Brian,

Thanks for your comments. I like your term "ecopoliticians." Did you
coin that? I wouldn't use the term "environmentalists" - it's so broad
that I don't know what it means. The term that I have used consistently
in my complaint against them is "environmental activists" - those who
behave in very irresponsible ways, presumably because they believe that
the rightness of their end justifies the wrongness of the means they are
willing to use to accomplish it (demagoguery). Zealots. I have also
called them elitists, because they believe that they know what is best
for the rest of us, whether we agree with them or not, and they are busy
trying to shove their beliefs down our throats with whatever political
force they can muster.

As for the film being financed by mining companies, who did you think
was going to finance it? Funding for such a topic from some neutral
party would be even harder to find than the neutral party itself. Would
you have trusted the film more if it had been produced by British
Broadcasting Corporation or Public Broadcasting Service? Would you
regard these organizations as objective in reporting on politically
sensitive issues so that you can trust whatever you see and hear from
them? Who gets to decide if a treatment of a politically sensitive issue
is a documentary or propaganda? I hope that it is obvious to you that
the source of the funds and the validity of the message are separable
issues. 

One doesn't reject the message because he doesn't like the messenger. I
for one am more willing to believe a minority report than an orthodox
one, simply because the reporter knows that in challenging orthodoxy he
is going to be challenged by the defenders of orthodoxy. Hence he has to
have his facts accurately stated. What difference does it make who paid
for the film? Why even mention it? Whether you regard it as propaganda
or not, if you found inaccuracies or misleading comments, whether
inadvertent or deliberate, why not share them with us? Are you going to
reject the film because the promotion says that it's the first
documentary to ask hard questions of the environmental movement when you
can recall earlier such films? Would you have been satisfied if instead
it said it was a documentary that asks hard questions of the
environmental movement, or do you think that the film should have been
described as something else, e.g., a polemic? 

And since we're discussing terms, have you noticed that "right-wing"
appears in the public forum about a hundred times as often as
"left-wing"? (At least in English - I don't  know about other
languages.) How balanced are you in your usage of those two terms? I
noticed that you referred to "ecopolitical NGOs" as engaging in
"extremist activities," but you didn't refer to them as "left-wing."
Also, when you use "right-wing" to refer to a position, do you mean, as
most users seem to, to dismiss it with no further evaluation? Rather
than just implying your criticism, for example in referring to the Fox
News appraisal of the film, why not state it? Labels and slurs are no
substitute for critical thought. I know you can do better.

Gordon Davy