CBC effort
wins praise

Karl Marx once quoted the
British journal, Quarterly Review
which noted in its day that, for 100
per cent profit, the capitalist would
take any risk, even that of the
gallows for the crime of murder.

But, as was vividly demon-
strated on CBC TV’s Fifth Estate
program Nov. 5, which traced the
S.S. Tugelaland’s sailings from a
Canadian port to its final
destination of Durban, South
Africa, where it unloaded'a cargo
of the most sophisticated weapons,
the insatiable quest for maximum
profits remains precisely as it did
in Marx’s day.

Low-keyed in its presentation,

the penetrating questions ac-
companied by a mountain of
evidence, the documentary left no
room for those engaged in the
illegal arms traffic to make a
single believable denial as to their
occupation. Well researched and
documented, the program was
devastating in its exposure of the
modern merchants of death, and
the impunity and arrogance with
which they continue to operate.

For a country whose government
has — in words at least — long pro-
ressed its abhorrence to the racist
governments of Rhodesia and
South Africa, Ottawa now finds
itself in a rather awkward and em-

' barrassing position, particularly i in
that Canadian companies are
involved in the deal. This is not to
say that government or authorities
were or are party to such deals,
either covertly or overtly, but it
necessitates their immediately
taking a more determined stand on
the matter, following up the
disclosures made and doing
everything in their power to close
the loopholes that permit con-
tinuation of this most nefarious
trade.

The alternative can only be
continued violation of the sanctions
imposed on the apartheid coun-
tries, who are now stepping-up and
escalating aggression against their
neighbor states, a situation that
can only aggravate the extremely
flammable condition that exists on
the continent.

The Fifth Estate’s film crew and
reporters, headed by Eric Malling,
have done an excellent and timely
job and the ‘CBC is to, be con-
gratulated in making the film
available to U.S. viewers, where it
was also shown on the PBS net-
work.

All International Brigade vet-
erans remember too well how
illegal shipments of unlimited
quantities of arms to the fascist
armies of Italy and Germany
enabled those countries to crush
the Spanish Republic over 40 years
ago. And all in the name of non-
intervention.

— Len Norris,
Mac-Pap veteran

Costa Gavras’
‘ZL’ back at Ridge

Two of the finest political films
will be returning to Vancouver
audiences in December at the
Ridge Theatre’s presentation of
Costa Gavras’ “Z’’ and “State of
Siege.”

Both “‘Z,”’ depicting the prelude
to fascist takeover in Greece, and

“State of Siege,” about terrorism -

and the CIA in Latin America, are
on a double bill Dec. 5-7 at the low
price of $2.75, or $1.00 for children
under 10, pensioners or han-
dicapped.

Following Costa-Gavras, the
Ridge will be returning the Soviet-
Japanese production of ‘Dersu
Uzala”’ which has won wide ac-
claim for three days Dec. 8-10.

The Ridge is at 16th Ave. and
Arbutus, Vancouver, 738-6311.

E

ELsp
ate genre ran ,

wire

SFU peofesenr Tabi McCallum was among the about twenty-five
practicing economists and members of SAAC that protested the
lunch speech of the South African ambassador, at Vancouver's

Bayshore Inn.

—Fred Wilson photo

Apartheid lunch
met with pickets

Practising economists from
Vancouver firms and educational
institutes formed an information
picket line around the luncheon
meeting of the Association of Pro-
fessional Economists Tuesday to
protest the appearance of John
Becker, the South African am-
bassador to Canada.

Becker was the luncheon
speaker -at the professional
economists ‘‘economic outlook
conference’”’ but his appearance
rocked the usually staid pro-
ceedings with pickets outside and
protests from the floor of the
meeting.

UBC economist Ernst Berndt,
himself a feature speaker at the
conference, protested Becker’s
speech with a short statement dis-
associating himself with the
ambassador’s participation in the
conference. Although Berndt was
booed by some of the conservative
economists, he insisted on stating
that he “‘in no way approved of the
apartheid policies of the South
African government.”

Outside the conference, some
members of APE and a number of
economists from University of
British Columbia, Simon Fraser
University and B.C. Institute of
Technology, together with
members of the Southern Africa
Action Coalition, passed out
leaflets urging economists to
boycott the luncheon. °

“The South African ambassa-

dor’s luncheon speech at this
conference is an attempt to win
business and public support for
trade with and investment in South
Africa,” a leaflet produced by
“B.C. Economists against Apart-
heid’” appealed, ‘“‘We feel that
investment in South Africa can
only prolong the struggle for racial
equality and will not make the
black majority any better off.
Show your feelings on this issue by
refusing to attend the luncheon at
which this speech is to be made.
Appearances at conferences. like
this only encourage the South
African government in believing
that it has sufficient respectability,
in the eyes of the rest of the world
to be able to continue its present
policies.”

BCIT economist Jane Dean, an
organizer of the protest, said the
demonstration was organized by

‘faculty members when they

received .advance notice of
Becker’s speech. There was a
spontaneous reaction, she said,
which has resulted in letters of pro-
test to APE from faculty members
at UBC, SFU, BCIT, Vancouver
City College, Capilano College,
Okanagan College and University
of Victoria.

Bruce Yorke, a member of APE
who demonstrated with the
economists, said _ that
president Rosalyn Kunin agreed to
allow the protesting economists to

present counter arguments to.

those of Becker.

Help celebrate

b>

JACK PHILLIPS
65th Birthday

Ukrainian Hall
805 E. Pender

$5 — $4 Pens., unemployed.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—NOVEMBER 24, 1978—Page 10

APE.

Acting can

f,

T save

anti-human film

It’s hard to believe that director
Robert Mulligan,. whose _un-
forgettably tender and meaningful
film of more than a decade ago,
could be responsible for this crude,
violent, sadistic semi-porno
horror, with almost every word out
of the mouths of the characters
“f—k,” in past, present and as
verb, noun and adjective. Worse,
this is a totally biased, one-sided
view of the union working man
which can only bring delight to J.
P. Stevens Co. and the big anti-
union corporations.

While the principal characters
are hard-hat construction workers,
the types who cheered Nixon and
vice-versa, it is in the portrayal of
them only in their cruel regard for
anything decent that they are
made to symbolize all laboring
men and women, since we see no
others either in contrast or conflict
with them.

The story centres around an
Italian, family and their co-
workers. The men rough, obscene,
vulgar; the women abused,
cheated on, figuratively stepped
upon.

In this particular family the
husband is a, braggart, cheat, ar-

. rogant lout with two sons, one 19

the other eight. When his wife
discovers he is cheating, she seeks
revenge by attempting to sleep
with a man in the tenement house
where they live. He is as neurotic
as she, however, and cannot, but
his mother finds out, phones the
husband, who proceeds to beat his
wife in one of. the most violent
scenes yet to appear in films.

For this display of ‘‘manliness’’
he is praised by his fellow workers
in the saloon they frequent, and he
returns home even = more
arrogantly to lay down the law (she
is in the hospital, a bruised and
bleeding wreck). ;

The one person who tries to stand
up to him is his sensitive older son
who would prefer teaching
children to becoming a hard-hat,
but has struck a deal with his
father to try it for two weeks. He
proves his ‘‘manhood”’ on the con-
struction job by beating hell out of
a stronger, older man who has
been tormenting him. .

With the beating of the mother,
and the near death of his beloved
younger brother, who has suffered

the cruelty laid on him by the wife

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* going to depend upon the rare

BLOOD BROTHERS. With Paul So
vino, Tony Lo Bianco, Richard Gere,
Leila Goldoni. Directed by Robert —
Mulligan, Screenplay by Walter
Newman from the novel by Richa
Price. At local theatres.

who is passing it along from her
husband, the young man has
enough. He at last defies his father,
takes the eight year old, and they
start off for a Greyhound bus. For —
somewhere. They don’t know.

This ‘tender touch,” human
indeed, does exactly the opposite:
what writers and director in
tended. For the son to be co’
passionate, tender and loving in
that atmosphere, that environ-
ment, is a freak of nature — tit,
natural, abnormal.

Why isn’t he like all the others,
products of their environment?
What rule does this exception
prove? Is the hope of mankind —

exception, the freak, the one who
escapes “‘real life?”’

No amount of intense acting, life
like characterizations can com-
pensate for the anti-human concept —
that is endemic to this film. :

—Lester Cole —

Reon,

\; P
Vs Wg

DEC. 1st.
8 p.m.
UKRAINIAN
HALL
$1:00 admission

ee oe

“Keeton, Dean &
Lane”

“Joyce Turpie”’

ee. ee

food, refreshments.

ALL2L £24 A

*
*
*

fel i i Sates