the era of cheap energy.
Electricity is one of the most complex manifestations of our complex system and has come to be widely seen as a basic necessity. It enables many of our modern life support systems. Expectations have been raised, even in many of the slums of the world, that electricity will be available, at least some of the time. The lack of it, especially if that lack is sudden and unexpected, or prolonged, increasingly leads to social unrest.
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Sunday, August 19, 2012
Financial Markets, Politics, and the New Reality / Politics / Financial Markets 2012
By: STRATFOR
Louis M. Bacon is the head of Moore Capital Management, one of the largest and most influential hedge funds in the world. Last week, he announced that he was returning one quarter of his largest fund, about $2 billion, to his investors. The reason he gave to The New York Times was that he had found it difficult to invest given the impossibility of predicting the European situation. He was quoted as saying, "The political involvement is so extreme – we have not seen this since the postwar era. What they are doing is trying to thwart natural market outcomes. It is amazing how important the decision-making of one person, Angela Merkel, has become to world markets."
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Republicans Hope, but Don't Change / Politics / US Politics
By: Peter_Schiff
For much of the past few generations, the debate over balancing the federal budget has been a central feature of every presidential campaign. But over time, the goalposts have moved. As the amount of red ink has grown steadily larger, the suggested time frames to restore balance have gotten increasingly longer, while the suggested cuts in government spending have gotten increasingly shallower. In recent years, talk of balancing the budget gave way to vague promises such as "cutting the deficit in half in five years." In the current campaign, however, it appears as if the goalposts have been moved so far that they are no longer in the field of play. I would argue that they are completely out of the stadium.Read full article... Read full article...