Joshua Kilbourn: ShadowStats Truth on Unemployment versus USG Lies

03 Economy, Corruption, Government
Josh Kilbourn

John Williams – Unemployment Rate at a Staggering 22.2%

John Williams, of Shadowstats, notes that manipulated government statistics are not changing the fact that the true SGS Unemployment Measure now sits at a staggering 22.2%.  Williams also demonstrates that despite the hype from Wall Street about a recovery, parts of the economy remain collapsed.  Here is what Williams had to say about the situation:  “Adding the SGS estimate of excluded long-term discouraged workers back into the total unemployed and labor force, unemployment—more in line with common experience as estimated by the SGS-Alternate Unemployment Measure—notched lower to 22.2% in March from 22.4% in February.”

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John Williams continues:

“The SGS estimate generally is built on top of the official U.6 reporting, and tends to follow its relative monthly movements. Accordingly, the SGS measure will suffer some of the current seasonal-adjustment woes afflicting the base series, such as recent distortions in adjusted reporting of part-time employment for economic reasons.  Nonetheless, there continues to be a noticeable divergence in the SGS series versus U.6.  The reason for this is that U.6, again, only includes discouraged workers who have been discouraged for less than a year.

 

As the discouraged-worker status ages, those that go beyond one year, fall off the government counting, and new workers enter “discouraged” status.  Accordingly, with the continual rollover, the headline workers flow into the short-term discouraged workers counted in U.6 continue, and from U.6 into long-term discouraged worker status (SGS Measure) at what appears to be an accelerating pace.

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Event: 28-29 Apr Washington DC International Drone Summit: Killing and Spying by Remote Control

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, DoD, Military, Peace Intelligence

Join us in Washington, DC on April 28 and 29 for an “International Drone Summit: Killing and Spying by Remote Control” hosted by CODEPINK, Reprieve, and the Center for Constitutional Rights.

US drone strikes have killed an estimated 3,000 people around the world, including hundreds of civilians, without any judicial process or meaningful oversight, and without any transparency or accountability. The summit's dual objectives are to better inform the public about the reality and significance of the US government's expanding use of both killer and surveillance drones, and to facilitate networks and strategies to resist this expansion.

The Saturday, April 28 program is open to the public and brings together human rights advocates, robotics technology experts, activists, lawyers, scholars and journalists, and shares the stories of people whose families and lives have been directly impacted by remote-controlled drone strikes. This is an all day event with multiple panels beginning at 9am at Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church, 900 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, DC. See this site for updates on the program, and register here today!

The Sunday, April 29 program is a strategy session for organizations and individuals to network and plan advocacy efforts focused on various aspects of drones, targeted killings and expanding US covert wars. If you are interested in attending this session, please email Ramah Kudaimi at rkudaimi(@ symbol)gmail.com.

Learn more.

Richard Wright: Washington Post – No Memory on Iraq & No Integrity on Iran

05 Iran, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Government, IO Impotency, Media
Richard Wright

An Mini-Me would say, “Huh”?

US intelligence gains in Iran seen as boost to confidence

By Joby Warrick and Greg Miller

The Washington Post
Published: April 8, 2012

More than three years ago, the CIA dispatched a stealth surveillance drone into the skies over Iran.

The bat-winged aircraft penetrated more than 600 miles inside the country, captured images of Iran’s secret nuclear facility at Qom and then flew home. All the while, analysts at the CIA and other agencies watched carefully for any sign that the craft, dubbed the RQ-170 Sentinel, had been detected by Tehran’s air defenses on its maiden voyage.

“There was never even a ripple,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official involved in the previously undisclosed mission.

CIA stealth drones scoured dozens of sites throughout Iran, making hundreds of passes over suspicious facilities, before a version of the RQ-170 crashed inside Iran’s borders in December. The surveillance has been part of what current and former U.S. officials describe as an intelligence surge that is aimed at Iran’s nuclear program and that has been gaining momentum since the final years of George W. Bush’s administration.

Continue reading “Richard Wright: Washington Post – No Memory on Iraq & No Integrity on Iran”

Marcus Aurelius: Department of State Broken – With No Prospect of Being Fixed

02 Diplomacy
Marcus Aurelius

Diplomacy is one of those jobs where you actually have to be present on scene to do it.  One key point that Ms. Schake does not mention is that a principal reason military is playing a dominant role right now is that Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) are not volunteering for the hardship — such as Baghdad and Kabul — posts in adequate numbers and neither Secretary of State nor Director General of  Foreign Service has invoked  statutory authority for “directed assignments,” i.e., to involuntarily assign FSOs where they are needed.  So, if nobody wants to go to Shitholia, nobody goes.)

Politico.com, April 5, 2012

How State Can Take Back Diplomacy

By Kori Schake

The Obama administration brandished “smart power” as crucial to U.S. foreign policy. “With smart power,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared in her confirmation hearings, “diplomacy will be the vanguard of foreign policy.” Yet the U.S. military controls ever wider swaths of our civilian activity abroad.

Despite a U.S. Embassy in Kabul staffed with more than 1,000 people, the U.S. military is running task forces on corruption and building the justice system in Afghanistan. When the Obama administration needed a political envoy for delicate diplomatic work in Iraq, it sent the Army chief of staff.

The militarization of U.S. diplomacy is bad policy. And it doesn’t have to be this way. Our diplomats are talented, resourceful people with the vocation of representing our country. But unlike the military, the State Department makes poor use of its human capital.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Department of State Broken – With No Prospect of Being Fixed”

Chuck Spinney: The Afghanistan Disaster Part I – When the War Comes Home

10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, Military, Officers Call
Chuck Spinney
WEEKEND EDITION APRIL 6-8, 2012
The Afghan Disaster
by FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY, Counterpunch

The PR disasters over the last three months — including pictures of American troops urinating on Afghan corpses, the burning of Qurans, and the massacre of Afghan civilians, including women and children, by at least one deranged American soldier — have morphed into a grand strategic debacle.  From the perspective of the Afghan insurgency, these are gifts that will keep on giving.

Why do I use the modifier grand strategic?

Because these incidents have (1) increased the moral strength of the Afghan insurgents by handing them a coup to rally supporters and attract the uncommitted to their cause.  They also widen the existing rift between the United States military and the Karzai government, which in any case is viewed by many Afghans as a corrupt, illegitimate, quisling lapdog of the US.  And (2), they are visibly weakening the rapidly crumbling solidarity at home.  Recent polls in America, for example, suggest the already overwhelming majority of Americans who now think it is time to exit the Afghan enterprise is growing again.  Moreover, an increasing number of politicians and editorial boards are now beginning to reflect the views of the majority of American people.  These incidents have magnified the already widespread perceptions among Afghans of a grotesque mismatch between the ideals we profess uphold  and what we do.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: The Afghanistan Disaster Part I – When the War Comes Home”

Josh Kilbourn: 51 Months of Recession – Report Card

03 Economy, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Media
Josh Kilbourn

51 Months After The Start Of The Recession, Here Is The Report Card

Tyler Durden

ZeroHedge, 04/06/2012

Recovery? What Recovery? 4 years after central banks have progressively injected over $7 trillion in liquidity into the global markets (and thus, by Fed logic, the economy), and who knows how many trillion in fiscal aid has been misallocated, to halt the Second Great Depression which officially started in December 2007, the US “recovery” is the weakest in modern US history! How many more trillions will have to be printed (and monetized) before the central planners realize that fighting mean reversion by using debt to defeat recore debt, just doesnt't work? Our guess – lots.

Incidentally, the US has now generated 3 million jobs since the trough of the recession in September 2010, until which point it had previously lost 8 million. Unfortunately, since the real labor force has grown by 4.6 million over the same period, or at the conventionally accepeted 90,000 labor pool entrants per month for 51 months, despite what the BLS may say, because America is after all growing, this means that the Obama administration has created a negative 1.6 million jobs net of demographics, which in turn have cost the US a modest $5.1 trillion in new debt, or an even modest $3.1 million in debt for every job lost.

Chart 1 – the current “recovery” in the context of all previous ones:

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Chart 2 – Min, Max and Average… and now

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Chart 3 – in bar chart format

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Chart 4 – There is good news: 16 quarters after the start of the recession, US output has turned positive. Just barely.

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Phi Beta Iota: What is one to do when the government, with the full complicity of the two parties that monopolize power through various illegitimate means, the full complicity of the five major media corporations whose “mouthpieces” bury their intelligence along with their integrity, all lie to the public? Have we really become a nation of idiot sheep?  At what point is the government impeachable for lies to the public?

See Also:

THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth & Trust

Journal: Reflections on Integrity UPDATED + Integrity RECAP