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The Shocking Reality: This Chart Shows Just How Bad Unemployment Is Today Compared to The Great Depression

October 3, 2015

The Shocking Reality: This Chart Shows Just How Bad Unemployment Is Today Compared to The Great Depression

great-depression---jobs (Desperate Americans stand in soup kitchen lines and look for work. Circa 1929)

While the Obama administration and their mainstream surrogates maintain that the economy is growing at a booming pace, the reality of the situation is starkly different.

According to a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics some 94.6 million Americans (age 16 and over) are either not working or have made no effort to find a job. With a population of 320 million, that means nearly one in three people in the United States are currently out of work.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that a record 94,610,000 people (ages 16 and over) were not in the labor force in September. In other words they were neither employed nor had made specific efforts to find work in the prior four weeks.

The number of individuals out of the work force last month — due to discouragement, retirement or otherwise — represented a substantial 579,000 person increase over the most recent record, hit in August, of 94,031,000 people out of the workforce.

Curiously, the official unemployment rate remained unchanged at 5.1%, suggesting that some 95% of people actually have jobs.

But as we’ve repeatedly pointed out, that number has been completely skewed over the last two decades as it fails to account for people who have stopped looking for work (because there are no actual jobs available).

According to John Williams of Shadow Stats, if we were to calculate unemployment using the same metrics as we did during the 1930’s, or even the 1980’s, we’d already be in Great Depression territory. Williams, who utilizes a reporting methodology that accounts for “long-term discouraged workers who were defined out of official existence in 1994,” notes that the real unemployment rate is rapidly approaching 25%.

shadowstats-oct-2015

Now compare the above chart to similar measurements from the 1930’s and you’ll see just how bad things really are:

greatdepression-unemployment (via Casey Research)

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

David Stockman On CNBC: ‘We’re On The Fiscal Titanic”

October 1, 2015

David Stockman On CNBC: ‘We’re On The Fiscal Titanic”

A government shutdown would force Congress to address fiscal issues before they reach unmanageable levels, a former Reagan administration official contended Wednesday.

“We’re on the fiscal Titanic and we’re going to hit something hard and immovable one of these days,” said David Stockman, director of the Office of Management and Budget from 1981 to 1985, in a CNBC “Closing Bell” interview.

The House of Representatives and Senate on Wednesday passed a last-minute stopgap spending bill that will keep the federal government open through Dec. 11 pending President Barack Obama’s signature. But another budget battle will likely ensue then, as Congress remains divided over federal funding for women’s health organization Planned Parenthood.

Read MoreHouse passes legislation to avoid shutdown

Many in Congress have opposed a shutdown, as a government closure can put some federal employees temporarily out of work or delay their pay. Stockman contends it could have a positive effect by making lawmakers address spending and debt issues.

He called for entitlement and defense spending reform. He also argued that easy monetary policy from central banks has made lawmakers less likely to address the deficit.

Still, Stockman did not clearly outline why a shutdown would force lawmakers to make significant budget changes.

Is The U.S. About To Break One Of Its Own Nuclear Treaties?

October 1, 2015

Is The U.S. About To Break One Of Its Own Nuclear Treaties?

Bill Richardson could teach Donald Trump something about the art of the deal.

He has done a lot of them. Richardson also wrote a book about the art of the deal, the big deal, entitled “How to Sweet-Talk a Shark; Strategies and Stories from a Master Negotiator.”

In a towering life of public service (U.S. representative, U.N. ambassador, secretary of Energy, New Mexico governor, and peripatetic hostage negotiator), Richardson confronted Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, two of North Korea’s dictators, and an assortment of international thugs. He was a five-time nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The essence of Richardson’s deal-making was that the commitment must be kept by both parties.

At present Richardson sees one of his deals in jeopardy, and he was in Washington last week to raise the alarm, meeting privately with former colleagues and appearing at a press conference at the National Press Club.

The deal in jeopardy involves a commitment he made, when he was secretary of Energy in the Clinton administration, with the Russians to dispose of weapons-grade plutonium, the long-lived ingredient in nuclear weapons. There are 34 metric tons of the stuff that the United States is bound, by treaty with Russia, to dispose of by integrating it into nuclear fuel and burning it in civilian power plants. This is known as mixed oxide fuel or MOX.

But the Obama administration wants to end the program, before a fleck of plutonium has been processed for fuel. It is seeking to pull the plug on the construction of the facility at a Department of Energy site on the Savannah River in South Carolina, which is two-thirds complete and has already cost over $4 billion.

The administration is now looking not at the completion cost, but at the lifetime cost of the facility. And it is saying that it is too high; although that could have been calculated years ago.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

U.S. Bombs Somehow Keep Falling in the Places Where Obama “Ended Two Wars”

October 1, 2015

U.S. Bombs Somehow Keep Falling in the Places Where Obama “Ended Two Wars”

“We’ve ended two wars.” — Barack Obama, July 21, 2015, at a DSCC fundraiser held at a “private residence”

“Now that we have ended two wars responsibly, and brought home hundreds of American troops, we salute this new generation of veterans.” — National Security Adviser Susan Rice, May 20, 2015

“His presidency makes a potentially great story: the first African-American in the White House, who helped the country recover from recession and ended two wars.” — Dominic Tierney, The Atlantic, January 15, 2015, “America Will Miss Obama When He’s Gone”

Report from Airwars, August 2, 2015, detailing civilian deaths from continuous U.S.-led airstrikes in Iraq and Syria:

New York Times, today, headlined: “U.S. Planes Strike Near Kunduz Airport as Fight Rages On”

American warplanes bombarded Taliban-held territory around the Kunduz airport overnight, and Afghan officials said American Special Forces were rushed toward the fighting. … The situation for the Afghan forces improved somewhat toward midnight: American warplanes conducted airstrikes at 11:30 p.m. and again at 1 a.m. on Taliban positions near the airport, an American military spokesman said. … Around the same time, soldiers with the American Special Forces headed out toward the city with Afghan commandos, according to Afghan government officials.

How do you know when you’re an out-of-control empire? When you keep bombing and deploying soldiers in places where you boast that you’ve ended wars. How do you know you have a hackish propagandist for a president? When you celebrate him for “ending two wars” in the very same places that he keeps bombing.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Value in Reading Others’ Propaganda

September 30, 2015

Value in Reading Others’ Propaganda

U.S. policymakers view their country as the “exceptional” and “indispensable” global policeman but shut their eyes to how other nations see the world, thus blinding America to emerging problems and possible solutions, as ex-CIA official Graham E. Fuller explains.

All countries do it — promoting their own societies in ideal terms in order to influence others. The U.S. devotes a huge amount of time and money to selling its self-image and a view of the world as seen through American eyes — and perhaps denigrating others as well.

Such “crafted” image-making is hardly exclusive to the U.S. government. The New York Times, for example, supposedly our gold-standard on objective reporting, is heavily slanted when it comes to reporting nearly anything on China or Russia — among other issues.

If you recognize the nature of what you’re reading, that’s fine. But if you think you’re getting the full skinny on the world, then it can be dangerous and self-deceiving. As we say in the free market, let the buyer beware.

China and Russia, among others, certainly produce their own state propaganda, often far less skillfully than the U.S., and it more often comes in state-controlled media. The real danger, of course, comes when you start believing your own spin as representing reality around you.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Obama Deifies American Hegemony

September 29, 2015

Obama Deifies American Hegemony

Today is the 70th anniversary of the UN. It is not clear how much good the UN has done. Some UN Blue Hemet peacekeeping operations had limited success. But mainly Washington has used the UN for war, such as the Korean War and Washington’s Cold War against the Soviet Union. In our time Washington had UN tanks sent in against Bosnian Serbs during the period that Washington was dismantling Yugoslavia and Serbia and accusing Serbian leaders, who tried to defend the integrity of their country against Washington’s aggression, of “war crimes.”

The UN supported Washington’s sanctions against Iraq that resulted in the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children. When asked about it, Clinton’s Secretary of State said, with typical American heartlessness, that the deaths of the children were worth it. In 2006 the UN voted sanctions against Iran for exercising its right as a signatory of the non-proliferation treaty to develop atomic energy. Washington claimed without any evidence that Iran was building a nuclear weapon in violation of the non-proliferation treaty, and this lie was accepted by the UN. Washington’s false claim was repudiated by all 16 US intelligence agencies and by the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors on the ground in Iran, but in the face of the factual evidence the US government and its presstitute media pressed the claim to the point that Russia had to intervene and take the matter out of Washington’s warmonger hands. Russia’s intervention to prevent US military attacks on Iran and Syria resulted in the demonization of Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin. “Facts?!, Washington don’t need no stinkin’ facts! We got power!” Today at the UN Obama asserted America’s over-riding power many times: the strongest military in the world, the strongest economy in the world.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

No Brains In Washington

September 27, 2015

No Brains In Washington

Washington’s IQ follows the Fed’s interest rate — it is negative. Washington is a black hole into which all sanity is sucked out of government deliberations.

Washington’s failures are everywhere visible. We can see the failures in Washington’s wars and in Washington’s approach to China and Russia.

The visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping, was scheduled for the week-end following the Pope’s visit to Washington. Was this Washington’s way of demoting China’s status by having its president play second fiddle to the Pope? The President of China is here for week-end news coverage? Why didn’t Obama just tell him to go to hell?

Washington’s cyber incompetence and inability to maintain cyber security is being blamed on China. The day before Xi Jinping’s arrival in Washington, the White House press secretary warmed up President Jinping’s visit by announcing that Obama might threaten China with financial sanctions.

And not to miss an opportunity to threaten or insult the President of China, the US Secretary of Commerce fired off a warning that the Obama regime was too unhappy with China’s business practices for the Chinese president to expect a smooth meeting in Washington.

In contrast, when Obama visited China, the Chinese government treated him with politeness and respect.

China is America’s largest creditor after the Federal Reserve. If the Chinese government were so inclined, China could cause Washington many serious economic, financial, and military problems. Yet China pursues peace while Washington issues threats.

Like China, Russia, too, has a foreign policy independent of Washington’s, and it is the independence of their foreign policies that puts China and Russia on the outs with Washington.

Washington considers countries with independent foreign policies to be threats. Libya, Iraq, and Syria had independent foreign policies. Washington has destroyed two of the three and is working on the third. Iran, Russia, and China have independent foreign policies. Consequently, Washington sees these countries as threats and portrays them to the American people as such.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Was Turkey Behind Syria Sarin Attack?

September 17, 2015

Was Turkey Behind Syria Sarin Attack?

From the Archive: As Washington pundits again demand Syrian President Assad’s ouster, a top talking point is that he “gassed his own people” in a Sarin attack in 2013. But that rush to judgment was picked apart by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh and others, as Robert Parry reported in spring 2014.

In late August 2013, the Obama administration lurched to the brink of invading Syria after blaming a Sarin gas attack outside Damascus on President Bashar al-Assad’s government, but evidence – reported by investigative journalist Seymour M. Hersh – implicates Turkish intelligence and extremist Syrian rebels instead.

The significance of Hersh’s report is twofold: first, it shows how Official Washington’s hawks and neocons almost stampeded the United States into another Mideast war under false pretenses, and second, the story’s publication in the London Review of Books reveals how hostile the mainstream U.S. media remains toward information that doesn’t comport with its neocon-dominated conventional wisdom.

In other words, it appears that Official Washington and its mainstream press have absorbed few lessons from the disastrous Iraq War, which was launched in 2003 under the false claim that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was planning to share hidden stockpiles of WMD with al-Qaeda, when there was no WMD nor any association between Hussein and al-Qaeda.

A decade later in August and September 2013, as a new war hysteria broke out over Assad allegedly crossing President Barack Obama’s “red line” against using chemical weapons, it fell to a few Internet sites, including our own Consortiumnews.com, to raise questions about the administration’s allegations that pinned the Aug. 21 attack on the Syrian government.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Gulf states lead call for regime change in Syria

September 17, 2015

Gulf states lead call for regime change in Syria

Though the Gulf has called for the overthrow of Assad, sources suggest Obama agreed to Putin’s increased support for him

The Organisation for Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the world’s second largest intergovernmental body after the United Nations, issued a dramatic call this Sunday for the overthrow of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

The new OIC communique comes in the wake of recent indications that the West is willing to slow-down the offensive against Assad to focus on defeating the Islamic State (IS).

Earlier this month, Downing Street declared plans for “limited” airstrikes against IS targets in Syria, coupled with a diplomatic push that would see Assad remain in power for six months.

Toward a ‘new Syrian state’

Highlighting the need for urgent action to address Syria’s escalating refugee crisis, the OIC communique on behalf of 57 member states urged the UN Security Council (UNSC) to renew “the pursuit of rapid political solutions” to the conflict that would establish a “transitional government with full executive power that would allow building a new Syrian state”.

This would require the UNSC to “fully implement the Geneva Communique,” the aborted 2012 roadmap for the transition of Syria to a new unity government without Assad.

Among the major reasons the Geneva plan broke down was US and UK determination to continue arming and training rebel groups even during the peace talks, the exclusion of Kurdish groups from the process, and the West’s insistence at the time that the outcome would necessarily exclude Assad from power.

The new OIC communique is thus effectively a call to escalate military support for Syrian rebels to forcibly oust Assad from power.

– See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/gulf-states-lead-call-regime-change-syria-889890058#sthash.8dYh1Pmb.dpuf

Fourth Turning: Crisis of Trust

September 11, 2015

Fourth Turning: Crisis of Trust

“Imagine some national (and probably global) volcanic eruption, initially flowing along channels of distress that were created during the Unraveling era and further widened by the catalyst. Trying to foresee where the eruption will go once it bursts free of the channels is like trying to predict the exact fault line of an earthquake. All you know in advance is something about the molten ingredients of the climax, which could include the following:

Economic distress, with public debt in default, entitlement trust funds in bankruptcy, mounting poverty and unemployment, trade wars, collapsing financial markets, and hyperinflation (or deflation)
Social distress, with violence fueled by class, race, nativism, or religion and abetted by armed gangs, underground militias, and mercenaries hired by walled communities
Cultural distress, with the media plunging into a dizzying decay, and a decency backlash in favor of state censorship
Technological distress, with cryptoanarchy, high-tech oligarchy, and biogenetic chaos
Ecological distress, with atmospheric damage, energy or water shortages, and new diseases
Political distress, with institutional collapse, open tax revolts, one-party hegemony, major constitutional change, secessionism, authoritarianism, and altered national borders
Military distress, with war against terrorists or foreign regimes equipped with weapons of mass destruction”

The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe – 1997

September 2015 marks the seventh anniversary of this Fourth Turning Crisis. The economic, social, cultural, ecological, political, and military distress propagates by the minute as the globe is besieged by economic turmoil, increased human suffering, and endemic corruption of the political and ruling classes. The Federal Reserve/Wall Street created global economic implosion was the spark which catalyzed this fourth Crisis period in U.S. history in September 2008. Neil Howe in a 2012 essay assessed the beginning of this Fourth Turning and why 9/11 was not the catalyst:

“Pending stunning new developments, I believe the catalyst occurred in 2008. It’s a date that is looking better and better as time goes by. The year 2008 marked the onset of the most serious U.S. economic crisis since the Great Depression.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

If You Want To Know The Truth About The Unemployment Rate Read This Article

September 8, 2015

If You Want To Know The Truth About The Unemployment Rate Read This Article

The Obama administration is telling us that the unemployment rate in the United States has fallen to 5.1 percent, but does that number actually bear any resemblance to reality? On Friday, news outlets all over America celebrated the fact that the U.S. economy added 173,000 jobs in August. We were told that the unemployment rate has fallen to a seven year low and that wages are going up. So everything must be getting better for the middle class, right? After all, isn’t that what the official numbers are telling us?

The financial markets are buzzing over this news because the unemployment rate has fallen into a range that the Federal Reserve has typically considered to be “full employment”, so there is an expectation that the Fed may raise interest rates shortly. The following comes from Business Insider…

The unemployment rate fell to 5.1% in August, the lowest since April 2008. This was lower than forecast, and put the measure in the middle of the 5.2% – 5.0% range the Federal Reserve considers to be “full employment.” The economy added 173,000 jobs, below the expectation for 217,000, although August payrolls are usually revised higher. We also saw some wage growth, with average hourly earnings rising 0.3% month-on-month, and 2.5% year-over-year. The payrolls gain for July was revised up to 245,000 from 215,000.

But do we actually have anything close to “full employment” in this country?

Of course not.

The truth is that the only way they have been able to get the official “unemployment rate” to steadily go down over the past few years is to eliminate hundreds of thousands of Americans that are chronically unemployed from the official labor force numbers every month. Jim Quinn elaborated on this very eloquently in one of his recent articles…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Counterterrorism “Success Story” Fails Completely As Yemen Set To Split Into Two Countries

September 4, 2015

Counterterrorism “Success Story” Fails Completely As Yemen Set To Split Into Two Countries

Late last month, as the fighting in Yemen continued unabated, Jeff Prescott, the National Security Council’s Senior Director for the Middle East said “there is no military solution to the crisis.” Saudi Arabia seemingly disagrees and that will reportedly be one topic under discussion at The White House on Friday where President Obama will meet with King Salman to discuss a variety of geopolitical issues.

The Saudi-led intervention into the conflict in Yemen has transformed the country into a battleground for a Saudi-Iran proxy war on the way to exacerbating a worsening humanitarian crisis. Civilian casualties are a regular occurrence, although, between conflicting reports from Riyadh and the Houthis, it’s nearly impossible to determine the exact figures. Just this week, sources on the ground indicated that dozens of civilians were killed when Saudi warplanes bombed a bottling plant.

Meanwhile, operations in Yemen are taking their toll on Saudi Arabia’s increasingly precarious fiscal situation, which has deteriorated rapidly in the face of persistently low crude prices. Coalition partner UAE is in a similar, if slightly more stable, position from a budget perspective.

So while the market nervously eyes the petrodollar reserves of Saudi Arabia and the UAE as the countries juggle domestic expenditures, dollar pegs, and the cost of war, Yemen itself is coming apart at the seams – literally. As WSJ reports, it now looks as though the country may in fact split, as Aden residents have eschewed the red, white and black for the flag of South Yemen, which existed as an independent republic for more than two decades. Here’s the story:

Now that pro-Iranian Houthi militias have been expelled from much of southern Yemen, many here are wondering when President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadiwill return to his homeland from Saudi exile—and, more importantly, under what flag.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

NYT Claims U.S. Abides by Cluster Bomb Treaty: The Exact Opposite of Reality

September 4, 2015

NYT Claims U.S. Abides by Cluster Bomb Treaty: The Exact Opposite of Reality

The New York Times today has a truly bizarre article regarding the U.S. and cluster bombs. The advocacy group Cluster Munition Coalition just issued its annual report finding that cluster bombs had been used in five countries this year: Syria, Libya, Yemen, Ukraine and Sudan. This is what The Paper of Record, in its report by Rick Gladstone, said this morning about the international reaction to that report (emphasis added):

The use of these weapons was criticized by all 117 countries that have joined the treaty, which took effect five years ago. Their use was also criticized by a number of others, including the United States, that have not yet joined the treaty but have abided by its provisions.

As Americans, we should feel proud that our government, though refusing to sign the cluster ban treaty, has nonetheless “abided by its provisions” — if not for the fact that this claim is totally false. The U.S. has long been and remains one of the world’s most aggressive suppliers of cluster munitions, and has used those banned weapons itself in devastating ways.

In December 2009 — just weeks after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize — President Obama ordered a cruise missile strike on al-Majala in southern Yemen. That strike “killed 35 women and children.” Among the munitions used in that strike were cluster bombs, including ones designed to scatter 166 “bomblets.”

Although the U.S. at first refused to confirm responsibility, a Yemeni journalist, Abdulelah Haider Shaye, visited the scene and found irrefutable proof that it was done by the U.S., a finding subsequently confirmed by Amnesty International as well as a cable released by WikiLeaks.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Hundreds Rally in Alaska to Tell Obama ‘Climate Leaders Don’t Drill the Arctic’

September 3, 2015

Hundreds Rally in Alaska to Tell Obama ‘Climate Leaders Don’t Drill the Arctic’

Climate groups rallied in Anchorage, Alaska yesterday to demand that the U.S. government, President Obama and Alaskan leaders take the urgent action needed to stop climate change. The “Rally to Confront the Glacial Pace of Political Action” took place as President Obama met with ministers from around the world for the “GLACIER” conference.

Peggy Wilcox of Anchorage takes a selfie with Frostpaw the polar bear at the rally. Photo credit: Mark Meyer / Greenpeace

More than 300 people participated in yesterday’s rally. The groups four “demands” for political leaders include:

Support an immediate shift to the development and widespread implementation ofrenewable energy sources
Support the call by global scientists to keep 80 percent of the world’s fossil fuel reserves in the ground
Protect and champion the rights of communities of color on the front lines of climate change
Commit the U.S. to legally binding commitments at the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference

In response to the President’s visit, Faith Gemmill of RedOil said, “Indigenous peoples of Alaska have seen alarming impacts from climate change already, and Shell’s drilling will only make them worse. We’ve seen over 300 wildfires this past summer which burned throughout the state and forced communities to evacuate, as well as the very real threat of actual forced relocation of coastal communities due to coastal sea ice loss and erosion.”

The President has said again and again that climate change poses a serious threat to humanity and in going to Alaska, he is highlighting how the state is on the front lines of the fight against climate change.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Assange and Democracy’s Future

August 19, 2015

Assange and Democracy’s Future

Democracy rests on citizens getting real facts and applying rational analysis. The ability of governments, including the U.S. government, to suppress facts and thus manage perceptions represents the opposite, a power over the people that WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange threatened, says Norman Solomon.

Three years after Ecuador’s government granted political asylum to Julian Assange in its small ground-floor London embassy, the founder of WikiLeaks is still there — beyond the reach of the government whose vice president, Joe Biden, has labeled him “a digital terrorist.”

The Obama administration wants Assange in a U.S. prison, so that the only mouse he might ever see would be scurrying across the floor of a solitary-confinement cell.

Above and beyond Assange’s personal freedom, what’s at stake includes the impunity of the United States and its allies to relegate transparency to a mythical concept, with democracy more rhetoric than reality. From the Vietnam War era to today — from aerial bombing and torture to ecological disasters and financial scams moving billions of dollars into private pockets — the high-up secrecy hiding key realities from the public has done vast damage. No wonder economic and political elites despise WikiLeaks for its disclosures.

During the last five years, since the release of the infamous “Collateral Murder” video, the world has changed in major ways for democratic possibilities, with WikiLeaks as a catalyst. It’s sadly appropriate that Assange is so deplored and reviled by so many in the upper reaches of governments, huge corporations and mass media. For such powerful entities, truly informative leaks to the public are plagues that should be eradicated as much as possible.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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