Jim Clifton, the Chairman and CEO of Gallup, says that the percentage of Americans that are employed full-time has been hovering near record lows since the end of the last recession. But most Americans don't realize this because the official unemployment numbers are extremely misleading. In fact, Clifton says that the official 5.6 percent unemployment rate is a "big lie". Gallup regularly tracks the percentage of U.S. adults that are employed for 30 or more hours per week, and it is currently at 44.2 percent. It has been hovering between 42 percent and 45 percent since the end of 2009. This is extremely low. As I discussed the other day, there are 8.69 million Americans that are considered to be "officially unemployed" at this point. But there are another 92.90 million Americans that are considered to be "not in the labor force". Millions upon millions of those Americans would work if they could. Overall, there are 101 million U.S. adults that do not have a job right now. But you won't hear that number being discussed by the mainstream media, because it would make Barack Obama look really bad.

Most Americans just assume that the economic numbers that we are being given accurately reflect reality. That is why it is so refreshing to have men like Jim Clifton step forward and tell the truth. His recent article entitled "The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment" is making headlines all over America. The following is an extended excerpt from that article...

There's another reason why the official rate is misleading. Say you're an out-of-work engineer or healthcare worker or construction worker or retail manager:

If you perform a minimum of one hour of work in a week and are paid at least $20 - maybe someone pays you to mow their lawn - you're not officially counted as unemployed in the much-reported 5.6%. Few Americans know this.

Yet another figure of importance that doesn't get much press: those working part time but wanting full-time work. If you have a degree in chemistry or math and are working 10 hours part time because it is all you can find - in other words, you are severely underemployed - the government doesn't count you in the 5.6%. Few Americans know this.

There's no other way to say this. The official unemployment rate, which cruelly overlooks the suffering of the long-term and often permanently unemployed as well as the depressingly underemployed, amounts to a Big Lie.

And it's a lie that has consequences, because the great American dream is to have a good job, and in recent years, America has failed to deliver that dream more than it has at any time in recent memory. A good job is an individual's primary identity, their very self-worth, their dignity - it establishes the relationship they have with their friends, community and country. When we fail to deliver a good job that fits a citizen's talents, training and experience, we are failing the great American dream.

Gallup defines a good job as 30+ hours per week for an organization that provides a regular paycheck. Right now, the U.S. is delivering at a staggeringly low rate of 44%, which is the number of full-time jobs as a percent of the adult population, 18 years and older.

And Gallup is being extremely generous.

The 2015 Greek tragedy is a sorry (financial) remix of the Trojan War. But now the troika (ECB, EC, IMF) has replaced Greece, and Greece is the new Troy.

It is now crystal clear the ECB will pull no punches to turn Greece into a European failed state. The rationale: others - from Spain to even, in the near future, France - must not entertain funny ideas. Toe the austerity line, or we'll get medieval on you.

It was so predictable that the destiny of Athens - and in fact the euro - would ultimately rest in the hands of ECB Governor Mario 'Master of the Universe' Draghi, purveyor of the latest QE which in thesis will grant an austerity-ravaged Europe a little extra time to pursue 'reforms'.

Some background is essential. The troika sold Greece an economic racket, but it's the Greek people that are paying the price. Essentially, Greece's public debt went from private to public hands when the ECB and the IMF 'rescued' private (German, French, Spanish) banks. The debt, of course, ballooned. The troika intervened, not to save Greece, but to save private banking.

The ECB bought public debt from private banks for a fortune, because the ECB could not buy public debt directly from the Greek state. The icing on this layer cake is that private banks had found the cash to buy Greece's public debt exactly from...the ECB, profiting from ultra-friendly interest rates. This is outright theft. And it's the thieves that have been setting the rules of the game all along.

© Mikhail Metzel/TASS

Russia's president Vladimir Putin and Alexander Boroda, general director of the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Cente

In February, it is a long way to the spring, lamented Joseph Brodsky. Indeed, snow still falls heavily in Moscow and Kiev as well as in the rolling steppes that form Russian-Ukrainian borderlands, but there it is tinted with red. Soldiers are loth to fight in the winter, when life is difficult anyway in these latitudes, but fighting already flared up in war-torn Donbass, and the US prepares to escalate by supplying sophisticated weapons to Kiev.

Tired by the siege and by intermittent shelling, the rebels disregarded snow and took the strategic Donetsk airport. This airport with its Stalin-built tunnels, a symbol of solid Soviet defence work, presented a huge challenge for underequipped militia. Its many-leveled underground facilities were built to sustain a nuclear attack; still, the rebels, after months of fighting, flushed the enemy out and took it.

In a bigger offensive, they trapped Kiev's troops in Debaltsevo pocket, and Kiev already sued for a cease-fire. The rebels hope to dislodge the enemy from their lands altogether; as now they hold only about one third of Donbass; but Russia's president still gropes for brakes. He prefers a bad peace to a good war. For him, the Ukraine is important, but not a sine qua non, the only problem in the world. This attitude he shares with the American leader. There is a big difference: Russia wants peaceful Ukraine, Americans prefer one at war.

Kiev forces opened fire on civilians and journalists being evacuated from the city of Chornukhyne in the country's east leaving at least one person injured, the Luhansk Information Center said Friday.

"Russian journalists Dmitry Malyshev and Artyom Kol were also fired upon," the center reported.

According to one of the correspondents who came under fire, the refugees in Luhansk region were attacked by Kiev volunteer battalion Aydar members.

"They [battalion], began firing at civilians who left this village, as well as at anything that moves... One local resident was wounded in his leg, but luckily he lost little blood," journalist Artyom Kol told Russian TV channel Rossiya-24.

A nine-page peace plan proposed by Putin in mid-January could be the basis for the initiative the French and German leaders are coming to Moscow with, Western media reports.

Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande reworked Putin's peace plan having taken out suggestions the EU and Ukraine were most opposed to, Western diplomatic sources told AP.

The new text is said to contain the promise of more autonomy for the rebel-held eastern Ukraine areas, and more protection for the Russian language and culture.

Apart from more powers, the breakaway eastern Ukrainian regions could be offered extra territory, taking into account the land gains of 1,500 square kilometers (around 600 square miles) the rebels have made since the last peace agreement struck in Minsk in September, German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung reports, claiming knowledge of the plan's details.

As the West stares into the great abyss and the world prepares for even greater economic turmoil, today Dr. Paul Craig Roberts gives readers a terrifying look at the real Matrix and how it will change all of our lives. King World News was given exclusive permission from the Trends Journal to release this amazing piece. It also contains an ominous warning from the former U.S. Treasury official, as the world prepares to descend into total chaos.

The Matrix Is Real & How It Will Change All Of Our Lives

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Former U.S. Treasury Official

- Americans are the most manipulated people in history. Since 2008, the economy has been manipulated for the benefit of a few oversized banks "too big to fail." US foreign policy has been manipulated to serve the hegemonic agenda of a handful of neoconservatives. These manipulations have undercut the consumer basis of the US economy and have pushed the American people into a conflict situation with Russia and China.

Lies, US Economic Collapse And Nuclear War

US economic collapse and nuclear war are the two most likely outcomes of Washington's manipulations of the American people. Time and again, the American public has fallen for transparent lies and orchestrated events. 2015 is a decisive year. Will a credulous people cast off their gullibility, or will they be swept away by economic collapse and war?

There are reasons to believe that the government's manipulations have overreached and are crossing the point of believability, even on the part of credulous Americans. Let's review some of these manipulations - first, economic, and then foreign policy.

Unemployment Number Is Meaningless

On January 9, the US government told Americans that the unemployment rate had fallen to a comforting 5.6 percent, an indication that the Federal Reserve's policy of Quantitative Easing was successful in restoring the US economy. A 5.6 percent rate of unemployment suggests that Americans have a reasonable chance of finding a job. Yet we know there are millions of discouraged workers who have given up looking for a job.

The explanation of this paradox is that the 5.6 percent unemployment rate (U.3) does not include unemployed people who have not looked for a job in the previous four weeks. These unemployed are called "discouraged workers." If they have been discouraged for less than one year, they are counted in a seldom-reported measure of unemployment (U.6). This rate stands at 11.2 percent, twice as high as the unemployment rate stressed by government and financial media.

The 11.2 percent rate is an official measure, but it is not publicized because it indicates a dismal employment outlook 5.5 years after the 2008 recession was declared over, in June 2009. What kind of recovery is it when the unemployment rate remains at 11.2 percent years after the recession has officially ended?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's impending speech to a joint session of Congress has caused waves from the moment it was announced right up to Thursday, and the address is still almost a month away.

The Israeli foreign ministry said Thursday it had called home the country's ambassador to Switzerland and a diplomat in India to face discipline over critical comments they made about Netanyahu, the Guardian reported.

A third employee, who works at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, is to face disciplinary action for the same reason, the Jerusalem Post reported.

"Every time one thinks Netanyahu has taken the relationship with the White House to the lowest point ever, he manages to take it even lower," tweeted Haaretz newspaper writer Barak Ravid, citing criticism of Netanyahu's accepting the controversial invitation to address Congress over Iran's nuclear policy.

That message was reposted on Ambassador Yigal Caspi's private Twitter account before the account was closed.

Detonating a car bomb in a civilian-populated area and denying any involvement in the attack is called terrorism when our enemies do it.

But what if the terror attack is backed by Israel and the United States?

Speaking only under the condition of anonymity, 5 former U.S. intelligence officials told The Washington Post that the Central Intelligence Agency tracked Imad Mughniyah for at least a year before killing him in a joint operation with the Israeli Secret Intelligence Service.

By studying Mughniyah's daily routine, a strategy for the attack was masterminded and carried out in secret by the 'good guys'. A truth which remained untold until last week.

According to their report, it was Israel who initially approached the CIA about the joint assassination, but former U.S. President George W. Bush is who authorized the operation after securing approval from the Attorney General, the Director of National Intelligence, the National Security Adviser, and the Justice Department.

"We have two choices. We can adopt the logic that the participants ought to be armed. Since Russia is arming the separatists, we will do the same for Ukrainians so that they can defend themselves. But can you draw the line between defensive and offensive weaponry?" - asked Hollande. "The other option is to try and find a compromise and convince both sides to cease fire. Diplomacy, negotiations, but they ought not continue endlessly...Because we are dealing with a war - war which can become total."

These are the words of Hollande, very straightforward and direct which is very uncharacteristic for contemporary European politicians, and they are a reflection of the high level of fear in continental Europe. And, what's important, it's fear that appeared suddenly, unexpectedly, forcing the leaders of the two biggest European countries to hurry to Kiev and Moscow. What did just happen?

Judging by the State Department announcements and the arrival of Kerry to Kiev, the catalyst of such a pained European reaction are the US intentions to start openly arming the Ukrainian army, which would guarantee a Russian response that would transform the conflict on the Donbass into something entirely different, which Hollande referred to as "total war". Keeping in mind that both the junta and the Donbass announced a mobilization of up to 100 [thousand] recruits, and that Poroshenko said he is ready to introduce martial law and use new NATO-provided weapons, all of this can lead to the biggest regional conflict since WW2.

The United States is pressing Cuba to allow the opening of its embassy in Havana by April, U.S. officials told Reuters, despite the Communist island's demand that it first be removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.

A refusal by Cuba to allow the United States to quickly establish an official embassy for the first time in half a century could complicate talks between the Cold War foes, reflecting enduring mistrust as they move to end decades of confrontation.

Striking Cuba from the terrorism list could take until June or longer, although the White House is pushing officials to move quickly, said two U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the State Department's review to take Cuba off the list.