The 2014 World Economic Forum will also probably be talking about threat of internet meltdown, the situation in the Middle East - and the ongoing dearth of women delegates

More than 2,500 of globalisation's movers and shakers gather for their annual four-day mountaintop conclave this week, aware that the world is still being shaken by the events of half a decade ago.

When the World Economic Forum met in Davos in early 2009, it was against the backdrop of the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers a few months earlier, and a contraction in activity that raised fears of a second Great Depression. Since then, hopes of a quick return to business as usual have been dashed by sluggish recovery, an incomplete repair job on banks, rising inequality, growing political alienation and concerns about extreme weather events and internet meltdown.

Klaus Schwab, founder and chairman of the WEF, has told the business executives, academics and government officials attending Davos this year that much remains to be done. "Economic growth patterns, the geopolitical landscape, the social contract that binds people together, and our planet's ecosystem are all undergoing radical, simultaneous transformations, generating anxiety and, in many places, turmoil," he said.

Much also remains to be done if the WEF is to make progress on the gender quotas it set four years ago. Then it told its 100 corporate partners - attracted to the Swiss resort by the opportunities to hammer out business deals behind the scenes - that they could bring a fifth representative only if it was a woman. Yet the percentage of women attending is just 16%.

Saadia Zahidi, head of gender parity and human capital at the WEF, says efforts are being made to push gender up the agenda. This year's theme is "Reshaping the world" and Zahidi points to six sessions, including a key event with Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook and the IMF's Christine Lagarde on on 25 January - though many delegates will have left by then.

The last thing the U.S. should do is become militarily embroiled in the conflict raging again in Iraq. But for Americans to shake their heads in lofty disdain and turn away, as if they have no responsibility for the continued bloodletting, is outrageous. Why? Because America bears a large part of the blame for turning Iraq into the basket case it's become.

The great majority of Americans don't realize that fact. They never did. So much of what the U.S. did to Iraq has been consigned by America to a black hole of history. Iraqis, however, can never forget.

In 1990, for instance, during the first Gulf War, George H.W. Bush, called on the people of Iraq to rise up and overthrow Saddam Hussein. But when they finally did, after Saddam's forces were driven from Kuwait, President Bush refused any gesture of support, even permitted Saddam's pilots to keep flying their deadly helicopter gunships. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were slaughtered.

[H.W. Bush later denied any responsibility for that uprising, but you can hear his appeal to the Iraqis in a documentary I produced with Michel Despratx, "The Trial of Saddam Hussein."]

Even more devastating to Iraq was the Draconian embargo that the United States and its allies pushed through the U.N. Security Council in August 1990, after Saddam invaded Kuwait.

Americans have a strange need to believe that their "leaders" mean well. Nowhere is this more true than in foreign policy. Even when the horror of some government operation is revealed (usually after being kept from the American people), solemn pundits and elder statesmen will drone on about unintended consequences and the fog of war, while admonishing against "pointless" recriminations. Typically, the harshest accusation leveled against those responsible for a calamity is incompetence, and even that's rare.

Yet when one examines the U.S. government's bloody record in foreign affairs, it is tough to come away thinking that the long trail of death, mayhem, and devastation is anything but the result of malevolence in the pursuit of political and economic interest.

In a recent article, former 60 Minutes producer Barry Lando describes the horror inflicted on the Iraqi people by American officials, beginning in 1990 with the George H. W. Bush administration. Officials actually began making life hell for Iraqis well before that, as Lando discusses in this interview with Scott Horton. The U.S. government (specifically, the CIA) not only helped to bring Saddam Hussein to power, it supplied him the means and intelligence to use chemical weapons in his aggressive war against Iran in the 1980s. (The Iranians have not forgotten.) Collusion with Saddam continued right up until he invaded Kuwait, as U.S. officials helped instigate that event by meddling on both sides of the dispute.

David Bird, a reporter who covers energy markets for the Wall Street Journal, has been missing for nine days. Bird, who has worked for the parent of the Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones, for more than 20 years, left his Long Hill, New Jersey home on the afternoon of Saturday, January 11, telling his wife he was going for a walk. Despite a continuous search by hundreds of volunteers and law enforcement officials, Bird has not been located.

Bird is 55 years old, approximately 6'1, and was last seen wearing a red jacket with yellow zippers according to officials. He and his wife, Nancy, have two children, ages 12 and 15. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Long Hill Police at (908) 647-1800.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Bird is a liver-transplant recipient and is required to take medication twice a day. He did not take his medication with him when he left for the walk.

NBC reported that sources close to the family said one of his credit cards was used in Mexico last Wednesday. Other media outlets have been unable to confirm that report. In the same news story, NBC reported that "the family believes that his coverage of OPEC may be related to his disappearance."

However, a careful review by Wall Street On Parade of the articles Bird has written for the Wall Street Journal since last October, shows that what he was regularly reporting on was a supply imbalance caused by overproduction of shale oil in the U.S. in the face of slacking demand.

On October 21, Bird wrote that "U.S. crude-oil futures Monday settled 1.6% lower, dropping to less than $100 a barrel for the first time since July on rising inventories and weak refiner demand. Prices dropped as the Energy Information Administration [EIA] reported U.S. crude-oil stocks rose for a fourth straight week, to the highest level since late June...The sluggish demand from refiners allows crude stocks to climb four-million barrels in the week ended Oct. 11, the EIA said in a report that was delayed from last week due to the government shutdown. That is the latest piece of a four-week build of 18.9 million barrels in stocks that has put pressure on prices, as refiners have lowered crude-oil processing runs by 1.26 million barrels a day since mid September..."

It's perhaps the greatest speculative bubble since Holland's 'Tulip Mania'

At the peak of tulip mania, circa 1637, a single tulip bulb sold for more than 3,000 Dutch guilders - that's 10 times the annual income of a skilled craftsman in those days. It was great while it lasted, but reality eventually caught up with the creative opportunists.

Man-made global warming, or as it likes to be referred to these days as 'climate change', had a grand plan in its heyday. The mythology was underpinned by a new economic model, one which hoped to monetize CO2 emissions - or more accurately, the absence of CO2.

Think of Al Gore and his associates like David Blood as the Bernie Madoff of the environmental movement. They created a market which has been disintegrating from day one, including a total collapse of the Chicago Climate Exchange, but not before the principle players cashed in their shares and abandoned that hip. It's a epic story of modern day high priests and sooth sayers, political hubris and pseudo-scientific largess on a scale never before seen in history.

But their story is far from over. Get ready for the epic climbdown...

Contrarian Pirouette from Al Gore

For Al Gore and his investor fund partner David Blood, their current thrust is more like dancing in the dark than out of the box thinking, due to "warmists" and "peakists" now having to fight on several fronts at the same time. Writing in 'Wall Street Journal' and similar outlets several times in 2013, they soldiered forward with the claim that "fossil carbon assets" are headed for a bust, and "green energy" can only soar. Along with Britain's Lord Stern, the former World Bank chief economist and author of the Stern Report on "fighting" global warming, they say all fossil fuels are so dangerous for the world's climate they must be completely phased out by 2050 or before. Investing in these fossil carbon assets is therefore, they say, a guaranteed disaster.

Somalia has become a breeding ground for Washington's black operations since 2001, with the African country suffering human losses due to US hegemonic policies.

Only recently, it has been revealed that the US secretly deployed two dozens of troops under the guise of military advisors. It is naïve to think that the US has no ulterior motives other than giving advisory clues to the military men in Somalia or protecting the security of the African people.

In 1993, the US embarked on a military expedition dubbed Operation Gothic Serpent in Somalia under the pretext of eliminating a Somali warlord, an operation which sadly caused massive human losses. Quite naturally, the US swiftly exonerated itself and attributed it to a misstep.

According to Charles William Maynes, editor of Foreign Policy, CIA officials privately concede that the US military may have "killed from 7,000 to 10,000 Somalis during its engagement. America lost only 34 soldiers. Notwithstanding that extraordinary disparity, the decision was to withdraw." So, the estimates delivered by the US media have been drastically overlooked or underestimated.

The fact is that there is no justification for this human catastrophe. However, as is their wont, Washington officials barefacedly insist that their mission was to capture Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid who was openly opposed to the presence of the US in Somalia.

Only a couple of major newspapers in the world have bothered to regularly cover the plight of Syria's diverse religious and ethnic minorities living in rebel held areas. Lebanon's The Daily Star and Al-Akhbar newspapers have featured consistent coverage of Syria's Armenians, Kurds, Iraqis, Druze, Christians, and Ismailis - and the threats these communities face in opposition held parts of Syria. Read the latest Al-Akhbar coverage of two Armenian Christian business owners who dared to stay in Northern Syria, attempting to hold on to their family livelihood in a rebel controlled area. They were arrested, forced to convert, executed with bullets to the head, and denied burial.

The Syrian opposition was sold to the world by mainstream Western press from day one of the Syria conflict as representing democracy, freedom, and a pluralist future for a new Syria. But the last couple of years testify the complete opposite. Anyone who actually spent time in Syria prior to the conflict knows that Ba'athist Syria has always been unique in the region for the high degree of freedom that minorities exercise.

An Israeli municipality plans to demolish al-Mahatta, a historic Palestinian neighborhood in Haifa.

It will be replaced by the expansion of an existing railway, new housing units, nightclubs and restaurants, among other venues designed to bring in increased tourist revenues.

"Since I was five years old, I've been hearing that al-Mahatta is going to be completely destroyed ... but today, I can't imagine that we have more than two or three years left in our homes," George Eskandar, chairman of al-Mahatta's neighborhood committee, told The Electronic Intifada.

Around 160 people from more than 30 families are facing eviction. All of them carry Israeli citizenship.

Eskandar, 34, lives with his wife and four-year-old son in his family's home. He and his wife also work as actors. "This is where I was born and where I've spent my whole life," he said.

The program to demolish al-Mahatta is part of an already approved national plan to develop coastal areas up and down present-day Israel. Haifa's municipality has until the end of 2014 to decide the local details of the plan for al-Mahatta, and another five years to fully implement it.

Only two of the remaining structures - one of which is a local church - will be left standing once Israel's plans for al-Mahatta are carried out.

Until now, the plan has only been implemented in the form of individual housing demolitions and evictions on a home-to-home basis.

Just when it seemed we might escape the political tides pushing the United States toward war with Iran, a group of senators has introduced a bill that would put us back on the path to war. We might as well call it the "give war a chance" bill.

Until recently there had been a general consensus in Washington in favor of sanctions against Iran. Although Washington's two foreign policy factions - arms controllers and regime changers - diverged in their ultimate goals, as long as Tehran kept methodically expanding its uranium enrichment capability (from a few hundred centrifuges in 2005 to 19,000 today and from 5 percent enrichment to 20 percent), the two sides could often agree on a policy of economic strangulation against Iran, backed up with the threat of military attack.

That coalition between Washington's arms controllers and regime changers was shattered, though, following the 2013 election victory in Tehran of a moderate, President Hassan Rouhani, who is aggressively pursuing an entente with the West.

While the arms controllers, led by President Barack Obama, are trying to avert a war by reaching an accord with Iran, the regime changers are doing everything they can to sabotage such an accord through a Senate bill, the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013, co-authored by Sen. Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, and Sen. Mark Kirk, Republican of Illinois.

Of course, being against arms control and for an increased likelihood of war is like being against motherhood and apple pie, so the regime changers are pretending to help the arms control negotiations they seek to undermine.

• Michelle Obama alleged to have discovered her husband has been unfaithful
• Reports claim they will separate at the end of his presidency in 2016
• Follows claims in two books that couple neared divorce in early 2000's

With invitations warning guests to 'EBYC' - Eat Before You Come - and rumours they'll be dancing to star turns from Beyonce and her rapper husband Jay Z, it won't be your usual White House knees-up.

Michelle Obama was 50 yesterday and President Barack Obama will be feting his redoubtable First Lady tonight with a party that will give them the chance to let their hair down and forget their troubles for a few hours.

The email inviting guests to the 'snacks & sips & dancing & dessert' advised them to wear comfortable shoes and practise their dance moves.

Purse-lipped Washington etiquette experts have tutted at the informality of it all, but the Obamas have always been keen to appear accessible, even if the stand-offish reality is somewhat different.

The Obamas are the world's most scrutinised couple at the best of times, but it will be rare to find a guest at the bash who won't be secretly watching them with particular interest.

After all, the last time they were pictured together - at Nelson Mandela's memorial - the First Lady was looking none too pleased as the her husband posed for a 'selfie' photograph with the leggy blonde Danish Prime Minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt.

Indeed, if the U.S. tabloids are to be believed, the relationship of Washington's golden couple is facing problems that go far beyond dirty looks.