Mike Ruppert: This is priceless.

Lisa Guliani

The Living Force
'Wilderness' relocates to Venezeula
http://www.dailytidings.com/2006/0825/stories/0825_ruppert2.php

August 25, 2006
'Wilderness' relocates to Venezeula
By Robert Plain
Ashland Daily Tidings

Mike Ruppert is gone. He left not only Ashland, his new-found hometown, but has denied his allegiance to the United States with a reported exodus to Venezuela.

"I left the United States with one large suitcase, my laptop, and a backpack," he wrote in an article on his Web site. "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."

Ruppert is the owner and editor of FromTheWilderness.com, a Web site dealing with Peak Oil and alternative Sept. 11 theories. Earlier this year he moved to Ashland and quickly drew a local following of supporters. Ruppert played a role in the Jackson County Sustainability Network, a group of some 200 local people who are trying to localize daily life and food production in the area.

A few computers, along with boxes, are stacked up in the conference room of the From the Wilderness on Washington Street in Ashland.

Photo by Orville Hector | Daily Tidings

The former Los Angeles beat cop became an independent journalist to uncover government conspiracies. According to the article on his Web site, he says he has relocated to Venezuela, in part, because of a June burglary at his Ashland office.

"It was the final outrage in almost three decades of attempts to silence my voice," he wrote on his Web site, ostensibly from the South American socialist nation.

However, one of the founders of the local sustainability network says that his recent disappearance raises more questions about the man's mental well-being than any of the reasons Ruppert himself cites for his departure.

"My feeling is he really needed a change in his life," said Michael Dawkins, a friend of Ruppert's who also facilitates a support group for depression and bi-polar disorder. "I think there is some depression or mania there."

A strange burglary

Ruppert's brief tenure in Ashland reached a bizarre climax with the burglary on June 26. Who committed the crime, and why, remains unsolved.

Like the government conspiracy theories he often writes about, his thoughts on the burglary include twists, accusations and of course, government persecution.

"There will be another time and another place, when I can and will say more about what happened," he wrote on his Web site. "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."

Ruppert said he believes a former employee, who he had fired weeks for the crime, burglarized his office.

The former employee thinks she knows who committed the burglary.

"I think he did that himself," she said.

Ashland Police are keeping an open mind. Officers would not rule out Ruppert himself as a suspect.

"At this point the case is still under investigation," Deputy Chief Rich Walsh said. "We're looking into both current and ex-employees."

He added, "We'd like to find out what the purpose of moving to Venezuela was. It may have absolutely nothing to do with it but we would like to know."

A troubled relationship

When interviewed the morning after the alleged burglary, Ruppert said he suspected the employee of trying to use his shipping department to smuggle methamphetamine.

"Her behavior was entirely consistent with meth addiction," he said, noting that some of his clues included highly erratic behavior, mood swings, poor dental hygiene and her slight figure.

According to the woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she fears Ruppert or his allies could try to hurt her, her accusation of sexual harassment caused her dismissal. She denies the meth accusation. "I don't know where he comes up with me being on methamphetamine," she said.

Both parties admit to engaging in conduct typically deemed inappropriate at the workplace, such as conversations about sexual preferences and other flirtatious behavior.

"I made the mistake of not realizing early-on that I was being harassed," the woman said in a statement made public by Victor Thorn, editor of WingTV.net. "For a while I was able just to 'laugh it off' when such comments came from Mr. Ruppert by telling myself it was just a harmless product of a patriarchal American society."

Wing TV is a competing 9-11 conspiracy site. Both Thorn and Ruppert describe themselves as internet rivals. The woman said she did not provide the statement, which outlines the alleged harassment, but a friend of hers did. The friend, she said, is actually another former Ruppert staffer whom she met after leaving From The Wilderness.

The morning after the alleged burglary, Ruppert discussed his troubled relationship with the former employee.

Ruppert admitted to stripping down to his underpants and parading around the office while he and the woman were the only two there, an accusation the woman made in her statement. However, he said his motive wasn't sex but rather an attempt to uncover the woman's "con."

"I was trying to make her show her hand because I knew she was up to something," he said while sitting in his office as Ashland Police surveyed the seven computers that were smashed with a sledge hammer in another room. "I needed to cross a line to make her show her hand."

When asked if he thought this was a wise move on his part, he said, "I handled it the best way I know how. I may spend the rest of my life asking myself that question."

Ruppert denies he harassed the woman, but said he was attracted to her.

"Was I tempted? Sure. Did I think she was cute? Absolutely."

He added, "Nothing she said rises to the level of sexual harassment. I'm a 55-year-old, divorced, healthy male who is lonely. Is that a crime?"

The woman is afraid of Ruppert and fears he might harm her. She doesn't believe that he is in Venezuela.

"I don't know what Ruppert is capable of," she said. "He's mental. My mom wants me to move out of town because she doesn't think I'm safe here."

She said she has reported Ruppert to the state civil rights division for sexual harassment but has not pursued criminal charges. She says she is still considering a wrongful termination lawsuit against him.

"I was the wrong female to mess with," she said.

The government

Ruppert's former employee is not the only one he blames for the alleged burglary. Ruppert also suspects the smashed computers might be related to a government plot to ruin him.

"Other facts started to indicate government involvement," he wrote on his Web site. "As soon as I discovered the burglary I ran next door to the offices of the US Forest Service which shares the same building. I asked [an employee] 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."

Indeed, government plots against him have been one of the most consistent aspects to his career as a writer.

"My permanent exodus from the U.S. was actually ordained 30 years ""- to the month ""- before I left for good on July 18th, 2006," he wrote on his Web site. "It was thirty years ago that my then-fianc
 
Well, it gets even better>

Dave McGowan's NEWSLETTER #84 August 27, 2006

Mike Ruppert's Harrowing and Heroic Flight to Freedom (or Flight from Justice, or Reassignment, or Whatever the Case May Be)

http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr84.html

A growing number of you have written to inquire whether I will be commenting on the dramatic 'flight to freedom' by the rather constipated looking gentleman to the left.

(You can find Ruppert's rant posted here http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/081606_burning_bridge.shtml,

and re-posted at just about every fake dissident site on the 'net, including:

http://vancouver.indymedia.org/?q=node/2235 ,

http://www.federalobserver.com/archive.php?aid=10848 ,

http://www.progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=22660&mesg_id=22660

http://www.fourwinds10.com/NewsServer/ArticleFunctions/ArticleDetails.php?ArticleID=10497 ,

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/printer_22797.shtml ,

http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=110 ,

http://www.pscelebrities.com/alice/2006/08/by-light-of-burning-bridge-permanent.html ,

http://forums.ariannaonline.com/showthread.php?t=45794 ,

http://plutonium-page.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/8/20/175819/646 ,

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=03x229778 ,

http://www.rense.com/general73/ces.htm ,

http://www.uncommonthought.com/mtblog/archives/2006/08/18/by_the_light_of.php ,

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_22797.shtml ,

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0608/S00201.htm ,

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/08/344643.shtml ,

http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=2&contentid=3862 , and

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_1120.shtml,)

And the answer, of course, is how could I not comment on it?

It's obviously a huge story, threatening to eclipse even the Jon-Benet Ramsey/John Karr saga. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Karr was ultimately charged with the vandalism of the From the Bilderbergs offices.

"But wait a minute," you say, "Karr was in Thailand at the time of the alleged break-in at the From the Bilderbergs offices. I doubt if he could even find Ashland, Oregon on a map. They can't possibly pin it on him. That would be ridiculous."

Oh, dear readers, you have so much to learn.

Anyway, as I started to say, Ruppert's "Goodbye, cruel nation" rant is, without question, the funniest thing that he has ever written. In fact, it is the funniest thing I can remember reading for quite some time. I would add that it is also the most paranoid and delusional thing he has ever written, but I don't believe for a second that Ruppert actually believes the bullshit that he feeds to his readers.

So the buzz on the streets is that the real reason for Ruppert's sudden exodus from the country was not that staying here "would surely mean death," but that he was being investigated on suspicion of having staged the 'burglary' at his new offices in Ashland and he was facing possible arrest and, with that arrest, full exposure as the complete asshat and fraud that he is now and has always been.

The word is that Ruppert's From the Bilderbergs empire has not been faring so well of late: subscribers, no longer duped by Ruppert's obvious lies, are dropping like flies; book and DVD sales are down; and the constant pleas for donations just aren't bringing in the truckloads of cash like they used to. So the prevailing theory is that Ruppert, in a desperate attempt to keep his empire afloat, staged the 'burglary' of his offices to raise some cash, possibly through insurance payouts and, most obviously, by portraying Ruppert as a victim once again in yet another craven attempt to pry more money loose from his ever-shrinking base of followers. His next trick, I hear, will be to inform his readers that he needs to raise a million dollars by the end of the year or God will call him home.

In addition to generating sympathy (and therefore money) for Ruppert, the staged "burglary" also serves to further bolster his 'street cred,' so to speak. After all, if the government has been working so hard for so many years to silence this man, then what he has to say must surely be of supreme importance ... right? That is what Ruppert would have you believe, which is precisely why he routinely rolls out a laundry list of sins allegedly committed against himself and his organization, and why he has, at various times, accused virtually everyone he has ever employed of being a government agent (that part, by the way, is probably true; it would hardly be surprising to find that a covert government operation that is currently housed in a government building is staffed by government agents).

Ruppert does not own the exclusive rights, by the way, to the tactic of fabricating instances of government harassment for the purpose of bolstering one's credibility. It is an all too common phenomenon out here in the cyberworld, though I have to say that no one seems to play that card as frequently, or with as much panache, as our boy Mike.

As far as I can determine at this time, it has not been verified that Ruppert is the prime suspect in the staged "burglary" (unfortunately, the Ashland Police Department declined to comment on the case, citing a department policy that forbids commenting on ongoing investigations), but that seems to be a far more plausible explanation for his abrupt departure than Mikey's breathless claim that he was facing an "imminent threat of death." Indeed, a careful reading of Ruppert's rambling, melodramatic diatribe yields clues that seem to support the theory that Sir Mike did indeed stage the scene at his offices.

For example, he writes that it "is almost certain that the burglary [Editor's note: nothing was actually stolen, so it is unclear why Ruppert always refers to the incident as a burglary] was perpetrated, at minimum, based upon inside information provided by recently fired or resigned FTW staff members." It doesn't take a Sherlock Holmes to deduce that this is little more than an attempt, albeit a rather pathetic one, to preemptively spin the coming revelation that the staged "burglary" was in fact an inside job - but one committed by disgruntled former employees, of course, and not the boss himself.

In what appears to be a further effort to exonerate himself, Ruppert tries to sell the idea that this crime had to have been committed by multiple perpetrators. Amazingly enough, he actually lays out the following laughably absurd claims: "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."

Damn, Mike, you are quite the cut-up, aren't you? Someone with computer savvy was involved? I think that what was probably involved was one guy with a cordless screwdriver. Even if the FTB computers had covers held in place by eight to twelve screws, unlike any computers that I have ever seen (my current computer has exactly one screw holding on the cover, and it is a thumb screw that can be quickly removed without the use of tools), it would take one person with a cordless driver and no computer savvy approximately 15 seconds to open each machine. With a manual screwdriver, it might take as long as a full minute.

Ruppert goes on to make additional claims that are, if anything, even more preposterous: "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."

Please stop it, Mike! You've almost got me in tears here! Do you write all your own material? Have you considered auditioning for "Last Comic Standing"? Seriously, dude, you should think about it because you are one funny -bad person-.

Speaking hypothetically, if I am a vandal bent on sabotaging the offices of FTB, I'm probably not going to bother with the niceties of properly disconnecting all the computer peripherals; I'm just going to grab a handful of cables and give them a good yank. It's probably going to take about, oh, two seconds to disconnect each machine. And come to think of it, that's kind of irrelevant anyway, because I'm not going to even take the time to disconnect the peripherals, nor am I going to then transport the machines to a vacant portion of the office, nor am I going to carefully remove the outer covers. No, what I am going to do is trash as much stuff as I can in the shortest amount of time. And I'm going to do that by just whaling on the computers and all their peripherals right where they sit, because in the time that it would take me to disconnect, relocate and open the machines, I can pretty much trash everything - including the desks they sit on. And it wouldn't take very long at all. I don't know that I'd even bother with the sledge hammer, to tell you the truth. I'm thinking I could just pour a little gas or something on the computers and light them up. Hell, I might as well burn up everything. But if I did go to all the trouble of disconnecting and removing all the machines, and I am, according to Ruppert, a methamphetamine addict, then I'm sure as hell not going to carry the machines into an empty room and (pretend to) destroy them No, I'm going to carry them right out to my car, along with anything else of value that I can find, and I'm going to sell everything for drug money. Vandalizing local businesses for no financial gain? That doesn't do much for me. Stealing stuff to pawn for drug money is what I'm all about.

Ruppert seems to realize that various parts of his story are inherently ridiculous, so he tosses out the claim that the computers were taken to a vacant portion of the building so that there would be "plenty of room to swing the hammers." It is perfectly obvious, however, that you don't need much room at all to swing a sledge hammer with enough force to destroy the delicate electronics of a computer. In fact, you don't need a sledge hammer at all. You can achieve the same effect by just picking the thing up and hurling it down on the ground (try it at home with your own computer and then compare the end result with the photos on Ruppert's site and you'll see what I mean). The only reasonable explanation for the machines being carefully disconnected and transported to a vacant portion of the office was to avoid damage to the peripherals and the desks that they sat on, which seems to me to be a pretty clear indication that this "burglary" was not the work of outside actors.

Ruppert tosses out some more alleged facts that are clearly intended to direct suspicion away from himself. He claims, for example, while offering no supporting evidence, that he suspects "that a minimum of two sledge hammers were used." He also claims that "one door to a storage area which held no computers at all was needlessly smashed," the implication clearly being that he couldn't possibly be the perpetrator since he would have obviously known that there was no point in breaking into that particular room. But so presumably would the 'real' perpetrators, since Ruppert has already told us that they were working with "insider information."

Mikey also poses the question of "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." Now, I don't know if Ruppert is really this stupid or if he just thinks that his readers are, but his rather bold proclamations are directly contradicted by what Mikey himself wrote in the very same paragraph, when he noted that his offices are in a "quiet business park that was always abandoned after sunset." How then could Ruppert's vehicle stand out like a sore thumb when, by his own account, there would have been no one there to see it?

There is so much more in Ruppert's ten-page screed that is ripe for ridicule. For example, Iron Mike claims that three "mobile squatters" who regularly parked their mobile homes by his offices at night were potential witnesses to the crime. He further claims that, "About a week after the burglary, I noticed the Ashland Police Department towing away one of the mobile squatters." But if Ruppert really believed this (fictional) person to be a potential witness, then why wouldn't Mike himself have approached and questioned the potential witness during the week before he was allegedly towed away? Ruppert is, after all, a former police investigator himself, so he does have some experience with questioning witnesses.

Also begging for ridicule is Ruppert's audacious and wildly inappropriate claim that the staged "burglary" represented his own personal Kristalnacht. And then there is perhaps his most hilarious claim of all: "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."

Gee, Mike, overdramatic much? There is, as it turns out, an expedited procedure for getting out of the country. Though little known, it involves driving to the nearest airport, walking up to a ticketing agent at the airline of your choice, purchasing a ticket to your desired destination, and then boarding an airplane (after, of course, disposing of any potentially explosive water bottles). Perhaps Ruppert should try that technique next time. I've tried it myself and I can vouch for the fact that it really works. And by the way, that "renewed and ominous surveillance" that Mike mentioned? I'm guessing that if that wasn't a figment of his imagination then it was probably the Ashland Police Department keeping tabs on their prime suspect.

While there is no shortage of material in Ruppert's rant to mock and ridicule, there is also, alas, an aspect of this story that is not so funny, and that aspect, despite this lengthy intro, is the real focus of this newsletter.

Let me begin by stating that, except in the minds of a devoted few, there is little reasonable doubt that Michael Ruppert is, and always has been, a government agent. Everything about the man - from his family and employment history to his stand on numerous issues - points unwaveringly in that direction. His assigned mission for the last several years has been to unrelentingly push the lie of 'Peak Oil,' while occasionally taking a break from that to do such things as sabotage the 9-11 movement and run interference for the government after Gary Webb's 'suicide.'

It occurs to me, however, that Ruppert has lately become far more of a liability than an asset in his role of disinformation peddler. His own personal credibility is at such a low point that it seems very likely that a decision was made that the 'Peak Oil' scam was far too important a mission to be compromised by allowing a buffoon like Ruppert to continue to serve as the most vocal and visible spokesman. In other words, the staged burglary was really just the straw that broke the camel's back; even before that, it was becoming clear that Ruppert needed to be shuffled off the stage and reassigned so that more credible spokesmen could take up the 'Peak Oil' battle cry.

Mikey claims that he doesn't know where he will eventually take up residence, but for now he will be cooling his heels in Venezuela. This hardly seems a random choice. As readers are no doubt aware, Venezuela has been a hotbed of covert intelligence operations for many years now - election rigging, media manipulation, coup plotting, assassinations ... all the usual "boys will be boys" kind of stuff. Funny then that a guy like Mike Ruppert would show up there, of all places, and at the very time that the CIA has announced the creation of a "new special CIA mission to oversee intelligence activities" in that particular country. (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? context=viewArticle&code=GOL20060820 &articleId=3015)

If your primary goal, by the way, is to escape from CIA threats, harassment and intimidation, is it really a good idea to flee to a place that is absolutely teeming with CIA operatives? I'm not sure that would be my choice, but maybe that's just me.

Anyway, I am reminded here of another time, some three-and-a-half decades ago, that a fake dissident journalist arrived in a South American country that was being targeted by the CIA. The last time I mentioned this gentleman's name, several years ago on a radio show, I found my in-box filled with threats of legal action, so I will be using pseudonyms here that, unfortunately, will make it virtually impossible for readers to figure out who I am talking about.

So this other fake dissident, let's call him "Marcooper," arrived circa 1971 in a country that we will here refer to as "Chilly." At that time, Chilly was being run by a democratically elected government that was at peace with its neighbors and working for the betterment of the country's have- nots. As such, the decidedly left-leaning administration was widely admired throughout Latin America. But in North America? Not so much.

Providing a better life for the Chillyan people, you see, came at the expense of the profit margins of the American corporations that run the economies of our Latin American neighbors. So the CIA, as is its custom, sent in a whole bunch of operatives to stir up trouble, eventually culminating in a bloody coup that overthrew the democratically minded government and replaced it with a brutal military dictatorship that was more to Washington's liking.

While the stage was being set for the coup, along came our dissident journalist to cozy up to the doomed administration. By posing as a harsh critic of US foreign policy, he was able to infiltrate the inner circles of the Chillyan government. Needless to say, this provided him with an ideal position from which to facilitate the coup, and then walk away unscathed, unlike some of the legitimate dissident Americans who were in the country at the time.

If someone were to attempt to play the role of Marcooper down in Venezuela, one of the first things they would probably want to do is firmly establish their status as a critic of US foreign policy and, more specifically, as a friend of Venezuela. And how would they do that? One way would be to show a sudden interest, some four years after the fact, in posting information about the US-backed coup that briefly toppled Chavez. And that, by sheer coincidence, is exactly what Michael Ruppert did, just three days after posting his farewell to America (http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ ww3/082106_proof_documents_summary.sh tml). Another thing an aspiring Marcooper might want to do, upon arrival in Venezuela, is appeal for political asylum so as to get the attention of the Chavez government. And that, again purely by coincidence, appears to be exactly what Ruppert did (which would explain why he took a roundabout route to Venezuela to make it appear as though he was forced to sneak out of the US).

Only time will tell if Michael Ruppert is indeed in Venezuela as a man on a mission. It is possible, I suppose, that he simply needed to get the hell out of Dodge - due to the staged "burglary" incident, his ongoing financial woes, and the sexual harassment suit that he has responded to, from the safety of Venezuela, by viciously slandering and snitch-jacketing the complainant - and so he picked a place that is filled with friends from the intelligence community who can help him get reestablished.

All that can be said with certainty is that, as Richard Nixon once said, we won't have Mike Ruppert to kick around anymore. But have no fear; there is no shortage of fake dissident writers waiting to fill the void.
 
Lisa said:
"I think he did that himself," she said.
Smart girl.

Lisa said:
"I don't know what Ruppert is capable of," she said. "He's mental. My mom wants me to move out of town because she doesn't think I'm safe here."
Her mom's probably right. We end up with yet another 'alternative media' person seen as a raving lunatic (although in this case, I think it's probably true).
 
My personal take is that Ruppert was so sorely exposed that he became a liability for COINTELPRO and so he was reassigned to a country where they don't know him that well. There he can put on this "ex-pat-that-HAD-TO-flee-mask" for credibility. Good Luck Lier.
 
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