CANADA HAS RESPONSIBILITY

U.S. wages cruel war against
the people of South Vietnam

By BEN SWANKEY

Many Canadians do not real-
ise that Canada must bear some
responsibility for the bloody and
devastating war now being waged
in South Vietnam,

By the 1954 Geneva Agree-
ments which ‘‘ended’’ the war
in Indo-China, Canada became
a member of the three power
International Control Commis-
sion, Its duties include investi-
gating and reporting on any
violations of the peace and neu-
trality of South Vietnam,

People’s Liberation Army,

It controls the countryside and
the jungles, It is armed with
home made weapons and with
U.S. arms captured from govern-
ment forces,

U.S. news agencies always re-
fer to the People’s Liberation
Army as Viet Cong. No such
thing as Viet Cong exists in
South Vietnam, This is a fictit-
ious propaganda . tag pinned on
the People’s Liberation Army.
Viet Cong is an abbreviation
for Vietnamese Communists and

the U.S, would like to spread

The war in this unhappy coun-

the false impression that all

who oppose its intervention in
South Vietnam are Communists,

One of the ‘most sinister forces
in South Vietnam is the US,
Central Intelligence Agency. It
makes and breaks governments
,according to U.S, dictates and
is directly responsible for many
_of the inhuman policies practised
by successive dictatorial govern-
ments.

This war is as cruel as any
that has ever been waged,

Because of mass opposition
by the people in the country-

try is not only a civli war. It
has become a war of interven-
tion by a foreign power, the
United States, and a war of ex-
termination against the 14 mil-
lion Vietnamese.

On the one hand there is the
press gang army of the US.
directed government of South
Vietnam which includes 220,000
regulars and 150,000 militiamen,
It is supported by 15,500 US.
combat troops armed with the
most modern tanks and guns,

The U,S. is spending $1; mil-
lion a day in Vietnam support,
These armed forces are in con-
trol only of the cities and im-
mediate surrounding areas.

On the other hand there is
the National Liberation Front,
a federation of all forces op-
posing foreign intervention and

to be trampled on.”

tyranny, with a 40,000 strong

By JOHN GRITTEN

Little notice has been taken
of the astonishing claim by ex-
President of the U.S. Harry S.
Truman that he warned the Jap-
anese before ordering the air
force to drop the atom bomb.

He chose his 80th birthday
last week to make this revela-

U.S. State Department: ‘‘We won't allow your independence

—Vadillo in El Dia, Mexico

tion about one of the most mom-
entous and dire events in world
history 19 years ago.

So we have some justification
in doubting the reliability of the
Truman memory.

Claiming that his decision had
saved 500,000 Japanese and Am-
erican lives, Harry S. was re-

Did Pres. Truman warn

ported as having said: ‘‘I sent
word to the Japanese that we
had the most powerful explosive
in the world and in reply got the
nastiest, meanest telegram I ever
saw.”

Since memories of others be-
side Mr, Truman are short,
perhaps it may be useful, once
again to put the record straight

U.S. LABOR SECRETARY SAYS:

(Following are excerpts from a
recent speech by U.S. Secretary
of Labor Willard Wirtz, at the
University of Michigan).

A few miles from this hall,
10 employees man a machine
that makes automobile motor
blocks 400 men worked on 10
years ago, Fourteen operators
attend the glass-blowing ma-
chines that make 90 percent
of all the glass light bulbs
produced in this country. Two
workers now turn out 1,000

- radios. a day—the product of
200 workers a few years ago.

Between now and this time
tomorrow, 4,400 people will
have stepped aside from their
jobs, or moved on to others,
because machines will be
doing what they are doing
today.

Yet any philosophy or policy
about automation must neces-

sarily start from clear recog-
nition that unrestrained tech-
nological advance is not only
inexorable, but essential to the
maintenance and elevation of
the standard of living.

It is equally clear that the
prevalent myths about auto-
mation are narcotics dulling
the national sensitivity to the
necessity of averting men’s
mastery over machines,

The myth that automationis
only a new stage in an old
process is akin to the thinking
that splitting the atom repre-
sented only a evolutionary de-
velopment in the dynamics of
war— a projection of the first
use of the cross-bow.

The most dangerous mythis
that. machines produce as
many jobs for men as they
destroy and therefore repre-

‘4400 JOBS LOST PER DAY TO MACHINES’

sent. no threat to workers,
The machines now have, in
general, a high school educa-
tion—in the sense that they
can do most jobs that a high
school education qualifies
people to do, So machines
will get the unskilled jobs, be-
cause they work for less than
living wages. Machines are, in
the most real sense, respons- |
ible for putting uneducatec
people out of work.

The answers are not tc
smash the machines, They are
to recognize that the individ-
ual versus the machine is as
unfair a match today as the
individual versus the corpora-
tion was in the last century,
and that advancing technology
requires the exercise of col-
lective — public and private
—responsibility for its effects
and collective measures to
carry out this responsibility,

;

Page
Two
Features —

side, U.S, ;planes have burned
hundreds of villages to the ground
with napalm bombs, Inhabitants
who escaped death by burning

were lucky. that the People’s Liberalt

to 8

U.S. planes have sprayed huge eee eats : 3
areas with deadly spray that : e

destroys crops, orchards, trees,
all vegetation,

To human beings who were
sprayed, it brought, according
to the Trade Union Federation
of Vietnam, ‘‘vomiting, hemor-
rhage, blindness, partial paraly-
sis and unconsciousness,”’ For
cattle, buffalo, and other
domestic animals, the spray

‘prought death,

a

Apparently Asians are. again
being used by U.S. military forc-
es as human guinea pigs for ex-
periments with new death dealing
weapons,

Whole settlements have been
forced out at gun point, the vil-
lages burned, and the peasants
‘tyesettled’’ in ‘‘strategic ham-
lets’? that are veritable concen-
tration camps,

Civilians have been the main
victims in this savage war of
repression against the people
of South Vietnam,

‘*Between 1954 and today,”
it was reported in the October
1963 issue of Trade Union Press,
‘¢more than 156,000 persons have
been killed, 672,000 disabled as
a result of torture and 370,00C
including thousands of children
detained in more than 1,00C
prisons,’’

on the events leading up to the
dropping of the Hiroshima A-
bomb,

According to that other octo-
genarian, Sir Winston Churchill,
the only message that was sent
to Japan was the joint ultimatum
from the Governments of the
U\S., China and Britain calling
on the Japanese Government for
the unconditional surrender of

all the Japanese armed forces,

I quote from the text of the
message:
Japan is complete and utter des-
truction.’’ Nothing about ‘‘the
most powerful explosive in the
world,’’ please note,

There were also dropped over
21 Japanese cities 1,500,000
leaflets warning that they would
be subjected to ‘‘intensive air
bombardment.’’

But, again, no warning to the
people of Hiroshima or Naga-
saki that they were about to be

~ plasted, burned, suffocated, or
slowly poisoned over the years,
by the most destructive weapon
hitherto invented,

It was these cold warmongers,

Truman and Churchill, before

even the hot war against fascism
‘May 29,

are being raised against a ©
tinuation of a war that the ©
c ae.

Vietnam,’’ Senator Mike Man
field, Senate Democratic majo!

ity leader, said recently,
stop this awful waste of Am!
can
money.”’

Hiroshima?

“The alternative for

Voices in the United state
con

annot possibly win.

“It’s time we got out of Sou!

6h an
eri-
Ameri

blood and

This feeling was echoed
Alaska Senator Ernest Gr!
ing, “It’s high time,’’ he °
“that the American people |
mand that this slaughter st
Sentiment is overwhel
for this course of action . °

U.S, troops operate in south
Vietnam in violation of th
Geneva Agreements which spec
ifically forbid the interventi®?
of foreign troops, a

We owe it to our own rep
tation and to the people of sout
Vietnam to: join with them
the demand that U.S. troops
out of their country and- ;
they be allowed to follow 2 P° fi
icy of peace and neutrality ae
to establish ademocratic g0Ve™
ment of their own choice.

—The Fisherma?

get

was ended, who ‘resolved at a
costs to refuse to divulge any PY
ticulars’? (Churchill’s wot
the A-bomb to the Soviet Ua
their ‘magnificent allyin tev
against Hitler” (Churchill 4!

Not only did Truman not 8
a warning to the people of HiP
shima, but it has long since ©
recognised that the A-bomb
never have been dropped a
and, in fact, was droppe
purely cold war, power- politl®
anti-Socialist reasons.

The Soviet Union had give?
solemn undertaking at the
dam conference to enter thé
against Japan three months
the unconditional surren er
Nazi Germany, namely, A¥
1945, and before she knew
imminent creation of thé

bomb,

of!

The Report on the pacific ;
prepared by the USS. strat
Bombing Survey came
conclusion; ‘‘It seems cleat
even without the atomic
attacks, air supremacy ovel
an could have exerted suf
pressure to bring uncondit
surrender and obviate the

for invasion,”’

Finally, Major-General F
Chenault, wartime U.S. Al e ;
Commander in China, comm
at the time that Russia ®
into the Japanese wat ©
decisive factor in spe©
end and would have bee? 5°

no atom bombs h@
dropped, :
1964—PACIFIC TRIBUNE