Jesse Hirsh wrote:
>
> >as for maude barlow or mcquaig, what do they do besides get a lot of media
> >attention? have they been building grassroots radical organizations? i
> >don't think so. i mean you might make the argument that the council of
> >canadians is grassroots or radical (it is neither) but maude barlow
> >herself was and may still be a member of the Liberal (governing) party,
> >and did once serve in the Prime Ministers' Office...
Big deal. Ramsey Clark was the attorney general under Johnson I think and he has done some good work around anti-imperialist issues e.g. exposing war crimes against the Iraqi people. It is possible to have a change of heart. Barlow's Council of Canadians is much closer to being a grassroots org than any other comparably sized party or movement in this country. It has grown to something like 150,000 members now. Both Barlow and Mcquaig give speaking tours whenever they can and charge nothing if you can't pay. They're politics certainly aren't mine --the nationalism drives me up the wall-- but they deserve credit for putting out some kind of alternative to neo-liberal capitalism. Even if Barlow just wants to restore the Canada of 1975, that's better than what we have now.
Big media attention is exactly what the left needs now. There's a potentially large constituency for left ideas, the message just needs to get out there and that means using any means possible. If Black thinks Maude Barlow should be shot that is a pretty good endorsement of her.
I've heard Mcquaig speak a few times and she is sympathetic to marxism and socialism. Her books are ok. though they are filled with errors. If she can get her ideas out through the Post or the Glib and Stale that's great. Remember when A Cockburn used to write a column in the WSJ? Barlow and Campbell's book on the metamorphesis of the Liberal Party from a nationalist soc-dem outfit to a neo-liberal party and what that has ment for the majority of the people in this country is informative. I don't know much about Klein but if the NYT is writing her up for activism and work against sweatshops and the like, I say good for her and good for the people killing themselves in those sweatshops.
Sam Pawlett