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Chemical Coup d'etat
2002-04-16, The Guardian (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4394862,00.html

The US wants to depose the diplomat who could take away its pretext for war with Iraq. On Sunday, the US government will launch an international coup. It has been planned for a month. It will be executed quietly, and most of us won't know what is happening until it's too late. It is seeking to overthrow 60 years of multilateralism in favour of a global regime built on force. The coup begins with its attempt ... to unseat the man in charge of ridding the world of chemical weapons. If it succeeds, this will be the first time that the head of a multilateral agency will have been deposed in this manner. The coup will also shut down the peaceful options for dealing with the chemical weapons Iraq may possess, helping to ensure that war then becomes the only means of destroying them. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) enforces the chemical weapons convention. Its director-general is a workaholic Brazilian diplomat called Jose Bustani. He has, arguably, done more in the past five years to promote world peace than anyone else on earth. His inspectors have overseen the destruction of 2 million chemical weapons and two-thirds of the world's chemical weapon facilities. In May 2000, as a tribute to his extraordinary record, Bustani was re-elected unanimously by the member states for a second five-year term. Last year Colin Powell wrote to him to thank him for his "very impressive" work. But now everything has changed. [But now] the man celebrated for his achievements has been denounced as an enemy of the people. In January, with no prior warning or explanation, the US state department asked the Brazilian government to recall him.

Note: The "coup" was successful. The New York Times, though reporting few of the details above, stated six days after the above article, "José M. Bustani ... was voted out of office today after refusing repeated demands by the United States that he step down because of his 'management style.'" For why this highly revealing story received no media coverage in the U.S., click here. For a top U.S. general's comments, click here.

The Assisi Decalogue For Peace
2002-02-01, King's University College, University of Western Ontario
http://www.uwo.ca/kings/ccjl/docs/catholic_docs/assisi/assisi.html

What if leaders of the world’s major religions got together one day and denounced all religious violence? What if they unanimously agreed to make this plain, clear and bold statement to the world? “Violence and terrorism are opposed to all true religious spirit and we condemn all recourse to violence and war in the name of God or religion.” It could change the world. More than 200 leaders of the world’s dozen major religions did get together January 24 in Assisi, Italy. Pope John Paul II and a number of cardinals were at the meeting. So was Bartholomew I, spiritual leader of all Orthodox Christians. So were a dozen Jewish rabbis, including some from Israel. So were 30 Muslim imams from Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan. So were dozens of ministers representing Baptists, Lutherans, Anglicans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, Disciples of Christ, Mennonites, Quakers, Moravians, The Salvation Army and the World Council of Churches. So were dozens of monks, gurus and others representing Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Zoroastrians and native African religions. They unanimously agreed to condemn “every recourse to violence and war in the name of God or religion.” They also said, “No religious goal can possibly justify the use of violence by man against man.” And that “Whoever uses religion to foment violence contradicts religion’s deepest and truest inspiration.” They called their statement the Assisi Decalogue for Peace. Maybe you missed the story. It didn’t even make the newspapers the next day, hidden inside or not. What if leaders of the world’s major religions got together one and denounced all religious violence - and no one cared?

Note: Why is it that news about war and terrorism so frequently makes headlines, but the amazing news that leaders of religions from around the world got together to denounce all violence in the name of God and religion did not even warrant an article or story in any major media?

Alleged Hijackers May Have Trained at U.S. Bases
2001-09-15, WantToKnow.info/Newsweek
http://www.WantToKnow.info/010915newsweek

U.S. military sources have given the FBI information that suggests five of the alleged [9/11] hijackers of the planes that were used in Tuesday’s terror attacks received training at secure U.S. military installations in the 1990s. Three of the alleged hijackers listed their address on drivers licenses and car registrations as the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fla.—known as the “Cradle of U.S. Navy Aviation,” according to a high-ranking U.S. Navy source. Another of the alleged hijackers may have been trained in strategy and tactics at the Air War College in Montgomery, Ala., said another high-ranking Pentagon official. The fifth man may have received language instruction at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Tex. The five men were on a list of 19 people identified as hijackers by the FBI on Friday. The three foreign nationals training in Pensacola appear to be Saeed Alghamdi and Ahmad Alnami, who were among the four men who allegedly commandeered United Airlines Flight 93. The third man who may have trained in Pensacola, Ahmed Alghamdi, allegedly helped highjack United Airlines Flight 75, which hit the south tower of the World Trade Center. NEWSWEEK visited the base early Saturday morning, where military police confirmed that the address housed foreign military flight trainees but denied access past front barricades. Officials at the base confirmed that the FBI is investigating the three students.

Note: Why would these high-ranking Pentagon officials be making such statements just days after 9/11 if they didn't suspect foul play? Two other hijackers also had possible military connections. For more reliable information on this crucial matter, click here.

Plane Lands In Cleveland; Bomb Feared Aboard
2001-09-11, WCPO - Cincinnati's ABC Affiliate
http://www.wcpo.com/specials/2001/americaattacked/news_local/story14.html

Reported by: 9News Staff, 9/11/01 11:43:57 AM. A Boeing 767 out of Boston made an emergency landing Tuesday at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport due to concerns that it may have a bomb aboard, said Mayor Michael R. White. White said the plane had been moved to a secure area of the airport, and was evacuated. United identified the plane as Flight 93. The airline did say how many people were aboard the flight. United said it was also "deeply concerned" about another flight, Flight 175, a Boeing 767, which was bound from Boston to Los Angeles. On behalf of the airline CEO James Goodwin said: "The thoughts of everyone at United are with the passengers and crew of these flights. Our prayers are also with everyone on the ground who may have been involved. "United is working with all the relevant authorities, including the FBI, to obtain further information on these flights," he said.

Note: Remember that Flight 93 reportedly crashed in Pennsylvania on 9/11, with all aboard killed. This story was posted within hours of the 9/11 attacks. Click on the link above and you will see, "This story has been removed from WCPO.com. It was a preliminary AP story, and was factually incorrect." However, using the powerful Internet Archive, you can see the original article here. Click here and you can see the article continued to be posted for all dates through June 2004, and was only removed later. How can this be?

UFO spotters slam 'US cover-up'
2001-05-10, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1322432.stm

The suitably sci-fi sounding Project Disclosure ... launched a campaign in Washington on Wednesday. It is aimed at persuading the US Congress to hold hearings on the existence of unidentified flying objects and extra-terrestrials. The campaign believes the US Government has known about the existence of UFOs for over 50 years but has been trying to hide it. It was surely the strangest ever news conference hosted by Washington's august National Press Club. Donna Hare was just one of over 20 witnesses, most of them ex-military, and all deadly serious. The brains behind Project Disclosure is country doctor turned ambassador to outer space Steven Greer. He says there are two reasons for the project: first, to persuade the US Government to reveal the astonishing planet-saving technology he says it has picked up from super-clever aliens, and second, to stop the Bush administration from annoying them by building weapons in space. Despite the impressive military credentials and undoubted sincerity of the witnesses, Congress is surely unlikely to move on their request for a hearing - unless a space ship lands on, or at least within sight of, Capitol Hill.

Note: Though BBC quotes one Army sergeant in this article, they fail to quote some of the many, credible higher ranking military officers and government officials who shared mind-boggling stories of personal experiences with a major government cover-up of UFOs. To watch a video of this highly revealing press conference, click here. For a reliable, verifiable two-page summary of the UFO cover-up, click here.

Tsunami bomb - NZ's devastating war secret
1999-09-25, New Zealand Herald (New Zealand's leading newspaper)
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=14727

Top-secret wartime experiments were conducted off the coast of Auckland to perfect a tidal wave bomb, declassified files reveal. United States defence chiefs said that if the project had been completed before the end of the war it could have played a role as effective as that of the atom bomb. Details of the tsunami bomb, known as Project Seal, are contained in 53-year-old documents released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Papers stamped "top secret" show the US and British military were eager for Seal to be developed in the post-war years too. The experiments involved laying a pattern of explosives underwater to create a tsunami. It is unclear what happened to Project Seal once the final report was forwarded to Wellington Defence Headquarters late in the 1940s. The bomb was never tested on a full scale. "Whether it could ever be resurrected ... Under some circumstances I think it could be devastating."

Homosexual prostitution inquiry ensnares VIPs with Reagan, Bush
1989-06-29, WantToKnow.info/Washington Times
http://www.WantToKnow.info/890629washingtontimesfranklin

A homosexual prostitution ring is under investigation by federal and District authorities and includes among its clients key officials of the Reagan and Bush administrations, military officers, congressional aides and US and foreign businessmen with close social ties to Washington's political elite. Reporters for this newspaper examined hundreds of credit-card vouchers, drawn on both corporate and personal cards and made payable to the escort service operated by the homosexual ring. Among clients who charged homosexual prostitutes services on major credit cards over the past 18 months are Charles K. Dutcher, former associate director of presidential personnel in the Reagan administration, and Paul R. Balach, Labor Secretary Elizabeth Dole’s political personnel liaison to the White House. Members of major news organizations also procured escort services from the ring, credit card documents show. These include Stanley Mark Tapscott, who was an assistant managing editor of The Washington Times. Before joining The Times, Mr. Tapscott worked for the Office of Personnel Management in the Reagan administration. A major concern, said the former official with longtime ties to top-ranking military intelligence officers, was that hostile foreign intelligence services were using young male prostitutes to compromise top administration homosexuals, thus making them subject to blackmail.

Note: How is it possible that this major story was not covered by any major media other than the Washington Times? For answers to this question, click here. For an insider's story of how prositution was regularly used to compromise politicians, click here.

George Bush aide dies in plane crash
2008-12-21, The Telegraph (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/3885913/George-Bus...

Mystery surrounds the death of a Republican pollster, recently compelled to give evidence about alleged election fraud in the 2004 election in Ohio, after he was killed in a plane crash. Top internet strategist Michael Connell, 45, was the only person in his single-engine private plane that crashed three miles short of the Akron-Canton airport on Friday night as he prepared to land. He had worked on Mr Bush's two presidential campaigns, advised John McCain this year and was also linked to allegedly missing White House emails in the 2006 controversy over a string of firings of US attorneys. The death of the married father of four immediately triggered conspiracy theories amid speculation that he had been about to reveal embarrassing details of the complicity of senior members of the Bush administration in fixing an election and destroying incriminating emails. In a blog posting entitled "One of my sources died in a plane crash last night...", Larisa Alexandrovna of The Raw Story revealed that Mr Connell had been talking to her about the Ohio case alleging that vote-tampering during the 2004 presidential election resulted in civil rights violations. "Mike was getting ready to talk. He was frightened... I am not saying that this was a hit nor am I resigned to this being simply an accident either. I am no expert on aviation and cannot provide an opinion on the matter. What I am saying, however, is that given the context, this event needs to be examined carefully."

Important Note: This death becomes even stranger considering that attorneys had sought protection for Connell against threats from Karl Rove in late July (click here). He also was apparently warned not to fly.

Report on Detainee Abuse Blames Top Bush Officials
2008-12-12, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/11/AR20081211019...

A bipartisan panel of senators has concluded that former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other top Bush administration officials bear direct responsibility for the harsh treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and that their decisions led to more serious abuses in Iraq and elsewhere. In the most comprehensive critique by Congress of the military's interrogation practices, the Senate Armed Services Committee issued a report yesterday that accuses Rumsfeld and his deputies of being the authors and chief promoters of harsh interrogation policies that disgraced the nation and undermined U.S. security. "The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own," the report states. "The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees." Human rights and constitutional law organizations have urged further action, ranging from an independent commission to prosecutions of those involved in authorizing the interrogations. Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has helped defend detainees at Guantanamo, said the committee report is valuable because "it's official, it's bipartisan. It's open and explicit, going right to Rumsfeld and having Rice involved," Ratner said. "It breaks new ground in saying that the [torture] techniques basically don't work . . . that they're actually designed to elicit false confessions."

Note: To read the full report, click here. For many key reports from major media sources detailing US torture and war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, click here.

Spying on pacifists, environmentalists and nuns
2008-12-07, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cop-spy7-2008dec07,0,734...

To friends in the protest movement, Lucy was an eager 20-something who attended their events and sent encouraging e-mails to support their causes. Only one thing seemed strange. "At one demonstration, I remember her showing up with a laptop computer and typing away," said Mike Stark, who helped lead the anti-death-penalty march in Baltimore that day. "We all thought that was odd." Not really. The woman was an undercover Maryland State Police trooper who between 2005 and 2007 infiltrated more than two dozen rallies and meetings of nonviolent groups. Maryland officials now concede that, based on information gathered by "Lucy" and others, state police wrongly listed at least 53 Americans as terrorists in a criminal intelligence database -- and shared some information about them with half a dozen state and federal agencies, including the National Security Agency. Among those labeled as terrorists: two Catholic nuns, a former Democratic congressional candidate, a lifelong pacifist and a registered lobbyist. One suspect's file warned that she was "involved in puppet making and allows anarchists to utilize her property for meetings." "There wasn't a scintilla of illegal activity" going on, said David Rocah, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a lawsuit and in July obtained the first surveillance files. State police have released other heavily redacted documents. Investigators, the files show, targeted groups that advocated against abortion, global warming, nuclear arms, military recruiting in high schools and biodefense research, among other issues.

Note: For lots more on increasing threats to civil liberties, click here.

Standing in Someone Else’s Shoes, Almost for Real
2008-12-02, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/health/02mind.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&page...

Neuroscientists have shown that they can [create] a “body swapping” illusion that could have a profound effect on a range of therapeutic techniques. At the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience last month, Swedish researchers presented evidence that the brain, when tricked by optical and sensory illusions, can quickly adopt any other human form, no matter how different, as its own. “You can see the possibilities, putting a male in a female body, young in old, white in black and vice versa,” said Dr. Henrik Ehrsson of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. The technique is simple. A subject stands or sits opposite the scientist, as if engaged in an interview. Both are wearing headsets, with special goggles, the scientist’s containing small film cameras. The goggles are rigged so the subject sees what the scientist sees: to the right and left are the scientist’s arms, and below is the scientist’s body. To add a physical element, the researchers have each person squeeze the other’s hand, as if in a handshake. Now the subject can see and “feel” the new body. In a matter of seconds, the illusion is complete. In a series of studies, using mannequins and stroking both bodies’ bellies simultaneously, the Karolinska researchers have found that men and women say they not only feel they have taken on the new body, but also unconsciously cringe when it is poked or threatened. In previous work, neuroscientists have induced various kinds of out-of-body experiences using similar techniques. The brain is so easily tricked, they say, precisely because it has spent a lifetime in its own body.

Credit-card industry may cut $2 trillion lines: analyst
2008-12-01, Reuters News
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE4B01HI20081201

The U.S. credit-card industry may pull back well over $2 trillion of lines over the next 18 months due to risk aversion and regulatory changes, leading to sharp declines in consumer spending, prominent banking analyst Meredith Whitney said. The credit card is the second key source of consumer liquidity, the first being jobs, the Oppenheimer & Co analyst noted. "In other words, we expect available consumer liquidity in the form of credit-card lines to decline by 45 percent." Closing millions of accounts, cutting credit lines and raising interest rates are just some of the moves credit card issuers are using to try to inoculate themselves from a tsunami of expected consumer defaults. A consolidated U.S. lending market that is pulling back on credit is also posing a risk to the overall consumer liquidity, Whitney said. Mortgages and credit cards are now dominated by five players who are all pulling back liquidity, making reductions in consumer liquidity seem unavoidable, she said. "We are now beginning to see evidence of broad-based declines in overall consumer liquidity. Already, we have witnessed the entire mortgage market hit a wall, and we believe it will, for the first time ever, show actual shrinkage over the next few months," she wrote. "In a country that offers hundreds of cereal and soda pop choices, the banking industry has become one that offers very few choices", Whitney wrote in a note dated November 30. "Pulling credit when job losses are increasing by over 50 percent year-over-year in most key states is a dangerous and unprecedented combination, in our view," the analyst said.

Note: This article, in pointing out that the banking industry offers few choices for consumers, fails to mention that the industry is rapidly becoming extremely concentrated, with major bank failures and takeovers accelerating due to the financial crisis on Wall Street. And the bailout from the Fed and Treasury has encouraged this concentration through huge tax breaks and risk protections. For many revealing reports on the Wall Street bailout from reliable sources, click here.

Turning Around the Idea of Student Loans
2008-12-01, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/education/01microbank.html?partner=rss&emc=...

Over sandwiches and pizza, a group of high school students here debated the pros and cons of combating poverty in five desperate nations. They scrolled through Web sites, analyzed statistics and considered how much they knew about the economy, language and culture of each country. This was no mere academic exercise. The students, at the Meadows School, have real decisions to make and, they hope, real people to rescue. By the time they scattered after their lunch period, the group had deferred until next month the decision on where to spend the $25,000 they had raised, but seemed to be leaning toward Peru. That may seem like a lot of money for a student group, but it was the entry fee for the school to become investors in Pro Mujer, a nonprofit lending institution based in New York that issues small loans to poor women in foreign countries to use for buying tools to start or expand small businesses. In raising the money and investing it with Pro Mujer, the Meadows School is by all accounts the first high school to operate a microbank. The founder of the Meadows Microcredit Action Group, Justin Blau, 17, and its faculty adviser, Kirk Knutsen, have bigger plans for their endeavor. Pro Mujer will mete out the $25,000 to recipients in the country the students select and return to the school both regular status reports as well as a modest amount of earned interest. The group plans to use that interest and other money raised locally to invest in smaller, more specific projects through Kiva, another microfinance lender, with no minimum entry requirement.

Note: For lots more on the exciting, amazingly successful microlending movement, click here.

UFO enthusiasts call on Obama to release X-Files
2008-11-30, The Telegraph (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/3536229/UFO-enthusias...

UFO enthusiasts are pressing Barack Obama to release classified documents about sightings of alien spacecraft, encouraged by support from within the President-Elect's own White House team. Desperate to see the US emulate the British Government and disclose reported "contact" with UFOs, the enthusiasts have written to Mr Obama to ask that his administration [come] clean about the contents of America's "X-Files". They believe they have good prospects of success after public statements of support from both John Podesta, who is running Mr Obama's White House transition team, and Bill Richardson, the Governor of New Mexico ... who is expected to secure a cabinet post. When he was the White House chief of staff under Bill Clinton, Mr Podesta led a project to declassify 800 million pages of intelligence documents. Gov Richardson, a former presidential candidate and fellow UFO aficionado, has written a forward to a book on the so-called Roswell Incident in New Mexico. He has called for full disclosure by the Pentagon of what really occurred. Only last week a US Air Force pilot, Milton Torres, whose testimony was released from the British archives, appeared on US television explaining how he was ordered to shoot down a large UFO over the UK in 1957 and then silenced by military officials, who told him never to speak of the incident.

Note: Podesta has also publicly called for a release of UFO records for years, alleging a cover-up. See the CNN article reporting this available here. For a concise summary of evidence on UFO sightings presented by highly-respected former military and government professionals, click here.

Economic rescue could cost $8.5 trillion
2008-11-30, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-pricetag30-2008nov30,0,7549258.story

With its decision last week to pump an additional $1 trillion into the financial crisis, the government eliminated any doubt that [it has] no hesitation in pledging to spend previously almost unimaginable sums of money and running up federal budget deficits on a scale not seen since World War II. Indeed, analysts warn that the nation's next financial crisis could come from the staggering cost of battling the current one. Just last week, new initiatives added $600 billion to lower mortgage rates, $200 billion to stimulate consumer loans and nearly $300 billion to steady Citigroup, the banking conglomerate. That pushed the potential long-term cost of the government's varied economic rescue initiatives, including direct loans and loan guarantees, to an estimated total of $8.5 trillion -- half of the entire economic output of the U.S. this year. The spending already has had a dramatic effect on the federal budget deficit, which soared to a record $455 billion last year and began the 2009 fiscal year with an amazing $237-billion deficit for October alone. Analysts say next year's budget deficit could easily bust the $1-trillion barrier. "I didn't think we'd see that for a long time," said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. "There's a huge risk of another economic crisis, a debt crisis, once we get on the other side of this one." Once the financial crisis eases, higher interest rates and soaring inflation will be risks.

Note: For many revealing reports on the Wall Street bailout from reliable sources, click here.

Citigroup gets a monetary lifeline from feds
2008-11-25, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/24/BUST14B71M.DTL

The bailouts keep coming, and they seem to be getting worse for taxpayers. The deal worked out over the weekend to prevent the collapse of Citigroup "is a terrible deal for taxpayers," says Campbell Harvey, a Duke University global finance professor. "Some intervention was necessary. But the terms of the intervention basically shafted the U.S. taxpayer." Under the deal, the U.S. government will invest $20 billion in Citigroup preferred stock (on top of its previous $25 billion capital injection from the Troubled Asset Relief Program) and guarantee up to $306 billion in mortgage and other assets. Citigroup would absorb the first $29 billion in losses on that asset pool. Losses exceeding $29 billion would be shared 90 percent by the government and 10 percent by Citigroup. What do taxpayers get for taking on this risk? Citigroup will pay an 8 percent dividend on the preferred stock or $560 million a year. By comparison, when Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway recently invested $5 billion in Goldman Sachs and $3 billion in General Electric, it got preferred stock that pays a 10 percent dividend. The government also gets warrants to purchase about $2.7 billion worth of Citigroup common stock at $10.61 per share. Citigroup's shares closed at $5.95 per share Monday, up $2.18 from Friday. For the warrants to become profitable, the common shares would have to nearly double.

Note: The answer to the question of what taxpayers get should be essentially nothing. Only Citigroup shareholders will see the benefits mentioned, and very few taxpayers are shareholders. Money is being thrown around like never before. For many revealing reports on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.

Financial Crisis Tab Already In The Trillions
2008-11-18, CNBC
http://www.cnbc.com/id/27719011

Given the speed at which the federal government is throwing money at the financial crisis, the average taxpayer, never mind member of Congress, might not be faulted for losing track. CNBC, however, has been paying very close attention and keeping a running tally of actual spending as well as the commitments involved. Try $4.28 trillion dollars. That's $4,284,500,000,000 and more than what was spent on WW II, if adjusted for inflation, based on our computations from a variety of estimates and sources. Not only is it an astronomical amount of money, it's a complicated cocktail of budgeted dollars, actual spending, guarantees, loans, swaps and other market mechanisms by the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and other offices of government taken over roughly the last year, based on government data and news releases. Strictly speaking, not every cent is a direct result of what's called the financial crisis, but it is arguably related to it. Some 68-percent of the sum falls under the Federal Reserve's umbrella, while another 16 percent is the under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, TARP, as defined under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, signed into law in early October. The TARP alone is bigger than virtually any other US government endeavor dating back to the Louisiana Purchase.

Note: That's over $10,000 per man, woman, and child in the U.S. Click on the link above to view a highly informative slideshow, the "Biggest Budget Items in US History," comparing the Wall Street bailout to famous historic government expenditures, and a chart, the "Financial Crisis Balance Sheet," detailing the many components of the bailout. For many key articles revealing the hidden realities of the bailout, click here.

Justices Revoke Limits On Navy Use of Sonar
2008-11-13, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/12/AR20081112010...

In issuing a deliberately narrow ruling yesterday in a controversial case involving whales and the U.S. Navy, the Supreme Court strongly indicated that it intends to defer to the military in future disputes pitting national security against environmental concerns. The justices voted 6 to 3 to lift restrictions on the Navy's use of sonar off the Southern California coast, backing the military in a longstanding battle over whether anti-submarine training harms marine mammals. Environmentalists say the exercises disrupt habitats and leave the mammals with permanent hearing loss and decompression sickness. But the Navy argued that the training missions are essential to detecting a new generation of "quiet" submarines deployed by China, North Korea and other potential adversaries. "We do not discount the importance of plaintiffs' ecological, scientific, and recreational interests in marine mammals," Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in the first decision of the court's current term. "Those interests, however, are plainly outweighed by the Navy's need to conduct realistic training exercises to ensure that it is able to neutralize the threat posed by enemy submarines." Although the majority tailored its decision on narrow legal grounds and indicated that future environmental disputes will be decided on a case-by-case basis, the court made sweeping statements of deference to military judgments. Roberts unquestioningly accepted the assertion of top Navy officers that the exercises "are of utmost importance to the Navy and the Nation," writing that "the proper determination of where the public interest lies does not strike us as a close question."

Note: For key reports on threats to and abuse of marine mammals, click here. For a list of organizations dedicated to protecting marine wildlife, click here.

Secret Order Lets U.S. Raid Al Qaeda
2008-11-10, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/washington/10military.html?partner=rssuserl...

The United States military since 2004 has used broad, secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks against Al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere. These military raids, typically carried out by Special Operations forces, were authorized by a classified order that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed in the spring of 2004 with the approval of President Bush. The secret order gave the military new authority to attack the Qaeda terrorist network anywhere in the world, and a more sweeping mandate to conduct operations in countries not at war with the United States. In 2006, for example, a Navy Seal team raided a suspected militants’ compound in the Bajaur region of Pakistan. Some of the military missions have been conducted in close coordination with the C.I.A.. In others, like the Special Operations raid in Syria on Oct. 26 of this year, the military commandos acted in support of C.I.A.-directed operations. Apart from the 2006 raid into Pakistan, the American officials refused to describe in detail what they said had been nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks, except to say they had been carried out in Syria, Pakistan and other countries. The new authority was spelled out in a classified document called “Al Qaeda Network Exord,” or execute order. The 2004 order identifies 15 to 20 countries, including Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and several other Persian Gulf states.

Note: For key reports on government secrecy from major media sources, click here.

Banks Owe Billions to Executives
2008-10-31, The Wall Street Journal/wealthbulletin.com
http://www.wealth-bulletin.com/home/content/3352363539/

Financial giants getting injections of federal cash owed their executives more than $40 billion for past years' pay and pensions as of the end of 2007, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows. The government is seeking to rein in executive pay at banks getting federal money. But overlooked in these efforts is the total size of debts that financial firms receiving taxpayer assistance previously incurred to their executives, which at some firms exceed what they owe in pensions to their entire work forces. The sums are mostly for special executive pensions and deferred compensation, including bonuses, for prior years. Some examples: $11.8 billion at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., $8.5 billion at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., and $10 billion to $12 billion at Morgan Stanley. Few firms report the size of these debts to their executives. In most cases, the Journal calculated them by extrapolating from figures that the firms do have to disclose. Most firms haven't set aside cash or stock for these IOUs. They are a drag on current earnings and when the executives depart, employers have to pay them out of corporate coffers. [Such] liabilities grew especially high in the financial industry, with its tradition of lavish pay. The liabilities are an essentially hidden obligation. Even when the debts to their executives total in the billions, most companies lump them into "other liabilities"; only a few then identify amounts attributable to deferred pay.

Note: For extensive coverage of continuing revelations about the Wall Street bailout, click here.

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