Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - August 22, 1981, Winnipeg, Manitoba August t x mullahs inflict reign of terror on torn nation earlier this speaking to a special train full of agricultural writers and the Vic president of the cars Mountain Ross said that unless Money could be found for More double tracking be tween Edmonton and Cana Dian companies that wanted to Export Potash and Grain face serious transport begin Ning in the Walker said he disliked the word and he denied that the state ment was a threat of any but he produced figures that proved without More double tracking the Days of unlimited and unrestricted transportation of Export commodities were and the possibility of not being Able to fill Export orders was real Walker for that the million year Burden imposed on Canadas two major rail companies by the crows nest agreement on Grain rates be shifted there Are two either Farmers will have to pay triple their present Cost of moving or the Bill will have to be sent to Canadian what Walker did not say is that shifting the railways portion of the Grain rate subsidy will not build enough double track to solve the other transportation double tracking is a because of the costs but it is also an Opportunity for the railways to make a lot More Money by to Export their projected loads of Sulphur and last year the privately owned up rail used the most senior railway brass available to drive at the necessity of changing the Crow rate so that up rail would be Able to build its multimillion Dollar Rogers pass the railway officials never mentioned that other up rail particularly its Coal All but guaranteed that the Tunnel would be whether the Crow rate was changed or More muted this years pitch was somewhat More muted on the subject of changing the As befits a Crow owned its shoot Hecrow Mes Sage was mixed with lectures on the difficulty of moving two trains in oppo site directions same Section of single track at the same but the message was if the threat of traffic rationing was a bit stronger than up rails Crow rate when up rail argues for a change in the Crow critics always Point out that the railway is part of a profitable and suggest that there is something wrong in such a conglomerate being permitted to Fence individual profit centres and act As if they were Independent Canadian nationals Case is it is a company whose main business is and a company because of its Public is often saddled with the continued operation in the Public interest of otherwise unprofitable As an when Newfoundland joined and its Money losing railway became part Canadian nationals Only recourse was to take Over the but to split off that operation so that its annual losses could be kept although Canadian National is adversely affected by the Crow rate for its losses Are not As great As those of up simply because cps lines service the areas of greatest Grain the is just As useful to the car As a vehicle for getting its problems before the Public As it is to up the figures compiled by the railway paint a gloomy be tween Edmonton and just past the railway will have enough Money to double track 49 per cent of its line by but to meet projected traffic it should double track 93 per i shortfall there is a shortfall Between what can be built and what should be built be tween Winnipeg and Edmonton of eight per cent by but this shortfall figure jumps to 21 per cent by the i is estimated at million in but will reach million by the cars loss i Gram in 1981 is estimated to be the Gap Between Cost and Revenue will the railway because the shortfalls have been estimated in rather than future and the Crow As it makes no provision whatsoever for changing the on half cent a to mile Cost of shipping Grain set More than six dec Ades there were the usual it costs a Prairie Farmer More to mail a postcard than it does to ship a Bushel of Grain to it costs the same Fanner More to elevate his Grain 70 feet at a local elevator than it does to ship it an Export Canadian National How tread More carefully than those from up rail when talking about the Crow but the railways Are agreed on the last these figures the full rail costs of moving Canadian Grain were the Crow rate produced Leav ing a Crow As it is called by the of big subsidy the government pays million a year in compensation to the railways Branch line subtracting this figure leaves what the railways Call an uncompensated loss on Grain of the railways have suggested a Means of making this Pill easier to if the Federal they would forgive the million in Federal taxes and dividends required from up rail and the the real Crow subsidy could be pegged at a net Cost increase of this Fig it was pointed is less than the annual subsidy required for Mirabel the do not Deal with the political problems that by George Ball the Washington Post Washington Iran today is Stag Gering toward nothing works in a nation whose nominal Leader does not regard it As a Khomeini has never thought of himself As leading a political entity but As the divinely appointed Prophet of a shiite islam that knows no National he rules the people not through political Means but through a clerical apparatus that brutally enforces an Al embracing body of rigid rules and absolute Doc Trine regulating All aspects of no doubt the Mullah leadership contains some men of pragmatic turn of but no amount of Talent could effectively operate the hybrid institutions of a constitutional system conceived in the style of Salvador Dali and the capricious and arbitrary inter Ference of self serving ayatollahs and mullahs permits no Hope of improve Slippery slope the Economy steadily slides Down a Slippery two million to four million people have no jobs and More than a million others live wretchedly As refugees from the War with for eign Exchange reserves evaporate and rebellion brews in the nonfarm speak ing tribal areas that surround the Cen i trial persian incompetent to the regime works off its fears and frustrations with a bloody sadism that has led even Khomeini 20yearold grandson to de Clare publicly that the religious dictatorship is worse than the that the country is governed by fascists More dangerous than the founders of fascism and that the revolutionary would be created for any politician who suggested forgiving up rails nor do the railways Deal with the political reality that might result from any situation of traffic the political influence of a dozen Coal company owners might be stacked up against the farm the railways immediate solution Calls for the government to continue its subsidy on Branch and its policy of providing Grain Hopper it also Calls for the government to replace the railway owned old style Grain boxcars As they Are it Calls for a formula for Cost including and wants anew system of payments to take effect in the cur rent crop these requirements Are loaded in favor of the they Are suggestions on How to bail the railways out of their current Grain loss not for putting the transportation of Grain on the same basis As Potash and it is too big a problem for even the railways to Ross Walker hinted at it when he said wanted nothing to do with the manage ment of the Fleet of Grain cars unless he was free to introduce greater efficient he came close to Labelling the management of Grain cars As income saying that the Cycle time the time for a round trip by a single car often More than three compared to less than a week for an average or Potash if the railways had their they would own the cars and negotiate with Grain shippers contracts similar to those in effect for these contracts would contain rewards car says Crow rate losses could be spent on double tracking for the efficient use of equipment and penalties for anyone responsible for the railways have been moving Grain Long enough to know in today such contracts Are Best left to future in the want to get out from under the financial Burden of the Crow whether they can will depend on government willingness to move on the the railways have the majority of Western agricultural organizations on their these organizations Are arguing that the Crow rate provides no incentives for the efficient transportation of and that Export sales will suf the As Walker told his is in order to make the Best capital investment Deci and to take advantage of the Only construction weather available in West Ern the Canadian National would like some answers by septem the same with the same Tim sensitive was Deli Vered by William now presi Dent of up last the rail transportation Industry in Western is something like a freight train heading at full Speed to Ward a while the the a few Box car hitchhikers and the owners argue whether it would be Best to pull Back on the apply the or to Bridge the courts Are treating our people with More brutality than the mongols the Mujahideen opposition counters official mass arrests and summary executions by assassinations and in the past few 10 per cent of the parliament has been killed and four Cabinet members the current phase of the revolution is a Competition in brutality Between the islamic cruel repression and the mounting efforts of the Mujahideen and other disaffected groups to keep the mullahs off balance and persuade the iranian people that their Side will ultimately should Khomeini die or enough people conclude that the Mujahideen would even the most ruthless state terror could not Stop the swelling the military is also a potential player in the improvised riddled by increasing disa Fec army elements might at almost any time turn against their islamic masters either to support the Mujahed Deen or to launch a righting unless the mullahs continue their relentless repression Long and brutally enough to break the will of a whole the people will at some Point replace them with a nationalistic re Gime either of the left under Leader ship of the Mujahideen or of the right under military of these a left regime seems the More Sloppy press what would that mean for the West the Sloppy press habit of dismissing the Mujahideen As leftists badly confuses the Masud Raja i who has recently arrived in Paris with former iranian president Abolhassan Banisadr is the Leader of the move its intention is to replace the current backward islamic regime with a modernized shiite islam drawing its egalitarian principles from koranic sources rather than its doctrinal objective was clarified in 1977 when the Mujahed ens secular marxist Wing split off to form a Sepa rate faction called the the Prophet the a French educated professor named Ali died in but his teachings still exert a Strong it would be a Diplo Matic mistake to assume that Moscow could effectively manipulate the for though its leaders Are fiercely anti Western and they Are also nationalists to the Point of xenophobia and strongly resistant to any foreign fourth stage if the Mujahideen should take Power or a righting military government emerge that would clearly not Mark the end of the there would be presumably a fourth stage a protracted struggle Between the regime in Power and the soviet directed Udeh with the soviet Union almost certainly helping its political agents More actively and the Krem Lin can live with the current islamic leadership in but it most strongly opposes the creation of a socialist islamic state under the Mujahideen that would reject Moscow such a construct could seriously menace soviet Solidarity by providing an islamic titlist Model to inspire moslem minorities within the soviet Union and elsewhere that Are already restless under soviet the writer was formerly undersecretary of Lauchlan steers w through the Centre the two Federal by election losses give a but largely Over message to provincial As Well As going to the voters with the Economy sagging and your arrogance showing is fatal to any but in the liberals they were punished not Only for their but for betraying their it is a lesson liberals have been Given before by particularly in Western Canada where they have Al most As with the stupidity displayed by repeatedly Call ing unnecessary by elections for the convenience of various Parachute candidates and repeatedly losing the liberals still have not when they move they Are defeat the economic policies being pursued by the Federal government especially the criminally High interest rates Are policies originated by the political right Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in the so the liberals have not gone All the Way into the never never of monetarism with its accompanying massive cuts in Public spending on social ser but they Are threatening to with a planned billion cutback to fiscal transfers to the the liberals tape from their unhappy state in Western Canada that Frances Russell whenever they depart from the political Centre and move to the right to espouse the policies and philosophy of Conser their vote quite literally almost in with the Centre left voters defecting to the and the Centre right siding with the conserva the party has been there All too often in Saskatchewan and the liberals Are verging on oblivion because they tried to out conserva Tive the conservatives with people like Douglas Campbell and Bobby Bend in Row Thatcher and Ted Malone in Saskatchewan and Pat Allan Williams and Garde Gardom in the political while it is the Battleground of is also very once toe liberals have vacated it Tennis to disappear and very hard to rebuild As an electoral As Manitoba Liberal Leader plug Ian is Lau Swanfe the third person to occupy the leadership since the liberals lost 10 per cent of their vote to the new democrats in another four Points in j973 and seven More to the tories in reducing them from 33 per cent of the electorate to a Mere 12 per cent in just three Lauchlan is a True Liberal he believes in activist government to further human Equality and Freedom but Wor Ries about the threats to Freedom posed by Gigantic Public and private Bureau Lauchlan has carefully fashioned a plan for economic development in Manitoba which he believes weaves its Way Between the Shoals of too Little government As advocated by the tories and too much government As advocated Lauchlan believes the tories Mega project approach is both inappropriate and the be either do not Manitoba or simply have so Little vision of the province that they Are Content to try to ape the big hang resource based economies of Alberta and to Manitoba has three strengths which Are being ignored by the current government its Small Busi Ness agricultural land base and its Centra building upon these natural advantages will strengthen Manitoba economic diversity and allow the province to maintain its Quality of life which is threatened by the environmental and social problems accompanying Lauchlan says the provincial govern ment should fund and encourage what Manitoba already has going for it instead of trying to superimpose Hothouse there is nothing wrong with an aluminium although i would have trouble giving away part of a publicly owned Power Plant to a private but what about an alumni num fabrication Plant we hear Noth ing about Alcan will be making a billion investment for 700 put cup foods near Russell created 70 jobs with an million the nip alien ated people by doing too the by doing too Manitoba future is Small our enormous land base and the development of vice whats happening in the Sunbelt near Morden and Winkler could be made to happen elsewhere in Manitoba the Small business Community needs some leadership from the Lynn administration has done nothing but provide a Little tax Cut and sit Back and wait for something to that just int i dont mind running a debt if it has an economic payback to the higher education has an economic pay Baek so does applied Assis Tance to native Peoples to expand their economic activities also has a but the government has done Lauchlan says the governments no activist stance has left Mani to bans believing nothing can be there is a feeling of even about the its the result of Lauchland ideas Are if the Liberal Leader can still get an audience in the they could show whether it is possible to rebuild the Centre once it has been doonesbury i ;