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Paul Merrell

Afghan Holocaust, Afghan Genocide - 0 views

  • This site is dedicated to informing people about the ongoing, US Alliance-imposed Afghan Holocaust and Afghan Genocide that as of 2012 is associated with post-2001 violent and non-violent avoidable deaths totalling 7.2  million and Afghan and Pashtun refugees totalling 5-6 million – an Afghan Holocaust ( a huge number of deaths) and an Afghan Genocide as defined by Article 2 of the UN Geneva Convention (see: http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html ) which states: “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”Also utterly ignored by Neocon American and Zionist  Imperialist (NAZI)-perverted and subverted Western Mainstream media are the 1.2 million people who have died world-wide since 9-11 due to US Alliance restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from 6% of world market share in 2001 to 93% in 2007, the breakdown (as of 2015)  including 280,000 Americans, 256,000 Indonesians, 68,000 Iranians, 25,000 British, 14,000 Canadians, 10,000 Germans, 5,000 Australians and 500 French.
  • As of January 2014  deaths from the Afghanistan War include approximately 7 million violent and non-violent excess deaths of Indigenous Afghans since 2001 and 3,417 US Alliance deaths (see: http://icasualties.org/oif/ ).As of January  2014 it is estimated from the latest UN Population Division data that in Occupied Afghanistan post-invasion non-violent excess deaths total 5.5 million.  Assuming expert US-Australian advice that the level of violence has been 4 times lower in the Afghan War than in the Iraq War where the ratio of violent deaths to non-violent avoidable deaths was 1.5 million/1.2million = 1.25, then post-invasion violent deaths in Afghanistan can be estimated at 1.25 x 5.5 million/4 = 1.7 million. Post-invasion violent and non-violent avoidable deaths total 5.5 million plus 1.7 million = 7.2 million; and post-invasion under-5 infant deaths total 3.0 million (90% avoidable and due to US Alliance war crimes in gross violence of the Geneva Convention – Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War demand that an Occupier must supply life-sustaining food and medical requisites “to the fullest extent of the means available to it” (see: http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/y4gcpcp.htm ) but according to the WHO (see: http://www.who.int/countries/en/ ) the “total annual expenditure on health per capita” permitted in Occupied Afghanistan is $50 as compared to $8,608 in Occupier US, $3,322 in Occupier UK, $4.086 in Occupier France, $4,371 in Occupier Germany  and $3,692  in Occupier racist, white Apartheid Australia).  
  • There are 3-4 million Afghan refugees plus a further 2.5 million Pashtun refugees generated in NW Pakistan by the obscene war policies of war criminal Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Obama – this carnage involving 4.5 million post-invasion violent and non-violent excess Afghan deaths constitutes an Afghan Holocaust and an Afghan Genocide as defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention (see: http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html ).
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  • As of January 2014  2009 it was estimated from the latest UN Population Division data that in Occupied Afghanistan post-invasion non-violent excess deaths totalled 5.5 million and post-invasion violent deaths totalled 1.7 million (this based on assuming expert US-Australian advice that the level of violence has been 4 times lower in the Afghan War than in the Iraq War).
  • The US Alliance restored the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from about 6% of world market share in 2001 to 93% in 2007 (see UNODC World Drug Report 2007: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/WDR-2007.html and World Drug Report 2009: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/WDR-2009.html   and World Drug Report , Opium/heroin market, 2009: http://www.unodc.org/documents/wdr/WDR_2009/WDR2009_Opium_Heroin_Market.pdf ).
  • About 0.1 million people die from opiate drug-related causes each year (see Australian National Drug Research Centre: http://db.ndri.curtin.edu.au/media.asp?mediarelid=40 ; UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), “Addiction, crime and insurgency. The transnational threat of Afghan opium”, 2009: http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/Afghanistan/Afghan_Opium_Trade_2009_web.pdf ) and hence about 0.8 million have died since the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, of whom about 90%, i.e. 0.9 x 0.8 million = 0.7 million people, have died as a result of the huge expansion of the Afghan opium industry under US Alliance occupation. In 2005 in the US, of 18,347 deaths due to narcotics and psychodysleptics, 12, 262 were due to heroin (2,011), other opioids (5,789) or methadone (4,462) (see Health E-stat, “Increases in poisoning and methadone-related deaths: United States,1999-2005 “: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/poisoning/poisoning.pdf  ) . Given the over 90% contribution of the US restoration of the Taliban-destroyed opium industry to world illicit heroin production, and the interconnectedness and effective indistinguishability of "Afghan-derived heroin" from the "pool" of other abusively-used opiates, one can accordingly crudely estimate 0.9 x 12,262 persons/year x 8 years = 88,286 US opiate drug-related deaths (0.9 x 2,011 deaths/year x 8 years = 14,479 heroin-related deaths) connected with the aftermath of the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.
  • Global deaths from violent priorities and ignoring Developing World poverty. Professor John Holdren (Professor of Environmental Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University; Director of the Woods Hole Research Center;  recent Chairman of the American Association for the Advancement of Science) identified nuclear weapons, poverty and global warming as the three biggest threats facing Humanity (see: http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2007/0216am_holdren_address.shtml ). The US military budget is now about $1 trillion per annum (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States ) and 2001 Economics Nobel Laureate and former World Bank Chief Economist, Professor Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia University) has estimated that the accrual cost (long-term committed cost as opposed to the shirt-term budgeted cost) of the Iraq War is about $3 trillion (see: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2007/s2236161.htm and “The Three Trillion Dollar War” by Joseph Stiglitz). In 2009, funds for war had been equally distributed between Iraq and Afghanistan, which each received $700 million. But in 2010, the bulk of the funds - $1.2 billion dollars will go to Afghanistan (see: http://www.defencetalk.com/afghan-war-costs-to-overtake-iraq-in-2010-pentagon-18679/ ). The budgeted cost from Congress of the Afghan War is estimated to have been $38 billion (see: http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=16570
  • Poverty results in the deaths of 16 million people annually (including 9.5 million under-5 year old infants) from deprivation and deprivation exacerbated disease (2003 data; see Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007). yet high female literacy, good governance, good primary health care and a modest increase in economic security could abolish this global avoidable mortality holocaust. It is estimated that the simple expedient of increasing the per capita of all countries to about $1000 would cost only $1.4 trillion, roughly the annual global “defence” budget and about 2.65 of global GNP (2003) ( p169,  Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”). Global deaths from worsening climate genocide. Both Dr James Lovelock FRS (Gaia hypothesis) and Professor Kevin Anderson ( Director, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Manchester, UK) have recently estimated that fewer than 1 billion people will survive this century due to unaddressed, man-made global warming – noting that the world population is expected to reach 9.5 billion by 2050, these estimates translate to a climate genocide involving deaths of 10 billion people this century, this including 6 billion under-5 year old infants, 3 billion Muslims, 2 billion Indians, 0.5 billion Bengalis, 0.3 billion Pakistanis and 0.3 billion Bangladeshis (see “Climate Genocide”: http://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/ ).
  • US Alliance war policies in a swathe of countries from Occupied Haiti to Occupied Afghanistan and NW Pakistan, coupled with similarly greedy and  racist US Alliance global warming policies, oppose and prevent global equity and will ultimately kill 10 billion non-Europeans this century.
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    Nauseating statistics. Site also has stats for Palestine and Iraq.
Paul Merrell

Study: U.S. Wars Have Left Over 1 Million Dead in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan | Democra... - 0 views

  • A new report has found that the Iraq War has killed about one million people. The Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and other groups examined the toll from the so-called war on terror in three countries — Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The investigators found "the war has, directly or indirectly, killed around one million people in Iraq, 220,000 in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan (i.e. a total of around 1.3 million). Not included in this figure are further war zones such as Yemen. The figure is approximately 10 times greater than that of which the public, experts and decision makers are aware. ... And this is only a conservative estimate," they wrote. They say the true tally could be more than two million.
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    Unfortunately, those stats have been around for several years now. This is just a new confirmation of the data.
Paul Merrell

Imagery and Empire: Understanding the Western Fear of Arab and Muslim Terrorists | Glob... - 0 views

  • Seven out of the top ten countries afflicted by terrorist attacks are predominately Muslim, according to the Australia-headquartered Institute for Economics and Peace’s Global Terrorism Index for 2014, which is based on the University of Maryland’s meta-analytic Global Terrorism Database. Using a maximum value of ten and a minimum value of zero, the entire international community is systematically ranked. Although the definition of terrorist incidents in the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database can definitely be debated over, important inferences can be made from its data sets and the Institute for Economics and Peace’s Global Terrorism Index. Several key features can be noticed, if readers look at the nature and identities of the perpetrators of what is classified as acts of terrorism among the top thirty countries in the Global Terrorism Index for 2014. The first feature is that the violence generated from the ascribed terrorist groups falls within the framework of insurrections and civil wars that are generally equated as acts of terrorism. For example, this is the case for countries like Somalia, the Philippines, Thailand, Colombia, Turkey, Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nepal, which are respectively ranked seventh, ninth, tenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, twenty-second, and twenty-fourth place. Under closer examination several of these insurgencies can be tied to international rivalries and power plays by the US and its allies. This becomes obvious when more observations are made.
  • The second feature is that the majority of the cases of terrorism in the indexed countries, especially the higher ranked they are on the list, are connected to Washington’s direct or indirect interference in their affair. For example, this is the case for Iraq, NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Russia, Lebanon, Libya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, South Sudan, China, and Iran, which are respectively ranked first, second, third, fifth, seventh, eighth, eleventh, fourteenth, fifteenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth, twenty-fifth, and twenty-eighth. US-led wars, Pentagon interventions, US-backed coups, or US government support for so-called «opposition» groups or proxy regimes have all been a basis for the affliction of terrorism in these countries. Out of the above countries, according to the Global Terrorism Index, 82% of global deaths that are assigned to acts of terrorism happen in NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, and Nigeria. The ties to US foreign policy should be clear.
  • It has been claimed that if all terrorists are not Arabs or Muslims, that most terrorists are Arabs or Muslims. Is this true or another myth? An empirical look at data compiled in the US and Europe will help answer this question. In the US, which is ranked thirtieth in the Global Terrorism Index for 2014, the majority of terrorists are not Muslims and are non-Muslims according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Inside the US, 6% of terrorist cases from 1980 to 2005 were committed by Muslim terrorists. [1] The other 94% of terrorism cases and terrorists — in other words, the vast majority — were not related to Arabs, Muslims, or Islam. [2] While the FBI’s methodology on what is a terrorist attack and what is not a terrorist attack is questionable, it will be accepted herein for arguments sake. According to the same FBI report, there were actually more terrorist attacks launched by Jews from 1980 to 2005 on US soil. The same FBI data was compiled by the Princeton University-linked webpage loonwatch.com in a chart that describes the breakdown of cases of terrorist attacks on US soil from 1980 to 2005 as follows: 42% Hispanic terrorism; 24% extreme left-wing group terrorism; 16% other types of terrorists that do not fit into the other main categories; 7% Jewish terrorists; 6% Muslim terrorists; and 5% communist terrorists. [3] While Muslim terrorists comprised 6% of the attacks on US soil from 1980 to 2005, Jewish terrorists and Hispanic terrorists respectively comprised 7% and 42% of the terrorist attacks in the US during the same period. There, however, is no fear mongering about Jews or Hispanic people. The same media and government focus is not given to them as is given to ethnic Arabs and Muslims.
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  • The same pattern repeats itself in the European Union. Loonwatch.com also compiles data on terrorism in the European Union from the reports of the European Union’s European Police Office (Europol) from 2007, 2008, and 2009 in its annual EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Reports. [4] The data further distances Muslims from terrorist acts. 99.6% of the terrorist attacks in the European Union were committed by non-Muslims. [5] The number of failed, foiled, or successful terrorist attacks by Muslims in the EU from 2007 to 2009 was simply five attacks whereas the number of terrorist attacks by separatist groups was 1,352 attacks, which equates to approximately 85% of all terrorist incidents in the European Union. [6] According to Europol, the number of failed, foiled, or successful terrorist attacks by so-called left-wing groups was 104 while another 52 attacks were categorized as non-specific. [7] In the same period, two attacks were attributed to so-called right-wing groups by Europol. [8]
  • There is a huge disparity in who is causing and committing terrorism and who is being victimized and blamed for it. Despite the overwhelming facts, whenever Arabs or Muslims commit crimes and acts of terrorism, they are the individuals that are focused on whereas non-Arabs and non-Muslims are ignored. If it does acknowledge that Muslims are the biggest victims of terrorism, Orientalism still manages to assess some guilt to the victims of terrorism by tacitly portraying them as members of a savage community or society that are as much prone to facing a violent end as animals in a jungle.
  • Illusions are at work in the world. The truth has been turned on its head. The victims are being portrayed as the perpetrators. Whether stated candidly, implied, or unmentioned, the notion of Arabs and Muslims as savages and terrorists plays on the imagery that the so-called Western World embodies equality, freedom, choice, civilization, tolerance, progress, and modernity whereas the so-called Arab-Muslim World underneath its surface represents inequality, restrictions, tyranny, a lack of choices, savagery, intolerance, backwardness, and primitiveness. This imagery actually serves to de-politize the political nature of tensions. It sanitizes the actions of empire, from coercive diplomacy with Iran and support for regime change in Syria to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and US military intervention in Somalia, Yemen, and Libya. As mentioned earlier, in varying degrees, this imagery extends to other places that are seen by US Orientalists as non-Western places or entities, like Russia and China. At its roots, this imagery is really part of a discourse that sustains a system of power that allows power to be practiced by an empire over «outsiders» and against its own citizens. It is because of US foreign policy and economic interests that Arabs and Muslims are unempirically portrayed as terrorists while real world data that shows that US intervention is creating terrorism is ignored. This is why there is a fixation on the attack on Parliament Hill in Canada, the Martin Place hostage crisis in Sydney, and the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris, but US, Canadian, Australian, and French governmental support for terrorism that has cost tens of thousands of lives in Syria is ignored.
  • It has been claimed that if all terrorists are not Arabs or Muslims, that most terrorists are Arabs or Muslims. Is this true or another myth? An empirical look at data compiled in the US and Europe will help answer this question.
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    Very interesting statistics that depart from the common American belief. Note that the stats do not include "terrorism" inflicted by U.S. or foreign government military forces. But all wars produce terror far beyond the wildest capabilities of individual "terrorists."
Paul Merrell

Virtual Economy's Phantom Job Gains Are Based on Statistical Fraud - 0 views

  • Washington can’t stop lying. Don’t be convinced by last Thursday’s job report that it is your fault if you don’t have a job. Those 288,000 jobs and 6.1% unemployment rate are more fiction than reality. In his analysis of the June Labor Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, John Williams (www.ShadowStats.com) wrote that the 288,000 June jobs and 6.1% unemployment rate are “far removed from common experience and underlying reality.” Payrolls were overstated by “massive, hidden shifts in seasonal adjustments,” and the Birth-Death model added the usual phantom jobs. Williams reports that “the seasonal factors are changed each and every month as part of the concurrent seasonal-adjustment process, which is tantamount to a fraud,” as the changes in the seasonal factors can inflate the jobs number. While the headline numbers always are on a new basis, the prior reporting is not revised so as to be consistent.
  • The monthly unemployment rates are not comparable, so one doesn’t know whether the official U.3 rate (the headline rate that the financial press reports) went up or down. Moreover, the rate does not count discouraged workers who, unable to find a job, cease looking. To be counted among the U.3 unemployed, the person must have actively looked for work during the four weeks prior to the survey. The U.3 rate automatically declines as people who have been unable to find jobs cease trying to find one and thereby cease to be counted as unemployed.
  • Since 1994 there has been no official measure than includes discouraged people who have not looked for a job for more than a year. Including all discouraged workers produces an unemployment rate that currently stands at 23.1%, almost four times the rate that the financial press reports. What you can take away from this is the opposite of what the presstitute media would have you believe. The measured rate of unemployment can decline simply because large numbers of the unemployed become discouraged workers, cease looking for work, and cease to be counted in the U.3 and U.6 measures of the unemployment rate.
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    Paul Craig Roberts dismantles the latest employment stats.
Paul Merrell

Forget Russia - Here's How Much Israel Is Spending to Influence American Politics - 0 views

  • While the American media and Washington are expending substantial energy on the alleged Russian interference in the United States political theatre during the 2016 election cycle, another nation and its American promoters that invest substantially in Washington generally fly under the radar when it comes to political influence-peddling. According to Open Secrets, the pro-Israel "industry" has made the following political contributions since 1990:
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    Lots of Israel Lobby spending stats.
Gary Edwards

Jeff Gundlach June Webcast Presentation - Business Insider - 0 views

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    Fascinating presentation filled with stats and charts depicting the state of the world's economy.  51 slides in total, so it takes some time.  The summation is clear though.  We are in a world of hurt.  The $85 Billion per month the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel is pumping into the financial markets is the only thing holding the world economy together.  When the dollar collapses, the USA must officially devaluate the dollar, the QEII $85 Billion per month joy ride will be over. ""Something happened in the middle of May," said investing god Jeff Gundlach as he began his latest webcast on the state of the global markets and the economy. He was referring to how global interest rates quietly rallied and how the Japanese stock market fell spectacularly. He notes that the magnitude of the interest rate rally isn't unusual.  Having said that, Gundlach believes rates will stay low thanks to a "put" by the Federal Reserve. Should rates rise, Gundlach believes the Fed would actually expand quantitative easing. This is because high interest rates would put too much pressure on the economy, and it would cause Federal interest expenses to become too onerous. "I certainly think the Fed is going to reduce quantitative easing," he said. But he attributes the reduction to the shrinking Federal deficit. "I'm starting to like long-term Treasuries," said Gundlach as he predicted the 10-year Treasury yield would end the year at 1.7%. All of Gundlach's theses are based on the fact that the global economy remains weak, GDP growth forecasts continue to come down, and unemployment remains high and lop-sided. He communicates all of this in his eye-opening, hand-picked collection of charts on growth, employment, inflation, stocks, bonds, and other critical global macro indicators. Anyone who is serious about investing must consider his charts. And for anyone who's just curious, these charts will give you a peek into how Gundlach thinks. Click Here To See Gundlach's Presentation >"
Paul Merrell

HTTPS Deployment Growing by Leaps and Bounds: 2016 in Review | Electronic Frontier Foun... - 0 views

  • This was a great year for adoption of HTTPS encryption for secure connections to websites. HTTPS is an essential technology for security and privacy on the Web, and we've long been asking sites to turn it on to protect their users from spying (and from censorship and tampering with site content). This year, lots of factors came together to make it happen, including ongoing news about surveillance, advances in Web server capacity, nudges from industry, government, and Web browsers, and the Let's Encrypt certificate authority. By some measures, more than half of page loads in Firefox and in Chrome are now secured with HTTPS—the first time this has ever happened in the Web's history. That's right: for the first time ever, most pages viewed on the Web were encrypted! (As another year-in-review post will discuss, browsers are also experimenting with and rolling out stronger encryption technologies to better protect those connections.)
  • Sites large and small took turned on HTTPS in 2016, often using certificates from the Let's Encrypt certificate authority (sometimes with EFF's Certbot software, or a range of other options). In just a single year of broad public availability, Let's Encrypt has now helped enable secure connections for over 21 million websites, most of which never had certificates before.
  • A sizeable part of the growth in HTTPS came from very large hosting providers that decided to make HTTPS a default for sites that they host, including OVH, Wordpress.com, Shopify, Tumblr, Squarespace, and many others. Sites they host, and visitors to those sites, can get a boost in security without having to do anything. (And we're getting ongoing benefits from providers like CloudFlare who made the switch in previous years.) A single hosting provider's decision can result in enabling encryption for hundreds of thousands or millions of customers; we hope others will take the plunge too! U.S. government sites also made significant progress adopting HTTPS this year, responding to the administration's guidance in support of HTTPS—a clear and practical explanation of why secure connections should be the default. A caveat: data from Google shows that use of HTTPS varies significantly from country to country, remaining especially uncommon in Japan. We've also heard that it's still uncommon across much of East and Southeast Asia. Next year, we'll have to find ways to bridge those gaps.
Paul Merrell

The U.S. military's stats on deadly airstrikes are wrong. Thousands have gone unreported - 0 views

  • The American military has failed to publicly disclose potentially thousands of lethal airstrikes conducted over several years in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, a Military Times investigation has revealed. The enormous data gap raises serious doubts about transparency in reported progress against the Islamic State, al-Qaida and the Taliban, and calls into question the accuracy of other Defense Department disclosures documenting everything from costs to casualty counts.In 2016 alone, U.S. combat aircraft conducted at least 456 airstrikes in Afghanistan that were not recorded as part of an open-source database maintained by the U.S. Air Force, information relied on by Congress, American allies, military analysts, academic researchers, the media and independent watchdog groups to assess each war's expense, manpower requirements and human toll. Those airstrikes were carried out by attack helicopters and armed drones operated by the U.S. Army, metrics quietly excluded from otherwise comprehensive monthly summaries, published online for years, detailing American military activity in all three theaters. Most alarming is the prospect this data has been incomplete since the war on terrorism began in October 2001. If that is the case, it would fundamentally undermine confidence in much of what the Pentagon has disclosed about its prosecution of these wars, prompt critics to call into question whether the military sought to mislead the American public, and cast doubt on the competency with which other vital data collection is being performed and publicized. Those other key metrics include American combat casualties, taxpayer expense and the military’s overall progress in degrading enemy capabilities.
Gary Edwards

The Obama Factor and Unemployment Statistics | Western Free Press - 0 views

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    Great chart!  It shows the Labor Force Participation (LFP) Rate, which rolls off the table under the Obama regime.  This graphical statistic depiction answers the following simple question: "What fraction of our total civilian working-age population is actually working?" Now you know where the St Louis Federal Reserve Banksters came up with their underemployed stat of 88 MILLION workers either out of work or delivering pizza part time. http://www.westernfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Image1-570x448.jpg excerpt: What fraction of our total civilian working-age population is actually employed? In this statistic, people are counted as either working or not-working.   It doesn't matter whether they're looking for work or not.  That makes this statistic harder to "fudge" than the widely reported "unemployment rate".  While there are month-to-month variations, note the steady, linear decline in the trend lines since Obama took office in January, 2009.  Well done, Mr. President! This is The Obama Factor. 
Gary Edwards

Unemployed WorkForce Graphic.jpg 2002-2012 Time Line - 1 views

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    Incredible.  If this surveys the hundred of billions in paid spin and lies, it will determine the next President, the next Senate, the next House and every Stat Legislature - Governorship.  This is the bottom line.  The one that no one wants Americans to see.
Gary Edwards

NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times per year, audit finds - The Washington Post - 0 views

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    Page 2.   There is an incredible chart jpeg at the top of the page showing the audit stats.  Incredible.
Paul Merrell

NYT Trumpets U.S. Restraint against ISIS, Ignores Hundreds of Civilian Deaths - The Int... - 0 views

  • The New York Times this morning has an extraordinary article claiming that the U.S. is being hampered in its war against ISIS because of its extreme — even excessive — concern for civilians. “American officials say they are not striking significant — and obvious — Islamic State targets out of fear that the attacks will accidentally kill civilians,” reporter Eric Schmitt says. The newspaper gives voice to numerous, mostly anonymous officials to complain that the U.S. cares too deeply about protecting civilians to do what it should do against ISIS. We learn that “many Iraqi commanders, and even some American officers, argue that exercising such prudence is harming the coalition’s larger effort to destroy” ISIS. And “a persistent complaint of Iraqi officials and security officers is that the United States has been too cautious in its air campaign, frequently allowing columns of Islamic State fighters essentially free movement on the battlefield.”
  • The article claims that “the campaign has killed an estimated 12,500 fighters” and “has achieved several successes in conducting about 4,200 strikes that have dropped about 14,000 bombs and other weapons.” But an anonymous American pilot nonetheless complains that “we have not taken the fight to these guys,” and says he “cannot get authority” to drone-bomb targets without excessive proof that no civilians will be endangered. Despite the criticisms, Schmitt writes, “administration officials stand by their overriding objective to prevent civilian casualties.” But there’s one rather glaring omission in this article: the many hundreds of civilian deaths likely caused by the U.S.-led bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria. Yet the only reference to civilian deaths are two, ones which the U.S. government last week admitted: “the military’s Central Command on Thursday announced the results of an inquiry into the deaths of two children in Syria in November, saying they were most likely killed by an American airstrike,” adding that “a handful of other attacks are under investigation.”
  • Completely absent is the abundant evidence from independent monitoring groups documenting hundreds of civilian deaths. Writing in Global Post last month, Richard Hall noted that while “in areas of Syria and Iraq held by the Islamic State, verifying civilian casualties is difficult,” there is “strong evidence [that] suggests civilians are dying in the coalition’s airstrikes.”
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    Glenn Greenwald ain't buying the DoD excuse for not effectively bombing ISIL Check to make sure your wallet is still there anytime the U.S. federal government starts talking about humanitarian motives in prosecution of its wars. There never has been such a thing as a humanitarian war. And the U.S. government is not concerned about civilian casualties. If it was, it would have stopped instigating direct or proxy foreign wars a very long time ago. Civilian non-combatants always take the brunt of any war. Example: death toll from Iraq War 2.0 stands over 1 million. Casualty stats are not yet available for Iraq War 3.0. 
Gary Edwards

Bradley Schiller Says Barack Obama Should Stop Comparing Our Financial Crisis With the ... - 0 views

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    This out of control Obama fearmongering may be good politics, but it is bad history and bad economics. It is bad history because our current economic woes don't come close to those of the 1930s. At worst, a comparison to the 1981-82 recession might be appropriate. Consider the job losses that Mr. Obama always cites. In the last year, the U.S. economy shed 3.4 million jobs. That's a grim statistic for sure, but represents just 2.2% of the labor force. From November 1981 to October 1982, 2.4 million jobs were lost -- fewer in number than today, but the labor force was smaller. So 1981-82 job losses totaled 2.2% of the labor force, the same as now. Good stats comparing the Roosevelt great depression years, the Carter recession years and the Obama recession years.
Gary Edwards

Karl Rove: The President Is No B+ - WSJ.com - 0 views

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    Once again Karl Rove lays the lumber to the liar Obama.  Rove provides a trove of stats and facts exposing Obama as a shameless liar and phony.  And then Rove points out that the American people are not fooled.  Polls show an increasing number of Americans are angry and aware that they have been had.  Obama is not who he claimed to be. excerpt:Barack Obama has won a place in history with the worst ratings of any president at the end of his first year: 49% approve and 46% disapprove of his job performance in the latest USA Today/Gallup Poll. There are many factors that explain it, including weakness abroad, an unprecedented spending binge at home, and making a perfectly awful health-care plan his signature domestic initiative. But something else is happening. Mr. Obama has not governed as the centrist, deficit-fighting, bipartisan consensus builder he promised to be. And his promise to embody a new kind of politics-free of finger-pointing, pettiness and spin-was a mirage. He has cheapened his office with needless attacks on his predecessor.
Gary Edwards

Porter Stansberry : This key gov't statistic is signaling crisis - 0 views

  • These obligations aren't future promises to pay. This isn't Medicare spending projected out until 2040. These are all obligations that either have known maturities or will come due in the next two or three years.
  • What's a reasonable rate of interest on these debts? Right now, it costs the U.S. government almost 5% to borrow for 30 years. Let's assume the blended borrowing cost goes to that amount – which is well below the government's average borrowing costs since 1980. That would equal $1 trillion in interest payments due, per year. That's 100% of all income taxes paid in 2009.
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    Key Stat: The amount of the government's revenues that must go towards paying interest. The U.S. already has more debt than it can afford, which puts it at an enormous risk of a debt and currency collapse.  ... Our "short term" debt means we'll have to "roll over" roughly $4 trillion in the next 30 months. That's in addition to funding another $3 trillion or so in additional annual deficits. As of today, China is a net seller of Treasury debt. If we can't fund our debts in the bond market, the Federal Reserve will be forced to monetize our deficits by buying Treasury bonds. If that happens, inflation will soar and the price of gold will double or triple almost overnight. By the end of OBAMA!'s first presidency (2013), I believe the U.S. will owe roughly: $17.8 trillion in federal debt, $2 trillion in GSE debt/guarantees, $500 billion in FDIC obligations, and $500 billion in FHA obligations. My only big assumption is $1.5 trillion in additional deficits each year, which is what the president's budget also predicts.  Right now, it costs the U.S. government almost 5% to borrow for 30 years. Let's assume the blended borrowing cost goes to that amount - which is well below the government's average borrowing costs since 1980. That would equal $1 trillion in interest payments due, per year. That's 100% of all income taxes paid in 2009. This amount of debt isn't sustainable. Felix Zulauf, one of Europe's top money managers, "Eventually the U.S. will arrive at the point where, as Marc Faber says, interest payments on government debt all of a sudden go to 20%, 25%, 30% of tax revenue. And once you go above 30%, you are done. You go into default or your currency breaks down and your system collapses."  act now to protect yourself. If you wait until the last minute to get your assets out of the U.S., you'll never make it.
Gary Edwards

The Problem With Debt | Clusterstock on HomeOwner Equity Loss - 0 views

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    "15.4 million homeowners now owe more on their houses than their houses are worth, up from 13.6 million four months ago. The number will probably top 20 million when all is said and done. To mark this sad stat, we've updated our post from last fall on the power of leverage." Excellent math in this article. Very simple and straightforward explanation. Do the math and weep.
Gary Edwards

NumbersUSA Education & Research Foundation - 0 views

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    stats and charts for immigration, legal and illegal.
Paul Merrell

America's Going to Lose the Oil Price War - Bloomberg View - 0 views

  • This could be a bloody, prolonged battle with an uncertain outcome. Oil supply and demand are rather inelastic to the price in the short term. The price's trajectory this year will, therefore, be largely dictated by the news and the market's reaction to it. A wave of bankruptcies in the U.S. shale industry will probably drive it up because it will be perceived as a negative factor for supply. How high it will go, however, is unpredictable. It may actually rise enough to enable consolidation in the U.S. shale industry, giving it second wind and driving OPEC countries, Russia, Mexico and Norway into greater difficulties -- or it might just even out at a level that would make the U.S. forget about its shale boom. That would have dire consequences for the U.S. economic recovery. It may be time for the U.S. government to consider whether it wants to up the stakes in this price war by entering it as a sovereign country. That might mean bailing out or temporarily subsidizing the shale producers. After all, they are competing with states now, not with businesses like themselves.
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    U.S. government subsidies for fracked shale oil producers? Well, we bail out banksters bad bets; why not the oil companies' too? But watch the sparks fly if they try to ram that through Congress.  Repubs and Dems are competing on which should get credit for a slight improvement in the economic stats for the last quarter. But with gasoline heading south of $2.00 per gallon, I'd bet that it's increased consumer spending that is flowing from reduced prices at the gas  pump and is not being repatriated to OPEC.  
Paul Merrell

The Empire's Next Effort to Extract Your Wealth | Laissez-Faire Bookstore - 0 views

  • Since before the tech bust, we’ve been suggesting that while Americans “think” they’re getting richer… they’re actually heading in the other direction. They’re getting poorer.
  • This proposition has been easier for folks to entertain since housing busted and the financial crisis reversed the “wealth effect” in 2008. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the logic of the American Empire and what you can expect in the year(s) ahead. “Great empires, such as the Roman and British, were extractive,” economist Paul Craig Roberts observed recently. “The empires succeeded because the value of the resources and wealth extracted from conquered lands exceeded the value of conquest and governance.” We explored a similar theme in our 2006 book, Empire of Debt. But unlike empires of the past, the American Empire has a logic all its own. “America’s wars are very expensive,” says Roberts, stating the obvious. “Bush and Obama have doubled the national debt, and the American people have no benefits from it. No riches, no bread and circuses flow to Americans from Washington’s wars.”
  • Again Roberts: “Washington’s empire extracts resources from the American people for the benefit of the few powerful interest groups that rule America. The military-security complex, Wall Street, agribusiness and the Israel lobby use the government to extract resources from Americans to serve their profits and power. The U.S. Constitution has been extracted in the interests of the Security State, and Americans’ incomes have been redirected to the pockets of the 1%. “That is how the American Empire functions,” concludes Roberts. We agree. To grow, the American Empire is always looking to inflate the next bubble. These serial bubbles each have the effect of “extracting” wealth from the citizens — in the form of bigger mortgages, heftier credit card statements and stuffed stock portfolios. The “extracted” money is, over time, passed from the wallets of citizens to the pockets of the well connected.
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  • It’s Jackowski’s final mention of extraction — the student debt fiasco — that worries us. This bubble that has already taken flight. Now it’s flying dangerously close to a few pins. Just like with housing, this is one hell of a bubble. And when it bursts, it’ll invite another crew of crony capitalists to the Beltway, who will soon be lining up for bailouts. I urge you to grip your wallet with both hands and prepare for the worse.
Paul Merrell

Best place in the world to be a mother is... - CNN.com - 0 views

  • The index ranked countries according to five indicators of a mother's well-being: maternal health (the risk of maternal mortality); children's well-being (the mortality rate of children under five); educational status (number of years of formal schooling a woman receives); economic status (gross national income per capita); and political status (the participation of women in national government). Finland was followed closely by its Nordic neighbors and other Western European countries. Australia was the only non-European country to place in the top 10. The United States ranked 30th, performing poorly in under-five mortality rates, maternal death, and political participation, compared to other highly-developed countries.
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