An Interview with Michael Ruppert – by Tod Foley and Ronnie Pontiac – Includes: “Ruppert’s Rubicon: Presenting the Best Case”, A review of Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil, by Tod Foley.
from: http://www.newtopiamagazine.net
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Apocalyptic fantasy is the heritage it seems of everyone growing up in
a monotheistic culture, and no one of us has avoided the stomach
turning terror of wondering if the next turn around the corner might
lead to disaster. We titillate our fears with movies like The Day After Tomorrow.
Hal Lindsay made a fortune preying on that fear. History is full of
ridiculous stories of whole communities standing outside awaiting the
end of the world on the word of some deranged bookworm’s interpretation
of holy scripture.
But imagine for a moment if you were the child of Holocaust survivors.
Or imagine that you lived in Lebanon when your cosmopolitan street of
cafes was bombed into rubble. Imagine you were the child of one of the
people who died in the World Trade Center. The idea that some dreadful
page of history might be just ahead would not seem so far-fetched. When
you have a born again president in charge of Mideast policy apocalyptic
thinking must be the order of the day.
The concept of Peak Oil seems to exist in a strange parallel universe
where, despite the term having been affirmed by the likes of Cheney,
Bush, and numerous oil company executives, it has not reached the
popular imagination. Peak Oil broken down to its simplest form is the
observation that oil production is limited and that we already are or
are about to experience a decline in oil availability that, coinciding
with ramped up oil demand in China and India and your local Hummer
dealership, will be the end of globalism and the precarious prosperity
we’ve built on the resources of the Third World. If you were among the
first to know about a coming economic calamity, would preserving the
status quo for as long as you could be worth fixing elections and
starting energy wars in the Mideast? Would it be worth orchestrating
the demise of some of your own citizenry? Perhaps you might even feel
that you must be a ruler by divine mandate. It takes a rare individual
to face such an enormous predicament without some crutch of faith.
Mike Ruppert is the publisher/editor of From the Wilderness
or FTW, a newsletter he founded in March 1998 by mailing out 68 copies
to friends and researchers. FTW is now read by more than 16,000
subscribers in forty countries including forty members of the US
Congress, the intelligence committees of both houses, and professors at
thirty universities worldwide. An honors graduate of UCLA in Political
Science (1973), Ruppert is a former LAPD narcotics investigator who
discovered CIA drug trafficking in 1977. After attempting to expose it,
he was forced out of the LAPD in 1978 despite earning the highest
rating reports possible, and having no pending disciplinary actions. In
1996, after eighteen years of struggle, he finally achieved one of his
deepest wishes in a face to face encounter with then CIA Director John
Deutch on national television. Washington sources later told Ruppert
that Deutch’s mishandling of the encounter cost him his guaranteed
appointment as Secretary of Defense.
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In Ruppert’s highly controversial new book “Crossing the Rubicon” he
names Vice President Dick Cheney as the prime suspect in the mass
murders of 9/11 and with copious footnotes works to prove that not only
was Cheney a planner in the attacks but also that on the day of the
attacks he was running a completely separate command, control and
communications system which was superseding any orders being issued by
the FAA, the Pentagon, or the White House Situation Room. He provides
evidence that in May of 2001, by presidential order, Cheney was put in
direct command and control of all war-game and field exercise training
and scheduling through several agencies, especially FEMA. This also
extended to NORAD drills — some involving hijack simulations. Ruppert
finds evidence that the interceptors that should have protected America
were instead over the Atlantic and elsewhere involved in the TRIPOD II
exercise conducted by Cheney. He also provides evidence that a number
of public officials at the national and New York City levels including
then Mayor Rudolph Giuliani were aware that flight 175 was heading for
lower Manhattan for twenty minutes and issued no warning.
According to Ruppert the US manufacturing sector has been mostly
replaced by speculation on financial data whose underlying economic
reality is hundreds of billions of dollars in laundered drug money
flowing through Wall Street each year from opium and coca fields
maintained by CIA-sponsored warlords and US-backed covert paramilitary
violence. America’s global dominance depends on an arbitrage of guns,
drugs, oil and money. Oil and natural gas — the fuels that make
economic growth possible — are subsidized by American military force
and foreign lending. What happens when the oil starts running out? It’s
no coincidence that the Homeland Security Act clears the way for
martial law. Ruppert not only thinks both presidential elections were
stolen, he thinks the electoral process in the United States is dead.
Newtopia: The 9/11 case you present in “Crossing the Rubicon”
eventually leads up to charging the President and especially the Vice
President, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Commander of NORAD,
the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General and the former Directors
of Central Intelligence and the FBI with multiple counts of
premeditated murder. What has been the response (if any) from DC
circles?
MR:The response has been absolute silence. Not a word of reply from any official source in Washington or elsewhere.
Newtopia: Your findings seem to correlate with many of the
“911Truth” findings, and I know you are on familiar terms with the
people there. Are there any areas in which your findings or theories
differ appreciably from theirs, or do you feel that your investigations
are mutually supportive?
MR: By and large our findings and approaches are consistent.
However, as I described in Rubicon, because of my long experience with
investigative and court procedures, there are some areas of emphasis I
have chosen to avoid or minimize. Legal “proof†is a standard that is
very much misunderstood by many amateur researchers who have no legal
or law enforcement training. This is especially true when it comes to
physical evidence issues which require expertise to analyze in a legal
setting and incredibly strict standards to guard against manipulation
of physical evidence (whether video, photographic, or crime-scene
evidence).
There is an old saying that “For every expert, there is an equal and
opposite expert”, and we have seen this used against physical evidence
proponents as recently as a couple of days ago when the New York Times
presented rebuttal experts on physical evidence to their story about
millionaire activist Jimmy Walker and his ad campaign. I predicted this
kind of response well over a year ago.
I have been at this for 26 years and I have seen all of these mistakes
made before. No such rebuttals can be made against a written record of
statements made by the suspects themselves or to their records and
documents submitted under oath and no scientific analysis is necessary
to evaluate them. Either they said something or they didn’t. Either the
records they submitted were submitted or they were not.
An additional problem is that by focusing on physical evidence
questions only, there is no legal proof offered as to who was
responsible. For example: Lets say that it was definitively established
that no airplane hit the Pentagon. That would still leave you legally
bereft of proof as to who was responsible for that, what was used
instead, and who used it.
In Rubicon I nail the suspects with enough evidence to prosecute and
convict them for murder. If that were to ever happen then a real
investigation with reliable control mechanisms for the analysis of
physical evidence and real penalties for dishonesty might produce some
interesting results that could be legally trusted.
I also believe that it is imperative to get people to the point of
realizing that the government “did†9/11 as quickly as possible for the
same reasons that I believe that fighting over the 2004 election is a
complete waste of time.
Newtopia: The concept of Peak Oil has been getting more
attention lately, thanks in no small part to your work, and to the work
of other journalists who have taken up the call. On a global level the
danger is obvious and the best way to respond seems pretty clear: to
drastically reduce dependency on oil and natural gas. But oil is
involved in more products than people are aware of, and dependency
reduction (like recycling) begins at home. Think globally, act locally.
So before we get to the point where these products are being rationed,
how can people act *locally* to begin reducing their own families’
dependence on these resources?
MR: Changes are being implemented all over the world and in very
creative ways. Biodiesel co-ops are forming throughout the Pacific
Northwest and elsewhere. Alternative currencies are springing up. I
could not have conceived of some of the things that are taking place.
This is a good thing. No one is as smart as all of us and I think it
better for me to see what everyone else comes up with based upon their
own situations. The important task will be to identify what works and
what doesn’t and disseminate that information widely. This is going to
be a key priority for FTW’s future efforts.
But people must understand that a solution that works in Minnesota might be a disaster in Phoenix.
One of the problems here is that every individual has a different
starting place. They are different for people who live in large cities
versus people who live in the country or a small town; different for
renters as opposed to those who own their homes; different for people
who are out of debt and those who are not; different for people with
children versus those who have none. There is no one-size-fits-all
solution.
At FTW we will be getting much, much deeper into possible
post-petroleum lifestyle options in coming years. This is probably the
best return on investment we can give to our subscribers.
However, many experts, including my dear fried Richard Heinberg
(author: The Party’s Over and Powerdown) are in complete agreement that
post-petroleum and Peak Oil solutions will be local and governed by
geography and local communities more than anything else. There will be
no painless magic bullet solutions for anybody.
Newtopia: The previous question notwithstanding, the approach of
the neoconservatives currently in power seems to be quite the opposite:
They seem to have decided on the approach of acting as though nothing
is wrong, meanwhile doing everything possible to place all the world’s
oil reserves under American control, either directly or indirectly.
There is a brutal logic to this approach, although no amount of
military expenditure will ever increase the amount of accessible oil on
Earth. So even if one buys into the neocons’ apparent assessment of the
situation, there has to come a point of diminishing returns. To put it
bluntly: How long could the US remain at current usage levels if we
forcibly seized all of the known oil reserves in the world?
MR: Great question but the answer is uncertain. The question
assumes that somehow the US will be able to “take†all the energy it
needs, whenever it needs it. The truth is that the global energy supply
is a very complex system which as has been recently demonstrated –
quite clearly – has no elasticity whatsoever. Not every event or
circumstance is answerable with military force. For example: a large
Russian tanker just stalled yesterday in the narrowest part of the Suez
Canal when its steering gears allegedly failed. Some 130 ships were
backed up behind it. That’s a problem that can’t be bombed into
submission.
There is massive civil unrest exploding through maybe ten countries in
Africa. Strikes are pending in Nigeria and Norway. Sometimes refineries
go idle or are damaged by weather as recently happened in the Gulf of
Mexico with four hurricanes in a row.
There are other problems such as with refining capacity. Saudi Arabia
and other countries have recently boosted production. But they can do
so only with heavy-sour oil which cannot be turned into gasoline by
most refineries. We do not need asphalt, we need gasoline. No new
refineries are being built because (at a cost of around $150 million,
with a 2-3 year lag time) the oil companies know that there won’t be
enough future oil production to repay for the capital cost of building
the new refineries. That’s why no – zero – significant new refinery
construction is taking place anywhere that affects the global supply
chain.
A better question is: How long will the US have before supply
disruptions and production shortfalls hit home? The answer in my
opinion is: less than a year.
Newtopia: Shortly before November 2nd, Osama bin Laden released
a tape in which he spoke to the American people. He was reminiscent of
a Native American as he seemed to try to speak rationally to an invader
with a belief in Manifest Destiny. Bin Laden mentioned his relationship
with the Bush family, and ran down a list of grievances against US
involvement in the Middle East. Most Americans have only seen 4 minutes
of that 18 minute-long tape, and unfortunately the segment which
received the most airplay was bin Laden’s closing statement, which
asserted that neither George Bush nor John Kerry could protect
Americans. But Americans (especially in election years) are
unaccustomed to political speeches without partisan agendas, and bin
Laden’s message seems to have been dropped by the media as quickly as
it was picked up. Connect the dots for us, since your research puts you
in an ideal position to do so: What is bin Laden trying to tell us?
link to TRANSCRIPT OF BIN LADEN TAPE IN ITS ENTIRETY:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/79C6AF22-98FB-4A1C-B21F-2BC36E87F61F.htm
MR: Really, the wrong question! In Rubicon I establish
definitively that bin Laden has been and remains a US intelligence
asset. His family business (the Saudi BinLadin group) [Yes this is the
correct spelling for the company name, please don’t change it] owns and
operates a number of satellites and the Iridium satellite cell phone
company (among other things). I am really fatigued with these OBL
videos. Either the US government flies him to a secure base to shoot
what is needed, or a tape is morphed and fabricated, or a really
bad-looking impostor is used. Wayne Madsen just published a great story
on this.
These bin Laden tapes are a convenient way (although I don’t think very
effective) of massaging public opinion. That’s all. The BinLadin Group
is making huge profits from the War On Terror and Osama is facilitating
that with the help of partners in (for example) the Carlyle Group. Even
though the bin Laden’s supposedly sold out, there’s a clear trail of
interlocking financial interests which is described thoroughly in
Rubicon.
Newtopia: Your work is hotly debated in some politically active
American youth undergrounds like anarchy punk and the gang truce
movement including the Black Panthers. It’s also been reported that you
and your partner Catherine Austin Fitts have something to do with
Lyndon LaRouche and his organization. You have written “I share a near
universal respect of the LaRouche organization’s detailed and precise
research, I have not, however, always agreed with [its] conclusions.”
What would you like to say to these?
MR: I have not been and will never be aligned, partnered or
affiliated in any way with Lyndon La Rouche or his organization. One of
my biggest problems with La Rouche is that he is a staunch drug warrior
who believes in the War On Drugs. I do not. I think all drug use should
be decriminalized, thus removing some $600 billion a year from the
economic system that oppresses us all. I have other issues with La
Rouche as well but no time to digress for that here.
Newtopia: Bin Laden, whether on behalf of Islam or the Carlyle
Group, or both, in his pre-election speech said that Bush, Sr. had
envied what he saw in Saudi Arabia (probably how his father Prescott
felt about Nazi Germany since his company had to be closed down by the
US Government for ignoring direct orders to stop doing business with
Hitler). Bin Laden said Bush, Sr. brought home techniques from the
Saudis that have resulted in stolen elections. Greg Palast claims on
the basis of exit polls that Kerry would have won had the election been
conducted fairly. Bush now has four more years. You have written that
you believe the election was stolen, please tell us a little about how.
MR: The election was stolen. So what? That’s all the time it
gets from me. There are a jillion stories on it circulating around the
Internet right now. I won’t recap them here. I stopped believing in
elections in 2000. The techniques for stealing elections did not
originate in Saudi Arabia. The American electoral process is dead; and
irretrievably so. When you have John Kerry, Bill Clinton, Donna Brazile
and the DNC saying that the election was fair and balanced then it is
sheer foolishness to believe that any challenge is worth the effort.
The courts are rigged. Rehnquist is going out and Bush gets to pick
maybe three more Supremes. That’s where an election challenge would go.
So what’s the point?
Insanity is repeating the same actions over and over, expecting
different results. People who want to know my feelings about the
election should go to FromTheWilderness.com and read my editorial “Snap
Out of It!â€
Newtopia: You say how we use our money can do more to change
things than our votes can, especially now that Diebold and the other
Republican information technology companies control vote counting. You
advise Americans to become debt free. To create self sufficient local
communities, both as a way of transforming the prevailing oligarchy,
and as our best chance for surviving the economic disaster of oil
depletion. You expect an economic crash next year. What is the recourse
of the American People now? Is it time for liberal thinkers to abandon
ship and head elsewhere? Will America become China’s world police in a
permanently divided society of the very poor and the very rich?
MR: You have the wrong perspective on China altogether.
Globalization is dead, d-e-a-d. It is based upon shipping raw materials
and finished goods all over the planet. Hence we have 10,000 mile
Caesar salads; tin and aluminum packaging that travel 20,000 miles from
mining to manufacture to store; Chilean strawberries in Los Angeles
markets instead of those grown right here in California. All of that is
made possible by cheap oil. Some 60-70% of all petroleum energy is used
for transportation. That’s another reason why local solutions are
inevitable. Rising transportation costs will kill globalization and
outsourcing for anything other than information services and data
processing.
Liberal thinkers must stop chewing on bones that have no meat on them.
They must be as ruthless in evaluating the return they get for their
own investments in terms of time, energy and money (all the same thing,
really) as the bad guys are. The question to ask is: Has this tactic
ever produced any real change in the political landscape?
Newtopia: What are your own plans for the future? You recently
mentioned you are about to purchase your first home, I’m guessing it
won’t be near your current HQ, here in southern California area,
perhaps the most oil dependent of all cities.
MR: I am waiting for the housing bubble to collapse next year,
as it certainly will. Secondly, FTW’s following is so large now that if
I publicize the destination or area in advance a lot of people will get
there before I can move my company. And not all of them would be
friendly. What is imperative is that I relocate FTW to a rural or
semi-rural area so that we can (with funding we are hoping to raise in
the next six months) begin to explore various survival options in a
real test-bed and begin to provide that life-saving information to our
subscribers. I have an area in mind but am not disclosing it now.
If people are asking about priorities in selection of areas to move to I offer the following:
Access to fresh water;
Arable land;
Lumber for construction and heating;
Low population density;
A friendly and supportive local community.
Obviously 6.5 billion people will not be able to find such a place. The
math doesn’t work. Seeing that opens the door of consciousness to the
real problems of Peak Oil and why it is so imperative to put it
squarely on the world’s agenda as quickly as possible. Otherwise, as so
many Peak Oil activists believe, things are going to get very messy.
Population control and compelling a reduction in consumption/energy
usage are the main problems. I do not have any plan for how this should
be accomplished. I do have some ideas about the ethical/moral/spiritual
standards that I would like to see injected into the process but that
is not for me to dictate to anyone. That is a problem for the human
race as a (real) whole.
What I am absolutely certain of is that Dick Cheney, the Bushes, the
Clintons and the Rockefellers do have population reduction plans and
that ethics, morality and spirituality are not involved in any of them.
RUPPERT’S RUBICON: PRESENTING THE BEST CASE
A Review of Michael Ruppert’s CROSSING THE RUBICON: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
by Tod Foley
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PEAK OIL AND THE HUBBERT CURVE
Developed in the 1950s by Dr. M. King Hubbert and expanded in recent The Hubbert Curve is scalable, in the sense that every field has its
This Peak does not signal total planetary depletion — we will never Peak Oil activists come in a variety of flavors, but they share the With the price of gas topping $50 a barrel and U.S. military bases |
What do rolling blackouts, Federal Reserve bailouts, rising gas prices,
cooked books, the CIA, the 2000 election, secret military training
exercises, FEMA, September 11th, Dick Cheney, Usama bin Laden, Saudi
Arabia, Iraq and American Imperialism all have in common? Investigative
writer/editor Mike Ruppert examines these issues in meticulous detail
and delivers the answer in two words: Peak Oil.
A DAUNTING CHALLENGE
“Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, so long as you call yourself a coincidence theorist.”
– John Judge
With all the political chaff and disinformation floating around these
days, the task of writing a coherent analysis of recent world events
seems to be a process of endless revision, as new data arrives and old
data gets continually spun, denied, amplified, or covered up. People
change their stories. Evidence is destroyed or disappears. Events which
appear to be unconnected may in fact be causally related, possessing
additional objectives or meanings unknown to all but a few, or hidden
objectives which run counter to their known objectives.
The task of unifying all this divergent data is made no less difficult
by the fact that all writers – presumably human beings – are subject to
the subtle but ubiquitous effects of their own epistemologies. The
entire world is literally at stake here – both the future of the planet
Earth and the veracity of one’s own personal worldview – rendering all
calculations into fuzzy math.
AN IMPRESSIVE PRESENTATION
A former LAPD officer experienced in global investigations involving
the CIA, Michael Ruppert is not daunted by the enormity of the task.
The responsibility of the investigator in a situation like this, he
says, is to present the “best case”: a thorough interpretation of
related events connecting all known facts in a logically supportable
manner, which eventually points to a suspect and fills in the three
blanks of any criminal investigation: Motive, Means and Opportunity.
Beginning with the phenomenon of Peak Oil and tracing the effects of
this looming threat through multiple White House administrations and
the 9/11 attacks to the present day, this is the task Ruppert sets out
to accomplish. To this end, he has gathered a gigantic mountain of data
from a wide array of diverse sources, verified it or debunked it,
organized it, and finally assembled it all into a massive
internally-coherent narrative.
It’s an impressive presentation, and much of it is hard to refute.
THE END OF PETROLEUM MAN
Simply put, “Peak Oil” is a point on the Hubbert Curve of Oil Production
which signals an imminent crisis in the availability and cost of
hydrocarbon fuels (see sidebar). While pundits for the oil and natural
gas industries publicly claim they can increase production to meet the
exponentially-rising demand of the planet’s population indefinitely, a
growing number of independent watchdogs, geological researchers and
international investors are reporting that we may have only a few years
left before we’ve peaked for both of these vital substances.
The “Peak” is the point beyond which the cost of all natural gas and
electricity, as well as all oil, plastic, gasoline and every
petroleum-based product in the world, will begin to progressively rise
– and never again come down. The effects will be economically
devastating. They will be global and irreversible. Ultimately, we’re
talking about the end of Petroleum Man.
In Ruppert’s “best case,” the looming shadow of Peak Oil has already
succeeded to great degree in undermining the natural forces of both
democracy and the free market (unless your vision of the free market
includes mass murder). As awareness of Peak Oil has dawned and its
implications have become acknowledged – whether publicly or secretly –
the responses on the part of the elites have so far included covert
actions, counterintuitive alliances, inexplicable foreign and domestic
policies, draconian security, false fronts, cooked books, rigged
elections, coverups, finger-pointing, assassinations, military coups,
occupations, and many thousands of deaths – including the victims of
the 9/11 attacks.
CONNECTING THE DOTS
Taken together, the actions, counter-actions, intelligence reports,
interviews, releases, statements, responses and plans documented in
RUBICON describe a woven braid of related events reaching back far
prior to the 2000 election, leading directly to 9/11, and continuing
through to the present day. Ruppert interweaves groundbreaking
reporting with government releases and investigative reports to present
his case: The White House Knew About The 9/11 Attacks, And Was
Complicit In Their Execution. Major players include the CIA, the
pentagon, FEMA, NORAD, both houses and at least two presidential
administrations, in a series of responses to a global economic disaster
that’s waiting to happen. He just may have found the mother of all
conspiracy theories here.
But supporting this case is something that requires a good deal more
than two words. CROSSING THE RUBICON is a massive tome, including over
900 footnotes and referencing the outstanding work of many mainstream
and independent journalists, plus hundreds of sources including
official government releases, news briefings, declassified materials,
taped interviews and independent investigations, and numerous articles
penned by Ruppert’s own staff of reporters at From The Wilderness
Writing in a light conversational style adopted from his newsletters,
Ruppert connects the dots and names the names, keeping track of sources
and allegiances all along the way.
Despite a few rough spots – the slippery character of key informer Mike
Vreeland, for instance, or Ruppert’s almost religious regard for the
powers of the PROMIS software – what’s truly frightening is that this
narrative provides a remarkably workable framework for understanding
Peak Oil, 9/11, the occupation of Iraq, and other major events
currently transpiring on the world stage.
Given the levels of deceipt and secrecy employed by the current
administration regarding such issues, Ruppert’s “best case” may be the
only workable theory we’re ever gonna get.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON PEAK OIL
Association for the Study of Peak Oil
http://www.peakoil.net
From the Wilderness
Michael Ruppert’s Official Website
http://www.fromthewilderness.com
Is the world’s oil running out fast?
by Adam Porter
BBC News, 7 June, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3777413.stm
The End of Cheap Oil
by Tim Appenzeller
National Geographic, Jun 2004
http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0406/feature5/index.html
The Oil We Eat
by Richard Manning
Harper’s Magazine, Feb 2004
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1111/is_1845_308/ai_112796599
U.S. Oil Policy Simulation
Interesting little game depicting the US oil predicament
http://broadcast.forio.com/pro/oil/index.htm
When The Last Oil Well Runs Dry
by Alex Kirby
BBC News, 19 April 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3623549.stm
Why Are Oil Prices So High?
BBC, 28 September 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3708951.stm
World Oil and Gas Running Out
by Graham Jones
CNN, 2 October 2003
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/10/02/global.warming/index.html
 Tod Foley is the founder of As If Productions, an interactive development studio with clients including Comedy Central, Sony/Epic Records and The Electronic Cafe. His writings have been published in bOING-bOING, Fringeware Review, Entertainment Weekly and PIX-Elation. |
