os

Appeal for

a —
DONT LET
DEMAND THE IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF LUIS CORVALON
AND ABE CHILEAN POLITICAL PRISONERS!

release

of Chile prisoners

The Vancouver Chilean
Association has joined the’ world-
wide campaign to save the life of
an ex-Senator of the Popular Unity
government, Jorge Montas
Morage, a distinguished professor
and journalist, and other political
prisoners held and tortured by the
military junta.

Morage has been savagely
tortured and his life is in danger
unless he gets early medical help.
His wife and daughter have also

~ been tortured.

The Vancouver Committee is
also appealing for protests to save
the life of Sergie Perez Molina
whose wife was killed after being
savagely tortured and her torn
body left on the Italian Embassy
grounds in Santiago.

The committee appeals to the
public to send letters at once to:

e Kurt Waldheim, secretary-
general of the United Nations,
asking him to intercede for the
lives of these Chilean patriots;

e General Pinochet, Edificio
Gabrilla Mistral, Santiago, Chile,
demanding the release of Moraga
and family, Sergio Perez Molina
and all political prisoners;

@ Hon. Allan MacEachen,
secretary of state for external
affairs, Ottawa, asking him to offer
political asylum to Maraga and his
family and Molina.

Also being circulated by the
Vancouver committee is a
message to the women of the world
by Hortensia Bussi Allende, wife of
the martyred president, appealing
for signatures on an appeal for
liberty for Chilean women,
thousands of whom are in prisons
and concentration camps.

The appeal says that all of these
women are being held without
trial, without legal defense,
without even having been charged.
It calls on women of the world to
sign the message so that Chilean
mothers can be reunited with their
children this coming Christmas
and New Year season.

fascism.

HITS

City tax scheme unfair)

democracy from

HOMEOWNERS

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN
City Council has decided that all
taxpayers must pay half of their
1975 taxes by February 4, 1975.
Failureto do so will result in a four

_per cent penalty.

Past procedure has been that
assessment notices would be sent
out at the end of the year, the mill
rate struck in April and tax notices
sent out soon after with the whole
amount payable by the first
Monday in July.

-To get around the fact that the
amount of the 1975 tax has not yet
been decided, property owners will
in the meantime be charged ap-
proximately half of their 1974
taxes.

The reason given by Council for
this drastic departure from usual
procedures is that compelling
property owners to pay all their
taxes in advance will save the city
about $1,400,000 in interest on
money which it would otherwise
need to borrow to carry on city
business.

I voted against this decision by
Council, and I made clear my
reasons as to why I was opposed.

When a property owner pays his
taxes in the middle of the year, he

or she pays for six months of.

services already received and in
advance, only for the remaining
six months. Now all taxes must be
paid in advance. This will impose a
real hardship on many home-
owners, who haven’t the money
readily available.

There is an alternative that I
proposed to Council; I suggested
that only commercial and_ in-
dustrial properties be compelled to
pay half of their 1975 taxes by
February 4. This would be fair, I
said, because the owners of
commercial and__ industrial
properties are able to claim their
taxes as an expense deductible
from income.

Furthermore this would work no
hardship on the holders of mor-
tgages who now collect tax money
from the mortgages at the
beginning of the year and are able
to use this money free of charge for
six months before paying taxes for
the person who has his property
mortgaged. In such cases the
property owner is already paying
all his taxes in advance, but it is
the holder of the mortgage and not
the city that benefits.

the epic struggles of Republican Spain to save its
the barbarism and atrocities of imperial

But City Council turned down my
proposal. Big business profits are
sacred and musn’t be touched. But
the homeowner who uses his home
only as a place to live and raise the
family and not for revenue — he
must be penalized. This is the logic
of a business oriented Council. City
Council exists to serve business
interests.

Council has already sent out tax
notices to all property owners so I
don’t know if there is much that
can be done now to reverse this
decision. But there are two steps
that can still be taken in the
months ahead.

One is to appeal your assessment
notice when it arrives if you feel
your assessment notice has been
set too high. The other is to demand
that before Council strikes the 1975
mill rate, it should decide that
there will be two mill rates in the
future; one for commercial and
industrial properties and another:
(and lower) rate for homeowners;
homeowners should be taxed only
for those services directly related
to homes such as street main-
tenance, garbage collection,
sewers, water, police and fire
protection. If this were done home-
owners’ taxes could be cut at least
in half.

=

oy J q
Bert Ogden, aldermanic candidal 8
in last Saturday's Nanall}€a

election, polled 1,229 votes if of |
city centre under the newijWa
amalgamated ward system. Het@iWa
in sixth place with eight runny

for three seats. Ray Holmdgl i ye.

running in the Chase River war the
where one seat was to be fille ‘
ran third with 139 votes, only 4 }for

votes behind the  winhiix,
candidate. The third candidate” the
the Greater Nanaimo Civic Aff@l™ th,

Committee, which was backe@ ©)
the local labor council, was W:™)

Thompson in Wellington, W™*
polled 160 votes.

Fish prices

- Cont'd from pg. 1

has put up $4 million in subsidies to
fish companies to build up fish
inventories to keep fish off the
market.

“The federal government has
put out millions of dollars to keep
prices up and put people out of
work,’ said Hewison.

Pointing out that it was
regretable there was no consumer
movement in B.C. to take up this
issue, Hewison said, ‘‘we had the
egg scandal, the beef scandal, and
the fish scandal is as big as any of

PROFITS UP

Wonder why prices are so high?
Here’s the big reason: After-tax
profits of industrial corporations in
Canada for the third quarter of 1974
totalled $2,312 billion, up 27.7 per
cent from the total for the same
quarter last year, according to the
latest figures released in Ottawa,

Some time ago CBC TV showed a film of some of om
assorted celebrities without any communist “stain _
their “respectability,” who publicly boasted of hav

them.’’ In an earlier press rel
Hewison said it was ‘“‘ludicl®”
that when people need reasonably tal
priced food we have boats € Ji
tied up or severely curtailed "ly,
their operations.” oh eac
The fish price scandal cam® | ty
light last week as a result of aC sh
taken by the United Fishermen ®
Allied Workers Union whose Wid»,
fishermen have had their ves vi
tied up early this year and pla®
on restrictive quotas for the
three months, with prospects
1975 even worse. Fe rr
Ina telegram to federal fish") f
minister LeBlanc last week
UFAWU demanded a full pM
into marketing practices, ‘
urged that decisive action be
to enforce Canada’s West ©
closing lines against U.S. 1
fishing in B.C. waters. 5
The public’s interest deman&
full airing of the UFAWU chalé
a curb on profiteering, a!
rollback of fish prices.

qi

n
Ht

o you remember The Canadian Medical Mission of 1938,
Pex esitiea, of course, as a ““‘Communist front”’ organiza-
tion? :

Did you ever donate 50 cents to that outfit, roll a ban-
dage, attend a meeting, or better still, know somebody
who knew somebody who knew Dr. Norman Bethune?
Then according to Vancouver Sun columnist Allan
Fotheringham in the November 28 edition you’re in line
for a free trip to China! According to such sources it got
the NDP Barrett ‘‘mission”’ there, so why not a lot of
others?

“History comes into its own,” runs an old adage when a ~
fact of life finally asserts itself. Sometimes however, and
unfortunately so, history comes into a hell of a lot more
than its own when the press and similar “historians” get
into it — when it becomes highly popular and safe to climb
onto its rejuvenated bandwagon.

The Canadian Medical Mission to China was organized,
sponsored, financed and led by Canadian and U.S.
Communists, mainly by Canadian Communists.

Dr. Norman Bethune, also a Communist, went to China
under its auspices to ‘theal the sick and succor the
wounded’’; to fulfil the oath of his chosen profession, far
beyond the call of duty; to preserve life as he had done in

SEAR — : ee
PACIFIC TRIBUNE Y, DECEMBER 20, 1974—Page 2

Norman Bethune arrived in Hong Kong on January 28,
1938. He died at 20 minutes after five on November 13;
1939. In less than two years, by his self-sacrificing work,
he had written an indelible page in the long history of a
great and noble people. They honored him as their own
PaiChu En, as few great men have ever been honored.

Rivers of tears, great as the mighty Yangtse were shed
at his passing. The babe-in-arms, the grizzled and scarred
veterans of the Liberation, the million-fold peasants in the
remote grasslands of China whispered his name with deep
love and reverence. To the six or eight hundred millions of
the New Peoples’ China, Norman Bethune, M.D., the
“stranger within their gates” had become a national hero.

Norman Bethune died of septic poisoning because an
“official’’ Canada, in cahoots with a US. Establishment
of the same breed, decreed an embargo and strict
prohibition of the export of all medical and surgical
supplies to the Canadian Medical Mission in China.

It is therefore not surprising that it took the “official”
Canada of this day and age some 25 years to “‘recognize”
Peoples’ China and its hero, Norman Bethune, — the same
“official” Canada which supplied cargoes of arms and
equipment to Chiang Kai-shek to help massacre his own
people and whose inhuman medical supplies embargo to
the China Medical Mission hastened the death of Dr.
Norman Bethune!

But times changes, as do the coloration of capitalist
Establishments. It is now highly popular and eminently

“respectable”’ (and politically “‘safe’’) to have known Dr.
Norman Bethune, even if remotely so.

these representing nothing and nobody but thems u

known Dr. Bethune. Yet at the time he left Canad
fulfil his destiny in China, had most of these bourg®

riff-raff seen him coming a block away they would
crossed the street to avoid meeting him. Now of ¢
there is a cheap and easy spot of publicity to be picked”
and who knows — maybea free trip to China?

That there have been political nondescripts, 4
missions and individuals of all kinds making free tr
China during recent years, goes without saying, maby

But they have all found it necessary (for theif o
aggrandizement) to ‘‘hone up” on the lately discov
saga of Norman Bethune as an immortal episode in
birth of the great Peoples Republic of China. Eve?
debonaire Trudeau has managed that much, if inde
years late.

yy

We could even hope that the recent ‘‘Barrett Missio®
Peoples’ China, ‘aside from the cheap press gossip w é
concentrated on the whys and wherefores of its alle
“free trip” to this ancient land, which could boast
civilization while we of a more ‘‘enlightened”’ rac® © jj
still climbing trees, managed to absorb some bast ral i
down-to-earth lessons on the building of socialism: ~ jj)
together with whatever trade it managed to drum et /|
serve to make its own “‘socialism’’ more meaniN&"_ jp
and the cause of Dr. Norman Bethune more realist
British Columbians and others — even if they wel I)
quarter of a century late in “recognizing” an histo
fact