DISARMAMENT
Bzpaan
Films
ERE

Politics of peace

can’t be

Since its founding in 1974, the
National Film Board’s Studio-D
has provided a forum for women

makers to promote the issues
they believe in. Its newest re-
lease, Speaking Our Peace, fol-

lows the Studio’s fine advocacy *

tradition without apology. In a
documentary format, seven
Canadian women peace activists
are interviewed. None are new-

~ Comers to the peace struggle. All

Would have been adults when the
nuclear age was ushered in by the
mushroom clouds over Hiro-
shima and Nagasaki. For them it
Signalled the death of an era when
Major conflicts could be solved
through armed confrontation.

_ Backed by a low-keyed narra-
tion, and supported by film clips,
the women’s arguments come to
an uncompromising conclusion:
World War Three is upon us. Its
Soldier/victims are already outfit-
ted in their suits and blue jeans,
their overalls and disposal diap-
ers; the battlefields are beneath
their feet and the body count is
Coming in.

It isn’t the easiest truth to di-
8est, and is sure to stir up con-
troversy; but directors Bonnie
Sherr Klein and Terri Nash have
worn controvery well since they
Started working with the embat-
tled: NFB: Klein’s exposé of
the pornography industry (Not a
Love Story) came up against the
Ontario Censor Board and can
still only be screened with a spe-
Cial permit. Nash’s If You Love
this Planet, won an Academy
award, but never made it onto the
CBC until it became a ‘‘news
item’? when the U.S. justice
department labelled it a piece of
Propaganda.

WW Ill Is Here

Rather than taking off from If
You Love this Planet’s impas-
Sloned plea for nuclear sanity, the
Message in Speaking Our Peace
@s a quiet urgency not only to
Prevent the unthinkable, but to
Stop the damage nuclear weapons
are now causing.

Bio-statistician Dr. Rosalie
Ttell makes the understate-
ment: ‘‘nuclear bombs don’t just
8et there by miracle.”’ All the pro-
Césses from the mining of the
uranium to the testing of weapons
Produce radioactive waste, a
Y-Product the planet can not ab-
Sorb with immunity.

Stretched across the Canadian
landscape are hundreds of mil-
lions of tons of dangerously
Tadioactive white sands, a waste
uranium mining. They serve as
an eerie warning of what scien-
tists mean when they speak of nu-
Clear winter,

Once the economic base for
Several Native communities; the

Tpent River became the sewer
for the uranium mines at Elliot

ke, Ontario. The river carries
the contamination over the Cana-
dian Shield into the Great Lakes
Water system.
wh © citizens of Port Hope,

Ose livelihood depends on the

anium refining plant owned by

avoided

the federal government, face the
unenviable choice between
unemployment or Eldorado Nu-
clear Limited which has turned
their town into a radioactive
waste site.

Sixty miles away in a Toronto
suburb, Bertell explains the
health effects of contamination to
a tense group of parents and
children. Their subdivision was
built on a forgotten dump. The
government’s response was to
put snow fences around the most
affected spots.

These are random examples
from home of what is occurring
world-wide. The end result is
we each carry a little bit of
cancer-producing toxins. The
next generation is damaged in the
womb and delivered inte an
increasingly polluted environ-
ment where it is less able to cope.
It is a process towards extinction
which is reaching an irreversible
climax.

The East-West Trap

Speaking Our Peace tackles
other issues. In an attempt to
humanize the enemy, it takes its
cameras to the Soviet Union. Any
examination of East-West rela-
tions is fraught with traps; unfor-
tunately the film makers stumble
into. many.of.them.

It is understandable that a
Canadian visitor to the Soviet
Union, schooled in 30-40 years of
anti-Sovietism, looks perhaps un-
consciously for scenes to confirm
the common stereotypes; but
rather than breaking these down,
the film misses its intention and
reinforces them.

Among the 1,500 people who
viewed the film’s Toronto pre-
miere June 2 were five Soviet
journalists. Interviewed after,
their response was guarded. In
the words of Nikolai Borisovich,
foreign editor of Moscow’s Coun-
try Life, the film was a “positive
beginning, despite its contradic-
tions.”

He, however, can’t hide a cer-
tain indignity concerning the
treatment of his government and
society. The film’s first reference
to the socialist world is the “‘Iron
Curtain’. Why a term which was
used as the opening shot to the
cold war — the ideological main-
stay of the arms race — found its
way into the dialogue is question-

ble.
‘ Moving Second World War
footage of besieged Leningrad, its
people dropping from starvation,
figures of war casualties, followed
by contemporary shots of chil-
dren’s playground, back up the
Soviet people’s commitment to
peace — a commitment the film
divorces from their government.

The Soviet visitors easily list at
least ten peace proposals ad-
vanced by Moscow in recent
months, from its pledge never to
be the first to use nuclear weap-
ons to its plea to keep these
weapons out of the heavens. Each
proposal was either met with no
response, Or with a flat refusal by
the Reagan administration. Why
then, they ask, is equal blame re-

SS

peatedly attributed to both sides?

In the main the camera
zooms in on the elderly, the street
cleaners, peasant women ped-
dling their produce in an open
market — then pans to the Krem-
lin wall and the Soviet flag.

Says Borisovich, *‘How would
you feel if I shot pictures of your
skid row and farmers’ market and
then passed them off to a Soviet
audience as typical of Canadian
street scenes and commerce?”’

Once in Moscow the film de-
viates from its main theme. Pro-
ject Ploughshare’s Kathleen Wal-
lace-Dearing questions an official
about events in Czechoslovakia,
Hungary, Afghanistan, Poland. A
legitimate set of questions to ask,
but such questions which take 15
seconds to pose, need more than
15 seconds to answer and that is

Terri Nash and Bonnie Sherr Klein co-directors of Speaking Our Peace.

all the Soviet official is alloted.

Also examined are relation-
ships between rich and poor na-
tions and their link to the arms
race. Montreal economist Sol-
ange Vincent ascribes the same
exploitative policies to the Soviet
Union as she does to the U.S.
Vincent could be queried —
where is the Soviet equivalent to
Bata Shoes or the United Fruit
Company in the Third World?
Does the Soviet Union not sup-
port the same liberation move-
ments she does, does it not con-
demn the same reactionary
regimes?

Beyond Dialogue

The methodology of the Cana-
dian women’s movement is to
search for people-to-people solu-
tions to conflict. But in recent
years it has recognized the limita-

tions of focusing solely on
consciousness-raising, and has
advanced political solutions to-
wards women’s equality. So too,
women in the peace movement
must move beyond coffee
klatches and quilting bees, and
examine the politics of peace.
Wallice-Dearing tells her
Soviet host she doesn’t want to
get into ‘‘who’s got more mis-
siles?’’ But in the real world of
arms negotiations, missiles are
counted; new deployments bring
counter-measures; proposals are
advanced and need to be studied.

Sections of the peace move-
ment continue to brush all this
off as a game the boys play; but
when the dice are so loaded, it
becomes incumbent on each of us
to learn the players and the rules.

— Kerry McCuaig

Acton Soviet peace appeal.

Rush urges Mulroney gov't

“Canada should be a bridge for
peace between the Soviet Union
and the United States and act on
the recent Appeal of the Soviet par-
liament to all peoples and govern-
ments to join together in action to
save world peace,” B.C. Commu-
nist Party leader Maurice Rush
told a public meeting in Kamloops
May 29.

Reporting on his recent visit to
the Soviet Union to participate in
the 40th anniversary celebrations
marking the victory over fascism,
Rush said the Appeal of the Soviet
government has been _ totally
blacked-out by the Canadian and
western media and ignored by the
Mulroney government. “But it is
one of the most significant docu-
ments of our time, outlining as it
does a program for action by all
who want to prevent a nuclear

Sub-launched cruise

The presence of a cruise-missile
equipped U.S. submarine at the
maritime testing range at Nanoose
Bay has given new urgency to the
actions protesting the sea-launched
cruise missile planned for June 15-
16 by the Nanoose Conversion
Campaign and the Greater Victo-
ria Disarmament Group.

Organizers in Victoria plan a
sail-in in Esquimalt harbor Sunday
June 16 while at Nanoose Bay
there will be an all-night bonfire
vigil from dusk June 15, drawing
attention to the danger posed by
the cruise missile.

Both events are part of an inter-

holocaust,” he said. The appeal
was published in the Tribune May
22:

Rush accused the Reagan admin-
istration of sabotaging the Geneva
two-power talks by insisting it will
proceed with Star Wars and reject-
ing all proposals put forward by
the Soviet Union to halt the arms
race on earth and prevent it from
being extended into space.

Pointing out that Star Wars
would represent a “dangerous
escalation of the arms race”, Rush
said the real purpose of Star Wars
is to create a shield while at the
same time building a nuclear
sword to destroy the Soviet Union
without the risk of retaliation. He
said Canada should stay out of
Star Wars and oppose the Reagan
administration’s plan to extend the
arms race into space.

national protest against the sea-
launched cruise missile.

Both groups are protesting the
deployment of cruise missiles and
are giving their support to the
action by the Labor government in
New Zealand in barring entry to
nuclear-equipped or nuclear-pow-
ered ships. They are calling on
Canada to take similar action.

Canadian Forces bases at Esqui-
malt and Nanoose Bay have
recently hosted the nuclear attack
submarine La Jolla, one of the new
U.S. Los Angeles class of subma-
rines which has been fitted to carry

“The industrial, military com-
plex is power-mad and _ thinks
nuclear weapons will give the U.S.
world superiority to crush social-
ism and prevent third world coun-
tries from achieving their inde-
pendence.”

Rush was interviewed on local
radio and T.V. during his two-day
visit to the interior centre.

The meeting was one of several
organized by the Communist Party
following Rush’s return as part of a
Canadian Communist Party dele-
gation to the 40th anniverary cele-
bration.

He will speak in Vancouver on
Thursday, June 13-at the Russian
‘People’s Home, 600 Campbell Av.,
at 7:30 p.m. and in Nanaimo on
Sunday, June 16.

protested

up to 12 Tomahawk missiles, the
sea-launched version of the cruise.

Like the air and ground-
launched cruise missile, the Toma-
hawk is a destabilizing element in
the arms race because of its small
size and range, up to 2,500 kilo-
metres. It carries a 200-kiloton
warhead, 10 times the destructive
power of the bomb which devas-
tated Hiroshima.

The appearance of the La Jolla
is, according to the Nanoose Con-
version Campaign, the first time
that a Los Angeles class submarine
has berthed at Nanoose.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JUNE 12, 1985 e 7

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