Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Thursday, October 03, 2013
China's Ambitions in Xinjiang and Central Asia / Politics / China
By: STRATFOR
In mid-September Chinese President Xi Jinping rounded out a 10-day tour of Central Asia that included state visits to Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, as well the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Bishkek. At each stop, the new president made hearty pledges of financial support and calls for further diplomatic, security and energy cooperation. In Turkmenistan, Xi inaugurated a natural gas field. In Kazakhstan, he agreed to invest $30 billion in energy and transportation projects. In Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, he made similar promises to increase investment and cooperation in the coming years.
Thursday, October 03, 2013
Five New Obamacare Facts You Need to Know / Politics / Healthcare Sector
By: Money_Morning
Tara Clarke writes: The federal government operates these marketplaces, or exchanges, across 36 states, and the Obama administration anticipates seven million people will apply for coverage across the six-month open-enrollment period.
The exchange rollout comes as a wash of just-released polls on Obamacare shows the public hasn't embraced our country's new healthcare law.
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Thursday, October 03, 2013
Renewable Energy-- But Not for America / Politics / Renewable Energy
By: Walter_Brasch
Tokelau, an independent territory of New Zealand, is a small three island archipelago of about 1,400 residents about 300 miles north of American Samoa in the South Pacific. In October 2012, the Polynesian nation turned off the last of its diesel generators and became the first country to use solar power as its only energy source.
Wednesday, October 02, 2013
The Ministry of Truth Wants to Outlaw Free Speech / Politics / US Politics
By: LewRockwell
Butler Shaffer writes: It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us in trouble. It’s the things we know that ain’t so.- Artemus Ward
I blogged, awhile back, on the comment made by a top federal official who, in responding to Edward Snowden’s Internet release of top-secret NSA documents, said that the government would be able to secure the return of such information. The implication was that the government could order Internet providers to reverse the processes by which such documents were distributed to millions of Internet users. Underlying this claim is the apparent belief that Internet providers function as a kind of storehouse of various kinds of information, to which users apply for access. It is not an exaggeration, in their world, to analogize a provider – such as Google – as a public library, making stored information available to users, and being able to demand its return to the “library.”
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Wednesday, October 02, 2013
Government Shutdown Proves Roads Not Possible Without Government / Politics / US Politics
By: Jeff_Berwick
It is often irritating for those of us who don't believe we need violent institutions (ie. government) to keep hearing the same refrain from non-believers over and over again, "But, what about my roads?"
We always reply, exasperated, that pavement is not impossible to have without theft and the fact that roads existed without government even in the US (as Walter Block wrote in "The Privatization of Roads And Highways"). And, TDV's own Gary Gibson has covered the topic many times including, "If One More Person Asks Me About the Roads...".
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Wednesday, October 02, 2013
U.S. Government - What Will "shut down"? / Politics / US Politics
By: Sahil_Hafeez
Democrats and Republicans were unable to intention their contrasts over Obamacare and now the government is closed down.
Republicans in Congress declined to embrace a using bill unless it postponed the Affordable Care Act, the law conveying health protection to poorer Americans, which began to assume Oct. 1. Right away, the new monetary year begins; government authorities won't have the power to use money.
Wednesday, October 02, 2013
Obama Scaring Saudi Arabia / Politics / Middle East
By: Andrew_McKillop
PRINCELY TANTRUMS
Wall Street Journal reported, 29 September, that the Obama administration's overtures to Iran and handling of the Syrian crisis have outraged the Wahabite Kingdom. Saudi Arabian royals still imagine that Obama, and his sole French ally in the fumbled attempt to bomb Syria, want to and will boost the power of armed Sunni rebel groups on the ground in Syria. They want to arm the djihadists, Saudi royals believe, but they could be very wrong.
Tuesday, October 01, 2013
U.S. and Iranian Realities / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Anonymous
U.S. President Barack Obama called Iranian President Hassan Rouhani last week in the first such conversation in the 34 years since the establishment of the Islamic Republic. The phone call followed tweets and public statements on both sides indicating a willingness to talk. Though far from an accommodation between the two countries, there are reasons to take this opening seriously -- not only because it is occurring at such a high level, but also because there is now a geopolitical logic to these moves. Many things could go wrong, and given that this is the Middle East, the odds of failure are high. But Iran is weak and the United States is avoiding conflict, and there are worse bases for a deal.
Tuesday, October 01, 2013
Ridiculous Ways U.S. Government Shutdown Will Affect You / Politics / Government Spending
By: Jeff_Berwick
Millions around the world today are hoping the US federal government shuts down at midnight on Monday. Many have thoughts of wars and occupations ending in their regions... but, sadly, this is not part of the "services" that will be cut during a shutdown.
In fact, not only will the Department of Offense continue on as usual but so will all the tyrannical agencies such as the DEA, IRS, ATF, CIA and countless other alphabet soup agencies of oppression.
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Monday, September 30, 2013
U.S. Government Shutdown - A Grand Bargain for Liberty? / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
As I write this, it appears that the federal government is about to shut down because the House and Senate cannot agree on whether to add language defunding or delaying Obamacare to the "Continuing Resolution". Despite all the hand-wringing heard in DC, a short-term government shut down (which doesn't actually shut down the government) will not cause the country to collapse.
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Monday, September 30, 2013
Crude Oil Helps Unfreeze US-Iranian Relations / Politics / Crude Oil
By: Andrew_McKillop
SAVING PRESIDENT OBAMA
Missing in the diplomatic and media hoopla surrounding US-Iranian relations, for example the missing “photo op” handshake between the USA's Obama and Iran's new president Rouhani at the UN General Assembly, the three-letter-word oil was also absent.
For some, given Obama's often farcical and fumbling foreign policy initiatives, it might seem the mounting momentum for an end to Iranian sanctions is only another initiative with no real goal except saving the president. As we know, a phone call between the two turned out to be “almost as good as a handshake”. As we also know, ending sanctions and normalizing US-Iranian relation may move very rapidly – whatever Israel can do trying to slow it.
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Sunday, September 29, 2013
Did Putin Quietly Play the Debt Card Over Syria? / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Ron_Holland
"They are living beyond their means and shifting a part of the weight of their problems to the world economy. They are living like parasites off the global economy and their monopoly of the dollar. If [in America] there is a systemic malfunction, this will affect everyone. Countries like Russia and China hold a significant part of their reserves in American securities. There should be other reserve currencies." – Vladimir Putin in 2011
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Barack Obama - The Blackberry President / Politics / US Politics
By: Andrew_McKillop
TIME MOVES ON
At the height of his short-lived media acclaim and uncritical public support, Obama was happy to show he knew how to use, and liked his Blackberry cellphone. Time has also moved on for Blackberry. Like Nokia it missed the boat for upmarket Internet devices. It was unable to adapt to the surge of new and flashier gimmicks from Samsung and Apple. Blackberry is now a corporate disaster. On its August sales, it lost nearly $24 for every $100 of the dwindling sales it could garner. T-Mobile, the fourth-largest US wireless provider said it will no longer stock Blackberry devices in its shops and will only ship them when people make a written request.
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Why Israel will Not Join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty / Politics / Israel
By: Global_Research
Timothy Alexander Guzman writes: Iran’s New President Hassan Rouhani has requested that Israel to sign and become a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as he spoke for a second time at the United Nation General Assembly. “As long as nuclear weapons exist, the threat of their use exists,” Rouhani said, citing the American bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Rouhani is calling for “nuclear-free zone” in the Middle East. Israel is the only country in the Middle East that had not and will not sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel would use nuclear weapons if it felt it was threatened by any nation in the Middle East.
Saturday, September 28, 2013
CNN Broadcast Fake Translation of Iran President Rouhani’s Statement Regarding Holocaust / Politics / Mainstream Media
By: Global_Research
Farsnews writes: TEHRAN (FNA)- American news channel CNN fabricated the remarks made by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in response to the network’s question about the Holocaust.
Saturday, September 28, 2013
The Student Loan Bubble / Politics / Student Finances
By: Jeff_Berwick
James Guzman and Ben Vincent write: In 2008 the prospective career paths for much of America went up in smoke as jobs became more and more sparse. Many, still desperately clinging to the fantasy of the American Dream, are getting money the only way that they know how; borrowing it.
Friday, September 27, 2013
Reasons for U.S. Income Inequality / Politics / Social Issues
By: Richard_Mills
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston says the incomes of the bottom 90 percent of Americans, after being adjusted for inflation, grew by only $59 on average between 1966 and 2011, over the same period the average income of the top 10 percent of Americans grew by $116,071.
A 2011 study from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported incomes for the bottom fifth of Americans grew 20 percent between 1979 and 2007. Members of the top one percent saw their incomes grow by 275 percent during the same period,
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Thursday, September 26, 2013
The Perfect Alternative to Wall Street Banks / Politics / Banksters
By: Ellen_Brown
A national postal and infrastructure bank could protect our money, rebuild the nation, and won't cost taxpayers a dime.
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is the nation’s second largest civilian employer after WalMart. Although successfully self-funded throughout its long history, it is currently struggling to stay afloat. This is not, as sometimes asserted, because it has been made obsolete by the Internet. In fact the post office has gotten more business from Internet orders than it has lost to electronic email. What has pushed the USPS into insolvency is an oppressive 2006 congressional mandate that it prefund healthcare for its workers 75 years into the future. No other entity, public or private, has the burden of funding multiple generations of employees who have not yet even been born.
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Thursday, September 26, 2013
Iran Hell Bent On An Nuclear Bomb / Politics / Middle East
By: Andrew_McKillop
IN ISRAELI EYES
In Israeli eyes, Iran is ruled by a gang of religious fanatics whose nearly unique aim in life is to annihilate Israel. They are hell bent on producing The Bomb, which will enable them to do so. They are crazy fanatics so they don't care that Israel will make a second strike with its own nuclear weapons if it is A-bombed. Iran will be destroyed forever. So Iran must be prevented from having the bomb at all costs, certainly including world oil supplies being cut by 33% or more and the Strait of Hormuz closed, for a period that will depend on how quickly Iran can be bombed flat.
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Just Say No to the Fed's Next Bernanke / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: Don_Miller
So long Larry Summers! In this game of eeny meeny miny moe, it appears that Obama's index finger will ultimately land on Janet Yellen to replace Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Summers was Wall Street's choice, but he withdrew from consideration, citing potential obstacles in the Senate confirmation process. While I greeted that update favorably, Yellen isn't high on my list either.