2 toe

tudent’s of Gibbons’ Rise and Fall of the Roman
Empire or the demise of successive empires since,
cannot but have noted that as each of these changing forms of
society reached their apex and began their historical decline,
that all were affected by a common characteristic: a resort to
Violence by the ruling caste upon their exploited minions,
becoming more and more vicious and brutal as the decay of
their empire gathered speed and momentum.

In this process of empire development and decay the
violence of the exploiters against the exploited had (and still
has) its roots deep in the acquisitiveness, greed, (which one
Gaglardi of today extols as a ‘‘virtue’’) corruption and worse,
which marks the decline of a dominant class, often referred to
as an ‘“‘Establishment.”’

The violence of a ruling class of today and that of ancient
Rome, stems directly from similar causation, the only
difference being that it is a million times more intense in our
day, more brutal, more arrogant, more hypocritical, more
cynical, cruel and devastating. The violence of U-S.
imperialism in Vietnam alone is without a parallel in human
history, and far supercedes the cruelties and barbarism of the
Caesars, of Ghengis Kahn, Attilla the Hun or the barbarities
and genocide of the Hitler era.

These legendary gangsters and schizophrenics killed for
lust, loot and the ‘‘thrill’’ of conquest. U.S. imperialism kills
because it knows no other obstruction to social progress and
change than aggressive genocide on a nation-wide scale.

Having created its ‘‘God’’ in its own image, U.S.
imperialism presumes, on the strength of this self-created
“divinity” to abrogate to itself the role of a world policeman,
and in that role to bar the way to social change and the right of
people to determine their own destiny.

Hitler wasted time and money building death ovens to
incinerate the millions who opposed his fanatic barbarism.
U.S. imperialism is more “‘efficient’’; it turns every Vietnam
town, village, hamlet and field into a death oven. Hitler hated
democracy and said so: U.S. imperialism “‘loves’”’ democracy
and makes pretentions at ‘‘saving’’ it — by massive
strangulation, in Vietnam and at home.

It is an old and uncontrovertable axiom of socio-economic
change, that those who seek to obstruct in countries other than
their own, must first of all settle with their own workingclass,
farmers, workers, professionals, Black, Brown, White or Red.
There too U.S. imperialism has amply demonstrated its great
capacity for violence against its own people, regardless of
issues involved.

If, as Sheakespeare once wrote, ‘uneasy lies the head that
wears a crown,”’ the head that’s cracked open by the violence
of an armed gendarmerie because it ‘‘stood up to be counted”’
for peace and orderly social change,-also lies uneasy, but only

temporarily, since it is the head of a New Society, unmarred by _

violence. That is the nightmare which haunts the ruling caste
in all hitherto social orders, not excluding this one
(capitalism), and explains. in great measure their mounting
violence against their historical ‘‘gravediggers.”’

Since space does not permit further elaboration of the
origin and use of violence to perpetuate the rule of an
exploiting class upon an exploited class, and which has played
a most vital and decisive role in all the changing epochs of
social evolution, we might as well close this screed with a
quotation from a great American, President Abraham Lincoln:

“This country, with its institutions, belong to the people
who inhabit it. When they shall grow weary of the existing
government, they can exercise their constitutional right of
amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or
overthrow it.”’

Most ‘great’ empires have been built by violence,
maintained by violence, and perished by violence. This society
we call Capitalism, most corrupt and brutal of all, like the
Roman Empire of the Caesars, will go the same way...
because it knows nor accepts any other way. Like the Caesars
of old and the ‘‘enlightened” bourgois of today, it “learns
nothing, and forgets nothing.” Violence is its stock-in-trade in
the obstruction of peace and social change. Violence is part of
the rot of its decay.

ee Ve ee.

FOR ALL YOUR TRAVEL NEEDS

Contact:

GLOBE TOURS

2679 E. Hastings St., Vancouver 6, B.C.

253-1221

Ut YAD W4-— 24 ea? SP Ae

254-2313

IN GR. VANCOUVER

Improve ‘liveable’
quality of region

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

The Greater Vancouver
Regional District (GVRD) has
undertaken what it calls a
Liveable Region Project. Its
stated objective is to help
develop policies which will
“manage growth and change so
as to maintain or enhance the
liveable quality of the Region,”
to develop a ‘‘positive pro-
gram”’ to “‘counteract the 1ll
effects of growth.”’

This is a laudable objective.

So far growth and development .

have all too often brought nega-
tive results. That has been
because they were not planned
on a municipal or regional
scale, and because growth often
served only the narrow interests
of profit-motivated developers
and business interests rather
than the needs of citizens.

The GVRD Planning Com-
‘mittee, in carrying through its
Liveable Region Porject, has
held a number of meetings, ten
in all, with various community
organizations
groups. They were aimed at
identifying the issues involved
in what liveability means to
people.

What the Committee quickly
found out was that citizen
groups. concerned with the
development of their neighbour-
hoods or municipalities were
not only disturbed at the way
development is taking place, but
were frustrated about the way
important decisions, which signi-
ficantly affect their lives, are
being made without citizens
having any say in them.

Citizen participation, par-
ticipatory democracy, or what-
ever you want to call it, is lack-
ing. Municipal councils are
responding only to the wishes of
developers. They are not only
ignoring citizen views, they
often act in direct defiance of
them and deliberately do what
they can to prevent citizen views
from being heard.

A good example of this was the
issue of a Third Crossing of

Burrard Inlet. The municipal —

councils involved were deter-
mined to impose a Third Cross-

and business °

ing, and with it a freeway
system, on the Lower Mainland.
Citizen groups had to fight like
hell just for the right to be heard,
and Mayer Tom Campbell of
Vancouver did his best to under-
mine: the only one-session hear-
ing that was arranged despite
his protest.

The meetings that the GVRD
Planning Committee has so far
held have not been nearly repre-
sentative enough. The Chamber
of Commerce and the Greater
Vancouver Real Estate Board
were heard, but not the trade
union movement or the rate-
payer groups united in the Van-
couver Central Council of Rate-
payers. Nor has the committee
met with groups in Vancouver
City Council’s step-child, the neg-
lected East End.

Furthermore we have quite a
contradiction here.

The various municipal coun-
cils on the Lower Mainland, for
the most part, try to circumvent
citizen participation in
planning, growth and devel-
opment. They listen only to devel-
opers and real estate interests.

Yet the same mayors and al-
dermen comprise the member-
ship of the Greater Vancouver
Regional District. They agree in

the GVRD on the need to take.

policies to the people while they
are still in the discussion stage.
That’s good. But these same
people do just the opposite in
their own municipal councils.
One can only conclude that in
their opinion the GVRD is still

only in the talking stage and not*

in any way able to implement its
policies of citizen participation
in any meaningful way.

In my view we should wel-
come the statement of the
GVRD that it is anxious to
involve citizens in decisions
before they are made, and help it
to put that policy into practice.
At the same time we must con-
tinue to press every municipal
council in the Lower Mainland
to do the same thing as a matter
of practice. It will help to make
our municipalities and region
more “‘liveable.”’

A jubilant Angela Davis is shown greeting an estimated 18,000 people

at Madison Square Garden last Friday at a star-studded “Evening With
Angela.”

—Daily World photo

“Why all this fuss about not hoviay .
job?’. . . | haven't worked a day" |

my life. . .” a

Jobless city
youth organiza

_ Faced with growins A '
employment, Vancouver Ser a
people have taken steP
organize themselves al '
formed a Union of Unemple!
Youth.

In a leaflet being aistribulé :
this week the Union points jy)

that unemployment on |
B.C. between the ages of 48

March of this year was al Bh
percent — double the nal the}
rate. This does not inclue®),|
summer influx of students" { ta
job market. a

= : r
The Union is putting forWe ,

four-point program WHC! (aii \
To organize and e

unemployed youth to dé oni}
their right to a job; to cary gl m
jobs campaign aimed at cl®
100,000 new jobs in B.C
with daily problems of J? ,
youth such as welfare. ly
Unemployment Insuran etl ‘
act as a liason be itt :
unemployed youth and of6*—
labor. . :

the
For information abou if
Union of Unemployed * | tt

phone 879-8062. s
Plan events fo" |:
Vietnam hospital |,

Vancouver young people
have pledged to raise 1 oilt
the Vietnam Childrens HO
Fund announced this ‘oft |
series of planned events igh Ye
in the fund-raising camP? “te We

First, on July 8, at 8 Pe int al
are holding a benefit ee: Bi u
Ukrainian Hall at 8 1s Wi
Pender, with folksing@” 7) ke
rock and roll band. _ gat

The second event !§ ©
fair on July 29 from } Fider™ &
p.m. at the home 0
and Mrs. Rankin, d
Street. Handicrafts were | tr
works will be sold a” for @ i
be games and sports will f a
enjoy. Entertainme ord 5
provided and a smoré@ if
be served from 6:00 oe yod \

To date the Hospi 0!
Vancouver has raised ind
nation-wide raffle 15 Be work
with the first prize ® ja
B.C.’s own Jack Lee | ay
and other prizes n pole
Eskimo carvings, totes”

S
Sa

=
Oo

: if
other Canadiana. qed
rummage sale is s nav’
September, so if rea via !

saleable items, call y ne se
2782, Mike, 594-9371 in!
White Rock area.
The new mailing 4 0
the Vietnam Childrer’
Fund is Box 5804, °~
Vancouver 12, B.C-