Eulogy

Farewell Michael Ruppert, and Thank You

    

Michael C. Ruppert: February 3, 1951 – April 13, 2014

#1 from Jenna Orkin

Jenna Orkin, a colleague and friend of Michael Ruppert, is the author of The Moron’s Guide to Global Collapse. Portions of the speech below were read out at Mike’s public memorial on Saturday 17th May 2014. 

   Mike Ruppert was a complex, brilliant, infuriating, funny, impossible, honest (usually), never boring, enraged, musical, competitive, generous, contradictory, dog-loving, horse-whispering, childlike giant who happened to be right about the most important problems facing the world today.

   A psychologist once said, “You can’t have just a baby’s foot,” meaning, “You can’t have the cute parts of a baby without the sleepless nights and dirty diapers.”  Similarly, you can’t have Mike’s unique gifts to the world without the upheaval he generated around him.

   To lionize him does not do him justice; he doesn’t need it.  He had his demons, both internal and external.  In fact, he epitomized the old saw, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not following you.”

   He once said, “There is a deep flaw in me and that is the source of everything I’ve done.”  Driven to flee his own devils, he fought far greater ones on the global stage.  And although he didn’t succeed in single-handedly shifting the paradigm of the global economy, he got further than just about anyone else.

   You don’t have to perform the mind-bending feat of accepting death by self-inflicted gunshot wound as a peace offering in order to show him respect.  To paraphrase Mike’s own eulogy to Gary Webb who also killed himself, only Mike knows why he finally did it after threatening for at least eight years.

   Some of Mike’s accomplishments: From uncovering CIA drug-dealing, he went on to found fromthewilderness.com which revealed how the US banking system looted Russia after the fall of the USSR.  FTW also published documents which helped secure the release of CIA spy Edwin Wilson who had been convicted on the basis of perjured testimony by a CIA Executive Director.

   But one of his greatest achievements occurred around 9/11. At FTW and in his book, Crossing the Rubicon, Mike showed that four months before the attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney had been put in charge of war game exercises; and that in spite of the multiple warnings from foreign intelligence agencies to the White House concerning a terrorist attack the week of September 9, at least five war games had been scheduled for that morning which drew planes away from the East Coast, where they would have been able to intercept the hijacked planes, to Alaska, Northern Canada, Greenland and Iceland.  FTW also revealed insider trading – exorbitant numbers of put options on the airlines involved in the attacks; a sure red flag that a major disaster was about to take place.

   The best way to honor Mike is to understand and educate others on the fundamental lessons he taught. First, his favorite line:  “Until you change the way money works, you change nothing.” An economy based on infinite growth cannot continue indefinitely on a finite planet. Resources are being depleted as population growth marches on.  The population currently stands at seven times what it was when oil started being used to fuel the economy. No matter how smart our technology becomes, as easy oil inevitably wanes, the replacements cannot fill in at the same rate, certainly not without poisoning the air, water and soil as well as huge swaths of people.

   If we don’t deal with this now, it will deal with us later and at far greater cost. That’s what Mike’s been trying to tell everyone for ten years. Relocalize. Grow food not lawns. And end our current economic system of fiat currency, fractional reserve banking and interest. Do that and Mike will be able to rest in peace.