The killing of Osama bin Laden during a raid by Navy SEALs on his hideout in Pakistan was the top news story of 2011, followed by Japan's earthquake/tsunami/meltdown disaster, according to The Associated Press' annual poll of U.S. editors and news directors. The death of bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader who masterminded the Sept. 11 terror attacks, received 128 first-place votes out of 247 ballots cast for the top 10 stories. The Japan disaster was next, with 60 first-place votes. Placing third were the Arab Spring uprisings that rocked North Africa and the Middle East, while the European Union's financial turmoil was No. 4. – AP

Dominant Social Theme: These are the world's most important news stories.

Free-Market Analysis: The Killing of bin Laden was voted top news story of 2011 and from our point of view it goes downhill from there. Having observed in detail how elite dominant social themes work, we're well prepared to analyze this year's top news stories.

What we will do in this article is briefly debunk the ones that we believe are factually false. In doing so, we shall surely make the point that the level of promotional manipulation and propaganda is alive and well within the ranks of power elite media.

But we also intend to make the point that (thanks to what we call the Internet Reformation) even modest media websites such as ours can easily follow the REAL conversation taking place these days – and anticipate various power elite promotions.

We think the results are shocking. Out of ten stories selected by the AP poll, six from our point of view are somewhat or palpably false. That is, they have been in some manner concocted to advance elite globalist goals. Here are the stories about which we have significant doubts.

1. OSAMA BIN LADEN'S DEATH: He'd been the world's most-wanted terrorist for nearly a decade, ever since a team of his al-Qaida followers carried out the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In May, the long and often-frustrating manhunt ended with a nighttime assault by a helicopter-borne special operations squad on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Bin Laden was shot dead by one of the raiders, and within hours his body was buried at sea.

We've written about this a good deal. It seems likely to us that Osama bin Laden, who was repeatedly reported to have been very ill, died years ago. We've covered the questions about the raid, the lies of the administration regarding the raid, the hurried "burial" – which must have proceeded without a body. There are eyewitnesses who claim that there was no raid, etc.

The reason to (apparently) fake bin Laden's death was probably because the phony war on terror narrative was getting too unwieldy. Also, there were apparently domestic reasons to "kill" bin Laden now, as Barack Obama's handlers wanted him to be perceived as a "victorious" president coming into next year's elections. Just do an Internet search on the terms "Daily Bell" and "Osama bin Laden" for more.

2. ARAB SPRING: It began with demonstrations in Tunisia that rapidly toppled the longtime strongman. Spreading like a wildfire, the Arab Spring protests sparked a revolution in Egypt that ousted Hosni Mubarak, fueled a civil war in Libya that climaxed with Moammar Gadhafi's death, and fomented a bloody uprising in Syria against the Assad regime. Bahrain and Yemen also experienced major protests and unrest.

This is another meme we've written about a great deal. There is simply no doubt that the Obama administration and the US State Department have helped sponsor these Arab Spring demos, in concert with the tacit, apparent support of US corporate and intel resources. AYM in particular has been active in training "youth" on how to return to their countries to begin protests.

Additionally, we have many times pointed out that the apparent goal of these Anglosphere-sponsored revolutions is to create a kind of Muslim crescent arc because almost all the regimes being destabilized have been either Christian or non-sectarian.

The replacement authorities in Tunisia and Egypt are looking to be Muslim rather than secular, just as we predicted. More fodder for what seems to us a fairly suspect "war on terror." For more on our comments just search Daily Bell and "Arab Spring." Also try "Muslim Arab crescent" and "AYM."

3. EU FISCAL CRISIS: The European Union was wracked by relentless fiscal turmoil. In Greece, austerity measures triggered strikes, protests and riots, while Italy's economic woes toppled Premier Silvio Berlusconi. France and Germany led urgent efforts to ease the debt crisis; Britain balked at proposed changes.

The EU crisis is one of central banking – printing money from nothing and expecting the economy to flourish nonetheless. Many other fancy explanations have been proffered but the reality is that monetary stimulus always creates craziness.

Add euro-rigidity to the mix and you have a recipe for a steep financial bust and that's just what happened. The Anglosphere that is trying to build world government anticipated the downturn in some detail. Its enablers and associates are even now trying to parlay the crisis into an ever closer union, in our view.

To maintain, as the mainstream media does, that the current crises are merely an accident of the monetary system doesn't make sense, given what bankers know about the central banking initiated business cycle. For our take on these events just search for "Daily Bell" and "EU directed history."

4. US ECONOMY: By some measures, the U.S. economy gained strength as the year progressed. Hiring picked up a bit, consumers were spending more, and the unemployment rate finally dipped below 9 percent. But millions of Americans remained buffeted by foreclosures, joblessness and benefit cutbacks, and investors were on edge monitoring the chain of fiscal crises in Europe.

What goes for the EU also goes for the US. The housing crash of 2008 was part of a larger central bank bubble caused by too-low interest rates. The results of such rates are entirely predictable and to pretend that the senior banking elites don't know what they are doing seems to us to be an increasingly useless pretense in the era of the Internet.

What is going on, in our view, is a kind of planned depression intended to force further global governance on the Western world in particular. China will be the last economy to founder, but it is already on its way for exactly the same reasons. Search the 'Net for "Daily Bell" and "planned depression" for more articles on this issue.

5. GADHAFI TOPPLED IN LIBYA: After nearly 42 years of mercurial and often brutal rule, Moammar Gadhafi was toppled by his own people. Anti-government protests escalated into an eight-month rebellion, backed by NATO bombing, that shattered his regime, and Gadhafi finally was tracked down and killed in the fishing village where he was born.

Gaddafi was hounded to his destruction by the same Western forces that organized the rest of the current Arab Spring revolutions. There was a twist, though. Apparently many of the rebels were part of the dread Al Qaeda forces that had fought in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and maybe Iraq.

That Western powers would work with these individuals and even arrogate power to them is startling and shows further that the war on terror that is so heavily promoted by the power elite is likely fungible propaganda rather than a deepening, threatening reality. Searching on "Daily Bell" and "Gaddafi" will offer more of our outlook on this tragic episode.

6. OCCUPY WALL STREET PROTESTS: It began Sept. 17 with a protest at a New York City park near Wall Street, and within weeks spread to scores of communities across the U.S. and abroad. The movement depicted itself as leaderless and shied away from specific demands, but succeeded in airing its complaint that the richest 1 percent of Americans benefit at the expense of the rest. As winter approached, local police dismantled several of the protest encampments.

The OWS protests seem to have proven links to such power elite names as George Soros and are the brainchild, supposedly, of a left-wing magazine known as Adbusters. In fact, one finds many of the same ingredients at play in the OWS protests as in the Arab Spring protests across the sea.

From our point of view, the elites are using the OWS protests as a way to generate, ultimately, a kind of French Revolution that will shift the blame from the power elite central banking families to their Wall Street enablers and associates. Under no circumstances must those directly involved with central banking be targeted. Search "Daily Bell," "OWS" and "French Revolution" for more on this perspective.

What remains shocking to us is the increasing brazenness of what seem to be lies about important events. However, in retrospect, those at the top of these thematic promotions don't have much choice in the matter. They need to continue to consolidate.

In order to manage their global consolidation they need to continue to manipulate the news. The problem is that their manipulations are increasingly evident and obvious. Which is why they are now beginning to pass legislation that will make it increasingly difficult for the alternative media to tell the truth about what's taking place.

Conclusion: On the other hand, in our view, no matter what the elites do, the truth is already circulating. Enough people in the West (and around the world) may understand that the 20th century was an unparalleled century of "directed history." And that knowledge may well guarantee that the 21st century shall be less so.

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