Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Thursday, February 09, 2017
The Leading Power In East Asia Will Be Japan—Not China / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: John_Mauldin
BY GEORGE FRIEDMAN AND JACOB L. SHAPIRO : By 2040, Japan will rise as East Asia’s leading power. This is one of our most controversial forecasts at Geopolitical Futures.
Our readers know that GPF is bearish on China. And while some may disagree on that point, they usually see that the reasoning is sound. China will face serious problems in coming years… problems that will strain the Communist Party’s rule. (I write about this topic extensively in This Week in Geopolitics—subscribe here for free.)
Japan, though, seems a bridge too far. Its population is less than a tenth of China’s size (and it’s not just aging… it’s shrinking). Japan also has a debt-to-GDP ratio over 229%.
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Thursday, February 09, 2017
Germany Blasts Israel’s Illegal Land Grab / Politics / Israel
By: Stephen_Lendman
A previous article discussed Israel’s Resolution Law, retroactively approving around 4,000 illegally built settler outpost homes on privately owned Palestinian land - confiscating it for exclusive Jewish occupation and use, legislation its attorney general opposed and won’t defend.
Anything about Israel is sensitive in Germany, given its Nazi era mass extermination of Jews.
Last December, its Foreign Ministry spokesman expressed great concern about the pending legislation, saying it “violates international law,” along with “undermin(ing)” any chance for a two-state solution.
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Thursday, February 09, 2017
Trump Plays Cat and Mouse with Iran / Politics / US Politics
By: Mike_Whitney
Why is the Trump administration threatening Iran?
On February 1, National Security Adviser Michael Flynn announced that the administration was “putting Iran on notice” after it tested a ballistic missile which the US sees as a violation of Iran’s treaty obligations. Flynn’s frigid tone made it clear that the administration is considering the use of military force. But why?
Under current UN resolutions (Resolution 2231), Iran is forbidden “to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons.” Read that over again. Iran is not forbidden from testing ‘all ballistic missiles’ just missiles that are ‘capable of delivering nuclear weapons.’ The resolution could not be clearer. There’s no gray area here, none at all. Flynn is just fudging the resolution’s meaning, so he can rattle a saber. But, why? And why are other members of the administration, including the president himself, making equally belligerent remarks? In a tweet last week, Trump said, “I won’t be as ‘kind’ to Iran as Obama” which was followed by a speech by US Defense Secretary James Mattis who called Iran “the single biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world.”
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Wednesday, February 08, 2017
Trumpin' and Thumpin' Back to the 1930s / Politics / US Politics
By: Dan_Steinbock
With the Trump White House, America and a global economy will enter a highly divisive period – as evidenced by the debate about his economic, trade and infrastructure plans.
As long as Republicans sustain some unity in and between the White House, the Senate and the House of the Representatives, Trump will benefit from an unprecedented execution power.
Tuesday, February 07, 2017
America’s Aging Demographics / Politics / Demographics
By: Rodney_Johnson
It was a long time ago, way back in 1950.The United States was recovering from World War II while facing down a new enemy, China, on the Korean Peninsula. We were an exporting powerhouse that fortunately escaped the war with all of our production capacity intact. And, our population was experiencing a baby boom.
We were growing our wealth, expanding our military capabilities, and increasing our population. Even after the ravages of war, we had a tremendous group of workers 20 to 49 years old, and an explosion of babies on the way.
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Tuesday, February 07, 2017
We’re Seeing More of Trump Reaction than Action / Politics / Immigration
By: Harry_Dent
Look. Economy & Markets isn’t a political newsletter, and I typically stay away from talking about it – people are touchy on the subject, and it’s the quickest way to make enemies.Yet I find myself writing about Trump again! It’s like I just can’t escape the man.
Of course, I can choose not to write about him, and instead write about any number of other important things… but I don’t think that would be valuable to you because everything that The Donald has done so far connects directly back to the research and the heart of our operation: demographics and cycles.
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Tuesday, February 07, 2017
Fake and False and Just Plain Nonsense News / Politics / US Politics
By: Raul_I_Meijer
Two and a half weeks after the inauguration, and yes it’s only been that long, the media still don’t seem to have learned a single thing. They help the Trump campaign on an almost hourly basis by parroting whatever things, invariably judged as crazy, he says. One day it’s that negative polls are all fake news, the next it’s some list of underreported terror events. All of it gets an avalanche of attention provided by the very people who claim to be against Trump, but greatly help his cause by doing so.
Tuesday, February 07, 2017
Left Coast Liberals Dream for Secession / Politics / US Politics
By: BATR
As the consequences of losing control of the federal government seeps into their delusional entitlement, the ultimate statists of the Left scamper to find a method to regain power. A concept, whose day is gaining acceptance, is the Nation of Pacifica. With the incompatibility between the Trump Nation deplorables and the intolerant collectivists of Leftist state worshipers, the end game is rapidly approaching a final conflict that easily could erupt in a real civil war. Leave it to the beautiful people; their fantasia screen play scripts a peaceful dissolution of the disjointed union. A sample of their dialectic:
Monday, February 06, 2017
Health Tourism Cripples NHS, Nationwide Winter Crisis Paralysis / Politics / NHS
By: Nadeem_Walayat
The mainstream press has been reporting on the unfolding NHS crisis over the winter months, one of a building paralysis in the NHS that in large part has its roots in EU out of control immigration and wide spread health tourism abuse that in large part is of african origin. Where people who are ill come to the UK for FREE treatment on the NHS and thus clog up thousands of much needed beds for months at a time, health tourism impacts the NHS across the whole spectrum of services from maternity wards upwards across all age groups costing billions and crippling NHS services.
Monday, February 06, 2017
Carnage of the Middle Class / Politics / Social Issues
By: Michael_Pento
In President Donald J. Trump's inaugural address he promised, "This American carnage stops right here and stops right now." And immediately liberals and the MSM took umbrage to his use of the word carnage, which means the slaughter of a large number of people, claiming it was just too dark a description for America. Maybe so. However, in a recent Bloomberg commentary, Justin Fox cites some sobering statistics that support Trump's statement.
Monday, February 06, 2017
Betting on President Trump Leaving Office Early, Presidency End Date - Betfair Market / Politics / Gambling
By: Nadeem_Walayat
The Trump Reset Tsunami waves continue to wash that which has been built up over the past 40 years away in a manifestation of extreme delirium which I covered both in the run up to the US presidential election of why Trump would WIN, and in my post Trump analysis of why the Trump Reset looks set to culminate in a war with China.
Monday, February 06, 2017
Absolution, Deceit and Renewables / Politics / Renewable Energy
By: Raul_I_Meijer
It’s been a while since the Automatic Earth featured an article from Energy Matters, the site run by our longtime friend Euan Mearns, Honorary Research Fellow at The University of Aberdeen, and his co-conspirator Roger Andrews, a British engineer/geophysicist, semi-retired in Mexico. But I read a piece by Roger yesterday that I like, because it allows me to rant against all the false claims emanating from countries and companies about the share of renewable power in their total energy consumption.
Roger focuses on the railway system in the Netherlands, run by NS, which recently claimed that it operates on 100% wind power. This is of course, if you know anything about electricity generation and the grid, a preposterous claim, and that the company has the guts to make such a claim can only serve to prove how little the general public knows about the topic. Or they wouldn’t dare. Green is still so sexy in certain circles, and actual knowledge so poor, that companies like the NS feel no scruples about stretching their ‘greenness’ into absurd theater territory.
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Sunday, February 05, 2017
Pope Francis and the Poverty-Ridden Catholics / Politics / Religion
By: Dr_R_M_Mathew
- A New Development Strategy for the Catholic Church
In spite of the increasing charity and missionary works in terms of billions all over the Christian world, especially of the Catholic Church for the last 2000 years, poverty and backwardness in the Christian World have been growing at an alarming rate. It is estimated that while over 38% of the world Christians lives in ignorance, poverty and backwardness, the share of the Catholics comes around 30%. However, more than 60% of the world Muslims belongs to this category despite the importance given to zakat by Islam.
Thursday, February 02, 2017
Channel 4 War on 'Fake News', Forgets Own Alt Reality Propaganda Broadcasting / Politics / Mainstream Media
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Apparently Channel 4 is going to go to war against 'Fake News' next week with the likes of "i know nothing" Jon Snow fronting mocumentaries of the 'Fake News' of 2016. Don't get me wrong I love watching John Snow, it's about as close as the mainstream press ever gets close to a dose of reality from within their Left-Right political spectrum that they have been stuck in since the broadcast channels first started appearing in the 1970's. Since which time nothing much has changed, in that they fail to realise that the likes of Channel 4, BBC inhabit their own liberal alt-reality that each year reinforces the delirium perpetuated on themselves and the general population.
Thursday, February 02, 2017
Red States vs Blue States - What’s Next: A Third and Potentially Lethal Trigger / Politics / US Politics
By: Harry_Dent
This past Monday I updated my Boom & Bust subscribers about an important new development in the civil war that I see brewing… or at least the possibility that the United States of America won’t remain the way we know it for much longer. We’re certainly no longer united. In fact, we’ve not been this polarized and divided since the Civil War.Unfortunately, the state we find ourselves in today has been painted on the wall for a long time! And my hierarchy of cycles – which includes the Spending Wave Cycle, the Technology Cycle, the Geopolitical Cycle and the Boom/Bust Cycle – have shown me for many years now what we have in store. And now a near 100-year cycle in globalization has peaked, much like the last one did when World War I started.
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Thursday, February 02, 2017
How Misconceptions Are Driving the US to Sociopolitical Disaster / Politics / US Politics
By: David_Galland
Throughout history, bad ideas such as those espoused by Marx have taken hold in the public arena and become institutionalized. This occurred despite the inherent violence required by a system in which individuals are forced to be subservient to the state. I’ve discussed issues like this previously, but I find it continues to be relevant today.
The iconic socialist revolutionary, Che Guevara, made the case that in a true socialist revolution, large swaths of the population had to die.
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Thursday, February 02, 2017
Trump Voters And The News Media Have Something In Common / Politics / US Politics
By: John_Mauldin
BY PATRICK WATSON : Donald Trump won the White House for two main reasons.
First, in the last 20 years, new technology and globalist “free trade” agreements combined to destroy millions of middle-class jobs. Particularly, manufacturing jobs. I’ve written about the future implications of this trend in Connecting the Dots (subscribe here for free).
Second, our political and business elites didn't recognize this was happening—or just didn't care. In either case, they failed to respond adequately. President Trump is a direct result of their negligence.
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Thursday, February 02, 2017
White House Puts Iran on Notice Over Its Legitimate Missile Tests / Politics / Iran
By: Stephen_Lendman
On Wednesday, Trump’s National Security Advisor Michael Flynn irresponsibly lashed out against Iran’s recent legitimate ballistic missile tests.
Without justification, he claimed they “undermine security, prosperity and stability throughout and beyond the Middle East that puts American lives at risk.”
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Thursday, February 02, 2017
Pass the Gatorade - How Much Did the US Election Really Matter? / Politics / US Politics
By: Andy_Sutton
We’ll start out this week by prepping you. This article is going to annoy quite a few people. We’ll warn you up front that neither of us subscribes to the idea of political parties or platforms. We have the Constitution; that is good enough for us. We credit people like Dr. Paul Craig Roberts for having the backbone to be one of the early people to break out the box of pins to pop the balloon of idiocy that has been floating around the past few months. What we’re talking about is the kind of idiocy we haven’t seen since 2008 when one side of the political spectrum swamped into Washington DC and absolutely trashed the place. We’ll see if the other side can do better.
Thursday, February 02, 2017
Unrest Is The Only Growth Industry Left / Politics / US Politics
By: Raul_I_Meijer
Benoît Hamon won the run-off for the presidential nomination of the Socialist party in France last weekend. The party that still, lest we forget, runs the country; current president François Hollande is a Socialist, even if only in name, but he did win the previous election. Hamon ran on a platform of shortening the workweek from 35 to 32 hours, legalizing cannabis and ‘easing’ the country into a universal basic income of €750/month per capita. He’s way left of Hollande, who has a hilariously low approval rating of 4%.