Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Momentum And Inertia In Debt And Climate / Politics / Social Issues
By: Raul_I_Meijer
Today, we give you another little gem from Nelson Lebo, our dear friend in Wanganui, New Zealand, who equates the inertia in debt (economy) with that of heat (climate), a smart idea that makes a lot of – explanatory – sense. But first, here’s a picture of Nicole and I back in April 2012 (that’s a kitten named Billy T I’m holding in my arms) at the Lebo home that Nelson restored from basically a bare skeleton and which he talks about in this article, in Castle Cliff, one on New Zealand’s poorest neighborhoods. The house is right by a beach with black volcanic sand and – I kid you not – a local seal slash resident beachmaster who was keeping watch lying on top of these huge pieces of eucalyptus driftwood.
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Scientists Predict Increased Rain, Floods for Northeast / Politics / Climate Change
By: Walter_Brasch
Pennsylvanians will experience increased rainfall and floods if data analysis by a Penn State meteorologist and long-term projections by a fisheries biologist, with a specialty in surface water pollution, are accurate.
Paul Knight, senior lecturer in meteorology at Penn State, compiled rainfall data for Pennsylvania from 1895—when recordings were first made—to this year. He says there has been an increase of 10 percent of rainfall during the past century. Until the 1970s, the average rainfall throughout the state was about 42 inches. Beginning in the 1970s, the average began creeping up. “By the 1990s, the increase was noticeable,” he says. The three wettest years on record since 1895 were 2003, 2004, and 2011. The statewide average was 61.5 inches in 2011, the year of Tropical Storm Lee, which caused 18 deaths and about $1.6 billion in damage in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, and devastating flooding in New York and Pennsylvania, especially along the Susquehanna River basin.
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Splitting Up Iraq - It’s All For Israel / Politics / Iraq War
By: Mike_Whitney
“It is no longer plausible to argue that ISIS was a result of unintentional screw ups by the US. It is a clear part of a US strategy to break up the Iran-Iraq-Syria-Hezbollah alliance. Now that strategy may prove to be a total failure and end up backfiring, but make no mistake, ISIS IS the strategy.” - Lysander, Comments line, Moon of Alabama
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Friday, June 20, 2014
Should The West Save Iraq? / Politics / Iraq War
By: Andrew_McKillop
Why Does Obama Hesitate?
Obama hesitated for some while before deciding not to bomb Syrian president Bashr el-Assad out of power. To be sure, Russia helped that decision in a big way. If el-Assad had been chased from power and given a show trial like Saddam Hussein before being killed, or not even given a show trial like Muammar Gaddafi before being killed, fundamentalist Islamic forces would have held sway in Syria.
Friday, June 20, 2014
Congress Makes a Clean Sweep of Corruption – Under the Rug / Politics / Market Regulation
By: Money_Morning
Shah Gilani writes: Do you remember the not-so-big-deal legislation known as the 2012 STOCK Act?
That’s STOCK as in Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge.
Members of the House and Senate passed this act – which in this case should be short for acting like whores -quietly because it pointed to Congress as a bed of lascivious insiders who trade for personal gain through the backroom market-moving horse trading that they massage into laws in D.C.
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Thursday, June 19, 2014
Jordan Next Target for ISIS? / Politics / Middle East
By: STRATFOR
The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, buoyed by its recent successes in Iraq, wants to expand its regional reach. Reports that Iraq has withdrawn forces from western towns close to its 180-kilometer (110-mile) border with Jordan have left Amman feeling vulnerable, and the Hashemite kingdom, certainly a target of interest for the jihadist movement, has deployed additional security personnel along the border.
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Iraq: The Cost of Building a Failed State / Politics / Iraq War
By: Steve_H_Hanke
"Governments constantly choose between telling lies and fighting wars, with the end result always being the same. One will always lead to the other." - Thomas Jefferson
Nobel Laureate George Akerlof uses this edifying quote from Thomas Jefferson to good effect in his foreword of Hossein Askari's excellent read, Conflicts and Wars: Their Fallout and Prevention (Palgrave MacMillan, New York, 2012). Indeed, Prof. Akerlof has this to say about Askari's work:
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Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Central Banker Right Think – The Imams Fight Back / Politics / Central Banks
By: Andrew_McKillop
Not Credible
The central banker fraternity has its own ideological Right Think, like the mob of Tea Towel Heads presently near Baghdad, but the UK glove puppet media has singled out Britain's central bank chief Mark Carney as “unreliable and out of line”. He supposedly infringed central banker right think but what he did wrong is as arcane as Sunni and Shia imams hairsplitting the doctrines of ibn Hanbal and al-Askari. In any case don't be mistaken. Carney is a fully paid-up member of the bankster fraternity. Attacking him is like attacking all the rest.
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
ISIS Crisis Only Tip of the Sunni Ice-berg in Iraq, Whilst Blair Goes Mad / Politics / Iraq War
By: Nadeem_Walayat
The mainstream press has been awash with commentary over the past few days of the apparent miraculous speed at which ISIS has conquered approx 1/3rd of Iraq and now threatens the capital Baghdad, which has prompted has been's such as Tony Blair to step forward and offer his tuppence worth of recommendations for apparently an Iraq War 2 style western assault on the region, suggestions which were immediately denounced by many, including Boris Johnson as being mad.
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Intrigue Lying Behind Iraq's Jihadist Uprising - Saudi Arabia Stirs the Pot / Politics / Middle East
By: STRATFOR
Reva Bhalla writes: Events in Iraq over the past week were perhaps best crystallized in a series of photos produced by the jihadist group the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Sensationally called The Destruction of Sykes-Picot, the pictures confirmed the group's intent to upend nearly a century of history in the Middle East.
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Debt, Civic Decay, Global Disorder - Fourth Turning Accelerating / Politics / Social Issues
By: James_Quinn
“In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party. The catalyst will unfold according to a basic Crisis dynamic that underlies all of these scenarios: An initial spark will trigger a chain reaction of unyielding responses and further emergencies. The core elements of these scenarios (debt, civic decay, global disorder) will matter more than the details, which the catalyst will juxtapose and connect in some unknowable way. If foreign societies are also entering a Fourth Turning, this could accelerate the chain reaction. At home and abroad, these events will reflect the tearing of the civic fabric at points of extreme vulnerability –problem areas where America will have neglected, denied, or delayed needed action.” - The Fourth Turning - Strauss & Howe – 1997
Monday, June 16, 2014
Central Banks Have Become The Markets / Politics / Central Banks
By: Raul_I_Meijer
The cluster, – or pride, or cabal – of global central banks, led by the Bank of Japan have come very close to strangling their respective bond markets to the point suffocation with ultra low interest rates, and therefore together moved $29 trillion they had ‘invested’ there into equity markets. Restoring the world’s $100 trillion bond markets to health, even ever, will be a task so daunting that it’s hard to see one single way it can be done. The Bank of Japan has become the de facto only buyer of its own government’s bonds, with the result that trading has ground to a halt, literally so for a number of days last week. Yields on global bonds have been manipulated down so much that not only pension funds and other traditional large-scale fixed-income buyers feel forced to move into stocks, it’s even come to the point where central banks themselves, too, make that move.
Monday, June 16, 2014
Mafia GDP, Systemic Conspiracy to Alter Economic Data / Politics / Economic Statistics
By: Michael_Pento
Governments are not engaged in a systemic conspiracy to alter economic data after it has been collected. To get a multitude of individuals agreeing on how to fudge information would be far too difficult to control. Instead, it is much easier for a small group of government officials to simply change the formula for calculating the data points that they desire to manipulate to make the information seem more palatable.
Monday, June 16, 2014
US Puppet Regimes in the Muslim World Are All Tyrannies / Politics / Middle East
By: Jack_D_Douglas
The sudden implosion of the vast Iraqi Army of the Baghdad Puppet Regime constructed by the U.S. is an excellent early warning of the fates of the other U.S. puppet states in the Muslim World—Afghanistan, Egypt, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, U.A.E., and lesser ones. As always, there are many differences among these puppet states, including degrees of being puppets of the U.S., but the general picture of them and their situation now are roughly similar.
Monday, June 16, 2014
Ron Paul - Haven't We Already Done Enough Damage in Iraq? / Politics / Iraq War
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
In 2006, I invited the late General Bill Odom to address my Thursday Congressional luncheon group. Gen. Odom, a former NSA director, called the Iraq war "the greatest strategic disaster in American history," and told the surprised audience that he could not understand why Congress had not impeached the president for pushing this disaster on the United States. History continues to prove the General's assessment absolutely correct.
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Sunday, June 15, 2014
Mena War Fever And The Iraq Crude Oil Price Spike / Politics / Iraq War
By: Andrew_McKillop
Libyan Precedent
Whatever Libya's oil production is, this week, it is a lot less than the approximate 1.6 million barrels a day it regularly extracted and shipped during the Muammar Gaddafi era. Libya has no effective government and its last prime minister Ali Zedan fled to Europe in March, replaced by a shifting coalition of rival forces with changing strongmen. His supposed replacement, former Defence minister Abdullah el-Thinni has since late April kept a low profile, sometimes saying he has “stepped down”, and sometimes not. As recently as June 4, he told Reuters that he was stepping down but was also staying on as “interim PM”!
Saturday, June 14, 2014
Black Flags Over Mosul / Politics / Iraq War
By: Mike_Whitney
"The whole of Mosul collapsed today. We’ve fled our homes and neighborhoods, and we’re looking for God’s mercy. We are waiting to die." – Mahmoud Al Taie, resident of Mosul, Wall Street Journal
An army of Sunni fighters affiliated to al Qaida crossed the Syrian border into Iraq on Tuesday, scattering defensive units from the Iraqi security forces, capturing Iraq’s second biggest city of Mosul, and sending 500,000 civilians fleeing for safety. The unexpected jihadi blitz has left President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy in tatters and created a crisis of incalculable magnitude.
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Saturday, June 14, 2014
Governments Stealing Savings Accounts / Politics / Savings Accounts
By: Jeff_Berwick
Governments, by definition, are violent institutions. And taxation, by definition, is theft. These are blatant facts to all but the most indoctrinated and brainwashed. However, governments worldwide are ramping up all manner of other thefts by almost any means necessary.
Friday, June 13, 2014
Who Is To Blame For Iraq? / Politics / Iraq War
By: Andrew_McKillop
Bloomberg Tells All
In a strange article signed only “The Editors” and posted to Bloomberg's web sites, 13 June, its few published Comments were mostly flippant. One said Iraq is or was an illusion that could only be propped up by bombs, but destroying the illusion would also need bombs – therefore Iraq was or is a paradox. In fact, as I have argued in several articles, Iraq was an artificial entity, not created for any specific purpose other than developing its then unknown-size oil resources, without any credible claims to national identity – or unity – and created with no particular life expectancy or “shelf life”, that is either short, medium or long. Concerning the Kurds, however, the Iraq of post-1923 obliterated an existing and functional national entity – Kurdistan – which as we know has returned to the headlines, this week, because it can and will effectively resist any attempt by ISIS, formerly 'Al Qaeda in Iraq' to encroach on Kurdistan. Kirkuk is probably now under Kurd military control.
Friday, June 13, 2014
Iraq Perfect Storm as ISIS Islamic End Times Prophecy Seeks Fulfillment in Sham / Levant / Politics / Iraq War
By: Nadeem_Walayat
It's mission accomplished for George Bush the 'manchurian candidate's' decade long the war on Iraq which has finally succeeded in delivering the country to the Saudi funded ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham), even more extreme than Al-Qeeda that it split from just over a year ago in Syria, who's ultimate aim is to create an Islamic state spanning Syria and much of Iraq that they seek to pull back in time to the 7th century.