[HarvKilljoy]

I've read the book, and argued in its defense on other sites (in particular www.blizzforums.com, under Serious Discussion/Peak Oil thread). I've been slowly doing the research on the end-notes provided, trying to ascertain which are true and factual, and which are not.

Thus far- I haven't researched enough to conclude that they are all true- but the few that I've researched have indeed been true.

Also- I question the refutations against Mike's work, of only because much of the so-called "refutations" have been more ad hominem attacks against Mike himself, instead of the information he's presented. Doesn't that make you wonder?

Ad Hominem- Against the man, ala Latin. It's a logical fallacy, a mistake in one's argument. It usually indicates that you haven't done your homework and need to go back through Arguments 101 again.

On another note- I'd become interested in politics in general and in peak oil as an alternative only weeks before the November 2004 Presidential election. Read a few books, started poking around on various forums, and lo and behold, now the right-wingers of said forums view me as a full-blown conspiracy theorist nutcase.

WOOT WOOT. So be it. Mr. Ruppert attests in the introduction of "Rubicon" to how he feels about both conspiracy and theory. I feel he's answered any challenges of his being a "conspiracy theorist" quite soundly therein. Conspiracy is a term used very frequently in our legal system to describe a person or persons conspiring to commit an illegal act.

No one can deny that the events of September 11, 2001 involving the aircraft hijackings and subsequent attacks were homicides. Illegal acts. There is no statute of limitations regarding homicide. That such a complex series of events as the coordinated attacks that took place that day actually did take place, indicate that there was some planning, i.e. a conspiracy, involved.

The problem we seem to have is the negative connotations attached to the word itself, when it's connected to "US Government". We as a people seem to think that such an event as our own government committing such an atrocity is completely impossible- instead of realizing that our own government is just like us, i.e. human, capable of both good and evil.

Now then- on the "theory" part- Mr. Ruppert asserts that he works only with those things that could be admitted in a court of law as evidence (or that's the idea I got from reading his introduction, please bear with me). He claims to do exhaustive research on each bit of evidence, and he asks you the reader to do the same, to look at each piece of evidence just as you would were you to be in a court of law and on the jury.

With that suggestion, I've been trying to balance my life of working my blue-collar job, raising two young daughters, and keeping my demanding wife at bay (lol, just kiddin' Toots) with trying to do the research he's asked us to do. I want to know the truth, period. I could not care a whit less if that truth is incredibly ugly, horrible, or nasty.

That's my two cents' on Mr. Ruppert's book, ladies an' gents. I don't take it as gospel truth- because I doubt the Gospel myself . I simply take it as a suggestion towards the truth- and I'm still looking. Mr. Ruppert may or may not be pointing me in the right direction- but I get the feeling that he's on to something.

I get that feeling because there are so many well-educated persons out there trying to warn of peak oil... why would they waste their time in such endeavours as they do? What gain? To what end?...

Meh... politics... I should've gone fishin'...

HARV

[arretium]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mastroid', 'I') read this book.

absolutely awesome and well written.

Anybody has information about mind control devices and how it is possible to ''hypnotise'' people remotely, using radiowaves frequencies ?

it is actually the most poignant and frightening aspect of the book, from my point of view.
some good info is available at :

http://www.raven1.net/
and
http://www.angelfire.com/or/mctrl/


anything else ?

thanks
this forum is great

namaste

[Revi]

I found Ruppert's book to be very well researched. I agree with a lot of what he says, but he could use a bit of editing. I love these tomes, but the average reader is not going to wade through every arcane detail of the myriad of plots outlined in his book. I certainly would not give this to someone to convince them of the reality of peak oil. I agree with almost all of it, but most of this won't matter to the average person. What I'm most concerned about are the decline of the dollar, the rise in energy prices and the chances of living some semblance of a civilized life in the future.

[0mar]

Throughout CTR, you'll notice that the CIA rarely kills people. They incarcerate, discredit and spin the messages that are counter to their agenda.

This makes good sense, because if a person dies saying something, then that message must have some weight to it. That is the mentality surrounding most people. It is as old as human psychology. Christianity's message was propagated this way as well. No it is better for the CIA/FBI/Gov't to discredit, spin and denounciate critics rather than silence them.

[ashurbanipal]

pstarr,

I initially had a problem with the chapter on PROMIS software as well, until I realized that I use programs every day that do everything that he needed PROMIS to do in order to make his case. For the record, I'm the database director for a mid-sized health food chain. I frequently employ a program called TOAD (Tool for Oracle Application Developers) to look through our fairly large database. It gives me the ability to view and alter data in real time, and in fact doing so daily is part of my job. I have what is probably a very scary set of abilities from an outsider perspective. The only thing that I need to operate this software is a certain set of "keys" to the database itself--namely, a valid logon to the private network the database resides on, the IP address of the specific servers I need to look at, and a bunch of under the hood code to do with interpretting the structure of the data encountered (the object code in TOAD takes care of that). A couple other things are needed, but all of them are relatively easy to get, especially if I am given that information outright, as the MIS director was more than happy to do.

Ruppert is careful to document the fact that the developers of this software worked for several months with the FAA, and established a link with the Secret Service as well. During this period, the same keys, or their analogs, would have, by necessity, been granted the developers of PROMIS.

Ruppert, not being a computer scientist, engineer, programmer, etc., does make the mistake of overstating the case for PROMIS--without the afforementioned keys, it's difficult to get into a system and control the data it stores and manipulates. Ruppert would like to believe that PROMIS can do what it does without them. That claim is spurious, but it is also not needed for Ruppert to make his case, and it's easy to see why he could make it--it's a specialized area of study, one of the few of great import in the book, and he is relying on the misinterpretted comments of Indira Singh to support it.

The weaker claim, that the Secret Service possessed the ability to alter data in the systems of the FAA, is plausible because of the other documentation he provides.

As for others who claim to "debunk" Ruppert, I usually find that their cases are based on straw men. I believe this is a well researched book, and contains an overwhelming amount of information that points to complicity on the part of the Bush administration on the 9/11 attacks.

That said, I think Ruppert himself does sometimes wax a little paranoid; his predictions especially for the future probably ought to be taken with a grain of salt (or two).