After tragic assassination

Pacific

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FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1963
VOL. 24, NO. 48

RIBUNE

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Who was this man=
Lee Harvey Oswald?

Who was Lee Harvey Oswald?
Was he linked to the political
left? Did he assassinate Presi-
dent Kennedy? And why was he
himself put out of the way?

These are only a few of the
Questions hanging over the entire
Case of America’s fourth
Successful presidential assass-
ination, The press of the world
Says the whole affair is covered
by **a forest of question marks.”’

The answers to all the ques-

tions may never be. known. In
fact, the unusual haste with which
Dallas police were prepared to
say ‘*case closed’’ after Oswald’s
murder would indicate a bold at-
tempt to prevent adequate ans-
wering of the questions posed.

However, some facts are al-
ready beginning to emerge.

In a speech by Cuban Premier
Fidel Castro, heard in Vancou-
ver by several PT readers hours
after the murders, the premier
analyzed the relationship of
forces in the United States, He
said the issue at stake inthe U.S.
was not one between the left and
right—but between the moderates
and the extreme right.

The forces on the right wanted
to change the Kennedy administ-
ration’s policy; they were op-
posed to the test ban treaty and
the pledge given last year not to
attack Cuba, as well as the civil
rights program.

Castro referred to remarks
made by Kennedy several weeks
ago in Miami, Florida that he
would not allow another invasion
of Cuba. He then quoted aleading
Southern political figure who said
something would happen in a short
time to change this.

Turning to Oswald himself, the
premier said when Oswald went
to live in the Soviet Union he
offered that country military in-
formation but was laughed at.

See: Oswald, Pg. 3

AFL-CIO meet tips hat
towards Canadian labor

The AFL-CIO has tipped its
hat in the direction of Canadian
labor autonomy. Deferring to
Widespread pressure for sover-
Signty in the affairs of the Can-
adian Labor movement, the
recent AFL-CIO convention gave
its executive council the right to
Waive some of its international
authority,

Acting upon a resolution pre-
Sented by the Brotherhood of
Pulp, Sulphite and Paper Mill

Orkers the convention seemed
to agree that the Canadian Labor
Congress should have the right
to settle jurisdictional disputes
arising in Canada among affili-
ates of international unions.

However, the move did not in-
Struct the AFL - CIO executive
‘©0uncil to adopt a ‘hands ‘off’
, | _ toward Canadian =

lems; it merely gave that body
the power to refrain from pok-
ing its nose into Canadian af-
fairs should it so desire, press
reports from Washington and New
York have indicated.

Even this limited, begrudging
recognition of Canadian labor's
rights represents somewhat of a
victory, some observers feel.

They point out that at least
U.S. labor top brass has been
made aware Canada is not the
51st state of the U.S.A., though
this is still only a very small
step on the road to Canadian
trade union sovereignty. |

Of no small consequence in this
development were the roles play-
ed by recent conventions of the
Ontario, Quebec and B.C, Feder-
ations ‘of ‘Labor—all - of which
demanded: Canadian autonom

ICH ROAD WILL
. TAKE NOW ?

As the world recovered from the shock and horror of the vio-
lence which exploded last weekend in the rightist stronghold of Dallas,
Texas which saw President Kennedy assassinated and his accused as-
sassin murdered in the city’s police station by an ex-Chicago thug and
known police stoolpigeon, the ques tion began to push itself into every-
one’s mind: What does Kennedy’s death and the accession to power of
Lyndon B. Johnson to the presidency mean for the world? What does

it mean for Canada?

Many questions about last
weekend’s violence still linger
in everybody’s mind. There is
a strong feeling everywhere that
the full truth of the bizarre and
stunning events of last weekend
have not been told to the pub-
lic.

In the aftermath of the ter-
rible tragedy people in all lands
are wondering: Will these events
lessen the chances of» world
peace? Will they help the strug-
gles of the Negroes for equality?
Will U.-.S. policies: remain the
same or will the country move
to the right?

An audible sigh of relief went
up when President Johnson this
week assured Soviet Premier
Khrushchev that the U.S. intends
to carry forward efforts of the
late President Kennedy to im-
prove relations between the U.S.
and the Soviet Union,

For its part the Soviet Union
hastened to call on the new U.S.
president to co-operate in efforts
toward relaxation of international
tensions and measures to end
the cold war. A front page edi-
torial in Izvestia said that a
joint U. S..— Soviet effort to-
wards peace would be ‘‘the fin-
est memorial’? to the murdered
president.

Of particular coneern to Can-
adians was how the events of
last weekend would affect Canada.
Relations between the two coun-
tries have deteriorated in recent
weeks, U.S. insistence on Canada
accepting nuclear arms, its
interference in Canadian affairs
on trade, manufacture of auto
parts, labor matters and other
issues has deeply concerned Can-
adians,

Likewise, the growing takeover
of Canadian industry and natur-
al resources, such as the Colum-

LYNDON B. JOHNSON, new Presi-
dent of the United States. A 55-
year-old Texan millionare who
made his money in oil and real
estate. Will the right see new op-
portunities in his elevation to pres-
idency? Or will public pressure
compel him to follow a more mod-

Sovie! Premier Khrushchev and the late John F. Kennedy—photo-
graphed during their first meeting in Vienna. Will the initiative
towards peace taken by these two men with the test ban treaty be
continued by the new administration?

bia River, has very much ag-
gravated relations between the
two countries.

How the new president of the
U.S. will cope with these ques-
tions which eventually affect
Canadian independence are mat-
ters which Canadians will haveto
weigh up and assess in the next
few weeks,

Meanwhile, faced -with the
events of the past weekend, the
Pacific Tribune re-organized its

pages this week to bring our
readers the widest possible cov-
erage of the critical events of
last weekend,

Of particular interest to our
readers will be an article by the
foreign affairs expert ofthe Brit-
ish Daily Worker, Sam Russell,
who in the following article as-
esses the world-wide importance
of the tragic events of last week-
end and their significance to the
world.

By SAM RUSSELL

America and the world will,
in the coming weeks and months,
be confronted with the crucial
question of which way U.S. policy
will face, both in international
and home affairs,

The whole history of President
Kennedy’s 34 months of office
showed how fierce was the strug-
gle in the U.S. between the en-
trenched forces of reaction and
those elements—both inside and
outside the Kennedy Administra-
tion—which sought to strike out
to the New Frontier.

Of course, the New Frontier
concept was vague and woolly,
compounded as it was at atime
when the anti- Communism of
the Dulles brothers, Acheson,
Truman and Co., was the most
powerful element in the Demo-
cratic Party.

And President Kennedy and
his New Frontiersmen had more
than their fair share of anti-
Communism; their loathing of
the Soviet Union, and of -the
mere mention of Socialism,
bordering on the pathological.

Yet there was among these
New Frontiersmen
back to the progressive tradi-
tions of the New Deal under

a harking.

Roosevelt in home and foreign
affairs,
* * *

But for such a policy to be suc-
cessful, however tentative its ap-
proach, it was necessary to mo-
bilize the ordinary people of the
U.S. and above all the 50 million
Americans, the majority of them
Negroes, who live in the direst
poverty.

The Kennedy Administration
failed to do this, because it hoped
it would somehow be possible to
behead the tiger of extreme U.S.
reaction by first cutting off its
tail without its knowing,

And so, in the first period of
his tenure of office, President
Kennedy was the prisoner of his
own anti-Communist, multi-mil-
lionaire background, coupled with
the equivocal attitude he had
adopted over the McCarthy
witch-hunt, the most pressing is-
sue in American politics at the
time.

He also came to power on a
program promising an even more
astronomic expenditure on arms
than the Republican Eisenhower
Administration had thought pos-
sible, with an intensification of
the nuclear arms race.

The most explosive. issue in
See WHICH