Protester is 'Person of the Year,' Top Bosses Get Big Raise, Japan Redefines Cold Shutdown

Revealing News Articles

December 20, 2011

Dear friends,

Below are key excerpts of important news articles on Time Magazine's selection of the Protester as "Person of the Year", top bosses getting over 25% raise in one year, Japan's dubious claim that the Fukushima reactors are in "cold shutdown", and more. Each excerpt is taken verbatim from the major media website listed at the link provided. If any link fails to function, click here. The most important sentences are highlighted for those with limited time. And don't miss the "What you can do" box below the summaries. By choosing to educate ourselves and to spread the word, we can and will build a brighter future.

With best wishes,

Tod Fletcher and Fred Burks for PEERS and WantToKnow.info

Special note: For a great four-minute video of the Occupy movement and uniting as one people on one planet, click here. For some of the most powerful information yet by respected researcher David Wilcock on amazing developments of major changes on our planet, click here. Though this information is "out there" for the vast majority of people, much good evidence supports his claims. Two days after this article went out, Wilcock received death threats and went on air revealing more in a Project Camelot interview available here. For a more accurate take on the of "end of the Iraq war" than you'll see in the major media, click here.

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Person of the Year Introduction

December 14, 2011, Time Magazine

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2101745_2102139_2102380,00.html

No one could have known that when a Tunisian fruit vendor set himself on fire in a public square in a town barely on a map, he would spark protests that would bring down dictators in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya and rattle regimes in Syria, Yemen and Bahrain. Or that that spirit of dissent would spur Mexicans to rise up against the terror of drug cartels, Greeks to march against unaccountable leaders, Americans to occupy public spaces to protest income inequality, and Russians to marshal themselves against a corrupt autocracy. Protests have now occurred in countries whose populations total at least 3 billion people, and the word protest has appeared in newspapers and online exponentially more this past year than at any other time in history. Everywhere, it seems, people said they'd had enough. They dissented; they demanded; they did not despair, even when the answers came back in a cloud of tear gas or a hail of bullets. The root of the word democracy is demos, "the people," and the meaning of democracy is "the people rule." And they did, if not at the ballot box, then in the streets. Protest is in some ways the source code for democracy – and evidence of the lack of it. For steering the planet on a more democratic though sometimes more dangerous path for the 21st century, the Protester is TIME's 2011 Person of the Year.

Note: For a treasure trove of reports from major media sources that explain why protestors worldwide have been occupying their cities, click here.

Protests Boost Sales and Fears of Sonic Blaster

December 12, 2011, ABC News/Associated Press

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/protests-boost-sales-fears-sonic-blaster-15135793

Rather than batons or rubber bullets, some police departments have started using an intense beam of sound to manage protesters, but the annoying tone has drawn criticism from some who say it can cause permanent damage. More U.S. police and emergency-response agencies are using the so-called Long-Range Acoustic Devices ... for crowd control. The leading manufacturer, LRAD Corp. of San Diego, said the product was developed as a nonlethal option for military use. Some people who have been on the receiving end call the devices "sound cannons." A woman is suing the city of Pittsburgh claiming the piercing tone from a police blaster during the 2009 G-20 summit permanently damaged her hearing. There were reports that New York City police used the punishing tone on protesters. The devices were developed for the U.S. Navy. They have also been used to deter pirates from attacking cruise ships. The products range from a 15-pound, battery-operated, hand-held unit to a 320-pound device with a range of nearly 2 miles. Even the smallest unit, the LRAD 100X, emits as much as 137 decibels at 1 meter, which is louder than a jet takeoff at 100 meters.

Note: For key reports from reliable sources on so-called "non-lethal" weapons, click here.

Revealed: huge increase in executive pay for America's top bosses

December 14, 2011, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/dec/14/executive-pay-increase-america-ceos

Chief executive pay has roared back after two years of stagnation and decline. America's top bosses enjoyed pay hikes of between 27 and 40% last year, according to the largest survey of US CEO pay. The dramatic bounceback comes as the latest government figures show wages for the majority of Americans are failing to keep up with inflation. America's highest paid executive took home more than $145.2m, and as stock prices recovered across the board, the median value of bosses' profits on stock options rose 70% in 2010, from $950,400 to $1.3m. The news comes against the backdrop of an Occupy Wall Street movement that has focused Washington's attention on the pay packages of America's highest paid. The survey, the most extensive in the US, covered 2,647 companies, and offers a comprehensive assessment of all the data now available relating to 2010 pay. This year's survey shows CEO pay packages have boomed: the top 10 earners took home more than $770m between them in 2010. As stock prices began to recover last year, the increase in CEO pay outstripped the rise in share value. The Russell 3000 measure of US stock prices was up by 16.93% in 2010, but CEO pay went up by 27.19% overall. For S&P 500 CEOs, the largest companies in the sample, total realised compensation – including perks and pensions and stock awards – increased by a median of 36.47%. Total pay at midcap companies, which are slightly smaller than the top firms, rose 40.2%.

Note: For key reports on income inequality from reliable sources, click here.

Japan declares Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant stable, in 'cold shutdown'

December 16, 2011, Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/japan-declares-fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-plant...

The Japanese government [has] declared that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant had reached a stable state known as "cold shutdown." But the formal status change at the plant, experts cautioned, means only that its problems have become less dire; they have not disappeared. The plant still leaks radiation into the sea. Its makeshift cooling system is vulnerable to earthquakes. And the cleanup work remains dangerous, with many flooded and debris-strewn areas of the reactor buildings difficult even for robots to access. In normal circumstances, a reactor in cold shutdown mode is entirely stable, its fuel intact, with no chance of a chain reaction. To achieve its version of a cold shutdown at Fukushima Daiichi, ... Japan had to loosen the definition. Fukushima now meets the government's requirements because temperatures at the bottom of the three damaged reactor pressure vessels have dropped below 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit). Airborne leaks into the environment have also been almost halted. The declaration poses new questions for many of the 80,000 people who fled towns around the plant ... since the government had made the cold shutdown a precondition for even considering reopening parts of the no-go zone to residents. Many areas within the no-entry zone – a 12-mile radius around the plant – will be uninhabitable for decades, maybe longer.

Note: For further information on the claim of "cold shutdown" at Fukushima, click here and here.

Biggest Nuclear Breach Raises Alarm as France Debates Reactors

December 14, 2011, Bloomberg/Businessweek

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-14/biggest-nuclear-breach-raises-alarm-as-france-debates...

Just after 6 a.m. on Dec. 5, under cover of darkness, nine Greenpeace activists cut through a fence at the Nogent-sur-Seine atomic plant 95 kilometers (59 miles) southeast of Paris and headed for a domed reactor building. They scaled the roof and unfurled a "Safe Nuclear Doesn't Exist" banner before attracting the attention of security guards. Two remained at large for four hours. On the same day, two more campaigners breached the perimeter of the Cruas-Meysse plant on the Rhone, escaping detection for more than 14 hours while posting videos of their sit-in on the Internet. The security lapses ... come at a time when debate has intensified on France's reliance on atomic power for three-quarters of its energy needs in the run-up to next year's presidential elections. They also preempt next month's release of the results of safety checks at France's 58 reactors, commissioned in the aftermath of the Fukushima tragedy. Greenpeace said its activists exposed the biggest security lapse to date at the reactors that are operated by Electricite de France SA.

Note: For lots more on corporate and government corruption, click here and here.

Military given go-ahead to detain US terrorist suspects without trial

December 15, 2011, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/15/americans-face-guantanamo-detention-obama

Barack Obama has abandoned a commitment to veto a new security law that allows the military to indefinitely detain without trial American terrorism suspects arrested on US soil who could then be shipped to Guantanamo Bay. Human rights groups accused the president of deserting his principles and disregarding the long-established principle that the military is not used in domestic policing. The legislation has also been strongly criticised by libertarians on the right angered at the stripping of individual rights for the duration of "a war that appears to have no end". The law ... effectively extends the battlefield in the "war on terror" to the US and applies the established principle that combatants in any war are subject to military detention. The law's critics describe it as a draconian piece of legislation that extends the reach of detention without trial to include US citizens arrested in their own country. "It's something so radical that it would have been considered crazy had it been pushed by the Bush administration," said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. "It establishes precisely the kind of system that the United States has consistently urged other countries not to adopt. At a time when the United States is urging Egypt, for example, to scrap its emergency law and military courts, this is not consistent."

Note: The implications of the passage of this bill to authorize the US military to carry out domestic arrest and imprisonment of US citizens have hardly been reported on by the major media. The defense authorization bill undermines protections established by the Bill of Rights and the Posse Comitatus Act against use of US military forces in domestic control and arrest. For further analysis of the implications of this legislation, click here and here.

Police employ Predator drone spy planes on home front

December 10, 2011, Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-drone-arrest-20111211,0,324348.story

Armed with a search warrant, Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went looking for six missing cows on the Brossart family farm in [eastern North Dakota]. He called in reinforcements from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three other counties. He also called in a Predator B drone. Sophisticated sensors under the nose helped pinpoint the three suspects and showed they were unarmed. Police rushed in and made the first known arrests of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator, the spy drone that has helped revolutionize modern warfare. But that was just the start. Local police say they have used two unarmed Predators based at Grand Forks Air Force Base to fly at least two dozen surveillance flights since June. The FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration have used Predators for other domestic investigations, officials said. The drones belong to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which operates eight Predators on the country's northern and southwestern borders to search for illegal immigrants and smugglers. The previously unreported use of its drones to assist local, state and federal law enforcement has occurred without any public acknowledgment or debate.

Note: "Looking for six cows," the Sheriff called in "a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three other counties. He also called in a Predator B drone." Does that sound like a reasonable response to the problem of missing cows? Or could there be an agenda to establish aerial surveillance by drones as the norm in the US?

Newburgh Four: poor, black, and jailed under FBI 'entrapment' tactics

December 12, 2011, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/12/newburgh-four-fbi-entrapment-terror

Imam Salahuddin Muhammad could hardly miss Shahed Hussain when he first appeared three years ago at his mosque in the dilapidated town of Newburgh, just 60 miles up the Hudson River from New York. Hussain was flash, drove expensive cars and treated people to gifts of cash and food. Hussain would make Newburgh's Muslim community famous when earlier this year four other black Newburgh Muslims were jailed for 25 years for a 2009 plot to fire a Stinger missile at US military planes. All four followed the instructions of Hussain, who meticulously organised the scheme: from getting the missile and bombs, to reconnaissance missions, to teaching the tenets of radical Islam. Hussain was a fake. In fact, Hussain worked for the FBI as an informant trawling mosques in hope of picking up radicals. Yet far from being active militants, the four men he attracted were impoverished individuals struggling with Newburgh's grim epidemic of crack, drug crime and poverty. Hussain offered the men huge financial inducements to carry out the plot – including $250,000 to one man – and free holidays and expensive cars. The Newburgh Four ... represent the most extreme form of a controversial FBI policy to use invented terrorist plots to lure targets. "There has been no case as egregious as this. It is unique in the incentive the government provided. A quarter million dollars?" said Professor Karen Greenberg, a terrorism expert at Fordham University.

Note: For a powerful BBC documentary showing clearly that much of the war on terror is a fabrication to forward a political agenda, watch Power of Nightmares at this link. For many reports from major media sources on the fake terror behind the "global war on terror", click here.

Silicon Valley firms dodging taxes, report says

December 15, 2011, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/14/MN9C1MCI25.DTL

Silicon Valley technology firms that are lobbying Congress to slash taxes on money they bring home from abroad, arguing that doing so would help them create millions of jobs, already send more than half that money back to the United States without paying taxes, according to a Senate investigation. The corporate tax code permits Google, Cisco, Apple, Adobe Systems, Oracle and other U.S. multinational corporations surveyed to invest nearly $250 billion in the United States without paying the 35 percent corporate tax rate that applies to repatriated foreign earnings, according to the report by the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The corporations, which are not allowed to invest the money in their own companies, can escape the 35 percent tax if they invest in other domestic assets, such as stocks, bonds and bank deposits. Silicon Valley's technology giants have banded together with pharmaceutical companies and other multinationals in the Win America Coalition in an attempt to get Congress to cut their tax rate from 35 percent to just over 5 percent on overseas earnings they bring home. The survey data showed that Adobe, Apple, Broadcom, Cisco and Google have invested 76 to 100 percent of their foreign earnings in U.S. stocks, bonds, bank deposits and other domestic assets, a greater share than the other companies surveyed.

Note: For lots more on corporate and government corruption, click here and here.

Report Slams Dutch Catholic Church Over Sex Abuse

December 16, 2011, NPR/Associated Press

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=143820662

As many as 20,000 children endured sexual abuse at Dutch Catholic institutions over the past 65 years, and church officials failed to adequately address it or help the victims, according to a long-awaited investigative report. Based on a survey of 34,000 people, the report estimated that 1 in 10 Dutch children suffered some form of sexual abuse – a figure that rose to 1 in 5 among children who spent part of their youth in an institution such as a boarding school or children's home, whether Catholic or not. "Sexual abuse of minors," it said bluntly, "occurs widely in Dutch society." The abuse ranged from "unwanted sexual advances" to rape, and abusers numbered in the hundreds and included priests, brothers and lay people who worked in religious orders and congregations. The number of victims who suffered abuse in church institutions likely lies somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000, according to the probe, which went back as far as 1945. The commission behind the investigation was set up last year by the Catholic Church under the leadership of a former government minister, Wim Deetman, a Protestant, who said there could be no doubt church leaders knew of the problem. "The idea that people did not know there was a risk ... is untenable," he told a news conference.

Note: For lots more on institutional secrecy from reliable, verifiable sources, click here.

New leads in missing Sandusky case DA

November 18, 2011, CNN blog

http://insession.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/18/new-leads-in-missing-sandusky-case-da/

Centre County District Attorney Ray Gricar investigated allegations that former Penn State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky molested a child in 1998. Gricar chose not to bring charges at the time, and now that young man ... is listed as "Victim 6" in the current child molestation charges the Pennsylvania Attorney General is pursuing against Sandusky. Gricar went missing in April 2005 and his whereabouts are still a mystery. He is ... presumed dead. The recent child molestation charges filed against Sandusky are raising questions about whether Gricar's disappearance is somehow connected to the Sandusky case. Police Chief Shawn Weaver of the Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, police department, ... says his department has gotten new leads since the Sandusky case broke. Weaver says detectives never looked into Gricar's 1998 investigation of Sandusky because they weren't aware the inquiry took place. One of the strangest things about the Gricar case is that his county-issued laptop computer was found at the bottom of the Susquehanna River. Weaver confirmed ... that the hard drive had been intentionally removed.

Note: For a revealing MSNBC News video titled, "Was DA investigating Sandusky murdered?", click here. To understand how literally hundreds of investigators of high-level sex abuse cases have either disappeared or been killed in unusual circumstances, watch a suppressed Discovery Channel video titled "Conspiracy of Silence" at this link.

Thousands of birds make crash landing in Utah

December 14, 2011, USA Today

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/story/2011-12-14/bird-crash-landing-utah/51927250/1

Thousands of migrating birds, apparently mistaking parking lots for ponds, crashed into the ground throughout southern Utah this week. Thousands of the birds were killed [and] officials said they had rescued more than 2,000 as of Tuesday evening. Wildlife officials said the grebes ... were likely migrating toward Mexico and probably mistook the parking lot of a Cedar City Walmart and other areas as far south as Anderson's Junction for bodies of water. Thinking they were landing to rest atop a pond or lake, the grebes plummeted to the ground Monday night. "The storm clouds over the top of the city lights made it look like a nice, flat body of water. All the conditions were right," Griffin said. "So the birds landed to rest, but ended up slamming into the pavement." Griffin said the event was unlike anything she had seen before in her professional career. "I've been here 15 years and this was the worst downing I've seen," she said. "Most of the downings I've seen have been pretty localized, but this was very widespread." Cedar City resident Stephen Gwin was among the volunteers who helped DWR officials gather the surviving birds. "I have never in my life encountered such a thing," he said. "I've heard of fish die-offs and other strange natural phenomenon, but I've never experienced one before. It was very strange."

Note: Do birds really mistake parking lots for ponds? Could a more likely explanation be that someone is messing with HAARP technologies? Perhaps some kind of experiment was conducted to see if they could successfully disorient and kill large numbers of birds, as may have happened in other very strange incidents about a year ago. Other mass wildlife deaths are reported here.

Three women jointly receive Nobel Peace Prize

December 10, 2011, CNN

http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/10/world/europe/norway-nobel-peace-prize/index.html

Women's rights took center stage Saturday at the Nobel ceremonies as three women recognized for their struggles against the backdrops of the Arab Spring and democratic progress in Africa accepted this year's peace prize. Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and Leymah Gbowee, a social worker and peace campaigner from the same country, shared the prize with Tawakkul Karman, an activist and journalist who this year played a key opposition role in Yemen. The three were chosen for their non-violent struggle against injustice, sexual violence and repression. All three women dedicated their remarks to women struggling for equal rights around the world. Crediting women with ending the conflict and challenging the dictatorship of former President Charles Taylor, [Sirleaf] declared a zero-tolerance policy against corruption and made education compulsory and free for all primary-age children. Gbowee, 39, led a women's movement that protested the use of rape and child soldiers in Liberia's civil war. She mobilized hundreds of women to force delegates at 2003 peace talks to sign a treaty -- at one point calling for a "sex strike" until demands were met. Karman, 32, ... founded the rights group Women Journalists without Chains, and emerged as a key figure in protests against President Ali Abdullah Saleh's regime.

Santa gets help: Anonymous donors are paying off strangers' layaway accounts

December 15, 2011, Washington Post/Associated Press

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/at-kmart-stores-santa-gets-help-anonymous...

The young father stood in line at the Kmart layaway counter, wearing dirty clothes and worn-out boots. With him were three small children. He asked to pay something on his bill because he knew he wouldn't be able to afford it all before Christmas. Then a mysterious woman stepped up to the counter. "She told him, 'No, I'm paying for it,'" recalled Edna Deppe, assistant manager at the store in Indianapolis. "He just stood there and looked at her and then looked at me and asked if it was a joke. I told him it wasn't, and that she was going to pay for him. And he just busted out in tears." At Kmart stores across the country, Santa seems to be getting some help: Anonymous donors are paying off strangers' layaway accounts, buying the Christmas gifts other families couldn't afford, especially toys and children's clothes set aside by impoverished parents. Before she left the store Tuesday evening, the Indianapolis woman in her mid-40s had paid the layaway orders for as many as 50 people. On the way out, she handed out $50 bills and paid for two carts of toys for a woman in line at the cash register. "She was doing it in the memory of her husband who had just died, and she ... wanted to make people happy with it," Deppe said. The woman did not identify herself and only asked people to "remember Ben," an apparent reference to her husband.

Key Articles From Years Past

Profiles: Barry Goldwater

April 25, 1988, New Yorker

http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1988-04-25#folio=070

Expressing his thoughts forthrightly and indiscriminately, for better or worse, has always been the indelible mark of the man. [Former U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee] Barry Morris Goldwater ... simply does not have a dishonest bone in his body. At the close of his eight decade, here are some of his random thoughts. UFOs: "I used to receive a hundred calls a year from people who wanted me to get into the Green Room at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, because that's where the Air Force stored all the material gathered on UFOs. I once asked [USAF General] Curtis LeMay if I could get in that room, and he just gave me holy hell. He said, 'Not only can't you get into it but don't you ever mention it to me again.' Now, with the millions of planets that we know are up there, it's hard for me to believe that ours is the only goddam one that has things that can think walking around on it. So when people tell me they've seen UFOs, I don't say they haven't. In fifteen thousand hours of flying, I've never seen one, but I've talked to pilots who have. I talked to an airline crew that swore up and down that an object came alongside of them one night, and before they could do anything it vanished. We lost a military pilot who went up to intercept strange lights and never came back. His airplane disappeared, too. I won't argue for or against."

Note: For riveting testimonies of top military and political leaders who claim direct involvement in a major cover-up of UFOs, click here.

Please note that most of the summarizing of the revealing news articles in the above summary was done by Tod Fletcher of WantToKnow.info. Many thanks to Tod for all the time and skill he puts into this. The box below provides several ideas on what you can do to spread the news.

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