Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Strangelets, Black Holes and the GOD Particle / Politics / Social Issues
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator that straddles the border of France and Switzerland, is quite busy lately playing with the most basic ingredients of the universe. Much of humanity is completely oblivious to what is taking place there, even though the elemental forces of creation are being manipulated as never before. Perhaps it’s time to take a closer look at some of the more profound questions surrounding this type of scientific research. For the uninitiated, a more thorough description of the LHC with many informative links has been provided below.
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Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Facebook, A Movie That Gets It Right / Politics / Social Issues
Who are the capitalist folk heroes of our time? The Social Network is a film that celebrates one of the greats, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. It might seem at first like an impossibly boring story that resists movie making: how Facebook came to be founded and grew, meeting trials along the way and becoming the giant that it is today.
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Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Engineering a Global Depression to Create a Global Government, “Crisis is an Opportunity” / Politics / Global Economy
The following is a sample from an forthcoming book by Andrew Gavin Marshall on 'Global Government', Global Research Publishers, Montreal. For more by this author on the issue of the economic crisis and global governance, see the recently-released book by the Centre for Research on Globalization, "The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century," co-edited with Michel Chossudovsky, in which the author contributed three chapters on the history of central banking, the rise of a global currency and global central bank, and the political economy of global government.
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Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Economic Crisis and The Protest Movement: French Lessons for U.S. Workers / Politics / Social Issues
The world watches as France once again erupts in protests, demonstrations, and strikes. So much is at stake. If France's corporate-dominated government is able to increase the retirement age, other governments will be empowered to follow through with their plans to do the same.
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Tuesday, October 26, 2010
U.S. Midterm Elections, Obama and Iran / Politics / US Congressional Elections
We are a week away from the 2010 U.S. midterm elections. The outcome is already locked in. Whether the Republicans take the House or the Senate is close to immaterial. It is almost certain that the dynamics of American domestic politics will change. The Democrats will lose their ability to impose cloture in the Senate and thereby shut off debate. Whether they lose the House or not, the Democrats will lose the ability to pass legislation at the will of the House Democratic leadership. The large majority held by the Democrats will be gone, and party discipline will not be strong enough (it never is) to prevent some defections.
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Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Cutting the Welfare State, Paris Dithers While London Shows the Way / Politics / Economic Austerity
Eric Margolis writes: PARIS – Strikes, demonstrations, and blockages of fuel deliveries continue here in Paris, and across France. However, the protests and strikes this week are not as intense as the ones over past weeks. But are promised this month and until year end. More disruptions of ground, underground and air travel are threatened.
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Tuesday, October 26, 2010
United States Judgment Days / Politics / US Politics
On November 2, the voters go to the polls. On November 3, the Federal Reserve goes to the mat.
On November 2, the voters will get to judge the United States Congress. On November 3, the Federal Reserve gets to judge the Federal Reserve.
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Monday, October 25, 2010
Wikileaks, U.S. Iraq War Genocide Civilian Deaths Could Top 1million / Politics / Iraq War
Nicolas Davies writes: The documents on the U.S. War in Iraq published by Wikileaks contained data on 15,000 Iraqis killed in incidents that were previously unreported in the Western media or by the Iraqi Health Ministry, and therefore not counted in compilations of reported Iraqi war deaths by Iraqbodycount.org. The Western media are dutifully adding these 15,000 deaths to their so-called "estimates" of the total numbers of Iraqis killed in the war. This is deceptive. What the unreported deaths really demonstrate is that the passive methodology of these body counts is a woefully inadequate way to try and estimate the number of deaths in a war zone. These 15,000 deaths are only the tip of an iceberg of hundreds of thousands of unreported Iraqi deaths that have already been detected by more serious and scientific epidemiological studies, but the U.S. and British governments have successfully suppressed these studies by confusing the media and the public about their methods and accuracy.
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Monday, October 25, 2010
The Secret War Between Wikileaks and the Pentagon / Politics / US Politics
It happened on a Friday, the anniversary of the first US casualties of the Vietnam War way back in l957. It was also the anniversary, in l964, of French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre’s announcement that he was turning down the Nobel Prize. He later sat as a judge on Bertrand Russell’s Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal, which indicted that conflict’s carnage and lies.
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Monday, October 25, 2010
French Students Instead of Rioting Should Celebrate Pension Reform / Politics / Pensions & Retirement
François Melese writes: Images of angry French students burning vehicles and demonstrating in the streets fill the world's TV screens. Sadly, several young demonstrators have been seriously injured. French youth may be gathering in the streets, and yet the fight is not over education or job-training policies but about a pension reform that postpones retirement.
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Sunday, October 24, 2010
Coalition Government Huge NHS No Spending Cuts Blunder Continues to Bankrupt Britain / Politics / NHS
The coalition government announcement of spending cuts was crippled from the outset as a consequence of ring fencing the biggest spending departments whilst the mainstream media obsessed over 30% cuts to far smaller departments, the consequences of which are that total UK government spending will NOT fall for ANY year.
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Sunday, October 24, 2010
Wikileaks Nukes Pentagon's Lies and Deceit on Iraq and Afghanistan Wars / Politics / Iraq War
Wikileaks may cause irreparable damage to the United States as it continues to declassify the information about the activities of US and allied troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. On October 19th, the Pentagon urged mass media not to distribute the information which appears on Wikileaks not to make the controversial website obtain the reputation of a reliable source of information.
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Sunday, October 24, 2010
Russian State's Strangehold Over Economy Needs to be Cut / Politics / Russia
The Russian economic model must change to ensure stable economic growth to the country. Nearly all developing economies of the world have retrieved the growth which they had prior to the economic crisis. Russia is expected to achieve the same by 2011. The Russian economy mostly depends on oil and gas, and the state shows two much presence in the economy - these are two biggest problems of the Russian economy, according to Newsweek magazine.
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Sunday, October 24, 2010
The Haves, The Have Nots and the Dreamless Dead / Politics / Social Issues
A very nice piece via Reuters (quite lengthy - good for weekend reading to cheer you up) touching on themes we've been very early on. In fact I am starting to see a lot of things in terms of income inequality, wealth concentration, loss of job security, fear of children living worse than their parents, failure of of creating "the American dream" for the masses, and such starting to pop up.
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Saturday, October 23, 2010
The Killing and Reviving of the American Dream / Politics / US Politics
USA Today loves to run lifestyle features that purport to show how we are living, what we are doing, what we like and what we don't like — premised on a collectivist assumption that all our preferences can be tracked and characterized with these aggregate claims.
Most of the time, these features are silly. It's not really true that we are all listening to Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, or tweeting what we had for breakfast.
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Saturday, October 23, 2010
Waves of Strikes Across Europe, the Decay of Democracy / Politics / Social Issues
The growing struggles of the working class in Europe and internationally against mass unemployment and government austerity policies are exposing the reality behind the façade of bourgeois democracy. In every country, the government, whether conservative or nominally “left,” is cutting jobs and wages and slashing social programs in complete disregard for the overwhelming opposition of the population.
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Saturday, October 23, 2010
Vive la France Vive la Résistance, French Fight Back Against Oligarchy of Racketeers / Politics / Social Issues
Thank God for France. While American liberals tremble at the idea of sending an angry e mail to congress for fear that their name will appear on the State Department's list of terrorists, French workers are on the front lines choking on tear gas and fending off billyclubs in hand-to-hand combat with Sarkozy's Gendarmerie. That's because the French haven't forgotten their class roots. When the government gets too big for its britches, people pour out onto to the streets and Paris becomes a warzone replete with overturned Mercedes Benzs, smashed storefront windows, and stacks of smoldering tires issuing pillars of black smoke. This is what democracy looks like when it hasn't been emasculated by decades of propaganda and consumerism. Here's a blurp from the trenches:
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Saturday, October 23, 2010
Iran Begins a New Phase in Uranium Exploration / Politics / Iran
Tehran writes: Iran’s nuclear chief announced beginning of a massive operation to explore for uranium located in central and southern parts of the country, areas presumed to hold large quantities of the said element.
Ali Akbar Salehi, Director of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI), told reporters the country seeks to fulfill its long-term commitments in uranium mining and reach self-sufficiency in that field. ‘We have divided the country into several regions and in each one we are doing some research. But most of our exploration activities are being conducted in the central and southern parts of the country,’ MNA quoted Salehi as saying.
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Saturday, October 23, 2010
Iran Produces 30 kg of Enriched Uranium / Politics / Iran
Tehran writes: Iran has so far produced 30 kilograms of 20 percent enriched uranium up until now, according to the country’s top nuclear official.
In a surprise announcement Ali Akbar Salehi in an interview with Iran’s Press TV on Wednesday said all the efforts are aimed at nuclear sufficiency in production and exploration.
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Saturday, October 23, 2010
China Rejects G20 New Trade Currency Rules and Limits / Politics / Global Financial System
Tehran writes: China rejects any form of rules on currency policy and exports limits among world’s industrialized nations, Reuters reported from South Korea where the G20 meeting is being held this weekend.
Many observers expect the US treasury secretary Timothy Geithner is going to pressure China to accept a new system of currency valuation in which Beijing would agree to allow its currency fluctuate freely and not be pegged to US dollar like the way it’s currently. The move - if accepted by China - should make Chinese industrial products more expensive and therefore reduce trade imbalance in US favor.
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