Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Romney Was Right, The Power of Government 'Gifts' For Gaining Power / Politics / US Politics
By: LewRockwell
Patrick J. Buchanan writes: "What the president's campaign did was focus on certain members of his base coalition, give them extraordinary financial gifts from the government and then work very aggressively to turn them out to vote, and that strategy worked."
Thus did political analyst Mitt Romney identify the cause of his defeat in a call to disconsolate contributors.
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Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Secession Is America's Pecan Pie / Politics / US Politics
By: Thomas_J_DiLorenzo
"Secession is a deeply American principle. This country was born through secession." ~ Ron Paul
Leftists and neocons in the media who tend to agree on the propriety and desirability of an ever-growing welfare/warfare/police state were predictably apoplectic when Ron Paul recently stated on his House Web site that secession is "a deeply American principle." Congressman Paul was alluding to the fact that all fifty states have sent secession petitions to the White House.
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Wednesday, November 21, 2012
America's War on Children / Politics / US Politics
By: Jeff_Berwick
This holiday season, give the gift of freedom. Include a passport among the gifts you give your children this Christmas. Not an American passport, but one from the several countries that make it easy to acquire residency status even if you do not live there. For example, Paraguay requires only a two day visit to apply for a passport, and the residency status so acquired is permanent even for those who never return. While taking a family vacation, you can protect your children from an unpredictable and alarming world.
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Wednesday, November 21, 2012
The Fiscal Cliff and the U.S. Trade Deficit / Politics / Protectionism
By: Ian_Fletcher
First, let’s get the definitions straight, as confusion about definitions is the single biggest avoidable cause of economic nonsense.
The trade deficit measures how much America’s imports exceed its exports.
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Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Patriotic Millionaires Unmasked / Politics / US Politics
By: Peter_Schiff
Despite the breathless post-election "think pieces" that have drawn sweeping and deeply considered conclusions about the political drift of the country, at its core President Obama's re-election is easy to understand. He essentially promised millions of middle and working class voters that if he were to be re-elected, they would receive benefits paid for by the rich. You don't need to read a Time Magazine cover story to untangle this political strategy. Now that he has been given a second term, Obama needs to deliver the goods by raising taxes on the rich and only the rich. He will be "asking" them to pay their "fair share," (as if "asking" and "fairness" have anything to do with it). In reality the wealthy already pay taxes at a much higher rate than average Americans and in many cases will now have to pay more than half of their income in federal, state, and local taxes.
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Tuesday, November 20, 2012
The Trans-Pacific Partnership's Secret Agenda / Politics / US Politics
By: Andrew_G_Marshall
The following is the first installment of a three-part exclusive for Occupy.com on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. In 2008, the United States Trade Representative Susan Schwab announced the U.S. entry into the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks as “a pathway to broader Asia-Pacific regional economic integration.” Originating in 2005 as a “Strategic Economic Partnership” between a few select Pacific countries, the TPP has, as of October 2012, expanded to include 11 nations in total: the United States, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Chile, New Zealand, Australia, Brunei, Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia, with the possibility of several more joining in the future.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Israel Gaza Conflict Impact on West Bank and Jordan / Politics / Middle East
By: STRATFOR
A Palestinian who was wounded Nov. 17 during protests in the West Bank against Israel's ongoing operations in the Gaza Strip has died from his injuries, the Palestinian Ma'an news agency reported Nov. 19. The West Bank has been calm in recent years, but significant protests have been taking place across the eastern Palestinian territory -- which is ruled by Hamas' secular rival, Fatah -- in response to Israel's Operation Pillar of Defense. The protester's death could widen that unrest.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Ron Paul on U.S. States Secession: Are We Free To Go? / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
Is all the recent talk of secession mere sour grapes over the election, or perhaps something deeper? Currently there are active petitions in support of secession for all 50 states, with Texas taking the lead in number of signatures. Texas has well over the number of signatures needed to generate a response from the administration, and while I wouldn't hold my breath on Texas actually seceding, I believe these petitions raise a lot of worthwhile questions about the nature of our union.
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Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Elites Will Make Gazans of Us All / Politics / US Politics
By: Chris_Hedges
Gaza is a window on our coming dystopia. The growing divide between the world’s elite and its miserable masses of humanity is maintained through spiraling violence. Many impoverished regions of the world, which have fallen off the economic cliff, are beginning to resemble Gaza, where 1.6 million Palestinians live in the planet’s largest internment camp. These sacrifice zones, filled with seas of pitifully poor people trapped in squalid slums or mud-walled villages, are increasingly hemmed in by electronic fences, monitored by surveillance cameras and drones and surrounded by border guards or military units that shoot to kill. These nightmarish dystopias extend from sub-Saharan Africa to Pakistan to China. They are places where targeted assassinations are carried out, where brutal military assaults are pressed against peoples left defenseless, without an army, navy or air force. All attempts at resistance, however ineffective, are met with the indiscriminate slaughter that characterizes modern industrial warfare.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Western Elite Using Islamophobia to Serve their Own Interests / Politics / Social Issues
By: Global_Research
Malaysian public intellectual believes that propagating fear and hatred of Muslims is not a new phenomenon and has been rampant for more than a thousand years. Referring to the growth of the population of Muslims, he also says that “some right-wing groups in Europe and North America are fearful of what they see as the Islamic ‘demographic’ threat.”
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Is America Israel's Puppet State? / Politics / US Politics
By: Paul_Craig_Roberts
The United States government and its subject peoples think of the US as “the world’s only superpower.” But how is a country a superpower when its entire government and a majority of the subjects, especially those members of evangelical churches, grovel at the feet of the Israeli Prime Minister? How is a country a superpower when it lacks the power to determine its own foreign policy in the Middle East? Such a country is not a superpower. It is a puppet state.
Monday, November 19, 2012
Will USSR Rise From Ashes Through Eurasian Currency? / Politics / Fiat Currency
By: Pravda
The creation of the supranational currency within the scope of the Customs Union is inevitable, Prime Minister of Armenia, Tigran Sargsyan, believes. According to him, this should be the next stage of integration within the organization, which makes sense from the point of view of simplification of currency circulation in transfers. The new currency may see the light on January 1, 2015.
Monday, November 19, 2012
World Bank Back In Charge Of Global Warming / Politics / Climate Change
By: Andrew_McKillop
Following a Group of 20 finance ministers meeting in Mexico City this month, in the wake of superstorm Sandy, Bank of Italy governor Ignazio Visco told reporters: “The World Bank has gone back to being in charge of climate change,” “For a certain period....., it had stopped”.
This followed the report on climate change by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, commissioned by the World Bank and released this month, which bluntly says "a 4 degC warmer world must be avoided".
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Monday, November 19, 2012
U.S. States Secession Movement Ready to Take Hold / Politics / US Politics
By: BATR
All the buzz in the aftermath of the last election is that secession is in the air. Despite the improbable prospects that the globalists, that control the federal government, would allow the upstart masses to leave the dominion of Disunion States, it is promising that the country builds critical mass for dissolution. Secession in this day is not your call to arms in the defense of home. "Honest Abe’s" version of despotism caused many politicians to "Wave the bloody shirt", but today’s crop of brave leaders just asks you to sign a petition to beg for a cordial severance. Just imagine the response from the unprincipled governmental career class. The re-education FEMA facilities are ready to become today’s "Camp Douglas" detention centers.
Monday, November 19, 2012
Ron Paul Never Wielded Any Power / Politics / US Politics
By: Gary_North
On Wednesday, November 14, Ron Paul delivered his final speech at the podium of the United States House of Representatives. It was covered by C-SPAN live, and was later posted on C-SPAN's site. It was soon posted on YouTube, and from there was posted on numerous sites.
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Monday, November 19, 2012
Rumors on Israel, Hamas Gaza Cease-Fire / Politics / Israel
By: STRATFOR
Contradictory rumors regarding the outcome of cease-fire negotiations between Hamas and Israel have increased dramatically in recent hours. A Hamas spokesman told Al Jazeera that Israel and Hamas have agreed to 90 percent of the terms of a new cease-fire. Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi is reportedly meeting the evening of Nov. 18 with a delegation led by Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal and another delegation led by Palestinian Islamic Jihad Secretary-General Ramadan Abdullah Shallah. While Israeli officials have told news outlets that the government is in talks with Cairo on a cease-fire, Israeli officials are now denying reports that an Israeli envoy actually traveled to Cairo Nov. 18 for cease-fire talks. Meanwhile, Turkey appears to be trying to integrate itself into the cease-fire talks with reported plans for Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to travel to Gaza on Nov. 20.
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Sunday, November 18, 2012
We are forbidden to say this - Gaza is a Concentration Camp / Politics / Israel
By: Submissions
Arthur Silber writes: THE MOST STRIKING and significant quality of our national conversation "is one of overwhelming, oppressive and suffocating unreality.
It is as if everyone knows, but will never acknowledge, that we may speak only in code, and that we may only utilize the safe, empty phrases that we have agreed are 'acceptable' -- phrases and language that are safe precisely because they have been drained of all correspondence to facts.
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Sunday, November 18, 2012
Gaza: Here we go again, A Terrorist Attack for an Terrorist Attack / Politics / Israel
By: Pravda
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a terrorist attack for a terrorist attack. Sit back ladies and gentlemen for the next round of hypocrisy as Israel plays the victim card, forgetting the fact that it has stolen Palestinian lands, that it continues to bulldoze Palestinian homes, expel people from their lands and loots Palestinian resources. If your home is taken, what do you do?
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Sunday, November 18, 2012
Death of the West and Decline of the East / Politics / Global Economy
By: Pravda
We are used since a century to denounce and comment the so-called decline of the West; the great essay of Spengler, unfit for the public of today, was published during the WW1 and it has been quickly fulfilled, Western Europe becoming an American colony and a bureaucratic disaster, both economically and spiritually. Her ageing population is rapidly disappearing and it will be replaced during the next decennials. Nobody should lament this process since Solzhenitsyn observed that the westerners do not know if there are alive! Modern world is a bad dream, said once French philosopher Deleuze, a left-wing genius completely forgotten nowadays in what is left of France (pardon, Hollande...). Statesmen in Europe hate or fear Mr Putin for he is the last statesman with a brain and a soul. This is why there are each year more youngsters fond of him in Western Europe. We will see where this hope will get us to.
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Israel Gaza War's for Control of Offshore Natural Gas Fields / Politics / Israel
By: Michel_Chossudovsky
The [December 2008] military invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israeli Forces bears a direct relation to the control and ownership of strategic offshore gas reserves.
This is a war of conquest. Discovered in 2000, there are extensive gas reserves off the Gaza coastline.
British Gas (BG Group) and its partner, the Athens based Consolidated Contractors International Company (CCC) owned by Lebanon’s Sabbagh and Koury families, were granted oil and gas exploration rights in a 25 year agreement signed in November 1999 with the Palestinian Authority.
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