Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Monday, October 07, 2013
Man Sets Himself on Fire, The Madness of Crumbling Empires / Politics / US Politics
By: Jack_D_Douglas
Setting one’s self on fire is a form of the ancient practice of “committing suicide on the head of someone” to blame them for something serious. The modern form of this as a political protest has been world famous since the Buddhist monk’s self-immolation in South Vietnam which helped to galvanize the Buddhist majority against the U.S. and the U.S.-Francophile puppet regime. That single act against the repressors of Buddhists, the majority of people, was a crucial trigger in the national revolt that led to the total defeat of the vast U.S. war machine even thought it cost the Vietnamese many millions of dead, maimed, wounded, MIA’s, and destroyed families and lives. [Gen. Giap, who led that total defeat of the U.S. by a poor peasant guerrilla army died yesterday at 102.
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Monday, October 07, 2013
Obama Phone Call an Opening for Iran? / Politics / Iran
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
Last week, for the first time since the 1979 Iranian revolution, the US president spoke with his Iranian counterpart. Their 15 minute telephone call was reported to open the door to further high-level discussions. This is a very important event.
I have been saying for years that we should just talk to the Iranians. After all, we talked to the Soviets when they actually had thousands of nuclear missiles pointed at us! The Iranians have none, according to our own intelligence services. I even suggested a few years ago that we should "offer friendship" to them. Unfortunately, so many so-called experts have a stake in keeping tensions high and pushing us to war. They did not want to hear what I was saying. It seems, though, this is beginning to change now with these recent events.
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Sunday, October 06, 2013
US Government Shutdown - Wall Street Signals Concern on Debt Ceiling / Politics / US Debt
By: Global_Research
Bill Van Auken writes: With the partial shutdown of the US government ending its fourth day on Friday, leaving 800,000 federal employees out in the street and vital social, environmental and other services paralyzed, the US Congress appeared no closer to an agreement on a bill that would provide the appropriations to keep the government running in the new fiscal year that began Tuesday.In immediate jeopardy are programs like WIC, which provides supplemental food assistance to some 9 million low-income women, infants and children, and Head Start, with nearly 20,000 children in programs whose grants kick in on October 1 already facing the threat of being locked out.
Sunday, October 06, 2013
An Empire of Money and Privilege in Decline: Portrait of a Tragic Policy Error / Politics / US Debt
By: Jesse
"Everybody, sooner or later, sits down to a banquet of consequences." Robert Louis Stevenson
"They don't have intelligence. They have what I call thintelligence. They see the immediate situation. They think narrowly and they call it 'being focused.' They don't see the surroundings. They don't see the consequences." Michael Crichton
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Sunday, October 06, 2013
US Government Shutdown Theatre Of The Absurd / Politics / US Debt
By: Andrew_McKillop
DEBT AND ANARCHY
Claims in the US media, from left and right, that anarchy is rising and is being encouraged are easy to find. This is nothing more or less than a diversionary tactic to keep everybody's mind off the real subject which is out-of-control debt. Journalists as wide-ranging as arch-keynesian Paul Krugman to left wing senator Elizabeth Warren, and “moderates” like the collective Bloomberg Editorial Board or anonymous editorialists at Wall Street Journal work the anarchy theme.
Sunday, October 06, 2013
Healthcare Revolution - The Road to a New Medical Order / Politics / Healthcare Sector
By: John_Mauldin
There is no doubt that the single most contentious topic I can bring up in a small group discussion or speech is the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. You can feel the tension rise, as everyone has an opinion they want to express – most of them based essentially on preconceived philosophical positions, nearly all of which can be can seen through their own eyes as reasonable and consistent with civilized behavior. And the facts that can be trotted out to support their positions, pro and con, could fill up a document almost as long as the original 2,300+ page bill. I have avoided writing about the Affordable Care Act (ACA) for a variety of reasons but primarily because it is so difficult for us to get our heads around the economic implications.
Sunday, October 06, 2013
John Frum And The Cargo Cult Of Debt / Politics / Global Debt Crisis 2013
By: Andrew_McKillop
JOHN FRUM WHERE?
Wikipedia tells us the Melanesian cargo cult called John Frum arose in the late 1930s, in Vanuatu which was then known as the New Hebrides. The movement was heavily influenced by the existing cult practice of worshipping Keraperamun, a god associated with Vanuatu's highest mountain, Mount Tukosmera. Here, we can already wheel on the Japanese cult of calling anybody friendly and worthy “Fuji San”, or my soul brother Fuji – named for Japan's Mount Fuji which has magical powers.
Saturday, October 05, 2013
Do U.S. Taxpayers Want to Pay For the Shut Down Government Services? / Politics / Government Spending
By: MISES
Ryan McMaken writes: There is a common assumption among politicians that voters want a lot of government services, but don’t want to pay for them. It’s certainly true that taxpayers don’t like paying taxes, and this is demonstrated in the fact that the federal government runs a deficit virtually every single year. If the taxpayers didn’t mind paying the full cost of government, the feds would be able to collect enough in revenue to pay the bills. As it is, the political realities of public opposition to taxation drive the feds to resort to deficit spending to cover their costs.
Saturday, October 05, 2013
Humanitarian Wars, We Love You As We Kill You / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: MISES
Daniel McAdams writes: In February, 2011, Soliman Bouchuiguir told a lie. It was a big one. As the head of the Libyan League for Human Rights, Bouchuiguir initiated a petition that was eventually signed by 70 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) demanding that the US, EU, and UN “mobilize the United Nations and the international community and take immediate action to halt the mass atrocities now being perpetrated by the Libyan government against its own people.”
Saturday, October 05, 2013
Why Obama Should Give his Nobel Peace Prize to Putin / Politics / Russia
By: Pravda
Nomination of President Vladimir Putin for the Nobel Peace Prize is actively discussed in the world. In the West the idea was taken mostly with skepticism, but there is some unexpected support. Putin is thanked for singlehandedly preventing the third world and being able to resist the pro-Israel lobby in the United States.
On Wednesday, the initiative of All-Russian Fund of Education and the International Academy of Spiritual Unity and Cooperation was supported by Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro. He said that if anyone in this historic moment deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, it was President Vladimir Putin who helped to stop a war that threatened the Syrian people, Maduro said as quoted by EFE.
Saturday, October 05, 2013
Cut the Debt by Ending the Empire - Bring the Legions Home / Politics / US Politics
By: LewRockwell
Eric Margolis writes: NEW YORK – “Banana Republicans,” sneered the Democrat’s leader, Senator Harry Reid. It’s not certain if Reid was comparing his conservative Republican opponents to monkeys or citizens of a Central American banana republic.
Either way, Reid’s nasty remark captured the bitter animosity surging through the US Congress as the mighty United States faces running out of money on 18 October.
Friday, October 04, 2013
First U.S. Government Shutdown in 17 Years. If Only It Will Last? / Politics / US Debt
By: Profit_Confidential
At the very core, this U.S. government shutdown means that about one million federal employees will be told to go home without pay. Non-essential services will be stopped until further notice. This will be mainly due to a lack of funds. (Source: Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, September 24, 2013.) National parks will be closed; museums will be shut along with many other services.
Friday, October 04, 2013
U.S. Government Shutdown: Next Step Dollar Collapse? / Politics / US Dollar
By: Sahil_Hafeez
Not a single person might make a conciliatory sentiment for rehashing cautioning that, on account of the grim Obama administration and Republicans, Uncle Sam is closed down. Genuine monetary analysts are currently anticipating mobs in the streets that there is presently nothing the USA can do to avert the fall of its currency, and its economy. It has no reserves to back its worth, and has the most indebted country in the world, is dependant of the credit from America's previous foes. Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, October 03, 2013
China's Ambitions in Xinjiang and Central Asia / Politics / China
By: STRATFOR
In mid-September Chinese President Xi Jinping rounded out a 10-day tour of Central Asia that included state visits to Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, as well the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Bishkek. At each stop, the new president made hearty pledges of financial support and calls for further diplomatic, security and energy cooperation. In Turkmenistan, Xi inaugurated a natural gas field. In Kazakhstan, he agreed to invest $30 billion in energy and transportation projects. In Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, he made similar promises to increase investment and cooperation in the coming years.
Thursday, October 03, 2013
Five New Obamacare Facts You Need to Know / Politics / Healthcare Sector
By: Money_Morning
Tara Clarke writes: The federal government operates these marketplaces, or exchanges, across 36 states, and the Obama administration anticipates seven million people will apply for coverage across the six-month open-enrollment period.
The exchange rollout comes as a wash of just-released polls on Obamacare shows the public hasn't embraced our country's new healthcare law.
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Thursday, October 03, 2013
Renewable Energy-- But Not for America / Politics / Renewable Energy
By: Walter_Brasch
Tokelau, an independent territory of New Zealand, is a small three island archipelago of about 1,400 residents about 300 miles north of American Samoa in the South Pacific. In October 2012, the Polynesian nation turned off the last of its diesel generators and became the first country to use solar power as its only energy source.
Wednesday, October 02, 2013
The Ministry of Truth Wants to Outlaw Free Speech / Politics / US Politics
By: LewRockwell
Butler Shaffer writes: It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us in trouble. It’s the things we know that ain’t so.- Artemus Ward
I blogged, awhile back, on the comment made by a top federal official who, in responding to Edward Snowden’s Internet release of top-secret NSA documents, said that the government would be able to secure the return of such information. The implication was that the government could order Internet providers to reverse the processes by which such documents were distributed to millions of Internet users. Underlying this claim is the apparent belief that Internet providers function as a kind of storehouse of various kinds of information, to which users apply for access. It is not an exaggeration, in their world, to analogize a provider – such as Google – as a public library, making stored information available to users, and being able to demand its return to the “library.”
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Wednesday, October 02, 2013
Government Shutdown Proves Roads Not Possible Without Government / Politics / US Politics
By: Jeff_Berwick
It is often irritating for those of us who don't believe we need violent institutions (ie. government) to keep hearing the same refrain from non-believers over and over again, "But, what about my roads?"
We always reply, exasperated, that pavement is not impossible to have without theft and the fact that roads existed without government even in the US (as Walter Block wrote in "The Privatization of Roads And Highways"). And, TDV's own Gary Gibson has covered the topic many times including, "If One More Person Asks Me About the Roads...".
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Wednesday, October 02, 2013
U.S. Government - What Will "shut down"? / Politics / US Politics
By: Sahil_Hafeez
Democrats and Republicans were unable to intention their contrasts over Obamacare and now the government is closed down.
Republicans in Congress declined to embrace a using bill unless it postponed the Affordable Care Act, the law conveying health protection to poorer Americans, which began to assume Oct. 1. Right away, the new monetary year begins; government authorities won't have the power to use money.
Wednesday, October 02, 2013
Obama Scaring Saudi Arabia / Politics / Middle East
By: Andrew_McKillop
PRINCELY TANTRUMS
Wall Street Journal reported, 29 September, that the Obama administration's overtures to Iran and handling of the Syrian crisis have outraged the Wahabite Kingdom. Saudi Arabian royals still imagine that Obama, and his sole French ally in the fumbled attempt to bomb Syria, want to and will boost the power of armed Sunni rebel groups on the ground in Syria. They want to arm the djihadists, Saudi royals believe, but they could be very wrong.