Gordon

So many questions and so little time! :-( I'' lattempt to interpolate 
the answers below.

Davy, Gordon wrote:
> Brian,
> 
> Thanks for your comments. I like your term "ecopoliticians." Did you
> coin that?

It's possible. I've used it for many years. I think I may have done but 
cannot be sure.

  I wouldn't use the term "environmentalists" - it's so broad
> that I don't know what it means. 

I think I tend to use the term for professional scientists and I don't 
consider it pejorative, but I do equate 'ecologist' with a pejoration. I 
think everyone has his own interpretation of the terminology.

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.

I go farther and call the worst ones ecoterrorists. They can generate 
either physical terror by the destruction of or attempt thereof e.g., 
research facilities, blocking transport of hazardous materials etc. or 
psychic terror by describing extreme but very unlikely scenarios as 
probable.
> 
> 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? 

Most certainly not! The media are just as bad as politicians at pushing 
a point of view as fact.

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? 

Never

Who gets to decide if a treatment of a politically sensitive issue
> is a documentary or propaganda? 

In an ideal world (Utopia), the public should be presented with 
impartial facts and let them decide for themselves. Unfortunately, on 
complex scientific issues, Joe Public, politicians and the media have 
not got the intellectual background to interpret data, so everything 
becomes distorted beyond recognition simply because the people 
(including the above) deliberately or through ignorance misinterpret the 
facts and thus contradictory agenda are born.

I hope that it is obvious to you that
> the source of the funds and the validity of the message are separable
> issues.

They MAY be separable, but rarely are separated.

> 
> 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. 

Good point, except that who decides what is orthodoxy? A recent survey 
in the UK showed that 52% of the sample were still against nuclear 
power, even if it meant that there would have to be power cuts. Is the 
orthodox view pro or anti-nuke? And, in the same survey, I think it was 
75% who said the global warming was nothing to do with human activities. 
Is the orthodox view what Joe Public thinks or what the IPCC thinks?

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? 

In this case, where a point of view is harshly promoted in favour of one 
group and equally harshly puts down another group (obvious from just the 
trailer) it is too black and white. "There's sae much guid in the worst 
o' us and sae much bad in the best o' us, it behoves none o' us to say 
ill o' the rest o' us" (hope I got the quotation right!) I think what I 
found bad was that the film seemed more intent on blackening Greenpeace 
(whether they deserve it or not) than on promoting the benefits that 
could accrue from allowing the mining. I'm sure that there are positive 
motives on both sides, but I did not obtain the feeling of a balanced 
argument (any more than in either Gore's or the "Swindle" films). I'm 
developing the expression of this thought as I write it, so it may seem 
disconnected, in which case my apologies.
> 
> 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.)

Hmmmmm! Have you not noticed that the extreme left and right often have 
the same agenda? The Nazi party in the 1930s Germany were actually 
socialists, berating the sort of the ordinary man in the street. In US 
terminology, "liberal" is only half a step from "commie", yet in the UK, 
the liberals are centrist and in Switzerland, the liberals promote a 
"right-wing" programme. I have often been accused by Americans of being 
"liberal", as a pejorative term stronger than "left-wing". But for me, 
the term means "free-thinking". In fact, I'm neither left- nor 
right-wing, but a mixture of both. I sometimes say that I can never make 
up my mind between being an extreme right-wing communist or an extreme 
left-wing ultra-conservative! :-) IOW, these are labels used, for 
simplicity, to cover a wide range of thinking. I think that the 
important point is that such labels are usually used pejoratively as a 
simplistic argument-form (mea culpa!).
  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."

Because I don't believe "left wing" applies to them, at all times. In 
some ways they are more conservative than even Donald Rumsfeld. It is 
very misleading likening them to a water melon, green on the outside but 
pink in the centre. The popular image of them being socialist is 
possibly because they sometimes coalesce with true socialists for 
political reasons. One of the most well known radical Greens is Joschka 
Fischer. Fischer was Germany's foreign minister during the 
administration of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, and earned international 
attention in 1998 when he urged that Germany should send troops to 
Kosovo during the NATO-led intervention there, a controversial decision 
domestically. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Fischer 
advised Chancellor Schröder to send German troops to Afghanistan. Are 
these the actions of a "leftie"?

Tony Blair is a socialist, leader of the Labour Party. Yet his reign has 
been the most conservative or right-wing since Maggie (God rot her!) was 
PM. I'm sure that the traditional Labour pundits, such as Keir-Hardy, 
Attlee, Bevan and Cripps must be turning over in their graves at Blair's 
policies (or - often - lack thereof). Until recently, he has blithely 
ignored all things environmental, but has, of late, turned his coat in a 
magnificent volte face.

I believe the environment already very partially transcends party 
politics but should transcend it altogether. It is neither left nor 
right, it is something for the commonwealth of mankind.

> 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? 

Dismiss it as a convenient label!

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.

I admit that I tend to think of Fox News as often right-biased, just as 
the BBC is sometimes left-biased. But aren't they?

Hope this helps you understand my viewpoint.

Brian