An end to

tw only thing we have

silence!

to fear,” declared Franklin

Delano Roosevelt, “‘is fear itself.’”

That historic observation opens a wide door upon to- - confronting humanity with a U.S. escalat- already driven by desperation towards the

day’s dilemma, ing war in Asia,

abyss of world nuclear disaster.

__. And the heads of “free west” governments, our own included, fear to speak out against the U.S. perpetrators of this threatening calamity. Why?

A few good reasons for this fear might be posed. The U.S. of today under the Johnson regime, a good samaritan

or cunning pawnbroker? Its

“foreign aid”, given by the

hand of generosity, or the hand of Cain? Its “allies” whose support — and silence, dignity and heritage of their own people, traded for U.S. dollars.

Vietnam provides many, if not all, of the answers!

Perhaps the Wilsons, Pearsons, Martins et al of the “free west” may not like to look upon the bodies of Viet-

namese women and children

roasted to a crisp by U.S.

napalm bombs, or a Viet peasant coughing out his lungs af- ter a deadly spraying with U.S. poison gas; but they keep silent because they fear what is for them a greater cala-

mity—the loss of U.S. dollars.

Perhaps also they don’t care to look upon the “scorched earth” destruction of the crops and food of a hungry and war-torn people, but their fear keeps them silent. While the good earth of another people may be scorched and blackened, their own must be kept well-

manured with Yankee dollars.

silence.

This is the greatest fear

Hence their fears and their

of today; the fear that too

often grips the United Nations, and too often in the past turned it into an obedient pawn of U.S. war adventures and aggression in the countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. A fear that keeps governments silent, déspite the ever-growing protests of their own peoples against these

Pentagon crimes against humanity; crimes that already equal if not surpass those of the Hitler era!

The winning of Peace poses an ultimate choice; to _ abandon fear, break the silence, even forfeit the flow of U.S. dollars, and speak out for an end to the monstrous

U.S. war crimes in Vietnam. nuclear disaster?

ee < SSESSSSSSS

Tom

McEWEN

ack in “Merrie England” in

the year 1215 the signing of’ “Maena Charta” took place, This historic event, among other things, was productive of many illusions, some of which remain with us today,

Without going into the social

- or class antagonisms which

brought the Great Charter into

being, two sterling principles

upon which our social and judicial

way-of-life are said to be based, _ were set down:

One, that any citizen of the

_-_.realm, charged with an offense,

must be presumed to be innocent of the charge until proven other- wide before and by “a jury of his peers,” that is, a jury of his fellow citizens, And two, that no citizen may be arrested, de- tained, imprisoned or otherwise molested or held without trial,

_ without due cause; and that such

“due cause” will be explicitly

and speedily set forth by the proper legal authority,

_ Some 750 years later, prob- ably just to make sure modern.

That, or U.S: dollars and

capitalist society hadn’t entirely forgotten Magna Charta in its pursuit of pillage, pelf and profit, the United Nations re-empha- sized these and other fine prin- ciples as set down in 1215 in another lengthy document,. en- titled the “United Nations Declar- ation of Human Rights,”

Canada of course, along with many other nations, was asigna- tory to that latter-day Declara- tion, and, as with most of the other “Free West” vintage,“ more honoured in the breach than in the observance,”

A-few centuries after Magna Charta we had robbed, swindled, starved and all but decimated our Native Indian and Eskimo people, We had also cut “a jury of his peers” in half in order to make sure that a great Canadian patriot back in 1885.wouldn’t go

unhanged, Later, in order to break the

Winnipeg General Strike of 19 195 we stood Magna Charta on its head with Section 98 ofthe Crim= inal Code, which reversed the

principle of the accused being .

im The Daily Worker, London

“And I blame the increased cost of living on the fact that everything has become more expensive.”

The war on poverty

Ts remarkable “discoveries” were made last week by two Liberal spokesmen junketting’ in B.C. Dr. R. A. J. Phillips, the new Liberal general-in-command of Prime Minister Pearson’s “war on poverty” has discovered that one out of every four or more Canadians are living in con- ditions of abject poverty; victims of disease, slums, mal-

nutrition and illiteracy. -

Then no sooner had Mr. Phillips unburdened himself of the long-obvious division in our tinselled affluence than along comes our new Liberal Minister of Agriculture, Mr. John J. Greene from Ontario, to tell us of yet another long- obvious truth: that the family farm, long the bedrock of our agricultural and national economy, is facing social and economic extinction. That scores of hundreds of our farm people are trying to exist upon an annual cash return for their labours, of some $1,500-dollars more or less. “Some- thing has got to be done about it,”’ quoth the Minister, :

but he didn’t say what.

What he did say, however, coincided largely with what war-on-poverty Mr. Phillips said; that a vast section of Canada’s industrial and farm people live on or well be- low the border-line of sub-standard poverty—completely outside the privileged stockade of our much-boasted dyna-

mic affluence.

held innocent until proven other- wise by a jury of his peers—and put the onus of proving his inno- cence upon the accused, In the “Hungry Thirties” we dug up the same Section 98 to guillotine the Communist Party of Canada and railroad hundreds of jobless and hungry Canadians into prison, because the former accused the monopoly bellyrobbers of thena= tion’s hunger, and the latter couldn’t prove their own “inno- cence” at being deprived of the right to a job—and food,

Then in the mid-forties we Canadians greased the Churchill coldwar launching platform with a hair-raising anti-Soviet “spy” thriller, and had a “Star Cham- ber” Royal Commission com- pile a vast volume of prefabri- cated “evidence” against numer- ous citizens, not a line of which would have stood up in any open Canadian Court of law. In point of fact our then “minister of jus- tice” had to publicly admit as much in Parliament, But Magna Charta took a terrific beating in the process,

Now, while we don’t boast of it, we have another anti-Soviet “spy” thriller on tap, Long“tried” and already “convicted” in our established organs of public mis- information, the “accused” is already a condemned man—to a sentence worse than hanging,

The Tory mentality, like a

hungry mongrel on the scent of a political garbage can for a smelly morsel with which to bait the government, compels another Liberal “minister of justice” to lamely protest a complete “lack of evidence to bring the accused to trial” with or without a jury of his peers—but assures all and sundry that the said ‘‘accused” will be under constant surveil- lance of our political police for the rest of his lifetime!

To top this off another Liberal minister has fired the “accused” from his job as a minor civil servant, cancelled all his vested rights in the pension provisions of his job, Thus we have two Liberal ministers chanting in unison, a requiem for Magna Charta and the Declaration of Human Rights, ending their dirge upon an illusion-shattering note —*the case is closed,”

Canada, $5.00 one year;

Ottawa, and for payment of postage in

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Editor — TOM McEWEN Associate Editor — Circulation Manager — JERRY SHACK Published weekly at” Ford Bldg., Mezzanine No. 3, 193 E. Hastings St. Phone 685-5288 :

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Worth | Quoting

There is no danger that a cou so powerful as the U.S. would face by withdrawing itself from, thereby liquidating, the war in Vi nam. This thought Walter Lippman pressed in his syndicated column Tuesday, Jan. 4. Lippmann haste to warn, however, that a countr' powerful as ours ‘‘can lose face » fooling around with it’. Lippmat warned of the consequence that cou follow from “fooling around” with peace issue as a demagogic cover some new military operation exteé ing and intensifying the war. (THE WORKER, New York, Jan. 9/:

*

The President is waging his ‘‘pe offensive’’ with perfect sincerity. Hé really does most earnestly desire ‘uf conditional discussions’’, provided only that before they start, all objecti are waived to his tearing up the 19. Geneva Agreements, which the U are pledged to respect and to wh this country is a party.

Provided, too, that the enemy e is fighting, i.e., the South Vietnam ‘National Liberation Front, not only surrenders unconditionally, but com= mits suicide before the negotiations start. a

(Konni Zilliacus in British DAILY WORKER, Jan. 8/66)

*

At bottom, Washington’s fear and anger over TV coverage in Vietnam is soundly based; if the American public had access to the truth about the £ and how the U.S. is fighting it, the Administration could find itself in trouble. ; :

(NATIONAL GUARDIAN, Jan. 1/

Ladner Voice of Women (VOW) On January 7, wired President son appealing to him to “open tiations directly with all parties in Vietnam conflict or to put the initiat- ing of negotiations before mutually acceptable mediators". s

Espionage is a dirty business. in any man’s language, not made less so by the known fact in the diplomatic embassies of most of the world’s nations, at home and abroad, it is a top priority job; always well hidden behind a cur- tain of “secrecy” and the moth- eaten excuse of “national se- © curity,” =

Just the other nightonTV when | questioned on the alleged “bug- ging” of the Soviet Embassy in — Ottawa, our Prime Minister de- 4 nied any knowledge whatever of — such goings-on, “but,” said the Great Man, “I could tell you — something about ‘bugging’ the Canadian Embassy in Moscow.”

While anindignant peopleswept Section 98 from theStatute Books of Canada nearly 35 years ago, Ottawa still operates onaSection _ 98 mentality, eee

TAMMIE tery h 1

MAURICE RUSH

year. All other countries, $7.00;

cash,

_ January 14, 1966—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 4