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PROJECT CENSORED'S Top 25 News STORIES CENSORED'S PROJECT STORIES Top NEws The Project Censored team has undertaken the rigorous process of selecting and evaluating the most important American and global news stories of 2009-2010 that received little or no coverage by the mainstream media. ach year, the Project Censored team, based at Sonoma State University, California, selects and evaluates thousands of news stories published in the national and international mainstream media as well as in the alternative press. The team ultimately decides on the top 25 most underreported stories. Following is an edited summary of Project Censored's 2009-10 selection. To see the full report with sources, references and updates, visit http://www.projectcensored.org/ top-stories/articles/category/top-stories/top-25-of-2011/. The book Censored 2011, edited by Mickey Huff, Peter Phillips and Project Censored, is reviewed in this edition. — Editor 1. Global Plans to Replace the Dollar Nations have reached their limit in subsidising the military adventures of the United States. During meetings in June 2009 in Yekaterinburg, Russia, world leaders such as China's President Hu Jintao, Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev and other top officials of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organisation took the first formal step to replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency. The United States was denied admission to the meetings. If the world leaders succeed, the dollar will dramatically plummet in value; the cost of imports, including oil, will skyrocket and interest rates will climb. Foreigners see the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization as Washington surrogates in a financial system backed by US military bases and aircraft carriers encircling the globe. But this military domination is a vestige of an American empire no longer able to tule by economic strength. Journalist Chris Hedges wrote in June 2009: "The architects of this new global exchange realize that if they break the dollar they also break America's military domination. US military spending cannot be sustained without this cycle of heavy borrowing. The official US defense budget for fiscal year 2008 was USS$623 billion. The next closest national military budget was China's, at $65 billion, according to the Central Intelligence Agency.” To fund the permanent war economy, the US has been flooding the world with dollars. The foreign recipients turn the dollars over to their central banks for local currency. The central banks then have a problem. If a central bank does not spend the money in the United States, then the exchange rate against the dollar increases, penalising exporters. This has allowed the US to print money without restraint, to buy imports and foreign companies, to fund military expansion and to ensure that foreign nations like China continue to buy American Treasury bonds. In July 2009, President Medvedev illustrated his call for a supranational currency to replace the dollar by pulling from his pocket a sample coin of a “united future world currency". The coin, bearing the words "Unity in Diversity”, was minted in Belgium and presented to the heads of G8 delegations. Compiled by Project Censored © 2010 Sonoma State University 1801 East Cotati Avenue Rohnert Park, CA 94928, USA Email: censored@sonoma.edu Website: http://www.projectcensored.org Compiled by Project Censored © 2010 Sonoma State University 1801 East Cotati Avenue Rohnert Park, CA 94928, USA Email: censored@sonoma.edu Website: http://www.projectcensored.org NEXUS ¢ II DECEMBER 2010 - JANUARY 20II www.nexusmagazine.com