Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
French Plan to Topple Gaddafi on Track Since last November / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Global_Research
Voltaire Network writes: According to right-wing Italian journalist Franco Bechis, plans to spark the Benghazi rebellion were initiated by French intelligence services in November 2010. As Miguel Martinez from the progressive ComeDonChisciotte website observes, these revelations which have the blessing of the Italian secret services should be interpreted as the sign of existing rivalries within the European capitalist camp. Voltaire Network wishes to point out that Paris promptly paired up with London in its scheme to overthrow Colonel Khadafi (Franco-British expeditionary force).
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Solution to the U.S. Budget Crisis: Keeping the State's Money in the State / Politics / US Debt
By: Ellen_Brown
Cut spending, raise taxes, sell off public assets – these are the unsatisfactory solutions being debated across the nation; but the budget crises now being suffered by nearly all the states did not arise from too much spending or too little taxation. They arose from a credit freeze on Wall Street. In the wake of the 2009 financial market collapse, banks curtailed their lending more sharply than in any year since 1942, driving massive unemployment and causing local tax revenues to plummet.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Fukushima Nuclear Reactors Radiation Catastrophe, Japanese Government Lies and Cover-up / Politics / Environmental Issues
By: Global_Research
Dr. Ilya Sandra Perlingieri writes: “Should the public discover the true health cost[s] of nuclear pollution, a cry would rise from all parts of the world and people would refuse to cooperate passively with their own death.” Dr. Rosalie Bertell. “No Immediate Danger,” xiii.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Libya War Damages Russia's Economic Interests / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Pravda
The events in Libya are impacting the economic interests of Russia. While Russian raw materials companies working in this country may still cherish the hope to participate in some projects, the loss of Rosoboronexport's contract with the Jamahiriya will amount to over $4 billion. In the event of the victory of the Western coalition the country's weapons market will be closed for Russia.
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Friday, March 25, 2011
The World As A Theater Of The Absurd: Interests or Idiocy? / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Danny_Schechter
It's been a long time since I sat in a college literature class and learned about the theater of the absurd, the work of great writers like Beckett, Ionesco, Genet and Camus, among others. Their writing was their way of reacting to a world that seemed out of control and maybe out of its mind.
Wikipedia tells us “It expressed the belief that, in a Godless universe, human existence has no meaning or purpose and therefore all communication breaks down. Logical construction and argument gives way to irrational and illogical speech and to its ultimate conclusion, silence.
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Friday, March 25, 2011
The Burden of Portugal is Not Debt but Education? / Politics / Global Debt Crisis
By: Justin_John
Portugal is the poorest country in Western Europe. It is also the least educated, and that has emerged as a painful liability in its gathering economic crisis. Wednesday night, the economic crisis became a political crisis as Portugal’s parliament rejected Prime Minister José Sócrates’s plan for spending cuts and tax increases. Mr. Sócrates handed in his resignation even though he will hang on as a caretaker until a new government is formed.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Japan Fukushima Radioactive Fallout Nears Chernobyl Levels / Politics / Environmental Issues
By: Jesse
I do not seem to be hearing this same level of detailed information on the financial news networks anymore. I do not watch network televised news at all, so it could be covered there.
Apparently I am not the only one who feels this way.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Cameron Hoodwinks Uncle Sam into Another Stupid War: After Libya...Mogadishu? / Politics / UK Politics
By: Andrew_Butter
When I was confined to one of those particularly British institutions, “Public School”, one of our favourite games to relieve the tedium was to goad unpopular boys into having a fight. The trick was not to get found out.
A pattern is starting to emerge; mid-term with approval ratings in the doldrums, US Presidents are easy meat…for Public School Boys.
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Friday, March 25, 2011
23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism / Politics / Resources & Reviews
By: Ian_Fletcher
If you’re not happy with the way the U.S. economy is being run right now, you’ve been pretty much stuck talking to leftists to get any serious in-depth dissidence. With the exception of a few distinguished rightist critics like Paul Craig Roberts, a former Reagan appointee at the Treasury Department, most people who do hard-hitting across-the-board criticism of our present variety of capitalism are liberals and beyond. So if pink isn’t your political color, you’re pretty much stuck with narrow-bore criticism of the recent financial crisis—most of which comes down to “people were stupid and crooked.”Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, March 24, 2011
The EU-India Free Trade Agreement, Banking Sector Liberalization / Politics / India
By: Global_Research
Kavaljit Singh writes: Since 2007, India and EU have been negotiating a free trade agreement (FTA) — covering trade in goods and services, investments, intellectual property rights and government procurement — that is fraught with problems. Till now, ten negotiating rounds have been held. The agreement is expected to be finalized by mid-2011.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Big Oil Versus The Dangers of Nuclear Power / Politics / Crude Oil
By: Eric_Walberg
As oil prices soar and countries think twice about expanding nuclear power, we should be careful about where to point the finger, says Japan’s trauma following the partial meltdown of nuclear reactors in Fukushima has once again brought to the world’s attention the dangers of nuclear power. From the start, it was clear that a broad advocacy of nuclear energy is bad ecology. Splitting the atom (or worse, fusing atoms) unleashes intense heat and radiation and produces poisonous waste that lasts for up to 10,000 years or more
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Tokyo Residents Preparing For Massive Nuclear Radiation Exposure / Politics / Environmental Issues
By: Chris_Kitze
End of the American Dream writes: Does anyone really know what is going on at the Fukushima nuclear complex? When problems at the facility first surfaced, authorities promised that no significant amounts of radiation would be released. Then we were told that only those living within 20 kilometers of the complex needed to take precautions. After that we were told that radiation was showing up in many different types of vegetables all over northern and central Japan but that it was not a major concern. Now we are being told that the tap water in Tokyo is unsafe for infants to drink. So what are they going to tell us next? Should residents of Tokyo be preparing for massive radiation exposure from this disaster? Tokyo is only 150 miles away from the Fukushima nuclear complex. If a worst case scenario plays out at Fukushima, exactly what would that mean for the over 30 million people that live in and around Tokyo?
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Economic Nationalism: Fair or Foul? / Politics / US Politics
By: Ian_Fletcher
Because we have a national government, because Americans care about what happens to their economy, and because it is the national debate on the question that will bring changes or fail to, our trade problems will be fixed in Washington or not at all. As economist Herman Daly of the University of Maryland, best known for his work on ecological economics, puts it, “Free trade makes it very hard to deal with these root causes at a national level, which is the only level at which effective social controls over the economy exist.”Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Japan Background Radiation Levels By Prefecture Area / Politics / Environmental Issues
By: Jesse
"Updated on March 21, 2011 21:20 (JST)(Japan Standard Time) nGy/h (nano- Grays per hour)Realtime radiation data collected via the System for Prediction of Environment Emergency Dose Information(SPEEDI) These Results are the maximum values of the space those rate distributions shown from local governments in the latest updated date and time.
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Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Dictator Obama's Foolish and Unconstitutional War / Politics / US Politics
By: LewRockwell
Patrick J. Buchanan writes: "The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."
So said constitutional scholar and Senator Barack Obama in December 2007 – the same man who, this weekend, ordered U.S. air and missile strikes on Libya without any authorization from Congress.
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Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Economic Boom Bust Cycles are Planned / Politics / Business Cycles
By: Bob_Chapman
Cycles and booms and busts just don’t happen. They are planned that way. In the late 1990s Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan commented on irrational exuberance and said he hoped the market would cool down. The amount of money and credit he had introduced into the system had a great deal to do with a forming of a bubble. He indicated that on the short-term there was little he could do about it, when all he had to do was raise margin requirements from 50% to 60% temporarily. We wrote about the solution as a coupe of other writers did, but no one really wanted to take away the dotcom punchbowl. In late March of 2000 the market began its collapse. We removed our subscribers out of the market in the first week of April, as did Joe Granville, a friend and one of the best market timers ever.
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Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Fed's Shortcuts to Greatness / Politics / Central Banks
By: Vitaliy_Katsenelson
There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen… the bad economist pursues a small present good that will be followed by a great evil to come, while the good economist pursues a great good to come, at the risk of a small present evil.–Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
What Was Carbon Finance ? / Politics / Environmental Issues
By: Andrew_McKillop
As a leading investment banker put it: “Carbon is getting more and more difficult. A significant amount of the business that is done in the carbon space should shift”, which when translated from finance talk to human language means that the loose “consensus” on creating a global carbon tax, without calling it a tax and trading around this new asset has likely cracked beyond repair. The smart money is now beating a retreat from playing with carbon finance assets, and remaining players in the carbon market are seeking any way out they can find, as turnover on emissions markets goes only one way – down.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
The U.N. Goes to War for Libyan Oil / Politics / New World Order
By: Michael_S_Rozeff
The civil war in Libya is now a new war: the Libyan War. This new war began when the West and/or the U.N. joined the war and escalated it. NATO may be coming aboard too.
The U.N., that supposed instrument of international peace and security, has escalated a civil war into an international war. If the principle it has invoked in doing so stands, which is a supposed humanitarian one, then we face perpetual war, for there are and will be hundreds of civil conflicts within nation-states that are no different than the one in Libya.
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Tuesday, March 22, 2011
The Real Meaning of "Defense" / Politics / Government Intervention
By: Jeffrey_A_Tucker
The horror of Muammar Gaddafi's approach to keeping power in Libya boggles the mind and shocks the moral conscience. But how different is his approach from the way most all governments behave in the face of citizen revolt? There are differences among them with regard to how far they will go to force submission, but the methods and the rationale everywhere are the same in all times and places.