British Columbia/Canada

mee

contest.

limelight.

with a serious challenge.

some prizes.

weekly has already drawn support.

Last week, we at the Tribune became the news instead of reporting it, when both broadcast and print media featured our complaint about the loss of the annual fundraising

The RCMP order that we cease holding the drive has made us a temporary item of media interest. But given the nature of the situation — the banning of a highly successful yearly event — we’d really have preferred to remain out of the

When the Attorney-General’s department decided to turn its guns on us, we knew it was no accident. The contest has been a feature of the sustaining drive almost since the paper was launched back in 1935. The suppression of it presents us

The financial drive was launched April 1, and has a target of $82,000. That’s the smallest amount we’ve asked for since 1982, but it’s the first annual drive in decades in which we haven’t been able to offer readers and supporters a chance at

But our announcement three weeks ago that the Socreds have seen fit to attempt to hamstring B.C.’s working class

$82,000: the challenge for 1988

From people we’ve never suspected would care have come donations and messages of support. We'll likely carry some of their remarks in future issues.

One person, citing the attempt to curtail our activities, sent us $150. Others have pledged various ways to assist us now that the news of our contest’s demise has reached more ears.

But in other ways, the Tribune annual press drive continues in much the same manner. ~

There are still regular fundraising events organized by our various press clubs. Individuals have used unique ways — including “baby pools” to guess the birth date, weight and gender of recent.arrivals — to raise funds.

Most of our supporters continue to raise money the basic way: by asking their friends and acquaintances to contribute to the drive that has kept our non-corporate sponsored newspaper alive for 53 years.

And, for those who will read this in time — and those who have already reserved their tickets — there’s the kick-off banquet this Saturday, April 16. Featuring George Hewison, the nominee for general secretary of the Communist Party, entertainment and fine food, its at the Maritime Labour Centre, 111 Victoria Dr. in Vancouver beginning at 6:30 p.m.

Peace movement alerted to ‘sz

By KERRY McCUAIG

Dr. Helen Caldicott was introduced to a Toronto press conference last week as the person who “thas done more to win people in the fight against nuclear war” than anyone else.

The statement is probably not an exag- geration. The Australian-born M.D. has become a household name on four conti- nents since she resigned as an instructor of pediatrics at Boston’s Harvard Medical School to work full time educating people on the nuclear danger.

She’s spent the intervening 10 years on the road “talking, eating, sleeping and dreaming nuclear war.” Looking fresh from an R and R in Australia she’s on tour again, this time to help the Canadian peace movement win a nuclear free Canada.

Caldicott and her physician husband par- ticipated in New Zealand’s successful anti- nuke campaign, and she’s confident that Canadians “can pull off a New Zealand here.”

The Peace Voter Pledge Campaign aims to have Canadians vote with peace in mind in the next federal election. Politicians will be asked to commit themselves to a nuclear- weapons free Canada, and voters will place their mark accordingly.

New Zealanders “voted in a government which would kick out the Americans and have become a leading light in the world.” Caldicott wants the same for Canada.

“This is the election to save Canada,” she stresses. “If you don’t vote right in this next election, you’ve lost your sovereignty.”

Even as it stands now, Caldicott is not sure we have much sovereignty left.

The Mulroney government’s White Paper on Defence was authored by the Pen- tagon, she says, holding up a copy. “It’s full of propaganda and cold war stuff.” A sim- ilar document was released by the Hawke government in Australia and “‘it’s the same — down to the pictures.”

White Papers are part of the price paid by USS. allies for their special status with the U.S., and Caldicott thinks the bill is too high. She was present when White House officials addressed the Canadian cabinet in 1983. “Your politicians trembled in their boots when the Americans spoke. What- ever the States says, our countries do. Why? Why are we such pathetic, grovelling, ser- vile idiots?”

There are plenty of whys in US.- Canadian relations. For example, Ameri- can nuclear-equipped and powered ships which make “courtesy” calls to Canadian

port cities aren’t allowed into the major harbours of the United States. It is consi- dered too risky to expose a highly populated area to a possible meltdown or other acci- dent. This was the issue which sparked the New Zealand campaign. “It was the hypoc- risy of the United States — and you’re being used in the same hypocritical fashion.”

Canada’s participation in NATO ties it into a nuclear first-strike strategy. Caldicott pulls no punches on this issue — “by par- ticipating in NATO you’re participating in preparing for nuclear war.”

The 300-odd defence agreements Ottawa shares with Washington draws it into the nuclear web. B-52s practice terrain flying

~ over the Canadian north. “‘The only reason

they’re doing this is to practice flying underneath the radar in the Soviet Union — now why would they want to do that if they are striking second?” she asks rhetorically.

Cruise missile testing is Canada’s most ominous connection. A first strike weapon, the cruise is small, undetectable by radar,

_ adaptable for land use or on trucks, planes,

ships or submarine. Because they are unveri- fiable, they can “end any arms control prospects.”

NORAD, with its North Warning Sys- tem is Canada’s ticket into Star Wars. Ostensibly, it’s there to pick up long-range, 1ow-flying cruise missiles coming from the Soviet Union — ”except that the Soviet Union doesn’t have long-range, low-flying cruise missiles,” Caldicott adds.

The doctor is obviously competent with her subject. She’s the founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Nobel Prize winning peace group, and was nominated for the honour herself in 1985. Best known to Canadian audiences as the star of the National Film Board documentary If You Love This Plant, she shared in the film’s fame when it became an Academy Award winner and its notoriety when it was labeled “propaganda” by the U.S. State Department. Her books, Nuclear Madness and Missile Envy, have sold in the millions of copies.

Preventing nuclear war is a very personal thing to Caldicott. She and her husband — who also abandoned a lucrative career in pediatric medicine to devote his time to peace — have travelled world-wide urging audiences from doctors to school kids to get involved in saving the planet. She excuses no one from this responsibility.

Travelling to Toronto with a group of

DR. HELEN CALDICOTT ... on cross-Canada tour which began in Victoria April 8.

arms manufacturers returning from a Washington naval show, Caldicott left them feeling “rotten about the kind of work they are doing.”

In the next breath she takes a kick at the Yuppies who “run around making money and eating gourmet food while denying their children a future.”

Then the press: ““You could save the earth ina year if you printed the truth in the same dramatic fashion you print about rapes and fires and murders.”

What the world needs, she says, is a “revolution of women ... our ethics are needed to save the planet — our nurturing and caring and passion and intuition which are not present in the male locker-room power structure.” Those who have trouble with biological determinism may feel uneasy with this view.

For Caldicott, men are at the heart of the arms race. At least those with “grey suits and grey hair and grey brains” who control the “so-called democracies”.

She’s met with world leaders and has

: strong opinions about each one of them.

Reagan — “he really doesn’t understand much at all” — which is much kinder than her written assessment of the U.S. president. In Missile Envy, she calls him a paranoid schizophrenic.

Former Prime Minister Trudeau is a “lovely guy, so intelligent” — although he “really didn’t understand or appreciate the properties of cruise missiles.”

Mulroney is a “Reagan clone.”

Her kindest words are reserved for Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev who is “behay- ing like Jesus Christ. He keeps walking the extra mile. He is making the initiatives and they are very intelligent. He’s not just talk- ing arms control but nuclear disarmament. He’s giving the world a vision of a place without nuclear weapons.”

This is a giant step forward from past Soviet administrations which she character- ized as “rigid” and “unimaginative”.

But despite Gorbachev’s vision, not enough progress has been made. “The for- ces of evil are winning the propaganda war,” she warns. The INF agreement elimi- nated only three per cent of the world’s weapons. The proposed 50 per cent cut in strategic arms “sounds terrific” but count- ing warheads is swiftly becoming an obso- lete form of arms control as technology outstrips numbers.

With the buttons computerized, zones of tensions in the Mideast or in Europe, mil- itary exercises in the Pacific, or cat and mouse games under the Arctic ice caps could spark an accidental nuclear holo- caust.

“We're on the brink, and you in Canada have a big job here,” she emphasizes. ““Can- adians are a sensible people, with a sense of humour, with a sense of courage and sover- eignty. I think in the upcoming election that they will vote in a government which represents a nuclear free Canada.”

eo Pacific Tribune, April 13, 1988 « 3