NEUTRON ; \ BOMB : ee, Die Wahrtieit (West Berlin) Vy | £5 piel = “We are humanitarians. The human being is the center of all our aims!” 25 years ago... PROTEST CITY STAND ON RACISM Rumblings of a storm of pro- test against Vancouver City Council’s license and claims committee for its rejection of a clause. to ban racial. discrimina-. tion were heard last week. The committee’s ruling is under sharp attack by Civic Unity Council (an organization attended by about 100 repre- sentatives of labor, church, businesses and other groups at its last meeting on January 29), the Joint. Labor Committee Against Racial Discrimination, and the newly formed Negro Citizens League which was or- ganized as an outcome of the Clemens case. In face of this public protest, city council decided Monday this week to hold up final approval of the ruling. Tribune, Feb. 9, 1953 , 50 years ago... BAKERY WORKERS PROTEST BILL FOR SUNDAY LABOR A storm of protest has arisen among bakery workers over the terms of a,bill which is being pre- pared by Deputy Minister of Labor James Ballantyne for pre- sentation by the Ontario Provin- cial Government during the com- ing session of the Legislature. Mr. Ballantyne would tag the working week at 54 hours, but, in failing to specify that there should be oneday’srest in seven, and at the same time fixing the possible day’s work at 10 hours, with one day at 14 hours. The bill, according to bakery workers; can place a 74-hour week on the statute books. The Worker, Feb. 11, 1928 Audience Participation EDITORIAL COMMENT Take-over of Bell overdue It’s high time Bell Canada was placed under public ownership and:democratic control. That way, its host of subscribers, trapped by Bell’s monopoly of the.tele- phone system in Ontario and Quebec, could be guaranteed service without the constant gouging they now suffer. Bell wants to raise rates again! If it gets the -go-ahead from the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecom- munications Commission (CRTC), on . July 15 residential rates will jump 20% and business rates 28%. It’s the largest rate package ever demanded by this privately-owned communications giant. _No Anti-Inflation Board nonsense for this corporation! Outrage is the understandable re- sponse of working people, farmers, small businesses, the self-employed — all who lack a big business revenue cushion. And that’s not to mention those on re- stricted incomes, pensioners, students, etc. Bell made $286,208,000 profit in 1977 — after expenses and taxes. And that was on top of $287,384,000 profit in 1976, and so on back through many luc- rative years. Now it threatens declining service if it fails to get its increase. Who says a mass communications net- work on which millions of Canadians are dependent should stay in the hands of a corporation whose sole purpose is to make profits? “Bell should be made a public utility, answerable to the public at large instead of tied to a profit motive for which it constantly extorts new increases from its subscribers. Neutron bomb salesmen Canada’s. defence minister, Barnett Danson, does his utmost to create in the minds of Canadians a “Soviet threat”. On that basis the Liberal government claims the need to hand over to the interna- tional armaments profiteers, billions of dollars a year. Those are billions never to be used for Canada’s real and urgent needs. A study of facts shows why we are lied - to by Danson, his government, and those who pull their strings — the Pentagon and NATO generals and the bosses of Canadian and multi-national corpora- tions. It is all in aid of preserving the status quo at any cost. And the cost is piled onto working people. Danson’s big selling job on the “Soviet threat” boomeranged recently. He got caught lying and had to retract. He had said in a letter that the Warsaw Pact (and Soviet Union) “openly proclaims its pol- icy to impose its political philosophy. . . if necessary by force.” He had to admit he made it up.. The clear attempt is to ease us into acceptance of the arms build-up at the expense of social needs, in the first place to gain acceptance of the neutron bomb, which would herald a new round of arms escalation. The Toronto Star’s resident reactio- , nary, Robert Nielsen, calls the neutron bomb (newest horror in imperialism’s armory) “a weapon of peace.” He plants oisoned bait about a Soviet arms uild-up and lauds the fact that while _ killing people, quickly or in prolonged agony, the neutron bomb leaves the real estate intact. Those who oppose the neutron horror — the majority of man- kind — Nielsen accuses of advocating total destruction. This is crazy, he suggests. He wants the lesser evil, merely the obliteration of human life. Besides, the next war, thinks Nielsen can now be. fought only on the battlefield with this “battlefield weapon”. U.S. Defence Secretary Harold Brown thinks otherwise, and told a U.S. Con- gress committee, that the USA’ must be ready to flatten at least 200 major Soviet cities, to offset what Brown calls the USSR’s ability to cripple a U.S. first strike missile attack. If the USSR can defend itself then the $126-billion slated for U.S. arms spending in 1978 isn’t enough; the $140-billion demanded by the military is the way to human rights! Who can agree to placing life and fu- ture in the hands of these wiley, calculat- ing servants of imperialism? It should be remembered that their most important military bloc, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to which Canada belongs, last year spent $165-billion in stepping up the arms race. Why do Danson and Trudeau, along with Pentagon and NATO brass hide facts known throughout the Vast United Nations Organization? Facts, not politi- cal bias, show the USSR as prime prop- oser of ways to end the arms race. At the UN 32nd session, ended in December, the Soviet Union proposed measures to rein in the arms race and extend peace- ful co-existence. To support such moves is not to throw in with the Soviet way of life, but simply to join world reality as it confronts the neutron bomb and other means of mass death and suffering. The Dansons want a population of anti-Soviet robots who are not supposed to notice that jobs, homes, all the needs of life are slipping beyond their grasp. The Soviet proposal, “On deepening and strengthening international détente and preventing nuclear war,” was adopted unanimously at the UN, with China later reneging. The USSR’s prop- osal on concluding a World Treaty on Non-Use of Force in International Rela- tions, was opposed only by Albania, Chi- na, Britain and the USA. Who then wants the arms race? Who is a threat to peace and detente? In the world-wide fight against the neutron bomb, on which hinges a vast new arms escalation, Canadians have to see beyond the drummers for im- perialism’s arms build-up and join the protest of the majority of humanity. PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 17, 1978—Page 3