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Monki peels the first day of SXSW: SXSW INTERACTIVE & the conspiracy doc, NEW WORLD ORDER!
Greetings humans, Monki here, partially hungover from my first night at SXSW 2009.
This has the makings of a fantastic year at SXSW. The crowds seem a bit less nuts and the people have all been pretty laid back so far. Hopefully that will keep up. Oh, and the free drinks have been flowing. Only at SXSW will you find a party called "Pastries and Pasties!" Gotta love that. Nothing better than boobs and cupcakes.
This is the first year I've been a part of the interactive portion of SXSW as well. I've been graced with a gold badge so I can get in to all sorts of trouble...interactive trouble. It's going to be interesting hitting the interactive stuff during the day and the film stuff at night. I can imagine this will be an exhausting week by the end of it all.
My first day of SXSW 09 started with a panel on web-design. It could have been dull, but the presenter used some interesting metaphors to compare the evolution of web design to the evolution of film. He posited that we are still in the infancy of design and that the majority of websites out there are just "dead trees," a reference to the newspaper industry.
Using clips from Georges Melies' "A Trip to the Moon" he went on to show how the first couple of decades of film were pretty much just stage plays put to tape, much like how the majority of internet sites are just digital newspapers. He then showed off a clip from "Birth of a Nation" to show how Griffith took new tools (cross cutting, close-ups, etc.) and put them all together to make something new and unique. An interesting idea and a pretty sweet way to make something like web design a bit less dull. Not too shabby for my first interactive event at a SXSW.
From there I went over to a panel hosted by a group that creates ARGs (Alternate Reality Games) for community and corporate events. I've been a big ARG fan and I'm always curious to see these things work.
The Go Game (the group presenting this panel) has actually created an ARG that anyone can participate in during SXSW. I've only skimmed the surface so far of it, but it involves challenges, scavenger hunt missions and even face to face confrontations with strangers! Awesome. It's called "Running with SXSWissors" and you can play along right here. You earn points as you do missions and the top five folks at the end of the game will get a free badge to next year's SXSW Interactive festival. Not bad at all. You can play along with your web-enabled phone wherever you are. If you do register, make sure you let them know that Monki referred you.
After all those shenanigans, I finally caught my first film. I headed towards the Alamo Ritz to check out "New World Order."
New World Order is a documentary about the guys who dare to question what most people would call "reality." This is a film about the 911 "Truthers," the conspiracy theorists, the Alex Jones' of the world...and what do you know, Alex Jones is all over this movie.
Alex Jones is either a hero or a nutjob depending on who you are talking to. If you haven't heard his daily radio show on the internet, or his local show here in Austin, you've probably unknowingly seen him in films like Waking Life or A Scanner Darkly. (Animated versions of him at least.) He is of the "9/11 was an inside job." ilk. A hugely polarizing character.
This a documentary in the purist sense of the word and I thought it was fantastic. The filmmakers could have easily made this a hokey, "look at these nuts" type of film, but instead they present their characters with an unbiased take. I can imagine the difficulty in creating a balanced film with this subject matter, but these guys pulled it off.
Andrew Neel and Luke Meyer, the directors, are also the guys behind the fantastic film "Darkon," which was a big SXSW hit a few years ago. Before the film I was curious about their choice of subject matter for this one, but during the Q&A they mentioned how, like the LARPers featured in Darkon, the "Truthers" are really just another sub-culture of people, so it wasn't as big of a jump as most thought it was. Makes sense to me.
Check this one out if you get a chance. If anything, for one scene between a husband and wife singing a hymn while footage of 9/11 rolls in the background on a television. A very surreal moment.
From there I went on a whirlwind of Mexican food and various alcohols before ending up on a couch next to Jason Segal. Strange. And then in a drunken genius moment I think I was a dick to Paul Rudd. So, Paul Rudd, if you are reading this, I apologize for being a dick. My bad.
Alright folks, tons more SXSW to come, until next time, back up the tree I go!
-Monki
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Yes?
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Please! Allow me this one glory!Harry, shut this fucker down!
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Do it, do it
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You officially have the best avatar on AICN. EVAR! You are my new hero.
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If you don't think we havn't been manipulated into this situation your incredible naive. They pull the strings, we react. I used to think Alex Jones was nuts too but when I see how these major events are allowed to happen, its obvious to see how easy we are to be manipulated into a course of action others wish.
This situation is being allowed to degrade to the point where we (the population) will WANT to be in a government controlled 'camp' when the options are to live on the streets with no money, riots, rape gangs & squalor vs. the 'protection' of a camp..we wont view them as prison camps but thats the course of action we're being forced into.
sigh -
...but it sure smells good!
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I hate conspiracy theorists almost as much as I hate the shadowy elite who secretly control the world.
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...Talk about a guy who can't see the forrest for the trees. While he's busy accusing Barrack Obama, Chris Carter and The Illuminati for raping children and flying planes into buildings, he seems to miss the point that rich powerful people quite enjoy being rich and powerful and really don't mind who they step on to get rich and powerful. I don't need (a typically poorly researched and ill informed) rant about alien lizards and templar knights from Mr. Jones to let me know that Bankers (SHOCK! HORROR!) don't have my best interests at heart, and would probably happily see me dead for an extra nickle. Hey, at least he opened my eyes to the true nature of a politician. I thought they were all about Bringin' Da Change! But it turns out some of them might actually be tools of big business. I know. Sounds crazy. Again, fuck Alex Jones and his retardation. Even Ted Kaczynski was more clued in then this tool.
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I love conspiracy theories, they are far more interesting and entertaining than most movies. However I will say that Alex Jones is a moron and makes everyone who believes this stuff look stupid as well. There is a lot of truth to the movement but Alex Jones has seen to it for the last 10 years that every conspiracy theorist is seen as a bull horn wielding douche bag. The guy is a demagogue and fearmongering prick, also damn near everything he says is taken from his followers. Which he then takes and runs with, meanwhile tainting it with his "They are scum, they want your guns, they want you as slaves. Prepare!!! BUY SURVIVAL GEAR AND GUNS, OR DIEEEE!!!!"
If they want to do a real NWO doc, they should find Bill Cooper footage, dude is dead, but he is the one that really kicked off the movement. -
But this? I dunno
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Mar 14, 2009 11:04:59 PM CDT
On conspiracies I default to the Ben Stiller line in Zero Effect
by industrykiller!
I'm paraphrasing here "There arent good guys, and evil guys.....it's all just a bunch.....of guys." Its that simple. If you think a conspiracy of thousands can be pulled off thats fine, everyone needs something to make their life more exciting than it really is, but it has no basis in basic human psychology.
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All of this info on 9/11 is coming from the same guy who broadcast, live on the air, that the Russians were preparing to fire on us on NYE 2000.
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Take the bottomless well of pessimism and paranoia that pretty much renders any version of the future impossibly bleak and in control by "Them", then combine it with a ham-fisted interpretation of The Book Of Revelation, and you've pretty much made a person impossible to talk to. Fucking tinfoil-hat city.
Sad thing is, this guy went to an Ivy League college... -
that AICN talkbacks will be brought into the 20th century, never mind the 21st? Really, though, web pages that are overladen with geegaws suck, and just another excuse for some web "designers" to justify their fees.Gotta love the U.S. of A., where every nutjob has the freedom to be a nutjob, and make a living from it.
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I'm a humble novice script writer and i love watching this NWO stuff. Might all be bullshit- how the fuck do i know, but it's certainly great fertilizer for growing high-concept movie ideas. Keep 'em coming!
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AVATAR
December 2009
That's what *I* call new world order. -
George Bush Sr, called for it years ago, and Henry Kissinger called for it a few weeks ago on cable TV. Time wrote an article about it. Alex Jones may seem outrageous, but only to people who live for left-right politics. He links to mainstream articles and newsclips. If people aren't adventurous enough to check out the facts then keep drinking the FOX/CNN kool-aid. But at this point you've gotta be tired of endless war retoric from the GOP/Dems and Bristol Palin's baby. Besides the fact that Alex Jones screams into a megaphone, what exactly is so crazy? The Bohemian Grove exists. The Bilderberg Group exists. CFR and Trilateral Commission members have been in the White House for decades. The 911 report IS a joke. The Federal Reserve DOES lower interest rates and creates inflation. Inflation is bad. If you don't like Alex Jones' personality then do your own research (wikipedia, buy books, read articles).
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tLyIFiJBAM
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Iran/Contra, Teapot Dome, Aaron Burr, Watergate, Madoff, so on. It amuses me when people deny one line of conspiracy theory in the face of the thousands proven.
Seriously what makes any single group more trustworthy? -
...Conspiracies cause a lot of debate making them great dramatic material for questioning our lives. So saying it's not a worthy of an AICN thread is daft!
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when they allowed Dusty Rhodes & Brutus Beefcake join up. Just oversaturated until it became a 'good ole' boys club' & don't get me started on the "B-Team" with Vincent, Oy Vey!
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weren't they like kind of interesting when the x-files was TV show... now well.. yawn. I'm bored. Fuck the english language!
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...Coke aluminium bottles?
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virtual reality environments and shit! like Snow Crash!
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finds conspiracy related stuff fascinating, but don't believe in any of it, conspiracy theories are when you get down to it simply a Religion (case in point allot of conservative Christians believe in a conspiracy theory of some sort, including my dad)
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the world is just too damn chaotic for a group of PEOPLE to try to control, it's as simple as that
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with a minimal amount of research, anyone can find out that there is at least 10 times the evidence that there was lots of foul play going on. the so called "official story" is severely lacking evidence, and that would be the conspiracy.
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Mar 15, 2009 10:09:02 AM CDT
Pretty funny that people keep referring to "Wikipedia"...
by motoko kusanagi
...as a source for "research". A big LOL to you morons!
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"The Federal Reserve DOES lower interest rates and creates inflation. Inflation is bad." But the alternative, lack of currency is also bad. The Fed (usually very poorly) tries to balance the effect of the two. Its not a New World Order, its lazy morons, greedy morons, some evil morons all bumping into each other. I've read alot of Alex Jones stuff, and like BurnHollywood I similarily lost a friend to this nonsense. He, no shit, stands in supermarket parking lots yelling at everyone about this shit. George Carlin made a good point about it. There doesn't need to be a conspiracy when the wealth and powerful all grew up in the same neighbourhoods, went to the same schools and work for the same people. Also, give Alex Jones' review of Watchmen a gander. If he can be that woefully ignorant and retarded regarding a fucking comic book, how can you take him seriously on politics or economics?
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could you maybe post a link to Jones' review of Watchmen? I went to his website and found nothing about movies
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Alex's new film: The Obama Deception, see it on Google Video
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Mar 15, 2009 11:32:24 AM CDT
"the world is just too damn chaotic for a group of PEOPLE to try
by geek molester
with ignoramuses like this going around questioning Alex Jones no wonder this country is so fucked. History is filled with empires vying for world domination. They failed, yes, but they indeed tried. The British Empire is still alive and well and it has merged with the American empire. What the fuck do you think Iraq was about? Oil? We could have bought all their oil for a lower cost than these wars.
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9/11 was an inside job. Even these guys know it. Check out the "terror drills/take red pills" line in this music video in the 4th verse.
http://tinyurl.com/dctzhp -
it makes him talk about satanists and other christian centric things too often. If only he realized Christianity as it exsists today is a form of mind control as well.
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Mar 15, 2009 1:57:30 PM CDT
alex is crazy but a lot of the things he says are 100% true
by awepittance
such as the fact that bush, cheney, and rumsfeld were on Cipro the anthrax antibiotic 2 months before the antrhax attacks.
I heard this first from jones, and quickly found it verified in countless other sources.
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I agree with you. I believe The Fed has been doing a poor job since it's inception. We've gone through a Great depression, recessions, and about to enter another Great Depression. For those who don't know, The Federal Reserve is a private group of banks with a special relationship with the gov't. They can create money and inject it into the system. Their actions create and implode wealth by raising and lowering interest rates. I believe interest rates should be a result of the amount of savings and not by tickering with the economy. It's a method of control and the Fed isn't even subject to audit. It's hilarious how Americans can be pissed about Madoff and the lack of transparency. Meanwhile, the private Federal Reverve has the power to bascially create money out of thin air and Congress can't even look at their bookkeeping. Ha! Also, in the talk of all transparency in the Bush bailout (also supported by Obama and McCain. Concocted by The Fed chairman and Hank Paulson) TARP money in the billions of dollars went missing. If people can believe that greedy evil people hang out together.....well that's the Fed in a nutshell. Anyway, even if you believe that "liquidity" is necessary, then at least we can agree that a private cartel of banks (who operate in secret) shouldn't be in charge of it.
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You're saying your Dad's a conspiracy theory?!!
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but...you know...they ARE nutjobs.paranoid personality disorder is very real, and trust me, I lost a family member into the abyss of insanity partly because much of the early warning signs were chalked up to harmless neuroses.they don't have to be demonized, but they ARE clinically mentally deranged, and any documentary about them needs to show this...
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What a good doco should show is the polarized opinions of you and Neo Zeed. They should be applied to documented situations that scrutinize these points of view. It should be postulated what kind of would we would be living in if either opinion were true. But it should be left to to the viewers what to think at the end, otherwise it's no different from the evangelistic opinion makers it's investigating. Just a thought.
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Mar 15, 2009 6:30:01 PM CDT
Alex Jones is like every typical conspiracy theorist out there..
by qweruiop
...in that they have all the real details about what's going on in this world, they just happen to conveniently have that information in their latest $29.99 dvd for sale. If any conspiracy theorist out there is truly legit, wouldn't they provide their saving-the-world information for free, or could there be a second alternative involved, one in which (I know how preposterous it may indeed sound, sarcasm) they want to make money off of the fear they instill in people? I live here in Austin and I get to pick up his show on 590 KLBJ, and I gave it a listen one day only to realize that I lost the number of times he kept referring people over to his website and him hawking his DVDs. As soon as I went over there, sure enough there's an entire catalogue of DVD's ready to provide you all the information about this "New World Order", it'll just cost you $29.99 each to find out the truth. Oh and you can also buy T-shirts, bracelets and hats to help keep the "New World Order" at bay. C'mon people grow up, the only truth Alex Jones is seeking is the almighty dollar and how to get more of it out of people like you.
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Just type "Alex Jones Watchmen" into youtube. Its split into 4 parts. Its horrible to watch. For one, he thinks Neil Gaiman wrote the book. Again though, Banks and large multi nationals are harmful to society, and in some cases downright evil. Government would like to turn us all into complient sheep. Most people will agree with Mr. Jones on these issues. Its when he starts throwing around the child raping satanists and that McMartin Pre School is where Ronnie Reagan, Cher and the Bilderberg Group all got together to sacrifice pure blooded white children to a magic unicorn that it all falls apart.
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Mar 15, 2009 6:58:09 PM CDT
Alex is an idiot, but even idiots speak the truth sometimes.
by bmacsmith
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i've heard so many times from Alex Jones' nuts about how the government had more to gain from 9/11 than anyone, and that somehow equates to guilt in their mind. the idea that some politicians (ie Giuliani) are opportunists who took advantage of something they had no control over to push there own agenda is completely foreign to them. they won't listen.
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If you don't want to support him with money then thats your choice. Alex Jones has said REPEATEDLY that he is ok with people uploading his videos for free on youtube, google video, torrent sites as long as the word gets out there. You can find all his videos online for free. You can also order the books from the bookstore of your choice. Besides, every major media personality on the big networks sell books and videos. Al Gore made a lil' movie about global warming (maybe you've heard of it)and I'm sure movie theaters weren't cool with people just walking in without paying for a ticket. So chill out.
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Alex Jones is a Christian too, see what I mean? not that I'm trying to badmouth Christianity or anything (seeing as how I'm a Christian myself), but these Conspiracy Theorists do tend to treat it as a "Religion" of sorts if you know what I mean
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Can't speak for everyone in the movie, but people who believe that the official 9/11 story is sketchy or confront the Bilderberg ( A meeting of the most wealthy and powerful people on the planet) are not necessarily nutjobs. One of the people in this film, Luke Rudowski is an intelligent, relaxed kid who is informed about current events and geopolitics. A FilmThreat review of this film says the following: Rudowski makes a great point when he says (and I’m paraphrasing here) “if 100 of America’s top celebrities got together in a hotel for a secret meeting, the media would be all over it. Why don’t they ever cover this meeting?” A great point. Are the media and public more "sane" for not caring about the Bilderberg group? Why is that normal? I guess if you need a psychiatrist to be in this movie to judge these people then whatever, but then again maybe the rest of society needs one too. Isn't the definition of insanity repeating the same action over and over again expecting different results? I certainly see that every election cycle when people cheer and cry in the street for their puppet candidate, while ignoring a third party candidate who actually cares about them. Then their puppet betrays them, the people bitch, and then they do it all over again in next 4 years.
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I'm not a big fan of Maddox or anything, but the man makes a good point with this article http://tinyurl.com/z97d6
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I haven't seen the movie, so perhaps not everyone in it is mentally imbalanced, but Alex Jones certainly is, and he seems to be a main focus of it.I agree it is a good idea to promote fostering a healthy distrust of authority, and not being a sheep and accepting the given story as fact without criticism or doubt. but that is not what conspiracy theorists really do. that's just what most intelligent individuals do. conspiracy theorists become pathologically unable to believe ANYTHING that is more or less universally accepted is true. and they have a complete disregard for logic, for science, and any concrete methodology. that is by definition, someone who is mentally imbalanced. I don't even need to mention lizard people to make a case for that.
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Mar 15, 2009 11:22:56 PM CDT
RE: Alex Jones is like every typical conspiracy theorist out the
by robertplant
There is a legit guy. He actually appears on Alex Jones' show from time to time. His name is Alan Watt and his site is cuttingthroughthematrix dot com. He is incredible, but after faithfully listening for the past 3 years, I have learned so much that I no longer listen as of the last 2 weeks. I can Cut Through The Matrix just fine on my own.
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When there's so many dubious facts from the mainstream media, you really can't blame these guys for questioning everything. Maybe it leads to personality quirks like screaming in a megaphone, but other than that...what exactly makes Alex insane? BTW here are some leaps of logic that are universally accepted by millions of "regular" people. 1. Two planes hit the twin towers yet it's perfectly normal for a third building (WTC7) to come down. 2. Iran, a country that can't even refine it's own gasoline, is developing nuclear weapons. 3. Maintaining military bases across the globe and dolling out billions in foreign aid (while people here are living in tent cities) is a good idea. 4. The over 650 dissenting scientists are more than 12 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers. Yet global warming is universally accepted because they made a movie. 5. Moving troops to Afganistan and leaving permanant bases and troops in iraq is considered ending the war. 6. The Federal Reserve is both "federal" and actually has "reserves." P.S. Alex Jones does not believe in reptilian humanoids or deal with little green men.
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Thank god a crazy person that believes a global conspiracy is out to get him has never been able to become president of the United States!
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Mar 16, 2009 6:36:02 AM CDT
haha, so I just started watching the Alex Jones watchmen review
by the amazing g
why if something uses any "Illuminati" imagery at all is it considered "part of the conspiracy"? the Tenacious D movie has the all seeing eye in it, is that part of the conspiracy?
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Ozy-man-DAMME-us
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sorry, I didn't realize you had already bought in. I learned enough dealing with my family member I lost to PPD, that I can't argue logically with you. just because you mix in obscure (and truly inane) policy questions in with completely disproven conspiracy theories, just tells me you are more slick at marketing than someone like Alex Jones, not any more lucid.sorry man, I'm out.
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After all, it's really difficult to argue logically without things called facts (and the time to research them for yourself). But then again, you have dismissive adjectives and quicky medical diagnoses...and that's good enough for most people (not me tho'). Hey, maybe you can get a job at Fox News.
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