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Unemployment Mumbo-Jumbo and Rank Propaganda
By Dave Lindorff
The US stock market jumped up today on word that the number of new unemployment applications fell to the lowest level in four years.
Sounds good, right? It's meant to sound good, but if you look at the number, and if you think about what it really means, it's not good news at all.
What the US Labor Department reported was that new unemployment claims filed for the week ended Feb. 24 totaled 351,000, which was slightly lower than the 353,000 new claims filed the prior week. "Slightly indeed! a better term for this 0.57% decline is "statistically insignificant!
The idea that such a "drop" in new claims would spark a jump in the Dow or the S&P shows how completely divorced from reality investors really are.
But it is worse than that. The number, remember, is new unemployment claims. That is to say, over a third of a million more Americans were laid off last week. Anyone who sees that as some kind of good news is really stretching to find a silver lining on a pretty dark cloud.
Now I'll grant you that from one perspective it's good to see "only" 351,000 new people getting on the nation's unemployment lines rather than the 589,000 who joined a line in December 2008. But the reason the number is smaller now is not that things have been getting better. It's that there are fewer people to lay off. Companies and employers have already cut back their workforces to the bone, so for them to find another 351,000 people to sack, as they seem to be doing week after week, suggests they are really struggling.
The official unemployment rate, an artificial politically rigged number deliberately designed to underreport the amount of actual joblessness, is still at a staggering 8.3 percent of the workforce, which represents over 13 million people. And if you count, as the government used to do, those who have been forced to accept only part-time jobs when they want full-time work, and those who have given up actively looking for work not because they don't want a job but because they have realized that there are no jobs to be had where they live, the rate is over 15%, and nearly half of those people without jobs have been without one for more than 6 months. Many people have exhausted their unemployment benefits, which after extensions, have been running as long as 99 weeks, or nearly two years!...
For the rest of this article by DAVE LINDORFF in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1082
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Yesterday night as I was driving home, NPR, rotten, corrupt public media was cheerleading the lies, propaganda that marks the
deformed class professionals, fascist middle class, whether it is Iran, the job statistics or LYING DENIALS of officials, often quoted
by NPR, as reliable sources, when they clearly are not.
The manipulation of the truth by the corporate media, corporate-public news stations, like PBS AND NPR is now so widespread, and
generic corruption, that one can take any of the issues listed above, to show these class, ideological, empire thugs are routine lying
asses:
HOW MANY TIMES HAS NPR, PBS, and the corporate media been exposed as PROPAGANDISTS, LIARS, on the issue of Iran, the
economy and foreign policies. They are all related to CHEERLEADING CLASS SHILLS, empire thugs who serve FASCIST ZIONISM,
FASCIST NATO AND FASCIST US. EMPIRE. It is called CLASS PROPAGANDA, CLASS MYTHS, CLASS DOGMAS AND BRAZEN LIES.
Even as they are caught with their pants down, exposed, as inveterate manipulators of the truth, THEY STILL CONTINUE to keep the
public ignorant of reality as it exists. This usually happens when documents, by Wiki Leaks shows that CLASS ELITES, MEDIA WHORES
LIE routinely to the public, as the recent Stratfor documents show the FASCIST COLLUSION of (FAKE/CORRUPTED) LABOR parties
and officials participating, SECRETLY, to indict Jullian Assange and Manning, while claiming not to know about the matter.
WHEN LIBERALS, LABOR, SOCIALIST PARTIES PARTICIPATE IN GENERIC LIES, CONSPIRACIES, WHETHER WAR OR TOTALITARIAN
POLICIES.....they have become FASCIST CHEERLEADERS, like most of the corporate media, including NPR:
Further evidence of secret US indictment of Julian Assange
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/mar2012/wiki-m01.shtml
EXCERPT:
"...The Stratfor emails undoubtedly reflect sentiments inside the Obama administration to exact revenge on Assange and destroy WikiLeaks for having exposed US war crimes all over the globe....
It is clear that Australian authorities, acting on the instructions of the Gillard government, are heavily involved in the conspiracy against Assange. In July 2010, Burton wrote to George Friedman, Stratfor CEO and founder: “We probably asked the ASIS [Australian Secret Intelligence Service] to monitor Wiki coms and email, after the soldier from Potomac [Manning] was nabbed. So, it’s reasonable to assume we probably already know who has done it. The delay could be figuring out how to declassify and use the Aussie intel on Wiki.”
Because of the widespread support for Assange in Australia and internationally, the Australian government has repeatedly denied any knowledge of his indictment. Yesterday, in parliament, the government’s Senate leader, Chris Evans, again stated: “I can tell you that the Australian government is not aware of any charges by the US government against Mr Assange.”
These denials fly in the face of the record. The Labor government publicly backed the persecution of Assange from the outset. In December 2010, Prime Minister Julia Gillard improperly declared the WikiLeaks publication of the US cables “illegal.” Without any legal basis, the then attorney-general, Robert McClelland, claimed that obtaining classified information was also an offence under Australian law. The government authorised an investigation, involving ASIS, the Australian Federal Police and other security agencies, to assist the US witch hunt...."
WHEN FAKE LABOR, SOCIALIST, FAKE PUBLIC MEDIA ROUTINELY LIE, CORRUPT THE NEWS, REALITY, THEY HAVE MORPHED INTO
FASCIST ELITES.
Neo Liberalism is a class deformed terminology for Fascist austerity , Fascist or Late Capitalism. NPR AND FOX
news share the same class myths, class dogmas, half truths, and corruption of reality, the "WEIMARIZATION" of
class states into Fascist, totalitarian outcomes: WHERE THE WEST NEVER LEARNED THE LESSONS OF FASCISM
The Science and Ethics of Austerity: Lessons from the US and Europe
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/03/01-9
excerpt:
"...In this narrative, Europe is especially culpable because it has failed to learn from its own history. German excess spending under the Weimar Republic led to hyperinflation, social panic, and the rise of the Nazis.
Part three of this trilogy warns that the United States is about to become Greece, unable to pay its debts and soon to be bankrupt. President Obama, has presided over an inordinate expansion of the Federal Government. Perhaps his most devastating blunder was an 800 billion dollar stimulus package that added to our debt and failed to produce any jobs.
Every element of this trilogy is now taken as gospel across sectors of the corporate media from Fox to NPR Every part, however, will not meet examinations that rely on the most generally accepted statistical checks and historical reckonings...."
WESTERN FASCISM HAS BEEN RECONSTITUTED THROUGH DESPOTIC CAPITALISM.