Environmentalists: Choose freedom and die
British environmentalists released a very slick looking advert -- written by Love, Actually's Richard Curtis -- in which people who oppose carbon reduction schemes are killed. Beginning with the children.
I don't even want to put the ad, called "No Pressure," in here, it's so distressing. But you can view it here. I actually had a hard time believing it was real. It was as if non-environmentalist extremists were caricaturing the environmental agenda. But Even the Guardian was questioning the wisdom of the ad:
But why take such a risk of upsetting or alienating people, I ask [Franny Armstrong] : "Because we have got about four years to stabilise global emissions and we are not anywhere near doing that. All our lives are at threat and if that's not worth jumping up and down about, I don't know what is."
"We 'killed' five people to make No Pressure – a mere blip compared to the 300,000 real people who now die each year from climate change," she adds.
Jamie Glover, the child-actor who plays the part of Philip and gets blown up, has similarly few qualms: "I was very happy to get blown up to save the world."
- Comment (29)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (2)
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
Comments :
Re: Environmentalists: Choose freedom and die
I should have probably put a stronger warning up about the ad. It is truly revolting and I feel sick about it. Also, it's a call to arms about how serious a threat environmentalism can be to freedom. I can't believe how poorly thought out this ad is.
Re: Environmentalists: Choose freedom and die
Weird how this coincides with Osama Bin Laden releasing a tape today complaining about Global Warming:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE6901DG20101001
The radical/left-wing war on modernity continues.
Edited on Oct 1, 2010 at 11:15amOct '10
Re: Environmentalists: Choose freedom and die
Well, one fewer latte a month for me.
As to this ad, I can only say they have truly gone mad.
May '10
Re: Environmentalists: Choose freedom and die
Wow.
I try to always give people the benefit of the doubt, but that ad pretty clearly advocates violence against those of us who reject the anthropogenic climate catastrophe nonsense. What else could the message be?
If they wanted us to think that we, the naysayers, are responsible for the impending deaths of other people, then they would show those innocents being killed. Instead, only the naysayers are killed.
And they're not killed by extreme weather. They're killed by other people.
This ad is abominable. The makers should be charged with incitement of violence.
May '10
Re: Environmentalists: Choose freedom and die
By the way, Mollie, you were right to post this here. It is very graphic and disturbing, but it shows us what we're up against. If this is acceptable advertising in Britain, I fear for their future. And there are undoubtedly Americans who support it.
Oct '10
Re: Environmentalists: Choose freedom and die
Aaron Miller: Wow.
I try to always give people the benefit of the doubt, but that ad pretty clearly advocates violence against those of us who reject the anthropogenic climate catastrophe nonsense. What else could the message be?
If they wanted us to think that we, the naysayers, are responsible for the impending deaths of other people, then they would show those innocents being killed. Instead, only the naysayers are killed.
And they're not killed by extreme weather. They're killed by other people.
This ad is abominable. The makers should be charged with incitement of violence. · Oct 1 at 11:23am
And the killers are so nonchalant.
Jun '10
Re: Environmentalists: Choose freedom and die
Kim Jong-il doesn't understand what the problem is. It's just a normal incentive program.
Edited on Oct 1, 2010 at 11:39amMay '10
Re: Environmentalists: Choose freedom and die
Coincidentally, today the Royal Society have revised their position on the severity of global warming, due to 40 Fellows who questioned mankind’s contribution to rising temperatures. To quote a section of the recent report "There is little confidence in specific projections of future regional climate change, except at continental scales.”
On a side note, 250 Million cases of Malaria occur leading to 1 Million deaths per year. I would prefer a little righteous indignation against this appalling statistic. When Bono, Gore, Penn et al give up their lifestyles I will start to take this AGW risk more seriously.
Jun '10
Re: Environmentalists: Choose freedom and die
The next time a group of environmentalists try to demonize you as a "fascist," show them this disgusting ad, which is little more than a modern argument for eugenics (but instead of killing the infirm and the poor, they kill those who don't sign on enthusiastically to the current environmental dogma). It's a new version of the Hitler youth. Sick and repulsive.
Re: Environmentalists: Choose freedom and die
The creative geniuses behind the ad have now apologized, sort of - "We thought it was funny, but we missed the mark, it seems. Ah well! Live and let live, except for the pigs who don't bike to work and should be strangled with a sustainably grown hemp cord, and bulldozed into a pit, providing the bulldozer is an electric vehicle or at least a hybrid." Or words to that effect.
The apology notes that "we wanted to find a way to bring this critical issue back into the headlines whilst making people laugh." My sense of humor is broad, and has its dark and mordant territories, but that was appalling - and it shows the creators' insularity as well. They couldn't see how bad this would look.
We have a little rule in the humor business: don't kill children.
Re: Environmentalists: Choose freedom and die
Their website has a big list of things you can do to be an energy hero around the office, including:
Because I'm not a self-righteous wanker, perhaps, and I like bananas.
Aug '10
Re: Environmentalists: Choose freedom and die
The British have a rich tradition of this, sadly. George Bernard Shaw can be seen in a film made in the 1930's preaching Nazi racial purity and perfectionism, saying that people should be tried by a council annually to justify their existence or be euthanized, and raising a palm in the "Sieg Heil" salute.
We are seeing the unmasking of evil, the true Apocalypse, a Greek word meaning "a parting of the veil".
Jul '10
Re: Environmentalists: Choose freedom and die
Ultimately, it is the true mark of the zealot (of any stripe) that he wishes - ultimately - to dispose of those who disagree with him.
The broad's remarks about
"We 'killed' five people to make No Pressure – a mere blip compared to the 300,000 real people who now die each year from climate change,"
is eerily similar to "If you want to make an omellette, you ned to break a few eggs".
And James, the phrase "self-righeous wanker" is the perfect description for these folks, who seem to have gone blind from moral wanking.
Jul '10
Re: Environmentalists: Choose freedom and die
There are some really chilling hallmarks of propaganda in that video. In the first two sequences, note how the dissenters, who get executed, are portrayed: they're mousier, and less attractive, than the people around them.
Why do you suppose that is?
It even ends on a perfect Stalinist note: Gillian Anderson thinks she's pure, but, sadly, she is not. Sacrifices must be made, Comrade. The Revolution must be fed.
Aug '10
Re: Environmentalists: Choose freedom and die
As much as I often enjoyed Monte Python's Flying Circus, there was something disturbing about it now and then. I think this is where you end up when you follow that road of madness to the end.
Does anybody remember the Python move The Meaning of Life? There's a scene where a bloated man eats until he explodes.
Aug '10
Re: Environmentalists: Choose freedom and die
Franny Armstrong: "We 'killed' five people to make No Pressure – a mere blip compared to the 300,000 real people who now die each year from climate change," she adds.
I counted 2 + 3 + 1 + 1 = 7 people "killed". If she can't even get the first number right, why should we believe the second one?
Oct '10
Re: Environmentalists: Choose freedom and die
5, 7 who cares - they were ugly anyway. I also noticed that and hoped that after five they were done. I found particularly chilling the mild mannered, mid-level manager in the second murder scene. The way he lovingly takes the button ...
How could they possibly have thought it was funny. Monty Python did revel in blood, often very gratuitously, like that tennis sketch or the Knights who Say "Ni". And the ghastly animated cartoons were horribly misogynistic.
Jul '10
Re: Environmentalists: Choose freedom and die
True, but the tennis sketch mocked cinematic violence. The gag was that it was the British musical "Salad Days", as directed by Sam Peckinpah. The 10:10 video isn't mocking anything.
Well, not intentionally, anyway.
Oct '10
Re: Environmentalists: Choose freedom and die
You know, I was going to defend Monty Python when I started writing that comment on the grounds that they never said anyone deserved to die. But the fat guy eating until he explodes blew my theory. But yes - usually they were being satirical, and the Knights skit is very funny. And if you disagree I will bite you ... come back and I will bite you ...
May '10
Re: Environmentalists: Choose freedom and die
I watched a show years ago where the Monty Python guys got together to discuss their works. They released The Holy Grail during the Vietnam War. When they sat in on a first showing in America, people didn't immediately laugh during the dismemberment scene with the black knight. Gradually, they did. John Cleese theorized that it's absence of pain that allows violence to be funny. There has to be a step away from realism.
I love that movie. I grew up listening to their skits on tape, and can recite many of them by heart.
But I agree that much of their work, particularly the Flying Circus stuff, demonstrates corrupt aesthetics. To a great extent, yes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder; but not totally. Much of Monty Python's comedy is more rebellion against traditional forms of comedy than a proposal of anything substantive. It is very similar to rebellions against symmetry in art, against purpose in sculpture, and against harmony in music. It's more destructive than creative.
Artistic corruption both feeds and follows cultural corruption.