EDITORIAL

The case for peace

Nicaraguan vice-president Sergio Ramirez’ visit to Canada is extremely timely. It will
help focus Canadian attention more forcefully on the quest for peace now underway in
Central America, a goal supported by most Canadians and officially by Ottawa.

During his discussions with the Canadian government, he put the case to Canada, urging
our country to take an active role in helping the peace process succeed. Ottawa should
make every effort to “give peace a chance,” as Costa Rica’s President Oscar Arias put it to
Ronald Reragan some days ago.

The Sandinista government, one of the five signatories to the peace plan signed in
Guatemala City on Aug. 7 and due to take effect on Nov. 5, views the chances for peace
from a very real perspective.

Reagan’s contra war against Nicaragua has cost that country some 30,000 killed and
countless wounded. It’s economy, on a war footing since 1981 when the illegal war began,
has suffered over $1 billion in direct damage — a calamity for an impoverished people
struggling to overcome a colonial past. 3

In the weeks following the signing Reagan has repeated his condemnation of. the
Sandinista government and, ominously, has publicly requested Congress pass $270 million
in contra funding to press the war.

The next weeks, therefore, are critical to Central America’s chances for peace.

Vice-President Ramirez has put the case for peace. He has urged Canadian participation
to assist both in the implementation and monitoring of the Arias plan. He has reported his
government’s steps to date to fulfill the plan’s conditions.

President Reagan has put the case for war. He has asked for millions more to fund his
contras. He would condemn Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras to continued
armed conflict.

The choice for Canada should be clear.

_ Message from Britain

With this issue, the Tribune concludes its three-part series on privatization in Britain.
Coincidentally, the final article is appearing just as Premier Vander Zalm has announced
his government’s sweeping privatization plans.

Like Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Vander Zalm has trumpeted privatization as a
policy to “create economic development and opportunities for all British Columbians.”

But as the experience after eight years in Britain demonstrates, privatization has created
no economic development — except in the financial services sector. On the contrary, it has
brought about the loss of thousands of jobs throughout the economy, particularly in public
services. And those services have declined markedly — in health care, in public transport,
n local government services where private contractors have been brought in.

The only benefits have gone to the investment houses who have handled the share sales
and the corporate shareholders who have gathered up the shares in Britain’s public assets at
bargain-basement prices.

Britain also has some other lessons, as the last article this week shows. Mounting an
effective opposition to privatization requires the mobilization of the broadest possible
alliance of trade unionists, community groups, political parties, consumer organizations
and others who don’t want to see public assets and services handed over to the private
sector for profit.

It requires initiative from the labour movement and strategies that include a wide range
of economic and political actions. But the labour movement in this province has done that
before and can do it again.

We intend to do everything we can to assist in that process.

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n the United States, consumers won’t
find the latest in Toshiba stereos on the
shelves of the local electronics store.
Industrialists will not be purchasing the
Japanese multinational’s machinery and

machine tools for a few years. Toshiba, governments of Norway and Japan pub-

along with the Kongsberg Vapenfabrikk
corporation of Norway, is being “pun-
ished” by the Reagan administration for
three to five years.

Why? Well, according to Washington,
the corporations are responsible for the
fact that Soviet submarines don’t make as
much noise as they used to.

The U.S. government claims that the
sale to the USSR of four numerical control
milling machines, with parts from both
Japan and Norway, contravened rules
governing the sale of technology to social-
ist countries and allowed Soviet scientists
to design a quieter propeller for sub-
marines — making the vessels’ move-
ments more difficult to trace.

Although the sale of the technology
took place several years ago, it was only a
few months back that the Pentagon linked
the two developments and “charged”
Toshiba and Kongsberg with violating the
regulations of COCOM — the Consulta-
tive Group Co-operation (of NATO and
Japan) for Multilateral Control of
exported goods. As a result the U.S.
Senate banned imports of the companies’
products for from three to five years.

Perhaps fearing this type of action, the

licly regretted the sale. But, as an article in
the Soviet newsweekly New Times ob-
served, all available evidence belies the
Pentagon claim. That includes the revela-
tion that Pentagon surveillance crews had
discovered the quieter propeller on Soviet
submarines back in 1979 — at least three

_ years before Toshiba signed the contract

for the sale with the USSR.

Despite the truth of the matter, Tokyo
panicked and at one point accused France
of selling machine tools to the USSR. Ina
stunning declaration of capitalist princi-
pals, Toshiba claimed it made the sale only
after it discovered the now-defunct French
corporation, Ratier-Forest, struck its deal
with the Soviet Union.

But if either sale has nothing to do with
gains in Soviet military expertise, the ques-
tion is begged: why all the fuss?

New Times writer Yuri Bandura pro-
vides a plausible explanation when he
notes that the United States trade deficit
with Japan reached $59 billion last year,
and that Toshiba builds that deficit by
exporting $4 billion in goods to the U.S.
annually. Further, Bandura writes,
COCOM nations balked last November
when asked by the U.S. to broaden the list

People and Issues

of goods banned for export to socialist
countries. :

But the Reagan administration is per-
sisting, using the Toshiba-Kongsberg
affair as fodder in its war to isolate the
socialist world industrially. Among its
plans are making COCOM, so far a kind
of international “gentlemen’s agreement,”
into a full-fledged organization with stiff
economic punishment for those countries
which violate its regulations.

The latter move is designed to try and
hamper the Soviet Union’s industrial
revamping process known as “peres-
troika.”” Whether it succeeds depends on
the backbone of Washington’s allies,
including Japan which, smarting under
the Senate’s embargo, has begun to pub-

licly refute Pentagon claims about the »

alleged “danger to security” posed by the
Toshiba deal.

* * *

ince it was started in California in

1983, the Children’s Peace Prize Com-
petition has grown to international stature.
So for the parents of artistically inclined
budding peace activists, the chance has
come around again to enter your child’s
submission.

This year the contest has received a
boost with the endorsement of the Van-
couver school board, which has agreed to
inform the city’s elementary school child-
ren of the contest.

In recent years some 150,000 children
from 50 countries have contributed their
stories, poetry, essays, music, paintings
and drawings in the cause of world disar-
mament. Collecting all British Columbia
offerings will be the provincial sponsors,
the Congress of Canadian Women (B.C.).
The international competition is spon-
sored by the Children as the Peacemakers
Foundation based in San Francisco

A panel of judges that includes children
will select the B.C. winner, which could be

_ any child between the ages of six to [1 on

May 20 next year whose contribution
responds to the question, “What to you
are the principles of peace?” The winner,
announced Feb. 22, 1988, will travel to
Anaheim, Calif., May 15-20 to attend
special ceremonies at Disneyland and to
receive a commemorative sculpture.

Renown for the contributors may
extend beyond the contest as well, since all
works submitted — which become the
property of the organizers — may be dis-
played at a local gallery.

Deadline for the entries is Dec. 15.

These should be sent, along with an appli-
cation form, to the CCW, Box 65703, Sta-

_ tion F, Vancouver, B.C. V5N 1K7.

4 PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 28, 1987