Basic HTML Version
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JUNE 24, 1986
PAGE 11
@ illion in goods, services and resources last year.
Andrew Malcolm,
uthor of the book, THE CANADIANS, states that trade between the two North
American powers represents an •economic relationship so massive that
..
either government can even monitor it fully, let alone control it.• As
one observer put it, Canada and the U.S. are like •siamese twins who
cannot separate and live.•
The bilateral exchanges are so large that the amount traded between the
u.s.
and just one Canadian province, Ontario, is larger than all the trade
between the U.S. and Japan, America's second largest trading partner.
Significantly, the U.S. trade deficit with Canada is second only to the
export-import gap with Japan, adding fuel to protectionist fervor in
Washington.
The row along the 49th parallel is symptomatic of the larger deteriorating
world trade picture involving the U.S., the Common Market and the
economies of the Pacific Basin.
But it has one signif!cant and very
inous, long-range regional implication.
Canada and the U.S. are not
ly each other's major trade partner, but they exist in a symbiotic
fense arrangement as well. Canada's depth of territory stretching into
e Arctic is essential to the entirety of North American defense. In it
is positioned much of the continent's jointly managed air and missile
defense network. In effect, Canada is America's northern buffer zone, its
first line of continental defense. In turn, Canada, with only a tenth of
the population of the USA, depends upon American military power to defend
its territory. Should a trade •tiff• ever escalate to a rupture of this
interrelated defense network•••well, I think we can all see the
implications of that.
�ial Report: south Africa• s Emergency The South African government's
( �iementation of an emergency decree has so far worked--internally. The
various black township· areas, which would certainly have witnessed large
scale political demonstrations on June 16 (10th anniversary of 1976 Soweto
riots), have been largely becalmed. But the emergency action has further
infuriated political opponents at home and around the world.
The government, all sides admit, has used but a fraction of the power at
its command to control unrest. But President Pieter Botha has been boxed
into a corner. The government has all but lost political control of the
townships.
Local black politicians and law-enforcement personnel have
been silenced, either killed or driven from office. In area after area,
control is exercised by radicalized youths of the United Democratic Front
(UOF), which increasingly acts as the agent of the outlawed, Communist-
backed African National Congress (ANC). These youngsters rule by means of
their own revolutionary committees and •people's courts.•
Those who
oppose their instant justice are burned alive via the •necklace•
procedure--gasoline-soaked tires placed around the •informant's• head and
� set ablaze. This bestial process has led to some gallows humor--that UOF
w�really stands for •uniroyal, Dunlop and Firestone.•
Still, Winnie
/ Mandela, wife of the imprisoned ANC figurehead leader Nelson Mandela,
claims that blacks will achieve liberation •through our boxes of matches,
with our necklaces.•
It was precisely because the radical youths were intimidating the
sprawling •crossroads• squatter camps near Cape Town that older residents,