Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
The Real Reason the US Invaded Afghanistan, Afghan War / Politics / Afghanistan
By: LewRockwell
Russ Baker writes: When the United States decided to invade Afghanistan to grab Osama bin Laden – and failed, but stayed on like an unwanted guest – could it have known that the Afghans were sitting on some of the world’s greatest reserves of mineral wealth?
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
The Declining West: Tragedy or Comedy? / Politics / US Politics
By: Paul_Craig_Roberts
During the Vietnam War, Sweden was an independent country with a moral conscience, and Sweden gave sanctuary to US war protestors who refused the draft. Washington realized the cost to itself and purchased the Swedish government in order to prevent a reoccurrence of moral conscience on the part of any Western government.
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Tuesday, September 11, 2012
China Number Two Man Xi Jinping Assassination Attempt? / Politics / China
By: Jesse
It is hard to tell exactly what is happening in China from these reports of two top officials who were injured on the same night in two separate car accidents, one in which Xi was sandwiched between two military jeeps, and another where He Guoqiang was mysteriously hit from behind by a truck.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
What Makes Mario Draghi So Dangerous For Europe / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Raul_I_Meijer
The plan to "save the euro through unlimited bond-buying" that ECB president Mario Draghi presented last week shows one thing above all, and with blinding clarity to boot - why nobody picks up on it is beyond me: it shows that Draghi is the least suitable person to present any such plan.
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Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Creativity and Empathy: How to Capitalise on Complexity in the Conceptual Age? / Politics / Social Issues
By: DK_Matai
History as-we-know-it is now ending because the dominator culture has led the human species into a blind alley and lost its vitality. As the inevitable chaos approaches, people are now looking for metaphors and answers to their societal and personal quandaries including the type of future their children are likely to inherit. We were reminded by The Prince's Trust recently in regard to rising youth unemployment and youth poverty which has crossed more than twenty percent in the United Kingdom and more than fifty percent in Spain. The Geneva-based International Labour Organisation (ILO) is also projecting global youth unemployment to worsen with the spill over of the euro crisis spreading from advanced to emerging economies. However, when we try to isolate any challenge to resolve it on its own, we find it interlinked with everything else. The crux is no longer about finding the answer; it is to face the answer which already exists courageously, and with full awareness of its interconnectivity with the rest of the whole. The key re-discoveries of the new Conceptual Age -- now unfolding -- are Creativity and Empathy.
Monday, September 10, 2012
Soros Tells Germany to Lead or to Leave the Euro: He’s Right / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Andrew_Butter
George Soros was interviewed by the Financial Times yesterday, his message, prior to a speaking engagement the next day was that if Germany wanted to continue to doggedly promote a hard-currency anti-inflation, pro-austerity stance, then they should leave the Euro.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, September 10, 2012
Rewarding Idiots with Democratic Totalitarianism / Politics / US Politics
By: BATR
Now that the Democrat Party convention concluded their class warfare rally, those with saner minds are left with the task of identifying the magnitude of the sociopathic disease that infects the vast mindset of the worship government sect. The rhetoric of the Left has little trouble with identifying the ills of the world, but when the collectivists start to rattle off their measures to make the world safe for democracy, the ugly fascist face of totalitarianism emerges. The bond among statists, span all ideological spectrums. Commies and Nazis share the same gene. In Amerika, that same defiled DNA proliferates in all the half-wits that still believe that government is or can be a force for good. Essentially, the people are a herd of corruption enablers.
Monday, September 10, 2012
Bailouts and the Wonderland U.S. Economy / Politics / Credit Crisis Bailouts
By: William_Anderson
I guess it is good that the Democratic National Convention is over if for no other reason than Paul Krugman can get some sleep, given his heart was pounding with joy and admiration over the brilliance of the speakers. No doubt, all this fall he will coordinate his columns and blog posts with talking points from the Obama campaign and the DNC, and I am sure that some real howlers are in store for us lucky readers.
Monday, September 10, 2012
Draghi's Fatal Mistake, German Constitutional Court Approval of ESM Not a Done Deal / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Mike_Shedlock
One puzzling aspect of ECB president Mario' Draghi's Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) plan to save the eurozone is his doing so before the German constitutional court had approved the ESM.
In spite of Draghi's emphasis on conditionality, OMT puts Germany directly at risk in an unlimited way. This modification to the ESM makes the constitutional case against it is much stronger.
Monday, September 10, 2012
Central bankers and politicians are running out of ideas / Politics / Credit Crisis 2012
By: Alasdair_Macleod
My father, who at one time was an education minister in the Kenyan government, used to tell a story of a long-forgotten crisis when the leaders in the educational establishment could only turn to him and ask: ”minister, what shall we do?” The point of the story is that these were all highly qualified senior academics, while my father had left school at 16 with no qualifications at all. It amused him.
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Sunday, September 09, 2012
US Sponsored “Islamic Fundamentalism” / Politics / Middle East
By: Global_Research
Benjamin Schett writes: The alliance between the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia helped spread the ideology of fundamentalist Sunni Islam all over the globe. The majority of its victims are not citizens of Western countries, but citizens of countries that U.S. elites consider a threat to their economic and geopolitical interests. Many victims of Sunni extremism (often called Wahhabism or Salafism[1]) are in fact Muslims (often with a secular leftist or nationalist political background), moderate Sunni or members of Shiʿite Islamic faith.
Sunday, September 09, 2012
Governments Spinning Bad Economic News Into Good / Politics / Economic Statistics
By: Paul_Craig_Roberts
Friday’s payroll jobs report says that 96,000 new jobs were created in August and that the unemployment rate (U.3) fell from 8.3% to 8.1%. As 96,000 new jobs are not enough to keep up with population growth, the decline in the U.3 unemployment rate was caused by 368,000 discouraged job seekers giving up on finding employment and dropping out of the work force as measured by U.3. Discouraged workers are not included in the U.3 measure of unemployment, which makes the measure useless. The only purpose of U.3 is to keep bad news out of the news. the U.3 unemployment rate only measures those who have not been discouraged by the inability to find a job and are still actively seeking employment.
Sunday, September 09, 2012
Symptoms and Signs of 'The Shift' / Politics / Social Issues
By: DK_Matai
Are we on the cusp of a new dawn? From Britain to Brazil and from Kenya to China, ATCA 5000 distinguished members in more than 150 countries around the world are beginning to report an unprecedented yet accelerating individual and collective ‘Shift’ in awareness in the last few quarters. The changes appear to be affecting many at the material, physical, emotional, mental and more subtle levels. We have been examining four key interlocking aspects of those thoughts, observations and views expressed one-to-one by distinguished members from around the world in this regard:
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Sunday, September 09, 2012
Most Germans Want Constitutional Court to Kill the Euro-zone Bailout Fund / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Mike_Shedlock
Moment of Recognition
It appears a majority of German citizens have finally had enough of chancellor Angela Merkel saying one thing and doing another in regards to bailouts. They have also had enough of Mario Draghi and his policies.
Saturday, September 08, 2012
State Schools Are an Inevitable Source of Ethnic Conflict / Politics / Educating Children
By: MISES
Mike Reid writes: The great antifascist scholar Ludwig von Mises warned that government schools are an inevitable source of ethnic conflict, because dominant nationalities can use them to indoctrinate children from other cultures, pulling them away from their parents and communities.[1] In Canada, this was explicitly the aim of the Indian residential schools, which sought to "kill the Indian in the child."[2]
Saturday, September 08, 2012
Barack Obama is a Left-wing Social Climber with a Wife Who Loves to Shop / Politics / US Presidential Election 2012
By: Gary_North
In my article on the letter I received from a lawyer who insisted – inaccurately – that Michelle Obama let her license to practice law go inactive when her husband surrendered his license in early 2008, I responded: “Did Romney surrender his license? No. Did either of the Clintons surrender theirs? No. Did Nixon surrender his? No.”
Saturday, September 08, 2012
Euro-zone Debt Crisis, Germany vs Greece, and Spain and... / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Ian_R_Campbell
Why read: Because things can happen very quickly, and it may be that 'push' finally may be coming to 'shove' in the Eurozone.
Commentary: Even if 'push' and 'shove' don't meet in the Eurozone over Greece (and Spain) in the next few weeks and months, time nonetheless seems to be shortening for Greece (and Spain), and eventually 'push' and 'shove' must meet. I have said for months now that:
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Friday, September 07, 2012
Hungary Throws Out Monsanto AND The IMF / Politics / Credit Crisis 2012
By: Raul_I_Meijer
I don't know about you, but I would label my personal knowledge of Hungary as wanting, if not painfully incomplete. It's not an easy country to come to grips with, not least of all of course because Hungarian doesn't look like any western language we know with the possible exception of Finnish. I did visit just after the Wall came down, and remember huge contrasts, almost paradoxes, between rural poverty and a capital, Budapest, that was much richer than other capitals such as Prague, a leftover of Budapest's status as meeting place between western and eastern diplomats and businessmen.
Friday, September 07, 2012
The Fed's Campaign / Politics / Central Banks
By: Peter_Schiff
This past Friday, as Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke delivered his annual address from Jackson Hole - the State of the Dollar, if you will - I couldn't help but hear it as an incumbent's campaign speech. While Wall Street was hoping for some concrete announcement, what we got was a mushy appraisal of the Fed's handling of the financial crisis so far and a suggestion that more 'help' is on the way.
It is important to remember that it's not just President Obama's job on the line in this election; in two years time, the next President will have the opportunity to either reappoint Bernanke or choose someone else. So we must understand what platform Bernanke is running on, as his office has an even greater effect on global markets than the President's.
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Friday, September 07, 2012
Mario Draghi Over and Out / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Fred_Sheehan
A collapsing order will do what it takes to retain power, no matter its abuse of law or decency. Writing in Die Zeit on August 29, 2012, European Central Bank president Mario Draghi wrote (in German): "[I]t should be understood that fulfilling our mandate sometimes requires us to go beyond standard monetary policy tools. When markets are fragmented or influenced by irrational fears, our monetary policy signals do not reach citizens evenly across the euro area. We have to fix such blockages to ensure a single monetary policy and therefore price stability for all euro area citizens. This may at times require exceptional measures. But this is our responsibility as the central bank of the euro area as a whole."