Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Friday, April 02, 2010
Tension Builds in the Gulf of Guinea as Competition for Economic Resources Increases / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: OilPrice_Com
The strategic framework and the correlation of forces in the Gulf of Guinea — one of the most significant and growing energy resource regions of the world — is changing rapidly. A new era in security arrangements for the region is beginning.The region is moving from an area of low technology defense and security systems, and minimal command and control at national levels, to one of growing sophistication, higher mobility, and the potential for military confrontation.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, April 02, 2010
Get an MBA and Mow Grass for a Living / Politics / Social Issues
By: LewRockwell
Laura Bassett writes: When Frank Harris completed his MBA degree in May of 2005, he never expected to end up mowing grass for a living. But after losing his $103,000-a-year upper management job at Lowe's, just as the job market was crashing in December 2008, he didn't see many other options.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, April 02, 2010
Political Lessons From History, Absolutist Thought in Italy / Politics / Social Issues
By: Murray_N_Rothbard
By the 12th century, the Italian city-states had evolved a new form of government, new at least since ancient Greece. Instead of the usual hereditary monarch as feudal overlord, basing his rule on a network of feudal dominion over land areas, the Italian city-states became republics. The commercial oligarchs who constituted the ruling elite of the city-state would elect as ruler a salaried bureaucratic official or podesta, whose term of office was short, and who therefore ruled at the pleasure of the oligarchy. This city-republican form of government began at Pisa in 1085, and had swept northern Italy by the end of the 12th century.
Friday, April 02, 2010
A Cavalcade of U.S. Corruption Is Finally Being Scrutinized / Politics / Credit Crisis 2010
By: Danny_Schechter
As The Crisis Deepens, More Attention is Being Paid To Financial Fraud
The “F Word” (for fraud) is back in polite conversation on Wall Street. Fraud and financial crime are slowly becoming part of the debate over what must be done to restrore confidence in what has so plainly been a confidence game.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Timothy Geithner is a Sniveling Scamster / Politics / Credit Crisis Bailouts
By: Mike_Whitney
Whew. That was fast. It didn't take long for Wall Street to figure out how to game Obama's new mortgage modification program, did it? The plan was hyped as help for "struggling homeowners", but it turns out, it's just another stealth bailout for pudgy bank-execs. It's funny, the program hasn't even kicked in yet and, already, bigtime speculators are riffling through their filing cabinets looking any garbage paper they can find to dump on Uncle Sam. Take a look at this on today's Bloomberg report:
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Student Loans, The Government is Now Officially in the Banking Business / Politics / Credit Crisis 2010
By: Ellen_Brown
“We say in our platform that we believe that the right to coin money and issue money is a function of government. . . . Those who are opposed to this proposition tell us that the issue of paper money is a function of the bank and that the government ought to go out of the banking business. I stand with Jefferson . . . and tell them, as he did, that the issue of money is a function of the government and that the banks should go out of the governing business.” William Jennings Bryan, Democratic Convention, 1896
Thursday, April 01, 2010
The Fed's Last Hurrah / Politics / Central Banks
By: Peter_Schiff
During the 1990s, inflationary Federal Reserve policy fueled a tech stock bubble. When that bubble burst, the Fed inflated a larger one in real estate. Now that the real estate bubble has burst, the Fed is inflating the biggest bubble of them all - a bubble in government. While the earlier booms at least provided the illusion of prosperity and some fun while they lasted, the government bubble will cripple the economy and deliver widespread misery to the vast majority of Americans.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, April 01, 2010
The Hydropower Solution in Central Asia: Yes But... / Politics / Renewable Energy
By: OilPrice_Com
Surfing the wave of the hype for renewable energy such as hydropower and the invitation by the United States to many regional countries to get involved in the efforts to stabilize Afghanistan, Tajikistan is bringing back to the table the Rogun hydropower dam project. Rogun, conceived in Soviet days, was planned to generate 3,600 megawatts but the collapse of the Soviet Union halted the completion of this project. Now an independent country, Tajikistan, one of the poorest in the world, sees Rogun as a central element for its energy independence and a source of severely needed foreign currencies that could be earned through the export of electricity.
Thursday, April 01, 2010
E.U. Greece Rescue Plan Fails, Back to Square One / Politics / Global Debt Crisis
By: Mike_Shedlock
Europe's rescue plan for Greece is now back at square one. The reason the plan failed is there never really was a plan to begin with, just bazooka talk.
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Google and China Internet Censorship, Mr. Hu, Tear Down This Wall! / Politics / Google
By: Aden_Forecast
Over two thousand years ago, China began to build its Great Wall in order to keep nomadic tribes and marauding armies from crossing its borders. In the last few decades, China has built another protective barrier, a 'Great Firewall,' to keep socially disruptive web content from reaching its citizens. American companies have long acquiesced to this censorship charade in order to have access to China's booming online market.
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Iran Attack, Rumours of a Hard-Rain and the Price of Oil: My Trip to Tehran / Politics / Iran
By: Andrew_Butter
Oil-Blogger Alan Von Alterdof (http://seekingalpha.com/..) is convinced that pretty soon Iran is going to “get what’s coming to it”, he tells us:
Hundreds of powerful US "bunker-buster" bombs are being shipped from California to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean
Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Chechnya Oil Pipeline Politics True Underlying Cause for Moscow Metro Bombings / Politics / Russia
By: OilPrice_Com
The tragic news of the 29 March twin suicide bombings of two Moscow Metro stations during the morning rush hour has produced outrage worldwide, with the Kremlin quickly adding that the attacks were carried out by the Caucasus Mujaheddin, a northern Caucasus-based militant Islamist guerrilla group that claimed responsibility for the bombing of a Moscow to St. Petersburg express train last November.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
China Inherently Unstable Economic System Crunch Time / Politics / China
By: STRATFOR
The global system is undergoing profound change. Three powers — Germany, China and Iran — face challenges forcing them to refashion the way they interact with their regions and the world. We are exploring each of these three states in detail in three geopolitical weeklies, highlighting how STRATFOR’s assessments of these states are evolving. First we examined Germany. We now examine China.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Western Civilization and the Economic Crisis, The Impoverishment of the Middle Class / Politics / Social Issues
By: Andrew_G_Marshall
The western nations of the world have built their great wealth and societies on the exploitation and plundering of the people and resources of the rest of the world. The wealth, freedom, and structures of our societies have been built on the starvation, robbery, deprivation and murder of millions upon millions of the world’s people, both historically and presently.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Argentina Running Out Of Options Over UK Falklands Oil Fight / Politics / Crude Oil
By: OilPrice_Com
As Argentina's oil battle with the United Kingdom rages on, the only other obstacle the South American country can throw at oil companies planning to drill near the Falkland Islands is to interdict U.K. ships or equipment - but regional expert Riordan Roett doubts the Argentines are “stupid enough to do that.”
Monday, March 29, 2010
The Fannie May and Freddie Mac Bailout Debacle / Politics / Credit Crisis Bailouts
By: Sol_Palha
No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities. Christian Nevell Bovee, 1820-1904, American Author, Lawyer
Monday, March 29, 2010
Healthcare and Economic Realities / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
With passage of last week's bill, the American people are now the unhappy recipients of Washington's disastrous prescription for healthcare "reform." Congressional leaders relied on highly dubious budget predictions, faulty market assumptions, and outright fantasy to convince a slim majority that this major expansion of government somehow will reduce federal spending. This legislation is just the next step towards universal, single payer healthcare, which many see as a human right. Of course, this "right" must be produced by the labor of other people, meaning theft and coercion by government is necessary to produce and distribute it.
Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, March 29, 2010
Socialized Medicine Impact on Gold Bugs / Politics / Gold and Silver 2010
By: Howard_Katz
The “passage” of the Obama “health care” proposal is a significant change in the political scene. Some of it directly affects our program as gold bugs. Some goes beyond this. But it all is one integrated whole, and it has to be understood if we are to make our way in this world.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
California Could be Destroyed by Looming Water Disaster / Politics / Climate Change
By: Global_Research
Yasha Levine writes: There's an impending disaster in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and a handful of wealthy farmers seem to like it that way.
"That, in your own backyard there, is the scariest place after New Orleans.” —Geologist Nicholas Pinder's description of the precarious situation in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta after the hurricane Katrina disaster.
Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Financial Fraud on Wall Street / Politics / Credit Crisis Bailouts
By: Bob_Chapman
The re-nomination of Ben Bernanke, as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, has to be one of the ultimate political insults, particularly coming from Republicans, as did his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, both have taken America and the world down the sewer. Ben Bernanke saved Wall Street, the banks, insurance companies and a myriad of other financial firms.