~ Tashkent and Lagos |

T he Tashkent Conference between two warring mem-

~*. bers of our “great Commonwealth” India and Pakis-
tan, under the good office and guidance of Soviet Premier
Kosygin, scored a major achievement; mutual agreement
to “pull their armies back” and to stop the useless killing.
A first decisive step towards peaceful negotiation of the
issues in dispute.

__ The death of Indian Prime Minister Shastri imme-
diately following the Conference and its historic agree-
ment was a sororwful event in every respect. Yet the
ashes of his funeral pyre were not yet cold when voices
in our “great Commonwealth” began their customary
croaking, seeking to downgrade the Tashkent Agreement.
How “‘little it had accomplished” . . . ‘none of the pro-
blems were resolved’’, etc., ad naseum.

Even Prime Minister Pearson in his obviously
strained “praise” of the Tashkent achievement, could not
resist his ““wait and see” mite of gloom on its ultimate
success. Perhaps the fact that his own proferred “ser-
vices” to attempt a like agreement six months ago, which
was flatly rejected by the warring “Commonwealth”
members, had something to do with the PM’s pique and
pessimism?

And in Lagos, Nigeria, another “Commonwealth”
conference of heads-of-state met, to seek ways and means
of replacing a noisily racist rebel Commonwealth member
with something more “stable” from the old colonial
“school-tie” vintage. That, and to lecture Black Africa on
the finer points of “self-government” as interpreted by
No. 10 Downing Street.

The “agreements” reached at Lagos were lacking in
substance but strong in Micawberian ‘“‘hopes” that sanc-
tions would bring the Rhodesian Smith racist regime to
its knees—with a nebulous “deadline” if it doesn’t.

On the Lagos “agreements” achieved even our own
PM “Mr. Fix-It” was something less than positive, but in
our multi-racial “Commonwealth associations”, ah, these
were “greatly strengthened. We could sit down togethe
and talk with no element of racism in evidence”.

When all the foreign “Commonwealth” dignatories
were off the premises, the Nigerian powder keg on which
they had been sitting suddenly “exploded”, and another
member of our “democratic Commonwealth” went down
before a military junta.

Tashkent and Lagos hold many lessons — for those
ready and willing to learn. The one dedicated to the ways
of peace; the other to short-circuiting realities.

—Krokodil (Moscow)

“NEXT”

Pledges—with gas

B ack in the year 1920 one of the first decrees of the
= newly-formed Permanent Court of International Jus-
tice was the outlawing of all forms of bacteriological,
chemical and gas warfare.

All civilized nations put their signatures to this his-
toric Protocol of the PCIJ, that is all but the United
States of America. There, as with the Geneva Agreements
of 1954 for the unification, peace and orderly government
of Vietnam, the U.S. “pledged” to abide by these momen-
tous decisions—but refused to add its signature to either!

But even as its spokesman like the fabled Ananias
deny or mitigate its use of “harmless” gases, Reuters in-
ternational news service reports the death of an Aussie
soldier and the hospitalization of several of his buddies
resulting from a U.S. gas attack upon an alleged “Viet
Cong stronghold”. And, strange as it may seem, the dead
Aussie was wearing his gasmask when his life was snuffed
out by ‘“‘harmless” U.S. lethal gas!

Worth |

| Quoting |

The nuclear trigger ic in danger of
‘being pulled as America has begun {0
find the taste of her influence spread-
ing into the new Germany of her o¢-
cupation, or vice versa, is if German
militarism that is affecting America
today? :
_ American manpower is being divert-
ed fo various quarters of the alobe for
training in the strategy of world con-
quest and the nuclear stockpile in the

hands of bloody adventurists is the

one single portend, that the world is
swiftly moving to its end in the last
warfare that mankind will fight on
this earth.

(CEYLON NEWS REVIEW. Nov. 6/65)

Some suspicion may even rest on

Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies, —
who is known to drink Scotch. But
since he has accepted the Order of the —

Thistle from our gracious Queen, no
doubt this has made an honest man
of him?

But even on such matters, Robbie
Burns has-had a say:—

‘What of Earls with whom you

have supt-

And of Dukes you have dined with —

yestreen?
Lord! a louse is a louse at most
Though it crawl on the curls of a
queen’.
(AUSTRALIAN Hebei Nov. 17/65)

The British Institute for Strategic Re-

search has declared that the “‘scienti- —

fic reactors’ in the German Federal
Republic are already making enough
nuclear material to preduce 13 atomic

bombs annually, and that the planned |

of fission-

e ion of the producti

P

_ able material, beginning in 1970, will

‘be enough to produce 173 atomic
bombs a year.

These facts should be idered
before passing off warnings against
German revanchism as ‘‘mere propa-
ganda”’, instead of realizing that they
are a reaction to existing reality.
(PRAGUE NEWS LETTER, Dec. 25/65)

We have been led fo a position
where there is no longer any such
thing as a “‘good” solution much less
an easy one. Turn which way we will,
the view is depressing. ;

What lies beyond is now plainly so

painful that the only comfort lies in -

the hope that the beginning of wis-

dom follows the end of illusion.
(WALL STREET: YOURNAL on Vietnam,
Dec. 17/65)

Tom
McEWEN

‘people begin now to mobilize.

change of ‘attitude’ on the part
of the poverty-stricken, rather
than a drastic change in social
and productive relations; or that
a ‘conscience~stricken’ multi-
million dollar monopoly will
‘break down’ and share its ill-
gotten wealth with those it has
robbed.

their combined strength to give ~
reality to a “war on poverty.”

To leave the conduct of this
kind of “war” to a handful of
government-appointed and high-
salaried ‘Generals’ (who invari-
ably die in a comfortable bed
with a good pair of shoes on), is

“sweep of

pp Sonne U.S. President
Johnson’s declaration of
“war on poverty” some months
ago, it was almost inevitable, our
*‘yesmen’ status being what it is,
that our own Liberal figurehead
LBP would follow suit with alike
‘declaration.’

In keeping with the old legend
of the one-family bed, ‘when Papa
turns we all turn,’ we also can
- now boast a “war on poverty,”
with a high-salaried General Staff
already set up to explore the
terrain and direct strategy, but
as yet sans an ‘army,’

Down in the USA, if Washing-
ton’s statistics on poverty in a
land of affluence is any criterion,

it would seem that so far LBJ’s
“war on poverty” has scored
_ fewer ‘victories’ than his bloody
_ war upon the Vietnamese people,
It would also seem that LBJ’s
“war on poverty” will soon have
to be changed to “war with pov-:
_ erty,” since his ‘victories’ in the
jungles of Vietnam — or the
_,American poor, are equally non-

existent when separated from the
thick fog of demagogy and false=-
hood proclaiming them,

However for the moment let’s
get on with our own“war.” Stem-
ming from Pearson’s announced
“war-on-poverty” and the setting
up of his ‘general staff’ to direct
‘combat’ operations, we are now
assured (?) that poverty inCana-
da does exist!

That may be ‘news’ to many in
our affluent, dynamic, prosper-
ous, etc, (pick your own adjec-
tive) society, To millions of Ca--
nadians however who live out
their lives in dire poverty, or on
its borderline, the only element
of ‘news’ is the belated realiza-
tion (and admission) by succes-
sive monopoly-dominated gov-
ernments that poverty does exist
at all, and afflicts one third or
more of all Canadians in greater
or lesser degree,

Even that admission is worth
something—but only if a united
and determined army of working

‘nually;
is going to lead in an all-out:

to ‘court defeat before the battle
even starts,

Victory in such a “war” can
only be won by a vast army of
united people, down below at the
‘srass roots,’ fearlessly chal-
lenging and storming those social
bastions and institutions which
function mainly as the incuba-
tors and progenitors of mass
poverty,

To swallow the illusion that a
government which pours $14 bil-
lion dollars of the nation’s re-
sources down the war-drain an-[
that such a government,

“war on poverty,” is akin to be-
lieving that the moon is made of.
‘green cheese,’ and that whoever
gets there ‘first’ will have a:
monopoly of the world’s cheese
supply,

Crazy? Yes, but not more so
than harboring the illusion that
hunger can be appeased by the
wilful destruction of food; that
poverty can be eliminated by a

The only force that can lead
(and win) in such a “war” are the
common people themselves, and
first and foremost the great
Trade Union Battalions of or-
ganized labor in the vanguard of
the struggle,

In the endless struggle for
peace, and policies which make
for peace, for the right to a job
ind ‘job security’ in the age of
automation and the computer,
for national health and a clean

Pa Le

and C wealth c

Editor — TOM McEWEN
Associate Editor —
Circulation Manager:-— JERRY SHACK
Published weekly at
_ Ford Bldg., Mezzanine No. 3, 193 E. Hastings St.
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disease - breeding
slums; for the right of every
Canadian child to a full and free
education from kindergarten to
university, these are the basic
‘logistics’ of any real “war on
poverty.”

Anything short of that is only
the empty husk of a monstrous
illusion, designed to make the
profiteers on poverty ‘virtuous’
—and the poverty-stricken de-

- pendent upon political-appointed

‘generals’ rather than upon the
strength of their own battalions,

To win this “war” Pearson’s
phoney “war -on-poverty” must
be turned into the real thing, It
too must become “a People’s
War,” directed by its own general
staff—from the ranks of Labor
and the People,

“[rtbane |

MAURICE RUSH

January 21, 1966--PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 4

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