Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Friday, April 25, 2014
The Great American Giveaway / Politics / US Debt
What do the national debt and a designer Hepatitis C drug have in common? This question actually spans two areas near and dear to my heart: economics and medicine. What I’m going to be covering this week is something that I feel is going to be part of a growing trend in America over the coming decades. You see, too many – myself included for quite a while – were asking the wrong questions. Many still are. We shouldn’t be asking what we can do, conventionally speaking, to pay off the national debt because it cannot be done. Consider the unfunded liability portion and that should be obvious to everyone. So what? We just default? That has been suggested. With devaluation we’ve already been doing it, albeit with sleight of hand. Don’t count on the fact that the debtors are ignorant though because they aren’t. This article is going to prove that.
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Thursday, April 24, 2014
Rome Wasn't Burnt In A Day / Politics / Global Economy
The Sack of Rome
With highly suspicious precision on dates, and disputed by many sources, Wikipedia gives the date of Rome's fall as August 24th, 410 AD, following a two-year siege. In fact, Rome had been falling for a long time. It had fallen in different ways at different times, but at each event and in each of the run-up intervals, the Roman Empire had suffered repeated economic and monetary crises, and partial recoveries. The Sack of 410 by the Visigoths can be called the definitive or final fall of Rome but, here again this was in no way an overnight event. The complete loss of Imperial power and its exercize from the city of Rome is placed by many historians at about 435-445 AD. The process of terminal decline and fall therefore took at least 25 years.
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Thursday, April 24, 2014
Putin’s Secret Weapon – How Russia Could Take Down America Without Firing a Single Shot - Video / Politics / US Politics
Here’s a startling fact most investors have never heard: During the last financial meltdown in 2008, when the U.S. economy was on the brink, Russian leaders met with China to persuade them to dump the dollar – and destroy the world’s reserve currency.
Before they could act, the Fed pumped over $700 billion into the economy and delayed their day of reckoning. Still, the threat remains. China holds over $1.2 trillion in U.S. debt today. And with their Russian allies, they could drop the dollar at any moment. This excerpt from our eye-opening documentary called “Meltdown America” explains the severity of this imminent threat:
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Thursday, April 24, 2014
When Does Government Policy Become Criminal Behavior? / Politics / Government Intervention
That’s always a hard question to answer. At what point does government policy become criminal? Since governments make the laws, perhaps never. But then again, countries tend to have constitutions, and government actions can violate those. Still, before you know it, you get trapped and stuck in lawyer lingo limbo, and that’s not what I’m looking for. I’m wondering to what depths a government can go in its actions vis à vis it own people. So maybe I should rephrase this, maybe a more relevant question would be when government policy becomes morally repugnant. There I sure have a few candidates.
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Thursday, April 24, 2014
The Great Recession Grinds On - Measuring Misery around the World / Politics / Social Issues
The Great Recession grinds on. And as it does, politicians of all stripes ask, usually behind closed doors, "Just how miserable are our citizens?" The chattering classes offer a variety of opinions. As it turns out, there is a straightforward way to measure what is termed the misery index.
The late Arthur Okun, a distinguished economist who served as chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers during President Johnson’s administration, developed the original misery index for the United States. Okun’s index is equal to the sum of the inflation and unemployment rates.
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Thursday, April 24, 2014
The U.S. Is Now a Global Satanic Empire / Politics / US Politics
The rulers of the U.S. have just celebrated the most holy day of Christianity, Easter, by massive secret murders of Muslims from the skies by firing Hell Fire missiles into their impoverished homes, village gatherings, and old family automobiles.
These massive killings of the poor around the world with Hell Fire missiles from the heavens have become a Satanic Celebration for the U.S. totalitarian rulers. It fills them with blood lust, power lust, and blinding hubris.
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Tony Blair Backs Dictators Over Freedom in New Fundamentalist Christian Crusade / Politics / Religion
Britain's former Prime Minister who betrayed Britain by taking the country into an illegal 10 year Iraq war on the basis of lies that resulted in more than 150,000 civilians deaths all in the lunacy of praising his own version of the 'man in the sky' cult that goes by the name of the Roman Catholic church, today emerged to further his evangelical fundamentalist message of siding with Russia's Czar Putin in his latest East European war of conquest that first consumed former Tartar Crimea and looks set to ultimately annex half of Ukraine's land mass.
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Wednesday, April 23, 2014
The Death Of Capital / Politics / Resources & Reviews
Elite Psychosis Again
Rather predictably, the elite-serving glove puppet media has decided it is right and good at this time to wheel on its handpicked, most obedient and servile journalists to opine about Piketty's new book “Capital”. This coincides with David Stockman's almost triumphant declaration of Greenspan-and-Bernanke's come-uppance Truth Moment (“America's Housing Fiasco Is On You, Alan Greenspan”).
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Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Bank Depositors Take Up Arms to Protect Their Savings / Politics / Banksters
The Bank of Russia revoked the license for banking operations from the Moscow-based bank Zapadny ("Western").
The reason for the revocation was the failure of the bank to execute the federal laws regulating bank activities and regulations of the Bank of Russia.
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Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Cold War 2.0 / Politics / New Cold War
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
The JIS – Junk Ideology Syndrome / Politics / Social Issues
Global Reach
What I call the JIS has been studied and commented under different names, but the start and end points of political mass movements and political ideology, crystallized as JIS at a peak point, is a process driven by crisis conditions. These can be economic, cultural or national security and geopolitical, or other shocks to society. The examples are numerous and well-documented, and certainly extend from Antiquity. They also exist at a smaller scale in so-called pre-modern non-Western societies.
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
How to Avoid Losing All Your Money / Politics / US Politics
You know what's easier than making millions upon millions of dollars? Losing it...
This is the story of one sports great who thought he was investing conservatively. The problem? He was not investing conservatively at all. In fact he was investing in one of the riskiest assets available today - government bonds. His financial advisor did not advise him of that.
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Tuesday, April 22, 2014
U.S. Mainstream Media Propaganda Setting the Stage for War With Pakistan / Politics / Propaganda
Tony Cartalucci writes: Attempts to paint Pakistan as a dangerous enemy of the West and a prime candidate for military intervention has been made once again by those in the Western media. ABC News, in an article titled, “‘Double dealing’: How Pakistan hid Osama Bin Laden from the U.S. and fueled the war in Afghanistan,” claims that:
What if the United States has been waging the wrong war against the wrong enemy for the last 13 years in Afghanistan?
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Japan - The Twilight Of The Rising Sun / Politics / Japan Economy
US President Barack Obama begins a three-day visit to Japan on Wednesday. As for what he’s going to be talking about, I can give you a hint or two. First of all, there are ongoing tensions between Japan and China, something both nations have a very long history of. And second, these tensions risk flaring up as they move towards intensifying domestic economic troubles, as their exports dwindle.
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Monday, April 21, 2014
Ron Paul on Nevada Standoff a Symptom of Increasing Authoritarianism / Politics / US Politics
The nation's attention has for the past few weeks been riveted by a standoff in Nevada between armed federal agents and the Bundys, a ranching family who believe the federal government is exceeding its authority by accessing "fees" against ranchers who graze cattle on government lands. Outrage over the government's use of armed agents to forcibly remove the Bundys' cattle led many Americans to travel to Nevada to engage in non-violent civil disobedience in support of the family.
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Monday, April 21, 2014
Extreme Climate Change And Life On This Planet / Politics / Climate Change
Elite Climate Change and Global Warming (CCGW)
There is no need to dwell on the political elite theory and fear of CCGW except that its main goal is to enrich the crony capitalist “carbon finance” industry and reward techno-geek start ups rushing their newest gimmick able to store sunlight for nighttime use to market, and then to IPO, powered by free sunshine! The elite doomster theme of CCGW is essentially no different from that of former Nazi ideologist Gunther Schwab. In his 1958 book “Dance With The Devil” he melded Goethe's Faust with Svante Arrhenius' original CO2 global warming theory, which by 1908 was defined, debated and discussed – and disputed – in scientific circles. Schwab used his Nazi-flavored version of CCGW theory to make an “Appeal to Humanity”, to abandon non-Aryan industry and cut CO2 emissions.
Sunday, April 20, 2014
The CIA Through The Looking-Glass / Politics / Intelligence Agencies
The US Empire’s Eyes and First Sword
“The distance is so great between how we live and how we ought to live that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done learns his ruin rather than his preservation; because a man who wants to make a profession of goodness in everything is bound to come to ruin among so many who are not good.” Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (1513)
The Central Intelligence Agency was established in 1947. For the first time, a separate civilian organization became the command center for all US intelligence rather than the Pentagon. Covert operations were explicitly authorized by the new law.
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Sunday, April 20, 2014
Ukraine, War Fever, Sanity and a Daisy / Politics / GeoPolitics
The Ukraine imbroglio has left this writer and others swimming against two mutually opposing perpetual tides preempting objectivity.
Firstly, war fever has been induced in the U.S. population as it has in the Russian people, this is a given. Secondly, to geopolitical analysts there are no independent sources of news to be found in the world (including Asia). One either believes Mr. Obama or one believes Mr. Putin and the web will provide every rationale needed to support either side, as well as provide a smorgasbord of conspiracy theories that support one or the other side, but not both sides.
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Saturday, April 19, 2014
America has Become a Police State / Politics / US Politics
Kourosh Ziabari writes: In the far past, I used to look skeptically at those who believed and maintained that the United States is moving in the direction of becoming a rogue, police state. After all, nearly every single American media outlet propagates this belief that the United States is a “beacon of freedom”, and many people around the globe tend to accept it. Moreover, every year, thousands of people from different parts of the world immigrate to the States in search of a better and more prosperous life, having believed in the hidden power of this beacon of freedom in revolutionizing their lives. But now, I’ve come to the understanding that this is not the whole story, and even those who wishfully move to America to realize their dreams, find after a while that their hopes were in vain.
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Saturday, April 19, 2014
Elite Herd Psychology And War By Default / Politics / GeoPolitics
Seven Types of Schizophrenia
The earliest clinical definition of schizophrenia and the schizoid denial of reality dates to 1911 and the Swiss psychologist Eugen Bleuler, who moved on from previous medical definitions of dementia, by including the key parameter of “positive and negative” schizoid states. The number of these states is still a question of debate among psychiatrists, biologists, and political scientists and historians, seeking explanations for deliberately irrational individual behavior and the mass behavior of elites.