Review

Cuba-the

t is a stock excuSe of imperial
spokesmen, reluctant to let go
of. their colonial possessions, that
the natives are “not yet ready for
responsible self-government?

Last week Jamaica became a
sovereign self-governing nation.
Princess Margaret and her royal
photographer officiated at the col-
orful ceremonies bestowing inde-
pendence to this Crown colony
,after 307-years of British rule.

Along with their independence
the Jamaician people took over a
‘broken-down economy, a_ severe
market crisis, forty-percent of its
labor force jobless, much of its
productive agricultural lands al-
most derelict, a native bourgeoisie

_-with little more than a ~tourist’
outlook, and a native government

Solution -

Te Miniere’ is the great Bel-

®” gian mining cartel in the
Congo province of Katanga. Large
chunks of its lucrative stocks are
held by British, U.S., Canadian
and other foreign investors. With

- Katanga miners digging rich ores
at less than one dollar for a 12-14-
hour day, Union Miniere pays
handsome dividends.

The “president” of secessionist
Katanga is the Belgian stooge,
Moihse Tshombe, who engineered
the Katanga ‘break-away’ from
Congo central government under
the direction and with the conniv-
ance, arms and finances of Bel-
gian imperialism, and with the
tacit approval and “non-interfer-
ence” ‘of the “Western” colonial-
ists in the United Nations.

In its doleful (and highly mis-
leading) editorial of August 1 on
“Money, Mines and Mandates”,
the Vancouver Sun laments the
UN’s inability. “to keep its troops
in the Congo much longer’, and
Tshombe’s success “in defying the
UN by the simple expedient of
outspending it” with Union Min-
iere funds?

The Sun’s lament stands the
issue on its head. Right from the
beginning UN operations (as dis-
tinct from its mandate) was to
undermine the authority of the
government of the Congo Repub-
lie; to become an “accessory” to,
the murder of its first premier,
Patrice Lumumba, to tacitly ap-
prove of the arrest, torture and
banishment of its deputy premier,
Antoine Gizenga, and to create

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haunted by the “spectre of Com-
munism” and not quite decided
whether “Free West” guns or in-
dependence “butter” should have
priority? Under British rule the
main exports were rum, roses, ro-
mance 2nd bauxite, but never
enough ‘prosperity’ from either to
reach down to the poverty-strick-.

en masses.
But Jamaican workers, looking

across the blue Carribean towards
Cuba, will learn fast how to set
their house in order in the build-
ing and consolidation of their new-
won independence. In this they
will be spurred on by the sinister
schemes of Yankee imperialism to
transform Jamaica into a “52nd
state” to serve as a coldwar base
against social progress in Latin
America and the Carribean.

get out!

and utilize every opportunist, ad-
venturist or likely stooge (with
Tshombe as a shining example)
dn an effort to undermine the
authority of a duly elected gov-
ernment, and to open the door for
a new neo-colonialism to foist
upon the backs of the Congolese
people.

The ultimate solution for Kat-
anga and its sister provinces of
the Congo in the restoration of
independent self-government is
not, as the Sun suggests, “a swift
kick” in Tshombe’s Union Miniere
“pocketbook”, but for the UN and
its neo-colonialists to get out of
the Congo—and stay out.

EDITORIAL PAGE

ailment and defect, with one prime objective in mind — profit.; —

‘Adolph Hitler look like a saint by comparison. To let this out

x

A monstrous crim

a fg say that the multiple millionaire monopolies engaged in drug P
duction and distribution is a highly profitable business, is mer
to state the obvious. On those rare occasions when the drug monop
has come under some halfbaked ‘investigation’ or other, their enorme?
profits, if little else, has been well established.

These monopoly dope peddlers with their vast sales-pressures
advertising agencies, lay claim to a surefire ‘cure’ for every hum :

While statutory laws exist, allegedly to protect the public ate
the blandishment of these legalized dope peddlers, “new wonder , F
appear on the market almost daily, with little government concern
their content or claims — until the damage has been done. :

Thus came the ‘new discovery’, Thalidomide, a new variety.
‘goofball’ claimed by its manufacturers and peddlers to render the p@
of pregnancy and childbirth practically “painless.” ;

Now comes the delayed horror of its after-effect, much be,
first months after the Hiroshima A-Bomb when mothers gave birth
physically and mentally deformed infants. The victims of Thalidom
are experiencing a like horror, while pregnant mothers are torm —
fear that a like deformity will be born to them. A national and ye
wide computation already runs into the tens of thousands of defor™ |
births resulting from the use of this horror drug.

It has been suggested that some form of “compensation
for the infant victims of this monstrous crime?

The question might be asked of those bourgeois cash reg
in human form; just what “compensation” is equal to a cradle-t0-
destruction of a child’s birthright to health and happiness?

. Aside from that pertinent question, who is to assume responsi!
or “aid” to these as yet unknown thousands of Thalidomide V
which may be added to the already thousands of unfortunate oa |
or ‘Mongoloid’ children, for whom government institutions and car
as yet practically nil in every Canadian province, with the sole excé
of B.C., itself far from adequate? ali

The fearsome incidence of mother-and-child victims of Th
mide must be placed where it properly belongs; at the door of the P
hungry: drug monopolies, and (in Canada), at the door of the
baker government for permitting such criminal drug traffic to
unrestricted.

It is bad enough to exploit the adult living, who should know y |
But to exploitthe unborn babe and condemn it to a life-span © -
deformity in order to reap still greater prifts, is a crime ee. i
humanity pass in silence is to condone a crime worse than murder é
a profitable enterprise.

ist

conti®

Ws by conscious intent or
sheer ignorance, the busi-
ness of spreading distortion and
confusion in ‘king-sized’ packages
has reached a high degree of per-
fection in modern journalism. Or,
to put it another way, the unprin-

cipled use of a good cause to ad- ..

vance a bad one. ee

In a recent..edition the Toronto
Globe & Mail “does an editorial
hatchet job on two trade unions,
the International Brotherhood of
Teamsters and the Seafarers In-
ternational Union (SIU). Accord-
ing to the G&M these two unions
are guilty of ‘‘besmirching” our
Canadian “heritage” by the ‘‘viol-.
ence” of their strike actions, with
Teamsters’ Jimmy Hoffa and SIU
Hal Banks spotlighted as the
prime “besmirchers.”’

“Canadians have been horrified,
from time to time” warbles the
-G&M “at the thought that the
United States Government could
dominate Canadian companies;
through their parent bodies in the
United States. This has struck us
as shocking and scandulous, a
denial of our proud existence as,
a sovereign state, ‘

“What is not so well known is
that many Canadian union mem-
bers suffer similar domination.

dian sovereignty and ‘a
dence, standing as “Masters
our own House” without fut idl
delay, but don’t reduce Canadh,
sovereignty as something to ©
ber trade unions with.
By all means also let us f
full autonomy for Canadian
ions, free from the dominatio?
high-salaried U.S. - resident
union burocrats and fakes:
serve as US. state depart™
agents and echoes in the ra?

Many an industrial contract nego-
tiated by a union with a Canadian
company must go to union head-
quarters in the United States for
approval even before it is voted
upon by the Canadian member-
ship. These Canadian union mem-
bers have yielded the right to say
a firm yes or no of their own until
the Big Brother to the south has
spoken. This is a surrender of na- .
tional sovereignty of the worst
sort, and we have seen the results

navé

— violence, intimidation, arson, labor, both in Canada and ee nal
. .”. Etcetra and etc, But this autonomy or “n@ e
Entirely aside from the G&M sovereignty” as the G&M

scribes it, will be designe é
won by Canadian unions Ke
selves and not by the £0 4
tongue editors of a reaction
monopoly press, who use ae,
causes to promote union
tion. : S to |
If readers of the G&M ©? gre |
back through the files f0% 9g
years 1949-50 when the ShiPP.
Federation, the Mackenzie
government, and the right-
trade union beaurocrats wet
smashing the Canadian 5
Union on the pretext that }
“communist-dominated”, and
inating the remainder of C4
Merchant Marine meantime
will find many approving ful
in the G&M on this sha” i
union-wrecking job. They raise
also find fulsome words ° ane
for the SIU, brought in to a
job, and little or nothing oi
about the violence used 1”. ove
it. So much for G&M a ald
eignty.” Sie
We are all for Canadia? a
pendence and trade union 44
omy, but hot the G&M way

having constituted itself prosecu-
tor, judge and jury of the ‘“Hoffas |
and the Banks and others’, its ar-
gument for Canadian sovereignty
and independence from U.S. dom-
ination (if indeed badly mis-direct-
ed), is eminently sound. Ever since
the coldwar was launched with its
multiple evils of Canadian “integ-
ration”, costly war alliances, and
the subordination of our economy,
resources and peace requirements
to the dictates of U.S. imperialism
the Communist Party of Canada
has been saying much the same
thing, only much more consistent-
ly.

What the G&M forgets (or does
it?) is that it was not the ‘‘Hoffas
and the Banks and others’’ in the
domain of organized labor who
have sold Canada’s sovereignty,
industries, jobs, resources, well-
being and peace to U.S. monopoly
and its Canadian partners, but the
moncpolists and their Liberal,
Tory and Socred henchmen, whom
the G&M serves as a class, if not
a family bible.

By all means let us have Cana-

me

das
aie

August

a US

10,

1962—PACIFIC TRIBUN