Page 4, The Herald, Friday, November 24, 1078

TERRACE/KITIMAT

daily herald

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Red stickers not enough

The federal government has indicated that it will not offer aid to residents of designated flood plains in the -future. Skeena MLA Cyril Shelford has suggested that red stickers be placed on the titles of properties in flood plains so that potential buyers would be warned,

Shelford made his suggestion after he heard from several homeowners in a flood plain who said they were unaware thelr area was so designated. The MLA’s intention is to make sure that those who are

WEAK a vonson Baga

buying land are aware of the risks. The queation is, is

this sufficient or even equitable,

The scheme that Shelford is proposing is com- mendable in that-if there are known hazards a potential purchaser should be made aware of them, The days of “buyer beware” should be put behind us.

The problem with Shelford’s plan is that it punishes those who already own land in the areas and does nothing to deal with their concerns. There is no

uestion that properties in areas of potential flooding should be properly identified. This goes without saying.

By designating land as flood plain, there is no

vestion but that it will be devalued. By making sure

e titles of those properties are marked, whether with ared sticker or a big black X, it only makes certain that less scrupulous sellers cannot get away with palming off property without informing buyers of the problems.

Designating areas as flood plains and cutting off future aid to those residents who are unfortunate enough to live there may protect the majority of the taxpayers from future damage claims, but it does not face up to the prublem.

Any area with a history of flooding should be carefully surveyed and the risks evaluated. If dyking or other forms are economically feasible then a long- term, government (and that means all. levels of government) program for the protection of those areas should be undertaken.

If the risks are great and the costs too high, the governments should start to look into the possibilities of a long-range relocation plan.Potential flood plains could be turned over to an appropriate government authority to be redeveloped in directions compatible with the risks,

Certain types of entertainment and recreational uses as well as some industrial and commercial ventures are acceptable in areas subject to occasional vend 1 . Flood proof buildings in other areas may be a ibility.

Government subsidies could be made available or compensation awarded to make up the difference between the devalued market value and the

replacement value when a flood-plain resident relocates.

It would be expensive. It is also expensive to cover flood damage. It is costly and socially unacceptable to allow those individuals who are located in flood areas bear the entire cost of either leaving that area at a loss or staying and suffering further losses. A more long- range plan, with all three levels of government using some forethought and spending some time, energy and money to come up with a permanent solution, is the only acceptable answer,

HEDMAN

P1978 Unhrersct Prem Syndicore

‘And in recognition of your 20 years loyal service in the X-ray department...’

CULT SUICIDES .

Speaks of awesome power

NEW YORK (CP) Across the U.S., people are asking the same question? why?

Why did some 400 mem- bers of the People’s Temple line up ina jungle settlement in Guyana and, apparently for the most part docile, kill themselves with a lethal hellbroth of cyanide mixed with a soft drink?

What kind of hypnotic power did Jim Jones wield over his followers? How did he induce mothers to poison thelr children and then kill themselves, as eyewilnesses have reported?

As the grisly reports and photographs pour in from Guyana, and as U.S. Air Force planes bring home the first of the hundreds of bodies, there is shock and disbelief in the country.

Commentators are Struggling to explain the inexplicable. The suicide has been blamed on alienation in modern society and on the mobile, rootless way of life in California, home of most of the victims, Permissiveness and even a breakdown in trust and confidence stemming from the Vietnam war have been cited as causes that drove hundreds of people to subordinate everything, including their

_

WASHINGTON (AP) — “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”— Shakespeare in Henry VI, writen in 1501.

“We are over-lawyered and under-represented."-— Jimmy Carter, Maz 4, 1978.

For centuries, it seems, people have loved to hate lawyers, ‘

Nevertheless, law in the United States is a growth in- dustry, Law schools produce 30,000 new degree-holders each year. And while competition for legal work is fierce, the number of lawyers has climbed to an estimated 470,000,

REGINA (CP) — Cloning cattle to produce identical versions of highly efficient animals ip only one of several areas where the beef Industry needa to do research, C, M ‘Red’ Wil- liams of the University of Saskatchewan, sald Thur- sday,

Not only is research not being done in a wide variety of key areas, ‘'we're not even producing the researchers, let alone funding them,” Williams told the natlonal beef seminar.

He sald the beef industry, which has ‘“‘some of the strongest voices in the single biggest industry in Canada,"”

lives, to the wishes of Jones. Did he offer them an authority figure and give them a chance to abdicate responsibility?

in recent years there has been a sharp rise in the number of religious cults and communes across the U.S. They range from small, back-to-nature groups to such organizations as the Hare Krishna sect, the Reunification Church of Sun Myung Moon and the so- called Children of God, whose members can be found cadging change on the streets of many cities,

Many, like L. Ron Hub- bard’s Scientologists, claim large memberships and impressive financial) statements.

Most require adherents to follaw strict rules and to make contributions to the community.

In that, at least, the People’s Temple was similar to other groups. Jones’s followers apparently surrendered their homes and possessions to the temple. Searchers going through the Guyana townsite reported finding money, valuables and even stacks of uncashed social security cheques.

But most of the cults and communes of recent years

have attracted young people and teenagers. Those who followed Jones to Guyana included people of all ages and many walks of life, in- cluding medical personnel and other professionals.

There have been confused rumors about the sect since the news from Guyan broke last weekend.

Lawyer Mark Lane, while not a member of the temple, was a witness to the Saturday ambush that killed congressman Leo Ryan and four other persons— and which seemed to touch off the mass suicide. Lane hints darkly of “hit lists” and con- spiracies to kill public of- ficials. Lane, however, has been the high priest of conspiracy theories since publishing his book, Rush to Judgment, which scoffed at the findings on the Warren

‘Commission into the as- _ saagination of John Kennedy,

It seems that Jones sul- fered from strong parancid fears and delusions of per- secution. His own son and his lawyer say the religious leader had lost his mind.

In ordering the murder of the _— investigating congressman and his party, Jones was trying to protect his 27,000-acre agricultural settlement from outside

DO THEY HELP oe What price the lawyers

Criticism has kept pace, appearing to have reached a high this year.

Lawyers not only are doing too little to improve the quality of justice in the United States but often are guilty of thwarting justice, Carter said in a Los Angeles 5 \. “I am worried about a legal system in which ex- pensive talent on both sides produces interminable delay,” Carter said, ‘Justice should not be forced to obey the timetables of those who seek to avoid it.”

His comments were ap- plauded by some editorial writers and others and

panned by the legal establishment. The con- troversy soon faded.

Criticism from the country's top-ranking judge, Chief Justice Warren Burger, has endured, however.

While Carter seemed to be saying that lawyers should put their competence to better use, Burger questions the very existence of that competence.

Testifying before a legal services commission in London last year, Burger estimated that one-half of all U.S. trial lawyers are unqualified to - represent their clients.

| BETTER STOCK Cattlemen consider cloning

should have the research

capacity it needs, His comments echoed Elmer Menzie of the

University of Guelph, who told the seminar Wednesday no other Industry treats its market with auch contempt as doea beef in terms of research.

Williams and Harvey Trimble, a pure-breed breeder from Okotoks, Alta., both mentioned cloning.

Trimble described it as a process of embryo split- ting— separating the ceils of an embryo, putting them into & membrane in which an em*-yo graws and planting the: in a host cow,

The process, he said, could produce “identical cattle, one after another after another,”

“Completely identical in every respect. .. it’s in the early experimental stages but it's actually being ex- perimented with right now."

Trimble said later he was speaking of a Calgary animal transplant firm which was doing cloning research. Willlams noted that much work had already been done in the. areas of artificial insemination and ova transplants,

The seminar was toll caitlemen were not sur- prised by the birth of a test-

- persons,

interference, Yet when some of the intended victims escaped, he saw no choice but to destroy his “beautiful experiment” himself.

But while madness and a fanatic’s wish to pull his world down around him would explain Jones's ac- tien, how can Potent lor the apparent ness of his disciples to follow suit? There are some reports of gunfire at the scene, but only three bodies, including that of Jones, were reported to have shown gunshot wounds, There also were reports of heavy use of drugs.

The ugly conclusion remains that about 400 men, women, children, young and old, black and white, drank poi- son and died voluntarily or under the influence of drugs at the behest of a madman.

Despite the horror of the deaths and puzzle of what happened to several hundred other members of the cult who seem to have disap- peared in the jungle, other members of the sect have vowed to carry an.

At a news conference in San Francisco members of the People’s Temple said they will continue their work, the “selfless cation” Jones demonstrated,

Although only one in 10 lawyers ever sees courtroom duty, Burger's comments rankied a group of lawyers from Illinois enough to spark a proposal that the American Bar Association rebuke him.

Had the chief justice, as former ABA president William Spann charged, offered a “grossly disproportionate” estimate?

Confronting his critics at the ABA convention earlier this year, Burger said more should be done to correct in- competence no matter what its extent. His concern has since expanded to cover all lawyers, not just those who do trial work.

tube baby in England because they have been us- ing similar techniques in their imtustry for some time.

The industry also needs to

‘undertake research into

soils, Willlams said. He said soit specialists have said that, on average, 50 per cant of fertility on the Prairies has been lost in the past 75 years. He said no other area in the world faced such a situation.

He speculated that putting cattle aight be now ised for crops mi a solution to the fertility problem.

But, as in so many other areas, he said, more research {s needed.

OTTAWA OFFBEAT

BY RICHARD JACKSON

Ottawa, -- You might think= that with everything they’ve got going for them -- national leadership in pay and in- dexed pensions, automatic built-in annual salary in-

‘creases, complete protection

from dismissal, and the right to strike even against the government’s threatened legislation to tie their salary rates {o prevailing levels in business and indusiry -- federal public servants would be reasonably content. And ail those job ad- vantages so far listed just scratch the surface of the armor-plated benefits en- joyed from junior clerk to senior deputy minister. They have it so good -- so almost unbelievably rich ~ that beyond the horizon of civil service-saturated Ot- tawa-Hull, the term public servant to the taxpayer is an expletive of contempt,

: derision and even hostility

verging, in some cases like the postal workers, on hatred.

That's why the govern. ment plucked up previously zero-level courage. high enough to bring the uncivil non-service to the high court of Parliament.

The government proposes treating the public service like any other working Canadian in pay averages and perks, and has the legislation to prove its good intentions.

Response from the tax- payers out in the boonies ~ which the Oltawa federal establishment considers takes in everything beyond the National Capital in- cluding such centres of supposed sophistication as Toronto, Montreal, Van- couver -- has been en- thusiastic.

In Ottawa-Hull it has been one of ontrage, and public service union leaders are calling on the faithful to punish those presumptuous aad preposterous parliamentarians at the

polls. But with as good as they

IN THE AIR

‘ situations,

lad it —and nobody as cazy -- it still wasn't rich enough. Nat just for the scores of chisellers, frauds, fixers and other practitioners of the criminal aris who are nabbed annually by the eagle-eyed Auditor General.

But not good enough for a whole departmental agency.

And a big one it is, too, vital to the economy of the whole country.

Statistics Canada.

In recent times it has been getting into all sorts of tacky embarrassing both to its own ad- minislvation, the depart- ment which runs it, and the government that in the end must carry the can for its questionable conduct.

The fault lies with the initiative of some of its staff.

Holding down goad jobs and plush offices in “Stats Can,” these inventive souls have heen going into business for themselves.

On the side. Moonlighting. Using gavernment office space, staff and supplies for private profit.

Like:

Husbands hiring wives and wives hiring husbands, not for those run-of-the-shop jobs but for executive posts.

An executive with enough time on his hands to operate a thriving real estate business out of his office.

Another executive who “flogged” -- for a price - Supposedly confidential and economically important statistics to clients in outside business and industrial clients, giving them a jump on their competitors.

An official using his in- fluence to solicit cases for a staff medical officer who in turn runs a private practice on the side out of his own "Stats Can" office.

It’s all under = in- vestigation: by the Auditor General, the Comptroller General, the Treasury Board, and, who knows, perhaps by the criminal business section of the RCMP.

Where do

talks

WASHINGTON (CP) The ponderously slow EgyptiarrIsraeli peace talks appear to be up in the air with Cairo insisting it will agree to nothing less than a ‘comprehensive settlement and U.S. officials main- taining that both sides will be back at the table soon.

In the latest US. manoeuvre, President Carter telephoned Egyptian President Anwar Sadat seeking assurances that Egypt is not suspending the talks, An American spokesman sald Carter got that assurance but Cairo

- dispatches appeared less

certain. Egypt still insists that a peace pact with Israel be linked with settlement of Palestinian issues,

Some observers suggested a major obstacle to signing a treaty had been overcome with the Israeli govern- ment's decision to link the proposed peace treaty to negotiations for a setilement on the West Bank and Gaza strip.

Israel in effect agreed to open lalks on the fate of the West Bank-Gaza . Palestinians a8 soon as the treaty was signed with Egypt. But while this was a major concession from Israel, it still rejected Egypt's call for a timetable for autonomy.

Within hours, Egypt had announced it was recalling its top negotiator to Cairo. This lithhour hitch seemed to put the negotiating process for a bilateral treaty in limbo.

Egypt is demanding the peace trealy include or have attached a timetable for implementing a formula for Palestinian self-rule that was worked out at Camp David, the presidential retreat near Washington, Last September.

But the Israelis again this week overwhelmingly rejected inclusion of any timetable, The two sides have agreed the Palestinians are to have self-government in the occupied West Bank and Gaza after a five-year transition period, but it is not specified when the elections marking thestart of that five years are to be held or who can stand as candidates.

Epyopt and Israel still have

stand?

until about Dec. 17 to meet the three-month deadline for a treaty set at the Camp David summit. .

State department sources, though concerned, said they were not completely sur-

‘prised by the Egyptian tactic

of recalling its top negotiator. Sadat had said last week it might be nec- essary to break off the talks to let the Israelis reconsider their position.

The Egyptians may algo be trying toshow they are not in such a hurry for peace that they will retreat from their position on the Palestinian

ue,

Sources here say work on the treaty is all but con- cluded, with most of the major Issues between Egypt and Israel already settled...

Even Sadat, who started the whole process with his journey to Jerusalem last year, has said that after the Palestinian question, “the remaining obstacles to a treaty are of no significance and could be surmounted easily,”

But Sadat has also called the Palestinian impasse “a crisis” and said his peace initlative is at “a turning poin mad

State department concern had centred on whether Egypt and Israel would be able to get back to the table themselves, or whether another American push was needed. Carter's telephone call may have been the impetus: needed to get assurances of good faith from both sides.

The United States has already made one com- promise proposal on the Palestinian timetable issue.- The compromise was con- tained in a draft letter the two countries ere to sign to. accompany the treaty, but Israel objected to it. 9

Now, observers say, the current dispute may yet be settled by having Israel give 4 separate understanding to Carler on the timetable proposal that Carter could then formally convey to Sadat ina U.S. commitment to Egypt.