Council Consideration?

Anonymous submitted this tidbit under another post. I thought it was worthy of it's won post.

I know this is missplaced. Yet, I thought you would be interested. I do not agree with the council debating the war and the like. Yet, here is a story about a small town who is taking on issues of world and national importance. It got me thinking if I am wrong on the war thing. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91332402

According to the NPR story, the Detroit suburb of "Harper Woods, Mich., has filed a lawsuit against a massive defense contractor, BAE Systems, over allegations that the company funneled payments to a member of the Saudi royal family....Harper Woods got involved because its $40 million employee pension fund includes about $135,000 invested in BAE Systems. That's not a lot, but this is not a big town."

" 'As part of the contract [a large defense contract with Saudi Arabia] there was a side agreement that basically allowed for payments to be funneled to Prince Bandar," Coughlin [the city's attorney] alleges. "Bank examiners and people looking at this have estimated it was nearly $100 million a year or a total of $2 billion that was funneled through various U.S. banks."

Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz Al-Saud was Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States for decades. Coughlin is alleging that to get that defense contract for a bunch of fighter planes, known as the "Al Yamamah" or the Dove deal, BAE paid Bandar $2 billion over a period of about 20 years. "

The city has had some success: Saudi Prince Bandar's real estate assets in the United States, valued at more than $150 million, have been frozen by U.S. courts.

And by the way, the council never debated the Iraq war; we debated whether to place the Iraq war on a referendum ballot after a citizen group's effort was stymied by a technicality.