All language subtitles for Collapse 2009 eng

You know, there's been a lot
of talk about Abraham Lincoln.

But the president we need today
is not Abraham Lincoln.

The president we need
today is Thomas Jefferson.

He said that we needed
a revolution every generation.

Thomas Jefferson said
you have to be ready

in order to preserve
the vitality

of your liberty
and your freedom

to defend it not by
overthrowing anything else

except for what you
have been holding in your head

that may not be
applicable anymore.

We've gotten very lazy.

We're many generations overdue

for a revolution
in our thinking.

I'm not talking about
blood and violence;

although I'm afraid
that's already happening.

I'm talking about a revolution

that's probably
the hardest kind,

the kind that takes place
inside the human soul

and the human mind,

to be able
to tear everything down,

throw everything out,

and start with a completely
fresh piece of paper

and say, "Okay, how do we
solve this problem?"

Can you talk to me
a little bit, like...

I mean, who are you?

Listen, this is not a plan

that would make sense to anybody
except God.

You know, I gave up trying to
figure that out a long time ago.

I was born into a family
deeply connected

to the U.S.
intelligence community.

My mother had been
a cryptanalyst

at the Army Security Agency
and NSA in World War II.

Her work product went
to the President Roosevelt

and to Secretary of War Stimson
and Cordell Hull at State.

My father was
an Air Force aviator

who went to work
for Martin Marietta

on contracts for the CIA
and the Air Force,

namely the Titan IIIC

which put out the CIA's
Keyhole spy satellites.

At age 19 when I was interning
for LAPD,

I was pulled into
the chief's office

because somebody discovered
I had a Q clearance.

I didn't know anything about it.

I went home,
and I asked Dad he said,

"Yeah, because you're my son,

"and, you know,
they have to do that

because I might leave
my briefcase open."

But a Q was a secret
compartmentalized clearance

above top secret.

I went through UCLA
as a Republican

who didn't like anything
about the war in Vietnam,

who didn't like anything
about government

with this naive belief that,
you know,

you can get inside the system

and change it from the inside.

I became an L.A. policeman,

worked in South Central
Los Angeles in The Jungle,

and the CIA tried unofficially

to recruit me
into an operation

where they were smuggling drugs
into the country

back in 1976, 1977,

and I wouldn't get involved
in that.

You know, I thought,
"Well, jeez, this must be

"an isolated incident
of corruption.

"This must be something

"that everybody is gonna
want to correct right away.

My God."

And of course
that was a mistake.

Basically my life disintegrated

because I was betrayed
by a woman

who worked for CIA,
who was my fianc�e,

and when I said I wouldn't
get involved in drugs,

she disappeared, and people
started shooting at me,

and then it was
a matter of saving my life,

and the tools which
I acquired to save my life then,

which were, you know,
writing letters to congressmen,

getting on the record,

trying to get
newspaper stories written,

those were survival skills,

but it was also a part
of learning how things worked.

I was a mapmaker if you will,
a cartographer,

going out to try and map
how the world really worked

as opposed to the way
we were told it worked.

And the map that we have made

has proved so startlingly
accurate over ten years

whether they had to do
with gold prices

or geopolitical developments
or economic events.

The only thing that amazes me

is the speed with which things
are falling apart,

and that message now

is the single most
important thing in my life.

It's the only thing in my life,

well, except for rock and roll
music, good music,

playing with my dog,
and long walks on the beach.

Rags, come here.
Rags, come here.

I first became focused
on energy issues in late 2001,

just maybe a month or two
after 9/11.

I was contacted by a geologist,

a brilliant guy named
Dale Allen Pfeiffer,

who introduced me to the concept
of peak oil

and the basic issues
about energy

and helped me to realize

that there was a great deal
of evidence in 2001,

not only that peak oil
was very real

but that government agencies
were acting

and responding
as if it was very real.

All plastic is oil.

Most paints, all pesticides
are made from oil.

Everything from toothpaste to
tooth brushes is made from oil.

There are seven gallons of oil
in every tire.

There is nothing anywhere
in any combination

that will replace the edifice
built by fossil fuels.

Nothing.

Peak oil is probably now
very easy to explain,

much easier
than it was a long time ago.

People have felt what
$147 a barrel oil feels like.

Essentially peak oil is like if
you know what a bell curve is.

Goes up, comes down.

Peak oil is the point
of oil production

when you're at the top
of the bell curve.

And essentially
what that means is,

you've used up
half of the resource.

In the case of oil or
any other substance like that,

no matter how much money
you throw at it,

you're never going
to be able to increase

oil production above
where it was at peak.

As of 2008, the International
Energy Agency has admitted

that there is a global 9%
decline rate in oil production.

That's the equivalent of
about 8 million barrels a day.

There is no way, having plucked
all the low-hanging fruit

and found the big reservoirs

that we are gonna able
to offset a 9% decline rate.

From a detective's standpoint,

if you are trying
to assemble a case, you know,

the multidimensional aspects
of a case...

means, motive, opportunity...

to understand what kind of force
drives events,

peak oil was almost
with the stroke

of, like,
a diamond cutter's knife

the single piece which started
to make

everything resonate
and make sense together.

An economy
that runs on petroleum,

some 20 million barrels of it
a day.

You will recall that when the
Bush administration took office

in January of 2001,

a National Energy
Policy Development Group,

the NEPDG, was formed

and placed under
the exclusive, private,

absolute control
of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Its records were kept a secret,

its minutes were kept a secret,

seven pages were released
as a result of two lawsuits,

and it clearly shows that that
task force was looking saying,

"How much oil is there?

Where is it?
Who owns it?"

They knew that this was coming
for a long time.

It has been known
that this event,

this collapse,
this crash, was coming.

Who they were,

we can't even get information

as to who was involved
and what they were doing.

First of all, if you think
there might be oil someplace,

then what you do is,
you go drill a test well.

Then what you have to do

is to take that one well
in the center,

and then you drill a series
of appraisal wells

around that well

to determine where the oil field
might go.

You don't know how much oil
you're gonna get,

how deep it is, what kind of oil
it's gonna to be.

There are many different grades
of oils,

a lot of which
are more expensive to refine.

So all of that has
to do with how long it takes

to make something produce,

how much energy do you get back

for how much energy
you invested.

When oil was seeping out
of the ground in Pennsylvania,

you got a return of,
I don't know, 200 to 1.

When you have to go offshore,

to deep water drilling
in 15,000 feet of water

and your first well costs
$150 million to build,

all that's energy that's being
invested to get energy,

and the moment you start
burning more energy

to get a barrel of oil out
of the ground than it's worth,

forget about it.

The world's been
thoroughly explored

over the last 120 years.

There's no major
oil finds left.

As a matter of fact,
no field the size of Ghawar,

the largest field
in Saudi Arabia,

has ever been discovered since.

Saudi Arabia has 25%

of the known oil reserves
on the planet.

25%.

Why, if Saudi Arabia has all
these untapped reserves on shore

are they moving heavily
into offshore drilling?

Now, if it's 5, 10, 50 times
more expensive

to drill offshore
than on land,

doesn't that tell you
that Saudi Arabia

knows they've got
no more oil to find?

It's axiomatic that if
Saudi Arabia has passed its peak

and is in decline,
the whole planet is

just because of the size
of the reserves that are there.

Iraq is oil
that's not only accessible,

it's right close
to the Persian Gulf,

which means it's
a short distance to ships.

They can put the pipelines.

They can get that into
the global supply stream

as everything else declines.

And Iraq was all about the oil.

A lot of people have admitted
that, and like, duh.

11 days after 9/11,
when there was no clear evidence

that Saddam Hussein had anything
to do with 9/11...

of course, he didn't...

the plans were started
to invade Iraq, of course.

That was the objective,
get control of that oil.

Because Saddam Hussein
had been talking about

pricing his oil in Euros,
taking it away from the dollar.

We got in there.

We restructured everything.

We put in a friendly government
using the U.S. dollar,

and we assured
the oil companies

their "fair access"
and fair share of Iraqi oil.

International oil companies
into Iraqi oil fields

We have no intention
of leaving Iraq.

We're never gonna
leave Iraq.

Going back to 2004,
we started building the largest,

most permanent military bases,
three of them, in the world,

plus the largest embassy
compound that's ever been built.

We built an embassy compound
in Baghdad

that's bigger than Vatican City.

That's not a temporary deal.

Nobody is gonna take
that oil.

We are sitting on it.

But there is not enough oil
in Iraq to change anything.

Iraq probably has around
90 billion barrels

of recoverable oil.

That sounds like a lot of oil.

But when you consider that in
2008 the world was consuming

85 million barrels a day,

that means
a billion barrels of oil

only last for about 111/2 days,

so that ain't that much oil.

That's only the first
of the good things

that will come to Iraq,
thanks to oil.

They knew exactly
what was coming.

That's what's in
the National Energy Policy

Development Group report
that's been classified,

because if that report
were declassified,

we would be building scaffolds
to hang Dick Cheney

and everybody in that
administration tomorrow.

Let's assume
just for the sake of discussion

that there's 600 billion barrels
in the Arctic.

First of all, it happens
to be under the polar ice cap.

That's a problem.

The polar ice cap happens to be
on, what, 10,000,

15,000 feet water.

The problem with the polar ice
cap is, it floats; it moves.

So you can't drill a well
on Tuesday

and expect it to be in
the same place on Thursday.

That's why a lot of conservative
think tanks and oil companies

are cheering the melting
of the polar ice caps.

Developing this tiny section
of ANWR,

could eventually yield up
to a million...

If there is oil in ANWR

there's no more than about
a six-month supply

for the entire United States.

There are no pipelines
across a thousand miles

of tundra that's melting due
to global warming,

which means you can't sink pipes
to support

a pipeline in tundra
that's turned to mud.

There's no tanker routes,
the wells aren't drilled,

and yet we are spending our
future as if that oil is there.

We got to drop all this lying
right now.

We don't need transparency
about anything

other than about
how much oil is really left,

because we don't know.

Oil is a commodity;
it's an asset.

You make loans based upon
what's in the ground,

so you have all these
accounting terms:

possible reserves,
proven reserves,

ultimately recoverable reserves,

verified reserves, estimated...

But actual reserve estimates
are state secrets.

The Saudis don't dare announce
that they've passed

their peak of oil production.

Why?

They have a very
restive population

that have been sold
an expectation

of a rising standard of living,

and the moment Saudi Arabia
acknowledges it's past peak,

it may well have a revolution.

Now, what happens if there's
a revolution in Saudi Arabia

with 25% of the world's
known oil?

Where is that oil going
to get replaced from?

It can't be.

Very complex problem.

It's a very complex situation.

Just start working now,
otherwise we won't have time.

We're gonna be out
of oil within a few years.

In doing this sort of pulling
archival footage for this film,

I found at least ten examples
of people in the late '70s

talking about,
this is the end of oil.

This is, like,
end of a way of life,

we are hitting a new era.

This situation is destined
to continue.

People look at that footage,

and I think they can feel
that it's somewhat alarmist,

given that we were able
to continue

our way of life
for another 30, 35 years.

Do you see any parallels
between that time and now?

The '70s was really
a critical decade.

In the '70s,
Marion King Hubbard,

the original prophet
of peak oil,

in late 1949 he did the math

and said U.S. domestic oil
production will peak in 1970.

So that's not some feat
of Nostradamus

communicating with some entity.

It's math; it's science;
it's simple.

But in the '70s, M. King Hubbard
testified before Congress.

That was 1974.

In 1976,
President Jimmy Carter said,

"Man, we cannot use as much
energy as we have been using."

To use energy
more efficiently.

That's when solar panels
went up.

That's when he start... he knew.

They have known in Washington.

I have...

I have published on my website,
as have others,

declassified CIA documents
from 1976

showing that CIA was perfectly
aware of peak oil.

In those days, of course,

when the situation appeared
to be normal,

when people had jobs,
they had vacations,

they had credit cards,
they had credit lines,

everybody is talking about
growth, growth, growth,

buy, buy, buy,
spend, consume, consume,

and everything seemed
to be working,

yeah, we were called alarmists.

We don't live
in that world anymore.

Americans were on the way
to owning millions of cars.

800 million internal
combustion-powered vehicles

on the planet.

They all run on oil.

It takes uncounted barrels
of oil

to make those cars and engines
in the first place,

and you cannot plug
any new technology

into an internal combustion
powered engine.

With seven gallons of oil
in every tire,

nobody will ever make

800 million new
internal combustion anything

because there ain't gonna be
enough oil.

Ethanol is an absolute...

joke.

First of all, a very brilliant
scientist, David Pimentel,

took the concept of net energy,

how much energy do you invest

versus how much
do you get in return,

and he concluded
about a decade ago, I guess,

that it takes more energy
to make ethanol

than you get from burning it,
which is absolute stupidity.

Because you drive the
oil-powered machines, etcetera,

you irrigate,
you use the fertilizers,

you're burning all that oil
and natural gas to grow it.

Then you make steam which is...

which is more
hydrocarbon energy,

you add more chemicals,

and you come up with ethanol,
which you can put in a car.

Now, the Bush administration
had announced a goal

of having 15% of all fuel
in the United States

made from ethanol, I think,
by the year 2015.

They forgot to tell you that

that would take all the arable
land used to grow corn to do it.

Canadian tar sands is an oil.

it is a very, very thick,
sticky, obnoxious substance

that's mixed in with sand

at levels 200, 300, 400,
500 feet in layers

beneath the soil.

This is in Alberta.

And they literally strip mine
thousands of tons a day.

They put them in these huge,
oil-powered dump trucks

and drive them to a place
where they then wash the sand.

They take millions and billions
of gallons of fresh water,

which we're running
out of everywhere,

and they boil it
by burning natural gas.

There is not
a possibility anywhere

that Canadian tar sand's
production

will exceed maybe 3 million,
3.5 million barrels a day.

The first thing
that the uneducated mind

that's in denial says,

"Well, what about hydrogen?

Can't we make electric cars?"

Then I have to bring them back
to the fact

that there's seven gallons
of oil in every tire,

that there are thousands
of gallons of oil in every car,

in the plastics, the paints,
the resins, everything.

All of that is made by oil.

The oil that's used
to manufacture the car

and ship it around, to heat
the metals, etcetera, etcetera.

There will never be 800 million
electric powered vehicles,

and electricity is not
an energy source.

Electricity is generated
by burning

or using some other kind
of energy.

Today freedom and power
are woven together.

The invisible battalions
of electric power...

It's clear that electricity

is the key
to industrial civilization

in that it powers
our refrigeration.

It runs the water pumps
that pump water out

of the New York subway
system every day.

It allows us
to commute electronically,

charge our cell phone batteries,

preserve food,
run operating rooms, etcetera.

The subject
of alternative energies.

There is no such thing
as clean coal,

and there never ever will be.

Why?

Carbon sequestration
is enormously expensive.

What it says essentially is,
you capture the CO2

and any other
greenhouse gases emitted

in the burning of the coal,

you exert enormous amounts
of energy to compress it,

then you move it over
enormously long distances,

and you pump it into some
airtight chamber in the ground

where somebody will figure out
with technology

what to do with
the greenhouse gas in 10,000

or 15,000 thousand years.

Nuclear process
requires something

like 10 to 13 years
of incubation

to get the permitting done,
all the regulations satisfied,

and the construction
of nuclear power plants

is one of the most
energy-intensive processes

in the world.

The steel, the lead containment,

the enrichment of uranium
is a horribly intensive process.

You just don't throw
a rock of uranium in

and start making nuclear energy.

Can't do that.

The first and obvious
problem with tidal energy is,

it has to be generated
or collected near a coastline.

Salt water
is extremely corrosive.

There's an enormous energy cost
in manufacturing the machines.

There are only two
alternative energies

which can really have
an immediate impact,

an immediate benefit.

Now, the problem with plans
like enormous wind farms

in Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado,

the fundamental law
with electricity is,

is that it's drawn off
right where it's used first.

Yes, you can transmit
electricity over long distances,

but people don't think
about the energy

that goes into transformers,

and how much copper
is in power lines,

and all the maintenance
that has to go to that grid.

So when you see really
ridiculous commercials

that say we could have a solar
array 96 miles in the desert,

they don't even think about
the fact

that that electricity is going
to get used in California

before it goes any place else.

Just, you know,
if you saw this movie

and you didn't know
who you were,

and you wanted...

you were just curious
what your credentials are

in terms of understanding
this information.

I have a bachelors degree
in political science

with honors from UCLA, 1973.

Graduate of the Los Angeles
Police Academy, Valedictorian,

class of 1173,

was sent to do DEA Narcotics
Enforcement School by LAPD.

I have 30 years of experience
as an investigative journalist.

I've broken major scandals
that have had national impact.

Of course, I got to know
many members of Congress.

I had been trying to testify
for a long time,

and actually I have
never testified in Congress.

I did, at the request of

the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence,

submit written testimony,

but after they read
the written testimony

that I was going to submit,

I never got a call to testify.

I have written two books,

one of which is in the
Harvard Business School library.

I've lectured at universities
all over the country

and in many countries.

People wonder, you know,

how this guy with
a bachelors degree from UCLA

came to know all this shit.

Well, this comes from 30 years
of learning

how to scan mainstream media
and read it,

a way of finding stories
from around the world

that tell you all the things
that are really going on

that are not played
on the headlines...

but they're the kind of stories

that people who really make
decisions know how to look for...

and then how to connect them,

how to place the dots
close enough together

so that they can be connected.

The soil is the place from which

all plant matter
gets its nutrients,

and if you keep sucking
the nutrients out,

the soil is useless.

For all of history,
the way the soil was replenished

and the nutrients were returned
in some measure to the soil

was that plant matter
was allowed to decay,

to compost, to restock the soil.

That's why crop rotation
is so important.

You may have one crop
of celery

which will suck certain
chemicals out of the soil.

Another crop,
wheat or something else,

may return those same chemicals
to the soil.

So the soil maintains a balance.

It's kind of sad,
because we as a species

have become so disconnected
from the earth.

We don't have any
real contact with the earth.

We don't have any sense
of its functions,

its feel, its nature,
its seasons, its timing.

First of all, the topsoil
on which food is grown now

is nothing more than a sponge
onto which we pour chemicals

that we get from oil
and natural gas,

and without those chemicals...

the soil has been turned
into a junkie;

the soil is worthless.

So when you plant a crop now,

what happens is you drive
an oil-powered machine.

Drives along, and it plows.

Then you drive another
oil-powered machine,

and it drives along,
and it plants.

And then you irrigate.

Well, how do you irrigate?

Well, that water is pumped
by pumps

that are powered by electricity.

Where's that electricity
come from?

In the United States,
it's either coal or natural gas.

So next thing you do
is come along,

and you fertilize it.

All commercial fertilizers
are made from ammonia,

and the feedstock for ammonia
is natural gas.

So you have ammonium nitrate
fertilizers

that are then sprayed on
by another oil-powered vehicle.

Then the crop dusters come along
that are powered by oil

that spray pesticides that are
all made from petroleum.

Then when it's time to harvest
the food, what do you do?

You drive another
oil-powered machine,

and you harvest it.

You use another oil-powered
machine to drive it to a place

where it's processed.

Then you wrap it up in plastic,
which is oil,

and you put it in
another oil-powered machine,

and you drive it X number
of miles

to a food distribution warehouse

and an oil-powered machine
to your supermarket.

The way food is grown, produced,

and moved around
the world today,

it's an enormous waste
of hydrocarbon energy

which doesn't make sense.

Why do we have strawberries
from Chile?

Why do we have
spinach from China?

Why do we ship anchovies
halfway around the world

to be packaged in tin cans?

There are ten calories
of hydrocarbon energy

in every calorie
of food consumed

in the industrialized world.

Three times in my life

I tried to walk away from,
forget about,

the things
that I had seen

that were so out of whack,

that were so crazy,
that were so wrong.

You know, and that is what
many people urged me to do.

But what inevitably happened
every time

I tried to walk away from this
path that I have walked

was that everything else
in my life

would be taken away from me

so that this path
was the only thing left.

I had no other choice.

And, yeah, anger and resentment
do build up,

especially when you see
and document as much corruption,

as much dishonesty,

as much illegality,
as much murder, as much betrayal

as I have from people
who pretend to be otherwise.

And I reached a point...

it was about 1993
when I first became involved

or learned of the murder
of Marine Colonel Jim Sabow

at El Toro Marine Air Station.

He was the chief of Air Ops,
and he had caught CIA C130s

flying 2,000 and 3,000 kilos
of cocaine on to his base,

and he was suicided.

I crossed my own Rubicon
at that point.

There was no turning
back for me,

and I knew that wherever
this path was gonna go,

I had to follow it.

In the '80s, because I had
some skill as a writer,

I started freelance writing.

I got published a few times.

I realized
that I could be a writer.

I wrote about 109 mysterious
deaths or suicides

in the U.S. military
in a very short period of time,

and I found that most of those
were connected

to covert operations
in one way or another.

The next real evolution
came in 1996

after my confrontation
with CIA Director Deutch,

John Deutch
at Locke High School.

You know, I remember standing up
saying something like,

"I am a former Los Angeles
police narcotics detective.

"I worked South Central
Los Angeles,

"and I can tell you,
Director Deutch,

"emphatically
and without equivocation

"that the agency
has dealt drugs in this country

for a long time,"

and the room exploded.

I had been saying that CIA
was dealing drugs for 18 years.

I mean, I'd been shot at for it.

I'd been forced out of LAPD.

I'd been trashed.

I'd been called crazy.

If, in the course
of the IG's investigations

and Fred Hinson's work,

you come across evidence
of severely criminal activity,

will you tell
the American people the truth?

We will bring the people
to justice

and make them accountable.

Like so often,
when they promise justice,

there isn't any.

It was whittled
and tweetered down.

There were some
very mysterious deaths involved.

Congressmen Julian Dixon,
who was at that meeting,

had a very sudden
heart attack...

which led to the publishing of
the first issue of my newsletter

in May of 1998,
From the Wilderness.

I sat down
and wrote a few pages out,

like, eight pages I think.

I mailed it to 68 names,

and over the next
81/2 years,

From the Wilderness grew
to have

as many as 60 members
of Congress as subscribers,

professors at universities
around the world,

government officials.

One of my first expos�s
after CIA and drugs

was that I proved CNN
was absolutely lying

in something called
the Tailwind Scandal of 1998

where CNN had
correctly reported...

their producer April Oliver
had reported

that CIA had used sarin gas
in Laos

during the Vietnam War,

and Henry Kissinger
authorized it.

Four different A-1
pilots who dropped the gas.

In spite of
what the Pentagon said.

CNN, you know, rolled over.

Henry Kissinger called.

Oliver was fired.

Pat Tillman series
that I broke in my newsletter.

All seven parts, that was what
broke the Pat Tillman expos�

that brought down nine officers
or got them disciplined.

The government violated
its most basic responsibility.

But my
economic predictions then,

we had it so right.

The problems are several-fold

behind the economic crash
that is coming

that will be nothing
like we have ever seen before.

In 2006, we said,
"Get out of debt right now.

"Check your mortgage carefully,

"especially if you have
an A.R.M.

"Get into gold.

"Reduce debt
as much as possible.

"Stay away from any kind
of financing

and heavy credit card."

We issued a whole series
of warnings.

How many people have ever heard
of the fact

that they're trading pools
of mortgage-backed securities?

Like mutual funds,
but it's all mortgages.

Those books are as cooked
as the books on Enron.

But it was like 11, 12 days

after we issued
that economic alert

in the middle of running
the Tillman series

that our offices
were burglarized.

All seven computers smashed

and a whole chain of events
took place up there

which was... which actually
worked out okay,

because I needed to evolve,
and I have since then.

There was a period after,
you know, so many years

of deliberate attempts
to sabotage my operations,

four of which we connected in
one way or another to the FBI.

I published that I had retired.

I said officially
that I had retired.

What I had... and at that point,
given the way I felt,

that was
a pretty honest statement.

I didn't know
that I would bounce back

or that there was a third
or a fourth wind

to come inside of me,

but that also is the image
that I wanted out there

just to take the heat off me

at least until Bush and Cheney
got out of the White House,

because that's where
the heat was coming from.

From them personally?

I mean,
from their administration,

or, you know, the people
that ran the CIA,

that ran the FBI?

Who was that pressure
coming from?

I have absolutely no doubt
that Richard Cheney

and Donald Rumsfeld took an
intense personal interest in me

and what my newsletter
had published

for all the years
of the Bush Administration.

That's about as specific
as I care to get.

There was a guy named
von Clausewitz

who said that war
is a continuation of politics

by other means.

Politics is a continuation
of economics by other means.

To understand all of this mess,
you need to understand one term.

It's a big financial term that
is real simple to understand.

It's called a derivative.

A derivative is
any financial instrument

which is derived
from the inherent value

of something else
that is tangible.

In other words,
an ear of corn has value.

A barrel of oil has value.

If you have a house
and a mortgage, that's fine.

When you start doing
mortgage-backed securities,

packaging, and bundling,
that's called a derivative.

As of the start of the collapse,

which let's peg
at September of 2008,

there were derivatives
with a notional value,

meaning that if you added up
all the pieces of paper,

were worth $700 trillion.

In other words,
if they all cashed out at once,

you would need to have
$700 trillion in cash,

and of course,
there isn't that much money.

So with all of these hedges and
derivatives and puts and calls,

those are all derivatives,

and all these other things
they do,

all they cared about was making
the minimum monthly payment

on the credit card bill.

In other words, to service
the $700 trillion

in notional-valued derivatives,

they had to pay a certain amount
of cash every month,

and God forbid they should
all come due.

What's happening
with all of these bailouts,

which are now around
$11 trillion

if you add up
all the U.S. bailouts,

they're chasing a $700 trillion
derivatives bubble

down the drain.

The people who have run
the monetary paradigm,

the economic paradigm,
since money was first invented

have wanted to mystify it

and to make everybody believe

that only some expert could
understand the mumbo jumbo

of the priesthood of money.

Three things only anybody
needs to know

about the way money works
around the world today.

One: fiat currency.

What is money?

If I were to take a bill
out of my wallet,

and I reach in my wallet,
and I pull out this bill,

it's $20.

Wow. Okay.

Can I eat it?

Can I roll it up and chew it?

Do I get calories and vitamins?

No, I don't.

Can I crumple it up,

throw it in my gas tank?

Is the car gonna go anywhere?

No, it's gonna clog
the fuel injectors, maybe.

This is only a symbol.

This doesn't mean anything.

It's fiat.

It's created out of thin air

because somebody turned on
a printing press.

That's all it is.

Before the great growth
of population

which occurred
with the advent of oil

came this revolution in
the monetary system as well.

There was a time
when the pound sterling

actually meant
a pound of sterling silver.

There was only so much silver
out of the ground.

It was tangible.

You couldn't print silver.

It was something real.

You cannot print any more money

than there is energy
to back it up.

That simple.

So we have fiat currency.

Then we have something called
fractional reserve banking.

If you were to bring me
a $10 deposit,

I could make $90 worth of loans

based on just having
that $10 in my drawer,

because it's all calculated
on the premise

that not everybody's
gonna come in

and want their cash all at once.

That's called a run on the bank.

So they have calculated
the odds,

much as Vegas odds makers do,
and said,

"Okay, well, you know,
there are very little odds

under normal conditions."

When I lend now a total of $100
based on that $10 deposit,

that's more money
that I create out of thin air.

Well, gee, that means
that in order to pay off,

whoever gets that money
has to make more money still

to feed in at the bottom
to pay the bank

so that the bank
can create still more money.

You know, I think it's probably
pretty safe

at this point in time with the
collapse of the U.S. economy

to say that pretty much
everybody is understanding

how compound interest works.

The higher the interest rate
on your credit card,

for those people who had 20%,
25% cards,

that means they are creating
that much more money

if they don't pay cash
every month.

What I have just described
is a pyramid scheme.

We live in
an infinite-growth paradigm

which requires growth forever.

It's not that Bernie Madoff
was a pyramid scheme

or Stanford was
a pyramid scheme.

The whole economy
is a pyramid scheme.

The whole global economy
cannot be sustained.

It requires infinite growth.

But infinite growth collides
with finite energy.

First law of thermodynamics,

energy can neither be created
nor destroyed.

The second law:

energy converts
in only one direction:

from usable to unusable.

That's called
the law of entropy.

Things break down.

And in every energy transaction,

some energy is always lost.

So you have finite energy

and you have
a financial paradigm

which demands infinite growth,

and we are at the point
of human history

where the infinite growth
paradigm collides with something

that is more powerful
than money is.

By 2006, I knew that
the collapse was very imminent,

that there would be a major
implosion of the U.S. economy.

I actually missed it
by about a year,

maybe a little bit more.

I thought it was
gonna happen sooner,

but it happened.

And now that it is happening,

these pieces are falling exactly

as if everything else
we had written, said, done...

all the peak oil activists,

all the sustainability
advocates...

our map was proving
deadly accurate.

Things don't break up;
they break down.

When a government collapses,
what happens?

Mail stops getting delivered.

Air traffic controllers
don't get paid,

so they don't go to work,

which means planes don't fly.

Bridges and highway inspections
don't get made.

Food and Drug Administration
inspections don't get made.

Maintenance is going
to be defrayed.

Law enforcement stops working.

I mean, it's no secret now.

You see the headlines every day.

California is bankrupt,
Michigan is bankrupt, Ohio.

They're shutting down services
left and right.

There are tent cities springing
up all over the country.

There are homeless
displaced people.

A great many billionaires,
who we would call the elites,

a great many very, very wealthy
people are getting crashed,

burned, and eaten alive.

What you don't hear is the fact
that, all over the world,

economies are collapsing much
faster than the U.S. economy.

Britain is an absolute
basket case.

There is a curtain of despair
descending

across Eastern Europe.

There's a revolution under way
in Greece.

It's not riots.

It's not civil unrest;
it's a revolution.

Drug violence right across
the border in Mexico,

this is all part
of the collapse.

Pakistan, Afghanistan,
there's lots of violence.

The people who have run
the planet to this point

and who are running the planet
now are losing control.

Have I ever been called
a conspiracy theorist?

Of course I've been called
a conspiracy theorist.

But I don't deal
in conspiracy theory.

I deal in conspiracy fact.

Somebody once said to me
a long time ago,

and this was probably
back in '84,

"Climb down off the cross,
asshole, we need the lumber!"

I am not a Messiah.

I am not responsible
for saving anybody.

The only person I am
responsible for saving is me.

What I see now is the end
of a paradigm

that is as cataclysmic
as the asteroid event

that killed almost all the life
on the Earth

and certainly the dinosaurs.

Now, the dinosaurs were
kings of their paradigm,

and a paradigm is
what you think about something

before you think about it.

Somebody talks about money,

and you automatically accept
without thinking

that compound interest,
factional reserve banking,

and fiat currency is okay,

and we have to protect that,

because if we don't
protect that,

it's gonna be bad for us.

If you know anything
about Darwinism,

basically what it said was

is that those species
that had evolved

or were able to adapt
to changing circumstances

were the ones that survived,

and those that were not equipped

or had been...
become evolutionary dead ends

were destined to die.

"Mike, you better be careful.

It sounds like you're advocating
Social Darwinism."

I'm not advocating
Social Darwinism.

I am witnessing
actual Darwinism.

If you are in a camp
with a bunch of campers

and a bear attacks,

you don't have to be faster
than the bear.

You only have to be faster
than the slowest camper.

There is one and only one
graph image

that I have used

in I would guess 60 to 70
lectures in eight countries,

and that's a graph
of human population,

and if one looks at that graph,

what you see is human population

roughly stable at around
a billion people or so

with maybe a little bit more
at around the time of Christ.

Then it stays pretty stable
until we get to the bubonic...

it starts to rise some as some
primitive technology emerged,

but then you get
to the Bubonic plague.

There's a little dip.

Then after the bubonic plague,

you begin the start of what
we would call the Renaissance

and the early stages
of the Industrial Revolution,

the discovery of steam.

The population starts
to go like this.

The introduction of coal,

the population
starts to go like this.

But around 1900, around the turn
of the 20th century,

what you see as oil
became ubiquitous

was that the population
went like this,

and it goes up
to 6.5 billion people.

We may be at 7 billion people

by the time anyone
sees this interview.

All of those people exist on
this planet only because of oil.

That's it.

So it's axiomatic
that if you take the oil away,

the population
must go away also.

In all of science,
in all of biology,

there is no case
where any population,

be it bacteria in a petri dish
or caribou in an Arctic island,

runs into a set
of favorable circumstances

and goes to that point
without an immediate crash down.

It's a law.

It's a law
as fundamental as gravity.

It's a law as fundamental
as thermodynamics,

and if one thinks about it,

it might also be viewed
as true of the stock market

or the financial markets,

which go like this,

and when they go like this,

they automatically go like this.

That's the history
of every bubble.

I think it's a mistake
to ask, "If people,"

and make all people
the same as one entity,

if they will understand it.

I don't care
if all people understand it.

When you're faced
with an overwhelming,

life-threatening crisis,

as in the Titanic being hit
by an iceberg,

and you happen to be aware
before anybody else is

that the ship is gonna sink

and there aren't
enough lifeboats

and you know
how to build lifeboats

and you tried
to deal with that

in however long the Titanic
had before it went down,

you're likely to run across
three types of passenger

on the Titanic.

You'll run across a type

that's basically
deer in the headlights.

"Ship's been hit?
What does that mean?

"What do I do?
I don't know what to do.

"I don't where to go.
Should I do that?

I don't know."

That's one group.

There's another group that says,

"We get that the ship
is gonna sink.

"We get that we're all gonna die

"unless we make some lifeboats
and do it fast.

Show us what to do."

Then you have a third group
that says,

"This is the Titanic.

"It's absolutely unsinkable.

"Un-fucking-sinkable.

"So we're going back to the bar
for a drink,

and all you doomsday sayers
can actually just take a hike."

Now, if you're the one who knows
how to build lifeboats,

which group of people
are you gonna help?

Certain things
are inevitable right now.

FDIC insolvency,
I will tell you, is coming.

Insolvency of
the Federal Reserve is coming.

Federal Reserve can go bankrupt.

T-bill defaults.

We're looking
at major bankruptcy,

starvation, dislocation.

All these things
are already on the way.

Everything is
gonna break down

differently in different places.

The best that I can do
is give you some ideas

of some markers
that are gonna come.

The bumpy plateau has been
described by peak oil activists

and researchers
for many, many years,

and it's actually happening.

Basically you come up
the growth curve of oil prices,

and the oil prices go up until
you start running out of oil.

Then what happens is,
you have to destroy demand,

which is what's happening
with this collapse.

Demand gets destroyed;
the price of oil drops.

But as you start a recovery
you start back up again,

and you collide again
with the finite oil

and the rising energy prices,

which shuts
everything down again.

This is the bumpy plateau.

I think it's fairly certain

that the mortal blow to human
industrialized civilization

will happen
when oil prices spike again

and nobody can afford
to buy that oil,

and everything
will just shut down.

The collapse must happen fast

in order to leave
infrastructure standing.

We have all heard the stories
about infrastructure, you know,

the sewers and the bridges
and the roads and all that.

Well, the point is,

is that as economic collapse
continues or accelerates,

those structures will fall
into more and more disrepair.

There's not gonna be
any money

or anything running
to fix those,

so what you want to have
is the change to a new paradigm,

getting the old one
out of the way

while there is still
infrastructure left

to start building something new.

We have to survive
the transition phase

of human civilization,

which I anticipate could last
anywhere between 20 years...

and oh, my God,
would that be fast and hard...

you know, to 50 years
or 100 years

before some kind of stable
civilization starts to emerge.

You need to survive
the transition phase.

So don't panic.

Don't freak out.

Use your heads.

Analyze your local situation
where you live,

don't worry about
rebuilding sewers.

You're gonna be able
to get water for a few years.

People say there's either oil
or no oil.

There's either food or no food.

And people say,

"Well, we're gonna have food
in the supermarkets on Tuesday,

and we're never gonna
see it again."

That's not the way
it's gonna happen.

As things break down,
we will see specific shortages

in specific areas
for periods of days

before it gets to the point
where there's nothing left.

So what you need to prepare for
is not the end result,

but you need to prepare
to survive the transition.

When people say, "Okay,
I'm gonna run for the hills.

"I'm gonna go build a cabin.

I'm gonna buy ten million cans
of baked beans."

Well, they're probably gonna be
the first to die.

Number one, it's too late.

If you don't know
how to live off the land,

and if you're not already
on the land right now,

don't even try to go,

because you're gonna
fail miserably,

and you might be shot
by the people

who got there ahead of you.

You know, the one factor

that you're not including
in some of this

is just sort of discounting
human ingenuity,

or our ability
to sort of problem solve.

Because my father was an Air
Force aviator combat veteran,

he was very much trained
in a military style

of decision making and analysis

where it's motivated
by life-and-death decisions,

where you are trained
how to think critically

and respond critically
in response to emergency.

So I was trained at an early age

in the skill
of critical thinking,

and maybe I have a gift
for it too.

I believe there are some people

who have a gift
for critical thinking.

In my own experience
on the streets

in South Central Los Angeles
as a cop,

there were quick decisions,

sometimes decisions
which changed people's lives

or could end people's lives,

and it gave me an ability
to respond and think

to separate the ice cream
from the bullshit.

Probably one of
the biggest impediments

I removed
to critical thinking was,

I stopped taking mainstream
media seriously a long time ago.

We were talking about
human ingenuity.

No amount of technology
and no amount of human ingenuity

can possibly overturn
the laws of physics,

the laws which govern
this planet.

Those are intractable,
immutable, real,

and science has never
been able to do that.

Man's great arrogance,
I believe,

and one for which
he is paying a price now

is to believe that mankind
really could become God

and even turn over and upset
and revoke somehow

the laws of the universe.

I am a great advocate of buying
and owning physical gold,

not paper gold.

You buy gold, you own it.

When hyperinflation occurs
after deflation here,

and all these trillions
of dollars come back

and we are wheeling wheelbarrows
of thousand dollar bills

to buy a loaf of bread,

the only thing people
will accept for goods

is gonna be gold.

Do whatever you can

to reinsulate your house
if you need to.

If you have a house,
if you have soil,

you immediately
get it off petrochemicals

and start learning
how to restore it.

What I do in the yard
where I am renting,

I'm mixing barbeque
and wood ash

and then I go out
and pee on everything,

because then you get
the root elements

of ammonium-nitrate that
starts to bring the soil back.

If you are dependent upon
a cell phone, get a land line.

All the
telecommunications companies

that operate the satellites,
the cell towers,

the fiber optic cables,

and all this stuff that makes
your wonderful cell phone work

are cutting back on maintenance
as the stock market collapses,

and we're gonna see failures
in cell phone service.

A land line is a redundancy
that can help you.

Get books on first aid
and holistic medicine.

Moderate fresh water supply,

a reasonable amount
of food storage.

You can't store enough
to live on.

What you need to store is seeds.

Seeds that are not manufactured
by Monsanto,

that are not Frankenseeds,

that only work one time
you plant them

and then you got to go buy more.

You get good organic
whole seeds,

and you store them.

That could be a great
currency in the future.

Unlike the Great Depression,

this is a vastly
different scenario.

We do not have infinite
resources left to be tapped.

We don't have lots of land,
we are at peak everything,

all the commodities,
everything else.

What they had in the 1930s that
my grandparents told me about

was the ability to grow food
right where they live,

and local food production
is perhaps

the most fundamental key
to human survival

in the collapse
of industrialized civilization.

We've had examples of what
happens when oil disappears

and how civilizations respond

and what works and what doesn't.

In 1991,
the Soviet Union collapsed,

and there were two nations
that were absolutely

and totally dependent upon
Soviet oil for their survival

because they had none:

Cuba and North Korea.

And what they did in response
to that was completely opposite,

and the proof, as the say,
was in the pudding.

North Korea was a rigid,
hierarchical, top-down,

Soviet-style,
bureaucratic regime

where everything came
from the central government.

They managed everything,
and North Korea starved.

I mean, it was... in human terms,
the suffering was amazing.

All of a sudden,
there's no oil.

There's no natural gas.

There's no fertilizer.

Cars don't run.

Trains don't run.

You get to a point where
you can run trains on some days

or generate electricity
on others,

but you can't do both
at the same time.

But the Cuban government
reverted

to one of the purest forms
of capitalism.

It said, "Everybody start
restoring the soil

"and grow food.

"You will grow food
where you live.

"If you find any piece
of arable land

"that is not being used,
you occupy it,

"and you start farming it,

and you start growing food
right now."

The Cuban government
did everything it could

to liberate local food growing,

and what happened was,

is after a very tough period,

the Cuban people were eating
better than they had ever eaten,

because they were free of
this whole agri-biz, you know,

Frankenfood nightmare.

Everything was organic,

and you had every square inch
in Havana that had soil,

on rooftops or in flower boxes,
was growing food,

and there was a degree
of sustainability.

Everything became organic,

and all you had to do
was separate the people

from the way money worked
and top-down control,

explain to them,
you grow it where you eat it,

and you're gonna make it,

and Cuba survived and thrived.

And that's the essence
of where everything is going to

in the new human paradigm.

Everything will be local.

Jack London was one
of my favorite writers,

and he wrote about animals
a lot.

One thing you know about animals

is that they all want to go home

when they know that
they're gonna face death.

They all want to be
in their tribe

or their pack or whatever it is.

They want to be
on familiar ground.

It's a natural animal instinct.

In Dubai, the economic crash
has hit so hard

that Indians who were living
and working in Dubai

lost their jobs,

and they just drove
to the Dubai airport

and abandoned their cars.

There was a story talking about
all the cars that were abandoned

as these Indians caught a
one-way ticket home to go home.

It's happening in Britain too.

You have lots of Poles
and Eastern Europeans,

who were the latecomers
into E.U.,

fleeing Britain to go home.

Now in some areas, and certainly
in the southern California basin

with 13, 14 million people
and a four-day food supply,

it's clear that people are going
to migrate out of this area,

because it's not sustainable.

We get most of our water
from Northern California.

That's a problem.

We get a lot of our electricity
from Hoover Dam

out in Las Vegas.

Hmm.

Phoenix, for God's sake,
Las Vegas,

those people have to
worry about where to go,

and community
is what will save us.

You are gonna have to do it
in conjunction

with your neighbors
and your family

and the people around you.

You will fail
as a rugged individual.

You will survive as a member
of a tribe or a family.

I have emotion about this.

I'm losing it.

We have waited...

have waited for so long
for somebody to listen to us.

When the mainstream press
and the government says

nobody could have
predicted this,

they're lying through
their fucking teeth.

We all saw exactly
what was gonna happen

and how it was gonna happen

and, remarkably,
when it was gonna happen.

None of us expected the collapse

to be as severe
as it's proving to be

or as fast
as it's proving to be.

But we've been screaming
for years,

and we've been watching
everything we said

come to pass,

and we have felt so angry.

I haven't lost
emotional connection to it.

What I have learned to do
over the course of my life

is to balance the...

the horror with love,

with play,
with making people smile.

I take my dog out for a walk,

and we count how many smiles
we can inflict

in the course of one walk.

I walk through downtown
Culver City,

and, you know, I usually
come home, you know, and say,

"That was 23 smiles
we created today."

And for some reason
at this moment in time,

that's a very precious
little treat for me.

There was a psychologist...
psychiatrist,

Elizabeth K�bler Ross,

who talked about
the five stages of grief,

and when you're hit with

an overwhelming
life-changing situation.

The first is denial.

"This can't possibly
be happening.

It's not true;
no, it's not happening."

And you stay in denial,
and you fight to stay in denial.

Then comes anger.

I really believe that mankind
is now entering just barely...

it has just barely crossed the
threshold of the anger phase.

We have to get through
the anger phase.

And how we get through
that anger phase

is going to be critical.

The way we're going
under current government

and monetary rule,

the only kind of anger
that's going to be produced

is the destructive kind,

borne of absolute frustration
and bitterness

that nothing
that's being sold to us

as being a solution

is making us feel
any goddamn better.

Then, of course, after that,

you know,
we have the bargaining.

Well, the bargaining
is kind of going on now too.

"Maybe I could've
done something different.

"Maybe I should have
thought of this.

Maybe if I do this now,
it won't be different."

Then you go through
the bargaining,

and you finally get to a place
of depression,

where it's really starting
to sink in,

and these are all
emotional stages

that one goes through

whether they're an individual

or a culture
or a civilization.

And the final stage
is acceptance,

and it's really only when people

have reached
the point of acceptance

that you can find those people
who are like

part of the ones
on the Titanic saying,

"Okay, show us
how to build a lifeboat."

You know, there's different
ways to look at...

you can find stories
that support arguments

that you want to make,

just because there's
different authors

that sort of support
your world view,

and there's other ones
that don't.

Is it possible to sort
of create a reality

based on picking news stories
that support your world view?

I don't do debates anymore,

and the reason why
I don't do debates anymore

is because I don't have to.

At some point, you have
to acknowledge the fact

that what I've been
writing about

and what I've been saying

is actually happening
all around us.

So why do I need
to debate anything?

Why does the peak oil movement,

why does
the sustainability movement,

need to debate anything?

Everything that we said
was gonna happen

is taking place right now.

Every aspect of human existence
is on the table.

As far as political parties go,
they're all anachronisms.

They're all products
of centuries gone by.

The human race now
is only going to be concerned

not with an ideology

but what allows them to survive.

Capitalism, socialism,
and communism are all terms

that need to be tossed
in the trash can immediately,

because all of them were created

on the assumption
of infinite resources.

Not one of those ideologies
that are now dead dinosaurs,

archaic fossils,

and no longer relevant
to our way of life,

not one of them recognizes
that there must be a balance

between growth and the resources
and the planet.

So forget the idea that you can
have as much as you want,

because until mankind
surrenders to the fact

that it lives
on a finite planet

and it must have balance
with that planet,

with the planet's resources,
with the animal life,

and all the other life,

there can be no happiness
for anything.

Anything.

It's all about
getting balance back.

And who sold me the idea
that it was my destiny to grow?

Nothing grows forever.

There's no such thing
as infinite growth.

It's not possible.

Look around at everything you
see around you that's living.

There is a cycle:

birth, growth, maturation,
decline, and death.

The challenge being faced
by the human race now

is either evolve or perish,

either grow up or die.

God doesn't care.

God's not gonna play babysitter
for us.

The challenge is either
you grow up and mature,

change your minds
and the way you think,

or you're gonna perish.

Everything is on the table now.

God is on the table.

Every religion in the world
is on the table now.

They'll all be measured
as standards by,

"This is reality, and this is
what the religion says,"

and every religion in the world

is gonna be under
a huge microscope.

This is gonna be
the greatest age of evolution

in human thinking
that's ever taken place.

You walk towards your fear.

You embrace your fear.

You don't try to hedge it,

that a part of real living
as a human being,

as a spiritual being,

is to embrace and encompass
your fear, your love,

and not run away from anything,

because that's
the life experience,

and it's in that richness

that I think we find
the most beautiful art,

the most beautiful music.

We find the richness of
what the human soul can offer,

and I see all that richness
buried under such bullshit.

Can you talk about
your own spirituality?

You talk about
a lot of different religions.

How do you define
your own spirituality?

I quote a Christian,
St. Timothy,

and I find it to be true
what he said,

that the love of money
is the root of all evil.

That's the end result of my
spiritual intellectual quest.

It is the end.

It is the fundamental truth
that I have verified

through three decades of
empirical, investigative, legal,

academic research,

trying to answer
some fundamental questions

about human existence
and why we behave the way we do,

why we think the way we do,

why we act the way we do.

The love of money
is the root of all evil,

and it is the love of money

which has the potential
to exterminate,

to render extinct
the entire human race.

All right,
so here we have this...

this likeable,

sincere guy
in the White House,

and he is as imprisoned
as we all are.

I need to cut.

I need to cut.
I need to cut.

I'm just having a real powerful
wave of emotion right now,

because a whole new realization
is opening to me

about what I'm actually saying,

and this is some
serious fucking shit,

so I got to get my head
around it for a second.

Fuck.

Okay, I'm ready.

He is a prisoner of government.

He's a prisoner of politics.

He's a prisoner of economics.

He's a prisoner of the Federal
Reserve Bank of New York.

He's a prisoner
of the Federal Reserve.

He's a prisoner
of a governmental system

that's archaic
and not quickly responsive,

so we should not make
the success or failure

of human civilization
rest on his shoulders.

The only thing in the world that
you and I can possibly change

to give ourselves
a chance of survival

and to give our children
a chance

at some kind of human
civilized life is our minds.

You have to believe, not wish,
not hope, not pray, not beg.

You just have to believe
that there's a way out of it,

and you're gonna find it.

This is perhaps
the greatest part

of the American character is,

when we get pissed off

and we put our minds
to something

and we clearly understand
what needs to be done

and we believe in it,

we really can change things.

I plan on living joyfully and
happily for the rest of my life,

a free man.

Shit.

How can you possibly say
there's no hope?

Just change your mind
and see what we see.

Stop thinking like dinosaurs.

So do you feel that the work
that you do,

you're just gonna do it

regardless of what the
possible consequences are?

It just would be so much easier
to have walked away.

If there was a German
in 1932, 1933,

who had the foresight
to look ahead

and to see what
the inevitable end result

of the Third Reich would be,

if there was somebody
who had seen that coming,

do you honestly think that
they could in good conscience

turn around
and walk away from it

and pretend it wasn't there?

When every passing day,

from the first election
of Adolf Hitler

as Chancellor in 1933,

to Kristallnacht,
to the Night of the Long Knives,

to Anschluss,
the occupation of Austria,

to Sudetenland, Poland,

as all of those things happened
that were right on the map,

how do you think that person
would have felt?

Do you think that person
could have walked away?

We are all collectively
as a species responsible

for what may be the greatest
preventable holocaust

in the history of planet Earth.

Our own suicide.

How do you walk away from that?

How do you sleep at night?

Who is anybody?

Who are you to tell me

it would have been easier
to walk away?

You aren't in my skin.

It was never easier for me
to walk away

because to walk away
would have meant to compromise.

To walk away would have meant
selling out.

You know, I'm still a guy who,
30 years ago,

approached his government
as a citizen

asking for redress of grievance.

I caught the CIA dealing drugs.

It's wrong.

Somebody needs
to talk about this,

and I'm still that same guy.

I'm still the 27-year-old
about to be promoted,

perfect record,
perfect rating report,

LAPD...
dedicated, clean LAPD cop.

He's still alive in me,

and he very much wants
some answers.

There is a legend or a fable
that really speaks to my life

about the 100th Monkey.

A long time ago
in the late '40s, early '50s

when atom bombs and H-bombs
were in vogue

with above-ground testing,

we set off an atom bomb
on an atoll in the Pacific,

and then we waited
a number of years,

because we wanted
to answer questions like,

"Gee, how soon after we
nuked something

would it be possible to get
any kind of life started again?"

So they went back
to this island,

and they decided
to repopulate it with monkeys,

and the monkeys ate coconuts.

Everything was pretty healthy

except for the fact that
the husks of the coconuts

were slightly radioactive.

So the scientists took
ten monkeys or so

and taught them
to wash the coconuts

in a fresh water stream
on the island

before they cracked them open

and turned the whole thing loose
to see what would happen.

Well, you know, pretty soon,

maybe 12 monkeys out of
a population of 10,000

were washing their coconuts

and then 20,
and then 47.

But a funny thing happened.

As soon as the 100th monkey

started washing
his coconut husk,

all 10,000 started
washing simultaneously.

I guess one way that I have
always looked at my life,

especially since
I clearly understood

what this issue was
in late 2001 is,

this is my quest
for the 100th monkey.