Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Monday, June 24, 2013
Latest Obama Outrage - First Family's $100 Million Vacation Trip! / Politics / US Politics
By: Money_Morning
Frank Marchant writes: How much do you spend on your summer vacation? American households usually spend about $1,200 per person on summer vacations, according to a recent American Express survey.
Presidents spend more on their vacations than you or I. They have to. Air Force One and security does cost more than loading the Honda and heading to the beach.
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Monday, June 24, 2013
Ron Paul - Talking to the Taliban, What We Have Learned From Afghanistan? / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
Last week the Taliban opened an office in Doha, Qatar with the US government's blessing. They raised the Taliban flag at the opening ceremony and referred to Afghanistan as the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" -- the name they used when they were in charge before the US attack in 2001.
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Sunday, June 23, 2013
GCHQ at the Heart of Britain’s Secret Surveillance State / Politics / UK Politics
By: Global_Research
Colin Todhunter writes: “The innocent have everything to fear, mostly from the guilty, but in the longer term even more from those who say things like ‘The innocent have nothing to fear.’” Terry Pratchett (British author), in Snuff (Doubleday, 2011).
For many people, personal privacy vs widespread surveillance has been a major issue for decades. However, some thought it might have been happening but chose to downplay it. Others didn’t want to know and just didn’t care. Edward Snowden’s recent revelations indicate it is happening and that we should all care.
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Saturday, June 22, 2013
How Currency Wars End in Violence as Brazil Erupts / Politics / Brazil
By: Mike_Shedlock
The flareup in Brazil erupted in violence overnight as millions protested corruption, inflation, bus fares and a seemingly growing list of items.
Unsurprisingly, the Brazilian real weakened against the dollar now in its sixth consecutive day of decline.
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Saturday, June 22, 2013
Peak Soil Desertification, Between Us and Extinction / Politics / Climate Change
By: Richard_Mills
Desertification is a phenomenon that ranks among the greatest environmental challenges of our time, unfortunately most people haven't heard of it or simply don't understand it.
Desertification and land degradation is a global issue with desertification already affecting one quarter of the total land surface of the globe today
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Friday, June 21, 2013
NSA Arm of Your Friendly Neighborhood Totalitarian State / Politics / US Politics
By: Walter_Brasch
It makes no difference if Edward Snowden, who had fled to Hong Kong and revealed that the American government was spying upon American citizens, is a traitor or a hero.
Intelligence agencies from China, Russia, England, Israel, and maybe even Lichtenstein, probably already know that the National Security Administration (NSA) is collecting data of all the phone calls and emails of Americans, and linking them to conversations with foreign nationals. What is unsettling is that everything the NSA is doing is legal. Secret federal courts can issue secret warrants to agencies that maintain secret files.
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Friday, June 21, 2013
Even Sesame Street Can't Ignore America's Economic and Social Collapse / Politics / US Politics
By: Jeff_Berwick
Things have gotten so bad in the US that Sesame Street has its first character, Alex, who has to try to deal with the torment of having his dad in jail. This, believe it or not, is par for the course for Sesame Street.
Sesame Street has helped kids open up about all sorts of serious subjects that are commonplace in the USSA today, from hunger and divorce to their parents going off to commit terrorist acts on the part of the financial and political elite (military deployment). In fact, one in 28 children in the United States now has a parent in a rape camp (jail) -- more than the number of kids with a parent who is sent overseas to commit acts of terrorism (military).
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Friday, June 21, 2013
The Cancer of Online Gambling, Really Toxicity / Politics / Online Gambling
By: Bloomberg
Las Vegas Sands Corp., Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson joined Bloomberg TV's Deirdre Bolton on "Money Moves" today to discuss why he's come out swinging against online gambling and said: "I think it is a train wreck. It's really toxicity. It is a cancer waiting to happen."
Adelson on poker being skill based: "That skill base is, in my opinion, just a bunch of baloney. To get a card is not skill base. I know people say it is skill based, but it's just so they can categorize it in a certain segment"
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Thursday, June 20, 2013
German Car Industry Says 'Nein Danke' To Carbon Correct / Politics / Climate Change
By: Andrew_McKillop
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
Barack Obama, perorating and posing at the Brandenburg Gate felt obliged to put on his most somber look and gurgle a few lines about the glorious quest of all civilized countries, led by the US and Germany, fighting the menace of global warming. Obama has rebranded this the “struggle against bad weather” - possibly because there has been no warming of the Earth for over 10 years - but Germany's industrial chiefs call European Carbon Correct a suicide pact.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
U.S. Creates Al Qaeda 2.0 in Syria: The Obama Administration is a “State Sponsor of Terrorism” / Politics / US Politics
By: Michel_Chossudovsky
A major transition in US counter-terrorism doctrine is unfolding.
While Barack Obama, following in the footsteps of George W. Bush, remains firmly committed to waging a “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT), his administration is now openly supporting selected rebel units in Syria which are part of the Al Qaeda network.
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Wednesday, June 19, 2013
When the Scales Fall - U.S. Government is Losing Credibility / Politics / US Politics
By: Fred_Sheehan
That is both an obvious and a useless observation without a sense of the consequences. Maybe, there are none. Maybe, the accumulating doubt concerning Benghazi, IRS intrusions, and NSA confiscation of privacy are wearing thin. If the latter proves correct, how will the people express their disillusion: "Voting with their feet," so to speak? A glaring vulnerability is the gap between falling income and inflation. The government's numbers are propaganda, and seem to have worked. The Fed, Bureau of Labor Statistics, reporters, and the academics who are paid to polish Goebbelism into a scholastic veneer, state that annual price inflation is short of 2%. John Williams, proprietor of Shadow Stats, estimates that if the Bureau of Labor Statistics used the same methodology for calculating the CPI as in 1980, the monthly figure released and disseminated to the public would be 9.4% (as of November, 2012).
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Why And How The Young Are Screwed / Politics / Social Issues
By: Raul_I_Meijer
Last week I read a few lines in a Dutch newspaper article about pensions that immediately took me back to something I wrote in early May about youth unemployment - especially in southern Europe, where it's often 50% or more -. There is a common thread that links pensions to employment to stimulus measures: the younger generations invariably get the short end of the stick. Until they don't, of course, for they have one thing going for them. Age. Before they can play that ace, however, their parents seem intent on milking them for all they got. And I can’t help finding that curious, because it’s not at all what parents say they want for their children.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
NSA PRISM, Edward Snowden, Who Are The Real Traitors? / Politics / US Politics
By: James_Quinn
“I'm neither traitor nor hero. I'm an American.” - Edward Snowden
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” - Samuel Adams
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Tuesday, June 18, 2013
G8 Meeting: Climate Change Laid To Rest / Politics / Climate Change
By: Andrew_McKillop
GLACIERS ADVANCE, GLACIERS RETREAT
Revealed by UK media shortly before the start of the G8 meeting near Lough Erne in Ulster, David Cameron's adviser for Europe, Ivan Rogers blocked moves from Germany and France to make climate change a major G8 agenda item.
Ritual whines that this meeting is yet another “last hope for an international agreement that could avert catastrophic climate change” have worn thin, very thin. The real world potential for any international climate change pact setting European-style ETS carbon taxes and tradable permits is zero and not worth talking about. Linked whining about “rising concern” that the UK government is watering down its climate change mitigation ambitions, the same way these are on the point of being watered down in Germany, other European countries and the European Commission, are also not worth talking about – because the die is cast and change is coming.
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Tuesday, June 18, 2013
The Fourth Branch of Government is Killing Our Competitiveness / Politics / US Politics
By: Money_Morning
Greg Madison writes: The United States claims a position as a world leader in many fields. And in a few of those fields, it still is. We like to think of ourselves as leaders in business, the free market, the entrepreneurial spirit. But the country is falling further and further behind in key competitive areas, giving up a lot of ground in the past 10 to 13 years.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Who Profits from Corporate Profits / Politics / Social Issues
By: Jesse
Why keep the median wage low, despite rising profits and productivity?
Whom does an increasingly debt-based economy serve?
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Monday, June 17, 2013
India's Energy Ties with Iran Unsettle Washington / Politics / Middle East
By: OilPrice_Com
India's relentless search for hydrocarbons to fuel its booming economy has managed the rather neat diplomatic trick of annoying Washington, delighting Tehran and intriguing Baghdad, all the while leaving the Indian Treasury fretting about how to pay for its oil imports, given tightening sanctions on fiscal dealings with Iran.
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Monday, June 17, 2013
Governments Love Secrecy to Hide their Crimes and Totalitarian Ambitions / Politics / US Politics
By: Michael_S_Rozeff
"Governments, like married couples, are entitled to their secrets" has written Richard Cohen a few years back. Which secrets? Lines have to be drawn. A government shouldn't cover up crimes under the mantle of secrecy. It shouldn't conceal wrongful seizures and exercises of power. This government and the preceding one under Bush have concealed the fact that they were collecting information wrongfully, namely, information on private communications. The term "national security" cannot reasonably be invoked as an excuse for doing this because it's too vague, and almost anything can be construed as affecting "national security". The quest for catching terrorists cannot be offered as a reason because there are bounds on searches and invasions of privacy that have long standing and that specifically apply to government and policing activities. These governments have gone way beyond these bounds and then compounded their trespasses by attempting to keep them secret.
Monday, June 17, 2013
United Stasi of America through the Echelon Prism / Politics / US Politics
By: BATR
Signals collection has a long secretive and enigmatic history. The very definition of espionage implies spying, most closely associated with foreign sources. Since the Echelon network, the unified function of data retrieval became a given during the cold war. With the revelation of Prism, advances in sophisticated electronic devices and software algorithms provide a major leap. The article, Is PRISM the US version of Echelon?, sums up the evolution. "With this kind of setup and ambition to capture and evaluate private conversations (well, not so private now), makes Echelon that much more believable, and that PRISM is a reflection of the infamous project, but focused solely on the US."
Monday, June 17, 2013
Germany's Accidental Empire / Politics / Germany
By: Andrew_McKillop
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
Historians say the Holy Roman Empire was founded on Christmas Day 800 AD but its maximum power and reach was from about 1200 – 1750 AD, weakened by “turf wars” with the Ottoman Empire in the east and rivalry with Louis XIV of France in the west, Louis XIV being the cousin of the last great Holy Roman Emperor, Louis I of Hungary.