Americans generally like to hear good news. They like to believe that a new president will right old wrongs, that clean energy will replace dirty oil and that fresh thinking will set the economy straight. American pundits tend to restrain their pessimism and hope for the best. But is anyone prepared for the worst?

Meet Michael Ruppert, a different kind of American. A former Los Angeles police officer turned independent reporter, he predicted the current financial crisis in his self-published newsletter, From the Wilderness, at a time when most Wall Street and Washington analysts were still in denial. Director Chris Smith has shown an affinity for outsiders in films like American Movie and The Yes Men. In Collapse, he departs stylistically from his past documentaries by interviewing Ruppert in a format that recalls the work of Errol Morris and Spalding Gray.

Sitting in a room that looks like a bunker, Ruppert recounts his career as a radical thinker and spells out the crises he sees ahead. He draws upon the same news reports and data available to any Internet user, but he applies a unique interpretation. He is especially passionate about the issue of peak oil, the concern raised by scientists since the seventies that the world will eventually run out of fossil fuel. While other experts debate this issue in measured tones, Ruppert doesn’t hold back at sounding an alarm, portraying an apocalyptic future. Listening to his rapid flow of opinions, the viewer is likely to question some of the rhetoric as paranoid or deluded, and to sway back and forth on what to make of the extremism. Smith lets viewers form their own judgments.

Collapse also serves as a portrait of a loner. Over the years, Ruppert has stood up for what he believes in despite fierce opposition. He candidly describes the sacrifices and motivators in his life. While other observers analyze details of the economic crisis, Ruppert views it as symptomatic of nothing less than the collapse of industrial civilization itself.

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Is access to clean drinking water a basic human right, or a commodity that should be bought and sold like any other article of commerce?  Stephanie Soechtig’s debut feature is an unflinching examination of the big business of bottled water.

From the producers of Who Killed the Electric Car and I.O.U.S.A., this timely documentary is a behind-the-scenes look into the unregulated and unseen world of a industry that aims to privatize and sell back the one resource that ought never to become a  commodity: our water.

From the plastic production to the ocean in which so may of these bottles end up, this inspiring documentary trails the path of the bottled water industry and the communities which were the unwitting chips on the table.  A powerful portrait of the lives affected by the bottled water industry, this revelatory film features those caught at the intersection of big business and the public’s right to water.

www.tappedthemovie.com

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Workers push a cage with an unknown mammal inside into a trailer as thousands of animals are confiscated from U.S. Global Exotics in Arlington, Texas, on Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2009.

A raid on an exotic animal delivery company in Texas found starving snakes, hundreds of reptiles packed in shipping crates and rodents that had killed and eaten each other, officials said.

Dozens of people with the city of Arlington and animal welfare groups took inventory Tuesday of the animals — estimated at 20,000 — and removed them from the U.S. Global Exotics during the raid. The Arlington-based company, which advertises that it delivers exotic animals worldwide, did not respond to a telephone message seeking comment and it’s Web site was down on Wednesday.

“Sometimes animals die, but the amount of animals dead far exceeded what you would normally see at any company like this,” said Jay Sabatucci, manager of animal services with the city of Arlington. “Animals were not fed, not fed properly, overcrowded and attacking each other. Some were in an environment not proper for them, such as snakes in a 72-degree room with a lamp over them, which is not enough heat and could cause them to die.”

The company’s warehouse held mostly reptiles and rodents and also spiders, sloths and hedgehogs, but it was unclear how many were dead, said Maura Davies, a spokeswoman with the SPCA of Texas. Veterinarians treated the most severely malnourished animals, she said.

Hundreds of rodents were crammed in small containers covered with wire, and many had killed and eaten each other, Davies said. Other animals were kept in feeding troughs, and there were numerous stacked in shipping containers still holding turtles and other reptiles that had been sent to the company, Davies said. About 200 iguanas were in one small room, she said.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A hearing will be held within 10 days to determine if the animals will be returned to the company or stay in the care of the animal welfare groups, Sabatucci said. The city is considering filing criminal charges against the owner, he said.

The city was tipped off recently by federal officials who had executed a warrant for another violation and reported concerns about the animals’ conditions, Sabatucci said.

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It was the 1950s, a time of doo-wop, sock hops and Bobby Rydell, when Americans dusted off the remnants of WWII and looked toward a more optimistic society. Or so it’s often thought. But the ’50s were often less Happy Days and more The Day the Earth Stood Still, as fears of a Cold War and mistrust of the government were just beginning to bloom. Since those fears couldn’t always be talked about, they came through in films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with themes of technology run riot and the loss of free will.

These “delusional fears” were actually rooted in reality, as the government was taking steps toward turning American soldiers into unthinking, unfeeling machines with help from brainwashing and LSD. The CIA, while learning how to bring down Communists, was also learning from them — specifically how they used mind control on Korean War prisoners. Could this mind control also create a zombie-like US soldier, one who would follow orders no matter how grisly, or withstand any amount of torture if captured?

The combination of hypnosis, shock therapy and drugs like LSD and Ketamine made this seem a possibility, and were investigated in a mind control research program called MK-ULTRA. MK-ULTRA was funded by millions of U.S. dollars and led by a scientist named Sidney Gottlieb. In his book The Very Best Men, Evan Thomas describes Gottlieb as “born with a club foot and a stutter, he compensated by becoming an expert folk dancer and obtaining a Ph.D. from Cal Tech … he drank only goat’s milk and grew Christmas trees, which he sold at a roadside stand.” That is, when he wasn’t drugging research subjects.

The goals of MK-ULTRA included investigating the following:

• Materials which will render the induction of hypnosis easier or otherwise enhance its usefulness.
• Substances which will enhance the ability of individuals to withstand privation, torture and coercion during interrogation and so-called “brain-washing”.
• Materials and physical methods which will produce amnesia for events preceding and during their use.
• Physical methods of producing shock and confusion over extended periods of time and capable of surreptitious use.
• A knockout pill which could surreptitiously be administered in drinks, food, cigarettes, as an aerosol, etc., which will be safe to use, provide a maximum of amnesia, and be suitable for use by agent types on an ad hoc basis.

The CIA was fascinated by LSD, and thought it a wonder drug that could be used not only to create zombie-like armies, but to drive enemy leaders like Fidel Castro insane. There were few willing subjects in the research — often, LSD was secretly given to a range of people, from CIA employees to prostitutes and the mentally ill. Sometimes, agents even posed as prostitutes and secretly drugged their clients, while fellow agents watched in two-way mirrors.

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WWII in HD is the first-ever World War II documentary presented in full, immersive HD color.  Culled from thousands of hours of lost and rare color archival footage gathered from a worldwide search through basements and archives, WWII in HD will change the way the world sees this defining conflict.  Using footage never before seen by most Americans–converted to HD for unprecedented clarity–viewers will experience the war as if they were actually there, surrounded by the real sights and sounds of the battlefields. Along the way they’ll meet a diverse group of soldiers whose wartime diaries and journals show in visceral detail what the war was really like.

This visually astonishing landmark series presents the story of World War II through the eyes of 12 Americans who experienced the war firsthand.  Viewers will hear the story of Army nurse June Wandrey, who served from the beginning of the war in North Africa to the liberation of the camps in Germany.  They will meet Shelby Westbrook, a young African American from Toledo, who became a member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen; Jimmie Kanaya, the son of Japanese immigrants, who served in the U.S. Army and was imprisoned in Europe; and Jack Werner, a Jewish émigré who escaped from Austria before the war and wound up fighting not against Hitler and the hated Nazis, but in the Pacific Theater.

History Channel: WWII in HD

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THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK exposes the tragedy taking place in Darfur as seen through the eyes of an American witness who has since returned to the US to take action to stop it.

Using the exclusive photographs and first hand testimony of former U.S. Marine Captain Brian Steidle, THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK takes the viewer on an emotionally charged journey into the heart of Darfur, Sudan, where an Arab run government is systematically executing a plan to rid the province of it’s black African citizens.  As an official military observer, Steidle had access to parts of the country that no journalist could penetrate.  He was unprepared for what he would witness and experience, including being fired upon, taken hostage, and being unable to intervene to save the lives of young children.  Ultimately frustrated by the inaction of the international community, Steidle resigned and returned to the US to expose the images and stories of lives systematically destroyed.

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The Triangle Shirtwaist Company always kept its doors locked to ensure that the young immigrant women stayed stooped over their machines and didn’t steal anything. When a fire broke out on Saturday, March 25, 1911, on the eighth floor of the New York City factory, the locks sealed the workers’ fate. In just 30 minutes, 146 were killed. Witnesses thought the owners were tossing their best fabric out the windows to save it, then realized workers were jumping, sometimes after sharing a kiss (the scene can be viewed now as an eerie precursor to the World Trade Center events of September, 11, 2001, only a mile and a half south). The Triangle disaster spurred a national crusade for workplace safety.

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The USS Vincennes fires a rocket from its Mark 26 missile launcher, 1985

On July 3, 1988, during a  patrol in the Persian Gulf, the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian passenger jet that it had mistaken for a hostile Iranian fighter aircraft. U.S. Navy Captain Will C. Rogers III ordered a single missile fired from his warship, which hit its target and killed all 290 people aboard the commercial airbus. The attack came towards the end of the Iran-Iraq War, while U.S. vessels in the Persian Gulf had been patrolling to ward off Iranian attacks on Kuwaiti oil tankers. The international community was outraged by the American attack on a large civilian aircraft, but the Pentagon and White House defended the action. The United States claimed that the aircraft was outside the commercial jet flight corridor, flying at only 7,000 feet, and on a descent toward the Vincennes. One month later, U.S. authorities admitted that both the Vincennes and the airbus had been within a recognized commercial flightpath, and that the Iranian jet was flying at 12,000 feet and not descending. The U.S. Navy’s final report blamed crew error caused by psychological stress on men in combat for the first time.

An Iran Air passenger plane, Flight 655, was shot down by the U.S.S. Vincennes–a U.S. Navy warship–killing all 290 passengers and crew as the plane flew over the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. Stationed in the Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war, U.S. presence was intended to escort and defend Kuwait oil tankers registered under the U.S. flag. The crew of the Vincennes, in battle with gunboats of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that were harassing the passing oil tankers at the time, apparently misidentified the plane as an Iranian F-14 fighter. Tracking the plane’s approach, the Vincennes radioed repeated warnings to the Iran Air plane not to approach. When it became obvious that the crew of the plane would not concede, the Vincennes fired two surface-to-air missiles, exploding the plane.

Questions abounded about how the bulky passenger plane could have been mistaken for an F-14 fighter plane, which is much smaller and sleeker–about a third of the size of the Boeing 747 passenger plane. However, due to the sand haze from the Arabian Desert that shrouded the Gulf, the approaching plane was not visible to the naked eye, even at the nine-mile mark where the Vincennes fired. Additionally, the plane was flying towards the warship head-on, showing a smaller dot on the radar than it would have from the side. Further adding to the confusion, the passenger flight had taken off from Bandar Abbas airport, which served both civilian and military craft and happened to be the center of Iran’s F-14 operations. Any plane lifting off from Bandar Abbas was automatically tracked and assumed hostile until shown to be otherwise. No Air Force Airborne Warning and Control System or Navy Hawkeye sentry planes were positioned over the Gulf to provide further identification of the aircraft, leaving the ship to rely on its own communication tools and instinct to make a decision.

Several contradictions exist in the telling of the events surrounding the attack on Flight 655. U.S. Navy Capt. Will C. Rogers III had received orders earlier to stay in a position where the Vincennes could monitor the movement of the Iranian gunboats. When the Vincennes fired on the Iran Air flight, claiming that it was four miles outside of the standard commercial flight path from Bandar Abbas airport in Iran to Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, records show that the Vincennes was actually inside of Iran’s territorial waters, not forty miles south (where the ship had been ordered by fleet headquarters to stay) as Rogers and government reports had claimed. Furthermore, Flight 655 was directly inside of its commercial flight path, not four miles outside of it–as Rogers and the Vincennes crew also claimed.

The reason for Rogers moving the Vincennes so far away from his ordered post? The warship was purportedly off to defend its helicopter, which had been deployed–under orders from fleet headquarters–on a reconnaissance mission, to check out the group of gunboats hovering further north. Anti-aircraft rounds from one or more of the gunboats were fired, giving Rogers reason to approach; when the Vincennes arrived on the scene, lookouts reported that a few of the gunboats were headed towards the ship. It remains unclear whether this was actually the case: the gunboats likely couldn’t see the Vincennes, with their low profiles and amidst the sandy haze hovering over the gulf; also, the gunboats were within Iranian territorial waters–firing on them here would be a breach of international law.

Unfortunately, that is exactly what Rogers decided to do. It was in the midst of this gunfire that Flight 655 took off, and was (as is routine) identified initially as a hostile aircraft by the Vincennes’ AEGIS monitoring system. The first person to try to establish the plane’s identity was Petty Officer Andrew Anderson, who sent out the electronic query, “Identify, Friend or Foe?” The automated response from Flight 655 came back as “commair”–a commercial airliner. Anderson tried to confirm this, but in checking navy listings of scheduled flights over the Gulf, Anderson apparently missed Flight 655, possibly confused by the Gulf’s four different time zones. The Vincennes sent out the first of four warnings over the military emergency channel for the plane to change its course. Three subsequent warnings were sent out over the civilian emergency channel as well, although none were broadcast over air traffic control–despite the Vincennes having the capability. It is speculated that inside the cockpit of Flight 655, all channels were in use communicating with ground control, since the plane had just taken off. When Anderson again sent out the “Identify, Friend or Foe?” query, he received a different response: military aircraft. Rogers’ decision to fire was made while under the impression that the query was correct–in fact, Anderson had forgotten to reset the system after the first query, and the response he received was probably from a fighter plane on the runway back at Bandar Abbas. Rogers held that, at the time that he ordered for the crew to fire, the plane was descending and rapidly approaching–in fact, Flight 655 was actually ascending, and its speed was holding steady.

Still more factors come into play. The captains of all of the ships stationed in the Persian Gulf were under specific “Rules of Engagement” at that time, with orders to fire to avoid being fired upon. The heightened response to aircraft was due to an incident the previous year when the USS Stark was fired upon by an Iraqi fighter plane, killing thirty-seven American sailors. Navy officials reported also that on at least eight separate counts, Iraqi commercial planes had flown over commercial warships in what they deemed “a threatening manner”–possibly leading to anxious crew conditions. In fact, the U.S. military later issued a statement holding the crew accountable for the shooting, but held that their actions were influenced by the stress of being in battle for the first time.

In the end, nothing in the way of punishment happened to Rogers and his crew. Rogers became a military instructor, and then retired in 1991. The crew of the Vincennes received combat-action ribbons. The air warfare coordinator on board, Lt. Cmdr. Scott Lustig, received a commendation medal for his ability to “quickly and precisely complete the firing procedure”–the same firing procedure that shot down Flight 655.

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Thich Quảng Đức was a Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk who burned himself to death at a busy Saigon road intersection on 11 June 1963.  Thích Quảng Đức was protesting against the persecution of Buddhists by South Vietnam’s Ngô Đình Diệm administration. Photos of his self-immolation were circulated widely across the world and brought attention to the policies of the Diệm regime. Malcolm Browne won a Pulitzer Prize for his iconic photo of the monk’s death, as did David Halberstam for his written account.  After his death, his body was re-cremated, but his heart remained intact. This was interpreted as a symbol of compassion and led Buddhists to revere him as a bodhisattva, heightening the impact of his death on the public psyche.

Thích Quảng Đức’s act increased international pressure on Diệm and led him to announce reforms with the intention of mollifying the Buddhists. However, the promised reforms were implemented either slowly or not at all, leading to a deterioration in the dispute. With protests continuing, the Special Forces loyal to Diệm’s brother, Ngô Đình Nhu, launched nationwide raids on Buddhist pagodas, seizing the holy heart and causing deaths and widespread damage. Several Buddhist monks followed Thích Quảng Đức’s example and burned themselves to death. Eventually, an Army coup toppled and killed Diệm in November. The self-immolation is widely seen as the turning point of the Vietnamese Buddhist crisis which led to the change in regime.

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With more than 79,000 horses slaughtered in 2007 alone, Canada’s horse slaughter industry is among the largest in the world, and a shameful betrayal against our loyal companions.

Horses are slaughtered in Canada primarily to provide horse meat to European and Asian countries where it is eaten as a delicacy.  Horses are brought to slaughter in every possible condition—old, young, sick, healthy, injured, and even pregnant.  They are not all unwanted—often, their guardians can no longer afford to keep them, and bring the horses to auction hoping to find them a good home.  But horribly, more than 50 percent of horses sold at rural auctions go to slaughter after being bought by “kill buyers”.

A Terrible Journey

Many times, horses are crammed in trailers designed for shorter animals and travel in uncomfortable positions over very long distances. Loading and unloading is extremely stressful and dangerous for horses as they are moved along the relatively steep ramps. Canadian animal transport standards are among the worst in the industrialized world.  Current regulations allow horses to be transported for up to 36 hours without food, water or rest.

Inhumane Slaughter—NOT Humane Euthanasia

There have been many reported cases of animal welfare violations in Canadian horse slaughterhouses including failure to provide food and water, illegal unloading of animals, animals left for extended periods in kill pens and sick or injured animals denied veterinary care.  Not surprisingly, veterinary experts around the world and leading animal protection groups have denounced horse slaughter as inhumane.

Once the horses are corralled into the slaughterhouse, the end is predictable—violent and bloody. Sometimes injured and emaciated, horses are beaten and electro-shocked in overcrowded pens and must endure the smell of blood and the sights and sounds of other horses in pain and being killed before they, too, are led into a kill chute.

Horse slaughterhouses use the same type of stalls and techniques as cattle slaughterhouses. These stalls are too wide for horses and the captive-bolt stun gun method used with cattle is ill-suited for horses.

Horses are an extreme example of a flight animal. The panic and instinctive desire to escape they experience in the slaughterhouse causes them to thrash their heads frantically in the kill chute, making it difficult to effectively stun them prior to slaughter. Witnesses (and video footage) document horses subjected to a sharp blow to the head from the captive-bolt gun three or four times before they are rendered unconscious for exsanguination. In a recent investigation of carcasses discarded by a Canadian slaughterhouse, skulls of many horses processed for meat were found without any holes from a stun gun or rifle whatsoever!

Times Are Changing—Time to ACT

The Canadian horsemeat industry had been in decline in recent years.  However, with the closing of the remaining equine slaughter plants in the United States, the number of horses imported to Canada for slaughter has increased by a whopping 49 percent. As a result, several new equine slaughter plants have recently opened in Canada. We need to act now to stop this growing climate of cruelty to horses in Canada!

What We’re Doing

Horse slaughter is an urgent problem that needs to be addressed throughout North America. This year, House Judiciary Committee Chairman, John Conyers (D-MI)—along with Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN)—introduced the Prevention of Equine Cruelty Act of 2008, which prohibits the slaughter of American horses for human consumption and their export for slaughter in other countries.

In Canada, HSI is working to achieve a federal ban that would end the slaughter, sale, transport and export of horses for human consumption. Such a ban would save tens of thousands of gentle creatures from a horrible fate.

Take Action

Please contact your MP urging the creation of legislation to end horse slaughter in Canada.

Learn More

Fast Facts

• Horse Slaughter Factsheet [PDF]

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