Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends

The analysis published under this topic are as follows.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Israel Gaza Conflict Impact on West Bank and Jordan / Politics / Middle East

By: STRATFOR

A Palestinian who was wounded Nov. 17 during protests in the West Bank against Israel's ongoing operations in the Gaza Strip has died from his injuries, the Palestinian Ma'an news agency reported Nov. 19. The West Bank has been calm in recent years, but significant protests have been taking place across the eastern Palestinian territory -- which is ruled by Hamas' secular rival, Fatah -- in response to Israel's Operation Pillar of Defense. The protester's death could widen that unrest.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Ron Paul on U.S. States Secession: Are We Free To Go? / Politics / US Politics

By: Dr_Ron_Paul

Is all the recent talk of secession mere sour grapes over the election, or perhaps something deeper? Currently there are active petitions in support of secession for all 50 states, with Texas taking the lead in number of signatures. Texas has well over the number of signatures needed to generate a response from the administration, and while I wouldn't hold my breath on Texas actually seceding, I believe these petitions raise a lot of worthwhile questions about the nature of our union.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Elites Will Make Gazans of Us All / Politics / US Politics

By: Chris_Hedges

Gaza is a window on our coming dystopia. The growing divide between the world’s elite and its miserable masses of humanity is maintained through spiraling violence. Many impoverished regions of the world, which have fallen off the economic cliff, are beginning to resemble Gaza, where 1.6 million Palestinians live in the planet’s largest internment camp. These sacrifice zones, filled with seas of pitifully poor people trapped in squalid slums or mud-walled villages, are increasingly hemmed in by electronic fences, monitored by surveillance cameras and drones and surrounded by border guards or military units that shoot to kill. These nightmarish dystopias extend from sub-Saharan Africa to Pakistan to China. They are places where targeted assassinations are carried out, where brutal military assaults are pressed against peoples left defenseless, without an army, navy or air force. All attempts at resistance, however ineffective, are met with the indiscriminate slaughter that characterizes modern industrial warfare.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Western Elite Using Islamophobia to Serve their Own Interests / Politics / Social Issues

By: Global_Research

Malaysian public intellectual believes that propagating fear and hatred of Muslims is not a new phenomenon and has been rampant for more than a thousand years. Referring to the growth of the population of Muslims, he also says that “some right-wing groups in Europe and North America are fearful of what they see as the Islamic ‘demographic’ threat.”

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Is America Israel's Puppet State? / Politics / US Politics

By: Paul_Craig_Roberts

The United States government and its subject peoples think of the US as “the world’s only superpower.” But how is a country a superpower when its entire government and a majority of the subjects, especially those members of evangelical churches, grovel at the feet of the Israeli Prime Minister? How is a country a superpower when it lacks the power to determine its own foreign policy in the Middle East? Such a country is not a superpower. It is a puppet state.

Monday, November 19, 2012

Will USSR Rise From Ashes Through Eurasian Currency? / Politics / Fiat Currency

By: Pravda

The creation of the supranational currency within the scope of the Customs Union is inevitable, Prime Minister of Armenia, Tigran Sargsyan, believes. According to him, this should be the next stage of integration within the organization, which makes sense from the point of view of simplification of currency circulation in transfers. The new currency may see the light on January 1, 2015.

Monday, November 19, 2012

World Bank Back In Charge Of Global Warming / Politics / Climate Change

By: Andrew_McKillop

Following a Group of 20 finance ministers meeting in Mexico City this month, in the wake of superstorm Sandy, Bank of Italy governor Ignazio Visco told reporters: “The World Bank has gone back to being in charge of climate change,” “For a certain period....., it had stopped”.

This followed the report on climate change by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, commissioned by the World Bank and released this month, which bluntly says "a 4 degC warmer world must be avoided".

Monday, November 19, 2012

U.S. States Secession Movement Ready to Take Hold / Politics / US Politics

By: BATR

All the buzz in the aftermath of the last election is that secession is in the air. Despite the improbable prospects that the globalists, that control the federal government, would allow the upstart masses to leave the dominion of Disunion States, it is promising that the country builds critical mass for dissolution. Secession in this day is not your call to arms in the defense of home. "Honest Abe’s" version of despotism caused many politicians to "Wave the bloody shirt", but today’s crop of brave leaders just asks you to sign a petition to beg for a cordial severance. Just imagine the response from the unprincipled governmental career class. The re-education FEMA facilities are ready to become today’s "Camp Douglas" detention centers.

Monday, November 19, 2012

Ron Paul Never Wielded Any Power / Politics / US Politics

By: Gary_North

On Wednesday, November 14, Ron Paul delivered his final speech at the podium of the United States House of Representatives. It was covered by C-SPAN live, and was later posted on C-SPAN's site. It was soon posted on YouTube, and from there was posted on numerous sites.

Monday, November 19, 2012

Rumors on Israel, Hamas Gaza Cease-Fire / Politics / Israel

By: STRATFOR

Contradictory rumors regarding the outcome of cease-fire negotiations between Hamas and Israel have increased dramatically in recent hours. A Hamas spokesman told Al Jazeera that Israel and Hamas have agreed to 90 percent of the terms of a new cease-fire. Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi is reportedly meeting the evening of Nov. 18 with a delegation led by Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal and another delegation led by Palestinian Islamic Jihad Secretary-General Ramadan Abdullah Shallah. While Israeli officials have told news outlets that the government is in talks with Cairo on a cease-fire, Israeli officials are now denying reports that an Israeli envoy actually traveled to Cairo Nov. 18 for cease-fire talks. Meanwhile, Turkey appears to be trying to integrate itself into the cease-fire talks with reported plans for Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to travel to Gaza on Nov. 20.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

We are forbidden to say this - Gaza is a Concentration Camp / Politics / Israel

By: Submissions

Arthur Silber writes: THE MOST STRIKING and significant quality of our national conversation "is one of overwhelming, oppressive and suffocating unreality.

It is as if everyone knows, but will never acknowledge, that we may speak only in code, and that we may only utilize the safe, empty phrases that we have agreed are 'acceptable' -- phrases and language that are safe precisely because they have been drained of all correspondence to facts.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Gaza: Here we go again, A Terrorist Attack for an Terrorist Attack / Politics / Israel

By: Pravda

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a terrorist attack for a terrorist attack. Sit back ladies and gentlemen for the next round of hypocrisy as Israel plays the victim card, forgetting the fact that it has stolen Palestinian lands, that it continues to bulldoze Palestinian homes, expel people from their lands and loots Palestinian resources. If your home is taken, what do you do?

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Death of the West and Decline of the East / Politics / Global Economy

By: Pravda

We are used since a century to denounce and comment the so-called decline of the West; the great essay of Spengler, unfit for the public of today, was published during the WW1 and it has been quickly fulfilled, Western Europe becoming an American colony and a bureaucratic disaster, both economically and spiritually. Her ageing population is rapidly disappearing and it will be replaced during the next decennials. Nobody should lament this process since Solzhenitsyn observed that the westerners do not know if there are alive! Modern world is a bad dream, said once French philosopher Deleuze, a left-wing genius completely forgotten nowadays in what is left of France (pardon, Hollande...). Statesmen in Europe hate or fear Mr Putin for he is the last statesman with a brain and a soul. This is why there are each year more youngsters fond of him in Western Europe. We will see where this hope will get us to.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Israel Gaza War's for Control of Offshore Natural Gas Fields / Politics / Israel

By: Michel_Chossudovsky

The [December 2008] military invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israeli Forces bears a direct relation to the control and ownership of strategic offshore gas reserves. 

This is a war of conquest. Discovered in 2000, there are extensive gas reserves off the Gaza coastline. 

British Gas (BG Group) and its partner, the Athens based Consolidated Contractors International Company (CCC) owned by Lebanon’s Sabbagh and Koury families, were granted oil and gas exploration rights in a 25 year agreement signed in November 1999 with the Palestinian Authority.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Why We Should Not Fear the Fiscal Cliff / Politics / UK Politics

By: Kevin_Geary

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Optimism Bias: What Keeps Us Alive Today Will Kill Us Tomorrow / Politics / Social Issues

By: Raul_I_Meijer

Definition of a lie: any not entirely accurate representation of the world as we perceive it; what's not spoken can be as crucial as what is.

So yeah, people lie. They, we, all do. Some of us understand the extent to which this is true better than others, but that's probably just because we haven't all spent equal time wondering when it was we first started doing it. Let alone why. Interesting questions. After the fact, it's blindingly obvious why we would want to lie: accomplished liars get to mate faster and more often. Which still is the purpose of life, even though it may not be terribly fashionable to phrase it that way these days.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Targeting Civilians: Israel's Specialty / Politics / Israel

By: Stephen_Lendman

Bullies choose easy adversaries to pummel. Equal fights are shunned. It's the same in schoolyards or battlefields. 

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Israel Military Implements Gaza War, Phase1 of Iran Nuclear Attack Plan / Politics / Middle East

By: Nadeem_Walayat

It is no news that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been preparing the world for an attack against Iran all year, as illustrated by the PM's September visit and speech at the UN (Netanyahu Warns of Attack on Iran). In a continuation of the propaganda war, Channel 4 recently aired a fly on the wall documentary into the suggested thought processes that the Israeli Government, Military and Intelligence agencies were going through during September 2012 as they war gamed the consequences of a unilateral attack against Iran's air defence, missile and nuclear infrastructure, and how the aftermath could play out in terms of world reaction and Iranian military response.

Friday, November 16, 2012

What is the “fiscal cliff”? / Politics / Government Spending

By: Global_Research

Patrick Martin writes: The term “fiscal cliff,” first used by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke last February, refers to the simultaneous expiration of tax cuts and imposition of spending cuts on January 1, 2013.

The American media has seized on the term “fiscal cliff” and promoted it, in part, to suggest that measures which would otherwise be enormously popular—ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy or cutting military spending—are threatening, even dangerous.

Friday, November 16, 2012

What to Expect If We Go Over the Fiscal Cliff? / Politics / Taxes

By: Money_Morning

Keith Fitz-Gerald writes: I'm on the road this week in Las Vegas and Los Angeles and receiving lots of great questions as usual from your fellow Money Morning subscribers.

Here's a few that really caught my attention. Not surprisingly, one of the biggies deals with the fiscal cliff.