Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Monday, September 20, 2010
Tony Blairs Journey Into Fantasy Land, 624 pages of Excuses for Killing 1 Million People / Politics / UK Politics
Dr. David Halpin writes: Your 'Journey' has been long on miles but absent of humanity, reason and law. 'It can only get better'. Could it have got any worse?
Your vapour trails have left millions weeping. One million of those are widows in Iraq, at least 1.2 million humans with their Allah, five million orphans and four million refugees. We will leave out the blood and the mayhem you have left in Afghanistan, Somalia and the Yemen. You sprang from each jet with strange eyes ablaze, with more lies and plans for yet more Muslim decimation. You had been re-fuelled at high altitude by your fellow psychopath Campbell and other 'advisers' like Manning.
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Monday, September 20, 2010
Chavez wants a break from U.S. meddling, Can you blame him? / Politics / Venezuela
Most people know that Iran, Russia and Venezuela all have vast oil reserves. And, they also know that Hugo Chavez, Vladimir Putin and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are on Washington's "enemies list". So, why is it so hard for them to connect the dots? Can't they see that the media only demonizes the leaders that stand in the way of the corporate agenda? If Iran's biggest export was pistachios (rather than oil), no one in America would have ever heard of Ahmadinejad. Instead, every time poor guy makes the slightest miscue, his face is splashed across the front pages of US newspapers.
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Monday, September 20, 2010
Average American Works 231 Days Just To Support Government / Politics / Taxes
The drunker I get, the more it seems to me that you slave away at your stupid job every day of your stupid life, hating every moment of it, reviling all the idiotic people you deal with every hellish day, but you bravely and heroically put up with the aggravation, tedium and ennui because you desperately need the money.
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Sunday, September 19, 2010
Elizabeth Warren In Office But Not In Power, Bankster's Cheer Tepid Financial Reforms / Politics / Market Regulation
Hooray, Elizabeth Warren is to become a Special Assistant to President Obama in charge of setting up the Consumer Protection Bureau that she conceived. Alas, it is not to be the independent agency she wanted but a bureau within the Federal Reserve Bank, a branch of government that is really run by big banks which and did virtually nothing to protect consumers when they needed help the most.
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Sunday, September 19, 2010
A Third Sino Japanese War? / Politics / GeoPolitics
For centuries, the relationship between China and Japan may be best described as tense to turbulent with two Sino-Japanese wars all within the last century or so. The accord between the two neighboring Asian countries has progressed in recent years with official visits, trade pact and joint venture agreements.
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Sunday, September 19, 2010
Roma Deporations in Sarkozy's Vichy France, Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité is a Joke / Politics / Euro-Zone
Alex Lantier writes: In the run-up to yesterday’s European Union (EU) summit in Brussels, European officials and heads of state disavowed criticisms of French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s mass deportation of Roma by European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding.
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Saturday, September 18, 2010
Coalition Government's £100 Billion Economic Gamble Supported By "No Reputable Economic Theory" / Politics / UK Politics
Today Compass has launched a report which reveals the extent of the Coalition Governments reckless gamble. It is calculated in this new report by the leading left of centre pressure group Compass that the government is making a £100 billion gamble on growing while cutting which is supported by "no reputable economic theory".*
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Saturday, September 18, 2010
The Strategic Outlook: Fear and Uncertainty Have Paths of Their Own / Politics / GeoPolitics
Fear and uncertainty create patterns, paths of their own. And societies are again in a mosaic of uncertainty -- and resultant fear -- over the fate and durability of the social and security frameworks once taken for granted. Mass reaction to these fears will trigger transformative change. But there will be opportunities to seize and command change.
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Saturday, September 18, 2010
The Governmental Money-Vacuum / Politics / Government Spending
The drunker I get, the more it seems to me that you slave away at your stupid job every day of your stupid life, hating every moment of it, reviling all the idiotic people you deal with every hellish day, but you bravely and heroically put up with the aggravation, tedium and ennui because you desperately need the money.
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Saturday, September 18, 2010
Are Consumers Finally Winning in Washington? / Politics / US Politics
This past week the administration announced its choice for the first credit czar at the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This bureau was created as part of the supposed Wall Street reform bill recently passed by Congress. This new bureau, which represents nothing more than another layer of useless Washington bureaucracy, will be housed within the Federal Reserve-- one of the most anti-consumer institutions in Washington.
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Friday, September 17, 2010
Real Versus Fake Crises, Concealing The Risk of An All Out Nuclear War / Politics / GeoPolitics
We have reached a turning point in our history. The US and its allies are preparing to launch a nuclear war with devastating consequences.
During the Cold War, the concept of "mutual assured destruction" (MAD) was put forth. An understanding of the consequences of nuclear war largely contributed to avoiding the outbreak of war between the US and the Soviet Union.
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Friday, September 17, 2010
Forty-four Million Americans Living in Poverty, Failure of Capitalism? / Politics / US Politics
Patrick Martin writes: The number of people living in poverty in America rose to 43.6 million in 2009, the US Census Bureau reported Thursday. This is the largest number since the agency began making such estimates 50 years ago and represents an increase of 3.8 million compared to 2008.
As of last year, one in every seven Americans was poor, according to the government’s definition of poverty. The official poverty rate of 14.3 percent is the highest since 1994.
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Friday, September 17, 2010
China's Next Generation of Leaders, Looking to 2012 / Politics / China
In 2012, the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) leaders will retire and a new generation — the so-called fifth generation — will take the helm. The transition will affect the CPC’s most powerful decision-making organs, determining the makeup of the 18th CPC Central Committee, the Political Bureau (Politburo) of the Central Committee, and most important, the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee that is the core of political power in China.
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Thursday, September 16, 2010
Government Jobs, It's Not about Personnel; It's about Power / Politics / Government Spending
Market analysts have been trying to predict President Obama's pick to head the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Earlier this week Obama and other administration officials hinted that the spot would be filled by Elizabeth Warren, a hero to progressive activists but anathema to the banking industry. (As of Wednesday evening, Warren had been confirmed as a "special adviser" though her ultimate status still remained up in the air.) The whole episode underscores the profound difference between adversarial government operations and peaceful, win-win market activities.
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Thursday, September 16, 2010
Glenn Beck the Socialist / Politics / US Politics
Dr. Phil Maymin writes: Glenn Beck is a polarizing person among libertarians. Some laud him for being one of the few voices on television to criticize both Democrats and Republicans as being equally complicit in growing the size of government and pointing out that there is no significant difference between them. Others view him as a phony usurper of the freedom movement.
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Thursday, September 16, 2010
U.S. Economy and Economic Stimulus, Why Can’t Politicians Understand What is Really Happening? / Politics / US Politics
Every time I hear a politician or economist call for more stimuli to create jobs I just shake my head and wonder, do these people really not understand what is happening in the jobs market? Do they really not understand that government can't legislate prosperity? All governments can do is steal from...errr I mean tax its citizens and then throw their funds away on nonproductive ‘make work’ jobs.
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Thursday, September 16, 2010
Washington Turf Wars / Politics / GeoPolitics
Washington’s bureaucratic turf wars are a dismal reality of politics in Beltwayistan, but are now threatening national policy, as competing agendas threaten policies extending far beyond the continental U.S.
In two of the most notable recent examples, the Kazakh “Giffengate” corruption case and attempts to extradite notorious “Lord of War” Viktor Bout to the United States, eager federal officials in both cases are running up against other government elements content to let both cases lie fallow, notably the CIA and Pentagon.
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Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Central Banking's "Grotesque" War on Your Money / Politics / Fiat Currency
Nobody wins this war of attrition, however much money they print up and shell into the market...
DURING the Second World War, Nazi Germany hatched a plot to flood Britain with fake bank notes.
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Wednesday, September 15, 2010
How Corporations Own the US Congress / Politics / US Politics
With the November elections quickly approaching, the majority of Americans will be thinking one thing: "Who cares?” This apathy isn't due to ignorance, as some accuse. Rather, working people's disinterest in the two party system implies intelligence: millions of people understand that both the Democrats and Republicans will not represent their interests in Congress.
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Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Obama's $50 Billion "Infrastructure" Gift to the Wall Street Banks / Politics / Government Spending
I can smell the newest giveaway looming a mile off. The Wall Street bailout, health-insurance giveaway and support of real estate prices rather than mortgage-debt write-downs were bad enough, not to mention the Oil War¹s Afghan extension. But now comes a topper: the $50 billion transportation infrastructure plan that Obama proposed in Milwaukee cynically enough, on Labor Day. It looks like the Thatcherite Public-Private Partnership, Britain¹s notorious giveaway to the City of London underwriters. The financial giveaway had the effect of increasing prices for basic infrastructure services by building in heavy financial fees guaranteed for the banks, who lent the money that banks and property owners used to pay in taxes in more progressive times.
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