Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Monday, September 24, 2012
When Is A Terrorist No Longer A Terrorist? / Politics / US Politics
By: Danny_Schechter
Question: When is a terrorist a terrorist?
Answer: When the US government says so.
When the Mujhadeen in Afghanistan were assassinating members of their government and the Russian troops dispatched to support it, they were, in Washington’s view, freedom fighters, even as their enemies branded them terrorists.
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Monday, September 24, 2012
What Is Energy and What Role Do We Play Within It? / Politics / Social Issues
By: DK_Matai
Albert Einstein's famous equation E=mc2 shows us that everything is made up of energy. Science demonstrates that energy is the building block of all matter and exchanges with everything else at all times in a most complex dynamic. Everything in this universe is ultimately made up of that same energy. It is just present in different forms and different shapes. The energy that composes our bodies is indeed the same one that composes the building materials of our homes and the animals and the trees found outside. It is all just the same!
Sunday, September 23, 2012
America and Western Democracy Were Founded On a Conspiracy Theory / Politics / Conspiracy Theory
By: Washingtons_Blog
The Constitution, Magna Carta and Democracy Itself Are Based on the Idea that – Without Checks and Balances – Those In Power Will Take Advantage of Us
America was founded on a conspiracy theory: that Britain’s King George was conspiring against the colonists by all his actions.
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Sunday, September 23, 2012
QE Shell Game, the Fed's Latest Scam / Politics / Quantitative Easing
By: Stephen_Lendman
Now you see it. Now you don't. QE III is the Fed's latest scam. A previous article quoted PIMCO's Bill Gross. He called it money printing "till the cows come home."
Sunday, September 23, 2012
The Fiat Currency Cyclone Gathers / Politics / Fiat Currency
By: Stephen_Merrill
The present experience of the United States and Europe from the abuse of fiat money has been a recurring drama for millennia. Kingdoms, the reign of pharaohs, oligarchies, dictatorships, republics and empires have imploded from within largely due to discredited money.
The Western Roman Empire fell a thousand years earlier than the Byzantine Romans by debasing the silver content of coinage to fund military adventures. The debasement of the pound helped the sun set across the British Empire. In the last century national fiat currencies have drown in hyperinflation in Germany, Italy, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Zimbabwe and Argentina (three times) to name the ones that come to mind to a Westerner.
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Digital Technologies vs. Establishment Truth Suppression / Politics / Social Issues
By: Gary_North
I am going to tell you some stories. To make it interesting, I will begin with one which could make one of my readers the deal of a lifetime. It ends on September 30. He who hesitates is lost.
I begin with the obvious: the falling cost of Internet communications is revolutionizing the spread of knowledge. In doing so, it is undermining every establishment. Every establishment rests mush of its power on official views of the past. This is seen in the novel by George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four. The tyrant who enforces the totalitarian state says this. "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."
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Saturday, September 22, 2012
NHS GP's Ignoring Cancer Symptoms, Putting Profit Before Patients / Politics / NHS
By: Nadeem_Walayat
The National Cancer Intelligence Network reports that 1/4 of patients are only eventually being diagnosed when seriously ill in casualty which can have a disastrous impact on their survival chances.
Sara Hiom, of Cancer Research UK and one of the authors of the study states: "Our findings showing the sheer numbers of cancer patients first seen as an emergency are startling.
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Saturday, September 22, 2012
Fed Money Printing Inflationary Round Trip / Politics / Central Banks
By: Fred_Sheehan
The dedicated resuscitators of the Federal Reserve are doomed to lose their battle with sanity, akin to Alexander Scriabin's fate in search of the lost chord. Chairman Ben S. Bernanke has not a clue where this will end. Our doleful fate is leading staunch establishmentarians to sink the Fed.
A group of worthies tacked a manifesto to the September 17, 2012, Wall Street Journal editorial page. The five authors are insiders; insiders being those who created and benefited from the false economic structure compounded over the past four decades. " J'accuse" should have been the title under which they charged the Federal Reserve with committing every crime under the sun.
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Friday, September 21, 2012
Food Stamp America, Poverty’s Roll Call / Politics / US Politics
By: Richard_Mills
Increases in taxes and, to a lesser extent, reductions in spending, the infamous $600 billion “Fiscal Cliff” that’s looming in the new year, will reduce the US federal budget deficit by 4 - 5.1 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
But at what cost?
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Friday, September 21, 2012
TARP Bailout Fraud: Where Did the Money Go? / Politics / Credit Crisis Bailouts
By: Stephen_Lendman
On December 8, 2008, the Senate confirmed Neil Barofsky’s nomination as Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) watchdog. He assumed the post of SIGTARP (Special Inspector General for TARP).On July 20, 2009, he estimated the $700 billion bailout fund could balloon to $23.7 trillion. Obama administration secrecy conceals what’s essential to reveal. Over $9 trillion is known. Some analysts think true figures may be three times that amount. Only crooked bankers and corrupt bureaucrats know for sure.
In February 2009, Barofsky submitted an initial report to Congress. In the past two months, he said, Washington handed out hundreds of billions of dollars (like confetti) to troubled financial institutions.
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Friday, September 21, 2012
Politicians and Journalists Least Trusted by the Public / Politics / Social Issues
By: Ian_R_Campbell
Why read: Because in the current turbulent economic times it may prove to be one of the most important things you need to think about - if you haven't already.
Commentary: The Telegraph on September 19 showed ten slides of what it reports to be the results of a survey of the 'ten least trusted professions'. I found it no great surprise that politicians were ranked as 'least trusted' at 7%, but did find it surprising that journalists were ranked as 'second least trusted', also at 7%. Teachers (at 69%) were the most trusted of the ten categories reported.
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Thursday, September 20, 2012
Capitalism is based On Addiction,Craving for More and More Wealth / Politics / Social Issues
By: Global_Research
Colin Todhunter writes: It encourages people to crave for more and more wealth and more and more products. Ridiculously wealthy people want even more riches, resulting in war, exploitation and the immiseration of working folk. In turn, ordinary people have been encouraged to take out ever greater debts in order to purchase an endless stream of goods of dubious worth. This addictive behaviour is ultimately ruinous for the individual, humankind and the environment, which becomes stripped bare in the process.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Hungary Says The IMF And EU Want To Make It A Colony Of Debt Slaves / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Raul_I_Meijer
After publishing Hungary Throws Out Monsanto AND The IMF 10 days ago, I've been keeping an eye on what goes down along the twin Buda and Pest shores of the Danube river.
That's how I came upon a video from Johnny Miller for PressTV, which is sort of Iran's version of Russia Today and Al Jazeera, news channels that find their niche and viability "behind the biases" of western media, in much the same way that the Automatic Earth and numerous other websites do. Of course, there is no lack of people who declare exactly those alternative voices to be biased, but wherever the truth may lie, fact is that many readers and viewers in the west are fed up with, and no longer trust, their traditional media, let alone their political systems. Hungary may prove to be an excellent example of why that is and how it all plays out.
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Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Can Syria's Rebels Overthrow Assad? / Politics / Middle East
By: OilPrice_Com
As rebels attempt to regroup in advance of a new strategy to overpower Assad, and Western powers try to start from scratch with a new rebel formation that is presumably devoid of Salafi Jihadists, the US is calling on third party, non-state actors to arm the rebels in order to avoid becoming embroiled in a geopolitically sensitive conflict just ahead of presidential elections. As attentions turn to the chaos breaking out across the Middle East and North Africa (and even further afield), what chance do the rebels have of pushing Assad to his limits? Michael Bagley, President of the Jellyfish Operations private intelligence boutique, which has adopted an approach that is contrary to the typical "yes-man" characteristics of its competitors, calls a spade a spade.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
The Seeds of Conflict: Anglo-American Axis and Chinese History / Politics / US Politics
By: Ron_Holland
"It is this Anglo-American axis (a 'special relationship') that has dominated the Western world for the past 150 years. It is a secretive and closely guarded group of families and individuals with enormous wealth derived from the implementation of mercantilist central banking. In recent years, America has provided the military power and to a large extent the corporate vehicles that have projected the 'one world' vision of the Anglo-American elite throughout the West, and even to Africa and Asia." – The Daily Bell, Glossary
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Federal Reserve Policy of Legalized Plunder / Politics / Central Banks
By: Casey_Research
“Legalized Plunder – Why we have all been had, fooled and deceived…. and the surprising reason we keep asking for more of the same bad medicine”
Author G Edward Griffin was pilloried from all sides when his book The Creature from Jekyll Island was first published in 1994.
18 years later, when prediction after prediction has come true, and Griffins claim that we are in the middle of enormous changes to society that will affect your lifestyle, your livelihood and your financial wellbeing are playing out every day, people are taking notice.
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Wednesday, September 19, 2012
NHS GP Standards in Free Fall, Complaints Soar by 23%, GMC Sticks Head in Sand / Politics / NHS
By: N_Walayat
To be blunt, NHS GP's are increasingly NOT doing their jobs, ignoring patient symptoms, fail to refer even misleading patients that a referral has been made, forcing patients to pay for routine referrals with the icing on the cake of obnoxious reception staff who see their jobs as doing their up most at hindering patients in pursuit of competent healthcare. This is the message from the latest GMC report that concludes that patient complaints have soared by 23% during 2011, that is resulting in patients increasingly being forced to pay to see competent private GP's therefore in effect patients are being forced to pay twice for healthcare, once through high extortionate taxes to fund the life-styles of increasingly part-time NHS GP's (3day surgery consultation weeks) and then again for actual diagnoses and referral.
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Banking union fallacies 5 - DG MARKT complicit in capital controls? / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: ECB_Watch
According to the FT, Mari Draghi claims that, in response to the sovereign debt crisis, national supervisors have been imposing capital controls on the banks in their jurisdictions. Daniel Gros from CEPS—'who developed original plans for EMU—warned against a similar scenario to underscore 'national bias' in financial regulation.
Monday, September 17, 2012
“The Innocence of Muslims”: Blasphemy as a Political Tactic / Politics / Religion
By: Global_Research
Thierry Meyssan writes: The circulation on the Internet of the trailer for a film, The Innocence of Muslims, sparked demonstrations across the world and resulted in the killing in Benghazi of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya and members of his entourage.
At first glance, these events can be located in the long line leading from Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses to the burnings of the Koran by Pastor Terry Jones. Nevertheless, this new attack differs from other incidents in that the film was not directed at a Western audience but instead was uniquely conceived as an instrument of provocation directed at Muslims.
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Monday, September 17, 2012
Ron Paul - Consequences of U.S. Interventionist Foreign Policy / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
The attack on the US consulate in Libya and the killing of the US Ambassador and several aides is another tragic example of how our interventionist foreign policy undermines our national security. The more the US tries to control the rest of the world, either by democracy promotion, aid to foreign governments, or by bombs, the more events spin out of control into chaos, unintended consequences, and blowback.
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