‘Deficits’ a are buring, but then so is the problem of Canada’s three- quarter million unemployed looking for jobs that don’t exist. The fed- eral budget brought down this week by tory Fleming emphasizes the point.

The budget shows a mounting deficit of $791,400,00, an all-time peak in a five-year “red ink” tory, pile-up. Total government spend- ing for the fiscal year exceeded $6'4-billion of the money.

Nearly one and three-quarter billion dollars, or almost one quar- ter of that vast spending was squandered for so-called “defense,” upped during the year (while Dief and company talked “peace”), by some $135,300,000.

Income tax payers, mostly the common people, coughed up an extra $89-million for the year’s total of nearly $2-billion, or 31- percent of all government reven- ues. Corporation taxes on the other hand “enjoyed” a reduction of ap- proximately $72-million, no doubt

taxpayers |

EDITORIAL PAGE

iob as an “incentive to prosperity” — for the monopolists? By and large the Fleming budget holds nothing for the people of

Canada, that is outside of “red in 2 deficits and a mounting national

debt, which endows those now liv- |

ing and tomorrow’s new-born baby with a per-capita debt of some $750 or more.

One budget item indicated an “ynforseen” $40-million or there- abouts spent on our “national sur- vival course”. Most Canadians are becoming convinced that “national survival” would be much. better served were a half or more of the billions now going down the “de- fense” drain, spent on providing opportunities and jobs for the tens of thousands of jobless workers, plus the thousands of young people now emerging from schools and ‘universities, with little prospects: of a future. pees

Then, at least, we would have something to show for such prodi-, gious spending . . . even if there was a “deficit.”

Editorial comment...

A news item reports a “Red” grain elevator official in the Soviet Union sentenced to death by a firing squad for prolonged: swindling of the collective farm- ers in his area.

In Canada he’d probably end up becoming a liberal or tory minister of agriculture, or at the very worst, get a Senate appointment.

Two social orders; in one harsh penalties for betraying the people, in the other an “honoured”! place at the political pork-barrel.

* * * WwW" the U.S. to lift its embar- YY wo against Cuba, stop interfer- ing with other countries trading with Cuba, give a firm pledge that

it would never again organize (or}

permit to be organized) armed ag- gression and counter-revolution against Cuba, it could probably get its 1700 mercenaries returned by the Cuban government “free of charge.” With the Pentagon al- ways on the outlook for “bar- gains” there’s one it shouldn’t: miss. % * *

he New York Herald-Tribune

defines the U.S. economic “up- swing” after the fashion of weath- er reporting, with “Washington feeling a chill in business” and

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Pacific Tribune

Editor — TOM McEWEN Associate Editor—MAURICE RUSH Business Mgr..OXANA BIGELOW

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“The Bloom is off the Kennedy boom”.

Up here in Canada at the CLC convention AFL-CIO fraternal delegate L. M. Raftery doesn’t feel the economic chill at all. His solu- tion to the “abiding hunger pains in the stomach” (not his own one), is for more guns “against the threat of Communism.” Hitler said the same thing 28-years ago; “guns before butter”.

B fee U.S. undeclared war against

North Vietnam has brought in its wake not only death and suffer- ing to the people of both North and South Vietnam, but widespread moral corruption. Swaggering U.S. forces, well loaded with dollars to spend have become the promoters of every form of prostitution and vice.

The smuggling of gold, opium and other narcotics has become a very lucrative business in and around Saigon in South Vietnam. As is already known by admission of the Diefenbaker government, a number of Canadians serving on the three-nation (India, Poland and Canada) International Control Commission (ICC), have been in- volved in this dirty business.

Macleans! Magazine of April 21 provides an interesting overtone on inducement. “An ambitious officer (presumably ICC or GI) can run an investment of $100 into $40,-

‘Bullseye’ hairman of the Canada-U.S. ‘International Joint Commis-.

-sion on power development, Gen-

eral A. G. L. McNaughton has been “deposed” by Dief. Reason: the General dropped a shattering “bombshell” on the tory doorstep last week. :

In clear and_ succinct terms’ General McNaughton stated what millions of Canadians now know to be only too true; that “the gov-

A good ‘investment’

000, making only three or fo

trips north and south during h one-year tour of duty.” : No wonder a recent TV col mentator described Saigon as huge U.S.-staged brothel, whe all the vices from dope to juven prostitution. flourishes on U. “sid” and fat GI payrolls. Macleans’ adds a doleful note 6 its Vietnam “paradise for our di lomat smugglers”. While Indi and Canadian personnel on the IC presumably get in a spot of g0 and opium “contraband in the

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ernment had sold Canada dow! the river on the Columbia Riv Treaty with the U.S.”

Now: the General is in the “tal get area” for Liberal blandish: ments (for votes) and the ful treatment of tory calumny and vil lification for uttering the truth

‘And the truth is, not the sello “treaty” but the “McNaughto! Plan” for Columbia developme® —and the interests of Canada.

Tom McEwen,

W's. someone to make a study of the countless struggles of the “men who go down to the sea in ships’”’, i.e. seamen, they would pro- bably find at the core of every grievance which has sparked ‘‘mut- inies on the high seas’’, strikes and other bitter forms of struggle, the issue of “food”. Or to put it more simply, the swill and garbage pro- vided by shipowners and reaction- ary governments in lieu of food for seamen.

Turn back the pages of history. The famed mutiny on the old Tzar- ist battlewagon Potemkin stemmed from many causes, but rotten food fit to make a dog vomit touched off the fuse of revolt.

The British “Invergordon” mut- iny had a similar origin. While the Captain Blyes of Merrie Eng- land and the English bourgeoisie were and are traditionally persis-- tent that their roast beef be “done

to a turn”, any kind of decayed carrion was considered good enough for their “Jack LATS <

In the heyday of British imperial- ism when Britain was ‘‘mistress of the seas”, its merchant seamen held the unenviable record of hav- ing the worst food and working conditions on the Seven Seas. That

record is now possibly held “by —..

the Greek merchant marine, plus a few other shipping monopolies.

However, despite all our vaunted, progress, and despite the fct that- this is 1962 instead of 1862, many, shipping monopolies insist on their crews eating garbage instead of food.

During the past month Spanish! and Greek seamen in B.C. ports have literally had to “mutiny” be-. cause of rotten food. Of course the, commercial press (as ever), pinch- hitting for the shipowners, puts it. more nicely; the seamen protested’ because they ‘‘couldn’t stomach bacon and eggs’. Now why should- n’t seamen, like the rest of us, just love bacon and eggs? What the press forgot to mention was that bacon and eggs (together or sep- arate) upon which the “hand of time” has laid heavily, can also smell and taste to high heaven when done up in putrid grease.

In this bacon-and-eggs controver- sy an old sea horse, one George Donaldson, hastens to the aid of the shipowners, boasting of the good “old days” when seamen like himself consumed “salt horse, weevily biscuits, duff treacle, etc, and relished it”. Old Salt Donald- son would give the seamen epicures! - of today a tasty menu; a “diet of seal with living weevils and a demi- john of water.”

The intent of the Donaldson yarn. (if it has an intent) is that today’s seafaring boys should be as partial, to such garbage as the shipowners. Then we’d have labor-management _ “peace and cooperation”. Heave ho,

~me boys. We commend this old salt_

on his strong stomach. It should net him a Tory nomination somewhere, where the political menu runs 4 close parallel with his gastronomic reminiscences. Speaking of the close relationship between food and politics as it re- lates to seamen, the good ship Bretwalda under British registry (Captain James Milne), out of Hav- ana, Cuba, with a cargo of sugar for Peoples China, provides a fine example. Unable to stock up in Havana the doughty skipper decid- ed to replenish his stores in the Panama Canal Zone (USA). The U.S. gave Captain Milne @ flat “no” with a rider attached: “since you’re going to a Communist — country, you won’t get a permit for stores in any American port.” . Then the skipper cut across the — Carribean to Colombia. Officials of 4 that country, their sense of smell — dulled by Kennedy’s “alliance for progress” deodorant, sold the skip per a few slabs of rotten beef. More trouble. While loading this dubious — beef some of it came in contact with a load of pork on the dock, and pork — is strictly taboo with the skippers 4 five Mohammedan firemen (on reli ‘gious grounds), just as the stale crow-bait was equally repulsive to. the rest of his 54-man crew. a Determined to get edible-food for his crew, the skipper finally sailed his ship on the last leg of 4 2,000-mile “detour,” into the porl of Vancouver, B.C. which, happil is not yet listed as an “Americal port,” and where food can 0 bought without U.S. approval.

ril 13,

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