Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Crossing Syria Chemical Weapons Red Line, Obama's Bluff / Politics / Middle East
By: STRATFOR
Images of multiple dead bodies emerged from Syria last week. It was asserted that poison gas killed the victims, who according to some numbered in the hundreds. Others claimed the photos were faked while others said the rebels were at fault. The dominant view, however, maintains that the al Assad regime carried out the attack.
Monday, August 26, 2013
Why Wages Don't, Won't, and Can't Keep Up With Productivity / Politics / Social Issues
By: Mike_Shedlock
By now, everyone is well aware that real wages have not kept up worker productivity. But why is that?
The Fed, government bureaucrats, and economists are puzzled by the phenomenon as well as what to do about it.
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Monday, August 26, 2013
NewsSpeak - Al Jazeera and Russia Today Propaganda or Factual Reporting? / Politics / Mainstream Media
By: BATR
Only a public relations genius would roll out a news channel in the domestic American TV market with the name Al Jazeera. Sparing no expense, this new leap into sober journalism has not been seen since the formation of regional news bureaus in the days when CNN was a serious network. The Current TV purchase, financed by the Qatar government, shows that money can buy glitz and glamour, when reporting from the trenches of global conflicts or personal tragedies. Notwithstanding, hiring known retreads or celebrity has-beens, the cast of characters that will present this new version of reality, needs to earn creditability for the public to overlook the image of the corporate logo.
Monday, August 26, 2013
Ron Paul - Middle of the Road in Healthcare Leads to Socialism / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
The ever-expanding role of government in healthcare provides an excellent example of Ludwig Von Mises' warning that "The Middle of the Road Leads to Socialism." Beginning in the 1940s, government policies distorted the health care market, causing prices to rise and denying many Americans access to quality care. Congress reacted to the problems caused by their prior interventions with new interventions, such as the HMO Act, ERISA, EMTLA, and various federal entitlement programs. Each new federal intervention not only failed to fix the problems it was supposedly created to solve, it created new problems, leading to calls for even more new federal interventions. This process culminated in 2010, when Congress passed Obamacare.
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Sunday, August 25, 2013
Ron Paul - Private Property Is the Essence of Liberty / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
This selection is taken from chapter 10 of A Foreign Policy of Freedom by Ron Paul, available in both print and ebook editions at the Mises Store.
Privacy is the essence of liberty. Without it, individual rights cannot exist. Privacy and property are interlocked. If both were protected, little would need to be said about other civil liberties. If one’s home, church or business is one’s castle, and the privacy of one’s person, papers and effects are rigidly protected, all rights desired in a free society will be guaranteed. Diligently protecting the right to privacy and property guarantees religious, journalistic and political experience, as well as a free market economy and sound money. Once a careless attitude emerges with respect to privacy, all other rights are jeopardized.
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Sunday, August 25, 2013
Government Should Not Define What a Reporter is—or Isn’t / Politics / US Politics
By: Walter_Brasch
Sen. Diane Feinstein and a horde of members of Congress of both parties want to decide who is and who isn’t a reporter. Sen. Feinstein says a “real” reporter is a “salaried agent of a media company.”
She mentions the usual suspects—New York Times, ABC News. She dismisses part-time staff. She dismisses freelancers. She dismisses those who write, often without pay, for the hundreds of alternative publications, and often break news and investigative stories well ahead of the mainstream media. She dismisses anyone who, she says, “have no professional qualifications.”
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Sunday, August 25, 2013
Weapons Of Massive Self-Destruction And Islamic Gangstah War / Politics / Middle East
By: Andrew_McKillop
ISLAMIC WAR OR GANGSTAH WAR?
Salem al Rafei, a prominent cleric targeted in Lebanon's August 23 car bomb attack, the most deadly since the end of Lebanon's previous or most-recent civil war in 1990 is reported by newswires to have a long track record of organizing militias. In his case, he encouraged the formation of Sunni defence militias and popular committees for street patrolling, which he calls Islamic defense councils. These are composed of mostly young males armed with a wide variety of hardware, including grenades, infantry rifles and even home-made guns. Financing of these armed groups is always opaque, and almost always includes a range of criminal activities
Saturday, August 24, 2013
Lagarde 'crossing fingers' for the Euro Zone / Politics / Euro-Zone
By: Bloomberg
IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde spoke with Bloomberg Television's Sara Eisen in Jackson Hole, WY today, where she said, "we are all globally on a path to recovery, still fragile, not yet strong enough, and with this very strong support from the unconventional monetary policy."
Lagarde said that "clarity of when things will happen, how things will happen" is needed as the Fed considers unwinding its bond buying program and "the signaling effect matters almost more than the actual implementation."
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Saturday, August 24, 2013
Your Money Is Not Safe In The Big Banks / Politics / Banksters
By: Rudy_Avizius
Most people think that money is safe in the big banks because the FDIC will protect the deposits. This assumption is not based on the facts. This video will show official government documents that describe the plans for confiscating deposits when (not if) a big bank fails. Individual, as well as public funds from municipal, university, county deposits are at serious risk.
Saturday, August 24, 2013
Libya Moving From Arab Spring To Arab Winter / Politics / Middle East
By: Andrew_McKillop
ARAB SPRING – ARAB WINTER
Already dubbed 'Arab Winter', the unrealistic hopes and aspirations of 2011's Arab Spring are rapidly being replaced by civil tension and fear, as we witness the breakdown of the unified nation state in country after country across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Shaded by the Syrian civil war and the probable emerging Egyptian civil war, the Islamic Crescent of instability stretching from Libya and Tunisia through Egypt and Lebanon to Syria, with another branch running through Yemen and Iraq is becoming a sombre reality. Above all, how outsiders can respond and react to it has no easy answers and throws up dangerous pitfalls for foreign policy, diplomatic relations and the economy as shown by the USA's near-total loss of leverage and influence in Egypt.
Friday, August 23, 2013
Obama Destroys the Middle-Class / Politics / Social Issues
By: Mike_Whitney
According to a survey conducted by Gallup on August 15, 2013, Obama’s Economic Approval rating has slipped to 35%. A full two-thirds of the American people are now dissatisfied with Obama’s performance vis a vis the economy. The survey mirrors the results of an earlier poll (Aug 12) which found that a mere “Twenty-two percent of Americans say they are satisfied with the direction of the country… Three-quarters of Americans are now dissatisfied with the nation’s course.” (Gallup)
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Market Bubbles and Economic Busts / Politics / US Economy
By: LewRockwell
Charles Goyette writes: Has President Obama at last figured it out?
If only.
The President has been talking a lot of late about the bubble economy. Last month he mentioned “unstable bubbles” that threaten the economy, and the other day in his radio address he referred to “the bubble-and-bust mentality” that has made “a mess” of our economy.
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Thursday, August 22, 2013
To Make Sense of the Coins Act, Follow the Money / Politics / Fiat Currency
By: Steve_H_Hanke
The American people might be surprised to learn that for the past 20 years a handful of lobbyists and lawmakersmostly from states with mining and metal-processing interestshave been pushing a proposal to take away dollar bills, and force the public to use metal coins instead.
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Global investment banks Stand Convicted, of taking the Hypocritic Oath / Politics / Banksters
By: John_Mauldin
By Grant Williams
(Wikipedia): The Hippocratic Oath is an oath historically taken by physicians and other healthcare professionals swearing to practice medicine honestly. It is widely believed to have been written either by Hippocrates, often regarded as the father of western medicine, or by one of his students. The oath is written in Ionic Greek (late 5th century BC), and is usually included in the Hippocratic Corpus. Classical scholar Ludwig Edelstein proposed that the oath was written by Pythagoreans, a theory that has been questioned due to the lack of evidence for a school of Pythagorean medicine. Of historic and traditional value, the oath is considered a rite of passage for practitioners of medicine in many countries, although nowadays the modernized version of the text varies among them.
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Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Forget College, Fake it Till You Make It, How to Become a Journalist / Politics / Education
By: Videos
Great advice from Luke Rudkowski. It goes well beyond journalism, and applies to whatever you want to be great at. It’s about passion, persistence and no excuses.
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
China's 7 Perils Are All Western / Politics / China
By: Andrew_McKillop
THE SEVEN PERILS
Reporting from Hong Kong in the 'New York Times', August 19, Chris Buckley started with this lead: “Communist Party cadres have filled meeting halls around China to hear a somber, secretive warning issued by senior leaders. Power could escape their grip, they have been told, unless the party eradicates seven subversive currents coursing through Chinese society”.
Monday, August 19, 2013
FATCA and the End of Banking Secrecy / Politics / Market Regulation
By: MISES
Cezary Blaszczyk writes: Among the many recent revelations about American surveillance operations was the fact that, according to Der Spiegel, the U.S. intelligence apparatus “not only conducted online surveillance of European citizens, but also appears to have specifically targeted buildings housing European Union institutions,” Few, if any, of those commenting of late on such affairs mentioned that numerous nations across the globe actually acknowledged the U.S. government’s anti-privacy offensive months before by accepting its Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA).
Monday, August 19, 2013
The Borderless World Of Islamic Instability / Politics / Middle East
By: Andrew_McKillop
TIME WAS
“The End of History and the Last Man”, the 1992 bestseller of Francis Fukuyama hailed the triumph of globalization and the arrival of a One World State of borderless prosperity – which didn't arrive. History continued, then accelerated.
Fukuyama's book spawned a crop of lookalike works trying to catch the market opportunity, in which authors pondered a spiraling pot pourri of themes like wither and whence Western civilization was going, the future of democracy, the end of the business cycle, world music and The Death of the Nation State. Rather like global warming, this elite theme or meme burnt itself out through over-hype and by boring the public to death with endless and pompous repetition. Well before 2000, and certainly by Sept 2001 the robust survival of History was assured.
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Monday, August 19, 2013
Political Islam And The Next Oil War / Politics / Middle East
By: Andrew_McKillop
OLD DIVISIONS NEW CONFLICTS
PIMCO's Mohamed El-Erian, interviewed by Bloomberg August 15, speaking from deep knowledge and sympathy for Egypt likely felt obliged to give a positive turn to his view of events. He said "It is very important for people inside Egypt to step up. This is not a situation where people from the outside can come in, whether they are people who were living in Egypt at one time, or whether it is foreigners. This is a situation where the Egyptians have to find a way to get over what is a very tragic, dangerous, and sad situation". In fact this situation has a tortured pedigree of the state-versus-religion stretching at least 1100 years back in time, but we can start with the the 2011 National Assembly (parliament) elections in Egypt – the first elections in more than 30 years, or longer.
Sunday, August 18, 2013
Obama and the Egyptian Massacre / Politics / US Politics
By: Global_Research
Johannes Stern writes: Wednesday’s massacre of hundreds of unarmed protesters by the US-backed Egyptian military junta shatters Washington’s hypocritical claims that its Middle East policy is based on democracy and human rights.