WORLD

Ad urging U.S.

test ban

raises ire of right wing

_ Right-wing guru and widely-syndicated columnist Wil-
liam F. Buckley is aghast. It seems that the tranquility of
his coffee break was ruptured one day last week by an
extraordinary item he spotted in his favorite morning
Tead, the New York Times. :

It was a full-page ad, addressed to ‘‘President Reagan
and General Secretary Gorbachev,”’ urging them, in
light of the ‘‘growing risk of nuclear war,”’ to get down to

‘business at the Summit and declare ‘a mutual
Moratorium on nuclear explosions, effective January 1,

1986 or. sooner’.

Now this kind of ‘‘slovenly thought’’ really gives
Buckley heartburn, but doesn’t particularly surprise him

‘Coming from certain people who tend to think non-
tigorously’’.

Imagine his horror, then, as his eyes scanned the list of
More than 100 signatories of the ad, to find some of the
Most distinguished Americans from all walks of life rep-
Tesented. People such as Paul Newman, Jesse Jackson,
George McGovern, Carl Sagan ...

_ But these are, after all, ‘‘gullible’’ liberal types. Con-
Sider Buckley’s consternation at some of the other
Names he spied:

What on earth, asks Buckley, ‘‘are former secretaries
of defence Clark Clifford and Robert MacNamara doing,
Signing that silly ad? Or Townsend Hoopes, who has

British fair play?

LONDON — “‘Seventy-five per cent of all major
daily papers supported the National Coal Board,
there was no support for the union, and 25 per cent
were ‘neutral’ ’’, charged the British Campaign for
Press and Broadcast Freedom in a recently-released
review of the press handling of the 1984-85 miners’

. Strike. ag!

The study showed that Coal Board bias was pres-
ent in presenting violence as the picketers’ fault
rather than the police’s; exaggeration of return-to-
work trends, and an uncritical acceptance of the
official description of British mines as

‘uneconomic’? when marked for closure.

a

ees

NewS
Analysis

Fred Weir

studied nuclear statesmanship? Or, for that matter,
Jimmy Carter, who was commander-in-chief? And, for
heaven’s sake, a straight thinker like Ted Turner?”
The terrible reality is that Ronald Reagan (whom
Buckley serves as chief unofficial apologist) has strained
the limits of nuclear strategy, and brought our world to

’ the brink of catastrophe. This has caused turmoil in the

ranks, as large numbers of thoughtful, intelligent people
—many from the upper levels of the U.S. establishment

have decided to put sanity ahead of blind patriotism.

America’s Cold War consensus is coming apart, and a
rigid old diehard like Buckley is only capable of register-
ing dismay.

“‘Who says there is a ‘growing risk of nuclear war’?,”
he shrills, ‘‘Why is the risk greater now than yesterday,
or the day before? Don’t these folks know that it is only
because of testing that, for instance, we have been able
to compress nuclear weapons to fit into smaller missiles
that serve to deter, yet minimize the scale of potential
nuclear exchanges?”

Buckley alludes to the ongoing research which has
enabled the U.S. to replace its big, city-busting nuclear
missiles of the past with enormous numbers of small,
highly-accurate weapons with the capability to launch a
‘‘surgical’’ first-strike against the USSR. This is sup-
posed to be “‘progress’’, but in fact it has moved nuclear
war from the realm of the unthinkable, into the world of
the very possible.

One of the ‘‘sloppy. thinkers’ who signed the ad, Carl
Sagan, is a prominent scientist who has been key to
developing scientific understanding of the consequences
of nuclear war. What Sagan could tell Buckley, if the
latter could only hear, is that it is now thoroughly estab-
lished that even a ‘‘minimal’’ nuclear exchange —
involving 100 megatons, barely one per cent of existing
arsenals — would trigger a globe-girdling nuclear winter

Nuclear Explosions
762 1945— mid— 1984

Total: 1,486

U.S. U.S.S.R. France United China India
Kingdom

Sources: DOE, SIPRI, CDI
Chart prepared by Center for Defense Information.

that would freeze out all earthly life.

Anend to nuclear testing would stop the development
of new first-strike weapons. It would also put a halt to the
emerging ‘‘third generation’’ of nuclear technology,
such as the neutron bomb and other horrors that are still
on the drawing boards.

That is why so many prominent Americans, seeing the
deadly spiral of technology, have come out in favor of a
moratorium on nuclear testing.

But don’t they know, asks Buckley, that “‘unless we
periodically test our inventory of weapons, we can’t
guarantee that they will go off if needed? And any lack of
credibility at this level diminishes the only reason for
having the bombs in the first place.”

Exactly. And that is why the testing freeze proposed
by the Soviet government last summer represents what
may be humankind’s last best hope to halt and then
reverse the nuclear arms race.

A ban of nuclear testing is one of the simplest of all
arms control measures to implement, but its long-term
ramifications would be immense. It would be the easiest
of all agreements to police. As two top American geo-
logists recently noted in Scientific American, *‘the tech-
nical capabilities to verify a comprehensive test ban
down to explosions of very small size unquestionably
exist’:

A comprehensive testing ban, mutually agreed upon,
would undermine the ‘‘credibility’’ of the nuclear arsen-
als of both sides. It would enormously reduce the risk of
such weapons being used, and increase the incentives for
nations to turn unreliable nuclear stockpiles into reliable
arms control agreements.

While Bill Buckley nurtures his outrage and ful-
minates at the ‘‘betrayal’’ of so many prominent Ameri-
cans, let us all thank goodness that there are still people,
including ex-presidents and defence secretaries, who
have the courage and foresight to take a stand for nuclear
sanity.

International Focus

Tom Morris

(Mamike) Moloise left Pretori-
a's Central Prison after visiting
her son Benjamin on death
Tow. She was singing the chant
Benjamin told her he would
Sing on his way to the gallows
the next day: ‘Lead us, Tam-
bo ... Tambo we want you to
return.”’

‘Mamike Moloise had spoken
with Benjamin for 20 minutes.
She reported he had no regrets.

Courage ‘‘T am proud to give mayne wey
ami i solitary life,’’ he said. As they
leg brutality led him away, Benjamin gave
On Oct. 17, Pauline the clenched fist salute of the

African National Congress.

“I am proud,” his mother
told friends. ‘‘I never thought
that one day I would have a
warrior in my arms.”’ She had
asked to accompany her son to
the gallows, but the brutal re-
gime said no. ‘‘It is a pity I
cannot march hand in hand
with my son, otherwise I
would do it ...”

At dawn the next day they

hanged Benjamin Moloise.

Fulfilling his last wish,
Mamike Moloise and a group
of friends joined outside the
prison and, at the moment of
the judicial murder, sang the
national anthem of the ANC.

‘“‘Tell the world,’ he said
hours before his death, ““we
shall overcome. Tomorrow I
will spill my blood for those
who are left behind. The strug-
gle must go on until we people
get freedom!”

Benjamin Moloise was 28
when he died.

A double
wrong Nov. 11

This Remembrance Day we
were reminded that almost
3,000 Canadians fought with
United States’ forces in their
dirty war against Vietnam.

And one would think, given
the overwhelming public dis-
gust in this country with that
war, anyone who served in
such a mercenary capacity
wouldn’t want it known.

But, for the first time, there
they were, marching with vete-
rans of World Wars One and
Two during the Toronto cere-
monies on November 11.

There were the familiar
American Army fatigues with
‘**United States’’ emblazoned
across the breast, and the be-
rets, all so familiar from tele-
vision coverage of the carnage.

There, also, was the Legion
brass shaking hands with
them. And we listened as the
mercenaries told us how glad
they were to finally have come
in from the cold.

Of course they shouldn’t be
marching alongside Canadian
veterans, the majority of
whom fought fascism. These
soldiers of fortune discredit the
memories of our war dead.

But who should be there,
and are excluded, are the vete-
rans of the Mac-Paps — the
first Canadians to fight fascism
and who will be marking the
50th anniversary of that proud
moment for Canada next year.

One day this double wrong
will be righted.

Smarts not
his strong suit

Interviewed by the BBC the
other day, Reagan thumped his
drum about the differences be-
tween the socialist system and

-the ‘‘free world’’.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 20, 1985 e 9

And he added: ‘‘I’m no lin-
guist, but I have been told that
in the Russian language there
isn’t even a word for free-
dom.”

No argument that Reagan
isn’t a linguist, or that he’s
woefully ignorant of Russian
history or culture. That’s self-
evident every time he opens
his mouth.

By now someone will have
told Reagan the Russian word
for freedom is ‘“‘svoboda’’.

And they even have a word
for idiot.

More Summit
shenanigans

The West German magazine
Stern reports the U.S. rushed
ahead to deploy the 108
Pershing-2 missiles in the FRG
a month early. It quotes a Pen-
tagon source that deployment
was “‘accelerated out of con-
cern the Summit could pro-
duce an immediate halt (to
deployment) of the medium-
range missiles,’ which were to
be in place by Dec. 31, 1985.

These are the missiles that
can reach Moscow in six
minutes.

Talk of ‘‘building trust’’.

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