Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
The JIS – Junk Ideology Syndrome / Politics / Social Issues
By: Andrew_McKillop
Global Reach
What I call the JIS has been studied and commented under different names, but the start and end points of political mass movements and political ideology, crystallized as JIS at a peak point, is a process driven by crisis conditions. These can be economic, cultural or national security and geopolitical, or other shocks to society. The examples are numerous and well-documented, and certainly extend from Antiquity. They also exist at a smaller scale in so-called pre-modern non-Western societies.
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
How to Avoid Losing All Your Money / Politics / US Politics
By: Jeff_Berwick
You know what's easier than making millions upon millions of dollars? Losing it...
This is the story of one sports great who thought he was investing conservatively. The problem? He was not investing conservatively at all. In fact he was investing in one of the riskiest assets available today - government bonds. His financial advisor did not advise him of that.
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Tuesday, April 22, 2014
U.S. Mainstream Media Propaganda Setting the Stage for War With Pakistan / Politics / Propaganda
By: Global_Research
Tony Cartalucci writes: Attempts to paint Pakistan as a dangerous enemy of the West and a prime candidate for military intervention has been made once again by those in the Western media. ABC News, in an article titled, “‘Double dealing’: How Pakistan hid Osama Bin Laden from the U.S. and fueled the war in Afghanistan,” claims that:
What if the United States has been waging the wrong war against the wrong enemy for the last 13 years in Afghanistan?
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Japan - The Twilight Of The Rising Sun / Politics / Japan Economy
By: Raul_I_Meijer
US President Barack Obama begins a three-day visit to Japan on Wednesday. As for what he’s going to be talking about, I can give you a hint or two. First of all, there are ongoing tensions between Japan and China, something both nations have a very long history of. And second, these tensions risk flaring up as they move towards intensifying domestic economic troubles, as their exports dwindle.
Monday, April 21, 2014
Ron Paul on Nevada Standoff a Symptom of Increasing Authoritarianism / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
The nation's attention has for the past few weeks been riveted by a standoff in Nevada between armed federal agents and the Bundys, a ranching family who believe the federal government is exceeding its authority by accessing "fees" against ranchers who graze cattle on government lands. Outrage over the government's use of armed agents to forcibly remove the Bundys' cattle led many Americans to travel to Nevada to engage in non-violent civil disobedience in support of the family.
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Monday, April 21, 2014
Extreme Climate Change And Life On This Planet / Politics / Climate Change
By: Andrew_McKillop
Elite Climate Change and Global Warming (CCGW)
There is no need to dwell on the political elite theory and fear of CCGW except that its main goal is to enrich the crony capitalist “carbon finance” industry and reward techno-geek start ups rushing their newest gimmick able to store sunlight for nighttime use to market, and then to IPO, powered by free sunshine! The elite doomster theme of CCGW is essentially no different from that of former Nazi ideologist Gunther Schwab. In his 1958 book “Dance With The Devil” he melded Goethe's Faust with Svante Arrhenius' original CO2 global warming theory, which by 1908 was defined, debated and discussed – and disputed – in scientific circles. Schwab used his Nazi-flavored version of CCGW theory to make an “Appeal to Humanity”, to abandon non-Aryan industry and cut CO2 emissions.
Sunday, April 20, 2014
The CIA Through The Looking-Glass / Politics / Intelligence Agencies
By: Stephen_Merrill
The US Empire’s Eyes and First Sword
“The distance is so great between how we live and how we ought to live that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done learns his ruin rather than his preservation; because a man who wants to make a profession of goodness in everything is bound to come to ruin among so many who are not good.” Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (1513)
The Central Intelligence Agency was established in 1947. For the first time, a separate civilian organization became the command center for all US intelligence rather than the Pentagon. Covert operations were explicitly authorized by the new law.
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Sunday, April 20, 2014
Ukraine, War Fever, Sanity and a Daisy / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Michael_T_Bucci
The Ukraine imbroglio has left this writer and others swimming against two mutually opposing perpetual tides preempting objectivity.
Firstly, war fever has been induced in the U.S. population as it has in the Russian people, this is a given. Secondly, to geopolitical analysts there are no independent sources of news to be found in the world (including Asia). One either believes Mr. Obama or one believes Mr. Putin and the web will provide every rationale needed to support either side, as well as provide a smorgasbord of conspiracy theories that support one or the other side, but not both sides.
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Saturday, April 19, 2014
America has Become a Police State / Politics / US Politics
By: Global_Research
Kourosh Ziabari writes: In the far past, I used to look skeptically at those who believed and maintained that the United States is moving in the direction of becoming a rogue, police state. After all, nearly every single American media outlet propagates this belief that the United States is a “beacon of freedom”, and many people around the globe tend to accept it. Moreover, every year, thousands of people from different parts of the world immigrate to the States in search of a better and more prosperous life, having believed in the hidden power of this beacon of freedom in revolutionizing their lives. But now, I’ve come to the understanding that this is not the whole story, and even those who wishfully move to America to realize their dreams, find after a while that their hopes were in vain.
Saturday, April 19, 2014
Elite Herd Psychology And War By Default / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Andrew_McKillop
Seven Types of Schizophrenia
The earliest clinical definition of schizophrenia and the schizoid denial of reality dates to 1911 and the Swiss psychologist Eugen Bleuler, who moved on from previous medical definitions of dementia, by including the key parameter of “positive and negative” schizoid states. The number of these states is still a question of debate among psychiatrists, biologists, and political scientists and historians, seeking explanations for deliberately irrational individual behavior and the mass behavior of elites.
Saturday, April 19, 2014
E.U. Officially Adopts the Bank Depositors Bail-In / Politics / Credit Crisis 2014
By: Andy_Sutton
It has now been more than a year since that fateful weekend in the Mediterranean when everything changed. However, like most of the big changes we’ve seen lately, there is a subtlety afoot that somehow results in few noticing. This should surprise no one really. How the world can change in such dramatic ways without any type of mass awakening is a topic more for the psychologists who help pull the strings and the evil they represent than for anyone involved in the analysis of economics and events, but I say the above so that you know you’re not kidding anyone.
Saturday, April 19, 2014
Ukraine - The Trouble With Natural Gas / Politics / Natural Gas
By: Andrew_McKillop
Cinderella Gas at the Thieves Ball
Simple questions can have complicated answers, but for Cinderella Gas the clock has a habit of chiming 12-midnight all too often. The simple question is how come natural gas in the USA has grave problems to even attain $27.50 per barrel of oil equivalent – but in Japan it can fetch about $100 per barrel equivalent? Do Japanese like expensive things, or what?
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Friday, April 18, 2014
The Obama Game - Is Putin Being Lured Into a Trap? / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Mike_Whitney
“Russia … is now recognized as the center of the global ‘mutiny’ against global dictatorship of the US and EU. Its generally peaceful .. approach is in direct contrast to brutal and destabilizing methods used by the US and EU…. The world is waking up to reality that there actually is, suddenly, some strong and determined resistance to Western imperialism. After decades of darkness, hope is emerging.” – Andre Vltchek, Ukraine: Lies and Realities, CounterPunch
Friday, April 18, 2014
The Growing Threat to Capitalism / Politics / Social Issues
By: Money_Morning
Shah Gilani writes: American exceptionalism, the country's qualitatively demonstrable advantage over other nations, used to be characterized by individualism.
Not to mention egalitarianism, republicanism, and populism.
All of this was supported by the government's laissez-faire approach to America's capitalist economic system.
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Friday, April 18, 2014
From Monroe to the Bush-Obama Doctrines, American KARMA is Long Overdue / Politics / US Politics
By: Michael_T_Bucci
I wait for the first domino to fall on Empire. Will it be a bond collapse? Another total market meltdown? A right-wing/NRA/neo-Confederate fight to the finish against "central government" (Washington) and subsequent martial law? A cathartic race war in New York or Chicago or Detroit or LA against police violence, corrupt politicians, angry white men, phony liberals and decades of exploitation by the middle and upper classes who salute themselves for electing the first African-American president while continuing to institutionalize racism and poverty?
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Thursday, April 17, 2014
Chicago, the Windy City has a $26.5 Billion Pension Problem / Politics / US Debt
By: Survive-Prosper
Rodney Johnson writes: The Windy City has a $26.5 billion problem — it is short of that amount.
That’s a lot of dough for one town.
Overseers of the city’s finances haven’t kept up with their payments to the city pension funds, while the investment gurus running the funds haven’t been able to make their projected returns.
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Thursday, April 17, 2014
SitComs Not Always a Laughing Matter / Politics / Social Issues
By: Walter_Brasch
My favorite new TV comedy is “Growing Up Fisher.”
It’s the story of a blind lawyer, his 12-year-old son, a mid-teen daughter, and an ex-wife who is trying to return to her adolescent years. The show is based upon the experiences of D.J. Nash.
Thursday, April 17, 2014
Old World Order New World Order, Chaos And Change / Politics / New World Order
By: Andrew_McKillop
Geopolitical Harbingers
Certainly by the closing decades of the 19th century, geopolitical theory was splitting into two camps, that we can call the global seaborne Hegemon theory of US admiral Albert Thayer Mahan, and the pan-Asian landward Hegemon theory of British academic and director of the London School of Economics, Sir Halford Mackinder. In both cases however, whether the coming single global superpower attained that status by sea wars or land wars, military and political-economic conflict was certain as the power blocs collided and the seats of global power shifted. In both cases, either or both land areas and seas or oceans – pivot or shatterbelt zones, and blue water seas and oceans - would remain disputed.
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Thursday, April 17, 2014
Even The US Government Will Abandon the U.S. Dollar / Politics / US Debt
By: Jeff_Berwick
For millions it is already too late.
They won't realize the geopolitical winds which are now blowing. Off in their own lala land, the average American will be focused on sports, celebrities, what the right amount of stealing (taxes) in society is, gay rights, which foreign countries "we" should bomb next, the first woman president, and so on and so forth, while their livelihoods are sacrificed in the name of the US government.
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Thursday, April 17, 2014
Overpopulation Is Not A Problem For Us / Politics / Demographics
By: Raul_I_Meijer
On a day like this, when Bloomberg runs the hilarious and preposterous headline “Euro Periphery Emerges as Haven as Bonds Rise”, and markets are up because the Chinese government announces a 7.4% GDP growth number, which might as well be 4.7% for all we know given the opaqueness and rosy bubbly with which Beijing is known to “calculate” these numbers, let’s talk about something entirely different. And what better to talk about than a topic I know beforehand will antagonize a substantial part of my readership? And add a title to match that?