EDITORIAL |

Made-in-USA ‘opinion’

hen Privy Council President Walter Gcrdon made his

historic public statement that the U.S, “has become
emmeshed in a bloody war in Vietnam which cannot be justified
on either moral or strategic grounds”, he echoed a wide and
growing sentiment in Canada and world-wide opinion,

One of the first to repudiate the. Gordon statement — after
Prime Minister Pearson had completed his dictatorial ukase to
his Liberal cabinet and caucus, that “quiet diplomacy” was
government “policy” and that those who didn’t like it, or had
other opinions, should quit — B,C.’s Socred Premier Bennett
got in on the U,S, satellite wolf-pack howl, ;

“Walter Gordon should never had made that statement,’’
quoth W, A, C, “and a minister can have no private opinions,”
etc. Pearson’s arm-twisting “democracy” and Bennett’s “‘indig-
nation’’ anent Gordon’s statement have a common root cause,
and especially obvious in the political behavior of the latter,

Premier Bennett, as an alleged minister of the Crown, holds
a lot of “made-in-the-USA® opinions, private and otherwise,
especially on the giveaways and fire-sale bargains to U.S.
monopoly of British Columbia resources, The Columbia River
Treaty sellout (with Pearson in cahoots), the export of B,C,
water and hydro power potential, natural gas, oil, mineral and
forest resources an infinitum, Name it, and Bennett has traded
it off for a fast Yankee “affluent” buck,

In his capacity as Socred broker for the sale (and final
surrender) of B.C, resources to U.S, monopoly, Premier Ben-
nett demonstrates the basic cause of two main loyalties to
Washington in return for Socred ‘‘affluence” dollars received,
His open and avowed support of U.S, aggression and genocide
in Vietnam; and stemming from that “loyalty”, his blatant
fulminations against the jarring and incontrovertible truths
publicly uttered by Walter Gordon, :

What price democracy? Lester Pearson attempts to silence
his government and party with the gag of “quiet diplomacy”,
which means Canada remain as an accomplice and co-con-
spirator in U.S, war crimes upon Vietnam, And with Bennett,
the Socred broker for U.S. monopoly, no one in Canada from
the Privy Council down to the humble home should have any
private or public opinions — not made and approved by Wash-
ington, and their kept press give out with loud editorial hozan-
nas at these dictatorial attempts to gag and suppress free ex-
pression of opinion, the very hallmark of democratic govern-
ment.

Even the aged but still blustering Tory Dief got in on the
“gag Gordon” act, by accusing Walter Gordon of ‘giving aid and
comfort to communism”, For Bennett however, Walter Gordon’s
opinion sounds like the equivalent of the “‘no sale’’ key on a
Socred cash register and that would be disastrous—for Bennett *
and Co,

2-2 0 6 ee 6 © w © RA ae eae
Be SOOO POI IO I OI

Tom
McEWEN

correspondent who sign- through International Convention
ed himself WS mailed us. by all civilized states — except
@ copy of the January 26/67 the U.S.A,
edition of the New Scientist some
time ago with five dollars en- Since around the late 1950’s
closed and a brief message:— the U.S, has been rapidly

“please comment”, The New
Scientist is a British publica-
tion, printed in London, and ob-
viously dedicated to scientific
research over a wide field,

The article specifically drawn
to our attention by WS is en-
titled “Unmentionable Warfare”
by Ian Low, dealing with the
‘vast chemical and bacterial arse-
nal of the United States, and the
growing alarm being felt by
American scientists at the dia-
bolical uses their skills and re-
‘i i searches are being put to by a
i Boy war-mad government,

The layman (and this writer
is very definitely in that cate-
gory) generally thinks of the
horrors of war in terms of mass
death by hot steel with a highly
diversified delivery, and of

J course since World War I, deadly
, poison gas: the latter banned

expanding its chemical labora-
tories, and its budgetary appro-
priations, now, according to the
New Scientist from an annual
average of $35 million to $158
million. Only about 15 percent
of the findings of these vast U.S,
chemical and biological labora-
tories, employing thousands of
scientific workersare publicized.
The balance goes into the secret
archives of the U.S, Defence
Department.

In its Korean War of aggres-
sion the U.S, demonstrated its
readiness to violate all civilized
norms in its use of bacterio-
logical warfare against the
Korean people, which killed just
as surely as any bomb filled
with high explosives or napalm
ever did, And in its Vietnam war
of genocide against a civilian
population, a world stands aghast
at the excesses of U.S, chemical

Union leaders urge
debate on Vietnam

Ontario Federation of Labor
president David Archer, said last
week that now that Walter Gordon
has made an issue of the U.S.
bombing of Vietnam the govern-
ment should say where they stand,

“Is Gordon speaking for them
or not? Archer asked, “You
can’t have one cabinet minister,
Paul Martin, saying that he takes
a neutral stand, and another say-
ing he is opposed to the bomb-
ing in order to get the best of
both political worlds, It’s a dan-
gerous game in a situation such
as this.”

“The government should make
clear whether Gordon or Martin
speaks for them,” he added,

There must be a debate in
the House. Now we see our
anti-U,S. friend Diefenbaker
coming out to be the most pro-
American, People must stand up
and be counted.”

Archer said that he personally
stood in defense of the New
Democratic Party and Canadian
Labor Congress positions that
the bombing must be ended as a
prelude to proper negotiations,

Gerard Rancourt, secretary of
the Quebec Federation of Labor,
told the Canadian Tribune last
week he strongly supported an
emergency debate on the ques-
tion of Vietnam,

He was of the opinion that
Canada should “stop sitting on
the fence on this question,”

Rancourt said he was against
the war in Vietnam and for a
“more defined and concrete posi-
tion on the part of Canada.” He
also said he favored a stop to
the arms sales to the United
States as Canada did in rela-
tion to Cyprus to Greece and
Turkey and, at the time of the
dispute over Kashmir, to Pakis-
tan and India,

os
ee

‘Grant, The Commonwealth

“Confidentially, it has no meaning. 1 just chip a tittle

warfare upon a fertile land and
a heroic people.

In the up-grading of its chemi-
cal and biological efforts, per-
haps the U.S, Army Chemical
Corps and the Pentagon “apothe-
caries” visualize something in
the nature of “war without death”
as the New Scientist writer puts
it,

Instead of high explosive bombs
or bullets (with the H-Bomb
always held in large stock-pile
reserve) what about giving the
Vietnamese — or anyone else who
doesn’t kowtow to Washington, a
goodly dose of “anthrax, glanders,
dysentry, brucellosis, plague and
tularaemia, rickettsial diseases
-(Q-fever and Rocky Mountain
fever), viral disease (dengue,
several types of encephalitis,
psittacosis and yellow fever) a
fungal disease (coccidiodomyco-
sis) and botulism toxin”, etc, etc,

A lady U.S, scientist was re-
cently awarded the Army’s Dis-
tinguished Service Medal “for
her contribution to developing
a rice blast fungus”. In its
natural form this fungus gives
Asian rice growers much the
same worries in overcoming as
cutworm or rust gives to Cana-
dian wheat growers, But the
Pentagon puts Reason and Nature
in reverse with its defoliating
flights for the destruction of
rice fields and Nature’s verdant
beauty.

The New Scientist article also
spotlights lethal and poison gas

production and the perfection of products of U.S.

these deadly weapons in U,S,
laboratories,

Incapacitants such as a lethal
nerve gas which can be loaded
into rockets, land mines and
artillery shells with the plant
going “24-hours a day since
1960”,

“HD, BZ, DM, CS and CM, etc.
etc. In their order, a highly

THE COMMON MEAL

OR
Re aaa rat oe

VERDUN PERL

Vietnam |
aid rally |
Sunday |

Outstanding
film showing

antl

Vancouver will have os

to hear an outstanding an

peace leader from Britall i,

see a widely-acclaim® jy

mentary on Vietnam 2 ig |
in the Queen Elizabeth Pla!

Sunday, May 28 at 8 p.lMe

Aid
Sponsored by the Canad e
for Vietnam Civilians comm io
the rally will hear Mrs pris
Perl, co-chairman of the
Medical Aid Committees sna
speak on the subject: “V!
then World War III?”
apo
About a year and a nal
Mrs, Perl was chosen 10° oa
a delegation sent by ! vet
Council of Peace 1 oa
where she met.and talks itt
President Ho Chi Minle) ~
ge?
Sunday’s rally will ale? aif
‘“‘The Threatening SKY. soot
film has been hailed 5 5
mentary which tells the aie

of the war in vie {§
realities in human Pe
produced by Joris Iven:

competent scientist 1 ap
f thes? a!
to explain many 0 jalis

impe?” sh
its “Drang Nach On the my

lined by Ian Low of
Scientist, To elaborait pil
would take a volume © m6)
it down to layman's gnke? |
simply means that © og T
perialism is now ©, yet |
big way (with AsI® ® isfy
ground) in working gnd Le |
weapons of chemic norde i
teriological warfat® need On
its victims may 1aUeP gg HU

perfected mustard gas; a hallu- choke to death, have or by |
cination and giddiness producer; supply well poisone ied aeat? ;

a vomiting, sneezing and nausea still, a nice prot x, ay gt
producer; and variations of tear an infection of anthr™ not at
gas,” All the last three ‘‘have or tularaemia, 2 ©° erica pt
been authorized and usedin Viet- or disease amoné en? sine!
nam. Only DM is not to be used A “war without deh YU

where deathsare notacceptable,” is to compute Wa?

This column had the aid of a

push fe
Editor—TOM McEWEN Associate Editor— MAURICE ngh ®

Published weekly at Ford Bldg., Mezzanine No. 3, 193 E-
Vancouver 4, 8.C. Phone 685-5288.

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May 26, 1967—PACIFIC TRIBUNE