THE BEGINNING OF THE END
A Letter to President Barack Obama

by Michael C. Ruppert
(C) Copyright 2009, All Rights Reserved. Michael C. Ruppert

FEB. 17, 2009, 11:00 PM PST

Dear Mr. President:

Today, as you signed your recovery package into law, you said that this was "the beginning of the end."

No shit!

The death and collapse of the U.S. and global economies has been inevitable for some time. The collapse of industrialized civilization cannot be prevented by any plan or scheme invented by any political party operating in the current economic paradigm. There are alternatives and options that can save hundreds of millions, if not billions, of lives, but they are outside the box that you think in. I and many others have foreseen and accurately predicted these events for years. We are known as the Peak Oil/Sustainability Movement. Because of our incredible accuracy in predicting events to this point, over decades, you might want to pay attention to what we and a growing number of honest business reporters are saying about what is coming next.

With all respect, when you said "beginning of the end" with that sincere smile, transmitting hope and confidence, it sent a shudder down my spine. All you are doing is buying time to prevent the collapse of totally dysfunctional marriage where the mother (the government) kills the children (us) to save her relationship with the father (the way money works). The time has come to admit to the people the catastrophic event horizon before us and all of humankind. I cannot believe that you do not see this. And, if you do see it, then what you said today was the biggest Hail Mary pass in American political history. Those, Mr. President, are words that will come back to haunt you and it scares me to think that you might be cynical enough to try and sell it to us.

Mr. President, what you said today was a "tell" of desperation. There are those who want to help you, who are eager to help you. But you must look at us and call us by our name. Otherwise it will not be long before one of two things happens. Either you and the government of the United States will be compelled to listen to us, or else the people will stop listening to you.

The President we need now is not Abraham Lincoln.

It is Thomas Jefferson.


Sincerely,

Michael C. Ruppert
*************************************************************************************

The Man Behind the Curtain Revealed

by Jenna Orkin


As we all lunge towards Wikipedia to figure out what it is about Thomas Jefferson that makes him such an apt mentor, I believe Mike's referring to two things:

1. Jefferson's emphasis on local rather than federal government. This is going to play out anyway in the coming years, whether TPTB like it or not.

2: His resistance to the establishment of a central bank that was not beholden to the people whose taxes maintained it. Hamilton won the argument by conceding that the bank would have to retain a gold reserve.

The rest, as they say, is history. As are we about to become, when the end President Obama mentioned we're at the beginning of, arrives in force.

But even as we players strut on the stage in the final act of whatever drama this is, it's gratifying at last to understand our role and to learn the name of the author.

Turns out, the drama's The Wizard of Oz.

First revealed by school teacher Henry Littlefield in 1964, and explicated superbly by Ellen Hodgson Brown in Web of Debt, the fable was written c. 1900 to protest events which would culminate in the establishment of the Federal Reserve. Author Frank Baum did not trust gold which is in notoriously short supply; hence the failure of the yellow brick road to get Dorothy where she wanted to go. In the original story, the magic slippers that finally did the trick were silver.

The scarecrow represented farmers who felt intimidated by the city slickers setting up the Fed. The tin man represented factory workers. And the cowardly lion was William Jennings Bryant whom Baum was trying to enCourage [sic] to fight the good Populist fight.

So the wizard, as we always suspected, was the Alan Greenspan of his day. Fittingly, at the end, he goes off in a hot air balloon which is what Mr. Greenspan was always so full of.

Brown doesn't mention it, but I wonder if the tornado that got the story off the ground, so to speak, was a vortex of inflation or the crash of 1873.

Perhaps all this was clear to audiences when the book was first published. Or perhaps, in the spirit of Baum's contemporaries, Messrs. Freud and Jung, the characters were simply intended to resonate with the archetypal Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the collective unconscious.

As for Oz, that stood for 'ounces.'


Top of the Agenda: US Troop Boost in Afghanistan
Just in time for the unemployment crisis. Note the article further down: Mysterious Attack on presidential palace in Equatorial Guinea.
Russia Restricts Gas to Poland
Over-exposed to Emerging Europe
"It is quite likely that the emerging-markets exposure of European banks exceeds even that of US lenders to Alt-A [Alternative-A] and sub-prime loans."

"I don't think that the EU will let any of these big banks fail," Deuber says. But if they do have to recapitalise their subsidiaries with sizable amounts, he continues, they and their governments will regard those new EU members such as Poland and the Czech Republic as more like core markets, while those countries less integrated with the EU and worse hit by the crisis, such as Ukraine, could be let go.
Crisis Tops G7 Agenda

European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said the ECB had not drawn any particular conclusions after discussions with other central banks.
"I have said that I did not exclude additional non-standard action, but no decision has been taken yet on top of the non-standard action we have already decided to do and we will see," he said on Saturday.

Why does that language sound so familiar? Oh yes: That's how Gideon Gono used to describe his actions as Finance Minister of Zimbabwe.
Eastern Europe Could Dump Gold
Despite Obama Pledge, Justice Defends Bush Secrets
JP Morgan Launches Gold-Linked CDs
"The payout will... be around 30%." In other words, they're capping it.
JP Morgan Sees $6.4 Billion Capital Shortfall at Deutschebank
Russia's State Arms Exporter has $20 Billion in Foreign Orders