Since the historic address of
Cuba’s Prime Minister Fidel
Castro to the UN General Assem-
bly, on which the U.S. and Canad-
ian “free” press imposed an almost
complete blackout, much has hap-
pened.

Foiled in one direction in its
aggressive interference in the in-
ternal affairs of Cuba; U.S. im-
perialism tries another tack. Now
it plans for a tight embargo upon
all exports to Cuba, not only from
the U.S. but from “other countries”
including Canada.

Cuba, of course, has replied with
decisive firmness against con-
tinued U.S. provocations and ag-
gression by the strengthening of
its peoples’ vigilance, and by the
confiscation and nationalization of
hundreds of big U.S. monopoly
industries and financial institu-
tions.

Those who may harbour illusions
that the U.S. presidential elections
might ease the situation and bring
some promise of improved U.S.-
Cuban relations under a new ad-
ministration seem doomed to dis-
appointment.

In the Nixon-Kennedy Punch-
and-Judy ‘debates’ one sorry fact
sticks out like a sore thumb; viz,
that both candidates are out for
tougher “get tough’ coldwar poli-
cies against all who do not kowtow
to the Pentagon’s ‘big stick’ meg-
alomania. At the moment the
Nixon-Kennedy gold-dust twins are
vieing with each other on who can
hit Cuba’s Fidel Castro the hard-
est.

The vital question for Canadians
on this embargo issue lies in the
danger that it will spill over into
Canada, if it hasn’t already done
so. It is now definite that ‘talks’
are in process between Washing-
ton and Ottawa, aimed at pressur-
ing the Diefenbaker government
into line in support of the U.S.
embargo. Since the Diefenbaker
government, like the Liberals be-
fore it, have never been noted for
rejecting the coldwar orders of
their bosses in Washington, - this
embargo issue is fraught’ with
great dangers for Canada.

Pacific Tribune

Editor — TOM McEWEN
Associate Ednor — MAURICE RUSH
Business Mgr. — OXANA BIGELOW

Published weekly at
Room 6 — 426 Main Street
Vancouver 4, B.C.
Phone MUtual 5-5288
Subscription Rates:
One Year: $4.00
Six Months: $2.25
Sanadian and Commonwealth
countries (except Australia): $4.00
one year. Australia, United States and
all other countries: $5.00 one year,
Authorized as second class mail
Post Office Dept., Ottawa

No embargos on Cuba

|. EDITORIAL PAGE

ves

The only sure guarantee that

Canada will not become a partner
in this war conspiracy against
Cuba, rests entirely with the vig-
ilance and determination of the
Canadian people. Vigilance requir-
ing a maximum of workingclass
alertness and unity at the point of
production. With so much of Can-
ada’s industry already in the hands
of U.S. monopoly, American-owned

firms may be told, as was the Ford
Motors of Canada a couple of years
ago, that they could not sell their
products to the People’s Republic
of China, or to any other country
not approved by the Yankee over-
lords. Results for Canada, more
jobless auto workers.

The Province has already let it
be known (editorially) that in such
an eventuality, there is nothing for
Canada to do but comply with U.S.
embargo diktats.

On the contrary, the best safe-
guard against Dief jumping when
the Pentagon waves the embargo
whip, is nation-wide workingclass
solidarity with the Cuban people
in their struggle against the com-
mon scourge of mankind—counter-
revolutionary U.S. imperialism.

Survival a ‘gamble

The unsightly Junior Chamber
of Commerce ‘fallout’ shelter which
defaced the front lawn of Van-
couver’s Courthouse for some
weeks has been happily removed.

To Vancouver citizens it was
neither ‘a thing of beauty’ nor use,
a fact well underscored by the
total absence of applications for
building: permits to build replicas
of this JC-civil defence absurdity
in citizen backyards or basements.

Going to bat against public ridi-
cule of the JC’s effort to promote
nuclear war hysteria, a recent edi-
torial in the Vancouver Sun goes
into a fine definition as between a
nuclear “bomb shelter” and a “fall-
out shelter.”

With most sensible people the
Sun agrees that such a shelter
would be useless in a “near hit,”
but purely, (with a wordy illustra-
tion of bombs dropping) “to give
protection against the intense
radiation of the fallout.”

“After about two weeks” con-
tinues the Sun, “its occupants
could emerge with some chance of
surviving the radiation that was
left.’ This “some chance” opines
the Sun, “is a precise definition of
the shelter’s purpose.”

A sort of a ‘Hobson’s Choice’ for
the citizen to being barbecued
smartly or over a slow fire, say
“about two weeks.”

All science and common sensé
contend that JC-civil defence or
other ‘shelters’, regardless of fine
editorial definitions, are not the
answer for human survival, no
matter how plausable such defini-
tions may appear.

The best and only possible path
for human survival in a nuclear
war is to see that it doesn’t hap-
pen. To stand up in millions-strong
unity and determination for peace,
for total disarmament, for an end
to the manufacture, testing. and
use of nuclear weapons. To impose
this mass determination upon thé
nuclear atomaniacs, thereby elim-
inating the Sun’s “gamble”  be-
tween a quick “roasted to death”
barbecue, or done slowly in a JC-
civil defence radiation cooker.

The argument that human sul
vival from nuclear war is @
“oamble,” only serves the purposé
of those who give support to every
coldwar conspiracy and stupidity
that makes it so. The Sun’s ‘chance
of survival’ fits into this JC ‘fall
out’ absurdity. :

Tom
McEwen

RECENT edition of the Trail

Times carried an editorial en-
titled, ““‘The Great Depression, CBC
Style.” The gist of this editorial
comment against the. Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation was its
featuring of “The Hungry Thir-
ties” in its TV program known as
“Project 61.”

The Trail Times, a doughty ex-
ponent of the status quo and the
vested rule of monoply, can see
no point in CBC’s featuring the
“Great Depression.”

“Let it forget the Depression,”
says the Trail Times scribe, “let it,
along with the radical agitators,
grow up... let it delve into the
origins of this nation and let it
stir in us a consciousness of the
meaning of Canada.”

In the near future this paper. is
going to publish a very full anti-
monopoly edition on just who
owns and exploits Canada, past
and present. For the moment, how-
ever, let’s do’ aq little “delving” as
the Times’ editor so. loftily
suggests.

Since we didn’t see the CBC’s
presentation of the “Great De-
pression” we must fall back on
experience and the lessons of his-

tory. We recall vividly a genera-
tion of young and unwanted Cana-
dians, hungry and destitute, for
whom the government of the Right
Hon. (?) Richard Bedford ‘Iron
Heel” Bennett had nothing. They
asked for bread, for work and
wages, for an opportunity to live
like Canadians. Tory “Iron Heel’
Bennett gave them 20-cents-a-day
slave camps, teargas, police black-
jacks, jails and bullets.

And on the “meaning of Can-
ada” as the Trail Times puts it,
we recall too that countless thou-
sands of Bennett’s slave-camp vic-
tims gave their lives on the battle-
fronts of world war two fon the
€anada’s that couldn’t give them
a job, while ‘Lord Bedford of Cal-
gary” shook the dust of Canada
from his shoes and headed for
Merrie England, a deserter from
the land that had provided him
with substance and affluence.

“The most one can say about
the Great Depression” quoth the
Trail Times “is that it is a fact of
history. It has no social signific-
ance of any kind in the Canada
of the 1960’s.”

“History repeats itself,’ wrote
Hegel, “‘once as a tragedy, next as
a farce.” But the “farce” too be-
comes a tragedy if man hasn’t
learned something from the past in
shaping the future. Having ad-
mitted the ‘‘Great Depression’”’ to
be “a fact of history” the Trail
Times scribe would have served
the cause of progress better had he
applied the lessons of the “Great
Depression” of the 30’s to the 60’s,
instead of sniping at the CBC. To

have scored the CBC, not because
it featured the ‘“‘Great Depression,”’
but how it featured this “fact of
history.”

There are many grim parallels
between the Hungry Thirties and
now. A reactionary tory govern-
ment then — and now. A million
jobless and dispossessed workers
then — and climbing to that figure
now.

A war hysteria then, with the
“free” West pinning its hopes and
conspiracies upon a Rome-Berlin-
Tokyo Axis to “save the world
from communism.” A war hysteria
now with the “‘free’’ West pinning
its hopes and conspiracies on a
U.S.-created, NATO — to do the
same job.

The wolf of hunger, eviction,
seizures and foreclosures, police
intimidation and violence, prom-
ises, buck-passing and doublecross,
boxears, “keep moving,” prisons
and brutal murder . . . the lot of
the jobless worker of the 30’s...
and the same now well advanced
in the 60’s.

A Liberal Mackenzie King said
‘not one five-cent piece for unem- |
ployment” and a tory compound-
ed it. with a 20-cent-a-day slave
camp “wage.” In this day a liberal
and tory government say, $14- i]
billion a year for arms, and a “fix-
it-yourself” . peanut handout for
work and wages. Such are the
“facts of history.”

The main “fact” still missing is
the militant workingclass organ-
ization of the 30’s to meet the
capitalist bankruptcy of the 60’s.
But that will come.

—

October 28, 1960—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 4