Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Friday, August 15, 2014
Life and Times in Propagandistan / Politics / Propaganda
By: Raul_I_Meijer
The UN said earlier this week that in east Ukraine over 1000 people – a conservative estimate – were killed during the last fortnight in the battles over Donetsk and Luhansk. Today, there are again reports of more heavy shelling by the Ukraine “army”, and dozens more deaths, while the Russian aid convoy is still not – allowed – anywhere near the cities.
At this rate, who’s going to be left to receive any of the food and generators and sleeping bags? I have a dark suspicion that if we don’t resolve this issue, and fast, we’re going to regret that for a very long time.
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Thursday, August 14, 2014
Back In Iraq: We Only Want To Save You / Politics / Iraq War
By: Danny_Schechter
New York, New York: Welcome back to Iraq—complete with our ever present WMD’s --- Weapons of Mass deception.
Suddenly, the country we never wanted to have to think about again is back in the news and on our military agenda. So, after a few denials that troops would not, never, and no way be sent, sure’nuff, U.S, boots are back on the ground, but to play a very different “mission.”
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Thursday, August 14, 2014
Russia, Ukraine - Washington Chokes Truth With Lies / Politics / US Politics
By: Andrew_McKillop
Are Western propagandists fooling anyone but themselves?
The latest absurdity coming out of Ukraine, the EU and Washington is that the humanitarian aid that Russia and the Red Cross are trucking into the former Russian territories that comprise eastern Ukraine is a trick, a deception, a pretext for Russia’s invasion forces. Such a preposterous lie tells us that Western propagandists have no respect whatsoever for the intelligence of Western peoples.
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Putin is Winning the New Cold War / Politics / New Cold War
By: Mike_Whitney
“History shows that the United States has benefited politically and economically from wars in Europe. The huge outflow of capital from Europe following the First and Second World Wars, transformed the U.S. into a superpower … Today, faced with economic decline, the US is trying to precipitate another European war to achieve the same objective.”… Sergey Glazyev, Russian politician and economist
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Wednesday, August 13, 2014
ISIS - The Latest Neocon Lies for War / Politics / US Politics
By: LewRockwell
Patrick J. Buchanan writes:
U.S. air strikes since Friday have opened a corridor through which tens of thousands of Yazidis, trapped and starving on a mountain in Iraq, have escaped to safety in Kurdistan.
The Kurds, whose peshmerga fighters were sent reeling by the Islamic State last week, bolstered now by the arrival of U.S. air power, recaptured two towns. But the peshmerga have apparently lost the strategically important town of Jalawla, 20 miles from Iran, the furthest east that ISIS forces have penetrated.
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Israel Is Bad for The Jews / Politics / Israel
By: Danny_Schechter
I would have become a rich man in the Fiddler in The Roof sense if each of the insults, putdowns and venomous asides about my recent article, “Israel Is Bad For The Jews,” had a monetary value.
For so many years, we used to joke, “Five Jews, Ten Opinions,” as a comment about the perennial, ongoing and never ending arguments and debates that made our culture so rich with its many religious tendencies—Reform, Conservative and Orthodox, and their many spinoffs competing over the best way to serve God.
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Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Writing Off America's Losses In Iraq And Ukraine / Politics / US Politics
By: Andrew_McKillop
Spend and Defend
It is impossible to get exact figures and numbers on how many Iraqi civilians and American soldiers died in Iraq post-2003, nor on how much it all cost US taxpayers and the Federal government. We can probably say at least 4,500 American lives, over 100,000 Iraqi lives and $1700 billion spent doing what? Although star players in the rush to war in 2003 such as Paul Wolfowitz memorably said that “Iraq floats on a sea of oil – so we had to intervene” the lure of cheap oil was played down as the main war aim. Today, we can pretty much forget all about that. Obama's present fumbling in a so-called humanitarian war against ISIS will help oil prices upward at a time when basic supply-demand metrics are driving its price below the “magic three digit” level of $100 a barrel.
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Only the Powerful Get Tax Cuts / Politics / Taxes
By: MISES
Crosby Kemper writes: Ninety-seven years ago, a small but ruthlessly determined band of revolutionaries set out to prove that it would be possible to achieve material happiness— and social justice — by replacing free markets with economic planning.
In his classic work Socialism, produced in 1922, just five years after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, Ludwig von Mises predicted the failure of Soviet communism. He pointed out that the planners would be flying blind — lacking the vital information that comes from free-market pricing. In his words, the marketplace acts as “a daily referendum of what is to be produced and who is to produce it.”
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Tuesday, August 12, 2014
New World Order Forbidden History the Ultimate Taboo / Politics / New World Order
By: BATR
People are dumb because they do not know and refuse to learn the real history behind world events. Educational institutions do not function as seekers of truth, but as gatekeepers for narratives that defy common sense and defame historical facts. Society fosters the ultimate taboo against chronicles that differ with the established story of distortions and misdirection. Anyone who dares waver from accepted limits and suppositions immediately is a quack or an extremist. The dreaded label of being a conspiracy theorist, used to smear and marginalize researchers and pundits, is the height of anti-intellectualism and character assassination.
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Kurdistan Oil, Chaos, Power and Arrogance / Politics / Middle East
By: Raul_I_Meijer
Boy, what a day so far; hard to keep up. tell me, is it just me, or has the US really started another round of regime change in Iraq?
Washington wants a new government in the capital, Baghdad, a national unity one, ostensibly to respond to the Islamist State threat.
PM Maliki doesn’t want to go, but also can’t lead such a government (nobody likes him). Iraqi President Fuad Masum then tells him off, so does a court. Maliki sends loyal troops into Baghdad, threatens to take the President to court, and the latter names deputy parliament speaker Haider Al-Abadi as new PM.
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Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Ukraine Will Destroy Itself With New Gas Tax / Politics / Ukraine Civil War
By: OilPrice_Com
Ukraine doesn't need Russia to take it down-Kiev is doing fine destroying itself, most recently with a new tax code that doubles taxes for private gas producers and promises to irreparably cripple new investment in the energy sector at a time when reform and outside investment were the country's only hope.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on August 1 signed off on a new tax code that effectively doubles the tax private gas producers in Ukraine will have to pay, calling into question any new investment, as well as commitment from key producers already operating in the country.
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Monday, August 11, 2014
The Long Descent – Peak Oil And Decline / Politics / Social Issues
By: Andrew_McKillop
Western Decline Paradigm Redux
The current re-edited version of “The Long Descent” from New Society Publishers, by John Michael Greer was first published in 2008 when things looked mighty different for many things, including the economy. In 2008 oil briefly hit $147 per barrel in Nymex trading. Using the doctored US official CPI figures we would need over $160, or in real terms probably north of $170 to beat that today.
Monday, August 11, 2014
Politics of the U.S. Election Cycle and Policy Spin / Politics / US Politics
By: EconMatters
Political Spin
The Republicans are coming out in force on their criticism of President Obama`s decision to utilize primarily air strikes to thwart ISIS aggression in Iraq towards the Kurds and the minority Christian group the Yazidis.
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Monday, August 11, 2014
Syria, Iraq... US Picks Wrong Friends, Wrong Enemies, Wrong Fights / Politics / Middle East
By: Raul_I_Meijer
There are presidential elections in Turkey today, and current prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan looks set to win. Which means the US will have a definitely uncomfortable bedfellow in the Eastern Europe/Middle East region (the borders between the two are not terribly clear) in the coming years.
Erdogan has recently become a very loud opponent of Israel – and all the world’s Jews – , and US relationships with him had already been cooling way before this latest foray into ‘international diplomacy’.
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Monday, August 11, 2014
They’re Lying To Us - Fake Credit Scores / Politics / Credit Cards & Scoring
By: John_Rubino
Like any other weak-willed entity, an over-indebted country eventually finds that formerly-easy things get harder to do. Today, for instance, banks are having trouble attracting customers with the kinds of credit scores that meet previously-set criteria for mortgages and car loans. As a result they’re writing fewer loans and the economy is seeing less debt-fueled growth than policy makers think is ideal for the run-up to the next election.
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Monday, August 11, 2014
Why America is Ungovernable - The Republicans’ Civil War / Politics / US Politics
By: John_Rubino
Back when the republican party was actually the party of small government it was possible for country club moderates (white guys and their trophy wives who love the status quo and want to preserve the tax breaks that make it possible), Christian conservatives (who want the bible to be the template for the US legal system) and libertarians (who want a limited government that exists almost solely to protect property rights and individual freedoms) to coexist. While disagreeing on some major issues like abortion and foreign affairs, they could unite on taxes, regulation, school choice and enough else to hold the party together.
Monday, August 11, 2014
US Sanctions on Russia May Sink the Dollar / Politics / US Dollar
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
The US government's decision to apply more sanctions on Russia is a grave mistake and will only escalate an already tense situation, ultimately harming the US economy itself. While the effect of sanctions on the dollar may not be appreciated in the short term, in the long run these sanctions are just another step toward the dollar's eventual demise as the world's reserve currency.
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Sunday, August 10, 2014
Undercover Look Inside ISIS Islamic State Caliphate - Videos / Politics / ISIS Islamic State
By: Videos
Whilst the Jewish fundamentalist state Israel is busy killing thousands of Palestinian men, women and children these two videos take an undercover look at their new born sibling the Islamic Fundamentalist State, giving a unique window into why they too can so easily kill innocent men, women and children as they, along with Jewish fundamentalists and Evangelical Christian fundamentalists are infected with the same virus that craves fulfillment of prophecy.
Sunday, August 10, 2014
Foreign Policy And Chaos Theory / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Andrew_McKillop
Western Primacy in a Multipolar World
This is a nice theory but neither of its two parts exists. John Kerry, for example heavily uses “multipolar world” as his best excuse for the USA's powerlessness because, he says, the multipolar world is so complex and the different parties all disagree. Two absentees from this theoretical world are Russia and China, and India is drifting away, also. The outright debacle of US (and western) foreign policy now playing out in Iraq underlines there is no such thing as western primacy.
Sunday, August 10, 2014
What if There’s a Real War in Ukraine? / Politics / Ukraine Civil War
By: LewRockwell
Russia and the West are at war – over fruits, veggies, pork, and bank loans. The cause is Ukraine, a vast emptiness formerly unknown to the western world, but now deemed a vital national security interest worthy of a risking a very scary war.
Economic embargos such as those launched by the US against Russia may seem relatively harmless. They are not. Trade sanctions are a form of strategic warfare that is sometimes followed by bullets and shells.