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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.
“Sometimes you get your best light from a burning bridge” – Don Henley, “My Thanksgiving”
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. “Today,”
he said, “the United States is hated around the world far worse than it
was at the height of the Vietnam War.” 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 won’t
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 King’s “Can’t we all just get along”
has become the modern day theme song for the surrender of America’s
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 “the good old days”. 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 tyranny’s
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 can’t live without the “good things”, 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 world’s
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 LAPD’s 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
martyr’s death. As I am learning every day, there are more difficult
and demanding ways to write the final chapters of one’s 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 “her people”
were interested in giving a major boost to my career with LAPD if I
would become involved with her “anti-terror” operations that involved
“overlooking” (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 – “that has determined the course of my life ever since.”
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: “Mike,
the world doesn’t want to be saved.”
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
“doped” 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 world’s population
consumes 25% of the world’s energy and a totally disproportionate share
of the world’s 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
“non-negotiable” and unsustainable “American” 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
“other” 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 country’s 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, “Fascism ought to
more properly be called corporatism since it is the merger of state and
corporate power.” 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 “true
North”.
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, “any fool can see it coming.”
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 I’m
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, HBO’s Deadwood. It was common knowledge in FTW’s
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, it’s
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 Master’s 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 “sexual
demon”. 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 month’s 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 Siren’s 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 Ulysses’ 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 that’s 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,
“No”. I couldn’t help but feel she already knew about the burglary.
If I didn’t 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 “no outlet” street, and the only place to park late at night is
directly in front of FTW’s 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 didn’t 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 it’s federal or state parole, they’ll do
anything the government wants them to in order to curry favor,
including the commission of crimes “under color of authority”. 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, Rubicon’s 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 wasn’t 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 I’m
sure they will – that all of these things happened because I’m 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 FTW’s 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 FTW’s 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,…
But
when a long train of abuses and usurpations… 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
“country”, 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 haven’t 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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