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EDITORIAL

WAC‘pulls a fast one!

t a press conference last Friday, Premier Bennett

officially ended his ‘cat-and-mouse’ game by the not
unexpected announcement of a provincial election onSeptember
12, with final nomination day, August 29,

In the opinion of most people in B,C,, including the leaders
of other political parties, this snap election sprung by Bennett,
is indeed necessary but very untimely, particularly since this
Socred government had still two years to go;

The excuse given by the premier for calling an election now
is characteristically phoney; “redistribution”, enabling larger
representation in the Legislature;

The real reason goes much deeper. Bennett’s ‘dynamic af-
fluence’, derived from the give-away and Sell-out ofB.C;
resources to U.S, monopoly, is beginning to show symptoms
of becoming an economic nightmare, hense his urge for a new
‘mandate’ to stay in office before all Socred’s policy-hatched
chickens come home to roost;

~

Slick Socred financing in the Columbia River sellout and in
his Peace River project are already showing big deficit short-
ages ahead — which the people of B.C, will ultimately have to

pay for. The ‘termites’ of inflation are already boring into:

Socred financial timbering!

With the peoples health and hospital needs, as with education
and other pressing problems of peoples’ wellbeing, the Bennett
regime already shows all the earmarks of total bankruptcy,
And like every government in the service of big monopoly, it
has sought to extricate itself by anti-labor legislation and
callous disregard of the peaple’s needs;

No doubt Premier Bennett and his government cohorts hope
that with the holiday season still in full swing on September
12, and that his snap election announcement caught the oppo-
sition parties ‘off base’, the end result he hopes will merely
be another okay (regardless of the two or three millions
dollars -cost) of Socred ‘policies’ by the electorate!

It is hardly likely that the leaderless Tories in B.C., barely
distinguishable from the Socreds except the label, will cut
much more than a nuisance swath in this election campaign.
And Liberal leader Ray Perrault, now contending with Prem-
ier Bennett for the role of top political broker in B.C, in the
shady business of handing over B.C,’s resources, sovereignty,

etc., lock stock and barrel to U.S, big business, Certainly no

substitute there for any improvement;

There is only one alternative; the ousting ofthe Bennett gov-
ernment by the election of a democratic majority; a majority
dedicated to the needs of B.C. and its people — not to the
rapacious demands of U.S, monopoly and its B,C, counter-
parts — whose tool the Socreds have been, are, and will
remain — until booted out!

SESE RAE eee aaa amem ean

ecently an American G,I,

_in Vietnam, now allegedly
under court martial for ‘insubor-
dination’, gave vent to his feelings
in a letter to the folks back home
on U,S, aggression in that coun-
try. In a few short words con-.
taining a volume of meaning the
G.I, said: “We are being turned
into savages”.

Doubtless many scores of Am-
erican GI’s, reared in the atmos-
phere of cultured surroundings
and loving parents, think the same
thing, even if they don’t say it —
out loud,

Today there is a steady es-
calation of court martials in the
U.S, armed forces in Vietnam, a
clear indication of a growing
revulsion on the part of the com-
mon soldier to the armed bar-
barities which U,S, military
forces are called upon to per-
form in order to keep their
‘Land of the Free’ (Pentagon
style), top-dog in their world
scheme of things.

Early this year the Vancouver
Sun (February 9) reprinted an
editorial from the Victoria Daily
Times under the title, “Confi-

dence in arms, threatens the
mind’,

From Vietnam —and America,
the impact of that simple truth
is being driven home to us, al-

most daily, ; :

In the ‘Lone Star’ state of
Texas where the man who now

rules America — and aspires .

to be the world’s chief-of-police,
hails from, one is said to be not
even considered well dressed
unless he is toting a heavy cali-
bre ‘six gun’. How frequently
these may be used by Americans
upon fellow Americans probably
the FBI’s top hypocondriac J,
Edgar Hoover doesn’t even know!

The disturbing fact remains
however that the mentality gov-
erning official America today —
and seeping down dangerously te
the grass roots level, is a men-
tality based upon a ‘‘confidence

C.P. wires Pearson-Jodoin

Prov. premiers ‘gang-up’
on national Medicare

Following the recent provincial
premiers conference in Toronto
at which it soon became evident
that a ‘gang-up’ was underway
to block the enactment of nation-

‘laccuse...’.

Patterned on the Nuremberg
trials of Nazi leaders following
World War II, Britain’s Bertrand
Russel has invited eminent people
in law, literature, and public af-
fairs generally, to form a panel
of judges to try President John-
son and other U,S, leaders for
‘war crimes against the people of
Vietnam,

Lord Russell’s appeal for such
a Tribunal says in part:

“In violation of solemn inter-
national agreements signed by
American presidents and ratified
by the American Congress, this
Johnson government has commit-
ted war crimes, crimes against
humanity and crimes against the
peace. It has committed these
crimes because the Johnson gov-
ernment exists to preserve the
economic exploitation and the
military domination of subject
peoples by U,S, industrial mag-
nates and their military arm,

The Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA), which has a budget
15 times larger than all the diplo-
matic activity of the U.S,, is in-
volved in the assassination of
heads of state, and plots against
independent governments. ..

The War Crimes Tribunal is
under urgentpreparationnow, . .
President Johnson, Dean Rusk,
Robert McNamara, Henry Cabot
Lodge, Gen, Westmoreland and
their fellow criminals will be
brought before a wider justice’
than they recognize, and a more
profound condemnation than they
are equipped to understand.”

in arms”; on the efficasy of lethal
arms, on guns. A “confidence”
that you can bomb and shoot your
way out of any situation — and
still be regarded as ‘civilized’ —
and sane,

It is therefore not surprising
that LBJ’s numerous offers of
‘peace negotiations” and “un-
conditional discussions” about
peace, are always sung to the
accompaniment of a rising cres-
cendo of murderous bombings and
other barbarities against the
Vietnamese people, young and
old, military and civilian alike.

Thus we should not be sur-
prised when we read the current
daily headline of sensational news
that “Everybody liked Charlie
. . e”, poor 25-year-old dement-
ed Charles Joseph Whitman, ex-
Marine, Vietnam veteran, stu-
dent engineer, who shot his
mother and wife to death, then
planted himself in the vantage
point of a University of Texas
campus tower with a sizeable ar-
senal on hand, plus food sup-
plies for a ‘seige’ — and gunned
15 of his fellow Americans to
death, and seriously wounding
some 35 others, before a police
gun finally ended his demented
gun-toting rampage.

Or an earlier Chicago psycho-
path who brutally snuffed out the

al medicare by Parliament, the
Central Executive of the Commu-
nist Party of Canada, over the
signature of national leader Wil-
liam Kashtan, forwarded the fol-
lowing telegrams to Canadian
Labour Congress president
Claude Jodoin, and to Prime

Minister L,B, Pearson.

The ‘tele’ to Mr, Jodoin read:

*We are greatly concerned with
the effort of provincial prime:
ministers to water down, delay or
completely scuttle national medi-
care, The gang up displayed at
the conference of provincial pre-
miers is obviously directed to
the coming Dominion- Provincial
Conference and to Parliament. .*

“In face of this real threat to
a long overdue measure the Com-
munist Party urges that the CLC
which sparked a country-wide _
campaign on the issue of nation-
al medicare, again initiate simi-
lar action and help establish an
all Canadian Co-ordinating Com-
mittee to press for implementa-
tion of national medicare. We

lives of eight young nurses before
he was put under restraint; how
are normal people to assess such
horrible events, recurring in the
U.S.A. with analarming sequence
and rapidity?

‘killing — and not expect such ~

To find a partial answer we
must go back to the American
G.I, — and the brief ‘Moment of
Truth’ in a Canadian newspaper;
“We are being turned into sav-
ages” says the GI, and our re-
liance or ‘confidence in arms
threatens the mind’. Or to put
it another way, human reason
replaced by violence,

This is not to say that Ameri-
ca has gone mad, but merely
that the dominant philosophy of
its ruling caste, based on the
superiority of violence and worse
to achieve their ends, in Vietnam

Pactfte

Associate Editor —
Circulation Manager

Vancouver

“Editor — TOM McEWEN
Published weekly at

Ford Bldg.,, Mezzanine No. 3, 193 E. Hastings St.

Phone 685-5288
Subscription Rates:

firmly believe that majority opin-

ion is for national medicarenow. —
The issue is clear, the health.

and welfare of the people, or the
selfish interests of the big cor-
porations and insurance compan-
ies.”

The telegram to
Minister Pearson reads:

“The Communist Party urges

that the federal government re-

pudiate the gang up by provin-
cial premiers against national
medicare. Their attack on this
long overdue measure is obvious-
ly directed to either water down,
delay or scuttle it completely,
and force the government and

Parliament to throw national -

medicare into the waste basket.

“Public opinion and the last

general election campaign clear-
ly demonstrated that the Canadi-
an people want medicare, Gov-
ernment and Parliament should
affirm that, by speedy implemen-
tation of legislation which would
serve the health and welfare of
the Canadian people’’,

Oe

or elsewhere, is driving many
young Americans to the ‘brink’
of madness — or over the ‘brink’.

One cannot train a young gen-

eration in the arts and skills of

training to ‘rub off’ inthe quieter
— if still often vexing pursuits
of civilian life.

So don’t say ‘tch, tch’ and heap
accusation and scorn upon poor
Charlie Whitman and the multi-
ple tragedy of his last hour
beyond the ‘breaking point’. His
‘crimes’ stem from the same
source that is perpetrating 4

‘millionfold greater crimes upon

the people of Vietnam; from the
same people whose “confidence
in arms’? threatens a whole world
by the spread of its madness.

Tutbune |

MAURICE RUSH
— JERRY SHACK

4, B.C..,

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August 12, 1966—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 2