Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Friday, August 22, 2014
The Something for Nothing Society - Lifecycle of Bureaucracy / Politics / Social Issues
By: Ty_Andros
In this next chapter of Useful Idiots and the Something for Nothing Society, we will put the final nails into a century's UNFOLDING MADNESS. A country of free men has been transformed into an authoritarian state on its road to totalitarianism as the final denouement unfolds under their policies. The final connecting dots of from whence we came, where we are today, and the inevitable destination of societal and economic collapse of empire as has been seen throughout history and Austrian economics. It's been an EXTREMELY interesting journey, one which has been full of opportunities and heartbreaks. I have witnessed much of it in my 58 years. At the time of many events, I did not understand the significance of them. Now, I believe I do. This is not a story of doom and gloom. It is the story of man, human behavior and history repeating.
Friday, August 22, 2014
Hitting The ISIS Panic Button In The Middle East / Politics / ISIS Islamic State
By: Andrew_McKillop
Obama's Transcript
The US Federal News Service, August 20, released president Obama's remarks on the decapitation of journalist Jim Foley, in which Obama said that people across the Middle East have to make a common effort “to extract this cancer so that it does not spread”. Speaking at a joint press conference, August 21, with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey, US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel went much further. Saying that ISIS, ISIL or IS “poses a threat greater than 9 / 11”, he added "This is beyond anything we've seen. We must prepare for everything."
Thursday, August 21, 2014
Outrage! On The Beheading of Our Media Brother James Foley / Politics / Mainstream Media
By: Danny_Schechter
By Danny Schechter
Written For Telesur
New York, New York: Outrage has been the response to reports, still officially unconfirmed a day later, that the Islamic State-Isis maniacs in Iraq beheaded an American journalist. Unlike, American politicians who want us to be loved, in the media at least, these Islamic extremists only want to be feared. We had shock and awe; they have only shock.
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Thursday, August 21, 2014
The Black Box Economy / Politics / Social Issues
By: Andrew_McKillop
Love, Sex and Marriage
Opinion polls in Japan paint a stark picture. Around 40% to 50% of Japanese below the age of 45 regard sex as “uninteresting” or even “degrading”. They do not want sexual partners, marriage or children. An impressive number of polled persons add the claim that the human instincts of love, sex and marriage are unknown to them.
Thursday, August 21, 2014
Obama Fails As Schoolyard Bully / Politics / US Politics
By: Raul_I_Meijer
When I think about what an American president should do, and should be, the first thing that pops into my mind is (s)he should be a peacemaker. It would seem to be the no. 1 requirement for someone who’s the leader of the most powerful nation on the planet, and therefore the leader of the free world.
If that person is not a peacemaker, if (s)he is not focused on diffusing trouble and violence when and where they rear their ugly heads, how could the entire world possibly not be in a state of perpetual warfare? But here we are, there’s no such American leader in sight, and the prospects of one appearing anytime soon are zero.
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Wednesday, August 20, 2014
President Obama Strongest Statement Yet on Israel Gaza War / Politics / Israel
By: MarketOracleTV
Following the targeted assassination by the Israeli military of an 7 month old baby boy and his mother, President Obama makes his strongest statement yet on Israel's war on Gaza and the Palestinian people.
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
Real Priorities – Destroy ISIS Is Number One / Politics / ISIS Islamic State
By: Andrew_McKillop
Silence Speaks Loud
Nothing filters out of Riyadh, Doha, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi or Muscat on the the slowly-growing rollback in Iraq of the Islamic State and its filthy barbarians. The reason is simple. ISIS was funded, armed and supported by the Sunni-minority regimes of the Gulf states when it ran its rampage of atrocities in Syria, with arms-length acceptance of this by the so-called “mature western democracies”.
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Ukraine's Next Crisis? Economic Disaster / Politics / Ukraine Civil War
By: OilPrice_Com
Ukraine's next crisis will be a devastatingly economic one, as violent conflict destroys critical infrastructure in the east and brings key industry to a halt, furthering weakening the energy sector by crippling coal-based electricity production.
The Ukrainian military's showdown with separatists in the industrial east has forced coal mines to severely cut production or close down entirely. This has led to an electricity crisis that can only be staunched by cutting domestic production along with exports to Europe, Crimea, and Belarus -- or worse, getting more imports from Russia.
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Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Iraq, Ukraine - Oh, What A Tangled Mess We Weave / Politics / US Politics
By: Raul_I_Meijer
When first we practise to deceive!
The upper echelons in and behind various governments have had on their radar far longer than the media that serve them, and I also realize that Washington wants a leading role in that battle, but even then I still don’t really get what is going on these days.
I think perhaps that’s because I tend to give the American political machine too much credit when it comes to intelligence and insight and other qualities its managerial staff doesn’t exactly seem to be drowning in. But still. I get the idea that most of what Washington does is based on what someone I read today calls ‘solution selling’, and what I know as ‘the completion backward principle’.
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Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Here’s Where Socialism Intrudes on Our American Dream / Politics / Social Issues
By: Money_Morning
Shah Gilani writes: It’s yet another prime example of “The strong get more while the weak ones slave.” Private equity shops and institutional players are buying and packaging (securitizing) nonperforming mortgages and selling those mortgages to mutual funds and themselves.
On the surface, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) wants to minimize the cost to taxpayers. After all, we have to cover the insurance guarantees the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) made on loans it backed but are now nonperforming or in foreclosure.
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Tuesday, August 19, 2014
America is a Police State : Our Highest-Rated Speech of All Time / Politics / US Politics
By: Casey_Research
By Olivier Garret, Chief Executive Officer
Never in my life have I seen a round of applause like this one… and at an event normally composed of conservative, introspective investors to boot. But most surprising of all - and I must admit in my bias here they were applauding a lawyer. A defense lawyer at that.
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Monday, August 18, 2014
Ron Paul Asks - What Have We Accomplished in Iraq? / Politics / Iraq War
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
We have been at war with Iraq for 24 years, starting with Operations Desert Shield and Storm in 1990. Shortly after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait that year, the propaganda machine began agitating for a US attack on Iraq. We all remember the appearance before Congress of a young Kuwaiti woman claiming that the Iraqis were ripping Kuwaiti babies from incubators. The woman turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US and the story was false, but it was enough to turn US opposition in favor of an attack.
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Monday, August 18, 2014
From Oxford Town To Ferguson Town / Politics / Social Issues
By: Andrew_McKillop
Everybody's Got Their Head Held Down
A long time ago Bob Dylan sang 'Oxford Town' and he did not mean Oxford in England. He could have, however, if he was talking about Oxford-England today. He could also have been talking about almost any inner-city ghetto in France, Belgium, Italy and Spain. Where youth unemployment usually runs at a cool 35% to 55%, except in Germany. Here, young unemployeds have no choice at all but accept make-work “apprenticeships” that last forever, paid by the German Federal government at around 2.75 euros per hour. To be sure that doesn't even pay an apartment “but its a job after all”.
Sunday, August 17, 2014
U.S. Empire of Death and Lies / Politics / US Politics
By: LewRockwell
Eric Margolis writes: Armed humanitarianism 2.0. That’s our new western version of old-fashioned 19th century imperialism, now feminized by President Barack Obama’s lady advisors, painted pink and accompanied by the kind of soft piano music you hear in ads for women’s products.
Last week, the Obama administration latched onto the plight of Iraq’s Yazidis who were being persecuted by those awful ISIS folks - just in jolly good time to divert attention from the massacre in Gaza.
Sunday, August 17, 2014
Ukraine - Whose Spin Are We Caught Up In Here? / Politics / Ukraine Civil War
By: Raul_I_Meijer
Let’s assume for the moment that the two Guardian and Telegraph journalists who reported seeing 23 Russian army vehicles cross the border into Ukraine on Thursday were duped. Because if we don’t assume that, we must conclude they are accomplices, in a strange plot.
On Friday the Ukraine government, first through military spokesman Andriy Lysenko, and then through President Poroshenko, sent out a claim into the world that its army had destroyed a number of Russian vehicles on Ukraine territory.
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Sunday, August 17, 2014
The Key Role Of Conspiracy Theory In Dumbing Down Society / Politics / Social Issues
By: Andrew_McKillop
One Size Fits All
In a downsized western world, the abandonment of leadership and the dereliction of government are two major strands of the general dumbing down process. Examples abound.
In recent days president Obama of the USA was able to tear himself away from the golf course “to save Iraq”. The west is fighting the Islamic horde called ISIS. Previously, the west aided and supported ISIS, in Syria, but not in Iraq. Fighting the Islamic horde means that Obama and his lookalike-talkalike European partners and allies have to support Kurdistan. Previously, Kurdistan did not exist and all references to a semi-independent Kurdistan were studiously avoided by Obama and his partners.
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Saturday, August 16, 2014
Good Works Are Never Lost / Politics / Social Issues
By: Michael_T_Bucci
Last week the muses elbowed me to write about something, anything, but I couldn't focus. Where do I begin, muses? Do I write about the Ukraine imbroglio and its prospects leading to World War? Write more about press censorship in the West and America's global surveillance of the planet? Write about Israel and Gaza? Maybe write about America's reentry into Iraq and the absence of dissent in the U.S.? Do people need more written about Ferguson, Missouri and America's militarized police?
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Saturday, August 16, 2014
Decline And Fall Of The CO2 Crisis / Politics / Climate Change
By: Andrew_McKillop
Time Was
The 2009 Copenhagen conference was with no possible doubt the high point. Over 130 Heads of State flew into the Danish capital in their low-carbon presidential planes although some came by motorcade or presidential train to worry in public about “climate catastrophe” and bicker about who pays what.. Outside the venue hundreds of Climate Crazies, paid by somebody, danced round with paint on their faces in gay printed T-shirts to dramatise the urgency of the situation. They said that “Al Gore's 350ppm” must be fixed and set as the global limit for CO2 levels, and become the maximum-ever limit for CO2 in the atmosphere – that is 0.035%. In the geological past, without a single coal-fired power plant (or any humans including Al Gore) on the planet CO2 levels sometimes exceeded 1000ppm.
Friday, August 15, 2014
Welcome to the New Crusades / Politics / US Politics
By: Andrew_McKillop
A Fine Vacation
President Obama had a plan. Take two weeks and have a fine vacation (not taking his problem to the United Nations) in Martha’s Vineyard, rapidly becoming the Graveyard of US foreign policy. Boots would soon be on the ground in Iraq, about 600 of them to start with, and the Kurdistan he studiously never mentioned as a thing or “near nation” that exists would soon receive US arms shipments. The ISIS or Islamic State which received funding, in Syria, from the USA's NED or National Endowment for Democracy, was now The Enemy. It seems to be threatening oil supplies...
Friday, August 15, 2014
America the Neighborhood Bully Recklessly Throws its Weight Around / Politics / US Politics
By: Peter_Schiff
On June 30, U.S. authorities announced a stunning $9 billion fine on French bank BNP Paribas for violations of financial sanctions laws that the United States had imposed on Iran, Sudan and Cuba. In essence, BNP had surreptitiously conducted business with countries that the United States had sought to isolate diplomatically (sometimes unilaterally in the case of Cuba). Although BNP is not technically under the jurisdiction of American regulators, and the bank had apparently not broken any laws of its home country, the fine was one of the largest ever issued by the United States and the largest ever levied on a non-U.S. firm. The Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve made clear that unless BNP forks over the $9 billion (equivalent to one year's of the company's total earnings), the U.S. will prevent the bank from engaging in dollar-based international transactions. For an institution that makes its living through such transactions, that penalty is the financial equivalent of a death sentence. The fine will be paid.