Review

Do the job right!

harp political rivalries between central and state governments

in Brazil has produced a major headache for the Canadian finan- cial tycoons of St. James and Bay Streets. Canada’s “Big Five” banks and their multi-interlocking’ directorates are in a cold Sweat over this threat to “free enter- and their $946.6-million:

Anti-communist governor Car- los Lacerda of Guanabara province has set the machinery in motion to “take over” the Canadian- owned Brazilian Traction, Light and Power Company. At the mo- ment it would seem that Lacerda is more interested in “embarass- ing” the central Goulart govern- ment of Brazil in its current trip to the U.S. for another of Pres- ident Kennedy’s “Alliance for Progress” handouts?

Whatever the internal motives behind this “take over”, Canad- ians have no grounds for squak- ing should the people of Brazil,

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EDITORIAL PAGE Who pays-to whom

through their respective govern- ments. decide to expropriate Brazilian Traction and utilize its vast resources for their own well- being, instead of as hitherto in the sole interests of a Canadian- U.S. financial octopus.

When Premier Bennett “took over” the BC Electric the prime motivating force was his desire to settle a beef with Dief, rather than to serve the interests of the B.C. people. To date as far as bus services and power costs are con- cerned the Bennett “take over” has benefited the people exactly nothing. :

The people of Guanabara prov- ince in Brazil. shouldn’t make the same mistake in the Brazilian Traction expropriation. Fidel Castro showed the way; to make the “take overs” from monopoly serve the well-being of the people.

Governor Lacerda of Guanabara. state and Premier Bennett of B.C. should both note this important distinction of “take overs”.

Editorial comment...

EES report of the Glassco Royal ’ Commission, which cost the

Canadian taxpayer a goodly chunk of dough, is a large-sized shot-in- the-arm to “free enterprise”.

“Get out of business” it tells government, and confine your act- ivity to “buying”. Let “free enter- prise” do the “making”—and sell- ing. A virtual death sentence to all Crown or public-owned enterprise.

Always at the beck and call of big business to do its bidding, Dief (with unseemly speed) has already “appointed” his Big Busi- ness cabinet and senate appointee, “Senator” Wallace McCutcheon of the E. P. Taylor Argus Corpor- ation, to “implement” this Glassco report on government “econo- mies”.

“All you gotta-do”’, says the Glassco report to the government, is “buy”. “Free enterprise” will: do the rest’ whether it be “‘mak- ing’ BVD’s, Voodoos, victuals or whatever.

From the report it may be see that the government has been do- ing a goodly spot of “buying” to keep its patronage (and votes) up to par. :

Our navy boys have “union suits” on hand to last them for the next 1000-years while army and airforce boys have sufficient kitbags, light bulbs, boots, socks, overalls and other trousseau bric- a-brac to last them anywhere

from one to three hundred years.

Pacific Tribune

Editor — TOM McEWEN Associate Editor—MAURICE RUSH Business Ry See OXANA BIGELOW

: ed weekly at:

Room 6 — 626 Main Street

Vancouver 4, B.C.

Phone MUtual 5-5288.

Subscription Rates: One Year: $4.00—Six Months: $2.25 Canadian and Commonwealth coun- tries (except Australia): $4.00 one year. Australia, United States and all other countries: $5.00 one year.

as second class mail by

rtment, Ottawa,

All of which shows that the good old graft in “defense con- tracts” still spells out fat profits, sizeable political slush funds, and

242 00d old-line voting performance,

be it a Tweedledee or Tweedle- dum government.

But this isn’t enough for the Glassco commissionaires. They want “free enterprise” firmly in the “productive” saddle and a “clean-up” of all government ad- ministrative or functional activ- ities that stand in the way of this

objective — all in the name of —

“economy”?

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he case of a West Vancouver

businessman, Allan S. Gentles, now before the courts on a charge of income tax evasion, projects - another long-overdue need: that of a full-scale public investigation into the odorous business of elect- ion slush funds. Who pays the shot. how much, and to whom in which political party for “prom- ised” pelf and patronage hand- outs?

A seemingly very “innocent” man, Mr. Gentles told the pre- siding magistrate he had paid over some $25,000 in three instal- ments during 1956 to someone he “didn’t know ... and never saw before. 33°

This tidy bit of political boodle allegedly came from a Montreal steel firm which had the fore- sight to earmark “a political fund of $78,000” in lieu of political patronage favors in hand, or to

Comment

come? A pure “coincidence” course, but the same firm whi supplied the Socred governmer with steel rails for ‘your PGE”

During the Gentles case to d other sources of political sl funds have been hinted at. Sinc however, this is purely a case fecting income tax payments 4! not of slush funds, the latter quires a much more vigorous Scr! tiny.

Nothing short of .a full-scal public investigation into the hig! ly odorous business of electiot slush funds: who pays the sho’ how much, and to whom in whi political party for ‘promised pelf and patronage handouts?

The Gentles ~““I don’t know maxim is only one more reas why British Columbians sho know. A searching public inve igation would provide the answé! —and boost the remedy.

‘Put and take’ gam

he current. edition of Maclean’s

Magazine features a story of how one American, John C. Doyle “struck it rich” in Canada. This story is highly typical of how Canadian independence, resources, jobs, dignity and honor has been ‘sold out to U.S. monopoly buccan- eers by fast-buck Canadian huck- sters.

Back in 1952 Doyle, an “ex-coal salesman” made a deal with New- foundland’s Joey Smallwood to buy up the mineral and timber “rights” covering an area of some twenty-four thousand square miles of Newfoundland and Lab- rador with a “down payment” of $2,500. In the decade since, Doyle

has collected fabulous “royalties and as Maclean’s say, may © well “over a billion dollars durin the next fifty years”.

The story of Doyle is reminisc”_ ent of the old Horatio Alger stuf, Acquire all “rights” for a song Promote mining and timber 4 velopment (largely U.S.), “buy to” other Canadian developmen purchase elaborate homes, hot and other posh resorts in numé ous Latin American countries, a! rake in the “portfolio” boodl Eat, drink and be merry, even the cafe bill has often “reach $280”. What th’ hell, it’s all Canada’? nox

Tom McEwen

eath on the highways is no longer a mere matter of “ac- cident”. The stage has now been reached where the staggering weekly and “holiday” totals can be forecast with deadly accuracy. Even on those specified “safe driv- ing weeks’ the total of dead and maimed shoots upwards. Annually the Canadian total of deathson the highways exceeds the casualty list of a fair-sized war.

What causes this homicidal neu- rosis in the ‘“‘driver’s seat’? of an automobile?

The answers are many and var- ied. Booze, bravado, ‘“‘buck-fever’’, a psychological recklessness stem- ming from a sense of “power”, or just hell bent on beating the other fellow to the lane ahead? Any or all are contributory factors and to which more could be added.

An organization known as the “Canada Highways Council” pours out a voluminous stream of liter- ature and ‘“‘advice” on the subject, much of which neither provides an answer nor a solution. “Built-in” neurosis at the wheel of a car with its foot on the accelerator is not responsive to “good advice”’ or the

sedative of a ‘‘seat belt”, whether

strapped on voluntarily or by legal compulsion.

The problem goes much deeper. The automobile magnates, as with all monopoly ‘free enterprise’, jet-propelled by greed for max- imum profits, designs the horse- power and styling of its product to stimulate the advancement of neurosis rather than sanity. Monop- oly doesn’t actually say so in its~ multi-million dollar advertising, but what it actually means is that this year’s super-duper 300-HP for the “discerning buyer’, providing a “smooth ride” at 80-mph and up, kills far more effectively than last year or the year before models?

Just recently a U.S. statistical journal published some figures on the gigantic pyramid of chewing gum, aspirin pills and “tranquiliz- ators” consumed by the American public. An American author, Eu- gene Burdick, declared only last: week thaat the higher up you go “in the U.S. pyramid of power” the higher the consumption of tran- quilizers; that U.S. “top policy makers are living on tranquiliz- PIS ene

How Canadians compare with this percentage-wise in the con- sumption of junk for jagged nerves is anyone’s guess, as are the vast profits harveted by the drug car- tels. But there is a close relation- ship between this consumption of a mountain of dope for the preser- vation of near sanity and the grue- some death-rate on the highways. Hence the problem of “death on

the highways” is not only one of individual responsibility, but “social” neurosis, with a risin® death toll ticking off one of its end results. Thus, like all social evils under capitalism, be it mass une” ployment, hunger, disease or wha capitalist society tinkers with th “effect”, but never decisively wi the cause. That would be infrin ing upon ‘free enterprise’’? ; We can scientifically work out the “blood alcohol level’ in } befuddled coordination of an UP intentional killer, produce a raft | catchy slogans on the subject, ig- nore a nation-wide neurosis whi seeks ‘sanity’ in tranquilize but only “deplore” the gruesom toll that marks the trail? ; We boast the highest per capit® “of car “owners” as a measure our “well-being”, and sneer at tht Socialist countries for their sc@ ity of automobiles. We forget t they at least are not obsessed Wi our made-in-the-USA neurosis, 4 manifest no desire to “catch UP with us, either in the producti? of a total transit chaos, or in up-to-date form of mass homicl™ | As we said, the neurosis produ ing death on the highways in eve increasing volume is a social P lem. Any attempt to ignore % evade that fact merely assures | the totals will continue to gr?* A social problem in which b “tranquilized”’ ravings of nucle “statesmen” on the art of M* killing—finds its neurotic echO — the scream of the latest highW® victim.