EDITORIAL Stockholm, the next step On Jan. 16 the 35 countries which put their signatures to the Helsinki Final Act in 1975, will meet in Stock- holm to seek ways to security for all the European countries, coupled with establishing confidence that will permit a disarmament process. The participants, 33 European countries plus Canada and the U.S., will open the conference on the foreign ministerial level — with leading spokesmen Andrei Gromyko and George Schultz taking part. Entitled the Conference on Confidence and Security- Building Measures and Disarmament, and beginning with a seven-week first session, it was decided upon when the parties met in Madrid in September. The people of Europe in the first place, linked to the people of all the world in their powerful opposition to nuclear war and nuclear adventures, look to this con- ference for concrete achievements for peace. Here is the moment, in this first part of 1984 when, through serious negotiation, the potential exists for the European countries, including the USSR and the War- saw Treaty countries and the U.S. and the NATO countries, including Canada, to map the way back from the nuclear brink. On Oct. 5, 1983, the Soviet Union gave its view of the conference. the USSR’s permament representative at the UN, Oleg Troyanovsky declared: “The USSR — to the extent of its ability — will seek to ensure that the work of the conference is fruitful and lives up to the expectations placed on it by political circles and the public at large in European and other countries.” In the opinion of George Ignatieff, former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations: “We ‘may find that scoring points over the Russians by development of the new Pershings leads to great disruption of the NATO alliance because of the concern of the West Germans that their security is actually being reduced by the deployment.” It is not only the West Germans whose security is threatened; and in that light a consensus among Euro- peans on at least the main requirements for security and coexistence may not be impossible, whatever the Rea- ganite intimidation. It is clear that building confidence and security in those countries requires, among other things, a freeze on nuclear weapons, and reversal of U.S. deployment of missiles. On these. matters, Canadians should make their views known to their members of parliament and the prime minister, in the interest of turning the confer- ence in the direction of detente. Socialist Cuba — 25 years Twenty-five years of the Cuban revolution is a land- mark in the progress not just of Cuba but of the strug- gling peoples of the world. It is not enough to congratulate the Cubans, their government, their Communist Party, the foremost leader of the revolution Fidel Castro and his courage- ous comrades, it is a matter of commitment for those of us who agonize over the uneven struggle, a matter of dedication to the fight to end for all time the USA’s harassment of that socialist island. The Yankee bully is at his mouthiest when attacking 110,000 Grenadians, or blasting with the world’s largest battleship artillery Lebanese and Palestinian mothers - and children or — vindictively trying to strangle with sanctions the island of Cuba. » However, the glory of Cuba is not only in its standing up to Yankee imperialism and its hired thugs, but in what is has achieved. What has been achieved since the arrival of Fidel and his comrades aboard the little boat, Granma and since the rallying of the Cuban people is the Opening up to the Cuban people, confined only by imperialist economic, politcal and military brigandage, a socialist future unprecedented in the Americas. ; Vast distances have been covered collectively and by individuals. Whole new futures have been opened out for the generations of the revolution. The humility and depravity of the fromer U.S. dominiation has been buried — without honor. Today, and since Jan. 1, 1959, Cuba sets an example for the Caribbean, for Central America, for South America, a free territory of the Americas, rejecting with disdain the corrupt imperialist inhumanity of U.S. rul- __ ing circles. We greet and honor the Cuban revolution and its 25 years of stalwart dedication to progress. We call for and work for stronger friendly and commercial ties between Canada and Cuba. We join with people the world round who demand an end to US. interference in Cuba, directly, or through third parties or organiza- tions, as well as through lying propaganda. Wage fight ’84 The 1984 wage negotiations in Canada promise to be as charged with the ingredients of class struggle as they are extensive — involving hundreds of thousands of workers. How much class struggle comes through depends upon the militancy of the trade unions, because the bosses, the employers, the corporations and the governments the corporations manipulate always fight the class struggle. The never for a moment waver fro defence of their class interests. : It is necessary that the workers not be seduced into a “we're all Canadians in this together” quagmire. The bosses aren’t in it “with” us. Their effort to extract concessions, to “monitor” wages and to continue a policy of restraint raises the big question and the big challenge: Can the working class go over to the offensive? That is what is needed. It’s needed in the fight for wage increases, shorter hours of work at no reduction in pay, and in increased security of employment. It is needed in the fight for jobs for the unemployed; and against cuts in social benefits. \\\ \\ \\ Ne NVA ~ i i777 7 ems = =a aaa 7 ————————— a x One of capitalism’s more tawdry sides is its treatment of the aged and sick. But sickness and old age pay off for the likes 0 Extendicare Inc., Toronto, whose profit on its nursing centre, etc., was $25,806,000 for nine months ended Sept. 30. A year earlier the period netted $19,873,000. IRIBUNE Editor — SEAN GRIFFIN Assistant Editor — DAN KEETON Business and Circulation Manager — PAT O'CONNOR Published weekly at 2681 East Hastings Street Vancouver, B.C., V5K 1Z5 Phone: (604) 251-1186 - Subscription Rate: Canada — $14 one year; $8 six months; Foreign — $20 one year; Second class mail registration number 1560 i; was 37 years ago, in 1947, that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists which then included among its founders the ven- erable Albert Einstein — first set the People and Issues they returned not just with the usual pho- tos and souvenirs, but with the idea fora | small book which would recall the high- | — lights and impressions of their visit and “atomic clock” that would later appear on every cover of the Bulletin. The hands were placed ominously at seven minutes to midnight to symbolize the impending threat of nuclear holocaust hanging over nuclear weapons and to dramatize to the world how little time there was to work towards reduction or elimination of that threat. Since then, the hands have been moved just four times — and the last time was only three weeks ago. In simultaneous news conferences in Chicago, Washington D.C., Oslo, Stock- holm, Paris, Tokyo and London, scientists moved the clock’s hands up to three min- utes to midnight in direct response to the new threat of nuclear war posed by the deployment of the U.S. Pershing 2 and cruise missiles on European soil. world war is inevitable and inexorable,” mankind as a result of the development of | “We do not want to say that another . said Japanese professor Toshiyuki Toioda. “We only want to stress our concern for the fate of the world and urge all people of goodwill to step up the peace campaign.” Toioda’s message was echoed by scien- tists all over the world — in fact the deci- sion to move the clock was made after discussion by some 12,000 scientists world wide. And just as in 1981 when the last change in time was made, the move was prompted by a U.S. initiative in the arms race. That last move was the result of Rea- gan’s announcement of the U.S. intention to militarize outer space — his “Star Wars” speech of Mar. 23. What was particularly significant was that following the 1981 move of the clock, two atomic scientists, Dr. Richard Garwin of the IBM Research Centre in Washing- ton and Dr. Carl Sagan, host of public television’s Cosmos series, wrote letters to both Reagan and Soviet president Yuri Andropov. In the letter to Andropov, the two criticized a 1981 Soviet draft treaty on banning anti-satellite weapons, arguing that it contained a loophole. Andropov apparently replied to the let- ter and pointed out that a revised treaty unveiled by Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko at the UN in 1982 was “much improved.” And according to Garwin, the changes made reflected the criticisms outlined by the two scientists. Reagan, on the other hand, never even replied. * * * é eee of Canadians annually visit the Soviet Union as tourists, taking advantage of the extensive tours that are available, the expensive travel and, above all, the opportunity to catch a glimpse of life in the country where socialism was first transformed from theory into living real- ity. Last summer, Tribune readers Ivor and Arminda Mills were among them — but embody in it an appeal to Canadians for renewed cooperation and friendship with the USSR. That booklet, entitled Forty Years After. . . and Still There Are Tears has now been published by Northern Book House and Ivor dropped us off a copy with anote saying that it was “our way. . . of meeting the problem of peace and disarmament.” Copies are available at $2 from North- ern Book House, Box 1000, Gravenhurst, Ontario, POC 1G0, or from Co-op Books in Vancouver. * * * W: have a note from Tribune mailer Gerry Delaney asking us to pass along his thanks to the many people who wished him well during his illness. Gerry. had phoned us several weeks ago to tell us — reluctantly — that he would not be able to assist with the mailing. He later had to be treated for pneumonia which kept | him out of action for some time. 4 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JANUARY 11, 1984.