Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Saturday, November 02, 2013
Conspiracy And The Threat To Democracy / Politics / Propaganda
By: Andrew_McKillop
HYPOCRISY DEMOCRACY
The deluge of news, views, opinions, theory and spin about everything from the weather – weather now means climate change – to why the price of gold is low and Facebook shares are high, or the outlook for economic growth in the US, Europe or Japan is what passes for 24/7 democratic open access information. Everybody has a right to too much bent information, but for the BBC's Brian Wheeler, October 26, the dark side of information – conspiracy theories – are destroying democracy. He says:
Saturday, November 02, 2013
Aung San Suu Kyi Burma's Latest Tyrant / Politics / Dictatorship
By: Global_Research
Guy Horton writes: Aung San Suu Kyi is the international face of Burma and a global icon of courage, endurance and moral authority. But as Guy Horton reports from Burma, she is now actively colluding with the Burmese military’s violent campaigns against minority ethnic and religious groups.
One morning in January this year I stood near the front line between the Kachin Independence and Burma armies. The former was defending some of the last remnants of its territory. The latter was inflicting a massive attack consisting of tens of thousands of troops, supported by helicopter gunships and jet fighter bombers under the direction of the Supreme Command.
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Saturday, November 02, 2013
Entire Fiat Money System is Bankrupt: Demise of the Global US Fiat Dollar Reserve Currency / Politics / Fiat Currency
By: Global_Research
Matthias Chang writes: It’s been a while since I last wrote an article on the on-going financial crisis. I don’t write for the sake of writing, as others do because they have to do so, on account of their subscribers who pay hefty subscription fees and demand their money’s worth.
Major issues or trends do not change on a daily or even monthly basis. A trend may take a few years to run its course and unless there is a major factor that may affect the trend, there is hardly any need to comment any further on the trend or outcomes.
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Saturday, November 02, 2013
Israel's Latest Terror Attacks on Syria and Gaza, Netanyahu Dirty Tricks / Politics / Israel
By: Stephen_Lendman
Israel gets away with daily crimes of war, against humanity and slow-motion genocide. It does so with impunity. It does it because world leaders able to act do nothing.
Failure to hold Israel accountable reflects complicity with crimes too great to ignore. They’ve persisted for decades.
They show no signs of ending. On October 30, reports said Israeli warplanes struck Latakia. It’s Syria’s principle port city. Damascus was attacked. An administration official confirmed what happened.
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Saturday, November 02, 2013
Does the U.S. Dollar Have a Future? / Politics / US Dollar
By: Mike_Whitney
“If the dollar does indeed lose its role as leading international currency, the cost to the United States would probably extend beyond the simple loss of seigniorage, narrowly defined. We would lose the privilege of playing banker to the world, accepting short-term deposits at low interest rates in return for long-term investments at high average rates of return. When combined with other political developments, it might even spell the end of economic and political hegemony.”– Economist Menzie Chinn, “Will the Dollar Remain the World’s Reserve Currency in Five Years?”, CounterPunch 2009
Friday, November 01, 2013
Alan Greenspan Played Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, Federal Reserve Mainstream Media Propaganda / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: Janet_Tavakoli
Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve board (August 1987 – January 31, 2006), recently appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Greenspan said he didn’t see the financial crisis coming; he thought bankers would be better stewards of their capital. That was meant to be a apologia of sorts for the Fed’s bungling oversight of the banking system. According to Greenspan, banks didn’t understand their risks, and neither the Fed nor the banks can forecast well. He added that people on Wall Street are “screwy.” Greenspan says he always thought “screwiness” would wash out, since people “would act rationally in their long term self-interest.”
Friday, November 01, 2013
Europe's What-Else-Is-New Crisis Agenda / Politics / Euro-Zone
By: Andrew_McKillop
ECONOMIC SABOTAGE
Whenever Europe's politicians get bored with the perpetual-crisis agenda, they invent new crises. Recent add-ons feature NSA hacking of Angela Merkel's cellphone, proving she has interesting things to talk about. Why Europe is even further from economic recovery than the USA – in fact a long way – was hopefully one interesting thing she talked about with uninvited American listeners.
Friday, November 01, 2013
Gold, Silver and the Lost Generation / Politics / Gold and Silver 2013
By: Dr_Jeff_Lewis
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil, to one who is striking at the roots." - Henry David Thoreau, 1846
Institutional trust and confidence continues to unravel as less and less participation, combined with isolation, threatens the middle class. As in all major crises throughout Anglo American history, the weight will be carried on the shoulders of the pragmatic caught in the middle.
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Thursday, October 31, 2013
Is Edward Snowden an NSA Mole? / Politics / Intelligence Agencies
By: Stephen_Merrill
As revelations of massive NSA spying across the globe convulse US foreign policy like the superpower has never experienced, one has to marvel at the seamless way whistleblower Edward Snowden has dealt such a powerful series of blows to the fear-inspiring national security intelligence agencies.
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Thursday, October 31, 2013
Kiss Your Pension Goodbye! / Politics / Pensions & Retirement
By: Don_Miller
I was on the reunion committee for my 50-year high school class reunion a few years back. As we tried to track down classmates, we discovered that many—including a few I had known quite well—had died from lung cancer. These folks would light up a cigarette, joke about cancer sticks, cough, and make fun of their addiction. They ignored their symptoms and the constant warnings from their families and doctors, and they suffered the ugly consequences.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
How the NSA Hacked Google and Yahoo! / Politics / Intelligence Agencies
By: Mike_Shedlock
In response to NSA Breaks Into Secure Communication Links of Google and Yahoo I received a few comments worth exploring.
Reader "Fury" commented "True encryption using the RSA algorithm is unbreakable today. No way can the NSA break the prime number encryption that is used, I don't care how many supercomputers they have."
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Thursday, October 31, 2013
NSA Director Keith Alexander Denies Hacking Google or Yahoo Servers / Politics / Intelligence Agencies
By: Bloomberg
Bloomberg Television's Trish Regan interviewed NSA Director Keith Alexander today at Bloomberg Government's "Cybersecurity: Costs and Solutions" conference in Washington D.C. In response to a Washington Post report that claimed the agency has secretly tapped into main communication links that connect data centers internationally, Director Alexander said, NSA infiltration of servers "never happened," The director went on to call the report "spurious," and insisted that the NSA does "not have access to Google servers, Yahoo servers," and that ''those companies work with us, they are compelled to work with us."
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Still Feel Confident About Collecting Your Pension After This? / Politics / Pensions & Retirement
By: Raul_I_Meijer
If your answer to that question is affirmative, I suggest you take a good hard look at what's coming out of Detroit these days. Why don't we just call it a bail-in model, not unlike Cyprus, where the waters are tested for forcing parties who historically thought they were safe from cuts, find they no longer are.
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Wednesday, October 30, 2013
The Coming Carbon Asset Meltdown / Politics / Climate Change
By: Andrew_McKillop
YOU CAN BELIEVE AL GORE
For Al Gore and his investor fund partner David Bloodai, writing in 'Wall St Journal' October 29, what they define as “carbon assets” are headed for a bust. Gore does not say in his article that he had plenty to do with the present and growing crash of intrinsically – not basically but intrinsically - worthless assets, which I define as the motley crew of carbon finance and its related and downstream assets.
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Insurance Companies Profit from Obamacare / Politics / US Politics
By: BATR
No one can reasonably deny that the major Insurance Companies were the driving force behind the writing of the Affordable Care Act legislation. "The health care industry spent nearly $500 million lobbying for health care issues in 2012, and $243 million so far in 2013." Obamacare or Corporate-care: The Writing of the Affordable Care Act, sums up the process.
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Obama Lies to Merkel on NSA Spying / Politics / US Politics
By: Stephen_Lendman
He lied claiming otherwise. He’s a serial liar. He’s a moral coward. He’s a war criminal multiple times over. He did what supporters thought impossible.
He exceeds the worst of George Bush. He plans lots more ways to prove it through 2016. Humanity may not survive the ordeal.
On October 27, Deutche Welle (DW) headlined “Media reports suggest Obama knew NSA spied on Merkel.”
Der Spiegel said NSA’s Special Collection Service (SCS) monitored her cell phone conversations since 2002. Obama lied telling Merkel he knew nothing about it.
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Tuesday, October 29, 2013
India Taken Over by Foreign Banks? / Politics / Banksters
By: Global_Research
Kavaljit Singh writes: On October 12, Raghuram Rajan, the new Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, announced that the RBI will soon issue new rules allowing a more liberal entry of foreign banks in India. “That is going to be a big opening because one could even contemplate taking over Indian banks, small Indian banks and so on,” he stated in Washington at an event organized by the Institute of International Finance, a global banking lobby group.
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
From Sykes Picot To Anarchy In The Arab World / Politics / Middle East
By: Andrew_McKillop
SYKES PICOT AND LENIN
When it was signed in May 1916 the Sykes-Picot-Sazonov agreement was a secret carve-up accord set by the British and French diplomats, Sir Mark Sykes and Georges Picot, and Imperial Russia's foreign minister Sergei Sazonov. In 1916 the deal still included Imperial Russia for setting “spheres” of colonial power and influence in the soon-to-fall Turkish Ottoman empire. After the Bolshevik Revolution in November 1917, Vladimir Lenin found a copy of the agreement in Russian archives. By way of the agreement, Russia would control Turkish Armenia and northern Kurdistan. Lenin and the Communists were happy to widely publish agreement – because to them it was nothing but another Imperial carve-up of dominated peoples – and also fell far short of what Russia had expected from the deal, especially concerning Persia or Iran. The Communists totally rejected the deal.
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
The Postal Worker Assumed the Gun Wasn’t Loaded / Politics / Government Spending
By: Don_Miller
A man with a wooden leg worked with my dad at the post office. I could even hear his leg creak as he limped along. Remember, this was long before I needed a hearing aid. When I asked if he'd lost his leg in the war, my dad said "no." It was a hunting accident. Then he launched into a lecture on gun safety. "He assumed the gun was not loaded, and now he is crippled for life."
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Expendable People as a Result of Murderous Academic Economics / Politics / Economic Theory
By: John_Kozy
The English who settled America brought English culture with them. The colonies were nothing but little Englands. When the colonists revolted, they were merely trying to get free of the tyrannical English monarchy, not trying to change the culture. They were perfectly happy with the English way of life. They carried on its practices and adopted the English system of common law.