AN’ THEN AFTER THE MENTAL ABUSE, THE BEATINGS STARTED. WANNA SEE THE BAVISES?... farketplace TAND BY for more unnecessary gov- ernment regulation courtesy of the socialist hordes in Victoria. The NDP government is a chronic meddler in the marketplace, and for good reason: more meddling means more government, which means more government workers, which means more voters for government, the provider of worker security forever. ‘The latest: meddiing meve is the recent ill-. "advised introduction of rent “protection” leg- __-istation.. Housing, Recreation and Consumer Services Minster Joan Smallwood has been _ quoted as saying the legislation is aimed _Specifically at rent gougers and is “consumer protection” not rent controls. ’.. But regerdiess' of which words are used to " describe the legislation it represents the : application of more government regulation ieddiers in a free marketplace that i is working just fine without government intervention. If rent gouging were rampant in British Columbia then perhaps serious controls should be considered, but the NDP govern- ment has provided no fi igures showing that to be the case. The Rental Housing Council of B.C., on the other hand, estimates: that of the 460,000 rental units around the: province, perhaps ‘ two dozen have been subjected to flagrant rent gouging. ? In the long run, controlling rents works to the detriment of renters by scaring off invest- ment in rental housing | development, thereby driving up the price of the available rental housing stock. ; But with the NDP, iegislation that sounds like the nice thing to do usually takes pricrity over legislation that is the right thing to do. ‘LETTER OF THE DAY Farm animals deserve a break today Dear Editer: How ironic that the May 27 News. featured “Dog bylaw beefed p” asking for Fido to buckle.up for safety and other requirements to ensure humane treatment of dogs and other animals. I applaud these moves to show our evolution to treating our fellow creatures with respect and consider- ation, But Jane Johnson’s letter “Animals badly abused” in the same issue outlines the obscencly inhumane treatment of our feed ani- ‘mals, sparked by Bob Huntcr’s Publisher Managing Editor Associate Editor.. Sales & Marketing Director Comptroller Peter Speck Timothy Renshaw recent excellent columns on why we should consider not eating ani- mals. On the one hand, we’re bending over backwards to accommodate our. pets, while we turn a blind eye to other animals who regularly appear as our dinner or lunch. They are given sanitized names Like steak, chops, drumsticks and cutlets to draw our attention away from their miserable lives and ultimate gory demise at the brutal hands of man in the slaughter house. All animals “deserve a break Display Advertising 980-0511 Real Estate Advertising 985-6982 Classified Advertising 986-6222 Fax Newsroom 985-2131 North Shore News, founded in 1969 as an Distribution Subscriptions Administration today,” by our not running down to McDonald’s or wherever for our daily fix of dead animal flesh. This would improve our chances of avoiding heart attacks, many types of cancer, diabetes, osteo- porosis, kidney disease, and an escalating health care bill. At the same time, we would be helping conserve water, topsoil, energy, tropical rainforests, and avoid global warming and the expansion of the ozone hole. Victoria Hogan North Vancouver 966-1337 986-1337 985-3227 985-2131 a SREY : independent suburban newspaper and qualified under Schedule 111, Paragraph 111 of the Excise Tax Act, is published each Wednesday, Friday and - Sunday by North Shore Free Press Ltd. and distributed to every door on the North Shore. Canada Post Canadian Publications Mail Sales Product Agreement No. 0087238. Mailing rates available on request. Submissions are welcome but we cannot accept responsibility for unsolicited material inctuding manuscripts and pictures which should be accompanied by a stamped, addressed envelope. V7M 2H4 1 139 Lonsdale Avenue Norih Vancouver B.C. Gu S ' SOA aint 61,582 (average circulation, Wednesday, Friday & Sunday) North Shore Managed Entire contents © 1994 North Shore Free Press Ltd. All rights reserved. DAMN. I was girding my loins to blast governments, the media and everyone under 50 for sloughing off the D-Day commemoration. And they tricked me, blast them, by paying attention beyond my best hopes. I’ve been forced to ungird my loins. The newspapers have run whole series on the D-Day landings. In France, Prime Minister Jean Chretien will join the heads of state of the wartime Allied powers to mark this 50th anniversary — the Jast big one, alas, that will be attended by most veterans of that vast undertaking, The B.C. govern- ment is planning no public cere- monies but that’s not a great sur- prise. Our own West Vancouver coun- cil has something in the works, | suspect. And I am honored — even seedy journalists sometimes feel a” sense of honor — to have been invited to a D-Day ‘reception next Monday at HMCS Discovery given by Maryse Berniau, Brian Austin and Michael Gallagher, respective- ly the consuls general in Vancouver , ¢6 Who knows? It was a near, near thing —a war that might have been lost, that in early days looked as if it were lost. 99 of France, Britain and the United States. With the torrent of retrospec- tives on the landings that morning of June 6, 1944, I don’t need to pot an account of the bloody and deci- sive events as such. What remains fascinating is the might-have-been. It’s well known that Joseph Stalin was furious that the Western Allies hadn’t invaded earlier — if not in 1942, then in 1943. What if they had? What if they’d failed?. What if they’d waited even longer and meanwhile the Soviet Union had sued for peace — with what had been, when the war began, its ally, Nazi Germany? William Thorsell in the Globe and Mail has mildly rained on the commemorative parade by assert- ing that the war’s biggest opera- tions took place on the eastern not the western front. Fair enough. But the Soviets got a huge amount of matériel from their allies, plus the pressures of Allied bombing of Germany and of pinning down German divisions in western Europe, the invasion of Italy, and so forth. All the Allics played a role. Had any of the major players stayed out or dropped out, or collectively been beaten ... well, what if? This has proven fertile ground for the imagi- nation, in fiction and film. Such projections have pictured a very different Europe, a very different world, in the last half-century. Winston Churchill, far from Lautens GARDEN OF BIASES being a hero, would have sunk into ignominy — his wartime cabinet dissolved, ‘a leader more acceptable to Germany raised. More lurid speculations: a pro- fascist government in Britain; Churchill tried as a war criminal. The governments of the humbied- if-not-beaten United States, too, ° and all the Allied nations, would have swung sharply toward fas- . ’cism. It is a terrifying thought that the racist persecution of Jews and oth- ers might have crept like slime from a Hitler-dominated Europe as the deniocratic leaders world-wide were replaced in keeping with “the new realities.”. The Holocaust exported? —. "In the most bizarre fi ctional : pro- = jections — of a Britain defeated by - Hitler and the installation of an. indigenous puppet government — , the British are depicted as accept- “ing fascism with their mustn’t- grumble stolidity,, as some Frenchmen had under the Nazi- backed Vichy government. ; Who knows? It was a near, near. thing — a war that might have been - lost, that in early days looked as if it were lost. I, then’a boy in safe central Canada, remember. - ~ Another fascinating phenome- non is today’s nay-sayers. . . For instance, Richard Gott in the _ Manchester Guardian Weekly © recently declared — unbelievably — that it was “a matter-of-fact kind of war ... a war tacitly supported by the entire (British) nation, yet it did not arouse national passions.”. That is historical claptrap. More cogent- ly, but not originally, Gott argues that the war precipitated Britain’s decline as a great power — that “D- Day may well seem to future histo- rians like a Victory that we turned into defeat.” There’s no need to wait for such, historians. There’s already a major iconoclast among them: John Charmiey, author of a 1989 book whose title pretty well reveals its thesis. It’s called Chamberlain and the Lost Peace. Charmley argues that Chamberlain, correctly, “saw no gains for Britain in another: war.” This transforms Munich into the right course. The villain of the piece is there- fore not -the discredited Chamberlain but the lionized Churchill. Who, you'll have noticed, is also being accused of |. racism in some quarters these days. : How comfortable the armchair; how clear the vision through the tear-view mirror. ©