Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Friday, November 01, 2013
Europe's What-Else-Is-New Crisis Agenda / Politics / Euro-Zone
By: Andrew_McKillop
ECONOMIC SABOTAGE
Whenever Europe's politicians get bored with the perpetual-crisis agenda, they invent new crises. Recent add-ons feature NSA hacking of Angela Merkel's cellphone, proving she has interesting things to talk about. Why Europe is even further from economic recovery than the USA – in fact a long way – was hopefully one interesting thing she talked about with uninvited American listeners.
Friday, November 01, 2013
Gold, Silver and the Lost Generation / Politics / Gold and Silver 2013
By: Dr_Jeff_Lewis
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil, to one who is striking at the roots." - Henry David Thoreau, 1846
Institutional trust and confidence continues to unravel as less and less participation, combined with isolation, threatens the middle class. As in all major crises throughout Anglo American history, the weight will be carried on the shoulders of the pragmatic caught in the middle.
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Thursday, October 31, 2013
Is Edward Snowden an NSA Mole? / Politics / Intelligence Agencies
By: Stephen_Merrill
As revelations of massive NSA spying across the globe convulse US foreign policy like the superpower has never experienced, one has to marvel at the seamless way whistleblower Edward Snowden has dealt such a powerful series of blows to the fear-inspiring national security intelligence agencies.
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Thursday, October 31, 2013
Kiss Your Pension Goodbye! / Politics / Pensions & Retirement
By: Don_Miller
I was on the reunion committee for my 50-year high school class reunion a few years back. As we tried to track down classmates, we discovered that many—including a few I had known quite well—had died from lung cancer. These folks would light up a cigarette, joke about cancer sticks, cough, and make fun of their addiction. They ignored their symptoms and the constant warnings from their families and doctors, and they suffered the ugly consequences.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
How the NSA Hacked Google and Yahoo! / Politics / Intelligence Agencies
By: Mike_Shedlock
In response to NSA Breaks Into Secure Communication Links of Google and Yahoo I received a few comments worth exploring.
Reader "Fury" commented "True encryption using the RSA algorithm is unbreakable today. No way can the NSA break the prime number encryption that is used, I don't care how many supercomputers they have."
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Thursday, October 31, 2013
NSA Director Keith Alexander Denies Hacking Google or Yahoo Servers / Politics / Intelligence Agencies
By: Bloomberg
Bloomberg Television's Trish Regan interviewed NSA Director Keith Alexander today at Bloomberg Government's "Cybersecurity: Costs and Solutions" conference in Washington D.C. In response to a Washington Post report that claimed the agency has secretly tapped into main communication links that connect data centers internationally, Director Alexander said, NSA infiltration of servers "never happened," The director went on to call the report "spurious," and insisted that the NSA does "not have access to Google servers, Yahoo servers," and that ''those companies work with us, they are compelled to work with us."
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Still Feel Confident About Collecting Your Pension After This? / Politics / Pensions & Retirement
By: Raul_I_Meijer
If your answer to that question is affirmative, I suggest you take a good hard look at what's coming out of Detroit these days. Why don't we just call it a bail-in model, not unlike Cyprus, where the waters are tested for forcing parties who historically thought they were safe from cuts, find they no longer are.
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Wednesday, October 30, 2013
The Coming Carbon Asset Meltdown / Politics / Climate Change
By: Andrew_McKillop
YOU CAN BELIEVE AL GORE
For Al Gore and his investor fund partner David Bloodai, writing in 'Wall St Journal' October 29, what they define as “carbon assets” are headed for a bust. Gore does not say in his article that he had plenty to do with the present and growing crash of intrinsically – not basically but intrinsically - worthless assets, which I define as the motley crew of carbon finance and its related and downstream assets.
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Insurance Companies Profit from Obamacare / Politics / US Politics
By: BATR
No one can reasonably deny that the major Insurance Companies were the driving force behind the writing of the Affordable Care Act legislation. "The health care industry spent nearly $500 million lobbying for health care issues in 2012, and $243 million so far in 2013." Obamacare or Corporate-care: The Writing of the Affordable Care Act, sums up the process.
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Obama Lies to Merkel on NSA Spying / Politics / US Politics
By: Stephen_Lendman
He lied claiming otherwise. He’s a serial liar. He’s a moral coward. He’s a war criminal multiple times over. He did what supporters thought impossible.
He exceeds the worst of George Bush. He plans lots more ways to prove it through 2016. Humanity may not survive the ordeal.
On October 27, Deutche Welle (DW) headlined “Media reports suggest Obama knew NSA spied on Merkel.”
Der Spiegel said NSA’s Special Collection Service (SCS) monitored her cell phone conversations since 2002. Obama lied telling Merkel he knew nothing about it.
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Tuesday, October 29, 2013
India Taken Over by Foreign Banks? / Politics / Banksters
By: Global_Research
Kavaljit Singh writes: On October 12, Raghuram Rajan, the new Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, announced that the RBI will soon issue new rules allowing a more liberal entry of foreign banks in India. “That is going to be a big opening because one could even contemplate taking over Indian banks, small Indian banks and so on,” he stated in Washington at an event organized by the Institute of International Finance, a global banking lobby group.
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
From Sykes Picot To Anarchy In The Arab World / Politics / Middle East
By: Andrew_McKillop
SYKES PICOT AND LENIN
When it was signed in May 1916 the Sykes-Picot-Sazonov agreement was a secret carve-up accord set by the British and French diplomats, Sir Mark Sykes and Georges Picot, and Imperial Russia's foreign minister Sergei Sazonov. In 1916 the deal still included Imperial Russia for setting “spheres” of colonial power and influence in the soon-to-fall Turkish Ottoman empire. After the Bolshevik Revolution in November 1917, Vladimir Lenin found a copy of the agreement in Russian archives. By way of the agreement, Russia would control Turkish Armenia and northern Kurdistan. Lenin and the Communists were happy to widely publish agreement – because to them it was nothing but another Imperial carve-up of dominated peoples – and also fell far short of what Russia had expected from the deal, especially concerning Persia or Iran. The Communists totally rejected the deal.
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
The Postal Worker Assumed the Gun Wasn’t Loaded / Politics / Government Spending
By: Don_Miller
A man with a wooden leg worked with my dad at the post office. I could even hear his leg creak as he limped along. Remember, this was long before I needed a hearing aid. When I asked if he'd lost his leg in the war, my dad said "no." It was a hunting accident. Then he launched into a lecture on gun safety. "He assumed the gun was not loaded, and now he is crippled for life."
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Expendable People as a Result of Murderous Academic Economics / Politics / Economic Theory
By: John_Kozy
The English who settled America brought English culture with them. The colonies were nothing but little Englands. When the colonists revolted, they were merely trying to get free of the tyrannical English monarchy, not trying to change the culture. They were perfectly happy with the English way of life. They carried on its practices and adopted the English system of common law.
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
The NSA’s Rent Is Too Damn High / Politics / Intelligence Agencies
By: Steve_H_Hanke
For months, the American public has received a steady stream of new information detailing the massive scale and scope of the United States’ spying activities. Of course, maintaining a surveillance state powerful enough to reach into the inboxes of world leaders, friend and foe, is not cheap. Indeed, as the Washington Post revealed when it released portions of the so-called Black Budget, this year’s price tag on America’s spook infrastructure comes out to a whopping $52.6 billion.
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Tuesday, October 29, 2013
France Suspends Its New Muppet Tax / Politics / France
By: Andrew_McKillop
THEY CALL IT THE ECOTAX
Reuters reported, October 29, that French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault is suspending the application of a planned environmental tax, called the “ecological” tax on vehicles above 3.5 tons weight after mounting protests in the western Britanny region, dealing another setback for President Hollande's Parti Socialiste government tax policies.
Monday, October 28, 2013
Canada Bans "Disappearing Palestine" The Theft of a Whole Nation / Politics / Middle East
By: Global_Research
Ali Abunimah writes: The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) has rejected a group’s bus ad showing Israel’s expropriation of Palestinian land over time, claiming the ad could incite anti-Jewish discrimination and violence. The ad, sponsored by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), is similar to others that have appeared in cities all over North America – including Vancouver. CJPME has said it is ready to appeal the censorship of the ad all the way to Canada’s Supreme Court.
Monday, October 28, 2013
America's Culture of Ignorance / Politics / Social Issues
By: James_Quinn
“Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.” - Thomas Edison
The kabuki theater that passes for governance in Washington D.C. reveals the profound level of ignorance shrouding this Empire of Debt in its prolonged death throes. Ignorance of facts; ignorance of math; ignorance of history; ignorance of reality; and ignorance of how ignorant we’ve become as a nation, have set us up for an epic fall. It’s almost as if we relish wallowing in our ignorance like a fat lazy sow in a mud hole. The lords of the manor are able to retain their power, control and huge ill-gotten riches because the government educated serfs are too ignorant to recognize the self-evident contradictions in the propaganda they are inundated with by state controlled media on a daily basis.
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Monday, October 28, 2013
Ron Paul - Saudi Arabia Insists that the U.S. Fight its Battles, a Welcome Reset / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
Last week it was reported that Saudi Arabia decided to make a "major shift" away from its 80 years of close cooperation with the United States. The Saudi leadership is angry that the Obama administration did not attack Syria last month, and that it has not delivered heavy weapons to the Syrian rebels fighting to overthrow the Assad government. Saudi Arabia is heavily invested in the overthrow of the Assad government in Syria, sending money and weapons to the rebels.
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Monday, October 28, 2013
Nuclear Power Dirty Bomb / Politics / Nuclear Power
By: Andrew_McKillop
THE 100-YEAR CURSE
Within the next 15 – 20 years as many as 100 industry standard Westinghouse-type 900 MW PWR pressurized water reactors, concentrated in the "old nuclear' countries will have to be decommissioned, dismantled and their sites made safe - unless political deciders maintain the sinister farce of rubber stamping reactor operating lifetime extensions. The decontamination process could take as long as 100 years. In several countries, especially Germany, Switzerland and probably Japan the dangerous game of politically-decided reactor life extensions – to push back the date of final decommissioning - has already ended or is ending.