4 - Wednesday, February 13, 1991 - Nerth Shore News The facts on this Nintendo, Robocop war NEVER MIND all the waving of Maple Leafs and the ty- ing of yellow ribbons or the attempts by Brian Mulroney and Joe Clark to talk in the deepest baritones humanly possibile. Let us just look at the facts of the brutal, unnec- essary Nintendo Mutant Robocop war that Canada has jumped into. We are spending $3 million a day to send our CF-18s out over Iraq to protect American B-52s that aren’t being challenged by anyone because the Iraqi air force has either fled to Iran or is hiding in holes in the sand. Our fighter jets are so under- employed that they had to go looking for a sitting-duck patrol boat in the Persian Gulf last week in order to get a chance to fire the wrong kind of missile. The missile in question, an air- to-air Sparrow, missed. There went $250,000 worth of Canadian taxpayers’ money to the bottom of a rapidly-dying sea. Even the Canadian base com- mander in the Gulf, Remeo Lalonde, has recommended we stop this crazy, expensive kind of tivity, but he was overruled by the brass in Ottawa. Who is going to pay for this lunacy? In the wake of the GST, not even Mad Mulroney will dare to raise taxes to pay for the war game. So guess where the money will come from? Of course it will come out of existing foreign aid programs, our concept of helping the less fortu- nate having been warped to mean assisting in carpet bombing rather than the more traditional role of helping to build wells and irriga- tion dams. These cuts in foreign aid will be coming at a time when the Third World is all but crushed under the burden of extra expenses brought on by the war. While the spoiled young Kuwaitis whose freedom i: obstensibly being fought for in the Gulf spend their nights at discos in five-star luxury hotels in Cairo, the food-supply network in Sudan has collapsed because most foreign agencies have recalled their relief workers as a result of rising political tensions due to the conflict. Having lost their access to low-cost Kuwaiti oil, countries like Zambia have to turn to world spot-market supplies, which has ruined their balance of payments situation, forcing them to in- troduce rationing. Zimbabwe's economic growth has likewise been kneecapped, while the flight of some two mil- tion foreign workers from Iraq has. resulted in the loss of $3 billion in desperately-needed remittance payments going to Egypt, Bangladesh, Jordan, the Philippines, Turkey and India. Already devastated by falling prices for their exports, high in- terest rates, frozen credits and mounting debts, Third World countries everywhere have had to slash vital services to the poorest of the poor. The increases in oil prices at the start of the Gulf crisis is expected to cost them an additional $30 billion, which means that many such countries are facing econom- ic collapse. Nor is the threat to economic well-being limited to distant parts of the slobe. U.S. Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan has acknowledged thac if the Gull war goes on beyond the middle of April, the United States could be Bob Hunter STRICTLY PERSONAL facing a long, deep recession. Already weakened by the big- gest federal deficit in their history, the Americans are going to have to absorb a minimum additional $35 billion in their 1991 military budget — and that’s not counting the incredible non-military bills yet to come in from President George Bush’s efforts to buy no- litical support in Israel, Es +. an elsewhere. (The Israelis alone demanded a $13-billion bribe as the price of their ‘trestraint.’") The impact of a deepening American recession on a tremu- lous Canad’an economy, already staggering under massive job losses, burgeoning welfare loads and bankruptcies, wouid be awful. Keep in mind that the mere act of imposing sanctions on Iraq cost Canada an estimated $646 million in lost revenue. And that was before the shooting started. The bottom-line ballpark figure offered by military planners as the price of our involvement in the Gulf is $90 million a month, but when was the last time a cost estimate out of Ottawa turned out to be remotely accurate, let alone under budset? Perhaps there is ao aspect of the war where hypocrisy coagu- lates more thickly than when Brian the Barbarian’s speechwriters and psychological operators try to distance themselves from their actual role as Pentagon lapdogs by running up the United Nations flag and having the Prime Minister salute until his elbow creaks. The truth of the matter is that the war suits America’s strategic interests, and that is the reason it is happening. If the flight was really about ending oppression by 3 brutal in- vader, the UN would also be at- tacking the Indonesian army for its pitiless occupation of East Timor, where probably a quarter ofa million people have been massacred Since 1975, and soldiers in blue berets would be trying to drive the Indian occupation army out of Kashmir, where 5.000 peo- ple were killed last year, many of them burned alive. The righteousness Mulroney in- tlates himself with when it comes to Kuwait is so selective it is enough to make one weep — al- though throwing up is a perfectiy salid response too. A TE EES EOS EE * VANCOUVER. The pattern tha I gyeryone. Our entire. tequiar: . : stock. Sale Bu e| NEW NEMBERS BENEFIT! SEWING CLUB MEMBER HOT LINE PHONE NO. FOR CURRENT SPECIALS 299-8784 * NORTH-VAN : welcome to our new tocation: 1420 Marine Drive in North Vancouver. Now is a great time to see the complete line of General Electric appliances. We also offer parts & service at the new store!