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
jeremy of W.A: I followed the comments on the film at the Telegraph and the Guardian. The majority of UK opinions were negative as well. It’s not only clueless Americans who didn’t appreciate “No Pressure.”
As a clueless American who’s a big fan of British shows like Monty Python and Blackadder, the film missed the mark in many ways. First, it wasn’t nearly cartoonish enough, as Python was, to distance the audience from the horror. Second, I don’t remember children ever being killed in anything Monty Python did. Third, Monty Python material was anti-authoritarian and anti-violence. The Black Knight in Holy Grail was not a sympathetic character. The Peckinpah satire was anti-violence.
Just for light relief here,
Check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhmnOpoGAPw
I’m sure you’ll get the joke.
[thanks for the reminder ~jove, mod]
Another cult that kills unbelievers…
I imagine if all involved (the rich media creative types, and the funders) cut their own emmisions by 10%..
Then their emmisions would still be MANY times that of mine…
My family haven’t flown for a long time (can’t face it with under 4’s)
Yet @i’m sure Franny, curtis, et al, think nothing of it..
I bet none of them even buy a JP Morgan Climate Care carbon offset, from their bunch of ‘merchant bankers’ friends in the trendy ‘chattering classes’ parts of London. Did they carbon offset, to relieve their troubled minds, about all the CO2 they are emmiting….?
http://www.jpmorganclimatecare.com/
How many houses properties does Curtis have again (london west country, etc)
So to all thos eco rich activists preaching…
When you have REDUCED your ‘carbon footprints’ to merely ONLY 10 times mine….
Then I might start laughing, vs being very concerned that they are in positions of power (ie media and establishment, the luvvie, political circuit)
The AGW apologists who are asserting that this was all just a big funny joke that the moronic denialist scum are too stoopid to get are doing the best thing possible:
Helping the echo-chamber of AGW drive straight off the cliff into the trash heap of history.
Please, do keep it up.
Like most dysfunctional social movements, AGW’s worst enemy is its strongest true believers. 10:10 meant this to be mainstream, huge and wildly helpful in getting the AGW dogma more widely accepted.
10:10 is slick, funded by huge corporations and governments, and attracts the alleged best and brightest.
If a skeptical group had made fun loving video where skeptics could blow up AGW promoters droning on about how much worse things really are, or holding some huge tax payer funded ‘climate conference’ at the push of a button, would that be cute?
Please. The makers would be facing terrorism charges already.
Memo to believers: Keep it up. This is making people simply go ‘yuck’.
At you.
I am having a fabricator make a red button like the one on the movie. I will personally deliver it to Senator Inhofe to keep on hand for the post November hearings.
Read a lot around this, and the only funny part I can so far glean is how all the creators and their apologists’ stories seem to evolve hourly… and contradict endlessly.
Don’t mention ze Audi ad… I did once but think I got away with it!
Personally I am now awaiting a) the BBC to eventually twig that it’s looking silly gazing at its navel in the bunker, again, and b) speaking of public funds being committed without much choice, for a few quango investor senior board types explaining their support for this.
I mean, like the £6M ‘bedtime stories’ worked so well for Ed ‘n his plans ‘n all.
I’m ashamed to admit this but the awfull advert is in keeping with modern UK youth humour. Mony Python isn’t a good reference point because it was 40 years ago! We’ve had 40 years to warp what (in my opinion) already warped comedy. OK, this is at the upper edge of repulsive for us but not way out of bounds. Little Britian is a more apt comparison. Violence and sheer cold blooded victimisation is weaving itself into our society, no small wonder it creeps into what should be polite society.
From a comedy persepctive the real crime is it was a very poor joke, repeated 4 times, just in case you didn’t laugh the first 3 times.
On behalf of the British sense of humour… sorry.
A contributory factor to these deaths is the anount of funds diverted from overseas aids budgets into the fantasy of solving the made up problem of dangerous AGW.
It’s not really that. “Aid budgets” cannot solve poverty. Charity can certainly help people in distress and that is laudable, but it will never help an economy escape poverty. The primary problem is deliberate action by western agencies to prevent development in the Poor World, precisely because those agencies are the tool of people like these film-makers who despise wealth and comfort (0ther peoples’, they don’t mind a bit for themselves) and thus they actively prevent development.
The Poor World remains poor because western elites have decided it will not be allowed to become rich. For the good of the planet. It’s a new and particularly pernicious form of imperialism.
Maybe it is a British thing, which explains why the rest of us don’t get the joke.
In the historical play/movie, A Man For All Seasons, Henry VIII asks all his loyal subjects for a little favour. When he meets resistance he puts “no pressure” on Thomas More (and Bishop John Fisher) to sign the Oath of Succession/Supremacy. Because they would not sign the “oath” they were beheaded.
Everyone else in Britain who were given the “request” signed on.
I think I get it now.
Ralph says:
October 2, 2010 at 2:10 am
“Not so long ago they produced a scare-film for children, where all the animal were drowning because of climate change.”
The scare film is here:
http://tinyurl.com/ygdaq6c
Many people complained and this is what happened:
http://tinyurl.com/ye5msne
You will need a lot of time and a strong stomach to wade through the report, but
at that time (early 2010) the IPCC reports were called upon to justify rejection of many of the complaints.
The film maker is reported as saying that it was not aimed at children, but they recognised that children may see it. So thats all right then.
No reaction from the BBC yet: (5 mins ago)
A search of the BBC website for ‘No Pressure’
http://search.bbc.co.uk/search?go=toolbar&uri=%2F&q=%22no+pressure%22
yields nothing………………
I wonder if people would have found it “funny” – you know, “British satire” – if a group of skeptics had produced a similar video showing Hansen, Gore, Jones, et. al. being blown up in a graphic manner for their positions on catastrophic global warming…
In any case, this is all about MONEY, and until the people who are funding these 10:10 clowns are exposed and shamed, nothing will change. That’s why I opine that 99% of what passes for global warming “research” is nothing more than make-work projects for government and academic scientists who want their slice of the Climate Ca$h pie…
@ur momisugly jeremy of W.A “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)”
So you think this film is satire? Been said already by quite a few people, but perhaps you should consider that satire and irony mostly work because they expose and exaggerate underlying truths.
Now if only we could get them to build their own red buttons and self carbonate.
My son is sendt to a trip to Auschwitch this year on something called “Tolerance trip”.
The young is learning tolerance. I like that.
However , the socialist teachers in Norwegian schools….I dont think they learn the children what tolerance really is. Or in-tolerance.
They dont learn that In-Tolerance comes in new shapes every time. They dont learn the children how to recognise in-tolerance, when it pops up again under a new name.
So, they learn that something called nazism is bad. And they learn that nazism is some obscure Right-wing stuff they must stay away from. End of story.
What if they learned that nazism is short for National Socialism, a sort of socialism turned bad. What if they learned that socialism in itself is a way of in-tolerance.
If every one in a society is supposed to be equal in every way, you need to do something about those who do not want to conform.
You must use force against them. That is when in-tolerance come into play.
So my question to the teachers is;
How can you be a socialist, and teach our children tolerance at the same time?
[snip. You’ve been around here long enough to know that calling people “denialists” is not appropriate. Stop it. ~dbs, mod.]
Jo Nova has issued a very interesting challenge:
“My Challenge to Green groups: Call off your attack dogs.
For peace loving environmentalists, you may not have asked for this, but your true colors are being tested and the test comes from within. The challenge goes out to the Greens, Greenpeace, WWF, The Wilderness Society, CAN and the Sierra Club. Will you allow your sycophant totalitarian bullies to push these death-threats under the guise of joke, or will you stand up for human-rights, for peace, for non-violent answers – and denounce 10:10 and demand it’s immediate dissolution? Do environmentalists dream of violent deaths of the children of those who disagree? Unless you issue clear official statements that you are appalled by the 10:10 threats, that this kind of sicko-psycho intimidation is dangerous and uncivilized, then we mark you as tacitly approving. It only takes one written press release for your organisation to make its stance clear. What say ye?”
I wonder how many green groups will dare to distance themselves from 10:10?
I agree with TinyCO2, this is basically in keeping with recent British stuff like Psychoville. This is stuff I couldn’t bear to watch, but after you get over the vileness, it gets funny due to its clever stuff.
However, that’s not what really annoys me about this video. Vile or not, it promotes a falsehood. It attacks reason. It is just a media campaign, well funded, well organised, promoting false views, or if you will, views which are mostly false, and damaging.
I wish the environmental movement would find wherever they’d left their brains and go fetch them.
Osama Bin L. drives an old carefully preserved VW (love those N. cars!) to the United Nations to deliver a speech on global warming in the wake of the Pakistani floods, He implores the world to do something. Some nations disagree, notably Obama and Cameron. Obama says ok, no pressure, and blows them up with RPGs from across the room. Next an Arab stands up, rich from oil wealth and says, Osama, the Earth is but a speck of dust in the eyes of Allah, you are a failed Muslim! So he pushes a button and Mohammed enters and sprays everyone in the room with a volley of spears. Funny? No? After a while trying to be shocking just gets very boring. I suppose we should hand it to real writers like Curtis who can be creative.
It is just a pity they’re idiots when it comes to science.
Stephen Skinner says:
October 2, 2010 at 4:07 am
Dr Jacob Bronowski’s passionate and moving defence of science.
A very moving piece by Bronowski, but I think his premise is not accurate. It was the thick use of the questionable science of eugenics, coupled with an absence of the dogmatic religious belief in the immortal human soul of every human being that animated those committing the atrocities alluded to in the clip.
Similar situation with 10:10 and their dubious “climate science” coupled with dogmatic eco-pantheism. Hopefully they were not foreshadowing their hopes and dreams in their film/fantasy, should they come to power.
@Jeremy
“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.”
At risk of being snipped I have to say that is absolute patronising rubbish. This already tired canard that the bad reactions are uncool people who don’t “get” British humour is despicably desperate and jingoistic. I’m a Brit and a lifelong fan of the quintessential British humour expressed in the likes of Monty Python, Blackadder, Brass Eye, In the Thick of it etc etc. This sick and offensive video bears absolutely no relation to these fine traditions and I’m already sick to death of seeing people who presume to speak for me as a Brit making specious claims that it is a “cultural thing”.
[no you don’t get snipped, because you are not attacking the person, just what he said – strongly worded, but polite enough ~jove, mod]
I may be in a small minority here, but whilst my sympathies are with WUWT in general, I find what I’ve seen here to be a total over-reaction. I laughed at the video – at them, not with them – and at its bizarre content. I wasn’t in the least bit bothered by the gore and the screaming. I was, and remain, bothered by the video basically equating skepticism with thought-crime, but I thought the video was no more than a more than usually explicit statement of the warmist-fanatics’ view. No surprise, nothing to see, and nothing here that’s worse than what they normally do. This was par for the course, so why are people so upset?
I would note that I come from a family with very poor taste in humour. My grandmother lost her sister in the Nazi camps, but still tells poor taste jokes about the holocaust. Maybe this is why I’m not offended by the way the content was presented, but, still, I’m not. What I’m annoyed and offended by is the idea that lies behind the making of the film, and that was something we all knew about already.
just my £0.02 worth.
Regarding the apologist for the propaganda snuff film in question,
it just goes to show that some people can rationalize anything
if they believe that their ends justify any means whatsoever.
This film is not satire or humour, certainly not Monty Python.
The “this is British humour” rationalization is a load of bollocks.
M.P. did not advocate killing children who questioned their humour.
As a previous poster speculated, one possible way to understand this is that Curtis wanted to see what was the most offensive script that he could come up with and still have the eco-righteous approve it.
Off-topic, but here’s my nomination for roll-your-eyes quote of the week:
“In an article from November 5, 2008, Josh Willis states that the world ocean actually has been warming since 2003 after removing Argo measurement errors from the data and adjusting the measured temperatures with a computer model his team developed. ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argo_(oceanography)
@De Nihilist
just showed it to my 18 yr old son, slightly amused, but thought it was sick. Whereas I found it humourous.
And no, it does not show the “real” plans of the left, just like Delingpole does not show the “real” plans of the right.
I disagree with you – I do not think it is humorous … I find it profoundly disturbing. However its OK that we disagree, although I’m not sure I’d ever want to have a drink with you. What I find interesting is your insinuation that its ‘OK’ because it doesn’t show ‘real’ plans by the left … and then defend that by somehow comparing it with Delingpole because of something he hasn’t done.
Wacko and bizarre.