social movements

Counterpunch has good pieces about similar dynamics in two different US political movements, environmentalism and anti-war.

Jeffrey St. Clair on the green movement's disconnection from the grassroots, and the unfortunate accuracy of right wing claims that environmentalists are Washington elitists:

To quote Jospeh Heller: Something happened. Somewhere along the line, the environmental movement disconnected with the people, rejected its political roots, pulled the plug on its vibrant and militant tradition. It packed its bags, starched its shirts and jetted to DC, where it became what it once despised: a risk-aversive, depersonalized, hyper-analytical, humorless, access-driven, intolerant, centralized, technocratic, dealmaking, passionless, direct-mailing, lawyer-laden monolith to mediocrity. A monolith with feet of clay.

Legendary Haitian organizer, grandmother, folksinger and former political prisoner Annette "So Ann" Auguste was in Montreal this week. Cafe Toc Toc was packed last night for her appearance there, where Dominion contributor Isabel Macdonald's short documentary film, "Our Arms do Not Kill," an investigation into the role of the UN military occupation of Haiti, was also shown, and members of Kalmunity performed.

The Montreal Mirror covered So Ann's visit in their last issue. In a press conference on Monday, So Ann said that Canada was to blame for her imprisonment without trial. During her 800+ days in jail, Paul Martin visited Haiti and claimed that "there are no political prisoners in Haiti", and CIDA provided funding for NCHR and other organizations that took the lead in building bogus cases against So Ann and hundreds of other political prisoners. Many remain imprisoned.

The überculture kids are videoblogging from their tour with the Waltown film, which is taking them from Victoria to Whitehorse to Saint John's.

Yesterday, the Globe and Mail published a half-decent piece about the sit ins in Beirut. I can't help but wonder if the sudden improvement in coverage (which is to say, conformity with well-established facts) had something to do with this analysis that the Dominion published two weeks ago of Mark Mackinnon's wildly misleading coverage of the same protests.

The crux of that analysis was that Mark Mackinnon probably wouldn't mind telling the truth, but likes having his job and pleasing his editors better than he likes telling the truth. (Not unlike a lot of people, probably...) And that, given the opportunity, Mackinnon probably wouldn't have a personal problem with reporting accurately. It's just that when his editors want something different, his career takes precedence.