Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Greece Euro-zone Crisis, Ukraine - Germany Emerges / Politics / Germany
By: STRATFOR
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, accompanied by French President Francois Hollande, met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Feb. 6. Then she met with U.S. President Barack Obama on Feb. 9. The primary subject was Ukraine, but the first issue discussed at the news conference following the meeting with Obama was Greece. Greece and Ukraine are not linked in the American mind. They are linked in the German mind, because both are indicators of Germany's new role in the world and of Germany's discomfort with it.
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Courage to Face True History / Politics / Social Issues
By: BATR
History is philosophy teaching by examples. ~Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War
Human consciousness and the ability to understand that which really occurred in the past, is a skill that many people have little experience with mastering. Scholarship and researching the yesteryear relies upon analyzing accounts of others and is usually based on chronicles written centuries ago. Most of the original evidence used in writing the accounts may be lost, based upon oral myths or accurate translations of vanished languages. Even when the original sources are impeccable in their authenticity or go unquestioned in the ivory towers of academic scrutiny, the crucial question still remains, Was It So? Attempts to provide definitive proof, when it comes to explaining political events, relies more often on the art of understanding the connection among factions, based within the context of their intended agendas than smoking gun documents.
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Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Greece Dependency Has Created Dangerous Illusions / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: John_Browne
Once again the crisis in Greece is threatening the unity of the entire euro zone. Many analysts are asking what must be done to restore viability to the Union's weakest link. Lost in this discussion is that modern Greece, formed in 1830, has never really been required to stand on its own. Generations of support from abroad, typically given for strategic reasons, has created a false sense of prosperity in the country and has prevented the Greeks from accepting the realities of their current situation.
Monday, February 09, 2015
Good News From Egypt - Dinosaurs Are Finished / Politics / Egypt
By: Andrew_McKillop
Bad News for al-Sisi
At the state-owned Airforce Stadium in Cairo about 200 young male supporters of the Zamalek team were injured by riot police beatings, water cannon, birdshot and live bullets, and about 35 to 45 were shot dead, Sunday 8 Feb. Mainly targeted by the police, the White Knight vanguards of the Ultras movement of Egyptian football fans. The previous police atrocity against Ultras, at Port Said stadium near Cairo left about 74 dead and 500 injured, and helped spark the downfall of "lifetime president" and former airforce general Hosni Mubarak. Muslim Brotherhood recuperation and re-use of the Ultras as political chaff troops and cannon fodder stopped dead when the Muhamad Morsi government maintained and extended the 2-year ban on all football matches in Egypt, contrary to promises given by the Morsi government to the Ultras. The state had lied to them.
Monday, February 09, 2015
Greece Debt, Who is Accountable? / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Submissions
Raymond Matison writes: There are millions of individual and institutional investors worldwide who purchase equities and fixed income instruments. When they make a decision to purchase an investment, they hope to make a profit, but they also take on a risk of losing their money. If the stock or bond purchased loses value, it is solely the investor or lender who takes the loss.
When a family purchases a home and seeks a mortgage loan, the bank making the loan used to be at risk. That is, they made an evaluation of the borrower’s ability to repay, and used the property as collateral to secure the loan. If the loan went bad, the bank was at risk of losing money. Over the last decades, banks sell off their mortgage loans to be packaged into a security which is sold to investors, thus passing the loss risk to individual and institutional investors. It is the ultimate investor or lender who accepts the risk of loss.
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Saturday, February 07, 2015
The Fallujah Option for East Ukraine / Politics / Ukraine Civil War
By: Mike_Whitney
“I want to appeal to the Ukrainian people, to the mothers, the fathers, the sisters and the grandparents. Stop sending your sons and brothers to this pointless, merciless slaughter. The interests of the Ukrainian government are not your interests. I beg of you: Come to your senses. You do not have to water Donbass fields with Ukrainian blood. It’s not worth it.” — Alexander Zakharchenko, Prime Minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic
Washington needs a war in Ukraine to achieve its strategic objectives. This point cannot be overstated.
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Friday, February 06, 2015
Greece To Return Classical Masterpiece / Politics / Global Debt Crisis 2015
By: Raul_I_Meijer
An Automatic Earth afficionado who goes by the moniker GeoLib posted something in the comments section for yesterday’s Debt In The Time Of Wall Street that I think deserves a better fate than to be stuck there. He makes a gracious connection between 19th century American writer, politician and political economist Henry George, in particular his book Progress and Poverty, which in its day was a huge bestseller, and Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, who, in GeoLib’s words, “is graciously returning the book to us”.
Friday, February 06, 2015
Moses Was a Terrorist - Egyptian Empire vs U.S. Empire, Today's Islamic Freedom Fighting Terrorists - Video / Politics / Religion
By: Videos
"In an interview with ABC’s Nightline, Christian Bale described his Exodus: Gods and Kings character Moses as a “freedom fighter” and a “terrorist” against the slaveholding Egyptian empire.
Enter Fox & Friends with a segment ridiculing the actor’s comments part of their regular “Fight for Faith” segment (normally reserved for stories on the persecution of Christians and/or Todd Starnes).
Thursday, February 05, 2015
Texas and the Evils of U.S. Annexation / Politics / US Politics
By: MISES
Ryan McMaken writes: This year marks the 170th anniversary of the annexation of Texas by the United States government. Although Texas militias had gained de facto independence from Mexico in 1836, negotiations between Mexico and the United States continued for another nine years as the Texas government attempted to work out a long-term strategy for Texas. Most Texans (especially the Anglo ones) wanted union with the United States, and American settlers looking to move to Texas also wanted union to ease emigration and legal issues. Moreover, American slave owners saw the opportunity to admit another slave state to the United States to counterbalance the addition of northern free states from the Louisiana Purchase.
Thursday, February 05, 2015
Argentina's President Fends Off Challenges from the Intelligence Service / Politics / Intelligence Agencies
By: STRATFOR
Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner announced Jan. 26 that she would reform her country's civilian intelligence organization, the Intelligence Secretariat (SI). Soon after, the office of the president said it would submit a draft law to reform the SI to the Senate on Feb. 3. In addition to changing the organization's name to the Federal Intelligence Agency, the reform is expected to significantly weaken the SI by limiting its ability to gather signals intelligence, revealing a wider political dispute.
Thursday, February 05, 2015
Greece Have A Little Faith In Blotto / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Raul_I_Meijer
What, Greece again? Sorry!! But I see a lot of things flash by that make me want to say something. Today it’s the alleged 180 that Syriza made on debt reduction, before that it was their alleged kow-towing to Brussels on Russia sanctions, and tomorrow it’ll be something else again. It’s all media formatted bite-size and pre-chewed chunks, but the Greece-Troika stand-off is anything but.
Wednesday, February 04, 2015
Greece - Why There’s No Political Fix / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: John_Rubino
Tuesday’s markets really liked hearing that Greece’s new “radical-left” leaders had, once in office, backpedalled on their demand for debt restructuring. Now they apparently just want the country’s unmanageable debt to be rescheduled. See Hopes for Greek Debt Deal Rise After Athens Softens Tone.
This, of course, is just semantics. Either a big chunk of Greece’s debt somehow goes away or its economy implodes, so whatever they call the deal it will have to amount to a massive haircut if it’s to prevent a default in 2015.
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Wednesday, February 04, 2015
Australia Coming Apart at the Seams, Government on the Brink of Collapse / Politics / Austrailia
By: Mike_Shedlock
With the huge spotlight on Europe, Greece, the US Dollar, Canada, Switzerland, and China, it's easy to lose track of major things outside of mainstream attention.
Like what? Like Australia.
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Tuesday, February 03, 2015
Greece and the Bravado of Borrowers / Politics / Global Debt Crisis 2015
By: Peter_Schiff
Last week a scene unfolded in Athens, largely unnoticed by American eyes, that provided all the visual and metaphorical symbols needed to define the current state of the global economy. Hollywood's best screenwriters couldn't have laid it out any better.
Tiring of being told by self-righteous foreigners to pay for past borrowing with current austerity, the Greek people had just elected the most radically left-wing government in recent memory, whose stated goal was to tell their creditors that they were not going to take it anymore. The leadership of the victorious Syriza Party, a collection of mostly young Marxist and Trotskyite academics, had promised the Greek people a clean break from the past and an end to years of economic malaise. Although their plan seemed fundamentally contradictory (telling foreign creditors to butt out even while courting more aid), Syriza nonetheless appealed to a frustrated electorate through their dynamism and optimism.
Tuesday, February 03, 2015
Greece - Is It Socialism or Just Failure? / Politics / Social Issues
By: Raul_I_Meijer
It’s all still about Greece, and that makes sense, if nothing else Syriza is a breath if not a tornado of fresh air. But those too pass. The question at the end remains: did anything really change? It’s quite possible, don’t get me wrong, but Tsipras and Vanoufakis are busy looking out for the people who voted for them, not the rest of the Europe, or the world for that matter. And neither should they.
Sunday, February 01, 2015
Delusional America / Politics / US Politics
By: Paul_Craig_Roberts
Robert Parry is one of my favorite columnists. He is truthful, has a sense of justice, and delivers a firm punch. He used to be a “mainstream journalist,” like me, but we were too truthful for them. They kicked us out.
I can’t say Parry has always been one of my favorite journalists. During the 1980s he spent a lot of time on Reagan’s case. Having been on corporate boards, I know that CEOs seldom know everything that is going on in the company. There are just too many people and too many programs representing too many agendas. For presidents of countries with governments as large as the US government, there is far more going on than a president has time to learn about even if he could get accurate information.
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Sunday, February 01, 2015
U.S. Escalation in Ukraine Is Illegitimate and Will Make Matters Worse / Politics / Ukraine Civil War
By: Michael_S_Rozeff
Steven Pifer, a senior fellow at Brookings, writes “The West, including the United States, needs to get serious about assisting Ukraine if it does not wish to see the situation deteriorate further. That means committing real money now to aid Ukraine’s defense.”
He’s dead wrong. No matter who is in the right or wrong in Ukraine, the U.S. shouldn’t intervene further. It shouldn’t have intervened in the first place.
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Sunday, February 01, 2015
How to Start a Nuclear War / Politics / Nuclear Weapons
By: LewRockwell
Eric Margolis writes: The United States has just made an exceptionally dangerous, even reckless decision over Ukraine. Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader who ended the Cold War, warns it may lead to a nuclear confrontation with Russia.
Rule number one of geopolitics: nuclear-armed powers must never, ever fight.
Yet Washington just announced that by spring, it will deploy unspecified numbers of military “trainers” to Ukraine to help build Kiev’s ramshackle national guard. Also being sent are significant numbers of US special heavy, mine resistant armored vehicles that have been widely used in Afghanistan and Iraq. The US and Poland are currently covertly supplying Ukraine with some weapons.
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Sunday, February 01, 2015
Greece vs Wall Street / Politics / Euro-Zone
By: Raul_I_Meijer
On the one hand, I’ve written so much about Greece lately I fear I’m reaching overkill. On the other hand, there’s so much going on with Greece, and so fast, that I wouldn’t know here to begin. Moreover, I’m thinking and trying to figure what is what and what is actually happening so much it’s hard to stay focused for more than a short while before something else happens again and it all starts all over. And I’m thinking it must feel that way for the Syriza guys as well.
One thing I do increasingly ponder is that it gets ever harder to see the eurozone survive. In its present shape and form, that is. Damned if you do, doomed if you don’t, is an expression I’ve used before. It’s like this big experiment that a bunch of power hungry Europeans really get off on, that now all of a sudden is confronted with the democracy they all only thought existed in books of history anymore.
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Friday, January 30, 2015
An Often Overlooked Predator: State Governments and Income Taxes / Politics / Taxes
By: Casey_Research
Nick Giambruno writes: International Man is all about making the most of your personal freedom and financial opportunity around the world. To do this, by definition, you must minimize the amount of money any government takes from you.
Unlike every other country in the world, the US successfully taxes its nonresident citizens on their global income. This means Americans living abroad have to not only deal with the tax system in the foreign country in which they live, but also with the multiple layers of tax bureaucracy from the US. It’s a uniquely American burden.
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