Mike Rupert movie Collapse review: Is it the end of the worl

[MikeWB]

Is it the end of the world?
By Dan Kois
Friday, December 11, 2009

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.

Spare some seeds?

Kois is a freelance reviewer.

** 1/2 Unrated. At AFI Silver Theatre. Contains profanity. 82 minutes.

Post a Comment

[abduLMaria]

and how nervous I was, suddenly, that this contemporary Cassandra might just be right.

or ... Faux Cassandra.

loudest silence i have ever heard - Ruppert's silence on Israel & Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.

on Ruppert's blog Orkin actually describes herself & Ruppert as "Cassandra's" (someone who is destined to tell the truth, but never be believed.)

my perception is that Ruppert's intent was to tell the truth when he was investigating drug dealing in the CIA, and early on when he was investigating 9-11.

but, since his trip to Venezuela ... i think he was adopted by the Zionists.  he began advocating ignorring the biggest pieces of evidence (the collapse of WTC 1, 2, & 7), and even convinced Marc Rabinowitz (oilempire.us), who until then had been doing a credible job of covering 9-11, to follow along.

Cassandra my ass.

Paradoxically, i still admire his work.  i don't know anybody else who has so thoroughly documented Cheney's role in 9-11 & supervision of the war-games.  the lowering of the guard was critical to the execution of 9-11, and Cheney's office supervised that.  of course, who was in Cheney's office ?  Scooter Libby/Leibowitz.

[Rockclimber]

The world is swimming in oil. Ruppert is zio-owned.

[scorpio]

The world is swimming in oil. Ruppert is zio-owned.

yep - the massive oil deposit in North Dakota is but one of many oil deposits that are rarely mentioned.

As for Mike Ruppert, I actually knew a woman that owned some land in East County San Diego.
Ruppert was introduced to her by a mutual friend. At the time, Ruppert was looking for a
new place to live and ended up renting one of the buildings on her land.
I will spare you the gory details, but Rupert was asked to leave as the result of some rather'
strange and creepy behavior on his part.

I met him on one occasion when he was living there. He seemed very
uptight and he made me uncomfortable. I didn't really care for him.

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

The world is swimming in oil. Ruppert is zio-owned.

I also agree. He's stuck to his "Bush-Cheney-Intelligence-War for Oil" stories and just leaves it at that. Yet the Zio-NeoCon Criminals get a free pass from him because he ignores the bigger game for Israel. As a former Narcotics-Officer, I'm sure he ran across a lot of the "Chosen" from all corners of the Globe, yet nothing...

Why not attack full throttle on these Jew propagandists?

Critics

Columnist Norman Solomon has argued that Ruppert has a flawed analytical model. "Some of the problem is in how he characterizes news reports. These citations can be narrowly factual yet presented in a misleading way. Yes, such-and-such newspaper reported that thus-and-so claim was made by so-and-so. The paper reported on the claim, but that doesn't mean the claim is true."[19]

Ruppert's reply to Solomon's criticism, "Most of our critics, notably David Corn of The Nation and self-anointed media critic Norman Solomon, have gone silent as both our reporting and predictions have been completely validated by events."[20]

Columnist David Corn has also criticized Ruppert's methodology, and dismisses the idea that conspiracy theorizing is useful: "In fact, out-there conspiracy theorizing serves the interests of the powers-that-be by making their real transgressions seem tame in comparison."[21] Ruppert responded with an open public letter to Corn.[22]

Many supporters of Ruppert's take issue with the use of phrases like 'conspiracy theories,' as they instigate immediate connotations and denote falsehoods that portray the 'conspiracy theorist' as a member of a paranoid fringe-dwelling underclass. As Ruppert points out about several of his major documented sources, academics Dr Alfred W. McCoy and Peter Dale Scott; "why is it that these books have never been sued? There is an old saying amongst legal circles: the truth is the perfect defence against libel." [23]

[MikeWB]

Just watched it. It's very, very good. Better than any conspiracy movie I've seen in the past few years. Agree or disagree with Rupert, this is a powerful documentary. Highly recommended.

[kolnidre]

I have very low expectations but I'm going to go ahead and watch Collapse and Ventura's global warming episode this weekend. Watched the first quarter of Not Evil, Just Wrong last night and it was really good up until that point. Beautifully filmed and edited, and on message, which I didn't expect based on the film maker's public antics like the polar bear suit in Copenhagen yesterday.

[high_treason]

I thought Rupert disappeared after accussations of sexual harrassment and theft surfaced against him, then he went AWOL claiming to be sick with some terminal disease and then he said he retired from beyond the wilderness. Surprize! now that things have gone quiet again he emerges to draw us back in to his peak oil B.S. which is not helping anyone.

[Rockclimber]

Just watched it. It's very, very good. Better than any conspiracy movie I've seen in the past few years. Agree or disagree with Rupert, this is a powerful documentary. Highly recommended.

I haven't watch it, perhaps I might since you say it's good but...Vague question but what solutions does he offer? Does he offer hope for mankind or is this another fearmongering, no hope documentary? If so, like Jones, I tend to beleive that the ultimate message/programming is to break people down and make us ripe for accepting global government/global tyranny.

I don't trust the guy. He started out with good intentions but then the sexual harrassment charges started pouring in. Something tells me, imho, that his zio-handlers have some serious dirt on him, hence why the silence on Israel. Somebody else is steering his ship so to speak. Plus he comes off as a manic depressant-misery loves company.

[MikeWB]

Rupert doesn't get into Zionism. His world view is not focused on who runs things but on where we're heading and what the society will look like after economy disintegrates. To say that he's zio-owned or a zio-agent is a huge stretch. He's a small-time nobody in their eyes. Just because a person doesn't agree with everything you believe in does not mean they're an agent. Glenn Beck or Alex Jones might be agents... but not him... he's too small.