A:
:

i ore

COMMENTARY

International Focus

Tom Morris

667 children
will die

How would we react if
everyone in the Principality of
Monaco died in one day? Or if
every Arkansas child born in
1980 died overnight?

What would we say if Prince
Edward. Island’s _ population

perished in four days, or if.

every person in the Republic of
San Marino died in 12 hours?

Any of these catastrophes

would be front-age news. An-
guished outcries and calls for
investigation would resound.
Questions would be asked,
answers sought.

Imagine, as well, the outrage
when we learned all had died
from starvation and disease.
Worse still, that this genocide
will continue day after day,
year after year.

At the death rate we’re dis-
cussing, British Columbia
would be empty of people in 75
days, Ontario in eight months.
Toronto would be a ghost town.

in two and one-half months.
* * *

At its recent meeting on the
Role of the Non-Aligned
Movement which took place in
Delhi this month, the World
Peace Council issued a ringing
call for a new world economic
order and decried the vast
Sums spent today on instru-
ments of death.

What would we say?

The WPC spoke of the
super-profits made by arms-
producers, of the economic
stranglehold on the nations of
Africa, Asia and Latin
America by multi-nationals, of:
the poverty, misery, disease
and death brought in its wake.

Included in the WPC mate-
rials is this wrenching sen-
tence: “‘Forty thousand chil-
dren in Asia, Africa and Latin
America die each day from
hunger and disease ...”’

That's all of Monaco. It’s
twice the population of San
Marino. It’s all the babies born
in Arkansas in 1980. It is also
seven times the number of auto
deaths in Canada in one year.

The most telling fact might
be that in the one minute it took
you to read this item, 667
“third world’’ children died.

Carrying
the torch
California’s Hells Angels

motorcycle clubs, according to
recent press reports, control a :

large chunk of the drug and
prostitution rackets in that
state. They've come a long
way:from the days of ‘‘fun-
loving good old boys”’ drinking
beer and tearing up the high-
ways. :

LOS ANGELES
MEMORIAL
COLISEUM

The leather jacketed machos
have blended in quite well with
free enterprise and, it seems,
also have a sharp eye for
publicity.

An especially astute group,
the Ventura Hells Angels club,
recently collected the $3,000
required to carry the Olympic
torch one kilometer on its trip
across the USA to Los Angeles
in August. They submitted the
name of the club’s president

and it was accepted by Games’

organizers. :

The world will now be
treated to the sight of a runner
with skull-and-crossbones tat-
tooed on his arm bearing the
Olympic torch for the youth of
the world.

Given the rank commercial-
ism of the Los Angeles Games,
the misuse by the Reagan ad-
ministration of them for poli-
tical gain, this latest insult to.
the Olympic ideal seems to fit
perfectly.

Unscrambling
the words

“‘We don’t allow terrorism
to go unpunished,”’ droned a
U.S. State Department official
last week. ‘‘I don’t think that
purely defensive postures are
adequate,’’ U.S. Secretary of
State Shultz added.

What these men are talking
about is Reagan’s new Na-
tional Security Decision Direc-
tive 138 signed April 3 instruct-
ing 26 U:S. federal agencies to
prepare proposals for a “‘pro-
active’’ stance by the United
States. :

“*Pro-active’’ in Reaganese ,
means first strike. That is —
the U.S. will determine in ad-
vance that some ‘‘terrorist
act’’ might occur and act. No
options are excluded in ad-
vance.

Directive 138, of course, ex-
cludes U.S. terrorism. What -
Shultz calls ‘‘state-sponsored
terrorism’’-by others, he calls
“‘assistance’’ by Washington. °
Killing Nicaraguans . with
mines and bombs is ‘‘assis-
tance’’. So is the murder of Al-
lende in Chile, the CIA war
against Afganistan, the butch-
ery in El Salvador, the invasion
of Grenada.

Propping up Israel in its
genodical war against Leba-
non, according to Shultz,
would also be assistance. So
would U.S. support for the kil-
ler Khmer Rouge bands and
the assassins who rule Guate-
mala and Honduras.

The CIA with its $1.5-billion
budget, then, are Boy Scouts.

onsidering what successive Social-

Credit administrations in this pro-
vince have done to the transit system, the
service that is provided by bus drivers is
nothing short of exemplary. They put up
with buses that are jammed because ser-
vice cutbacks have been imposed to the
point that the term “inadequate” ceases to
have meaning; they work split shifts that
leave them with virtually no time left for
their families; they put up with manage-
ment that takes its orders from a Socred
used car dealer.

And they often go even beyond that call
of duty as was the case last Saturday just
prior to the Walk for Peace.

Reader Beth Chobotuck tells us that she
took a bus downtown from her Burnaby
home enroute to the peace march, only to
find out that, because of the march, buses
had been re-routed. Accordingly, the
driver told her, downtown was the end of
the line.

She expressed her concern to the driver,

asking how she would get to the march

rallying point, at Kitsilano Beach. He
asked those on the bus if there were others
on their way to the march. Then he put it
another way: “Is anyone not going to the
march?”

Finding that everyone was headed for
the same place, he proceeded to make.an
unauthorized run — along an unautho-
rized route since the regular one was
closed to traffic — and dropped them all
of at Kitsilano Beach.

Think about that next time the drivers
are compelled to take job action in their
efforts to win a decent contract.

* sd *

n Margaret Thatcher’s economically

desecrated Britain, medical care has
already been reduced to a_ two-level
system — one for the rich and one for the
poor. If you only have access to National
Health, you wait and wait for elective
surgery and other procedures that aren’t a

~ People and Issues
ee Ne DESO S anDCRaR SSD STST CRESTOR CRIMES SE PUT et Oren eee ane ge ee ee eee ee ae eee ee ene eee ee eee eT

matter of life and death. But if you can
present a big bank account and you're
prepared to part with some of it, the best
medical care is instantly available.

In this province, with the health care
cutbacks and the hefty increases in user
fees, the Socred government is pushing in
that same right wing direction And it may
be closer than we think, .

Several hospitals have already instituted
“pay up first” policies for hospital care.
The government levies a $10 fee for emer-
gency ward care, prompting many to
think twice about going if it isn’t a clear cut
emergency.

But Ben Swankey encountered two-tier
care with a twist when he needed surgery
on his hand last month.

Although the hand caused him consid-
erable pain, the health care system consi-
dered it elective surgery. As a result it
meanta lengthy wait because of government-
caused bed shortages.

But there is an alternative, the hospital

told him. If you are prepared to_pay the
per diem charge for a private room —
$48.50 per day — the surgery can be per-
formed immediately.
_~ That practice won’t go on long before
the hospital begins to find an eco-
nomic incentive to convert some public
wards to private rooms. And like so many
things with this government, small chips
out of social services finally lead to their
elimination — unless they are stopped by
a public outcry and action.

* %* *

e had a sad note this week from
Ernie Dalskog in Courtenay to tell
us that long time Tribune reader and

former IWA activist Alec Armella passed

away last month at the age of 72.
A woodworker throughout his working

life, he began in the forest industry in 1931
at the age of 19. He was a charter member
of the Courtney local of the International
Woodworkers of America and Emie
remembers him as a driving force in the
organization of the union in the area.

He continued his active role in the
union through his life and played a promi-
nent part in the historic fallers’ strike in
1972.

He was also a member of the Comox
Valley Club of the Communist Party at
the time of his death.

* * *

| t was on May 18, 1935, that the striking
relief camp workers occupied the city

museum at Main and Hastings in Van- °

couver to draw public attention to their

demand for relief. The action. drew

national attention and wide public sup-
port as people brought food and supplies
which were roped up to the occupants
from the street below..

Now, 49 years later, the city museum is
the Carnegie Centre — and it will be
marking the anniversary with speakers,
films and entertainment, on May 18, from
2 to 10 p.m. For more information, you
can phone 665-2220.

ae Sie :
W: report elsewhere in this issue that
participants at the Vancouver Walk
for Peace booed when a letter from Pre-_
mier Bill Bennett was read to the rally
informing marchers of the Socred govern-
ment’s support for the peace walk. Many

undoubtedly saw the government’s posi- _

tion.as opportunistic, if not hypocritical,in
light of the Socreds’ cutbacks and unem-
ployment, tactics also practiced by. its
soulmates, the cold-war governments of
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
and U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

Readers will note that one of our front
page photos last week showed residents of
the Sunshine Coast digging the holes fora ~
sign declaring their regional government’s
pledge made more than one year ago. It
read: “Welcome to the Sunshine Coast —
A Nuclear-Free Zone.”

The trouble — and the reason behind
the year-long delay — was that Highways
Minister Alex Fraser had forbidden the
regional district permission to make their
declaration for all motorists disembarking
from the Langdale ferry to see. But after a
year of wrangling with the highways
department, the Sunshine Coast Peace
Committee — with the support of local °
aldermen and regional directors — went
ahead with the project in defiance of the
province.

Now we have word from Gibsons resi-
dent Hans-Penner that the ministry, on
Monday — barely 24 hours after peace
marches, which the premier claims to
endorse, swept the province — has taken.
the sign down.

We haven’t received all the details yet,
but we’re certain this point will be raised
by local residents and government with
Victoria, along with the demand the sign
be allowed.

The Socreds have flunked the hypocrisy
test. But they can reverse that by allowing
Sunshine Coast residents their sign.

__ TRIBUNE

Editor — SEAN GRIFFIN
_ Assistant Editor — DAN KEETON
Business & Circulation Manager —
PAT O‘CONNOR
Graphics — ANGELA KENYON

Published weekly at 2681 East Hastings Street
Vancouver, B.C. V5K 1Z5
Phone (604) 251-1186

Subscription Rate: Canada — $14 one year;
$8 six months; Foreign — $20 one year;

Second class mail registration number 1560

10 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MAY 2, 1984