ViETNA RS ae 25 years ago... HITCHED TO A WAR CHARIOT External Affairs Minister Pearson repeated in the Com- mons Feb. 24 his Florida state- ment that “we range ourselves on the side of freedom under the leadership of the United States of America”. What he is hitching to was bluntly revealled in Washington by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robertson. He was asked: “So ... for an indefinite period we would go on subsidizing and supporting the peripheral people (in Asia) economically to the end that at some point they might be prepared to move militarilly with our support on the Communist area of China?” To which Robertson replied, “Yes. Exactly.” This is what Pearson is rang- ing Canada _ alongside. Tribune, March 8, 1954 50 years ago... WAR AGAINST PROSTITUTION The struggle against prostitu- tion is one of the tasks which the Soviet system is vigorously tackl- ing in its steady progress toward a new standard of life. This fight is based upon the vocational education of home- less women and their cultural enlightenment. In many cities of the Soviet Union there are special sanitariums _ called “phophylactoria” where the women are housed in healthy surroundings conducive to normal work and cultural re- creation. Most of the women in the in- stitution are of peasant and working class background. Three-fourths of them were vic- tims of unemployment. Over half of them are single, without family and between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. The Worker, March 2, 1929 Profiteer of the week: Pssst! How'd you like to make $43,816,000 in three months? How would you do that— heart Surgery, supplying the world with food, finding a cure for cancer? Nah! Lend money — be- come a bank. We don’t call it usery anymore. So that figure above which Bank of Nova Scotia took out of society in November, De- cember and January isn't criminal by capital- ist laws. Same time last year they took only $34,558,000. Must be working harder. Figures used are from the company’s financial statements. Editor — SEAN GRIFFIN Associate Editor — FRED WILSON Business and Circulation Manager — PAT O’CONNOR Published weekly at Suite 101 ~ 1416 Commercial Drive, Vancouver, B.C. V5L 3X9 Phone 251-1186 Subscription Rate: Canada $10 one year; $6.00 for six months; All other countries, $12 one year. Second class mail registration number 1560 PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 9, 1979—Page 4 EDITORIAL COMMENT Statistics t Ottawa’s spending spree on arma-. ments — a huge $4.4-billion this year, a 6% jump — is by itself enough to enrage working people who are struggling to pay for health, a home, high-priced food and low-grade education. That’s not the only statistic to make people angry, although its combined sop to the profiteers and blackmail to the NATO brass offend in a number of ways. ‘On another front, a big capitalist daily says in a page one headline: Profits up 28.7%; wages rose by 50% (1974-78). That is more than dishonesty; it’s an attack on the workers’ struggle to have wages catch up with soaring prices, rents, etc. The ruling class likes the misleading picture of 28 to 50 because it helps them to blame workers for inflation — and even mass unemployment. They argue about productivity, cal- ling Canadian workers unproductive. What they did not put in headlines was the fact that last year unit labor cost in Canada rose only 2.6%; in the USA, 6% according to a Royal Bank survey. At the same time the corporate share of Gross National Product increased and pre-tax profits jumped 16.7%. Wages, salaries and supplementary. income (in- cluding management salaries) rose only 9.1%. (Statistics Canada figures) Or, take some other figures which didn’t get page one headlines. Finance Minister Jean Chretien predicted a GNP growth of 5%. Actually it was 3.4%. But in the fourth quarter of 1978, when the intermarried directorates of corpora- tions divvied up the spoils, they sucked $2.2-billion out of the economy and the GNP fell to 2%. Interesting note: Di- Communists the media lost The fluid political and social situation in Iran is admittedly complex, ad- mittedly in motion. There are several significant elements — the Khomeini forces, the Tudeh Party, the Fedayeen, imperialism’s agents, oil, and the oil workers, as examples. Another factor, for Canadians, is press distortion and fabrication. Contrary to the myth spread by the big business media, Canada and the USA suffer from excessive “management” of the “news”, unmatched in any but fascist countries. Developments in Iran have brought to light a perfect example of media distor- tion meant to serve the interests of im- perialism (U.S. foreign policy, the oil companies, the CIA, and their ilk). That distortion involves the loose use of the name, communists. This paper has published statements by Iran’s party of Communists, the Tudeh Party, which has its own clearly- defined program, while playing a unify- ing role as one of the elements of Iran’s revolution. The Tudeh Party is the:sole Iranian party basing itself on the tenets of Marxism-Leninism. o profit by vidend payments to non-residents of Canada, jumped in the last three months of 1978 by 72% over the previous three months (and 51.9% over 1977’s last quarter) for an annual level of $3.2-billion! Well, what causes high prices? Where does the money go? How can we find cash to afford hospitals? It’s worth some thought. One more point proves the.old adage — figures don’t lie but liars can figure. On Feb. 22 Consumers Affairs Minist Warren Allmand declared: “profit ley are not out of line”, “increased profi may very well be due to increas efficiency” (shouldn’t that affect wa too?), “profit increases have historicall heralded a general economic recovery. (Tell it to the unemployed.) But by Feb. 27 a little election bi from the Gallup Poll whispered in hi ear, and he ranted: “I’m fed up, a Canadian consumers are fed up, wi the unending increases in prices.” That’s what we’ve been saying, Mr. Allmand — all through the Anti Inflation Board caper while wages froze and prices bounded. ; Not only are Canadians fed up with soaring prices, they are fed up with profiteers, with statistics jugglers, at j tacks on unions and living standards, and they are fed up to the eyeballs Liberal-Tory, old-line party hokum, More of them are seeing through th Allmands, seeing that it’s time to chan the face of parliament and make it th seat of a progressive majority, speakin for the workers and democratic people of Canada — not the corporate eli and a government which pours billion a year down the armaments drain. Yet, for their own purposes, the news services and capitalist media suppre these facts. They persist in referring to student-oriented groups as “the Co munists”, and by implication maki Communists everywhere responsible for their actions. Manipulating the “news” to “wipe out” the understanding of Com munist participation in the events in Iran, is meant to prepare the minds of North Americans for the future distor tions imperialism’s agents may find useful. Exiling human rights Just how does a judge’s action in exil ing a worker from the district where he works and lives fit in with human righ notions? In Kenora, striking logger, James King was ordered out of the di trict pending his trial over an alleged threat. Breaking up a worker’s family, and trying to break the strike agains! Boise Cascade don’t rate the howls if high places that we hear when human rights is used as a smoke screen to attack the socialist countries.