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CANADA

By KERRY McCUAIG

Prime Minister Mulroney wrote a
suicide note for Canada when he failed to
_ condemn Star Wars, says Doug Mohr.

Mohr, who cycled across Canada for
Citizens’ Ads for Peace, said Mulroney,
> innot officially endorsing Star Wars, but
allowing Canadian industries to com-
pete for contracts was “‘like a pharma-
ceutical company producing a dangerous
drug. We don’t advocate its use, but we
allow the company to go on producing
ee
The Star Wars scenario would have
10,000 nuclear warheads being blown up
in the Canadian atmosphere turning the
country into a battlefield. ‘‘Virtually
every report objected to our involve-
ment’, said Mohr, referring to public
submissions to the Special Parliamentary
Task Force which examined the issue
over the summer. *‘Why are we allowing
something which is clearly not in the
interest of the Canadian people? Mul-
roney’s response was an attempt at hav-
ing his cake and eating it too.”

_ The Prime Minister has called U.S.
development of Star Wars a justified re-
sponse to Soviet initiatives in the field.
“This is a misstatement of truth’’, said
Mohr, a Waterloo, Ontario resident.
“The Soviets are involved in a vast civil
defence program,’ he notes raising
doubts about the effectiveness of such
measures, “‘but this is well within the
provisions of the Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty.”

The cornerstone of the ABMT is that
in order for deterrence to work the other
side has to be able to retaliate. Arms
experts, both East and West, agree Star
Wars violates the treaty. ‘‘Star Wars is
an attempt at a first strike potential. The

Cyclist rides to buy
peace advertising —

U.S. would be able to attack the Soviet
Union and they would have no chance to
retaliate.”

In any case Reagan’s ‘‘defensive
shield”’ will not make the North Ameri-
can continent impervious to attack.

Star Wars would counteract only bal-
listic missiles, Mohr explained. It is not
effective against sea launched or medium
or long-range Cruise missiles which. do
not enter the atmosphere.

Asked if the Soviets do pose a threat to
Western security as many Canadians be-
lieve, Mohr said: ‘‘We need to examine
how much of what we think about the
Soviet Union has been crafted by those
who profit off the arms race. We are no
safer now for 40 years of the arms race.

‘‘In many ways Soviet actions don’t fit
well into our perceptions,”’ he said, nam-
ing positive unilateral initiatives taken by
the Soviets which have never been re-
sponded to by the U.S. These include the
moratorium on deployment of missiles in
western Europe and the Aug. 6 an-
nouncement of a five-month moratorium
on nuclear testing.

The arms race also raises many moral
and economic questions, says Mohr.
“Spending $1-trillion on arms when
there are people starving. When you
think that only $10-million would provide
the world’s population with clean drink-
ing water and what a major health ad-
vance that would bring.”’

Mohr began cycling across Canada on
Aug. 6 to commemorate the 40th anni-
versary of the bombing of Hiroshima. He
hopes that the media exposure he re-
ceived will help make Canadians more
aware of arms issue.

But his major objective was to raise
funds for Citizens’ Ads for Peace, an or-

ganization he helped found. The group
hopes to raise $100,000 for an advertising
campaign which will be piloted in On-
tario next spring and eventually be made
available to peace groups across the
country.

Canada’s sparse and scattered popula-
tion makes it difficult for the peace
movement to reach large numbers of
Canadians. ‘‘People who come out to
meetings and demonstrations are
essentially already committed,” said
Mohr. ‘‘We need to reach all those
others and make them feel that by be-
coming involved they can have an
impact.”

The idea of selling peace, in much the
same way as MacDonalds, Chrysler or
Coke market their products, arose out of
a three-year study Mohr did as a doctoral
student in psychology at Waterloo Uni-
versity.

His research showed that Canadians
by and large were not well informed

about armaments issues and as a result
felt helpless about what they could do.
He already has the commitment of a
number of psychologists, sociologists,
and TV advertising personalities who are
working on the ads.

‘‘We have to develop the ads very
carefully so that we don’t create fear but
awareness,’ he explains. ‘““We don’t
want to worry people about what might
happen if they don’t act, but to show
them that if we all work together we can
make a difference.”

The ads will show the links between
the arms race and the economy and end
with the listing of toll-free numbers lis-
teners can call to find out which peace
groups are active in their area.

If you wish more information or would
like to make a donation, Ride For Peace
can be contacted at 524 Palmerston
Blvd., Toronto, M6G 2P%5 or call (416)
639-5954.

Sater: peit ti

cbt

* *‘*People to People Solutions”
has become a slogan of the Nic-
-araguan revolution. In a country

“short on material resources, en-

“ade and locked into an actual and
‘ideological war against U.S.
“financed terrorism, it has relied
~ heavily on the human spirit to ad-
vance the revolution’s cause.
___ Part of its effort to circumvent
the distortions playing in the
western media has been to appeal
_ directly to the people of foreign
nations, inviting them to take
_ part in the building of the new
_ Nicaragua and to view first hand
its accomplishments.
_ + Solidarity organizations have
__ Sponsored delegations of cotton
pickers, farmers, technicians,
doctors and educators inviting
them to lend their skills and in the
-process turning many into un-
_ Qne recent project involved a
_ group of farmers from the Cana-
‘“Bablitz of Bruce, Alberta, the
-18-member delegation spent two
- months this past winter with a
farming cooperative in Revas,
Nicaragua. Under Canadian
Tools For Peace, the farmers
gathered and took along over
$100,000 worth of machinery and
equipment which were then pre-
sented to their hosts.
‘The project grabbed the atten-
tion of an Edmonton journalist,

-_cumbered by an economic block-

40 « PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 9, 1985

Judy Havein who became seized
with the idea of recording the
group’s work to share with the
Canadian public.

With financing from the Na-
tional Film Board she teamed up
with Toronto: film maker Peter
Raymont. The end result is With
Our Own Two Hands, a 26-minute
documentary which will be
shown on CBC’s public affairs
program, Man Alive, Oct. 16.

‘*By following a group of ordi-
nary Canadians, some of them
quite conservative, the viewer

has a way of getting through that
blinkered perception’’ Raymont
says.

And that is the film’s effect.
Rural Canada doesn’t conjure up
radical images in the minds of the
average listener, so when a
farmer sitting on a combine exp-
lains the Nicaraguans desire “‘no-
thing more than to be left alone in
peace’’, it’s very convincing.

- One of the most moving pas-
sages belongs to Art Bunney of
Alberta, who made his own film
record of the trip. Some of his
footage appears of the group’s
tour to the northern sector of the
country prone to attacks by con-
tras massed along the Honduran
border. The camera zeros in on
the face of a Nicaraguan mother
standing over the coffin of her son
killed in a raid the previous even-
ing; then to Bunney whose wish is

Nicaragua finds friend in Canadian farmers

that every American mother
could share that woman’s pain
and come to understand the
suffering their government is in-
flicting.

The farmers don’t hide the
problems. Nicaragua is hurting
badly. Machinery stands idle for
lack of spare parts; irrigation
structures, power stations,
schools and hospitals are the
prized targets of contra attacks;

Members of the Canadian farmers’

Pe : ah

U.S. military manoeuvres off the
coast and mined harbors prevent
merchant ships from reaching
port and produce a thriving black
bie where a light bulb fetches

10.

The delegation made its own
small contribution — repairing
machinery, setting up a mobile
tool shop, training young Nic-
araguans in welding, but just as
importantly they find friends.

Tools for Peace project with Revas residents.

Up against an aggressive im-
perialist power, friends are wha!
Nicaragua now needs as much a$
anything else. The film Raymo?!
hopes will show Canadians tha
‘very ordinary people can do 4
lot. Maybe they can’t afford to 2°
down to Nicaragua but they cal
contribute to Tools for Peace OF
Oxfam and it will make a
ference’.

— Kerry