September 11th Truth Now

Crossing the Rubicon, by Michael C. Ruppert
excerpts from chapter 11 Vreeland I

"There is one man who spent a great deal of time and effort attempting to warn US and Canadian authorities of the attacks that occurred on September 11th, 2001. In spite of all the raging controversy that occurred around him, and around me for bringing him to light, there is one fact that cannot be denied. Both he and his Toronto attorneys Rocco Galati and Paul Slansky spent months in a well-documented, indisputable, and ultimately futile effort to prevent those attacks. That can be easily established. From the moment I made the fateful decision to get involved in his case, this fact - and this fact alone - is the only thing that I have ever considered important about it...

[Delmart "Mike"] Vreeland, gray, gaunt, fatigued, and jumpy, turned quickly to see who I was. He leaned over to Galati who turned, looked, recognized me from my picture on the website, and whispered in Vreeland's ear. I took out my notebook and listened.
The hearing had been in progress for some time, but the first thing I heard was the judge making a reference to having portions of certain documents deleted stating, "these items shall be deleted by means of scissors and once deleted, should be destroyed."
Having had no real access to information, I could only scribble notes of portions of the hearing that seemed pertinent. There was discussion by counsel from both sides indicating that Vreeland had, in fact, provided witness testimony against organized crime interests in Michigan in a case involving a Bobby Moore and that he was also a Crown witness in a continuing investigation and prosecution of a Nestor Fonseca who had been connected to a Canadian murder plot.
With that much confirmed, and through watching an animated Vreeland in his chair at counsel table, I was rapidly concluding that Vreeland's case was totally consistent with what prior experience had told me to expect.
The Crown Solicitor made a good point. Vreeland and his attorneys were alleging that he had been sent to Moscow in 2000 to retrieve extremely sophisticated scientific information connected to the Star Wars missile defense system that only he could evaluate. From my knowledge of covert operations this had to be a cover story. It was ludicrous to believe that the US government would ever send any person with the kind of technical knowledge required to evaluate top secret technology into a foreign land. In fact the travels of such people within the US intelligence and scientific community is closely monitored and restricted. This would be making a gift of the real secrets to the enemy.
Vreeland had allegedly returned from Moscow with several sealed pouches of intelligence data. Galati made a point of telling the court that he had not seen the pouches and had no first-hand knowledge of what they contained. The Crown Solicitor then referred to Vreeland's military record. I noticed that Vreeland's fair-complexioned lawyer Galati, who looked like a cherubic, playful pit bull, became animated any time Vreeland's military records were mentioned. It was immediately obvious that Galati did not suffer fools gladly, and he was not afraid to let the court see his emotions. This, I have found, is both a gift and a curse of anyone who is certain of his intellectual and factual foundations. I liked him immediately.
The Crown Solicitor asked why the US government would send someone who had been discharged from the navy after only a few months, with minimal education, and official training in the tool and die field to evaluate top secret scientific material in Russia. This was a good rhetorical question, given the Crown's position that Vreeland had only been in the navy for a few months. But Galati kept reminding the court that the records were inconsistent, that they had been altered, and that some of them indicated that Vreeland's service record was over 1,200 pages in length, not bad for someone who had only served for a few months before being discharged as unfit. Some were dated well after his supposed discharge date.
Then, just about 15 minutes later, I heard the Crown Solicitor step through the looking glass into the parallel universe.
He was rebutting the claim that Vreeland's other lawyer, Paul Slansky, had previously made a phone call from the (open) courtroom to the Pentagon switchboard. And in that phone call a Pentagon operator had confirmed Vreeland's rank as a naval lieutenant (impossible for someone who only served a few months) and provided Slansky with an office number and a direct dial phone number. To counter this claim the Crown Solicitor then suggested that Vreeland, who had been held without bail for more than a year on a non-capitol offense, had somehow hacked into the Pentagon's computer system from his jail cell and altered the Pentagon's database.
Galati was vibrating with frustration from his chair as the Crown Solicitor also suggested that "Vreeland-the-Idiot" had somehow translated documents in Russian and Albanian and then had them posted on a secure and unknown website. Galati was quick to point out to the court that Vreeland didn't speak Russian or Albanian and he was wondering why the Crown Solicitor was so quick to have Vreeland be both a village idiot and a criminal mastermind at the same time.
This was all too familiar, but I was not making up my mind until after I had spoken to both Galati and Slansky. That was most definitely going to happen before I went anywhere near Vreeland personally. Looking at him in the courtroom, all I could see was a gigantic wriggling can of worms.
At one point the Crown Solicitor made a statement that I was careful to record exactly. "The inescapable inference [of Vreeland's allegations] is that US intelligence had that information as early as 2000 and made no effective use of it." Exactly, I thought. Exactly! That is why they must destroy him and anyone who makes him credible..."


(The warning note, written 1 year prior to the attacks, was the only part of Vreeland's allegedly large amount intelligence information that was made public.) see full size image - http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/01_28_02_vreeland.jpg

The RNC's Ugliness Lingers and the Feds are Coming for You

The Republican National Convention during the past September of 2008 was the site of much more than just the ill-fated nomination of John McCain and Sarah Palin for Prez and VP, and the ghostly wake of that ugly couple of days will be haunting us for some time.

For one thing, there was a serious and concerted attack on the free press with the arrest and detention of Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now, and her news crew for no reason at all other than her tendency to report on protests and the seething underbelly of Politics instead of the bigwigs and hotshots who would otherwise fill the mainstream news with their own egos and self-serving horseshit.

But while Amy and her people were eventually released without charge, there may be no such luck for two men who will stand trial January 26th on charges of making and possessing Molotov cocktails during the RNC and who may face up to 30 years in jail. This would be somewhat inconsequential if it weren't revealed, on the 30th of December, that one of their co-planners was one Brandon Darby, an FBI informant. (Moynihan, NY Times, 1/04/09) Friends of David McKay and Bradley Crowder, the two who will stand trial, have accused Brandon Darby of being a provocateur and an enabler, which wouldn't be at all unusual and would actually better fit the pattern of events like this. An article by Guy Lawson, The Fear Factory, richly details several cases where our own FBI radicalized otherwise innocent Americans, gave them homes and weapons to then arrest them in a trumped-up, bullshit glory of preventing the death and chaos that would have doubtlessly ensued without the intervention of the FBI... and never mind that the FBI would have been culpable and the main perpetrators in these crimes, that's not
important, what is important is... is God Bless America! There were also the protests against the "Security and Prosperity Partnership" in Montbello Canada in August 2007, where after some ugly confrontations, nervous bumblings and the consistent level headedness of activist leaders the Canadian police were forced to admit that it was their own undercover agents that were there wielding rocks and inciting violence. Fiat iustitia!

"There is no such thing as paranoia."

- HST

War is Over: Thoughts on John Lennon and Sticking It to The Man at the End of 2008

After a successful career as a Beatle John Lennon became a leading figurehead of the anti-war/pro-peace movement of the late 60's and 70's. His "bed-ins" for peace became famous and notorious, as did his buying of billboard space across Britain and the U.S. to declare that "War is Over! If you want it."

There are many people who lament the fact that war isn't over, that John Lennon's message isn't true and that now he is dead and can no longer lead us to into our new age of peace... but they are fools and are wrong. What Lennon's message was, was not so much a statement of something we all wish were true, as it was a proclamation of the incredible possibilities of each person. What Lennon gave us was a new outlook on the world. With the right eyes, one can almost see the veil of self-doubt that fools each one of us into believing that the conflicts of the world are beyond our power being lifted and the real world, where an end to war is not only possible but possible for anyone of us to bring about, is revealed in striking clarity with the gift John gave to us in his simple message "War is over! If you want it." How? Know your elected officials, your governor, your congressman, your police chiefs etc, let your thoughts be known and don't let anyone fool you into thinking that you have no voice, you do and people will listen. Real change starts from the bottom up and it's a damn good time for us to get down to it. Alright.

Click on picture for video

The riots and protests across Greece, and Athens in particular, continue after more than a month of unrest and 21 days since police killed 15 year old Alexis Grigoropoulos in cold blood. The protests began in reaction to the global economic crisis and the conservative government of PM Costas Karamanlis' plan to cut public services to a level that would cause people in this U.S. to scream "communist!" But whatever, to each is their own. The protests have no real leader and are mainly a mix of Greece's Communist Party members, college and high-school students and the so-called 700-euro generation, college grads who can't find employment above minimum wage. Despite the disorganization of the efforts, according to the BBC's reporting, there is a lot of talk on the streets of revolution and a collapse of western capitalism that could be comparable to the collapse of Soviet communism in the 1990's. The protests and riots have shaken much of the establishment politic across Europe with the fear of the riots spreading to other nations. French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, speaking of his own now-dormant but increasingly embittered population said to his parliament that "in the name of symbols, they can overthrow the country. They are regicidal. Just look what's going on in Greece."

"Power to the People! Right on!"
- John Lennon

The iron-curtain, steel-chains of the USA Patriot Act are slowly being chipped away with the most recent victory of the ACLU. The victory was won over something called "national security letters", which were used to gag any library, ISP, phone company, hospital or other entity that the government demanded private records of U.S. citizens and non-citizens alike from. Now the executive and its auspices most go to a court to explain, on a case by case basis, why the company they took personal records from can't speak to its clients or anyone about the snooping around the feds have been doing. This follows a September 2007 court ruling that declared the government had to have probable cause to obtain a search warrant. Ho hum! I couldn't make this stuff up. Still, I wouldn't bet against the feds ability to circumvent these rulings with the legal-blackhole "suspected terrorist" designation or just pure innuendo and fear-mongering... Oh well, you have to learn to crawl before you can walk.

In a fitting end to 2008 and the Bush presidency a visit to Iraq by George Bush went awry when an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at the U.S. president. Muntazer al-Zaidi, who worked for al-Baghdadiya television, threw his two shoes at the U.S. president while shouting "This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog."

Happy New Year and Good Luck!

September 11th Truth Now

"A lot of these pieces of information, taken together, prove that the official story, the official conspiracy theory of 9/11 is a bunch of hogwash. It’s impossible. … There’s a second group of facts having to do with the cover up. … Taken together these things prove that high levels of our government don’t want us to know what happened and who’s responsible."

- Lieutenant Colonel Robert Bowman, U.S. Air Force, Sept. 11th 2004

Michael C. Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon, excerpts from Chp. 12 Executing a Conspiracy

"Twelve-year veteran FBI agent Robert Wright Jr. should be proud. Of all of the FBI "brick" agents who have come forward since 9/11 to describe the deliberate obstruction of investigations that could have prevented the attacks, no others have taken the risks or endured the punishment that Wright has. For good reason.

Wright is the only agent in the FBI's history to have conducted an investigation of terrorists that resulted in the seizure of financial assets. In 1998 he began an investigation - since terminated by the FBI - into terrorist money laundering in the United States. That investigation resulted in the seizure of bank accounts and other assets of Yassin Kadi, who has "since been identified as one one of the 'chief money launderers' for Osama bin Laden." Kadi is reported to have provided as much as $3 billion to al Qaeda before Wright shut him down...

In the only real coverage of Wright's decision to come forward - which was coupled with a formal complaint against the FBI for its suppression of him - the Congressional News Service told a chilling tale as it reported on a press conference held by Wright and his legal team on May 30, 2002:

In a memorandum written 91 days before the September 11 terrorist attacks, an FBI agent warned that Americans would die as a result of the bureau's failure to adequately pursue investigations of terrorists living in the country... Wright says that FBI management 'intentionally and repeatedly thwarted and obstructed his attempts to expand the investigation to arrest other terrorists and seize their assets... As a direct result of the incompetence and, at times, intentional obstruction of justice by FBI management to prevent me from bringing the terrorists to justice, Americans have unknowingly been exposed to potential terrorist attacks for years,' he charged.

- Jeff Johnson, "Tearful FBI agent...", Congressional News Service, May 30th 2002

FBI Director Robert Mueller held a May 29, 2002 press conference where he stated, "It is critically important that I hear criticisms of the organization including of me in order to improve the organization." Meanwhile the FBI was landing on Wright's chest with both feet. It had issued Wright written orders not to discuss what he knew and not to disclose, either in speech or writing, the contents of an unpublished manuscript entitled Vulgar Betrayal that he had written for Congress. Wright was threatened with disciplinary action, civil suits, revocation of security clearances, and even criminal prosecution if he talked. That letter was received by Wright's attorney, David Schippers, at 5:00 pm on the same day Mueller lied to the American people about his pure intentions...

The sheer vindictiveness of a system that seeks to silence whistleblowers was most fully revealed in the press conference itself, in which it was disclosed that Wright, Schippers, and attorney Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch (a Washington, DC-based legal watchdog group) had actually met months before 9/11. They also disclosed that Wright had written most of his manuscript and decided to speak out about the repression well before the first plane hit the World Trade Center. Repeating allegations that Wright had been threatened and intimidated by the Bureau, Klayman stated that Wright's manuscript hits both Bush and Cheney "hard." That leaves little doubt about where the orders to crush Wright were coming from. Shippers added that Wright had even been ordered not to talk to Congress. John Ashcroft was not spared in the scathing statements. Klayman said that "Ashcroft very likely had all of the information" and didn't use Wright's investigative work to pull the financial plug on al Qaeda before the attacks."

The Petroleum Man Lays on His Deathbed as the Auto Workers of America and Their CEO's Go to D.C. to Beg for Forgiveness and Salvation

"Global demand for oil and natural gas is growing faster than new supplies are being found, and the world population is exploding. Currently the world uses between four and six barrels of oil for every new barrel that it finds, and the trend is getting worse. Natural gas use is exploding while the rate of new gas discoveries is plunging.
According to most experts - including Colin Campbell... there are only about 1 trillion barrels of accessible conventional oil remaining on the planet. Presently the world uses approximately 82 million barrels per day. Even if demand remained unchanged, which it clearly will not, that would mean that the world will run out of conventional oil within 35 years."

- Michael C. Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon, 2004 New Society Publishers

The rank and file auto workers and union leaders of United Auto Workers (UAW) went to congress today to present their plan for a transformed "auto" industry in the hopes of maintaining some sort of control over an industry that is rapidly failing. The CEO's of "The Big Three" American auto manufactures have made two very publicized visits to congress to try and secure 34 billion in federal loans to stave off the collapse of an industry that directly and indirectly provides 3 million American jobs, but to no avail. No, all we have now is a $15 billion plan proposed by congress, which is being negotiated with the Whitehouse, as I write this, and isn't even a loan because it is funded entirely from an initiative passed long ago by congress to help the auto industry build fuel efficient vehicles. (AP, Dec. 8th) Should this plan be passed it would amount to nothing more than the creation of a Bush appointed "car czar", who would oversee the industry and doubtlessly prevent any real addressing of the problem that would cause the industry's CEO's to drive hybrid cars to D.C. after being lambasted for taking planes their first trip there. That problem is the rapidly diminishing energy resources that our entire economy depends upon. Oil and natural gas.

The Fantastic Possibilities for Killing All Humans: Robert Gates and Pre-emptive Nuclear Warfare

"America when will we end the human war?

Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb

I don't feel good don't bother me."

- Allen Ginsberg, America

Rumor has it that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will be staying on board with the incoming Obama administration. I heard it from Alex Jones, who heard it from Politico.com and ABC and CNN, who heard it from their own sources. It's probably true, but I hope it isn't. While more of Robert Gates wouldn't be as bad as another few years of former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, who left his office with the grace of a rabid dog to save any heads from rolling over the Iraq invasion, it would still be pretty bad. Actually, I don't think there is anyone who could fill the job of Secretary of Defense that would satisfy me. No, it must just be one of those jobs that attracts the really rotten people. Oh well, fuck it. He'll probably just be on staff until this wretched act in human history known as the Iraq War is brought to an end, then he'll be cast off like another pair of shit-stained briefs by our Goliath executive branch. Ho, ho! How's that for a description of the second person in charge of all America's armed forces?

The World Socialist Website and, the yin to their yang, Alex Jones' InfoWars.com have been reporting on Robert Gates' October 28th statements calling for pre-emptive nuclear warfare. Gates is reported to say that "As long as other states have or seek nuclear weapons—and can potentially threaten us, our allies and friends—then we must have a deterrent capacity that makes it clear that challenging the US in the nuclear arena—or with other weapons of mass destruction—could result in an overwhelming, catastrophic response." This statement was made in a speech about U.S. nuclear weapons policy, of course, which prompted a few righteous responses, like the one by the people at the World Socialist Website.

"Such a doctrine has immense implications not only for US nuclear weapons programs, but for the totality of US foreign policy. It stipulates that every foreign power in the world must believe that attempting to develop nuclear weapons invites US nuclear attack. Thus, the US would arguably be obliged to attack with nuclear weapons countries which it accused of developing nuclear weapons—such as Iran and North Korea—lest the rest of the world conclude that the US will not carry out its threats."

- Lantier, WSWS.org, Oct. 30th 2008

However, what both sites and apparently nearly all of the public, with the exception of readers of World for Ending War on facebook, have missed was that pre-emptive nuclear warfare has been an official policy of the United States armed forces since 2005, when the Joint Chiefs of Staff wrote up their Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations, which stated that permission for the use of nuclear weapons could be given for many reasons which included, in striking similarity to Gate's statements, "to deter adversary use of WMDs" and also the ominously ambiguous reason "to insure the success of US and multinational operations", which could really mean anything. The implications of these alternative news outlets missing this first story are pretty ugly, but are probably not all that important and I don't feel like dealing with that now. Besides, those implications aren't nearly as terrible as the ones are that come with the mad audacity of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who dealt first hand with the mess of the Iraq invasion that was based on the pre-emptive warfare doctrine, very publicly reiterating the call for the expanded pre-emptive warfare doctrine, so that it includes nuclear strikes! No, there is no hope for that kind of deranged craziness. None at all. And we can only hope that Gates will be chased out of his office, like the rabid dog he is, before the Obama administration takes the reigns and we can put an end to these stupid fears of a nuclear holocaust for at least another four years.

The Specter of War Hangs Over Iran, But the Deal Just Won't Go Down

Prelude: The Suicide Bomber of Baghdad



In March of 2003 the U.S. led an invasion of Iraq on trumped-up and bogus allegations of a weapons of mass destruction threat. Included in those phony allegations was the claim, made by George W. Bush, that we had intelligence of Saddam Hussein’s regime trying to buy weapons-grade uranium from some shady back-alley in Africa. Indeed, our intelligence people were in Niger investigating this claim more than a year before Bush used it to sell the invasion of Iraq and they said it was bogus then, and very loudly later when Ambassador Joseph Wilson went public about a month after the invasion. Even the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency wrote a letter to the White House in 2002 saying that the documents that entire claim was based on were obviously fake. (Leopold, Counterbias) In all of the innuendo and fear-mongering by the Bush administration that was heedlessly propagated by our media-establishment, this was one of the only actual, albeit false, claims made against Saddam's regime... aside from possessing aluminum tubes and the phony association with the dread specter of the most versatile political tool since Adolf Hitler's Reichstag Fire, 9/11, of course. Every one of the claims was known to be false, or at least baseless, by the U.N., the Bush administration and any person able to do a minimal amount of investigating into the topic, and all of that should have been widely reported by the governments watchdog, the press… but wasn’t, which goes to show, if nothing else, that the media-establishment is not much more than another degenerate gang of fascist thugs working for the twisted plans of a dying elite at the expense of peace and human-rights across the globe.

"The documents, given to International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, indicated that Iraq might have tried to buy 500 tons of uranium from Niger, but the agency said they were 'obvious' fakes."
- David Ensor, CNN Washington Bureau, March 14th 2003

George Bush is guilty. There are some who have tried to defend the President’s statements, like the people at The Daily Howler, regarding the bogus uranium sale to Iraq by saying that Bush only said Saddam “sought” to buy uranium from Niger, which is what he said. That, though, was still a deliberate lie, because the documents, which were at the base of that assumption, were known to be false by the U.N. and were confirmed by our intelligence agencies, to the best of their abilities on three separate occasions, to be false before George Bush made his statement. If the standard for impeachment is a botched political burglary or lying about a blowjob, then George Bush should not only be impeached but he should be hung for the war-crimes he committed. Arrest him, try him and hang him… or give him the electric chair or the lethal injection that he gave to so many children while he was the governor of Texas. It doesn’t matter which.

The Specter of War Hangs Over Iran, But the Deal Just Won't Go Down

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is an objective voice, in regards to Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program, and I have not always been and I am the smarter for it. Indeed, you would have to take the subjectivity that comes with realizing that the President deliberately lied to the American people, and the world, to start a war against Iraq, to have known all along that we are being lied to again about Iran. Hell, the claims against Iran are virtually identical to those that were made against Iraq! That certainly has to be of some significance.

In 2004, the U.N. with the IAEA began approving sanctions against Iran for allegedly violating the nuclear non-proliferation treaty by attempting to build a nuclear weapon. That allegation and the sanctions were and, to this day, still are based entirely upon one piece of evidence that is beginning to appear to be about as fabricated as George Bush’s claim that intelligence agents found Saddam’s people trying to buy weapons-grade uranium in Niger. That evidence is a set of technical drawings found on a laptop by U.S. intelligence that depicted a reworking of an Iranian missile to carry a nuclear warhead. The authenticity of these documents has come under question, just recently, by the IAEA and could mean the end of the sanctions against Iran and all but the most ill-informed fears about Iran trying to build a nuke. The full scope of the IAEA’s doubts about the documents is written out pretty well in Gareth Porter’s November 11th article for Raw Story, Docs Linking Iran to Nuclear Weapons May Be Fake, but a more fundamental reason to doubt the implications of those documents and the documents themselves exists anyways. That no one has yet to reconcile the fact that U.S. intelligence issued a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report in 2007 that stated Iran has had no nuclear weapons program since at least 2003 with the claim that U.S. intelligence supposedly found documents of an Iranian nuclear weapons program in 2004, most likely means, besides the documents being fake, that somewhere higher up in the chain of command things got mixed up, again, so that “no evidence of nuclear weapons” came out as “evidence of nuclear weapons”. Ho, ho! It’s the Joseph Wilson scandal all over again… only this time it came out before the war. No one has reconciled these conflicting claims with, maybe, the exception of Valerie Plame-Wilson, former CIA agent and wife of Joseph Wilson. Speaking at the Philadelphia Constitution Center in February 2008 and through a veil of secrecy behind which we may never fully see, she spoke of the 2007 NIE report as “the professionals taking a stand against the Bush administration and their wars.” Ah, I paraphrase, as I have lost the video, but the point still remains fresh in my brain. Yes, it seems to me like this is one war that isn’t going to be fought... and so we have already won. Alright.

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
- Albert Einstein