Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Sunday, July 06, 2014
Iraq Reverse Evolution - Iraqi Warriors Scattered Sand / Politics / Iraq War
Reverse EvolutionThe geographical region of Iraq is the place in the world most credited with starting human civilization, circa 3100 B.C., along the Euphrates Valley. Ancient Mesopotamia was the very tip of modernity at the outset of recorded history.
Now it seems Iraq is bent on undoing civilization altogether with a return to the chaos of a state-of-nature, where warlords, religious and secular, terrorize the population.
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Sunday, July 06, 2014
What the Hobby Lobby Ruling Means for Obamacare / Politics / Healthcare Sector
Tara Clarke writes: This morning (Monday), the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in the hotly contentious Burwell v. Hobby Lobby case. Here's how it went down, and what the Hobby Lobby ruling means for Obamacare ...
Christian-owned craft store chain Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties Store, a Pennsylvania wood manufacturer owned by a family of Mennonites, said the Obamacare contraception mandate violated their religious freedom by forcing them to pay for certain types of employees' contraception such as the morning after pill.
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Saturday, July 05, 2014
Judaism and Christianity - 2,000 of Lies, 66 Years of State Terrorism / Politics / Religion
Laura Knight-Jadczyk writes: A few years ago, when my book The Secret History of the World was published, I rashly promised that volume 2 would soon be completed and ready for publication. After all, I pretty much knew what I wanted to zoom in on - the topic of Moses and the creation of Judaism - and I already had a good hypothesis and had tons of supplementary support material. I even had a title: The Horns of Moses (triple entendre!) It should be a piece of cake, I thought. And so, I sat down to write.
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Saturday, July 05, 2014
If All Else Fails, You Eat Your Kids / Politics / Social Issues
The global financial system owns our societies, banks, politicians, the whole lot. It therefore owns us too, which includes you, and it’s very counterproductive to deny that. It can do what it wants and what it pleases with impunity. It took the finance wizards surprisingly long to figure that out, but they have. This has enabled them to buy everything and everyone they wanted to buy.
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Thursday, July 03, 2014
France And The End Of 'Sarkozyism' / Politics / France
Once Upon A Time
Not so long ago, but a long time in politics, Nicolas Sarkozy and his win-all neolib political gimmick called “Sarkozyism” was riding high. French voters seemed to love it. But times change.
Thursday, July 03, 2014
Iraq: Examining the Professed Caliphate / Politics / Iraq War
Summary
The Islamic State, previously known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, has changed its name, but otherwise the militant group remains the same. Over the past weekend, a spokesman for the group announced that it had established a caliphate stretching from Diyala province, Iraq, to Aleppo, Syria. The caliphate is a political institution that the Islamic State claims will govern the global Muslim community. "Iraq" and "Levant" have been dropped from the organization's name to reflect its new status.
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Wednesday, July 02, 2014
Similarities Between 1914 And 2014 / Politics / GeoPolitics
As we approach the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I, the (non-mainstream) media is starting to talk about the parallels between then and now. Could it be true that there are similarities? In this article, I would like to discuss some of the intriguing, and frankly disturbing, parallels I see between the period just prior to WWI and today. I think that understanding these parallels is of utmost importance, not only because the events leading up to WWI are, in my view, also the indirect cause of the Second World War, but they are important to understand the similar problems we could be facing today.
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Wednesday, July 02, 2014
Bill Gates On The High Cost Of Being Poor / Politics / Social Issues
Energy Energy Energy
Bill Gates has rotated and swiveled 180-degrees from his former self-righteous stance on the Global Warming issue, or “threat”, and the instant no brainer elite solution of using a lot less energy. Fossil of course. Now he says poor countries must use more energy but we could take the “US paradigm”. The US is a very long way from being an oil exporter and is still a long way from being a natural gas exporter – but is a large and growing coal exporter. The US exports energy! Exporting coal along with Windows (whose constant “upgrades” are always more difficult to beat into usable shape) makes economic sense. This coal is cheap energy – very cheap energy.
Tuesday, July 01, 2014
The Sunni Ramadan Offensive and the Lessons of Tet / Politics / Iraq War
George Friedman writesIn February 1968, the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong launched a general offensive in Vietnam during Tet, the Vietnamese New Year. From mid-1966 onward, the North Vietnamese had found themselves under increasing pressure from American and South Vietnamese forces. They were far from defeated, but they were weakening and the likelihood of their military victory was receding. The North Vietnamese decided to reverse the course of the war militarily and politically by marshaling available forces, retaining only limited reserves and going on the offensive throughout South Vietnam.
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Tuesday, July 01, 2014
Real Origins of the Monotheistic God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam - Video / Politics / Religion
A history of God, the cult of Yahweh and the rewriting of the polytheistic Torah.
Q: What is God?
A: The expression of....
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Monday, June 30, 2014
Minimum Wage, Maximum Stupidity / Politics / Wages
By Doug French, Contributing Editor
The minimum wage should be the easiest issue to understand for the economically savvy. If the government arbitrarily sets a floor for wages above that set by the market, jobs will be lost. Even the Congressional Budget Office admits that 500,000 jobs would be lost with a $10.10 federal minimum wage. Who knows how high the real number would be?
Monday, June 30, 2014
Why Timid Reforms of Central Banks Won’t Work / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
The Federal Reserve System of central banking was a response to the financial panics of 1903 and 1907 that rocked the US financial system. One of the key objectives, if not the only real one, was to counterbalance the nefarious nature of fractional reserve banking. We now have experienced a century of living with a central bank and we must only conclude that it has failed as a counterbalance while making fractional reserve banking an even bigger, more nefarious master. The evidence is clear and reform of the system is not the answer. Only the abolition of this institution will begin to set our economic system on the right path.
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Monday, June 30, 2014
The Death of Independence - BREAKING ALL THE RULES! / Politics / US Politics
July 4th has been the national birth date since the inception of the country. Americans want to celebrate past glories because there are few reasons to believe that the current government or society is worthy of rejoicing. Deifying the Founding Fathers and their wisdom usually is rooted upon the construction of a constitution based on separations of powers and shared authorities with individual states. Lost in this commemoration is the concept of true and lasting independence.
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Monday, June 30, 2014
Ron Paul - Celebrate Independence Day By Opposing Government Tyranny / Politics / US Politics
This week Americans will enjoy Independence Day with family cookouts and fireworks. Flags will be displayed in abundance. Sadly, however, what should be a celebration of the courage of those who risked so much to oppose tyranny will instead be turned into a celebration of government, not liberty. The mainstream media and opportunistic politicians have turned Independence Day into the opposite of what was intended.
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Monday, June 30, 2014
America / Politics / Social Issues
America is in transition as is the world
Eroei and debt are the drivers going forward
Eroei is what will define the future for better or for worse
America is the cradle of innovation = humanity’s greatest chance on eroei
Saturday, June 28, 2014
Did U.S. State Deptartment Organize the Fall of el-Maliki's Iraq? / Politics / Iraq War
Divide and Rule
Push the talk button and the special crowd of American commentators at all times poised to launch a new conspiracy theory will tell you, hand on heart, that the US State Dept. and the Pentagon want the fall of Iraq's el-Maliki regime. They want to divide Iraq into Shia and Sunni camps engaged in constant sectarian warfare. The conspiracy crowd – always reflecting credit on the devious all-knowing American elite that most of these commentators pretend to hate – are rushing to tell us that the ISIS onslaught in Iraq “was all planned by the State Department”.
Friday, June 27, 2014
Iraq - Time To Do Less Not More / Politics / Iraq War
The current situation in Iraq is a modern tragedy. But in more practical terms it is a very stark illustration of the folly of central planning and the limits of state power in the face of entrenched traditions and proven history. Although the parallels aren't perfect, the rapid dissolution of the puppet Iraqi state can offer some stark lessons to those who are optimistic about our current experiment in central bank dominated economic planning.
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Thursday, June 26, 2014
Russia, Iraq, China and Europe - The Four Horsemen of the Geopolitical Apocalypse / Politics / GeoPolitics
Ian Bremmer, NYU professor and head of the geopolitical consulting powerhouse Eurasia Group, consults at the highest levels with both governments and companies because he brings to the table robust geopolitical analysis and a compelling thesis: that we are witnessing “the creative destruction of the old geopolitical order.” We live, as his last book told us, in a “G-0” world. In today’s Outside the Box, Ian spells out what that creative destruction means in terms of events on the ground today. As Ian notes, the most prominent feature of the international landscape this year has been the expansion of geopolitical conflict. That expansion is gaining momentum, he says, creating larger-scale crises and sharpening market volatility.
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Thursday, June 26, 2014
Thawing U.S.-Cuba Relations / Politics / GeoPolitics
A breakthrough in U.S.-Cuba relations may be in the offing. On June 14, Uruguayan President Jose Mujica delivered a letter from U.S. President Barack Obama to Cuban President Raul Castro, according to Uruguayan media June 20, containing an offer to begin talks on a variety of issues, most prominently Washington's longstanding economic embargo. According to Uruguayan media, Obama had asked Mujica to help him improve relations with the island nation when Mujica was in Washington in mid-May. If the report is true, the transaction could be the first step toward reconciliation.
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Thursday, June 26, 2014
It's Going To Get Awful Hot In The USA This Century / Politics / Climate Change
More Deadly Than The US Has Ever Seen
Bloomberg sites are giving wall-to-wall coverage to the latest “shock report” on global warming. The report titled “Risky Business” was commissioned by Michael Bloomberg himself – helping explain its promotion by Bloomberg sites - and his tight-knit group of former and present business and political associates, including ex-Treasury secretaries Henry Paulson, George Schulz and Robert Rubin. The report kicks off the Doomster list with predictions that “by the end of the century, between $238 billion and $507 billion of existing coastal property in the U.S. will likely be subsumed by rising seas, and crop yields in some breadbasket states may decline as much 70 percent”.