Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Saturday, October 18, 2014
The Cost of Ebola and the Misery Index / Politics / Ebola
By: Steve_H_Hanke
For a clear snapshot of a country’s economic performance, a look at my misery index is particularly edifying. The misery index is simply the sum of the inflation rate, unemployment rate, and bank lending rate, minus per capita GDP growth.
The epicenter of the Ebola crisis is Liberia. As the accompanying chart shows, the level of misery, as measured by the misery index, has decreased since Charles Taylor ruled Liberia.
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Saturday, October 18, 2014
Why OPEC Has Declared an Oil War on Russia / Politics / Crude Oil
By: Money_Morning
Dr. Kent Moors writes: As I discussed recently (A Calculated Saudi Move Aimed at America), Saudi Arabia has grabbed the headlines by cutting oil prices, not production.
It seems the Saudis are more interested in grabbing market share than in attending to the present state of the market.
That move seems calculated to undercut the effect the U.S. has on global oil markets, even though that effect is indirect.
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Friday, October 17, 2014
Either You're The Butcher or You're The Cattle / Politics / Social Issues
By: James_Quinn
I know many people have no interest in watching the boob tube because 99% of the programming is either mindless drivel or government sanctioned propaganda. It's the 1% that reflects the deeper themes and moods engulfing our society. Television shows like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, and The Walking Dead reflect the darkening mood of this intensifying Fourth Turning. I wrote one of my more pessimistic articles called Welcome to Terminus in April regarding the season four finale of the Walking Dead series. I essentially argued we are approaching the end of the line and the world is going to get real nasty.
Thursday, October 16, 2014
The March Of History And The End Of Nations / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Andrew_McKillop
Dancing at the Victims' Ball
By July 1794, with the surprise execution of ace executioner Maximilien de Robespierre, who himself had probably ordered more than 5000 killings by the then-newfangled and dreaded guillotine in the French revolution, faction rivalry akin to the type that sets al Qaeda against ISIS in the Middle East today was so intense that a new wave of Terror was at hand. Called counter-revolution by some, and even the “death of History” by others, the strident call for Saving the Nation became a powerful excuse for new purges, plots and mass executions leading in 1799 to the emergence of the self-styled supreme leader who could save the nation, Napoleon I.
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Gordon Brown, Business and the Monopoly Motive / Politics / Social Issues
By: Submissions
Tom Naysburn writes: Adam Smith said if you left businessmen in a room together they would collude and fix the market or attempt to build monopolies. Adam Smith didn’t become infamous because he was inaccurate. What a shame his fellow Kirkcaldy resident, Gordon Brown didn’t have the same insight. Mr Smith’s invisible hand trumps Mr Brown’s withered left fist, every time. Gordon Brown regulated the people and forgot about the stealth concentrations of power in the banks and mega corporations. They say you shouldn’t look back with anger, but that old dog has had his day. Fast forward to the here and now and we see nothing changes under the sun, unless forced to.
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Wednesday, October 15, 2014
The Ukraine, As We Know It, Is Gone Forever / Politics / Ukraine Civil War
By: Mike_Whitney
The Saker is an ex-military analyst who was born in Europe to a family of Russian refugees. He now lives in Florida where he writes the Vineyard of the Saker blog and is a regular contributor to Russia Insider. The international community of Saker Blogs includes, besides the original Saker blog, French, German, Russian, Oceania and Serbian members and will soon include a Latin American member. – Mike Whitney
Mike Whitney: Is the United States responsible for the troubles in Ukraine?
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Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Why's EBOLA So Serious? / Politics / Ebola
By: DK_Matai
The 2014 Ebola outbreak is "Unquestionably the most severe acute public health emergency in modern times... a crisis for international peace and security... I have never seen a health event threaten the very survival of societies and governments... I have never seen an infectious disease contribute so strongly to potential state failure... when a deadly and dreaded virus hits the destitute and spirals out of control, the whole world is put at risk... the world is ill-prepared to respond to any severe, sustained and threatening public health emergency...” states Dr Margaret Chan, director general, World Health Organisation (WHO) based in Geneva, Switzerland. Dr Chan dealt with the 2009 avian flu pandemic and the SARS outbreaks of 2002-3.
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Building an Ark: How to Protect Public Revenues From the Next Financial Meltdown / Politics / Credit Crisis 2014
By: Ellen_Brown
Concerns are growing that we are heading for another banking crisis, one that could be far worse than in 2008. But this time, there will be no government bailouts. Instead, per the Dodd-Frank Act, bankrupt banks will be confiscating (or “bailing in”) their customers’ deposits.
That includes local government deposits. The fact that public funds are secured with collateral may not protect them, as explained earlier here. Derivative claims now get paid first in a bank bankruptcy; and derivative losses could be huge, wiping out the collateral for other claims.
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Tuesday, October 14, 2014
What Happened To The Fourth Estate? / Politics / Mainstream Media
By: Andrew_McKillop
Decline and Fall of the Media
Press and broadcast media, or “public information” was, called The Fourth Estate or fourth leg of the state, which itself can have an animal image, whether rabbit, elephant, cow or other. In Ancient Rome, the state was symbolized as a female wolf feeding the people with Capitolian milk.
As the fourth leg of the state, the press and media supposedly feeds the people with all that is right to know - and think - guarding intact and supporting all dominant social paradigms using selected information able to serve and defend the elite. The Fourth Estate was always considered suspect by freethinkers, radicals and the left.
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Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Student Movements: A Subject of Human Geography / Politics / Social Issues
By: STRATFOR
Sim Tack writes: As student protests in Hong Kong continue, memories of the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations naturally spring to mind. Less iconic but no less notable were the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, which began as a student movement; the 2007 Venezuelan protests, which started with a group of students demanding constitutional reform; and the 1929 protests in Paris, which challenged the role of churches in education.
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
CNN in Full Fear Mongering Mode Cashing in on Ebola / Politics / Mainstream Media
By: EconMatters
2 Cases of Ebola
From the ‘news’ network that covered and beat the Missing MalaysiaAirlines Flight 370 story to death comes the latest hysteria promoting journalistic approach to the 2 cases of Ebola here in the United States. These people should literally lose their broadcasting license as although many Americans have the ability to rationally think about the issue, unfortunately many Americans lack the level of reasoning abilities necessary to rationally think in a level headed manner regarding the actual risks of becoming infected by Ebola.
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Monday, October 13, 2014
Just Blame the Banks / Politics / Banksters
By: Dr_Jeff_Lewis
“I think this is a time where people will look back on us and see it as a period of practically central bank worship.” - Jim Grant
Central bank equals big private-publicly owned banks. The populace still holds a collective deference for the banks. The view that the political financial alliance is the problem is still a rare one. Always one step from conspiracy.
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Monday, October 13, 2014
Ron Paul - Liberty, Not Government, is Key to Containing Ebola / Politics / Ebola
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
According to Forbes magazine, at least 5,000 Americans contacted healthcare providers fearful they had contracted Ebola after the media reported that someone with Ebola had entered the United States. All 5,000 cases turned out to be false alarms. In fact, despite all the hype about Ebola generated by the media and government officials, as of this writing there has only been one preliminarily identified case of someone contracting Ebola within the United States.
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Monday, October 13, 2014
George W. Bushmeat and the Economics of Ebola / Politics / Ebola
By: Raul_I_Meijer
Ebola was until a few weeks ago mostly a forgotten affliction in the western world. Something that flared up in the Congo or thereabouts, parts of the world we’re aware of only because of the horrors of machete attacks and other mayhem induced by our own secret services in order to keep ‘our’ access to their mind-boggling amounts of resources going, while their populations live in conditions many miles below squalor.
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Has Obama Changed His Mind About Syria? / Politics / US Politics
By: Mike_Whitney
The ISIS siege of Kobane continued overnight while cities across Turkey were set ablaze by Kurdish protestors. At least 19 civilians were killed by Turkish riot police who were trying to disperse angry crowds that had gathered to protest the government’s unwillingness to defend the predominantly Kurdish city. According to Hurriyet, “The worst violence was seen in Diyarbakır during a reported gunfight between the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) supporters and Hizbullah, a radical Islamist group whose members are mostly Kurdish and who allegedly aided the state in the torture and killing of Kurdish activists in the 1990s.” (Hurriyet)
Saturday, October 11, 2014
Ebola Terror Threat Suicide Bio-Weapons Threatens Multiple 9/11's, Global Plague / Politics / Ebola
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Whilst President Obola has been busy stoking up a hornets nest of angry jihadists in Syria and Iraq vowing revenge for the U.S. military Industrial complexes bombing of the self professed Islamic State, meanwhile the Ebola virus continuous its out of control rampage across West Africa with now over 20,000 infected and more than 4,000 highly infectious dead bodies, a number of whom of have been left on the streets to rot that amount to instant bio-weapons for the angry revenge seeking jihadists which could be used to wreak havoc across whole nations never mind individual cities as armies of infected jihadists embark on their Ebola suicide missions.
Saturday, October 11, 2014
American the Broken State and How to Fix It / Politics / US Politics
By: Casey_Research
The United States of America is not what it used to be. Unsustainable mountains of debt, continuous meddling by the government and Fed to “stimulate the economy,” and the US dollar’s dwindling status as the world’s reserve currency are very real threats to Americans’ standard of living. Here are some opinions from the recently concluded Casey Research Fall Summit on the state of the state and how to fix it.
Marc Victor, a criminal defense attorney from Arizona and a staunch liberty advocate, says there’s really no such thing as “the state”—“it’s just some people bossing other people around.”
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Friday, October 10, 2014
Decline Fear And The Unique Nation / Politics / Social Issues
By: Andrew_McKillop
The Mass Psychology of Decline
Unknown to some, the fear of decline and a highly developed theory of decline is certainly one of the longest-running features of modern western society and culture. The decline paradigm can be claimed as emerging either before, or simultaneously with what the Oxford Dictionary defines as “the dominant social paradigm” - in which “progress” features as the supreme value of western society.
Friday, October 10, 2014
America is Truly a Country Run for the Few / Politics / US Politics
By: Paul_Craig_Roberts
The Bureau of Labor Statistics headline this morning reads: “Payroll employment increases by 248,000 in September; unemployment rate declines to 5.9%.”
How can this be? US corporations are investing in buying back their own stocks, not in new business ventures that produce new jobs.
According to the Census Bureau’s Poverty Report, US real median family income has declined to the level of twenty years ago. Consumer credit and real retail sales are not growing. Construction is limited to rental units. Construction shows 16,000 new jobs, half of which are “specialty trade contractors” or home remodelers.
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Thursday, October 09, 2014
America’s Terrorist Academy in Iraq Produced ISIS Leaders / Politics / Iraq War
By: Mike_Whitney
The Obama administration’s determination to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is pushing the Middle East towards a regional war that could lead to a confrontation between the two nuclear-armed rivals, Russia and the United States.
Last week, Turkey joined the US-led coalition following a vote in parliament approving a measure to give the government the authority to launch military action against Isis in Syria. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made it clear that Turkish involvement would come at a price, and that price would be the removal of al Assad. According to Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily
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