‘A global super-rich elite has exploited gaps in cross-border tax rules to hide an extraordinary £13 trillion ($21tn) of wealth offshore – as much as the American and Japanese GDPs put together – according to research commissioned by the campaign group Tax Justice Network.

James Henry, former chief economist at consultancy McKinsey and an expert on tax havens, has compiled the most detailed estimates yet of the size of the offshore economy in a new report, The Price of Offshore Revisited, released exclusively to the Observer.

He shows that at least £13tn – perhaps up to £20tn – has leaked out of scores of countries into secretive jurisdictions such as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands with the help of private banks, which vie to attract the assets of so-called high net-worth individuals. Their wealth is, as Henry puts it, “protected by a highly paid, industrious bevy of professional enablers in the private banking, legal, accounting and investment industries taking advantage of the increasingly borderless, frictionless global economy”.’

‘A Freedom of Information Act(FOIA) request filed by Friends of the Earth (FoE), Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), and the Nuclear Information and Resource Center (NIRS) has unearthed a shocking series of new evidence proving a deliberate, global cover-up of the true severity of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. And the unfortunate reality is that the mainstream media continues to blatantly ignore this colossal scandal.

Private emails, meeting transcripts and other key documents reveal that both the Obama White House and the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission(NRC) were well aware of just how bad things really were with Fukushima from the early days of the disaster, but did nothing to warn the public about it. In fact, NRC and the White House purposely did not warn Americans about a massive radiation plume that struck the West Coast just days after the massive earthquake and tsunami hit Japan’s eastern coast.

According to information gathered from hundreds of pages worth of private NRC emails, conference calls and secret meetings, key players in the Fukushima whitewashing campaign, including the NRC’s David McIntyre and Elliot Brenner, were hard at work in the days following the disaster distracting public attention away from it. By pretending that a radioactive plume did not exist while simultaneously sending out misinformation to the media, these two, in conjunction with White House officials, actively participated in a criminal cover-up of the truth.’

‘If you enjoy watching financial doom, then you are quite likely to really enjoy the rest of 2012.

Right now, red flags are popping up all over the place.  Corporate insiders are selling off stock like there is no tomorrow, major economies all over Europe continue to implode, the IMF is warning that the eurozone could actually break up and there are signs of trouble at major banks all over the planet.

Unfortunately, it looks like the period of relative stability that global financial markets have been enjoying is about to come to an end.  A whole host of problems that have been festering just below the surface are starting to manifest, and we are beginning to see the ingredients for a “perfect storm” start to come together.

The greatest global debt bubble in human history is showing signs that it is getting ready to burst, and when that happens the consequences are going to be absolutely horrific.

Hopefully we still have at least a little bit more time before the global financial system implodes, but at this point it doesn’t look like anything is going to be able to stop the chaos that is on the horizon.

The following are 22 red flags that indicate that very serious doom is coming for global financial markets….’

‘Environmental scientist James Lovelock, renowned for his terrifying predictions of climate change’s deadly impact on the planet, has gone back on his previous claims, admitting they were ‘alarmist’.

The 92-year-old Briton, who also developed the Gaia theory of the Earth as a single organism, has said climate change is still happening – just not as quickly as he once warned.

He added that other environmental commentators, such as former vice president Al Gore, are also guilty of exaggerating their arguments.’

‘The global agenda that we find ourselves, not facing, but deeply embroiled in today, can be characterised in many ways, as it is multi-faceted. The various elements of the agenda, though, all share one fundamental characteristic: the advancement of phenomena that, for the vast majority of people, are dehumanising, degrading and debilitating. Yet they are presented to us as being entirely natural, and perhaps the most telling phrase that has been introduced in recent years is the expression “the new normal”. The vast majority of the world’s population is relentlessly conditioned to accept what should be considered repulsive to be normal, even desirable.

There are two over-arching themes that dominate this global agenda. Firstly, is the hierarchical control of society by a banking elite whose tentacles reach out into virtually every social arena. Secondly, is the irrevocable move towards a global banking and business network from which no sovereign entity can assert independence. The banking hierarchy ultimately desires a world order in
which everyone on the planet either works for them, or buys what they need to survive from them, or both, while simultaneously annihilating the living standards of the great mass of humanity.

Thus, arguably the key element to this agenda is the globalisation of the economic system. This has been crafted over many decades through agreements such as Bretton Woods, and the creation of the IMF, World Bank and Bank of International Settlements (BIS). This is allied to the increasing digitalisation of money, with the vast majority of financial transactions not utilising cash, and large numbers of ‘convenient’ digital monetary systems now being released into the public domain.’