Sunday
Aug022015
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Are greens now the bad guys?
I was intrigued by this trailer for a forthcoming anime film. From Wiki, we learn that it is set in a future in which humankind has spread across the universe but then gone into decline, and that Earth has subsequently been taken over by an "authoritarian universal government by the name of the Gaia Sanction" which "declares Earth a sacred planet, and thus forbidden for humanity to repopulate".
Anyone would think that the greens were starting to be seen as the bad guys.
Here's the trailer, which looks like a lot of fun even without the message.
Reader Comments (42)
Woh. That is an amazing trailer.
Good Space Opera is great SF.
The animation quality is outstanding and much better than the Disney-fied Pixar stuff dominating movie screens.
BTW, greens have long been the bad guys...
Not the first time that a religion has been portrayed as the bad guys. Maybe film makers feel safer attacking those who prey to Gaia than those who pray to Allah.
THAT is my kind of film :)
Coming soon after "Kingsman: The Secret Service" in which the Greenies are the bad guys, perhaps we are seeing a trend.
Green is the new Black.
Is the "Gaia Sanction" a thinly disguised UN Agenda 21?
Green could be the new orange.
This religion's not been tried.
No have rhyme, but do have urge.
False conviction; man's been fried.
=================
"Are Greens now the bad guys?"
Niven and Pournelle certainly thought so, as far back as 2002:
"Reeling under a new ice age, the lunatic fringe of the environmental movement controls the US government. Abandoned by Earth, the space colonies replenish their air by scoop-ships diving into the atmosphere - but Alex and Gordon's ship was hit by a missile, and they are now wanted dead or alive."
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fallen-Angels-Larry-Niven/dp/0743435826/
Not the first time in the last few years they've been portrayed as deluded and evil. And won't be the last time I'm sure.
Interstellar pokes fun at them subtly, the kingsmen as well. I'm sure there are others I've not seen.
It's starting to become the mainstream view.
Just finished reading a very funny/thought-provoking book called 'Look Who's Back'. The plot involves Hitler waking up on some wasteground in 2011. He then tries to 're-establish his Reich in modern-day Germany.
In the story, the Hitler character dismisses all modern political parties as ineffectual. However, the author has him admiring just one party: the Greens.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Look-Whos-Back-Timur-Vermes/dp/0857052926
The film is Japanese funded. Does anyone know if it represents a backlash against CO2 hatred in Japan?
Hollywood has found it far more politically correct to stereo type CO2 as the evil dark sinister force for too long. Which is rather ironic considering how the genuine environment, especially the green bits, can't get enough of the stuff.
Whilst I still keep looking, I've only found two types of "Greens":
1. The gullible kind
2. The ones that make money from the gullible kind
Green is the new Cosa Nostra
Give us your money or the tree/bear/crustacean/ocean/mankind gets it?
Surely not!
-/
Green manure really does cost the Earth.
david smith
Excellent. I'll have a look. The Nazis were the Green party of the early 1930s.
http://goo.gl/wHNVbu
For example
A study of the membership rolls of several mainstream Weimar era Naturschutz (nature protection) organizations revealed that by 1939, fully 60 percent of these conservationists had joined the NSDAP (compared to about 10 percent of adult men and 25 percent of teachers and lawyers).
http://spitfirelist.com/news/the-youth-movement-and-the-weimar-era/
Captain Harlock! He's been around in anime for 40 years. Nice to see him updated.
esmiff
Hope you enjoy it. Had me laughing out loud in places.
You're right about the Green movement in the 30s being supportive of the Nazis.
Kind of reminds you of John Cook from SkS playing dress-up:
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/1_herrcook.jpg
david smith Yes, Herr Cook. I remember now. LOL !
The ultimate comic book bad guy was Batman's enemy eco madman, Ra's al Ghul
"Ra's al Ghul is an international criminal mastermind whose ultimate goal is a world in perfect balance. He believes that the best way to achieve this balance is to eliminate most of humanity. Ra's usually tries to assault the world's human populace with a biological weapon, such as a genetically-engineered virus. "
The 2005 film Batman Begins offers a very good insight into the philosophy of deep ecology / eco fascism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_Begins
WRT to not being the first example, let's not forget William Peck, the officious EPA bureaucrat in "Ghostbusters" (1984). Even libs ring their hands about that portrayal.
http://www.salon.com/2014/02/26/is_ghostbusters_secretly_an_anti_epa_screed_partner/
Interstellar, bad guy is Dr Mann.
Kingsman, bad guy is obsessed with global warming
Well it look stunning. I might grab it if it comes to Crunchyroll.
But if James Cameron likes it then it won't be too down on the Greens.
The ch4 drama Utopia was about elite eco fascists attempting to kill 90% of the world's population with a virus (usual method).
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/utopia/episode-guide/series-1
Goodie!
There are few pleasures that one can have in public (and with one's clothes on) greater than watching sanctimonious, smug moralisers being ridiculed and mocked.
Apart from doing the ridiculing and mocking oneself. :-)
It is excellent news that the government seems determined to steal UKIP's clothes and cut off the greens and their fellow-travellers sources of finance. And equally satisfying (though long overdue) that their supposed intellectual capital is being subjected to more rigorous scrutiny...and found to be wanting.
Esmiff: "The Nazis were the Green party of the early 1930s."
Shrewd observation. It's not for nothing the climate extremists are also called eco-fascists.
I think I've posted this here some years ago, but I still find it funny. and it bears repeating
THE WINNER
Messenger. The answer to the conundrum is a philosophy called 'Lebensraum'. Desperate for great great swathes of land from the inferior races to the east and lacking camels and a native spear industry, the Nazis were forced to use tanks.
Himmler justifies the invasion of Poland
In December 1942, Himmler released a decree "On the Treatment of the Land in the Eastern Territories," referring to the newly annexed portions of Poland. It read in part:
The peasant of our racial stock has always carefully endeavored to increase the natural powers of the soil, plants, and animals, and to preserve the balance of the whole of nature. For him, respect for divine creation is the measure of all culture. If, therefore, the new Lebensräume (living spaces) are to become a homeland for our settlers, the planned arrangement of the landscape to keep it close to nature is a decisive prerequisite. It is one of the bases for fortifying the German Volk.
Quoted in Heinz Haushofer, Ideengeschichte der Agrarwirtschaft und Agrarpolitik im deutschen Sprachgebiet, Band II, München, 1958, p. 266.
http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/germany/sp001630/peter.html
Lebensraum (German for "habitat" or literally "living space") was an ideology proposing German expansion, especially in Eastern Europe. Developed under the German Empire, it became part of German goals during the First World War and was later adopted as an important component of Nazi ideology in Germany. The Nazis supported territorial expansionism to gain Lebensraum as being a law of nature for all healthy and vigorous peoples of superior races to displace people of inferior races; especially if the people of a superior race were facing overpopulation in their given territories.[2]
..
He goes on to note that even within the Nazi regime, there were differences of opinion about the meaning of Lebensraum, citing Rainer Zitelmann, who distinguishes between the near-mystical fascination with a return to an idyllic agrarian society (for which land was a necessity) as advocated by Darré and Himmler, and an industrial state, envisioned by Hitler, which would be reliant on raw materials and forced labor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum
Lebensraum
One of the most central "doctrines" or pseudo-doctrines to the Nazi Belief System was that of "Blood and Soil" or Blut und Boden. "Blood & Soil" was the foundational concept for other concepts such as "Lebensraum and was rooted in occultic philosophies prevalent in German mysticism and Ancient legend, which posited that German Racial Identity, was essentially tied literally and metaphorically to the land. In the beginning of the reign of the Third Reich, the concept of "Blut und Boden" was euphemized with a'back to the land' , back-to-basics approach of bringing back the historical lifestyle of a Prussian people; a history tied in farming and rural values.
The concept however was far greater than the 'back to farming ' and country life mentality which was couched in terms of patriotism and nationalism: the concept of the bloodlines of Germany being integrally tied to the soil or land necessitated a German people on a German land, with all others as intruders.
http://www.shoaheducation.com/blut.htm
It looks like just about the whole Captain Harlock film (1h26m) is here -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzsmIy1wmBg
... just missing the intro and a minute at the end.
It looks like fun too :-)
In fact Lebensraum was the reason for WWII. Firstly the invasion of Poland, then the apparently insane decision to attack the Soviet Union.
It's just a movie. Besides, the "greens" portrayed in the movie are nothing like the "greens" that are scorching the earth nowadays.
@golf charlie
It doesn't. Can't say there is any "CO2 hatred in Japan" to respond to. Sure, there are some loonies around here but these trends are generally viewed as someone else's problem, not a Japanese problem.
Brute, thanks for that. I was curious because Japan is not rich in fossil fuels, and took to nuclear power. Fukushima presumably proved the Greens right, but hit the economy hard.
I have never visited Japan, let alone worked there, so I was curious how Japan, its economy and people were reacting to the reality of power shortages, now and in the future. The UK and Germany are starting to work it out. France has been buffered, by nuclear.
"A study of the membership rolls of several mainstream Weimar era Naturschutz (nature protection) organizations revealed that by 1939, fully 60 percent of these conservationists had joined the NSDAP (compared to about 10 percent of adult men and 25 percent of teachers and lawyers). http://spitfirelist.com/news/the-youth-movement-and-the-weimar-era/" --esmiff
Ooh! Godwin's! Godwin's! Godwin's!
/sarc
"In fact Lebensraum was the reason for WWII. Firstly the invasion of Poland, then the apparently insane decision to attack the Soviet Union." --esmiff
Not so insane if you realize (1) Hitler's top priority was to annihilate the Jews (for reasons I won't explain here), and (2) Russia is where most (3.3 million) European Jews outside Nazi control were in June of 1941. Es war Totensraum.
In think mainstream opinion would lean toward Lebensraum as the reason for the invasion of the east. I don't believe chasing Jews across the Soviet Union (for reasons you won't explain ) is anywhere near as plausible.
Whether you like it or not, the BBC is as close to the mainstream truth as you're ever going to get.
BBC
Indeed, an important reason for his decision to invade the Soviet Union in June 1941 was his desire to acquire the Lebensraum that he had been seeking for Germany since 1925. He envisaged settling Germans as a master race in western Russia, while deporting most of the Russians to Siberia and using the remainder as slave labour.
He was not of course the only Nazi committed to acquiring Lebensraum in the east, as is demonstrated by a note in the diary of Heinrich Himmler, future leader of the SS, in 1919: 'I work for my ideal of German womanhood with whom, some day, I will live my life in the east and fight my battles as a German far from beautiful Germany.'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/hitler_lebensraum_01.shtml
Encyclopædia Britannica echoing exactly what I said
Poland was critical to Hitler’s long-range strategy for the conquest of Lebensraum in the east; any invasion of the Soviet Union required that Polish territory be available as a staging area. Until the British-French guarantee, he had hoped to enlist Poland, mostly through bombast and threat, as an ally in an attack on the Soviet Union, and he believed Poland could be dealt with summarily after the defeat of the Soviet Union.
http://www.britannica.com/place/Germany/Foreign-policy
maybe
when multi million dollar starlets whine about 'income equality'
and stars conspire to hide their slave owning ancestors
then diddle the nanny
and the richest complain about how tough they've had it as this or that 'minority'
and fly in private jets to cry about the environment
and back to their private ranch estates
or their mansions by the sea
the young notice the stupid
and them that wants to sell them stuff ain't stupid
"Whether you like it or not, the BBC is as close to the mainstream truth as you're ever going to get." --esmiff
Have you learned nothing of "mainstream truth" in the past 15 years?
I didn't know it was news that the Greens are "bad". Of course they're bad they manipulated a ban on DDT in the face of all the scientific literature, causing millions of unnecessary deaths, they have almost done the same for fracking despite the fact that the recent EPA report found NO water contamination ANYWHERE from fracking. They have organised a ban on Golden Rice despite the fact that 500,000 children a year get VDA (vitamin A disease) and half of them will go blind. (and have shown they're not above thuggery to get their way)
They undermine our democracy with constant lobbying and our freedom of speech with highly organised responses and complaints if anyone ever criticises them, or puts forward views or policies with which they don't agree.
They are the implacable foe of all thing human.
They want to take us back to a way of life when 40 years was the average age you'd achieve at birth.
"Bad" isn't the word to describe them, it's "evil".
@golf charlie
No shortages. Utility bills have gone up some (and, naturally, so has everything with them) but things are getting back to normal.
Fukushima was exploited politically by some local people but few, very few. The green angle is considered in bad taste because the tsunami killed thousands while the nuclear plant none. However, since there were regulation issues with the running of the plant, a review of existing plants has been conducted.
As I said, "green" is considered a foreign problem here, something that occidentals talk about. Japanese don't feel the need to publicly pass judgment on others' affairs and they seldom do.
But who is Cameron mythicly, epically and visually unprecedentedly cheering fori for? The pirates or the Gaia Sanction?
Netflix here
Amazon here
Impressed - it's not Toy Story :-)
There has been some criticism of Japanese audio vs. subtitles vs. English dubbing messing with the message - my Japanese is non-existent I know there's a few lurkers here who might be able to comment?
Haven't watched it myself, but I think Harlock is available on Canadian Netflix.
I'm coming to this late, Derek Sorensen, but "Fallen Angels" was 1991, not 2002.
It was the first book for which Baen did an electronic download version, and I have the one with embedded serial number 00000001, which I downloaded from NY to NZ via 2400 bps dial-up modem.