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Issue 9 - Fall 2004 / Winter 2005page. 39 |
'Crossing the Rubicon'
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Thank you for that gracious introduction. Let me begin by thanking Pat Lamken for inviting me to be here today and for her efforts to arrange – what is certainly for me – an historic landmark in my 26 years of work to bring to light information – vitally important, life and death information – which has been virtually ignored by the mainstream media. This information has also remained completely unaddressed or even publicly acknowledged by those elites in both America and the world that determine and shape public policy and direct the course of human events.
I say this with the full and complete awareness that I am tonight standing partially in the midst of those elites and that those elites are listening. I have long been aware of the stature and prestige of the Commonwealth Club, for its ability to attract some of the world’s most influential speakers; also for its reputation for bi-partisanship; and perhaps most importantly for its willingness to present conflicting or opposing viewpoints.
My appearance here tonight no doubt marks a departure for the club, even from that inspiring record. With today’s remarks I intend to establish a whole new definition of ‘conflicting viewpoint’. I applaud the club’s record and am mindful that, had it not been for the dangerous and epochal historical events taking place around us, I would never have been afforded such an opportunity as this. Because, clearly, my writing and public speaking have demonstrated that where we are today is exactly where I said we would be if something fundamental were not changed about how we both view the world, and how we interact with it.
Before preparing this speech, of course, I did some research to see who had spoken here before. I was happy to see that I follow on the heels of such notables as former CIA director James Woolsey and two members of the Kean Commission on 9/11: Slade Gorton and Richard Ben-Veniste. These are not people whom I would call ‘kindred spirits’. I also saw the name of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. These are also leaders of whom I have been sharply critical in the past and will be sharply critical of in the future. I also saw names like John Kerry, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, Joe Lieberman and Madeleine Albright.
My record as a journalist and lecturer shows that I have not embraced, and have indeed been fiercely critical of, most of these opinion makers. While I am more inclined to find kinship with Dennis Kucinich, I also state categorically that no political leader who does not address the real causes of the problems facing us will ever be considered by me as a true kindred soul – or as a political champion for the future. Such praise and endorsement I offer only to the likes of my good friend, the honorable Cynthia McKinney of Georgia, and to former Assistant Secretary of Housing Catherine Austin Fitts. I heartily recommend them to the club as potential speakers for future events. I also saw the names of spiritual leaders and independent or international voices like Al Franken, Jane Goodall, Arianna Huffington, the Rabbi Michael Lerner, Norman Mailer, Ted Turner, Hans Blix and King Abudullah II.
In looking at this long list of prestigious speakers I was very aware that the life’s work of Michael Ruppert did not place me in any category that fit with these people. For the most part, I have long considered them to be part of a serious problem rather than pathfinders to its solution. That realization brought to mind what was perhaps the single most memorable line from the 1992 vice-presidential debates in which Ross Perot’s running mate, retired navy Admiral James Stockdale – a medal of honor winner and Vietnam POW – asked, "who am I?" And "why am I here?"
I am not prone to over-analyzing such opportunities. I have always said that, if given the chance, I would walk into the lion’s den or the devil’s bedroom to make my case and that is what I intend to do today. This is as close as I have come thus far to either. For here, I can see tonight parts of the elite whose consciousness and attitudes must be changed if humanity is to even partially meet the challenges that are "in our faces".
For any of you who might be either lions or devils I hope that you have had a good meal recently and also that you have checked your pitchforks at the door. I also implore that your ears be open and your minds accessible. For those of you who realize that a global crisis is casting its shadow across the entire planet, and who wish better to understand its dynamics, I am here to offer some of my experience and learning as a ‘mapmaker’ who has no allegiance to partisan politics or any desire, except to tell you the truth, no matter how disquieting it may be, or how divergent it may be from whatever cherished beliefs you may hold; from whatever cosmological principles you may believe in; or from whatever economic or other personal interests you may have.
A spiritual teacher once told me that my problem was not that I thought highly of myself, nor that I thought lowly of myself, but that I thought constantly of myself.
In that vein, let us all tonight try to think of issues larger than ourselves, our personal interests, our wants, or our fears. Viewed from almost any perspective – be it geopolitics, economics, climate, spreading warfare that threatens to unleash a global orgy of bloodletting, rising energy prices, documented energy shortages, fresh water shortages, biological warfare, the repression of civil liberties at home and abroad, or any of a dozen other issues – planet earth and all of its inhabitants are in great danger. This is not a time to think of national security. It is a time to think of planetary security – indeed, of planetary survival.
And I must recognize also that I would never have been afforded this incredible opportunity to speak to you today, had it not been for the consistent support and generosity, the research and activism, the courage and disenfranchisement, and above all the loyalty of all those people who have helped my newsletter, From the Wilderness (FTW), grow in just six years from 68 to more than 15,000 monthly readers worldwide. Our web site at www.fromthewilderness.com averages more than 12,000 visitors a day. These include members of Congress, business and economic leaders, professors at more than 30 universities, respected journalists and political leaders in many countries.
If anything had an impact on my thinking as I prepared these remarks it was my awareness that these loyal supporters are the people on whose behalf I presume to speak. It is their voice and their commitment which have given rise to my voice. I could not and would not be here were it not for them. But I also, if I may be that bold, presume to speak for all mankind regardless of religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual preference, bank account or any other artificial distinction.
This is no time to be shy. This is not a time when men and women of good conscience can afford to be politically correct or be guided by anything except a willingness to discard every ‘cherished’ belief or opinion which stands in the way of an accurate and fearless appraisal of the world around us. As I have said so many times in the last three years while delivering more than 40 lectures on the truth and lies of 9/11 and peak oil, in eight countries: the events in the five years following the attacks of September 11th will determine the course of human history for the next 500 years or more.
I can only assume that the record of my lectures and writings, wherein I have come to be known as a man who backs up everything he says and presents it to his audiences for verification, had something to do with how the board of governors reached its decision to extend this invitation. For many years now, not a single fact, citation or piece of evidence presented in my lectures, or in my best-selling video, "The Truth and Lies of 9/11" has been proved inaccurate. I am known as a man who does not expect people to take his word on faith but who asks and even expects people to challenge his research, evaluate it and reach their own conclusions.
Operating under the assumption that the past credibility of my research has produced a record, which got me in the door at the Commonwealth Club, I am today, in the interest of time and for maximum impact, going to dispense with my customary slide presentation. I fully expect that anyone who challenges or disagrees with my assertions will go out and do some checking for him or herself. Almost everything I present to you today will be fully documented – by means of approximately 1,000 endnotes – in my soon-to-be released book, Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil.
September 11 Attacks Orchestrated by US
Both here in the United States and around the world, I am not alone in believing that the attacks of September 11th were facilitated, orchestrated and executed by the United States government. However, there is a great deal of misunderstanding and conclusion-jumping about these assessments that is not supported by the evidence. I was trained as a police officer and detective, and for many years now I have been an effective investigative journalist because I have adhered to strict evidentiary and investigative standards.
The 9/11 attacks were the result of deliberate planning and orchestrated efforts by identifiable leaders within the US government, and the energy and financial sectors, to see a Pearl Harbor-like attack which would provide the American Empire with a pretext for war, invasion and the sequential confiscation of oil and natural gas reserves, or the key transportation routes through which they pass. 9/11 was a premeditated murder and here, tonight, I will name some of the suspects who committed the crime. In my book, I will show you overwhelming evidence of their guilt which I would be proud and confident to place either before a district attorney or a jury.
Historically, the assertion that the United States government would orchestrate an attack upon American interests has ample precedent. Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski described the need for such an event in several places in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard. It was I who first brought this book to world attention in late 2001. The Project for a New American Century made reference to the need for such an attack in its 2000 report Rebuilding America’s Defenses. Declassified top secret documents disclosed by author James Bamford in his book, Body of Secrets tell us that in 1962 the Joint Chiefs had approved a plan called ‘Operation Northwoods’ which was a covert operation that would shoot down American aircraft and stage attacks on American military facilities with the intent of blaming those attacks on Fidel Castro and prompting the subsequent US invasion and occupation of Cuba. The declassified Northwoods documents can be seen and downloaded from the FTW web site. But once viewed, they cannot be ignored.
Therefore it cannot be said that such a thing has never been conceived of or carried out by American political leaders. From the sinking of the battleship Maine, to the Gulf of Tonkin, and indeed, even to Pearl Harbor itself, history today provides us with abundant documentation of US government complicity in varying degrees in similar attacks. The book Day of Deceit and other records from the national archives have shown us that the Roosevelt administration had broken the Japanese codes well before December 7th, 1941 and that a conscious decision was made to allow the attack on Pearl Harbor to take place. This was intended to provide the necessary impetus for US entry into the Second World War at a time when Great Britain was buckling under the military blitzkrieg, aerial bombing and U-boat warfare of the Third Reich.
Crossing the Rubicon is a detective story that gets to the innermost core of the 9/11 attacks. It places 9/11 at the center of a desperate new America, created by specific, named individuals in preparation for peak oil: an economic crisis like nothing the world has ever seen.
Simply defined, peak oil is that moment in time when global oil (and natural gas) production begins an irreversible and permanent decline, which will not yield or give way regardless of how much money and effort, is spent trying to change it. With demand still accelerating rapidly in both the US and the industrialized and developing world, the arrival of peak oil literally describes a point of overshoot in which economic and ecological stasis – let alone growth – becomes unsustainable. Over the course of the last three years, From the Wilderness has pioneered the investigation and documentation of this crisis. With the invaluable research and writing of FTW’s energy editor Dale Allen Pfeiffer, a geologist, and through my own travels and research in the US, France and Germany, we have drawn upon the expertise of those with decades of experience in the oil industry (many of whom have left it), independent scientists and academics having no connection to the energy industry, business and financial leaders, international bodies such as the International Energy Agency, and actual world events to draw attention to what is the single most serious threat facing mankind in its entire history.
It is my belief, as I speak to you tonight, that planet earth is (plus or minus one year) at the all-time peak of hydrocarbon energy production. Simply put, we have used half of all the oil God placed on this planet, and every drop, every barrel extracted from the ground from now on will become progressively more expensive, of lesser quality, and much harder to obtain. We have picked the low hanging fruit. As all experts agree, peak oil is something we will only know of as certainty when we view it in our rear view mirrors.
The attacks of September 11th, 2001 were the pretext for the American, and to a lesser extent, the British and Israeli empires to begin seizing, by force, those energy supplies needed to sustain their power, hegemony (whether regional or global) and their teetering economies. The attacks of 9/11 were accomplished through an amazing orchestration of logistics and personnel.
Former National Security aide and counter-terror advisor Richard Clarke has postulated that such a conspiracy could never be kept a secret. Too many people would have been involved, he said. On this point I disagree with Clarke completely and point to the fact that the "Manhattan Project", which developed the atom bomb and the stealth fighter project were both successfully kept secret. The numbers of people involved in both of those projects far exceeded the numbers of people within the United States government required to execute 9/11. However, I must express a deep debt of gratitude to Clarke. For in his book Against All Enemies, he left a compelling trail of bread crumbs, contradictions to the sworn testimony of our highest leaders and hard evidence which provided me with much of the information needed to say that not only can I name some of the US government officials who perpetrated those attacks, I can also identify the prime suspect – or ‘Mr. Big’ – who played the command role in executing them. Mr. Clarke is not a stupid man and I can only conclude that he left those crumbs for others to find.
All of this, of course, stands in stark contrast to the report of the so-called independent 9/11 Commission, which investigated those attacks. Before I start naming names, let me first take a look at why absolutely nothing presented by the Kean Commission can, or should, be accepted without challenge.
Michael C. Ruppert is publisher and editor of "From the Wilderness" newsletter and website and author of the new book "Crossing the Rubicon: the Decline of the American Empire at the Age of Oil". He is also a frequent contributor to Global Outlook. All rights reserved. Copyright belongs to the author.
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