A QUARTET of images jos- tle for space in this stick of type today. China. Freedom. Remembrance Day. Doug Collins. Let us join the dots. Starting with the freshest news: You’ll have noticed that Prime Minister Jean Chretien — and a , cast of hundreds, including nine premiers and a writeoff of business- men (is there a better collective term for them?) — have been ped- _ dling Canada to China like a vacu- um Cleaner. _The big sale was a couple of CANDU nuclear reactors, a $3 bil- lion-plus deal badly needed by a country that has avery negative ‘ trade balance with Chisia. . . Whatever the Chinese calendar calls it, this is the Year of Marco _ Polo. All roads lead to Beijing. Recession-starved Westerners are in a feeding frenzy to do busi- ness with the Chinese. China is the : hot number in world business, Its - economic growth this year is’ ‘_ expected to be more than 11%, about three times Canada’s. The Chinese government is receiving the eager | barbarian huck- sters with the serenity of a nation that has never relinquished its self- “ image as the Middle Kingdom, cen- tre of the world. A state dinner in the Great Hall — even though one diner summed it up as good service, poor food — is the flavor of the year in economic chic. Am] the only Canadian squirm- Ch, q Weal WEA TAAL AN ERE ELI EM II IT ALLOA BH, MAPLE PSNI ETD EA PONT Fe IVES LL OIIIA ALTE LAY UPS PD DRL SAA NN LM AAT LEE 2d EL TO RARE TE RIMOR LETRA NOTE ATE FERTILE GARDEN OF BIASES ing about this? China is Communist. It is the only remaining Communist country of any size — an immense size — on earth. It still has its apologists. Its easing of direct state contro] over “free enterprise” is both rela- tive and ominous. Would world peace be well served by a prosper- ous Communist dictatorship? . Five years after the Tiananmen Square massacre, information about its death toll and extent are sup- pressed as ruthlessly by the govern- ment as the pro-democracy protest- ers themselves were. Canada — and, quintessentially, Chretien him- self — have been more than a tittle slippery adout this. raw s Wiese cired O FORGET war is to concede it retroactive victory. Thus the impor- tance of remembrance, A day set aside for the contemplation of man’s worst — war and destruction, the sub- jugation of the weak by the bullying strong — is also a contemplation of man’s best — a chronicle of human bravery and self-sacrifice in the face of monumental horror. Remembrance Day in Canada commemo- rates the armistice that ended the First World War in 1918. ‘The war cost Canada over 60,000 lives. Those lives and the lives of all who fought in the First World War are the original sub- jects of Remembrance Day ceremonies. They have been joined by many more. Blood let in the Second World War — for Canada over 42,000 lives ~~ and the blood fet in every war since has been added to the blood let in the First World War. Remembrance, then, has not stanched the flow of human blood spilled in battle. Its value resides in conserving the mis- takes of the past so that the horrors of war do not become an unreal abstraction to those who have had the good fortune to have lived without it. o Remembrance then for those who sacri- ficed all. But Remembrance aiso so that we don’t forget how easily war is spawned and how effortlessly it consumes lives and resources. Remembrance for the monumental stupid- ity of mass human conflict so that it cannot - so easily take place again. Remembrance that if there is another worldwide conflict it will likely be the final conflict for all of mankind. Which is some- thing we can’t afford to forget. _ Asked some time ago to explain why Canada trumpeted human rights over the then-white South African government but muted the rights issue regarding China, Chretien replied with amazing can- dor. It came down to: South Africa is small. China is big. Canada’s stretchable — and col- lapsible — principles have never been exposed so nakedly to the winds. All this kowtowing to the heirs of Mao Tse-tung —— mass murderer, big bungler, and, as reports of his sexual appetite have established, Big Swordsman —- is contemptible. And it evokes memories of the ’ way American businessmen cheer- fully sold scrap metal to Japan in the 1930s, which beat it into the arms used to kill American boys in ‘the 1940s. Hong Kong previews a nasty future. As the Financial Post recently reported, Communist China’s state news agency, Xinhau (New China News Agency), is already leaning mightily on the Hong Kong media. Xi Yang, a Hong Kong reporter arrested in China, is doing 12 years for revealing state “secrets.” The “secrets”? Xi reported a change in China’s interest rates three days before the mandarins’ official announcement. The reds have also kicked around businessman Jimmy Lai for a critical editorial in his magazine, Next, on Chinese Premier Li Peng. These scare tactics are entrench- ing media self-censorship. Example: Zillionaire media mag- nate Rupert Murdoch lifted the BBC News Service from his satel- lite TV service in Hong Kong after China complained of its “negative” coverage and particularly its biog of Mao and his above-mentioned womanizing. These are the thugs that the West, including that big and splashy Canadian delegation, is on its knees to do business with. Food for thought on this Remembrance Day, when we reflect on those who died for home- ly freedoms. Which brings me to the fourth dot: Doug Collins. I cringe at making a show of my commitment to liberty blah blah. But the case against Doug under the reprehensible new law framed by the more zealous mini-Maoists in Victoria is extremely important for. free expression. The new politically correct fasvists are drooling for a conviction as spearhead for their various pet guillotinings of thought and word. As noted here recently, I’m not with Doug at all in his insensitive views of the Holocaust. But I join what I hope will be many others — including, significantly, the B.C. Press Council — in warmly back- ing his right to be wrong, or right, or simp!y provocative, informative, readable, idiosyncratic, and highly professional. As every one of Doug’s colunins strikes me. miceidisan Unworthy thoughts Dear Editor: If you were to stop the Sunshine Girl appearing in your pages, it would take away my libido and make me an “honest” man with whom all women could feel safe. I fear | may not be “politically correct” in thinking this but some- times one has to admit to unworthy thoughts. I also have to admit that I am in danger of “bad” thoughts every time I stop at a magazine stand . and look at the multitude of women’s magazines with women appearing on their cover pages — sometimes women who are less than properly covered, often with their ankles on “show.” Woe is me! Such temptations! Oh, what a list I could make to keep me out of trouble! However I must admit that the thoughts of evil that the Sunshine Girl arouse in me are fewer than the thoughts of irritation I feel when I consider that there are actually people out there among your readers who want to take away my opportunity to feel even a small pleasure in looking at someone who is smiling with sunshine on the world. Better that I think, than having to be assailed by all kinds of rogues, villains, and misfits who are less worthy of my attention and yet who grab all the headlines in newspapers. Garth A. 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