[Avatar]is illustrative of what Hollywood thinks is acceptably anodyne when it comes to such fare: mystical mushy enviro-nonsense spouted by pacifist characters who are beyond reproach because they are not actually human and who then happily turn around and commit mass murder themselves against humans in the name of pacifism and environmentalism.
Yet the Avatar natives are romanticized as the innocent, good guys.
This is nothing new, of course, remember the Ewoks from Return of the Jedi? Cute, innocent, small, and cuddly with all that facial hair. And they were one with nature, living in the trees. The Wikipedia entry describes their distinctions as "primitive, curious."
Sure. And I'll add something else, "violent and good at it." You see, the Ewoks threw in their lot with the Rebel Alliance to fight the Empire:
Despite their small size, Ewoks are strong; in the climactic battle scene of The Return of the Jedi, they are shown physically overpowering and once even throwing Imperial Stormtroopers, though this detail is not consistent throughout the film. ...
They then help in the ground battle to destroy the Imperial shield generator on the forest floor, and their primitive weapons fell the Imperial Stormtroopers and the AT-ST walkers of the Empire. This assistance paves the way to victory at the Battle of Endor. Later that night the Ewoks are shown holding a huge celebration.
See what I mean? You don't build all those weapons (including catapults, I believe) or get good at war at a whim and overnight. Their huge celebration after the battle isn't something the Marine Corps could get away with, let me tell you. But primitive? You betcha. So they are automatically pure of heart. But nobody seems to notice that these guys are organized around war! And in case you have doubts about the linkage between primitive status and justification for violence against the civilized, the article states the Ewok are named after the Miwak Indian tribe.
Back to Avatar, the director directly links the innocence of non-Westerners with the justification for violence in their names:
Cameron himself told the New York Times that he is a “child of the ’60s. There’s a part of me who wants to put a daisy in the end of the gun barrel.” The sophistication of that perspective was matched recently when he declared, “I believe in eco-terrorism.” Interesting.
Indeed it is interesting. Nothing really new in certain strains of the West where guilt over the status and progress of the West is a source of discomfort. But surely interesting.
So it isn't really surprising that the man with the biggest car bomb footprint has decided to go all "daisy in the end of the gun barrel" and play the role of the primitive but curious innocent out to stop the big bad West from raping the planet:
Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has called for the world to boycott American goods and the U.S. dollar, blaming the United States and other industrialized countries for global warming, according to a new audiotape released Friday.
In the tape, broadcast in part on Al-Jazeera television, bin Laden warned of the dangers of climate change and says that the way to stop it is to bring "the wheels of the American economy" to a halt.
He blamed Western industrialized nations for hunger, desertification and floods across the globe, and called for "drastic solutions" to global warming, and "not solutions that partially reduce the effect of climate change."
This is hilarious. The man follows Leftist talking points shamelessly to give confused Leftist Westerners another excuse to "understand" his violence as a non-Western primitive (and he has the Ewok-like facial hair). But face it, he is good at killing, practices and trains for killing, and he has huge celebrations when he succeeds in killing any of us. It's like he's all about the killing, eh?
Perhaps it is just as simple as global warming being the last refuge of a scoundrel. If that's the case, I have a message for Osama: I see you.
But our Left does not. And that's all Osama cares about.
