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Editorial

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Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday

Amandla! Ngawethu!

July 18, 1988, Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday, is marked in all lands as a
focal point in the final battles against the genocidal apartheid regime he spent

his lifetime fighting.

This is also his 24th year of a life sentence in prison. Paes
When Mandela and his comrades left the Pretoria courtroom to begin their
Sentences in June, 1964, the racist regime hoped they would become forgotten

_ Men. That was not what happened.

_ Onthat day, ANC president, Chief Albert Lutuli described what was unfold-
ing: “Over long years these leaders advocated a policy of racial co-operation, of
£00dwill, of peaceful struggle that made the South African liberation move-
ment one of the most ethical and responsible of our times . .. However, in the
face of uncompromising white refusal to abandon a policy which denies the
African and other oppressed South Africans their rightful heritage — freedom
— No one can blame brave and just men for seeking justice by the use of violent
Methods; nor can they be blamed if they try to create an organized force, in
order ultimately to establish peace and racial harmony.

“For this, they are sentenced to be shut away for long years in the brutal and
degr ading prisons of South Africa... They represent the highest in morality and
ethics in the South African political struggle. When they are locked away, justice
and reason will have departed from the South African political scene ... “

Today, millions everywhere associate Mandela’s name with the world-wide
Struggle for freedom and recognize the organization he leads, the African
National Congress — as the political weapon for South Africa’s liberation.

At his trial Mandela told the court and the world: :

“During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African
People. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black
domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which
all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.

“It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is

an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

Today the struggle to free Mandela and all political prisoners and to smash

apartheid has become unstoppable.

TIRIBONE

EDITOR
Sean Griffin

ASSISTANT EDITOR
Dan Keeton

BUSINESS & CIRCULATION MANAGER
Mike Proniuk

GRAPHICS
Angela Kenyon

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wi all the debate in Canada about
the perestroika and glasnost pro-
cesses, perhaps the subject which stands
Out the most is one with relatively minor
Significance. But considering the unprece-
dented nature of the deal, it’s not surpris-
ing that the recent agreement between
Moscow and McDonald’s Canada should
attract so much attention — and create
such differences of opinion.

The latter is, of course, the Canadian
branch of the hamburger chain whose
fast-food franchises are found throughout
the capitalist world. A recent agreement
between the corporation and Mossoviet,
the city council of Moscow, will see the
first of several Big Mac outlets open in the
USSR’s capital next summer.

A few issues back former Tribune cor-
respondent Jack Phillips wrote in a letter
that while some in the progressive move-
Ment see in the deal a capitalist incursion
into a socialist market, selling “‘Bolshoi
Macs” in Moscow is mutually beneficial to
both the fast-food giant and the socialist
system. And an article in the current issue
of the Globe and Mail’s Report on Business
Magazine comments on the unique arran-
gements McDonald’s has with the socialist
world.

In “Hamburger Diplomacy” reporter
Larry Black observes that the corporation
is not allowed to take hard currency out of
Hungary, Yugoslavia and the Soviet
Union through its franchises. Instead, it
takes value outg in goods produced.
Poland, for example, grows Idaho pota-
toes, the kind used in McDonald’s french
fries, for export. Hungary’s largest state
farm, Babolna, creates the produce for the
outlets and Yugoslavia’s biggest foreign
trade firm benefits from the increased
export trade.

The article quotes a Soviet official as
noting, “‘No one in power in Moscow can
permit the golden arches to become a sort
of drive-through exit for profits.” The only
_exception will be an outlet that will cater to
foreign residents and the tourist trade,

People and Issues

which will permit some hard currency to
flow out of the country. And in signing the
deal, Mussoviet acquired 51 per cent of the
enterprise, with McDonald’s owning the
other 49 per cent.

In the Soviet Union’s case, it stands to
gain expertise in the food distribution and
service sectors — areas the recent 19th
conference of the Communist Party
acknowledged are woefully inadequate.
As for McDonald’s, the benefits are
straightforward. Having saturated the
Western world’s markets, it stands to gain
hundreds of millions of new consumers.

It is in the nature of capitalist enterprise
to expand. And itis the task of socialism to
defend the gains it has made while dealing,
in this new era of improved international
relations, with the capitalist world. _

One thing we’ll say: the Bolshoi Mac »

arrangement sounds a lot better than the
Canada-U.S. free trade pact.

2%... Wateatk

hat do Tories like Robert Coates,

Don Blenkarn and Tom Siddon have
in common with racists and ultra-right
wingers like Paul Fromm? The answer is
their virulent anti-communism.

A revealing article in the current issue of
ThisMagazine throws the spotlight on the
involvement of cabinet ministers past and
present, and other Tory MPs, with several
of the world’s worst dirty tricksters and
their organization, the infamous World
Anti-Communist League.

A reading of the article reveals that Sid-
don, current minister of fisheries and
oceans, attended his first WACL meeting

in Taiwan in 1983, declaring afterwards
that he finally understood the “evils of
communism.” The article, entitled “Right
Winging It,” relates how Blenkarn, chair
of House Finance Committee, once pro-
posed Canada invade Mozambique as a
way to “end apartheid” in South Africa.
And it tells how John Gamble, the ultra
right winger who was the only incumbent
Tory to lose his seat in the 1984 federal
election sweep, resigned as Canadian
branch leader after he was found to be an
official in one of the Canadian companies
cited for involvement in the 1987 Irangate
scandal.

Of more than passing interest is men-
tion of the November meeting of the Can-
adian WACL branch held in Abbotsford
last November. Attending the affair, arti-
cle authors: Howard Goldenthal, Glenda
Hersh and Nick Fillmore write, were “a
powerful politician from South Korea, a
leader of the Afghanistan ‘freedom figh-
ters,’ an organizer for the Ethiopian resist-
ance movement and retired U.S. general
John Singlaub (chairman of the WACL
who was implicated in the arms sales to
Iran caper).”

The organization formed in dictator-
ruled Taiwan in 1967 boasts such
members and associates as Salvadoran
death squad leader Robert d’Aubuisson,
former Ukrainian war criminal and Nazi
Yaroslav Stetsko, the aforementioned
Fromm (former leader of the group of
thugs called the Edmund Burke Society),
and Ron Gostick, who published tracts like-
anti-Semite Ernst Zundel’s Hoax of the
20th-Century.

Details of the WACL in Canada and

associated organizations such as the mis-
named Freedom Council of Canada and
the Canadian League of Rights are outlined
in the lengthy, but eminently readable and
informative article. It’s the June-July issue
of ThisMagazine, available at some news-
stands or by subscription: ThisMagazine,
70 the Esplanade, 3rd Floor, Toronto,
Ont., MSE 1R2.

* * *

anadians have shown in recent polls

their dissatisfaction with the federal
government’s attempts to militarize our
Arctic by purchasing costly British or
French nuclear powered “hunter-killer”
submarines. Their opinion, which bolsters
the active protest, may help “sink the
subs” of Defence Minister Perrin Beatty,
along with Tory plans to draw Canada
into the Pentagon’s maritime war strategy.

Meanwhile, with Parliament itself the
MP for Burnaby is offering an alternative
vision for the far north. A private
members bill from New Democrat Svend
Robinson, called the Canadian Arctic
Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Act, has gone
through first reading and has been ordered
to be printed.

Of course, most private members bills
have slim chances. Bill C-305, as it is num-
bered, still must go through the “draw”
system and be approved for debate by a
parliamentary committee. But the intro-
duction of the bill, which bans the manu-
facture, storage, deployment and testing
of nuclear devices above the 60th parallel,
has helped bring attention to the call for a
nuclear-weapons-free Canada.

As Robinson noted in introducing Bill
C-305: “In the USSR, General Secretary
Mikhail Gorbachev has undertaken revo-
lutionary changes with perestroika and
glasnost during the historic party confer-
ence this week. It is important that the
West respond positively to these changes,
not with the outdated cold war rhetoric set
out in the Conservative government’s
white paper on defence.”

Pacific Tribune, July 20, 1988 « 3