(featured inside)
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CHINA EYES $ 7 BILLION WHEAT DEAL
( THE WEATHER )
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Wednesday. January 10, 1979 Vol. 23; No. 7 Prince George, British Columbia
City has right to sue for libel
Citizen News Services
In a precedent-setting decision, the B.C. Appeal Court has ruled that Prince George has the legal right to sue British Columbia Television for libel.
The decision, announced Tuesday, upholds a decision last year by the B.C. Supreme Court.
The case can now proceed to trial.
The B.C. Appeals Court is B.C. TV’s last court of resort unless it can get court permission to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.
In making the decision, Mr. Justice J. A. Aikins said there are no Canadian cases in point. Cases which set a precedent were heard in British courts.
The city is suing the television broadcasting company for libel as a result of a series of news stories in April and May, 1977 outlining land dealings in Blackburn and other areas of the city.
The series outlined what the television company called irregularities in planning of sewer lines and the sales of development land as a result.
Former Mayor Harold Mof-
fat also sued the television company over the series. Moffat’s action is in the process of being dealt with, hut is not yet at the court stage.
Stuart Wood, owner of land in Blackburn is also suing BCTV.
BCTV argued that the city could not be libelled in point of law.
The city is being represented by Vancouver lawyer Doug Brown, who took the case from Allan McEachern now a judge.
Under B.C. law, statements broadcast on radio or television are considered the same as those printed in newspapers and thus are treated as libel, rather than slander.
Mr. Justice Aikins ruled that a municipality is a corporation and has a statutory right to sue.
He said that a municipality may have a reputation apart from that of its elected representatives, and if a municipality were not allowed to sue it would be a helpless victim of anyone who chooses to publish untrue imputations which injure its reputation.
No date has been set for the libel action.
Job offered •
The second FLQ terrorist suspect to return to Quebec has been offered a job as a research assistant to another. Page 9.
Goodbye, number 4
There was much emotion in Boston Tuesday night, as Bobby Orr’s number was retired, Page 13.
Together again *
The Oregon woman who charged her husband with raping her has found happiness. She’s reunited with her husband. Page 5.
Index
Business............ ..................8 Family.................... ....32,33
City, B.C............ ..2, 3, 10, 29 Horoscopes............ ..........30
Classified.......... ..........16-21 International......... ............S
Comics............... ................22 Morberg column.. ..........10
National................. ............9
Editorial............ ..................4 Rolling Stone........ __________12
Entertainment. ..........22. 23 Sports...................... .....13-15
The forecast for tonight calls for cloudy skies with snow. Thursday should be cloudy with occasional snow flurries. Both days should have warmer temperatures.
The expected high tonight is -23, the low -25. Thursday’s forecast high is -18. The high Tuesday was -25, the low -36 with a trace of snowfall. On this date last year the high was -11, the low -11.
More details page 2.
• We can't get confirmation about any Games here in 1981. But there is no doubt that for this year someone has awarded Prince George WINTER.
$100m pledge for Rupert port
GALLUP POLL
Tories' lead reduced
TORONTO (CP) - The federal Progressive Conservatives’ lead over the Liberals has dropped to two percentage points from 10, a Gallup poll shows.
The poll, released today, shows the Conservatives with 40 per cent of the decided vote, down five percentage points from the poll in the previous month.
The Liberals have 38 per cent, up three points, and the New Democratic Party remains at 18 per cent. Other parties were chosen by the rest of the decided voters.
The undecided voters increased to 33 per cent from 29 per cent.
Interviews for the poll took place Dec. 1 to 4, just after the
three-day federal-provincial economic conference in Ottawa. At the conference, Prime Minister Trudeau and the 10 provincial premiers were unable to make progress toward an industrial strategy.
In Quebec, about six in 10 decided voters supported the Liberals. About two in 10 chose the Conservatives.
In other parts of Canada, almost five in 10 supported the Conservatives and slightly less than three in 10 supported the Liberals.
Results of the poll are based on 1,015 personal, in-home interviews with eligible voters across Canada. A sample of this size is accurate within four percentage points, 19 in 20 times.
CNC INSTRUCTOR EXPLAINS
Cold
wars
'Canadians part of Iran's problems'
hy AL IRWIN Citizen Staff Reporter Canadians evacuated from Iran last week were not only victims of political and religious strife there but part of the problem, says an Iranian-born political science instructor at the College of New Caledonia.
Alan Danesh, who left Iran in 1965, says anti-foreign sentiments directed at Canadian and American technicians there has its roots in a hasty bid by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in the 1960s and 1970s to modernize Iran.
This involved importing thousands of highly-paid technicians, who became an elite group in tlie country.
Danesh said other causes of the present strife in Iran are:
9 Inhumane suppression of all opposition to the Shah, and execution or imprisonment without trial of tens of thousands of the Shah’s opponents by the secret police, SAVAK;
0 Massive unemployment, and inflation as high as 100 per cent per year;
• The extremely opulent lifestyle of Shah Pahlavi and his small group of supporters.
The Shah spent an estimated $500 million for celebrations several years ago marking 25 centuries of royal rule in Persia.
Danesh says the appointment by royal decree last week of Shahpour Bakhtiar as prime minister in an attempt to quell uprisings will be unsuccessful.
Bakhtiar, a member of the opposition, was chosen by the Shah to replace tlie military regime that the shah named in November to crush religious and political opposition to his reign.
Danesh says Bakhtiar’s appointment removed him from his political base of power, and the “events of the past few days (continuing strife in major cities) indicate he has no public support.”
"He will not be effective because the basic structure of control and domination remains intact. The army is still the supreme power and the vast apparatus of the secret police remains intact,” says Danesh.
"In effect, what the people demand is not a mere abdication of the Shah, but the dismantling of his powerful
machine of repression,” says Danesh.
“This objective cannot be achieved by a mere appointment by tlie Shah of a person from the ranks of the opposition. . .because even the prime minister and his cabinet must run the affairs of the country under the watchful eyes of tlie secret police.”
Danesh, 38, graduated from tlie University of Tehran’s faculty of law and political science in 1964.
For two years while a student, and for a year after his graduation, he worked at the office of the prime minister, and was in charge of petitions and complaints.
It was during his employ there that he learned “the extent of discontentment and injustice in the country, which influenced his decision to leave.”
Danesh, says the present unrest in Iran has its roots in tlie 1952 CIA supported coup which overthrew Iran’s popular democratic government headed by Dr. Mohammed Mosaddegh!
Mosaddegh’s aim was nationalization of the coun-
try’s oil industry, a policy which the United States, then emerging as a |)owerful force in the Middle East, could not tolerate, said Danesh.
He said the CIA’s involvement in the coup was revealed in the U.S. Congressional hearings which followed Watergate.
The first task of this new military regime in the 1950s was the complete elimination of opposition, and the establishment of SAVAK. Arrest and imprisonment without trial, and the murder of thousands of dissenters took place under the military ruleof General Zahedi, whose son Arde^hir Zahedi is now Iranian ambassador to Washington, says Danesh.
This |>eriod was followed in the early 1960s by land reform, in which vast tracts of feudally-held land was divided among peasants.
This freeing of the peasants was essential for the Shah’s policy of industrialization. It would provide workers for Hie factories, and provide a basis of popular support for the Shah, whose support in the past came from the feudal ar-
istocracies, says Danesh.
But the Shah’s plan backfired, says Danesh, because:
9 Peasants given small holdings lacked the capital and resources to cultivate their farms, and abandoned t hem to seek work in major cities. Shanty towns of thousands of unemployed were created. (Tehran, the capital, grew from an estimated population of two million to about 4.5 million in 10 years, and most of the new comers remained jobless).
• In the shah's haste to turn Iran into “the Japanof the 21st Century”, he opted for the most advanced technology his vast oil revenue could buy. This, coupled with an immense military buildup, equally advanced techologically made the workers’ skills of no value.
» Altlwugh tens of thousands ot Iranian middle-class students were sent abroad to be educated, the Shahdid not wait for their education to be completed, but rather enticed, with high salaries, thousands of foreign technicians, mainly Americans, to bring about industrialization.
“Where the government went wrong was not offering the Persian graduates of western universities the same salaries (upon their return)”, said Danesh. Persians (Iranians ) earn less than half what their foreign contemporaries in Iran do, he says.
“So suddenly, the very educated technocratic class, which was to be the backbone of the Shah’s industrial order, found themselves second class citizens in their own country,” says Danesh.
Disillusioned with the political system, and socially uprooted, people had to turn to something, and the only tradition they had, which could become a focal point for their op-positionto the Shah,was their religion, Danesh said.
Tne result has been a resurgence of religion in the predominantly Islamic country, with the boundary between religion and politics disolving, and religious leaders such as the exiled Ayattollah Kho-maini emerging as chief spokesman against the Shah.
Religious strife reported in
See IRAN page 2
Citizen photo by Doug Weller
Iranian-horn Alan Danesh says Canadian and American technicians became an elite group in the country.
TODAY
"I'd like to appeal my sentence on the grounds that I'm allergic to salt."
while China has so far contracted to buy three million tons in the period from September 1978 to August 1979.
The minister said no specific duration has been agreed on for the proposed agreement, but said the Chinese may be interested ina longer period than three years.
In Winnipeg. Representatives of five governments and the grain-handling industry ended a two-day conference Tuesday, saying that a psychological breakthrough had been reached in their attempts to reform tire industry.
A closing news conference put greater stress on the spirit of optimism, which all parties agreed was present at the end of the conference.
WINTER GAMES
Word comes today
The Canadian Press
WINNIPEG (CP) - Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed announced Tuesday that his government is willing to provide uptoflOO million to helpbuild a major new grain terminal at Prince Rupert, B.C.
Lougheed said in a statement at the close of the federal-provincial conference on grain handling that the funds would be available to a consortium of grain companies.
The Alberta funds would be in addition to $100 million the Canadian wheat board has proposed for grain storage facilities at Prince Rupert.
However, Lougheed said a number of issues need to be resolved, including an agreement between CN and CP Rail to exchange cars on the line into Prince Rupert and a federal commitment for early
completion of other work related to the new terminal.
The $100 million offered by Alberta would come from the province’s Heritage Savings Trust Fund.
Lougheed said the new terminal would help Alberta farmers by relieving serious bottlenecks in exports from other West Coast ports and greatly reduce demurrage fees paid to vessels that have to wait to load grain.
The Prince Rupert consor-
tium is composed of Alberta Wheat Pool, Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, Manitoba Pool Elevators, Pioneer Grain, United Grain Growers and Cargill Grain.
Meanwhile, a Peking announcement said China has agreed to negotiate a longterm wheat-purchase agreement with Canada which should amount to at least $1 billion during a three-year period. Trade Minister Jack Horner said today.
The commission was strongly against bidding for the games.
Commissioners said the financing formula for the games - the province has a grant maximum of $190,000 — was not favorable and the city would have difficulty breaking even on costs.
If the games are granted to Prince George, the city expects to negotiate some special considerations in the contract, something that games officials say they will not do.
The first summer games were held in Penticton last year and the first winter games open in Kamloops March 1.
Richmond plays host to this year’s summer games, starting Aug. 3.
Horner told a news conference in Peking that the Chinese said they intend at least to maintain and perhaps increase purchases of Canadian wheat in the future.
The managing director of the China National Cereals, Oil and Foodstuffs Corp. will lead a mission to Canada in late February to negotiate a longterm contract with the Canadian wheat board.
Horner said the Chinese also have expressed concern over
Canadian transportation facilities, and the mission will begin its tour with a visit to the Vancouver port facilities. It is expected to arrive about Feb. 22, although the final date has not been fixed.
Horner said that China has purchased an average of 2.4 million tons of wheat annually from Canada during the last 10 years. Purchases in 1977-78 amounted to 3.5 million tons.
BCTV SERIES
Citi7«n photo by Dave Milne
Some people will go to any lengths to escape a frost-bitten eyelash and Ed West is no exception. West, a diver, found a set of goggles fogged up but breathing though a snorkel keeps vision clear. West says the full mask is the sure thing to beat Prince George’s continuing cold snap. The only problem now is how toquiet children and timid women who scream in terror as he approaches on public sidewalks.
An official announcement on the awarding of the 1981 winter games, which Prince George wants, was to be made late today.
A spokesman for the B.C. Games Commission said today that until the award was announced — by commission head Ron Butline — it was known only to Butline himself.
The 1980 winter games were awarded Tuesday to Kimberley. Provincial secretary Hugh Curtis made the announcement in Kelowna where today’s announcement is also expected to come from.
Prince George bid for the 1981 games late last year came after bitter debate between councillors and the civic properties and recreation commission.