The really serious issue that I have with internet films is their unbalanced nature. Good journalism takes a topic, investigates it, then interviews two groups, those who support and those who are against. It then draws a conclusion.
Zeitgeist used the internet as its source material which is a major problem in terms of reliability. I mean if I told you that I was going to make a documentary using Wikipedia as my sole source then (hopefully) you'd think I was mental. Wiki is renowned for being an unreliable source.
So I had a real problem with Zeitgeist other than my opinion that it was a waste of an hour of my life.
- Unattributed narration
The film opens with some monologue about how the world is a big joke or whatever. Then at the end a name comes up. Like Fred Blogs. There's no title. Its just a bloke speaking and because he's the introduction to the film it gives his speech further gravitas. But who is he? For all I know he's a mentalist from Speaker's Corner who's been given a global stage.
This technique was used throughout the film, a weakening influence every time it was used.
- Quickfire video editing
Interspersing images of 9/11 with atomic tests from the 1950s is meaningless. Unless you're trying to show me that explosions are quite cool, or that wars kill people, or whatever. Or that 9/11 is somehow comparable to Cold War nuclear testing. Or is 9/11 a metaphor for Cold War MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). Or that 9/11 is the new Cold War?
- Religion is a tool to rule the masses
Well done, you learnt something about religion in medieval Europe. I'd also argue that money sets the masses free. Religion also gives hope to the hopeless. Its easy to slate Christian fundamentalism when you think of fat Americans in the mid-west but it's a little different telling a DCR refugee that their entire belief structure is there to repress them not save them.
- The 9/11 Truth: Its an opinion not the truth. Basing your thesis on other internet documentaries is not sound. Nor is it sound to use supporting evidence taken from news sources who you then go on to criticise for being controlled by the government/corporations/aliens. Using eyewitness reports isn't that reliable either as what people hear and see is often very different from what actually happens. Early reports of the Mumbai attacks had 100 gunmen running wild, that was reduced to 10.
- and on heavily edited quotes such as that of coroner at Shanksville where United 93 crashed who is widely quoted as saying there were no bodies there… (because they had been vaporised by the impact – that's the part people naysayers miss out). As for the architects of the towers. The building was designed with an impact of a Boeing 707 hitting the face of the tower and not slicing through a corner.
- The insinuation that 7/7 was an inside job, whilst being grossly offensive, neatly left out the attempt at a repeat bombing two weeks later when there wasn't a drill being conducted.
- Listing all the terrorist attacks against the US and suggesting that somehow these were instigated by the US government. Pan Am 103. Why would the US not only bomb its own airline two days before Christmas, but also target an airline in financial trouble. Yeah, lets make Pan Am, icon of the US airlines go bust.
- Banking. I didn't bother watching this bit as all I need do is read a paper or walk down the street to see the effects of the collapse in our banking sector. Its easier to portray them as the villains of the piece (the global conspiracy) when they're rolling in money. When they've been part or fully nationalised it's a less compelling argument. Royal Bank of Scotland [UK gov has a majority share], HBOS [Halifax Bank of Scotland] and Lloyds TSB are part nationalised. Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley are fully nationalised.
I like to use this article to rebuff the oh so tedious 9/11 conspiracy theories: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/1227842.html
I would also highly recommend 'The Power of Nightmares', a BBC documentary from about 2004:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Nightmares
If you want the ultimate 9/11 conspiracy film then look up 'Loose Change'. This is another 2 hours I've lost for good plus add another hour for raised blood pressure.
I think that, conspiracy bullshit aside, this is what Zeitgeist was aiming at – that it is fear that provides the impetus for many foreign and domestic policies.
I've also read and seen interviews where the argument is that sometimes people need to have something or someone to blame when something bad happens. How can it be that the mighty US of A can be brought to its knees by some crazy nutjobs with some box cutters? Yet that's what happened.
Personally I reckon the 9/11 Commission Report was so Republican because Bush's government was embarrassingly poor in preventing it. Any PM who had let something like that happen and admitted so would have had to resign. 9/11 went on to provide GWB with a pretext to invade Iraq. It also made him one of the most unpopular US Presidents in history. That's notwithstanding his single-handed destruction of the US economy.
My final issue with the global conspiracy is this: So what?
What does it matter? Really? Do you think if we take the blue pill (like The Matrix) and see the real truth, that it will make things any better? Since these global puppet masters are all but invisible and yet have their fingers in every pie we could be chasing ghosts forever and still never find them.
How about this for a contradiction? Zeitgeist accuses religion of being a tool to control the masses. Their message professes to there being a higher invisible power that rules the world. Its evil and its greedy and it controls the world at its whim. Nobody knows who this power is, nor is there any proof that it exists and yet there it is. Now call me blasphemous but that sounds like a whole new religion. In essence, global conspiracy theorists are a very modern 21st Century internet fundamentalists.
They've founded a new religion. Congratulations.
Not one I believe in
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