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Page 4, News, Tuesday, October 29 1991 'Editorial The Terrace Bay - Schreiber News is published every Tuesday by Laurentian Publishing Limited, Box 579, 13 Simcoe Plaza, Terrace Bay, Ont., POT-2W0O Tel.: 807- 825-3747. Second class mailing permit 2264. Member of the Ontario Community Newspaper Association and the Canadian Community Newspaper Association. Seniors $12 (local); $29 per year (out of 40 mile radius); $38 in U.S. Add GST to yearly subs. Single copies 50 cents. -- Publisher Se Subs. rates: $18 per year. Advertising Mgr Ss paiee Ree ae ....A. Sandy Harbinson esi Linda R Harbinson es Darren MacDonald Sales Representative......Lisa LeClair (] Secctiuele Gayle Fournier satieasd Cheryl Kostecki Admin. Asst...... Production Asst Mulroney off to top UN position? Who would feel more betrayed than the Canadian electorate if our Prime Minister was appointed UN secretary general? His supporters (both of them) would never forgive him for abandoning them after they stuck with him through the many dis- asters his government has endured. His own MPs, and especially his Quebec caucus, would proba- bly fall apart, and give in to the desire to join the Reform Party and the Bloc Quebecois respectively. But it wouldn't just be his supporters who would be upset. After more than six years of Tory rule, Mulroney's voluminous detractors are dreaming about the certain punishment he will ' receive in the next general election. If he gets the top UN job, not only do they have to suffer the humiliation of watching their great enemy take a step up in global profile, but they would also have to face a much less hated Tory leader in the next general election. But the chances of Mulroney getting the job are nil. Not only are the African delegates demanding an African, but Mulroney himself seems absolutely resigned to seeing the country, and his party, through the next round of constitutional bargaining. What is curious about the whole affair is just how his name got on the ballot in the first place? It's hard to imagine that he would be nominated without some form of his consent, however subtle. If I was cynical, which I'm not, but if I was, I would guess that our prime minister somehow convinced someone to nominate him, perhaps in a ploy to increase his stature at home. Coming as it does on the heels of his uncharacteristically hard- line stand on human rights at the Commonwealth Conference in Zimbabwe, it's easy to see a cynical plan to boost domestic popu- larity. Remember how much more Mikail Gorbachev started travel- ling when his popularity began to sag at home? It seéms every week he was either in the US, making a speech at the UN, in Ger- many to cheering crowds, being received by the Pope. Of course, we all know what happened to him. While the same is not likely to happen to Mulroney, it's also very likely that, no matter what amount of travelling he does, and no matter what any other world leader may say about him, it's not going to do him much good at home. While it may be easier to fly to Harare than reduce unemploy- ment, or be nominated for secretary general of the UN than reduce taxes, it's these kinds of things that will impress Canadi- ans, But it's hard to imagine, no matter what happens, a situation in which Canadians will re-elect his government. Well, the end of the century is less than a decade off, and you can bet your Bartlett's Quotations that the editors of Maclean's, Time and Newsweek will,soon start pumping out special "commemorative" issues, summing up the highs and lows of the past hundred years of human achievement. They'll talk of Bell's telephone and Edison's lightbulb. They will remind us of Gandhi's grace and Hitler's infamy. The editors will quibble over the most famous phrase of the twentieth century. Some will say it was Churchill's "blood, sweat and tears" Others will vote for Neil Armstrong's "one small step for man..." One or two might give the nod to McLuhan's "the media is the message." Not me. My vote for the most significant phrase of the twentieth century goes to a children's poster that appeared back in the 1960's. It was a simple question scrawled naively in black poster paint on a & piece of green construction paper. It # asked: WHAT IF WE GAVE A WAR AND NOBODY CAME? The Poster didn't get a lot of national attention in the sixties. I saw it reproduced on T shirts at folk festivals once in a while, but that was about it. The slogan disappeared, but not the sensibility. The notion that wars are something that each of us can choose not to fight, sank beneath the human consciousness like one of those delayed reaction depth charges destroyers drop on submarines. : If you've been listening closely over the past few years you might have heard the detonations. There was a loud one in the courtyard of Malacanang Palace in The Philippines a few years back when Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos tricd to crush the popular movement that eventually drove them from the country. It all came down to one moment when the Philippine army, it's tanks and soldicrs massed and "menacing, was ordered to fire on the." Phrase of the centur demonstrators in front of the palace. The troops refused, and the Marcos dynasty shuddered and died in that instant. | Who can forget the Chinese student, white: shirted, standing calmly. in front of -- and' stopping -- a line of government tanks in Tienanmen Square? It happened in Romania when the disgustingly corrupt Ceausescu regime ordered the troops to massacre protestors. Once more, the troops : refused. And it's just been evealed that, but for a handful of soldiers, the : recent attempted Soviet = coup d'etat would have been = a-bloodbath. One of the coup leaders, chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, = ordered a KGB anti-terrorist unit to storm the Russian parliament building and capture President Boris * Yeltsin. The troops refused. "We couldn't fighf against our own people" said a KGB officer, "and this our former chairman didn't take into consideration." All these moments show great bravery on the part of unarmed protestors, but that's not the point. We've always had handfuls of brave people ready to die for the beliefs. What's revolutionary is that each incident features soldiers thinking for themselves. What a frightening prospect for the military mind. If I had my way, I'd flood the world with T- shirts with the slogan WHAT IF WE GAVE A WAR AND NOBODY CAME? emblazoned on the front. And on the back of the shirt I'd print a photo from one of the Gulf War videos that U.S. military censors refuse to release. It shows Iraqi soldiers being sliced in half by helicopter cannon fire. A senior Pentagon official explained the censorship, saying "If we Ict people see that kind of thing, there would never Arthur Black _again be any war." | ~~" Gosh, we couldn't have that, could we? "' |