Kith-and-Kin ‘talks’

ritish Prime Minister Harold Wilson is seeking

more “talks” with the racist Smith regime in
Rhodesia. This latest move is bringing gleeful whoops of
approval from Britain’s Tory and coupon-clipping circles.

To the latter it matters little that the Smith settler
regime based itself upon a false sense of white “superi-
ority” over the native African people of Rhodesia, or that
in British imperialist jargon it is a treasonable regime
against their own colonial and Commonwealth set-up, this
white racist regime are our own “kith and kin’. Conse-
quently it cannot be disposed of with quite the same easy
conscience as prevails in the mass imprisonment, exile, or
murder of countless thousands of native African Rhodes-
ians.
Wilson’s half-hearted “oil sanctions” which brought
forth loud moans of distress from the Tory phalange, but
didn’t materially affect, (aside from some temporary in-
convenience to the Smith regime) Rhodesian trade and
industry. Such “democrats” as Verwoerd of racist South
Africa and Fascist Salazar of Portugal saw to that.

So now, instead of the prompt dispatch of British
forces to settle accounts with an illegal and treasonable
racist regime, Wilson seeks more “talks”. A strange con-
trast to his ready and fullsome support for U.S. aggres-
sion in Vietnam, or his “East of Suez” armed forces to
gun down the people of Aden, who seek what the African
people of Rhodesia seek—the right of self determination of
their own destiny, based on the democratic rule of “one
man, one vote”—black, white or coloured.

‘You are fired’

H e is a Canadian worker, competent in his trade
and rated “highly satisfactory” by all employers.
He is also a good union man. Perhaps that’s his “error”!

During the past several years he has been an em-
ployee of four different B.C: industries, all partially or
totally owned by U.S. interests; all “‘guarded” by US.
Pinkerton agents, and all using a “job application” form,
marked “printed in the USA” and the “questionaire”

Already the vast majority of the Rhodesian African
people and their leaders have branded Wilson’s move for
“talks” as a “gross betrayal of African people”. Leaders
and members of the African People’s Union and the Afri-
can National Union, both organizations “banned” and
with thousands of their members and leaders imprisoned
or exiled, regard the Wilson “talks” as such a betrayal.

They describe Wilson’s action as seeking “to avoid
a showdown with his kith and kin — by selling out the
birthright of the African people.” :

; One thing stands out like a festering sore; whatever
results from the Wilson “talks”, if and when they ma-
terialize, the Rhodesian African people will be the victims.

ism was suckled in its infancy on the

British imperialism
exploitation, sweat and
peoples. It seeks to

blood of Negro and Colored
perpetuate the diet — for itself — and

for its “kith and kin”. That is the essence of Wilson’s
craving for “talks” with the proponents of racism and
Tory jubilation at home.

treason in Rhodesia—and for

Tom

McEWEN ©

lmost daily some new pic-

ture, film or press story re-
veals something not too widely
known on the extent of the mon-
strous atrocities being inflicted
upon the people of Vietnam by the
armed forces of U.S, imperial-
ism, Atrocities which equal, if
not surpass the Nazi barbarities
of World War II,

The very old and the very
young, old men, mothers and
children are not immune from
these atrocities, designed,
ordered and carried out by the
“war criminals who rule the U.S.A,

There are other features, how-
ever, in this U.S, genocidal des-
truction ofan ancient and cultured
people which the outside world
rarely sees or thinks about; the
wilful destruction of the moral,
social and cultural fabric of the
_ Vietnamese people by their “dol-
~ lar-laden” executioners,

In the April 24th edition of the
New York Times one of its col-
umnists, writing on the growth of

anti-American feeling in Saigon
and other centers of South Viet-
nam, lifts the lida little for the
reader to savor this foul decaying
mess which U.S, aggression has
brought to Vietnam,

We have seen the advent of

_monster demonstrations in Sai-

gon against the presence of U.S.
troops in Vietnam, In these
growing demonstrations Budd-
hists, students, intellectuals,
middie class and workers, em-
phasize and re-emphasize their
growing awareness and protest in
four simple words: “Stop Killing
Our People,” In the words ofthe
poet, Charles Swinborne (1837-
1909), the people of Saigon have
already learned that, “At the door
of life, . there are worse things
waiting for men than death.”

Fears are already expressed
by Vietnamese intellectuals and
middle-class that the “traditional
Vietnamese society will not sur-
vive the American ‘cultural’ and
economic effect.” _ oe.

bearing a familiar McCarthyite odor.
In every case following a period of employment, with

his services always rated as

“highly satisfactory”, this

Canadian worker finds his job suddenly terminated. No
valid reasons given, just a sickly apologetic smile or a
mumbled confusing excuse, but “terminated”. Period.

There is of course only one valid explanation, well
illustrated recently by the FBI excursion into B.C. look-
ing for Canadian cannot-fodder for U.S. aggresion in Viet-
nam—with RCMP “cooperation” of course, as the hall-
mark of our Canadian “independence”.

The same kind of “cooperation” which determines—
among other things, that a competent Canadian worker

cannot work in a Canadian industry owned by U.S. mon-
opoly—if FBI-RCMP “cooperation’ so decrees.

If we are wrong, we'll be happy to be enlightened —
and so would many Canadians whose jobs are thus “ter-

minated.”

This fear (and shame) eats into
family life in Saigon. Vietna-
mese civil servants, army offi-
cers and personnel, because of
U.S. promoted inflation of all
living costs, are now compelled
to “rent out” their wives and
daughters to work as American
“par maids,” or “peddle them to
American servicemen as mis-
tresses.”’

As a direct result of this U.S.
“boost to the economy” of South
Vietnam, the Times reporter
states that “it is not unusual for
Saigon newspapers to report that
some Vietnamese army sergeant
has: committed suicide, appar-
ently out of shame because his
wife has been working as a “bar
girl” ... or worse,

Taxicabs in Saigon will not pick
up a Vietnamese fare if there is \

a Yank fare in sight, since the .

*“dollar-laden” GIs, “without
complaint, pay outrageously in-
flated prices.”

The Saigon press, in editorial

‘comment and biting cartoon, por-

trays the new U.S.-promoted so-
cial-structure pyramid in Saigon
—the result of U.S. invasion and
aggression,

At the top of this ‘‘elite” social
pyramid are the “bar girls,” and
next in line of social “affluence,”

the myriads of highly-paid pros-
titutes. Then as the Timesadds,
“the pimps and bar owners, and
finally the taxi drivers,”

Below that are the homeless
and hungry, many of these, in-
cluding middle-class elements,
evicted from their homes by cor-
rupt landlords, “eager to capital-
ize on the (U.S,) *dollar-laden
adolescents,” by cashing in on
greatly inflated rental and food
prices.

And finally right down at the
bottom layer of this hideous
structure, constructed by U.S.

armed might, the “kultur” of a
Nazi concentration commandant,
and the mighty dollar, “are the
peasants who have to endure the
agony of American bombs and
shells,”

-. hee

Editor — TOM McEWEN
Associate Editor —
Circulation Manager — JERRY SHACK

Published weekly at

Ford Bldg., Mezzanine No. 3, 193 E. Hastings St.
Vancouver 4, B.C.
Phone 685-5288
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Worth
Quoting |

In Cape Town we drop into the La
Fiesta Restaurant for a cup of coffee.
We sit down and wait to be served.
Finally the European manager comes
sliding up.

“You've made a misiake,”’ he says
smoothly. ‘This is for Coloureds only.’
We tell him we only want a drink.
You'd better go to the Waldorf or
Stutterford,”’ he replies.

After incidents like this, you feel
somehow less than human, ashamed
to be identified with the creature in
front of you by some accident of com-
plexion. And less of a man for not
having dropped the fellow on the
spot.

—Roger wills in AUSTRALIAN
TRIBUNE, March 23, ’66.

*

A new definiiion of capitalism: “It
is a crocodile-infested river in which
it is necessary to stand knee-deep io
fish. However, there is often a surplus
of fish and these are disposed of in
trade with the next village down the
river. That village specializes in the
manufacture of wooden legs.”

—PEOPLE’S VOICE, New
Zealand, March 2, '66.

*

If pay raises for company presidents
follow any guideposts it is not the 3.2

percent ceiling advocated by the -

Council of Economic Advisers. A pre-
liminary survey by Business Week
magazine showed that 40-percent of
company presidents got raises last
year-—averaging 9-percent.

Westinghouse President D. C. Burn-
ham had his pay boosted from
$198,055 to $223,390. His ‘‘addi-
tional compensaiion,” such as bonuses,
took an even bigger jump — from
$50,000 to $90,000.

Burlington Industries, the giant tex-
tile chain which has been engaged in
a running battle against union organ-
ization, gave Pres. Charles F. Myers,
Jr., a raise from $153,000 fo $173,-
750 a year, and a $3,500 boost in
added compensation to $12,613.

—AFL-CIO NEWS,
April 23, '66.

Small wonder that in a des-
perate effort to save something
of the nobility and dignity of the
people of his U.S.-occupied city,

a member of the Saigon City
Council felt compelled to propose
that “the United States Govern-
ment bring American bar girls
(prostitutes) to Vietnam for its
troops” . . . even at the risk of
engendering an alleged Vietna~
mese “inferiority complex” —
because the “dollar-laden U.S.
superman might prefer American
whores to the Saigon prostitutes
and pimps their invasion has
created.

U.S. bombs destroy the human
body and the land — the other
destroys the moral fabric and
soul of a nation, The process
could be well-termed “total gen-
ocide,”

“Ttbune

MAURICE RUSH

i

May 6, 1966—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 4