Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
ISIS Crisis Only Tip of the Sunni Ice-berg in Iraq, Whilst Blair Goes Mad / Politics / Iraq War
By: Nadeem_Walayat
The mainstream press has been awash with commentary over the past few days of the apparent miraculous speed at which ISIS has conquered approx 1/3rd of Iraq and now threatens the capital Baghdad, which has prompted has been's such as Tony Blair to step forward and offer his tuppence worth of recommendations for apparently an Iraq War 2 style western assault on the region, suggestions which were immediately denounced by many, including Boris Johnson as being mad.
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Intrigue Lying Behind Iraq's Jihadist Uprising - Saudi Arabia Stirs the Pot / Politics / Middle East
By: STRATFOR
Reva Bhalla writes: Events in Iraq over the past week were perhaps best crystallized in a series of photos produced by the jihadist group the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Sensationally called The Destruction of Sykes-Picot, the pictures confirmed the group's intent to upend nearly a century of history in the Middle East.
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Debt, Civic Decay, Global Disorder - Fourth Turning Accelerating / Politics / Social Issues
By: James_Quinn
“In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party. The catalyst will unfold according to a basic Crisis dynamic that underlies all of these scenarios: An initial spark will trigger a chain reaction of unyielding responses and further emergencies. The core elements of these scenarios (debt, civic decay, global disorder) will matter more than the details, which the catalyst will juxtapose and connect in some unknowable way. If foreign societies are also entering a Fourth Turning, this could accelerate the chain reaction. At home and abroad, these events will reflect the tearing of the civic fabric at points of extreme vulnerability –problem areas where America will have neglected, denied, or delayed needed action.” - The Fourth Turning - Strauss & Howe – 1997
Monday, June 16, 2014
Central Banks Have Become The Markets / Politics / Central Banks
By: Raul_I_Meijer
The cluster, – or pride, or cabal – of global central banks, led by the Bank of Japan have come very close to strangling their respective bond markets to the point suffocation with ultra low interest rates, and therefore together moved $29 trillion they had ‘invested’ there into equity markets. Restoring the world’s $100 trillion bond markets to health, even ever, will be a task so daunting that it’s hard to see one single way it can be done. The Bank of Japan has become the de facto only buyer of its own government’s bonds, with the result that trading has ground to a halt, literally so for a number of days last week. Yields on global bonds have been manipulated down so much that not only pension funds and other traditional large-scale fixed-income buyers feel forced to move into stocks, it’s even come to the point where central banks themselves, too, make that move.
Monday, June 16, 2014
Mafia GDP, Systemic Conspiracy to Alter Economic Data / Politics / Economic Statistics
By: Michael_Pento
Governments are not engaged in a systemic conspiracy to alter economic data after it has been collected. To get a multitude of individuals agreeing on how to fudge information would be far too difficult to control. Instead, it is much easier for a small group of government officials to simply change the formula for calculating the data points that they desire to manipulate to make the information seem more palatable.
Monday, June 16, 2014
US Puppet Regimes in the Muslim World Are All Tyrannies / Politics / Middle East
By: Jack_D_Douglas
The sudden implosion of the vast Iraqi Army of the Baghdad Puppet Regime constructed by the U.S. is an excellent early warning of the fates of the other U.S. puppet states in the Muslim World—Afghanistan, Egypt, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, U.A.E., and lesser ones. As always, there are many differences among these puppet states, including degrees of being puppets of the U.S., but the general picture of them and their situation now are roughly similar.
Monday, June 16, 2014
Ron Paul - Haven't We Already Done Enough Damage in Iraq? / Politics / Iraq War
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
In 2006, I invited the late General Bill Odom to address my Thursday Congressional luncheon group. Gen. Odom, a former NSA director, called the Iraq war "the greatest strategic disaster in American history," and told the surprised audience that he could not understand why Congress had not impeached the president for pushing this disaster on the United States. History continues to prove the General's assessment absolutely correct.
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Sunday, June 15, 2014
Mena War Fever And The Iraq Crude Oil Price Spike / Politics / Iraq War
By: Andrew_McKillop
Libyan Precedent
Whatever Libya's oil production is, this week, it is a lot less than the approximate 1.6 million barrels a day it regularly extracted and shipped during the Muammar Gaddafi era. Libya has no effective government and its last prime minister Ali Zedan fled to Europe in March, replaced by a shifting coalition of rival forces with changing strongmen. His supposed replacement, former Defence minister Abdullah el-Thinni has since late April kept a low profile, sometimes saying he has “stepped down”, and sometimes not. As recently as June 4, he told Reuters that he was stepping down but was also staying on as “interim PM”!
Saturday, June 14, 2014
Black Flags Over Mosul / Politics / Iraq War
By: Mike_Whitney
"The whole of Mosul collapsed today. We’ve fled our homes and neighborhoods, and we’re looking for God’s mercy. We are waiting to die." – Mahmoud Al Taie, resident of Mosul, Wall Street Journal
An army of Sunni fighters affiliated to al Qaida crossed the Syrian border into Iraq on Tuesday, scattering defensive units from the Iraqi security forces, capturing Iraq’s second biggest city of Mosul, and sending 500,000 civilians fleeing for safety. The unexpected jihadi blitz has left President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy in tatters and created a crisis of incalculable magnitude.
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Saturday, June 14, 2014
Governments Stealing Savings Accounts / Politics / Savings Accounts
By: Jeff_Berwick
Governments, by definition, are violent institutions. And taxation, by definition, is theft. These are blatant facts to all but the most indoctrinated and brainwashed. However, governments worldwide are ramping up all manner of other thefts by almost any means necessary.
Friday, June 13, 2014
Who Is To Blame For Iraq? / Politics / Iraq War
By: Andrew_McKillop
Bloomberg Tells All
In a strange article signed only “The Editors” and posted to Bloomberg's web sites, 13 June, its few published Comments were mostly flippant. One said Iraq is or was an illusion that could only be propped up by bombs, but destroying the illusion would also need bombs – therefore Iraq was or is a paradox. In fact, as I have argued in several articles, Iraq was an artificial entity, not created for any specific purpose other than developing its then unknown-size oil resources, without any credible claims to national identity – or unity – and created with no particular life expectancy or “shelf life”, that is either short, medium or long. Concerning the Kurds, however, the Iraq of post-1923 obliterated an existing and functional national entity – Kurdistan – which as we know has returned to the headlines, this week, because it can and will effectively resist any attempt by ISIS, formerly 'Al Qaeda in Iraq' to encroach on Kurdistan. Kirkuk is probably now under Kurd military control.
Friday, June 13, 2014
Iraq Perfect Storm as ISIS Islamic End Times Prophecy Seeks Fulfillment in Sham / Levant / Politics / Iraq War
By: Nadeem_Walayat
It's mission accomplished for George Bush the 'manchurian candidate's' decade long the war on Iraq which has finally succeeded in delivering the country to the Saudi funded ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham), even more extreme than Al-Qeeda that it split from just over a year ago in Syria, who's ultimate aim is to create an Islamic state spanning Syria and much of Iraq that they seek to pull back in time to the 7th century.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Obamacare Obamination: This One-Act Tragedy Is Nothing But a Bill of Goods / Politics / US Politics
By: Money_Morning
Shah Gilani writes: I’ve never before written anything about the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare.
That’s because I didn’t want to jump into the debate on one side or the other before letting some dust settle and seeing what there really is to see.
As the old Johnny Nash song goes, “I can see clearly now the rain is gone. I can see all obstacles in my way.”
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Thursday, June 12, 2014
How Smugglers Made America / Politics / Protectionism
By: Mark_Thornton
Whenever I receive a book to review that is written by some hotshot ivy leaguer, I brace myself for all the deception and tomfoolery that I will have to endure. Peter Andreas’s Smuggler Nation, however, turned out to be a very pleasant surprise. Indeed, I can recommend this book to anyone interested in a true history.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Iraq Worsening Violence Threatens Regional Security / Politics / Iraq War
By: STRATFOR
Battles continue to rage across northern Iraq, pitting jihadist group the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant against Iraqi security forces and their allies. The growing reach of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant has escalated an already brutal campaign in Iraq. Alarmingly quick advances by the militants across an important region of the Middle East could draw in regional powers as well as the United States
Thursday, June 12, 2014
The Fiction Of Iraq / Politics / Iraq War
By: Andrew_McKillop
Can You Trust This Man
Iraq was a prime example of post-World War I dithering and influence trading among the three Allied Powers, in Iraq's case especially concerning the UK and US. Everybody has heard about its early version with a 19th Province called Kuwait, and Imperial Iraq's incorporation – totally against their will – of the Kurds from 1923 to 2005. Its president today, Nouri el-Maliki is probably the last who can pretend the country is united and has “internationally recognized borders”, but he is not just anybody. Levering him into power, and his attempts at staying there, only since 2003, have cost more than one hundred thousand human lives and well over 100 billion US dollars.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Networks and Hierarchies / Politics / Technology
By: John_Mauldin
I have a big-picture piece for you today from a big-time thinker, my good friend Niall Ferguson. This is a little bit different for Outside the Box, but then isn’t that what this letter is supposed to be? Something to make us think and to come at a problem with a little bit different viewpoint?
At our recent Strategic Investment Conference, Niall focused on the dangers of US isolationism, the degeneration of American culture, and the immense problem of government debt whose trajectory is in the hands of a dysfunctional political system. In today’s Outside the Box, Niall examines a related issue: the dynamic interplay of networks and hierarchies that has led to the creation and destruction of economic systems in generations past… and will ultimately drive political outcomes in today’s unbalanced and rapidly changing global economic system.
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Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Is Inequality Caused by Capitalism or Statism? / Politics / Social Issues
By: John_Browne
The French economist Thomas Piketty has achieved worldwide fame by promoting a thesis that capitalism is the cause of growing economic inequality. Unfortunately, he is partially right. However, the important distinction missed by Piketty and all of his supporters is that state capitalism, not free market capitalism, has reigned supreme in recent decades in the world's leading democracies. It is this misguided attempt to wed the power of the state to the private ownership of capital that has led to the mushrooming of economic inequality. If the public cannot be made aware of the distinction, we risk abandoning the only system capable of creating real improvements for the vast majority of people.
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Wednesday, June 11, 2014
The West Has Gazprom in its Crosshairs / Politics / Oil Companies
By: Money_Morning
Kent Moors writes: Almost 45 years ago I signed an agreement with Uncle Sam…
The government essentially said it understood my soul may belong to God, but the rest of the anatomy was going to be theirs until further notice.
That was what brought me into a sometimes ill-defined segment of public service. It’s a job you never really have the option of leaving – at least easily and preferably while still drawing a breath.
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Tuesday, June 10, 2014
European Borderlands: The View Beyond Ukraine / Politics / Eastern Europe
By: STRATFOR
I traveled between Poland and Azerbaijan during a rare period when the forces that shape Europe appear to be in flux, and most of the countries I visited are re-evaluating their positions. The overwhelming sense was anxiety. Observers from countries such as Poland make little effort to hide it. Those from places such as Turkey, which is larger and not directly in the line of fire, look at Ukraine as an undercurrent rather than the dominant theme. But from Poland to Azerbaijan, I heard two questions: Are the Russians on the move? And what can these countries do to protect themselves?Read full article... Read full article...