PRR YS

Editorial

OAS not for Ganada

“Tt appears that Providence has destined the United States to plague America
with misery in the name of liberty,” wrote the great Latin American patriot,
Simon Bolivar, in 1829, as he watched U.S. imperialism’s tentacles spread out
across Central and South America and the Caribbean.

Bolivar’s fears 160 years ago were well-founded. The old European powers
were displaced and the U.S. was to rule supreme in the region for over 100 years.
Its Monroe Doctrine dictated a policy in which an entire hemisphere was
subordinated completely to U.S. economic and political interests.

The Caribbean was transformed into an American lake. The U.S. Marines
were the brutal agents of U.S. capital. In Central America, the United Fruit
Company became a law unto itself. Every courageous struggle for national
sovereignty was ruthlessly crushed as the terms “gunboat diplomacy” and
“banana republic” were added to our vocabulary.

Following World War II, however, the global political landscape again
underwent drastic upheaval with the rise of national liberation movements
everywhere, including those in the United States’s own “sphere of influence.”
Old colonial tools were scrapped in favour of new structures.

Enter the Organization of American States (OAS), formed in 1948 to replace
the Monroe Doctrine. With its headquarters, pointedly located in Washington,
the OAS from the outset was a vehicle for direct U.S. hemispheric control, albeit
under the flowery language of its Charter extolling “the rights and duties of
Man” ina hemisphere where the gap between poverty and wealth was wide and
growing.

For 41 years, Canada managed, despite extreme pressures from Washington
especially in the 1960s, to remain outside the OAS. So certain were its architects
that Ottawa would automatically sit at the OAS table together with other U.S.
allies, a chair marked “Canada” gathers dust in the basement of the alliance’s
headquarters. ,

And now the Mulroney government has again raised the issue of OAS
membership, this time to bolster sagging U.S. hemispheric fortunes.

Canadians should continue to reject the invitation.

Since 1948, non-membership has permitted Canada to develop an independ-
ent regional policy, to stay out of U.S. efforts to strangle Cuba, to distance
ourselves from such U.S. adventures as the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco, the 1965
invasion of the Dominican Republic and the 1983 invasion of Grenada. Non-
membership has meant that trade and commerce has grown with our Carib-
bean and South American neighbours and that we have been able to offer aid to
a besieged Nicaraguan people under U.S. attack. It has so far kept us out of any
ill-advised Rambo actions in Panama or Colombia.

At a time when the U.S. embrace grows increasingly suffocating, the last
thing Canada needs is to tie our hemispheric interests closer to Washington’s.

“ REMEMBER THE JAYS WHEN INCENTIVES CONSISTED OF CARROTS?...

VAS. 9- BT RC

FIRIBOUNE

~

EDITOR

Sean Griffin

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Dan Keeton
BUSINESS & CIRCULATION MANAGER
Mike Proniuk
GRAPHICS

Angela Kenyon

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S omehow, with the perverse logic that
only a Labour Party politician who
speaks from a Fraser Institute platform
could understand, former New Zealand
Prime Minister Roger Douglas was able to
describe the tax reform policies that he
helped introduce in New Zealand as

“attacking privilege.”

“If you want to talk about it purely in
socialist terms,” he told the Financial Post
in a lengthy interview, “what we did was
attack privilege.”

Now it might seem a tad odd that the
Financial Post, whose pages are practi-
cally oak-panelled from their connection
with the privileged elite, didn’t cut off the
interview right there. And it might appear
a little out of character fora Labour Party
government member to come to Canada
at the invitation of a far-right think tank
and help promote a contentious sales tax
that is vehemently opposed by most of
Canadians, including the New Democrats
who share membership in the Socialist
International with the New Zealand
Labour Party.

(Douglas was in this country last week
at the invitation of the Fraser Institute and
the Commons committee used the oppor-
tunity to get Douglas to appear before it to
relate the experience with the GST in New
Zealand. The committee even picked up
some of his expenses, we discovered, as we
listened to Finance committee officials
and Fraser Institute director Michael
Walker dicker about costs outside the
GST hearing room.)

But apparently there was no contradic- —

tion for Douglas — nor for the Financial
Post which, like the Commons committee
on the Goods and Services Tax, is only too

happy to use a Labour Party politician to
push Tory policies.

But Canadians should discard any idea
that what New Zealand introduced is what
the Tories want to put into effect. More
‘than anything, they should discard any
idea that what Roger Douglas is promot-
ing is worth supporting by anybody other
than those who drive a Porsche to work.

Just as the policies of a certain British
prime minister are responsible for the term
“Thatcherism,” so Roger Douglas’ poli-
cies introduced the term ““Rogernomics”
— and the differences between the two are
barely discernible. In cabinet, Douglas
pursued privatization, high interest rates
— they once approached 30 per cent —
and tax reform that was intended to shift
taxation on to consumption rather than
income. .

The New Zealand government did sell

the GST on the basis of providing simul- .

taneous income tax cuts. But the price of
Rogernomics in New Zealand has been an
unemployment rate higher than in post-
war history, an erosion of social programs
and a increasing reliance on higher GST
rates — the rate has gone up from 10 to
12.5 per cent — for government revenue.
Free market policies have the same effect,

whatever government introduces them, it.

seems.

Those policies have also caused deep
divisions within the New Zealand Labour
Party and the government. Douglas him-

People and Issues

self was forced out of cabinet, primarily
for his support of even farther-right tax
policies, including a flat income tax
(remember Peter Pocklington’s flat tax
proposal?). The divisions over the direc-
tion the government was taking even led
some left supporters within the party to
quit and form the New Labour Party.
But Douglas was narrowly re-elected to
cabinet earlier this year and now sits as
minister of police and immigration. Not
surprisingly, he had the support of New
Zealand’s corporate lobby group, the Bus-
iness Roundtable — the very people whose
“privilege” he purported to attack.
Beware of neo-conservatives in Labour
Party clothing — the tax bite they deliver
could be fatal.

* * *

t came too late for most of veterans who
survived the battlefields of the Spanish
Civil War to witness it, but the commem-
orative plaque for the Mackenzie-Papineau

Battalion that was unveiled in Winnipeg

last week fills a gap in that city’s history
that had too long remained.

Winnipeg mayor Bill Norrie and Mac-
Pap veteran Fred Kostyk did the honours
with the plaque which was created with the
assistance of Manitoba Historic Resources
and the Manitoba Heritage Federation.

It was unveiled Oct. 13 — 52 years to
the day that the Mackenzie-Papineau Bat-
talion, which was formed in 1937 as part of

the International Brigades, went into
action as a unit at Fuentes de Ebro as the
Brigades launched an offensive against the
fascist armies of General Franco.

There were some 106 Manitobans
among the 1,447 Canadians who volun-
teered for Spain. Nearly half of the Cana-
dians died in Spain, including 21 from
Manitoba, and many those who returned
later volunteered for service during World
War II. But theMac-Paps continue to be
denied official government recognition for
their part in the war against fascism.

a *

eople on Vancouver Island will also be

marking an anniversary as_ the
Nanoose Conversion Campaign prepares to
commemorate Remembrance Day with
the sixth annual peace walk to the Cana-
dian Forces Maritime and Experimental
and Test Ranges (CFMETR) on Nov. 11.

First initiated in 1984 to launch the
campaign for peaceful conversion of the
Nanoose Bay base, the peace walk has
been held every year since, backed by a
number of disarmament and other groups
on the Island.

This year, participants will gather at
noon in Lion’s Park at Nanoose (at
Powder Pt. Road) and march the approx-
imately four km toa rally outside the base
entrance.

* * *

hoever designed the ad campaign
that is currently running in Van-
couver’s SkyTrain, among other places,
has either got a bad sense of timing or an
even worse sense of humour.
“Next time,”
“choose VIA.”

the billboard states, -}

4» Pacific Tribune, October 23, 1989