Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Monday, December 16, 2013
UK General Election Forecast 2015, Who Will Win, Coalition, Conservative or Labour? / Politics / UK General Election
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Recent opinion polls put Labour 6 points ahead of the Conservatives which would translate into Labour winning an general election with a 74 seat majority (Independant on Sunday). Similarly the bookies also have Labour (oddschecker) as hot favourites to win the most seats at the May 2015 general election, though the odds marginally favour another hung parliament, whilst the Conservatives trail a distant third in their chances for an outright election win. However, what the opinion pollsters, bookies and the mainstream media commentators fail to grasp is the likely impact of accelerating UK housing market momentum on an general election that is still 18 months away (May 2015).
Monday, December 16, 2013
U.S. Misery Index Falls to Four-Year Low / Politics / Social Issues
By: DailyGainsLetter
John Paul Whitefoot writes: If you think you can judge a book by its cover, then you must believe the U.S. economy is doing really, really well. After all, consumer confidence is up and misery is down. However, looking past the cover, the pages of underlying economic indicators suggest the average American investor should be a little concerned.
But first, the good news! The U.S. Misery Index has fallen to a four-year low. The Misery Index is calculated by adding a country’s unemployment rate to the inflation rate, the logic being that we understand what stubbornly high unemployment mixed with the soaring price of goods translates into—misery.
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Sunday, December 15, 2013
The Global Economy is Running Out of Time / Politics / Energy Resources
By: Brian_Bloom
Energy drives all economic activity. Scientifically based evidence, recently to hand, leads to the conclusion that humanity has approximately 15 years to get its energy house in order. If we fail to achieve this outcome the global economy will not deteriorate, it will collapse. The flip side of this statement is that if we succeed – which is eminently possible from a technical perspective – we can look forward to a long period of global economic stability, if not growth. The obstacles to success are egocentricism and hubris of those in power. In the article below, Brian Bloom summarises key evidence to prove that the current status quo has a bias towards failure in all the world’s industrialised democracies. Urgent action is required.
Sunday, December 15, 2013
After 100 Years Of Failure, It's Time To End The Fed! / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
A week from now, the Federal Reserve System will celebrate the 100th anniversary of its founding. Resulting from secret negotiations between bankers and politicians at Jekyll Island, the Fed's creation established a banking cartel and a board of government overseers that has grown ever stronger through the years. One would think this anniversary would elicit some sort of public recognition of the Fed's growth from a quasi-agent of the Treasury Department intended to provide an elastic currency, to a de facto independent institution that has taken complete control of the economy through its central monetary planning. But just like the Fed's creation, its 100th anniversary may come and go with only a few passing mentions.
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Sunday, December 15, 2013
The Impossible Solution To China-Japan War Gaming / Politics / Nuclear Power
By: Andrew_McKillop
RATIONALIST ILLUSIONS - THE JAMES FEARON ANALYSIS
Events in the East China Sea since 2009, and especially since midyear 2013 have thrust the following frightening question forward: are China and Japan imminently going to war? Conventional answers to the affirmative point to deep historical mistrust, economic rivalry and jealousy as China moves far ahead of Japan in world ranking by GDP, and a large level of “unfinished business” in their own bilateral relations, and in East Asian regional politics, stemming from Showa Japan’s imperial rampage across Asia. To be sure, rationalists draw a long list of reasons why China and Japan are not going to war. There would be astronomical economic costs from a war that pitted the world’s second and third largest economies against each other, with the first and biggest economy, the USA almost surely, or at least possibly dragged in by third-largest Japan, in a war that started over a few tiny islands, underseas rocks, and possible or potential hydrocarbon reserves.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
China Fakes Moon Lunar Landing / Politics / Conspiracy Theory
By: Nadeem_Walayat
With much fanfare China announced that its Jade moon rover carrying Chang'e-3 space craft successfully touched down on the lunar surface saturday afternoon, which represents the first human non hard impact landing on the moons surface for some 37 years.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
France Plays World Cop In Africa – For How Long? / Politics / Africa
By: Andrew_McKillop
GENDARME DE L'AFRIQUE
Inside France, criticism and questioning of France's intensifying role as self-elected “savior of Africa” is mounting. Former defence ministers including Sarkozy-era Herve Morin who took on the role of pacifying Ivory Coast in an operation that took years rather than the promised months or weeks, have said that the ongoing Hollande-era action in Africa will take a lot longer, and cost a lot more in terms of money and French lives lost, than present defence minister Jean-Yves Le Drian pretends or claims. Backing that up, Le Drian on 14 December told French media that the Central African Republic (CAR) intervention is facing massively mounting violence and “a descent into anarchy which could destabilize the whole region”. Current government statements on CAR say that French armed forces will likely be expanded, from the present 1600, and their intervention dubbed “Sangaris” which was first stated as being a matter of “days or weeks”, will last 6 months or longer if the African Union force in CAR is not fully operational. UN sources estimate that the daily death toll in CAR is now close to 200 but this provisional count is uncertain, and could be too low.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Israeli Lobby Forces U.S. Congress to Triple Military Aid to Israel / Politics / UK Politics
By: LewRockwell
The US Congress has authorized $284 million to fund Israel’s missile systems program, triple the amount the Obama administration had requested.
The bill, introduced jointly by the House of Representatives and Senate budget committees, includes $33.7 million to improve the Arrow Weapon System, $117 million for the Short-Range Ballistic Missile Defense Program and $22 million for development of the Arrow-3 upper-tier interceptor, according to Business Week.
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Saturday, December 14, 2013
Who Needs the Debt Ceiling? / Politics / US Debt
By: MISES
Russell Lamberti writes: US lawmakers reached a budget deal this week that will avert the sequester cuts and shutdowns. These fiscal “roadblocks” supposedly damaged investor confidence in 2013, although clearly no one told equity investors who’ve chased the S&P 500 up 26 percent this year. But even so the budget deal is seen by inflationists as only half the battle won, because it doesn’t deal with the pesky debt ceiling. Unsurprisingly, the old calls for a scrapping of the debt ceiling are being heard afresh.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Bank of Israel Capitalising on U.S. QE Money Printing / Politics / Central Banks
By: Fred_Sheehan
Mr. Hyde and Mr. Hyde - Stanley Fischer is in the pipeline for the vice chairmanship of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. In this capacity, he would bang heads to gather FOMC votes for (Presumptive) Fed Chairman Janet Yellen. According to the New York Times, Fischer would "exert a moderating influence on Ms. Yellen," ("For No. 2 at Fed, White House Favors Central Banker in the Bernanke Mold.")
This is neither the job of the vice chair nor the inclination of the man.
First, Fed vice chairmen do the dirty work, clearing the path for the chairman.
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Friday, December 13, 2013
Venezuela’s High Inflation Playbook: The Communist Manifesto / Politics / Inflation
By: Steve_H_Hanke
t seems as though each passing day brings yet another piece of bad economic news coming out of Venezuela. For months, I have been tracking the decline of Venezuela’s economy and its currency, the bolivar. As if a collapsing currency, and the resulting inflation and empty shelves weren’t bad enough, Venezuela is now struggling with massive blackouts. Forget the Whig interpretation of history; Venezuela supports the schoolboys’ interpretation: “it’s just one damn thing after another.”Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, December 13, 2013
Does the US Have Enough Military Bases? / Politics / US Military
By: Mike_Shedlock
Inquiring minds might be interested in the analysis of artist Josh Begley who catalogs every U.S. military base in the world. Here is a representation.
Friday, December 13, 2013
U.S. Congress Bravely Chickens Out of Dealing with Debt Crisis / Politics / US Debt
By: Peter_Schiff
Earlier this week Congress tried to show that it is capable of tackling our chronic and dangerous debt problems. Despite the great fanfare I believe they have accomplished almost nothing. Supporters say that the budget truce created by Republican Representative Paul Ryan and Democratic Senator Patty Murray will provide the economy with badly needed certainty. But I think the only surety this feeble and fictitious deal offers is that Washington will never make any real moves to change the trajectory of our finances, and that future solutions will be forced on us by calamity rather than agreement.
Thursday, December 12, 2013
Russia and Europe Battle for Ukraine / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Stephen_Lendman
Ukraine matters. It’s strategically located. It’s in Europe’s geographic center. It borders seven countries.
In alphabetical order, they include Belarus, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Russia. After Western/Central Russia, it’s Europe’s largest country territorially.
It’s resource rich. Zbigniew Brzezinski once said “without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire.”
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Thursday, December 12, 2013
Scientology a Mirror for Christianity and All Religions of Eternal Slavery / Politics / Religion
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Scientology made the news yesterday on the UK broadcast news channels following recognition by the British state that L Ron Hubbard's Church of scientology has been finally accepted as being a religion and therefore has access to all of the trappings that go along with it such as having tax exempt status and liberal use of playing the religious persecution card to perpetuate their version of slavery that overturns the 1970 high court ruling that scientology was not a religion.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Three Words That Will Save Your Life / Politics / Social Issues
By: DailyWealth
Alex Green writes: Talk about a model prisoner...
In 1985, Fleet Maull began serving a 14-year sentence for drug trafficking. During his incarceration, he completed a PhD in psychology, authored a well-received book, became an ordained priest, founded a prison hospice program, and launched the Prison Dharma Network, a non-profit organization that supports prisoner rehabilitation through contemplative spirituality.
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Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Crony Democracy And Japan's Nuclear Disaster / Politics / Nuclear Power
By: Andrew_McKillop
LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC DISASTER
Abenomics has come, but is already on its way out. A short-term pack of phony reforms to befuddle public opinion, buy time, and develop new bad panic responses to Japan's enduring economic crisis. Because this is New Normal anywhere in the former rich nations - which are called “advanced industrial” as well as “postindustral” (well exhibiting their cognitive dissonance, schizophrenia and existential crisis) - Shinzo Abe and his clique of crony corporate profiteers stumble along to their next crisis with their heads held high. TEPCO, until March 2011, was a peer-respected player in the crony corporate court circus close to power. Today it is special – because it brought down a nuclear disaster of planetary scale, bigger than Chernobyl – but Japan's crony democracy, like its peers is hardwired to only react with panic to any disaster its incompetence produces. Bad panic or good panic, always panic.
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Obama's Long War - Enduring Security And Perpetual Illusion / Politics / Middle East
By: Andrew_McKillop
US OBSESSION WITH THE MIDDLE EAST
In a December 6th thinkpiece for 'Washington Post', Andrew J. Bracevich argues that the drift of history and the progression of things signal that now is the time for “ringing down the curtain on (the USA's) 30-plus-year military effort to pull the Islamic world into conformity with American interests and expectations”. As he says, this job befell to Obama and its high time the curtain falls. Almost for sure and certain, this will bring a sense of loss. Bacevich notes that the politics of war in former ages – he quotes Wellington – deals a melancholy sort to the victors of great wars, comparable with what the vanquished resent. They often plot and scheme to make revenge war when they can – not necessarily on their previous enemies. In other words, on collateral country victims of previous defeat.
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Kurdistan At the Edge of Empires / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: STRATFOR
Reva Bhalla writes: At the edge of empires lies Kurdistan, the land of the Kurds. The jagged landscape has long been the scene of imperial aggression. For centuries, Turks, Persians, Arabs, Russians and Europeans looked to the mountains to buffer their territorial prizes farther afield, depriving the local mountain dwellers a say in whose throne they would ultimately bow to.
The hot temperament of this borderland was evident in an exchange of letters between Ottoman Sultan Selim I and Safavid Shah Ismail I shortly before the rival Turkic and Persian empires came to blows at the 1514 Battle of Chaldiran in northern Kurdistan. The Ottoman sultan, brimming with confidence that his artillery-equipped janissaries would hold the technological advantage on the battlefield, elegantly denigrated his Persian foes:
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Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Hope and Defiance - A Lot of Hope is Dangerous / Politics / US Politics
By: James_Quinn
In the 1st installment of this article – May the Odds Ever Be in Your Favor – The Reaping, I addressed how wealth inequality created by men rigging the system and utilizing media propaganda ultimately leads to rebellion. In Part 2, I will show how hope and defiance can ignite the flame of liberty in the minds of men. Edward Snowden has ignited that flame.