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500,000 march for survival

BERLIN — In the wake of the
largest peace marches yet in
Western Europe, a top leader of
West German social democracy
has called for peaceful co-
existence in a statement clearly
opposing NATO’s policy of con-
frontation and nuclear war.

While an estimated 500,000
people marched for peace Easter
weekend in West Berlin and
scores of West German cities,
Egon Bahr, a member of the ex-
ecutive of the ruling German
Socialist Party (SPD) openly at-
tacked western propaganda on
‘‘limited’’ and *‘winable”’ nuclear
war.

Bahr, a close friend of former
Chancellor Willi Brandt, said the
maintainance of peace is ‘‘the
highest priority”’ today. As a so-
cial democrat he continues to
support his country’s member-
ship in NATO, but declared there
must be a “security of partner-
ship’* between East and West.

World security, he warned,
cannot be attained by efforts to
become stronger than the other
side. He added, ‘‘in a time where
war will guarantee mutual de-
struction, there can be no hope
for victory. That'means there can
only be mutual security.’

This, he emphasized, is true
also in relations between the two
German states. ‘‘In a conflict we
would both go under; the security
of the German Democratic Re-
public, therefore, is our secu-
rity.”

Bahr said that the NATO-

Washington argument for limited
nuclear war in Europe ‘‘would be
the end of our existence. For
Central Europe, then, we must
fight everything that feeds the il-
lusion of a possible limited nu-
clear war.”’

Bahr is the most important
figure in the SPD to have taken a
strong stand against NATO’s
program of deploying new nu-
clear weapons in Western Europe
and his statement will undoubted-
ly strengthen the peace move-

ment which is today an acknow]-
edged force in West German poli-
tics. a

Other SPD members and leader
also marched in the Easter de-
monstrations and several SPD
MPs have opposed the nuclear

program. SPD chairman of th.

Saar district, Oskar. Lafontaine
for example, has describe
NATO plans as ‘‘a program fi
military arming and social dj
arming”’ and called for ‘‘energeti
resistance’’ to it.

Intemational Focus

Tom Morris

it’s no time
to be silent

Erie Guindon has reached
Detroit. He and his friends
have been walking across the
United States since last Oc-
tober. They are walking for
peace.

They have spoken to hun-
dreds about their concerns and
have discovered ‘‘thousands
of peace networks”’ which re-
flect a new mood in America.

**Millions of people have to
be involved,’’ Guindon urges
his listeners. ‘‘We have to
work as a people despite our
political and social differences
or we won't survive as a

His message is as simple as it
is powerful. The realization
that world nuclear war is
unwinnable, unthinkable and
criminal has seized millions of
people as never before on this
continent. The daily press re-
ports peace actions more seri-
ously than before. They note,
not always kindly, that the idea
of world peace is becoming
paramount to many who have
never really considered t
issue before. =

' What we're seeing is not
only a “‘revival’’ of the peace
movement, but a broadening of
it. What Ernie Guindon is say-
ing is that **Peace is every-
body’s business”. Throughout
Canada and the U.S. this mes-
sage is beginning to have its

effect and it’s getting louder. .

Peace, that *‘dirty word’’ of
the 1950s, has returned with
new vigor faced as we are with
annihilation. It is finding its
way into the stuffy chambers
of government. It is finding its
way onto ballots, into schools,
into the arts.

The issues are being debated
in the press and on the air-
waves. Peace is expressed on
the streets, at rallies and, yes,
at military bases such as Cold .
Lake, Alberta, where our
stupid government will allow
Reagan to test his new Cruise
death machine.

There are millions of Emie
Guindons on this continent and
thousands of them will be in
New York for the opening of
the UN Second Special Ses-
sion on Disarmament in June.

Along with the simple con-
cept that peace is everybody's
business is another realization
— peace is too important to be
left to the likes of Reagan, ©
Haig, - MacGuigan and
Trudeau. It's up to the people,
and the people are starting to
be heard.

‘Tighten belts’
for 18 more years

External Affairs Minister
Mark MacGuigan spoke to the
Toronto Better Business
Bureau last week bringing with
him into economic matters all

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—APRIL 23, 1982—Page 10

the obvious talents he displays
in foreign affairs.

““The economic situation
looks very tough for the rest of
the century,’’ he warned.
How’s that for no light at the
end of a very long (18 year)
tunnel?

‘*The government must be
prepared to be strongly and

consistently behind the private

sector,’” MacGuigan offered.

There, you see, enters
MacGuigan’s expertise. The
fact that the ‘‘private sector’’
has been firmly in the saddle in
this country for 115 years and
is responsible (along with’
people like MacGuigan) for the
economic disaster, doesn’t
seem to phase the Minister.

It’s fascinating the govern-
ment sends him and not
MacEachen to talk to
businessmen, but both really
talk the same nonsense — ex-
cept MacEachen hides his ec-
onomic ignorance better than
his Cabinet collegue.

Perhaps we’ll see the Minis-
ter of Finance holding forth on
foreign affairs which, if his
budget is any indication,
should get this country into a
war by late spring. :

Is it really possible that
sobre-minded Canadian voters
actually elected these people?

There’s so much
to be done...

Peace is not simply a strug-

gle against nuclear destruction,
though clearly that fact is cent-
ral. Winning peace also means
scaling down the world’s war
machine and with it the in-
credible waste of human and
material resources.

Citing facts and figures in
arguing for disarmament isn’t
new. But the unprecedented
scale of arms spending brings
new figures.

Speaking recently to a
gathering of world trade
unionists in Havana, Cuban
Premier Fidel Castro linked
world poverty and military
waste. He told his listeners the
world spends in five hours the
equivilant of the yearly budget
of the UN International Child-
ren’s Educational Fund.

He said the number of
people engaged in military-re-
lated activities and staffs are
twice the number of teachers,

doctors and nurses in the
world.

Twenty-five percent of the
world’s scientific personne]
work on military projects and
60% of all scientific research —
expenditures are eaten up by
armies.

Many more equally depress- _
ing facts are given. i
Castro then talked about
some of the world’s crying
needs which go unanswered:
16 million illiterate children
could be given one year’s
schooling for the price of one
new U.S. Trident nuclear -
submarine (Reagan will build

13 of them).

The Cuban leader, spoke of
455 million unemployed and
underemployed in the Third
World in 1980; of the fact that
women represent one-third of
the world’s labor force, but re-
ceive one-tenth of the income.

‘The lives of one-fourth of
humankind,’’. Castro said,
“‘can be summarized in very
few words: hunger, ignorance,
squalor, poverty, unemploy-
ment, lack of opportunities,
lack of security, despair, in-
equality.”’ ;

So much to be done.

Securing peace, scaling
down the arms race, reducing
spending on wasteful, ugly,

‘dangerous articles of war is a

profoundly human action. No
one is exempt.

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