Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
London Olympics Economic Boost Failing to Materialise / Politics / UK Politics
By: Adrian_Ash
"Hello London, this is the mayor, and this is the big one."
- Tannoy announcement replayed endlessly over the last month to London commuters waiting for the city's creaking transport system to cough out their train
LAST TIME the UK government backed and boosted a major export industry, we got the banking and finance crisis. This time they got smart – and spent lots of taxpayer cash in advance.
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Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Project Europe is Over / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Raul_I_Meijer
I don't really know why it is, but as much as I see pundits and experts and everyone in between address the euro mudbath lately, nobody seems to have caught on to the two main events (inflexion points?!) that shape the latest reincarnation of said bath. So here's for them, and you, and anyone who's not yet tired of the story:
Event no. 1: it’s not so much that it's an entirely new notion, it's the realization that it has come to pass that is new. And even then it will take a while for most pundits and experts to understand the significance.
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Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Be Reasonable, Decarbonize Britain / Politics / Climate Change
By: Andrew_McKillop
During the 1968 French student revolt a key slogan was: "Be reasonable, demand the impossible". In the UK of 2012 this concerns "decarbonization". Officially, clean energy is still very close to godliness, as could be expected in a country of Protestant religious origins, but just like the definitions of sin, the British have strange definitions of "clean" energy, in particular taking this to mean nuclear power and propping up the now ramshackle edifice of carbon trading. Among other things.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Geopolitical Consequences of the Fall of the Syrian Regime / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: STRATFOR
We have entered the endgame in Syria. That doesn't mean that we have reached the end by any means, but it does mean that the precondition has been met for the fall of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad. We have argued that so long as the military and security apparatus remain intact and effective, the regime could endure. Although they continue to function, neither appears intact any longer; their control of key areas such as Damascus and Aleppo is in doubt, and the reliability of their personnel, given defections, is no longer certain. We had thought that there was a reasonable chance of the al Assad regime surviving completely. That is no longer the case. At a certain point -- in our view, after the defection of a Syrian pilot June 21 and then the defection of the Tlass clan -- key members of the regime began to recalculate the probability of survival and their interests. The regime has not unraveled, but it is unraveling.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
The Politics of Economic Collapse: The Center Will Not Hold! / Politics / Great Depression II
By: Danny_Schechter
Sometimes, we have to turn to our poets for real insight into our current global condition.
It was back in 1919 in the aftermath of World War l, that Irish wordsmith William Butler Yeats put pen to paper and came up with “The Second Coming,” verses that have stood the test of time. Yeats was born the year the American Civil War ended in 1865 and died in 1939, the year World War 2 began.
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Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Economic Austerity, Adjustment, and Social Genocide: Political Language and the European Debt Crisis / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Andrew_G_Marshall
Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. - George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” 1946
Political language functions through euphemism, by employing soft-sounding or simply meaningless words to describe otherwise monstrous and vicious policies and objectives. In the European debt crisis, political language employed by politicians, economists, technocrats and bankers is designed to make policies which create poverty and exploitation appear to be logical and reasonable. The language employed includes the words and phrases: fiscal austerity/consolidation, structural adjustment/reform, labour flexibility, competitiveness, and growth. To understand political language, one must translate it. This requires four steps: first, you look at the rhetoric itself as inherently meaningless; second, you examine the policies that are taken; third, you look at the effects of the policies. Finally, if the effects do not match the rhetoric, yet the same policies are pursued time and time again, one must translate the effects as the true meaning of the rhetoric. Thus, the rhetoric has meaning, but not at face value.
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Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Social Media Panic in Italy: 'Enough of this Agony; Give Us Back the Lira' / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Mike_Shedlock
Black Monday messages on Facebook and Twitter have gone viral in Italy as people have had enough of austerity, job losses, and uncertainty. La Stampa reports on Panic in the Network.
What follows is a Mish-revised translation of select ideas and quotes from the article. My specific comments are in brackets.
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Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Spain's Molasses Jeopardizing Eurozone? / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Axel_Merk
Spain's regional government debt is in focus again. Spanish 10-year government bond yields are trading near 7.5% as Spain's central government is expected to bail out its regions - and in return may ask for a bailout itself. Guarantees don't make a system safer, quite the opposite: everything is safe until the guarantor itself is deemed unsafe. While the failure of any one business of regional government is a tragedy, providing a guarantee puts the system as a whole at risk.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Argentina Economic Crisis to Accelerate Grab of Energy Resources from Corporations / Politics / Oil Companies
By: OilPrice_Com
Angering Spain by seizing and nationalizing a majority of Repsol's shares in YPF and ramping up the rhetoric over the Falkland Islands as exploration deals promise to make the territory a major oil player overnight, Argentina is making few friends in the fossil fuels industry these days. Sam Logan, owner of the Latin America-focused private intelligence boutique, Southern Pulse, speaks to Oilprice.com about the politics of populism behind Argentina's energy aggression.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Luciferian Technocrats Rule the New World Order / Politics / Conspiracy Theory
By: BATR
The condition of the state of the world is bleak. All signs point to a catastrophic day of reckoning. The worldview that places God as the creator of the universe is routinely dismissed as a myth or superstition. The adoration of scientific theory void of metaphysical presence is the Holy Grail for a culture of technocrats that manage the institutional components of a global order that places little value on life and individual Inherent Autonomy. Orderly obedience to the dictates of elitist secret societies is deemed the orthodox standard to manage a controlled chaos for the masses. By denying God and His sovereignty over man, the appeal of a Luciferian devotion immerges as the ultimate destiny for perfecting the evil nature of aspiring totalitarians.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Putin’s Geopolitical Chess Game with Washington in Syria and Eurasia / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: F_William_Engdahl
Since reassuming his post as Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin has lost no minute in addressing the most urgent geopolitical threats to Russia internationally. Not surprisingly, at the center of his agenda is the explosive situation in the Middle East, above all Syria. Here Putin is engaging every imaginable means of preventing a further deterioration of the situation into what easily could become another “world war by miscalculation.” His activities in recent weeks involve active personal diplomacy with Syria’s government as well as the so-called opposition “Syrian National Council.” It involves intense diplomacy with Erdogan’s Turkey regime. It involves closed door diplomacy with Obama. It involves direct diplomacy with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Dark Days Ahead, American's Are Armed and Ready / Politics / US Debt
By: Andy_Sutton
After spending an hour on Joe Cristiano’s Liberty Talk Radio program the other night, I was filled with an excitement that I haven’t felt since I posted my first ‘Two Cents’ piece back in early 2006. I got to thinking about all the progress that we together have made in the past half dozen years regarding the public’s knowledge of the causes of the financial crisis, to the role of the federal reserve in our economic fate. The great thing is that outside the political realm, this massive outpouring of information and coalescence of support has basically been leaderless, which is exactly what is needed for a meaningful change to be made.
Monday, July 23, 2012
The Gilded Age of Bankers or Banksters / Politics / Banksters
By: Richard_Mills
Between 1865 and 1898 the US economy grew at the fastest rate in its history with real wages, wealth, GDP, and capital formation all increasing rapidly:
- Wheat production increased by 256%
- Corn production increased by 222%
- Coal production increased by 800%
- Miles of railway track increased by 567% - railroad mileage tripled between 1860 and 1880 and had tripled again by 1920
- American steel production surpassed the combined total of Britain, Germany, and France
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Central Banks Are Doomed, Thanks to the Fed's Criminality / Politics / Central Banks
By: Gary_North
The word "untouchable" means something different in India than it does in the West. In India, no one wants to be an untouchable. In the West, achieving the status of untouchable is the supreme organizational goal.
In India, untouchable status means that you cannot move up. In the West, it means that you can't be pulled down.
In every Western nation, certain institutions are untouchable. Anyone challenging them is regarded as a revolutionary, a kook, or a self-promoter looking for publicity.
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Sunday, July 22, 2012
America's Right to National Bankruptcy and Healthcare / Politics / US Politics
By: MISES
Andrew Foy writes: People like me who believe the government should play a less active role in subsidizing healthcare costs are often asked the question "Do you believe healthcare is a basic human right?"
While this is an important philosophical question to ponder, it often lends itself to unexamined answers and political demagoguery. The imprecise answer "yes" to this question by most governments around the world (including the United States) has served mainly to accelerate healthcare-cost growth and benefit the medical-industrial complex at the expense of the public. To appreciate this point, one must consider the reality of what having a right to healthcare, as it is presently understood, actually means, and then consider who wins.
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Sunday, July 22, 2012
Fake Arab Spring are Post-Modern Coup D'etat / Politics / Middle East
By: Global_Research
Prof. Ismael Hossein-zadeh writes: Within the first few months of 2011, the United States and its allies lost three loyal "friends": Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Zine el-Abbidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and Saad Hariri in Lebanon. While Mubarak and Ali were driven out of power by widespread popular uprisings, Hariri was ousted by the parliament.
Inspired by these liberating developments, pro-democracy rebellions against autocratic rulers (and their Western backers) soon spread to other countries such as Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
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Saturday, July 21, 2012
Titanic Banks Hit LIBOR Iceberg: Will Lawsuits Sink the Ship? / Politics / Banksters
By: Ellen_Brown
At one time, calling the large multinational banks a “cartel” branded you as a conspiracy theorist. Today the banking giants are being called that and worse, not just in the major media but in court documents intended to prove the allegations as facts. Charges include racketeering (organized crime under the U.S. Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act or RICO), antitrust violations, wire fraud, bid-rigging, and price-fixing. Damning charges have already been proven, and major damages and penalties assessed. Conspiracy theory has become established fact.
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Playing Syria Roulette / Politics / Middle East
By: Stephen_Lendman
In Las Vegas, the house seldom loses. Rarely are dirty Washington schemes foiled. It's playing hardball against Syria.
Its dirty hands are all over months of violence. In a July 18 press briefing, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell refused to condemn Wednesday's cold-blooded killings.
Syrian Defense Minister Dawood Rajiha, his deputy General Asef Shawkat, and Assistant Vice President General Hassan Turkmani died.
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Saturday, July 21, 2012
Worldwide Debt Default is the Only Solution / Politics / Global Debt Crisis 2012
By: Jason_Hamlin
Sovereign nations, state governments, Californian cities, small businesses, homeowners, middle-class families, recent graduates and all types of other individuals and entities around the world are facing the same growing problem… DEBT. While the European Union is in the spotlight at the moment, the debt crisis is arguably worse in the United States and reaches its nasty tentacles into just about every nook and cranny of modern society.
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Subversive Influences by Government Officials and their Allies to Shape Public Opinion / Politics / Conspiracy Theory
By: Joseph_Russo
Who is John Birch?
Did we mean, "Who is John Galt?" No, however, though we are all familiar with the profound inference surrounding the famous question from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, today we ask instead, who is John Birch?
Before we do, we must first ask, who is Robert Welch? He was the founder of the John Birch Society. Before we introduce you Mr. Welch and the society he founded, we wish to state that like every other political organization, JBS had its flaws and history of gaffs. Just like Congress, the Senate, Republicans, Democrats, the Tea Party, or the Occupy movement, no organization is exempt from flaws and valid criticisms.
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