"Zeitgeist"--the Movie

[jaqeboy]

He mentions 'soon after' the Lusitania sinks that the US joined WWI... I guess it depends on how you define 'soon after'
Sinking May 1915
US enters WWI April 1917    I am not saying that the Lusitania didn't have anything to do with it but it is not soon after.

Oh, yeah, right, I did catch that, but didn't know the exact dates, but I knew it wasn't "soon after." BTW, there was a lot of controversy about that: - ie that it was known that the ship was to be carrying munitions to the Brits (would constitute an act of war by a neutral). The Germans even put ads in the paper, so I recently read, to tell people not to take the ship, since it would be carrying arms to a belligerent of Germany.

From Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Lusitania :

A group of German-Americans, hoping to avoid controversy if the Lusitania were attacked by a U-boat, discussed their concerns with a representative of the German embassy. The embassy decided to warn passengers not to sail on the Lusitania before her next crossing. The Imperial German embassy placed this warning ad in 50 East Coast newspapers, including those in New York. This ad was prepaid and requested to be put on the paper's travel page a full week before the sailing date. However, even though the ads were sent to newspapers in time for the requested deadline, the State Department of the United States intervened by raising the specter of possible libel suits. The ads, intended by the German government to save American lives, were to appear in only one newspaper, the Des Moines Register [huh?!?]. It has been argued that the actions taken by the US government were taken to ensure that the US would become embroiled in WWI. Popular opinion before the sinking of the Lusitania was against the war. However, by loading American passengers onto a ship that was known by German officials to be carrying munitions to aid the British war cause through a designated war zone that was known to have a German U-Boat operating in it, the British and American governments helped ensure that American lives would be lost, stirring popular opinion against the Central Powers.

The notice:
(Appears to be a general warning, not specific to Lusitania, but does appear about a week before the May 1 sailing from New York)

The German Embassy in Washington had issued this warning on 22 April.

                    NOTICE!
TRAVELLERS intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany and his allies and Great Britain and her allies; that the zone of war includes the waters adjacent to the British Isles; that, in accordance with formal notice given by the Imperial German Government, vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or any of her allies, are liable to destruction in those waters and that travellers sailing in the war zone on the ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk.
    IMPERIAL GERMAN EMBASSY,
    Washington, D.C. April 22, 1915

&

[Capt] Schwieger gave the order to fire, but his quartermaster, Charles Voegele, would not take part in an attack on women and children, and refused to pass on the order to the torpedo room — a decision for which he was court-martialed and served three years in prison at Kiel[6]. Another crewman took over, and a single torpedo was launched towards Lusitania. It hit cleanly under the bridge, blowing a hole in the side of the ship, and was then followed by a much larger secondary explosion that blew out the starboard bow.

& conspiracy possibility?:

Some historians have theorised that Great Britain, and in particular First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, conspired to have the Lusitania sunk in order to draw the United States into the First World War.

&

The British government is still unwilling to disclose all its information about the Lusitania case and the associated machinations of its espionage and counterespionage activities in the United States. Even evidence that apparently was once available has disappeared. For example, the present Lord Mersey has no knowledge of the papers belonging to his forebear which author Colin Simpson states that he examined at the family home in the early 1970s. Nor are they in any national collection. Many of the Cunard Company's Lusitania files disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Some but not all of them have resurfaced and been purchased by the Cunard archives. Official files in Britain, the United States, and Germany give tantalising leads that then disappear. Blank sheets inserted to preserve pagination sequences suggest that certain documents, like telegrams sent to and from the ship during her final voyage, have been removed. The authenticity of certain 'official' documents or alleged statements is open to question.

and from PBS "Lost liners" - http://www.pbs.org/lostliners/lusitania.html

As the Lusitania neared the end of her crossing, a German U-boat sank three British ships in the waters south of Ireland through which she was about to sail, and he received repeated warnings that U-boats were active on his intended course. Yet on May 7, as the Lusitania entered the most dangerous part of her passage, Captain William Turner actually slowed down, apparently worried by patchy fog.

In fact, Turner was ignoring or at least bending every one of the Admiralty's directives for evading German submarines. He was steaming too close to shore, where U-boats loved to lurk, instead of in the relative safety of the open channel. He was sailing at less than top speed, and he wasn't zigzagging (later he claimed to believe that zigzagging was a tactic to be adopted only after a U-boat was sighted).

From Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States (1980):

It was unrealistic to expect that the Germans should treat the United States as neutral in the war when the U.S. had been shipping great amounts of war materials to Germany's enemies. In early 1915, the British liner Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine. She sank in eighteen minutes, and 1,198 people died, including 124 Americans. The United States claimed the Lusitania carried an innocent cargo, and therefore the torpedoing was a monstrous German atrocity. Actually, the Lusitania was heavily armed: it carried 1,248 cases of 3-inch shells, 4,927 boxes of cartridges (1,000 rounds in each box), and 2,000 more cases of small-arms ammunition. Her manifests were falsified to hide this fact, and the British and American governments lied about the cargo.

Oops, got distracted off the movie topic by a favorite interest: history. But, it does again indicate the same types of actions presented in Zeitgeist - manipulation of the public mind to get nations into war, as opposed to finding peace.

[Dreepa]

From Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States (1980):

It was unrealistic to expect that the Germans should treat the United States as neutral in the war when the U.S. had been shipping great amounts of war materials to Germany's enemies. In early 1915, the British liner Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine. She sank in eighteen minutes, and 1,198 people died, including 124 Americans. The United States claimed the Lusitania carried an innocent cargo, and therefore the torpedoing was a monstrous German atrocity. Actually, the Lusitania was heavily armed: it carried 1,248 cases of 3-inch shells, 4,927 boxes of cartridges (1,000 rounds in each box), and 2,000 more cases of small-arms ammunition. Her manifests were falsified to hide this fact, and the British and American governments lied about the cargo.

Anything Zinn writes is suspect... he is a socialist.

[jaqeboy]

From Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States (1980):

It was unrealistic to expect that the Germans should treat the United States as neutral in the war when the U.S. had been shipping great amounts of war materials to Germany's enemies. In early 1915, the British liner Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine. She sank in eighteen minutes, and 1,198 people died, including 124 Americans. The United States claimed the Lusitania carried an innocent cargo, and therefore the torpedoing was a monstrous German atrocity. Actually, the Lusitania was heavily armed: it carried 1,248 cases of 3-inch shells, 4,927 boxes of cartridges (1,000 rounds in each box), and 2,000 more cases of small-arms ammunition. Her manifests were falsified to hide this fact, and the British and American governments lied about the cargo.

Anything Zinn writes is suspect... he is a socialist.

What he wrote above is just a summary of material known for decades, apparently.

The Lusitania Controversy (online paper at: http://www.gwpda.org/naval/lusika03.htm), states the munitions load, but disputes that it would have/could have exploded:

LUSITANIA sailed with 4200 cases of Remington .303 rifle cartridges, a thousand rounds to a box, with 1250 cases of shrapnel shells, and with eighteen cases of fuzes (which Bailey and Ryan describe as nonexplosive, but that does not sound right). The shrapnel cases were officially described as non-explosive. Simpson quotes a shipping note referring to the shrapnel as "1248 cases of 3 inch Shrapnel shells filled," and refers to this as a "fairly lethal load." Patrick Beesly, seizing on the adjective "filled," assumes the official description to be a lie, and the cases to in fact be a highly explosive and dangerous load. It is difficult to see how this interpretation can be made by anyone who understands what shrapnel is; it would seem extremely obvious that a non- explosive but filled shrapnel case is by no means an oxymoron, but refers to shells containing the metallic fragments of shrapnel without the fuzes and the small gunpowder charge used to scatter the shrapnel. [Bailey and Ryan, p. 96; Simpson, p. 106, ch. 8; Beesly, pp. 113-14]

Ballard (the oceaneer) in '93 says it was due to a coal dust explosion, but others think that couldn't have happened.

Lustitania timeline: http://web.rmslusitania.info:81/pages/timeline.html

Anyway, enough of this historical diversion.

I think the meta-message (of Zeitgeist) is that many occurrences in the world are of obscure origin to most people, so can be "used" for forwarding an agenda by those that can engineer the mass mind.

[Dreepa]

I think the meta-message (of Zeitgeist) is that many occurrences in the world are of obscure origin to most people, so can be "used" for forwarding an agenda by those that can engineer the mass mind.

Isn't this a   'duh'?

I mean hasn't that been known for a long time?

[lowen]

Jesus has been thought by many scholars to really have been born in April.  However in Rome in order to have Mithra's followers and others change religion the birth was changed to be Dec 25... it didn't start out that way.

I am not saying that the movie didn't have valid points.  It is just not the end all be all.

The original christians did believe he was born on Dec. 25th. The scholars today believe it was April. Why? Because the imagery in the birth story shows that it would have been impossible to be born in the middle of the winter. An oversight of the original new testament writers (approximately 100 years after the fact anyhow). Here they were just trying to tell an interesting story with nice imagery of animals, and today's scholars have to go and analyze it all. I've heard the Romans-changed-the-birth-to-appease-mithra-worshippers theory before too (in fact, a teacher tought it in world history in high school!), but it simply isn't true. Mithra wasn't exactly a major god in Rome (being a chiefly Persian god, the equivalent of the many sun gods at the same time including Jupiter, Horus and Jesus), so appeasing Mithra worshippers would not have been high on their list of important things to do to convert an entire civilization. That theory comes from the fact that Jesus is so much like Mithra (as indicated by the film) and that analysis of the bible indicates that Jesus "must've" been born in the spring, so more recent scholars figured the Romans must have changed it.

[Dreepa]

Mithra wasn't a major god but was the god of the Emperor of the time ... and also the many in the army were fans of Mithra.

[jaqeboy]

I think the meta-message (of Zeitgeist) is that many occurrences in the world are of obscure origin to most people, so can be "used" for forwarding an agenda by those that can engineer the mass mind.

Isn't this a   'duh'?

I mean hasn't that been known for a long time?

To you and me... 

[Insurgent]

The film maker, Peter J is interviewed on the air, for the first time since releasing his work: http://truthorlies.org/06-28-07-Hour-2.mp3

He goes in to greater detail about some of the sources he consulted for the film, and fleshes out some of the arguments presented in it. The interview went well; he comes across as being very intelligent and articulate. It's worth listening to. By the way, a DVD version of the film is now available to order directly from his website http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/dvdorder.htm

[jaqeboy]

Listening to the interview - the guy does sound good. If he goes on tour, maybe we can  have him talk in Manchester...

[Sheep Fuzzy Wool]

It seems to be that Chess, is an astrological board game.

[Ruger Mason]

Interesting choice to start off the film with 30 minutes of Christianity bashing.  I'm sure it was effective at eliminating a substantial portion of otherwise sympathetic viewers.  Brilliant. 

[KBCraig]

Interesting choice to start off the film with 30 minutes of Christianity bashing.  I'm sure it was effective at eliminating a substantial portion of otherwise sympathetic viewers.  Brilliant. 

That's a classic technique: self-selecting viewers. Anyone who is left after the first few minutes is more likely to accept the message.

[lowen]

Interesting choice to start off the film with 30 minutes of Christianity bashing.  I'm sure it was effective at eliminating a substantial portion of otherwise sympathetic viewers.  Brilliant. 

I wouldn't consider it "bashing" per se. All it did was present well-established connections between christianity and pagan astrology--the kind of connections that, if it wasn't christianity in question, would be accepted without much furor. Although there are exceptions, for the most part christians are set on the government's story of 9/11 and are unwilling to accept that private bankers run the country. It goes along with the I-can't-think-for-myself-so-I-follow-authority-figures-blindly thing.

[Friday]

Interesting choice to start off the film with 30 minutes of Christianity bashing.  I'm sure it was effective at eliminating a substantial portion of otherwise sympathetic viewers.  Brilliant. 

That's a classic technique: self-selecting viewers. Anyone who is left after the first few minutes is more likely to accept the message.

Exactly.  And anyone who deemed the movie "boring" after only five minutes, or "hurting my feelings" within the first 30, is unlikely to accept the message (or even be willing to listen to it).

[Ruger Mason]

Exactly.  And anyone who deemed the movie "boring" after only five minutes, or "hurting my feelings" within the first 30, is unlikely to accept the message (or even be willing to listen to it).

The first 5 minutes of the film WERE boring!  I wondered if it was going to be two-hour music video and light show.  If their goal is outreach, why would they do this?

Many skeptics of government power are Christians, who might have fully agreed with Parts II and III, but were needlessly alienated by Part I, which didn't really fit with the overall thrust of the last two parts anyway.  Its not surprising to hear that atheists and certain non-Christians are OK with this.

In my so-far fruitless search for serious rebuttals internet, I've found virtually all of the focus to be by Christian apologists disputing Part I, with little discussion of Part II and III.

Still looking for a rebuttal.  Anyone know of one?  This film is at least a lot better than Loose Change, which was so full of holes it had no credibility (although I noticed that Loose Change was shown in a couple segments in Zeitgeist).