Snap Out Of It!
The Day to Forget the November 2nd Election Forever is November 3rd
The Rest of the World Fights the Empire With Money - What We Should Have Been Doing Here All Along
Now Is The Time To Attack On The Fronts Where We Have Real Power
November 5, 2004 1900 PDT (FTW) - The rest of the world has known for some time that it is pointless to oppose this Empire either militarily or
electorally. They haven't the resources for the former and are legally barred from the latter. I think it's time the
American people adopted the same philosophy. We are, after all, legally barred from inspecting electronic voting
machines. The rest of the world has been fighting with money and public relations because these tactics work and work
well. This is a lesson that American activists and true patriots should have learned four years ago. Now the tempo of
battle will increase just as surely as the stakes have been raised both globally and domestically for us all.
While everyone waits for the administration's first move a Rubicon has been crossed and there is no turning back.
America will fight for oil wherever it feels the need.
Now the real Fourth World War begins. Sorry to disappoint all the scriptwriters and futurists who were thinking
exclusively in terms of bombs, plagues, famine etc. The first weapons of mass destruction in this war will be economic
and they will be devastating beyond imagination.
I feel good now, three days after the election. It was much easier for me to recover than most because FTW and its
readers had less invested in the election than most. But I am not so glib or cavalier as to overlook the massive
disillusionment that weighs like a wet blanket on all who had hoped that their prodigious efforts might oust the
Neo-cons.
The biggest blessing today is that the disillusionment is so deep, so fundamental, that at last people who have bound
themselves to ineffective political strategies may rethink their deeper core beliefs; their beliefs about what America
was supposed to be versus what it has become. They will redraw their maps. Perhaps with that process - painful as it
might be - will also come a willingness to abandon strategies which no longer work for entirely different ones that do.
In order for that to happen, however, those on the so-called left, as well as those conservative and libertarian voices
who wanted to return a degree of sanity to the Republican party, will have to admit that America is not America anymore.
We are living in a foreign land; a nation that is behaving like our enemy; a nation which has weaknesses and
vulnerabilities.
This nation is so deeply divided that the words "civil war" stand for a possibility that is longer remote. Next year,
even the next few months, will reveal these deep and irreconcilable divisions. The electoral process is dead. Only the
fear that there is nothing to replace it except revolution and bloodshed will prevent people from seeing that there are
different ways to fight; ways that should have been adopted four years ago. The rest of the world knows that physical
force is not effective in this struggle and the rest of the world has something to teach us. We will look anew perhaps
at the Second Amendment to the Constitution, but it is in what's left of the First that we will find our strength. The
freedom of association includes within it the right to decide where and how to spend our money.
Perhaps out of fear, perhaps out of prudence, I have been told that some activists and whistleblowers are planning on
leaving the country in short order. A thought I have seen circulate in discussions since the election is that many
well-known activists and whistleblowers think it wise to run before Dick Cheney and Karl Rove get their legs and start
hunting us down, one by one. Reuters published a November 3rd story about many Democrats seeking to emigrate to Canada.
As a man who has written a book 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, it is my belief that it is foolish to wait and see
what the administration does. Now is the time to attack, and to attack with all of the vigor our movement and our
wounded, offended spirits can muster. It is our best means of self healing. If we cut and run now, we die.
No longer is that word hyperbolic.
I am going on the attack.
Let me be quite clear about this: This is spiritual warfare. There is no place to run. There is no safe place to hide.
On her home page (www.solari.com) Catherine Austin Fitts posts a great quote from Gandhi.
"The only devils in the world are those running around in our own hearts - that is where the battle should be fought."
- Mahatma Gandhi
Only the protection offered by a universe that responds more powerfully to love than to fear can be an effective shield
now. That protection has no limits in geography, nor do the dangers against which it guards. I criticize no one for
making a decision to expatriate. Some may have physical or financial limitations and concerns. Some may be honoring an
old Special Forces axiom that running today makes possible a fight more likely to succeed another day. This is a sifting
out for the battles that are to come; battles which will be unlike anything ever seen in this country. There will also
be a great many new brethren who will show up on battle lines that we must now redraw to suit ourselves. We must begin
choosing the times and places of battle to suit our needs. No task is more important than this.
We have expended our money, our liberty, our hearts and our souls by spending money as powers that be, and media
programming describing a fictitious America, told us we should; by volunteering in efforts that were laid out for us by
others; by believing that we were doing the right thing playing in a rigged game. The biggest ball and chain for us now
is the notion that we might resurrect an electoral process that officially died four years ago. Anything brought to life
now would be a Frankenstein rather than a happy ending to an episode of ER; and at what additional cost in terms of time
and energy?
What happened on Election Day was no surprise to me and it should have been no surprise to long-term FTW readers.
Perhaps now some of the over-conditioned "lefties" out there will start to ask serious questions about what kind of bang
they get for their buck - and their dedication. Billions of dollars and countless man/woman-hours that could have been
expended on real-deal strategies that had a chance of making a change have been diverted and pulled away and wasted as
badly as the energy of tens of millions of demonstrators who poured into the world's streets for months in an effort to
prevent the US invasion of Iraq in 2002-2003.
When will the American opposition start to ask what kind of return on investment they are getting? When will they start
demanding better performance? What a waste and what a cost in broken hearts for the young, those just beginning to try
and change the world. If the young are to save themselves (and us) they must refuse to be herded into a political
process that is, in itself, their prison.
Even though there is evidence that Ohio was stolen, John Kerry has given up; conceded; thrown in the towel. There won't
be any lawsuits because he won't allow it. Bush won the popular vote. If the 2000 election passed into history "as-is"
it is certain that the 2004 election is zip locked. Fuggedaboudit! The people now performing that task of documenting
electoral fraud in Ohio and elsewhere have safely made themselves historians and targets of lesser priority for Cheney
and Rove. They are no longer activists.
There will be no successful suits over this election. The courts are rigged and lawyers are sea anchors. As I predicted
a week after 9/11, every lawsuit since filed has been derailed, morphed, sidetracked or sabotaged from within. Any
lawsuit over the 2004 election (assuming Kerry permitted it) would wind up in the Supreme Court. Has everyone forgotten
Bill Rehnquist's cancer or that the Neocons get to pick the next three justices?
HUMAN AND MONETARY THERMODYNAMICS
Human energy works like physical energy.
Just a while ago I received a call from a source indicating that John Kerry ended his campaign with $45 million unspent
dollars in his war chest. That money had reportedly been laid aside to pay for a recount or post-election court
challenges. There will be none. The caller suggested that Kerry might get to keep it personally. This will need some
checking but it would not surprise me.
In many respects the dynamics of money - as activists now spend it - parallels the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It only
changes form in an entropic direction; from being able to do useful political and social work to being useless. But
there is a way to make it multiply. This is the FTW model where dollars spent with us recirculate within the activist
community and create more energy.
As Jesus pointed out, the gift of two pennies from the poor woman was infinitely more valuable than the large gift from
the wealthy man. The corporations which profited from all the opposition advertising, the political campaign chests
which swelled and spent that money, will never reinvest that money to slow America's descent into tyranny. That energy -
created from the sweat of the people - has been pretty-well neutralized. Sure George Soros lost money (I suppose), but
what was the percentage cost to him as opposed to all of the "little" Americans who opened their thinly-stretched purses
in pursuit of regime change? Soros suckered you into spending money that was far more important to you than his was to
him.
What if John Kerry had won? He was going to add 100,000 troops to the army. He denied Peak Oil's existence and promised
a chimerical "independence from Mid-East oil". He endorsed the notion that 19 hijackers operating from caves executed
the attacks of September 11th. Then he said he would fight the war on terror better than George W. Bush. He said nothing
about a corrupt economic system which has fed and sustained both him and George Bush all these years. He hasn't lost a
penny.
A day after Kerry conceded defeat; The Boston Herald ran a story:
Bay State electric customers facing shock of high oil prices
By Jay Fitzgerald
Thursday, November 4, 2004
Massachusetts electric customers can expect more jolts in coming months as rising oil and natural gas prices drive up
the cost of generating electricity.
Crude oil prices jumped by $1.26 yesterday after President Bush's election, settling at $50.88 a barrel.
Rising natural gas prices also pushed wholesale electricity in New England up. Natural gas is used to power plants that
generate electricity.
The bottom line: Expect electric bills to head higher this winter with heating oil and other energy costs…
Another story talked about how oil and gas companies breathed a sigh of relief after the Bush win because they would
face less regulation. Duh. But less regulation only means a more frenetic, thoughtless and careless mad scramble to suck
up remaining hydrocarbon energy resources rather than an effort to mitigate our dependence on them by the only real
choices available: a reduction in consumption and an intense, transparent effort to look for and liberate renewables and
any technologies that may have been suppressed.
Will someone up there in elite land - Yo, you guys up there on Olympus! - please get it. We know what's going on. You
are not fooling us.
EVERY VOTE MAY NOT BE COUNTED BUT EVERY DOLLAR ALWAYS IS
So if we don't keep trying to fix the electoral process what do we do? For four years we at FTW and elsewhere have also
been consistently saying that the way to change what's wrong with America and the world was to get outside of the
election box into which most activists and opposition forces have placed themselves as if under house arrest. The way to
fight is not with votes but with money. Every vote may not be counted. But every dollar always is.
For activists wishfully clinging to an old and inaccurate map, there is good reason for despair. On the FTW map, and the
map of great economic thinkers like Fitts - the accurate map - there are no grounds for discouragement here. Yes, things
will surely now get worse before (if ever) they get better. Yes, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, absent the need to show
restraint before a re-election campaign, may now take the gloves off. Quel surprise!
So now what?
VOTE WITH YOUR MONEY
Since 9/11 we have witnessed the evolution of a number of powerful, truly authentic journalism syndicates. FTW is but
one of many that are credible, trustworthy and which have proven themselves providers of valuable and accurate
information. I know many of these people and small companies personally and we have all pretty much behaved the same
way. Every dollar that was spent with used was used to benefit those who gave it to us. That keeps us all in the game.
In November of 2001, when I lectured at Portland State University I pledged to the audience there - and in the permanent
record of my video "The Truth and Lies of 9/11" - that I would take money spent on us and devote it to making FTW
bigger, more effective and capable of getting more important stories to them; stories that would give them information
that might save their lives. In 2001 I had two part-time writers, an office staff of one and me.
Today FTW has an office staff of four, three editors/writers, four regularly contributing writers and now almost 20,000
subscribers in more than 40 countries. I have kept my promise and you have seen the results. I am still living in a
studio apartment and driving a 9 year-old Ford. I may soon get to have - out of necessity - a larger and better place to
live and for the first time own a home of my own but you get the point. There are many others who have behaved this way
because we share a common sense of urgency.
But there's something else your help makes possible for me and for all of us. We are all knocking down the doors of the
major media.
ANOTHER PROMISE - I'M GOING TO WASHINGTON
Before describing this economic warfare and how we can fight it let me make you another promise.
As soon as we can reasonably arrange it, I am throwing all of our meager funds for a book tour into one large,
well-publicized book signing in Washington, D.C. Rubicon's publisher just did not have the resources to fund a book
tour. I am going to ask for all the back-up and support I can get, for as many of you to come to Washington as possible,
because I am going there - to the city where Bush, Cheney and Rove rule; the city where I was born - to stand up and
publicly accuse them and others of murder: multiple counts, and with premeditation.
The world will be watching and your dollars made that possible.
The only way I know how to lead is from the front. We will keep you apprised of developments via the FTW web site.
MONEY IN THE WORLD - MONEY IN AMERICA
There's a great first rule in economic warfare. It's exactly the same reason why flight attendants instruct people to
put on their oxygen masks before assisting others when an airliner's cabin depressurizes. To save the world you must
save yourself first. The way you start to fight with money is to get out of debt. If that means simplifying your life
then that's good anyway, you'll use less energy. But to be debt free is to stop paying your money to the corporations
and banks that are creating this naked aggression anyway.
These are the same corporations and banks that will come and pluck your economic copse when the economy crashes next
year as it surely must. If you are debt free then there will be less for them to pluck.
All around the globe we see newly forming economic and political alliances. In South America and elsewhere new regional
common markets are evolving rapidly. The Euro is rising to new significance as a world currency and a way to pull the
rug from under the Empire. From Russia, to Iran, to China to Venezuela, to Saudi Arabia the world is drifting inexorably
to a decision to price oil in Euros. China has just raised interest rates. In 2005 Iran is planning on opening an oil
bourse trading futures in Euros and is quietly building consensus support. This is, in my opinion, the major motive for
pressuring Iran just as Saddam Hussein's decision to price oil in Euros was his chief crime.
I still believe that any military adventurism against Iran is not possible and that the US knows this.
On October 22 Pravda reported that the Russian Central Bank had stopped supporting the US dollar. As I write this essay
the Euro is now trading at close to $1.30 US (a record high) and gold is holding steady at close to $430 an ounce. It
was $280 an ounce just three years ago. Sure, oil prices have dropped a bit but that has no bearing on the reality of
Peak Oil. I am still expecting oil to hit $100 a barrel in 2005. What happens to your job then? Your mortgage? The
housing bubble is on the verge of collapse and Fannie Mae is under criminal investigation. There may be three times more
paper mortgages floating around than there are physical properties. (www.solari.com; www.sandersresearch.com)
Think again of the significance of the fact that Vladimir Putin in Russia has just ratified the Kyoto protocols limiting
greenhouse gas emissions. This takes on a whole new meaning when one remembers that for the last 50 years there has been
an overwhelming correlation between GDP growth and greenhouse gas emission. In other words, economic growth is not
possible without burning more energy and this empire's Achilles heel is its insatiable living requirement of infinite
growth even unto the death of the planet. This is the price of fractional reserve banking, debt-based growth, a fiat
currency, and markets trapped in Price/Earnings ratios.
Russia's move is significant because under the Kyoto treaty - as reported by The Economist on October 7th - Russia's
voice in resurrecting the 1997 accord carries special weight:
LIKE a swamp creature in a bad horror movie, the Kyoto treaty on climate change has risen from the dead. A certain
Texan cowboy thought he had killed the Japanese monster. Alas, thanks to a last-minute betrayal by an inscrutable
Russian spymaster, the green beast is back.
That is only a slight exaggeration of how some people view the revival of the Kyoto protocol. The controversial UN
treaty, agreed in Japan in 1997, commits rich countries to cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases by 2012. But it was
dealt a near-fatal blow when George Bush confirmed America's rejection in 2001. The EU, Japan, Canada and over 100
others remained in, but Russia wavered. If it did not ratify, the pact would fail.
Today, as I finished this essay, Putin has ratified the accord after overwhelming passage by the Russian legislature.
The BBC writes:
Putin clears way for Kyoto treaty
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed the Kyoto protocol on climate change - clearing the way for the treaty to
come into force next year.
This is Russia's final and crucial stamp of approval for Kyoto. The pact needed support from countries responsible for
55% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, which most scientists blame for global warming.
After the United States refused to ratify it, only Russia could enable this threshold to be passed.
The significance is clear. Limit greenhouse gas emissions and you limit economic growth. Limit economic growth and you
undermine America's financial and economic vampire. The world is fighting back. We can too and in this way we can force
a change.
HOW DO AMERICANS DO THIS?
There's a reason why I asked former assistant Housing Secretary Catherine Austin Fitts to write the foreword for
Crossing the Rubicon. She knows money and she knows how to change the system. I spoke with her yesterday and neither of
us is contemplating a cut and run strategy. We are both committed to taking the fight to Washington and New York, no
matter the cost.
"I can show these people how they and all of us can make more money by fixing money and what it does. But the first
requirement is that people understand that they have to stop feeding the tapeworm that is creating all of this."
Perhaps now disillusioned Kerry supporters will take a second look at what FTW has been teaching for years.
Get out of debt.
Spend your money and time on things that give you energy and provide you with useful information.
Stop spending a penny with major banks, news media and corporations that feed you lies and leave you exhausted.
Learn how money works and use it like a weapon.
It is already becoming clear that as Peak Oil becomes a stark reality, survival will become a place-based, local
phenomenon. Local economies, to the degree that they exist and are flourishing will provide strength to resist what is
coming. Everyone who sees this essay should compare the return on investment they got with the election against
something that offers more payoffs, an opportunity to become real, independent actors on the fields of their own lives.
Go to Fitts' web site http://www.solari.com and look at the section "Coming Clean". Not until each one of us looks at the ways that we feed the best and accept
responsibility for that do we have a chance for today and for tomorrow.
As I have said in Crossing the Rubicon and in almost every lecture for the last three years, "We will change nothing
until we change the way that money works."
Perhaps now some people will be willing to listen to our voices crying in the wilderness.
Michael C. Ruppert
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[© Copyright, 2002, From The Wilderness Publications, www.fromthewilderness.com. All rights reserved. May be copied,
distributed or posted on the Internet for non-profit purposes only.]
- Michael C. Ruppert is the editor and creator of From The Wilderness Publications