‘Deficits’
a are buring, but then so is
the problem of Canada’s three-
quarter million unemployed looking
for jobs that don’t exist. The fed-
eral budget brought down this
week by tory Fleming emphasizes
the point.

The budget shows a mounting
deficit of $791,400,00, an all-time
peak in a five-year “red ink” tory,
pile-up. Total government spend-
ing for the fiscal year exceeded
$6'4-billion of the
money.

Nearly one and three-quarter
billion dollars, or almost one quar-
ter of that vast spending was
squandered for so-called “defense,”
upped during the year (while Dief
and company talked “peace”), by
some $135,300,000.

Income tax payers, mostly the
common people, coughed up an
extra $89-million for the year’s
total of nearly $2-billion, or 31-
percent of all government reven-
ues. Corporation taxes on the other
hand “enjoyed” a reduction of ap-
proximately $72-million, no doubt

taxpayers |

EDITORIAL PAGE

iob
as an “incentive to prosperity” —
for the monopolists?
By and large the Fleming budget
holds nothing for the people of

Canada, that is outside of “red in 2
deficits and a mounting national

debt, which endows those now liv- |

ing and tomorrow’s new-born baby
with a per-capita debt of some
$750 or more.

One budget item indicated an
“ynforseen” $40-million or there-
abouts spent on our “national sur-
vival course”. Most Canadians are
becoming convinced that “national
survival” would be much. better
served were a half or more of the
billions now going down the “de-
fense” drain, spent on providing
opportunities and jobs for the tens
of thousands of jobless workers,
plus the thousands of young people
now emerging from schools and
‘universities, with little prospects:
of a future. pees

Then, at least, we would have
something to show for such prodi-,
gious spending . . . even if there
was a “deficit.”

Editorial comment...

A news item reports a “Red”
grain elevator official in the
Soviet Union sentenced to death
by a firing squad for prolonged:
swindling of the collective farm-
ers in his area.

In Canada he’d probably end up
becoming a liberal or tory minister
of agriculture, or at the very worst,
get a Senate appointment.

Two social orders; in one harsh
penalties for betraying the people,
in the other an “honoured”! place
at the political pork-barrel.

* * *
WwW" the U.S. to lift its embar-
YY wo against Cuba, stop interfer-
ing with other countries trading
with Cuba, give a firm pledge that

it would never again organize (or}

permit to be organized) armed ag-
gression and counter-revolution
against Cuba, it could probably get
its 1700 mercenaries returned by
the Cuban government “free of
charge.” With the Pentagon al-
ways on the outlook for “bar-
gains” there’s one it shouldn’t:
miss. % * *

he New York Herald-Tribune

defines the U.S. economic “up-
swing” after the fashion of weath-
er reporting, with “Washington
feeling a chill in business” and

a

Pacific Tribune

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

Published weekly at:
Room 6 — 426 Main Street
Vancouer 4, B.C.
Phone MUtual 5-5288

Subscription Rates:
One Year: $4:00—Six Months: $2.25
Canadian and Commonwealth coun-
tries (except Australia): $4:00 one
_ Australia, United States and
‘all other countries: $5.00 one year.

Authorized as second class mail by
the Post Office Department, Ottawa,

“The Bloom is off the Kennedy
boom”.

Up here in Canada at the CLC
convention AFL-CIO fraternal
delegate L. M. Raftery doesn’t feel
the economic chill at all. His solu-
tion to the “abiding hunger pains
in the stomach” (not his own one),
is for more guns “against the
threat of Communism.” Hitler said
the same thing 28-years ago;
“guns before butter”.

B fee U.S. undeclared war against

North Vietnam has brought in
its wake not only death and suffer-
ing to the people of both North and
South Vietnam, but widespread
moral corruption. Swaggering U.S.
forces, well loaded with dollars to
spend have become the promoters
of every form of prostitution and
vice.

The smuggling of gold, opium
and other narcotics has become a
very lucrative business in and
around Saigon in South Vietnam.
As is already known by admission
of the Diefenbaker government, a
number of Canadians serving on
the three-nation (India, Poland
and Canada) International Control
Commission (ICC), have been in-
volved in this dirty business.

Macleans! Magazine of April 21
provides an interesting overtone on
inducement. “An ambitious officer
(presumably ICC or GI) can run
an investment of $100 into $40,-

‘Bullseye’
hairman of the Canada-U.S.
‘International Joint Commis-.

-sion on power development, Gen-

eral A. G. L. McNaughton has
been “deposed” by Dief. Reason:
the General dropped a shattering
“bombshell” on the tory doorstep
last week. :

In clear and_ succinct terms’
General McNaughton stated what
millions of Canadians now know
to be only too true; that “the gov-

A good ‘investment’

000, making only three or fo

trips north and south during h
one-year tour of duty.” :
No wonder a recent TV col
mentator described Saigon as
huge U.S.-staged brothel, whe
all the vices from dope to juven
prostitution. flourishes on U.
“sid” and fat GI payrolls.
Macleans’ adds a doleful note 6
its Vietnam “paradise for our di
lomat smugglers”. While Indi
and Canadian personnel on the IC
presumably get in a spot of g0
and opium “contraband in the

="

ernment had sold Canada dow!
the river on the Columbia Riv
Treaty with the U.S.”

Now: the General is in the “tal
get area” for Liberal blandish:
ments (for votes) and the ful
treatment of tory calumny and vil
lification for uttering the truth

‘And the truth is, not the sello
“treaty” but the “McNaughto!
Plan” for Columbia developme®
—and the interests of Canada.

Tom
McEwen,

W's. someone to make a study
of the countless struggles of
the “men who go down to the sea in
ships’”’, i.e. seamen, they would pro-
bably find at the core of every
grievance which has sparked ‘‘mut-
inies on the high seas’’, strikes and
other bitter forms of struggle, the
issue of “food”. Or to put it more
simply, the swill and garbage pro-
vided by shipowners and reaction-
ary governments in lieu of food for
seamen.

Turn back the pages of history.
The famed mutiny on the old Tzar-
ist battlewagon Potemkin stemmed
from many causes, but rotten food
fit to make a dog vomit touched
off the fuse of revolt.

The British “Invergordon” mut-
iny had a similar origin. While
the Captain Blyes of Merrie Eng-
land and the English bourgeoisie
were and are traditionally persis--
tent that their roast beef be “done

to a turn”, any kind of decayed
carrion was considered good
enough for their “Jack LATS <

In the heyday of British imperial-
ism when Britain was ‘‘mistress of
the seas”, its merchant seamen
held the unenviable record of hav-
ing the worst food and working
conditions on the Seven Seas. That

record is now possibly held “by —..

the Greek merchant marine, plus
a few other shipping monopolies.

However, despite all our vaunted,
progress, and despite the fct that-
this is 1962 instead of 1862, many,
shipping monopolies insist on their
crews eating garbage instead of
food.

During the past month Spanish!
and Greek seamen in B.C. ports
have literally had to “mutiny” be-.
cause of rotten food. Of course the,
commercial press (as ever), pinch-
hitting for the shipowners, puts it.
more nicely; the seamen protested’
because they ‘‘couldn’t stomach
bacon and eggs’. Now why should-
n’t seamen, like the rest of us, just
love bacon and eggs? What the
press forgot to mention was that
bacon and eggs (together or sep-
arate) upon which the “hand of
time” has laid heavily, can also
smell and taste to high heaven
when done up in putrid grease.

In this bacon-and-eggs controver-
sy an old sea horse, one George
Donaldson, hastens to the aid of
the shipowners, boasting of the
good “old days” when seamen like
himself consumed “salt horse,
weevily biscuits, duff treacle, etc,
and relished it”. Old Salt Donald-
son would give the seamen epicures! -
of today a tasty menu; a “diet of
seal with living weevils and a demi-
john of water.”

The intent of the Donaldson yarn.
(if it has an intent) is that today’s
seafaring boys should be as partial,
to such garbage as the shipowners.
Then we’d have labor-management _
“peace and cooperation”. Heave ho,

~me boys. We commend this old salt_

on his strong stomach. It should net
him a Tory nomination somewhere,
where the political menu runs 4
close parallel with his gastronomic
reminiscences.
Speaking of the close relationship
between food and politics as it re-
lates to seamen, the good ship
Bretwalda under British registry
(Captain James Milne), out of Hav-
ana, Cuba, with a cargo of sugar
for Peoples China, provides a fine
example. Unable to stock up in
Havana the doughty skipper decid-
ed to replenish his stores in the
Panama Canal Zone (USA).
The U.S. gave Captain Milne @
flat “no” with a rider attached:
“since you’re going to a Communist —
country, you won’t get a permit for
stores in any American port.” .
Then the skipper cut across the —
Carribean to Colombia. Officials of 4
that country, their sense of smell —
dulled by Kennedy’s “alliance for
progress” deodorant, sold the skip
per a few slabs of rotten beef. More
trouble. While loading this dubious —
beef some of it came in contact with
a load of pork on the dock, and pork —
is strictly taboo with the skippers 4
five Mohammedan firemen (on reli
‘gious grounds), just as the stale
crow-bait was equally repulsive to.
the rest of his 54-man crew. a
Determined to get edible-food
for his crew, the skipper finally
sailed his ship on the last leg of 4
2,000-mile “detour,” into the porl
of Vancouver, B.C. which, happil
is not yet listed as an “Americal
port,” and where food can 0
bought without U.S. approval.

ril 13,

A