Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Friday, July 09, 2010
BP Relief Wells Are Ahead of Schedule … But Will They Work? / Politics / Environmental Issues
By: Washingtons_Blog
By all reports, BP is ahead of schedule in drilling the relief wells. In fact, BP will likely complete the first relief well this month.
The team leader for BP’s relief wells – Boots and Coots – is 40 for 40 in successfully stopping oil spills using relief wells (around 6:10 into video).
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Friday, July 09, 2010
Russia Natural Gas Politics vs Germany, Geopolitical Importance of Lubmin / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: F_William_Engdahl
In the postwar history of the Federal Republic, German Chancellors tend to disappear once they pursue political goals that deviate from the Washington global agenda too much. In the case of Gerhard Schroeder, it involved two unforgiveable “sins.” The first was his open opposition to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. The second, far more serious strategically, was his negotiations with Russia’s Putin to bring a major new natural gas pipeline directly from Russia, bypassing then-hostile Poland, to Germany. Today the first section of that Nord Stream gas pipeline has reached the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern coastal town of Lubmin on the Baltic Sea, making Lubmin into a geopolitical pivot for Europe and Russia.
Friday, July 09, 2010
ConLib Government to Give NHS GP's £80 Billion Blank Cheque / Politics / NHS
By: Nadeem_Walayat
The ConLib government appears hell bent on repeating Labours 2003 GP Contracts mistake by effectively giving GP's a blank cheque that is expected to result in huge pay rises as GP's take money meant for improving patient healthcare to reward themselves for working less hours.
Thursday, July 08, 2010
Big U.S. Banks Laundered Money From Drug Trafficking / Politics / Banking Stocks
By: Pravda
Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citigroup, American Express and Western Union have profited over the years with laundering money from drug trafficking and only pay minimal fines, with no executive jailed when authorities were able to detect illicit transactions. These U.S. banks have admitted failing to comply with federal regulations and laws to control money laundering, participating in the transfer of billions of dollars in illicit funds from drug smuggling in Mexico.
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Ron Paul - More Power for the Fed / Politics / Central Banks
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
Last week I was pleased to see my Republican colleagues take up the cause to fully and completely audit the Federal Reserve by including my language from the Federal Reserve Transparency Act in a Motion to Recommit the financial regulation reform bill. Although this effort was defeated by the Democrat majority, there were many good reasons to support it.
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Wednesday, July 07, 2010
BP Hard Cap Installation And Relief Wells Wellbore Problems / Politics / Environmental Issues
By: Dr_Stephen_Rinehart
Background -
In December 2005 (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090804090942.html), scientists aboard IODP (Integrated Ocean Drilling Program) Expedition 312 approached mantle depths while drilling to investigate superfast seafloor spreading rates. The research expedition penetrated volcanic rock (gabbros) and reached a fossil magma chamber lying 1.4 kilometers beneath the seafloor.
Tuesday, July 06, 2010
Offshore Drilling Moratorium: Hear It From The Little People / Politics / Oil Companies
By: Static_Chaos
Hornbeck, a $400-million vessel company in Louisiana, filed a lawsuit against the administration on June 7, a month after the moratorium started.
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Tuesday, July 06, 2010
Oil Espionage: Don’t Mess With China! / Politics / US Politics
By: Static_Chaos
An American geologist-- Xue Feng--was sentenced to eight years in prison for gathering data on China's oil industry, as reported by the Associated Press today:
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Tuesday, July 06, 2010
Economists Gathering Data Whilst Economy Burns / Politics / Economic Theory
By: MISES
Mark R. Crovelli writes: When future generations of scholars look back on the economic and political disaster enveloping the United States today, three questions should be at the forefront of their minds.
First, they should wonder whether the many generations of politicians that collectively engineered this economic and political disaster were either (1) too outrageously stupid to know that what they were doing would produce such a dreadful catastrophe, or (2) whether they were so evil and underhanded that they did know what they were doing would result in disaster — and yet they did it anyway.
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Tuesday, July 06, 2010
State Pension Woes Only Worsening … / Politics / Pensions & Retirement
By: Nilus_Mattive
I know some investors right now who are making major mistakes when it comes to retirement planning …
First, they have been consistently underestimating how much money they’ll need down the line. In essence they are pretending that inflation doesn’t exist …
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Tuesday, July 06, 2010
Striking Overpaid Workers, Public Unions Should be Banned / Politics / Social Issues
By: Mike_Shedlock
Illinois construction workers live in fantasy land of business-as-usual. They are demanding 15% pay hikes when everyone of them ought to be fired with their jobs outsourced to the cheapest non-union shop.
Tuesday, July 06, 2010
Fireworks To Distract Attention From Economic Depression Taking U.S. Down / Politics / US Politics
By: Danny_Schechter
July 5, 2010, Two days after a jobs report showed how many Americans are down, the nation was looking up -- at fireworks signaling the anniversary of American independence (even as the BP disaster shows how dependent we’ve become.).
On July 4th, here in New York, my block was jammed with ooing and ahing onlookers as was the whole West Side of Manhattan when the Macy’s Department store shot off 40,000 shells at a rate of 1500 a minute and at a cost of $500,000.
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Tuesday, July 06, 2010
BP Gulf Oil Spill Day 76: A Whale Awaits EPA and Jones Waiver / Politics / Environmental Issues
By: Dian_L_Chu
The world’s largest oil skimmer vessel arrived in the Gulf and has docked in Louisiana since June 30 awaiting U.S. official review and approval.
The Taiwanese-flagged vessel was originally commissioned as a conventional oil tanker earlier this year in South Korea. But the ship’s owner, Taiwan shipping giant –TMT (“Today Makes Tomorrow”) Shipping Offshore—modified it into an oil skimmer immediately after the BP Deepwater Horizon rig explosion.
Monday, July 05, 2010
Coming Chaos: No Banks, No Public Facilities, No Food and Rampaging Gangs of Desperate People / Politics / Social Issues
By: Mac_Slavo
Bob Chapman, of The International Forecaster, says it’s time to prepare for the worst, comparing our impending economic crisis to that which was experienced at the onset of 1348 and the following century and a half.
Monday, July 05, 2010
The New Civil Wars Within the West / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: OilPrice_Com
Internecine civil wars are underway almost everywhere within the West, and most virulently in the United States of America. They are not yet kinetic wars, but wars of grinding prepositioning, the kind which lead to foregone conclusions without a shot being fired. They are wars of survival, nonetheless, because the basic architecture for national strength is being altered incrementally or dramatically. And, in many cases, consciously. Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, July 05, 2010
Young People Should Work for Free / Politics / Employment
By: Jeffrey_A_Tucker
With young people nearly shut out of the market (by recession, regulation, "child" labor laws, and ghastly minimum wage laws), I would like to suggest the unthinkable: young people should work for free wherever they can and whenever they can. The reason is to acquire a good reputation and earn a good recommendation. A person who will give you a positive reference on demand is worth gold, and certainly far more than the money you might otherwise earn.
Monday, July 05, 2010
The IMF Wants to Take Over the World, Banking Colossus in the Making / Politics / Global Financial System
By: Michael_S_Rozeff
How long did it take to build the Federal Reserve System? Nineteen years. The various interests created and debated banking reform between the years 1894 and 1913. This is documented by Elmus Wicker in his little book The Great Debate on Banking Reform: Nelson Aldrich and the Origins of the Fed.
Sunday, July 04, 2010
BP Oil Spill Global Catastrophe Reaches Epic Proportions / Politics / Environmental Issues
By: T_Anthony_Michael
Dr. Tom Termotto writes: As BP Oil Spill Lets the Genie Out Of The Bottle
Why has it been so difficult to put this GENIE (Oil & Gas) back into the bottle (Macondo Prospect, Gulf of Mexico)? Or at least keep any more of him from coming out?
There are many reasons, on many different levels, but let’s start with BP and the culture of corporate superiority that has evolved at this corporate behemoth since its founding in 1908. We’re talking about the granddaddy here – the Anglo-Persian Oil Company – which was the first to develop the oil and gas reserves discovered in the Middle East. Simply put, when you’re the biggest and the oldest in that neck of the woods, you get used to doing it your way, and ONLY your way.
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Sunday, July 04, 2010
Sloppy G-20 Drunks Can’t Avoid Their Fate / Politics / Government Intervention
By: Justice_Litle
In some ways, the recent G-20 gathering in Canada was like a giant Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, in which the heads of drunk governments promised a return to fiscal sobriety. Fat chance...
"Wall Street got drunk."– George W. Bush, July 2008
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Sunday, July 04, 2010
Fourth of July, Put Away the Flags / Politics / US Politics
By: Global_Research
Remembering Howard Zinn - On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.
Is not nationalism -- that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder -- one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?