Guest post by Thomas Fuller
Well, with the calming passage of 24 hours, let’s take another look at the 10:10 video showing the splatterfest of gore as skeptics play the more volatile roles from the worst portions of the movie ‘Scanners.’
It’s still disgusting.
I spent four years in the Navy and have seen a lot. The film did not upset me physically or emotionally. My reaction was mental (Cue Michael Tobis: “See? Fuller’s going mental…”)
What disgusts me first is its target. The video is meant for the young. Young people get blown up by a calm and engaged teacher in the first scene, and music and sports and film figures appealing to the young are both victims and perpetrators throughout.
Our reaction is irrelevant. They are not talking to us. They are talking to our children.
What are they saying? That it’s okay to ostracize, bully and dismiss those who don’t agree that climate change is uber alles (Oops! Godwin alert, Godwin alert) and that skeptics or the children of skeptics are fair game for… whatever.
As there is no real attempt at humour in the video, there’s no point in pretending it’s a parody. It’s instructional. It’s not even aimed at helping children work towards reducing emissions. It’s about helping children take aim at those who do not.
This is worse than Orwellian, although Eric Blair would certainly understand the meaning behind this message. And I don’t want to (and internet traditions would forbid me in any case) link this to the propaganda tactics of World War II. So somewhere in between those two, there is a special place in hell reserved for those whose intent it is to legitimize the cruelty of children towards each other based on what has evidently become a religious belief. And I hope that none of the film’s makers reaches that special place ahead of their allotted timespan–but I hope they get there.
Joe Romm and Bill McKibben have already announced they are ‘Shocked! Shocked!’ that gambling is going on in their casino and that their perpetual campaign of invective and calumny has produced people who actually believe them and hate skeptics. So I guess it’s no harm, no foul. Just as it was not their fault when a disturbed environmentalist took hostages at the Discover Channel headquarters, just as when the WWF made an ad showing planes flying into New York skyscrapers, just as when a Greenpeace blogger told skeptics the world over that ‘we know where you live.’ And as Anthony Watts knows full well, they also know where you work. But none of this is the fault of those who whip up the frenzy and the furor of those stupid enough to believe their hyperbole, enough to do something vicious, cruel, stupid or illegal.
So I guess I can’t blame hysterics like Romm and McKibben, who spend their days babbling about hell and high water and related mystical miseries, for any of the troubles we’ve seen. Except for the kids who will be downloading that video tonight. Both William Golding (Lord of the Flies) and J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan) knew full well that children need no help in being cruel. But this gives them license and legitimacy. And for that, Joe and Bill, I do hold you responsible. You sent the message first–it took years for 10:10 to make it explicit.
Thomas Fuller http://www.redbubble.com/people/hfuller
Thomas Fuller href=”http://www.redbubble.com/people/hfuller
10:10 have said “sorry”.
But are they sorry for rocking the boat, or simply sorry they didn’t get their message across in a more palatable way. They will try again, and again, for they are working for government, and our taxes are paying for their efforts. I find this episode both enlightening in as much as it shows the ‘green’ movement for what it is, exposing the harsh reality of ‘we will make you obey’ by indoctrinating young minds into believing their propaganda wholeheartedly who then regurgitate it without any further thought or opportunity to research and discuss. Brainwash them while they are young, and you have them for as much of their lives that matters – people are tools able to self motivate themselves if given enough ‘reason’ – no matter it is not supported by evidence. All around the world this can be seen to work, famously in the way German people supported Hitler. It was the same with Communist Russia, and Japan too, the people did not want war, but the propaganda machines told them that without it, they were doomed.
This ‘humorous’ (?) mini video produced by 10:10 has many undesired consequences. Apart from the shock tactics deployed in ‘blowing up children’, which in itself would not be contemplated in an Iraqi, Palestinian, or Israeli school for very obvious reasons, it has ridiculed the people involved in the making of the film, and the tactics of the so called ‘environmental movement’ showing the depths to which they will go. This is not about environment, it’s about mind control. But there may now be many children who having watched the film, genuinely be aware that not following the class orthodoxy may get them into trouble. Not that they might expect to be ‘blown up’, but that either; they will be taken aside for a talking to, or be met with bullying tactics from their school ‘pals’. This latter is exactly how in Germany during the second world war the Gestapo and SS were able to find and round up dissidents – they were grassed on by neighbours and sometimes relations who feared for their own lives if they covered for someone, or even simply kept quiet. It’s the tactics of fear. The war on terror is the perfect cover for a war using terror to make obedient the slave nation.
Children and women first.
I am also wondering about the cost of this film, It seems to be quite an epic of casting, professionals and props.
Either 10:10 are rolling in money, or I have a suspicion of help from a Quango (explanation… Quango – a fringe government organization using government money). If this film was made with Quango financial assistance, we need to know.
.
I really think people are falling for this publicity stunt hook line and sinker. The aim of the film was to illicit the kind of response they have got and to obtain the pompous responses of climate “deniers” who “don’t see the joke”.
We’ve seen many of these “shock” publicity campaigns, where the original film was only meant to create something that got talked about. In that regard they seem to be 100% effective!
Still, I found it incredibly funny – because it was so obviously a shot in the foot – I still can’t believe it was done by those believing in global warming. The look on the kids face as they suddenly realise that their nice green teacher is a psychopath who’d kill any one of them who didn’t agree with her. I would liken this to the shock US airline passengers got when they suddenly realised that if they passively went along with airline hijackers they would be flown into skyscrapers!
This quote from Franny really sticks in my craw
““Doing nothing about climate change is still a fairly common affliction, even in this day and age. What to do with those people, who are together threatening everybody’s existence on this planet?”
I have worked the last ten years to really do something to improve quality of life and the environment and enable people to earn a real living. I am trying to help Maori friends , develop their indigenous crops for example, but they cannot get a small grant to do so because the project actually aims to do something rather than is pure research. I can recount very many more examples. To get small sums of money to achieve massive results is next to impossible, so to see this woman with her hate and threats being sponsored by Sony and the Guardian just makes more more determined to succeed.
Sadly New Zealand is ruled by these people, Gareth being a prime example.
With the knowledge and expertise available, why is NZ not 100% renewable energy?
In an agricultural country why is so much land set aside?
Why have they disposed of dairy farms and substituted “Milk Powder” factories.
The likes of Franny and Gareth have a lot to answer for.
All gore or Al Gore, what’s the difference?
The UK Conservative Party support the 10:10 campaign, as does Deputy PM, Nick Clegg. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/02/10-10-campaign-tory-frontbench
The Conservative Party is currently holding its annual conference. If the Party does not repudiate this vile Richard Curtis video, the world can draw its own conclusions.
Thank you, Andrew W. I’m shocked too by the mention of hell in such a nasty way. From the UK, it often seems that Americans wish others in hell. They need to calm down and stop being so mediaeval in their reactions. Seems to me that wishing others in hell is just as bad as blowing people up. Worse, because hell (for people who are so primitive as to believe in it) is supposed to go on forever. Gross.
Freedom of expression is a great blessing in many respects. One reason is that it allows insight into the mind and thoughts of the person expressing. Thought is action in fancy, an expression of the “desire” of the one expressing. To paraphrase the Gita, ” desire leads to recklesness, then the memory all betrayed, saps the mind, till purpose mind and man are all undone.”
Any decent study of history “memory” is fair warning to those who think such actions will remain in fancy only.
print your own campaign t-shirt:
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[REPLY: Linking to an image of major vulgarity is the same as posting the word in a response. … bl57~mod]
TGSG says: October 2, 2010 at 12:17 am
You’ve hit the nail on the head.
Why did NOBODY making the film see what the public reaction would be?
It’s the insulation from debate, fostered by years of Hansen, Gore, Romm, RC, Bob Ward, Schneider, et al, that has built this impregnable fantasy-land “don’t argue with me, I know the science” attitude. That is what frightens me, all this energy going into “education”. It’s why Monckton took Gore to court.
So I say again, although “I was only acting under orders” is no defence, we still need to take the science at the top to the cleaners. The science, not the scientists, as far as humanly possible. Then let the scientists go through their Damascus moment, repent, be truly “born again” as real scientists, relearn Scientific Method, take on board the importance of citizens’ science, and THEN return to their jobs (not fear being stripped of them)… but with an honourable agenda this time.
The work of things like the 12-Step Program, and many top coaches, is clear evidence that saying “sorry” and resolving to make amends works, not just for the health of the individual concerned, but also for his economic wellbeing.
Thanks to the reader for posting the Beck/Gore clip.
This movement of violence didn’t start yesterday. It’s been in the works a long time.
The indignation is long overdue. But, better late than never I guess.
The protesters have been getting increasingly violent for years. That’s something we’ve known for a long time anyway. This clip is just blunt about it. Call it the spiral of enviro-violence.
My wife watched the clip and she said it will be very successful in drving people AWAY from the cause – for sure. She found it aggressive, threatening, intimidating – a real turn off. She was quite upset by it.
I then showed her the Greenpeace hooded punk kid clip…and that was enough.
So far in Germany, not a peep about it in the media.
jeremy of W.A. says:
October 1, 2010 at 9:26 pm
Go and view Monty Python and the holy Grail. Look up Satire in the dictionary. Then take a course in being British (N.B. work very hard on the Irony / Sarcasm section)
Finally review the video again and posit a new opinion.
I’m not in the least surprised that the majority of Warmists who have a problem with this are American, as are the majority of Climate Realists.
It’s a cultural thing.
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Response.
I’m not sure. I’m from the UK and I loved the Python, but the humour was directly in a different way, it was directed at a particular genre of films and entertainment and parodied them to excess. There is a difference here. What if the joke had been to shoot the children in the head? or drive others into gas chambers? It could be made so gross as to be theoretically funny, but the point is that such satire would be directed at particular scientific ideas and people, not other genres of entertainment. We know that blowing people up is not a joke, and is a sensitive issue for many. How would this film be viewed by someone who had lost loved ones from the suicide bombings on the London Underground? Not so funny then eh? You’ll recall Thatchers point of wishing she had a red button she could push which would solve all the problems of unemployed people? same thing, same lack of understanding and insight into the beliefs of others.
*ahem*
One thing I found that may be more stupid and irritating than this video, is the ongoing opinions that Richard Curtis was some sort of double-agent, or deliberate saboteur, or otherwise did what he did knowing it would blow up in 10:10’s face.
The man is a professional. He wants people to purchase his content and services. He knows the people doing the buying do not want to deal with people who are erratic and willing to disrupt and sabotage their clients.
Either Curtis has done his best to deliver to his client what they wanted, or this was an act of career suicide. The first case seems far more likely.
These weak attempts at being backhanded apologists for 10:10 are rising to their own level of being disgusting. They invested considerable time and resources into doing this video. If they had sensed anything amiss during the process then they would have intervened rather than waste those efforts. By the proposed scenario, not only was Richard Curtis committing career suicide, but also 10:10 was too stupid to realize they were being deliberately thwarted. Groups like that don’t operate without expert marketing advice coupled with experienced public relations consultants, married with professional content generators. Do you think they could have gotten all these big names to sign up without such?
Richard Curtis delivered what the customer wanted. The customer was satisfied, the content was released. A professional effort by all involved, beginning to end. It was the tireless efforts of this site and others that informed the presenters of this professional marketing effort that, yes, there is a line, and yes, they have crossed it.
These people know what they do. They have their message, they know how to deliver it. They know how to quell dissent and ridicule skepticism. They got what they wanted, their funny little video, and they waited for the world to laugh with them as loud as they were laughing.
To insist these 10:10 people were somehow hoodwinked by the nefarious Mr. Curtis, is stupid, and irritating. To pretend they didn’t realize what the message crafted into this video was really saying, is irritatingly stupid. They knew, they did it, they released it.
This excuse being floated, that 10:10 didn’t realize the seriousness of what they were doing, because they were fooled and betrayed by one man, has as much validity here as it did as a defense at any war crimes trial over the last 50+ years, as it does as an apologizing explanation for jihadist murderers. The likely truth is harder to accept, but has been valid from antiquity until now and will be so in the future. They did not see those they went against as real people, as fellow humans, and they were surprised there was such a fuss over their actions against these non-humans.
For my part, I endure these people as well as I will endure those providing these awkward contrived excuses for them, these who willingly enable the others by sowing doubt about their motivations. To support our orderly and civil society, I shall endeavor to keep the entire internet between myself and them at all times. Perhaps that will prove sufficient.
One early commenter showed the video to their kids, and mentioned the kids laughed, thinking it was funny. In a macabre way, it is. If that’s the level that the AGW crowd must stoop, without addressing the actual science, they’re pathetic.
One other aspect that is troubling is the manner in which an adult, a teacher, casually kills children.
Can we imagine the outrage if the video had been produced showing kids blowing up teachers? If the video had been produced by kids?
This film is a symptom of something darker, and more sinister and widespread than merely having to do with the climate/CO2. Look around at what has been going on in the world for the past few decades. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it scares the hell out of me.
Hi Ralph at 2.20am
I think you might be after actonco2’s bedtime stories?
Try searching for that, it should be there.
So the message is conform or die. Where is the satire here ?
And the resulting future after this suggested genocide is one where all the cool, rebellious characters (Ginola, Scully etc) are gone, exterminated, leaving those who don’t question and don’t dare to have a point of view that differs from the consensus.
Yes, I’m British. Yes I love Python. In fact, (slipping into upper class accent) nobody enjoys a good bit of satire more than I do . . . but trying to compare this hateful trash with the intelligent, inspirational Pythons is not just wrong but desperately sad.
Mike Haesler – “it’s only a fleshwound”?
Further to my comments on Satire, Monty Python etc. I forgot to include self-deprecation.
Self deprecation is the art of putting oneself down for the amusement of others. Self satirisation is pretty much the same thing.
This clip is a self satarising piece that uses a ‘cartoon’ image of homicidal greenies blowing up dissidents – in order to attract attention, perhaps even attract a laugh, but overall to put the message across about energy saving.
There’s way to many serious people around these days.
Re: jeremy of W.A
You can get Britishness in pill form now? Damn, those scientists are good. I’m British, I’m offended. Whether people find this offensive or not may depend on whether they expect to have their finger on the button, or not. If you don’t, you may be offended, but not for long because Franny & Co are happy to push it. No need to bother about boring details like evidence based debate, or even reasoned debate. Just believe, or die. Truly she is living in the age of stupid.
She even tries to downplay the violence by saying-
I know climate policies proposed by her and her ilk will cost an arm and a leg but I didn’t think they meant it so literally. So amputate away, it could save me money and I’d lose weight. Would do nothing for reducing carbon though because amputees generally need more help and support.
We’re aware of that because we have soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, where believers are only too happy to push the button for real. Those soldiers are fighting and being killed or crippled so that others can have the right to believe, debate and make their own choices, and not face summary execution at the hands of people who think like 10:10.
But the 40+ media professionals, plus presumably others who worked on this lavish ‘mini-movie’ failed to see how this could send the wrong message. That’s a bit worrying and says a lot about their world view. So 10:10’s grand 10-10-2010 campaign has suffered spectacular blowback. Their sponsors and supporters are no doubt happy with a campaign that wants to summarily execute non-believers. Poor Franny may have anticipated jetting off to the US and then Cancun on the fundraising trail, but may be as welcome at a party as a dose of crabs now. Hey Franny, where’s your button?
How can it be that schools supposedly support 10:10 when 10:10 produces videos of teachers blowing up scoolchildren?
Case study: 10:10 schools
http://www.1010global.org/uk/2010/05/case-study-1010-schools
“Children at Argyle primary school learn about climate change and the 10:10 initiative in a workshop run by Actionaid.”
“It is these kind of challenges that the school’s headteacher, Laura Wynne, and many others like her, are grappling with as they try to cut their carbon emissions by 10% for the 10:10 campaign.”
“Having signed up to 10:10 a couple of months ago, Wynne is now working out how best to bring that bill down, with the help of ActionAid, the charity responsible for helping schools with the initiative.”
In light of the “no pressure” video, how should we interpret this?
This is so disgusting that it is beyond comments.
Please stop these people before the video turns into reality.
blimey. i get that thru on the gradiuan!
@Mosher
your quote:
” … rather the object of satire ( if there is one) are the authorities. Which means, of course, that it is self defeating as a work of satire since the point of the piece is to get people to listen to authorities. …”
Now you’ve got it. As I said, it is satire, but very poor satire. It missed the mark. I think it’s funny enough for kids in the sense of silly splatter films, but neither of my children believed a single word of it. Nor do I think it will provoke murderous outbursts … but then, I don’t support censorship at all.
And as you likely know, I’m a very hard AGW sceptic. This silly little film doesn’t bother me at all, rather the hysteria to denounce it I find unsettling. Are people really so silly as to be scared of it ?
One of the comments above maintained that no Monty Python skits singled out sections of society like this. Oh yes, some skits did – eg. an early one depicting people from the British aristocracy being so stupid that violently removing them from the gene pool was an altruistic act to be rewarded with audience laughter
I finally had the chance to see this video… Well, to be honest I stopped after the 2nd button. That was more than enough.
Picking a place to start on this is tough. There are so many things to point out. Things like the targets being the withdrawn, dorky, not cool people to begin with. The kind of people mocked as the stupid ones in commercials.
There is no attempt at humor here. This is a statement that the world is better off without certain people. There is certainly some significant money behind this and the fact that such money and such a message were together on this is disturbing.
If I take this video into consideration with other recent news events in the US. The recent plan of the White House to get ISP’s and industry to self censor themselves on what the WH considers acceptable.
Recently when US health insurance companies said increasing premiums were caused by the recent change in health care law, they were told to stop all claims like that or be cut out of all future dealings with the government.
I am becoming concerned that there will be actual problems with free speech in parts of the world that have not experienced such problems before in the near future. It is difficult to say if these unrelated themes will cause problems for Skeptics in the future, but is raises the potential for it happening.
Email sent yesterday around an Oxford University mailing list. Note the timestamp (UK time) – by that time the ‘reaction’ had resulted in the original video being taken down, but no mention of that.
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Climate humour on a wet, wet, wet Friday
Ian Curtis [xxx@xxxxxxxx]
Sent: 01 October 2010 17:09
To:
eci-all@xxxxx.ox.ac.uk
Attachments:
Dear All,
forgive a late fri run-round ..but you might be intrigued by this piece
of humour from Richard Curtis/ 10:10. Will be interesting to see the
reaction …
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/sep/30/10-10-no-pressure-film
—
Ian Curtis
xxx@xxxxxxxx
Environmental Change Institute
Oxford University
OUCE, South Parks Rd, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK
http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk
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