Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Ankara: the New Capital of Jihad, U.S. Policy for Strengthening ISIS / Politics / Syria
By: Mike_Whitney
“The US and it’s allies want to keep this monster (ISIS) in check, but they don’t want to destroy it. All their military, political and media campaigns are smokescreens. What the West has done so far has strengthened terrorism not ended it. The proof of this is the fact that terrorism has spread everywhere, its material resources have increased, and its ranks have swollen.” — Syrian President Bashar al Assad
Has US policy in Syria fallen prey to the political ambitions of one man, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan?
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Thursday, August 20, 2015
Moving Toward a Geopolitical Marketplace / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: STRATFOR
Jay Ogilvy writes: This column frames a question to which I do not have the answer. Or think of it as a historical agenda: How can we bring the logic of free market exchange into the domain of geopolitical conflict?
Why would we want to do such a thing? It's not simply a matter of substituting gold for guns, or nonviolent exchange for violent exchange. The question I am posing is not based on some utopian hope for perpetual peace. The distinction I want to focus on is the difference between zero-sum conflict and positive-sum exchange.
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Thursday, August 20, 2015
What's Really At Stake With The Iran Nuclear Deal / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: OilPrice_Com
Recently, I wrote on these pages that a remarkable turnaround was taking place in the President's fortunes. It's an impressive display of rising from the depths of falling popularity last fall, and it is starting to be felt in many areas, with major impacts on the future of energy. At his lowest point, the U.S. President was widely regarded as a lame duck, shedding influence and power, and on a down-hill slide.
This was followed by a number of embarrassments, with one of the worst coming from Russia, when it chose to provide sanctuary to Edward Snowden who revealed that the U.S. was hacking the strategic communications of its closest allies.
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Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Solution Space / Politics / Social Issues
By: Nicole_Foss
To use the word ‘solution’ is perhaps misleading, since it could be said to imply that circumstances exist which could allow us to continue business as usual, and this is not, in fact, the case. A crunch period cannot be avoided. We face an intractable predicament, and the consequences of overshoot are going to manifest no matter what we do. However, while we may not be able to prevent this from occurring, we can mitigate the impact and lay the foundation for a fundamentally different and more workable way of being in the world.
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Struggling To Make Ends Meet / Politics / Social Issues
By: Rodney_Johnson
I recently wrote about the cost of child care, which got me thinking of my own experience. My wife and I were in our mid-20s when we had our first child. To prep for the expenses, we sold my car. I replaced it with a 10-year old pickup painted in primer. It had an AM radio, vinyl seats, and no air conditioning. I took our son to daycare, so we commuted in the Texas summer heat with 2-by-60 air conditioning. By that, I mean rolling down both windows (by hand) and driving 60 miles per hour.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Blind Alleys and Techno-Fantasies / Politics / Social Issues
By: Nicole_Foss
The majority of proposals made by those who acknowledge limits fail on at least one of the previous criteria, and often several, if not all of them. Solution space is smaller than we typically think. The most common approach is to insist on government policies intended to implement meaningful change by fiat. Even in the best of times, government policy is a blunt instrument which all too often achieves the opposite of its stated intention, and in contractionary times the likelihood of this increases enormously.
Monday, August 17, 2015
The Seamless Web of Liberty / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
Many people think the Internal Revenue Service was violating civil liberties when it harassed tea party groups. After all, the groups were targeted because they wanted to exercise their civil liberty to challenge government policies. However, the specific issue in the IRS case was the groups' application for tax-exempt status, which seems to be an aspect of economic liberty. In fact, the IRS case demonstrates that there is no meaningful distinction between civil and economic liberties. A true friend of the free society defends both civil and economic liberties.
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Sunday, August 16, 2015
Hillary Clinton - Does the Country Really Need Another Economic Ignoramus? / Politics / US Presidential Election 2016
By: Investment_U
Alexander Green writes: Readers sounded off on my column a couple weeks ago about Hillary Clinton’s plan to nearly double the top tax rate on long-term capital gains to 43.4%.
As this is a column by and for investors, most readers nodded in vigorous agreement with my view that this plan would hurt not just investors but the poor and middle class as well.
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Sunday, August 16, 2015
The Boundaries and Future of Solution Space – Part 1 / Politics / Social Issues
By: Nicole_Foss
A great deal of intelligence is invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. Saul Bellow, 1976
More and more people (although not nearly enough) are coming to recognise that humanity cannot continue on its current trajectory, as the limits we face become ever more obvious, and their implications starker. There is a growing realisation that the future must be different, and much thought is therefore being applied to devising supposed solutions for that future. These are generally attempts to reconcile our need to make changes with our desire to continue something very much resembling our current industrial-world lifestyle, with a view to making a seamless transition between the now and a comfortably familiar future. The presumption is that it is possible, but this rests on foundational assumptions which vary between the improbable and the outright impossible. It is a presumption grounded in a comprehensive failure to understand the nature and extent of our predicament.
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Friday, August 14, 2015
Why It’s Not Always Good to be a Professional / Politics / Employment
By: Walter_Brasch
Decades ago, newspaper reporters had low wages and no bylines.As expected, they were a bit testy about the low wages.
So, publishers figured out that if they gave reporters bylines, it would soothe their savage egos.
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Thursday, August 13, 2015
Why is Russia Destroying Its Food? / Politics / Russia
By: STRATFOR
Forecast
- A Kremlin crackdown on food imports that violate Russian sanctions will continue to draw criticism throughout Russia.
- If the Kremlin continues with its crackdown, protests will expand.
- To limit the backlash, Moscow may opt for sporadic crackdowns rather than systematic enforcement of food sanctions.
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Debating the Morality of Hiroshima / Politics / Nuclear Weapons
By: STRATFOR
Each year at this time — the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima — the world pauses. The pause is less to mourn the dead than to debate a moral question: whether the bombing was justified and, by extension, whether the United States unnecessarily slaughtered tens of thousands of people on Aug. 6, 1945. The debate rarely focuses on a careful analysis of war and morality and is more frequently framed by existing views of the United States. The debate is rarely about Hiroshima or about World War II. It is a debate about the moral character of the United States. This is not an illegitimate subject, and Hiroshima might be a useful point with which to begin the debate. But that isn't possible until after we consider the origins of Hiroshima, which can be found in the evolution of modern warfare.
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Obama's Iran Nuclear Deal / Politics / Nuclear Weapons
By: BATR
Spending time analyzing the particulars of the agreement misses the point of the Iranian deal. It is not about preventing or even delaying the deployment of the bomb. The true intent of the P5+1 negotiation is to disrupt the unholy alliance between the war party and their Zionist overlords. The overwhelming reality is that U.S. foreign policy is based upon doing the bidding of Israel. What is transpiring is a fundamental push back coming from Barack Hussein Obama II. The Full text: Obama’s news conference on the Iran nuclear deal demonstrates this context.
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Real Education Reform Leaves the U.S. Government Behind / Politics / Educating Children
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
Among the items awaiting Congress when it returns from its August break is reconciling competing House and Senate bills reauthorizing No Child Left Behind. These bills passed early this spring. Each bill is being marketed as a huge step toward restoring state and local control over education. However, an examination of both bills shows that both provide local schools with only limited relief from a few federal mandates.
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Sunday, August 09, 2015
Japan Gets Ready for More Military Spending / Politics / New Cold War
By: MISES
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been pressing for more military spending in Japan, in what critics claim is a violation of Japan’s so-called pacifist constitution. Foreign Policy reports:
Read full article... Read full article...In January, the government of conservative Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe endorsed a defense budget of nearly 5 trillion yen, or $42 billion, continuing a three-year growth trend after nearly a decade of decline. The sum still represents a small portion of Japan’s GDP — it accounts for just one percent of it, according to the World Bank — but because offensive military action is prohibited by Japan’s constitution, even a modest increase is controversial.
Friday, August 07, 2015
Hiroshima, Nagasaki 70 Years On, Damascus Next City to be Nuked to Fulfill Bible Prophecy? / Politics / Nuclear Weapons
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Japan and much of the world this week will be commemorating America's nuking of two Japanese cities in August 1945 that resulted the incineration of over 250,000 people, 90% of whom were innocent civilians. Whilst to much of the world the nuking of these cities was clearly a war crime, to the US and some of its allies was deemed to be a necessary evil so as to bring a speedy end to the War in the Pacific. Though the facts are that Japan at the time was already negotiating its surrender, so the real reason why the bombs were dropped was so as to justify the huge amount of expense that had been incurred which would only be satisfied by such demonstrations.
Thursday, August 06, 2015
Europe’s Greek Tragedy / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: John_Mauldin
In this week’s Outside the Box we have a unique diagnosis of Europe’s ills from … a medical doctor. The author is Dr. Luc De Keyser, who currently serves as the chief medical information officer at Xperthis, the largest provider of hospital information systems solutions in Belgium. He has done pioneering work in multicenter clinical trials, medical ontologies, paleonutrition, and examining human conflict from an evolutionary perspective.
Dr. De Keyser (writing for Stratfor) is not sanguine about Europe’s future. There are times, he reminds us, when a doctor has to make the tough call and conclude that the patient’s case is simply without hope. It's a painful diagnosis and not one that the doctor enjoys sharing with the patient. But at some point the patient must be told.
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Thursday, August 06, 2015
Doug Casey on the Real FIFA Scandal / Politics / Social Issues
By: Casey_Research
Recently, high-ranking officials at FIFA, the world’s governing soccer (aka “football”) body, were charged with corruption and fraud. The US’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is deeply involved in the case. Doug Casey weighs in on the real scandal… the one you’re not reading in mass media.
The truth be known, I really don’t give a damn about soccer. Nor do most Americans.
Indeed, until recently, all that most Americans knew about “football” was that Brandi Chastain ripped off her jersey, to display a great physique, after she scored the winning goal for the US in the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup playoff against China.
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Thursday, August 06, 2015
Bringing Turkey's Border Strategy Into Focus / Politics / Turkey
By: STRATFOR
Summary
Satellite images taken at the Turkey-Syria border corroborate what Stratfor predicted weeks ago: that Turkey, now partnered with the United States, will strike at Islamic State-controlled territory adjacent to the Turkish border. The Turks reportedly began to reinforce their southern border with troops and equipment as early as July 3. But according to these images, which were taken July 26, we now know that that equipment includes Turkish-made main battle tanks and support units poised in a defensive position on the Turkish side of the border.
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Wednesday, August 05, 2015
There’s a Good Chance Your Bank Is Committing a Major Crime Right Now / Politics / Banksters
By: Casey_Research
By Dan Steinhart
On April 10, 2006, Mexican authorities searched through a DC-9 jet at the airport in Ciudad del Carmen. They found more than five tons of cocaine… valued at more than $100 million.
If you’re like many Americans, you’re not surprised by a story like this. Not a year goes by without a few big media stories about Mexican drug cartels.
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