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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Vol. 37 No. 3. March 20, 1974

Rip~Off News Service

page 13

Rip~Off News Service

Rip~Off News Service

Rip~Off News Service

African students agitate

The All African Student Union (AASU, secretariat in Dar es Salaam ) has set up a volunteer corps to work toward the liberation and reconstruction of those parts of the continent still under colonial or white minority rule. To further the aims of the new corps, AASU has developed close ties with various African freedom movements and the Liberation Committee of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU).

The continent-wide student body has also drawn up a number of projects in different regions of Africa which are designed to help students who want to contribute their share to social and economic development at the community level. But the community efforts are not to be divorced from the long-range goal of freeing the continent as a whole.

The new volunteer corps would assist the freedom movements, especially in the newly liberated areas, in the tasks of social reconstruction and rehabilitation. "We feel that this will give us ample opportunity to acquaint ourselves with the actual conditions in the zones where freedom fighters are in control," AASU spokesman Mxolisi Mgxashe explained.

The new emphasis on "practical experience rather than rhetorical slogans" within the AASU is a result of the growing awareness on the part of many African students that certain complex problems of development and democracy still confront African societies after more than a decade of independence.

The majority of the African peoples have yet to taste the fruits of independence, the AASU frankly recognises, and the "root cause" in a distressing number of cases has been the series of military coups that have overthrown elected civilian governments. "The future of Africa can only be assured", the AASU spokesman stated, "through the dynamic involvement of the young in the common search for solutions to the continent's problems."

Nazi death gas used in Vietnam

Washington (LNS) — Hydrogen cyanide, one of the world's deadliest gases, was used by the US Air Force in Vietnam according to recently released information. The same gas was used in the Nazi ovens and in gas chamber executions in California.

This previously concealed fact was revealed by former Air Force Sergeant Steve Hawkins who was in Vietnam during 1971 and 1972. Since his discharge, Hawkins has testified before Congressional Committees about the use of poisonous gas and various other tactics that he witnessed in Vietnam.

Hydrogen cyanide (HCN) is considered fifty times more dangerous than carbon monoxide and its use is prohibited by the Geneva Convention. The Air Force tries to avoid this ban by dropping bombs of two different chemicals that combine when they hit and cause a chemical reaction creating the HCN.

Hawkins' testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee was corroborated by Bill Amos, another veteran who had been a weapons specialist in Vietnam.

Don't say I'm smart, say I'm beautiful

The Air Force now uses the term "precision guided munitions" in place of "smart bombs" for fear the public will infer that other Air Force weapons are stupid.

Cartoon of soldiers marching

Fore! And watch out for land mines

Increased guerrilla activity in North-east Rhodesia has inspired a Salisbury golf club to add two new rules.

The first rule "allows a stroke to be played again if interrupted by gunfire or a sudden explosion". The second requires all golfers to care fully examine each green for land mines before putting.

Poverty becomes tourist attraction

Rio De Janiero (LNS) — A Brazilian tourist agency is making an effort to market misery as a consumer item.

The tourist agency. Agaxtur, recently published a brochure for international tourists and rich Brazilians promising its clients "something different: the poor of the Amazon".

The ad went on to proclaim: "During this trip we will be able to witness something different, scenes that are a mixture of courage, drama and necessity." The agency makes it easy for tourists to enjoy the Amazon region, providing them with boat passage and even with plastic bags to protect "presents" they might want to throw to the people in the small villages along the shore.

"Such is the anxiety of the population of the riverbanks when the ship passes by. It is when they can get things like dresses, shoes, candles, matches, buttons, medicines, food, etc. In the fight for grabbing the objects thrown from the ship, generally in plastic bags, they risk their lives by confronting with their fragile boats the current and the waves produced by the ship.

"These people belong to a community very attached to their native place," the ad asserts, "without knowing anything, under the circumstances, about the luxury, the comfort and the facilities of the big metropolitan centres. For this reason, Agaxtur counts on people like you."

Handcuffed hands

And they love watermelon too.....

South Africa (IT) — African workers at Bloemfontein will be identified by colour-coded hard plastic rings around their wrists. The rings are fitted by a special machine and are impossible to remove without a hacksaw.

The Bloemfontein town clerk denied that the system was inhuman since Africans "enjoy wearing brightly coloured armbands, ankle rings and neckbands."

Bugs in the shit

Pittsburg (APS) — A bizzare story has been emerging over the past few weeks from the Blue Mountains of Northeastern Pennsylvania where the ultra-right wing Minutemen maintain a "secret" training camp to prepare themselves for armed confrontation with communists and left wingers in general.

It seems that their camp has been bugged, and in retaliation, the Minutemen claim to have bugged the FBI.

The first listening device to be discovered at the Minutemen camp showed up two weeks ago when a member of the group ran a power lawnmower over what appeared to be a dog turd. It almost broke the blade of the mower.

The pile of dog shit turned out to be a tiny transmitter, capable of picking up conversations from 20 feet away and transmitting them some six miles. Upon close examination two other piles of dog shit with similar capabilities were discovered.

The Minutemen say the devices were planted by either FBI or Treasury Department agents (disguised as dogs?). Both these agencies deny that the devices were theirs, though they admit they've had the Minutemen under surveillance.

Despite orders not to talk about the incident from Minutemen chief Roy Frankhouser, one Mmuteman told a reporter about tapes the Minutemen have made of FBI contacts with the Mafia and the Black Panthers. He claimed the FBI has been after the tapes, but is afraid to press the matter for fear that "we can blow their whole illegal operation."

Richard Nixon

We couldn't have that, now could we?

Washington (ANS) — The General Services Administration recently explained how it justified expenditure of $621 for an automatic ice-making machine for President Nixon's San Clemente estate.

A GSA official stated that the installation was necessary in order to prevent the President from being exposed to polluted ice.

Guayakies exterminated in Paraguay

The Guayakie Tribe, now numbering 411, have found their land suddenly required for one of the world's largest hydroelectric power plants jointly under construction by Brazil and Paraguay.

These people have been dying out rapidly from disease and despair in conditions of semi-slavery because the tribe is actually scattered over thousands of square miles where they have practised an independent self-sufficient life — but have been subject to murderous attacks in retaliation for stealing occasional cattle or food crops — furthermore army officials have been buying them as slaves (houseboys) at a few pounds apiece up to only a year ago.

Paraguay is the only country in America where a pre-columbian language, Guarani has survived the arrival of Europeans — and the country prides itself as having achieved the most harmonious relationship between Europeans and indigenous peoples of any country in the Western hemisphere.

New apartheid ruling hits cats

South Africa (ZNS) — The latest racist ruling to be handed down in South Africa affects only cats and dogs.

The South African government has announced that the nation's SPCA will not be permitted to board animals belonging to non-whites in their kennels. People who are classified by the government as either "coloured" or "black" are now being informed by the Cape Town SPCA that their pets are not welcome.

The SPCA added that while mongrels owned by whites were still welcome, even pedigree dogs and cats owned by non-whites have been judged "unfit".

Stiff Competition

Milan Italy (IT) — Milan's 80 funeral companies are engaged in a cutthroat battle for body rights. Doctors and hospital porters are being swamped with bribes from morticians who want to win customers.

In one case, a porter led a woman whose husband had just died to the car of one undertaker when she had already contacted another. The result was a high speed car chase through the streets of the city.

The rich get richer

New York (LNS) — While the economic squeeze is on against most wage earners and small business people, the giant corporations enjoyed fantastic business profits during 1973.

Despite the dollar's sagging value, the falling stock market, and rampant inflation. Standard and Poor's Corporation Report for the first three months of 1973 discloses these sample figures:
  • The Chrysler Corporation is not being slowed down by gas shortages: profits are up over last year by 150.8%;
  • Honeywell, the company that makes many of the anti personnel bombs for the Indo-China war has increased profits by 43.6%;
  • Profits at EXXON, despite ( or perhaps because of) the fuel shortage are up 43.1%;
  • Crown Zellerbach's profits are up 197%;
  • Weyerhauser's profits jumped 168.1%;
  • Georgia-Pacific enjoyed a 89.7% profit increase.

Napalm burns

There used to be just first, second, and third-degree burns. But now, thanks to "napalm", both fourth and fifth-degree burns have been added to the list.

The United Nations has just completed a 52-page report on the uses and dangers of napalm, and has concluded that two more-severe categories of burns should be added to the medical vocabulary.

First, second and third-degree burns involve heat damage to the skin only. But now, napalm causes burns even more severe than that: a fourth-degree burn entails damage to the skin and muscle, and fifth-degree burns is a napalm wound penetrating both skin and muscle and affecting the bone.

The United States is one of the few nations in the world opposing a UN resolution which would outlaw the use of napalm in war.

Vonnegut burned in Dakota

Minneapolis (SWS) — About three dozen copies of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five were burned in Drake, North Dakota recently on orders of the local school board.

The board, claiming to be "investigating a complaint by a student", decided at a special meeting that the book was profane and should be destroyed. School superintendent Dale Fuhrman reported that he then "gave the books to the janitor and he threw them in the furnace".

The board also scheduled destruction for James Dickey's Deliverance, and an anthology of short stories by Hemingway, Faulkner and Steinbeck after deciding that they too contained "profane language".

The books had been assigned to high school students by Bruce Severy, an English teacher hired this year because of his "cosmopolitan outlook".

Not only were the members of the board unanimous in their decision to burn the books and not to re-hire Severy, they were also together in their refusal to read any of the books in question.

School boy wearing cap

And no masturbating either

Jakarta (Earth News) — The Indonesian Government has ordered all its government information officers to join the Boy Scouts.

By joining the Scouts, the Indonesian Minister for Information said, the information officers will be able to do their jobs better — presumably by making them more thrifty, brave, clean loyal and reverent.

The Minister added that he has signed an agreement with the Scouting Movement guaranteeing the membership of his staff.

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