Category: Social Issues
The analysis published under this category are as follows.
Friday, October 29, 2010
French Economy Crippled as Millions Strike and March Against Pension Cuts / Politics / Social Issues
By: Global_Research
Kumaran Ira and Alex Lantier writes: Millions of workers and students took to the streets across France Thursday to protest final approval by the National Assembly of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s pension “reform” bill. The French economy was still crippled by gasoline shortages due to ongoing refinery and port strikes.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Inflation, Food Crisis, Climate Change, The Rising Cost of Survival / Politics / Social Issues
By: Richard_Mills
Socio-economic turmoil - lawlessness, poverty, lack of adequate medical facilities and attention, low to no employment, low wages, disease, no clean drinking water or water for irrigation and shortages of food or unaffordable food can all cause socio-economic pressure to build in many countries that were once stable environments for investment.
In 2007 and 2008 roughly 40 food riots occurred - two of the more publicized examples were when people took to the streets after rising corn prices made tortillas very expensive in Mexico and skyrocketing food prices in Haiti led to the overthrow of that country's Prime Minister.
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Friday, October 29, 2010
The Shifting Financial Sands of Wealth Distribution / Politics / Social Issues
By: Barry_Elias
1913, the Federal Reserve Bank was created and the 16th amendment to the constitution was passed. This amendment provided Congress with the legal authority to tax.
At that time, the share of income earned by the top 1 percent, 0.1 percent, and 0.01 percent were 18.5 percent, 10 percent, and 4.4 percent, respectively. In 1980, these figures were dramatically reduced to 9 percent, 1 percent, and 0.5 percent, but by 2007 they increased significantly to 23.5 percent, 8.5 percent, and 3.0 percent (at or above 1913 levels).
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Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Strangelets, Black Holes and the GOD Particle / Politics / Social Issues
By: Dr_Tom_Termotto
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.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Facebook, A Movie That Gets It Right / Politics / Social Issues
By: Jeffrey_A_Tucker
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.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Economic Crisis and The Protest Movement: French Lessons for U.S. Workers / Politics / Social Issues
By: Shamus_Cooke
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.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
The Haves, The Have Nots and the Dreamless Dead / Politics / Social Issues
By: Trader_Mark
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.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Waves of Strikes Across Europe, the Decay of Democracy / Politics / Social Issues
By: Barry_Grey
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.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Vive la France Vive la Résistance, French Fight Back Against Oligarchy of Racketeers / Politics / Social Issues
By: Mike_Whitney
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:
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Speculators getting rich at your expense / Politics / Social Issues
By: Akhil_Khanna
Speculators are individuals or organizations who place bets on outcomes of certain events likely to take place within a defined time period and earn huge profits on their occurrence. A simple speculation transaction would be to place bets on the results of a sports match. Team A and Team B are playing a football match. 10 people place a bet of $10,000 each that Team A will win and 20 people place a bet of $10,000 each on Team B winning the match. So we have bets of $1,00,000/- on Team A winning and $ 2,00,000/- on Team B winning. If Team A wins, the 10 people who won the bet would get $20,000/- each ($2,00,000 / 10) and the people who bet on Team B would loose all their money. Similarly if Team B wins, the 20 people who won the bet would get $5,000/- ($1,00,000 / 20) each and those who bet on Team A winning will loose all their money.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Atomised Americans / Politics / Social Issues
By: Christopher_Quigley
“This shift from customary conformity to decision making by some other power, in its final stages, results in the dualism of almost totalitarian imperialism and an amorphous mass culture of atomised individuals.
The fundamental all pervasive cause of World instability today is the destruction of communities by the commercialization of all human relationships and the resulting neurosis and psychosis.
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Friday, October 08, 2010
America’s Third World Economy / Politics / Social Issues
By: Paul_Craig_Roberts
For a number of years I reported on the monthly nonfarm payroll jobs data. The data did not support the praises economists were singing to the “New Economy.” The “New Economy” consisted, allegedly, of financial services, innovation, and high-tech services.
This economy was taking the place of the old “dirty fingernail” economy of industry and manufacturing. Education would retrain the workforce, and we would move on to a higher level of prosperity.
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Sunday, October 03, 2010
The Growing Gap Between Rich and Poor in "Classless" America / Politics / Social Issues
By: Global_Research
Jack A. Smith writes: The so-called growing rich-poor gap in "classless" America is a euphemism for the existence of an accelerated class struggle against American workers and the poor by a relatively small minority that possesses or has access to great wealth and power.
The Census Bureau reported Sept. 24 that the income differential between rich and poor Americans was greater in 2009 than any time since such records were kept.
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Wednesday, September 29, 2010
U.S. Social Inequality Income Gap Hits Record High / Politics / Social Issues
By: Global_Research
David Walsh writes: Figures released Tuesday by the US Census Bureau reveal sharply worsening conditions for tens of millions of Americans under the impact of the economic crisis and the accumulation of vast wealth by a relative handful.
Some of the figures, for particular states and regions, are simply staggering. Michigan residents experienced a 6.2 percent decrease in median income in the course of one year, from 2008 to 2009, while Illinois has suffered a 24 percent increase in poverty in the past decade. More than 36 percent of Detroit’s population officially lives in poverty.
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Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Western Civilization Lies Dying / Politics / Social Issues
By: John_Kozy
The Western commercial system exists to extract more from consumers than it supplies in products and services. Its goal is profit and has never been to improve the human condition but to exploit it. When governments institutionalize this system, they place their nations on suicidal paths, because as Jefferson recognized, "Merchants have no country." It is not terrorism that threatens the security of the Western World, it is the Western World's commercial system.
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
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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Wednesday, September 15, 2010
One in Seven Americans Now Living in Poverty / Politics / Social Issues
By: Global_Research
Patrick Martin writes: Census figures for 2009, to be released Thursday, are expected to show that the poverty rate soared last year to nearly 15 percent. One out of every seven Americans is now living below the official poverty level, the highest proportion since the 1960s. One in five American children is living in poverty.
Monday, September 13, 2010
The New U.S. Ghost Towns / Politics / Social Issues
By: Jennifer_Barry
When you think of ghost towns, you probably imagine a mining settlement abandoned once the resource was depleted, like Bannock, Montana or Kolmanskop, Namibia. You may think of tumbleweeds blowing down vacant streets, or sand dunes covering vacant shops.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Patriotism as a Threat to Capitalism / Politics / Social Issues
By: Kel_Kelly
[From The Case for Legalizing Capitalism] - Having learned that the government acts in ways detrimental to its citizens economically, and by causing wars, we should ask exactly why we support our politicians, why we support most of our military operations, and why we support our very national identity. In short, we should ask ourselves why we are patriotic.