Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil

The attacks of September 11, 2001, were accomplished through an amazing orchestration of logistics and personnel. Crossing the Rubicon discovers and identifies key suspects--finding some of them in the highest echelons of American government--by showing how they acted in concert to guarantee that the attacks produced the desired result.

Crossing the Rubicon is unique not only for its case-breaking examination of 9/11, but for the breadth and depth of its world picture--an interdisciplinary analysis of petroleum, geopolitics, narcotraffic, intelligence and militarism--without which 9/11 cannot be understood.

The US manufacturing sector has been mostly replaced by speculation on financial data whose underlying economic reality is a dark secret. Hundreds of billions of dollars in laundered drug money flow through Wall Street each year from opium and coca fields maintained by CIA-sponsored warlords and US-backed covert paramilitary violence. America's global dominance depends on a continually turning mill of guns, drugs, oil and money. Oil and natural gas--the fuels that make economic growth possible--are subsidized by American military force and foreign lending.

In reality, 9/11 and the resulting "war on terror" are parts of a massive authoritarian response to an emerging economic crisis of unprecedented scale. Peak Oil--the beginning of the end for our industrial civilization--is driving the lites of American power to implement unthinkably draconian measures of repression, warfare and population control. Crossing the Rubicon is more than a story. It is a map of the perilous terrain through which, together and alone, we are all now making our way.

Michael C. Ruppert is the publisher and editor of From the Wilderness, a newsletter read by more than 16,000 subscribers in 40 countries. A former Los Angeles Police Department narcotics investigator, he is widely known for his groundbreaking stories on US involvement in the drug trade, Peak Oil and 9/11.