a

ur vocabulary changes with the changing times. Who

would have ever thought that the common “‘weather
man” who predicted showers in the morning to be followed by
rain in the afternoon would become an ‘‘atmospheric environ-
ment’”’ expert almost overnight? Not that it will make any
difference to the weather, but it does lend an elevated status to
your official forecaster.

Then there is your friendly undertaker who adopted the
moniker of ‘‘mortician,” presumably because it added more
“dignity”? to the profession’s final gouge on the ‘‘departed.”’
But it’s not all a picture of gloom. Last week we noticed the big
city billboard of a prominent ‘‘mortician” firm displaying a
‘“‘get-well soon card’’ from your friendly undertaker. That’s
really something ‘‘new’’ from an unexpected source.

..However, a press news item last week from ‘‘Merrie
England’’ reveals ‘“‘morticians’’ there taking a dim view of
“free enterprise’’ going into the production of cardboard
caskets, claiming that it detracts from the ‘‘dignity’’ of the
departed to dispose of his remains in a cardboard carton. What
they really mean of course is that such a modus operendi would
detract from their profits, from the high cost of dying, to quote
from the title of Jessica Smith’s sensational book on the
subject.

Then there is the new semantics on scabbery, now much in
use by those so-called public services, whose main aim is to
load_the public with ‘‘all the traffic will bear.” The role of the
scab has now been ‘“‘dignified’’ by the high-sounding title of
“‘supervisory personnel.’’ In most cases, as in the present
Hydro-IBEW dispute, this scabbing under the guise of
untrained ‘‘supervisory personnel’? could become a grave

danger to life and property, but to the Establishment and the -

labor-hating ‘‘free enterprisers’’ it serves, that is secondary.

If and when U.S. President Nixon triggers the Amchitka
nuclear explosion and blows a vast region of the ‘‘Pacific
Rim”’ to hell and gone, he will not be exploding a bomb five
times the destructive power of the one which blotted out
Nagasaki and Hiroshima; he will be exploding a ‘‘device’’.
Not that its devastating qualities will be any less, but in the
Nixon-Pentagon jargon ‘“‘device’’ sounds less awesome, more
‘scientific’. Among other definitions, current dictienaries
define a ‘‘device’’ as being ‘‘a plan, scheme, or trick for
effecting a purpose.’’ That fits Tricky Dicky and his “U.S.
security’’ down to a “‘T’’.

The younger generation of today have also made extensive
contribution to our-new vocabulary. In our own more youthful
days during the Hungry Thirties we were frequently
“‘busted’’, that is, more often than not, flat broke. But today
the term means something entirely different, although
relevant. To be ‘‘busted’’ today means to get arrested, clubbed,
beaten, thrown in the hoosegow, the target of a sadistic police,
to whom the lawless enforcement of the ‘‘law’’ has become
second nature.

. All that is required today to get ‘‘busted” is a wealth of
hair on the head or face, a healthy sophisticated doubt about
the social ‘‘amenities:’ of the status quo, and boy, you ve had it.
Riot sticks, tear gas, mace, guns, jail, and not infrequently
cold-blooded murder. Then you are ‘“‘busted’’ for sure. With
some of us ‘‘old squares’’ it was generally a case of being
‘“‘vagged”’ by the minions of the ‘‘law’’; for having “‘no visible
means of support,’’ with its periodic sojourn in the local
hoosegow, in which the state of being ‘‘busted’’ temporarily
terminated, but not the state of being ‘‘broke.’’ A condition
immortalized in the songs of the martyred working class poet,
Joe Hill— Hallelujah I’m a Bum.

The new and vast additions to our vocabulary, which
largely stem from the scientific and technological revolution
we are today experiencing, are almost limitless in their range
and scope, often far beyond the ordinary laymen’s ability to
comprehend. These we grapple with, not always successfully,
but don’t regard them as a cover-up attempt to make ‘“‘a silk
purse out of a sow’s ear,’’ such as dubbing a common scab as a
‘supervisory personnel,” etc. And if our popular plumber has
now become a “‘sanitary engineer,”’ that’s jake with us too. It’s
the hidden content of these semantics that gets us down
because much like the modern Establishment diplomat, to
whom ‘“‘yes’’ means ‘‘no”’ or vice versa.

“GOLD RUSH NIGHT”’

A Gala Extravaganza
At Great Expense to the Promoters

COME MEET
Flaming Mame _ Soapy Smith Diamond Lil
Sam McGee Klondike Annie Judge Begbie

With the Hurdy-Gurdy Damsels — Barber Shop Quartet

SATURDAY — OCTOBER 23rd — 8 p.m. to?

AUUC HALL — 805 Easter Pender St.
Admission — $1.50 (cash or gold dust)
Asp: North Burnaby — Edmonds Clubs (CPC)

2 ANS GIO YAS se 4a
PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1971—PAGE 2

Dohm Report underlines need
for public control of police

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

The Dohm Report on the .

August 7 Vancouver Gastown
riot falls short on at least two
counts.

It proposes that ‘‘the Van-
couver Board,of Police Commis-
sioners should not make
public a policy of no longer allow-
ing demonstrations to take over
the public street.’’ There is
nothing in the report that I can
see that warrants such a con
clusion.

Mr. Justice Dohm was critical
of police conduct. ‘“‘The violence
erupted only when the police
intervened,”’ he said. The police
“‘over-reacted’’ and in some
instances ‘‘used unnecessary,
unwarranted and_ excessive
force.”

If those in charge of the police
acted wrongly, then action
should be taken against them. To
propose the abolition of street
demonstrations ‘because police
officials exceeded their author-
ity is like proposing that all
banks be closed bécause some
are the victims of bank hold-ups.

Street gatherings and demon-
strations are a recognized- form
of expression. of public opinion,
a democratic right that belongs

to the people, a political liberty
not to be abrogated by police
officials.

Secondly, the report fails to
deal with the central question —
that of control ‘éf the police
force.

It focuses attention on two
‘‘dangerous, radical young
men’’ but police excesses can
hardly be blamed on them.

Then it would penalize the
victims, the public, by taking
away the right of street demon
stration.

But the problem of public
control of the police force to
prevent any further such inci-
dents is avoided.

Today the citizens of Van-
couver pay for the upkeep of the
police force, and it is no small
item in the city’s budget, but the
control of the force has been
taken out of our hands. It is
administered by a police
commission appointed by the
Attorney General.

The present commission has
lost public credibility because of
the way it is appointed, because
of the Gastown riot, and because
of its consistent failure to deal
with citizen complaints against

actions of the police. To take a’

‘Canada must protest
genocide in Pakistan’

- Twenty-two families in West
Pakistan control the industrial
wealth of all of Pakistan, politi-
cal science professor Dr. Usha
Mahajani of Washington Central
College told an audience in
Christ Church Cathedral Friday
night.

She said the military dictator
Yaya Khan who is carrying out a
policy of genocide against the
East Pakistan people has post-
poned calling the National
Assembly indefinitely, although
elections held in December of
1970 saw the Awami League take
162 out of 167 seats in East
Pakistan, and an absolute
majority of the total seats. He is
the ‘‘rebel,’’ the ‘‘secessionist,”’
Dr. Mahajani charged, and not
the leaders and people of East
Bengal.

The professor, originally from
Poona, India, pointed out that
the terms East Bengal and East
Pakistan are interchangeable,
and that Bengla Dash means,
loosely, Bengal government.

The United States and China
are giving all-out military aid to
Yaya Khan. Two billion in U.S.
aidhas already gone to the
dictator, and any attempt to
expose to the world the true
state of famine and disease
amongst the refugees has time
and again been hushed up by
officialdom in the U.S.

She asked the audience to try

to grasp what it means to havea
sudden flood of 10 million
impoverished people to feed and
shelter and clothe. This is the
situation facing India.-Help from
other nations and from United
Nations has been minimal.

She lashed out at the indiffer-
ence of western ‘‘civilization’”’
which turns a blind eye year
after year to the mass death of
peoples from. the days of the
Korean war, to the ‘‘anti-com-

munist’’» purge of 500,000 in
Indonesia in 1965, to Vietnam,
and now Pakistan.

She urged Canadians to
impress on their government
the need to protest the genocide;
the dictatorship of the Yaya
Khan. ‘‘Canada can at least go
down in history as a country that
condemned this kind of
genocide!’ she challenged.

A revealing answer to another
question from the floor was her
statement that President Nixon
has told India that ‘“‘if China
were to come into the war, not to
expect any help from the United
States.”

She quoted a statement to the
effect that the China-USA accord
was ‘‘bought at the cost of the
poor and weak countries of the
world.”’

The meeting was sponsored by
the Peace Action League.

- (phone 433-8328)

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