4- Friday, September 13, 1985 - North Shore News Canadians guilty by association IN FRANCE, it is known as l’affaire Greenpeace and there is talk of a ‘‘Greengate’’ scandal. But the scandal goes fur- ther than the French border. There is Canadian complici- ty. And no one wants to talk about that. For the record, the first journalist to point the finger of guilt in the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior direct- ly at the French government was yours truly, writing in the North Shore News a day after the ecology ship was blasted in Auckland harbor. I mention this because the silence in the Canadian media in the wake of the at- tack was otherwise deafen- ing. It wasn’t until French newspapers like Le Monde began their series of revela- tions concerning the in- volvement of the French Secret Service that the Cana- dian wire services, newspapers and retworks said anything at all, other than reporting the bare facts. Since then we have all witnessed the spectacle of Socialist president Francois Mitterand, who assiduously courted the environmental and anti-nuclear vote during his campaign for office, turn completely inside out, becoming every bit as hawkish on the issue of French nuclear testing as his Gaullist predecessor. BLOW WHISTLE Briefly, in the wake of the bombing and the murder of a Greenpeace photographer, Mitterand looked like: he might actually blow the whistle on his own troops. Instead, he appointed a commissioner who came out with a blatant whitewash which even he had to admit was based on nothing more than the word of the top suspects involved, as though they could be expected to fink on themselves. Why should the Canadian media have been faster to get on the case of France? For the very reason that for well over a decade, the Mururoa protest story has been a tale of two countries: Canada and France. It was a Cana- dian vessel that first challenged the illegal cordon the French Navy tried to lay down around its nuclear for- tress at Mururoa. It was a SCOTCH WHISKY “White Label? John Dewar & Sons Ltd. PERTH . SCOTLAND ECOSSE ONSTILLE ET EMBOUTEILLE EX Ecosse OtSTILLED AND SOTTLED IN SCOTLAND 750ml: 40% alc./vol. Canadian skipper, David McTaggart, who was first rammed, then beaten by the French Navy. In fact, McTaggart was rammed by a minesweeper handed over to France by crunch, throwing up smokescreens to cover its unwillingness to become in- volved. lf there is a scandal—and there is—it is not just to be uncovered in France. From tries. Later, evidence surfaced that Canadian authorities had conspired with French military officials in the seizure of McTaggart’s yacht, Vega, near Mururao. strictly personal the Canadian government. In the years that followed, as the former Vancouverite plodded his lonely way through the labyrinth of the French legal system, secking redress, he was repeatedly promised assistance by Ot- tawa, as any Canadian wronged by a foreign power should automatically be given, but every single time, Ottawa backed away in the by Bob Hunter 1972 to 1975, Canada and France were in bed in a cartel arrangement to push the price of uranium up from $9.50 to $41.50 a pound. This was a deal ar- ranged by Liberal Senator Jack Austin, by the way. It is understandable in a cynical fashion that the Grits should want to. downplay any focus on nuclear reja- tions between the two coun- Moreover, there was, and still is, evidence that, despite its posturing against nuclear testing, Canada permitted French military craft to stop at Canadian bases for refuelling while hauling weapons-grade plutonium to the Pacific test site. Finally—and this is a mat- ter of public re- cord—Canadian officials admit that Canadian pluto- nium exported for use in reactors abroad finds its way in the end to the massive reprocessing plant at Cape La Hague, France, where nobody, except the French themselves, have any control over the ‘‘end-use’’ of ihe stuff. PLUTONIUM Although security is so tight that nobody has been able to breach it, over- whelming circumstantial evidence points to La Hague as a major source of the French military’s plutonium supplies. Certainly, French uranium mines in Africa do not provide anywhere near enough of the raw material from which nuclear weapons are fashioned to supply le Centre d’Experimentations Nuclaires du Pacifique at Mururoa Atoll. In other words, Canada helps provide France with the resources to build its nu- See Media Page 8 CABLE TV PREVIEW WEEK September9-15 — North Vancouver 1474 Pemberton Ave. 986-3421 “i. WEEKEND. HIGHLIGH: ETAILED, SCHEDULE SEE TVILISTINGS,. 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