ot

View of the Trans-Canada Highway in Fraser Canyon

Schools versus jets’

ES TERMS of community needs
(any community) let’s say a new
school would cost a million dollars.
The price could go higher accord-:
ing to size, but the sum will suffice
as a basis of comparison. Or a new
municipal hospital, say two million
bucks.

. Under successive Liberal “and
Tory governments, some $450 mil-
lions went into the production of
an Avro jet interceptor plane. Then
on U.S. instructions we scrapped
this “defense” project—but not be-
fore we had sunk that $450 millions.

In terms of modest schools and
hospitals, that amount would have
provided Canadians with the job of
building some 300 of both. Now of
course we have neither, with noth-
ing to show for the money squand-
ered save a staggering deficit in
national budgets, plus the nation’s
sovereigntv and “defense” obliging-
ly turned over to a U.S. “receiver-
ship.”

Down in the United States we
read almost daily of new rocket
missiles going up in a blaze of fire-
works and boasts, the latter often
exploding with the lost missile.

_Thors, Little Johns, Sidewinders,
Nike-Hercules, Bomarcs, Atlas, and
so on. Lots of fancy names, none
of them costing less than $100,000,
and most running into one and two
million dollars each. Nice expensive
bangs, which, if transformed into
peacetime jobs for 544 million U.S.
jobless workers, would go a long
way towards restoring North Am-
erican sanity.

Pacific Tribune

_ Phone MUtual 5-5288
Editor — TOM McEWEN
Managing Editor — BERT WHYTE
Published weekly at
Room 6 — 426 Main Street

. Vancouver 4, B.C.
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year.

_ In Canada ot course we are not
in the rocket business, save by per-
mission of our U.S. bosses, but for
a nation of 17 million people under
successive Liberal and Tory misrule,
we still manage to blow in annually

_ some 2% billions on what is des-
_cribed as our “NATO obligations.”

Even top brass CCF social dem-
ocracy gives its acquiescent approv-
al of this NATO debauchery.

Just think how many schools,
hospitals, universities, cultural and
recreational centres, jobs, and op-
portunities for our young folks
such a sum would provide, if spent
for other than cold war insanity!

It’s worth thinking over — and

doing something about.

NY DOUBTS which might have
A remained in the minds of work-
ing people on the worth of the pre-
election Tory promises must have

‘been blown sky-high last week when

Finance Minister Donald “Flim-
Flam” Fleming tabled his “soak-
the-poor” budget..

Income, sales, and old age “‘sec-
urity” taxes are boosted two and
three percent. Smokers will now in-
hale more taxes in their cigars and
cigarettes (and there was more than
enough before) while an additional
25 cents or more is added to a
quart of diluted Capilano water the
B.C. Liquor Control Board. passes
off for “spirits.” For the low-income
brackets one percent has been added
from zero up to $3,000, and above
that amount, two percent.

For the average Canadian family
man the Fleming budget will add
approximately $40 or more to his
income, sales and social “security”
taxes, to say nothing of what he
will have to fork out in the way of
less direct extortions.

On the other hand corporate in-
come taxes are only boosted when
the income exceeds $25,000, which
leaves the big boys and their expert
income bookkeeping well in the
clear. Numerous exemptions are
also granted employers in connec-
tion with employee insurance
schemes, with ample room to “get
under the income tax wire.”

‘Soak the poor’ budge

‘

Commen?

Tory Fleming’s “soak-the-po
budget is touted as a “welfa
budget; to meet the growing:
mands of social advancem
curtail growing “deficit” in
financing, and to aid-‘‘economic
covery.” It gives nothing, but
a lot—from the low income h
ets. Over half a million unemp
are Canada’s “forgotten man” i
this tory budget. Re

Obviously it will do none of
things attributed to it while 5!
cents of the nctional tax dollar |
still being sunk in reckless
ment spending. “Flim-Flam”’ tells w
that Canada’s “defense”. spe
is only 27 cents on the tax dolla
but Avro- Arrow- Bomare - NATO
spending refute his fine words.

For the Canadian people in a
tory, mine, farm or ‘school ft
is nothing in the Fleming budg
save an additional bite into
dwindling incomes. :

The Fleming budget is an infl
tionary budget pure and_ simp
since it adds nothing to the sw
tctal of the peoples’ wellbeing, 0:
the contrary it whittles that wel
being away in additional onerot
taxes on declining income.

To workers and farmers
Fleming budget is a salutory sig
—the need to step up the fight
increased wages and purch
power to meet corporate and |
ernment prices and tax hoists.

Tom
McEwen

URING recent weeks there has
been much talk and specula-
tion on the “Berlin crisis’ and
its ultimate solution. Prime fea-
ture of a lot of this talk has
been its belligerent bombast,
loaded with a good deal of philis-
tine chatter about “preserving
peace,” arid the insistence that
“this outpost of democracy (West
Berlin) in our free world must be
kept free.” : ;
While this “‘peace” overture is
being sung by the spokesmen of
western imperialism on the “Ber-
lin crisis,” with numerous sour
notes in the Anglo-U.S.-French-

Bonn quartet, feverish activity is’

under way in West Germany
under U.S. direction and control.
Activity which is scarcely sym-
bolic of peace.

The nuclear arming of West
Germany, Nuclear rocket bases,
short and long-range, are being

rapidly pushed to completion on
the territory of West Germany.

Prussian junkers and the dregs
of Hitler’s elite corps of Nazi
killers are goose-stepping once
more, boasting of an early “Der
Tag” of revenge, under Wis:
tutelage, direction and $-aid.
Hitlerism has been salvaged from
the rubble of the Hitler Reich
by Western imperialism to serve
as the nuclear stormtroopers of
dollar “democracy.” In the “Ber-
lin crisis” the West German
Wehrmacht and its U.S... pay-
masters hope for a “moral” pre-
text to begin their third (and
final) “Drang Nach Osten.”

Some weeks ago I received a
book containing a speech of Al-
bert Norden, member of the
Central Committee of the Social-
ist Unity Party. of Germany, del-
ivered before.-an International
Press Conference on German
unity. This book is entitled,
Murderers At Large in West
Germany. :

It gives the names of hundreds

_ of war criminals, key men in the

Hitler murder machine, who now
hold practically all the top
judicial posts in the courts of the
Bonn government. Against many
of these names. are details of
their horrible crimes under the
Hitler regime, details, taken from *
the official record. It is horrible

, for German Unity in Berlin shows

_can only be met by a mounting —

reading, but more horrible to con- _
template that these war criminals,
guilty of the most atocious crimes
against humanity, are now “allies”
of the free world,’ armed with~
nuclear weapons, and lusting for
blood!
In the current issue of Demo-
cratic German Report a list of
Hitler’s top generals, their rank,
sentences served for war crimes,
and present position in the West~
German Wehrmacht is given, A
survey made by. the Committee

that among these 137 German
military brass, not one had any
vestige of an anti-Hitler record!

On the contrary, all were in- _
volved in .the Hitlerite crimes |
against peoples and nations. Many _
of these, such as the commander
of the new German Luftwaffe, —
Major General Martin Harling- —
hausen ‘“‘distinquished” himself
in the indiscriminate bombing of.
Britain. >

Such are our “allies” in the
“Berlin crisis.” Unhung murderers -
lusting again to kill; a threat that _

people’s struggle for peace and
disarmament as an accompani- _
ment to a summit conference.
And in such strength as to assure
that these U.S.-trained nuclear-
mad dogs will not be unleashed.
again against humanity.

&

April 17, 1959 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAG