Crossing The Rubicon:
The Decline of American Empire At The End Of The Age Of Oil

Most people I know have some intuitive sense that the stories told about the way the world works in our culture of daily “news” (and I use the term loosely) are suspect. The real stories about power and the ways power is exercised lie buried beneath the surface. But how deep, to quote “The Matrix”’s Morpheus, does this rabbit hole go?

For those willing to crawl down the hole, U.S. investigative journalism has its own Morpheus, and his name is Michael Ruppert. A UCLA political science honors graduate and former LAPD narcotics investigator, Ruppert is the editor/publisher of “From The Wilderness” (FTW at www.fromthewilderness.com), a monthly newsletter now read by more than 16,000 subscribers in 40 countries, including 40 Congressmen, both Houses’ intelligence committees, and professors at more than thirty universities around the world. He is also author of a new and startling book called “Crossing The Rubicon,” in which he draws on FTW’s seven years of research to tell a disturbing story about the way the world really works.

What Ruppert shares is not for the faint of heart. He asserts, as other researchers have, that key members within the U.S. intelligence community and the Bush administration helped engineer the 911 terrorist attack – “a catastrophic and catalyzing event” akin to “a new Pearl Harbor,” to quote from the Project For A New American Century’s 2000 report “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” – in order to build US public support for a military invasion and occupation of the greater Middle East. But Ruppert goes way beyond 911, arguing that the U.S. economy, built on an unsustainable “growth through debt” model and fed by more than $500 billion a year of laundered C.I.A.-controlled global drug money, is about to crash. Beyond the obvious – massive consumer debt, tremendously high levels of federal borrowing and spending, and spectacular corruption (more than $4 trillion have gone missing from the U.S. Treasury) – lies the specter of “Peak Oil.”

What dire news could possibly motivate any political official to consider supporting terrorist attacks on our native soil? The concept of Peak Oil, simply stated, suggests such a terrifying prospect: the planet is rapidly running out of hydro-carbon energy resources. Using geologist M. King Hubbert’s statistical model, which accurately predicted to within one year the coming of Peak Oil in the United States (1970), members of the world’s geological community argue that the world has now reached Peak Oil – fewer than 50% of the globe’s fossil fuel energy remain, and these hydro-carbon resources are the most inaccessible and expensive to locate, extract, refine, and transport to market.

For a world economy powered, quite literally, by fossil fuel energy, this is very sobering news. Our food and clothes are produced with oil (for every calorie of food Americans eat, we burn 20 calories of the stuff); most of the world’s 600 million internal combustion engines run on oil, and the energy to power our home and businesses are sustained on the black gold. No combination of alternative energy sources – nuclear, coal, wind, water, solar, geothermal, hydrogen – come close to matching oil and natural gas’ ubiquity. Pull fossil fuel energy out of the equation, and our global economy will collapse. Trillions of dollars will evaporate. Billions of people will starve. Many more millions will experience “severe dislocation.” How’s that for a euphemism?

Despite mounting evidence on a wide variety of fronts, Americans are in denial about Peak Oil’s impact, and our political leaders, for the most part, have refused to acknowledge the gravity of our situation. “The apparent crisis is about terrorism,” summarizes Ruppert. “The real crisis is about energy scarcity.” The crisis of Peak Oil, Ruppert suggests, explains why the U.S. government is willing to engage in global drug trading and money laundering to fund illegal covert operations around the globe, to spy on its own citizens, to undermine Constitutional freedoms, and to support attacks by terrorists like Osama Bin Laden (himself a CIA intelligence asset). The result? The U.S. government has created a “war on terror” to justify spending 1 billion a week fighting simultaneous wars (“a war that will not end in our lifetimes,” as Dick Cheney says) in Afghanistan and Iraq, two countries central to geo-strategic control of the world’s remaining energy reserves. Trillions of dollars and billions of lives are at stake, and instead of developing alternatives to our fossil-fuel powered way of life, our federal government is squandering what remaining time, energy, and money we have to solve the Peak Oil dilemma by choosing to fight expensive and bloody foreign wars around the globe.

Perhaps Dick Cheney said it best when he stated that “the American way of life is not negotiable.” But what about Vermont? Are we willing to work together to find solutions? “Vermont Commons” talked with Michael Ruppert about Peak Oil, 911, and Vermont independence.

Q. In “Crossing the Rubicon,” you provide a book’s worth of evidence to suggest that key players within the Bush administration helped engineer the 911 terrorist attacks to provide a pretext for securing the globe’s remaining fossil fuel energy reserves. What evidence has emerged since your book’s publication that further bolsters this argument?

A. I think we’ve seen evidence emerging on two fronts. The first is oil and energy: Peak Oil is extremely real and threatening, and it’s more imminent than most people thought. We are looking at serious major energy shortages this year, earlier than we anticipated, and the oil production numbers continue to perform as we thought they would, with decreasing supply, increasing demand, and rising prices.

Secondly, on the military front, we’ve seen retrenchment, globally, in terms of the world’s support of Iran in anticipation of a possible US military occupation of that country, which I don’t think will happen. The world needs Iranian oil - China has invested 200 billion into Iran; India has invested 40 billion, and Germany has invested 8 billion. The rest of the world is making it very clear to the US that we will not be allowed access to Iranian oil, at least, not without a big fight.

We’re also, by the way, seeing plans emerging to balkanize Iraq – suggestions to carve up Iraq into oil-rich and oil-poor regions; with the US controlling oil rich regions and making occupation that much more affordable, at least in the short term.

Q. You recently suggested that the “window of opportunity” has closed, as far as using emerging truths about the Bush administration’s complicity in 911 to bring about political reform. Speak more about this.

A. With the 2004 presidential election and the 2005 inauguration of Mr Bush, any window has closed. The 911 Commission and Congress have conducted all of their hearings; and the political and legal will to address the truth about 911 has evaporated. 911 has become history. To focus on 911 is a waste of energy.

Q. What of the “911Truth” community?

A. I appreciate any efforts to educate people about the truths regarding 911. I also see the 911 Truth community as fragmented, well-intentioned, and politically naïve, sometimes belligerently so. Teaching the truth about 911 for historical purposes is important, but to make it the primary focus of our educational efforts right now is a waste of time, with the reality of “Peak Oil” in the horizon.

Q. In “Rubicon,” you note that eminent geologist M. King Hubbert’s prediction about the US reaching “Peak Oil” in 1970 were dead on. Have we reached “Peak Oil” globally? What evidence is there to bolster this claim?

A. We will never know for certain until we see “Peak Oil” in the rear view mirror. Rapid decline of major oil fields indicates that our predictions are much more accurate and more serious than we anticipated.

Q. British news magazine “The Economist” recently did a feature issue on oil in which they referred to Colin Campbell and Matthew Simmons, two researchers whose evidence you cite in RUBICON, as “petro pessimists” who painted a far too urgent picture re: Peak Oil. Your response?

A. Here we are two months after “The Economist” published that issue, and our predictions seem dead on. Remember, “The Economist” has a vested interest in maintaining existing markets as long as possible, and that includes reporting on stories in a way that benefits the status quo.

Q. What concrete steps can all of us take to prepare for Peak Oil?

A. Peak Oil is here, and will turn out to be single most important event in human civilization. The subsequent energy shortfall will take us back to a carrying capacity of two billion people. It won’t be pretty. There will be survivors, who will figure out how to manage through place- based local cooperative efforts. I’m beginning to see this all over the country. The question is – can people organize themselves in time?

Q. You’ve suggested, in your writings and talks, that American political culture is more and more resembling fascism. What recent evidence do you see?

A. The list of things happening within the US is truly frightening, in terms of both volume and speed. Congress is moving to throw out the 25th Amendment, which imposes a “two term” limit on sitting presidents; the FBI can now issue its own subpoenas, without court involvement; It has just been proposed that US military intelligence should work with local law enforcement agencies to weaken “posse comitatus;” Congressman James Sensebrenner has now introduced legislation – HR 1528 – to impose a mandatory 5 year prison sentence for failing to inform on family members of friends guilty of marijuana possession or minor drug use; I predict we will soon see a national draft, and Canada will not harbor US deserters as it did during Vietnam, as it is now a virtual US colony…the list goes on and on.

Q. Paint a picture of our near-term future.

A. We’ll see major blackouts, the dollar will collapse, we’ll experience massive unemployment, the housing market will tank, and there will be a national “fire sale” as people and businesses are stripped of their assets. My best financial advice, acknowledging that there is no “one size fits all” plan, is to stay liquid, get out of debt while you still can, and decide if your most valuable assets, including your own home, are worth hanging on to. If your home is on a few acres with running water and rich soil, then sit on it. If it’s a condo in downtown Manhattan, you might consider moving.

Q. What are your thoughts re: Vermont independence, and secession – the voluntary break-up of US Empire through peaceful and cooperative means – generally?

A. The U.S. Empire will tank one way or another. I love Vermont, and have some old friends there. Any project that encourages cooperative efforts to re-invent some of our most basic and fundamental social and political policies around energy, agriculture, money, etc. – is the best hope we have.

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War Of The Worlds:
A Meditation on Peak Oil?

As a big H.G. Wells fan, I went to see Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise’s blockbuster “War Of The Worlds” more out of a sense of obligation than any genuine interest. Their last collaboration (“Minority Report”) had moments of brilliance but ultimately failed to satisfy. The reviews I had read of “War,” meanwhile, proved lukewarm. Friends who saw it also pronounced the film a sleeper. But I grew up reading plenty of sci fi stuff, and whenever the original “War Of The Worlds” movie aired on week-end TV, I always made sure to watch. Something about the way those aliens coasted across the planet zapping everything in sight fascinated me – to this day, I can’t say why.

I left the film feeling strangely enlightened. The movie proved better than I thought, actually. We all know that Spielberg is a special FX master. Watching the massive alien tripods tromp around America blasting everything and everyone in sight proved deliciously horrifying. I also appreciated the way Spielberg pays homage to the original film in a number of key moments – the “snaking tripod camera into the house” scene and the “infected alien hand creeping out of the tripod” climax brought back the original into vivid focus in my mind. Spielberg also invents entirely new twists to shock and frighten: from the ghostly laser vaporization of entire humans leaving only a “poofed” set of ashes behind, to the latticed spider web of chewed-up and bloody human remains that covered the blasted landscape, spilling all over the set like Halloween decorations. In one brilliantly shot scene, one of the protagonists finds a way to a quiet river at early morning, only to be distracted by the bodies of the dead meandering silently downstream in the wake of an alien attack. Chilling. Haunting. And utterly believable.

And, of course, the acting proved passable for a Hollywood film with big stars. Dakota Fanning plays “terrified cute” with aplomb. Tim Robbins is brilliant as the shell-shocked and edgy survivor who menaces Cruise and Fanning in one of the film’s key sections. And, as he often does, Tom Cruise plays, well, himself yet again – managing to crawl into the “Ray the dysfunctional dock-worker father of two desperate children” role with ease for roughly 80 minutes of the film after beginning the movie in “Top Gun” flying ace mode and ending with a sort of “All The Right Moves” meets “Jerry McGuire” look on his face.

But the real inspiration for me began in the film’s first fifteen minutes, when I watched Spielberg, consciously or not, lay over the traditional “War Of The Worlds” story a contemporary and very real crisis we all face. What brought such death and destruction to the planet? Aliens, of course, but at first, everyone in the film thinks the perps are…you guessed it, “terrorists.” (Americans worried about “communists” back when the original film as made).

But, from the film’s outset, Spielberg does (at least in my mind while watching) this whole riff on Peak Oil, subtly nuancing the fact that the world is running out of precious fossil fuel resources, and suggests (at least in my mind while watching) that, while Americans were concerned about imagined threats OUT THERE, the real threats to our civilization proved of our own making.

Let me explain. Spielberg opens the film with a shot of the New York City skyline, devoid of the Twin Towers, and symbol of the post-911 landscape and the “war on terror” (which, as many who’ve researched the US government’s alleged involvement in the 911 attacks knows, is but one piece in the larger Peak Oil puzzle). We then meet Tom Cruise’s Ray, a dock-working crane operator who unloads giant steel containers of manufactured goods for eager Americans to buy (symbol of America’s “debt-financed” and ultimately unsustainable growth economy, built on Peak Oil and hyper-consumption). Ray, a car lover, goes home to a tiny apartment full of half-built auto engines (overt symbolism), and his two estranged kids so bedazzled by their petroleum-fabricated MP3 players and fashion accessories that they have a hard time communicating.

Then, the aliens strike. From where? Out of the sky? No, massive electrical storms deliver them down into the ground, where their podlike machines have been buried among ancient carboniferous critters (read = oil) for millennia. The storms also knock out all electrical power – cars, lights, you name it – all of which, of course, is powered by fossil fuels. A terrified Ray flees with his two kids, clutching a discarded Penzoil Oil (symbol alert!) box full of condiments – suggesting that, without fossil fuels, we won’t be able to feed ourselves for very long unless we all become farmers again. By film’s end, a somber narrator (Morgan Freeman) tells us that more than 1 billion people perished before the aliens were vanquished. What might kill off billions in real life? The subsequent starvation and die-off brought on by the realities of Peak Oil and global economic collapse (See www.dieoff.org).

I know what you are thinking. This analogy is a REAL stretch. Maybe. But moviegoers (me included) always read, often unconsciously, current concerns into popular cultural texts, concerns that are (often unconsciously) reflected by the film’s makers.

I might be mad, of course. Or perhaps “War Of The Worlds” contains more truths than we might realize.

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