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Scientific Prognosis

By H. K. WARREN

The economics of our ministers
of agriculture in Canada are
among the most amazing
economics. in the world.

Eugene Whelan, our federal
minister of agriculture during the
recent election campaign, kept up
the theme that prices had to go
higher in order that the producer
get a better price. Since the
campaign he has come out in print
in the same vein. Both he and
Trudeau keep telling us that it is
not something that can be dealt
with ona strictly Canadian scale as
the inflationary spiral is a world-
wide condition.

When Whelan announced his
subsidy for slaughter cattle of $7

City landlords breaking law,
rent controls not enforced

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

Many Vancouver landlords
continue to break the law by im-
posing rent increases in excess of
the eight per cent ceiling decreed
by the provincial government.
What’s more, they’re violating the
law with impunity.

Hardly a week passes but what
City Council’s Social Services
Committee hears complaints of
gross violations. Often they involve
as Many as 20 or 30 tenants. The
complaints are lodged not only by
tenants in skid road hotels and
rooming houses, they come from
apartments all over the city.

The reason landlords get away
with such infractions is because of
the non-enforcement features. of
our rent control legislation.

Normally the attorney general’s
department enforces the law. But
in this case the onus lies on the
tenant. He must launch legal ac-
tion on his own, and this could be
costly. Then too, many tenants are
timid and unaware of their own
rights. Understandably they think
twice before taking legal action
against landlords who may harass
or evict them.

As a matter of fact, some lan-
dlords are threatening to evict
tenants who refuse to pay under-
the-counter increases of more than
eight per cent. Sometimes the
threat is carried out.

Our Social Services Committee,
of which I am chairman; has
limited legal powers to compel
landlords to obey the law.

What we usually do is inform
tenants of their rights. Then we see
to it that a letter of warning is sent
to the landlord. And on more than
one occasion we have sent strong
letters to the attorney general
about shortcomings in the rent
contrel legislation, urging him to

put some bite into it and enforce it
through his department.

In dealing with these grievances,
the Social Services Committee is
doing a job that the government-
appointed rentalsman, Barrie
Clark, should be doing. But the
people who come to us with
complaints can’t wait. They need
help and they need it right away.

‘So we do what little we can to help,

them over a rough spot.

Racist paper surfaces

A racist newspaper appeared in
some numbers in Vancouver this
week and last, and several readers
of the Tribune noted that they had
received it delivered to their
homes.

The paper, The Thunderbolt,
spawned in Marietta, Georgia is
typical of all such newspapers but
its appearance more recently
indicates a connection with the
emergence of the White People’s
Party in the federal election as
well as the stepped-up activities of
the fascist Western Guard.

Particularly virulent in the last
issue is a lengthy article covering
the best part of one page which
invokes scriptural passages —
“the holy scriptures are the word
of God, there can be no room for
error’? — to “prove” that only

black people can be the Biblical
“beasts of the field’’.

Elsewhere, the paper attacks
Australian prime minister Gough
Whitlam for his announced in-
tention to end once and for all the
“white only’ immigration policy
formerly pursued in that country
and for his: support of guerrilla
movements in colonial Africa.

Canadians have always
repudiated racist and hate
material that periodically spills
over into this country from the
United States. But the appearance
of the The Thunderbolt and any
other such material should be
investigated under human rights
legislation and prosecution carried
out on those who are distributing it
in this country.

a

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| High food prices cannot
be blamed on shortages

per hundred, the price of live
slaughter cattle stood at $50 per
hundred. The moment that the
subsidy took effect the price
dropped to $43 per hundred,
exactly the amount of the subsidy.
At the same time the wholesale
price of carcass beef went up from
$88 per hundred to $90 per hundred.
Who got the subsidy? Who profited
by the subsidy?

High retail prices cannot be
blamed on any shortage as we have
three months supply of beef in
storage at all times, and the Meat
Packers Council weekly letter
states that this is a normal supply.
They also inform us that we have
ample stocks of live slaughter
cattle for our immediate needs,
something like 3 million head in
slaughter condition. Poultry is in
ample supply. We are now holding
thousands of pounds of turkeys in
cold storage, which is being held
off the market to assist ‘“‘price
stability’. We have recent reports
through the farm papers that the
government has paid $16 million in
storage charges for turkeys held in
storage.

Eggs are in such ample supply
that we are bootlegging them
across the border and selling them
at 47 cents per dozen while
Canadian consumers are being
charged 93 cents per dozen under
the pretext that they are in short
supply. In the meantime Whelan
has placed his blessing on a
program to slaughter six million
laying pullets as they threaten an
oversupply of eggs. Two years ago
the same program was carried out
by paying 75 cents per laying hen
that the farmer slaughtered to
reduce the quantity of eggs
produced:

During the past year, according
to the Dept. of Agriculture’s
weekly Market Report, the price of
live broilers have not fluctuated
more than 1 cent per lb. one way or
the other, but the consumer has
seen nothing but increases in the
price of poultry on the super-
market shelves. The lowly “fowl”
which is supposed to be a cull or
boiling poultry, at its highest in the
past year was 7 cents per lb., and is
at the present date, 6 cents per lb.,
nevertheless the price of boiling
fowl has steadily increased until
the present date when it is around
59-75 cents per lb. retail on the
supermarket shelves. Boiling fowl
that is sold by the producer at 6
cents per Ib immediatel

Ss

becomes 56 cents per Ib. at #
wholesale level. a
These prices are quoted from”
Livestock Market Review and
Poultry Market report iss!
weekly by the Dept. of Agricul
and are for prices paid Wt
Canada to consumers: be
within Canada. These’ figures
Canadian, not ‘‘world-wi
figures.
Whelan must be just as awe
these figures as I am. If he is™
then his statements can omly”
attributed to plain ignorance: a
is aware of these figures * in
have only to assume that he aa
collusion with the large monoP?”
interests who are makin
“killing” (no pun intended) ~~
food industry. Be
Is the high price spiral due y q
“world-wide” conditions? site
farm market reports state. f
bluntly, ‘The breakdown ie alt
Common Market agricul aii |
policy has led to alarming “the |
pluses of food in Britain am -
rest of the Community.”
Britain is saturated wit
pluses of beef, eggs, fish, ee
broiler chickens and, to @
degree, lamb and pork. Th the
huge surpluses of butter, 0 d

other products are putter
becoming as alarming 2° nin
The Common Market is Pia?

the slaughter of millions of De
hens as the production 18 resell
tensive. Producers at the P + te
date are losing 7c per dozen @
wholesale level. There ae
100,000 tons of fish in cold ae ve
A plan is in the making to ei: r
dispose of this fish in ee ne
provide ‘cold storage for ate
crop of vegetables. Turkey».
such ample supply that © ¥
being sold at 20-25c per Ib. 19°
to make room for ie i
Christmas stocks that
pected.
Where is the shortage? W
the world-wide crisis? It
is not a shortage of supply.
farm paper from every pat
agricultural world publish be?
such as the above. Nowm”
there any report in farm PAF ip
shortages. Crop acreage a
Yield is reported as hight ane
usual. Even in Australia #
Zealand the farm papers
that mutton is only used only
tilizer and pet foods. Lam
eaten.

8 :
See FOOD PRICES, P29°

TOM
McEWEN

urkey and Greece are both fullblown members of

NATO, the ‘North Atlantic Treaty Organization”.
Geographically neither are in or near the North Atlantic,
but when imperialism goes cading for war allies, location
is of secondary consequence to the purpose desired.
‘Democracy’, as the people conceive that entity, in-
variably ‘‘takes it on the chin’, so don’t carry it too far,
otherwise we'll send in NATO, the CIA (Central In-
telligence Agency), the marines, any one or all of our
multibillion dollar ‘“‘peacekeeping”’ outfits to restore or
establish what we deem to be ‘law and order’’.
“Democracy”’, that is.

The Greek junta which reduced the democracy of the
Greek people to the rubble of a military-police state at the
end of World War II, with the aid of U.S. and British
bayonets, and has held them in subjection ever since with
the same “‘allies”, amid the most devastating torture,
terrorism and death, decided to apply the same
‘democracy’? to the government of Archbishop
Makarios on the island of Cyprus.

Then our NATO “‘ally”’, Turkey, not to be outdone, got in
on the invasion of Cyprus. Death and the killing of in-
nocents got going in a big way.

_ While this is being written some big events are taking

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, AUGUST 2, 1974—PAGE 2

place in Greece, the military junta has allegedly been
“overthrown’’, democracy restored to Greece, and hopes
held high for the ultimate peace and freedom of Cyprus.
But as the English poet George Gordon Lord Byron, who
died leading the first International Brigade for freedom
and democracy in Greece, and to whose memory Karl
Marx penned a fitting tribute, said, ‘we will believe the
traducers of the people when their actions fit their
words’. So we'll hold off for a moment with our own
cheers, while voicing again our long Solidarity with ‘the
Greek people).

It has long been known that the Cyprus government of
Archbishop Makarios did not want to see the island of
Cyprus turned into an eastern Mediterranean NATO base,
and said so quite openly, echoed by both the Greek and
Turkish people, who constitute the bulk of the people of
Cyprus: But NATO had other plans, has had them for a
long time; plans shared by the U.S.-based CIA and by US.
and British imperialism alike, the two “big” powers of
NATO, primarily to provide a more effective naval-police
“safeguard” against allegedly Soviet “expansionism” in
the eastern Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.

Like the ‘‘lord” their society has invented, these NATO
Superpowers with their CIA setups, ‘‘move in mysterious
ways their wonders to perform”, but it takes a Watergate,
a Chile or a Cyprus to get a glimpse of just “how
mysterious’’.

Hardly had events in Cyprus matured when Tass, the
Soviet News Agency, reported that the military coup of
the Makarios government by the Athens junta was the
work of NATO — the same NATO and its “democratic”

~ worked up no end the other day on Canada

decoys of Greece and Turkey which had managed mi
The cold war dies hard, especially for those arm
ment “‘statesmen”’ who wish to keep it tolerably

just in case. B

‘ Away back 25 years ago the late Tim Buck, nt
national leader of the Communist Party ete J
branded NATO at its birth as a monstrous wat compo, |
wordy goulash of Messrs. Trudeau, Sharp 4 keep ;
has softened it somewhat with all its “pene one _
twaddle, but its prime purpose is as a war Pa’ 4 fi ‘i

the predatory interests of world imperialism ica, ev
and foremost that of the United States of AM

holds.

wag hiss
One of our B.C. “hot line” pests was gettiné A

keeping”? force on the island of Cyprus;
bemoaning the fact that our troops weren’t sures f
larger and more effective weapons than ea upho”
“enemy”. He just couldn’t see how they col ortal:
“peace’’ with a popgun against a rapid-fire ten
Here you had the NATO-mentality, the ant-e*"
CIA conspiracy running right in the groove. some °
well have suggested, as he tried hard to do one Cy
listeners, that every ‘‘peacekeeping’’ trooper pom)
elsewhere be supplied with an individual AP° oy
“‘orders’’ to the ‘“‘enemy’’ to keep the peace ce: jonist ‘
you to hell and gone. Even the wordy contort
chell Sharp couldn’t (openly) approve of le its 8
But it’s on that precise mentality that NA , th. 'p?
and promoters operate. ‘‘Peacekeepers” W! rk of
kill, and the “body count” and rubble a m4!"

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achievements against democracy! na