Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Saturday, December 31, 2016
Trump’s Praise for Putin’s Moral High Ground Exposed Obama’s Vindictiveness / Politics / US Politics
By: Stephen_Lendman
In response to Obama’s new sanctions on Russia, illegal by any standard, Trump praised how Putin handled his action, tweeting “(g)reat move on delay (by V. Putin) - I always knew he was very smart.”
A follow-up related tweet said “Russians are playing #CNN and @NBCNews for such fools…they don’t have a clue! @FoxNews totally gets it.”
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Saturday, December 31, 2016
Barack Obama’s Legacy: War, Debt and Poverty / Politics / US Politics
By: Jeff_Berwick
As 2016 winds down, so does Barack O’Bomber’s $80 million in paid vacations and his legacy of war, debt and poverty.
It’s quite amazing how much one man can ruin a country while playing so much golf.
WAR
Just 12 days after being elected, Barack Obama was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He accepted the prize in Oslo on December 10, 2009.
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Friday, December 30, 2016
2016 the Year of BrExit - Exactly Why it Happened / Politics / BrExit
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Exactly why did BrExit happen in the UK?
It happened because the British Prime Minster David Cameron believed his own fantasy Westminster elite bubble reality to be true, thus in his reality there was ZERO likelihood of the British people voting to leave the European Union 9 months after having surprised the pundits by electing the Conservatives back into office. After all if the rebellious Scottish people had voted to REMAIN within the UK who had the highly vocal and organised Scottish Nationalists in charge of running the Scottish government, then how was possible that the British people, 90% of whom in the 2015 General Election voted for either a Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat REMAIN MP could result in a LEAVE vote outcome.
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Wednesday, December 28, 2016
The Trump Reset, US Empire's Coming Economic, Cyber and Military War With China (2/2) / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Nadeem_Walayat
This is Part 2/2 of my comprehensive analysis on the implications of the Trump Reset of why Trump will War on China both economically and militarily. Part 1 dealt with why Trump represents regime change in the US, and the role Putin's Russia, the Fake News SuperPower played in his election victory and what Russia can expect in gratitude going forward - Regime Change, Russia the Over Hyped Fake News SuperPower (1/2)
ECONOMIC WAR - JOBS
The reality is that the United States and much of the rest of the West have effectively been employing hundreds of millions of low paid chinese slave workers for decades, all without the labour laws or environmental consequences resulting in very cheap goods in western shops, low inflation maintenance of purchasing power for the western masses mostly for the purpose of buying the latest junk imports from Chinese factories designed by western corporations, and by doing so have completely transformed the Chinese economy from inconsequential GDP of $300bln 30 years ago to $12 trillion today, and thus exponentially strengthening a totalitarian state ruled by a communist dictatorship that increasingly seeks to spread its tentacles beyond its borders.
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Wednesday, December 28, 2016
2017: Where The Truth Lies / Politics / Social Issues
By: Raul_I_Meijer
I was surprised to see how surprised I was, like I’m sure millions of people were, to see the term ‘fake news’ pop up in what are still called ‘respectable’ (which is by now really just another word for ‘old’) news outlets.
Because a huge part of what they have been feeding their readers and viewers for years is that very thing: fake news. Who needs a bunch of bored highschool kids in small town Montenegro when you have the offices of America’s ‘official’ news sources at your disposal?
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Wednesday, December 28, 2016
War on Christmas / Politics / Religion
By: Walter_Brasch
The annual War on Christmas, which began Black Friday, will finally end at New Year’s Day.
There are three main reasons it ends on New Year’s Day.
First, there are football games that displace the energy the easily-distracted ultra-right wing needs to get through the end of the year.
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Tuesday, December 27, 2016
New Year's Resolutions for Donald Trump and US Congress / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
In the spirit of New Year's, here are four resolutions for president-elect Trump and Congress that will enable them to really make America great again:
1) Audit the Fed....and then end it: The Federal Reserve Bank's easy money polices have eroded the American people's standard of living and facilitated the growth of the welfare-warfare state. The Fed is also responsible for the growth in income inequality. Yet Congress still refuses to pass Audit the Fed, much less end it.
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Tuesday, December 27, 2016
The Trump Reset - Regime Change, Russia the Over Hyped Fake News SuperPower (Part1) / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Nadeem_Walayat
This is the first of a two part in-depth analysis that seeks to forecast key mega-trend geopolitical consequences of the Trump Reset (Part 2: US Empire's Coming Economic, Cyber and Military War With China). Trump's US election win amounts to a pressing of the reset button on that which has passed for at least the past 40 years. Which demands a reappraisal of virtually everything to ascertain not just the impact of Trump but the trend reversal / rebellion underway amongst Western populations against the ruling elites that will impact on the mega-trend drivers of financial market trends for many years if not decades to come. Mega-trends such as climate change, war and emerging technologies such as AI, as a 40 year system based on lies piled on top of lies piled on top of even more lies resulting in delirious populations that were ripe for the likes of BrExit in the UK and Trump as my post US election video attempted to explain why delirium played a key part in Trump's election win which this in-depth analysis acts as a continuation of.
Monday, December 26, 2016
Trump’s Economic Plan is a Betrayal of the People Who Voted for Him / Politics / US Politics
By: Mike_Whitney
Trump’s economic plan has sent stocks ripping higher for six weeks straight. But what’s going to happen to stock prices when Congress gives Trump’s plan a big thumbs down? Has anyone thought about that yet?
And what about the Fed? Does anyone seriously think that Fed chairman Janet Yellen is going to sit on her hands while Trump launches a $1 trillion fiscal stimulus package that triggers a sudden burst of growth followed by a sharp uptick in inflation?
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Sunday, December 25, 2016
Russian Military Plane Crash Spoils Putin's Christmas / New Year Aleppo Surprise Victory Visit / Politics / Syria
By: Nadeem_Walayat
President Vlad Putin planned surprise new years visit and Russian Orthodox Christmas (7th Jan) celebrations at formerly Syria's most populous city, Aleppo, which after 4 years of civil war and the recent Russian military backed onslaught has been turned to rubble. Nevertheless a celebratory Orthodox Christmas scene had been planned to the tunes of the Russian military band playing and singing patriotic songs with russian jets flying over, a military parade through cleared of rubble and white washed streets, all topped off with Vlad Putin's grand finale that follows in the footsteps of whom he was named after Vlad the Impaler, as the pinnacle of festivities will involve Vlad Putin disrobing and bathing in the blood of hundreds of dead Syrian children harvested earlier from the rubble of East Aleppo, leaving fellow Dictator Assad to look on whilst taking notes on how to truly frighten the people into obedience which Vlad Putin is the master of.
Sunday, December 25, 2016
The World Till 2021 – New Development Strategy, Alliance of India, Russia and America... / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Dr_R_M_Mathew
...& Growing Crisis of the Islamic World
The next four years are strategically important for India, Iran, China, Russia and America that are going to redefine the Fate of the Global Economy and many Nations, especially the Islamic Countries and Islamic Terrorism. Along with the Demise of Globalism and Liberalism and the Rise of Populism in the West, including Germany, Traditional Economics or Science of Economics becomes a major causality for it has been reduced into mere Data Manipulations and Unrealistic Projections and Forecasting that have no practical relevance. Even the World Economic Forum cannot offer any solutions for the Global Economic Crisis other than making so many deliberations for the lack of creative ideas and visions.
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Saturday, December 24, 2016
Donald’s Trump Card Facism 101 / Politics / US Presidential Election 2016
By: Richard_Mills
How did Donald Trump get elected? Can we pigeon hole Trump’s ideology?
Very few people expected Donald Trump to win the Republican nomination.
But Trump received more TV coverage than all the other candidates combined on his way to winning the nomination. According to mediaQuant it was the equivalent of $5.2bn worth of free airtime.
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Wednesday, December 21, 2016
The Trump Doctrine: A Work in Progress / Politics / US Politics
By: STRATFOR
By Reva Goujon : The world is in a "frenzy of study," Henry Kissinger said in a recent interview. At home and abroad, strategists and pundits are trying to piece together a blueprint of American foreign policy under U.S. President-elect Donald Trump from a stream of tweets, some campaign slogans, a few eye-catching Cabinet picks, meetings at Trump Tower, and a pingpong match already underway with Beijing. Highbrow intellectualism can be a handicap in this exercise. Commentators among the Washington establishment have been quick to dismiss Trump's foreign policy moves outright as erratic and self-serving over the past few weeks. In an op-ed entitled "Trump Failed His First Foreign Policy Test," for instance, columnist David Ignatius admonished the president-elect for the "hot mess" his phone call with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen precipitated. Trump makes people uncomfortable. It's what he does best, in fact. But how this quality applies to foreign policy is a question that merits deeper exploration than knee-jerk displays of stricken disbelief. After all, as Kissinger noted in his Dec. 18 interview, "a president has to have some core convictions."
Tuesday, December 20, 2016
Trumpenstein ! Who Created Him and Why? / Politics / US Presidential Election 2016
By: GoldCore
The election of Donald Trump has cast the political elite around the world into a state of shock. His arrival, so soon after the titanic Brexit vote, has profoundly undermined the neo liberal political status-quo that has dominated western economies over the past 30 years.
Monday, December 19, 2016
After Aleppo: America Needs a New Syria Policy / Politics / Syria
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
Over the past week, eastern Aleppo was completely brought back under control of the Syrian government. The population began to return to its homes, many of which were abandoned when al-Qaeda-linked rebels took over in 2012. As far as I know, the western mainstream media did not have a single reporter on the ground in Aleppo, but relied on "activists" to inform us that the Syrian army was massacring the civilian population. It hardly makes sense for an army to fight and defeat armed rebels just so it can go in and murder unarmed civilians, but then again not much mainstream reporting on the tragedy in Syria has made sense.
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Monday, December 19, 2016
On the 225th Anniversary of the United States’ Bill of Rights / Politics / US Politics
By: Antonius_Aquinas
This December, 2016, marks the 225th anniversary of the ratification of the first ten amendments to the US Constitution which would become known as the “Bill of Rights.” To secure passage of the Constitution, the framers of the document (the Federalists) had to agree that it would contain explicit language on individual rights.
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Monday, December 19, 2016
What Washington's Rivals Stand to Gain From Hacking the Presidential Campaign / Politics / US Presidential Election 2016
By: STRATFOR
Earlier this month, U.S. President Barack Obama ordered the intelligence community to conduct a full review of the 2016 presidential election before Donald Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2017. The move came amid growing suspicions that Russian intelligence agencies were behind the recent hacking of email accounts belonging to members of the Democratic National Committee and presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta. Though many people's computers have been compromised before, the fact that the attack targeted prominent political figures during a presidential race — and that tens of thousands of emails gained in the process were then posted to WikiLeaks, an organization with clear connections to Russian intelligence — has caused an uproar.
Monday, December 19, 2016
While dismantling Obamacare, U.S. Congress aims for Social Security reform / Politics / Social Issues
By: Michael_T_Bucci
Humans are woefully unprepared to deal with a surprise asteroid or comet, said NASA researcher Dr Joseph Nuth at the annual meeting of American Geophysical Union this month. Woefully, Americans are as unprepared to deal with the most ideologically driven reactionary Congress in this nation’s history that will convene on January 3 and decide the future of Obamacare, safety net programs, housing, EPA, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, among others.
In the elections of Nov. 8, Americans gave Republicans unified control of government. The policy and budget priorities of Congress promise to reflect a center-right conservative ideology for years to come.
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Sunday, December 18, 2016
Freedom in America Disappearing in Plain Sight / Politics / US Politics
By: Stephen_Lendman
The republic was founded “in strict secrecy,” Benjamin Franklin explained. When asked “what have we got, a republic or a monarchy,” he responded “(a) republic, if you can keep it.”
Today he’d say a coup to destroy it is underway in plain sight, the last vestiges of freedom fading with it - a fascist dictatorship emerging, far more ruthless and dangerous than others in world history.
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Saturday, December 17, 2016
Trumping the Environment / Politics / Environmental Issues
By: Walter_Brasch
Whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump was elected, the environment is going to suffer.
Both have supported horizontal fracking, the destruction of the earth to extract oil and gas. The use of fracking is so harmful to the environment and public health that numerous banks refuse to lend funds to individuals who wish to build or sell their houses near drilling operations. Numerous lenders have also refused to loan money to corporations that wish to drill.