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I’m pleased to provide scanned excerpts from Michael Ruppert’s comprehensive investigation of The New World Order and 911 which introduces new evidence contained in his newly released book, Crossing the Rubicon: The decline of the American Empire at the end of the oil era. (It’s one book that will profoundly change the way you manage the rest of your life: A must read. david)

 

 From the “Summation” section (excerpts from page 582 to 591)

 

Based upon the evidence, we can safely say that two airliners hit the World Trade Center. That part was filmed and/or witnessed by many people. We can also safely say that a number of witnesses saw an airliner make an unprecedented acrobatic maneuver over the Pentagon. There is, however, no footage of Flight 77's famed aerial maneuver just as there is no footage that shows an airliner actually hitting the Pentagon. The only thing ever produced was a film that showed the side of the Pentagon and then a large ball of flame.

 

Many websites have posted what they purported was slow motion footage  revealing an aircraft tailfin approaching the Pentagon and the debate over whether it was an F-16 or a cruise missile or something else grew so intense that threats of violence and some serious name-calling took place between advocates of various theories. Since it was based upon evidence that l could not verify as easily as a statement made by Dick Cheney, Condo Rice, or anyone else, 1 chose not to waste tedious time there. 1 could not personally verify the chain of custody of those films| or that they had not been tampered with. I lack the technical proficiency to   judge such things, and l am not an expert in the area of photographic analysis.

 

Flight 77 remains the greatest unsolved mystery of 9/1 l but that does not alter my belief in the guilt of the suspects.

 

'What we have, however, is a feat of airplane driving that far exceeds the skills   reportedly possessed by any of the alleged hijackers. In fact, the flying skills required for such a maneuver surpass even those of commercial airline pilots. A 2002 story that originated in Portugal confirms this.  

 

The Portugal News is a weekly English-language newspaper read largely by   expatriate and touring Americans. On March 8, 2002, in a story headlined   “September 11 -- US Government Accused'' it reported: 

A group of military and civilian US pilots, under the chairmanship of  Colonel Don de Grand, after deliberating non-stop for 72 hours, has concluded that the flight crews of the four passenger airliners, involved in the September 11th tragedy, had no control over their aircraft.   In a detailed press communiqué the inquiry stated: ''The so-called   terrorist attack was in fact a superbly executed military operation carried out against the USA, requiring the utmost professional military skill in command, communications, and control. It was flawless in ' timing, in the choice of selected aircraft to be used as guided missiles and in the coordinated delivery of those missiles to their pre-selected   targets.''  

 

The report seriously questions whether or not the suspect hijackers, supposedly trained on Cessna light aircraft, could have located a   target dead-on 200 miles from take off point. It further throws doubt their ability to master the intricacies of instrument flight

 

Colonel de Grand said that it would be impossible for novices to have taken control of the four aircraft and orchestrated such a terrible act [on 911] requiring military precision of the highest order. A member of the inquiry team, a US Air Force officer who flew over 100 sorties during the Vietnam war, told the press conference “Those birds (commercial airliners) either had a crack fighter pilot in the left seat, or they were being maneuvered by remote control. "  In evidence given to the enquiry, Captain Kent Hill (retd.) of the US Air Force, and friend of Chic Burlingame, the pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon, stated that the US had on several occasions  flown an unmanned aircraft, similar in size to a Boeing 737

across the Pacific from Edwards Air Force base in California to South     Australia. According to Hill it had flown on a pre-programmed flight   under the control of a pilot in an outside station

Hill also quoted Bob Ayling, former British Airways boss, in an

interview given to the London Economist on September   2001. Ayling admitted that it was now possible to control an aircraft from either the ground or in the air. This was confirmed by expert witnesses at the inquiry who testified that airliners could be controlled by electro-magnetic pulse or radio frequency instrumentation from command and control platforms based either in the air or at ground level.

    A1l members of the inquiry team agreed that even if guns were held to their heads none of them would fly a plane into a building. Their reaction would be to ditch the plane into a river or a field, thereby safeguarding the lives of those on the ground. During the press conference Captain Hill maintained that the four airliners must have been choreographed by an Airborne Warning and  Control System (AWACS). This system can engage several aircraft     simultaneously by knocking out their on-board flight controls. He said that all the evidence points to the fact that the pilots and their crews had not taken any evasive action to resist the supposed hijack   ors. They had not attempted any sudden changes in flight path pose-dive procedures which led him to believe that they had control over their aircraft. 

 

   THE NEWS, in an attempt to further substantiate the potential  veracity of these findings, spoke to an Algarave-based airline pilot, who  has more than 20 years of experience in flying passenger planes, to seek his views. Captain Colin McHattie, currently flying with Cathay  Pacific, agreed with the independent commission's findings. However he explained that while it is possible to fly a plane from the ground the installation of the necessary equipment is a time-consuming process, and needs extensive planning.  

 

Which brings us back to the war games again.

 

The War Games.

 

The military has been practicing shoot-downs of remotely piloted aircraft since the  1950’s. l consider it likely that on September 11,  all four aircraft were remotely piloted or taken over by a system that can be activated without the flight crew's ability to intervene. I believe that the apparatus to remotely pilot the two planes  that struck in New York was housed and operated from within the New York City’s Office of Emergency Management (or very close by), where we know that a Secret Service agent was already in place and communicating with Dick Cheney. The   Secret Service agent's presence is easily explained by the so-called preparations for the Tripod 11 exercise.  Since 7 'WTC was not struck by anything and it collapsed so perfectly, as if in  a controlled demolition, I believe that this was necessary and had been planned in  advance with the express intent of destroying the electronic equipment needed to  make the precise maneuvers necessary to get the airliners to hit the buildings.  In  law enforcement parlance, that was a task that required “eyeballs.'' Leaving that   equipment behind was too risky. Attempting to get the equipment out unseen in the middle of that kind of emergency would have been stupid. Someone might have questioned why equipment was being loaded onto trucks as people were running for their lives. A cop might have seen the activity as looting and made a log   entry. The equipment might have been seized or photographed. Ergo, the requisite demolition charges would have been in place well before the attacks occurred, and the equipment would have vanished with the building.

 

  In that context l cannot help but mark how convenient it was that John . ' O'Neil1 was occupied the night before the attacks, having drinks until 2:30 in the morning, well past the time when, given his now-famous sense that something “big'' was coming soon he might conceivably have dropped by for an unannounced inspection. Remote control technology for commercial aircraft is fairly common. However one particular company stands out in this area and is noteworthy for one of its executives, Dov Zalcheim. Independent journalist Cheryl Seal, writing in New Zealand's Scoop Media, is obviously aware of the interrelationships between economics, covert operations, and geopolitics. What l have read of her analysis is   cogent, clear, and in my opinion, pretty much right on the money.

 

She wrote; CONCLUSION: The plane was remotely controlled by a command transmitter system, at least in the final minutes. There was an explosive device on board, which was detonated immediately before impact,

 probably remotely controlled as well. The timing, trajectory, etc., may have been a software program of some sort that could have worked this out to the millisecond. The plane's own transponder would have had to have been turned off so that its operation would not interfere with a second transponder placed aboard by the perpetrators - a transponder designed to pick up the signal of a command system transmitter operated somewhere in the area. Or of course, the plane's own transponder was not actually off - it was just changed to a new   setting. In any case, turning the transponder off would not have   helped the hijackers to hide from the battery of sophisticated radars encircling DC so this motivation (hiding from radars) does not make any sence. Here is a description of an advanced, ''fully mobile'' CTS built by System Planning Corp., the CEO of which is Bush's undersecretary of defense and long time Texas pal Dov Zakheim.

 

I could not find any records confirming that Zakheim had been the CEO of  System Planning Corporation. However, a bio posted at the website of the office of the undersecretary for defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer says of Zakheim that he came to the Pentagon in May of 2001 just prior to the attacks and ''Most recently, he was corporate vice president of System Planning Corp. a technology, research and analysis firm based in Arlington, Va.''

A quick trip to the SPC website confirmed that the company is engaged in projects including Homeland Security, Intelligence and Advanced Concepts, Advanced Technology, Signatures and Electronic Warfare Technology, Radar Physics, Counterterrorism, Emergency Management, Biowarfare, and Communications Networks.

The SPC website also contains the following statement:

  SPC and TriData have supported crisis and emergency response planning for all levels of the federal government and for state and local (county and city) fire and police departments.

  We developed the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) family of plans (the Federal Emergency Response Plan and Continuity of Operations (COOP) Plan to guide federal responses to national emergencies. We have developed and conducted exercises to test responses to natural and wartime emergencies including hurricanes, nuclear power plant accidents and chemical/biological events.  TriData has developed executive training  models to address a wide array of threats, including industrial espionage ' and terrorism. . SPC also plays a key role in planning and executing wartime exercises.

 

Exercise Planning and Training

 

·        Federal, state, and local exercise support 

·        Federal exercise development and planning 

·        State and local exercise training systems

 

Since 1980 SPC and TriData have provided comprehensive emergency  management and support to US federal, state, and local governments; to county and city fire and police departments; to international governments; and to private industry. Our experience spans the range of all-hazards emergencies, large and small, and includes disaster preparedness and response planning, documentation, training, and exercise; mitigation support; and post-disaster analysis and reporting. SPC and TriData have relevant experience and staff who are knowledgeable in exercise support relating to acts of terrorism, including threats at four levels;

 

·        Predictable -- bomb threats 

·        Probable -- bombing attempts, computer crime .

·        Possible -- hostage taking

·        Catastrophic --aerial bombing, chemical agents in wafer supply or air conditioning

 

When it comes to remote control technology for the piloting of commercial aircraft, SPC offers (the appropriately named) Flight Termination System.

 

System Planning Corporation is proud to offer the Flight Termination System (FTS), a fully redundant turnkey range safety and test system for remote control and flight termination of airborne test vehicles. The FTS consists of SPC'S Command Transmitter System (CTS) and custom

control, interface, and monitoring subsystems. The system is fully programmable and is flexible enough to meet the changing and challenging requirements of today's modern test ranges.

 

The FTS is generally deployed in one of two configurations: Multi-site System: a network of multiple CTS units spread over a large geographic area Multi-control System: multiple operator consoles sharing control of a single CTS unit Multi-site System

 

Because many installations require several remote CTS units that can be controlled from eithcr the remote site or a centralized site, the FTS has been developed to control a fully redundant automated network of transmitters. The system can be configured to operate a single local site or with up to eight remote sights over an extended range. Each CTS unit may be controlled locally (manually), or as a part of the larger FTS system. The fully  redundant central control unit also supports either manual or automated modes of operation. One of F'TS's major strengths is its flexibility. A fully programmable command library of mission-specific commands in addition to the required Command Destruct sequence.

 

Multi-Control System

FTS also allows missions to be run simultaneously with a single CTS unit. In this mode, multiple operator stations share control of the   transmitter unit. The FTS control software ensures that the multitasking of the CTS unit is performed seamlessly and is completely transparent to the operators .  

 

Dov Zakheim resigned as the DoD's chief financial officer in May of 2004. A current bio on him from the SPC website reveals even more interesting information.

 

Dov S. Zakheim is Corporate Vice President of System Planning

Corporation (SPC), a high-technology, research , analysis, and manufacturing firm based in Arlington, Virginia. He is also Chief Executive Officer of SPC International Corporation, a subsidiary of SPC that specializes in political, economic and military consulting, and international sales and analysis. In addition, Dr Zakheim serves a Consultant to the Secretary of Defense and the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (Doug Feith) He is an Adjunct Senior Fellow for Asia Studies of the Council on Foreign Relations, Adjunct Scholar of the Heritage Foundation, and a Senior Advisor at the Center for International and Strategic Studies.

From 1985 until March 1987, Dr. Zakheim was Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Planning and Resources. In that capacity, he   played an active role in the Department's system acquisition and strategic planning processes and guided Department of Defense policy in a number of international economic fora. He also successfully negotiated a number of arms negotiation agreements with various us allies....

 

Dr. Zakheim is also a trustee of the Foreign Policy Research Institute; serves on the Board of Directors of Search for Common Ground, and of Friends of the Jewish Chapel of the United States Naval Academy; and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and other professional organizations. Dr. Zakheim is a member advisory boards of the center for Security Policy, the Initiative for Peace and Cooperation in the Middle East, and the American Jewish  Committee.  

 

A check of the SEC website shows no filing for System Planning Corporation,   which suggests that the company is privately owned; and the corporate website, for the information it offers, does not disclose the identities of the corporation's board of directors.

 

 

As you may recall, we talked about Zakheim in Chapter l   Zakheim has close ties to the Israeli government and, as we saw earlier. was the chief financial officer of a US government entity that has ''misplaced'' more than $3 trillion of our taxpayer dollars. Unconfirmed reports state that he holds dual American-lsraeli citizenship.

Although the ''loss'' of that money did not occur on his watch, the reporting of at least $2 trillion of that missing money occurred while he was there, and he made no accounting of it during his tenure except to acknowledge that it was missing.

Zakheim was also a signatory on PNAC'S report ''Rebuilding America's Defenses.''

 

Choreographing disaster; Cleveland airport.

 

I believe that on the day of September 11th, while FAA and NORAD responses were paralyzed and confused by an unknown number of wartime exercises involving inserted radar blips and live-fly exercises, there were also contained within those drills an unknown number of commercial airliners (possibly surplus) being piloted by remote control. It would have been easy to manipulate the transponder codes.

It was a shell game. We can still discern the guilty parties. This raises the possibility that one or more of the actual commercial airliners were taken over electronically, diverted into a wargame exercise, possibly over the ocean, and maybe even shot down by pilots who believed they were destroying empty drones. However, in the cases of Flights 11 and 175, I tend to believe that these were the real airliners. Excellent research by a German independent journalist using the name Woody Box, however, raised Another far more interesting possibility. In looking at what happened to Delta's Flight 1989, believed to have been a fifth hijacking, Box discovered that the Cleveland airport was mysteriously shut down, and that two airliners (instead of the reported one) landed there on the morning of September 11th.

 

Reporting on the website of INN World Report, Box wrote:

This article will prove that not one, but two planes made an emergency landing in Cleveland - in close succession. The proof is based on local newspaper and radio reports from September l lth and 12th (mainly from the Akron Beacon Journal and the Cleveland Plain Dealers, statements of eyewitnesses and Internet postings in the morning of 9/1 l (people were listening to the radio and immediately submitted the breaking news to the net). One of the flights was indeed Delta 1 989.

We don't know the identity of the other one, so we call it et/light X''....

       We start with a short summary of the events in Cleveland. At 10 a.m., the airport was evacuated. Without doubt. this had to do with ' the rumors that a hijacked plane was going to land. The passengers had to leave the airport but were not allowed to take their cars. They had to walk or get a ride at the highway. Busses were not allowed to leave the airport. People around the airport were told to go home. It was a very tense situation. These facts are undisputed.

 

Cleveland Mayor Michael 'White held a televised news conference at l l a.m., after the emergency landing. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer he said there was an unconfirmed report that the plane might have been hijacked or was carrying a bomb. But in the middle of the news conference, he reported that it had not been hijacked, and later in the day he said no bomb had been found. This was not the only detail that changed in the course of the day. In the morning White said that air controllers could hear screaming on the plane. In the afternoon, he didn’t mention the screams anymore.

    We will now examine several parameters of the emergency landing.

1. The moment of landing;

2. The begin (sic) of the evacuation of the passengers;

3. The number of passengers;

4. The place the passengers were interviewed after the evacuation;

5. The exact location of the grounded plane.

 

       We will see that there are two different data for every parameter, suggesting that we are dealing with two different planes. We will omit the   ''a.m.'' because it's clear that everything is happening in the morning.

 

1.     The moment of landing

AP and two Ohio newspapers report a landing at 10:45 (lA). However, Delta Airlines has registered 10:10 as the landing time, and Cleveland firefighters can confirm that the landing took place before 10:30.

. (lB). Because Delta Airlines did not loose the track of its plane, the 10:10 plane was surely Delta 1989.

So the 10:45 plane is - by definition - Flight X.

  1. The begin [sic] of the evacuation of the passengers

The Akron Beacon Journal writes in an extra edition from 9/1 1 that the passengers were released from the plane at 1 1:1 5. This is confirmed by   Internet postings describing the events in real-time (2A).

 

However, a passenger from Delta 1989 relates that she had to stay more than two hours in the plane before the FBI started to search it and took the passengers away for questioning. The Plain Dealer has I   learned about a [sic] evacuation time of 12:30, confirming the witnesses statement. (2B). Thanks to the most valuable statement of the passengers, we can conclude that Delta 1989 landed at 10:10 and was evacuated at 12:30. Flight X landed at 10:45 and was evacuated at 11:15

 

  3. The number of passengers

 

The first press reports tell us that the plane carried 200 passengers. Mayor White mentioned this number on his 1 1 o'clock conference (3A). He did not say how he got the number. The passenger of Delta 1989 however, she must know it, made an estimation of ''60 or so'' passengers.

This is confirmed by later reports - the story changed quickly. Now, 69 passengers have been released from the plane, going well with the  60 or so'' (3B).   We can conclude that Delta 1989 landed at 10:10, the 69 passengers being evacuated at 12:30. Flight X landed at 10:45, the 200 passengers being released at l l : 15.

 

4. The place the passengers were interviewed after the evacuation .

 

The [sic] most reports say that the passengers were brought into a near-by NASA facility (4A). This is the NASA Glenn Research Center, located

near the west end of the airport. It was already evacuated. The passenger of Delta 1989 however tells us that she was taken into a “secure building at the airport.'' This is confirmed by a report that the Delta 1989 passengers were interviewed in the FAA headquarters. (4B). ' Surely the FAA headquarters is not located in the NASA facility.   We can conclude that Delta 1989 landed at 10:10, and at 12:30 the 69 passengers were taken into the F.AA headquarters. Flight X landed at l0:45, and at 1 1: l 5 the 200 passengers were taken into the evacuated NASA Center. 

 

5. The exact location of the plane.

 

This is the final proof that we have to do with [ie, we are dealing with] two different planes. Both planes were sitting on a runway, but miles away from each other. One plane was at the west end of runway 28/10 near the NASA center (point 10 in the map). This is confirmed by Associated Press and an eyewitness (5A) The other plane was sitting at the south end of runway 18/36 near the I-x-center (point 36), also confirmed by two eyewitnesses (5B). The geographic conditions on the airport suggest that the passengers at the west end were taken to the NASA Center and the passengers at the south end to the FAA headquarters.

 

The question almost asks itself Was Plane X Flight 77? Was it Flight 93) There were even reports that Flight 93 was confirmed to have landed at Cleveland's airport, which I did not have time to chase down. (1 can't do everything.) I have no doubt that Flight 93 (or an aircraft posing as Flight 93) was shot down however. Engines from a Boeing 757 do not bounce for long distances through the air after the direct impact of a nosedive. Nothing bounced at the Pentagon. There wasn't even any recognizable debris except for a very small piece of metal that happened to be painted with the right colors. No tail section. No cockpit. No seats lying about. No suitcases.   There were too many witnesses to the fact that a debris trail from 93 was scattered over miles; something that could only have happened from a mid-air explosion. There were too many witnesses placing both military and civilian'' aircraft close to it. There were too many witnesses who reported that they saw missiles in the air.  

 

 

    Imagine the reaction if cameras had filmed a completely empty airliner landing by itself without any opportunity for statements from the passengers? The order stands! Shoot it down! These are all speculative questions that do not distract me from the   issue of guilt or a world that is exploding around a11 of us.

With the crash of Flight 93 the Rubicon had been crossed once and for a11.  And now, for all of the physical evidence fanatics who have dogged me for two years and who have lacked a courtroom wherein they could battle to their conclusive “proof” l offer this:

      For a long time 1 have not believed that the WTC towers collapsed was a result of the impacts. l said from the first days after 9/1 1 that I had too much experience with the way physical evidence could be manipulated, even inside a courtroom, to waste my time arguing claims that couldn' t be proven as thoroughly and convincingly as the ones I have proven here. 'While l cannot tell the general public, or you who have made so many excellent cases for your positions, how the buildings were brought down, l can certainly now point you to a likely suspect for the requisite studies of what would be required to do it. l found it in a footnote to the Kean Commission report.

1 . For the WTC s layout, see Port Authority diagrams, World Trade Center Concourse Level,'' Concourse Level'' and ''Plaza Level '' undated. For the number of square feet of office   see Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) report, World   Center I Building Performance Study '' undated. For the number of workers and passersby, see Port Authority briefing (May 13, 2004).

For the dimensions, see FEMA report, "World Trade Center Building Peformance Study '' undated. In addition, the outside of each tower was covered by a frame of l4-inch-wide steel columns; the centers of the : steel columns were 40 inches apart. These exterior wails bore most of the weight of the building. The interior core of the buildings was a hollow steel shaft, in which elevators and stairwells were grouped. Ibid.

For stairwells and elevators, see Port Authority response to Commission interrogatory, May 2004.15

 

As I close this book and end my arguments to you I want to thank a dedicated and meticulous 9/ l 1 researcher named Mark Robinowitz.

 

(And finally) Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Richard Cheney is the maestro.

 

Richard Cheney spoke to whom he needed to speak to while the nation's defenses foundered.

 

I also suspected that General Richard Myers and the NMCC'S Deputy Director of Operations, General Winfield, were actually in the PEOC running the wartimes as the attacks began. Thanks to Major Don Arias, we know that Vigilant Warrior was a Joint Chiefs' live-fly exercise being conducted on the morning of 9/1 1. Richard Clarke left so many breadcrumbs in his book. None was more amusing or easily understood than the following passage:

On one screen I could see the Situation Room. I grabbed Mike Fenzel. ''How's it going over here?'' I asked.

lt's fine,'' Major Fenzel whispered, "but l can't hear the crisis conference because Mrs. Cheney keeps turning down the volume on you so she can hear CNN. . . and the Vice President keeps hanging up the open line to you.”

This would explain why, even after Richard Clarke reported that Cheney had complained about the communications in the Presidential bunker, Clarke could I say, “I was amazed at the speed of the decisions coming from Cheney and, through him, from Bush.''  I believe that Dick Cheney also had the ability using evolutions of the PROMIS software, to penetrate and override any other radar computer or communications system in the government.

 

 I have placed before you a number of additional persons of interest who I also believe played a role in this crime. I have identified others who most certainly have a lot of explaining to do. As to the guilt of all of these people, you must decide. It is also up to you to decide whether or not any further investigations will be conducted, whether they will have the force of law, or whether what you decide will be enforced after you decide it.

There is no statute of limitations on murder.

There is another good reason why you should take to heart the case l have made and explore it thoroughly. For six years, since I sent out the first 68 copies of From The Wilderness, I and all of the wonderful people who write for FTW; have been telling you what was going to happen, long before it did happen.

Dale Allen Pfeiffer told you about Peak Oil, about natural gas shortages, about what Peak Oil and Gas means to our food supply. Today those issues are all over the mainstream print and Internet media, and the facts are pouring in with confirmation of Dale's insights.

Eight months before the Iraqi invasion, retired Special Forces Master Sergeant Stan Goff a former instructor at West Point, warned the world that an invasion of Iraq would turn out exactly as it has today. His 2002 prediction is uncanny for its description of the current tragedy. As we approach our 1,000th American military death in Iraq; as lraq is being flooded with arms merchants eager to supply a puppet regime; as heroin is sold on Baghdad's streets; and as endless thousands of Iraqi  citizens are killed or maimed, the fulfillment of Stan's prescient warning evokes deep-seated grief and horror in me.

  I told you four months before the first presidential primary that John Kerry  would be the Democratic nominee in 2004. For more than two years I have predicted accurately where conflict would spread, how, and why. And for more than , two years l have described, in several stories, a battle among the factions of the American state and a behind-the-scenes move by the CIA (Wal1 Street) to remove the nee-cons, which is coming to a head as this book is published. Why? Because the nee-cons are bad for business.

     Before it became the subject of a federal grand jury which has resulted in George W Bush and Dick Cheney hiring criminal defense attorneys, I said that   the administration's outing of a covert CIA officer named Valerie Plame - and the forged documents which the entire administration used to make the American people fear a nuclear-tipped Saddam - would be among the means by which the nee-cons were taken down. It's not Bush they want out as much as it is Cheney.  George W Bush is a mentally ill ''empty suit.''

There are dozens more instances where I, and all the people who have made FTW, have been far ahead of events. Why? Because we have the right map, and we  are reading it. I have tried to give it to you. Read it. If not for your own sake, then are for the sake of the generations in front of us who face a world of war, with no energy and no food; a world of economic collapse and brutal conflicts; a world which is being governed, quite literally by madmen. Disregard what l present to you here at your own peril.

 

Just as the Founders performed a fundamentally personal responsibility as ethical human beings when they contemplated, planned, and organized the American republic, responding to the current crisis is your own personal responsibility. You cannot pass the buck. My greatest fear is that my readers will pass the buck anyway, but there is no one and nothing to take it from you. Fortunately there are many who are not fleeing into denial and they, acting on their own or in small communities, are beginning even now to prepare for what lies ahead. Their numbers are growing faster than I can imagine. We are not alone.

 

lf you decide that you want to change things, I am telling you right now that you will change nothing until you change the way money works.

Looking into the future 1 see small (but very real) reasons to hope. Four states and more than 340 cities and counties in the US have passed resolutions opposing the Patriot Act. In August 2002 the House of Representatives passed a resolution saying that, no matter what threat or attack takes place, the 2004 presidential election should take place. (Who will count the votes and how they will   be counted is another matter).

 

And my beloved and much admired friend Cynthia McKinney defeated five challengers in a July 2004 primary with 51 percent of the vote to secure the nomination for her old seat in Congress. She is virtually certain to retake ' that seat in the 4th District of Georgia while retaining her seniority from five previous terms and she will not be silent. ! You are reading this book.

It may not sound like much, but it will hopefully prove to be more than we think. Great things are accomplished from humble beginnings, and unlike oil, courage is a limitless and renewable resource.

You will make your decisions in the deepest places where you live. If there is anything that I want you to understand, it is that as a species and as a planet we, have reached a point of self-imposed crisis that can neither be postponed nor evaded. That crisis and the values with which it is addressed are matters of life or death.

But they are also even more than that: the crisis and our response will constitute, for good or evil, an open and monumental testament that fully and finally reveals our most fundamental nature. It will be a validation of what humanity's deepest priorities really are. If the best we can do for our tens of thousands of years of cultural evolution is to destroy our planet and then ourselves, then perhaps we do not deserve to survive.

Human beings have explored outward to the limits of this planet in search of resources and understanding and experience. We have peered deep into boundless space by sending probes billions of miles away, even beyond the outer planets of the solar system. We also explore backwards in time, extrapolating the sublime   mysteries of Big Bang cosmology and theoretical physics. We spend hundreds of millions of dollars and lifetimes of intellectual passion on archaeological digs to find the earliest ancestors of our bodies and of our human mind.

But that mind is readily seduced toward astonishing feats of domination and cruelty. The combination of bureaucracy, technology and rationalized quantitative - measurement that built the great industrial civilization of the past 200 years, also created the Nazi death camps. There, efficiency and centralized control were as developed and refined as their uses were depraved and vile. The same cold, administrative approach to life that built the vast economies of the modern world is also preparing a terrible solution to the collapse of those economies. In the Empire's vision, love and art and religion and community are invisible; they count for nothing. It is as if the human race existed only in a statistical dimension; a calculus equation in need of a solution.

Distilled, all our pursuits essentially ask just two simple questions: Who are we really? And why are we here? We have been looking in the wrong places for our answers.

 

Let them that have ears listen. Let them that have eyes see.