EDITORIAL

Policies of war and peace’

President Reagan has abruptly rejected the latest
Soviet practical step toward stemming nuclear arms
escalation, and toward eliminating that threat to
humanity’s future.

The consistent negative responses by the Reagan
regime and the military-industrial complex to efforts
to reduce and eliminate the nuclear war threat, shoves
some grim realities into the faces of the world’s people.

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev offered on March
29 to meet Reagan in any European capital, without
delay, to reach agreement on termination of nuclear
tests by their two countries. Had Reagan and his
manipulators accepted, it would have marked a 40-
year high-point in defusing nuclear war.

The U.S. refused, as it refused the Soviet proposal
that both countries pull their fleets out of the Meditte-
ranean Sea; as it refused any serious response to the

USSR’s proposal to eliminate all nuclear weapons by ©

the year 2000; as it refused to duplicate the USSR’s
moratorium on nuclear weapons tests; and as it
rejected mutual withdrawal of short and medium-
range missiles in Europe.

Meanwhile, what has the Reagan regime been
doing in the spirit of last year’s Geneva meeting
between the two leaders? Reagan has proposed
another $100-million war gift to the contra gangsters

Pollution is big business

The recent ‘“‘agreement” by Canadian and U.S.
negotiators on the subject of cleaning up the Niagara
River — presently a toxic sewer — represents pro-
gress, the participants say. In the sense that the
Mulroney-Reagan talks on acid rain represent

_ progress — more studies while the perpetrators swell
their profits — the Niagara agreement oozed ahead.

To deal with the extensive and deeply-rooted
danger to human health and life, and to all other life
forms, four governments were represented in the talks
by Environment Canada, the Ontario Ministry of the
Environment, the New York State Department of
Environment Conservation, and the U.S. Environ-
mental Protection Agency.

In the fourth week of March, they concluded that
their findings would be useful for developing further
data and remedial actions. As for real action from
what a U.S. participant called a “dynamic” docu-
ment, the murderous flow of poison is not being

hired to try to overthrow Nicaragua’s elected govern-
ment, and concocted an “invasion” of Honduras to
justify it. The U.S. fleet and its aircraft have provoked
a confrontation with Libya off the Libyan coast,
where three U.S. pilotless reconnaissance planes were
hit by Libyan missiles.

In another provocative act, the Yorktown missile
cruiser and the U.S. destroyer Caron invaded Soviet
territorial waters in the Black Sea, March 13 and, eight
miles from shore, operated spying apparatus in con-
junction with the Ferret spy satellite. To express
further its disdain for the universal peace momentum,
the U.S. cynically exploded another nuclear device in
Nevada. :

Urgently needed is increased people’s action,
Stepped up actions by all concerned organizations,
and the utmost pressure on governments, including
the Mulroney Tory government, to proclaim a policy
of peace, not war.

Up until now the government of Canada has taken ~

every Opportunity to aid and abet the Reaganite war
policy, not least by signing away Canada’s sovereignty
through the NORAD Star Wars pact. It’s time to
compel that government to take a stand for Canada’s
interests, for a nuclear test ban, and a boycott of all
links to Star Wars.

?

stopped or curtailed in any way, and the polluters-are
not facing a timetable for ceasing their criminal activ-
ity.

It’s not as if no dramatic information existed. Back
on Feb. 21, Associated Press reported one U.S. chemi-
cal dump draining into the Niagara with dioxin levels
630 times the “danger level.” Standards at the U.S.
Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta call for a federal
clean-up at a level of one part per billion of dioxin (a
deadly chemical); the dump had 630 parts per billion.

Basic to the whole problem is corporate profit.

It is as if the air, the water, and the total environ-
ment had become the property of the corporations, to
foul as they have so well proven they can do. But on
the contrary, they must be stopped — by mass pres-

Sure on government, and by the election of defenders

of the public’s right to clean air, clean water, unpol-
luted food, and freedom from the chemical sewer
presently flowing through our lives.

International Thomson Organization Ltd., owns nu
newspaper and other publishing firms in the U.K., U.S. and ©
da, plus ventures in travel and resources. Its after-tax pro!l F
1985 was 111 million British pounds (approx.. $228-million ca of
dian) up from £98-million in 1984. Not surprisingly, Thoms
newspapers lack a working-class outlook.

SDB UNE
Editor — SEAN GRIFFIN
Assistant Editor — DAN KEETON

Business & Circulation Manager — MIKE PRONIUK
Graphics — ANGELA KENYON

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a

f anyone needed confirmation of the
suspicion that the Socreds were hoping
to promote: redneck opinions about the
Indian land claims issue and use them ina

provincial election, that confirmation has
come in the form of a questionnaire
issued, along with a self-congratulatory
leaflet, by Consumer and Corporate
Affairs Minister Elwood Veitch and the
Burnaby .Willingdon Social Credit Consti-
tuency Association.

There are 12 questions in the survey,
ranging from general questions on the
economy to a detailed series of questions
as to whether constituents would be wil-
ling to pay increased’ taxes to support
teachers’ salary increases as well as
increases in student aid and_post-
secondary funding, among other things.
All nice neutral questions, of course,
objectively placed in the best Socred tradi-
tion.

Fully one-third of the questions deal
with land claims issues, beginning with:
“Which is generally more important to
you — preserving wilderness areas or pre-
serving logging jobs?” (It does add, on this
one, “this is obviously not an all or
nothing question.’’)

It then asks people to state whether or
not they think Indian land claims are well
justified; what percentage of B.C. is
covered by land claims (with a variety of
choices, ranging from under 10 per cent to
over 90 per cent); and whether people
think land claims settlement is “mainly up
to the provincial government or the fed-
eral government.”

It also asks, again with readily-apparent
Socred objectivity, “how much would you

- People and Issues

A SSS SSL AL

expect settlement of these claims to cost
you in additional taxes? under $100; $100-
500; $500-$1,000; or over $1,000.”

What use will a survey like that have?
This, after all, is the government which
adamantly refuses to consider recognition
of Indian land claims. Premier Bennett
himself declared demogogically during the
Lyell Island crisis that he would “never
turn B.C. over lock, stock and barrel.”

Clearly, the Socreds aren’t out to solicit
informed public opinion They’re simply
hoping to tap whatever ignorance and

prejudice there is out there and to exploit it’

however they can in an election campaign.

It reminds us of a hand-pencilled pla-
card we saw at one of the first Operation
Solidarity demonstrations in Victoria in
July, 1983, which read: “‘Never vote for
vindictive, sleazy scum.” Crude as it is, it
seems entirely appropriate when you’re
talking about this government’s approach
to Native people.

* * *

our months ago, when the privatization-

bent Tories sold off Crown-owned de
Havilland Aircraft to the U.S. multina-
tional Boeing, the federal cabinet congrat-
ulated itself for the good deal it cut. While
the protest mounted all across the country
against the sellout — and even the Finan-
cial Post, a staunch advocate of the sale,
called the $155 million price tag “bargain

basement” — the Tories were saying that
the arrangement was not only the best that
could be obtained in the circumstances but
was a sound business proposition on its
own merits.

Never mind that the federal govern-
ment, which had complained that it had to
unload the company because it required
regular infusions of cash, would now be
giving Boeing some $48 million in federal
money up front to help finance develop-
ment costs. Never mind that many more
millions were promised in the future as
incentives to the U.S.-owned company.

“The sale will bring new investment into
Canada and that means jobs for Canadi-
ans,” Treasury Board minister Robert de
Cotret declared in defence of the de Havil-
land sale.

Investment? Jobs? Not bloody likely if
Boeing’s performance in the U.S. is any
indication.

A report we saw this week, published in
The Newspaper Guild journal, Guild
Reporter, prepared by Citizens for Tax Jus-
tice(CTJ), a coalition of trade union,
church and community groups, tells a dif-
ferent story from that peddled by de
Cotret. :

According to a four-year survey con-
ducted by CTJ betwen 1981 and 1984, the
various corporate tax loopholes, incentive
payments and other grants of federal

money given to corporations to “‘stimulaté
investment and job creation,” far from
accomplishing that end, have actually
resulted in cuts in investment and jobs.

And among the worst cases was Boeillé
which, despite corporate profits of som®
$2 billion over the four year period, got 4
tax refund from the U.S, government of :
$285 million.

But over that same period, the aircraft
giant actually cut investment by 38 pe
cent and cut jobs in its operations by !
per cent. >

The survey covered 259 of the U.S:
biggest and most profitable corporation®
and found that the main beneficiaries of
the federal largesse were the very compa!”
ies which cut both investment and jobs.
Many of them simply took the taxpaye!
cash and used it to pay higher share
holders’ dividends or to finance merge®
and takeovers.

(Conversely, the survey also found that |
some of the companies paying the highest
corporate tax rates — companies such 4§
Whirlpool and VF Corporations, manu”
facturer of Lee Jeans — were the ones t0
increase their investment and jobs —
putting the lie to the claim that increasin£
corporate taxc. curbs business.)

The survey emphasizes not only the sell’
out of the Boeing-de Havilland deal, but
also the folly of the Tories’ policy of cut
ting corporate taxes to stimulate job crea-
tion. It didn’t work in the U.S. and it won't
work here.

That will come as little surprise to ov!
readers, of course — but it’s something
that the Mulroney governments needs t0
be reminded of again and again and agai.

4 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, APRIL 9, 1986. -