Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Colonization by Bankruptcy: The High-stakes Chess Match for Argentina / Politics / Global Debt Crisis 2014
By: Ellen_Brown
If Argentina were in a high-stakes chess match, the country’s actions this week would be the equivalent of flipping over all the pieces on the board. – David Dayen, Fiscal Times, August 22, 2014
Argentina is playing hardball with the vulture funds, which have been trying to force it into an involuntary bankruptcy. The vultures are demanding what amounts to a 600% return on bonds bought for pennies on the dollar, defeating a 2005 settlement in which 92% of creditors agreed to accept a 70% haircut on their bonds. A US court has backed the vulture funds; but last week, Argentina sidestepped its jurisdiction by transferring the trustee for payment from Bank of New York Mellon to its own central bank. That play, if approved by the Argentine Congress, will allow the country to continue making payments under its 2005 settlement, avoiding default on the majority of its bonds.
Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Islamic State - Yeah, This Will Work Out Just Fine / Politics / ISIS Islamic State
By: John_Rubino
The Islamic State (ISIS) has set a modern-day “emergent threat” record by going from obscurity to existential global menace in what seems like a matter of weeks. But as with most overnight sensations, there was a longer gestation period outside of the limelight. And like most military threats of the past few decades it was nurtured by, you guessed it, us.
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Prohibition Laws and Agency Regulations / Politics / Social Issues
By: BATR
Depending on the longevity of one’s experience, the history of government’s inhumanity to man grows deeper. A person, who has lived through four score and seven years ago, may very well be similar to an individual hearing the Gettysburg Address at the time when Abraham Lincoln originally spoke those words. Eight-seven years is a long time, witnessing the Great Depression, World War II and every succeeding administration, which transformed the country from a Republic, into an Empire. Reflecting on the dramatic departure that took off under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the course of the federal government has intensified in size and escalated in scope of intrusion.
Monday, August 25, 2014
Ferguson: The Iraq, Gaza War Comes Home / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
America's attention recently turned away from the violence in Iraq and Gaza toward the violence in Ferguson, Missouri, following the shooting of Michael Brown. While all the facts surrounding the shooing have yet to come to light, the shock of seeing police using tear gas (a substance banned in warfare), and other military-style weapons against American citizens including journalists exercising their First Amendment rights, has started a much-needed debate on police militarization.
Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, August 24, 2014
The Ebola Outbreak: U.S. Sponsored Bioterror Weapon? / Politics / Conspiracy Theory
By: Global_Research
We can now be extraordinarily confident that the U.S. government is lying, in key material respects, about the latest Ebola outbreak—and not just because it lies about nearly everything of political consequence. This article shows that there are compelling reasons to believe we are being told three big lies about Ebola. It also offers a simple, rational, yet disturbing, explanation that very tidily accounts for all three lies. The explanation supposes that the current Ebola outbreak consists in an act of U.S.-linked bioterror.
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Instigating War in Europe - Understanding Ukraine in 15 Minutes / Politics / Ukraine Civil War
By: Mike_Whitney
If you want to understand what is going on in Ukraine, then you need to watch this 15 minute video with Putin advisor and friend, Sergei Glaziev. Glaziev explains how structural changes in the global economy and a shift to Asia have precipitated a desperate attempt by US policymakers to maintain their grip on power by instigating a war in Europe. Whether readers agree with this analysis or not, they will find Glaziev is brilliant, erudite and passionate in his beliefs. For that alone, the video is well worth the time.
Sunday, August 24, 2014
A Call to Revolution / Politics / Social Issues
By: Submissions
William Wallace writes:
Income inequality on a massive scale is well discussed on this site regularily. Taxes and regulations have increased diabolically during this "recovery" making it almost impossible to independently create wealth through your own hard work and enterprise. Incomes are stagnant and declining, industry is lost to Asia, debt has accumulated at every level to try to keep things going, and companies with access to cheap fed funny money are gobbling up competition causing rationalization and further concentration of wealth. Costs of higher education have soared and caused those of limited resources to get buried in debt while having less likely prospects to get the employment necessary to get out of debt. In addition to education, social connection is required to access higher levels of employment keeping the poor poor.
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Beware Of China And India / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Andrew_McKillop
Goading Putin is One Thing
It is simple good luck and certainly not by design that the west has chosen Russia as No 1 whipping boy. Russia is a western country, largely dominated by Christian values or a Christian heritage. It is a “known” rather than the “unknown” of China and India. When the political goading, military provocation and economic sanctions start with them, we will be on a short fuze.
Sunday, August 24, 2014
The West Set Up the ISIS Endgame / Politics / ISIS Islamic State
By: Andrew_McKillop
The Conventional Explanation
This can be found in the MSM or mainstream media, and paints a picture of political leaders in the US and its European partners being so committed to the overthrown of Syria's Bashr al-Assad regime that not enough notice went to where the arms supplied to the so-called “moderate opposition groups”, like the Syrian Free Army, were really going. The anti-Assad forces were “porous”, and in any case the most extreme jihadists received both funding and weapons supplies from Saudi Arabia and the other Arab Gulf states. But this was OK because these jihads, western security “experts” said, were totally opposed to al-Qaeda. Also, the anti-Assad forces, of all kinds, were either supported or tolerated by the west simply because they were anti-Assad, and simply because Putin's Russia was pro-Assad.
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Global Panic - U.S. Federal Government Stockpiling Ammo – Here’s What We’re Going to Do / Politics / Financial Markets 2014
By: Money_Morning
Shah Gilani writes: This is a warning. I’m not kidding.
I heard something yesterday that blew me away.
I can’t further corroborate it, but I trust the source.
Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, August 23, 2014
If Scotland Votes Independant It Will Revalue Its Money / Politics / UK Politics
By: Andrew_McKillop
Devalue or Revalue The Money?
With absolutely no doubt the question of what money an independent Scotland would use, and its value, has become the major background theme in the independence debate. The English Union lobby argues Scotland will have to devalue, suffer huge inflation, and become a European Argentina, which is pure and simple nonsense. England is the Argentina-candidate of Europe but does not have a telegenic Madame Kirchner to say so! Its money is massively overvalued on any rational basis.
Friday, August 22, 2014
Partying On In The Terror State - Thank God for Nuclear Weapons / Politics / Middle East
By: Andrew_McKillop
Terror and Counter Terror
We can be sure that, as one example, US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has a well-developed terror doctrine or ideology – or at least a bunch of slogans - for his press conferences. Apparently his “drone war” and its civilian victims is not Terror War, nothing like ISIS atrocities because it only concerns non-white persons, who don't speak English, and don't live in the US or Europe. Nice definition!
Friday, August 22, 2014
The Something for Nothing Society - Lifecycle of Bureaucracy / Politics / Social Issues
By: Ty_Andros
In this next chapter of Useful Idiots and the Something for Nothing Society, we will put the final nails into a century's UNFOLDING MADNESS. A country of free men has been transformed into an authoritarian state on its road to totalitarianism as the final denouement unfolds under their policies. The final connecting dots of from whence we came, where we are today, and the inevitable destination of societal and economic collapse of empire as has been seen throughout history and Austrian economics. It's been an EXTREMELY interesting journey, one which has been full of opportunities and heartbreaks. I have witnessed much of it in my 58 years. At the time of many events, I did not understand the significance of them. Now, I believe I do. This is not a story of doom and gloom. It is the story of man, human behavior and history repeating.
Friday, August 22, 2014
Hitting The ISIS Panic Button In The Middle East / Politics / ISIS Islamic State
By: Andrew_McKillop
Obama's Transcript
The US Federal News Service, August 20, released president Obama's remarks on the decapitation of journalist Jim Foley, in which Obama said that people across the Middle East have to make a common effort “to extract this cancer so that it does not spread”. Speaking at a joint press conference, August 21, with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey, US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel went much further. Saying that ISIS, ISIL or IS “poses a threat greater than 9 / 11”, he added "This is beyond anything we've seen. We must prepare for everything."
Thursday, August 21, 2014
Outrage! On The Beheading of Our Media Brother James Foley / Politics / Mainstream Media
By: Danny_Schechter
By Danny Schechter
Written For Telesur
New York, New York: Outrage has been the response to reports, still officially unconfirmed a day later, that the Islamic State-Isis maniacs in Iraq beheaded an American journalist. Unlike, American politicians who want us to be loved, in the media at least, these Islamic extremists only want to be feared. We had shock and awe; they have only shock.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, August 21, 2014
The Black Box Economy / Politics / Social Issues
By: Andrew_McKillop
Love, Sex and Marriage
Opinion polls in Japan paint a stark picture. Around 40% to 50% of Japanese below the age of 45 regard sex as “uninteresting” or even “degrading”. They do not want sexual partners, marriage or children. An impressive number of polled persons add the claim that the human instincts of love, sex and marriage are unknown to them.
Thursday, August 21, 2014
Obama Fails As Schoolyard Bully / Politics / US Politics
By: Raul_I_Meijer
When I think about what an American president should do, and should be, the first thing that pops into my mind is (s)he should be a peacemaker. It would seem to be the no. 1 requirement for someone who’s the leader of the most powerful nation on the planet, and therefore the leader of the free world.
If that person is not a peacemaker, if (s)he is not focused on diffusing trouble and violence when and where they rear their ugly heads, how could the entire world possibly not be in a state of perpetual warfare? But here we are, there’s no such American leader in sight, and the prospects of one appearing anytime soon are zero.
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
President Obama Strongest Statement Yet on Israel Gaza War / Politics / Israel
By: MarketOracleTV
Following the targeted assassination by the Israeli military of an 7 month old baby boy and his mother, President Obama makes his strongest statement yet on Israel's war on Gaza and the Palestinian people.
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
Real Priorities – Destroy ISIS Is Number One / Politics / ISIS Islamic State
By: Andrew_McKillop
Silence Speaks Loud
Nothing filters out of Riyadh, Doha, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi or Muscat on the the slowly-growing rollback in Iraq of the Islamic State and its filthy barbarians. The reason is simple. ISIS was funded, armed and supported by the Sunni-minority regimes of the Gulf states when it ran its rampage of atrocities in Syria, with arms-length acceptance of this by the so-called “mature western democracies”.
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Ukraine's Next Crisis? Economic Disaster / Politics / Ukraine Civil War
By: OilPrice_Com
Ukraine's next crisis will be a devastatingly economic one, as violent conflict destroys critical infrastructure in the east and brings key industry to a halt, furthering weakening the energy sector by crippling coal-based electricity production.
The Ukrainian military's showdown with separatists in the industrial east has forced coal mines to severely cut production or close down entirely. This has led to an electricity crisis that can only be staunched by cutting domestic production along with exports to Europe, Crimea, and Belarus -- or worse, getting more imports from Russia.
Read full article... Read full article...