Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Wednesday, July 02, 2014
Bill Gates On The High Cost Of Being Poor / Politics / Social Issues
By: Andrew_McKillop
Energy Energy Energy
Bill Gates has rotated and swiveled 180-degrees from his former self-righteous stance on the Global Warming issue, or “threat”, and the instant no brainer elite solution of using a lot less energy. Fossil of course. Now he says poor countries must use more energy but we could take the “US paradigm”. The US is a very long way from being an oil exporter and is still a long way from being a natural gas exporter – but is a large and growing coal exporter. The US exports energy! Exporting coal along with Windows (whose constant “upgrades” are always more difficult to beat into usable shape) makes economic sense. This coal is cheap energy – very cheap energy.
Tuesday, July 01, 2014
The Sunni Ramadan Offensive and the Lessons of Tet / Politics / Iraq War
By: STRATFOR
George Friedman writesIn February 1968, the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong launched a general offensive in Vietnam during Tet, the Vietnamese New Year. From mid-1966 onward, the North Vietnamese had found themselves under increasing pressure from American and South Vietnamese forces. They were far from defeated, but they were weakening and the likelihood of their military victory was receding. The North Vietnamese decided to reverse the course of the war militarily and politically by marshaling available forces, retaining only limited reserves and going on the offensive throughout South Vietnam.
Tuesday, July 01, 2014
Real Origins of the Monotheistic God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam - Video / Politics / Religion
By: Videos
A history of God, the cult of Yahweh and the rewriting of the polytheistic Torah.
Q: What is God?
A: The expression of....
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Monday, June 30, 2014
Minimum Wage, Maximum Stupidity / Politics / Wages
By: Douglas_French
By Doug French, Contributing Editor
The minimum wage should be the easiest issue to understand for the economically savvy. If the government arbitrarily sets a floor for wages above that set by the market, jobs will be lost. Even the Congressional Budget Office admits that 500,000 jobs would be lost with a $10.10 federal minimum wage. Who knows how high the real number would be?
Monday, June 30, 2014
Why Timid Reforms of Central Banks Won’t Work / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: Frank_Hollenbeck
The Federal Reserve System of central banking was a response to the financial panics of 1903 and 1907 that rocked the US financial system. One of the key objectives, if not the only real one, was to counterbalance the nefarious nature of fractional reserve banking. We now have experienced a century of living with a central bank and we must only conclude that it has failed as a counterbalance while making fractional reserve banking an even bigger, more nefarious master. The evidence is clear and reform of the system is not the answer. Only the abolition of this institution will begin to set our economic system on the right path.
Monday, June 30, 2014
The Death of Independence - BREAKING ALL THE RULES! / Politics / US Politics
By: BATR
July 4th has been the national birth date since the inception of the country. Americans want to celebrate past glories because there are few reasons to believe that the current government or society is worthy of rejoicing. Deifying the Founding Fathers and their wisdom usually is rooted upon the construction of a constitution based on separations of powers and shared authorities with individual states. Lost in this commemoration is the concept of true and lasting independence.
Monday, June 30, 2014
Ron Paul - Celebrate Independence Day By Opposing Government Tyranny / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
This week Americans will enjoy Independence Day with family cookouts and fireworks. Flags will be displayed in abundance. Sadly, however, what should be a celebration of the courage of those who risked so much to oppose tyranny will instead be turned into a celebration of government, not liberty. The mainstream media and opportunistic politicians have turned Independence Day into the opposite of what was intended.
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Monday, June 30, 2014
America / Politics / Social Issues
By: Charlie_Tarango
America is in transition as is the world
Eroei and debt are the drivers going forward
Eroei is what will define the future for better or for worse
America is the cradle of innovation = humanity’s greatest chance on eroei
Saturday, June 28, 2014
Did U.S. State Deptartment Organize the Fall of el-Maliki's Iraq? / Politics / Iraq War
By: Andrew_McKillop
Divide and Rule
Push the talk button and the special crowd of American commentators at all times poised to launch a new conspiracy theory will tell you, hand on heart, that the US State Dept. and the Pentagon want the fall of Iraq's el-Maliki regime. They want to divide Iraq into Shia and Sunni camps engaged in constant sectarian warfare. The conspiracy crowd – always reflecting credit on the devious all-knowing American elite that most of these commentators pretend to hate – are rushing to tell us that the ISIS onslaught in Iraq “was all planned by the State Department”.
Friday, June 27, 2014
Iraq - Time To Do Less Not More / Politics / Iraq War
By: John_Browne
The current situation in Iraq is a modern tragedy. But in more practical terms it is a very stark illustration of the folly of central planning and the limits of state power in the face of entrenched traditions and proven history. Although the parallels aren't perfect, the rapid dissolution of the puppet Iraqi state can offer some stark lessons to those who are optimistic about our current experiment in central bank dominated economic planning.
Thursday, June 26, 2014
Russia, Iraq, China and Europe - The Four Horsemen of the Geopolitical Apocalypse / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: John_Mauldin
Ian Bremmer, NYU professor and head of the geopolitical consulting powerhouse Eurasia Group, consults at the highest levels with both governments and companies because he brings to the table robust geopolitical analysis and a compelling thesis: that we are witnessing “the creative destruction of the old geopolitical order.” We live, as his last book told us, in a “G-0” world. In today’s Outside the Box, Ian spells out what that creative destruction means in terms of events on the ground today. As Ian notes, the most prominent feature of the international landscape this year has been the expansion of geopolitical conflict. That expansion is gaining momentum, he says, creating larger-scale crises and sharpening market volatility.
Thursday, June 26, 2014
Thawing U.S.-Cuba Relations / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: STRATFOR
A breakthrough in U.S.-Cuba relations may be in the offing. On June 14, Uruguayan President Jose Mujica delivered a letter from U.S. President Barack Obama to Cuban President Raul Castro, according to Uruguayan media June 20, containing an offer to begin talks on a variety of issues, most prominently Washington's longstanding economic embargo. According to Uruguayan media, Obama had asked Mujica to help him improve relations with the island nation when Mujica was in Washington in mid-May. If the report is true, the transaction could be the first step toward reconciliation.
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Thursday, June 26, 2014
It's Going To Get Awful Hot In The USA This Century / Politics / Climate Change
By: Andrew_McKillop
More Deadly Than The US Has Ever Seen
Bloomberg sites are giving wall-to-wall coverage to the latest “shock report” on global warming. The report titled “Risky Business” was commissioned by Michael Bloomberg himself – helping explain its promotion by Bloomberg sites - and his tight-knit group of former and present business and political associates, including ex-Treasury secretaries Henry Paulson, George Schulz and Robert Rubin. The report kicks off the Doomster list with predictions that “by the end of the century, between $238 billion and $507 billion of existing coastal property in the U.S. will likely be subsumed by rising seas, and crop yields in some breadbasket states may decline as much 70 percent”.
Thursday, June 26, 2014
GDP - They’re Lying To Us / Politics / Economic Statistics
By: John_Rubino
Today the US took its next-to-last stab at calculating First Quarter GDP, and the downward revision was impressive even by recent standards. It now appears that the economy, well, here’s how Bloomberg puts it:
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Wednesday, June 25, 2014
European Union Fools Paradise / Politics / European Union
By: Pravda
Smoke of wood stoves rises over cities of Greece, Spain suffers from youth unemployment, Germany raises retirement age to 76 years, whereas in the heart of London, people gather to protest against austerity measures. Who benefits from multiplying the poor in Europe? Has the tale of good European life been destroyed?
"In winter you can heat your house with gasoline-powered radiators, - a real estate agent in Cyprus told Pravda.Ru. - But we, for example, have a big house, and gasoline is expensive. So we installed a wood-burning oven, a pot-belly stove."
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
We Live in Our Own Past / Politics / Social Issues
By: Raul_I_Meijer
I’m going to step into uncharted territory, a for lack of a better word philosophical theme that I’ve long had on my mind but can’t quite figure out completely yet, and I would like you to tell me how much of it you recognize, or that maybe I’m a total fool for looking at things the way I do. You see, I often have this notion that we are living in our own past; not even our present, and certainly not our future.
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Ben Bernanke: Buy One Get Three Free / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: Vitaliy_Katsenelson
Linear thinking is dangerous. It is the easiest form of reasoning, lying on the path of least resistance. The simpler the path, the more readily people will march along it. Linear arguments are easy to make, as they require the least amount of evidence — past data points with a straight line drawn through them.However, the larger the crowd that follows the wrong line of reasoning, the more people pile in, and the greater the consequences if they are proved wrong.
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Game of Thrones, European-Style / Politics / Euro-Zone
By: John_Mauldin
I came back from Italy this week, and one of my guilty pleasures was being able to sit down and watch the last three episodes, including the season finale, of Game of Thrones. For those readers who are not enthralled with the fantasy epic from HBO or have not read the first five books (will he ever finish?), author George R.R. Martin has written one of the most complex fantasy series ever, about a world where everyone is occupied with who will sit on the Iron Throne.
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Secession in Iraq, Sunniland, Shialand and Kurdistan / Politics / Iraq War
By: Jack_D_Douglas
Jack D. Douglas writes: ISIS is getting most of the Sunni tribes and areas North and East of Baghdad to join them in a new nation-state. The Sunni are doing so, partly because ISIS is a powerful guerrilla army, but also because they want to be free from Shia Baghdad, just as the Kurds are north of them in Kurdestan creating their own independent nation-state.
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Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Why the U.S. Fed Is Nothing to Celebrate / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: MISES
Ben Wiegold writes: The Federal Reserve System turned 100 years old last December and Fed supporters have been celebrating ever since. In recent months, the Dallas Fed opened an historical exhibit, the Kansas City Fed released a documentary, and the New York Fed even started a Facebook page, all to commemorate the date.