"There's no way to argue with that, except with explosives"

March 9, 2012 7:12 PM

END:CIV [full 75 minute movie] "If your homeland was invaded by aliens who cut down the forests, poisoned the water and air, and contaminated the food supply, would you resist?"

Based on the book Endgame by Derrick Jensen.

Movie site (includes MP4 download)

posted by Burhanistan (37 comments total)

The movie starts out with some rather obvious exposition but veers into some interesting scenes, scenarios, interviews, and landscapes. My posting this does not necessarily mean that agree with all of the premises therein.
posted by Burhanistan at 7:13 PM on March 9, 2012

Aliens or Americans?
posted by sammyo at 7:14 PM on March 9, 2012 [5 favorites]

"If your homeland was invaded by aliens who cut down the forests, poisoned the water and air, and contaminated the food supply, would you resist?"

Only if they were obviously less efficient at doing so than we humans are.
posted by some loser at 7:17 PM on March 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

Now hush and go watch the video before coming back to make zingers.
posted by Burhanistan at 7:17 PM on March 9, 2012 [6 favorites]

Spoiler: It's not a Sci-Fi movie.
posted by d1rge at 7:25 PM on March 9, 2012 [3 favorites]

I remember watching a series of pleadings for money for producing this movie via some extremist Miro channel I subscribed to a while back. I've seen that it's aired on either FSTV or LinkTV, but have never bothered to tune in. Mostly because I assumed it was yet another installment of some doomsaying series I saw the first film or two in and found to be tedious and not well sourced or even accurate.

I guess I'll watch it now that it's appeared here. But if it's crap, I'm going to want my money back.
posted by hippybear at 7:25 PM on March 9, 2012

I suspect that Derrick Jensen is the most important writer at work today.
posted by Trurl at 7:27 PM on March 9, 2012

Ah, yes. submedia.tv was the Miro channel I was subscribed to which had the fundraising pleas. I stopped watching that channel when they started posting videos about undertaking quasi-violent and destructive actions in the name of their beliefs. Not that I'm necessarily against such things, but the way they were going about it just left me feeling like I might be on a watch list.
posted by hippybear at 7:29 PM on March 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

10 temperature degree rise, and there may not even be bacteria left???

No need for that kind of hyperbole in the first few minutes. Gigantic problems with a 10 degree rise of course, but I think there will be bacteria.
posted by dibblda at 7:31 PM on March 9, 2012 [5 favorites]

Deranged scum.
posted by codswallop at 7:42 PM on March 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

Tardigrades (water bears) can survive 150oC, which is to say you cannot boil them to death. Other multicellular life forms from the midocean thermal vents can survive at 80oC (176oF). So yep, there'll be bacteria.
posted by jfuller at 7:49 PM on March 9, 2012 [2 favorites]

Adapt quicker!
posted by not_on_display at 7:49 PM on March 9, 2012

Man has been at war against nature since the first cave-dweller figured out how to harness the power of fire. We've just recently reached the point where we can achieve total and unconditional victory in that war.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:55 PM on March 9, 2012 [3 favorites]

IT TURNS OUT IT'S MAN
posted by nanojath at 7:56 PM on March 9, 2012 [6 favorites]

Lierre Keith
Deep Green Resistance
Derrick Jensen
posted by stbalbach at 7:58 PM on March 9, 2012

We've just recently reached the point where we can achieve total and unconditional victory in that war.

No I'm pretty sure nature still has the upper hand.
posted by Hoopo at 8:10 PM on March 9, 2012 [3 favorites]

So I'm fucking confused. Do anyone actually wreck shit to bring down patriarchotechnofascist civilization or do they all just write books about it?
posted by nanojath at 8:13 PM on March 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

That depends, am you just an ordinary citizen and or did you sell out and are now able to move to nice neighborhood.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:16 PM on March 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

Goddamn Pac Man, you are one nature killing bastard.
posted by Brocktoon at 8:27 PM on March 9, 2012

So I'm fucking confused. Do anyone actually wreck shit to bring down patriarchotechnofascist civilization or do they all just write books about it?

HAYDUKE LIVES!!!
posted by alex_skazat at 8:45 PM on March 9, 2012 [2 favorites]

This is the Spring Occupy Revival film, isn't it. It will be interesting to watch it go viral.
posted by Surfurrus at 8:56 PM on March 9, 2012

I took this video out of the library a couple of weeks ago, and, although it did not add much to my knowledge of Jensen's point of view, it was good to see him in person. (Well, mediated.) And visual evidence of clearcutting etc. has more impact than stats.

And, for those of you who like movies more than books or just don't have the hours to put into Jensen's very important message (his books are pretty conversational, though: not wonkish), this is a good start to his EarthFirst kind of message.

He spends many pages in one of his books speculating about what it would take to, say, take down a cell tower. Is this useful? (I'm not quite convinced, myself.) Jensen prefers direct action to writing letters to your congressperson, believing that our culture of depleting all of our supplies of fish, trees, water, land and oil before doing anything radical about changing our lifestyle should not be dismissed out of hand in favor of techno-messiah fantasies.

After centuries of end-of-the-world speculation, it is easy to dismiss this as one more Milllerite Chicken Little prediction. However...
posted by kozad at 9:17 PM on March 9, 2012

James Hansen: Why I must speak out about climate change (TED, Mar 7, 2012)
posted by stbalbach at 9:23 PM on March 9, 2012 [2 favorites]

I don't much care for Jensen but I really like submedia's off the wall production aesthetic. I also think this particular video contains a very valuable message. Thanks for posting.
posted by broadway bill at 9:53 PM on March 9, 2012

This movie came out a long time ago. They Live with Rowdy Roddy Piper and worlds most gratuitous fight scene.
posted by Chekhovian at 11:51 PM on March 9, 2012

Man has been at war against nature since the first cave-dweller figured out how to harness the power of fire.

It started long before that. Prior to that, though, it was mostly man getting spawn killed and nature being all "LOL N3w8".
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 4:35 AM on March 10, 2012 [4 favorites]

Direct download only? No torrent? Mrph.
posted by scalefree at 7:33 AM on March 10, 2012

nanojath: "So I'm fucking confused. Do anyone actually wreck shit to bring down patriarchotechnofascist civilization or do they all just write books about it?"

They do/did at one point:

Vail Co. Ski Resort Arson
SUV Firebombing

Whether you want to count Animal Liberation as "wrecking shit", you can count that in.
I am disappoint when they threaten the lives of researchers and stalk their homes and plant bombs.

I have Endgame Vol I and think it's an important book, even if it does go on and on about the same stuff sometimes. But I don't think anyone should just drop it, even if they disagree with the message (well if you're a Republican, then sure -- but if you have some earth/hippie sympathy, then it's worth a read).

So is this produced BY Jensen or is it made by someone inspired by him.

I know he had a falling out w/Zerzan a few years back, that was around the time I kinda stopped following any Green Anarchist stuff. Curious if they ever patched things up or if they still have disagreements or what.
posted by symbioid at 7:59 AM on March 10, 2012

> 10 temperature degree rise, and there may not even be bacteria left???

Yeah, I stopped watching right there.
posted by languagehat at 8:48 AM on March 10, 2012

Here's Derrick Jensen's Endgame talk. (It's probably not exactly the same one I've heard, but he tends to be pretty consistent in delivering this talk.) Totally worth the time.
posted by kaibutsu at 9:50 AM on March 10, 2012

(Lierre Keith I know a bit less about, except for having run into the Vegetarian Myth, which is frankly full of terrible on exactly the level of the 'ten degree temperature => no bacteria' thing.)
posted by kaibutsu at 9:53 AM on March 10, 2012

So is this produced BY Jensen or is it made by someone inspired by him.

The IMDb cast and crew page for the film suggests it isn't actually BY Jenson.

The director, Franklin Lopez, is the subMedia personality (and founder) known as The Stimulator, whose video podcast I used to watch regularly a few years ago. It was pretty interesting for a while, actually. Some here might find it worth watching.
posted by hippybear at 11:13 AM on March 10, 2012

Well, I thought END:CIV was entertaining. The codgers who wrote the whole thing off because of that silly line about bacteria missed the part where they exposed the original screenplay for Star Wars before it got reworked into the final version.
posted by Burhanistan at 3:03 PM on March 10, 2012 [1 favorite]

I thought the film was terrible insofar as it advocated violence as the solution to the world's problems without distinguishing between violence against property and against people.

That shit is fucked up.
posted by mhjb at 7:56 PM on March 10, 2012

And that's why I stopped watching a lot of subMedia stuff. It was amusing when I started watching and it was all dissection of the dominant paradigm and trying to snap people out of their programming. But then once the Vancouver Olympics started ramping up and Lopez "went underground" and started talking about plans for actual violent action as a barrier to the Games and was making statements about collateral damage (meaning death of people) and such... that's pretty much when I stopped listening to him.

Plus it was kind of a turn-off that he was basically asking for people to send him money to help support him while he was living on the down-low in Canada trying to organize violence. It was like some kind of perverse pledge drive request.
posted by hippybear at 8:13 PM on March 10, 2012

Are you sure about that, hippybear? I was never a close follower of submedia.tv, but I know a bunch of people who were involved in the anti-Olympic movement in Vancouver, attended the rallies, etc., and I never heard anyone advocating violence in that context, not even the hardcore insurrectionary types.

As for "going underground" ... I have no idea what Frank was up to in the lead-up to the Games, but there was some pretty heavy surveillance of activists in Vancouver at that time. I wouldn't blame him for keeping a low profile.
posted by twirlip at 12:05 AM on March 11, 2012

I was watching It's The End Of The World As We Know It (his video podcast), and I only know what I saw... Whether anything was actually done or not, I have no idea. I quit watching.
posted by hippybear at 8:18 AM on March 11, 2012