In hockey parlance, it’s called “turtling.” There are hockey players who never fight and others who always fight, and many in between who drop the gloves only when it really matters. These are all loved or hated depending on whose shirt they have on. But the universally reviled hockey players are those who taunt, hook, spear and trash-talk till their opponent drops their gloves, and then run or curl up and cry foul to the referee. “Turtling” is bad form no matter whose side you play on.

Ian King, columnist at 24 Hours Vancouver, the throw-away free daily rag owned by Jim Pattison, came at me with a late hit long after all the hullullaboo had died down about how I apparently cheered on the 9/11 attacks. King chose to compare me to Doug Collins, the late North Shore News columnist who faced a tribunal for spreading hate literature by repeatedly denying the holocaust in his column. Naturally I requested from Dean Broughton, editor of 24 Hours, an apology and retraction for this over-the-top defamation. His response? “The matter has been referred to Sun Media's lawyer Alan Shanoff in Toronto. Please forward all further correspondence through him.”

They both turtled.

I wrote the lawyer asking if he was briefed on the situation, and he replied that he was, adding “I know who you are and need no briefing. I would be happy to speak with your lawyer tomorrow.” So I told him what I wanted, adding that I wouldn’t be speaking through a lawyer, but rather through my readers, so nothing was off the record. This is what he wrote back: “I refuse to conduct business with you on the basis set forth in your previous email and therefore it doesn't appear that there is any way to effectively discuss matters with you.” That is, he refused to discuss matters out in the open.

He turtled. Happy to represent writers and editors freely engaging in wide publication of defamation, when it comes to seeing their own words in print, they curl up and cry foul.

The Vancouver Sun printed a headline labeling me “Pro-9/11.” I wrote Harold Munroe, deputy managing editor of the Sun, asking for an apology and retraction for the defamation. His reply? “My advice is that you move on with your life. The rest of us have.” He refused my request for contact information with the Sun’s lawyer.

He turtled.

I showed Munroe an email from his staff reporter who wrote the defaming article about me, Peter O’Neil, which said “Because anyone so devoid of a conscience — and someone who cheered on the slaughter of close to 3,000 civilians is certainly without a conscience — is fundamentally a prick,” which seemed to me to demonstrate prior judgment of an interview subject. Munroe challenged me to contact any MPs in Vancouver to learn what they think of O’Neil as a journalist. For his part, O’Neil finished by saying, “Deal with our lawyer. I will erase all future emails from you without reading them. Your 15 minutes is over.”

He turtled.

I wrote Patricia Graham, managing editor of the Sun, asking to be put in touch with the company lawyer, as O’Neil, her own reporter, had asked me to. “We do not have counsel on retainer,” she replied. “If there is something you want, you can send it to deputy managing editor Harold Munro.”

Double and triple turtling!

This all went down on the same day David Suzuki, Mr Green Canada, was working as editor-for-a-day at Sun offices, a cute arrangement set up by Graham. I guess Suzuki wasn’t really the editor-for-that-day. I have to admit that even I don’t know how Mr Green, with his green-painted footprints all over the green-bordered and green-headlined newspaper would handle a request for an apology for defamation from the only Green Party candidate in the country who could potentially win a seat, before being defamed and thrown aside as a “pro-9/11 columnist” by his turtling colleagues-for-a-day, Patricia Graham, Harold Munroe, and Peter O’Neil.

I wonder who next will accept the position of “editor-for-a-day-but-not-really” at the Vancouver Sun? Who says turtles face extinction? Speaking of Suziki’s edition of the Sun, did anyone else notice how there was nothing about the politics necessary to generate a greener economy? Apparently the solution is all to be found in acceptable voluntary actions by happy citizens, and no extra-Parliamentary political actions by angry ones. I couldn’t find one reference to Betty Krawczyk, who tried in vain to stop the blowing up of the Eagleridge Bluffs and who is currently in jail for her troubles, in the whole 200 or so pages.

Reading it through, I was left with the impression that greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting climate change they cause had, happily, nothing at all to do with declining stores of energy resources, capital-necessitated over-consumption, the rise of neo-imperialism, or war in the Middle East and Africa. And none of those, by all means, have nothing, no-how, no-way, not in the slightest, to do with anything remotely connected by the tiniest of threads to that day whose date we must not ever, ever mention in anything other than reverential tones: 9/11.

Combine the two things, the Suzuki-edited Green edition of the Vancouver Sun, completely devoid of any references to 9/11, war, and imperialism, and the candidacy of the only potentially winning Green party candidate in the country, the one who emerged as a credible candidate by publicly connecting up environmentalism with 9/11, war, and imperialism, before being smashed up and destroyed by Sun corporate owner CanWestGlobal, and a picture begins to emerge: The biggest multinational corporations that have been beating the crap out of the planet’s environment for the last half century are now turtling when challenged on their brutal transgressions and whining to the refs about how unfair it all is if they have to pay a cent for their damages.

Anyone who doubts where the power in the country lies, between the elected House of Parliament, or the unelected corporate boardrooms and their media organ, the National Post, need only look at Green Party leader Elizabeth May’s letter to the editor of The National Post on April 19: “Readers will know that within hours of the editorial [Stephane Dion, Meet Kevin Potvin, printed in the National Post five days earlier], I announced that Mr Potvin will not run under the Green party banner.” In that editorial, The National Post editorial asked how it would look to voters if May “decides that Mr Potvin deserves to run as a Green candidate, and that his ‘bold,’ ‘alternative’ ideas, true or not, are exactly what Canada needs to hear?” True or not, National Post corporate parent CanWestGlobal decided Canada would not hear about how climate change and war and imperialism are directly related, and the leader of the Green party, May, dutifully obeyed no less enthusiastically than the leader of the green movement in Canada, Suzuki.

Instead of his pretty green footprints, a Suzuki edition of The Republic might use the prints created from the charcoal off the bottom of the half of the foot remaining of one of the 100,000 or so Iraqi children blown up by US Daisy Cutter bombs. It would have a bit more to do with the real causes and effects of greenhouse gas emissions, but I admit, it wouldn’t be as happy an edition.