Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
The Real 'Merchants of Death' / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: FPIF
Conn Hallinan writes: Accused Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout is a centerpiece for the book Merchant of Death and the model for the Hollywood movie The Lord of War. He is the archetypal bad guy. Washington apparently traded military hardware to the Thais to get him extradited from a Bangkok jail.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Inflation is Not a Concern, Exploiting Bernanke / Politics / Central Banks
By: Fred_Sheehan
It is unfortunate the media does not make better use of an accessible resource: itself. Newspapers and financial TV are generally content to report what is being said today with no reference to the past. There seems to be no memory. A recent instance is Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's opinion that inflation is not a concern. In a sane world, his opinion would not matter much. We live in a more nonsensical atmosphere in which abstractions substitute for reality.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Fahrenheit 451, Those Who Don’t Build Must Burn / Politics / Social Issues
By: James_Quinn
"Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there's your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries of more. School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?” – Captain Beatty in Fahrenheit 451Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, September 20, 2010
U.S. Unemployment, Where are the Jobs? / Politics / Employment
By: Pravda
Most Americans don't really care about the economic minutiae that many of us who study the U.S. economy love to pour over. When it comes to the economy, the typical American citizen just wants to be able to get a good job, make a decent living and put bread on the table for the family. For generations, this arrangement has worked out quite well. The U.S. economy has provided large numbers of middle class jobs and the American people have worked hard and have helped this nation prosper like no other. But now people are starting to notice that something has shifted. Millions of people are looking around and are realizing that the jobs that are supposed to be there are not there anymore.
Monday, September 20, 2010
World's Highest Salaries are Paid in Zurich, Switzerland / Politics / Social Issues
By: Pravda
Switzerland's largest bank, UBS, has published an annual research called "Prices and Earnings," which compared world's largest cities on their costs of living, earnings, and internal purchasing capacities. Moscow was ranked 44th, 42nd and 39th among 73 other cities. The highest prices were registered in Oslo, the capital of Norway. Salaries are the highest in Zurich, where the purchasing capacity is also on a similar level.
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Monday, September 20, 2010
107 MPs Call for Lending Interest Rate Caps to Rein in Legal Loan Sharks / Politics / Debt & Loans
By: Submissions
Landmark gives fresh impetus to the campaign ahead of meeting at Number 10
The 'End Legal Loan Sharking' campaign has received the backing of over 100 MPs ahead of a meeting with Number 10 next week. EDM 660,a parliamentary motion calling for a cap on the cost of credit has now been signed by 107 MPs. MPs from the Conservative Party, Labour Party, Liberal Democrat Party, Democratic Unionist Party, Plaid Cymru, Scottish National Party and Social Democratic and Labour Party are all supporting the EDM.
Monday, September 20, 2010
American Household Entitlements Balloon U.S. Federal Deficit / Politics / US Debt
By: Money_Morning
Don Miller writes:
As many U.S. citizens continue to rail against the ballooning budget deficit, the reality is that most Americans are unwilling to swallow the bitter pill it will take to tame it.
Perhaps that's because nearly half of all Americans live in a household in which someone receives government benefits, more than at any time in history, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.
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Monday, September 20, 2010
Tony Blairs Journey Into Fantasy Land, 624 pages of Excuses for Killing 1 Million People / Politics / UK Politics
By: Global_Research
Dr. David Halpin writes: Your 'Journey' has been long on miles but absent of humanity, reason and law. 'It can only get better'. Could it have got any worse?
Your vapour trails have left millions weeping. One million of those are widows in Iraq, at least 1.2 million humans with their Allah, five million orphans and four million refugees. We will leave out the blood and the mayhem you have left in Afghanistan, Somalia and the Yemen. You sprang from each jet with strange eyes ablaze, with more lies and plans for yet more Muslim decimation. You had been re-fuelled at high altitude by your fellow psychopath Campbell and other 'advisers' like Manning.
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Monday, September 20, 2010
Chavez wants a break from U.S. meddling, Can you blame him? / Politics / Venezuela
By: Mike_Whitney
Most people know that Iran, Russia and Venezuela all have vast oil reserves. And, they also know that Hugo Chavez, Vladimir Putin and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are on Washington's "enemies list". So, why is it so hard for them to connect the dots? Can't they see that the media only demonizes the leaders that stand in the way of the corporate agenda? If Iran's biggest export was pistachios (rather than oil), no one in America would have ever heard of Ahmadinejad. Instead, every time poor guy makes the slightest miscue, his face is splashed across the front pages of US newspapers.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Average American Works 231 Days Just To Support Government / Politics / Taxes
By: Richard_Daughty
The drunker I get, the more it seems to me that you slave away at your stupid job every day of your stupid life, hating every moment of it, reviling all the idiotic people you deal with every hellish day, but you bravely and heroically put up with the aggravation, tedium and ennui because you desperately need the money.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Elizabeth Warren In Office But Not In Power, Bankster's Cheer Tepid Financial Reforms / Politics / Market Regulation
By: Danny_Schechter
Hooray, Elizabeth Warren is to become a Special Assistant to President Obama in charge of setting up the Consumer Protection Bureau that she conceived. Alas, it is not to be the independent agency she wanted but a bureau within the Federal Reserve Bank, a branch of government that is really run by big banks which and did virtually nothing to protect consumers when they needed help the most.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
A Third Sino Japanese War? / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Static_Chaos
For centuries, the relationship between China and Japan may be best described as tense to turbulent with two Sino-Japanese wars all within the last century or so. The accord between the two neighboring Asian countries has progressed in recent years with official visits, trade pact and joint venture agreements.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Roma Deporations in Sarkozy's Vichy France, Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité is a Joke / Politics / Euro-Zone
By: Global_Research
Alex Lantier writes: In the run-up to yesterday’s European Union (EU) summit in Brussels, European officials and heads of state disavowed criticisms of French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s mass deportation of Roma by European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Coalition Government's £100 Billion Economic Gamble Supported By "No Reputable Economic Theory" / Politics / UK Politics
By: Submissions
Today Compass has launched a report which reveals the extent of the Coalition Governments reckless gamble. It is calculated in this new report by the leading left of centre pressure group Compass that the government is making a £100 billion gamble on growing while cutting which is supported by "no reputable economic theory".*
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Saturday, September 18, 2010
The Strategic Outlook: Fear and Uncertainty Have Paths of Their Own / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Global_Intel_Report
Fear and uncertainty create patterns, paths of their own. And societies are again in a mosaic of uncertainty -- and resultant fear -- over the fate and durability of the social and security frameworks once taken for granted. Mass reaction to these fears will trigger transformative change. But there will be opportunities to seize and command change.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
The Governmental Money-Vacuum / Politics / Government Spending
By: Richard_Daughty
The drunker I get, the more it seems to me that you slave away at your stupid job every day of your stupid life, hating every moment of it, reviling all the idiotic people you deal with every hellish day, but you bravely and heroically put up with the aggravation, tedium and ennui because you desperately need the money.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Are Consumers Finally Winning in Washington? / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
This past week the administration announced its choice for the first credit czar at the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This bureau was created as part of the supposed Wall Street reform bill recently passed by Congress. This new bureau, which represents nothing more than another layer of useless Washington bureaucracy, will be housed within the Federal Reserve-- one of the most anti-consumer institutions in Washington.
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Friday, September 17, 2010
Real Versus Fake Crises, Concealing The Risk of An All Out Nuclear War / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Michel_Chossudovsky
We have reached a turning point in our history. The US and its allies are preparing to launch a nuclear war with devastating consequences.
During the Cold War, the concept of "mutual assured destruction" (MAD) was put forth. An understanding of the consequences of nuclear war largely contributed to avoiding the outbreak of war between the US and the Soviet Union.
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Friday, September 17, 2010
Forty-four Million Americans Living in Poverty, Failure of Capitalism? / Politics / US Politics
By: Global_Research
Patrick Martin writes: The number of people living in poverty in America rose to 43.6 million in 2009, the US Census Bureau reported Thursday. This is the largest number since the agency began making such estimates 50 years ago and represents an increase of 3.8 million compared to 2008.
As of last year, one in every seven Americans was poor, according to the government’s definition of poverty. The official poverty rate of 14.3 percent is the highest since 1994.
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Friday, September 17, 2010
China's Next Generation of Leaders, Looking to 2012 / Politics / China
By: STRATFOR
In 2012, the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) leaders will retire and a new generation — the so-called fifth generation — will take the helm. The transition will affect the CPC’s most powerful decision-making organs, determining the makeup of the 18th CPC Central Committee, the Political Bureau (Politburo) of the Central Committee, and most important, the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee that is the core of political power in China.