Is it the end of the world?

[Eric]

By Dan Kois

Michael Ruppert is convinced I'll be dead really soon, and he'd like to tell you about it. At length! In Chris Smith's documentary, "Collapse," Ruppert -- a well-spoken, mustachioed ex-cop with shadowy CIA connections -- spins a plausible scenario for the end of civilization as we know it. Wearing a bland blue dress shirt and projecting an air of calm authority, Ruppert makes an unlikely doomsday prophet, which is why his predictions are so eerie. (If he were a bearded nut waving a sign on a street corner, he'd be easier to blow off.) "I don't deal in conspiracy theory," he says, answering naysayers with exasperation. "I deal in conspiracy fact."

Think of "Collapse" as the anti-"2012." Not because this dour doc is any more optimistic about the future than that recent apocalyptic spectacular but because its vision of disaster is delivered not through expensive special effects but by a talking head. Smith, the director of the dynamic documentaries "American Movie" and "The Yes Men," has clearly modeled "Collapse" after the work of Errol Morris ("The Fog of War"). Ruppert's high-energy 82-minute monologue is uninterrupted, but for archival footage.

Using the world's dwindling oil reserves, and its exploding population, as a starting point, Ruppert argues forcefully that the current economic crisis is in fact the beginning of an enormous correction that will devastate humanity. Ruppert predicts global food shortages, mass casualties and complete infrastructure collapse.

Ruppert's advice isn't too inspiring: Insulate your house and start to grow crops on your lawn. In the new world, non-genetically engineered seeds will serve as currency. I realize that, as a soft suburbanite with a hopeless brown thumb, under this nightmare scenario I'll be one of the first to go. So maybe it was denial that had me viewing Ruppert, through most of "Collapse," less as an unheralded truth-teller than as a crank with a practiced spiel. But toward the end of the movie, Ruppert unexpectedly breaks down, weeping openly for the lost future of humanity, and at that moment I was startled at how bad I felt for him -- and how nervous I was, suddenly, that this contemporary Cassandra might just be right.

Trailer here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJ3r93ELuB4



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[dom]

I'm going to watch this movie.

Tell you what man, this dooms day bit is right on par considering all the maggots running shit in the world.

And even worse all the junior maggots they having as believers and followers of their ideas.

With that said, I consider myself less maggoty than most!

[Eric]

I'm going to watch this movie.

Tell you what man, this dooms day bit is right on par considering all the maggots running shit in the world.

And even worse all the junior maggots they having as believers and followers of their ideas.

With that said, I consider myself less maggoty than most!

Me too!

I try to live and let live - and I don't believe it's ever right to use force to make other people give me things or do what I want them to.

Anyone who can agree with the above is not a Maggot in my book!

[KentAZ]

Ruppert is right on the money. He's no kook--everything he argues in "Collapse" is substantiated.

The petroleum party we've been throwing for the last 150 years is just about over, and civilization as we know it will change drastically if not disappear.

Meanwhile, Peak Oil is the elephant in the room that the politicians and major corporations don't want to talk about. Witness Obama's TV speech on the BP debacle. Mention is made of alternative energy and weaning ourselves off of oil, but the reality is that, as Ruppert and other experts point out, there are simply NO viable replacements for petroleum.

But don't worry...the Pres says that everything will be OK. Even the Gulf will come back 'better than ever.' Sure...