Does This Count as a National Post Apology?
The National Post, having humiliated itself on the weekend with an assault on everything from Mother Teresa to UN peacekeeping has offered a Counterpoint today that reads awfully like a mea culpa.
Entitled Hate Al Gore All You Like, Global Warming is Real, the article by CFRB DJ John Moore rips into the Post's anti-Gore screed and especially business editor Terence Corcoran's desperate effort to suggest that the science behind climate change is still somehow uncertain.
Moore says, "To continue to deny global warming, you have to first believe that the overwhelming majority of the planet’s scientists are stupid, misguided or lying for personal gain." He also says, "If the deniers want to consume themselves with finding holes in Gore’s film like obsessive compulsives looking for the deliberate error in a pattern of Arab floor tiles, they can knock themselves out."
The Post, never long on graciousness, deserves some credit for printing this piece, for offering this tiny gesture to balance and accuracy. But a newspaper with a shred of integrity would have issued a front-page apology, at the very least, to the Canadian soldiers who have risked their lives over the years to keep peace from Korea to Cyprus, from Rwanda to the West Bank. Those, among others insulted in Corcoran's vicious rant, don't deserve to be dismissed as "obscure and absurd," as "fringe" or "futile" players on the world stage - adjectives that, when you think of it, apply much more appropriately to the the current National Post.
And let's not forget
Lester B. Pearson, who won the Peace Prize for his work in establishing the UN peace keeping forces in the first place.
Lester's my hero
I am, in a very personal way, pissed about this. My dad did two tours as a peacekeeper - one in Korea and one on the Gaza Strip. I'll never forget the image of him coming home from Gaza in 1967 in Canadian khakis and a UN blue beret.
I already thought Terry Corcoran was a snivelling and sloppy quibbler, too content to stand at a very far distance from what I consider responsible journalism; but for him to stand up and deride that peacekeeping tradition goes way beyond the pale.
That said, I think he did us a favour. If he had written an even vaguely sensible criticism of the Nobel prize committee's bad calls (Arafat, Kissinger), he might have been able to mount an argument worth reading. If he contained himself to criticism of Al Gore, he might have continued to appeal to the partisan readers of the National Post.
But by his own clumsy hand, he has expanded immeasurably the group of people who believe that he is truly an idiot. And in trying to polarize the issue, he has recalibrated the polarity: now, anyone who thinks that it's a good thing to keep peace, to help children or to fight against the proliferation of land mines and nuclear weapons must also think that Terry Corcoran has either lost his mind or, perhaps, was just never that clever in the first place.
To all those, I say, welcome aboard.
It's a rightwing tendency.
Unfortunately, Richard, he is not the only rightwinger who despises the idea of peacekeeping. I think our current prime minister is another. In September 2006:
...he said it is time for Canada to shoulder its share of the burden of fighting for peace and stability in the world.
"If I can be frank about this, you know, in some ways I think we can complain that only a handful of countries are carrying the bulk of the load and the bulk of the danger there," Harper said.
"But, you know, the shoe was often on the other foot. For a lot of the last 30 or 40 years, we were the ones hanging back."...
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/09/19/harper-afghanistan.html
Men with guns
Yeah, it's great to have the Canadian military back out there killing people again, isn't it?
As I say, I have a perverse view of this. I was born the year that Mike Pearson won the Nobel Prize for establishing UN peacekeeping in the Middle East. I grew up during those four decades when our military was "hanging back" - which is to say, standing between enemy combatants, often unarmed, in every dangerous place on the planet.
It's true that the UN doesn't have much to be proud of when you look to what happened in Rwanda or what's happening now in Darfur, but Corcoran - and Harper - would be well-advised to read a little history (or perhaps just start paying closer attention to the international section of the newspaper) before saying much more about the record of UN peacekeepers
Richard, please read
before you write.
Corcoran mentions the UN peace keeping forces in passing, criticizing them for "obscurity and ineffectiveness" (no doubt hoping that also Gore and IPCC will go the same route).
You are intelligent enough to understand that, in recent history, the track record of UN peace keeping efforts is not exactly stellar (Rwanda, Darfur, Srebrenica) and thus it is perfectly fair to criticize their effectiveness, isn't it?
So what is your real motive to get so upset?
Can't count, Johann? 30 or
Can't count, Johann? 30 or 40 years?