Analysis
Bells tolling for humanity: BP oil catastrophe, Times Square bomb plot, and the folly of imperial oil agenda
By Larry Chin
Online Journal Associate Editor


May 17, 2010, 00:22

Faced with the end of the age of oil and systemic collapse, the leaders of the Anglo-American empire have engaged in increasingly violent and transparently futile zero-sum games to salvage what is left of a corrupt governmental and economic milieu.

Empire in crisis

From the BP-Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, crashing stock markets, and the bloody consequences of manufactured wars, it clear that the empire has lost control of its own criminal system.

As Michael C. Ruppert wrote in his 2004 book Crossing the Rubicon:

There are many factors that the rulers of the American empire now have to manage as they read their own delusional map of the world. They have to:

• Apportion dwindling resources among competitors, some of whom possess nuclear weapons;
  
  
• Maintain and expand their control over enough of the oil and gas remaining to ensure their global dominance and maintain order among the citizens of the Empire;
  
  
• Simultaneously manage a global economic system, made possible by hydrocarbon energy that is collapsing and in which the growing population is demanding more things that can only be supplied by using still more hydrocarbon energy;
  
  
• Acknowledge that they cannot save their own economy without selling more of these products;
  
  
• Control the exploding demand for oil and gas through engineered recessions and wars that break national economies;
  
  
• Hide the evidence that they are systematically looting the wealth of all the people on the planet---even their own people---in order to maintain control;
  
  
• Maintain a secret revenue system to provide enough off-the-books capital for military advantage; improving their technological posture, and funding covert operations;
  
  
• Repress any dissent and head off any exposure to their actions;
  
  
• Convince the population that they are honorable;
  
  
• Kill off enough of the population so that they can maintain control after oil supplies have dwindled to the point of energy starvation.�

Never has this agenda, its tragic consequences and ultimate futility, been more obvious than with the unprecedented events of the past weeks.

BP-Deepwater Horizon: an �extinction event�

The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig and the resulting oil super spill in the Gulf of Mexico is the worst man-made disaster, and the largest and most heinous act of environmental destruction in history.

This floating super-bomb remains completely out of control, spewing hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf, spreading in directions that cannot be predicted, becoming exponentially worse by the second. It threatens to dwarf the entire Gulf of Mexico, the entire southern and southeastern coast of the United States and Mississippi River, and is poised to spread into all of the world�s oceans. Wildlife, human life, industries, economies and livelihoods, all potentially face permanent damage and destruction. It is even possible that the Gulf will be rendered impossible to navigate.

What is certain is that this catastrophe, made possible by the oil agenda of the Anglo-American empire -- will continue to kill for generations, potentially rendering the entire Gulf of Mexico a dead zone.

For weeks, BP, government officials, and the corporate media have been engaged in a massive cover-up, lying about the unspeakable actual scale of the disaster, and lying about its clean-up and containment efforts. According to a spokesperson for Greenpeace, there has never been a successful response to an oil spill, and that what BP is doing at present is nothing but �response theater.� All attempts to contain the geyser -- each of them a series of failed experiments and theories -- have been futile and ineffective.

BP�s use of toxic chemical dispersants has been, at least in part, an attempt to obscure the visual horror of the spill from news cameras. The highly toxic dispersants themselves have further added to the toxicity of the spill, without actually removing any of the oil.

According to this frightening analysis by an experienced expert, what is visible on the surface, already the size of the state of Maryland may be as little as 20 percent of the actual scale of the spewing manmade volcano of toxic sludge being reported. Gigantic emissions of natural gas threaten to deplete the oxygen of the water in the Gulf.

The unprecedented amount of oil bursting out -- perhaps as much as four barrels of oil per second -- also raises questions about the actual size of the reservoir itself. Quoting the same analysis: �This is an out of control volcano of oil spewing up with 70,000 psi behind it, from a reservoir nearly the size of the Gulf, with an estimated trillions of barrels of oil and gas tucked away. It is this deposit that has me reminding people of what the Shell geologist told me about the deposit. This was the quote, �Energy shortage . . . , Hell! We are afraid of running out of air to burn.� The deposit is very large. It covers an area off shore something like 25,000 square miles. Natural Gas and Oil is leaking out of the deposit as far inland as Central Alabama and way over into Florida and even over to Louisiana almost as far as Texas. What we are seeing now could be small compared to what may yet unfold if things break apart, as they can do under such circumstances. If this thing blew, it could be like the Yellowstone Caldera, except from below a mile of sea, with a 1/4-mile opening, with up to 150,000 psi of oil and natural gas behind it.

�That would be an extinction event.�

Leaked memos suggests that government officials were aware of a potential for a nightmare scenario. Will it simply be �allowed to happen� as the days, weeks and months pass?

BP, Halliburton and Transocean -- notorious icons of �disaster capitalism� -- enjoy long and enduring ties to the world governments, and their worldwide oil strategies.

Both the Bush-Cheney and Obama administrations, the Minerals Management Service (MMS) directly involved with allowing BP to operate Deepwater Horizon in reckless fashion, sheltering BP from regulatory requirements. This despite the fact that BP has a history of recklessness and disaster known throughout the energy industry.

The case implicates Dick Cheney and the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG), Cheney�s secret �energy task force,� which may have provided BP and other oil giants with the license to �fast track� into production without proper safeguards, and without proper regard to potential catastrophic spills or permanent environmental damage.

What, if any, punishment will BP face for turning the entire Gulf of Mexico into a dead zone; for threatening all of humanity? A series of useless hearings in which corrupt and feckless members of Congress help the directors of BP, Halliburton and Transocean maintain their innocence, conceding �mistakes�? Fines? Promises that �it will never happen again� while an apocalypse is happening?

Transocean has in fact, already profited from the disaster. The corporation was just paid $401 million in insurance, while petitioning to cap its liability for the disaster.

The economic cost alone can potentially bring down a world economy already teetering on the brink of collapse. Oil prices will be disrupted for decades.

It is bitterly ironic that the Deepwater Horizon, which just weeks ago was viewed as the empire�s last greatest hope, will instead serve as its suicide.

Yet, even as the mega-volcano of toxic sludge relentlessly dwarfs more geography over the coming weeks and months, the empire�s leaders still refuse to stop.

The Obama administration has granted 27 new waivers to big oil companies since the BP explosion, allowing them to engage in yet more drilling and exploration, without proper environmental review -- in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Kerry-Lieberman energy bill, pushed through Congress in recent days, establishes yet more offshore drilling around the country, along with �clean coal� (a fraud and myth, perpetrated by the coal industry, that Congress and the Obama administration continue to push).

More �war on terrorism� for more oil

As an unintended oil calamity unfolds in the Gulf of Mexico, the planned oil chaos in the Middle East and Central Asia continues.

It is not clear if the foiled Times Square bombing was an attempted act of �real� terrorism or revenge, a false flag incident, a military-intelligence double or triple cross carried out by competing intelligence agencies, or a complete fabrication.

While the specifics of the case against alleged bomber Faisal Shahzad remain in the hands of deceptive US officials and law enforcement, the foiled plot provides the Obama administration with a twofold propaganda bonanza. The administration now has the pretext with which it can expand the �war on terrorism� into Pakistan, Waziristan and Iran, and further strengthen the foothold on the largest remaining oil and gas supplies of the Middle East and Central Asia. It was also a �wag the dog� diversion from the BP cataclysm in the Gulf of Mexico and crashing world stock markets.

Shazad�s connections to the CIA and MI6 raise immediate suspicions: �A man arrested in Pakistan in connection with the Times Square car bombing attempt who had traveled with accused bomber Faisal Shahzad is a member of a terrorist organization that is controlled by British MI6 and the CIA.

�Jaish-e-Muhammad, the group now emerging in connection with the Times Square incident, was founded by Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the 9/11 bagman who delivered $100,000 from the United Arab Emirates to Mohammed Atta at the behest of General Mahmud Ahmed, then head of the ISI. Mahmud Ahmed, the man who ordered Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh to bankroll the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, was meeting with Republican Congressman Porter Goss and Democratic Senator Bob Graham in Washington DC on the morning of 9/11. In the days before and after the attack, Ahmed also met with CIA Head George Tenet as well as current Vice-President Joe Biden, then Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

�In a report on Jaish-e-Muhammad�s involvement in the murder of Daniel Pearl, who was investigating the ISI, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported that the Pakistani government, �Believe that Saeed Sheikh�s power comes not from the ISI, but from his connections with our own CIA.��

Other suspicious factors include the presence of Special Forces immediately on scene, and the �mysterious white men� captured on video initially believed to be part of the bomb plot. According to an early CNN report, �a video obtained from a tourist in the area shows a person apparently running north on Broadway, while another video shows a balding man with dark hair removing a shirt and putting it in a bag before walking out of view of the camera, which was inside a restaurant.�

Regardless of how the Times Square bombing case develops, �war on terrorism� is a perpetual covert operation designed to justify perpetual war, and endless new resource conflict.

As noted in Michel Chossudovsky�s America�s �War on Terrorism,� �the significant development of �radical Islam� in the wake of September 11, in the Middle East and Central Asia, is consistent with Washington�s hidden agenda. The latter consists of sustaining rather than combating international terrorism, with a view to destabilizing national societies . . .� Virtually all of the world�s �Islamic terror� fronts -- Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, etc.---are manipulations by the CIA and Pakistan�s ISI (a branch of the CIA) and nurtured for years with US government support.

The US government has been funding Taliban militants, and buying off defectors of various tribal factions, at the same time as Washington decries the �resurgent� Taliban.

The initial reporting of the Times Square plot in the mainstream corporate media linked Shahzad to Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud, brother of slain former Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud.

Subsequent reporting has been rife with conflicting information, from quotes of Mehsud promising new attacks on the US, denials, counter-denials, speculation, and confusion that becomes even more complicated when one traces recent events involving the Mehsuds and the Taliban going back two years.

Qari Zainuddin, Mehsud�s Taliban rival, was shot dead in late 2009. Zainuddin, who had split from Mehsud�s Taliban faction, was accused of being a top Al-Qaeda asset.

In early 2010, seven CIA agents were killed by militants supposedly avenging Baitullah Mehsud, who was believed by many to be an Al-Qaeda ally and a CIA asset, linked to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

Other Pakistani men alleged to have direct connections to Shahzad have been arrested in Massachusetts Although it is �unclear whether they were witting accomplices or simply innocent money dealers,� the connection to Pakistan itself may prove enough to serve the purposes of war hawks in Washington.

The FBI has sent agents into Pakistan. The Obama administration and members of Congress, such as Senator Dianne Feinstein, are, in typical post-9/11 fashion, complaining about �intelligence failures� and vowing yet more aggressive domestic security. The �certain� ties to Pakistan, Waziristan, Iran, etc. will be used as fodder towards the next military attack. .

The final hour

The signs are unavoidable and clear: the Anglo-American empire has run out of time, and oil, and humanity itself has paid the steepest cost.