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The Citizen, 1991-04-10, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 10, 1991. PAGE 5. No. 1 with a bullet Guns are made of enduring metal. They outlive their owners. They go about their business. Roy Meador How true. And no gun more enduring than the one that so recently achieved superstar status in the Gulf War. The “Arme du jour” of the entire Middle East. The rifle toted by Republican Guards and resistance fighters. The one with the pistol grip and the trademark banana clip ammunition magazine thrusting out in front of its trigger guard. The Kalashnikov automatic rifle. AK-47 to its many friends and admirers. In truth the AK-47 was famous long before a small-time thug named Saddam Hussein discovered it. Russian engineers designed the rifle for their troops more than 40 years ago. Then the politicians took over. They adopted the AK-47 as a kind of insurgents Door Crashers Special. The basic Kalashnikov design was passed along to Russia’s many “spheres of influence” including the weapons-hungry Chinese. In those days of course, there was a world-revolution to foment. It wasn’t long Something to be proud of BY RAYMOND CANON I once had a teacher who used to take me to task with monotonous regularity for my prospensity of ending sentences with a preposition. “Never, never,” she used to yell at me, “are you to end a sentence with of, by, with or any other such word”. In vain, I tried to explain to her one day that in German it was done all the time and, since English was a Germanic language, well ... I was treated to another tirade. It was only years after this teacher and 1 had parted company that I read, with a great deal of satisfaction as you can understand, that Winston Churchill had been given the same sort of treatment by some language purist in Britain. Winston was equal to the occasion: “this is a rule,” he replied, “up with which 1 will not put.” Why couldn’t I have said something like that. I am actually digressing from the gist of my article by pointing all this out but, when I decided to entitle it “Something to be Proud Of”, I was sure that some reader would be muttering about ending in a preposition. Since 1 wanted to clear the matter right away, my rebuttal came first. Actually 1 was reading an article recently in a foreign journal and 1 came across a sentence that I did not expect to see. In talking about the popularity (or lack of it) of all the countries on this planet, the writer pointed out that it might be sensible to keep an eye on Switzerland, New Zealand and Canada. They have enjoyed almost unanimous goodwill for a suspiciously long time. Since I talk about the nice things to be found in Switzerland. 1 am sure that some of my critics are ready to suggest that 1 go back there to live. I must confess that I am pleased to see both countries mentioned within the same context since, although you may not know it. you doJiave a lot of things in common with the Swiss and presumably also the New Zealanders. 1 would like to continue where the article in the foreign journal left off by telling you some of the reasons why I think Canadians before rebels from the rice paddies of Vietnam to the mountain ranges of Nicaragua were prying open crates of brand new AK-47s wrapped in oil-soaked cotton. The AK-47 was the Volkswagen Bug of the arms world. It offered economy, easy maintenance, not too much weight and awesome firepower. Even non-revolution- aries admired it. The “Kalash” became a staple in the wardrobes of Miami drug dealers and CIA-sponsored troublemakers too. Today, the AK-47 is everywhere. We saw its ugly snout peep over the barricades at Oka. The TV cameras panned over mounds of AK-47s salvaged from the ruins of Iraqi bunkers and caravans. The price of an AK-47 varies wildly. In the desert sands of Kuwait they’re free for the taking. You’ll pay about $50 for a reasonable copy in the gun bazaars of Pakistan. In Honduras, you can probably find an ex-contra in a bar who’ll sell you his for $100. Washington gun boutiques have waiting lists for brand new models. They’re asking anywhere from $750 to $1,000 per unit. You can’t buy one legally in Canada, but the government in South Africa pays $2500 for every one a citizen hands in, no questions asked. In Mozambique the death-dealing rifle is so familiar it appears on the national emblem - a hoe crossed with an AK-47. Ironically, that war-torn, starvation- raddled country is also the only place where the rifle trades for something more have been and still are generally well liked throughout the world. One of the main ones is that we do not make it a point of grinding axes. We do not have any long-standing feud with any nation or group of them; we seem to understand and get along with the Ameri­ cans better than most other countries and the very fact that we have two of the world’s most widely used languages as national ones means that we are able to reach out to a wider group of countries than would normally be the case. All of this makes it far harder for other people to really work up a dislike of Canada that will last for any length of time. We have also been quite willing to take in refugees from other areas of the world even though there is nothing that obliges us to do so. This first came home to me when I was working in Vienna helping to process the Hungarians who wanted to come to Canada as a result of the uprising in their country in 1956. Because of my languages and my experiences in working with foreign people, I have heard time and time again just how happy people are to Robbery: Location: Today’s Variety Store, village of Londesborough. Time: 5:55 p.m., Wednesday, the 27th of March 1991. Two males in a mid-sized, dark-coloured station wagon pulled into the parking lot of the Today's Variety Store. The passenger got out. entered the store and approached the clerk. The suspect has his left hand in his jacket pocket, giving the impression of having a gun. He stated to the clerk “don’t scream” then took a green plastic garbage bag out of his pocket, gave it to the clerk and told her to put cigarettes in it. The clerk started putting the cigarettes in the bag when the male went behind the valuable than money, in Mozambique one used AK-47 can be traded for a 50-pound bag of corn. The scattering of what’s left of Hussein’s army will put more AK-47s on the world market, but they’ve lost a point or two in the glamour department. They didn’t prove very effective against smart bombs, Apache helicopters or F-18s. Still, a small-time terrorist, be he CIA, PLO or IRA sponsored, has to get his army boot in the door somehow, doesn’t he? And what better way than with a gun that’s chattered out its own leaden legend in more than four decades of mayhem? I think the AK-47 will be around for awhile. Which is too bad. There’s another, more promising weapon on the market right now that’s been somewhat eclipsed by the ominous shadow of the AK-47. It’s smaller, lighter, cheaper and even easier to maintain than the Kalashnikov. Does lots more too. With this weapon you can open cans, cut paper dolls, file your nails, tweeze out slivers and pop wine corks. The classic red-handled model has been around fore more than 70 years. Next fall, it will be available in a host of colours, including canary, camel and ivory. Not the kind of Yuppie hues normally associated with a weapon of destruction - but then this is more a weapon of construction, despite its name. That’s what I’d like to see: a whole world re-armed. Every citizen toting a His ‘n Her Swiss Army knife. come here. It goes without saying that there are unhappy ones but they are far more the exception than the rule. We have only to look at our record in peace-keeping to see another reason for the lack of animosity toward us. There is not one country in the world that has a better record. In this field we have literally been everywhere and done everything. Even as tourists we manage to escape without any pejorative adjectives being attached to us. We may hear about other nationalities being noisy, arrogant, un­ couth or the like but such words generally do not stick to us. I’m sure most readers have heard ©f Americans who wear a maple leaf when they travel abroad because they have discovered that by and large we get treated much better than Americans. This is not to say that we should all be wearing halos as part of the national costume but since all too frequently we have something of a inferiority complex, it is nice now and again to look at the positive side. That is a side, as Winston Churchill might have said, up with which I can really put. Crime Stoppers counter and started filling the bag himself. The male then said “give me all the money in the cash register”. The clerk game him all the money and he told her to unplug the phone. When she bent down to unplug it the male ran out of the store to the car and left in an unkown direction. Description of the party who entered the store: White male, early 20’s, 6 ft. tall, fat with a beer belly, a round face with a double chin, clear complexion, average skin colour, 2 days growth of beard, brown eyes. Hair: dark brown, straight, thin, cut short on the sides around the ears and long at the back over his collar. Wearing a baseball style cap, red and white in colour, logo on the trunk of the front, army jacket with blue-green camou­ flage, button front, undone, t-shirt, black with Molson Canadian on the front in bright letters, black jeans, possibly wear­ ing work boots. If you have information about these or any other crimes call Crime Stoppers of Huron County. 1-800-265-1777 or 524-6851 Letter from the editor We Canadians 9 are just plain grumpy BY KEITH ROULSTON Neither side would appreciate hearing it but it seems to me the Reform party supporters in English Canada and the separatist supporters in Quebec have a lot in common: both sides, and a lot of other people are just plain “mad as hell” and don’t want to take it anymore. Seems to me that a lot of us in Canada right now are just plain fed up and we’re looking for somebody to take it out on. If, in Quebec, it seems convenient to blame all problems on English Canada, so be it. If frustrated people in the rest of the country want to wear off some of the frustration by blaming Quebecers then at least you’re blaming somebody you don’t have to talk to every day. These are frustrating times we live in. So much seems to be beyond our control. People are losing jobs because of plant shutdowns or companies that are moving to Mexico or Georgia. People are angry, but what can they do about it? They can’t punch out the faceless executive who made the decision who lives in Toronto or even New York. They may blame Free Trade but what can they do about that? Everything is just too big, too overwhelming. Farmers see costs keep increasing and prices keep falling. It’s estimated farm income will drop 23 per cent this year from levels that already saw record number of people leaving the farm. The culprits are governments in Europe and the U.S. who are battling for a bigger share of world markets and subsidizing the prices to do it, driving our farmers out of some traditional markets. Our government says it can’t afford to play the game. Where can the farmer turn to try to do something about his frustration? There’s no visible target. The railways are pulled up, post offices close, taxes go up, government services get cut back, the deficit never seems to go down, we seem to have less and less control over our lives and our complaints seem to fall upon deaf ears. We figure, “what the heck, nothing else is working so we might as well try something radically new.” In Ontario enough people had that kind of feeling last September to elect our first NDP government. In the West the Reform party had gained so much strength that provincial governments have had to sit up and take notice. The party figures there are enough frustrated people in Ontario that on the weekend it decided to expand east. And in Quebec, 60 per cent of people would aprpove sovereignty, more than ever before. Meech Lake was the flame that lit the fuse of frustration. Quebecers were told by too many leaders, including the Prime Minister, that Meech Lake was the proof of the feelings of English Canada, so when the agreement failed, even though all but two provinces passed it, Quebecers felt rejected, hurt and angry. Ironically it was English Canadians’ feelings of betrayal and hurt and angry at the French-only sign laws of Quebec that triggered the events that caused the failure of Meech Lake. The only hope to save Canada is to overcome these feelings of frustration and yet the current situation only guarantees more frustration. The more people who join the Reform movement, the more people in Quebec are likely to see no alternative but separation. The more people support sovereignty in Quebec, the more people in the rest of the country are likely to feel frustrated that they can’t get their message through to Quebec and the more likely they are to join a party like Reform. We're in a very vicious circle and it’s going to take something extraordinary to break out of that circle. All we can do is try io find our own ways to vent our frustrations other than taking them out on other innocent people.