Editorial

Ottawa's war games

If there was any suggestion in the Tory government’s cancellation of the nuclear submarine program that it was preparing to chart a different course in defence policy, that suggestion was totally dispelled by the decision by govern- ment Wednesday.

Defence Minister Bill McKnight’s June 14 announcement that Canada will grant the U.S. request to conduct low level bombing test runs over the Canadian Northwest will accelerate the militarization of Canada’s North. And it will

increase the integration of this country with the U.S. military — an integration .

which Canadians, in their thousands, have stated that they reject.

In its request, now granted by Ottawa, the U.S. proposes to send as many as 25 bombers at a time along two tracks, each of them some 1,300 kilometres long, crossing the Northwest Territories, B.C:, Alberta and Saskatchewan. There are also test flights proposed for northern Ontario.

The test runs will involve huge B-1, B-52 and F-111 bombers flying as low as 100 metres over the ground. As part of the exercise, fighter jets, as many as 15 of them at a time, will be sent from Canadian bases to intercept the bombers to test their interception capability.

The first test has already been set for September, with further tests planned for November and March. Four tests a year are proposed.

Ethel Blondin, a Slavey Indian and Liberal MP for the Western Arctic, called

the plan the “part of the increased militarization of the North. “These are war games,” she said. ““The North is becoming a military play-

ground.”

For the Pentagon and for the Canadian military, the exercises are intended to test military capabilities over territory that is similar to that in the Soviet Union. As far as they are concerned, they will be flying over uninhabited territory.

But for the people of the North, the test flights bring the same dangers and potential devastation that have provoked the Innu in Labrador into civil disobedience to defend their land against NATO low level flights.

For all Canadians, the bomber flights represent a dangerous escalation of the arms race — an effort to pull Canada further still into the war-fighting scena- _rios of Norad and to turn our north into a vast weapons test range for the U.S.

military.

Ottawa should be inundated with protests demanding that McKnight with- draw Canada’s permission for the U.S. to conduct its bombing runs.

As the country-wide campaign against the nuclear subs demonstrated, Can- adians have increasingly demanded an independent defence policy. They have rejected further U.S. weapons testing and pressed for the establishment of

nuclear weapons free zones.

It’s time that the Tories began listening to Canadians, not to Washington.

Look, UP AM THE SYS!

byes, CE SOR” fe 4

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MUMS 79'S: BPD

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Sean Griffin "ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Dan Keeton

BUSINESS & CIRCULATION MANAGER Mike Proniuk GRAPHICS

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ead the business papers any day and

the story’s the same, the effect all the more numbing for being repeated so many times: the North American economy, led by the U.S., is buoyant and dynamic, driven by the new entrepreneurship of the 1980s. High tech discoveries are putting new products on the market, opening new opportunities for the huge retail sales industry to put its vast marketing skills to work.

There’s more here than just the eupho- ria of the boardroom, of course — there's also a not-so-subtle message that 1980s- style capitalism is the way of the future. The private sector will be the engine of change as we drive forward into the next century, we’re told.

What’s left out of that corporate limou- sine of prosperity is social justice — there just isn’t room for it, not even in the trunk. And the engine of free enterprise leaves a lot of destruction in its exhaust wake, including marginalized workers, homeless people, increased crime, child abuse and a drug epidemic. Worse, it is increasingly cash-strapped local governments that are left to deal with it.

Nowhere was that more graphically illustrated than in the recent budget adopted by the city that is the citadel of North American free enterprise, New

York. There, mega-mogul Donald Trump ©

makes multi-billion dollar deals in the glass palaces of Manhattan while the city government — albeit in typical right wing

People and Issues

- fashion — deals with the results.

In the new city budget, outlined by Mayor Ed Koch on May 18, there are four main areas where jobs are being elimi- nated: the parks department will lose 133 maintenance workers; the sanitation department will lose 405; there will be 234 civilian positions cut from the police force; and the housing preservation department will lose 75 workers.

In their place, Koch proposes to add hundreds of other positions — but all of them are in police, jails and other enforcement agencies.

The police department will add 1,668 new cops while 2,038 new officers will be added to the staff of jails and prisons. On the transit authority — policing the not- orious subway — 538 new officers are to be added while 1,390 new workers are to be hired in child welfare, mainly to moni- tor complaints of child abuse.

To bring the old saying into the 1980s: the rich get richer and the poor get more police.

* * *

A item that caught our eye recently reminded us of a previous time actor Sylvester Stallone, who reaps millions of

dollars for simulating the bashing of commies and engaging in other types of mayhem, was involved in a film that did an end-run around union scale wages.

It was a few years back, and Stallone was in Vancouver filming Rocky IV. That’s the one where Rocky, to the accompaniment of an album’s worth of soundtrack and a minimal script, goes over to the USSR to teach those Reds a thing or two about American two- fistedness. The final fight scene was filmed in the Pacific National Exhibition’s Agro- dome, and the ‘“‘audience” consisted of volunteer extras — Vancouverites play- ing Russians, in effect.

The true insult was that the film makers, in an effort to get “downtrodden”’ types, asked the Downtown Eastside Residents

_ Association to provide the film fodder

from its membership — for the price of a box lunch per person. DERA, noting the irony inherent in using capitalism’s cast- offs for a film plugging its alleged virtues — for no wage — declined. Well, Rocky’s at it again. This time it’s an as-yet unnamed action drama filmed in New Jersey prisons. In this case, real pri- soners are getting paid $3.75 an hour. That’s the state’s minimum wage, but it’s a

far cry from the wage paid to professional movie extras, noted Jerome Blackwell of the U.S. Screen Extras Guild.

When we last heard of Rocky, he was bashing Russian boxers. When we last heard from Rambo, Stallone’s’ other screen character, he was shooting up Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan in a film that was — happily — a box-office flop.

The scab wages paid on Stallone’s future effort is enough reason to boycott his films, if the ideological content of most of them weren’t enough of a reason.

* * *

t’s always a honour to get recognition

for years of service to one’s union, and that honour was accorded to Grace Tick- son of Nanaimo recently. Grace received an honourary life membership in the B.C. Government Employees Union for which she devoted so many extra hours over more than two decades. It is the union’s highest honour.

Grace became a union member in 1963, being an employee in the motor vehicle department in the Vancouver Island city. She served as chairperson of Local 1202 for two years, was a union shop steward for six years, and was a frequent delegate to Canadian Labour Congress and B.C. Federation of Labour conventions. She retired in 1987.

Grace was one of six former members awarded the honourary membership at the BCGEU’s convention June 10-11.

4 Pacific Tribune, June 19, 1989