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Barry McGuire was once a hero of the folksy radicals all round the world in the middle sixties. His most famous song was the 'Eve of Destruction' which was banned on radio because at the time, it was too political. It had lines like "you're old enough to kill but not for voting, you don't believe in war but what's that gun you're toting," and "Think of all the hate there is in Red China, then take a look around you to Selma, Alabama, "(comparing the race-riot torn Amerika unfavourably with China). Barry says that at the time the only contact he had with the Bible was when he rolled joints in its fine paper.
Now he's a full-time Jesus freak, singing Jesus songs and touring NZ with a rabid evangelist. He belts out lines like "Don't blame God for the sins of America, America has fallen from the ways of the Lord, living for the dollar she'll be dying by the sword," and songs like "After all the laughter, and the music fades away, you'll find yourself a lonely child, lost along the way ".
Why the change? Or has there been any real change? Has his mind been fucked by acid, or by Jesus?
Find out all about it on pages 8 and 9.
Plus all the usual features — books, records, Trot baiting, comix, assorted shit stirring and lots more!
Our rivers, our mountains, our men willalways remain. When we defeat theYankees, we will build a country tentimes more beautiful"."My ultimate wish is that our whole partyand people, closely united in struggle,shall build a peaceful, united, independent,democratic and prosperous Vietnam andmake a worthy contribution to the worldrevolution".
Saturday, May 19th was the 83rd anniversary of Ho Chi Minh's birthday.
Ho epitomised the Vietnamese people's struggle for national liberation against American aggression. People throughout the world honour him as a revolutionary whose people have brought the world's greatest military power to its knees.
Last Saturday a peace delegation from the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam left Australia after a three week friendship visit. They would have been in New Zealand this week but for the opposition of Norman Kirk.
By claiming that the P.R.G. has no status as a government and suggesting that it is merely a puppet of Hanoi Mr Kirk managed to sabotage the delegation's visit to New Zealand. But at the same time he exposed himself as an accomplice in Nixon's schemes of conquering Indochina.
After the Vietnamese decided they could not come to New Zealand, representatives of the Wellington Committee on Vietnam flew to Sydney to meet the delegation. In a special supplement in this issue Peter Franks reports on meetings and discussions with the Vietnamese.
John Mountain Sutherland, sickness beneficiary, pleaded not guilty before Mr Scully S.M. on a charge of using obscene language.
The main witness for the prosecution slated that he had pulled up by a milkbar when another car had passed his, stopped and a person from that car had got out yelling "What the hell ya doing ya fuckin bastard". Witness was unable to recognise the user of the language anywhere in court.
The person who actually laid the charge was not the man to whom the language was addressed, but a local shopkeeper Frank Charles Muncy. Muncy testified that he had heard the language complained of, although he had not seen the defendant actually speaking at the time.
The defendant, Sutherland, stated that he had been driving down Warspite Avenue, Porirua when the car in front of him indicated that it was stopping. It then indicated a left turn, making him cross the white line and almost collide with a vehicle coming in the opposite direction. Sutherland stopped, got out and asked the offending driver if he was drunk. Sutherland testified at 'the same time' a hitchhiker passenger had used the obscene language and that Muncy had not appeared until after the incident. Sutherland also said that he and Muncy had had arguments on previous occasions.
This evidence was corroborated by Sutherland's mother and Mr David Fogarty, both passengers in the car with Sutherland and the hitchhiker. Fogarty stated that in his opinion the other driver was too drunk to be in charge of a vehicle. He also named the hitchhiker who had used the language complained of.
As is his custom, Mr Scully wasted not a word or a second in summing up the case. He said that there was no question that the language had been used and that it came from the general direction of the car.
Mr Muncy, said Scully, had no interest in the case and had recognised the defendent in court. He fined Sutherland $50 and $6.50 witnesses expenses.
It is interesting to note that Mr Scully's "disinterested" witness was the one who had actually laid the charge, and that he was not on friendly terms with the defendant. Three witnesses were discounted in Muncy's favour. We didn't hear why, but one presumes that it would have been a bit much to have called Mr Sutherland a liar. Nevertheless the effect was there, and the day was saved for the propertied and respectable. The Justice Department can probably find a use for a sickness beneficiary's $50 too.
Two recent cases in the Rama tenants dispute have been thrown out of court.
The main feature of both cases was the utter failure of Mr Buddie (Rama's lawyer) to elicit any coherent information from his client in the witness box. Giving evidence Rama stated that his flat at 168 Kings Crescent had been let to Mr Campbell at $30 a week. He claimed that Campbell had left without notice, $362 being outstanding. In the chaotic examination that followed Rama produced no proof that this sum was actually owing to him. He first stated that he and his son both kept the accounts. His second version was that his son had kept all the accounts himself.
Rama claimed not to have advertised the flat after Campbell had left, wherepon Mr Hart (acting for the tenants) produced a photocopy of a newspaper advertisement for the flat. Rama immediately claimed that this advertisement was the work of his son.
Rama seemed unable to decide whether it would be more advantageous to state that he worked in close collaboration with his son Bhika or not. He compromised by shifting his position and contradicting himself until it became clear that the process of unravelling the truth of his testimony would not be worth the effort involved.
Rama was not assisted in his efforts by his counsel Mr Buddie. Buddie was repeatedly told by the magistrate Mr Patterson S.M. to 'examine the witness properly' and to refrain from putting loaded questions to his witness. Both Rama and his son Bhika were prevented from trying to refer to documents which they had not written. Both men attempted to read such papers in the witness box. These documents were furnished by Mr Buddie, who was reproached for doing so by the magistrate. However although Mr Buddie was many times asked to carry out his duties in the proper manner the most surprising thing about the proceedings was the fact that Patterson allowed the farcical antics to continue for so long.
Finally, however Mr Patterson decided that the cases had not been properly prepared or put forward and were accordingly not worthy of consideration.
Rama Madhav has made a mistake not unknown to his class, that of lifting up a rock only to drop it on his own feet.
Another act in the continuing tragedy of white capitalist injustice took place in the Lower Hutt Magistrates Court on May 1. Amanda Russell of the Tenant's Protection Association was up for "assaulting" Peter Amarat Rama, son and agent of the famous rack renter Rama Madhav.
Assault meant the act of intentionally applying force to another, said the Magistrate Mr K.J. Patterson, and there was no doubt that this had been done. Mr Patterson was not interested in the context of the assault. It did not, for instance, occur to him that a slap of the same negligible force would have been quite fitting if Amanda had administered it at a party if Peter Annual was getting fresh. No, the slap had a political context: a man was protecting his property, from someone no better than a demonstrator.
Nor did it matter to the magistrate that Amanda Russell had been waving special proceedings notices in front of the truck which was carting tenant's furniture away under Rama's supervision. Amanda had been called to the scene by distressed, crying tenants, who understood nothing of what was going on except that Rama's bailiffs were bullying them. Amanda had legal advice that Rama could not seize striking tenants' goods while he had court actions pending against them, and she was trying to impress this upon the driver. Peter Amarat Rama came over to her and in a gloating, pushy tone asked her to move away. Rama later boasted that he had deliberately provoked Amanda in order to get her out of the way.
As it turned out, Amanda's legal advice was wrong and Rama's actions were sanctioned by law. In retrospect, it was foolish for a member of the Tenants' Protection Association to have imagined for a moment that tenants are protected by law — they aren't. The average lease is two pages of rules for tenants with a free hand and no stipulations for the landlord. The law books themselves are full of landlords laws and offer little hope for oppressed tenants.
Finally the court ground on to the Amanda Russell case. There was indeed no doubt that assault actually occurred, it was only the context and the attitude of Peter Amarat Rama that Amanda's lawyer dwelt upon. But Patterson was impassive. In his summing up he ranted on about 'people taking the law into their own hands'.
"You may feel that you were justified in taking the action you did, but I hasten to tell you, you were not." In Mr Patterson's opinion, Amanda could have taken a more effective stand, though he did not suggest what this might have been. He was concerned that such an obviously intelligent woman as he discerned Amanda to be "should stoop to physical violence". And he said he could not find the answer in the evidence presented. With a last touch of irony, he fined her $50 — he must have decided that although she was intelligent she might still learn from being found guilty and fined in his court.
On
The battle lasted for about four hours and left many U.S. soldiers injured and at least two killed. Smaller battles took place later in other centres caused by the same U.S. provocation.
The battle of Manners Street marks a day when U. S. troops were defeated on New Zealand soil. Racist American politics were defeated by united New Zealanders.
Today U.S. imperialism is the main enemy of the people of New Zealand. Many New Zealanders realise that imperialist penetration of New Zealand must be soundly defeated. Just as its racist politics were defeated in Manners Street thirty years ago.
It was advertised that Mr Marshall would speak on Education. Instead he offered a homily on Freedom. These two concepts could be related by many speakers but not, it appears, by New Zealand's first graduate Prime Minister. What we got sounded very much like a rehash of a speech delivered at Lincoln College a few days earlier. Jack did use a slightly different tack for his opening, reminiscences of Anzac Day. He remarked, with typical insight, that he imagined for people of our generation Anzac Day did not mean quite the same thing . . . "some of you may even wonder what it's all about".
From there he went on to war service and a personal travelogue on pre-war Germany. Jack explained how he had been a Pacifist in youthful folly but the realities of Fascism first-hand converted him (he didn't say to what). Then came the reason for all this tear-jerking, "Beware the March of Reds". "I do not question the claim of the Chinese Communist Government that they have no territorial ambitions in this part of the world", said Mr Marshall. "But there is equally no doubt that the Communist World believes fanatically in the inevitability of communist revolution on a world scale. It is their mission to promote the cause of Communism."
Gentleman Jack Marshall went on to talk about the Communist threat in New Zealand. "The risks and dangers of subversion are always present. In New Zealand the Communist Party, which is affiliated to the Chinese Communist Party, is insignificant. It has caused some trouble. It has gained some influence in some trade unions. It has promoted Front organisations. It has fomented protests but it has little popular support".
If the CPNZ is insignificant, one wonders why Jack is raving about it up and down the country. In questions after his speech, he indicated only confusion in the matter. He was asked to name the trade unions in which the Communist Party is influential. He named Ken Douglas and the Northern Drivers Union and seemed to have nothing further to add. Now Jack had said "trade unions" and he did point out that the Communists in New Zealand were affiliated to the Chinese Communist Party. Ken Douglas belongs to the pro-Soviet Socialist Unity Party, not the CPNZ. Further, Mr Marshall only pointed to one "leftist" union leader, not to subversive influence.
Jack was asked to name protests (NB plural) fomented by the Communist Party. After being pressed by the questioner, he named the protest at Mount John. Asked what evidence he could produce that this was the work of Communists he replied that "Communists had taken part in the demonstration".
When my turn came to question I asked Mr Marshall to name the front organisations (NB plural) promoted by the CPNZ. He completely sidestepped the question and began to waffle. I interrupted to demand an answer to my question. Still he evaded and I was forced to constantly badger the Gentleman to answer what he had been asked. After some persistence on my part Mr Marshall suggested that the Auckland Progressive Youth Movement was a communist front organisation. Now Jack uses the word front to imply that the hidden aims of the movement are communist. Surely this is not the case with the Auckland PYM after their leader has made his views known on television?
But to return to the meeting. I pointed out to Mr Marshall, rather wet-browed at this stage, that he had said "fronts". Would he please name the other Communist Front in New Zealand. More waffle, of an unbelievable standard, more insistence on my part until finally Mr Marshall told the assembly the other Communist Front was . . . "The Socialist Unity Party"!! The Gentleman then suggested that I knew more about the topic than he did — meant as a smear, not a compliment.
Of course I was quite amused with all this. But you are wrong if you think I got the better of the encounter. Most of the audience of staff and students seemed to accept these farcical answers. Some had heckled me because I had the gall to insist that Mr Marshall answer the question I asked and name the Communist Fronts. But that's another tragedy.
To return to Mr Marshall, I am not an avid fan of his speeches, nor do I regularly read daily newspapers or listen to news broadcasts. However, I can recall two other occasions in April when Mr Marshall has dragged out the Communist Bogey. On April 9 he made the same outrageous claims to Auckland Rotary. More recently he played McCarthy at Lincoln College, the speech I referred to earlier. There could be other instances this month or this year for all I know.
What a pitiful spectacle — a defeated old man cowering behind "Communist Fronts" the same way as Hitler did, the same way as McCarthy brandished papers on which he claimed were the names of highly placed Communists. And this all done under the guise of a talk on Freedom. Mr Marshall's behaviour is an abuse of freedom. He refuses to name organisations because he knows this would lead to libel cases and his smears would not hold in a court of law.
I left the meeting with the impression that Mr Marshall is no more up to the job of leading the Opposition than he was up to being Prime Minister. Consequently, he meanders around the country in search of Chinese Dragons. Has he taken over the job of red-baiting from Mr Muldoon and handed over his parliamentary
One of the most heated discussions at NZUSA May Council was that on student representation, or, more loosely, student power. More questions were raised than answered. Confusion as to where to go from here was the main outcome.
It was generally agreed that token student representation on the decision-making administrative committees had failed to acheive much for students. Enough minor reforms had been made to keep students quiet. The failure of token students representation, it was decided, is due to the following factors:
Thus, when they are co-opted on to these committees, student leaders lose their contact with ordinary students. As they are a minority on the committee they can't force changes without popular student support. But by being on the committee, and being unable to divulge information, this support is lost. The student leaders can't help raise the awareness of the student to gain that support, as the majority of apolitical students see student politics as being part of the establishment. (UC, OU, VUW, WU)
The mind of the student is 'colonised' with the values and ideology of the present system by the contents of what they are taught, and the method by which they are taught. The content of lectures is often an ideological prop justifying the present order, especially in Law, Arts and Commerce faculties. Courses mostly deal with the operations of the existing order in an abstract and theoretical manner; assumptions are not critically examined in the light of New Zealand social practice.
The method of the transmission of knowledge is based on an assumption of the ignorance of the student and his lack of experience related to the subject. As a consequence, the students role is a passive uninitiating role of inferiority. The teacher's role is one of superiority, initiative and fountain-head of knowledge. Given that much of the content of lectures is abstract, and divorced from applicability to New Zealand, often the student only learns what he does: passivity, following orders, accepting the authority of "superiors' because of their supposed superior knowledge, and questioning only within clearly defined assumptions. These traits are at the core of the students' apolitical nature.
As students have little or no control over course content, course methods and staff appointments, then students have no control over their education. Therefore, the minds of students will continue to be 'colonised' and they will continue to be apolitical. (VUW)
On the criteria of gaining for the student a better education, student representation has been worse than useless. Unfortunately, although the problem is common to most NZ universities, the strategy and tactics required to meet the problem are uncertain and found little agreement between universities. The following suggestions were made:
If student are to get an education out of the university, instead of the present mis-education, then much information needs to be gathered. This information relates to tactics 2, 3, and 4. Especially important is the knowledge of the power structure of the university — the influence of business and government in the university. The VUW Student Association Education Officer is making an intensive study of the university power structure and would appreciate assistance or information.
The problem of tokenism is only a symptom of the greater problem of the anti-educational nature of our schooling and university systems. Rather than providing a situation in which the student can acheive social awareness, the student's mind is colonized. As the majority are unaware, the control of social destiny cannot be in the hands of the majority, and in the common interest.. It is the creation of unaware apolitical students that is at the basis of the problems faced by students in the institutions of miseducation.
The soporific calm of NZUSA's May Council was relieved for a while at the plenary session when the credibility of President Stephen Chan was seriously questioned by a group led by VUWSA's occasionally fiery president Peter Wilson In secrecy (in committee the bureaucrats call it) a motion had gone through the National Commission upping the salary of NZUSA Administrative Officer, Sharyn Cederman. She was formerly on $3,500 per year. The motion raised her salary to $4,300 by adding a $800 per year tax free expense account.
This motion slipped past the dull-witted delegates, but was picked up before the end of the meeting. Wilson satirised the motion by proposing salary increases for all NZUSA appointees. His motion to this effect made no headway as everybody knows that NZUSA has bugger all money and can't organise the little it has to pay the underlings who actually do all the work. But after a while Wilson's point got through, that if Cederman deserved the money then so too did a lot of other people.
Delegates however would not admit their mistake, and when Victoria suggested that the motion upping Sharyn's wages be recommitted the embarassed delegates started talking about having planes to catch and 'could we get on to the next business'. Russell Bartlett, president of Auckland (where Sharyn happens to come from) was noticeably disconcerted and mumbled through his moustache about Victoria's "Mickey Mouse" economics. Bob Lack, who has been touted as Auckland's (tame) left winger, became snarly as if he too had something to hide.
Bartlett became even more upset when Wilson demanded that the secret reasons for Sharyn Cederman's raise be made public. Other well known right wing student leaders joined in the attempt to put down Vic's pleas for open discussion. Stephen Chan tried desperately hard to be "so cool" in his chair but his gavel rattled noticeably. He refused to accept to recommit the motion, and tried to quell the clamour for honesty.
The right wingers won the day and the debate was silenced with Chan's gravel, sounding more and more like the fasces. The delegates were divided —Waikalo offered support and Otago wanted the whole matter of salaries subjected to full investigation. Individuals came up to Wilson later and said "I'd like to support you, but..." On the other side some of the student leaders revealed that they were just in it to feather their mate's nest and their own while playing a game of "Shareholders Board Meeting". Chan in particular came out of it badly as the reasons for the Cederman raise emerged. Chan, it seems, would be "all of a muddle" were Sharyn to leave NZUSA, and that's what she proposed to do it-she didn't get a raise. She's been offered another job and dedication or loyalty to the student apparently doesn't come into it.
Sharyn, who by the look of her spends all her money on clothes and make-up, came to NZUSA from a job in merchant banking. She also came to the job as the co-editor of the book that is the light of Women's Liberation in N.Z: "Sexixt Society". There's no contradiction there — despite the fact that all the other analysts of women's oppression conclude that capitalism is at the root of it, this fact was missing from the book that Sharyn co-edited. But if she wasn't a contradiction when she took on the job, she sure is now. Its bad enough that her only attachment to the job is so obviously money and the status. What's worse is that she's going around saying that she wants monetary compensation for being frustrated because she thinks that in her position she mustn't express her political views! As if she had any coherent views! And as if she is expected to stifle them in her job as Administrative Officer to the NZUSA! It is also interesting that in the finance and Administration Commission, after asking for her $20 per week increase in salary, Cederman suggested that the office staff of NZUSA be taken off their present State Service rates. Then she said each employee should be judged on their individual merits and paid accordingly, thus removing security from NZUSA's workers.
If paying such big wages as we do attracts such a chaotic, self seeking A.O. as we seem to have in Sharyn Cederman, and attracts such a crypto fascistic President as Chan who needs her as a prop, then perhaps the wages should be cut drastically, so at least we have people dedicated to the job and to students.
Student interest in NZUSA is at an all-time low, and it is because of such selfish, secretive bureaucrats as Cederman and Chan. Perhaps the only good thing they will do in office is to aggravate student to such a pitch that they will be thrown out, if they don't resign first in a fit of pique.
The editors in their wisdom commissioned me to write a report of the Young Socialists' Conference. I sat down reminiscing about the drab little performance and automatically began assembling the stock line up of anti Trotskyite jokes—the icepick, the cheques from the C.I.A., the "concretising of Stalinist misleader perspectives". It all suddenly seemed boring as hell and a waste of good space in the paper. 'Salient' readers have patiently endured an elitist procession of sectarian smears ever since this writer can remember. The only people attending the conference were the local working class heroes (Trotskyite and Leninist) and there were few enough of them. For the two or three students, outside the red cat fight block, who give a damn, the following highlights may be of interest.
George Fyson gave a speech about the betrayal of the Vietnamese revolution, a superb analysis lacking only 1) an understanding of the fact that the principal contradiction of the Vietnam conflict is not between the Vietnamese proleteriat and their "Stalinist misleaders", 2) the most rudimentary knowledge of the level of Vietnamese technology — i.e. according to Fyson the Vietnamese have no scientists. (!) 3) Any intelligent questions whatsoever from his assembled flock. Peter Franks and Don Carson were invited to speak in reply, to make up for this vacancy.
After quoting a recent eyewitness in the Indochina struggle (some callow Australian called Wilfred Burchett) in support of their claim that Fyson was talking nonsense, the Young Socialist rank and file were lulled back into their customary stupor by Peter Rotterman. Gasping with emotion he talked of the fellow travellers of the 1930's and how they had served the wicked Stalin's evil policies. This inference was that Frank's and Carson were just the same.
Highlight of the conference was imported Trotskite George Novak. In a leisurely singsong fashion he reminded the multitude that socialism was not incompatable with humanism, provided it was the right sort of humanism. He also mentioned that he was grateful to Benjamin Franklin for inventing bifocals and explained how the slogan "serve the people" had led to the perversion of reformism. A dribbling old prick in anybody's language, he recalled those days when the New Zealand Trot movement was but a twinkle in Keith Locke's eye. Just seems like yesterday, don't it?
Novak was followed by a speech by Russel Johnson, "How New Zealand can be won for Socialism". Half way through this embarrassing performance I got up to go and have a piss. Johnson suddenly screamed that Don Franks would do well to stay behind and hear his wisdom. Being brought up to give the other joker a fair go I decided to humour the poor fellow. With my bladder near to bursting and the blood pounding in my ear drums I received the following information.
The Young Socialists support Gay Lib, Brown Power, Women's Lib and abortion. The Young Socialists will continue to support these worthy causes, the breadth of their united front extending even as far as workers. The Young Socialists are constantly picked on by ultra leftists i.e. every non-Trot lefty. There are but three types of people trying to change society — Liberals (wrongly), frustrated liberals/redhot radicals (very wrongly), Trots (correctly). New Zealand will thus be won for socialism.
Nothing about class, contradiction, social forces, alienation dialectics, foreign involvement, local conditions, various present levels on consciousness — probably outdated consideration, unneccessary to Trotskyism.
After Russel had pulled back the curtain hiding the red dawn he was asked some question by the founder of the socialist action league, Hector McNeil. Mr McNeil was rather rudely told to read "Socialist Action", where he would find his answer. An attempt by George Novak to answer the questions and a few last sneers at the ultra-leftists later the conference closed.
Oh and there was the speaker Evelyn Reed, who I wasn't able to hear. A friend of mine did and was asked what she was like. "Well sort of you know," said my friend. I'll take her word for it.
And that, apart from a party in the evening which none of our reporters could afford was the conference. Keep twinkling Keith!
Evelyn Reed, self-styled 'independent Marxist anthropologist' and feminist author, was imported to preach to the converted and those who felt they should be at the Young Socialist's conference earlier this month. Her major speech, 'Is Biology Women's Destiny' attempted both to uproot the old myth of women's frailty and thus 'natural' subordination to men, and to replace it with the real 'history' of women, in much the same way as the negroes in the U.S. in the '60's. Unfortunately, myth masquerades as an academic investigation which no well-wisher would foist on feminists, so fragile is her construction and so threadbare her evidence.
She attempted to prove that women's role, which includes physical strength, is socially determined. The present oppression of women, she maintains, finds its origin in the structure of capitalist Society, in the need for the business 'monopolists' to enhance the masculinity (or self-respect) of the workers they 'must' use as cannon-fodder to maintain power: "Women are thrown to the dogs of men who are thrown to the dogs of war". According to what she labels as "the military thesis" male + arms = power, which is then glorified as 'biological superiority'! At any level, this is an extremely simplistic approach to the complex social structure of 'western society' — and, of course, this is part of its attraction. However, Ms Reed must then explain away male domination in 'primitive' societies. This male domination might indicate to a commentator less biased than Ms Reed that a social system based only on kinship can also cause 'oppression'.
Her explanation is a materialist, evolutionary hypothesis, which owes as much to 19th century 'armchair' anthropologists working with doubtful evidence as it does to a literal translation of Marx. Just as Morgan, Tylor and the Greeks had their Golden Age of liberty, equality and fraternity, so does Ms Reed: they differ only in one essential detail. Ms Reed's ideal society is matriarchal, i.e. women rule, compared with the patriarchal or lack of domination by either sex envisaged by other myth-makers. There is no private property, no nuclear families the women's decisions are respected by the men as rational and "In the best interest of all". The men fight solely to protect the community; and hold the women in high regard as procreators, economic producers, "centres of comfort", and rational decisionmakers.
She cites the Iroquois tribe as an example and then blandly argues from this one (very doubtful) case to all primitive societies, hardly a scientific procedure. Just as there is no evidence to support the social evolutionists' 'primitive promiscuity' (a misunderstanding of kinship classification) and their 'Golden Age', so Ms Reed's thesis must fall by the scientific wayside. The acceptance of this myth by feminists is dangerous, since it rests on leaps of faith and indicates a basic lack of confidence; it is easily destroyed by evidence and logic.
Futhermore Ms Reed contradicts herself by postulating that the definition of women — and thus 'basic characteristics' varies according to social structure, yet also citing qualities such as rationality, desire for peace and order as feminine universals, as displayed in the 'Golden Age'! While pointing out how physical capabilities of women (and men, I might add) vary from culture to culture, she never demolishes the central problem for certain feminists of coming to grips with their biological capacity to bear children. As it's easy to find other cultures and even sub-cultures of the Western world where the rearing of the child is shared, or not determined by biological motherhood, I am surprised that she did not tackle and demolish the 'problem' (see e.g. Margaret Mead's 'Male and Female' and Bruno Bettelheim's 'Children of the Dream').
Her definition of 'productivity', related as it is to 'meaning fulness' gives her trouble, because she seems to fit only work outside the home with definite, concrete results in this category. Indeed, her materialist model serves only to make bad myths, not to elucidate. She fails to understand that the material and political spheres comprise only one dimension of superficial social reality.. Her difficulties are thus self-imposed and ethnocentric: she seeks to make universal statements and observations which ignore other spheres such as religion, cosmology, values, personality and cognition. While the major principle in Western society (itself having little cultural uniformity) may be materialism, at least superficially, this is rarely the case with other primitive and peasant societies.
It makes far more sense, both factually and logically, not to isolate women from men, and vice versa, but to see as universal two complementary categories, 'male'/'female' whose content is culturally determined. The content of both categories and hence the relationship between men and women are confused and thus unsatisfactory. 'Liberation of both women and men goes far beyond material or individualistic (e.g. abortion) aspects which ate easily satisfied by 'capitalist' governments, thus perpetuating 'the system'. Feminists whose horizon is limited to this sphere treat only the symptoms, and not the cause of unrest.
Managed to break in upstairs — tried to give this lady a leaflet — "look, you've got to read it, its good, its really good, please take it" — "Fuck off!" she said. Hubby tries to kick me in the cods.....
Wandered into the pisser the next day —hailed by an old mate — "Fuck, saw ya at capping last night — talk about laugh —shit-hot-trick — but why d'ya do it — why pick on capping — bit fuckin' mad if ya ask me mate".
Well, its like this....
When I was a little boy at primary school I wrote a story about a bright-red shiney tractor. Miss Jones gave me an elephant stamp on my wrist for being such a clever little boy. Later on she gave me two cups at prize-giving — one for being a good little boy and the other because I was dux of standard two.
When I was a little older I received in the post a real groovy piece of paper which said:
This is to certify that Terence P. Williams
having completed a course of at least three years' post-primary education in accordance with the Education Regulations 1954, and having passed the School Certificate Examination has qualified for this certificate.
And when I was older still I received yet another piece of paper which said that Victoria University was pleased to bestow on me the degree of Bachelor of Arts. "You're a Success boy," said my wealthy uncle, "you've made the grade, you're set", It was generally acceptable that the boy who had written about the bright-red shiney tractor had finally got his oats.
But what had I learnt between the tractor and the oats? I had learnt that...
The banking theory of education; see 'Pedagogy of the Oppressed', Paulo Freire.
" the teachers teach and the students are taughtthe teacher knows everything and the students know nothing.the teacher thinks and the students are thought about.the teacher talks and the students listen-meekly.the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined.the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply.the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher.the teacher chooses the programme content, and the students (who were not consulted) adopt it.the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his own professional authority, which he sets in opposition to the freedom of students, the teacher is the subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects."
In other words, I had been "educated"? Education in New Zealand equals indoctrination and conditioning. I had been trained by the instilling within me of dead knowledge, knowledge divorced from its origins and application. I had been pacified by the compulsory requirement that I obey orders without question for fifteen years. Because knowledge always came from the teacher, I had a deeply-ingrained respect for authority. And because I had always worked for grades and certificates and ultimately A Degree I had been trained to work for money and status, and not to work out of interest and self-fulfilment.
And so I had learnt to be passive, accepting, conforming and that when I was so subservient I was to be rewarded.
This educative process reaches its symbolic zenith in the capping ceremony, an anacronistic ritual which ensures that the most subservient, the most conditioned, get the reward they have been working for throughout their university lives. It is the main spring of the "education" myth, and provides a "raison de etre" for the larger education system itself. This being so it was disrupted.
But this wasn't the only reason why I decided to disrupt capping, read on...
"
School is orientated towards selecting the future bureaucrats and technocrats who will manage society in the interests of the capitalists, and who will reap a much more handsome reward for their efforts than the ordinary workers. It is these elites that benefit from depriving the oppressed of political power and the words necessary to understand their oppression."From The Liberal School', Graeme Clark. PPTA Journal, March/April,
1973 , p 28
Question: Why do 50% of those who sit School Certificate pass?
Answer: So that the remaining 50% can be designated Failures.
Someone has to work the assembly lines, dig the drains, cut up the beef and make the roads....
Here are some figure you won't need to memorize:
only 5% of all university students in this country come from semi-skilled and unskilled worker parentage.91% of those graduated from university with doctorates, and 78% of those graduating with bachelor degress in 1970 were male.
University then (for what its worth) is the "preserve of the wealthy Pakeha male." See "University, 'The Presence of the Wealthy Pakeha Male', David Cuthbert Published in Clamant, Vol 1, Nol, April.
Capping is a symbol of the university's role in a capitalist society — to discriminate. The university is by no means divorced from such a society: (it pays an integral part in its perpetuation. Besides being conditioned into a conformist, unquestioning pattern of behaviour, students are also indoctrinated to conform to the values of our society: self-interest, elitism, racism, sexism and knowledgism.
And that's why someone tried to kick me in the cods you see. It wasn't a personal thing — it was just that I was threatening his way of life and the life chosen by his "successful" son sitting meekly below with the other "graduates" — I was challenging the values upon which his life was based.
There's one good reason why the capping game won't take place next year...
The university is right now training you to forego the right to control your OWN destiny, it values the degree above the act of learning. And so it exploits and oppresses you. Only when you rebel against the indoctrination you are subjected to, only when you fight against the discriminations you are condoning, and only when you assert your own freedom and individuality, will your life become in any way meaningful. That is why ELF is catching on — next year thousands of little elves will ascend upon the Town Hall and prevent capping from taking place. Do it.
Signs of discontent around the campus have become particularly evident this year. The organisers of May Week fell that a forum on "Why I am pissed off with this place" would enable students to air grievances and put The Students' Association in a better position to do something about them.
Peter Wilson began the discussion by pointing out some of the evidence already collected which indicated all is not well. Enrolments have dropped. The number of people using the Union
Many of the 300 students present at the meeting gave personal instances of why they were dissatisfied. Depersonalisation of the university has got worse, it was claimed. People were less willing to chat, share experiences, and were generally more defensive. Two main reasons were forwarded for this. First, there is a greater workload due to course changes and certain academic requirements, and second, traditions of the past such as Procesh have been done away with.
The workload and pressure is high on students for a number of reasons. The credit system and the move toward semester system has tended to increase workload Under the credit system every paper becomes important; weak papers can't be averaged out by strong papers any more. As every paper is important the pressure is on all the time.
Continuous assessment throughout the term has put more emphasis on every item of work being of a reasonable standard. It was pointed out that students create a lot of this pressure for themselves. They have always treated study as a competitive race for scarce grades which requires that everyone compete with maximum labour so as to be one of the lucky individuals who pass
Many of the requirements of departments in relation to work are trivial red tape which increase pressure. These include attendance requirement, term requirements, word limits on essays and marks being deducted for things not relating to the quality of the work.
The feeling that the ending of Procesh had caused the problems was also expressed. Although on the surface this seems to be a cause, it fails to analyse the situation. It says that things are bad and if we could only return to the old ways it would all improve. But times have changed. The increased pressure of work means that the burden of organising these activities falls on a few. They are poorly organised as a result and become more hassle than benefit.
After the meeting about 80 students went and liberated the Staff Club to air their grievances. Two hours of discussion with members of staff ensued as to the nature of the discontent. From the students it was stated that the problems outlined in the meeting were common problems which students faced in trying to gam an education. The implication behind the drop in attendence at university is that in fact the stress sustained in studying is not worthwhile. The scramble for grades and certificates is not an education and has actually stifled the growth of the powers of critical reflection that enable a student to take an active part in changing society.
Certification and grading has been foisted on the university by the business world for the purposes of stratifying students so that they can be fitted in to some appropriate level of society. It is obvious that what is taught in the university its designed to perpetuate the forms of our society. Courses that encourage critical reflection among students would have to start with the experience, of students in their environment. The evaluation of such a course would obviously be personal or measurable by the social changes it produced. This would be subversive of the existing order. Through the means of assessment and academic knowledge that is divorced from social relevance students are domesticated so that they will mindlessly maintain an order that is profitable to a few. The university like all other educational institutions in this country is a factory producing pacified identical products for consumption in the economy. It is little wonder that the pressure is high, the university is depersonalised, and enrolments are falling.
The question still remains: What can be done about the brain-dirtying peddled in the University under the guise of education?
Barry McGuire, formerly a spokesman for the politically awakening youth of the sixties, is now a spokesman for Jesus. He was recently on campus with an evangelist hot from 'saving' radicals for Christ in Berkeley, California. Roger Steele interviewed Barry McGuire for Salient. The interview starts with Barry talking about his road to Salvation.
McGuire: I've been up and down, I've been hitch-hiking down the road broke then two weeks later with a pocket full of hundred dollar bills in a limousine and then there months later broke, hitch-hiking down the road again. I've sang all over the world for presidents and people from the gutters and I've found that everybody I've ever met has something in common and its a refusal to accept responsibility for their brothers, you know, like we really are our brother's keeper. I really think that, you know, and that's what Jesus said. And I never really knew what Jesus said, all I've ever known is what I'd heard the Church say, and we'd just laugh our heads off at them man, and we'd cry too because they were saying the the words and I didn't see the reality of it in their lives. Like Christ said to sell everything you have and give it to the poor and in America man I'd see that wasn't a reality in the American Christian society, and I knew that was what had to happen if there was ever going to be a balance in the world and it really had to start with every individual person choosing in their heart, not because it was law.
When I found Christ that was what he really said. You see it really puts people in a position to get ripped off by society because a true disciple of Christ would never fight back. If somebody asked him for a buck he'd give them a buck, if somebody asked him for a shirt he'd give them a shirt and his coat too. Jesus said never to return evil with evil but to forgive those who trespass against you. That's all I've ever heard on American radio is that we've got to kill the communists but that's not what Jesus said, he said we've got to pray for them. To pray for everybody — people who you feel are mistreating you, or people who you feel are not what they could be with God.
Salient: Do you think that prayer helped stop the war in Vietnam?
The war's not stopped in Vietnam.
Do you think prayer helped stop the bombing, the B.52 bombing?
Ooh, I don't know.
What about political protest? Do you think that has any effect on Government policy?
No, no. You see man, I think that the Government will do what it wants to do no matter what the people say.
You've got no faith in the Government?
No, only God's Government.
Didn't it say somewhere in the Bible that we ought to have faith in the Government?
Yeah, when they're morally responsible. But if you were in Germany in
Do you think there is any similarity between Germany in the 30's and America in the 70's?
I sure do, I think America, man, is ah well, I think America is going to fall under the wrath of God. I think America is probably going to be hydrogen bombed off the face of the world.
How soon?
Probably in the next fifteen years, at the most. Maybe eight to 10. See it has been prophesied in the Bible, but Americans don't like to admit it. There's a thing in the Revelations, eighteenth chapter where it talks about this great nation in the last days just before Christ comes back, and its says that all the nations of the world will be drunk of the immorality and the fornication and will have become rich by selling goods to this great nation, and will have committed adultery, spiritual adultery with this great nation. Within one hour this great nation could be totally burned up. There's a whole bunch of conditions in this particular prophesy, and the United States is the only nation that meets all those conditions.
Yet the main message that came across from Mario Murillo, the evangelist travelling with you, was that people shouldn't rebel, that people shouldn't be radical and shouldn't look for new ideologies.
Well, I think that Mario, because of his involvement with violence, in the city he lives in, Berkeley, was on that end of his head, that's where he was at, he was talking about violent radicals, or violent revolution. There is a revolution going on right now. It's very radical, it's giving everything you've got to God. Choosing to do what's best because its right, not because it feels good or because there's going to be any personal gain or glory. I really think that's the most radical you can get.
How about non-violent political protest, what do you think of that? Do you agree with Mario's position on violent protest?
Well, I can't go along with violent protest. I think that violence, man, is the thing that is wrong. You can't overcome violence with violence. That's what's far out, because a good man, a man of love, will never hurt a man of violence. But a man of violence would think nothing of killing a man of love. I used to say 'love' and I used to say all the humanitarian words, but when it came right down to it man, I was just out looking to get laid and to make a couple of bucks and to get stoned, you know.
Before we go any further, for the benefit of our readers who may not be familiar with your background, when did you start singing in public?
I guess it was
What did you do before that?
Ah, I was a construction worker. I was a pipe-fitter. I've worked at everything. Before that I was a commercial fisherman for three years.
Did you go through college at all?
No, I quit school at the tenth grade, yeah I just didn't figure I needed to learn all that stuff I was learning so I didn't pass.
You recorded you most famous song. "Eve of Destruction" about 1965, is that right?
Yeah summer of 65.
What made you sing that song?
I guess I felt that it was the truth, you know I heard something when I was a little kid and I didn't even know it was from the Bible — it said you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. I didn't know what the truth was, man. I didn't know what being free was. But I knew that if anything was going to set me free it was going to be the truth. So I figured the only way to find the truth was to tell the truth as I knew it even if I was totally off base man. Maybe if everybody started telling the truth we'd find out what the truth was. When I heard this guy Phil Sloane wrote this song, and when I heard the song man, I knew that was the truth. That was the most relevant piece of truth I'd ever heard.
But it didn't have any answers, it just asked questions.
Yeah, yeah, I didn't know the answers then.
How long did it take for you to find the answer?
Aah, well.....see, I sang it in '65, well, um, six years.
Was that when you were 'saved'?
That's when I found out who Jesus himself really is, not who the Church said he is. You see man, in the name of truth, they've been ripping people off for thousands of years. Because the truth puts a person in a vulnerable position, see its like love never answers back, love is never proud, love never ceases, love is always humble and meek. Well a humble meek person man is really in a position to get ripped off by the exploiters, and so people have used Christianity to exploit other nations for hundreds of years. That doesn't nullify the truth within it, the truth is that until we can find peace within ourselves and get rid of the greedy, immoral, lustful desires within ourselves well there's never going to be peace in the world.
What sort of greedy, immoral, lustful desires are you speaking of in particular? Evangelists talk about how selfish people are but they don't narrow it down very much.
There are things that have been ordained by God, such as the family unit. Well because of the sexual immorality and promiscuity that goes on, especially in the United States, the family unit is falling apart, and so kids are growing up in the United States with no foundation of unity, in total loneliness, in total not-belonging. That's the reason so many people are going into the occult, that's why so many people are going in different directions because there's no foundation of belonging, there is no example of love.
People are just totally victims of their own animalistic traits. Like we are living in these animalistic bodies and we have these basic drives, to procreate, the sexual drive, self-defence, our food drives and those are necessities. God has given us guidelines to instinct — the use of these drives, and what's happening is that men are turning these guidelines away and overindulging in everything — in food and power and violence, when self defence becomes violent aggression, and the sexual procreation becomes total sexual immorality. With food people become very obese, they are gorging on drugs and food and you know the sexual thing. The end of all these things is suicide. Five of my friends in the last two years have committed suicide. Because of absolute abandonment of the rules and totally drawing themselves to the pleasure that life has to give, which is really tragic, but that's the end result that the world has to offer.
Just say that Utopia is reached in the world, say that science solves all of the problems, say Government works it all out for every man — every man has a house, is fed and clothes, every man has hospitals, schools, cars; the dream come true. Then what are men going to do without the guide lines that God has given them to rule their lives? There is no longer a challenge. Because of the over abundance of material things they have turned to sexuality because they are bored to tears. That's what happened in Rome, thats what happened in Greece, that's what is happening in America right now. And if the world became a Utopia that's what would happen to the whole world.
Can you see that happening in N.Z. now?
I see the inroads creeping in, the books of pornography creeping into the minds of the youth here in N.Z. When I got here man I thought this is really like a virgin, you know this, spunky little nation, it is like it has been sheilded from the insanity of the world. The big powers fighting back and forth man and you know its like an infant that is just learning to come of age, and I see the insanity of American promotion, advertising, and American filth creeping in. The occult, Satanism, are just coming in, creeping in around the edges and it would be really incredible if this could be stopped.
You think America is going to be hydrogen bombed off the face of the earth. Is there no salvation for it, even through Jesus?
Aah, it the nation were to repent there would be salvation, yes. Even now, as far out as they have gone now. If the Americans were to repent, and if Nixon were to get right with God, fall on his face and say I'm a dirty rotten sinner man, I'm evil, crooked, selfish, and get right with God and if the whole of the United States were to get right with God. Phew!
Nixon seems to be all right with Billy Graham doesn't he?
I don't know what their relationship is.
Nixon calls himself a quaker, after all.
I think Nixon is a politician and I think he uses titles and uses aquaintances to attract votes. I think Nixon's relationship with Billy Graham is strictly political, to get votes from the Christian Americans. I know because of the fruits of his life, that he is not a bona-fide quaker.
When you pointed out many things that were wrong with the world when you sang "Eve of Destruction", did you ever see capitalism as the main enemy?
No, no. I think that capitalism is the result of selfishness, and I think of communism as just the humanistic attempt to create through legislation the very foundation of what real Christianity is all about. In the New Testament it says that in the early church the Christians were communal. They were communist. They shared everything. If there was a need they sold what they had and fulfilled that need. But they didn't do it because it was the law, they did it because of the love in their hearts.
Do you think that communism will fail just because it involves legislation? Is that the only thing you see wrong with it?
You can make a law and a person will obey that law because if he breaks it he would go to
What did you do in the years after the "Eve of Destruction" and before you were 'saved'?
After I did the "Eve of Destruction" I did a lot of concerts across the United States and Europe. Then I came back to the U.S. and did some more TV, movies and things like that and then I got into psychedelic drugs. We were all looking for a deeper reality. We only use 7% of our brain, a genius only uses nine or 10 per cent. I was looking for the answer to what was wrong. Someone told me about psychedelics, I thought this might be the key to inner space. But after five years of I don't know how many hundreds of psychedelic trips and different encounter groups and getting into Eastern religions and philosophies and different diets and exercises, yoga, Kundalini, the whole Zen-Buddhist thing we all came to nothing. Then a friend of mine asked me if I would like to play the lead role in "Hair". But it turned out to be just another rip off. Some very rich joes put together this show that was just using the philosophy of the people to rape them with, you know. Because people believed in love to suck the blood out of them.
How long were you in "Hair"?
For about a year. Then I left "Hair" and went back to California and just saw everything totally falling apart. All the money was being spent in the wrong places, we don't have to go to the moon, we've got people starving to death in the world. Why are we going to the moon? We can go to the moon in fifty year but when a baby dies, its gone man. It was just blowing me apart man. I didn't see anything.
When I sang the "Eve" I thought we could get together on a humanistic level, that we could come together as intelligent human beings and say, hey look man, this is wrong, lets get it right.
But ail of a sudden man I found that I was in the very same position, I had become what I'd set out to change. We were in the limousines and the people were paying 10 or 15 bucks to come and hear us sing. We were flying off in a helicopter and they were sleeping in mud, in their sleeping bags. We were smoking $500 a pound grass and they're out there smoking weeds. All of a sudden we're the jet-set of the new culture. There was no difference and so I had to take a pass on all that too.
And then I met some people who really loved Jesus man, who weren't just playing the milk-toast, corn ball, ah, Jesus Social Club trip, which so many people were doing. They really loved God man and were really concerned about people and in their lives I saw a power, a reality, an honesty of giving it all away and saying to God you take care of me and I'm gonna do whatever you want me to do. I saw these people beginning to fill me, and I saw lives change, I saw people set free man from $175 a day heroin habits man, I saw chicks chat were blown-out empty shells come back to a new life. People on the verge of suicide man, who had tried everything there was to try man and nothing worked. They had been set free, and born again. Incredible! When I saw that reality I got hold of the New Testament and read it for myself. I'm 35 years old and I'd never read the Bible I'd just looked at Christians and laughed. I thought man who are they putting on?
Jesus was my answer and he is the life ship. Another thing that I found in the Bible were prophesies concerning this day and age we are living in. In the book of John it says 'at the end of the age just before Jesus is to return' from the cast is gonna come an army of two hundred million troops. When Red China joined the United Nations their ambassador said in his introductory speech that they have an army of 200 hundred million. When John wrote that prophecy man there were hardly 200 million people in the world.
It says that Israel is gonna be scattered over the face of the earth and in the last days the jews from all over the world are going back to Jerusalem to become a nation again. It says that Egypt is gonna go in league with the northern most nation of Europe. That they're gonna become partners and Egypt is gonna go to war with Israel and be totally wiped out. Everybody's gonna lose. Jesus said when you see these things happening know that I'm coming soon. He said I'm telling ya this so that you won't be caught unawares.
The Bible says that for 40 years after the fall of Egypt for 40 years neither man nor animal will be able to walk in the land of Egypt. The whole world is gonna tremble for fear because of what happened for Egypt and its gonna set up an atmosphere for a government to come in so that it won't happen again. Out of that one world government is gonna come a worldwide monetary system where everyone's gonna have to have a number, a magnetic number tatooed and the Bible speaks of a mark of the hand and the forehead. Without it you won't be able to buy or sell anywhere in the world. And out of the world government will come the antichrist whose sole thing would be to destroy the Christians — the real Christians, not the Pope and holy church on Sunday and drive the Cadillac home, the real Christian who have talked about love and say 'man thats the anti-Christ", that's not Jesus.
Its happening right now, I see the walls are breaking down between Russia, China and America and trade routes are opening up. See the Bible says there's gonna be a
Thats when this dude thats gonna be the world president is gonna get carried away with his own power and he's gonna double cross the world. That's when all the ICBM's will be set off and the United States will be blown off the face of the earth. The Bible says that when China makes her move a third of humanity is going to be destroyed and right at the moment Jesus says if I waited another day there'd be no one left alive to witness my coming and I think that God'll wait till the last instant where everyone's chosen in their heart whether to serve God or Mammon.
What do you think will happen to the people who have chosen God, and to the people who have chosen Mammon?
The Bible says when Christ comes to those who have died with the promise of Jesus in their heart will be ressurected with pure bodies and with pure — I think — pure energy, pure eternal bodies that exist on all dimensions at the same time. The Bible says that anyone that refuses the mark or the numbers is gonna get their head chopped off. Ha ha ha. They're gonna be executed so the ones who remain through their time of persecution are gonna be caught up in the clouds, Christ is gonna sweep the world and then at the end go to Israel with all the redeemed.
Christ is gonna set up his reign on the earth, and for a thousand years men are gonna be forced to live the way communally like, I never thought of this before man, it says that God is gonna rule with a rod of iron and people are gonna be forced to keep the laws of God. They're not gonna be able to commit adultery, they're not gonna be able to steal, they're not gonna be able to do anything that's negative. At the end of that thousand years God will lift his absolute control and man will revolt once again because of the frustration of rebellion thats within him and at that time God's gonna cleanse the earth of all impurity, that those in the final rebellion will be totally purified. And then I think we're gonna take our place in the galaxies and in the peoples that are scattered throughout the Universe. The question of selfishness versus submission to God will be solved.
Do you think any of this has any meaning or hope for people who are suffering in the world from repression and starvation?
Phew! (Pause). It really, (pause), yeah, (pause) almost (pause) almost naught for the millions of people that are starving right now because of the greed of man. On a personal level, I have a commitment with God where half of what I make goes towards two orphanages in Mexico. If I start making more bread and I can give more then I'll pray about it and ask God where he wants me to send that. But there's only so much that you can do as individuals because to relieve all the suffering in this world would take billions and billions of dollars. I mean it could be done.
There's a very clear example in Vietnam, at the moment, where Thieu's regime is holding up to a quarter of a million people in prison....
Incredible. I know.
....and a simple political revolution could liberate all those people. What do you think of that situation?
I think that a political revolution would just take one monster out of power and put another in. They would release these guys and they would lock up the other guys. I don't think its answerable in politics.
Do you think thats what happened in the Chinese revolution, that one monster went out and one monster went in? Do you think Chairman Mao is motivated by selfishness and greed?
Yeah, Yeah, I read his biography and I know how he came up through the self discipline that he had to get where he was. What I see in films about life in China, in-depth studies, is a nation that is in balance materially, but there's something missing from the personality of the people, and its the ease and the graciousness that the Chinese once had. Now they mistrust and suspect and very rightfully so, the white people. Because man, when I read how the white people smuggled opium into China in the first place it blew me away. Whew!
There's nothing more evil on the face of the earth than the white .... what do you call them, the dudes that take advantage of you, you know, wherever they are, and, uh, they're just rapists. I think that China has reacted in self defence against this invasion of the white monster that's out to suck up all the money and rape the world. But its just like women's lib. I see women's liberation as reaction against the male playboy who just uses them as a hunk of meat for sexual masturbation and when you're through....(claps). Well what else does a girl have, what other course does she have other than to come against it, you know. But the real answer is not in separation, the real answer is in giving, even if it means giving your life. I would rather die at the hands of a murderer than become a murderer in defending myself. I would rather give my life than take a life. I really feel that in my heart man, maybe when the time comes I'd have second thoughts. Its easy to say sitting here. But I really feel man, that the answer is not in.....power, its in non-power, or whatever the opposite to power is.
Were you at any stage of your life involved in any political organization?
No never once. I could never find a political organization that wasn't corrupt, in which the leader wasn't living off the cream and the followers were out working in the mud.
How about religious organizations?
Same thing. Same thing.
So you are not affiliated to any church group?
No. I'm not. I'm just a christian. I found in Christ the answer that I looked for for so long. In my own life I find that I have a reason for living now but I never had one before. I have found a forgiveness of my own selfish past.... of all the chicks I'd ripped off, all the guys I'd lied to.
How do you relate to other musicians? Presumably you had fairly close contacts when you were basically a stage performer with a lot of the other groups. But most of them these days seem to be nihilistic, even atheistic.
Yeah.....
What do you think of the Rolling Stones, for instance, who sometimes personify the antichrist?
Yeah. I think Mick Jagger's sold out to Demonic forces. I think he's controlled by darkness, because of his music and his life Style. I know a lot of people that I've made music with that are into the occult and are into mystic powers which are of darkness. The whole bible warns us against getting into any type of supernatural, mystical, seances and things like that. Because we don't have the spiritual knowledge to control that kind of power. I mean there it a supernatural world, man, and there is psychic power to be controlled. But God says not to fool with that stuff. But so many of my friends are really involved in it man. You know, like I was just talking with Dave Crosby on the phone the other day man, and he's really wrapped in it, him and Neil Young and those dudes, man, are really into the mystic phenomena and into the drug, mystery, sexual, witchcraft scene. I think they're controlled by demonic forces but they don't know it yet, they're being used by the powers of darkness.
Do you think perhaps Jagger's one of the worst examples of this?
Because of his popularity? You know I don't think he's the worst. He's probably the most notorious because as a musician he's so incredibly good. That puts him in a position to demonstrate his religious and spiritual beliefs.
Do you still feet that the questions you asked in "Eve of Destruction" are relevant?
Yeah. I think the song is probably more relevant today than it was then.
Do you think you've now found the answer?
I sure do, yeah.
Even if salvation did become widespread, even if people did start being saved all over the world, do you still think this holocaust is inevitable?
Yeah, the only way it could be prevented is if the whole world were to be converted. But as long as there's Mafia Killers who kill for the highest price, and as long as there's senators and congressmen who, if they thought the US was going to lose would push the button that would blow the whole world up, its inevitable. They would destroy the world to save it from communism.
Do you really think there is such a button?
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
The inspiration for this article was a lecture given by Dr. Bavanson of the World Bank to assorted Geography and Economics III students on the topic "Industrial Technology for Developing countries" on April 11.
Usually when the subject of imperialism is mentioned or discussed, your mind turns to thinking of the activities of Multi-National Corporations (MNCs). You think of ITT spending millions of dollars financing publicity for opposition to Allende in the Chilean elections and then when failure seemed inevitable trying to organise a right-wing coup. And then you realise that a subsidiary of the same mob of gangsters runs the University cafeteria.
The economic basis for this type of imperialism is that the "profit-maximising entrepreneur" will invest his capital resources whenever they will earn the best rate of return. In general, this will be in those parts of the world where labour is cheapest (South Africa, for example, where the white bosses pay their black workers no more than that "which is necessary to enable the labourers, one with another, to subsist and to perpetuate their race"), and where the natural resources needed for industry are most plentiful. The MNC can then export these items to the home country where the costs of production would be higher, possibly putting workers in the home country out of work. (This is becoming a genuine fear in the U.S.A.). This is an explanation for the threats made by the New Zealand management of General Motoros to its striking workers that, unless they went back to work, their cars would be imported from South Africa, where they could be produced more cheaply anyway.
But imperialism is very much associated with colonialism and neo-colonialism. It strives to stifle any independent development in the colony. The most subtle of the ways that have been developed for acheiving this is through technology, but the policy is also carried on through the control of financial systems, product designs, and managerial positions. The MNCs also build up tariffs in their home countries to prevent the colonies from competing with them with manufactured goods, and thus to force them to trade mainly in raw materials.
But the consideration of the role of technology and technical skills in colonialist policy has, to a large extent, been passed over. However, as the U.N. Secretary—General, Dr. Waldheim, has pointed out, 98% of the world's technological resources are controlled by the industrialised countries. The MNC, by the use of patent laws in the LDC (less-developed country), is able to establish a technological monopoly for itself. There are two ways by which the MNC can do this: it can establish a subsidiary or it can licence a local manufacturer. But whichever method is adopted, there is no outlet for any local technological innovation. This means that any scientists that the LDC does manage to produce must form part of the brain dram. I.B.M. is a very good example of this development.
However, it is doubtful whether, under these conditions, the LDC will be able to produce any scientists or skilled people. What incentive is there for big business to finance education in the colonies in the way that it does in developed countries like New Zealand? Any development of education can only endanger the technological monopoly of the MNC. Perhaps this is the reason for the inequality in expenditure on white and black education in South Africa. It is not worth giving the blacks any more education than the minimum necessary so that they can be taught their semi-skilled jobs in the mines and in the factories. The use by the MNC of its own skilled technicians explains why skilled jobs in South Africa are whites only, and why the Bantustans can never truely have an independent existence. It is all part of establishing the dependence of the colonial peoples on the MNCs for their livelihood.
The problem of the monopoly of technology and technical skills is not quite all, however. Because all the higher strata of management are filled by colonialists, the people of the LDC can never get any experience in managerial skills. Because the MNC has always financed industry, there are no indigenous sources of finance. (This is similiar to the problem in post-revolutionary Russia which ultimately led to the rapprochement with the capitalist powers and to N.E.P.). These problems, however, are of lesser importance to those imposed by the technological umbilical cord from New York, Tokyo or London, etc to the LDC).
How does New Zealand stand in relation to these types of neo-colonialist relationships? In terms of standard of living, New Zealand is a developed country, but from many other points of view it may be regarded as a colony. With exports of primary produce in exchange for manufactured imports at continually deteriorating terms of trade, we are protected from the rigours of neo-colonialist exploitation only by our small population which is, of course, mainly white. Except for our timber industry, almost all our heavy industry is foreign owned, managed by foreigners, and selling foreign designed products (take the motor industry, for example, or consider the case of those enterprises in New Zealand which have their accounting systems designed in London). There is very little outlet for New Zealand technological innovation, except in those industries which are export-orientated such as timber and meat-freezing. To a considerable extent, New Zealand is farmed by British and American capital, but with a certain amount of Japanese and Australian capital also.
We must now look at some of the solutions that are available, and that have been attempted to solve the problems of obtaining technological expertise without having to surrender control of part of the economy to MNCs. There is the approach of the Italians, who refuse to recognise any patents for pharmaceuticals. Thus in Italy anyone can produce and sell any drug they want to. Alternatively, the government can use its purchasing power to ensure that there is a transfer of technical knowledge every time it buys something. This is what the New Zealand government should insist upon whenever it buys railway equipment from Japan. Another possibility would be for governments to deal with smaller MNCs rather than larger ones, in order to have a stronger bargaining position when they want to wean themselves.
One of the platforms put forward by Trudeau's Liberal Party at the last Canadian election was a promise of tighter control over foreign investment. There is a lot of activity by United States MNCs in Canada — 58% of Canadian industry is foreign owned. And since the election this year the Canadian government has introduced legislation which will make subject to review any new investment by foreign enterprises or any takeoevers of existing enterprises by foreign firms. So far, this is all that has been done, but there is a possibility of "legislation concerning registration of agreements for licensing foreign technology". The net effect of such legislation will be to stop the proportion of foreign ownership of Canadian industry getting beyond 58% — perhaps! This is nothing but a compromise with imperialism, and can do little to change the situation in Canada.
One of the few countries that has made a successful acquisition of technology and technical skills without having to open itself up to the maraudings of MNCs is the People's Republic of China. For the decade before
Before we can properly examine the Chinese technical development policy and its suitability to Chinese conditions, we must look at the main aspects of the policy. There is every possible substitution of labour for capital. There is as much decentralisation as possible, with nodes of regional development being established in rural areas. And there is the promotion of a national technology — one that is based on Chinese conditions, and on the resources of skill and equipment that are available.
Considering China's large population, and the shortage of capital for a population of that size (compared with the United States which has the most abundent capital in the world), substitution of labour for capital in the productive process is obviously a desirable course of action. It is part of the process of adapting productive techniques to the availability of resources. The type of capital-intensive, highly mechanised productive technique prevalent in the U.S. is obviously not relevant when there is no longer the same need to economise on labour usage. The policy of decentralisation of industry is based on the thought of Mao—tse—Tung — that technical development must come from technicians and workers acting together. This emphasises the practical aspect of technical development — whatever is developed must be developed to a purpose, and where it is needed. And the emphasis on the development of a national technology is, of course, to avoid, as far as possible, the colonialist side-effects of the importation of technology.
It remains to consider the way in which Chinese technical development takes place. Chinese technology is gained essentially by the imitation of products from elsewhere in the world. But it is by no means a simple imitation. At the Chinese industrial exhibitions, such as the Canton Fair and the recent British exhibition in Peking, the potential sellers to the Chinese must display their goods (which are mainly industrial machinery), and must also have their experts on hand to explain the workings and construction. The Chinese find out how the product is built, and see whether they have the technical expertise and equipment to carry out the same productive process. Thus the Chinese may buy a tractor and use it as a model on which to produce their own design. The Westerners who are selling at such exhibitions know that they must co-operate fully or else someone else will get the deal.
Which leaves one question unanswered — why do manufacturers trade with the Chinese if all that will happen is that they will lose their manufacturing secrets? The Chinese recognise no patent laws. People trade with the Chinese because it is a Chinese policy that trade and friendship go together. In return for having to explain all the intricacies of a gas turbine over a period of several months, the Hawker-Siddely Corporation was able to sell a large number of Trident aircraft to China. The Chinese give just enough to keep their trading partners going.
Thus the stranglehold of the imperialist powers on industrial development can be defeated. Where a country can bargain strongly, it can have the MNCs at its feet, craving for business. The umbilical cord that the MNC attaches to the LDC can be broken. But this cord will not be broken by the screening of the activities of the MNCs. International capital will not surrender without a fight. The way to fight the neo-colonialist activities of the MNCs is either through action in their home country (note the effect of public pressure in Britain in the wage increases for black employees of British firms in South Africa) or by socialist revolution (Cuba, Albania, Vietnam). Only then can the industrial technology for developing countries cease to be an instrument of oppression.
This week a joint delegation from the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam should have been visiting New Zealand.
Because of statements by the Prime Minister, alleging that the P.R.G. was no more than a 'political movement', and suggesting that the P.R.G. representatives were merely puppets of the North Vietnamese, the delegation decided to decline the Committee on Vietnam's invitation to come to New Zealand.
When questioned by the press at the beginning of the month about the visit Mr Kirk said that although no application for visas had been received, only people who accepted the Government of North Vietnam or the Government of the Republic of Vietnam (the Thieu Administration) as their government could visit New Zealand.
The delegation's and the C.O.V.'s fears that Mr Kirk intended to use the visit to try to politically embarrass the P.R.G. were confirmed in a letter he wrote to Ken Stanton of Porirua on May 10. Kirk stated: "Upon enquiry we have found that members of the party, including the three Viet Cong (sic), are travelling on North Vietnamese passports.
"This confirms the Government's view that the so-called "Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam" is not an independent government".
After the delegation decided not to come to New Zealand the Chairman and Treasurer of the C.O.V., Mike Law and Rona Bailey, and the co-editor of "Salient", Peter Franks, flew to Sydney to meet the Vietnamese. Thanks to the co-operation of A.I.C.D., the organisers of the delegation's visit to Sydney, they were able to attend all the delegation's meetings. The articles in this supplement are based on the meetings and discussions with the Vietnamese.
Mr Kirk's attitude to the delegation's visit and to the whole Indochina question is curious in the light of the Government's boasts that it is following an independent foreign policy. Despite the recognition of China and Joe Walding's trip to Peking the Labour Party has not changed it predecessor's pro-American policy towards Indochina.
Since the ceasefire Mr Kirk has echoed Nixon's policy by continuing to support Thieu in South Vietnam and Lon Nol in Cambodia. Like the Americans and Lon Nol he has called for a negotiated settlement in Cambodia, despite the fact that Lon Nol rules little more than Phnom Penh, while (he Royal Government of National Union, headed by Prince Sihanouk, controls over 90% of the territory and the great majority of the population. Kirk has repeated all the U.S. Government's wild accusations about D.R.V. and P.R.G. violations of the Peace Agreement. Occasionally he has tried to cover up his pro-American policies by 'condeming' U.S. bombing of Vietnam and Cambodia, but these attempts have not been successful.
All this suggests that Kirk's 'independent foreign policy' is just a new way of continuing Holyoake and Marshall's sub-servience to the United States Government. As the People's Voice stated on May 16: "The Labour Government is just as partisan under its guise of impartiality: It uses the old technique of appearing to find fault on both sides in order to do nothing — except carry on as usual while doing nothing to oppose aggression, tyranny and injustice."
Discussions with the joint Vietnamese delegation have confirmed the Committee on Vietnam's view that the major aim of the New Zealand anti-war movement at present should be to demand that the United States Government, the Saigon regime and the New Zealand Government strictly implement all the provisions of the Paris Peace Agreement on Vietnam.
Peter Franks' report on meetings and discussions with the delegation outlines the extent of the violations of the ceasefire by the U.S. and Thieu. The seriousness of the present situation in Indochina cannot be overemphasised.
The Vietnamese told us they were determined to implement the Agreement peacefully through political struggle. However they said they had warned the United States Government and the Saigon Administration that if violations of the ceasefire continued the P.R.G. would be forced to go onto the offensive to defend liberated areas. The delegation called on the anti-war movement in Australia and New Zealand to assist the Vietnamese people in ensuring the correct implementation of the agreement.
Apart from this fundamental demand the New Zealand anti-war movement must concentrate on the following areas:
"When you go back home I would like you to extend our enormous thanks to our friends in New Zealand for their support for the Vietnamese people. Of course it would have been much better if we had been able to come to New Zealand, but because we have been unable to do so we are very pleased that you have come here to meet us".
With these words Le Duy Van, the Secretary of the Peace Committee of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, greeted four members of the Committee on Vietnam who flew to Sydney to meet the joint peace delegation from the D.R.V. and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam during the final stage of the delegation's visit to Australia.
The reasons why the delegation was unable to come to New Zealand are discussed fully in separate articles in this issue. Despite Mr Kirk's negative attitude towards the delegation the six representatives of the D.R.V. and the P.R.G. showed a very friendly attitude towards New Zealand and a great interest in New Zealand politics.
As with the North Vietnamese trade union delegation that visited New Zealand in February the most striking thing about the D.R.V. — P.R.G. peace delegation was the Vietnamese' tremendous sense of internationalism. Every time they spoke at meetings and discussions while we were in Sydney the members of the delegation would reiterate that the Vietnamese people's struggle against American aggression for national liberation and independence was not just isolated to Indochina. They put great emphasis on the international support for their cause precisely because they saw their struggle as being part of a common struggle being waged throughout the world.
The Vietnamese reiterated that the Paris Agreement on ending the War and restoring peace in Vietnam was a very great victory in their struggle. At a teach-in at Sydney University the leader of the P.R.G. delegation, Nguyen Van Tien, explained why his people saw the agreement as a victory.
"On March 29 this year, 90 days after the agreement was signed the last G.I. left for home. That marks a great victory. For the first time for over a hundred years there is not a single foreign combat soldier on Vietnamese soil. Vietnam was first under the yoke of the French colonists, then Japanese fascists, the French colonists again, and finally the U.S. imperialists."
The Provisional Revolutionary Government and the government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam see their main task at present as being to force the Americans and the Saigon Administration to strictly implement the provisions of the Paris Agreement. Since the agreement was signed on January 27 there have been many allegations in the western press that both sides have committed serious violations of it's provisions, especially those relating to the ceasefire. On the basis of these reports politicians such as Mr Kirk have stated that both sides in Vietnam are equally to blame for failing to restore peace in Indochina.
When we asked the delegation about the charge that the D.R.V. and the P.R.G. were violating the agreement as much as the Americans and the Thieu Administration, the leader of the D.R.V. delegation, Nguyen Van Chi, answered in the following way. "I think we should bring to the notice of people throughout the world that the agreement was the initiative of the D.R.V. and the P.R.G., and we pushed for that initiative at the peace talks in Paris even in early We have to implement the agreement strictly and correctly because to do otherwise would be to negate our own initiative! The United States and the Saigon Administration tried to sabotage the negotiations and tried to avoid signing the agreement. In order to put pressure on us and frighten us they sent their B52 planes to bomb North Vietnam for twelve days in December and early January. Although this was the heaviest bombing of the war they failed in their efforts to intimidate our people, and in the end they had to sign the agreement. However many provisions in the January agreement were more profitable for us than those in the October draft agreement. We say the agreement was a victory for us, the D.R.V. and the P.R.G., not a victory for the United States or the Saigon Administration. How can we violate an agreement which is a victory for us and a defeat for our opponents?"
Nguyen Van Chi's point that the D.R.V. and the P.R.G. would be made to undermine their own victory can be further understood if the Paris Peace Agreement is compared to the Vietnamese liberation movement's past peace proposals. All the major points of the Provisional Revolutionary Government's Seven-point Peace Proposals of July 1971 were incorporated in the agreement, and many of the fundamental provisions of the agreement can be traced back as far as the D.R.V.'s four point peace proposals of April 1965 and the N.F.L.'s ten point political programme of December 1960. At the time these different proposals were made they were rejected by the American Government spokesmen as being "tantamount to a defeat". The fact that the United States Government and its minion Thieu had to finally sign the Paris Agreement emphasises the point made in the January 29 issue of the authoritive
Independent research in the United States has confirmed the D.R.V. and P.R.G. claims that they have not violated the ceasefire. While we were in Sydney the main peace organisation there, the Association for International Co-operation and Disarmament (A.I.C.D.), received
a copy of a study by NARMIC, an American anti-war research group, which showed that there has not been one documented case of violations by the P.R.G. There is also little evidence for the allegations that the North Vietnamese have violated the ceasefire by 'invading' Cambodia. Writing from Phnom Penh in the April 27 New York Times, Malcolm W. Browne stated:
"Official American sources here said today (April 20) that since the Vietnam ceasefire three months ago, there has been no documented evidence that Vietnamese Communist troops are serving in combat roles in Cambodia.
"One source", Browne continued, "said that the Vietnamese influence on Cambodian insurgent forces was continuing to decline. That assessment has been corroborated in recent weeks by Cambodian officers in the field and by residents of villages in combat areas".
Nguyen Van Tien of the P.R.G. delegation told us that since the ceasefire agreement was signed the P.R.G. armed forces had undertaken only strictly defensive operations against attacks on the liberated areas by Saigon troops. Because of the extent of these attacks, which have included at least 50 offensives of division size, the P.R.G. recently warned the United States and the Saigon Administration that if they continued to violate the ceasefire the liberation armed forces would be forced to launch counterattacks as a more effective form of defence of their areas of control.
The delegation pointed out the various types of violations of the ceasefire which have been committed by the United States Government and its lackeys in Saigon.
Although the Americans have withdrawn all their combat troops 10,000 military personnel have been left in civilian clothes under Temporary Duty Assignment' (TDA). These 'civilian advisors' are employed by private firms, but as these firms are under contract to the Pentagon to provide 'civilian technicians' the men on TDA are in fact working for the Defence Department.
Under Article 6 of the Peace Agreement the United States agreed to dismantle all its military bases in South Vietnam within sixty days of the agreement being signed. Under Article 5 the U.S. pledged to withdraw all its armaments and munitions. What the Americans have done to get around these provisions of the agreement has been to turn over its bases and munitions to the Saigon Administration, in violation of Article 7.
The United States Government has tried its best to cover up these violations by claiming, for example, that it has now got not a single military base in South Vietnam! However attempts to fool the P.R.G. and people throughout the world have not been very successful. One case where the Americans were caught red
handed was the 'Japan Incident'. The United States Government, with the complicity of the Japanese Government, transferred 10,000 tons of weapons from Japan to South Vietnam. Unfortunately the Japanese anti-war movement found out, and after large demonstrations the Japanese Government was forced to admit that the Americans had been exporting armaments from Japan to South Vietnam.
The Nixon Administration has also violated provisions of the ceasefire relating to North Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Under Article 2 of the agreement the United States promised to end the mining of "the territorial waters, ports, harbours, and waterways of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam". In three months the Americans have exploded only three mines out of the estimated 10,000 mines dropped in North Vietnamese waters, Nguyen Van Tien commented that the United States Government had resorted to different reasons to justify the delay in clearing all the mines. "But if one takes into account the huge military power and technology of the U.S. its failure to explode more than I mine per month is quite inexplicable. Perhaps it will take the United States 10,000 months to complete the clearance of 10,000 mines".
Furthermore the Americans sent 15 ships, dozens of helicopters and hundreds of troops to North Vietnam to clear the mines. Their failure to make any progress in doing so suggests that the real reason for the presence of so many American military personnel is to gather intelligence information, in violation of Article 7 of the Protocol to the Paris Agreement concerning the removal of the mines.
In a speech to the Australian Overseas Students Conference, Le Mai, a member of the P.R.G. delegation, explained how the D.R.V. and P.R.G. had discovered another American violation in relation to
While there is scant evidence of D.R.V.
Two members of the P.R.G. delegation,
Under Article 3 of the agreement the The erated areas controlled by the P.R.G. e scattered throughout South Vietnam the form of 'leopard spots', and the lieu Administration has attempted to occupy areas around the cities and wns it controls, areas around import-it communication lines, and areas on nd and coastal borders. Le Mai cited
Officers from the four parties were
Le Hai described how the Thieu Ad
So far I have concentrated on military violations of the ceasefire. Although the military aspects of the Vietnamese conflict have always received the greatest attention in the western press the P.R.G. and the N.F.L. have always placed greater emphasis on the political nature of the conflict. As Wilfred Burchett shows in his book Vietnam will win, the Vietnamese liberation fighters see their struggle primarily in political terms.
It is not surprising that the Thieu Administration has completely failed to implement Chapter IV of the Paris Agreement, which deals with the procedures for working out the political future of South Vietnam. All of the provisions in this chapter came straight from the P.R.G's
The PRC's analysis of the political struggle in South Vietnam has clearly identified the United States Government as the main enemy. As the Pentagon Papers showed the history of South Vietnamese 'Governments' since the The U.S. Government has given him the world's third largest air force, the second most powerful arsenal of conventional weapons, an army of one million men and a very large para-military police force.
To defeat the Americans in their continuing attempt to divide Vietnam permanently and establish a neo-colony in the south, the N.F.L. and the P.R.G. have adopted a policy of working for the broadest possible national unity of all social, political and religious groups that believe in peace, independence, democracy and neutrality. Thus the P.R.G. demanded that the Peace Agreement should provide for the inclusion of the neutralist forces in any political settlement in South Vietnam. As explained elsewhere the P.R.G. itself is a very representative coalition of South Vietnamese political forces.
The PRC delegation stressed two particular areas in which Thieu has attempted to sabotage the Peace Agreement.
Firstly he has denied hundreds of thousands of refugees in the towns and cities the right to return to their native villages, a right guaranteed under Article 11 of the agreement, and has kept these people virtual prisoners in concentration camps, euphemistically known as strategic hamlets, refugee camps or resettlement camps. If the refugees were allowed to return to their villages, largely under P.R.G. control, the Saigon Administration would lose all credibility.
Secondly Thieu still refuses to release the 300,000 or more political prisoners held in his jails. Many of these people belong to the neutralists or 'Third Force', and under continued imprisonment is a means of sabotaging the provisions of the agreement which guarantee the neutralists a stake in South Vietnam's political future. Lately Thieu has pretended he is holding no political prisoners in his jails, and even made this claim to the Pope, despite the fact that his regime holds many Catholics as prisoners.
Like the American and Saigon Administration attempts to wreck the ceasefire these attempts to sabotage the political provisions of the agreement are doomed to failure. The more Thieu represses the people under his control, the more they will turn to support the P.R.G.
Although the Vietnamese delegation was optimistic about the future prospects of the struggle in their country, they never stopped reminding Australians that the conflict was by no means over. In thanking people throughout the world for supporting them, the P.R.G. and D.R.V. representatives stated that they still needed international support to force the Americans and Thieu to implement all the provisions of the Peace Agreement. Every expression of support was important, they said. They saw medical and reconstruction aid as an important way of showing solidarity with their cause, as well as being very useful in the reconstruction of their country.
At the delegation's last public meeting in Sydney Ken McLeod, secretary of the Sydney AICD, quoted Le Van Sou, the P.R.G. spokesman in Paris, on the meaning of international solidarity for the Vietnamese.
"He said we understand what solidarity means, however small it may be. Amongst our people there is a saying that a piece of bread when you are hungry is more precious than a banquet when you are full. The peace movement's voices of solidarity are more precious to us than all the gold in the world."
By their actions in bringing the world's most powerful nation to its knees the Vietnamese people have been fighting on behalf of people all over the world. They have shown the people of wealthy as well as oppressed countries that a decadent, dehumanised technological society can be defeated by ordinary people relying on their will to win and their own ingenuity. In their struggle against the Americans the Vietnamese have shown the way to true human liberation. For that reason especially we must keep on supporting them.
"...the so-called "Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam" is not an independent government. It does not meet the basic legal requirements for a government — namely control of territory and population and ability to carrry out international obligations. It does not even have a capital. It is, in fact, merely another name for the National Liberation Front, which is a political movement in arms against the Government of South Vietnam. "(Norman Kirk, in a letter to Mr Ken Stanton of Porirua,
One of the most misunderstood aspects of the Vietnam war has been the nature of the South Vietnamese opposition to the United States and its many puppet governments in Saigon. Western newspapers have persisted in calling the N.L.F. and then the P.R.G. the "viet cong', and this term has been adopted by right-wing politicians such as Sir Keith Holyoake, Jack Marshall and Norman Kirk.
But even members of Mr Kirk's cabinet have, in the past, seen through western attempts to distort the true nature of the South Vietnamese Liberation movement. In "The N.L.F. is not all Viet Cong. It comprises Buddhists and Catholics, Conservatives as well as Communists. Every element that used to be in the Viet Minh is in the N.L.F., and they combine and unite on two things — Vietnam for the Vietnamese and one Vietnam"
The Provisional Revolutionary Government is even more broad based than the National Liberation Front. It was established in
The P.R.G. and the Advisory Council of the Republic of South Vietnam, which was also set up in
As is explained elsewhere in this issue the P.R.G. follows a policy of building the broadest possible national unity among South Vietnamese people in order to defeat the United States Government's attempts to establish a neo-colony in South Vietnam through its various puppets in Saigon.
The P.R.G. stands for the eventual reunification of Vietnam, and its representatives in the Vietnamese peace delegation that visited Australia stressed that Vietnam was one country. However the P.R.G. and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the north, believe that reunification will not take place over night and must be achieved by peaceful means.
Until Vietnam is reunified the P.R.G. is pledged to carry out a strict foreign policy of neutrality. It has been recognised by 38 countries and last year was accepted by the conference of 60 Foreign Ministers of the Non-aligned countries as a full member of the Non-aligned group. Futhermore the fact that the P.R.G. is recognised in the Paris Peace Agreement as an equal party to the Thieu administration shows that it has a substantial claim to be recognised as a government in its own right.
Mr Kirk's charges that the P.R.G. does not control territory and population are quite false. Even before the P.R.G. was established the N.L.F. controlled a considerable amount of territory in South Vietnam and had established its own administration in the liberated areas. P.R.G. documents captured by the Americans, which relate to financial administration, show just how well established the P.R.G. is.
When we were in Sydney we asked the P.R.G. delegation why their government had not yet established a capital. The Vietnamese laughed and replied that if they loudly proclaimed a capital in South Vietnam they would just be asking for a massive attack by Thieu's airforce and troops. But just because Mr Kirk can't find the P.R.G.'s capital that does not mean that the P.R.G.'s administration does not exist.
The current demand in New Zealand and Australia for the two Labour Governments to recognise the P.R.G. must be seen in the context of the provisions of the Paris Agreement about the political future of South Vietnam. The political future of South Vietnam will only be worked out peacefully through the cooperation of the two South Vietnamese administrations. Attempts by foreigners, such as Mr Kirk and Mr Whitlam, to support only one of these administrations are in fact no more than attempts to hinder the implementation of the Peace Agreement. As Senator John Wheeldon, Labour Party representative from Western Australia and Chairman of the Joint Parliamentary Committee of Foreign Affairs and Defence, said at a rally in Sydney on Monday, May 14: "It is necessary that there should be a campaign waged at all levels in Australia to see that we fully carry out the principles of the Agreement by establishing full diplomatic relations between this country and the Provisional Revolutionary Government."
At a recent conference of the two Vietnamese parties held in Paris, the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of south Viet Nam (P.R.G.) put Forward a six-point proposal which would ensure the complete implementation of the Paris Agreements on Viet Nam. The Saigon regime has consistently tried to circumnavigate the provisions of the Paris Agreements ever since they were signed.
The Saigon regime has tried to rush through a proposal for a general election. Using the three-month time limit for some of the provisions of the agreement it has tried to pressure agreement from the P. R.G. The time limit, however, refers to the return of prisoners and the settling of the internal affairs of south Viet Nam. One of these important internal matters is the formation of a National Council of National Reconciliation and Concord.
It is the task of this Council to bring about national reconciliation and concord, to ensure democratic liberties, and to organise free and democratic elections The Saigon regime has repeatedly tried to bypass this provision. Its latest proposal is an attempt to do away with the Council altogether
The Saigon regime continues to hold hundreds of thousands of political prisoners. It continues to violate democratic liberties and makes no attempt at reconciliation. It has made no attempt to allow the 'third force' to play its pan Under these conditions there' can be no proper elections.
The P. R.G, proposed the following six points:
These' proposals clearly fit into the provisions of the Paris Agreement, and if implemented would ensure the complete observance' of the provisions of the Paris Agreement.
In support of counter insurgency operations, the detachment commander and the combat engineer specialist will place primary importance on those actions designed to win the willing and active cooperation, assistance, and support of the people. In remote areas, where Special Forces detachments will normally operate, there may be a lack of sophisticated structures of any kind. The construction of buildings? may well be the assigned mission of the detachment, as opposed to combat operations. Extensive area studies conducted before commitment will reveal additional information on which to prepare plans and details of operations. In preparing for commitment, the engineer specialist will conduct extensive training and development in the field of expedient engineering that may include —
Programs undertaken by Spec all Forces detachments up porting counter insurgency operations are called civic action or environmental improvement programs Special Forces detachments conducting military civic actions find that they are the contact, or go-between, for the local administration and the national government. In undertaking these programs and in assisting the local administration to satisfy the aspirations of the people, the Special Forces advisor helps create the image of a responsive and capable government. When this is accomplished, the opening for subversion diminishes.
Special Forces detachment personnel may find it necessary to employ the technical skills and capabilities of engineer units of the host country forces for projects supporting environmental improvement programmes; however, the Special Forces detachment must adhere to fundamentals and avoid the more advanced techniques and procedures, particularly those that are not compatible with limitations of terrain. road nets, size of host forces, and mobility. Special Forces personnel will try to improvise when standard equipment is not available. The assessment and evaluation of units' and local villagers' capability and availability will dictate those projects to be undertaken. They may include —
Through extensive training and constant development of destructive techniques, the Special Forces detachment personnel learn the various materials and their many uses in making destructive devices. Through many extensive studies of their operational areas, they determine the availability of these materials to the local populations as well as the insurgent force. The Special Forces detachment commander is able to advise his counts experts on resources control measures to deny the insurgent access to such materials. The detachment commander must exploit all available means to help the local law enforcement agencies prevent essential resources from falling into the hands of the insurgent. The police and paramilitary forces in operational areas must be properly oriented and indoctrinated for this task.
The following metric formulas may be used for demolition projects when working with personnel familiar with the metric system. Use of metric formulas and construction and placement of charges are the same as for U.S. Corps of Engineer formulas and charges. Since the formula results give kilograms of TNT, the relative effectiveness of other explosives must be considered. For demolition formulas see FM 5—25, or Demolition Card (GTA 5—10—9).
Add 10 percent to a calculated charge of less than 22.5 kilograms.
ADM is employed in conformance with tactical requirements of the assigned mission to reduce the tactical mobility of the enemy and to deny the use of key facilities such as bridges, industrial facilities, and power plants; however casualties among civilian personnel, destruction of man made and natural terrain features, and the creation of areas of high intensity, residual radiation may cause adverse political effects as well as create obstacles to friendly movement. Destruction and contamination is held to a minimum consistent with military necessity.
""I've tried to unlock it but alas no avail, the cunning old bastard has fitted a Yale, Hey Nonny nonny Fitted a Yale Fitted a Yale
The cunning old bastard has fitted a Yale" — from an olde English Folk song — circa
Most people in our property owning democracy have at some time suffered the inconvenience of being locked out of their cars, offices, houses, or sale deposit boxes etc through the misfortune of having lost or mislaid the key. Or one might have been in some strife over an intervening chastity belt, and unlike the page boy in the song unable to "gladly unlock it with a duplicate key".
Here, for the convenience of impoverished students unable to afford either replacement keys or the time to acquire them, is some information on overcoming this annoying predicament.
For more complex locks, combination locks etc, similar and different techniques may be neccessary, and for most students not possessing the required skills it would be neccessary to acquire the services of the Regimental locksmiths, although competence in these matters is restricted only by the limits to one's technical skill, manipulative dexterity and imagination.
It must be mentioned that possession of some of the tools described here might be viewed, quite reasonably, with some dismay, perhaps even hostility, by the Police Department, for unless one has a legitimate use for such devices it is the prerogative of the Police to suppose that such tools may be intended for criminal purposes. It was, therefore, with some reservations that we considered including this material from the American free press, but because students are as citizens socially committed to responsible and legal behaviour we present this information. However, the time and skills involved in acquiring competence as an amateur locksmith are no doubt beyond the patience, ability and, in some ways, the intelligence of most students.
The first mass produced padlocks were the Warded Padlocks. In this type of padlock there are obstructions of 'wards' that prevent the turning of the key blank. If the key blank is notched so that it bypasses the wards; if is free to turn and operate the release spring. When this spring is released, the Shackle jumps up, being pushed by the Shackle Spring.
The adjacent diagrams show how the cut key spreads the release spring as it turns.
In this course the pass key is used for enabling the beginner to test a padlock so that one can tell if the padlock is of the warded type. Therefore the next step is to convert the key you just made into a pass key. Place the key in a vise and file away the metal where indicated in the following illustration. The pass key can be used to test padlocks with the following keyways to find out if they are of the warded type.
Please refer back to the open diagrams of a warded padlock in this lesson.
In looking at the diagrams, can you see how a key with just one long cut on each side of the blade would be able to open the padlock? Can you see how such a key, with most of the metal cut away would not engage any of the wards? Here's a diagram of it.
Such a key is called 'Pass Key' or 'Skeleton Key,'. Most locksmiths carry such keys for emergency openings, or for testing a padlock to see whether it is a warded lock or not.
Warded locks are usually the cheaper made locks. Most heavy duty or security padlocks are of the pin and tumbler variety next described. You can usually tell if the lock is a pin and tumbler variety by seeing whether the key hole is round and has a pin in it.
The plug in a pin tumbler cylinder will not turn in the shell unless the correct key is inserted. To understand why, let us look into a cylinder. In the following cross-section view we see a section of a key in the key way. The key is supporting two small pins while a small coil spring is pressing down upon them from the top. In this position the plug cannot turn because the lower pin is half-way between the plug and the shell.
In the next illustration, however, the section of the key is much shorter & now it is the upper pin that is preventing the plug from turning.
But the following illustration shows that the key has raised the pins just high enough so that the lower pin can separate from the upper pin and permit the plug to turn.
The following side view of the lock without the key inserted shows how all of the upper pins have been pushed into the plug, thereby locking it.
This illustration shows how the correct key "lines up" the lower pins so that all of the upper and lower pins meet at the top of the plug, which is known as the shear line.
Here we see how all of the lower pins are locking the plug to the shell when a plain key is inserted in the lock.
Lock picking is a necessary skill in servicing locks as well as having freedom of access. Many locks cannot be taken apart that easy and it is best to pick them in order to open. Often the quickest way to turn the plug is by picking. But picking is not a universal answer to opening all locks. Contrary to the movies or other such educational tools there are many locks that cannot be picked and often it isn't just a flick of the wrist with a small tool that will open the lock.
Picking skill is very much a matter of practice and patience. But one must be aware of the fundamentals first. Here we will give Some basic info, on picking the pin tumbler and the disc tumbler locks.
Warning Many of the Steps May Seem Very Simple to you but it is Essential that you Follow them to the Letter and Skip None.
Review the principles of the pin tumbler lock Be sure that you understand it before proceeding.
A lock pick is nothing more than a thin, stiff piece of hardened steel that will enter the key way of a lock and manipulate the tumblers. At the bottom right you will find the most common picks used depicted. Examine them. The irregular shaped ends are formed to enable the locksmith to raise and lower the tumblers in the lock. Also described and drawn is a "turning wrench" a short piece of steel with short lugs bent at an angle. It is used in the key way of the lock to put a turning pressure on the plug in the same way that a key is used.
To practice obtain a pin tumbler cylinder of a normal lock. Remove all the pins and springs as well as the plug retainer plate and plug. Place the cylinder in a vise so that you can conveniently insert the turning wrench and pick in the key way. Select the pick that resembles the one in the illustration. Apply a turning pressure on the plug with the wrench and try to raise the bottom pin up to the shear line. See Drawing. Keep Practising.
You will notice that the harder you turn the wrench, the more difficult it is to raise the pin. However, you will also note that when the bottom pin has reached the shear line, the plug will turn immediately.
Practice this little exercise 25 times using less and less pressure each time on the turning wrench. You will soon get the "feel" of a pin tumbler when it reaches the shear line under the lightest possible turning pressure.
Now reverse the position of the wrench by placing it at the top of the key way as shown in the illustration, practice raising the pin to the shear line with the pick with the wrench in the shown position.
The reason for these two positions is a very simple one. In some plugs the turning wrench fits very snugly into the key way. In fact it "crowds" the space and this prevents the pick from working freely. In working both positions you will be able to tell which is most practical and comfortable.
When picking under normal conditions one should start either at the front pin or the rear and work your way forward or backward in order. One should use the turning wrench to keep the pins that have been raised in place. In some cases the pick can do this also. Some locks are machined such that they will stick when you raise the pins. This depends on the quality of the lock.
Some locksmiths use what is commonly known as the "raking method". Although it is not as scientific or as sure as the feel methods, it is often used as a short cut. A locksmith tries this method first on the cylinder, if it works you don't have to bother with the feel method.
In the adjacent drawing you see a rake pick, being worked in a cylinder. The idea is to run the rake quickly under the bottom pins. This action often causes the bottom pins to bounce up to the shear line and hang there as the plug is turned out of alignment with the upper pin holes. The time that it takes to open a lock this way depends on the speed of the wrist as one manipulates the rake in and out.
Take the practice cylinder with at least three of the pins in place and practice. The raking method can become quite a knack. Practice is the key to this method, but one must remember that security locks and the better made locks with mushroom pins or well machined locks won't open with this method. Jiggling is often the term used instead of the raking method.
For an understanding of the way a gun pick works refer to the game of billiards. No doubt you have seen how when the cue ball hits the other ball they immediately separate as shown in the drawing. The same action occurs when the pick of the gun hits a bottom pin. The upper pin is driven upward as the two parts separate.
The function of the gun pick is to strike all the bottom pins in the cylinder at once and bounce the upper pins into their chambers, while the lower pins remain in the lower chambers. When this happens there are no pins blocking the shear line and the plug is free to turn.
In theory the lock should open on the first "bounce". But there are various other factors to consider. Pins vary in length, springs vary in pressure and strength, & often the designs of key ways make it difficult to hold the needle in a position where all of the pins can be struck equally as hard at the same time. Many locks are designed with high ridges, that is short and long pins following to prevent picking. They can be picked but not with a gun pick.
Electric vibrator picks are the most modern method used for picking locks. The vibrator acts like the gun pick but the needle is actuated electrically to bounce the cylinders apart. It is almost impossible to make your own tool, and equally as hard to get one however.
Disc tumber locks are a cheap substitute for pin tumblers and are easily picked when the pin tumblers are mastered. The diamond shaped pick is the one most commonly used for these locks. See drawings below for the principle of the lock.
In drawing 1 the lock is locked. The spring loaded discs tumbers are pushed into shell slots. In drawing 2 the key forces the withdrawal of the discs. In drawing 3 the plug rotates.
To make the picks illustrated here you should have about 6 feet of spring steel, or ordinary steel wire (flat) 5/16" wide and .020" thick. This can be obtained from any locksmith supply jobber. A warding file, 3-corner saw file, and a coarse round file are also needed A small amount of glue, rubber cement, fine emery cloth and bench grinder complete the list.
Break off a piece of wire equal to the length of pick you want. Polish it on one side with the emery cloth. Keep fingers off this side afterwards. Cut one pattern and glue it to the polished side. Using your grinder remove the excess metal around the outline of the pick to within 1/16" of the line. Avoid burning the steel by dipping it in water often.
Hand file the rest of the steel away until the proper pattern and size is obtained. Polish the finished steel with a slightly oiled emery cloth. The picks should be tempered, but retain some flexibility.
"Holland" is the album the Beach Boys have been threatening us with ever since "Pet Sounds". The vocal and instrumental complexity that marked that album, and which reappeared briefly on "Sunflower and "Surf's Up" has returned, justifying a long-held belief, bolstered by the fact that rock pundits paid undue attention even to the group's blunders, that the Beach Boys were capable of producing a superb album. Through 10 years of recordings the group has struck with their own sound, which, while remaining distinctive, has shown a remarkable capacity for growth and "Holland" is the full blooming of that style's potential.
In deference to the influence that Brian Wilson has had on the group, "Holland" opens and closes with two songs that he co-authored: 'Sail On, Sailor' and 'Funky Pretty' — both incline towards a type of baroque chamber rock and are prime examples of his art.
Besides that, each member of the group has contributed at least one song, outstanding among which is the single, 'California', penned by Alan Jardine, which comprises the third section of the California Trilogy, the album's centrepiece. It incorporated everything good the Beach Boys have ever done: from the shattering introductory harmonies (Get out of the way Crosby, Stilles et all: let real professionals show you how it's done!) to the tasty banjo-pedal steel- banjo meshings right down to the solid rhythm patterns.
Fine as "Holland" is, however, I do have reservations, not the least of which is about the heavy-handed quasi-poetic recitation that fleshes out 'Bears of Eagles'. The other is that some of the lyrics don't quite slot in with the music comfortably, a trait continued from "Surf's Up", but these are really only minor consideration within the album's conceptual framework.
Also included with the package is a seven inch tripper's fairy tale, written by Brian and narrated by Jack Rieley, the group's manager. It's o.k. if you like that sort of thing, but a bore if you don't. Brian's incidental music is interesting though.
Eric Burdon declared War several years ago. Now he has left them and the Band comprising seven members have released 'The World is a Ghetto' as their first record sans Eric.
Burdon, while undoubtedly one of the finest British singers, never seemed to have much commercial success with War. Burdon himself rambled through it all — his voice never seemed to suit this medium and I still think 'Gin House Blues' was his forte.
When War appeared their music was a fusion of African rhythms, American Jazz and English rhythm and blues. The sheer frenetic energy of Burdon's voice was sometimes enough but the most exciting feature of War itself was the percussion — otherwise colour music could always be brightened by congas and timbales. Eric led the group and they will miss his vocals but they seem to be doing all right without him.
'City, Country, City' is the best thing on the first side and probably on the record. It is a long instrumental piece that begins with the same 42nd Street harmonica that wailed through 'Midnight Cowboy'. The tune builds up through exciting clarinet and saxaphone with glorious percussion and finishes with dreamy exchanges between organ and guitar. It is good music and made better by the absence of any of the vocals which spoil so much of the rest of the record.
The second side opens with 'Four Cornered Room'. The singing reminds me of the Yardbird's somber 'Still I'm Sad' and Eric Burdon's own nightmarish 'Black Plague' — it sounds like a dirge for a pigmy funeral. What makes the song worse is he triteness of the lyrics. I thought of that Buddy Miles' record 'Message to the People' with the fatman's face painted onto a mountain, with trees and rocks in his hair; undoubtedly some sort of Mt Rushmore crawl back obsession. On that 'waxing' that philosopher's message was "Ups and downs are in you mind, if you really don't have no conception of time".
War give us assorted revelations of a similar nature on this side. Examples are "I can understand where you're coming from" and later how "Paradise is love to be sure". These people have no sense of the banal.
World is a Ghetto' has some more good clarinet and saxophone work but this is the only thing that saves this side. "Beetles in the Bog" sounds like the rain dance from Woodstock.
Still, there is hope that War will find it's feet. The music is good: the horns are strong and the percussion saves the record. It will be interesting to hear their next record.
In an age where pretension is the rule rather than the exception, these two albums, though flawed, come as welcome relief admist the turgid heaviness being doled out so plentifully by the majority of 'progressive' groups.
Wild Turkey is the band formed by ex-Jethro Tull bassist, Glenn Cornick. Where his former group lost itself in Ian Anderson's obscure ramblings concerning his personal visions of God and bricks, Wild Turkey has developed vertically from Tull's peak, Benefit.
Wild Turkey's sound, commendably more lightly textured than most outfits which feature two lead guitarists, is firmly entrenched in a series of catchy riffs built up by Cornick and the drummer, Jeff Jones. The guitarists, Mick Dyche and 'Tweke' Lewis, use these as a springboard for dazzling duets in the finest Wishbone Ash tradition, the best example being 'Universal Man'.
Lyrics are the group's worst stumbling block, too often being trite re-runs of banal acid metzphysics ("there is no future, there is no past/there is nothing but today/for yesterday's tomorrow is tomorrow's yesterday) but even so they are delivered with enough force and conviction by Gary Pickfor-Hopkins to distract your attention from what he's saying to how he's saying it.
Paul Williams also has a very distinctive voice. It's nasal and whining and the first tune it assaults your eardrums, you are forced to think that nobody could get away with that. Eventually, you realise he can, along different lines, but in the same way Dylan or Loudon Wain wright do. His voice has its limitations and sometimes he flounders around, caught out of his depth, as he tries for the high notes. That's irrelevent really. This time it's the message, not the medium.
Williams first drew attention to himself by writing hits for Three Dog Night, among them "Just an old-fashioned love son" — which was included on his first, vastly underrated album, and "Out in the country", which crops up again, in a far superior version on "Life Goes On". Don't let the association of his name with Three Dog Night fool you, the man is a good songwriter, and, with Jackson Browne, can be rated as one of the most inventive lyricists to emerge in recent years.
The overall impression that "Life Goes On" leaves you with is, unfortunately, detracted from by the horn and string arrangements, which clog rather than complement the flow of the songs and by comparison with the uncluttered simplicity of his first effort come off very poorly indeed. For this reason, "That lucky old man", with only a piano and bass backing, come across as one of the strongest cuts, but "Rose" and "Little Girl" are also exemplary instances of Williams' ability to transform the subtler nuances of personal relationships into good music. I kinda dig the title cut too, probably because of the lyric: "Don't waste time talking if you don't have anything to say/ keep your eyes on the open road/ you're a fool if you live in the past/don't waste time fighting if you know that fighting's wrong... don't you get crazy, life goes on".
The best of the Steve Miller Band (Capitol ST 23014), eh? Well, whatever happened to "My Friend" and "Dime a dance romance" from Sailor, or "Kow Kow" from Brave New World? At its real best, the Steve Miller Band created some of the most exciting and listenable music from the
Peter Kaukonen's "Black Kangaroo" (Grunt FTR 1006) has struck a nice balance between Hendrix-influenced ravers and gentle lilting numbers. Resisting the temptation to call for assistance from members of big brother's group (apart from the use of Joey Covington on four tracks), and their coterie, who would have probably turned the session into yet another musical gang bang, he's turned up trumps even though his vocals are frequently buried in the final mix.
I mean, what standards can you apply to this? So its crude and tasteless and moronic, but flagellation is what Alice is about. They reach for that same streak of masochism that the Mothers have mined so successfully, ("plastic people, you think we're singing about someone else," no Frank, about yourself). So what's the point of warning you? People buy Alice Cooper because they dig being ripped off.
Generally the group is the reincarnation of the Troggs in drag. You hear on every track that same punk sexuality that was so great on "Wild Thing". And on the last track you can even hear "Wild Thing" subtly disguised as "Sick Things". Elsewhere there are bits from the James Bond themes, "Here Comes My Baby" "Brown Sugar" and many more, in fact half the fun of listening to this was in tracking down what had been ripped off from where. But enough of generalities. Are those boys any good? Well, the big single from the album is "Hello Hooray" but even as a rock song it doesn't come off even half as well as the version by that well known heavy rocker, Judy Collins. And when you start getting cut by Judy Collins.....
I wish I could say that the up front tastelessness of this album was refreshing, charming, disarming etc. (you know, songs about necrophilia, what a gas) but its really not The definitive piece of slimy punk-rock is still "The Slider".
A most unlikely combination of a Chinese in Tommy Chong and a Chicano (Mexican—American) in Richard Cheech is today providing American youth with a legitimate break from the hassles of everyday life with a series of situation and satirical skits.
Chong was born in Edmonton, Alberta 30 years ago. He began playing the guitar and writing for a rock group called Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers, on the Motown Label. During those "jitter bugging" days the group would come out and he would do comedy riffs prior to the group's performance. This was what got him to thinking about the possibilities of just doing comedy without the group. At this point he formed an improvisation group called the City Works, in Vancouver. They were doing such things as Committee and Second City routines in a striptease club. "The average person in the audience was a drunk or a pervert", says Chong. This posed quite a challenge for the improvisation group. They were successful in their attempts, but the audience began the expected switch from drunks to intellectual "heads". The owners were less than thrilled at the change so they let the group perform somewhere else, in other words they were canned.
Richard Cheech found his way into the act purely by chance. He was born in Watts 25 years ago and being raised in L.A. afforded him a multitude of experiences to recapture on stage, in the form of standup comedy. He received a degree in English in L.A. and then proceeded to Canada, because of the draft. His urges led home to Alberta, where he became an apprentice potter. One day a touring dine and dance combo asked him to sing with them. He had done a lot of singing with groups out of L.A. like Rompin' Richie and the Rockin' Rubins and Mother Fletcher's Blues Bros. Becoming a singer in the group was then quite appealing to him. They split to Bamf where they did some gigs and then headed for Hawaii. But because of Richard's draft status he couldn't go. Having acquired many friends up north he went back to Vancouver where a friend ran an underground newspaper. He began writing reviews for "Poppin". One day he met Tommy and both of them got together and formed the review company. (Rick had done some acting with the Instant Theatre, in L.A.)
Tommy was directing the group but later began performing the parts that the others couldn't do effectively.
When the review company split up the two put together a comedy act and went before an audience of 5,000 at the Gardens Auditorium in Vancouver. They then moved to L.A.
Here they found little acceptance for two heads doing a standup comedy act. The act began to change from straight situation comedy to a satirization of the current dope scene. The people loved it. Cheech and Chong could use their ethnic backgrounds to full advantage. Most of the audiences had no real knowledge of these ethnic groups, so the combination of ethnic and dope-orientated comedy situations proved to be their area of recognition.
I guess Cheech and Chong could not have survived even five years ago. Audience and liberalism and transient topicality have meant that dope orientated comedy how has a rightful place in our listening repetoire — even if it is only to cool it for a while.
Opening at the Memorial Theatre this Friday for a nine-night season, will be a series of James K. Baxter plays.
This festival, mounted jointly by the V.U.W. Drama Society and the English Department has a purpose which extends beyond the period of the festival's season, apart from bringing to Wellington for the first time some of Baxter's lesser known plays.
Because of the widely known sympathy that Baxter had for Maori culture and ways of life, an ad hoc committee consisting of Victoria staff members, students and those involved in Wellington theatre, conceived of an idea which would form a tribute to the late poet-playwright, as well as extending into a tangible expression of Baxter's desire to help the Polynesian peoples.
This idea involved mounting a season of Baxter plays, the proceeds from which would go to the recently formed Manaaki Society; a society which is dedicated to the support and promotion of Polynesian arts, culture and education.
The Q.E. II Arts Council considered the venture so worthwhile that it has made a grant of $1,000 to help cover the costs of the production.
The production team and cast includes many well known people involved in the arts throughout the country. Sets and posters have been designed by contemporary artist Colin McCahon; the directors include Patric Carey (founder of Dunedin's Globe Theatre), Phillip Mann and Judith Dale (lecturers in Drama and English at Vic.) and Anthony Groser (radio and stage producer).
The cast of over 40, reads almost like a whose-who of New Zealand theatre, and includes Bruce Mason, Ray Henwood, Lewis Rowe, Ross Jolly, Peter Vere Jones, Michael Haigh and Bill Saunders among many others.
The Baxter festival will include four plays, The Sore-Footed Man', The Band Rotunda', The Devil and Mr Mulcahey' and The Temptations of Oedipus'. They will run in groups of two, alternating for two nights at a time.
Dramatised domestic themes often produce either trite witticisms and cosy schmaltz (eg TV 'situation comedies'), intended to enhance its audience's complacency, or else histrionics and yawning silences of Great Depth. Luckily, A.E. Whitehead's Alpha Beta, now at Downstage avoids either playing to either of these extremes in the portrayal of a disintegrating, degrading marriage over a period of nine years. In fact, so natural is the dialogue that sometimes you feel like an intruder, and certainly not a superior observer of decay.
Whitehead has caught the rhythm and progression of conversation: the sudden darts back to parried or avoided issues, and the superficial phrases which bite deeper than a more seemingly direct hit. You get a feeling of spiralling into and cross cutting several dimensions of thought, feeling and action simultaneously —reality magnified to become many more times immediate and trenchant. Thus a twist of the ankle, the setting down of a coffee cup assimilate themselves to personal experiences as symbols. It's not an exploration in depth, but rather an icon, whose real meaning lies in the connections and attachments made by the individual playgoer to his own life. The play succeeds because it is so close to reality and makes little attempt at abstraction itself.
Glenis Levestam and Grant Tilly have the embittered couple down to a T. With many subtle movements and intonations they build a relationship which is both familiar and fresh. I particularly admired Glenis Levestam's sulky, staring silences, her jarring outbursts which form a picture of a woman shielded by her obsession with the way she feels 'things ought to be' from any real contact with herself. Grant Tilly is, as usual, superb. Indeed any jaded performance from Mr Tilly might well indicate that the heavens had fallen on theatre in Wellington. Murray Recce's direction has caught the essence of the play, the importance of the small gesture, and the dialogue's swings and curves. Without this care for detail, the play would probably suffer badly in the translation from script to flesh. It's a play that relies heavily on superb characterisation for its success, and this it has received in full measure in the Downstage production.
Education Minister Phil Amos will officially open "Manaaki Week" in the Conference Room of the Easterfield Building at 9 a.m. on Monday 28th May. The Manaaki Society was recently established at Victoria University with the aim of promoting more equal opportunities within our community.
Patrons of the Manaaki Society, Maori Affairs Minister Matiu Rata and the Ombudsman Sir Guy Powles will also address the gathering.
Manaaki Week will run concurrently with the James K. Baxter Play Festival in the Memorial Theatre. Proceeds from the Baxter Play Festival will go to the Manaaki Society, which will use them to help provide scholarships for Polynesian and Maori students.
Manaaki Week functions include lunch time readings of works of Maori poets and short story writers in the Memorial Theatre. Auckland author Maurice Shadbolt will travel to Wellington to take part in Manaaki Week. He has indicated his intention of reading extracts from "Pig Island Letters", which was dedicated to him by James K. Baxter, and one of his own short stories. Other writers who will read their own works, or who have authorised readings of their works include Rowley Habib, Hone Tuwhare, Bruce Mason and Witi Ihimaera.
A lunch hour concert will be presented by the Polynesian Club from the Hutt Valley Memorial Technical College on May 29.
A Manaaki Social will be held In the Union Hall on June 8 as the culmination of Manaaki Week activities and will include Hangi food prepared by Maori members of the Manaaki Society committee, Te Reo Maori and Nga Tamatoa.
One of the more curious products to come out of America because of the Vietnam war is a small paperback published by Signet Books called "Vietnamese Phrase-book". Described on the flyleaf as "invaluable whether you are working, fighting or visiting in Vietnam", the book provides many intriguing and — like most American humour — unconsciously bitterly funny insights into the endemic and glaring differences between American theory and American practice.
If one bears in mind that the book was published in
"....the Vietnamese people speak more softly than Americans. If you wish to make friends and be well-regarded by the people you meet, it would be advisable to modulate your voice, so that they will not think you are shouting at them or speaking harshly".
Or:
"Do not brag of your wealth or position. The Vietnamese know that you come from a rich and powerful country."
The introduction takes care, lest the brave fighters for freedom receive any rude shocks, by concluding with this extraordinary understatement...
"The people of Vietnam are inclined to be somewhat wary of soldiers, any soldiers, which is not surprising in a country that has been at war for so many years".
Since American troops were sent to Vietnam to promote American financial interests (despite Chapter 5, which says "there are now more than half a million Allied troops in Vietnam helping this small country defend itself against Communist aggression") the section headed "Financial Matters" throws more light on American priorities as regards money. Some examples:
"Where can I change American dollars? Please give me large, large bills."
An interesting sequence is this one.
"How much do I get for one dollar? The rate is 118 piastres to the dollar. Is that the best rate?"
Last, and doubtless a tribute to the American regard for free enterprise,
"Are you a black marketeer?"
Chapter 5, "For G.I.'s", opens with the bit about Commie aggression but comes somewhat closer to reality with the admonition that "Knowledge of the... words and phrases will make you work easier ... and perhaps, your life expectancy longer".
These life-prolonging phrases include the word for every rank from private to brigadier-general, Marines, Special Forces, Popular Forces, Communist, National Liberation Front and booby trap.
The chapter goes on to say that "the following expressions will be most useful in earning the friendship of a population which most of the time is terrified at the very sight of soldiers." They are:
"Don't be afraid; Hello, kids!; I am a friend; Where are the Front people?: What is your position in the Front?; I don't understand; Are the Viet Cong still here?; I want a guide; Is it safe?; Is this a friendly village?; Where are the weapons hidden?; Where are the tunnels?; where are the booby traps? etc". One wonders how useful these phrases were at My Lai.
The chapter continues with the instruction that the following short necessary commands should be learnt by heart.
"Stop! Hands up! Stop firing! Don't shoot! Don't move! Danger! Surrender! Sit down! Throw down your weapons! Keep quiet! Hurry up! Quick or I'll shoot!"
Other deathless phrases from the American ethic are...
"I am lost. You will be rewarded. Give me food. Hide me away."
Such craven phrases do not, of course, come naturally to the American GI, so the book, ever eager to alert the square-jawed defender of democracy to manifestations of the well-known yellow Commie horde peril, counsels him to "keep you ears open for these answers".
"I am a Cell leader. I am a Company Commander. I am a political cadre. I am innocent. I am not a Communist."
Perhaps the most amazing sequence in the book is the following passage which is quoted verbatim, English only:
"You are now back from an exhausting operation. You need rest and relaxation and most of all the company of a girl-friend. Here are a few expressions you may wish to use in conversation with her.
"My name is John. What is you name? I like you very much. I like your dress. You are very pretty. Let's dance. You dance beautifully. Would you like to go to the theatre with me? Sing a Vietnamese song for me. Here is a present for you. I love you."
So simple really.
The more salacious among us may wish to know what equivalents are provided for the more usual conversation needed by foreign invading troops in relation to female relaxation such as "Jeez, those boobs! Let's fuck! How much a night? Are you clean? etc." I confess I have not the knowledge, nor the phrase-book the wit, to provide these.
A major shortcoming of the book is the lack of referents given for the frequent consequences of such casual relationships. For example, although the word for "crab" is given, there is none for that virulent form of VD known worldwide as "Saigon Rose".
The section on "Medical Help does contain such versatile phrases as "Remove your clothes. Lie down. You need an injection. It will be over very soon. Do you have some stomach pills?"
For no fathomable reason, the phrase "I sweat" is given, equally no formula is given to allow the presumably non-breathing American to utter the Vietnamese for "I cannot breathe".
Another glaring omission are referents for that other well-documented pastime of American soldiers in Vietnam, namely the indulgence in those mind-distorting chemicals America is always warning the world about — heroin, opium and marijuana.
Nevertheless, those who supported the American military presence in Vietnam can take heart. She may have lost the war, but she's still making money by selling the "Vietnamese Phrasebook" at sales in New Zealand for 30c or four for $1.
So Dennis List, writing in his first published collection of poems. Dennis List is my alter ego, and I am his. We first met as students eight years ago, and from the start I had a very high regard for Dennis's literary potential. I have said so many times since, and critical opinion has come to agree. (The critics always come to agree with me in eight years or so, which I find off-putting, because who wants to be only Eight or Nine years ahead of the mob?)
But I was not content years ago to expect much of Dennis, I took over as much of his literary strategy and personal emotions as I could. The result of this was a burst of creativity on my part which manifested itself as Books 8 to 31½ of my epic, "The Alexandrians". This takeover was not one sided, because Dennis in his turn has also taken over much of my literary strategy and personal emotions, with a result shown in the volume under review. Dennis has done me proud.
This literary cannibalism, incest, is not uncommon on the NZ literary scene. A good example of it was the Louis Johnson-James K. Baxter complex, Baxter authoring (this is not an accusation of any malpractice) a considerable proportion of Johnson's vast corpus. And Dennis and I are not alone in this complex of ours. With us, is also J.H.E. Schroder in two volumes. Ruth Gilbert in one and a forthcoming volume, on an honorary basis, the admirable James Bertram with one volume. John Hales represents the critical side of the complex.
Dennis has written a book of epigrams Most of them were written in a few nights of sleeplessness, but others are earlier stray pieces. Books of epigrams are not fashionable. Dennis is following my own performance, in "Beyond Nonsense" and preceding volumes of mine. These are not the Coleridge-Fairburn style of epigrams, those essetially frivolous pieces who's existence is only justified by a terminal joke. No, he and I write the classical epigram, which I will here explain.
A poem cannot consist of a single word. Otherwise, what Nobel Prizes the lexicographers would win. But a poem can consist of two words. Dennis says this plainly in his opening poem.
So Dennis. This epigram refers to my instructions that poetry consists of writing two-word epigrams, and then combining them into larger masses. A poem of any length is just a mass of epigrams; from which it follows that a poem can never really be complete or incomplete. Hence why not write epigrams or epics? Epigrams are just bits of epics, and epics are just masses of epigrams. Homer equals Martial. I doubt if Dennis has read much of Martial or of the Greek Anthology that stands behind Martial. But I have, and by artistic empathy he shares my knowledge. So it is that his book of epigrams is intensely classical. In fact, he has succeeded in writing the most intensely classical collection of verse in NZ literature, in which just that is the hidden ambition of all our poets.
But Dennis works an interesting switch on the classical epigram by giving it a patina of nonsense. His book is the classical epigram turned into a joke, not frivolously but essentially. His epigrams are mirror-images of classical epigrams, with sense and nonsense apparently reversed: left hand right hand writing. The classical epigram has become absurd. In this he shows his all-round literary technique. In capitalist society, sense appears as nonsense and nonsense as sense. Dennis has raised this condition to an aesthetic principle, and so to social criticism. It was this literary technique that I adopted from Dennis at Book 8 in my epic, but in my case the technique operates through rhyme, that blatant assertion of the absurd interconnection. In Dennis's case, the technique operates through imaginative jux-taposition. Very often Dennis pulls it off by this means, and this is his great merit, as is everywhere recognised.
Epigram (ii) has Dennis a la Van Gogh complaining about (he clash of literary and scientific cultures. Dennis is a person with a thorough-going scientific background, from which he wilfully dropped out but cannot escape.
Epigram(iv) is another reference to alter ego relations, and (vii) is a parody of my poem "The Remembrance" in Book 22. In (xii) Dennis is stating his bloody-minded mercenary attitude to poetry. Make it worth his while or he will write the Great NZ Novel instead.
Number (xiii) is the finest of the epigrams:
Epigram (xxiv) is a classical piece in all respects:
Dennis is not responsible for any misprints introduced here. His own text, produced by the Amphedesma Press London, is accurate. About 120 copies of the volume came on the market in NZ. You may still find one. Otherwise, Xerox copies are available from the author or his friends. I conclude with an epigram of my own.
* * *
"Dennis List is my alter ego, and I am his"— So Niel Wright, writing in his first published review of Dennis List's published collection of poems. Of course Niel Wright is wrong. He always is. In actual fact, as everybody knows, Dennis List is my alter ego, and I am his. From the start Dennis has had a very high regard for my literary potential, in fact such a high regard that my literary potential has remained constant. I just haven't written anything.
This literary dormancy, hibernation-call it what you will —is not uncommon on the NZ literary scene. When you consider that of all the farmers, businessmen, school-teachers, and public servants that make up NZ society, the five per cent who actually release their potential into words are like the mere froth on a glass of beer, and the few who actually get published are the specks of spittle floating on the froth.
However this review is not of List's book but of Wright's review of List's book. Although few people have yet suspected it Niel Wright is my alter alter ego and I am his. We worship each other at our alters. Eight years ago I said that Niel Wright might have the potential of a good reviewer, and then again he might not. His review proves the correctness of my prediction, which shows that I am just about as avante as Wright's garde.
But I was not merely content to praise Niel, I slapped his back, he slapped Dennis's, and Dennis slapped mine. Which indicates that we are even kinkier than the Romantic Imagination.
Your heading 'Pie in the Sky' over the letter by Arthur McKenna in the last Salient really made me laugh. The correspondent's comment was that the hope of peace and reward in Heaven, so clearly spelt in Scripture, encourages a person to greatness.
But your little jab was comical because it came from a Marxist, one who holds to the biggest mass of wishful thinking that's around today.
Marxism may have many appealing features. But it's basic tenets have been shot full of holes too much for this doctrine to be credible to any person capable of calm thought. Let's be courageous enough to face reality.
Marx's view of history as being a continual class struggle is not held by modern historians; his historical predictions we see ourselves have not eventuated. The Marxist scorns the Christian who can however, prove the truth of his religious beliefs and their conformity to rational thought and human experience. He himself pins his hopes on what a fellow fallible 'genius' taught.
The Marxist goes into raptures over visions of the state of the world under Full Communism, when there will be an Utopia in existence, a Heaven on earth, or rather, a 'Pie on the' Earth'. The Marxist state will, they say, bring about the immediate or eventual solution to the great social problems. This ecstatic paean is far removed from the realism of Lenin or Stalin, of Russia and China today. But still the Marxist remains entranced by the beautiful vision of life, not after death but after the Revolution.
The Christian on the other hand, faces the blunt fact that there will always be someone who will betray the revolution, exert selfish independence or engage in the exploitation of others. To say conditioning governs such things makes man very much like a robot and does not explain the rise of a Baxter, the goodness of many ordinary people, the rebellion of young Soviet citizens or that of Marxists here. The Christian holds that unless there is more than a superficial change of political structure and system even the most liberated radical will have malice and selfishness to contend with in himself.
There is a pipe dream that Marxists have of 'brotherly love' spontaneously motivating members of the forthcoming Marxist state. But it is the Christian who doggedly prays and works to arouse and spread this love of one another, While the Marxist, therefore, plans the revolution which will enable him to put his science fiction into practice, the Christian faces reality and accepts the demands required of him by God and man.
The Editors,
Both of you mothers are Marxist/Leninist, right? So is the Executive, right? Well, if you are, you ought to read the fine print in the V.U.W.S.A. Annual Report. If you have a close look comrades, you will see that the Union Building Extension Trust stands at $45,988 and that $ 10,000 of this is invested in Broad-lands Dominion Group and yields 7½% — that's not a bad yield.
This year the yield ought to be a lot better because this money lending Broadlands, mothers, will have made more than a million dollars profit from their money lending activities. You can't find a better capitalist investment unless you bought up McIntosh in South Africa, and if you are so damned capitalist, why are you letting the Post Office Savings Bank pay you only 3% for the $11,477 you have got tucked away in there?
Stick to your capitalist principles comrades.
Mother of Six
P.S. So maybe you don't publish anonymous letters. Well, go thead, you revisit list bastards. M.S.
Thank you for printing the articles giving the Pro-Life view of the abortion question. It shows that the present editors are responsible enough to present readers with a balanced discussion of this highly complex question. We can now make up our own minds on the matter instead of being driven like a mob of sheep.
It is so easy, especially for students, to be swayed by every influence and persuaded without really giving an issue personal thought. And an issue so grave in its ramifications for our society in the future surely demands much discussion and serious thought from others besides the feminist extremists or the determined Christian humanists.
The object of the present peace movement is to rouse the masses of the people to fight for the preservation of peace and for the prevention of another world war. Consequently the aim of this movement is not to
It is possible that in a definite conjuncture of circumstances the fight for peace will develop here or there into a fight for socialism. But then it will no longer be the present day peace movement; it will be a movement for the overthrow of capitalism.
What is most likely is that the present day peace movement, as a movement for the preservation of peace, will, if it succeeds, result in preventing a particular war, in its temporary postponement, in the temporary preservation of a particular peace, in the resignation of a bellicose government and its supersession by another that is prepared temporarily to keep the peace. That, of course, will be good. Even very good. But, all the same, it will not be enough to eliminate the inevitability of wars between capitalist countries generally. It will not be enough, because, for all the successes of the peace movement, imperialism will remain, continue in force — and, consequently, the inevitability of wars will also continue in force.
To eliminate the inevitability of war, it is necessary to abolish imperialism.
This Varsity is a great hall of learning and "self education", but it definitely isn't a Utopia. Maybe it shouldn't be this but I do feel it could be a place of a little more happiness (laughter and smiling are not lost arts; although maybe some of our muscles in our faces are out of condition). Try it sometime! Some people may think you're crazy and maybe you are! But we "university students must stand up for what we believe in" against all "odds".
If you really believe the smile is worth saving tell everyone or join the new radical group, the SSC — small smile community —aim: to promote the art of smile among its members with the ultimate objective of making the world a "smilier" place. He! he! he!
As a committee member-buyer for the Wellington Food Cooperative Society, I would like to point out a grave misinformation perpetrated in the first instance by the Mt Victoria People's Union known in our organisation as the 'Mt Vic Food Co-op' and in the second instance by Peter Rendall (Salient, May 1). This misinformation is that the Wellington Food Cooperative Society is restricted to students. I can unequivocably say that any person is able to, and is allowed to join the co-op.
New members are required to pay a $1 subscription unless they (or their friends) can show a group of existing members that this would involve them in hardship. The only other requirement is that the members enter into the cooperative spirit of the organisation. This involved one person from each depot providing help for half-a-day, or less each week.
The delivery before Mt Vic set up their own distribution organisation was so large that we only just managed to stack it on the truck (a 5 ton with canopy). This prompted the suggestion that our rate of growth would have to be slowed, by having no more advertising as had been previously organised. This suggestion resulted in the Mt Vic group setting up their independent distribution in the east and central city ares.
Since there are now two medium sized distribution groups the total number of people involved can be increased by both groups. New members are mainly non-students, i.e. workers because most students who want to join have joined and other people are beginning to hear about the benefits of the co-op.
The Wellington Food Cooperative Society includes non-students and students, with no distinction being drawn between them at any time. A certain amount of volunteer work has to be done to run the organisation. Students tend to do this, as they can more easily make time available during the day. Inability to help on Thursday does not debar a person from joining. At present people with heavy traffic licences will be welcomed more enthusiastically than other people, but any person wishing to join should contact me, Liz Morgan 28 Murphy St, Judy Taylor 17 Owen St, Newtown, Ian Kent 4 Thule St 757—734, or Ellice St 51—542.
Salient has come to be the second most popular paper among me and my mates. We read it every week and especially enjoyed the series on "Demolitions and Engineering".
But what I have personally appreciated over the last few weeks is the absence of any forged letters with my name underneath them. The most important thing in life is not bitter fruitless quarrelling but communication as People.
Salient has gone some way towards restoring my faith in human nature in this respect. So thanks for the "new, unbiased look Salient" and all the best for future issues.
(We're pleased the Young Socialists are starting to enjoy "Salient" — in between jaunts to YSA meetings in Australia. One of our more light-hearted occupations is to look through "Socialist Action "for unsourced rip-offs from "Salient". We hope Terry and his mates like this week's issue — Eds.)
I don't know whose prerogative it is to hand out rooms in the Student Union, but in my opinion someone's made a bad mistake. There was a nice big room a majority of students, (if they wanted to) had access to; i.e. the club storage room, on the middle floor. Now the clubs, with their lockers and Gestetner, have been pushed downstairs into a 'cubicle', hardly fit for breathing or moving around, and god only knows what happened to the upstairs room. It is a real brothel — and that's understating the case. Whoever the pricks are who inhabit the place, its about time they learnt to treat our property with a bit more respect. You see, the room is locked, so the average student (ok, so he/she doesn't give a damn anyway) doesn't know about the orgies and free-for-alls that must go on in there. I have no objections to that kind of behaviour — when you're wrecking you own property — but to splodge paint all over the floor, mess up the walls — I haven't looked at the ceiling; and I'm no tidiness fanatic, but anyone who saw the state of the room would also be highly annoyed, especially considering the transformation from its pristine glory when it was a club room!
What I object to is that four or five people who are in there occasionally have the right to really screw the place up behind locked doors! The evidence is there, plain to see, its just that not many people get to see inside the place. I suggest that Studass tries evicting them down-stairs — after all, they've proven they don't know how to look after the room which of course can be looked upon as "our" property — and gives the clubs back a room that they appear better qualified to use.
[Part of the mess was caused by Ultra Rightist Adventurers enraged when the tour was stopped. The rest is creche gear. The occupants of the room are not bound to bourgeois standards of tidiness — why should they be?]
I wonder if you would be interested in publishing the full text of a simple little letter on bananas which I wrote — yes you've guessed it —to the Dominion.
Sir, — The manager of Fruit Distributors referred to the profit on Ecudadorian bananas bolstering up the "losses" on island bananas "and the ships go back empty".
It is sound economy to eat island bananas if we must eat
And what about the beautiful Australian bananas?
The paragraph omitted as indicated was as follows:
If the conditions in which Equadorian bananas are produced were generally known, if we must eat bananas, most people would never eat another. Banana imperialism depends on a poverty conditioned labour force admirably described in the book "Meat is for Special Days" by a Peace Corps volunteer, a mature man and skilled agriculturist.
Incidently I know ANANA means pineapple.
Yours sincerely,
Chris E. Gardner
Just to let you know you've scored another victory. I thought I'd better write and thank you for the past issues of Salient. I finally realised you're so right about this dump when I was reading Salient in the library last Wednesday, so I got up and left my favourite scat in the library to some other money fucking economics student and haven't been back since.
In their review of 'Godspell' in Salient' May 1, Stewart and Keene exposed themselves as modern day pharisees, revealing that old pharisee motto: "There are none so blind as those that will not see."
They begin by telling us 'Christ was clown among nine goons'; but although possibly dressed as a clown, he certainly never acted like one, for in all that he said and did he was neither pious nor flippant, but very sincere.
Apparently the dialogue "portrays a message quite different to that of the original", but I would be interested in hearing what Stewart and Keene consider the original message to be, if they know at all.
I suggest that the gospel needs no re-interpretation for contemporary society, the original and only message of the gospel will always be relevant. Men still choose to live selfish, sinful lives and can only be saved from them by Chrise.
I have heard the criticism that 'Godspell' is too fast moving and I feel that Stewart and Keene must certainly have been left behind if they felt the oppressive master/servant relationship was actually condoned.
The first such reference occurs in the parable of the unforgiving servant, Matt. 18: 21—35, where the master forgave his servant a debt he could not pay, and set him free — surely this is not condoning the oppressive relationship, but showing love.
I suggest Stewart and Keene also read Matt 5: 38—42, and read about 'walking two miles for a man in authority' in the context of the passage.
Maybe you will learn its lesson about paying back hate with love. This was pointed out at the time in 'Godspell', but you may have missed it or chosen to forget it.
Like the Pharisees, they couldn't see past the physical situation to the purpose of the image.
How come Stewart and Keene missed the most prominent point of 'Godspell', the greatest commandment of Christ, the very point of the gospel.
"You must love the lord with all your heart, with all you soul and with all your mind, and love your neighbour as yourself.
It was no fault of the show that Stewart and Keene missed the main point, only their own blindness.
I am a Bible class leader and a C.U. member but, personally, would not rave over 'Godspell' at all.
In reply to Ruth Swatland's official statement, we would like to raise several questions:
We find out that on some occasions overseas students are reluctant to seek help from the Counselling Service because they do not trust the so-called 'experts'. One always feels that the Counselling Service 'experts' keep on rationalising and defending the Labour Dept, and its policy rather than making efforts to demand changes.
Boyd seems to have too much power in making decisions on the future of students particularly overseas students. Problematic or troubled reports relating to overseas students can rarely escape from the censorship, interference, checking, alteration and being changed by Boyd who tries to cooperate with the Labour Dept and helps it to avoid embarrassment. The result is that on some occasions students who never think of consulting the Counselling Service are forced to see him because he tends to exert his power in such a way. Neither Swatland nor Mence explains the nature of the power relation of the Counselling Service to the University authorities.
Wendy Mence's defence is quite interesting. Unfortunately, she cannot prove that the close relations and cooperation between the Labour Dept, and the Counselling Service assured that information did not channel to the former. It is childish to expect the counselling service 'experts' to admit that information had been slipped to the labour Dept, or others. They will lose their jobs.
Some students may voluntarily choose or be advised to consult the Counselling Sen ice. Others may be 'forced' or 'attracted' to go to the Counselling Service to keep on this marvellous business which allows a lew so-called 'experts' to keep a living and do counselling research using students as guinea pigs as well as to build up their personal reputation, social status and power.
Can Wendy Mence list any case that the Counselling Service intends to make "in the interests of overseas students, as regards the rest of the student body in general."? As far as we know nothing has been published on such matters and made known to the public. Why have several issues never been openly discussed? It should be pointed out that no criticism of the policy of the Labour Dept, has ever been made by the Counselling Service. Can the Counselling Service list down what sort of suggestions it has made for change in the interest of students? Important issues relating to permits of overseas students have been handled quietly, secretly, privately between the Counselling Service and the Labour Dept, to avoid rebellion arising among overseas students against the New Zealand Government. It is noted that the relations between overseas students and the Labour Depts are vers bad and tense. The Labour Dept, has done a good job to breed the anti-New Zealand Government feeling among the overseas students and who will certainly spread their discontent after returning home. One of the main topics of the conversation among overseas students is 'cursing and swearing' at the policy and staff of the Labour Dept. The work of the Counselling Service is to minimize the conflicts and to divert the potential explosive rebellion.
The Counselling Service has never acted in the interest of the community and students who want to change the status quo. The function of the Counselling Service is to mislead the students to accept and fix into the status quo. The counselling service 'experts' never intend to help students to fight for a change of irrational regulations, systems or society. The Counselling Service is only part of the framework to rationalise the status quo and its evil nature is little different from those organisations such as the Departments of Social Welfare, Justice, State Advances, Health etc., which Wendy Mence also realised. Wendy Mence is correct to advise us to cast our myopic eyes in the direction of those oppressed. However, one must also realise that the Counselling Service is a tool of the reactionary Establishments which oppress and exploit the oppressed and exploited people in our society.
The students and the academic staff members are not enemies. They can cooperate and unite together to fight with workers for a new environment. The students only rebel against reactionary staff members, authorities and establishments. We would advise Wendy Mence to make further investigation into the response of some staff members towards towards the behaviour of the counselling 'experts'. Understandably, most staff members keep in silence and the counselling 'experts' have been ignorant of the anger among staff members for years. We make this disclosure open for the first time and it is hoped that the 'experts' of the Counselling Service will think twice in exerting their power in the future.
Those who revel in the Vandal' of Princess Anne's relationship with her horses, the press and her somewhat boring Lieutenant, also no doubt feel a sense of great pride at the sight of our national Hag gently fluttering in the Wellington wind. Those familiar red, white and blue colours in the form of the Union Jack in one corner, those stars on a plain blue background constituting the remaining area frankly do little to instil any national pride in my not so aged veins. I feel no romantic attachment to our so called 'home' country and thus think that our national flag should he free from the insignificance of the British influence.
Any feeling I ever had for the current New Zealand flag soon disappeared when I was unable to differentiate between it and its Australian counterpart — which is exactly the same but for one star more or less, I never can remember which.
While I am not advocating that we go as far as the American public in the use of the Stars and Stripes — on every second car there is a miniature version I do feel that a true New Zealand nag would be far more advantageous to many sectors of our community than the present reminder of colonial settlement.
A New Zealand flag, for example, would be welcomed by the business community, especially those engaged in exporting, who have had to devise their own symbol in the absence of a Hag bearing national identity.
Travellers abroad at present generally rely on an Air New Zealand travel bag as a means of indicating to others their country of origin — and in today's world it is often advantageous to make it known that you come from a country which does not have a bad image abroad It is so had in Europe at present that many young Americans buy Canadian Hags in an attempt to avoid the contempt that many Europeans have for America.
With Britain about to embark on a new era in European Co—operation its time we made a significant break by dumping our Union Jacked flag and replacing it with one that has meaning to us as a nation, not as a colony.
I implore you to refrain from printing any more articles on abortion. I'm frightened should I read another I'll have a miscarriage. Incidentally, shredded Salient on rye bread with pickled gherkin and strawberry jam is divine.
Why are you at university, you? How does this life compare with your rural small society, or pettiness boarding school, or the confusion in the city? — But this was last year, or the year before, or perhaps many in the past, and I can only wonder how much you've changed, and ask, in a conceited kind of way, how much of an idea you have of what you were when these line floors first knew your footsteps, and how you can guess what you'll be when their last echo has died.
Well, why are you here, and what do you think it is doing to you does the thought cross your mind? Oh yes, I know, I was here too, smiling with the rest and heckling noisily all the prejudiced city speakers from parliament and the rugby union. But somehow this doesn't seem to compare with the importance of a degree and the prized piece of paper your mother wants proudly to hang in the hall, glass-fronted, like an iceberg. And in a crazy kind of way it spells out all the relationships, and confusion, and emptied beer that ever happened in those short, eight-month years. Shall I write "Sally" and "Linda" and "Sue" in bold type under each one of those finely inscribed institutionalized italics, and underneath those names write "Dave" and "Pete" and "Mike", and specify individually all the 35 glass ounces of beer?
I'll add a postscript, too, to this obscene piece of paper, something that laughs almost a shade too loudly, and the hysteria is just a little too frightening to be read aloud and dismissed: it's all those people in the streets, isn't it, whom you never cared enough about to look at and say "hullo" to — it's the alcoholics around the Basin Reserve and the middle-aged drunk looking for a young party in George Street and lost Islander, still in Dunedin, forever wandering up Stuart Street shadowing a lover and the incredible hilarity afterwards over coffee and tea with Keith and the jokes, and the Tokolauan was there and simply didn't understand — he sat there in that alien society looking at the lover from whom he wanted six, and all I could offer instead was company and not being so alone, and my fear of an ego trip.
Sometime I'll be unfeeling enough to do it again, and then I'll think of you, all, sitting here, quietly dying. And mostly it's the people in the library on the fourth floor, blowing their minds with all that knowledge they can't comprehend, and the indifference, if not actual conceit, that everyone shows to the lonely strangers, when they have a lover of their own.... but all that is not important now; it is autumn and on Dunedin's fine campus the leaves are blowing across the park. It's cold enough, and in Queenstown lovely Karen might see even more closely the vision we call snow.
So go on, and don't even bother to try and answer the questions I was too scared to ask —and you can laugh a little, as well, because in the future the echos of your feet will match mine, silently crying, through the university.
Could you please tell me what a "trot" is.