Zeitgeist: Addendum

Summary

Zeitgeist: Addendum, a 2008 documentary film produced by Peter Joseph, is a continuation of the film Zeitgeist, the Movie. The film discusses the Federal Reserve System in the United States, the CIA, corporate America, other government and financial institutions, and religion, concluding that they are all corrupt institutions detrimental to humanity and are in need of replacement. The film proposes The Venus Project as a possible solution.

According to director Peter Joseph, the film attempts to locate the root causes of this pervasive social corruption, while offering a solution.In its conclusion, Addendum stresses the need for belief systems to embrace the ideas of emergence and interdependence. He outlines concrete steps that can be taken to weaken the monetary system. The film suggests actions for social transformation, which include boycotts of the large banks that make up the Federal Reserve System, the mainstream media, the military, and energy companies. It is also suggested that people reject the political structure.

Zeitgeist: Addendum premiered at the 5th Annual Artivist Film Festival in Los Angeles, California on October 2, 2008, and was released free online on October 4, 2008.

Sequel to the internet blockbuster Zeitgeist. Addendum discusses more in-depth the corruption of the current monetary system that is implimented more or less world wide. It also introduces The Venus Project as a possible means to break away from our present social paralysis.

Part I

Part I follows on from Part III from the original film, citing the specific process of fractional-reserve banking as detailed in Modern Money Mechanics, released by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. In detailing the process of money creation, the film suggests society is manipulated into economic slavery through debt-based monetary policies by requiring individuals to submit for employment in order to pay off their debt, supported by the statement "In the United States neither paper currency nor deposits have value as commodities. Intrinsically, a dollar bill is just a piece of paper, deposits merely book entries. Coins do have some intrinsic value as metal, but generally far less than their face value. What, then, makes these instruments - checks, paper money, and coins - acceptable at face value in payment of all debts and for other monetary uses is that money itself is debt", followed by "Money, like anything else, derives its value from its scarcity in relation to its usefulness.".

Part II

Part II is a documentary-style interview with The New York Times best-selling author and activist John Perkins based on his book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, in which he describes his role as a self-described economic hit man. In that capacity, he claims to have helped the CIA, as well as various corporate and political entities, to undermine or corrupt foreign regimes that put the interests of their populations before those of the transnational corporations. In the film, Perkins denies the existence of a "conspiracy" because in what he carefully discusses as the corporatocracy there is no need for a "plot" when those in charge such as Cheney shared dual roles as the head of Halliburton and the Vice Presidency.

Part III

Part III is a documentary-style interview with futurist Jacque Fresco of The Venus Project. The film suggests Jacque Fresco's proposal of a "resource-based economy" through intelligent management of resources is a sustainable way for humanity to progress, and it would eliminate the scarcity of resources. He goes on to discuss technology as the primary driver of human advancement while politics as clearly being a flawed solution to our problem due to many factors including politicians lack of formal training in the fields in the problems they attempt to solve. Jacque Fresco, in humility, claims that his approach is not the ultimate solution, but that "it's just much better than what we have. We can never achieve perfection.

Part IV

Part IV suggests the primary reason for the "irrational" behavior humans use is linked to a collective ignorance of "the symbiotic and emergent aspects of natural law." The film suggests actions for "social transformation", some of which include boycotts of the large banks that make up the Federal Reserve System such as JP Morgan Chase and Citibank, the mainstream media by simply turning off the TV, the military, and energy companies in favor or renewable, clean, affordable energy resources. It is further noted that boyoctting the military is due to ironies such as 1/4 of the homeless population being out so called honored veterans, not to disrespect the troops. It is also suggested that people reject the political structure in a peaceful manner so as to force the structures in control to conform to the will of the people. It closes by asking everyone to question, to tear down those differences which strongly separate the human race, and if they feel it is right, to help in the Zeitgeist movement.

The Venus Project

The Venus Project was started around 1975 by Jacque Fresco and Roxanne Meadows of Venus, Florida, USA. It was founded on the idea that poverty is caused by the stifling of progress in technology, which itself is caused by the present US's profit-driven economic system. The progression of technology, if it were carried on independent of its profitability, Fresco theorizes, would make more resources available to more people. This new-found abundance of resources would reduce the human tendency toward independence, corruption, and greed, and instead make people more likely to help each other. Fundamental to the project is the elimination of the current money economy in favor of what Fresco calls a resource-based economy. Jacque Fresco is a self-described futurist and social designer, with no formal university education. Roxanne Meadows is a former portrait artist. According to a 2008 interview with Fresco and Meadows, Fresco's lack of credentials has made it difficult for him to gain influence in academic circles. He adds that when universities do invite him to speak, they often don't give him enough time to explain his views. The Venus Project was incorporated in 1995. The Project also has a non-profit sector, called Future By Design.

The Obama Deception

The Obama Deception is a hard-hitting film that completely destroys the myth that Barack Obama is working for the best interests of the American people.

The Obama phenomenon is a hoax carefully crafted by the captains of the New World Order. He is being pushed as savior in an attempt to con the American people into accepting global slavery.

We have reached a critical juncture in the New World Order’s plans. It’s not about Left or Right: it’s about a One World Government. The international banks plan to loot the people of the United States and turn them into slaves on a Global Plantation.

Covered in this film: who Obama works for, what lies he has told, and his real agenda. If you want to know the facts and cut through all the hype, this is the film for you.

Watch the Obama Deception and learn how:

* Obama is continuing the process of transforming America into something that resembles Nazi Germany, with forced National Service, domestic civilian spies, warrantless wiretaps, the destruction of the Second Amendment, FEMA camps and Martial Law.

* Obama’s handlers are openly announcing the creation of a new Bank of the World that will dominate every nation on earth through carbon taxes and military force.

* International bankers purposefully engineered the worldwide financial meltdown to bankrupt the nations of the planet and bring in World Government.

* Obama plans to loot the middle class, destroy pensions and federalize the states so that the population is completely dependent on the Central Government.

* The Elite are using Obama to pacify the public so they can usher in the North American Union by stealth, launch a new Cold War and continue the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The information contained in this film is vital to the future of the Republic and to freedom worldwide. President Barack Obama is only the tool of a larger agenda. Until all are made aware, humanity will remain captive to the masters of the New World Order.

The Future of Food

"We used to be a nation of farmers, but now it's less than two percent of the population in the United States. So a lot of us don't know a lot about what it takes to grow food."
- Judith Redmond, Full Belly Farms

There is a revolution happening in the farm fields and on the dinner tables of America -- a revolution that is transforming the very nature of the food we eat.

THE FUTURE OF FOOD offers an in-depth investigation into the disturbing truth behind the unlabeled, patented, genetically engineered foods that have quietly filled U.S. grocery store shelves for the past decade.

From the prairies of Saskatchewan, Canada to the fields of Oaxaca, Mexico, this film gives a voice to farmers whose lives and livelihoods have been negatively impacted by this new technology. The health implications, government policies and push towards globalization are all part of the reason why many people are alarmed by the introduction of genetically altered crops into our food supply.

Shot on location in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, THE FUTURE OF FOOD examines the complex web of market and political forces that are changing what we eat as huge multinational corporations seek to control the world's food system. The film also explores alternatives to large-scale industrial agriculture, placing organic and sustainable agriculture as real solutions to the farm crisis today.


Watch HQ version of movie here:

Iran is not the problem (2008)

IRAN (is not the problem) is a new feature length film responding to the failure of the American mass media to provide the public with relevant and accurate information about the standoff between the US and Iran, as happened before with the lead up to the invasion of Iraq.

We have heard that Iran is a nuclear menace in defiance of the international community, bent on "wiping Israel off the map", supporting terrorism, and unwilling to negotiate. This documentary disputes these claims as they are presented to us and puts them in the context of present and historical US imperialism and hypocrisy with respect to Iran.

It looks at the struggle for democracy inside Iran, the consequences of the current escalation and the potential US and/or Israeli attack, and suggests some alternatives to consider.

Talk by Naomi Wolf - The End of America

Talk by Naomi Wolf author of "The End of America: Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot" given October 11, 2007 at Kane Hall on the University of Washington campus.

Naomi Wolf was born in San Francisco in 1962. She was an undergraduate at Yale University and did her graduate work at New College, Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.

Her essays have appeared in various publications including: The New Republic, Wall Street Journal, Glamour, Ms., Esquire, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. She also speaks widely to groups across the country.

The Beauty Myth, her first book, was an international bestseller. She followed that with Fire With Fire: The New Female Power and How It Will Change The 21st Century, published by Random House in 1993, and Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood, published in 1997. Misconceptions, released in 2001, is a powerful and passionate critique of pregnancy and birth in America. In 2002, Harper Collins published a 10th anniversary commemorative edition of The Beauty Myth.

Naomi Wolf is the author of The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot and the Forthcoming Give me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries.

Naomi Wolf is co-founder of the Board of The Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership, an organization devoted to training young women in ethical leadership for the 21st century. The institute teaches professional development in the arts and media, politics and law, business and entrepreneurship as well as ethical decision making.

Her most recent book, a New York Times bestseller, is The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, published in 2007 by Chelsea Green.

Interview with Naomi Wolf discussing "The End of America" available at http://youtube.com/watch?v=aW9PulYpjGs

Downloadable audio mp3 of this talk can be found at http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/25782

The End of America Movie http://endofamericamovie.com/

The Power of Nightmares - BBC

The Power of Nightmares

Should we be worried about the threat from organised terrorism or is it simply a phantom menace being used to stop society from falling apart?

In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares.

The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these nightmares.

In a new series, the Power of Nightmares explores how the idea that we are threatened by a hidden and organised terrorist network is an illusion.

It is a myth that has spread unquestioned through politics, the security services and the international media.

At the heart of the story are two groups: the American neo-conservatives and the radical Islamists.

Both were idealists who were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world.

These two groups have changed the world but not in the way either intended.

Together they created today's nightmare vision of an organised terror network.

A fantasy that politicians then found restored their power and authority in a disillusioned age. Those with the darkest fears became the most powerful.

The rise of the politics of fear begins in 1949 with two men whose radical ideas would inspire the attack of 9/11 and influence the neo-conservative movement that dominates Washington.

Both these men believed that modern liberal freedoms were eroding the bonds that held society together.

The two movements they inspired set out, in their different ways, to rescue their societies from this decay. But in an age of growing disillusion with politics, the neo-conservatives turned to fear in order to pursue their vision.

They would create a hidden network of evil run by the Soviet Union that only they could see.

The Islamists were faced by the refusal of the masses to follow their dream and began to turn to terror to force the people to "see the truth"'.

Century of the Self - by Adam Curtis

Trailer



"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.

We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized."

- Edward Bernays

Adam Curtis' acclaimed series examines the rise of the all-consuming self against the backdrop of the Freud dynasty.

To many in both politics and business, the triumph of the self is the ultimate expression of democracy, where power has finally moved to the people. Certainly the people may feel they are in charge, but are they really? The Century of the Self tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society in Britain and the United States. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interests?

The Freud dynasty is at the heart of this compelling social history. Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis; Edward Bernays, who invented public relations; Anna Freud, Sigmund's devoted daughter; and present-day PR guru and Sigmund's great grandson, Matthew Freud.

Sigmund Freud's work into the bubbling and murky world of the subconscious changed the world. By introducing a technique to probe the unconscious mind, Freud provided useful tools for understanding the secret desires of the masses. Unwittingly, his work served as the precursor to a world full of political spin doctors, marketing moguls, and society's belief that the pursuit of satisfaction and happiness is man's ultimate goal.


Part 1: Happiness Machines



One: Happiness Machines

The story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud's ideas to manipulate the masses. He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn't need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires.

Bernays was one of the main architects of the modern techniques of mass-consumer persuasion, using every trick in the book, from celebrity endorsement and outrageous PR stunts, to eroticising the motorcar.

His most notorious coup was breaking the taboo on women smoking by persuading them that cigarettes were a symbol of independence and freedom. But Bernays was convinced that this was more than just a way of selling consumer goods. It was a new political idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying the inner irrational desires that his uncle had identified, people could be made happy and thus docile.

It was the start of the all-consuming self which has come to dominate today's world.


Part 2: The Engineering of Consent



Two: The Engineering of Consent

The programme explores how those in power in post-war America used Freud's ideas about the unconscious mind to try and control the masses.

Politicians and planners came to believe Freud's underlying premise - that deep within all human beings were dangerous and irrational desires and fears. They were convinced that it was the unleashing of these instincts that had led to the barbarism of Nazi Germany. To stop it ever happening again they set out to find ways to control this hidden enemy within the human mind.

Sigmund Freud's daughter, Anna, and his nephew, Edward Bernays, provided the centrepiece philosophy. The US government, big business, and the CIA used their ideas to develop techniques to manage and control the minds of the American people. But this was not a cynical exercise in manipulation. Those in power believed that the only way to make democracy work and create a stable society was to repress the savage barbarism that lurked just under the surface of normal American life.


Part 3: There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads:
He Must Be Destroyed



Three: There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed

In the 1960s, a radical group of psychotherapists challenged the influence of Freudian ideas in America. They were inspired by the ideas of Wilhelm Reich, a pupil of Freud's, who had turned against him and was hated by the Freud family. He believed that the inner self did not need to be repressed and controlled. It should be encouraged to express itself.

Out of this came a political movement that sought to create new beings free of the psychological conformity that had been implanted in people's minds by business and politics.

This programme shows how this rapidly developed in America through self-help movements like Werber Erhard's Erhard Seminar Training - into the irresistible rise of the expressive self: the Me Generation.

But the American corporations soon realised that this new self was not a threat but their greatest opportunity. It was in their interest to encourage people to feel they were unique individuals and then sell them ways to express that individuality. To do this they turned to techniques developed by Freudian psychoanalysts to read the inner desires of the new self.


Part 4: Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering



Four: Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering

This episode explains how politicians on the left, in both Britain and America, turned to the techniques developed by business to read and fulfil the inner desires of the self.

Both New Labour, under Tony Blair, and the Democrats, led by Bill Clinton, used the focus group, which had been invented by psychoanalysts, in order to regain power. They set out to mould their policies to people's inner desires and feelings, just as capitalism had learnt to do with products.

Out of this grew a new culture of public relations and marketing in politics, business and journalism. One of its stars in Britain was Matthew Freud who followed in the footsteps of his relation, Edward Bernays, the inventor of public relations in the 1920s.

The politicians believed they were creating a new and better form of democracy, one that truly responded to the inner feelings of individual. But what they didn't realise was that the aim of those who had originally created these techniques had not been to liberate the people but to develop a new way of controlling them.