DISARMAMENT

a kN ph he aes ek ed

Ses cruise missile testing and the crea-

‘Keep Canada out of Star Wars’

Canadians face a task larger than the
fight against the testing of the cruise — they
Must also take action against Canada’s
Imminent involvement in the United States
Star Wars plan, a long-time peace activist
and trade unionist told a Vancouver
audience Saturday.

“The Star Wars thing goes beyond
(cruise testing) because without so much as
an ‘aye, yes or no,’ from the Pentagon
-..plans are drawn to deploy on Canadian
territory the bases for those fearsome wea-
Pons. Those plans are there, no matter what
‘honest’ Joe Clark (external affairs minister)
tells you,” Ray Stevenson, past vice-
President of the Canadian Peace Congress,
declared.

Stevenson, a former organizer for the
Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union and
One-time peace congress’ representative at the
Helsinki-based World Peace Council, also
urged greater trade union involvement in
the peace movement in his address to the
Vancouver Peace Assembly.

Some 65 delegates attended the first
annual meeting of the assembly, the local
component of the B.C. Peace Council, itself
@ provincial affiliate of the national con-
8ress. The assembly, whose creation reflects
the astronomical’ growth of the peace
Movement during the last two years, also
heard Vancouver lawyer Phil Rankin on the
Current situation in Nicaragua and other
Speakers who linked the peace question
with the U.S. Reagan administration’s mil-
itary involvement around the world:

The speeches and the motions passed at
the AGM reflected the organization’s anti-
imperialist stance, which holds U.S. milita-
tism, anti-Communism and anti-Sovietism
responsible for the spiralling nuclear arms
race,

One resolution, noting “the growing war
danger and increasing Canadian involve-
ment in U.S. military.expansion”’ called for
an independent Canadian foreign policy.
This involves cancelling the cruise tests,
declaring Canada nuclear-weapons free,
Opposing plans to expand the DEW line
early warning system (as part of the Star

Noted veteran
speaks Feb. 28

A former air
force squadron
commander
who chairs
Canada’s Vet-
erans for Mul-
tilateral Nu-
clear Disarm-
ament will
address a pub-
lic meeting on
the University

C.G. “GIFF”
GIFFORD
of B.C. campus Feb, 28 at 12:30 p.m.
C.G. “Giff’ Gifford, who has just

Teturned from commemorations
Marking the 40th anniversary of
World War II in Dresden, German
Democratic Republic, will speak in
the Student Union Building (SUB),
Room 212, at the invitation of the
UBC Students for Peace and Mutual
Disarmament.

The former McGill university pro-
fessor is also involved in the forma-
tion of the Defence Research and
Education Foundation, a project
Planned to mirror the U.S.-based
Centre for Defence Information
headed by peace activist and retired
admiral, Gene LaRocque.

Gifford, whose organization oppo-

tion of new nuclear weapons systems,
will also meet local veterans at a
Teception in the Unitarian Church
Hall, 949 West 49th Ave., in Van-
-Couver, on Mar. | at 8 p.m.

RAY STEVENSON AT PEACE ASSEMBLY...

Wars plan), withdrawing from the NATO
and NORAD military alliances, and “estab-
lishment of friendly relations with all coun-
tries.”

The assembly also praised the upcoming
Geneva arms talks between U.S. Secretary
of State George Shultz and Soviet Foreign
Minister Andrei Gromyko, urging the U.S.
to strike a bilateral freeze a nuclear arms
agreement with the USSR and match the
Soviet Union’s no-first use pledge.

Delegates also criticized the U.S.’ “long
history of political interference in the
governments of Central America.” They
voted to tell Ottawa to “demand that the
U.S. cease both overt and covert war action

onand in Nicaragua,” and “‘stateformallya -

position of support of independence and
sovereignty for Nicaragua.”

In his address Stevenson laid the blame
for the arms race directly at the U.S. mil-
itary, stating> “The American government,
the Pentagone, since at least 1949, has hada
policy and a program for war against the
Soviet Union.”

The peace congress activist based his
comments on a 1979 book, Operation
Dropshot: The American Plan for World War
II Against Russia in 1957, edited by
Anthony K. Brown.

A key passage reads: “In collaboration
with our allies, our overall strategic concept
is to impose allied war objectives upon the
USSR, by destroying the Soviet will and
capacity to exist, by conducting a strategic
offensive in Western Eurasia, and a stra-
tegic defensive in the Far East.”

Reading from Dropshot, Stevenson
quoted the military heads as aiming “to
secure and control essential strategic areas,
bases and lines of communication, to wage
psychological, economic and underground
warfare, while exerting unremitting pres-
sure upon the Soviet citadel, utilizing all
means to force the maximum attrition of
Soviet war resources; subsequently, to
launch co-ordinated offensive operations of
all arms against the USSR, as required.”

“This information should be the prop-

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1957 plan key to U.S. foreign policy.

erty of every Canadian. It should be the
property of every person in the world who is
concerned about incineration and a world
in which there will even be no children left to
tell what happened,” Stevenson declared.

Turning to the international arena, Stev-
enson noted the current debate in the daily
press concerning the agreement at Yalta in
1945, signed by the heads of government of
the U.S., Britain, the USSR to establish the
current borders of Europe.

“What you see in the press today is this
debate...to the effect that Yalta was an
abysmal, terrible sellout...and (that) the
borders of Europe should be redrawn.” He
advised the trade unionists in the audience
that the Solidarity movement in Poland
“was designed to overthrow a government
and begin the process of redrawing the
borders of Europe in favor of the West
German-American-British-French imperial-
ist interests.”

Such was the aim of the U.S. National
Security Council in a 1955 directive
— NSC5412-1 — which called for eco-
nomic sabotage, guerilla warfare and pro-
paganda, and “support of anti-Communist
elements in countries in the Free World,”

_ Stevenson quoted.

Those objectives are still sought today,
Stevenson warned, calling for the with-
drawal of Canada from NATO and
NORAD.

“The NATO alliance was originally con-
ceived as part of the same plans .. .the war

. plans against socialism and the Soviet
Union.”

Instead, Stevenson said, Canada should
ally itself with the countries in the Non-
Aligned Movement “who stand diametri-
cally opposed to the depradations and
horrors (of imperialism and nuclear war).”

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