Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Game of Thrones, European-Style / Politics / Euro-Zone
By: John_Mauldin
I came back from Italy this week, and one of my guilty pleasures was being able to sit down and watch the last three episodes, including the season finale, of Game of Thrones. For those readers who are not enthralled with the fantasy epic from HBO or have not read the first five books (will he ever finish?), author George R.R. Martin has written one of the most complex fantasy series ever, about a world where everyone is occupied with who will sit on the Iron Throne.
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Secession in Iraq, Sunniland, Shialand and Kurdistan / Politics / Iraq War
By: Jack_D_Douglas
Jack D. Douglas writes: ISIS is getting most of the Sunni tribes and areas North and East of Baghdad to join them in a new nation-state. The Sunni are doing so, partly because ISIS is a powerful guerrilla army, but also because they want to be free from Shia Baghdad, just as the Kurds are north of them in Kurdestan creating their own independent nation-state.
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Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Why the U.S. Fed Is Nothing to Celebrate / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: MISES
Ben Wiegold writes: The Federal Reserve System turned 100 years old last December and Fed supporters have been celebrating ever since. In recent months, the Dallas Fed opened an historical exhibit, the Kansas City Fed released a documentary, and the New York Fed even started a Facebook page, all to commemorate the date.
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Is The FDA Laying The Groundwork For Resecheduling Marijuana? / Politics / US Politics
By: Jeff_Berwick
Like on most things the government sits well on the side of tyranny compared to the general public when it comes to marijuana policy. A record number of Americans believe marijuana should be legal:
Monday, June 23, 2014
Out-of-control Central Banks are Buying Up the Planet / Politics / Central Banks
By: Ellen_Brown
In China and elsewhere, central banks are turning from monetary policy to asset grabs.
Finance is the new form of warfare – without the expense of a military overhead and an occupation against unwilling hosts. It is a competition in credit creation to buy foreign resources, real estate, public and privatized infrastructure, bonds and corporate stock ownership. Who needs an army when you can obtain the usual objective (monetary wealth and asset appropriation) simply by financial means? — Dr. Michael Hudson, Counterpunch, October 2010
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Monday, June 23, 2014
George Osborne HS3 Leeds and Manchester Rail Link for New North Mega-City / Politics / UK Politics
By: Nadeem_Walayat
George Osborne has thrown an major infrstrucvutre funding election scrap at the north by suggesting that a new high speed link HS3 should be created between Manchester and Leeds that would more than halve the existing travel time between the two cities.
"The cities of the North are individually strong, but collectively not strong enough. The whole is less than the sum of its parts. So the powerhouse of London dominates more and more. And that's not healthy for our economy. It's not good for our country.
"We need a northern powerhouse too. Not one city, but a collection of northern cities - sufficiently close to each other that combined they can take on the world. Able to provide jobs and opportunities and security to the many, many people who live here, and for whom this is all about." - George Osborne
Sunday, June 22, 2014
The Death Of Nations And The No-Nation Paradigm / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Andrew_McKillop
The Neolibs Said
Concerning western societies and nations, the “new economy” ideologues of the early 1980s can be blamed for the rot. They intensely argued for the total triumph of a magic disembodied thing called “the market” which would sweep away all traces of antique leftovers from the 18th century – the nation states. Everybody would move up and on to “the market”. It would be self-organizing and self-running, and (of course) capitalist, reproducing the Adam Smith paradigm of individual greed somehow producing or resulting in collective good. That can only make sense!
Sunday, June 22, 2014
EU Goes From Peacemaker To War Mongerer / Politics / Euro-Zone
By: Raul_I_Meijer
Jean-Claude Juncker, a former Luxembourg PM, claims that his EU-wide center right faction, the European People’s Party, “won” last month’s European Parliament elections, but something is not what it seems. They’re the largest faction, that’s true enough, but they had to concede 44 of their seats. In other words, while they claim a win, in reality it was a big loss. Which, in democratic systems, represents a call for modesty. Juncker will have none of that. He demands the leadership chair of the European Commission.
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Momentum And Inertia In Debt And Climate / Politics / Social Issues
By: Raul_I_Meijer
Today, we give you another little gem from Nelson Lebo, our dear friend in Wanganui, New Zealand, who equates the inertia in debt (economy) with that of heat (climate), a smart idea that makes a lot of – explanatory – sense. But first, here’s a picture of Nicole and I back in April 2012 (that’s a kitten named Billy T I’m holding in my arms) at the Lebo home that Nelson restored from basically a bare skeleton and which he talks about in this article, in Castle Cliff, one on New Zealand’s poorest neighborhoods. The house is right by a beach with black volcanic sand and – I kid you not – a local seal slash resident beachmaster who was keeping watch lying on top of these huge pieces of eucalyptus driftwood.
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Scientists Predict Increased Rain, Floods for Northeast / Politics / Climate Change
By: Walter_Brasch
Pennsylvanians will experience increased rainfall and floods if data analysis by a Penn State meteorologist and long-term projections by a fisheries biologist, with a specialty in surface water pollution, are accurate.
Paul Knight, senior lecturer in meteorology at Penn State, compiled rainfall data for Pennsylvania from 1895—when recordings were first made—to this year. He says there has been an increase of 10 percent of rainfall during the past century. Until the 1970s, the average rainfall throughout the state was about 42 inches. Beginning in the 1970s, the average began creeping up. “By the 1990s, the increase was noticeable,” he says. The three wettest years on record since 1895 were 2003, 2004, and 2011. The statewide average was 61.5 inches in 2011, the year of Tropical Storm Lee, which caused 18 deaths and about $1.6 billion in damage in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, and devastating flooding in New York and Pennsylvania, especially along the Susquehanna River basin.
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Splitting Up Iraq - It’s All For Israel / Politics / Iraq War
By: Mike_Whitney
“It is no longer plausible to argue that ISIS was a result of unintentional screw ups by the US. It is a clear part of a US strategy to break up the Iran-Iraq-Syria-Hezbollah alliance. Now that strategy may prove to be a total failure and end up backfiring, but make no mistake, ISIS IS the strategy.” - Lysander, Comments line, Moon of Alabama
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Friday, June 20, 2014
Should The West Save Iraq? / Politics / Iraq War
By: Andrew_McKillop
Why Does Obama Hesitate?
Obama hesitated for some while before deciding not to bomb Syrian president Bashr el-Assad out of power. To be sure, Russia helped that decision in a big way. If el-Assad had been chased from power and given a show trial like Saddam Hussein before being killed, or not even given a show trial like Muammar Gaddafi before being killed, fundamentalist Islamic forces would have held sway in Syria.
Friday, June 20, 2014
Congress Makes a Clean Sweep of Corruption – Under the Rug / Politics / Market Regulation
By: Money_Morning
Shah Gilani writes: Do you remember the not-so-big-deal legislation known as the 2012 STOCK Act?
That’s STOCK as in Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge.
Members of the House and Senate passed this act – which in this case should be short for acting like whores -quietly because it pointed to Congress as a bed of lascivious insiders who trade for personal gain through the backroom market-moving horse trading that they massage into laws in D.C.
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Thursday, June 19, 2014
Jordan Next Target for ISIS? / Politics / Middle East
By: STRATFOR
The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, buoyed by its recent successes in Iraq, wants to expand its regional reach. Reports that Iraq has withdrawn forces from western towns close to its 180-kilometer (110-mile) border with Jordan have left Amman feeling vulnerable, and the Hashemite kingdom, certainly a target of interest for the jihadist movement, has deployed additional security personnel along the border.
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Iraq: The Cost of Building a Failed State / Politics / Iraq War
By: Steve_H_Hanke
"Governments constantly choose between telling lies and fighting wars, with the end result always being the same. One will always lead to the other." - Thomas Jefferson
Nobel Laureate George Akerlof uses this edifying quote from Thomas Jefferson to good effect in his foreword of Hossein Askari's excellent read, Conflicts and Wars: Their Fallout and Prevention (Palgrave MacMillan, New York, 2012). Indeed, Prof. Akerlof has this to say about Askari's work:
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Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Central Banker Right Think – The Imams Fight Back / Politics / Central Banks
By: Andrew_McKillop
Not Credible
The central banker fraternity has its own ideological Right Think, like the mob of Tea Towel Heads presently near Baghdad, but the UK glove puppet media has singled out Britain's central bank chief Mark Carney as “unreliable and out of line”. He supposedly infringed central banker right think but what he did wrong is as arcane as Sunni and Shia imams hairsplitting the doctrines of ibn Hanbal and al-Askari. In any case don't be mistaken. Carney is a fully paid-up member of the bankster fraternity. Attacking him is like attacking all the rest.
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
ISIS Crisis Only Tip of the Sunni Ice-berg in Iraq, Whilst Blair Goes Mad / Politics / Iraq War
By: Nadeem_Walayat
The mainstream press has been awash with commentary over the past few days of the apparent miraculous speed at which ISIS has conquered approx 1/3rd of Iraq and now threatens the capital Baghdad, which has prompted has been's such as Tony Blair to step forward and offer his tuppence worth of recommendations for apparently an Iraq War 2 style western assault on the region, suggestions which were immediately denounced by many, including Boris Johnson as being mad.
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Intrigue Lying Behind Iraq's Jihadist Uprising - Saudi Arabia Stirs the Pot / Politics / Middle East
By: STRATFOR
Reva Bhalla writes: Events in Iraq over the past week were perhaps best crystallized in a series of photos produced by the jihadist group the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Sensationally called The Destruction of Sykes-Picot, the pictures confirmed the group's intent to upend nearly a century of history in the Middle East.
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Debt, Civic Decay, Global Disorder - Fourth Turning Accelerating / Politics / Social Issues
By: James_Quinn
“In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party. The catalyst will unfold according to a basic Crisis dynamic that underlies all of these scenarios: An initial spark will trigger a chain reaction of unyielding responses and further emergencies. The core elements of these scenarios (debt, civic decay, global disorder) will matter more than the details, which the catalyst will juxtapose and connect in some unknowable way. If foreign societies are also entering a Fourth Turning, this could accelerate the chain reaction. At home and abroad, these events will reflect the tearing of the civic fabric at points of extreme vulnerability –problem areas where America will have neglected, denied, or delayed needed action.” - The Fourth Turning - Strauss & Howe – 1997
Monday, June 16, 2014
Central Banks Have Become The Markets / Politics / Central Banks
By: Raul_I_Meijer
The cluster, – or pride, or cabal – of global central banks, led by the Bank of Japan have come very close to strangling their respective bond markets to the point suffocation with ultra low interest rates, and therefore together moved $29 trillion they had ‘invested’ there into equity markets. Restoring the world’s $100 trillion bond markets to health, even ever, will be a task so daunting that it’s hard to see one single way it can be done. The Bank of Japan has become the de facto only buyer of its own government’s bonds, with the result that trading has ground to a halt, literally so for a number of days last week. Yields on global bonds have been manipulated down so much that not only pension funds and other traditional large-scale fixed-income buyers feel forced to move into stocks, it’s even come to the point where central banks themselves, too, make that move.