Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Monday, July 05, 2010
The New Civil Wars Within the West / Politics / GeoPolitics
Internecine civil wars are underway almost everywhere within the West, and most virulently in the United States of America. They are not yet kinetic wars, but wars of grinding prepositioning, the kind which lead to foregone conclusions without a shot being fired. They are wars of survival, nonetheless, because the basic architecture for national strength is being altered incrementally or dramatically. And, in many cases, consciously.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, July 05, 2010
Young People Should Work for Free / Politics / Employment
With young people nearly shut out of the market (by recession, regulation, "child" labor laws, and ghastly minimum wage laws), I would like to suggest the unthinkable: young people should work for free wherever they can and whenever they can. The reason is to acquire a good reputation and earn a good recommendation. A person who will give you a positive reference on demand is worth gold, and certainly far more than the money you might otherwise earn.
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Monday, July 05, 2010
The IMF Wants to Take Over the World, Banking Colossus in the Making / Politics / Global Financial System
How long did it take to build the Federal Reserve System? Nineteen years. The various interests created and debated banking reform between the years 1894 and 1913. This is documented by Elmus Wicker in his little book The Great Debate on Banking Reform: Nelson Aldrich and the Origins of the Fed.
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Sunday, July 04, 2010
BP Oil Spill Global Catastrophe Reaches Epic Proportions / Politics / Environmental Issues
Dr. Tom Termotto writes: As BP Oil Spill Lets the Genie Out Of The Bottle
Why has it been so difficult to put this GENIE (Oil & Gas) back into the bottle (Macondo Prospect, Gulf of Mexico)? Or at least keep any more of him from coming out?
There are many reasons, on many different levels, but let’s start with BP and the culture of corporate superiority that has evolved at this corporate behemoth since its founding in 1908. We’re talking about the granddaddy here – the Anglo-Persian Oil Company – which was the first to develop the oil and gas reserves discovered in the Middle East. Simply put, when you’re the biggest and the oldest in that neck of the woods, you get used to doing it your way, and ONLY your way.
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Sunday, July 04, 2010
Sloppy G-20 Drunks Can’t Avoid Their Fate / Politics / Government Intervention
In some ways, the recent G-20 gathering in Canada was like a giant Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, in which the heads of drunk governments promised a return to fiscal sobriety. Fat chance...
"Wall Street got drunk."– George W. Bush, July 2008
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Sunday, July 04, 2010
Fourth of July, Put Away the Flags / Politics / US Politics
Remembering Howard Zinn - On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.
Is not nationalism -- that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder -- one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?
Saturday, July 03, 2010
Seize BP Assets: Compounding One Disaster with Another / Politics / US Politics
Carl F. Horowitz writes: The April 20 explosion and subsequent round-the-clock oil spill from a BP-operated deepwater drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico 40 miles off the Louisiana coast has generated justifiable anger across the nation. It's also generated calls for strict sanctions against BP, the most drastic of which is confiscation of all company assets.
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Saturday, July 03, 2010
Overwhelmed by Oil and Toxic Pollutants: The Destuction of an Entire Coastline / Politics / Environmental Issues
Felicity Arbuthnot writes: "The sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours ...
For this, for everything, we are out of tune." (William Wordsworth, 1770-1850.)
Saturday, July 03, 2010
Should We Nuke the BP Gulf Oil Well? / Politics / Environmental Issues
CBS News, the Christian Science Monitor, CNN and Reuters have all asked whether BP should nuke its leaking oil well.
Indeed, some high-level Russian nuclear scientists and oil industry experts have suggested such that approach to stop the Gulf oil gusher. Here is archival footage of the Russians killing a gas leak with a nuclear device.
Saturday, July 03, 2010
U.S. Economy is Stuck in Misery / Politics / US Politics
The middle class is dead. The US has produced a self-sustaining two-class society. Most Lower Class Americans are in bad or uncertain economic shape but the rich and powerful Upper Class crowd keeps making and spending money as if there has been no recession.
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Saturday, July 03, 2010
Postcards from the Gulf, Clouds of Oil Billowing from Seabed may Contain Silver Lining / Politics / Environmental Issues
James Macfarlane writes: There may be something other than misery being telegraphed from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. To the acute observer, something besides crude oil may be seen rising to the surface. It’s a message. A message revealing a deeper truth as to the real meaning of this crisis.
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Saturday, July 03, 2010
Chinese Yaun Manipulation, Currency Reform Bill Is Only a Small First Step / Politics / Market Regulation
It’s nice to see the long-stewing Chinese currency manipulation pot bubbling a bit again, thanks to China’s latest blatantly disingenuous move to allow a token fluctuation or two of the yuan. And it’s great that Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s currency bill is inching towards the floor of the Senate. (The underlying idea, giving American industries formal trade remedies against currency manipulation by foreign governments, was actually thought up several years ago by Kevin Kearns, president of my organization, the U.S. Business & Industry Council.)Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, July 03, 2010
BP Gulf Oil Spill Disaster, An Impossible Well to Cap? / Politics / Environmental Issues
My first article in this series was a query; I listed the theories and evidence I’d seen thus far and asked for readers to respond and tell me I was crazy (which a few of you did, in as many words…much appreciated J). I felt that what I was writing about seemed to me far “too apocalyptic” as one comment on the original article stated. If you read the introduction and conclusion of the first article it becomes rather obvious that I wasn’t advocating, I was inquiring. I received over 100 emails; after investigating those leads here are what I’ve concluded thus far.Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, July 02, 2010
G20 Economic Stimulus Stalemate in Toronto / Politics / Global Economy
Last week, global attention was focused on Toronto as the G-20 gathered to confront the growing financial and economic worries darkening the global economic horizon. In an irony worthy of Orwell, the representatives of the world's top 20 economies (19 countries plus the European Union) managed to ignore the out-of-control spending contained in Western governments' budgets and instead unite behind a banner that they called "financial responsibility." This is akin to a group of Mafiosi holding a summit on business ethics.
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Friday, July 02, 2010
Sheffield NHS Choose Your GP Consultation as Health Life Expectancy Gap Widens / Politics / NHS
The 13 year Labour government has come and gone and still PCT's such as the Sheffield NHS are sat twiddling their thumbs with yet another patient consultation rather than acting to allow patients to be able to choose to register with any GP, as patients remain locked into their local GP surgeries regardless of the huge disparity in actual health care provision as experienced by patients and as demonstrated by the UK GP Patient survey ( http://results.gp-patient.co.uk- table below).
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Thursday, July 01, 2010
How Bad is Alabama's Tax Structure? / Politics / Taxes
Helping the poor is one of the most important things society does. But we do the poor no favors when we promote public policies that perpetuate poverty.
This especially applies to the tax system.
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Thursday, July 01, 2010
Deficit Terrorism and Economic Warfare as Main Street Slips Into Debt Slavery / Politics / US Debt
Wall Street banks have been saved from bankruptcy by governments that are now going bankrupt themselves; but the banks are not returning the favor. Instead, they are engaged in a class war, insisting that the squeezed middle class be even further squeezed to balance over-stressed government budgets. All the perks are going to Wall Street, while Main Street slips into debt slavery. Wall Street needs to be made to pay its fair share, but how?
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Thursday, July 01, 2010
BP and Bhopal, U.S. Double Standards / Politics / US Politics
Bill Quigley and Alex Tuscano writes: When President Barak Obama went after BP and demanded a $20 billion dollar fund be set up for victims of the Gulf oil spill, the people of India were furious. They saw a US double standard. The US demonstrated it values human life within the US more than the lives of the people of India.
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Thursday, July 01, 2010
G20, Colossus and The Forbin Project / Politics / US Politics
The G20 Toronto Summit declaration reminds me of nothing so much as a science-fiction movie made in 1970 called Colossus: The Forbin Project.
The United States builds an impregnable computer system to control its nuclear weapons. As soon as it is activated, it senses a similar Russian system and demands a link – or else it will detonate a nuclear warhead. Once it gains this link, the two computers exchange information. The combination takes over control. It cannot be disconnected without unleashing nuclear catastrophe.
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Thursday, July 01, 2010
The Dismantling of a Suspected Russian Intelligence Operation / Politics / GeoPolitics
The U.S. Department of Justice announced June 28 that an FBI counterintelligence investigation had resulted in the arrest on June 27 of 10 individuals suspected of acting as undeclared agents of a foreign country, in this case, Russia. Eight of the individuals were also accused of money laundering. On June 28, five of the defendants appeared before a federal magistrate in U.S. District Court in Manhattan while three others went before a federal magistrate in Alexandria, Va., and two more went before a U.S. magistrate in Boston. An 11th person named in the criminal complaint was arrested in Cyprus on June 29, posted bail and is currently at large.
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