Commentary/Letters

Don’t worry, be happy that the Cold
War has ended.

Money now spent on the military will
pay for everything we want. The environ-
ment will be saved. Everyone will have
food, a home and a job. Besides, we don’t
have to worry about being roasted in a
nuclear inferno now. A 40 year nightmare
has ended.

The only problem is that some
politicians don’t want the Cold War to end.
What are they doing?

The February budget increased defence
spending by five per cent. Compared to
other countries Canada ranks 12th in
military expenditure and 31st in popula-
tion.

In the United States, the 1991 budget
gives high priority to nuclear weapons
programs. Advanced cruise missile spend-
ing will increase 47 percent. The Star Wars
budget will be $4.5 billion, a 25 per cent
increase. MX missile program spending
will rise 65 percent.

Commentary

A recent poll showed that only two per
cent of the U.S. public considers the USSR
a threat to U.S. security. Yet on May 10,
NATO defence ministers affirmed their
reliance on nuclear weapons.

Moreover, U.S. Defence Secretary
Richard Cheney said NATO should keep
its policy of first use of nuclear weapons.

At the May 10 meeting the Mulroney
government said it was willing to test a
new missile for NATO’s nuclear arsenal in
Western Europe, the tactical air to surface
missile (TASM).

If Mulroney allows TASM tests he will
damage both Canada’s image as a peaceful
country and the interests of world disarma-
ment. His policies fit closely to NATO
nuclear strategy. Canada has tested nuclear

weapons-capable aircraft and air-launched
missiles since 1982.

NATO refuses to put air and sea-
launched missiles on the negotiating table
with the USSR. Yet over 70 per cent of the
U.S. nuclear arsenal is air- and sea-based.
Only 30 per cent of Soviet nuclear
weapons are air- and sea-based.

NATO should make a_ balanced
proposal to cut nuclear weapons, including
sea- and air-launched weapons.

Peace supporters should tell Mulroney
two things. He must abandon the idea of
unbalanced reduction of nuclear weapons.
And he must support a ban on nuclear
weapons testing and modernization.

— Ottawa Disarmament Coalition

Review

Press PM to pay up on peace dividend

RICHARD CHENEY ... won't rule out
first use of n-weapons.

Letters

On May 4, 1990, 50 women from the
United States flew from New York City’s

JFK airport to embark on a trip to the Soviet
Union which united two unique groups of
women — women pilots of World War II
from the U.S. and the USSR. In the Soviet
Union, the women became known as the
“Night Witches” because the Germans in the
trenches knew that the pilots flying over
them at night were women — and so the
“Night Witches” they became. Their duties
took them much farther afield, however, as
-many of them became pilots of bombers and
fighters, going directly into combat after a
very short training period.

_ Inthe United States, they were the WASP
— Women’s Airforce Service Pilots. They
endured the same training that men did ex-
cept that on graduation their duties were
domestic, releasing men for overseas duty.
One thousand of them graduated and were
assigned to air force bases all over the coun-
try from Maine to California, until Decem-
ber, 1944, when they were inactivated.
About 750 of these women are still living.

Forty-five years later, 50 of them visited
Moscow, Kiev and Leningrad to meet their
counterparts. This remarkable event took
place because of a meeting between Nad-
ezhda Popova, one of the most famous of the
Russian pilots and me in October, 1988,
when I was teaching at the Lenin Pedagogi-
cal Institute in Moscow.

After numerous trips to the Soviet Union,
I had landed a teaching job in Moscow and

thou ght that while I was there for a substan-
tial length of time, I might to be able to
manage some time with Popova. I was re-
warded with not just one, but two meetings
with her, the second lasting for eight hours
in the Popovas’ posh apartment in one of the
best sections of Moscow. We talked through
an interpreter and Popova agreed with me
about a get-together of the two groups of
women.

While in Moscow, together with Barbara
Lazarsky, and two other WASP, I met with
the Minister of Defence, Dimitri Yazof.

Members of the famous “Night Witches,”
Nadezhda Popova and Yevgenia Zhi-
gulenkova, were also present at the meeting.
The minister talked about the need for dis-
armament and the effect of the Chernobyl
disaster, saying that Americans and Soviets
would solve economic and other problems
just as co-operatively as they did when fight-
ing fascism during World War IL.
People to People administered the pro-
gram for the WASP trip to the USSR.
Marjorie Nicol,
Vancouver

WASPs, Night Witches re-unite in Moscow

a ETI aE a a a muah ete

Digging deeper
for the Tribune
We will have to dig really deep this
year to make our total quota provin-
cially. So here is my own digging —
$200 — from my pension cheque. I
hope others will follow suit.
Ed Skeeles,

Nanaimo

Let me firstly congratulate the Com-
munist Party for its initiative in re-examin-
ing the nature of socialism in Canada,
recognizing the need to go far beyond the
Communist Party in drawing socialist-
minded leftists to commonly examine
concepts, ideas and principles of what the
future of socialism in Canada will be.

As an eco-socialist and a founding
member of the Winnipeg Greens, I would
like to make a few initial comments con-
cerning the Communist Party and a New
Decade (Tribune, April 23, 1990). These
comments are intended to begin the dia-
logue and debate among leftists, including
communists, socialists, greens, anarchists,
feminists, peace and labour activists, con-
cerning the future of socialism.

A good deal of self-criticism has begun
within the Communist Party, and while
recognizing the need to be vague about the
exact nature of the new socialist party, it
might be useful to ascertain whether or not
the Communist Party sees itself transfor-
ming into a new socialist party deriving
out of a fusion of the various progressive
movements active in Canada today.

Furthermore, while rejecting the state
socialist model (or the state capitalist
model), you do not attack the principle of

democratic centralism, which to my mind
and many other leftists and Greens, under-
mines the essence of developing a true
democratic socialist party.

Democratic centralism undermines the
ability of various factions to participate in
open debate about the way of achieving
socialism in Canada, and, to be frank,
tends to encourage the dictatorship of the
majority at the expense of the minority and
leads to the development of hierarchical
and patriarchal structures of party forma-
tion that are opposed by Greens and other
leftists. The CPC document does not ad-
dress the role of consensus in party policy
formation and the question of de-centra-
lization versus centralization of a Canada-
wide party. It is imperative that these ques-
tions be addressed.

Lastly, in beginning this dialogue, your
environmental perspective lacks-a clear
understanding of the politics of ecology as
it emerges around the world. It is essential,
with the co-option of greens by every con-
servative and liberal government in the
world, that there is a grasp of the clear
ideological differences between green-
ism, environmentalism, and eco-social-
ism. :

These differences are reflected in the

CP changes: Greens offer their views

debate between deep and social ecology,
as well as in developing a comprehensive
critique of capitalist economies in dev-
eloping an eco-socialist environmental
policy. This also deals with the issue of
sustainable development (some have
called it eco-pornography) versus the
issue of no growth, versus sustainable
growth as well as the transformation of
both capitalist and state-socialist econ-
omies from a growth, job orientation to an
environmental economy.

As the environmental movement is the
largest growing people’s movement in
Canada, it is imperative for the Commu-
nist Party to engage in broadening its en-
vironmental understanding of what eco-
socialism means in terms of the
environment, economics and feminism,
which are so fundamental to the building
of socialism in Canada.

I thank you for allowing us to par-
ticipate in an ongoing dialogue between
like-minded socialists and the Communist
Party on the future of socialism in Canada.
I’m hopeful that others in the Left will join
us in this dialogue.

Nick Ternette,
Winnipeg Greens

5 * Pacific Tribune, June 11, 1990

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