A Very Small Goodbye To a Very Large Man Being some selected items from a man’s personal diary: t Item: Reading the obituaries today-of a remarkable man in several of our leading newspapers and it surprised me that nune really gave him the credit that was his due. Here was a Canadian who was one of the first to ad- vocate world disarm of India from colonia! rule. H the United States invelvement in Viemam, Lao bodia. At a time when it seemed an impossibility he s ament, He campaigned for the freedom e warned against the dangers of s and Cani- aw the probability of peaceful co-existence and trade between the so- cialist states and the capitalist states. He was among the first to speak out against being shaped by the for full employment, social security, He worked in the American Deep Sout al r black workers. He saw the possibility of the week long before it became a reality. He was stoned by students and jailed by the Canadi- privileges for four-day work beaten by cops, an government. But he never changed his views, tion or his goals. Canada’s foreign and economic policies U.S.A. He was an articulate spokesman opportunity for youth. h for equal rights and his dedica- Maybe history will be kinder to Tim Buck, Canada’s best- known Communist, than the papers of the day. above tribute to Tim Buck by well-known columnist Jack Scott 2ared in the Victoria Daily Times of March 26. COPE ward plan offers most realistic choice By ALD. HARRY RANKIN TEAM, whichhasamajority on City Council, is committed to a two tier ward system. This calls for half the members of Council to be elected at large (from the whole city as they are at present), and the other half to be elected from a few, huge wards, each with 75,000 to 100,000 people. TEAM's proposal] would solve nothing and wouldineffectstifle and defeat the whole idea of a ward system. Westill wouldn’thave genuin neighbourhood representation. It would result in the aldermen who are elected at large being considered more important than the ward aldermen. The key positions would go tothe alder- menelectedatlarge. We would have first and second class aldermen, with the ward alder- men in the latter category. But most important of all— TEAM’ stwotier system would continue the present situation where all the advantages go to the political groups supported and financed by big business and the mass media which they own. It takes at least $50,000 to mount any kind of efféctive campaign when aldermen are elected at large. Only civic parties supported by the developers and other business interests get that kind of money. Summed up, the TEAM ward system is only a means for keeping things as they are while giving the appearance of compromise. The proposal of the Vancouver Area Council of the NDP, which calls for one ward for every 10,000 people, sounds very demo- cratic but would be quite unworkable. It would give usa City Council of 45 members, too big to get anything done. The aldermen would be falling over each other. Council would have only a few less members than the provincial legislature. Such a Council would be unworkable and soan Executive would have to be elected. This executive would soon become’ the real power in Council; ward aldermen would be relegated to filling pot-holes in their neighbor- hoods. Winnipeg has shown how unwieldy such a large Council can be. There the NDP govern- TENANTS TO LOBBY LEGISLATURE APRIL 12 e B.C. Tenants Organization unced its intention Sunday end a lobby to Victoria sday, April 12 at 11:30 a.m. emonstrate its dissatis- on with the government’s re to provide legislation to ct hard pressed tenants. ponsible government mem- are being called to the ng and MLA’s will be asked guarantee just cause for evic- tion and real protection against rising rents. ‘Tenants are in no position to wait for another session, B.C.T.O. president Bruce Yorke said, ‘‘our needs are urgent and -some meaningful legislationis required now. ‘Contrary to the generalim- pression created by the attorney general and the press, the pro- ye up to their election ise to provide legislation to — or the U.S. Establishment of Nixon and Co. life is in- deed ‘‘a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts frets his hour uponthe stage, and thenisheardno more. a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying ling. It played out its last miserable curtain of adecade or more nurderous killing in Vietnam with a brief ceremonial ogue, announcing that ‘‘its missionhad beenfulfilled. . . the people of South Vietnam had been saved from munist aggression, and if it has cost 46,000 American lives ir own figure), it had been cheap at the price.” in this brief show of bravado in this vast graveyard of its making, there was no mention of the millions of lamese men, women and children killed and maimed and ‘oyed. Each president in his turn strutted and fretted his upon the stage, the Kennedys, Johnsons and Nixons and vied with the other in his capacity to lie and kill. Having conditioned the mass mind that his mission was essential ‘concept of ‘freedom and honour. there will be no prob- eae the same mass mind that it was in all respects ssful. ‘op killers are already being cast in the image of heroes. ravest men, the draft-card burners. army deserters and ientious objectors, now branded as traitors and exiles for me, and a millionfold war protesters as un-American ‘icans. Amid all the sound and fury of a ceremonial ture from Vietnam, a once proud and invincible nation. itself had followed the revolutionary trail of 1776 against In aggression, isnowreduced toa nationof gravevard lers, hellbent onextracting a pyrrhic victory froman defeat. posed amendments do not provide for only one rent increase per year. All present rents, no matter how long they have been in effect, can go up immediately, subject only to three month’s notice.”’ Yorke emphasized that the amendment regarding rent increases is a backward step from existing Social Credit legislation even though the amendment has one good feature in that rents apply to the premises. The present proposed amend- ment reads: ‘‘only one increase may be collected during any twelve month period following establishmentoftherentorits last increase.”’ ; The tenants organization wants the amendment changed to read: ‘“‘no increase may be collected during the twelve month period following establish- ment of the rent or its last increase, and thereafter only once during any subsequent twelve month period.’’ Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow was no less a debacle. And we cannot remember reading of anything of benefit that the Corsican marauder was todo for the Russian people of that day, except give them a new set of French landlords in place of their Russian ones. Thatis what Nixon’s peace with honour means, the last bugle call that mustered the last U.S. soldier taking off for home— ‘‘the land of the brave and the home of the free.” If however there is a kernel of truth in the old saw that ‘‘uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” it is doubly true of the head that wears a crown imposed by U.S. imperialism. » The U.S. puppet Thieu may imprison, torture, maim and kill countless thousands of hisown people inthe service of U:S. monopoly, but the voice of another American President, joining that of the immortal Ho Chi Minh will re-echo through those prisons: This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing ‘government’, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. In the meantime this column is indebted to American Report of March 12 73 for its timely expose of Nixon's “Civilizing the War.’ While not downgrading the importance or significance or the difficulties inherent in its enforcement the data supplied on the number of U.S. combatant forces. remaining in South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia now turned “‘non-combatant’’ under the peace agreement terms, serves the dual purpose of strengthening our resolve against naivete and fighting to fulfill every last provision that spells out peace for the people of Indochina. _ Changing uniforms for sport shirts does nofmitigage the evil of a U.S. pilot at the controls of a B-52 ona bombing mission, nor does a CIA private war against any Indochina community absolve the.U.S. from Peace Agreement violations Moreover as the last American GI's are moved out. literally hordes of the big powerful U.S. defense monopolists are moving in— with big Washington— based contracts tokeepthe Their war machine in top shape. But ultimately. as time will show. it will not be “‘mission successful’ but ‘mission impossible’. The triumph of peace with honour instead of “peace” with sport shirts. double talk and unparalleled trickery. a BUNE—FRIDAY, APRIL 6, 1973—-PAGéE 2 . than 100 members Wer ment introduced a Upn;... of government with qucity Winnipeg Area being dic