Lured by the prospect of reducing oil dependence, President Obama’s ambivalent approach has ultimately yielded ground to industry. Lured by the same prospect, countries all around the world have joined the shale-gas craze, and many use the fact that the U.S. has been “fracking” as proof that it is safe. William Engdahl provides the full picture.

There is a global rush to embrace a new source of extracting hydrocarbons from the Earth. From Germany to Poland and France, from China and above all in the USA where the technique of hydraulic fracturing of shale rocks is most developed, governments and major oil companies are producing huge volumes of gas.

A number of energy importing countries around the world are planning a major investment in extracting natural gas from their shale rock formations. The most ambitious plans are coming from China and from Poland in the EU.

The US Government’s Department of Energy together with a Washington energy consultancy has just released a mammoth global report estimating resources of shale gas. Significantly, the report estimates that the largest untapped shale gas reserves worldwide lie in China. The study puts Poland and France at the top of the shale gas list in the EU. The rest of Europe they estimate simply lacks the geology where substantial shale rock is present.

Even in Germany some cash-strapped states are seriously looking at Shale gas. ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company is planning major projects in the densely-populated North-Rhein Westphalia region.

The company’s head for Central Europe, Gernot Kalkoffen in a recent interview stated, “Germany is most definitely an interesting market. We cannot achieve the energy strategy shift without gas.” ExxonMobil estimates shale gas is potentially available in six of Germany’s 16 states.

The US Energy Department estimates that Germany could have some 8 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable shale gas, three years’ total consumption. Citizen protest groups and Parliamentary skepticism about health and safety of shale gas so far is braking a German shale gas bonanza.

Not only ExxonMobil but also BASF’s Wintershall, Gaz de France, BNK Petroleum from the US and a daughter of Britain’s Royal Dutch Shell are salivating over German shale gas prospects.

The Polish government is in a state of near euphoria over the prospects of exploiting its shale gas resources. Prime Minister Donald Tusk calls shale gas Poland’s “great chance,” because it could cut its dependence on Russian gas, create tens of thousands of jobs and fill state coffers.

In tests at one well in northern Poland done last August, the Polish Geological Institute claimed that Hydraulic fracturing didn’t affect the quality or quantity of surface and ground water and didn’t cause tremors that would pose a threat to buildings or other infrastructure. The US oilfield services giant Schlumberger did the fracking.

Of course one test in one well is hardly conclusive, though the Tusk government doesn’t seem to care as they push Brussels to launch a major Polish shale gas exploitation program.

In China, shale gas looks about to take off as a major new focus for the country’s enormous energy requirements. The governing State Council has recently approved shale gas as an “independent mineral resource” and the Ministry of Land and Resources will conduct an appraisal of shale gas resources this year to expedite discovery and development of China shale deposits.

Until now China’s rough mountainous terrain and lack of shale gas fracking know-how has kept it out of the shale gas, with coal far the major source of electric power. The French oil giant, Total, has just signed a deal with China’s Sinopec to produce shale gas in China.

China has around 31 trillion cubic meters of natural gas trapped in shale, some 50% greater than the United States according to the US Department of Energy estimate.  These are volumes to make the head of any respectable state official spin.

One exception to the shale gas rush is Germany where the Federal Government just decided to prohibit ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company, from fracking in the eastern part of the country, stating they were “very skeptical” of industry claims it would not poison ground water or cause earthquake damage.

Myth and reality: The Halliburton Loophole

Fracking techniques have been around since the end of World War II. Why then suddenly is the world going gaga over shale gas hydraulic fracking? One answer is the record high oil and gas prices of the recent few years have made the costly fracking profitable.

The second reason is the advance of various horizontal underground drilling techniques that allow companies like Schlumberger to enter a large shale rock formation and inject substances to “free” the trapped gas.

But the real reason for the recent explosion of fracking in the country where it has most been applied, the United States, is the passage of legislation in 2005 by the US Congress that exempts the oil industry’s hydraulic fracking activity from regulatory supervision by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

The oil and gas industry is the only industry in America that is allowed by EPA to inject known hazardous materials — unchecked — directly into or adjacent to underground drinking water supplies.

The law is known as the “Halliburton Loophole.” That’s because it was introduced on massive lobbying pressure from the company that produces the lion’s share of chemical hydraulic fracking fluids—Dick Cheney’s old company, Halliburton. When he became Vice President under George W. Bush in early 2001, Bush immediately gave Cheney responsibility for a major Energy Task Force to make a comprehensive national energy strategy.

Aside from looking at Iraq oil potentials as documents later revealed, Cheney’s task force used Cheney’s considerable political muscle and industry lobbying money to win exemption from the Safe Drinking Water Act.

During Cheney’s term as vice president he moved to make sure the Government’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would give a green light to a major expansion of shale gas drilling in the US. In 2004 the EPA issued a study of the environmental effects of fracking. That study has been called “scientifically unsound” by EPA whistleblower Weston Wilson.

In March of 2005, EPA Inspector General Nikki Tinsley found enough evidence of potential mishandling of the EPA hydraulic fracturing study to justify a review of Wilson’s complaints.

The Oil and Gas Accountability Project conducted a review of the EPA study which found that EPA removed information from earlier drafts that suggested unregulated fracturing poses a threat to human health, and that the Agency did not include information that suggests “fracturing fluids may pose a threat to drinking water long after drilling operations are completed.”

The Halliburton Loophole is no minor affair. The process of hydraulic fracking to extract gas involves staggering volumes of water and of some of the most toxic chemicals known.

During the uproar over the BP Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the Obama Administration and the Energy Department formed an advisory commission on Shale Gas. Their report was released in November 2011. It was what could only be called a “whitewash” of the dangers of shale gas.

The commission was headed by former CIA director John Deuss. Deuss sits on the board of Citigroup, one of the world’s most active energy industry banks, tied to the Rockefeller family.

He also sits on the board of Schlumberger, along with Halliburton, the major company doing hydraulic fracking. In fact, of the seven panel members, six had ties to the energy industry. Little surprise that the Deuss report called shale gas, “the best piece of news about energy in the last 50 years.” Deuss added, “Over the long term it has the potential to displace liquid fuels in the United States.”

In the US oil industry people have forgotten the scare about oil and gas depletion, popularly known as the Peak Oil theory in their new euphoria over huge new volumes of gas and also oil obtained by fracking of shale and coal beds. Now even the Obama Administration is talking about a renaissance in domestic oil production.

The reason is the dramatic rise in domestic extraction of gas from hydraulic fracking of shale, using new fracking techniques first developed by Dick Cheney’s old company, Halliburton, made financially lucrative with the advent of $100 a barrel oil since 2008.

Reportedly under pressure from then Vice President Cheney, chemical or hydraulic fracking of shale rock and coal beds has been left unregulated under what has become known as the Halliburton Loophole in the 2005 US National Energy Bill.

To access the gas, the shale needs to be fractured using a mixture of hot water, sand and chemical additives, some of which are highly poisonous. Attempts by citizen organizations and individual litigants to force oil services company disclosure of the composition of chemicals used in hydraulic fracking have met a stone wall of silence.

The companies argue that the chemicals are proprietary secrets and that disclosing them would hurt their competitiveness. They also insist the process is “basically safe and that regulating it would deter domestic production.”  This legal sleight of hand lets the fracking lobby have their cake and eat it too.

They claim it is safe, refuse to say what chemicals are used and insist it be free from the Environmental Protection Administration rules under the Safe Drinking Water Act. If they are right about how safe their chemical fracking fluids are why are they afraid of regulation like other chemical companies?
Fracking toxic waste

To understand what is going on, in a typical shale gas fracturing operation, a company drills a hole several thousand meters below surface; then they drill a horizontal branch perhaps one kilometer in length.

As one expert described the fracking, once the horizontal drilling into the shale formation is done, “you send down a kind of subterranean pipe bomb, a small package of ball-bearing-like shrapnel and light explosives.

The package is detonated, and the shrapnel pierces the bore hole, opening up small perforations in the pipe. They then pump up to 7 million gallons of a substance known as slick water to fracture the shale and release the gas.

It blasts through those perforations in the pipe into the shale at such force—more than nine thousand pounds of pressure per square inch—that it shatters the shale for a few yards on either side of the pipe, allowing the gas embedded in it to rise under its own pressure and escape.”

The shale rock in which the gas is trapped is so tight that it has to be broken in order for the gas to escape. Therein come the problems. A combination of sand and water laced with chemicals — including benzene — is pumped into the well bore at high pressure, shattering the rock and opening millions of tiny fissures, enabling the shale gas to seep into the pipeline.

Not only does it liberate gas or in the case of Bakken, oil. It floods the shale formation with millions of gallons of toxic fluids. A study conducted by Theo Colburn, PhD, director of the Endocrine Disruption Exchange in Paonia, Colorado, identified 65 chemicals that are probable components of the fracking fluids used by shale gas drillers.

These chemicals included benzene, glycol-ethers, toluene, 2-(2-methoxyethoxy) ethanol, and nonylphenols. All of those chemicals have been linked to health disorders when human exposure is too high. Dr. Anthony Ingraffea, D. C. Baum Professor of Engineering at Cornell University, who has researched fracture mechanics for more than 30 years, has said that drilling and hydraulic fracturing “can liberate biogenic natural gas into a fresh water aquifer.”

Not only possibly poisoning the fresh water underground aquifers, hydraulic fracking is done with such force that it has been known to cause earthquakes. In the UK, Cuadrilla was doing shale gas drilling in Lancashire. They suspended their shale gas test drilling in June 2011, following two earthquakes—one tremor of magnitude 2.3 hit the Fylde coast on 1 April, followed by a second of magnitude 1.4 on 27 May.

A UK Government study of the earthquakes, released in April concluded that the fracking drilling operations had caused the quakes. Earthquake activity in fracking regions across the US have also been reported.

Alarmingly, in the case of exploiting shale gas in China, the largest shale formation lies in Sechuan Province in China’s east, one of the most active earthquake zones in Asia. Additionally, given the documented dangers to ground water from extensive fracking, China’s chronic water shortages are threatened as well.

The new technique of hydraulic fracking was first used successfully in the late 1990s in the Barnett Shale in Texas, and is now being used to liberate oil from beneath the Bakken Shale in North Dakota.

But the largest shale gas fracking activity in the US has been a literal gas bonanza drilling boom in the Marcellus Shale that runs from West Virginia into upstate New York, estimated estimated to hold as much gas as the whole United States consumes in a century. More recent estimates put the figure at half that or lower, suggesting the energy industry is using hype to promote its methods.
Good news bad news

Good news is shale gas shows how wrong the peak oil lobby is about depletion of global hydrocarbons. Gas like coal and oil are according to their definition all “fossil fuels.”

While we leave aside whether in fact they are from dinosaur detritus or fossilized algae, clearly the Earth is far from peaking in its hydrocarbon resources. Bad news is diverting valuable resources from finding abundant conventional gas or oil using advanced new methods.

F. William Engdahl , voltairenet

On March 25, 1948, Harry Truman met secretly with Chaim Weizmann (Israel’s first president). He pledged support for the future Jewish state. Minutes after midnight on May 15, 1948, America was the first country to extend recognition.

A special relationship began. Thereafter it’s grown financially, politically, militarily, diplomatically, and counterproductively. Israel clearly benefits. America loses more than it gains. Serious reassessment is long overdue. 

On many issues mattering most, the Israeli tail wags the US dog, whether or not Washington’s interests are served.

Both countries threaten world peace. United they endanger humanity. On February 9, 2010, an Intelligence Squared debate resolved: “The US should step back from its special relationship with Israel,” saying:

“Israel believes America’s special relationship is vital. It is, certainly, to Israel. But what about for the US? Israel has no oil, enemies in many places, and a tendency to defy Washington when it perceives its own interests to be threatened, which is not infrequently.”

Does America’s relationship do more harm than good? Is it time to step back and reconsider? These and related issues weren’t resolved. Raising them publicly served a purpose. 

A packed New York University student union showed people want answers they haven’t gotten. Together these pariah states menace humanity. Breaking up is long overdue.

In their book titled “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy,” John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt argue that Israel is “increasingly a strategic liability….It is time for the United States to treat Israel not as a special case but as a normal state, and to deal with it much as it deals with any other country.”

Doing so “means no longer pretending that Israel and America’s interests are identical, or acting as if Israel deserves steadfast US support no matter what it does.”

James Petras said “(t)he US-Israeli relationship is the first in modern history in which the imperial country covers up a deliberate major military assault by a supposed ally.”

He referred to the 1967 USS Liberty attack. Israel bombed and strafed it. Dozens of US seamen were killed. Around 170 were wounded. The vessel was heavily damaged. Israel got away with murder. It wasn’t the first or last time.

From then to now, the relationship strengthened. Today more than ever it threatens world peace. Managed news perceptions conceal it from public view. It’s time to reveal what’s been denied too long. It’s time to cut ties and move on.

On May 9, greater cause emerged. The US House passed HR 4133: United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012. It went to the Senate for consideration.

It “express(es) the sense of Congress regarding the United States-Israel strategic relationship, to direct the President to submit to Congress reports on United States actions to enhance this relationship and to assist in the defense of Israel, and for other purposes.”

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R. VA) introduced it. He had 304 co-sponsors. It passed 411 – 2. Nine didn’t vote. Another nine voted present.

John Dingell (D. MI) voted “Nay.” So did Ron Paul. Passage “will lead to war,” he said. More on his comments below.

On May 9, US sovereignty lost another round. Netanyahu is a global menace. HR 4133 facilitates his belligerence. Chances for war on Syria and Iran increased.

Israeli weapons aid insurgents against Assad. Its satellite images claim Iran’s developing nuclear weapons. Known facts belie contentions. Netanyahu hypes the threat. Congressional allies support him. More ammunition came on May 9.

AIPAC praised the bill’s passage. Rising regional threats warrant it was claimed. “America and Israel must further enhance their strong security relationship in this dangerous environment.”

“Cooperation with Israel strongly supports American security interests.”

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) also “strongly praised” the bill’s passage.

“This bipartisan legislation reaffirms and strengthens the deep military and security relationship between the United States and Israel, and reflects the bi-partisan consensus of the US Congress that this relationship must continue to thrive.” 

“It also reaffirms Israel’s right to defend itself against threats and reiterates America’s unshakable commitment to Israel’s security, recognizing that a secure Israel will always be in America’s national interest.”

Ron Paul disagreed. On the House floor, he said:

“Mr. Speaker: I rise in opposition to HR 4133, the United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act, which unfortunately is another piece of one-sided and counter-productive foreign policy legislation.” 

“This bill’s real intent seems to be more saber-rattling against Iran and Syria, and it undermines US diplomatic efforts by making clear that the US is not an honest broker seeking peace for the Middle East.”

“The bill calls for the United States to significantly increase our provision of sophisticated weaponry to Israel, and states that it is to be US policy to ‘help Israel preserve its qualitative military edge’ in the region.”

Sovereign nations should handle their own security issues. US taxpayers shouldn’t underwrite others. Neither should America’s military.

The bill states US policy “reaffirm(s) the enduring commitment of the United States to the security of the State of Israel as a Jewish state.”

America’s committed to protect its own security, not “guarantee the religious, ethnic, or cultural composition of a foreign country.”

“More than 20 years after” Soviet Russia dissolved, HR 4133 seeks new reasons to maintain NATO’s “anachronistic alliance: the defense of Israel.”

The bill wants Israel more involved in NATO, “including an enhanced presence at (its) headquarters and exercises.”

It’s a “dream” act “for interventionists and the military industrial complex.” Paul wants NATO “disbanded not expanded.”

“This bill will not help the United States, it will not help Israel, and it will not help the Middle East.” It facilitates greater regional interventionism at a time there’s already too much. “It more likely will lead to war against Syria, Iran or both.”

Paul urged House colleagues to vote Nay. Only John Dingell agreed and did so.

The stronger US/Israeli ties bind, the more likely global war approaches. Israel’s a strategic liability for America, the region and world. 

Neither reflects democratic values. Allied with Israel, the US is more vulnerable to attack and more likely to embroil the world in conflict. Both reflect the worst of the other. With these type allies, who needs enemies.

Each lacks moral standing. Neither respects human rights. Both are the world’s main offenders. Pointing fingers elsewhere can’t hide truths too glaring to deny.

Successive administrations in both countries have abusive track records enough to make some despots blush. Destructiveness between them made the whole greater than the sum of its parts.

What’s in it for America by giving Israel more? How do US people benefit? They’ve got a right to rage about lavish aid to Israel at a time they’re asked to sacrifice.

Middle East polls reflect hostile Arab street US sentiment. When asked how best Washington can improve its standing, responses overwhelmingly say change regional policies and stop supporting Israel.

Growing numbers of Jews oppose Israeli policies. American ones want a relationship this destructive ended. 

So do millions of people worldwide. An alliance based on militarism, belligerence, racism, and human rights abuses is crucial to end, not support. Doing it before it’s too late matters most.

The U.S. court judgment issued in December 2011 (Havlish v. Iran) which blames the Iran government for the 9/11 attacks is part of the propaganda ploy, which consists in demonizing the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is part and parcel of America’s ongoing war against Iran since the overthrow of its U.S.-backed monarchy in 1979.

Like many similar lawsuits in America, this legal procedure’s ultimate goal is to draw off important sums of money from the Iranian government leading to the possible confiscation of assets, thereby further strangling the country’s economy, already targeted by U.S. sanctions, while simultaneously reinforcing Iran’s image of  a “state sponsor of terrorism”.

This ruling allows the families involved to claim damages from the Iranian government as well from a number of Iranian State corporations, the amount of which is still unknown, but could reach billions, like last December’s judgement which found Iran liable for the 1983 Beirut bombings.

This judicial procedure is nothing more than another vicious weapon in the fabricated “War on Terror” to be used against another Muslim country, with a view to destabilizing Iran as well as justifying ongoing military threats. It also says a lot more about the people behind the lawsuit than about the accused. The expert witnesses who testified against Iran are very active in warmongering neocon circles. They belong to a web of architects of the 21st century Middle-Eastern wars, ranging from high profile propagandists to intelligence and military officers, including former U.S. officials.

In addition, all three branches of the U.S. government, under both Republicans and Democrats, contributed to make this and other legal attacks against Iran possible, while preventing comparable cases against the Saudi monarchy, most notably a case accusing Saudi Arabia for the 9/11 attacks. Although the evidence pertaining to the role of Saudi Arabia in 9/11 remains classified, the available evidence in the public domaine indicates more connections between Al Qaeda and the Saudi monarchy than those allegedly pertaining to Iran.

But what makes this case absurd is that in September 2011, a few months before the judgment, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has questioned the official 9/11 narrative, was accused by Al-Qaeda leaders of  “spreading conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks”. The semi-official media outlet of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, insisted that al-Qaeda “had been behind the attacks and criticised the Iranian president for discrediting the terrorist group.”

Part I of this analysis (below) will focus on the evidence on which the judgement is based.

Part II (forthcoming) examines  the profile of the expert witnesses and their links to the U.S government, various anti-Iran lobbies and think tanks. Part III centers on the role of various branches of the US government in facilitating judicial procedures against Iran. Part IV explores how the U.S.authorities have been protecting Saudi Arabia from similar legal suits.

Part I

The “War on Terror Rests” on Kangaroo Courts

Osama bin Laden, allegedly responsible for 9/11, was apparently killed over a year ago by a U.S. Special Operations Team in violation of international law.

Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) detained in Guantanamo and four others have recently been accused of orchestrating the 9/11 attacks. Their detention, mistreatment and accusations before a military tribunal also violate international law. According to this court judgement, Iran is also to blame for 9/11.

Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda are accused as well in Havlish v. Iran, but we will focus on Hezbollah and the Iranian defendants, including many entities such as the Ministries of Finance and Energy. Since it is a default judgment, the defendants were not present in court and no cross-examination took place.

Considering the fact that bin Laden has never been formally accused of the 9/11 attacks, due to lack of evidence, and that the evidence against KSM and the other accused has been obtained through torture and is classified, it is no surprise that the case against Iran also relies on “shaky evidence”. In fact, it seems that in logic of America’s “Global War on Terror” anybody can be accused of the 9/11 attacks with trumped up charges.

Havlish v. Iran reads like a typical kangaroo court case. Iran’s responsibility for 9/11 is mostly based on previous attacks and foiled attempts in the U.S.and other countries and all the so-called evidence is actually a collection of assumptions which are turned into facts from one sentence to another without any addition of factual evidence to support it. Some claims are inconsistent, purely subjective and what is said to be the strongest evidence is a clumsy distortion of facts, which can be easily refuted by sound factual evidence.

Ironically, this attempt to link Iran to 9/11 demonstrates a notoriously twisted legal procedure, not to mention a cruel lack of corroborating evidence.

To set the stage, numerous attacks unrelated to 9/11 are presented with alleged financial or material backing from Iran and/or Hezbollah, the Shia Muslim militant group. We can see a pattern and key people emerge: very often the U.S. and Israel accuse Iran of those attacks which have either not been resolved, or have been blamed on other governments and terrorist groups, or other organisations are said to have claimed responsibility for them.

Here are some examples:

- The Israeli embassy bombing in Buenos Aires in 1992:

The US and Israel have accused Iran and Hezbollah of those attacks, without providing corroborating evidence. The Department of State blamed a suicide bomber from Hezbollah driving a truck, but according to a report ordered by Argentina’s Supreme Court, the bomb was in the building: “The engineers established, with 99 percent certainty, the exact location where the explosives were and the quantity that was used.” The case has not been solved. (March 17, 1992: Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires Is Bombed, Hezbollah and Iran Accused Despite Lack of Evidence.)

- The 1993 WTC bombing:

Former CIA Director James Woolsey tried to prove Iraq was responsible for the 1993 bombing and hinted at possible links with Iran in an interview from October 2001. (Gunning for Saddam. Interview R. James Woolsey, Frontline, PBS, October 2001.)

An internal CIA report concluded however that the CIA was partly responsible for the bombing since “Several of the bombers were trained by the CIA to fight in the Afghan war.” (February 26, 1993: WTC Is Bombed but Does Not Collapse, as Bombers Had Hoped, History Commons.)

- The foiled Eiffel tower attack with a hijacked French airliner:

The Algerian group GIA (Groupe islamique armé) claimed responsibility for the hijacking. According to the famous U.S. think tank Council on Foreign Relations the origins of the GIA are the same as al-Qaeda:

Like lots of violent Islamic movements around the world, many militants in the GIA appear to trace their radicalization to Afghanistan, where they fought as mujahadeen, or Islamic guerillas, against the Soviet army from 1979 to 1989. (Lauren Vriens, Armed Islamic Group (Algeria, Islamists), Council on Foreign Relations, May 27, 2009.)

It is worth mentioning the creation of al-Qaeda by the U.S. government is well documented and has been admitted by Robert Gates and Zbignew Brzezinski:

According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invadedAfghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. (Le Nouvel Observateur, January 15-21, 1998, p. 76. Translation taken from Counterpunch Zbigniew Brzezinski: How Jimmy Carter and I Started the Mujahideen.)

 - The 1995 assassination attempt on Mubarak:

Conducted by the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, a group led by Ayman Al-Zawahiri, and closely affiliated with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. (Nate Jones, Document Friday: Mubarak, al-Bashir, al-Zawahiri, and bin Laden. The 1995 Assassination Attempt in Addis Ababa, The National Security Archives, February 4, 2011.)

- The Saudi Arabia Khobar Towers attack in 1996:

The Saudis blamed Hezbollah for the attacks, “but US investigators still believe bin Laden was involved”.

In June 2001, a US grand jury will indict 13 Saudis for the bombing. According to the indictment, Iran and Hezbollah were also involved in the attack. [US CONGRESS, 7/24/2003] (June 25, 1996: Khobar Towers Are Bombed; Unclear Who Culprit Is, History Commons.)

Former US officials will later claim that even after the bombing, the CIA instructed officials at its Saudi station not to collect information on Islamic extremists in Saudi Arabia. (After June 25, 1996: CIA Agents Told Not to Track Militants in Saudi Arabia, History Commons.)

- The 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen:

An American judge found Sudan guilty of those attacks through its support for al-Qaeda.

Four experts on terrorism, including former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, testified in person or by deposition Tuesday to support the families’ contention that al-Qaeda needed the African nation’s help to carry out the attack. (Associated Press, Federal judge rules Sudan responsible for USSCole bombing in 2000, NBC News, March 14, 2007.)

Clearly, this series of attacks by no means constitutes “evidence” of Iran’s involvement in 9/11.

In addition to the absence of links between Iran and 9/11, the nature of the assumptions and presumptons in the judgment is striking. The terms “proof” or “evidence” are simply nowhere to be found. Instead, formulations such as “Iran must have”, “would have” “it is likely that Iran”, are numerous. In the end, all these suspicions and beliefs are put together and presented as solid evidence of Iran’s participation in the 9/11 attacks. Yet, even in abundance, assumptions can not become facts. Here are some examples:

(41) “Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance […] had to have been involved in Iran’s […] financial support for terrorists […] al-Qaeda in particular”

(42) “Iranian Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Petroleum must have been aware of weapons shipments bound for terrorist groups.”

(252) Lopez and Tefft “state it is their expert opinion to a reasonable degree of professional certainty that the Iranian Regime’s use of terror, and specifically, its material support of al-Qaeda and terrorist attacks, including 9/11, is beyond question.”

(259) Bergman “asserts that the authorities in the Israeli and American intelligence services believe that Hizballah’s Imad Mughniyahconceived, designed, planned commanded and/or carried out terrorist operations […] in Syria in February 2008.”

(269) “[…] document dated May 14, 2001 from Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri and concludes it appears to be authentic. […] reveals both high level links between the Iran Supreme leader’s intelligence apparatus and al-Qaeda […]”

(274) Timmerman “states he was told by the 9/11 commission staff members that the Iranians were fully aware they were helping operatives […] of an organization preparing attacks against the United States.”

Other “evidence” of Iran’s link to 9/11 includes “Iranians travelling to Afghanistan” and al-Qaeda and Hezbollah operatives being on the same flight toBeirut. Again that proves nothing. Another issue raised to prove Iran was behind the attacks is Iran’s financial support to Hezbollah, which in turn supported and trained al-Qaeda. If such a link is admitted, then the U.S. should be the first to blame for 9/11 since al-Qaeda is a U.S. creation, “an intelligence asset” as acknowledged above by Brzezinski as well as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

But the “strongest” evidence brought up in this case against the Islamic republic relates to the stamping of Saudi passports by Iranian immigration. Iran is accused of being a “state sponsor of terrorist travel because it did not stamp the Saudi terrorists’ passports”. That is a half truth. It is true that Iran did not stamp the “Saudi terrorists’ passports”, but not because they were known to be terrorists, but simply because Iran does not stamp ANY Saudi passport.

If that, according to “expert” testimonies, is the strongest evidence proving Iran’s links to the 9/11 attacks, then the whole case has absolutely no grounds. Moreover, if one follows this logic, the U.S. should be found guilty of the attacks, since the alleged hijackers were delivered U.S. visas and the intelligence agencies were aware of their presence on American soil. Most importantly, they did nothing about it.

Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer was part of a secret military unit called “Able Danger”, which collaborated with international intelligence agencies and the Defense Intelligence Agency. The unit had identified and tracked terrorists allegedly involved in 9/11, including Mohamed Atta, more than a year before the attacks.(Pentagon opens doors to 9/11 attacks, Brasschecktv.com; 9 11 Prior Knowledge Able Danger Hearing for Lt Col Anthony Shaffer in Congress C SPAN, CoreofCorruption.com, September 24, 2009)

Lt Col Anthony Shaffer

Lt Col Shaffer testified at the 9/11 Commission. Navy Captain Scott Phillpott also testified to the 9/11 Commission staff about Able Danger and the identification of Mohammed Atta in January and February of 2000. Not only were their testimonies, as well as any other information relating to Able Danger, completely ignored in the report, but the latter states that “American intelligence agencies were unaware of Mr. Atta until the day of the attacks”. (Philip Shenon, Navy Officer Affirms Assertions About Pre-9/11 Data on Atta, August 22, 2005.)

Needless to say, the 9/11 Commission Report is a collection of “omissions and distortions”, a very well orchestrated cover-up, a reality to which even the Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the Commission, Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton adhere, claiming it was “set up to fail”.

The case against Iran is largely based on the 9/11 Commission Report, and three of the “expert witnesses” who testified were part of that commission. Among them is Dietrich Snell, one of the lead investigators and the man Captain Phillpott testified to about Able Danger. (Douglas Jehl and Philip Shenon, 9/11 Commission’s Staff Rejected Report on Early Identification of Chief Hijacker, The New York Times, August 11, 2005.)

Part II of this article (forthcoming) will focus on the expert witnesses who testified against Iran in the court case.

Julie Lévesque is a frequent voice for The 4th Media.

Nelson Algren once called Chicago the “City on the Make.” NATO’s May 20/21 “on the make” invasion isn’t welcome.

Chicago NATO.org announced an Obama-hosted “diplomatic summit.” Thousands plan protests against it.

The Coalition Against NATO/G8 War & Poverty issued a statement, saying:

“The city has carried out a campaign to intimidate and vilify protesters, claiming that protests lead to violence. In fact, the main source of violence in the world today is the wars being waged by NATO and the US.”

“We will march in May during the NATO meeting to deliver our message: Jobs, Housing, Healthcare, Education, Our Pensions, the Environment: Not War!”

“We and tens of thousands will be in the streets that day for a family friendly rally and march, with cries so loud they will be heard in Camp David and across the globe. We will be in the streets that day to fight for our future, and speak out against the wars and their cutbacks are designed to benefit the 1% at the expense of the 99% of the world.”

Last August, dozens of activists from 73 organizations met to plan large protests and marches when NATO arrives. United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) coordinator Joe Lombado said “(t)he entire world will be watching us.”

NATO doesn’t foster democratic values, liberation, and peace. It’s about wars, death, destruction and human misery. It requires draconian austerity and soaring debt to support it. A Chicago-style welcome awaits.

Organization representatives fear large scale crackdowns before and during protest demonstrations. Those involved plan to repudiate confrontations. They’ll also stand up for their constitutional rights.

Dozens of NATO heads of state and other top officials plan attending. Large delegations are coming with them. So are similar partner nation contingents.

The Chicago Tribune and Sun Times reported on elaborate security preparations. Hundreds of state police and National Guard forces are involved. So aren’t thousands of Chicago cops.

Secret Service staff also will be out in force. The ACLU said they’ll set up a security perimeter around McCormick Place. Part of Lake Shore Drive will be closed. It’s one of the city’s main arteries.

Enormous amounts of anti-scale steel fencing will be erected. Thousands of linear feet of concrete barriers will be strategically placed.

Secret Service spokesman George Ogilve declined to give specifics. The ACLU threatened court action unless details are released well in advance.

At issue are fundamental freedoms. They include speech and assembly rights. They’re also about police refraining from crackdowns on nonviolent protesters.

Will Chicago respect what NATO and Washington never do on so-called “liberating” missions? Activists want to know. The city has an odious reputation. More on that below.

Permits were granted for six protest events. Other groups got them earlier. Chicago cops cracked down anyway. A Secret Service/Chicago police business panel session revealed one planned tactic.

“Extraction teams” will snatch and grab protesters from crowds. Who for what reasons wasn’t explained.

Company representatives attending were told business won’t be affected. Staff won’t be deterred from moving around freely. How they’ll distinguish them from protesters and pedestrians isn’t clear, especially in large crowds.

Occupy Chicago plans 10 protest days. A May 12 “People’s Summit” will be followed by other events. Themes will highlight education, healthcare, the environment, immigration, other issues, and imperialism. On May 20, a “No to NATO” march is scheduled.

“We at Occupy Chicago,” it said, “cordially invite you to join us and thousands around the world in a week of action in protest. We will highlight the connection between our local struggles, global struggles, and the policies of the thieves and oppressors of NATO and G-8.”

Before things end, Chicago could become a battleground. Protesters stress nonviolence. Chicago cops are notoriously confrontational. In his 1990 book “Protectors of Privilege: Red Squads and Police Repression in Urban America,” Frank Donner called the city “the national capital of police repression” for good reason.

No-holds barred tactics are used. Illegal criminal methods include physical confrontation, intimidation, random searches, false arrests, racial targeting, sexual abuse, guerrilla warfare, torture, and whitewashed investigations. Thousands of complaints are lodged. Most fall on deaf ears.

Chicago is NATO’s 25th summit. It’s a first for Chicago. It may be the city’s greatest ever security challenge. Before it ends, violent crackdowns may exceed past large events.

Three main themes are stressed:

(1) “the Alliance’s commitment to Aghanistan through transition and beyond;

(2) ensuring the Alliance has the capabilities it needs to defend its population and territory, and to deal with the challenges of the 21st century; and

(3) strengthening NATO’s network of partners across the globe.”

NATO commits to supporting Afghanistan beyond 2014. Permanent occupation is planned. It’s the same wherever it shows up.

Washington wants it modernized, alliance partnerships deepened, and perhaps new members added. National Security Council European affairs director Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall said:

“The alliance needs to be more deployable and more adaptable, and we’re taking those lessons learned from Afghanistan and integrating them into our planning going forward.”

NATO also intends expansion beyond its borders. It plans building a “hub of relationships around the world.” Meeting “the challenge of (alleged) global threats” assures new wars besides current ones.

NATO’s an US imperial tool. Permanent wars are waged. One follows another. All involve mass killing, destruction, and enormous profits for corporate crooks cashing in. Geopolitical issues don’t concern them, just bottom line priorities. America’s addiction to war feeds them.

When established in April 1949, NATO called itself a “political and military alliance for peace and security.” It was always for offense, not defense. Cold War hysteria incited fear to assure an arms race for profits. Reinvented post-Soviet Russia, they keep flowing.

Its original five members now number 28. They’re linked with dozens of partners. Together they threaten world peace, stability, and survival.

Bogus threats justify NATO’s existence. With no real ones around, they’re invented. Wars are based on lies. Profits depend on them. Peace is a losing proposition. Preventing it at all costs is planned.

Ahead of and during Chicago’s summit, the city will be locked down and militarized. Mayor Rahm Emanuel and police officials plan targeting strategic areas in preparation.

In January, City Council representatives enacted a “Sit Down and Shut Up” ordinance. It includes required protester group liability insurance, fines up to $2,000 for those arrested, jail time penalties, strict permit guidelines, plans to deploy thousands of police and National Guard forces, and various other requirements.

One demands organizers provide descriptions of “any sound amplification or other equipment that is on wheels or too large to be carried by one person and description of the size and dimension of any sign, banner, or other attention-getting device that is too large to be carried by one person, to be used in connection with the parade.”

“Second to none” is Chicago’s newest tourism slogan. Before and during NATO’s summit, it may turn out that way, but not as planned.

Activists fear it may become a level of hell Dante forgot. Longtime residents hope not. We’ll still live here when NATO’s gone, and don’t relish coping with its aftermath.

This turn of events is in line with so many domestic terror plots “disrupted” by federal authorities, which—in the overwhelming majority of cases—have featured confidential informants acting as agent provocateurs, instigating stage-managed plots and providing targeted patsies with money, dummy bombs and fake weapons before they are rounded up.

The account given for this latest operation is decidedly murky. Officials have claimed that the plot originated with the infiltration of a group affiliated to the Yemen-based Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula by the CIA-Saudi double agent. Why the US government would choose to expose such a seemingly valuable mole by making the supposed plot public is unclear to say the least.

It is impossible to sort fact from fiction in the versions being reported by the media. A highly skeptical attitude toward the most basic claims about this episode is more than warranted. However, the saturation news coverage is itself an unmistakable indication that, with less than six months to go before the US presidential election, elements within the Obama administration and the state apparatus want to move the “war on terror” to the front burner of American politics.

A key motivation for this was made clear Wednesday by the Washington Post, which published an editorial entitled “The US is right to strike hard at terrorists in Yemen.” The Post cites the alleged bomb plot to retroactively justify the Obama administration’s sharp escalation in US drone strikes against Yemen, with more missiles fired from the pilotless aircraft at targets in the country in the first four months of this year than in all of 2010 and 2011 combined.

The editorial went on to praise White House counterterrorism advisor John Brennan for delivering a speech last week defending drone attacks as both legal and “ethical.” Brennan argued that the strikes were sanctioned by the Authorization of the Use of Military Force passed by Congress in September 2001 and used to justify both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

As the media provided wall-to-wall coverage of the alleged terror plot, virtually no attention was given to the announcement Tuesday by the Pentagon that US special forces “trainers” have been sent back into Yemen to aid troops of the country’s US-backed dictatorship in an ongoing civil war. They had been withdrawn during the mass uprisings that toppled dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh, who ruled Yemen for 33 years, only to see him replaced by his deputy. The Pentagon also revealed that an amphibious assault battle group, including some 2,000 Marines, has been deployed off Yemen’s coast in the Gulf of Aden.

Thus, the “war on terror”, in the form of the reported bomb plot, is being utilized to justify yet another US war, this time in Yemen. The country is of great strategic concern to the US, as it commands the choke point between the Red and Arabian Seas, a key oil shipping route, and borders Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer.

There are doubtless political calculations in making the bomb plot public as well. Obama launched his re-election campaign by glorifying his role as the man who ordered the assassination of Osama bin Laden. He appears determined to make it impossible for the Republicans to attack him from the right on the “national security issue” by touting his record as the most militarist president in the country’s history.

Finally, aside from immediate foreign policy and political objectives, publicizing the purported bomb plot serves an institutional purpose, providing a justification for the perpetuation of a massive apparatus of military aggression and domestic repression.

In Congressional testimony on Wednesday, FBI chief Robert Mueller cited the plot to call for swift renewal of provisions granting the US government sweeping authority to spy on electronic communications. The provisions are set to expire at the end of the year.

CNN commentator Fareed Zakaria pointed to this side of the issue in an online column posted this week, noting that Washington remains “firmly committed to the war on terror at home” and to the “expansion of federal bureaucracies to tackle this war.”

“Since September 11, 2001, the US government has created or reconfigured at least 263 organizations to tackle some aspect of the war on terror,” he writes. “Thirty-three new building complexes have been built for the intelligence bureaucracies alone, occupying 17 million square feet—the equivalent of 22 US Capitols or three Pentagons. The largest bureaucracy after the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs is now the Department of Homeland Security, which has a workforce of 230,000 people.”

Zakaria notes that the vast powers of this intelligence apparatus “now touch every aspect of American life”, with “some 30,000 people, for example … now employed exclusively to listen in on phone conversations and other communications within the United States.”

After more than a decade of first the Bush administration and then that of Obama attempting to terrorize the American people with the supposedly ubiquitous threat of terrorism, the breathless announcement of new “bomb plots” appears to be producing diminished returns.

The overwhelming majority of the American people are opposed to war and have seen again and again how the “war on terror” has been used to justify military aggression abroad. Moreover, millions of working people in the United States and around the world are confronting far more immediate threats in the form of mass unemployment, declining living standards, the lack of a future for the youth and the destruction of public education and basic social services.

The 2012 election contest between the Democratic and Republican parties will offer no opportunity to vote for or against the continued buildup of the US military and intelligence apparatus and the threat it poses to the democratic rights and very lives of working people on a world scale. Nor will it allow the people to vote for or against the assault on jobs, wages and social conditions in the interest of the banks and the financial elite. Both parties are fully committed to these policies.

None of this can be opposed within the framework of the capitalist two-party system. Such a struggle can be waged only by means of the independent political mobilization of the working class on the basis of a socialist program to put an end to the profit system.

We have had a second fake underwear bomb plot, a much more fantastic one than the first hoax. The second underwear bomber was a CIA operative or informant allegedly recruited by al-Qaeda, an organization that US authorities have recently claimed to be defeated, in disarray, and no longer significant.

This defeated and insignificant organization, which lacks any science and technology labs, has invented an “invisible bomb” that is not detected by the porno-scanners. A “senior law enforcement source” told the New York Times that “the scary part” is that “if they built one, they probably built more.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that “the plot itself indicates that the terrorists keep trying to devise more and more perverse and terrible ways to kill innocent people.” Hillary said this while headlines proclaimed that the US continues to murder woman and children with high-tech drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Africa.

The foiled fake plot, Hillary alleged, serves as “a reminder as to why we have to remain vigilant at home and abroad in protecting our nation and in protecting friendly nations and peoples like India and others.”

FBI Director Robert Mueller told Congress that the fake plot proves the need for warrantless surveillance in order to detect–what, fake plots? In Congress Republican Pete King and Democrat Charles Ruppersberger denounced media for revealing that the plot was a CIA operation, claiming that the truth threatened the war effort and soldiers’ lives.

Even alternative news media initially fell for this fake plot. Apparently, no one stops to wonder how al Qaeda, which has become so disorganized and helpless that it is on the run and left its revered leader, Osama bin Laden, in a Pakistan village alone and unguarded to be murdered by US Navy Seals, could catch the CIA off guard with an “undetectable” bomb, to use the description provided by Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Dianne Feinstein, who was briefed on the device by US intelligence personnel.

Notice that the Secretary of State has committed the bankrupt US and its unravelling social safety net to the protection of “India and others” from terrorists. But the real significance of this latest hoax is to introduce into the fearful American public the idea of an undetectable underwear bomb.

What does this bring to mind? Anyone of my generation or any science fiction aficionado immediately thinks of Robert Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters.

Written in 1951 but set in our time, Earth is invaded by small creatures that attach to the human body and take over the person. The humans become the puppets of their masters. Large areas of America succumb to the invaders before the morons in Washington understand that the invasion is real and not a conspiracy theory.

On clothed humans, the creatures cannot be detected, and the edict goes out that anyone clothed is a suspect. Everyone must go about naked. Women are not even allowed to carry purses in their hand, because the creature can be in the purse attached to the woman’s hand.

Obviously, if the CIA, the news sources, and Dianne Feinstein’s briefers are correct that defeated al-Qaeda has come up with an “undetectable” bomb, we will have to pass through airport security naked.

If so, how will this be possible? If each airline passenger must go through a personal screening by disrobing in a room, how long will it take to clear “airport security”?

I doubt there is any place in North or South American that the traveller couldn’t drive there faster. Or perhaps this is an answer to depression level US unemployment. Millions of unemployed Americans will be hired to view naked people before they board airliners.

As the Transportation Safety Administration division of Homeland Security has taken its intrusions, unchallenged, into train, bus, and highway travel, are we faced with the total collapse of the clothing industry? Stay tuned.

A couple of years ago a noted philosopher wrote an article in which he suggested that Americans live in an artificial or virtual reality. Another noted philosopher said that he thought there was a 25% chance that the philosopher was right. I am convinced that he is right. Americans live in the Matrix. Nothing that they know or think that they know is correct.

For example, our non-truth-telling “leaders” continually declare that “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.” This myth is one of the many reasons rolled out to justify American taxpayers’ declining incomes being taxed to provide the Israeli government with the means to murder Palestinians and steal their country.

Israeli democracy a myth you say? Yes, a myth. According to news reports compiled and reported by Antiwar.com (May 8), the September 4 Israeli elections have been cancelled, because the “opposition leader Shaul Mofaz is joining the government.”

Mofaz sold out his party for personal power, a typical politician’s behavior.

Mofaz’s treachery produced protests from his followers, but, according to news reports, “israeli police were quick to crack down on the protest, terming it ‘illegal’ and arresting a number of journalists.”

Ah, “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.”

In truth Israel is a fascist state, one that has been in violation of international law and Christian morality during the entirely of its existence. Yet, in America Israel is a hallowed icon. Like Bush, Cheney, and Obama, millions of American “christians” worship Israel and believe it is “God’s calling” for Americans to die for Israel.

If you believe in murdering your opponents, not debating with them, dispossessing the powerless, creating a fictional world based on lies and paying the corporate media to uphold the lies and fictional world, you are part of what the rest of the world perceives as “The West.”

Let me back off from being too hard on The West. The French and Greek peoples have shown in the recent elections that they are unplugging from the Matrix and understand that they, the 99%, are being put by their elites in a position to be the sacrificial lambs for the mistakes of the 1% mega-rich, who compete with one another in terms of how many billions of dollars or euros, how many yachts, collections of exotic cars, and exotic Playboy and Penthouse centerfolds they have as personal possessions.

The central banks of the West–the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and the UK bank–are totally committed to the prosperity of the mega-rich. No one else counts. Marx and Lenin never had a target as exists today.

Yet, the left-wing is today so feeble and brainwashed that it does not exist as even a minor countervailing power. The American left-wing has even accepted the absurd official account of 9/11 and of Osama bin Laden’s murder in Pakistan by Navy Seals. A movement so devoid of mental and emotional strength is useless. It might as well not exist.

People without valid information are helpless, and that is where Western peoples are.

The new tyranny is arising in the West, not in Russia and China. The danger to humanity is in the nuclear button briefcase in the Oval Office and in the brainwashed and militant Amerikan population, the most totally disinformed and ignorant people on earth.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, Global Research

With new-found economic clout and an increasing pride in “Brand Korea,” South Korea – the Republic of Korea — is also beginning to flex its political muscles on the world stage.

South Korea has traditionally been seen as a nation totally dependent on the United States for its defense against the de facto hereditary monarchy of North Korea, a hermit nation that has been resistant for historical and political reasons to become part of the globalist construct.

However, thanks to a burgeoning industrial base, South Korea is spreading its own wings and establishing itself as an important hub for trans-Asian and trans-Pacific commerce.

Not only has South Korea recently hosted in Seoul the second-ever international summit on nuclear security, but this summer it will host an international exhibition, commonly known as a “World’s Fair,” in the southern coastal city of Yeosu.

Even in an era when the world has become smaller as a result of globalization, the Internet, and social networking technology, nations are still lured by the chance to host international exhibitions.

For the city of Yeosu, the chance to host a world Expo saw success when, in 2007, the Bureau of International Exhibitions in Paris selected the medium-sized city of 300,000 to host Expo 2012.

The theme for the Expo is the ocean environment and the goal is to highlight ways to protect the ocean and other valuable and rapidly-diminishing water resources. With the south coast of Korea having one of five of the world’s most important mud flats/wetlands environments, the theme is supported by local and national government officials.

Of course, South Korean companies are also eager to demonstrate to the world that they possess the technology required to mitigate the effects of rising sea levels, water shortages in arid environments, and an increasing need for desalinization plants in countries that have diminishing fresh water resources for growing populations.

Two restored former cement silos on the Yeosu waterfront will house an exhibition and a fully-operational seawater desalinization plant.

Expo 2012′s soon-to-be iconic “Big O” symbol, which will remain long after the expo closes on August 12, symbolizes the ocean. It will join other icons left over from past Expos, including Centennial Hall in Philadelphia; the Eiffel Tower in Paris; the Atomium in Brussels; the Seattle Space Needle.

Aand the Unisphere in New York City. Some have likened the Big “O” to the Stargate featured in the science fiction film and TV series with the same name. The Big “O” features a computerized laser and water screen display, and which was constructed at a cost of $70 million.

The Expo itself has cost $1.9 billion and the entire infrastructure costs, including the Expo. Improved highways and transportation systems, including a high-speed train from Seoul to Yeosu, are estimated to have cost $12 billion, well worth the cost to South Korean officials who see Yeosu, an ancient sea trading city between China and Japan, having the potential to return to its past glory as an important trading hub between two major Asian economies.

Yeosu Expo 2012 officials, citing the non-political aspects of world expositions, officially invited North Korea — the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — to the event.

As of this date, there has been no response from North Korea. However, the admission of the gesture to the North from the South came a few days before world leaders gathered in Seoul for the Nuclear Security Summit, one of U.S. President Barack Obama’s “boutique” global issues: countering the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

However, a recent thaw in U.S.-North Korean relations was offset by the announcement that North Korea will launch a rocket on April 15 to mark the centennial of the birth of North Korea’s founder, Kim Il Sung.

The government of his grandson, Kim Jong Un, who has been leader of North Korea since last September when his father, Kim Jong Il, died, hammered out an agreement that saw the U.S. willing to provide food staples to Pyongyang in return for a North Korean moratorium on missile tests and nuclear development.

North Korea agreed to put in place a moratorium on its nuclear weapons program but the decision to launch the rocket has deep-sixed the agreement.

South Korean President Lee Myung Bak’s government responded to the North’s rocket launch announcement by requesting that Obama lift part of a 32 year-old pact between South Korea and the United States that limits South Korean missiles to a range of 300 kilometers.

During his visit to South Korea, Obama is paid his first visit to the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea.

While South Korea’s economy is booming, the world’s financial crisis has affected international participation at the Yeosu Expo. For example. Spain’s pavilion suffered budget cuts of a few million dollars arising from its government’s drastic austerity program.

Expo officials set a target of attracting 100 countries to exhibit at Expo 2012. Expo officials have met and exceeded that goal with 106 nations scheduled to participate. Expo officials say that 99 percent of the 106 nations that agreed to participate will have pavilions in Yeosu.

Owing to budget problems in Washington, the U.S. pavilions at Expos are not as grandiose as they once were. The U.S. pavilion in Yeosu will feature a water screen and an audio-visual presentation about the beauty of America’s coastline.

It is doubtful anything will be featured showing the oil and tar blobs and patches that devastated the Gulf of Mexico after the BP Deepwater Horizon off-shore oil rig blowout.

Wealthy oil nations, like Brunei and Saudi Arabia, will be on hand. At Yeosu others, like Tuvalu and Kiribati, although poor and threatened by rising sea levels, will be represented with assistance granted by the Korea International Cooperation Agency.

A few countries declined to take part for different reasons. The government of the late Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi was the first African nation to sign up for Expo 2012, but Qaddafi’s ouster by NATO-supported rebels left Libya’s participation in great doubt. Libya, under Qaddafi, had pioneered in creating a water delivery and irrigation system, the “Great Man Made River,” which transported fresh water from Saharan aquifers to water-scarce coastal cities.

That entire Libyan water system and its availability to the Libyan public is in jeopardy with fratricidal Libyan rebels in charge of Tripoli and Benghazi and damage to the water system suffered from the NATO attack.

Expo officials were disappointed that British Prime Minister David Cameron sent a letter to Expo organizers that stated Britain declined to participate because the Expo overlaps with the 2012 London Summer Olympics.

However, it is austerity that forced some nations, including those with long seafaring traditions, to decline participation in Expo 2012.

Chief among these was Greece, which turned down its invitation due to severe budget cuts. Portugal and Ireland similarly declined to take part in the exposition.

Even with diminishing national budgets, the Yeosu Expo will offer true “World’s Fair”-style attractions, including a huge aquarium, featuring belugas from Russia and other rare marine species, and a terrarium. Russia’s pavilion will expose visitors to the cold of the Russian Arctic winter in the middle of South Korea’s hottest months.

However, it is South Korea’s high-technology prowess that will most be on display at Yeosu. In this context, it should be emphasized that President Lee is a former chief executive officer of the giant Hyundai corporation.

With over 350 islands on South Korea’s mountainous southern coast, Expo administrators and local governments are hoping that Expo visitors to take a look at the other attractions of the region, which is fast becoming a location for retirees from Seoul, the capital, who seek a relatively warmer climate and more traditional Korean.

For international investors, southern coastal officials are keen to advertise the entire South Korean south coast as a center for one of Asia’s largest seafood industries.

In today’s world of projecting “soft power,” the hosting of Olympics, World Cups, Expos, and summits are seen as a non-military method to project national power at regional and global levels.

If the Yeosu 2012, the Nuclear Security Summit, and next year’s Asian Games are any indication, South Korea is intent on establishing itself as an Asian and international power to be reckoned with.

Wayne Madsen, Strategic Culture Foundation

An ideology based on inequality, injustice, exploitation, militarism, and imperial wars eventually self-destructs or gets pushed.

Growing evidence in America and Europe show systemic unaddressed problems too grave to ignore. They remain so despite millions without jobs, savings, homes or futures.

Imagine nations governed by leaders letting crisis conditions fester. Imagine voters reelecting them despite demanding change. OWS aside, one day perhaps rage will replace apathy in America. The latest jobs report alone provides incentive enough to try and then some.

On May 4, the Labor Department reported 115,000 new jobs. It way overstated the true number. Official figures belie the dire state of things. At most, two-thirds the headline total were created. Even that’s in doubt.

Most were low-pay, part-time, or temp positions with few or no benefits. Decades ago, workers would have avoided them. Today, there’s no choice.

The report also showed economic decline. Expect much worse ahead. In 2008, Main Street Americans experienced Depression. It rages today. Poverty’s at record levels. Real unemployment approaches 1930s numbers. Dire conditions are worsening.

Announced job cuts are increasing. Hiring plans are down. Compared to year ago levels, they’re off 80%. Income is stagnant for those lucky to have work. The private diffusion index measuring growth fell sharply month-over-month.

The unemployment rate decline reflects discouraged workers dropping out. They want jobs but can’t find them. The Labor Department considers them non-persons. They’re not counted to make official figures look better.

Moreover, the broad based Household Survey showed employment dropping 169,000. It was the second consecutive monthly decline. The Labor Department uses a “population and payroll concept adjusted” calculation. Doing so tries to compare monthly payroll and household figures.

The measure plunged 495,000 in April after dropping 418,000 in March. The calculation represented the largest back-to-back decline since late 2009.

At 63.6%, America’s labor force hit its lowest level since September 1981. Since then, population totals grew from 229 million to about 312 million today. The state of the nation today reflects lots of people facing few jobs, and no policy to create them.

The employment/population ratio stands at 58.4%. Alone, it represents a shocking testimony to failure. So do other data. Long-term unemployment remains near record levels. Credit deleveraging continues. Housing’s in its worst ever depression. Prices keep falling. Inventories of unsold homes are huge. Foreclosures are at epidemic levels.

State and local downsizing continues. Personal income suffers. Conditions are bad and worsening.

On May 4, Pimco’s Mohamed El-Erian headlined his Financial Times article “Confirmed: America’s jobs crisis,” saying:

“Friday’s US jobs data sound a warning that should be heard well beyond economists and market watchers.”

Americans with jobs have poor ones. Wage growth is stagnant. Purchasing power can’t keep up with inflation. For ordinary Americans, secular income headwinds blow at gale force strength.

Crisis conditions today make “a mockery of the published unemployment rate of 8.1 per cent….The economic implications are clear.” At a time, Europe’s recession deepens, America’s declining.

Risks are increasing. A “potential (austerity caused) year-end ‘fiscal cliff’ (may) suck out some 4 per cent of GDP in purchasing power, and do so in a disorderly fashion.”

Instead of addressing crisis conditions responsibly, political Washington campaigns for reelection, and plans huge domestic budget cuts when stimulus help is needed.

Main Street Americans are pushed to the edge. Potential “social consequences” suggest “the possibility….of a lost generation.”

Unemployed teenagers “face the risk of going from being unemployed to becoming unemployable.” Today’s reality is bleak. It reflects “a multi-faceted unemployment crisis that politicians, both in America and Europe, are failing to comprehend, unite around, and respond to.”

“I worry greatly that facts on the ground will unfortunately warrant future analyses to be even more disheartening.”

Alan Greenspan’s Too Late to Matter Mea Culpa

As Fed chairman for nearly two decades (1987 – 2006), he engineered today’s crisis. Some call him the Maestro of Misery for good reason. Those benefitting most sing his praises. In 2008, he had second thoughts.

A longtime Ayn Rand disciple, he strayed noticeably in October 2008 House testimony. Her libertarian views influenced his. She championed regulatory free markets. So did Greenspan. He practiced what she preached.

Perhaps House Oversight and Government Reform Committee members couldn’t believe their ears. He acknowledged his worldview failure, saying:

“You know, that’s precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 yeas or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.”

While trying to have it both ways, he admitted his faith in regulatory free markets was shaken, saying:

“I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.”

“The Federal Reserve had as good an economic organization as exists. If all those extraordinarily capable people were unable to foresee the development of this critical problem…we have to ask ourselves: Why is that? And the answer is that we’re not smart enough as people. We just cannot see events that far in advance.”

In his book “Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country” William Grieder called Greenspan one of “the most duplicitous figures to serve in modern American government.”

He used “his exalted status as economic wizard (to) regularly corrupt the political dialogue by sowing outrageously false impressions among gullible members of Congress and adoring financial reporters.”

His ideology was hokum. Somehow he managed a Columbia doctorate without its dissertation requirement. His economic consulting firm flopped. It faced liquidation. He closed shop to join the Fed after serving earlier in the Reagan, Nixon and Ford administrations.

His background in government got him his job. His inability to forecast made him a perfect Fed choice. So did his reliability to serve monied interests over populist ones.

Saying he got it wrong after the fact hardly matters. Where was he when it counted. In 2006, Bernanke replaced him. He made a bad situation worse. Since 2008, he more than tripled the Fed’s balance sheet from about 6% of GDP to 20%.

His day of reckoning approaches. Perhaps in future congressional testimony, he’ll address his own shortcomings. Doing it when it counts matters. After the fact turns memoirs into best-sellers.

His cross to bear and Greenspan’s could fill volumes. Millions their policies harmed won’t line up to buy them.

How can they? They’re broke, on their own, out of luck, and unreceptive to hear defrocked Fed chairmen say they’re sorry. If so, they’d have done it right in the first place.

 The fact that the Occupy movement is unprecedented is quite appropriate. After all, it’s an unprecedented era and has been so since the 1970s, which marked a major turning point in American history. For centuries, since the country began, it had been a developing society, and not always in very pretty ways.

That’s another story, but the general progress was toward wealth, industrialization, development, and hope. There was a pretty constant expectation that it was going to go on like this. That was true even in very dark times.

I’m just old enough to remember the Great Depression. After the first few years, by the mid-1930s — although the situation was objectively much harsher than it is today — nevertheless, the spirit was quite different. There was a sense that “we’re gonna get out of it,” even among unemployed people, including a lot of my relatives, a sense that “it will get better.”

There was militant labor union organizing going on, especially from the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations). It was getting to the point of sit-down strikes, which are frightening to the business world — you could see it in the business press at the time — because a sit-down strike is just a step before taking over the factory and running it yourself.

The idea of worker takeovers is something which is, incidentally, very much on the agenda today, and we should keep it in mind. Also New Deal legislation was beginning to come in as a result of popular pressure. Despite the hard times, there was a sense that, somehow, “we’re gonna get out of it.”

It’s quite different now. For many people in the United States, there’s a pervasive sense of hopelessness, sometimes despair. I think it’s quite new in American history. And it has an objective basis.

On the Working Class

In the 1930s, unemployed working people could anticipate that their jobs would come back. If you’re a worker in manufacturing today — the current level of unemployment there is approximately like the Depression — and current tendencies persist, those jobs aren’t going to come back.

The change took place in the 1970s. There are a lot of reasons for it. One of the underlying factors, discussed mainly by economic historian Robert Brenner, was the falling rate of profit in manufacturing. There were other factors.

It led to major changes in the economy — a reversal of several hundred years of progress towards industrialization and development that turned into a process of de-industrialization and de-development. Of course, manufacturing production continued overseas very profitably, but it’s no good for the work force.

Along with that came a significant shift of the economy from productive enterprise — producing things people need or could use — to financial manipulation. The financialization of the economy really took off at that time.

On Banks

Before the 1970s, banks were banks. They did what banks were supposed to do in a state capitalist economy: they took unused funds from your bank account, for example, and transferred them to some potentially useful purpose like helping a family buy a home or send a kid to college. That changed dramatically in the 1970s.

Until then, there had been no financial crises since the Great Depression. The 1950s and 1960s had been a period of enormous growth, the highest in American history, maybe in economic history.

And it was egalitarian.  The lowest quintile did about as well as the highest quintile. Lots of people moved into reasonable lifestyles — what’s called the “middle class” here, the “working class” in other countries — but it was real.  And the 1960s accelerated it. The activism of those years, after a pretty dismal decade, really civilized the country in lots of ways that are permanent.

When the 1970s came along, there were sudden and sharp changes: de-industrialization, the off-shoring of production, and the shift to financial institutions, which grew enormously.

I should say that, in the 1950s and 1960s, there was also the development of what several decades later became the high-tech economy: computers, the Internet, the IT Revolution developed substantially in the state sector.

The developments that took place during the 1970s set off a vicious cycle. It led to the concentration of wealth increasingly in the hands of the financial sector. This doesn’t benefit the economy — it probably harms it and society — but it did lead to a tremendous concentration of wealth.

On Politics and Money

Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle. The legislation, essentially bipartisan, drives new fiscal policies and tax changes, as well as the rules of corporate governance and deregulation. Alongside this began a sharp rise in the costs of elections, which drove the political parties even deeper into the pockets of the corporate sector.

The parties dissolved in many ways. It used to be that if a person in Congress hoped for a position such as a committee chair, he or she got it mainly through seniority and service. Within a couple of years, they started having to put money into the party coffers in order to get ahead, a topic studied mainly by Tom Ferguson. That just drove the whole system even deeper into the pockets of the corporate sector (increasingly the financial sector).

This cycle resulted in a tremendous concentration of wealth, mainly in the top tenth of one percent of the population. Meanwhile, it opened a period of stagnation or even decline for the majority of the population. People got by, but by artificial means such as longer working hours, high rates of borrowing and debt, and reliance on asset inflation like the recent housing bubble.

Pretty soon those working hours were much higher in the United States than in other industrial countries like Japan and various places in Europe. So there was a period of stagnation and decline for the majority alongside a period of sharp concentration of wealth. The political system began to dissolve.

There has always been a gap between public policy and public will, but it just grew astronomically. You can see it right now, in fact.  Take a look at the big topic in Washington that everyone concentrates on: the deficit. For the public, correctly, the deficit is not regarded as much of an issue. And it isn’t really much of an issue.

The issue is joblessness. There’s a deficit commission but no joblessness commission. As far as the deficit is concerned, the public has opinions. Take a look at the polls. The public overwhelmingly supports higher taxes on the wealthy, which have declined sharply in this period of stagnation and decline, and the preservation of limited social benefits.

The outcome of the deficit commission is probably going to be the opposite. The Occupy movements could provide a mass base for trying to avert what amounts to a dagger pointed at the heart of the country.

Plutonomy and the Precariat

For the general population, the 99% in the imagery of the Occupy movement, it’s been pretty harsh — and it could get worse. This could be a period of irreversible decline. For the 1% and even less — the .1% — it’s just fine. They are richer than ever, more powerful than ever, controlling the political system, disregarding the public. And if it can continue, as far as they’re concerned, sure, why not?

Take, for example, Citigroup. For decades, Citigroup has been one of the most corrupt of the major investment banking corporations, repeatedly bailed out by the taxpayer, starting in the early Reagan years and now once again. I won’t run through the corruption, but it’s pretty astonishing.

In 2005, Citigroup came out with a brochure for investors called “Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances.” It urged investors to put money into a “plutonomy index.” The brochure says, “The World is dividing into two blocs — the Plutonomy and the rest.”

Plutonomy refers to the rich, those who buy luxury goods and so on, and that’s where the action is. They claimed that their plutonomy index was way outperforming the stock market.

As for the rest, we set them adrift. We don’t really care about them. We don’t really need them. They have to be around to provide a powerful state, which will protect us and bail us out when we get into trouble, but other than that they essentially have no function.

These days they’re sometimes called the “precariat” — people who live a precarious existence at the periphery of society. Only it’s not the periphery anymore. It’s becoming a very substantial part of society in the United States and indeed elsewhere. And this is considered a good thing.

So, for example, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, at the time when he was still “Saint Alan” — hailed by the economics profession as one of the greatest economists of all time (this was before the crash for which he was substantially responsible) — was testifying to Congress in the Clinton years, and he explained the wonders of the great economy that he was supervising.

He said a lot of its success was based substantially on what he called “growing worker insecurity.” If working people are insecure, if they’re part of the precariat, living precarious existences, they’re not going to make demands, they’re not going to try to get better wages, they won’t get improved benefits. We can kick ’em out, if we don’t need ’em. And that’s what’s called a “healthy” economy, technically speaking. And he was highly praised for this, greatly admired.

So the world is now indeed splitting into a plutonomy and a precariat — in the imagery of the Occupy movement, the 1% and the 99%. Not literal numbers, but the right picture. Now, the plutonomy is where the action is and it could continue like this.

If it does, the historic reversal that began in the 1970s could become irreversible. That’s where we’re heading. And the Occupy movement is the first real, major, popular reaction that could avert this. But it’s going to be necessary to face the fact that it’s a long, hard struggle. You don’t win victories tomorrow. You have to form the structures that will be sustained, that will go on through hard times and can win major victories. And there are a lot of things that can be done.

Toward Worker Takeover

I mentioned before that, in the 1930s, one of the most effective actions was the sit-down strike. And the reason is simple: that’s just a step before the takeover of an industry.

Through the 1970s, as the decline was setting in, there were some important events that took place.  In 1977, U.S. Steel decided to close one of its major facilities in Youngstown, Ohio. Instead of just walking away, the workforce and the community decided to get together and buy it from the company, hand it over to the work force, and turn it into a worker-run, worker-managed facility. They didn’t win.

But with enough popular support, they could have won.  It’s a topic that Gar Alperovitz and Staughton Lynd, the lawyer for the workers and community, have discussed in detail.

It was a partial victory because, even though they lost, it set off other efforts. And now, throughout Ohio, and in other places, there’s a scattering of hundreds, maybe thousands, of sometimes not-so-small worker/community-owned industries that could become worker-managed. And that’s the basis for a real revolution. That’s how it takes place.

In one of the suburbs of Boston, about a year ago, something similar happened. A multinational decided to close down a profitable, functioning facility carrying out some high-tech manufacturing. Evidently, it just wasn’t profitable enough for them. The workforce and the union offered to buy it, take it over, and run it themselves.

The multinational decided to close it down instead, probably for reasons of class-consciousness. I don’t think they want things like this to happen. If there had been enough popular support, if there had been something like the Occupy movement that could have gotten involved, they might have succeeded.

And there are other things going on like that. In fact, some of them are major. Not long ago, President Barack Obama took over the auto industry, which was basically owned by the public. And there were a number of things that could have been done. One was what was done: reconstitute it so that it could be handed back to the ownership, or very similar ownership, and continue on its traditional path.

The other possibility was to hand it over to the workforce — which owned it anyway — turn it into a worker-owned, worker-managed major industrial system that’s a big part of the economy, and have it produce things that people need. And there’s a lot that we need.

We all know or should know that the United States is extremely backward globally in high-speed transportation, and it’s very serious. It not only affects people’s lives, but the economy. 

In that regard, here’s a personal story. I happened to be giving talks in France a couple of months ago and had to take a train from Avignon in southern France to Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris, the same distance as from Washington, DC, to Boston. It took two hours.  I don’t know if you’ve ever taken the train from Washington to Boston, but it’s operating at about the same speed it was 60 years ago when my wife and I first took it. It’s a scandal.

It could be done here as it’s been done in Europe. They had the capacity to do it, the skilled work force. It would have taken a little popular support, but it could have made a major change in the economy.

Just to make it more surreal, while this option was being avoided, the Obama administration was sending its transportation secretary to Spain to get contracts for developing high-speed rail for the United States, which could have been done right in the rust belt, which is being closed down. There are no economic reasons why this can’t happen. These are class reasons, and reflect the lack of popular political mobilization. Things like this continue.

Climate Change and Nuclear Weapons

I’ve kept to domestic issues, but there are two dangerous developments in the international arena, which are a kind of shadow that hangs over everything we’ve discussed. There are, for the first time in human history, real threats to the decent survival of the species.

One has been hanging around since 1945. It’s kind of a miracle that we’ve escaped it. That’s the threat of nuclear war and nuclear weapons. Though it isn’t being much discussed, that threat is, in fact, being escalated by the policies of this administration and its allies. And something has to be done about that or we’re in real trouble.

The other, of course, is environmental catastrophe. Practically every country in the world is taking at least halting steps towards trying to do something about it. The United States is also taking steps, mainly to accelerate the threat.  It is the only major country that is not only not doing something constructive to protect the environment, it’s not even climbing on the train. In some ways, it’s pulling it backwards.

And this is connected to a huge propaganda system, proudly and openly declared by the business world, to try to convince people that climate change is just a liberal hoax. “Why pay attention to these scientists?”

We’re really regressing back to the dark ages. It’s not a joke.  And if that’s happening in the most powerful, richest country in history, then this catastrophe isn’t going to be averted — and in a generation or two, everything else we’re talking about won’t matter. Something has to be done about it very soon in a dedicated, sustained way.

It’s not going to be easy to proceed. There are going to be barriers, difficulties, hardships, failures.  It’s inevitable. But unless the spirit of the last year, here and elsewhere in the country and around the globe, continues to grow and becomes a major force in the social and political world, the chances for a decent future are not very high.