Michael C. Ruppert: Why I’m moving to Venezuela

2006-08-22

Richard Moore

Original source URL:
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/081606_burning_bridge.shtml

BY THE LIGHT OF A BURNING BRIDGE
A Permanent Goodbye to the United States
by
Michael C. Ruppert

© Copyright 2006, From The Wilderness Publications, www.fromthewilderness.com. 
All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted, distributed or posted on an Internet web 
site for non-profit purposes only.

³Sometimes you get your best light from a burning bridge² ­ Don Henley, ³My 
Thanksgiving²


August 16th 2006, 11:45 AM [PST] ­ CARACAS ­ It was about a week before I left 
the United States forever that I watched Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. tell Charlie 
Rose something all of us already know in our hearts. ³Today,² he said, ³the 
United States is hated around the world far worse than it was at the height of 
the Vietnam War.² I remember the Vietnam War. I will never forget it.

I opposed that war, and I still remember riots on the UCLA campus in May,1970 
when four students were shot dead by National Guard troops at Kent State 
University in Ohio. I was a college student then, and I was 2S-deferred for the 
draft. A year later I would be re-classified 1A as the nation shifted to a 
lottery system. At least someone in my country was willing to risk his life in 
the face of injustice. It gave me hope. That kind of risk-taking was commonplace
then, from the civil rights movement to the anti-war movement, to the American 
Indian Movement. American blood was shed regularly on American soil to resist 
American tyranny; from Watts, to Detroit, to Selma, to San Francisco to Memphis 
to Wounded Knee. It fertilized our lives and souls as it touched the ground. The
willingness to endure physical suffering, material sacrifice, and jail for the 
sake of justice was a singular mark of the American character that earned 
respect as it infected the world.

What is the United States infecting the world with today?

Now it seems the American people won¹t even risk their credit ratings, student 
loans, the next piece of ass, or a sideways glance from people who look at them 
like AIDS patients for daring to deviate from the corporate, media-instilled 
norm. We have come a long way backward. Rodney King¹s ³Can¹t we all just get 
along² has become the modern day theme song for the surrender of America¹s 
character, and the L.A. Rebellion of 1992 was probably the last flame of will to
fight injustice in American history.

This new quiescence comes at a time when US crimes are far worse and more 
far-reaching than they were in 1970; certainly in the eyes of the world. In 2001
the US government both facilitated and executed the attacks of 9/11 against its 
own people, killing thousands of its citizens as an excuse to launch a 
neo-imperial conquest for energy. A few Americans held small rallies, organized 
some ineffective groups, bought a few hundred thousand books and DVDs, listened 
to a few radio programs and lectures, and then quietly lined up to have their 
bags, emails, credit histories, minds and bodies searched. Critical mass was 
never achieved as Executive Orders along with the Patriot and Homeland Security 
Acts shredded the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th Amendments to our Bill of Rights.

In my book Crossing the Rubicon I wrote that events that took place in the five 
years following those attacks would determine the course of human history for 
centuries to come. We now stand at the brink of that fateful anniversary.

After the 9-11 attacks the US government lied to create a war for oil in Iraq 
telling us that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, almost-ready 
atom bombs, poison gas and deadly germs. We were told that he helped execute the
9/11 attacks. It was all lies, and no one has held the US accountable for the 
hundreds of thousands of deaths (murders) in Iraq and Afghanistan since then. 
Few have tried to hold the government accountable for 2,500 Americans who have 
died needlessly, and those who have, have been remarkably ineffective.

US presidential elections were stolen in 2000 and 2004 through rigged electronic
voting software and intimidation. Not one drop of blood was spilled anywhere, 
even as the US Supreme Court rendered an illegal decision supporting the 
overthrow of the Constitution and trampling the rights of individual states.

I never thought I would call the 60s and 70s ³the good old days². I would cry 
tears of joy today to see just one campus overrun by a modern equivalent of the 
Students for a Democratic Society. I would cheer to see a general strike 
paralyze a city. It would be living proof that American character had not been 
submerged, drugged, weakened, and rendered anemic beyond revival.

My country is dead. Its people have surrendered to tyranny, and in so doing, 
they have become tyranny¹s primary support group; its base constituency; its 
chief defender. Every day they offer their endorsement of tyranny by banking in 
its banks and spending their borrowed money with the corporations that run it. 
The great Neocon strategy of George H.W. Bush has triumphed. Convince the 
American people that they can¹t live without the ³good things², then sit back 
and watch as they endorse the progressively more outrageous crimes you commit as
you throw them bones with ever-less meat on them. All the while, lock them into 
debt. Destroy the middle class, the only political base that need be feared. 
Make them accept, because of their own shared guilt, ever-more repressive police
state measures. Do whatever you want.

No amount of mind control spin can absolve any of us from acknowledging this 
ugly truth about the US and its crimes today. It lurks invisibly behind every 
corporate news broadcast, every commercially-made television show, every 
infomercial, every new magazine ad, and almost every new popular song that leads
Americans deeper into ever-less-satisfying consumption, self-indulgence and 
debt. It stands grinning behind every report on the world¹s rapacious financial 
markets and every new automobile, shampoo, or other product that promises to 
give the world larger and more potent sexual organs, bigger (more ridiculous) 
breasts, a better love life, and peace of mind.

I left my last classes that spring day in 1970 after four students had been 
murdered, crying from both the emotional pain and the tear gas that wafted up 
the Janns Steps and onto the Quad at UCLA. I went to my job as an intern at the 
Los Angeles Police Department. After donning my khaki uniform without gun or 
badge I returned to UCLA to work at LAPD¹s command post, ferrying dispatches and
running errands for Deputy Chiefs, Commanders, and Captains as LAPD batons shed 
the blood of my fellow students. My life has always been full of ironies. Then, 
I believed that the system could be changed from the inside. Then, I believed 
that the United States could be changed from the inside.

Mistrusted by both sides there was no safe place for me to cry that day.

My shame today is that it took a set of circumstances where my life was in 
danger to make me make the right choice, a choice I would now like to say was 
totally a matter of conscience, but it was not. The truth is that I was prompted
to do what I should have done long ago out of a well-justified desire to save my
life.

In this life I have chosen not to die a martyr¹s death. As I am learning every 
day, there are more difficult and demanding ways to write the final chapters of 
one¹s life. I left the United States with one large suitcase, my laptop, and a 
backpack. I left behind my precious library, most of my clothing, my personal 
possessions, my guns, and a house full of furniture. I brought with me less than
eight thousand dollars in cash and gold to start the final segment of my life.

My permanent exodus from the US was actually ordained thirty years ­- to the 
month ­- before I left for good on July 18th, 2006. It was thirty years ago that
my then-fiancée, a career contract agent for the CIA, disclosed to me that ³her 
people² were interested in giving a major boost to my career with LAPD if I 
would become involved with her ³anti-terror² operations that involved 
³overlooking² (i.e. protecting) large drug shipments coming in while 
facilitating the movement of large quantities of firearms going out. I refused 
to compromise my ethics as a police officer and ­- as I wrote on page 6 of 
Crossing the Rubicon ­ ³that has determined the course of my life ever since.²

Like all humans I want to hold on to dreams for as long as possible, even long 
after I know they will never come true. I have tried and sacrificed with every 
fiber of my being to change my country, but the plain fact is that the United 
States of America cannot and will never be changed from within. I recall the 
words spoken to me by a senior FBI agent in Los Angeles in 1986: ³Mike, the 
world doesn¹t want to be saved.²

Stupid me. I still believe it does ­- at least the parts of it that lie outside 
the US, Great Britain, and Israel; the real Axis of Evil.

Today the United States is the cause of ever-expanding wars (covert and overt), 
carnage, suffering, and political and economic exploitation ­- even within its 
own borders against its own people ­- that fill our corporate-issued headlines 
and TV shows. The US economy, the privately-owned Federal Reserve system, and 
the government which they operate like a franchise are the greatest enemies of 
the entire human race and especially the rapidly- deteriorating and fragile 
ecosystem which supports all life. U.S. citizens are slowly discovering that 
they are not immune because of their nationality. On our planet today, what 
happens to one must inevitably happen to all. Peak Oil and global warming will 
spare no nationality in the end.

The US economy, driven by a fiat currency, fractional reserve banking, 
debt-based financing ­- and ³doped² with the billions of dollars of drug profits
laundered through its corporations and banks ­- is a superheated pyramid scheme 
of infinite growth wherein 5% of the world¹s population consumes 25% of the 
world¹s energy and a totally disproportionate share of the world¹s diminishing 
resources and commodities.

In their silence and acquiescence Americans have voted ­- even if by abstention 
­- to stand on the shoulders of all drowning peoples in the vain hope that they 
will somehow be saved from a paradigm which they support and empower by obeying 
it; by endorsing it with their silence or knowingly impotent protests; by 
refusing to throw themselves against the gears of the machine. In this world, a 
protest which is allowed and encouraged, corralled into free-speech areas, and 
then policed by the ruling government only to be ignored by the media is, by 
definition, meaningless.

The US is a nation where the ³non-negotiable² and unsustainable ³American² way 
of life is propped up by global conflict, out-of-control military spending, 
massive and unsustainable debt, and an increasingly-aggressive fascist police 
state. It is a nation where all US citizens who do not resist and disconnect 
from this paradigm enjoy their ever-diminishing privileges with the guilty 
knowledge that somewhere else, hopefully in some ³other² country, others are 
paying the price for it.

The world is now my country.

With the passage of time, the degree of corporate oppression, the outrageousness
of the cruelty, and the absurdity of the lies can only increase as dwindling 
resources diminish and desperation erupts. Ironically, the disappearing American
middle class will still cheer at each new millionaire success story, even if 
they quietly understand that a hundred or a thousand of their kind had to 
disappear to create it. They chase illusions of hope rather than the real 
possibility of justice and change like lottery players with a one-in-a-billion 
chance of winning. They prefer that to hard work and sacrifice with much better 
odds where almost everybody can win something.

As the human race enters the first stages of inevitable collapse resulting from 
Peak Oil, it does so ass-backwards, in complete denial, and in the one way most 
certain to guarantee the greatest amount of suffering and death for future 
generations. It does so because, for a time at least, U.S. foreign, military, 
and economic policy holds the steering wheel of human destiny through dollar 
hegemony, military force, technology and globalization.

This control is inevitably weakening, and other hands in other countries are 
successfully struggling for an ever-increasing measure of influence. The Empire 
is dying from within, and like all wounded beasts, it is becoming more vicious 
and dangerous in the process; its lies more transparent.

A different world is possible. A better world is possible. It took the imminent 
threat of my own death at the hands of my government to make me fully admit to 
my innermost self what I have known for years. Having failed to change my 
country¹s direction after 30 years of effort, I had to stop living in the 
problem and start living in the solution. If I did not, my soul would have died 
just as surely as my body would have died after the recent burglary that savaged
our offices.

I do not know where I will spend the rest of my days. Maybe in Venezuela, maybe 
in Mexico with the Zapatistas, maybe in Bolivia, maybe in France, Germany, or 
even Russia. But because Venezuela has become the singular world leader in 
resisting US domination under the courageous, intelligent, and inspired 
leadership of Hugo Chavez, I want to begin the rest of my days here.

Being freer to speak, to learn, to experience and to witness real solutions 
being discovered and implemented by peoples willing to take risks and who 
understand the challenges, I will be better able to report usefully to FTW 
readers and the world in future books and articles. I am currently in a country 
where the people have changed and are changing their government; where the 
elected head of state has won six elections while George W. Bush has stolen two.
Is it any wonder I feel better already?

One thing is certain about fascism and that is that its behavior and evolution 
are remarkably predictable. Five years ago I helped bring into world 
consciousness a forgotten quote from Benito Mussolini wherein he said that, 
³Fascism ought to more properly be called corporatism since it is the merger of 
state and corporate power.² Nothing better describes the state of the world 
today. The U.S. is a nation of the corporation, by the corporation, and for the 
corporation. As such it has placed something different from and opposed to the 
welfare of human beings on the compass as its ³true North².

Fascism always becomes more vicious as it evolves. It never retreats, and as 
with drug addition, larger and larger doses of oppression and violence are 
always required to sustain its inevitable path towards self-destruction. As the 
great Cynthia McKinney said to me not long before her just-orchestrated ouster 
from the House of Representatives, ³any fool can see it coming.²

KRISTALNACHT

The burglary that took place at the new FTW offices in Ashland, Oregon on 
Sunday, June 25th of this year was the equivalent of my Kristalnacht, a replay 
of the night in 1938 when Nazi storm troopers, aided by an increasingly cowed 
and cowardly citizenry, raided synagogues all over Germany and smashed every 
piece of glass and every window they could find. German Jews not in denial who 
could (literally) read the writing on the walls (Juden Raus!) fled for their 
lives in the short time remaining before The Holocaust. Those who denied the 
meaning of that very specific warning remained in Germany, and their fate was 
sealed.

As a man who owns his own mind I can and do vehemently oppose the Israeli 
government and its policies and still have no ill will at all towards any Jew 
anywhere. Israel is a country. Judaism is a religion. All men and women are free
to worship their God or Gods as they see fit, and in so doing, to bring 
knowledge of the unknowable and their truths to a human table that is 
increasingly deprived of compassion, love, justice, balance, and mercy. These 
will always remain the common threads in all true spirituality. Truly what is 
needed now is some spirit.

Those who do know history are not destined to repeat it.
DETAILS

As for the burglary itself, there will be another time and another place, when I
can and will say more about what happened. Certain important events have yet to 
unfold, and I¹m holding other key facts until the time is right. There are facts
about the timing of the burglary that may eventually connect to events here in 
Venezuela. But for now, suffice it to say that it was the final outrage in 
almost three decades of attempts to silence my voice and the eight-year-old 
voice of From The Wilderness.

It is almost certain that the burglary was perpetrated, at minimum, based upon 
inside information provided by recently fired or resigned FTW staff members. 
There is ­ or was ­ only one television program I cared about, HBO¹s Deadwood. 
It was common knowledge in FTW¹s new offices that I was obsessed with the show, 
and on June 25th I was certain to be home watching one of the first episodes of 
the new season I had been anticipating for a year. As everyone knew, I worked 
late and had irregular hours every other day of the week. I may never find out 
if Al Swearingen got the best of George Hearst, but in retrospect, it¹s a small 
price to pay for my new freedom.

The burglary followed on the heels of my humiliation of the perpetrator of a 
feeble and stupidly executed sexual blackmail plot that began when a newly-hired
staff writer (with a clean record and a Master¹s degree in English) began a 
torrid (and not very discrete) sexual affair with my long-term IT manager. The 
IT manager was, at the time, involved in a committed relationship with a woman 
in Los Angeles. The same female employee also made simultaneous direct sexual 
advances to my Operations Manager who is married. These included her showing 
naked photographs of herself to both men in our offices, something which they 
kept from me until later.

Eventually the sexual intrigue resulted in an altercation between the three 
which wound up on my doorstep late on a Sunday night in April. It seems no one 
involved in the altercation was capable of telling the whole truth. It was also 
clear that my IT manager ­ who was known for his appetites ­ had fallen 
hopelessly in the grasp of an attractive sexual smorgasbord that was fulfilling 
his every wish. This is what he said to people in phone conversations who later 
told me about them. He reportedly described her as a ³sexual demon². He lied to 
his girlfriend. He lied to me when he told me that he had ended the 
relationship. Then he lied to his friend, the Operations Manager, about it. I 
could no longer trust him, and this was of enormous concern to me.

After all of the previous attempts to sink FTW over the years I was 
well-prepared when the same woman started making advances to me. How dumb did 
they think I was? I concealed a tape recorder in my office as she directed me, 
after regular office hours, to pornographic web sites and continually tried to 
tempt me with scanty outfits, G-strings and hints of sexual delights including 
descriptions of her private parts. She was doing all this at a time when she 
made 103 cell phone calls in one month to my IT Manager on a cell phone that FTW
was paying for. I got the bills. Most of the calls were made during business 
hours. The second month¹s bill was just as bad when it arrived after she had 
been fired.

My IT Manager had been my most trusted employee and a close friend. I may never 
be able to forgive his betrayal even if the Siren¹s song had overwhelmed him. In
previous years FTW computers had been sabotaged, our web site had been hacked, 
and several attempts had been made to financially sabotage our operations. Being
fully aware that he was likely revealing our most sensitive proprietary 
information, including account access codes, I had but two choices.

I could fire the young woman. But if I did so she would be angry outside the 
company and still have the IT Manager as helpless as Ulysses¹ crew in her 
vindictive grasp. Or, I could keep her close, play along with her games, prepare
myself against the blackmail I knew would come, and try to find out what kind of
damage she was intent on doing and head it off. When she could not compromise me
sexually, she turned the IT Manager against me, and he gave sudden notice. That 
was damaging enough. His last day of work was to be June 1st. I decided 
immediately that that would be her last day of work too, and so it was.

As June 1 approached I baited her with actions I knew would force her to show 
her hand. She did on May 29th and that¹s when I let it be known how I had 
protected myself. She immediately went ­ no doubt with the guidance of our IT 
Manager ­ to a ridiculous pseudo-journalist who has been hounding FTW and other 
9-11 activists for years. In a previous sabotage attempt in 2005 this same 
pseudo-journalist had been directly connected to the FBI by a tape recording.

Her allegations of sexual harassment against me fell flat on their faces, and 
she was publicly humiliated. She had also been showing highly erratic emotional 
behavior consistent with drug use in her last two weeks of work. On the day she 
was terminated she and the IT manager frantically rushed to erase large 
quantities of data from her office computer. This was witnessed by the entire 
office staff. Fortunately for us, the erasures were only made with one-pass 
deletions, and most of what they were trying to hide remains recoverable.

This was on my mind when I came into the office at 7:30 AM on June 26th and saw 
all seven of our computers dismantled and smashed in a vacant portion of our 
building. As luck would have it, the right hard drives were not damaged beyond 
recovery.

But other facts started to indicate government involvement. As soon as I 
discovered the burglary I ran next door to the offices of the US Forest Service 
which shares the same building (rented from a California property management 
company). A female Ranger who was raising the flag out front seemed unusually 
nervous even before I got to her. I asked if they had surveillance cameras 
covering the front of the building and our only parking lot. Reacting as though 
I was scaring her to death, she hastily replied, ³No². I couldn¹t help but feel 
she already knew about the burglary.

If I didn¹t know that there were no surveillance cameras on a government 
building then how could the burglars have been so confident? The street our 
offices are on is a long ³no outlet² street, and the only place to park late at 
night is directly in front of FTW¹s front door. My next step was to look for any
one of the three small and run-down motor homes belonging to poor people who 
always parked right in front of our offices at night. It was a rent-free place 
for them to sleep, and it had a great view. Maybe they had seen something. All 
three were gone. One of them had been parking diagonally across the street every
day since the day we moved in, and I had (correctly, I believe) pegged that one 
as government surveillance.

These witnesses would have been invaluable because they would have seen whoever 
came to the office in the quiet business park that was always abandoned after 
sunset. After I left the states, allegations were floated that I had smashed my 
computers myself. But who could have missed my Blue and Gold, 1996 Ford Bronco? 
It stands out like a sore thumb. And I could hardly have walked a block or two 
with a sledge hammer over my shoulder without risking being noticed.

There are between eight and twelve screws that need to be removed to take the 
cover off of each of our computers. There were seven computers, and every one 
had their covers removed before being smashed. This was not a one-man job. 
Someone with computer savvy was involved. Four interior doors were also smashed 
with multiple sledge hammer blows. I estimated between three and five blows per 
door. Each computer had been disconnected from its monitor and peripherals. That
was three to six connections per computer. This feat would have taken one person
hours, and it would have been physically exhausting.

All the evidence showed that one person was waiting to dismantle each computer 
as it was brought into the vacant office (where there was plenty of room to 
swing the hammers) by another person who was doing the disconnecting, while a 
third person went ahead with the sledgehammer to open the doors to which the 
fired female employee never had the keys, from which to make copies before she 
was fired. I suspect that a minimum of two sledge hammers were used.

One door to a storage area which held no computers at all was needlessly 
smashed. That was wasted time and effort. Likely one or more of the burglars 
didn¹t know where the computers were. Or maybe they just had a little too much 
crystal meth in their system and needed to burn off some energy.

There was, however, one other way that the burglars could have gained entry to 
the interior of the building. That is through a back door which is accessible 
only through a high-security parking lot controlled by the Forest Service which 
covers the entire back side of the building. No one else can get to the back 
doors. The burglars could have been waiting inside the Forest Service offices 
for me to leave. This would have left no telltale cars out front and would have 
provided an easy, secure escape route in the event that I or a police car pulled
up out front unexpectedly. No one would ever have been seen entering via the 
front door, the only way FTW employees could get in.

About a week after the burglary I noticed the Ashland Police Department towing 
away one of the mobile squatters. The one mobile home that had been there every 
night up until the burglary has never been seen again. The third just vanished 
the night of the burglary.

Also, about a week after the burglary, my Operations Manager, who we have since 
discovered was apparently in the process of destroying our paper financial 
records, disclosed that the fired female employee was a multi-year close friend 
of a convicted methamphetamine manufacturer and dealer who had served five years
in prison. That was the last straw, and it was then I started realizing that it 
was time to go.

Convicted drug dealers are usually on parole. They have little or no rights and 
can be violated and sent back to prison at any time. Whether it¹s federal or 
state parole, they¹ll do anything the government wants them to in order to curry
favor, including the commission of crimes ³under color of authority². The 
COINTELPRO records of the FBI from the 60s and 70s against civil rights and 
anti-war activists; against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian 
Movement; show clearly how these convicted felons were used as ideal plausibly 
deniable weapons of infiltration and mass destruction by the US government 
against enemies of the state.

THE END OF HISTORY

In 2001 a high school classmate who had served in the US Army and worked for the
National Security Agency, led FTW into a financial trap promising a major 
investment to re-publish suppressed books documenting US government corruption. 
After FTW had invested thousands of dollars in layout and committed to spending 
more for printing, the investor disappeared leaving us with a huge loss.

In 2001 and 2002 a series of previously-unknown computer viruses completely 
destroyed our office computers.

In 2003 an outside storage area of the building where our offices were, was 
burglarized.

In late 2003 our then General Manager, Michael Leon, suddenly abandoned his job 
and fled to New Zealand. That nearly put us out of business. We have since 
learned that he was, at minimum, a key material witness in a huge federal Ponzi 
scheme prosecution, US v. Osaki. (I had absolutely no connection to the case). 
In 2005 information surfaced in federal court that he had provided the FBI with 
information, and I have ­- based on other information ­- concluded that he was 
an active FBI informant while working for FTW.

Throughout 2004 and 2005 a series of successive employees (one of whom was a 
retired FBI agent presenting herself as a victimized whistleblower) engaged in 
ruthless sabotage which came closer to sinking us than anything ever had. Other 
links to the FBI were well-documented. FTW struggled for survival, and I 
successfully fought back, ultimately winning a case in Small Claims Court 
wherein I proved deliberate sabotage and won a small judgment. That nine-month 
effort ended just two months before we moved to Oregon.

Then came the events I just described in Ashland. To the end of my days I will 
never forget the indescribable beauty of the Rogue Valley in the brief time I 
was allowed to live there. I will always remember the wonderful, spiritual and 
courageous friends who came to our aid in time of need and who still remain 
close friends and supporters of FTW.

But at 55, as I looked at the smashed computers and realized that I had 
humiliated the government one too many times, I understood two things. I was too
old to go on fighting these increasingly ugly and dangerous battles. And there 
was nothing left in the United States worth fighting for. The next battle would 
surely mean death for me. Additionally, according to their own figures, and 
after an independent review by a Los Angeles area law firm specializing in 
royalty rights, Rubicon¹s publisher, New Society, appears to have defrauded me 
out of between $38,000 and $58,000 dollars of royalties.

I made my decision on July 1st. It really wasn¹t difficult.

A NEW BEGINNING

Since my departure Carolyn Baker, Michael Kane, Stan Goff, Jamey Hecht and the 
remaining FTW office staff consisting of Brendan, Spencer and Luke have been 
performing heroically. A brave and honorable Ashland attorney has valiantly 
stepped in with complete power of attorney over my affairs. My agent and 
publicist Ken Levine has been steadfast and true. It was he who helped to get me
out of the country in secret. In the coming weeks some of these wonderful people
will provide our subscribers with their accounts of my last days in the US. 
There were many poignant moments in the way we put together and executed a plan 
to get me out of the country in just 18 days, even as I noticed renewed and 
ominous surveillance around the office.

To all those who will assert ­ and I¹m sure they will ­ that all of these things
happened because I¹m some kind of deranged maniac who pisses everyone off, I ask
how I could possibly have earned and retained the loyalty of these wonderful 
people and all of our subscribers for all these years.

FTW is going to be bigger and better. I will continue to write and offer 
editorial guidance, but my days of running the business are over. Carolyn Baker,
Mike Kane and Stan Goff are giants in their own rights, and they need room to 
blossom and carry on the FTW tradition with their own unique styles and 
personalities. Since leaving the US I have been offering occasional editorial 
guidance, but I have come to realize that FTW¹s writers need very little of 
this. They have the map and are reading it well. Listen to them.

FTW needs your help now. We need donations. We need sales. Very soon we will 
have a new DVD which will show you my last two public appearances ever in the 
United States. It will be my farewell message to all of you even as I say hello 
in a new form. After FTW¹s current, considerable expenses and staff are paid, 
some of that badly-needed money will find its way to me in Venezuela where I 
sorely need it.

I have said time and again that the only thing that matters to me is effecting 
real change in the political landscape. Revolution is not a dinner party. The 
economy and government of the United States of America are my enemies and the 
enemies of the entire human race and even of the American people themselves. 
They must be weakened, defeated and replaced by something which places the 
welfare of human beings ahead of profits and share value.

With these words I have committed a crime in the eyes of US law. There is no 
turning back. The bridge is burned. But I will reply with the words of the 
Declaration of Independence which state:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that 
they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among 
these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness, -- That to secure these 
rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from 
the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes 
destructive of those ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish 
it,Š

But when a long train of abuses and usurpationsŠ evinces a design to reduce them
under absolute Despotism, it is their right, their duty, to throw off such 
Government.

In 1776 there was no concept of any limitation in terms of resources, space or 
possibilities. We live in a fundamentally different era today, and so therefore,
I would add to these truths the following:

We must also recognize that Happiness cannot be defined solely within the mind 
and the will of individuals alone, without regard to the availability of the 
same potential for all mankind and all life placed here by the Creator. One 
human being, or group of human beings, cannot possess a disproportionate share, 
deprive others, and justly call this Happiness. True Happiness and Peace result 
from harmony between peoples, the planet and all life forms without which no 
life is possible. These can only be achieved in a world where men and women in 
all places realize the need for Balance, Equity, Harmony and Justice and that 
only these will ensure equal and fair Rights for subsequent generations and the 
sustainability of the planet itself.

In many lectures I have uttered another one of my trademarked lines: The human 
race is now being presented by a dispassionate universe with one test; either 
evolve or perish. I, for one, have chosen to evolve.

Now that I am in the world and not a ³country², my prayer is that my future 
adventures for as long as I live will connect me with other world-changers so 
that we can support and empower each other and all peoples. I am already finding
out that there are more people who clearly see these challenges than I ever 
suspected.

But I am also under no illusions about the increased danger this will bring. 
Even though life is very difficult now as I live on the cheap and struggle to 
become halfway fluent in Spanish, I wake up each morning with something I 
haven¹t felt in a long time ­ hope, real hope.

I promise to send some home.

**The opinions expressed here are not necessarily or entirely those of From The 
Wilderness as a corporation.**
-- 

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