Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Sunday, February 06, 2011
Egypt Crisis Financial Bonanza for Wall Street Investors and Speculators / Politics / Middle East
By: Michel_Chossudovsky
Mubarak's decision not to resign was taken in close consultation with Washington. The US administration including US intelligence had carefully identified the possible scenarios. If Washington had instructed Mubarak to step down, he would have obeyed forthright.
His decision not to resign indelibly serves US interests. It creates a situation of social chaos and political inertia, which in turn generates a vacuum in decision making at the government level.
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Sunday, February 06, 2011
Who is the Real Opposition in Egypt? / Politics / Middle East
By: Shamus_Cooke
The revolution in Egypt erupted like all revolutions do, from the bottom up. It was unemployment and high food prices that propelled working and poor people into action. Now, the media reports that the "opposition” in Egypt is a group of well-to-do folks who have very little in common with the poor of Egypt.
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Sunday, February 06, 2011
The Battle for Egypt - The People vs. Washington / Politics / Middle East
By: Michael_T_Bucci
As it now stands on 5 February, Washington has engineered the Egyptian situation to where revolution is repressed, installation of a military regime is proposed, and the West can go back to business as usual, or so it hopes.
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Sunday, February 06, 2011
Egypt's Revolution: Creative Destruction for a 'Greater Middle East'? / Politics / Middle East
By: F_William_Engdahl
Fast on the heels of the regime change in Tunisia came a popular-based protest movement launched on January 25 against the entrenched order of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak. Contrary to the carefully-cultivated impression that the Obama Administration is trying to retain the present regime of Mubarak, Washington in fact is orchestrating the Egyptian as well as other regional regime changes from Syria to Yemen to Jordan and well beyond in a process some refer to as "creative destruction.&
Saturday, February 05, 2011
Financial Markets and the U.S. Orwellian Non Farm Payrolls Report... / Politics / Market Manipulation
By: Jesse
The weather ate the recovery.
Now we know why the Wall Street demimonde had been pimping the unemployment number as 'the key number to watch' as compared to actual jobs added earlier this week. Although at the time they never really said why.
Friday, February 04, 2011
American History Is Not What They Say, The Reagan Fraud and After / Politics / US Politics
By: Jeff_Riggenbach
Like most Republican politicians since the early 1930s, Ronald Reagan always portrayed himself throughout his political career as a champion of limited government, individual rights, and free enterprise — the classical-liberal values, which, of course, he absurdly described as "conservative." But, like almost all Republican politicians since the early 1930s, he seemed to forget all about these values once he got into office and assumed the reins of power. Consider, as a case in point, Reagan's eight years (1966–1974) as governor of California. As Murray Rothbard noted in 1980,
Friday, February 04, 2011
How Banks and Investors Are Starving the Third World Into Political Crisis / Politics / Food Crisis
By: Ellen_Brown
“What for a poor man is a crust, for a rich man is a securitized asset class.” --Futures trader Ann Berg, quoted in the UK Guardian
Underlying the sudden, volatile uprising in Egypt and Tunisia is a growing global crisis sparked by soaring food prices and unemployment. The Associated Press reports that roughly 40 percent of Egyptians struggle along at the World Bank-set poverty level of under $2 per day. Analysts estimate that food price inflation in Egypt is currently at an unsustainable 17 percent yearly. In poorer countries, as much as 60 to 80 percent of people's incomes go for food, compared to just 10 to 20 percent in industrial countries. An increase of a dollar or so in the cost of a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread for Americans can mean starvation for people in Egypt and other poor countries.
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Friday, February 04, 2011
Egyptian Revolution Will Eventually Be Betrayed / Politics / Middle East
By: LewRockwell
Mark R. Crovelli writes: There is nothing in this dark and cynical world that is more beautiful than when a people rises up en masse against its suffocating and predatory political system and tells its murderous "leaders" to get the hell out of the country. Such a scene is all the more inspiring when it is motivated solely by the hope for freedom and prosperity, and the participants resort to the protest instead of the assault rifle. In the face of such a powerful grassroots lunge toward liberty, it is a foregone conclusion that the "leaders" of the country will eventually be forced to abdicate power and run for their lives. When this happens, the victorious and free people will fill the streets and countryside with joyous and uproarious song. They will have won the battle for liberty.
Friday, February 04, 2011
Falling Prices and The End of the Nation State / Politics / Social Issues
By: Gary_North
We are living in the greatest era of falling prices in the history of man. Our lives are being transformed by this phenomenon year by year, yet most of us take the change for granted. We barely notice it. Yet we would wonder what is wrong if it ceased.
Falling prices, you say? What falling prices? Where is there any sign of this.
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Friday, February 04, 2011
The U.S. Government Budget Deficit Scam / Politics / US Debt
By: Richard_Daughty
I am constantly amazed at the number of people who think that a budget deficit is the same thing as the total federal deficit, which it ain't.
Actually, I remember one time early in my career where I was so desperate to cover up the results of my own incompetence that I tried to exploit this confusion with a "budget deficit" scam of my own, and it seemed to work for almost a month!
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Thursday, February 03, 2011
Understating the Economic Cost of a Carbon Tax / Politics / Climate Change
By: Robert_Murphy
In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, Alan Blinder listed numerous alleged benefits of a phased-in carbon tax. Out of his entire column, he devoted a single sentence to the possible downside of his plan when he wrote, "No one likes to pay higher taxes." A more balanced assessment shows that a carbon tax presents very real dangers, even if we rely on the same economic analysis that so enthralled Blinder.
Thursday, February 03, 2011
Reagan for President...of China! / Politics / US Politics
By: Axel_Merk
With Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday around the corner, it seems fitting that the world may need another President with the same level of foresight. This time it’s not the U.S., but China that may need a President Reagan.
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Thursday, February 03, 2011
Egypt Crisis Driven by Population Growth Impact Other Emerging Markets to Similarly Suffer / Politics / Emerging Markets
By: Money_Morning
Martin Hutchinson writes:
Seven months ago, global investment bankers had anointed Egypt as the "next big thing" in the world of emerging-markets investing - naming it as one of the exciting "CIVETS" economies that every investor had to consider.
At that time, in a column here in Money Morning, I told you that I had my doubts, and said that "with an 82-year-old dictator and a radical Islamist movement, it doesn't look that attractive to me."
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Thursday, February 03, 2011
Why Did Mubarak's Thugs Ride In On Camels? / Politics / Middle East
By: Washingtons_Blog
The photos of Mubarak's thugs riding in on camels to attack the peaceful protesters with whips is getting worldwide attention:
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Thursday, February 03, 2011
Britain is an Incipient Fascist State / Politics / UK Politics
By: Global_Research
Derek Martin writes: I was born in 1929. Despite the prevailing poverty of the 1930’s, followed by the horrors of the Second World War, there was a general spirit of optimism generated by the radical thinking of H. G. Wells, Bernard Shaw, and a host of left wing thinkers associated with the Labour Party. Despite the war this persisted, and led to the Labour Government of 1945, and I reached adulthood feeling that we had reached at least the beginning of a genuinely brave new world. Events have proved me very wrong. The only Brave New World around was Huxley’s, and I read the articles about the impending decline of the U.S.A. into fascism, (‘America Has Gone Away’ by Paul Craig Roberts (ref.1), and the somewhat more recent, ‘Does Fascism Lurk Around the Corner in the U.S.A.? by Danny Schechter (ref. 2), and realised that for some time I had been considering Britain in the same terms. I thought then that it might be worth sharing my thoughts with others; hence this article.
Thursday, February 03, 2011
The Federal Crisis Inquiry Commission Missed the Money / Politics / Credit Crisis 2011
By: Fred_Sheehan
The Federal Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) had as much chance of satisfying the public as the Warren Commission did of closing the debate on the Kennedy assassination. The FCIC published its report on January 27, 2011. This was the "Final Report of the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States." The FCIC itself could not come to a conclusion. The Democrats wrote for the majority, the Republicans for the minority, and a think-tank fellow motored off on a tangent of his own.
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Wednesday, February 02, 2011
U.S. Chickens Come Home to Roost in Egypt / Politics / Middle East
By: Global_Research
Marjorie Cohn writes: Barack Obama, like his predecessors, has supported Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to the tune of $1.3 billion annually, mostly in military aid. In return, Egypt minds U.S. interests in the Middle East, notably providing a buffer between Israel and the rest of the Arab world. Egypt collaborates with Israel to isolate Gaza with a punishing blockade, to the consternation of Arabs throughout the Middle East. The United States could not have fought its wars in Iraq without Egypt’s logistical support.
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
U.S. Police State Decades in the Making / Politics / US Politics
By: Global_Research
David Swanson writes: Andrew Kolin's new book "State Power and Democracy: Before and During the Presidency of George W. Bush" actually begins with the war for independence and continues into the Obama years. A 231-page monotone recounting of endless facts, it doesn't pick up with Bush the Lesser until page 137. Kolin chronicles a gradual slide into an imperial presidency that really got going after World War II. Along the way he chronicles the damage done to the forces of resistance, making a compelling case that our movements for peace and justice are weak in part because of the extreme repression of recent decades.
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Tuesday, February 01, 2011
A People's Uprising Against the Empire / Politics / Social Issues
By: LewRockwell
Those of the young generation, people too young to remember the collapse of Soviet bloc and other socialist states in 1989 and 1990, are fortunate to be living through another thrilling example of a seemingly impenetrable state edifice reduced to impotence when faced with crowds demanding freedom, peace, and justice.
There is surely no greater event than this. To see it instills in us a sense of hope that the longing for freedom that beats in the heart of every human being can be realized in our time.
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Tuesday, February 01, 2011
Financial Crisis Inquiry, Another "Whitewash" for Wall Street / Politics / Credit Crisis 2011
By: Mike_Whitney
Maybe "whitewash" is too harsh of a term to apply to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission's (FCIC) report, but it certainly doesn't break any new ground. Nor does it achieve its real purpose, which is to figure out what triggered the financial meltdown and (hopefully) restore confidence in the system. It fails on both counts, and it's not hard to see why. The investigative panel was clearly instructed to point out the dangers of insufficient regulation rather than focus on the massive incidents of fraud that were perpetrated by the bankers and other financial kingpins. It's a clever way of blaming the system instead of the people who were responsible.