Dissent Mag

By John Mauldin

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.” – commonly attributed to Benjamin Disraeli

If we are to believe the government statistics, the GDP of the US grew by 0.6% in the first quarter of this year. And unemployment actually fell. And there were only 20,000 job losses. This week we do a quick review of why the statistics can be so misleading. We also look at why I was wrong about the housing number last week, and I highlight what could be a very serious Black Swan lurking in the agricultural bushes. It should make for an interesting letter. It’s hard to know where to begin, there are just so many tempting targets; so let’s take the statistical aberrations in the order they came out this week.

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By Lech Biegalski

03 May, 2008
Canada Watch

April 27, 2008 - Rev. Jeremiah Wright had his “historic” speech at the fund raising dinner for thousands of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) delegates in Detroit, extensively publicised and enthusiastically promoted by the flagship of the corporate media, CNN.

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Published on Friday, May 2, 2008 by TomDispatch.com

by Pepe Escobar

More than two years ago, Seymour Hersh disclosed in the New Yorker how George W. Bush was considering strategic nuclear strikes against Iran. Ever since, a campaign to demonize that country has proceeded in a relentless, Terminator-like way, applying the same techniques and semantic contortions that were so familiar in the period before the Bush administration launched its invasion of Iraq.

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Posted: 2008/05/02

Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Influence exploited legal loopholes by planting its propaganda in foreign newspapers that would later be picked up by U.S. newswires.

by Steve Watson & Paul Watson
(Infowars.net)

The Pentagon is expanding “Information Operations” on the Internet with purposefully set up foreign news websites that are designed to look like independent media sources but in reality are nothing more than direct military propaganda

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By Will Allen, AlterNet. Posted May 3, 2008.

Much of our food supply is based on entrepreneurial gambling that relies on chemical pesticides and fertilizers to make huge profits.

his article is adapted from Will Allen’s new book The War on Bugs (Chelsea Green, 2008).

With one member trimming beef in a cannery, and another working in a sausage factory, the family had a first-hand knowledge of the great majority of Packingtown swindles. For it was the custom, as they found, whenever meat was so spoiled that it could not be used for anything else, either to can it or else chop it up into sausage.

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