The Digger No.24 November 1973

A.J.Weberman on the theft of JFK’s brain, and the fallen Yippies

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- the new people buy some land

by Colin James, page 5

MARY W HITEHOUSE & the anti-porn crusade bv Judith Rich, page 3

H ARDHATS vs H ARDNOSES at the Rocks

by Hall Greenland, page 6

ISRAEL & OIL & what’s at stake A dossier, page 8

BLANK PAGE FOR ISSUU VERSION ONLY

Page 1

Three freaks led to the slaughter

Custom s and nares conspire to im port dope

Great moments in Australian history (1) I

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by Mary Duggan and John Halpin

Australia’s biggest drug case ended on October 25 in Melbourne’s County Court. Bruce Watt, Richard Tregear and Julie Rhodes were convicted of conspiring to import marijuana into Australia. Not only was the trial the largest drug case in Australia’s history, but also the first time that a charge of conspiracy had been prosecuted in a matter relating to drugs. The trial lasted for nine days, and the jury of six women and six men took ten hours to reach the verdict.

Anthony Wiley who also faced the charge was acquitted. A charge of unlawful assembly (assembling for the purpose of importing marijuana) was dropped after objections by defense counsel.

It is important to note that the Crown was not attempting to prove that the defendants were in posses) sion of marijuana, or that the defen dants imported or attempted to im port any marijuana; the Crown on a conspiracy charge has only to prove that the defendants made an agree­ ment to import. The agreement is the crime.

The defendants in this case were manipulated into committing the offence by the Federal Bureau oi Narcotics. Australia’s biggest drug case was certainly Australia’s biggest frame-up. The behavior of the agents of the Federal Bureau, together with, the fact that 25 Customs officials have been convicted of selling drugs (plus two more arrested on Novembei 3) discredits the Customs Depart­ ment and the Federal Bureau oi Narcotics.

The story as told in court, went something like this: On February 14 Noel Bezzene and Tom Walsh (both currently serving two and a half year jail sentences in Indonesia) offered a licenced pilot, Ian Strachan, $15,000 to fly a light ’plane to Indonesia and back to Australia with a cargo of marijuana. Strachan attended several- meetings at a house in Ascot Vale to discuss the scheme.

On February 27 Strachan reported the matter to the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. The Federal Bureau directed him to continue with the scheme and not to arouse the defen­ dants’ suspicions. “The Narcotics Bureau told me what to do and what not to do, and I followed their instructions,” Strachan later: testified.

On March 1, according to Strachan’s testimony, it was arranged that Walsh and Julie Rhodes would take a commercial flight to Indonesia, arrange the purchase of the mari­ juana at Berastagi in Northern Su­ matra, and telegraph back to Mel­ bourne. Strachan and his co-pilot would fly in, pick up the dope, avoid Australian customs by flying in outside Darwin’s 50-mile radar limit, then fly back to be cleared by customs at Darwin. Strachan would then pick up the dope again, fly it to Pakenham in Melbourne, and contact Watt who would collect it.

On March 6 Strachan drove Watt, Bezzene, Walsh andRhodes to Pakenham airfield, where unknown to the defendants, narcotics agent Yeates took a series of photos of them with a telephoto lens. (Yeates has since been promoted to Chief Narcotics Agent and is in charge o f the Bureau’s South Australian o p era tio n s.)________ * * * Strachan admitted in court that, after March 1 when the arrange­ ments were finalised, “the bulk of the work” was done by him. Watt swore that he believed Strachan to be the ringleader: this seems a reasonable conclusion to have reached. “ The bulk of the work” done by Strachan and other Narcotics Agents included: ♦pointing out that it was not possible to fly into Indonesia from Timor without a permit; ♦working out which airfields would be used; ♦getting the services of a second pilot; ♦working out how to avoid Customs; ♦pointing out that there was a 50-

mile radar screen around the coast; ♦going to the Civil Air Services, DCA and Bib Stilwell for navi­ gational charts; ♦getting an entry permit for Indo­ nesia; ♦obtaining the Baron Beechcraft; ♦getting the flight information and flight permission; ♦Jjuying plastic containers for the hash oil; ♦lending his driving licence to Watt so he could drive an Avis van.

On March 10 the telegram ahrived from Indonesia, and on March 14 Strachan and the co-pilot Newman, and Bezzene left for Bali. In Bali a local policeperson upset the arrange­ ments between Strachan and chief narcotics agent Travers, who was working in collaboration with Indo­ nesian authorities, by busting Walsh and Bezzene. Strachan and Newman spent a few days, presumably at the Australian tax-payers’ expense, lounging beside the pool at the Bali Beach International Hotel, and then flew back to Australia..

In his evidence Strachan said the defendants had pooled about $7,000 for the operation. He alleged that some of the money was raised by the sale of drugs, and that Tregear, Watt and Wiley had put approxi­ mately $2,000 each into the scheme.

The cost of the Baron Beechcraft was $4,200, Strachan had originally said, but under cross-examination he admitted that it had actually cost $5,000. Who paid the extra $800 for the aircraft?

It is clear, as defense counsel Cummins said, that this crime was sponsored by the government agencies, partly financed by them, and in fact created by them. It was a costly and complicated way of framing and busting a couple of harmless freaks. * * * Tregear, 22, electrical mechanic

O pening Day, Sydney O pera H ouse photograph by Jon Rhodes of Williamstown, was sentenced to five years with a minimum period of three years before parole; Bruce Watt, plasterer, of Ascot Vale, got four years with a minimum of two and a half years; and Julie Rhodes, 19, receptionist of Ascot Vale, got two years in a Youth Training Centre.

Judge O’Shea, who prefers Glenfibick whisky, said in sentencing the defen­ dants, “The use of marijuana, by association, leads to the use of harder drugs. Cannabis is a deleterious sub­ stance leading to physical addiction and psychological dependence, and is a great social evil” .

Ponch Hawkes

Top — Strachan enters the court while drug squad agents shield him and themselves, on either side.

Lower — 1 to r: Bruce Watt, Tom Walsh and Noel Bates inspect a 'plane.

Pilot, chief-plotter and narc Ian Strachan is obscured.

TheR ocks; w ill they get the push?

by Hall Greenland After discovering that Botany Bay wouldn’t support a white ant to the acre, Phillip steered the First Fleet north to Sydney Harbour and rowed ashore at the Rocks.

In the nineteenth century it be­ came a waterfront area encrusted with warehouses and workingpeople’s shanties and humpies. It still abounds with doors which ring-a-ding when you push them open.

The black death hit at the turn of the century and the government grabbed the area. As landlords they were too good to be true. The local tenants — mostly wharfies and their relations — paid reasonable rents and tenure was passed on from one gene­ ration to the next. To this day when you talk to workers about the local residents of the Rocks wanting to preserve the area for low and middle income earners, their response is: “They’ve had it good for donkeys’ years; you know. Only ever paid pepper-corn rentals” .

In the late ’60s the Askin govern­ ment created the Sydney Cove Re­ development Authority, gave it the eastern half of the Rocks (which is right next door to the Central Business District), and charged it with selling off this area to private developers for the benefit of con­ solidated revenue.

What was on was the expansion of the Central Business District — that area which is, outside of working hours, the dead heart of Sydney.

SCRA is directed by White AngloSaxon Protestant men of impeccable character, matured by success in the worlds of business, public service, and the armed forces. It’s an outfit like QANTAS. Their clean, shining, imposing modern world— the Central Business District — lies immediately to the south of the Rocks and its

expansion into the rundown and slightly seedy Celtic Rocks is for them i. a matter of indisputable material and moral progress.

While their plans entail flattening almost the whole area and erection of great skyscrapers, they intend — not being philistines — to preserve certain historic features of “this cradle of the nation” .

Faced with wide-spread uneasiness and some strong opposition to their plans, what is the first thing SCRA

has done? Put a bulldozer through the area, or “restore” certain historic landmarks?

They are not raw.

Cadman's cottage, named after Governor Macquarie’s boatswain and the oldest standing structure in the country, has been re-roofed, duluxed on the outside and dollied up inside.

The solid and imposing stone bond stores in Argyle Street have been reclaimed and the inside turned Syd Shelton

BLs locked out in Sydney.

They want to work, but the cops and bosses say no.

Why? — see Page Ç.

into a bazaar o f small craft and fine wares’ shops reminiscent of those little shoppes at international airport terminals.

While in Playfair Street a row o f Victorian terraces has been saved from falling down, the original prole tenants moved on, and the renovated houses turned over to trendy mer­ chants for exquisite boutiques.

Such is SCRA’s idea o f “preser­ vation” . But it has apparently im­ pressed the Sydney masses and the tourists. According to SCRA the Rocks has already had a million visi­ tors this year, compared to the 130,000 a year before SCRA moved in.

There has been a “ green ban” on •the Rocks in Sydney for about 18 months now. A green ban is a decision by the executive of the Builders’ Laborers’ Federation that no union labor will work in an area.

A ban is usually bunged on in res-t ponse to requests from locals.

The strong opposition of locals to anti-social and anti-environment re-development plans has proved to be crucial.

In itself it can at times be enough.

Like at Galston, where Whitlam would have needed the army to put down that airport.

Or if not enough in itself, it can be enough to justify the ihtervention of the BLF and its allies.

Like at Kelly’s Bush in bourgeois Hunters Hill which A. V. Jennings wanted to resume for a model housing estate. There the local housewives and grandes dames were united to a woman, prepared to turn out in force to sabotage survey work and sit down in front of bull-dozers.

So the intervention of the BLF with a green ban was something like Galahad arriving.

November 10 — December 8

Page 2

THE DIGGER

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15 Avenue Rd, Glebe, 2037 No. 1: Warner's abortion epic; Gary Young exposed.

No. 2: Drug history of Australia; Niugini cannibals.

No. 3: Cocker interview ; Don Juan; Porny pics.

No. 4: Zim m er's Essay; F oo tb a ll's freak; . High School revolt.

No. 5: People's Park; FM radio; shared diseases.

No. 6: Helen Garner/school kids; Reefer Madness. tiS 5 No. 7: Poetry supp.; H istory of abortion.

No. 8: Bisexuality; Labor's v ic to ry ; Mt. Isa. No. 9: Prostitutes; conscripts & resisters.

No. 10: Marg W hitlam ; the gay beat; Sunshine grass label.

No. 11: Women in pubs; N im bin; Ringolevio.

No. 12: Com ix supp.; Angry Brigade; Sunbury.

No. 13: Rolling Stones; Drug "p roblem "?

No. 14: Contraceptive guide; Sydney's ju n kie murder.

No. 15: Nurses; Higher Consciousness; Great Moments o f Rock.

No. 16: A n ti-p sych ia try; Fred Robinson; Port P hillip sewer; "couples".

No. 17: Silver Screen; N im b in ; Zappa.

No. 18: Watergate; Ford; A LP ; Godfathers.

No. 19: Dalmas, med. students, women's strike.

No. 20: Omega, No. 96, Communes, V ictoria Street.

No. 21: The Fastest Rising Guru in the West; How Labor Bought Tasmania; : Body rhythm s; Suburbs seige.

No. 22: Gay Lib., The Crips, Memoirs o f a Sydney cop, Dylan M ystery LP. No. 23: V icto ria n Drug Squad search warrant racket; tw o ex-prisoners and th e ir w o rld ; Captain M atchbox; Travels o f Bazza McDope; Melbourne fo o tb a ll.

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Charles Bernard, a Frenchman, has just been jailed for the 50th time for not paying for restaurant meals. He is 47 years old, and has spent 17 years behind bars for this offence.

Red-handed British revolutionaries now have a millionaire, Oxford-educated, attractive heroine. Her name is Bridget Dugdale, and she was this week found guilty of stealing nearly a quarter-million dollars worth of paintings and silver to support British and Irish civil rights move ments. The valuable paintings and silver were stolen from Ms Dugdale’s family mansion.

Wandering Jew Simon Wiesenthal — the man who spent years running down Adolf Eichmann — has claimed that America’s official discoverer was actually a Jew in search of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. That Jew, says Wiesenthal, was Christopher Columbus.

Wiesenthal’s theory is put forth in a new book called Sails o f Hope, The Secret Mission o f Christopher Columbus. He notes that at least one-third of Columbus’ crew was Jewish, and that the voyage em­ barked from Spain the day following the expulsion of all Jews from that country, Wiesenthal says that Columbus’ background has never been firmly established, but he was a master cartographer, and cartography (map­ making) was a profession practised almost exclusively by Jews.

Other evidence in support of the Wiesenthal theory includes the fact that Hebrew lettering has been dis­ covered on Columbus’ manuscripts, and that the only translator aboard the ship was a Hebrew. That Hebrew translator is supposed to have been the first European to step on shore in America and address the astonished Indians with a cordial “Shalom”.

The Man’s best friend The US Customs Service is pretty jazzed about its dope-sniffing dogs.

The 67 canine narks last year found an incredible amount of drugs.

US Commissioner of Customs, Vernon Aciee, says that in fiscal 1973, the dogs found almost 60,000 pounds of marijuana, more than 3,000 pounds of hashish, more than 18 pounds of cocaine, 29 pounds of heroin, five pounds o f opium, and more than four million doses of other drugs. They found it at border crossings, in the mail, and in cargo shipments.

Customs officials estimate that “street price” of all those drugs to be almost $200 million.

The Customs Service is so happy about all this that they’re adding another 95 dogs and 65 dog handlers next year.

For those of you who want to learn more about the shaggy agents, the Customs Service is making avail­ able a 20 minute, 16 millimeter sound-on-color film called A Day [n the Life o f Chopper. It’s the engrossing story of a typical day in the life of one of America’s most trusted public servants, Chopper — the dope-sniffing dog.

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November 10 — December 8, 1973

Snuff You can get two free boxes of snuff (it makes you sneeze some­ thing awful) by simply asking for it via postcard to Dean Swift Ltd., Box 2009, San Francisco, CaL, 94126, USA. - N YNS.

Dylan Bob Dylan is set for a 23-city, 39-show concert tour of the USA. Dylan, who’s been in virtual retire­ ment from the concert stage for years, has concluded arrangements with promoter Bill Graham to under­ take the mammoth tour beginning January 3 in Chicago. Hitting 23 cities in all, the tour will wind up 39 concerts later on February 14 in Los Angeles. Dylan will be accom­ panied on the entire tour by the Band.

Priorities The South African black civil rights movement received a set-back in September, as well as 11 new martyrs, when government police opened fire on striking miners at the Western Deep Level mine in Carletonville.

During the fray, 11 miners were shot to death, and 27 others were wounded. The miners were striking for a wage increase. Asked why bullets were used against the miners, racist Prime Minister John Vorster said that “all other possible methods” had been used, including “persuasion, tear-gas grenades and clubs”.

But police Colonel L. M. Loots, who was responsible for the massacre, was considerably more blunt. When reporters asked Loots to justify the high loss of lives and small extent of property damage, Loots replied, “Sometimes property means more than lives. Our duty is to protect property and lives, not only lives” .

On the same day as the Carleton­ ville massacre, police attacked demon­ strating miners at a mine near Johan­ nesburg and hospitalised 25 miners.

Students at the University of Cape Town passed a resolution several days later calling on American businessperson Harry Oppenheimer — who is chancellor of the uni­ versity as well as head of the AngloAmerican Corporation — to take actions on behalf of the striking miners. The Anglo-American Cor­ poration controls many of South Africa’s mines, including the one where the 11 miners were shot.

oft-heard criticism that not enough research has been done on long­ term marijuana use. The report was prepared a year and a half ago by social and medical scientists from the Research Institute for Wo/man in New York and the psychiatric and medical schools at the University of Indonesia and Kingston. The report was presented to the National In­ stitute for Mental Health in March of 1972, but was never given any public attention.

In the course of the research, a group of 30 chronic marijuana smokers were studied against a group of 30 non-smokers. The smokers’ group had all been using marijuana frequently for from seven to 37 years, smoking seven to 24 joints a day. During a six-day period of abstinence the smokers were thoroughly tested for psychological, chromosonal, and neuropsychological damage. The researchers report that they found no evidence for any such damage beyond what could normally be predicted in the non-smoking public.

The report was finally given full coverage in a recent issue of the Medical Tribune ; a professional trade paper.

Maoharaj Ji A man who claims to be a psychic told an audience in San Jose, Cali­ fornia recently that he’s convinced that psychic powers could be used in the interests of politics — and maybe even help the President out of a few of his jams.

Michael Rossman, speaking at the 21st Century Fair, said that his own psychic feelers have indicated that “ Chairperson Mao, no less, has become a disciple of Sri Guru Maharaj Ji, aged 15” .

Eco~raiders

The infamous “Eco-Raiders” of Arizona were napped early last month by the Pima County Sheriff’s department and charged with vanda­ lism — a misdemeanor in Arizona.

The eco-raiders, who had become folk-heroes to many Arizona eco­ logists, turned out to be four students from the University of Arizona in Tucson.

The secret group started their eco-raids almost two and a half One of the key questions in the years ago by tearing down billboards debate over the clinical effects of advertising new home developments marijuana usage appears to have been in the desert. This year they stepped answered. A report commissioned up their activities by trashing model by the Department of Health, Edu­ homes in new developments, tearing cation and Welfare has concluded out wiring, smashing windows and that long-term chronic marijuana cutting water pipes.

After each raid, the group left use does not produce any physio­ logical or psychblogical damage. a note saying that their actions That statement — coming from were done in the interests of the an official government report — environment. The developers, they would appear to lay to rest the said, were destroying the ecological

Killer weed

balance of the desert by mowing down cactus, creating water runs, and generally ignoring the balance of nature.

The four eco-raiders could still be charged with felonies if the case is turhed over to the grand jury.

Fine Rather than disclose a wiretap and surveillance evidence gathered against the indicted members of the Weatherunderground, the government prosecutors in Detroit dropped their case against “Mark Rudd et al”. In New York, defense lawyer Gerry Lefcourt called it a “great victory” , announced that he, along with other defense lawyers, were going to file suit against the US government for trespass of Fourth Amendment rights to privacy. Lefcourt alleged that the government was afraid to reveal the extent of its surveillance activities because it would show that Nixon’s 1970 secret surveillance programme, while vetoed by J. Edgar Hoover, had actually been put into effect.

Since federal statute provides an award of $100 for each instance of trespass (one day of illegal wiret apping equals $100, for example) the underground Weatherpeople could become quite wealthy if their lawsuit succeeds. — NYNS.

Black& blue The South African government is reportedly supporting a rampage of floggings in the territory of South West Africa.

An Anglican bishop in South West Africa reports that during the last few weeks at least 100 — and possibly as many as 400 — native women and men have been flogged in the Ovambo region.' The bishop — Richard Wood — said in a newspaper interview that both women and men were stripped naked from the waist down and publicly whipped.

The “crimes” committed were such offenses as referring to South West Africa as Namibia — the name used by native separatists, as well as the United Nations, for the area — and criticising the s South African governor of the territory.

Among those flogged were two leaders of Ovambo’s opposition political party. One of the men was taken to the hospital immediately after his whipping, and the other was forced into exile.

South Africa was given admini­ strative powers over South West Africa by the old League of Nations.

The United Nations — which took over responsibility for the League territorial mandates — has repeatedly demanded that South Africa with­ draw from the area and grant inde­ pendence.

N ixon bags JFK’s brain

by A. J. Weberman “What's the truth about JFK's assassination?” The people of Ameri­ ca have been asking this question for ten years and still haven’t re­ ceived an adequate answer. Many have grown impatient waiting for their elected representatives to force the power structure to objectively investigate itself and have decided to personally petition the government to re-open the case. They’ll be gathering in front of the National Archives in Washington DC on No­ vember 23 at 1 pm to demand that the Archives be open to re­ searchers of all persuasions who want to see if the evidence in the Archives backs up the conclusions o f the Warren Commission. There will also be a demand that all evidence being held by the Kennedy family and by the Bethesda Naval Hospital be returned to the Archives immediately.

The rally in front of the Archives will be addressed by the following people: Mae Brussell, whose extensive re­ search has uncovered links between Watergate and Dallas, and whose West Coast radio programme and widely-reprinted articles have en­ lightened many: Mae is the ultimate assassinologist.

Don Freed, author of Executive Action (movie and book), co-author of The Glass House Tapes in which ex-Red Squad agent Louis Tackwood links McCord and Hunt to a plan for a Nixon coup d’etat. He is the greatest investigative-radical-writer in America.

Carl Oglesby, ex-president of SDS,

Vanguard recording star, and radical theorist responsible for the Yankees/ Cowboys double-agent theory of Watergate that has received wide acceptance in radical circles.

Mark Lane, ex-New York City Councilperson, Margeurite Oswald’s lawyer at Warren Commission hear­ ings, author of Rush to Judgement (movie and book) about the Warren Commission, and currently attorney for Indians arrested at Wounded Knee.

Sherman Skolnick, independent researcher whose work led to the conviction of Otto Kerner, former governor of Illinois. Skolnick also discovered links between Nixon and the death of Dorothy Hunt and others in a suspicious ’plane crash, and will also talk about Albert Bolden, black Secret Service agent who has been imprisoned for trying to tell the truth about the JFK assassination.

Theodore Charach, co-author of the movie Second Gun, will talk about links between the RFK killing and the JFK killing.

The main theme of the event will be Where is Kennedy's brain? — it seems that when Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, one of the country’s foremost pathologists, and also a critic of the Warren Commission, was finally allowed to examine the autopsy evidence (the Warren Commission has finally allowed experts to examine the material — everyone else must wait 100 years because of “National Security” , and we all know what that means!) the doctor discovered that one of the X-rays revealed a bullet fragment lodged

in JFK’s brain. This confirmed what many people have seen in the Zapruder film — Kennedy getting his head blown off from a bullet fired in front of him, which proves that there were several people involved in the murder. (The Zapruder film will be projected on the walls of the Archives during the rally by Assas­ sination Information Bureau of Bos­ ton, and there will also be showings later of Second Gun and Executive Action.) But when the good doctor tried to find JFK’s brain, supposedly preserved in formaldehyde, he found it missing from the Archives!!!!!

When I heard the brain was missing I immediately thought of Nixon who has a long record for tampering with evidence (many people thought he produced his own “Woodstock typewriter” in the Hiss case and recently prominent mem­ bers of Congress have publicly ex­ pressed their fears that Nixon might alter the White House tapes), and figured he had it in his den in between his stuffed moose and fish.

Actually, the brain is probably in Bethesda Naval Hospital where it’s his by fiat, since Nixon is the commander in chief of the armed forces.

No matter, we want it returned to the Archives and plan to make our feelings known after which we’ll march to Congress where we will demand that Gerald Ford’s confir­ mation be held up until we know if the Warren Commission, which he was a leading member of, was a cover-up.

— New York News Service.

A South African government official who was present when the flogging sentences were handed down commented afterwards that he was only an observer and could not intercede. “ I am just a government official doing my job,” he said.

Hold-alls The Rocky Mountain Casket Com­ pany of Colorado is now offering a great bargain to everyone who plans on someday dying. For a mere $125 they’ll ship you a wooded casket for your eternal resting place, along with some suggestions on how to use it in the meantime. The Company points out that the coffin will serve' you faithfully as a gun cabinet, a rack for pool cues, a book cabinet, a coffee table, or anything else you can think of. For an extra ten bucks, they’ll even include four shelves that fit neatly inside, trans­ forming the casket into a wine rack.

Dopey A researcher at the University of Florida says that people who smoke a joint before going to bed are depriving themselves of restful sleep. Professor Ismet Karacan, who directs the university’s sleep labora­ tory, conducted extensive experi­ ments 'on the relationship between marijuana and sleep, and concluded that grass may make going to bed more fun, but not more restful.

Karacan experimented with two separate groups o f subjects. One group smoked marijuana before going to sleep and the other group didn’t.

During their sleep, Karacan monitored the subjects with various scientific devices, such as an EEG, and found that the grass smokers were getting less Stage 4 sleep than the nonsmokers. Stage 4 is considered the most restful stage of sleep.

Karacan says that long-term mari­ juana smoking appears to have no effects on a person’s ability to get restful sleep, as long as you don’t smoke just before going to bed.

(Credit: Amorphia, San Francisco.)

Sexualism pricks male art world One of the newest art movements is being forged entirely by women, and it is making big waves in the art world. “ Sexualism”, as the movement has been labeled (by Maryse Holder in O ff Our Backs, the feminist paper) is generally an attempt by women to explore the forms, shapes, colors, composition, dimensions and meanings of sex by using sexual imagery in painting, sculpture and other art forms.

A rare collective appearance of the major exponents of Sexualism occurred at a recent forum of New York’s New School of Social Re­ search, where a series of seminars are currently being held on “Porno­ graphy Uncovered, Eroticism Ex­ posed” . The seminars regularly draw large crowds and this particular session on “Woman and Erotic Art” was no exception. Rapt attention was paid to the women who, with examples o f their art, gathered on the stage.

The group of artists are organised under the name of the “ Fight Cen­ sorship Group” . One of their number, Anita Steckel, made an opening statement in which she explained that one of the group’s objectives was to break the taboo of the male nude in art, pointing out that, while most museums and galleries exhibit works of art based on every aspect of female nudity, few show (or accept) art that fully and frankly explores male nudity. “ If the erotic penis is not ‘wholesome’ enough to go into museums,” Steckel stated, “it shouldn’t be ‘wholesome’ enough to go into women!”

The erect penis, as an objective form and as an emotional image, is one o f the prime subjects of Sexualist art, Some examples shown were Joan Gluckman’s humorous

giant stuffed vinyl “Cock” , a large, grotesque latex sculpture of male genitalia titled “Hanging Sculpture”

by Louise Bourgeois, Judith Bern­ stein’s series of charcoal-on-paper drawings of enormous threatening hairy screws, and Eunice Golden’s brooding, sensual paintings of male torsos.

The Sexualists however are interested in more than just male nudity. It is human sexuality in all of its aspects that their art ex­ plores. Anne Sharp’s collage series, “ Film Star Portrait” is concerned with the myth and reality of Marilyn Monroe, Martha . Edelheit’s works, titled “Paintings of Buttocks” are just that, and Joan Semmel’s dramatic and luminously sensual paintings de­ pict couples copulating.

Few o f the works shown used feminism as an explicit theme. Most of the artists seemed in agreement that their feminism was inherent in their work. Anita Steckel’s works however clearly evinced a feminist theme, being mostly collage/paintings of giant women hovering over the Manhattan skyline, aggressive and sexy Mona Lisas, and the Statue of Liberty holding the sisterhood symbol aloft. Juanita McNeely showed tortured, anguished paintings that used birth, abortion, and death to “express women’s hidden feelings” .

All of the artists in the “ Fight Censorship Group” are professionals whose works have been shown in galleries around the world; As a group they hope to encourage other women artists and to fight against discrimination in the art field. As “Sexualists” their work will quite likely take its place alongside of the other important movements in modern art history — or herstory.

— New York News Service.

w ould YOU buy a n U 1 from th is m an

(please?)

This is a smiling photograph of our man in Hawthorn, Ross Nicholson — longarm watch salesman, turned music afficionado.

Buy your Mickey Mouse time-piece and LP's from 'Rossy Rocksoff' at 710 Gletiferrie Road.

O ther key linkm en in the ever-stretching vin yl chain o f record co llector music salons are: Paul " The Barber" Barrile at Davis Avenue, South Yarra, and Jim Fraser at Professor Longhair's, 366 Lygon Street, Carlton, all in livery to the Honorable Greg Young, Pied Piper to the pop scene, yet running 'cheek by jo w l' w ith the serious minded musician:

THE RECORD COLLECTOR A Fantastic Collection o f the Latest Albums.

November 10 — December 8, 1973

Page 3

THE DIGGER From the people who brought you Right to Life:

M ary’s crusade tc enforce self-restraint opposite the Town Hall Fm con.fronted with plastic-encased books — “ Lust and Lash” , “Stiff — You’ve Never Had It So Good”. Will I fall into Fred Nile’s Pollution Pit? Around the corner an Aboriginal bible basher is yelling through the streets about the “wages of sin” .

Last month was Festival of Light Month. Tens of thousands of people who don’t want their normality shifted by exposure to hu­ manists and libertarians bought an Australian tour by England’s Mary Whitehouse. The Festival’s emblem hung over the stages of town halls throughout the land.

by Judith Rich

i

The Festival of Light came to Australia last month. All over the country thousands o f people gath­ ered ranks in a “ demonstration for purity, love and family life” . / Packed by various Christian churches, and enlisting organisations such as Lions, Rotary and the RSL, the Festival kicked off in Queens­ land, NSW, SA, Victoria and Can­ berra to crusade for higher spiritual values and moral standards.

The Festival of Light is a move­ ment concerned about “moral pollution” . Its targets are films, books, periodicals, television and public performances. Its blacklist of sins includes pre-marttal sex, pro­ miscuity, homosexuality, abortion, sex educationalists and the human­ ists.

Masthead o f the Festival of Light was Mary Whitehouse. On tour from England, she is a 62-year-old forpier schoolperson, whose dogged efforts over the last 10 years in her own country have earned her the titles “Britain’s most active Watchdog \ “the conscience o f the BBC”, “the lighthouse” , and “ a beacon shining, a persistent beam o f light into dark and murky places” .

Her 1,400 strong National (UK) Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association, which she formed in 1964, keeps a constant watch on television and made her such a familiar nuisance to former BBC director-general Sir Hugh Greene, that he bought a painting by Lawrence Isherwood showing Whitehouse in full frontal nude with five breasts, to light the days of his retirement. In 1971 Whitehouse organised with Malcolm Muggeridge a Festival of Light rally.

The event pulled 35,000 people to Trafalgar Square and had 90,000 participants all over Britain pro­ claiming their Christian beliefs and deploring immorality. Recently the organised a petition with over a million signatures to Prime Minister Heath, calling for radical changes in Britain’s obscenity laws.

Realising her charismatic potential and with similar aims for a Festival of Light in mind for Australia, the Very Rev. Lance Shilton of Adelaide finalised plans for her visit earlier this year. He spoke to Whitehouse while he was on a world study tour o f pornography. Dean Shilton (“ Freedom is Discipline”) who is about to join the Anglican Church in Sydney, first emerged on the smut front with his Community Standards Organisation, which got Oh Calcutta! banned in Adelaide.

Following his lead in South Aust­ ralia - which boasts the strongest following and 300 new members weekly — FOL Committees have sprung up over the last year in major cities, soliciting minimal sub­ scriptions o f $10 per church and $2 per person. These fees and do­ nations have subsidised the staging o f the FOL in different states and the cost o f Whitehouse’s pilgrimage.

At the Sydney rally alone, where 6,500 people packed the Town Hall, St. Andrew’s Cathedral and the Ly­ ceum Theatre, followers gave $2,000 in cash and more in promises.

The FOL represents a substantial pressure group and is pledged to action. Through a programme of meetings, research, dissemination of propaganda, media publicity, mo­ bilisation of youth and pressure on political leaders, they aim to “ clean­ up” society. The whole barnstorming shindig will culminate in an orgasmic day of nation-wide marches and Public Demonstrations, possibly with Malcolm Muggeridge, along the lines of the Trafalgar Square deal, early next April. And that won’t be the end o f it. * * * The Sydney Festival of Light headquarters are |the offices of an evangelist, philanthropic organisation called Campaigners for Christ. There I found “one of the leading lights” of the FOL, its secretary Alex Gil­ christ. Gilchrist was secretary for both the Billy Graham crusades here and in the last 25 years you might have tuned in on him reading the Gospel Message of the Day ©n morn­ ing radio. He delivered his rap to me in a pulpit sleeper drone and it was so boring that all that remains to report is that 1,500 churches in New South Wales have been sent membership brochures and at $10 a pop that’s sòme holy offering. “ Light dispels darkness,” he said greyly, “and we want to enlighten people. We want, as it were, to light the flame of concern.”

Down at the Methodist Mission’s Wesley Chapel I made my way

through the Senior Citizens’ Esperanto class and the queue for theatre party tickets to Zeffirelli’s St. Francis of Assisi film and met one of the youngest members of the local FOL committee, Rev. Fred Nile. Fred, a man of square-jawed decency, who’s in charge of Wesley Centre’s Youth activities, was saying goodbye to a group of young people from the Jesus commune he supervises at East Sydney.

As co-ordinator of the FOL’s Study Group into pornography, he and his young helpers have been scouring newsagents’ collecting porn press literature such as Ribald, Flame, Screw and Stallion.

“The same as you have laws governing health requirements to stop poisoning a person when they go into a cafeteria, in the same way we feel that the community should be protected from those who would

Whitehouse spends her days per­ forming for journalists and cameras, always hungry for a new kind of freak show. She is a formidable pro in the stomping, arm-waving re­ vivalist tradition. She drowns them with her waterfall of wowserisms and fights her way out of corners with an armory of puritan contra­ dictions. The Whitehouse wit pours out quotable gems of unintentional humor and crashing dogma. She clings to some concept of normality and peppers her raves with tenuous evidence to back up her view that permissiveness is bringing about the Fall of Western Civilisation. She feeds the media machine she wants to curb.

Most journalists who face her in interview are amazed. When she locked in combat with one of TDT's

Nick Crame

exploit it and poison it morally,” he said. He’s already done his bit by getting the NSW Chief Secretary to pull off Oh Calcutta! at Its first Sydney screening some time ago.

Others on FOL’s porn group aré lawyers, a group headed by a Bishop who are looking into films and have secured a print of Deep Throat from America for profound study, some young Christians who are examining university publications like Tharunka, and rector’s wife, Freída Brown, who’s diligently collecting disgusting material that falls into the hands of children.

They plan to make recommendations to the government about outlawing the flood of obscenity that Fred believes changes a person’s person­ ality and creates a sick society.

“Senator Murphy seems to think that the Australian people don’t want censorhsip, we believe they do want it.”

FOL is planning one of the largest petitions ever collected in Australia on “this whole question of moral pollution” . The inquiry into this “tide of filth” is starting off with certain basic assumptions. They claim it’s been proved beyond s shadow of a doubt that erotically stimulating material is totally res­ ponsible for crimes of sex and violence. Much of their evidence for this comes from Flinders Uni* versity clinical psychologist, Dr. John Court, one of the prime movers of the nation-wide Festival, whose book Stand Up and Be Counted has made as little impact on “sexual research” as you’d expect.

Drawing a pencil line with a curved dip in the middle, Fred ex­ plained his theory of what’s happen­ ing in the world: “You have a certain level o f society that’s dropping down into a sort of Pollution Pit and every­ body says you’ve got to get down there and struggle up the other side.

Now apparently America’s struggling up the other side, Great Britain is struggling up the other side.

“We’re saying in Australia, now let’s not go down the Pit, it’s not necessary. Let’s just cut straight across tc an enlightened community.”

Notes on the Sydney Festival of Light Rally Sydney Town Hall, Sunday Oc­ tober 7. An overflow audience brave an assortment of cOunter-demonstrators to hear the Light according to Whitehouse.

Under the Festival of Light em­ blem — a hand with a heaven-ward pointing finger inside a flame — com mittee members, clergypeople and the Young World Singers (miniskirted thighs pressed tightly to­ gether) are assembled on stage be­ hind banks of orchid pots.

Whitehouse tells of “the rising

A photographic record o f the Festival of Light rally, Adelaide, attended by about 12,000 people. Top — the leaders, l to r: the rev. Lance Shilton, dean-elect o f Sydney, Mary Whitehouse from the UK; dr. John Court, psychologist and the Festival's resident authority; Peter Daniels, who boasts it was his idea to stage the Festival of Light in Australia.

Gentre — FOL symbol is a pointing hand, against a flame. Below — “Let's demonstrate for what we believe in |

tide of concern about moral pollution”. Throwing in shock evi­ dence about one or two ten year olds who’ve been aborted in Britain and presenting flimsy factual evidence to show what a corrupting affect sexually explicit material has on people’s behavior, she calls for cen­ sorship.

Printed extracts from the Aust­ ralian Broadcasting Control Board’s standards booklet are handed out, as are lists of media representatives’ names, so that Festival of Lighters can get stuck into their watchdog mission. The clean-cut Young World Singers in lemon dresses and mus­ tard trousers, get young and old clapping and swinging revivalist-style to their rock music, climaxing in the theme song o f the Festival, “Light up the Fire” , while money is collected in paper cups.

In the excitement on stage afterWards I head for Freida Brown, in frothy green floral, to get to the bottom of this child bestiality thing Brown, through the nation-wide Wo­ men’s Christian Convention, has been

askihg mothers to send her offensive material that reaches children, in­ cluding that which advocates ob­ scenities such as trial marriage, abortion, homosexuality, and ques­ tioning of parental and teacher authority. When I rang her at St. Barnabas’ rectory she’d refused to answer my questions because I wrote for Gordon Barton’s papers and “The Australia Party'is against cen­ sorship”.

Now she reaches into her white vanity case and produces a copy of Ribald, turning to a heavily marked article with a dog-fucking section, she begins to read aloud until the first “cock” sends her eyelashes into nervous fluttering.

This has apparently been slipped into some mother’s letterbox. A 14 year old boy who’d sent off for a “body building course” has also been mailed “pornographic literature” and she’s collected a lot of “soft porn” .

“I find it difficult to take on this job because pornography is a man’s field. Pornography is written hy men for men. We are not moved

by pornography. I am not aroused by the male nude and I’ve yet to meet a woman who is. Dr. John Court, could you come here and tell her from your clinical knowledge that extent to which a woman is aroused by seeing a male nude?

Is it really in tune with the normal female?”

A surprised Dr. Court says no, it isn’t normal.

“But there’s some indication that women are becoming a little bit more aroused and responsive than used to be the case,” he says.

“Whether this is a good or a bad thing is very inuch open to question.

It may be an unhealthy arousal, it may be a healthy one, we don’t know yet. More often the typical reaction of normal women is that they express some distaste when they’re presented with this kind of material.”

I head for home, with thoughts of tearing my nude male calendar off the wall before it arouses ab­ normal response in me. But at the newsstand on the Woolie’s corner

craftiest TV reporters in Brisbane, his colleagues admitted “she ate him alive”.

Perhaps fortunately her enormous Australian television coverage was limited by an exclusive contract the FOL people in Adelaide signed with Channel 9 in SA, forbidding her to appear on any other programme but their own Special for longer than 15 minutes. That deal put $2,000 in the SA FOL coffers and had Robert Moore on Monday Con­ ference timing her verbal diarrhoea with a stop watch “for her own good” . Imagine what Harry M. Miller could have done for her! He better than anyone knows what a huge financial plus sign the Cross can be. Mary Whitehouse Superstar.

Jesus!

Her Sydney press conference, scheduled for the Menzies Hotel, was cancelled three times in a day, as Whitehouse battled to reach us from Brisbane in a chartered light aircraft to beat the strike. I filled in time gazing in Menzies Arcade bookshop window at books like “Suspenders and Sexy Nickers” , “The Submissives — Women the Sex Slaves of Men”, and “Ladies of Vice” .

I was joined by a passing schoolchild who spent long minutes casting his eyes professionally over the awk­ wardly positioned naked couples and leather-trussed female bodies on dis­ play.

Hurry Mary Whitehouse.

A few days later in a city Travelodge hotel room, I took my turn for an interview, after a reporter from a 2SM religious programme.

Whitehouse is surprisingly fresh and in vital form after a gruelling day of interviews and a harrowing tele­ vision encounter with “Them” — liberals, longhairs, homosexuals, les­ bians and a porn press publisher — on Monday Conference.

Arranging her crisply dressed figure and white sandalled feet in front of the 2SM man, she launched into her stuff on “freedom” and the purveyors of moral pollution.

To “Them” freedom was license, to her * lot controls Were needed for freedom. No, no, she didn’t like the word “censorship” . She wanted “understanding, an awareness of what the general viewer thinks” .

Whitehouse is a semantic juggler who believes what’s good for her is good for everyone. She’s fought to protect us from such corrupting influences as Chuck Berry’s hit “I Want You to Play With My Ding A Ling” (“ It can only encourage child molesters”), Alice Cooper’s hit “School’s Out” (the lyrics encourage anarchy in schools); blasphemy, fourletter words, nudity and sex education on the BBC; Andy Warhol and films like Last Tango in Paris (which she hasn’t seen) and A Clockwork Orange (which made her weep when she saw it and which she claims incited Bremer to shoot George Wallace).

She conducts an interview like, the school teacher that she is, in­ structing a classroom full of naughty children.

What turned Mary Whitehouse on?

She and her dog-breeder husband Ernest spent hours in bed together reading the Bible. “The most erotic thing you can see is a man’s hand move out to take a woman’s,” she said.

The only thing that stopped me from dropping off to sleep was the futile fantasy that she might in­ advertently drop a “ fuck” or at least a “shit” into the conversation and surprise*, us all. But no, here was this animated caricature of re­ actionary attitudes, raging on and on and the only thing to do was hope she’d go back to Britain soon.

“The thing, which your own Richard Neville himself has made clear, and our friends across the West Coast, Jerry Rubin and these people . . . they say quite specifically that the use of sex and violence and drugs, obscenities, blasphemy, are essential weapons in the destruction of society as we know it. I’ve yet anywhere to see any kind of blue­ print for the alternative society.

It’s one thing to change and evolve.

I’m all for that, but Fm dead against the destruction of a society which has been learning and growing for hundreds of years. I think it’s non­ sense really, quite frankly, to talk about destroying all this unless your aim is actually destruction. I don’t see this alternative society of value and culture and quality and therefore one is driven to ask what is the motivation of these people that want to destroy society? Unless they’ve got a motivation, they’re behaving like irresponsible children, really.”

Later on, Freedom: “ If you’re going to be a mature person, maturity does mean that you’re pre­ pared to accept limits upon what you would term your freedom in order for the greater freedom of the people . . . I think it’s a fallacy and a myth that you can have freedom without controls. I see licence as the reverse of freedom.

This terrible obsession with sex ás though it were the beginning and the end of life,” Sex education: “We quite spe­ cifically didn’t tell girls about contra­ ceptives at school. Because in Bri­ tain anyway we still have this obli­ gation to give sex education on the basis of chastity before marriage and fidelity in marriage. “ It seems to me the best contra­ ceptive is that you don’t have sexual intercourse before you’re married.”

Pre-marital sex: “ I’ll tell you something and I don’t believe kids change; basically you know we’re all the same, one generation after another. The thing I found was this.

That these girls I taught, they had high ideals. They wanted when they got married to have a feeling that for the first time they were giving themselves in an act of love to somebody that they love — and they wanted to keep that precious gift".

Homosexuality: “When you come to the business o f homosexual prac­ tices — I’m not making judgements on people or criticising individuals — but the simple biological fact is that this is an anti-creative activity.

And if you have a society where this increasingly normalises, men with men, women with women, in this you have the seeds of a society which ceases to recreate and ceases to be. It’s a mutation. Once you begin to accept that male to go with male, female with female, is normal, you actually begin to destroy the concept of normality” .

Women: “Very very fundamentally and as part of the whole thing biologically, there is the link of sex with children and I think the care of children and the deep need to provide a home for children can­ not be separated from the sex act.

It is so deeply part of our nature” .

Change: “ I think change is coming.

It is now our turn. What with the avant garde in the ’60s — our friend Richard and the rest — they’re the new Establishment and the young­ sters who are growing up now are taking a look at them and they don’t care very much for what they see” .

The interview over, I established that Ms Mary Whitehouse had never met one of her neighbors, “Geezer” Butler, bass guitarist of the Black Sabbath group, who lived just over the Worcestershire meadows from her home.

She went to her room to recover strength for her visits to Tam worth, Adelaide, Melbourne and New Zea­ land. Downstairs in the foyer the reporter from the Catholic Weekly had taken the news of his cancelled next interview philosophically. “Well, up Mrs. Whitehouse!” That said it all. * * #

Page 4

THE DIGGER

November 10 — December 8, 1973

Ponch Hawkes

Good buzzes weren't enough to make me stay

1

The end of a collective “The formation o f a collective begins when people not only have the same politics but agree on the method o f struggle. ” — The Anti-Mass.

Months ago when the Rathdowne Street collective started in Melbourne, several of its members urged me to read The Anti-Mass (methods of organisa­ tion for collectives) as a guide to their hopes. Reading it again now may give us some clues about what happened to that collective. Since Digger no. 20 when we ran an account o f some of its members’ feelings about the idea of collective living and child-rearing, some people have rung us to ask how they can contact the collective. They can’t. It folded a few months back, and its members aren’t agreed on why. Twelve or so people ranging from bruised to stubbornly optimistic emerged from the two massive houses where the collective began its short life. The houses are gone now; only a few wry wall signs remain.

Most of the people who formed this collective were on the dole or some kind o f pension — survival level income. A few had nine-to-five jobs. The rent for the two houses, which were to be pulled down after six months, amounted to $100 a week.

The steady core of the collective qpmprised Terry, Janet, Rose, Roger, Ene, Kath, Raani, Tully, Ross and Sue. A second Roger had a room but didn’t spend much time there. Brian and Lola moved in and out quite quickly.

Raani, 4, was Rose’s son. Tully, 2lA, was Roger’s daughter. Another boy, Max, went back to Queensland soon after the first Digger article was published.

Peter went to jail a week after moving into the collective. He’s still there.

Most of the collective disliked the Digger article. Too superficial, too opti­ mistic, too idealistic, they say. Maybe they forget the extraordinary vibe the houses had in its early days. After our first visit we went away feeling excited and impressed. But though we left several messages about the article we were writing, asking people to be there at certain times if they wanted to talk to us, the original interviews were left up to Terry, Rose, Roger, Sue and Ene. People couldn’t be bothered, or were asleep, or out, or thought Digger was a bourgeois rip-off male-dominated paper. Thus necessarily we got an unbalanced story.

When the Rathdowne Street people were evicted, they scattered in various directions and in various combinations. The ones Digger managed to contact were pretty much the same ones who took part in the first interviews. We suggested that each person write a short blast on their experience in the collective and what they’d learnt. Some weren’t interested, preferring to talk; others agreed to and didn’t; one did. Raani was the only one of the children we talked to. Almost all the adults insisted we talk to him.

The things we wanted to know were: why people moved into the collective in the first place, what sort of a time they had there, what they thought they’d gained or learned there, why they thought it folded, whether they wanted to try again.

by Helen Garner Terry : The trouble was — there was too much space, too many people.

But these would have been secondary — so much space and so many people would h^tve been a benefit if we had known, or had a clear idea of what we were doing when we shifted in. A lot of people were moving out of a bad situation rather than into a collective one.

Janet: I moved in out o f desperation.

I’d been living in a beautiful house in Elwood. We wanted to make a col­ lective of five people there. Peter wanted to live collectively, and had good ideas about it. At Elwood there was plenty of space, a yard, animals.

The Rathdowne Street collective was bad for animals . . . there was no yard, and most of the people didn’t seem to like animals. I always think there must be something wrong with you if you don’t like animals. I didn’t know anyone there except* Terry and Peter, before I shifted in.

And one week after we moved in, Peter went to jail.

I was taken advantage of by

several of the men. Guys thought that now Peter was gone I was lonely for a man. “I care, I love you, I know what you’re going through!” I was sexually freaked out.

I started work and had nothing much to do with the collective; I was completely cut off from it during the day. I used to come home tired, I shotted, I got mad. I even used to snap at Sue — ‘Why don’t you snap out of it? Why don’t you do some­ thing?’ I screamed at the kids, I belted Kyril once for torturing the cats. He didn’t know what he was doing.

And it was the noise. I lived next to the living room. People didn’t have much consideration for people who had to get up early to work.

They used to play records, till really late at night.

Terry: People weren’t; conscious of other people’s needs. They were all caught up in their own problems.

They were selfish and egotistical.

There was also a hierarchical setup.

Rose said she was put in the posi­ tion of a leader. I felt that she took

that. She was really conscious that it was she and Roger who initiated the collective.

Once I said to her, “Sometimes I’m frightened of you.” Rose was distressed by this. That was her reaction. But she didn’t ask why. I even found myself doing things to please Rose. For example — I had some strong criticisms of Ross, who couldn’t take criticisms. I was talking to Rose about th6m, and I agreed to talk 'io him because Rose wanted me to.

With different people I was put into different roles. Sue for example was dependent on me. She moped, she was lonely. She waited for other people to ask her to take part in w h atever was happening. She couldn’t initiate them herself.

Janet: This thing sprang up between Ene and me. She felt alone, and I was the only one she could talk to. I wanted to help her through. But Kath and Ross accused me of initiat­ ing a mother-daughter relationship with Ene. Ene had been in bed for days and no-one gave a fuck. They left it up to me, then cast me in a mother-daughter role.

Terry: Eventually there was an opportunity to talk these things out publicly. We had three meetings. At one of them, Ene asked how people felt about her. From nine people she got three answers. People didn’t lis­ ten. I talked about shitwork, kids, animals — all the things people have to do that indicate concern for others. Rose thought I was equating looking after children with shitwork.

The money situation was bad. Me and Ross more or less financed the house. We were six weeks behind in rent when we left. That’s $600 down. Before people shifted in, the collective situation was idealised.

There were to be no private rooms. I can’t live without a space where I can be alone.

There was also anti-intellectualism in the collective. At two of the meetings I drew implications from specific events I analysed. But people have the idea that if you don’t feel it, it’s not valid. There’s a thing against using your intellect.

Janet: Terry, Sue and I were the last to leave. There was no gas on, but there was still power. It was really good then because we had a chance to know each other. We wanted to live together. Ene would have moved in here with us, but she wanted not to put her problems on us. So she went to live on her own.

Terry: I wrote less poetry there than in any other place I’ve lived. People would go out and Sue would be left

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with the kids a bit because she didn’t object. This happened to me too. I got pissed off after a while.

The shit work was not shared. I had a daily job'for a week. And three times that week I cleaned the house after work because it was so filthy.

Maybe it’s a matter of different standards? People saw it but they didn’t want to notice it.

When I got out — I was so relieved. Boy was I relieved!

I did a lot of printing to raise bread for the house. I encouraged the others to help but they didn’t re­ spond.

Sue: Roger and I did.

Terry: On one job. So did Rose and Kath — on one job. The basic prob­ lem was that people idealised the situation. Then they got into it and found it wasn’t matching up to their ideals. Roger said, “It didn’t fulfil my needs, so I didn’t want to par­ ticipate.” People were interested in what they could get out, rather than what they could put in. That article you ran in Digger was just a lot of subjective raving.

Digger: But don’t forget that inter­ view was done right at the very beginning of the collective’s life.

There was a very optimistic feeling in the house then.

Terry: If I ever shift into a collective again, I want to have quite a long working out, long talks, before we start. Some of us had lived in col­ lectives before. But somehow I didn’t put what I’d learnt from that into practice. Rose regarded me as nega­ tive about experiences I’d had in collective living at RAM (Radical Action Movement). But one thing I learnt — it’s necessary to be totally critical. Critical scrutiny is a matter of seeing the good and seeing the bad and figuring out how to change it. There must be some good in me! If I can only find it.

Janet: I feel quite the opposite! that there’s so much in me, so much love and so much care. If I could only get it all out! But in the collective there wasn’t much closeness.

Terry: No trust, was there?

Janet: I was freaking When Peter went to jail. I felt no-one wanted to just be with me, like he did, just sit in the same room! But I’m content now to live here, knowing these people.

Terry: Where people went when they left Rathdowne Street is a good indication of the way they felt about it. Kath went back to kinder, Ene went and lived on her own, Rose and Roger and Raani recreated a family, and three of us are here in this house.

Kath was angry ; she felt no-one made much attempt to keep it all going except her.

Sue: I used to sit in the house all day hoping everyone would come home for tea, but they wouldn’t.

Janet: It was the space. I’d come home and no-one would know I was home.

Sue: I did! I was sitting there!

Janet: But not everyone. I’d be in Ene’s room and I’d go down to the kitchen for something and stop to talk to someone on the way; by the time I got back to Ene, two hours would have gone and I’d forgotten what I was up to.

Terry: There were expectations on everyone to be pushed suddenly into relationships that normally take years to develop . . . or months, any­ way.

Janet: There was this thing about discrimination against couples. Me and Peter, Lola and Brian. This was really shithouse, because we’d been together a year and wanted to devel­ op relationships with other people, but also to sleep in the same bed because we loved each other and wanted it that way.

Terry: There was some sexual criss­ crossing. And there was some sleep­ ing together without fucking. Aliena­ ted fucking is easy to get into, and it’s really bad.

Sue: I came to the collective from a very bad time. I didn’t know anyone because I’d just come from Brisbane.

I spent all my time in the house.

When people went out I didn’t want to be with a big group. And about the kids and babysitting . . . I wanted to be with them. It was better than the radio.

Terry : After the first week only four people did the cleaning up.

Sue: Rose did the kids’ room, and washing and picking up after the kids. Most of the men didn’t do much.

Janet: Roger started to cook and clean up, but then he lost interest.

Terry: Ross did nothing the whole time he was there. I even did his washing for him. I shouldn’t have done that. People expected it to fall

into place without effort. When this didn’t happen, they gave up.

Sue: I don’t think it was like that. I didn’t expect it all to happen. Some did; Everybody did put effort in.

There’s so much you need, and you put it all in and it’s not enough. You don’t get back what you expect.

Janet: A bit of a 24-hour job, isn’t it!

Terry: For a collective to work is going to take more struggles and effort than we think we’re capable of. There was no real attempt made.

We couldn’t even last six months.

We’d have had to put our whole mind and body into making it work.

Sue: I did that. There was nothing happening outside the house for me, so I had to — I was on the dole.

Sue: Ross came home once when I was there and said, “Oh, there’s nobody here.” I was just a ghost.

“I’ll have to go out to eat,” he said.

People wanted to find out each other’s needs, but they didn’t do anything about them.

Terry: Lip service was paid to the idea of a collective. We expected we could be instantly collectivised.

Rose: Guilt. For two months after the collective broke up I felt guilt. 1 had nightmares. I thought a lot about my responsibilities to people I had gathered together.

Digger: You? Rose: There was a certain role I had in the house by virtue of my having got it together. This was really bad.

If I ever live collectively again, it’ll have to be purely by people talking about themselves. The group must exist before the house. I felt I was the organiser of the collective. I had to behave in a certain way because people expected me to.

I was guilty about my relationship, with Roger. There arose a pro­ hibition against any indication that two people in the collective might relate more closely to each other than to the others. I felt I spent toe much time on Roger, that I ought to be more with other people. One night I came home and was con­ fronted by four people who felt I organised too much, that people needed my OK before they’d do anything. Gradually I became retij cent about saying what I felt. I didn’t know if my feelings were valid, or correct. I wanted the collective to be a strong, stable base, all of us with similar political ideas and concepts leading to action. And in personal relationships, that ideas should be put into practice.

I became very aware of my re­ action to people, as objects different from me. This got worse. What have I got in common with them, I used to think? I don’t even particularly like them.

Digger: Still?

Rose: No, but I haven’t seen many of them since we left. Ross used to talk all the time about how fantastic it was to live so close to people. It took me a while to say I wasn’t feeling close to him.

We used to say, “It’s such a good house, so many good ideas” — but ideas require collective effort to get off the ground. And if there’s no collective feeling then there’s no hope of getting it off the ground.

There came to be a tacit agreement

to keep the shit down, to keep a strong image outward.

My relationship with Roger — I had no energy left for the collective, for rallying people. The shitwork was never done — well, not never. If there’d been 20 people the house would have been alive and buzzing.

As it was, it was too big for our numbers.

As for the money and food money: we only ever paid two weeks’ rent, and in the food situation there was plenty of casual gobbling, and hardly any organised cooking.

We didn’t all sit down to eat together more than four or five times in the two months we were there. Roger and Terry cooked a lot at first, but it dwindled away.

While I was there I lacked an idea of myself. I was too much aware of other people’s feelings about me, more than I was aware of my own feelings for them. I was all the time projecting, fantasising. And what happened to the kids I found horrify­ ing.

I assumed that everyone would become as aware of the kids as I was.

I thought Raani would we well cared for, that other people would be able to be patient with him, listen to him, the things a mother has always been supposed to do. But while we were there he developed this wilful deaf­ ness. He got superdependent on me. I didn’t want to get back into being a mother, but there was no-one else around who was prepared to develop

the sensitivity, the patience, the in­ tuition that mothers have about their kids.

The kids in the house remained their parents’ children. It’s not that I don’t want to be with him. Just that I don’t want to be with him all the time. He descended into whingeing.

Terry complained because one night when he was minding the kids he ended up with all three of them in his b ed. Well, sure, that’s a drag . . . but that’s the way it is with kids.

I remember saying to Raani, “Look, there are other people in the house. I don’t have to be with you all the timé, go and play with them, they love you and I like you too.”

But he knew it wasn’t true because they never came after him, came looking for him.

I felt extreme guilt about that. I was afraid of Raani because he was there to show me what a shit I was — a product of my bad points. I don’t ever want to live again with a lo t of people who haven’t had kids. Be­ cause you have to keep asking your­ self, Why, just because someone likes me, should they also like my kid?

That’s OK, but if they don’t it’s pretty tough going.

I saw Raani as a tyrant but I know I’ve produced this situation because I’m the person who introduced him to the world, who socialised him.

People’s attitude to women must come from this relationship with their mothers, who are patient and self-effacing. No wonder they tyran­ nise over us.

In the collective we all quickly •became each other’s mums and dads.

To a point this was cool. There was always someone freaking out, hudd­ ling in their room. People were so scattered. You could have come home and found a dead body in one Qf those rooms. I started to think of the house as tomb-like. There was no energy to make it liveable, homelike.

It seemed that when everyone talked about relating to other people, it was all in terms of being down, freaking out. We never got to the real core — why"?

Simple things jiike not making too much noise, leaving enough food for the people who worked — co­ operation was nil, no-one thought of anyone else’s needs. It got to the point where you’d have to hide food if you wanted to have breakfast.

People often spent their money on themselves instead of putting it in the kitty. They felt, “There’ll be none left for me” because how people just took.

It was very unorganised. In a house that size, organisation doesn’t just happen. Kath suggested some kind of roster for the dishes, and at the time I said no, but looking back I think she was right.

The six months limit played a part in people’s lack of enthusiasm and staying ability. I’d moved three months before I went into Rath­ downe Street. I didn’t think I could take another move. I reckoned I could stick this one out for six months. I’d get down and decide to leave, then I’d talk about it to someone, get a good buzz, and stay.

But finally good buzzes weren’t enough to make me stay.

Once I’d decided to leave I felt

rosters, rules, organisation. I wanted to be responsible for cleaning one section of the house. “It’s all just a matter of consciousness” , people said. They were so anti-organisation.

I wanted to feel some structure so I was doing something. I hardly did any shitwork. I felt overpowered by it. So the shitwork fell on Janet, Rose and Terry, who were more willing to throw themselves into it.

After the eviction notice came, there was no further discussion. People were disappointed and wanted to get out as soon as possible.

Such a high proportion of them were under 21, and a couple of them were in' a bad state. We were an unstable group because of age. There was no stability in anyone, no-one» could feel happy in themselves so they couldn’t give anything out.

They expected a lot from the collect­ ive rather than from themselves. How permanent is what you’re looking for when you’re 18? You don’t have, enough motivation.

Yeah, I’d do it again, but with older people, and people who . . . not necessarily people I knew already, but a group who knew something about each other. The fewer expect­ ations you have, the better it works.

The answers were there, but noone gave it time, a chance.

And about Raani: because it was a collective, Rose felt the others would help her with her burden. But she rejected’ Raani. She went out when he needed her. Parents shouldn’t give up their parental role. Kids in a collective shouldn’t lose their parents — they should get more. A broader range. I saw a positive change in Tully. When she first came she was clinging all the time, but later she was talking, laughing, playing. . There was a long way to go . . . it was just a beginning.

Raani: I didn’t like it. There was too much noise from the buildings, and everyone bossed me round. Rose bossed me, Rog bossed me, they dll bossed me.

Digger: How about the big kids’ room? Did you lik*e that?

Raani: Yes. We used to stay awake all night, till the morning came. ***

Roger: I’d never call it a collective. It couldn’t be. Everyone had different ideas about collectives. We could have come closer to the idea with more talking. Too many people was the main thing wrong, I suppose. I thought that before we moved in: that it wasn’t a collective because of that. I reckon the maximum you could have would be five or six biggies and two or three littlies.

Otherwise _there’s not time to get close to people by doing things to­ gether.

A meeting of eleven or twelve people? I don’t want to know about it. It was cool when we talked about practicalities, but when it came to breaking down barriers I couldn’t handle that number of people — specially a mixed group. > With the relationship between grownups and kids, not much happened. We weren’t there long. It takes time. We didn’t work out any real alternative. People did take the kids out. And if you have no kids, Ponch Hawkes even that’s a breakdown of your usual way of acting. I didn’t want to know about Raani and Max. They hassled the arse off each other. Fuck­ ed if I know why. It started back at the Free Store. I used to lay heavies on them because of what they were doing to each other.

Raani never gave Rose any space.

I can understand why. He’s slowly breaking down that locked-in thing, that physical wanting to be with her.

The Anti-Mass points out the poli­ tical implications o f numbers. I knew all that numbers stuff. I guess that’s why it was never a collective. Or is it the way you live that counts? and maybe numbers have nothing to do more capable. It lifted a weight off with it? You can see collective living me. But I thought, well, if we can’t as a political act. That may be live together, nobody can! I don’t idealism (laughs). I guess it is. Got to think that now. have some ideals. *** The best time I had there was the Kath: I came in because I was first week, getting it together, fixing crapped off with living at the kinder things. But that petered out. I got a on my own, generally sick of the way job and I was at the Albion by 4.30 I was living. They were negative every day. It’s not a bad pub, you reasons. I thought Rose was someone know, when the workers are there.

I’d like to live with. I didn’t have any I wonder why people saw me and interest in any of the others at the Rose as a couple. Maybe because we start. spent time together, going out to­ But for me the collective was gether. What’s a couple? A couple is really good. I didn’t want to move. It two. Peter and Janet shared a room, was so much better than here. so we found it hard not to think of People expected results too quick­ them as a couple. So did Brian and ly. Relationships take time to Lola. Maybe it was a matter of being develop,-with both kids and adults. I able to get on with Brian and Peter was prepared to give it a go. The six and seeing Janet and Lola as parts of months’ limit was bad. It made for a Brian and Peter because they’re lack of commitment. When things women. went wrong everyone would talk Fucked if I know what happened about leaving. There was an unstable, about the money. When I got a job, I nasty feeling. If the dishes weren’t didn’t want to put $100 into that washed, they were moving. If they place. I wasn’t interested. I didn’t were having a good time, they were know' how the rent got piad. I staying. would’ve rather eaten out, had a But I saw good things happening counter tea at the pub, than cook for very slowly, specially with the kids. that number of people.

I think I handled the shitwork There were big changes in Tully and Raani. The others wouldn’t admit OK, given the length of time we were that anything good was happening. I there. I’ve got no complaints on that Side of it? How do you handle that think it was just a matter of time.

People were only just starting to side of it? think about kids. Terry was the only The main thing is agreeing on one who really changed in this way. politics — on your whole world The house was so big it hardly picture. *«* seemed worth starting to clean it.

There was an unspoken rule against

November 10 — December 8, 1973

THE DIGGER

Page 5

G arbologist threatens violence against A lbion w ing o f Yippie — H offm an,R u bin, A lper t & Sanders Review, a CIA-funded paper that tells you how bad things are but not what to do about them. Stew, an ex-wrestler who served as pighonkoid Yippie-bully in Miami, has a bad heart condition and all the

by A. J. Weberman

by Abbie! Small eventually got a crank calls he’s been getting at his The Zippie action-faction of the year for his part in the Miami Mad­ home at all hours haven’t helped Youth International Party — which ness. Tom Forcade, who used the the poor bouby too much. is now The Youth International bread from one of his own books Ed Sanders, after cleaning up on Party (if you write to Abbie or to finance the Zips, was denounced his Manson book, is now cleaning up Jerry POB you get a printed reply not only as a cop, but as the Devil the remains of his Land Rover — stating that Yippie no longer exists) incarnate. I was also called a cop — which was totally demolished by are right on cultural revolutionaries a paid agent of the Committee to Zippie terrorists the same night he who have been maligned by aging, Re-elect The President. Tom is called me a cop on the radio here. corrupt and liberal old-guard Yippies facing 20 years for his part in the Thinking his life was in danger, — the assholes of the ‘Albion Wing protests and I had my rib fractured Sanders has left NYC. Jerry’s car o f Yippie’ — Abbie ‘the Quaalude by police who stormed into the was also demolished and his window addict’ Hoffman, Jerry ‘the snivelling Zippie-house after the Riot that fol­ was trashed so many times that coward’Rubin, Stew ‘the bully-with - lowed Nixswine’s acceptance speech. some think he left for the coast a-heart-condition’ Alpert and Ed While the Yippies were busy because of this constant harrassment.

‘Manson is worse than Nixon’ Sanders.

So when I read in It that I was putting us down, they were popping Take Abbie Hoffman — he ran Quaaludes left and right — Abbie a CIA agent ’cause I belonged to a out of revolutionary energy around group that refused to make any deals 1971. But, still wanting to maintain was actually addicted for a while — with the cops and who got blamed and they kissed the government’s ass his superstar status, he started to and beaten and imprisoned for the rip-off his brothers for their energy. — going alone with the Communist riot that followed Adolf Nixswine’s But the people he did it to wrote Party (PCP) in working out deals acceptance speech and who went with the police regarding the demos long articles and demanded movement after the longhaired collaborators, trials — and Hoffman’s bad karma (choreographing protest is how we I am driven to violence! I t says I was put it). became public knowledge. contracted by Jack Anderson’s office After the Demo Con, half of — never happened! Just some gossip Abbie retired to the Virgin Islands — but you can’t keep a bad man Abbie’s charges for Chicago and May­ It correspondent Miles heard in a down (that’s why the world is the day were dropped, and after the decadent bar called Max’s Kansas way it is today), and he came out of Rep Con the rest were dismissed. City where all the rich, artsey-fartsey seclusion to cash in on the Presi­ A t the government's request! One decadent hippies and non-struggle charge was assaulting a cop — the gay people hang out. The Zips are on dential Conventions of 1972.

Reviving Yippie, which hadn’t gov generally doesn’t drop something the streets instead — selling Yipster dpne any actions for years and had like this ’cause it’s no good for the Times and rapping with the people. become nothing more than a catch­ cops’ ‘morale’.

Speaking of Yipster Times, Miles Why’d the Justice Department word to sell books, Abbie went says it costs $3 to subscribe. Bullshit. down to Miami Beach, set up a do this? Maybe it was in return for phony office and took in the above- Abbie’s endorsement of McGovern, This underground rag specialising in mentioned people as partners in order which must have set him back action against the dictatorship here to get $33,000 advance on a paper­ 100,000 votes since most Amerikans is read by 20,000 people and a good back giving ‘the inside story’ about were unaware Abbie had sold out deal of the KGB, I mean FBI, who the demonstrators at the conventions. and still connected him with riot in harrass the young kids on our sub Top left —Helene Horvath the artist and husband George; farm life. Top right — Fred Robinson and Adrian Rawlins at Nimbin list by calling or visiting and saying: He also invited people like Allen Chicago.

—a karmic highlight: Lower left —Nimbin Learning Exchange. Lower right — more farm life.

Eventually Abbie was barred from ‘You sure you want to subscribe Katzman (the shithead who was Flamingo Park by the Zippies — to Yipster Times?' Anyway, thanks kicked out o f NYC underground when he tried to come in I personally to J & Y who pay postage, Yipster after ripping-off everyone who wrote challenged him to fight — which Times is free — POB 384 Staten for the now-defunct East Village Island Station, NYC 10302, US of A. Other by selling their work to a pig got nation-wide coverage since the The current issue is about the media was attracted to him like publisher and not giving them a eight smoke-ins that went on across shit attracts flies . . . cent) to come and live at the Albion Abbie is now living at 80 Park Amerika during National Marijuana H otel with black maids, a swimming Avenue, in a $600 a month luxury Day. Here in the big apple we had pool and air-conditioning (while everyone else sweated it out in pad and is working out a revised a march up 5th Avenue with a edition of Steal This Book . . . he 10 ft. by 10 ft. pack of Bamboo Flamingo Park). plans to get richer by selling infor­ Rolling Papers, a 30 ft. joint arid During the conventions the mation which should be given out many banners. We drifted up, to Yippies held no demos of their own for free. I feet sorry for Abbie Central Park where we did up 3,000 and the only thing they did was to and the rest be paid at a time he will me there. rent an elephant to march in a and think he should be put out of joints and were entertained by T. Pass Around The Plate:

by Colin James Lust, Dave Peel and Elephant’s Applications for share:i can be Nimbin is unique as a community; then specify. Somehow it’s decided his misery . . . parade and rent some floodlights sent to Box 2598 GPO Svdile v 2001.

Saturday, October 20, the night that that time will be six weeks. If it will get land because the com­ Enclose vour cheque lo r $S>00. Make The rest of the Yippies: Rubin is Memory. Then we marched to ex­ for a Hollywood Spectacular effect it o u t to Tuntable Fa Ils Farm of the big land meeting in Nimbin, the rest of the money is not paid in munity has a large capacity to absorb Association.

— meanwhile the people were eating in California studying yoga and attorney general John Mitchell’s pad Further information can be easily and the first thing you notice is that in an Impeach Nixon Open Martha’s obtained by writing to th e Nimbin bummers and turn them to its own that time, then the deposit is returned white bread in Flamingo Park and managing a health foods store.

Co-Op., c/o Nimbin Post Office, there are more cars in town.

The NSW. 2484. use. And it will get land through the and the deal called off. the Zippies were putting the last He sees a shrink regularly and has Mouth March. Actually we believe Nimbin is unique as a com m unity: Nimbin community seems to start it will get land because the com ­ There is a persistent feeling at the co-op., because the co-op. will be of their personal savings into finan­ short hair. Rubin got me to apologise that the only honorable way out m unity has a large capacity to absorb automatically producing things to bummers and turn them to its own meeting that we should buy what made to work for it, not as suggested to Dylan for promising to get J & Y of Watergate for the President is cing the ten or so demos we held! use. And it will get land through the make money. The best way is food, we can afford right now, and that’s at the meeting that the community co-op., because the co-op. will be to bail out my partner Dana Beal — suicide. Impeachment with honor Most o f the 33 grand went into made to work for it. not as suggested because there are all those people to at the meeting that the com m unity clashing with a strong spiritual work for the co-op.

Abbie, Jerry and Ed’s pockets — who was facing a lot of time back we call it. work for the co-op. feed, and so food stands appear in The next day the FBI forced feeling for the dream property, Tun­ they said half was going to the then. Though this was bullshit I town. table Falls (which — by the way — Youth International Party Inc. and was able to contact J & Y — and their way into my home and ques­ By the afternoon the rumor is has risen in value by $20,000 since half to themselves. But they owned they’ve been a great help to us tioned everyone they found about ever since. I’m sorry if I let down some fugitive who was once men­ that the co-op. has $40,000 and now the contract was first drawn up).»

YIP Inc. only needs another $30,000 to buy Several attempts are made to Not only did they steal from the any of my friends with the apology, tioned in Yipster Times. On other Tuntable. The extra needed to make speak against or rather suggest alter­ occasions they’ve threatened to plant but it really didn’t mean that much people’s energy, but they denounced up the $104,000 can come from natives to Tuntable, but the quickly us as cops and agents provocateurs — it’s all over now for Baby Bob explosives on Zips leaders if we Alice Cooper: You’re AIL Crazier Than I Am - 1973 concert re­ sub-leasing the land. By night the solidifying structure of the meeting don’t stop organising demos . . . anyway.

He took my advice and quit ’cause we stood up to the pigs. cording.

Elected, 18, Killer, School’s Out, etc. (double album). feeling is very high, and if you they’ve already done this to Forcade. is against this.

The Chair takes a After Pat Small threw a pie at the while he was still slightly ahead. your eyes a little, it almost position of power and cuts short _______ $ 8 .00.

The KGB, I mean the FBI (why do I squint Stew Alpert who the government city councillor who voted against David Bowie: The All-American Bowie live album recorded looks like the festival days. always confuse the two?) have a what sounds like it could have been giving us a decent campsite, Pat mistakenly accused of the Capitol March 1973. Five Years, Alladin Sane, Panic in Detroit, etc.

The meeting kicks , o ff with a a very good rave from Tom Zubrinski device called Telecommand which Bombing now has a soft office job ‘the pieperson’ was publicly de­ report from the seven temporary by literally laughing him down. An­ ............$5.00. turns any ’phone into a live mike by nounced as an agent provocateur and is working fro the University Deep Purple: Sonic Zoom - live 1972 Chicago concert. Black co-ordinators (who uses the word other speaker who queries buying sending current through it to jump Night, Paint it Black, Wiring that Neck; excellent album. director these days?) of the co-op. Tuntable is interrupted by the chair­ the disconnect switch. People have Terry McGhee, who has worked his person and asked whather the ............$5:00. called my number and, even though suntan off to get the co-op. legally speaker is a paid co-op. member.

Jethro Tull: Forum ’73 — live in Los Angeles July 20, 1973. the ’phone was on the hook, they Two sides of PassionPlay, the Bomb in the Dressing Room and heard conversations that were going registered told us how the legal work Objections on irrelevant propertystarted on August 8 and that up to hang-ups having nothing to do with other songs (double album). $.800. down in the room . . . 1984 is already last week the only stopper was the the community, are greeted with a Led Zeppelin: 3, Days After — Stairway to Heaven, Bon-Y-Yur, here for some of us . . . need for approval by the local condescending thank you and com­ Whole Lotta Love, etc.; recorded live 3.6.73 (double album).

Anyway, about 20 people were (Terania) Shire Council. On Tuesday plete dismissal. .......... $ 8. 00 . busted in rural Yip outposts across 15 at the local council meeting, The Kinks: I t ’s Kriminal - Little Queenie, Be Bob-a-Ma, Victoria,.

Amerika for NMD — some police approval was given by an obviously * * Lola, You Really Got Me Now, Louie Louie (live album). forces (namely those in Iowa City, friendly* council. One councillor . . ■. . . $5.00.

Iowa and Lafayette, Indiana) would spoke on the matter and in essence Solicitor Viv Abrahams treated Pink Floyd: F loyd’s o f London — 1972 studio recording, 3 songs: rather start a riot than let people said: “ If Lismore can have its college us, early m the meeting, to a rundown Echoes (whole side), Fat Old Sun, One of these Days. . .$5.00. get high. Okay if that’s their scene .,..

The Rolling Stones: Live on Mick’s Birthday — Mercy Mercy, Not all English rads over here are of advanced education, why can’t we on the co-op.’s rules (“They’re all in have our college of advanced culture?” this yellow book here”). She pushed Time is on My Side, Under my Thumb (double album). like It's Miles. Unofficial Ambassador, That meant the co-op. could be home all the legal obligations co-op. ______ ____ $ 8 . 00 . the Honorable J. Lennon, has been legally registered, and so it was on members have — so much work a The Rolling Stones: Stone Relics — Sad Day, Child of the Moon, putting English Freekdom’s best foot October 19. From that date the week for the co-op. and so on — Looking Tired, How Many Times, High Heel Sneakers etc. forward stateside, and anyone who (studio). $5.00. thinks that just ’cause you got a lot j community at Nimbin attained legal which not many people had pre­ The Who: Jaguar — Early Morning Cold Taxi, I Don’t Even of bread you’re a pig better think i status and became a registered com- viously considered important. Some community people thought all this Know Myself, The Seeker, WaspMan (studio, many unreleased twice! Speaking of Yoko, one of j munity.

Next the figures — what all of us legal talk was bullshit. “Nothing to songs; double album). $8;00. your critics writes — ‘Yoko doesn’t j do with Utopia, that I can see,” in the hall were waiting for. $25,692 Johnny Winter: Hot — Mississippi Blues, It’s My Own Fault, clarify her position in regard to Mean Town Blues etc. (live album). $8.00. lesbianism’ — in Approximately In­ Uj bank accounts; $20,000 in pro­ remarked one freak.

The co-op. was formed to lubri­ mises; $3,500 extra pledged at the The Beatles: Have You Heard the Word? — I-Me-Mine, Besame finite Universe she writes — ‘I was cate the awkwardness of dealing with Much, I Forgot to Remember etc. (early live and recent studio looking for some head in the closet’. meeting. A local, Tom, looked like recordings). ; $5.00.

So resistance to fascism in Amerika putting in $12,000, and $20,000 was the straight world, but already fric­ promised from the parents of some The Beatles: Live a t the Paris Olympia —Twist and Shout, Can’t tion has become evident between it still lives among the longhairs and will Buy Me Love, Rock ’n’ Roll Music, Long Tall Sally (1964 concert). outlive me and Forcade, who Miles girl in Sydney, provided they get a and the Nimbin community which ............$5.00. tags as leaders — which is like asking nice subdivision to retire to (sub­ naturally considers itself closer than The Allman Brothers: Statesboro Blues — Don’t Keep Me new financial members of the co-op. the pigs to put us away. Saying that, division is something forbidden by Wondering, Might Be Your Man, Blue Skies (live, 17.9:71). me and Tom lead YIP is like saying the co-op., if I read my co-op. to the land all the fuss is about. _______ $5.00. brochure right). That made $42,682 Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse Community people .are amused or or maybe $62,682 or maybe . ; . bewildered at the statement that it Grateful Dead: Acoustic Dead —Don’t Ease Me In, Friend of the control Disneyland.

Devil, Dire Wolf, Cumberland Blues etc. (live). ............ $5.00.

And resistance to the mass-mur­ who knows, even now? And therg costs $200 to become a member of Neil Young: A Bit More - The War is Over, Southern Man derer dictators will putlive Miles — are 127 paid members of the co-op. their community.

A voice from the floor said we Alabama, Don’t BeDenied (livealbum recorded January 1973). especially if I can locate him! * * * ............$.500.

So smoke pot get high the pigs should decide whether it might not be better to buy land we can afford We offer a very fast mail order service for these and other albums. who rule are gonna die and all that AN ENSEMBLE OF THE COOLEST JAZZ SOUNDS OF THE 70’ s Postage is 35 cents per record, and our 10 page catalogue is free.

Back at the meeting, Tuntable and if any of you are in NYC this now, and have no more talk of 20TH CENTURY RECORDS L 34920 (COD orders must be accompanied by a $1.00 deposit.) summer drop by 6 Bleecker for a rap mortgages or subdivisions. This carries the day. At least there’s a ushered in the Tuntable nondebate.

Wholesale price lists are available to record dealers. time set, and there’s energy directed and some tea and come to the °ooV o Uo oU °°o 'o Wf o o “ « % o* f o o ’ J ' o o J o o J oo ' J ' Ö T 1 Sam McKay (who owns the land) towards Tuntable now, because it Fourth Annual July 4 Independence Write to: Toad Hall’s Rare Records O o o o ® o o % o o ; o o I o o I o o I o o j OO ; « Day Smoke-In in Washington DC has to be seen the next day and was the first real decision that the PO Box 35 on° n ° „° 0Ö° O ° o 0 ° o ° ° o ° ° 0 ° ° o ° ° o ° A ° o ® ° r > f > ° n r > 0 O O ° 0 0 _ OO - OO O O where we’ll march on Congress and told of the co-op.’s intentions about meeting made. People say they will Southland Centre Vic. 3192. its option on his land. The deal he try to get the extra money, so hell, demand that they Impeach Nixswine.

“We like to sell records people like to listen to. ” drew up is that 10% of the price is why not give it a go? It’s a terrific Peace people AJ. 1,000 acres. There’s a lot to attract paid on the signing of the contract,

The story so far: A. J. Weberman, sometime Dylanologist/ Garbologist has been shot down by one “Miles”, US correspondent of the UK underground tabloid It. Weberman replies with a memo on the Amerikan dada resistance establishment . . .

RARE RECORDS

AHMAD JAMAL 73

John Lindblad

N im bin C o o p decides to go for the Big One-Tuntable Falls

Hardhats vs. hardnoses over fate of those Rocks

Official model of future renovated Rocks district in Sydney as seen from the Central Business District.

Continued from page 1 About 200 people live in the 53 acre eastern half of the Rocks.

Most of them have lived there all their lives.

When SCRA and its plans came on the scene, the locals wanted to know where they were going to live. Under pressure from the local residents’ group and unions, SCRA came up with a promise to provide all working class locals with alternative accommodation at rentals equivalent to what they have now and in the Rocks if they wanted it.

It is the last part of the promise which locals can’t bring themselves to believe. Says Nita McCrae, secre­ tary of the Rocks Residents’ G roup: “ There’s no provision for Housing Commission type housing in SCRA’s plans. And I can’t see private de­ velopers putting us up at low rentals” .

If she could see firm evidence that SCRA was putting aside say three acres for Housing Commission type housing, then she says “ I would stop protesting tomorrow” .

Nevertheless SCRA claims half of the local residents have signed docu­ ments agreeing to re-housing arrange­ ments. “ Most people signed these agreements,” sniffs Nita McCrae, “so that SCRA agents would stop bad­ gering them ” .

Nita McCrae is fond of quoting what SCRA intend to do to the local police station as a paradigm case of their approach to the preser­ vation of the historic features of the area. The police station has this fan­ tastic sandstone Palladian Water Gate front. A touch of Renaissance Flo­ rence. Originally SCRA had the cop shop down for demolition, but after a public outcry decided to preserve the facade and put a whopping great skyscraper up behind it. * * * On Monday October 15 the bull­ dozer and demolition gang arrive and set to knocking down a row of old unused garages in Playfair Street. The BLF’s green ban on the Rocks is being defied by an outfit called Silvertons who, given the green light by SCRA, are intent on putting up a five storey block of home units.

During the week, the developers’ own union, the Master Builders’ Association, indicates their support.

The action rapidly escalates!. For the first two days the demoiishers are badgered by the local Madame Defarges.

On Wednesday and Thursday, hundreds of builders’ laborers walk off city jobs in protest at the breaking of the green ban by scab labor.

On Friday a thousand BLs invade Playfair Street and stop the demo­ lition work until the following Tues­ day.

At dawn on Wednesday hundreds occupy the demolition site and are arrested.

On Thursday 2,000 BLs and mem­ bers of local resident action groups in the inner city area demo and there are 21 arrests.

On Friday a week-long protest strike is called by the BLF leadership

— though in the suburbs work had and does continue throughout the battle.

The garages are coming down but the BLF are intent on hurting the developers for this attack on the green bans. The BLF leaders and resident action group activists are convinced that the Playfair Street demolition is the thin end of the wedge. A successful defiance of one green ban would put all the others at risk.

BLF militants and RAG activists alike sense they were being set-up.

A state election is impending and the Askin government is running for re-election on a law ’n’ order platform. How convenient a bit of industrial and street turmoil for them.

Askin provides massive police pro­ tection for the demoiishers — even if somewhat tardily. His Minister for Labor announces: “ What was done on the Rocks was straight out industrial anarchy and it is time that it was stopped and it will be stopped” .

The tie-up is too neat and Federal Housing Minister Johnson voices a widely held suspicion when he charges the developers and Askin with collusion.

So the NSW Branch of the BLF is taking on a tall order: developers and the state.

Are they up to it? * * * The boom in the building in­ dustry in the inner city led to a boom in unionism.

Skyscrapers meant concentrations of BLs who were now easier to organise into the BLF and a mob of BLs on a job were more confident and cocky than they would have been if scattered about in twos and threes. The boss too was rolling in money. This combination meant gains in wages and conditions came thick and fast in the late ’60s.

There was plenty of employment about too, which meant that the militant few hundred in the city who dominated the 10,000 member BLF could bring on green bans on new developments w ithout any BL having to forego a job and pay.

The majority acquiesced because it did not materially affect any BL. The manager of Hooker Projects put it cynically, “ When they’re look­ ing for work for their members, I bet their cries will fade away” .

In the week before the battle of the Rocks began, BLs working on the first of two g ian t. blocks of home units in suburban Manly had rejected a proposal by BLF leaders for a green ban on the job as requested by local residents. It would have put them out of a job.

The Master Builders’ Association are awake to this situation and how they might use it to their advantage.

They have already done so.

At the beginning of this year the BLF leaders decided on a cam­ paign for “ permanency” and “ union hall hire” . The first would mean that the BLs would no longer be casual workers but have a guaranteed income all year round. The second would mean that the boss could not pick and choose the best speci-

mens among those who presented themselves for jobs, but would have to take new labor from the BLF’s roster of unemployed BLs. On the more militant city jobs BLs began to implement the second demand forcing the boss to go to the union for any new labor on pain of industrial action if he did not. They also abrogated the right to veto his dismissals.

In May, the MBA made their retaliation play. First by banning

Stick with me kid and y o u ’ll do a lrig h t. . . candy and cigarettes.

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torum!), while type 2 in a woman giving birth can dangerously infect any area of the infant’s body.

Recognised as early as 1736 by Jean Astruc as a venereally-spread disease, herpes type 2 (genital) was largely ignored until Andre Nahmias in 1967 proved it to be a separate virus from its well-known cousin, herpes type 1, which causes “ cold sores” or “ fever blisters” of the mouth, recognised 100 AD. About 80% of the US population show antibodies in their blood (factors resulting from having a specific disease that help you fight recurrences of that disease) to one or both herpes viruses, according to Davis’ textbook, Microbiology, 1970. Any­ where from 10 to 50% have anti­ bodies to genital herpes, depending on which study you accept. From hereon the term herpes will only be used to mean type 2, genital herpes.

The incidence of the first or primary infection with herpes is highest in March, April and May.

The quivering wheel of m eat-conception Turns in the void, expelling Ticks, rum or-mongers, pricks, prim adonnas, Great wolfish louts, the odd rat.

And hordes o f backbiting snakes.

They catch the next camel train from the Casbah to Cairo b u t en ro u te go and see the shrinks oops . . I mean the SPHYNX

Diseases we share, an occasional series'

No, it's never happened before.

Burns like hot iron when I pee — and last night I practically climbed the bed post it itched so bad. The doctor? Didn't know . . . said maybe warts . . . maybe syphilis . . . maybe herpes. Said don't worry . . . only a little sore so far. Only!

Both non-genital and genital herpes sores are acquired through close physical contact where the herpes virus of one person passes directly to susceptible tissue of another person, and so it was named the “ virus of love” . In adults, type 1 (non-genital) affects exclusively above the waist and type 2 (genital) below the waist, and they are rarely cross-contagious.

The sores usually limit themselves to mucous membranes — type 1: mouth, nose, eyes; type 2: cervix, vagina, labia (lips), penis, anus — though some type 1 herpes have been found on fingertips in hospital personnel and on the chest and arms in wrestlers (herpes gladia-

Abdul the hoon, proprietor o ff restaurant, breathes heavily do w like neck under th e envious gai faggot waiter.

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fiBBIMniTr

by Pam Kalishman

week-end overtime, which is what most BLs rely on for really big money. And then by locking out half the BLF membership.

The mass meetings that followed made it quite clear that the bulk of the rank and file were not interested in losing any pay for “ workers’ control” experiments like trying to deny the boss his right to hire and fire. So the demand for “ union hall hire” was quickly dropped.

The BLF leaders also proposed

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groovy to think I’ll spend this sum mer back on St. Kilda beach A But really dearie . . . if you’re going to bounce cw airline tickets — it mightb>< to open th e accounts in m\ you heard o f Interpol? all the dope in the world

The sore of the herpes appears two to 12 days after sexual contact with a person having the virus though that person may be unaware of having it if the virus is limited to only the woman’s cervix or the man’s urethra (tube carrying sperm and urine out through the penis).

These areas are often infected with­ out noticeable symptoms. (Josey, et. al., Obstetrical and Gynaecological Survey, 1972). Initially the sore looks much like a 1/8 inch red, slightly raised blister, located alone or more often with many other blisters on the cervix, labia (lips), vagina, anus, the shaft or glans (tip) of the penis, or in the man’s urethra. The blisters itch and in a woman are often accompanied by a sudden onset of discharge from the vagina, often found to be trichimoniasis, a venereally transmitted disease but with­ out symptoms in the male. Within a couple of days the blisters break leaving a very tender raw area of skin which burns intensely when touched, when urine passes over it or during intercourse.

There is a general feeling of pain and soreness in the genital area.

With the primary or initial contact with herpes, the lymph nodes in the groin often become swollen and the person may have a fever. The herpes in women resolves itself with­

out treatm ent in seven to 21 days; more rapidly for the male. Though herpes is the most common genital lesion in women and the second most common in men (after syphilis), the various stages of herpes are often | misdiagnosed as 1] venereal warts I which are velvet and wart-like in appearance and which occur one to three months after contact, the 2] syphilis chancre which appears three weeks after contact, is larger (peasize), not tender and gets a scab after it heals, or the 3] chancroid which looks like an infected pimple until it bursts and then bleeds easily when touched.

Once infected with herpes, the virus remains in a latent stage in the person’s body forever. It’s not certain what factors bring the virus out of its latency into an active recurrent infection, sometimes as often as every three weeks for over a year, sometimes never at all. Con­ tributing factors seem to be infection anywhere in the body, physical trauma or irritation to the herpes site as with intercourse, changes in hormone balance as with ovulation, and menstruation (Drumeau in 1880 called it “ bouton de regie” , button of menstruation), emotional tensions, and environmental temperature changes. Recurrent infections are usually shorter and milder except that psychologically they become

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Page 7

December 8, 1973

20 dollar per week levy on BLs ll-at-work to provide “ lock out” y. Not surprisingly a mass meeting locked out BLs in Sydney enrsed the proposal, but in the one ek the collection was attem pted ly about 700 of an estimated )00 in-work BLs coughed up. In iwcastle the mass meeting reduced 3 levy to five dollars.

When the Federal government invened to promise an enquiry into ermanency” that was good enough

for the BLF. But not for the MBA. At a con­ ference before a conciliation com­ missioner in Melbourne they de­ manded as the price for lifting the lock out that Jack Mundey agree on the spot, without any bullshit about consulting his members, to call off all “ workers’ control” cam­ paigns and rein in the militants.

Mundey agreed. Obviously sensing that his rank and file would agree anyhow, regardless of the militant

minority. * * * Afficionadoes of the building game were not astonished that when the BLs end their week-long protest strike on November 2, the MBA responds with a lock out.

A lock out of sorts. Out in the suburbs work continues. In the city non-MBA developers like Civic & Civic open up their jobs as do some MBA members like Stocks & Holdings. “ It’s a George and Pitt Street

lock out,” one militant tells Digger.

MBA loyalists in the city Nhave locked out the militants. And some of these find jobs out in the suburbs in the days that follow. “ The lock out last May was planned a good six weeks before it started,” Joe Owens the new NSW secretary of the BLF tells a BLF meeting on November 6, “ no such planning went into this one” .

This is the second, attem pt of

the MBA to bring pressure on the Sydney city militants which has back­ fired.

On October 18 the MBA initiated de-registration proceedings in the Federal Industrial Court against the entire BLF on the ground that its NSW Branch was “ a mob of industrial anarchists,” to use the Sydney Morning Herald's words.

If successful this would mean a new union could be set up to take the place of the BLF. The MBA

hoped the prospect would daunt the paid officials in other states enough for them to combine on the union’s federal council and order the NSW Branch to pull its head in.

Federal Secretary Norm Gallagher indicated that he was in favor of such an order.

On Tuesday October 30 the fede­ ral council meets but decides to back the NSW Branch. Later, as the lock out in George and Pitt Streets drags on, the federal council meets

again and threatens a national strike on November 14 in support of the NSW Branch.

Nor is there any joy in the Arbi­ tration Court for the MBA. The judge assigned by that court to the building industry, one Justice Aird> recommends on two separate occa­ sions that the lock out be lifted.

The MBA ignores the recommen­ dations which accords ill with their attem pt via press statements and newspaper advertisements to present the BLF as outlaws and themselves as reasonable, law-abiding men. * * * The MBA has been less than clear publicly about its war aims.

On November 1 it announces via ads in the Sydney dailies that the lock out will end as soon as 22 disputes are fixed up. “ None of these are because of green bans,” it says.

So it appears that a settlement does not hinge on any green bans.

But the next day John Martin, executive director of the MBA, is quoted in The Australian as saying four of the 22 disputes involve green bans.

So it now appears that a settle­ ment hinges at last on four green bans.

But on Monday November 5, the MBA is demanding the dropping of all 40 green bans as a condition of settlement.

It is not until November 9 that the Sydney Morning Herald's in­ dustrial reporter, Fred Wells, can confidently assert: “ It now seems certain that the crucial point of this dispute is lifting the green bans” .

But on November 11 the MBA announces in the Sydney dailies: “ The dispute is not about green bans but about normal construction work halted by wildcat strikes by the Builders’ Laborers’ Federation.

OF

D oto

SHOWMAN

* * *

Cartoonist: Peter L illie , fo rm e r moose, playw right and now noted eccentric.

irder to handle as they continue ldlesslv on.

During pregnancy they recur more ’ten and last longer. The 1964-70 udy by Nahmias et. al. at Grady emorial Hospital, Atlanta, showed le of every 100 women had herpes iring the pregnancy in contrast i one of 300 non-pregnant women ose same nine months. The herpes sted from three weeks to three onths during pregnancy instead of ven to 21 days.

Both herpes and cancer of the irvix are now thought to be viruses ith latency characteristics that are ansmitted through sexual contact tough some scientists believe cancer genetically inherited and sits latent itil the right conditions allow it i be active (Todaro, Heubner), lere is quite a strong correlation stween the incidence of the two ruses in the same women. Melnick id Rawls in 1970 claimed that )% of women with early cancer id 82% with advanced cancer of e cervix had antibodies to herpes their blood, showing previous fection with herpes. Naib shows ten to 15 year lapse between e greatest incidence of herpes 0 years old) and early cancer of e cervix (30 years).

The unanswered question is why e correlation. Is it a coincidence

since both are viruses probably venereally passed along? Does herpes change the cervical tissue so that it accepts the cancer virus if it’s acquired or stimulate the cancer into action that some believe has been in the tissue all along? Or is a tissue that’s receptive to herpes (75% of those in contact with herpes will get the virus) also susceptible to cancer? Until the answer is known a pap smear every six months is recommended for women with herpes in their past.

About 10% of pregnancies nor­ mally end in miscarriage but when the woman has had a herpes in­ fection anytime before or during the pregnancy, the rate increases to 34%. Naib claims in Obst. Gyn. 35:260, 1970, that women whose herpes attacked them within 18 months of the pregnancy had a 55% miscarriage rate and those with herpes diagnosed during the preg­ nancy had a 62-5% rate of mis­ carriage.

About one of every 3,500 deliveries in this country occurs during active herpes in the mother and if the infant is delivered, vaginally instead of by caesarean it has a 40-80% chance of acquiring the virus through its eyes, mouth or skin as it passes through the cervix, vagina and labia. This follows

the presently accepted theory that herpes of the newborn infant is not acquired across the placenta from the mother but in the birth canal.

Support for this theory is given by the fact that these affected in­ fants appear healthy until they’re four to 21 days old when their appetite, activity and weight gain decrease, and they begin having loose# stools and being irritable.

Of those infants who do acquire the virus approximately 2/3 will die, and 1/3 will survive, the majority with disabling brain or eye damage, reports Nahmias et. al., Adv. PecL 17:185, 1970. Various treatments have been so far unable to save these infants. If the herpes is de­ tected before or during labor and before the membrane (bag of water) has been ruptured for four hours, a caesarean delivery will avoid the infant’s contact with the virus and offer an almost 100% chance of healthy survival.

Since 43% of herpes in women is confined to only the cervix and therefore w ithout external lesions, the only sure way to detect active herpes is to have a cytology test to confirm the presence of the virus.

The simple test is performed by swabbing the cervix, vagina, and any suspected lesions with a sterile Q-tip, spreading the smear on a slide, and

fixing it by the pap technique used to check for cancer, Giemsa or Wright’s stain. It can be read in less than 30 minutes by your doctor, whoever reads your pap smears, a laboratory, or anyone familiar with the purple-stained multinuclear giant cells containing intracellular eosino­ philic inclusion bodies (. . . info, to tell your doctor when you’re told she/he is not familiar with the test, it can’t be done, is impractical or expensive). The other test for active herpes detection is a tissue culture that costs $100, takes several weeks and requires expensive equip­ ment. To check your blood for antibodies against herpes, a serology test with neutralisation and com­ plement-fixation titrations can give you the results that same day.

Once you are sure the problem is herpes, most of the treatm ent is symptomatic to relieve the dis­ comfort: soothing baths and topical viscous novocaine to numb the pain­ ful lesions if they’re on the labia or penis. Some women wear a tampax to keep the vaginal discharge from irritating the raw lesions on th e , labia. And some have to urinate in the bath water so it doesn’t burn their lesions. Doctors may want to prescribe antibiotics like sulfa to protect against the herpes getting infected but this rarely happens with

cleanliness.

There’s a new drug that can be applied directly onto the lesions but whose total effects are not yet known.

IDU, iododeoxyuridine, helps mini­ mise the severity and length of an attack by interfering with viral DNA synthesis, but doesn’t prevent further recurrences. It’s not recommended during pregnancy because it’s readily absorbed into the body’s cells along with the herpes virus and thus possibly is toxic to the foetus.

Reports say that large quantities given systematically (to the entire body rather than locally) cause bloody diarrhoea and depression of the bone marrow (where blood cells are produced). It may be safe in the long run when applied to lesions but th at’s not known.

Other health measures include pap smears every six months- for cancer detection and strong consideration of caesarean delivery if herpes are detected through weekly cytology tests the last month of pregnancy.

You should be aware that the attitude of gynaecologists has not changed much since R. Debre said in 1958, Strasbourg MeeLr “ Such is herpes simplex, a common in­ fection, barely a disease — so why talk about it?” Holland and Brews’ Manual o f Obstetrics, 1969, has nothing about herpes in its 866

pages, Shaw’s Textbook o f Gynae­ cology, 1971, has seven lines and recommends unnecessary antiseptic powders, and Novak’s Textbook o f Gynaecology, 1970, gives one column and recommends sulfa creams.

Hayne’s Medical Complications During Pregnancy, 1969, should be complimented for good coverage in which he refers to Nahmias’ recent research.

— o ff our backs.

Thrown out of work because of the lock out are something like 4,000 electricians, plumbers, carpen­ ters, and brickies. Though many of them have or can find alternative work.

On November 6, 1,500 trades­ people meet. The contrasts with the BLs’ meetings immediately hit you.

The men are older, have shorter hair, and wear long socks and shoes rather than the thongs and Adidas sneakers favored by the BLs. They are Australian and barely tolerate the worker who uses Spanish, whereas the BLs’ meetings are conducted in four languages: English, Italian, Greek and Yugoslav. The tradespeople’s officials wear collar and tie, whereas the BLF officials do not.

The women at the tradespeople’s meeting are wives and daughters and belong to the union’s ladies’ auxiliary.

When Frank O’Sullivan, the union president, notices the women he addresses the meeting: “ Ladies and Gentlemen” . At the BLF meeting, when Bob Pringle remembers there are female union members in atten­ dance he says: “ Brothers and Sisters” .

At the tradespeople’s meeting the officials are cranky that the BLF’s go-it-alone policy hurts tradespeople.

To prevent this happening again the officials propose — and the meeting accepts — that the union push for “a code of interunion re­ lationships” and take industrial action against the BLF if they will not accept such a code.

What the tradespeople’s officials have in mind is that in future green bans will be decided by all the unions in the building industry, and not unilaterally by the BLF. And that when the BLs decide to walk off a job, they leave a few members behind to operate the hoists and look after safety, so that the trades­ people can keep on working.

The MBA has publicly endorsed the tradespeople’s unions proposals.

If the BLF could be married to the tradespeople’s unions and undertake to love, honor and obey them, then the MBA would be happy enough to reopen the city jobs for the honeymoon.

But the BLF militants are re­ sisting the code proposal, which would mean they would be con­ tinually inhibited by the lack of radicalism of the rest of the building industry workforce. Which is what the MBA has been trying for all year.

Dateline: Sydney, November 12.

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Page 8

THE DIGGER

November 10 — December 8, T973

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Through the ’60s, the US policy in the middle east was direc­ War Britain felt the need to secure the Anglo-Persian oil concession and ted towards the defence of its interests in oil. so set out to control Persia. This It sought to deflect the nationalist rhetoric of Nasser in Egypt was done by treaty in 1919 but and the Ba’arthists in Syria and Iraq. Kennedy tried to befriend ratification was prevented by nation­ Nasser, to deflect him from foreign to domestic concerns; at the alist opposition and the Persian go­ same time he moved to strengthen links with Israel. In Johnson’s vernment was overthrown. A long time, with America’s image tarnished by the escalating war in and bitter dispute lasted through Vietnam, US-Egyptian relations dissolved and the US began seri­ the ’20s and early ’30s, during which Anglo-Persian went on producing oil ously to arm Israel. It sought to strengthen its more reliable, as before. In 1932 Persia brought conservative allies (Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel) so as to curb the conflict to a head by attempting the Arab nationalists and to create an environment in which to cancel the concession. The British moderate regimes in Lebanon and Jordan could survive. government took over negotiations In the latest war, Saudi Arabia has played a major role in cut­ and a new agreement was reached — ting oil supplies to Israel’s supporters, including the US. Have theoretically valid till 1993. The America’s support for Israel and its need for oil proved irrecon­ conflict resumed after World War II, cilable? but this time complicated by Ameri­ Oil has always been a weapon. In the past it has been firmly can determination to get in on the act. in the hands of the world’s seven great oil companies, and was used as often as not against the producer countries whose ability America Becomes Interested to use it back was limited by their total reliance on income from oil, their political disunity and the collaboration of the big oil Before World War I American in­ companies. But more recently the balance of power between the terest in the middle east had been companies and the producer states has shifted. Demand for oil minimal. The American domestic oil has increased so greatly that for the producer states even to industry was dominated by the threaten to hold output at the present level constitutes a signifi­ Rockefellers’ Standard Oil. Since cant threat. In the present crisis however, it’s worth asking who most oil traded internationally was has who over the barrel?

American oil, the Rockefellers were Britain, Persia, and the Anglo* Persian Oil Company

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Recognition of the importance of the middle east’s oil dates back to World War I. In 1911, Winston Churchill as First Lord of the Ad­ miralty began the conversion of the Royal Navy to oil. He was anxious to lessen the navy’s reliance on oil supplies from Standard Oil and Shell and he turned to the AngloPersian Oil Company. Anglo-Persian had been formed to take over a British concession in Persia, when

oil was discovered there in vast quantities in 1908. The British go­ vernment secured a 51% interest in the company and awarded it a 20 year contract to supply the British navy. In this first case of the ex­ ploitation of oil in the middle east, the interests of a major western go­ vernment and a major oil company had been made to completely coin­ cide. The combination was, for 40 years, invincible.

Events in Persia — later Iran — over the next decades are illumina­ ting. At the end of the First World

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content to monopolise transport, re­ fining and marketing. But at the end of the war, the growth of the middle east oil fields, and commercial rival­ ry between the US and Britain caused the US to challenge Britain’s hegemony there. The challenge was focussed on the rights to oil in Iraq.

Iraq used to be Mesopotamia, part of the Ottoman Empire, and ruled from Constantinople. Before the Young Turk Revolution in 1908, the British had secured oil rights as they had in Persia. After the revolu­ tion, the British sponsored forma­ tion of a Turkish Petroleum Com­ pany with ownership split between Anglo-Persian (50%), Shell (25%), and the'Deutsche Bank (25%).

Transfer of the original oil concession to Turkish Petroleum hadn’t been ratified when the War broke out.

When the War ended, Britain was in control of much of the Ottoman Empire, including Mesopotamia, and declared the pre-War oil concession (dominated by Anglo-Persian) valid.

The French were not happy about this, neither were the Americans who were busily trying to open the door to American investment^ France and Britain settled their differences — they shared out middle eastern mandates, France taking Lebanon and Syria, Britain taking Palestine and Iraq, and the French were given the 25% German share in the Tur­ kish Petroleum. Britain then went ahead setting up an independent Iraq, which was tied to Britain by treaty and accepted the oil conces­ sion.

The Americans at first rejected the validity of the Iraq concession and challenged it in the League of Nations. Eventually the problem was resolved when relations between Bri­ tain and the US entered a more co­ operative phase in the ’20s.

An agreement was formalised in 1928 which gave the American com­ panies, Standard Oil and Socony (Mobil), a share in what was now the Iraq Petroleum Company along with Anglo-Persian, Shell, and the French company, CFP. IPC went on during the ’30s to secure concessions which covered the entire territory of Iraq.

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Acupuncture kicks smack Doctors in Hong Kong claim to have discovered a cure for hard drug addiction. Using the ancient Chinese technique of acupuncture, they have been able to eradicate the painful withdrawal symptoms and the desire to return to drugs. So far, not one of the 40 patients released from hospital after com­ pleting the cure, has returned to drugs.

The acupuncture treatment was discovered by accident after one of the doctors, a Dr. Wen, visited China and watched acupuncture being used in surgery there. Back in Hong Kong, Dr. Wen began ex­ periments of his own and was as­ tonished to find that acupuncture could prevent the appearance of withdrawal symptoms in addicts who had been denied drugs. They show

producer states. But the war had changed the relationship between the major Western powers.

Predominance had been challenged even before the War; during and after the War the US sought increas­ ingly to supplant the British eco­ nomically while retaining their con­ tinued military presence where it was useful.

and Bahrain). This cartelisation was further elaborated in an arrangement through which the major companies agreed to stabilise oil marketing, car­ ving up the world markets between them according to a formula agree­ able to them all.

The Americans Get Arabia British hegemony over the middle east had been whittled away through American entry into the Iraq Oil Company. It was the opening up of oil fields in the Arabian Peninsular

by American companies which / changed the whole scene. During the ’20s oil had been found in Bahrain, off the Saudi Arabian coast in the Persian Gulf. Standard of California obtained the concession, beating British restrictions by using a Canad­ ian. subsidiary. The Ameripan comr pany, Gulf Oil,, sought a concession in Kuwait hut was blocked by; the British. Gulf was able to beat the ban by negotiating in London in the guise of the US government — thé US ambassador at the time happened to be Andrew Mellon, head of Gulf Oil. He secured agreement to a joint concession with Anglo-Persian.

Anglo-Persian wanted to move into Saudi Arabia to prevent it being taken up by anybody else. It had to move through the IPC cartel. Stan­ dard Oil of California, outside the cartel, was not so constrained and bought the concession. When oil was found there in massive quantities in 1938, SOCAL united with Texaco to form the Arabian-American Oil Company. By the end of the ’30s, the Americans had acquired almost . half of the known middle eastern oil reserves. The oil world belonged to seven companies — Anglo-Persian, Shell, Jersey Standard, Socony, Gulf, Socal and Texaco — locked into joint production, and marketing arrangements virtually eliminating competition and stabilising high pro­ fits.

US Replaces Britain World War II made it even more urgent for the West to safeguard its control over the middle eastern oil­ fields and the best way to do this was seen to be to preserve the mono­ poly of the major companies, and maintain co-operative regimes in the

that patients addicted to hard drugs for years — in one case for more than 50 years — have now been off them for five months.

For the addiction treatment only two of the many possible acu­ puncture points are used. These are the so-called ‘lung’ points in the middle of the concha of each ear.

The needles are inserted Vkcm. below the skin and connected to a machine that supplies them with an alter­ nating current whose frequency is increased from zero to 125 cycles per second. The effect of the treat­ ment becomes apparent after 10-12 minutes. The patient’s eyes, nose, and throat become dry, the aching, shivering, and abdominal pains dis­ appear, breathing becomes regular and the patient is warm and relaxed.

Once the treatment is over after 30-45 minutes, the patient is bright and alert, takes an interest in events around her/him and is eager for food.

Two or three of these treatments are given daily for the first two or three days, then once a day for the next four or five days. At the end of that time the cure is com­ plete. Of the first 40 patients — 30 opium and ten heroin addicts —

During the War the US had joined Britain and Russia in using Iran as a corridor to supply Russia. By the end of the War American advisors were installed to assist with oil ad­ ministration and an American aid programme was under way to assist the economy and the armed forces.

After the war Russia pressed for Oil concessions in the north of Iran, a traditional Russian sphere o f influ­ ence. Britain was agreeable, seeing this as justification for its continued control in the south. The US toojc up the case and it became the first crisis on the agenda o f thé new United Nations, a case o f Russian totalitarian aggression. Russia and Iran settled privately, but having championed the Iranian cause, America had won the right to be a continued ‘presencé’ in Iranian affairs.

The next target was Britain.

Anglo-Iranian Oil, still trying to play its pre-War hand, was refusing to re-negotiate its concession, swit­ ching its own production to Kuwait and Iraq, and leaving Iran without funds. Iran was led on by the Ameri­ cans. Clearly the US companies wanted to get in on the oil and the US government’s support led the Iranian government to believe it would be safe from British gunboats.

This gave Iran the confidence to nationalise oil.

But neither the US companies nor the US government was at all happy about this. It was just the precedent they were anxious to avoid. So the companies joined Anglo-Iranian’s boycott of Iranian oil’, and the go­ vernment set about restoring the power of the Shah who, since the War, had been eclipsed by the politi­ cal parties and Parliament. This was completed in 1953 in â CIA-assisted coup which removed nationalist Prime Minister Mossadeq.

It remained only to reorganise the off operations; à rtew consoitjüTtp' was set up injwhich! me big five Ameri­ can companies held a 40% interest and Anglo-Iranian 40%, with the re­ mainder divided between Shell and the French. Iran had been preserved as a most agreeable base for the oil industry, and so it remains, a cornerstone o f American policy.

The Monopolies Challenged The ’50s were the high point of oil company (and Western) power in the region. With the entry of the Americans into the Iranian conces­ sion, every major concession in the middle east was operated by two or more of the giant companies; con­ versely, every company had signifi­ cant, if not controlling interests in two or more of the producing coun­ tries. Controlling production and prices, pipelines, markets, even pro­ cess patents, the boards of these inter-locking companies determined oil polièy for the Western world.

The tide of nationalism which swept the Third World in the ’50s could hardly leave the middle east unaffected — even though there was no hesitation in putting it down, as in Iran. Before the ’50s were out the Western powers had been forced twice to intervene militarily to de­ fend their hegemony — in 1956 Bri­ tain, France and Israel went into ac­ tion against Egypt over the right of —Continued N ext Page.

all- were cured of withdrawal symp­ toms and lost the urge to take the drug. The average drug intake for these patients had been equivalent to one gramme of heroin a day.

—Midnight Rider.

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THE DIGGER

November 10 — December 8, 1973 the Egyptians to nationalise the Suez j Canal; and in 1958 the British and !

Americans intervened to stabilise the situation in Lebanon and Jordan following the revolution in Iraq.

But the changes which came about in the ’60s were not caused only by the continuing swell of anti-imperial­ ism. It was partly an inability of the great companies to make total their control of the industry. Iran and Traq were again where it was at.

Iran And The Italians Even the Shah’s Iran was not un­ affected by the anti-Egyptian actions of 1956. In 1957, the Iranian Na­ tional Oil Co., which had been setup for the abortive nationaisation of Anglo-Iranian and which had re­ mained nominally in existence, was resurrected. INOC was to enter into new joint ventures alongside the old concession. The Italian National Oil Corporation, ENI, which had been excluded from the 1954 consortium, delightedly stepped in, accepting a new profit-sharing arrangement which was to lead eventually to a re­ structuring o f the industry. A new role was carved out for independent companies and it provided a means for the producer countries to begin to escape from the control of the cartel companies, Iraq And The Russians After the revolution o f 1958 Iraq did not nationalise oil. It had learned the lesson of Mossadeq in Iran. Instead negotiations were begun with IPC to attempt to cut back the area o f the concession. No agree­ ment could be reached and when the negotiations broke down, Iraq uni­ laterally lopped from the concession those areas not currently being ex­ ploited by IPC. Negotiations were re­ opened and dragged on through seve­ ral changes of government. IPC was restricting output in Iraq — &nd starving successive governments of funds. The June 1967 war hardened opinion in Iraq; an agreement which was emerging in 1965—66 was now no longer acceptable. Instead Iran National Oil was given sole rights to the areas outside the restricted IPC concession, and concluded an agree­ ment with the Soviet Union.

The Rise Of OPEC The strength of the cartel rested in the ability of the companies to control production through exclusive Concession rights. When threatened, the companies could switch produc­ tion to another location, supporting each other to bring deviant coun­ tries to heel. Over the ’60s this power was eroded with the rise of the new joint venture operations.

The next element of change to emerge was a co-operative agreement between producer countries.

OPEC, the Organisation of Oil Exporting Countries emerged in res­ ponse to falling prices. Revenue for the producer states was’ based mainly on taxation and profit-sharing. Their interest was in maximising produc­ tion and profits. This appeared to coincide with the companies’ own interest in maximising profits. In fact prices and production climbed until the end of the ’50s (the price was pushed up 22% in 1957) when excess production started to push prices down. In mid 1960, Jersey Standard dropped its price for crude and the other companies followed; the producer countries were not consulted, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and Iran joined to form OPEC in an attempt to restore the price. They didn’t succeed, but they did prevent any further cuts.

If the companies were going to sell cheaper, and they did, they’d have to absorb the loss of revenue. They could afford to.

Over the ’60s, OPEC’s achieve­ ments were substantial if not dra­ matic. Given the history o f com­ plete control by the companies, their ability to manipulate the pro­ ducer countries and maximise pro­ fits, there was an important shift in balance occurring between the coun­ tries and the companies. In order to cope with the new situation, the companies were forced to diversify their operations, moving into other energy industries, but also develop­ ing other sources o f oil outside the middle east — Indonesia and Nigeria for example. It was during the ’60s too that Libya emerged as a major producer, by 1969 producing more oil than Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, and providing 30% o f Europe’s needs.

In 1969 Iraq had made an oil agreement with the Soviet Union; in the same year a coup in Libya brought to pwoer the nationalist re­ gime of Col. Gadafy. The new go­ vernment acted quickly on oil from a good vantage point — it was deal­ ing with a host of independent com­ panies. Libya’s demands were met, and the OPEC countries followed the example.

In 1971 the cartel companies were still trying to use production cut­ backs against the producer countries; Libya on the other hand was using the same weapon against the smaller companies.

In 1972, negotiations began con­ cerning national equity in the com­ panies. Algeria had nationalised, so had Syria (of marginal importance); Libya had obtained 51% interest.

Page 9 -

Saudi Arabia, a consistently conser­ How the Zionists colonised Palestine vative force in Arab politics, played a major role, proposing an initial 20% equity be bought, rising to 51% by 1985. The companies were hos­ tile. Then, in response to the latest production cuts, Iraq nationalised IPC. Clearly Saudi Arabia’s proposal was a moderate alternative reflecting the strategy of the more conservative i states adjusting to a change in the balance of power brought about by the more radical Arab nationalists.

There is a crucial difference though; the radical nationalists have asserted their political and economic inde­ pendence. The more conservative states have used the opportunity to forge closer economic integration with the companies and Western go* vernments. It all adds up to a part­ nership.

The state of Israel

Resources And Imperialism If it’s essential to an industry, the more of a resource which can be controlled the better; if you can’t control it, your competitor might, and that means a threat to your sur­ vival. If you can control it, you can also set the price.

The real energy crisis, part of the larger ecological crisis, is one based on the threatening real depletion of resources. The current crisis turns on who controls resources which are still abundant. It is just another epi­ sode in an on-going political drama.

Direct military intervention, in the past, has been used fairly frequently to achieve strategic imperialist pur­ poses, when the more subtle pré­ ventive ploys of economic and politi­ cal manipulation have failed. Viet­ nam has demonstrated the limited value of this last card, and the dangers inherent in its use. This has had the effect of increasing the re­ liance which must be placed on more purposeful preventive action.

The US and other big dependent economies are likely in future to play their manipulative role even more purposefully than in the past; those areas still under control must be kept that way.

In the present crisis, direct mili­ tary intervention cannot be ruled out as a possibility. Clearly America does not want anybody to believe it is ruled out, and it has been reported that American military training re­ cently has become pre-occupied with desert warfare. Two possible areas for intervention present themselves, Libya (also strongly anti-Russian) and the Persian Gulf. Direct inter­ vention though, is probably unlikely.

And in this context it is worth bear­ ing in mind that although the balance of power between the oil companies and the producer countries has been shifted somewhat, oil has not fallen into the hands of a bloc of radical nationalists.

Jerusalem, holy city ’73 style In 135 AD, Jewish Palestine was removed from history when the Romeris ploughed up Jerusalem. Most of the Jews moved on to Europe and only a few thousand stayed behind. Until the seventh century, Palestine was ruled by the Roman and the Byzantine Empires. Then the area was occupied by Arabs (from the Arabian desert) who also moved into the rest of Syria, Ifaq, Persia, Egypt, the North African coast, Spain and the Mediterranean seaboard.

In the 11th century, the Seljuck Turks invaded the area. They were followed by the Christian Crusaders, who ruled, on and off, for 200 years. Then the Moslems controlled it again, this time the Egyptian Mamluk dynasty, who had to contend with Tamerlane, Ilalagu and other Mongols. In 1517 Palestine, Syria and Egypt were conquered by the Ottoman Turks and remained the property of the Sultans in Constan­ tinople until the First World War Saudi Arabia And The Oil Weapon (except for the short periods of the Napoleonic invasion and Muhammed A major voice amongst the pro­ Ali’s occupation). ducer states threatening oil cuts has Israel, the Jewish state, was es­ been Saudi Arabia; Saudi Arabia, in the past one of the conservative cor­ tablished in Palestine without the invitation or consent of the indige­ nerstones of the Arab world, until nous population. The immigration recently proposing a massive increase and settling occurred, and could only in output to cater for the huge in­ have occurred under the aegis of crease in demand over the next dec­ Western colonial rule. The creation ade and pronouncing oil “a weapon of Israel has meant the exile of too dangerous even to think of two million Palestinians. Those Arabs using”. What is Saudi Arabia’s role, Jwho have remained in Israel are has King Faisal’s mind been changed, | treated as an underclass. has Arab nationalism become so The Jews’ unique exile in no strong that he must seize the wea­ way destroyed their sense of iden­ pon or risk revolution at home? tity. The experiences of the Crusades It seems more likely that the eco­ (when large numbers of Jews were nomic partnership between Saudi Arabia and the US, sharing control of the oil industry, is being pushed to the logical conclusion of a politi­ cal partnership, giving Saudi Arabia a sub-imperialist role, from which both partners have much to gain.

The US has much to gain from Saudi Arabia’s assuming leadership among the Arab states; King Faisal has clearly, already had a lot of in­ fluence over Sadat’s Egypt. On the other hand King Faisal certainly must make concessions to Arab opinion on the issue of Israel. The prospect of checking the leftward trend, and so securing control of oil in partnership with reliable allies, is attractive to the US. The US must be seen to make concessions, move towards a more even-handed posture in the Arab-Israel conflict. Faisal, in return, may be able to use his posi­ tion to make nominal concessions acceptable to the Arabs. In the meantime, who has whom over a barrel? It is not inconceivable that the US, particularly the oil com­ panies, and Saudi Arabia are playing out an elaborate charade. A shortage of oil in the US can be used to justify the concessions to the Arabs that the oil companies would like the US to make.

But more than that; the US had been experiencing an energy crisis before the latest middle east war.

The energy crisis was largely the making of the great companies squeezing out the independent com­ panies, and forcing up prices. The cut-off of oil reinforces the com­ panies’ position; but the US is not too badly hurt. It has been until now virtually self-sufficient in oil; but Europe and Japan are very heavily dependent ori middle eastern oil supplied by US companies. Prices should move on upwards; it should be a profitable partnership.

in Spain), the Inquisition, pogroms and later the horrors of Nazism and the displaced persons camps were clearly enough to provoke a desperate casting about for a radical alternative to this kind of treatment.

The working assumption was that anti-semitism was a permanent and unshakeable feature of life in Europe, especially Eastern Europe.

The radical alternative was that there must be a nation state in which Jews are a majority and have power.

This idea (Zionism) was most clearly spelled out by Theodore Herzl in the 1890s and was particularly well received among the Jews of recent Europe.

The few thousand Jews who had always lived in Palestine spoke Arabic and lived with the Moslems and Christians without any apparent schisms.

By the middle of last, century, there were about 12,000 Jews in Palestine; Later last century during the large scale emigrations of European Jews, most went west­ ward, but a tiny minority headed for Palestine. By 1881, there were about 25,000. Once Baron Edmond de Rothschild and others had set up funds to maintain the process of colonisation, the rate of settle­ ment increased dramatically. By 1914, there were 80,000 Jews in Palestine, mostly in the urban centres of Jerusalem, Haifa and Jaffa, but a goodly number on the land in abdut 43 colonies. By 1948, Jews were 600,000 out of a population of two million.

The new immigrants differed from the older Jewish inhabitants of the area in their determination to create a society and a state which were

distinctively and exclusively Jewish, and to revive an explicitly Jewish culture. Their concept of the state and the society they wanted to create had no room in it for the Palestinians. The “national” identity of the Jews would be secured through an ingathering of the Jews; the state was to be the home of world Jewry; the Palestinians would have to go elsewhere. The lack of any felt dilemma is summed up in the old Zionist slogan “A people with no land to a land with no people” .

The Jews of Europe had an enor­ mous problem and a solution had to be found. Especially after the Dreyfus case had belied the socalled ‘emancipation’ that was meant to have occurred in post-bourgeois revolution Europe, there was nothing ) to indicate that anti-semitism was riot a permanent feature of Christian societies. Given this,"' the idea of setting up a new community within the borders of a nation state, was a brilliant solution.

It is understandable that rather than the Ugandan Highlands or any of the other sites suggested, they chose Palestine.

In the First World War, the Arabs helped the British fight the Turks.

Their gift in return was “indepen­ dence”. The British created an in­ genious system of dividing the area into new,modern states and sultanates ruled by sultans, kings and walis (all answerable to the British) which transferred the Arabs’ dependence from the Ottomans to the West, hopefully for all time. The French gave “independence” in the same way.

In 1917, in a gesture designed to enlist Jewish support especially in America (and to make it easier for the American government to assist the Allies), the British govern­ ment issued the Balfour Declaration which pledged Britain’s assistance in “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people . . .” When the declaration was first revealed to the Palestinians in 1920, the response was the first wave of violent agitation. All to no avail. After 1933, Hitler’s rise, the rate of Jewish immigration accelerated dramatically.

The Zionists already had a variety of military groups. The Haganah which later became the core of the national army had been organised as early as 1920, and co-operated with the British in their ‘police action’ against the Palestinians in 1936—39. The Irgun broke away 'from the Haganah in the ’thirties and pursued a larger Israel than Haganah envisaged. It fought agairist the British up until the Second World War when it agreed to observe a truce. (The Stern Gang, a group out of the Irgun, didn’t observe the truce.) After 1944, the two groups began the struggle against British colonial rule aiming at the establishment of the state of Israel.

Once the UN had created the state of Israel, without asking the Palestinians anything about it, the Arabs wanted to defend the Pale­ stinians, and took to arms. But Transjordan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq were all to various degrees financed and ruled by Britain so the antiIsrael forces were hardly huge. The Zionists had a military force of 65,000 heavily armed men. In addition, there were the terrorist group.s The 1947—48 war was a war of terrorist activities. Massacres such as the well known Deir Yassin were designed to encourage the local population to leave. The war was a

sound defeat for the Arabs. The myth that a peaceloving, defenceless little Israel had been attacked by tens of millions of bloodthirsty Arabs surrounding it had begun to be put about.

The aggression and expansionism of Israel was already being revealed.

The war gained them an extra 6,350 kilometres o f territory. Israel was already militarily strong, with a rapidly developing arms industry, had world opinion on its side (thanks to the myth) and was anxious to stretch further into Arab land in a quest for “secure borders”.

When Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal Company, Britain and France were threatening war, and certainly no European country was going to help Egypt. Israel recognised the moment to move, not into Jordan for fear of antagonising the British, but into the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula. Israel went to war on October 29, 1956, and with the assistance of France and Britain, who bombed Egyptian airfields for three days and landed troops in Port Said to control the water way, it was all over in a week. The occupation of the Gaza Strip was met with sniping, sabotage, hit and run attacks by fedayeen, strikes, mass demonstrations, closedowns by shopkeepers, passive resistance and civil disobedience of all kinds.

Israel withdrew from Sinai and Gaza in March 1957 under the pressure of world opinion, in particu­ lar a US threat to withhold financial aid.

The June 1967 war erupted out of a crisis around Israeli threats to “attack Damascus and change its government” (Israel’s Chief of Staff), and an Egyptian-Syrian mutual defence pact. This, too, was a “defensive” war when beleaguered Israel performed the miraculous feat of wiping out 2/3 of Egypt’s “attacking air force” , on the ground.

T(ie Gaza Strip came under Israeli occupation for the second time in ten years, and suffered the same fate o f bombing and shelling, looting, random bashings, curfews lasting hours or even weeks. Houses of people suspected of being, harboring or even knowing fedayeen were bull­ dozed or blown up.

Six months after the war, UNRWA officials in Gaza estimated that 35,000 people had left the Strip and were continuing to leave at 300 — 400 a day. Israel assisted with free transport to the Alienby Bridge on the Jordan River. The attempt to empty the Strip was frustrated when Jordan wouldn’t allow any more Gaza residents to cross to the east bank of the Jordan.

Despite most efficient policing and brutal repression, the occupiers 5 have riot been able to prevent a continuous series of incidents.

The return of the occupied terri­ tories does not appear to be catered for in the Israeli picture of itself in the middle east. To an increasing number of Israelis, it seems tttat the only way they can have secure borders is by retaining the occupied territories. The way in which demo­ lition, settling and building have taken place show clearly Israel’s intention.

On the eve of the 1967 war the UN reported that one and a half million Palestinians were refugees.

Since 1967,’ inside Israel thousands more have been imprisoned (10,000 without trial, 4,000 convicted), evicted and had their homes de­ stroyed. Of the original 475 existing Arab villages in 1948, 385 have been destroyed, the sites used for Jewish settlement and the inhabitants forced to leave. Since 1967, 16,000 Arab dwellings have been destroyed in the occupied territories, not counting 35 entire villages on the

Golan Heights.

The Israeli League for Human Rights reports that despite inter­ national protests, the Israeli author­ ities in the occupied territories are still using torture o f prisoners and the practice o f “neighborhood punish­ ment” . All Palestinian political prisoners are held under the Defence Regulations which give the power of arbitrary arrest to the military authorities.

Jews are given automatic .and unconditional rights of citizenship, including Jews not living in Israel who may adopt Israeli citizenship.

The Law o f Return which allows all Jews to take up residence in Israel doesn’t apply to a Palestinian born in Israel.

There are many areas where only Jews and no Arabs may live. Work laws tend to reserve the better jobs for Jews. 90% o f Israel’s agricultural land is owned by the Jewish National Fund.

The Israeli kibbutzim have often been idealised as an example of a peaceful road to socialism. Most kibbutzim are in fact controlled by a political party. All are in debt to the government and private banks and would be quite unable to exist without subsidies from the Zionist institutions. In terms o f agricultural production, the kibbutzim were quite uncompetitive and turned to light industry. The small kibbutz populations couldn’t maintain both the agriculture and the industry.

They couldn’t give up the agri­ cultural activity without betraying the principles of Zionist socialism, ao they had to employ labor from the towns. If a strike occurs in a kibbutz factory, the owners rarely hesitate to call in the police.

Members of kibbutzim have never exceeded five percent o f the Jewish population.

A far more important establish­ ment o f the Zionist ‘left’ is the Histradut, the General Federation of Labor in Israel. Founded in 1922, it now owns giant industrial con­ cerns, banks, shipping, airline com­ panies, the largest construction firm in Israel, the largest health insurance scheme and a major share in every branch o f economic endeavour. The Histadrut aimed not at organising the Jewish proletariat, but at creating it, partly by campaigning against Arab labor. It called on Jewish workers to work harder, earn less and make sacrifices for the sake of establishing and strengthening the state. The Histadrut is probably the only trade union which has a Depart­ ment Trade Unions. Its activities as an owner and employer clearly outwejgh its activities as a trade %nion. \ I t s centrally administered union structure ensures a firm con­ trol over the working class. It is a state within a state.

Israel is not a country where foreign aid flows directly into private pockets; it is a country where this foreign aid totally subsidises the whole society. The enormous, inflow of capital Of which only 30 percent calls for any return outflow, comes into the hands of the Zionist establishment.

— LPCW * The following sources were used in compilation o f this page: PFLP Bulletin, Political Prisoners and Human Rights In Israel,Palestine Forum, Free Palestine, \ Israel and Palestine (Monthly Review), MERIP Reports, Journal o f Palestine Studies, The Guardian (NY), Guardian Weekly (London), Third World Reports.

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THE DIGGER

JIMI HENDRIX<0)

by Mitch Johnson Tim Bums exhibited this com­ munication installation last month at the NSW Art Gallery, titled “ A Change of Plan”. It was part of a $50,000 exhibition called “ Recent Australian Art”. Inside Ursula and Barry were televised (naked) to a live audience in the gallery from the room above. The piece requires two video cameras and two monitors, allowing the objects to see and also talk back with their viewers.

Tim developed the thing from an idea he had for the Object and Idea Show in Melbourne. There people would sit in a chair with headphones that gave a running com­ mentary on themselves. Liz Sheridon suggested the room idea.

The arrest of Barry Prothero, the male half of the duo (after he had walked naked to the toilet through the Sunday afternoon gallery gazers) got front page in The Australian and henceforth Tim Burns became mass-appeal. Ursula says it was very hot and Barry refused to get dressed to go to the toilet. The guards called the police, who came into the room and carried him away.

Barry got $1,000 bail and the exhibition was closed for the day.

The next Monday Barry was put on $400 self-surety. Other artists exhibiting immediately organised to withdraw their works in protest allowing Tim Burns ¿nd his advisors to negotiate conditions under which

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uibuiu una Barry saz insiae this pre-tab. room and talked to gallery visitors on the tele. Much interest tended to focus on their nakedness. the work would continue.

Gallery Curator Daniel Thomas gave written assurances that he would testify in court on Barry’s behalf; that Barry would be allowed to

continue his participation under limited restraints; that in future no decision about works will be left to. non-professional staff and that limitations imposed on works be

clearly stated and agreed to by the artist.

As precedents, these committ­ ments represent major gains for the professional artist.

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NAME: ADDRESS: POSTCODE:

in which our rookie-hero Merv attempts to intimidate a female jaywalker and is later stabbed by an irate hatpin.

I turned up at the Depot, bright and early next morning to start. So early in fact that I had to wait 20 minutes until someone turned up to let me in. My uniform was reissued' to me, and I checked to see if it was all there. It was my initial issue and Was quite large. As a matter of interest, it contained the following paraphernalia that, it was hoped, would disguise me enough into fool­ ing the general public that I was a policeperson. Two tunics, three pair of trousers, four shirts, with three collars and one tie with each shirt, two pair of boots and one cap.

This issue is replaced every twelve months. As well as this, I was issued with a raincape, a waterproof cap cover and a white helmet, all which are supposed to last some time.

I went into an empty lecture room and put on the set that Mum had sewn the numbers and buttons to, leaving the rest untouched in the box. As I buttoned up the tunic, and put the cap on at the regulation angle, my chest and head swelled so much, that I nearly had to call fora reissue. I bundled up my civvies into the box with the rest of my gear, and it was stored where I could pick it up, later in the week.

I walked back into the office, and the first person I saw was Bull, who greeted me with a broad smile and an outstretched hand. “Con­ gratulations son,” he said, grinding the bones of my hand together.

‘You’ve finally made it.” I shook my head slowly, “ I don’t know how [ still can’t believe it’s true.” He released my mangled hand, and squared his shoulders. “ You did al­ right. You didn’t start off too well, out just show as much guts when you’re out on the street, as you did in here, and you’ll go a long way.”

If there’d have been a stroqg breeze blowing, it would have knocked me over, my surprise was so great, but I kept a stiff upper lip and carried on. Bull gave out compliments like he gave away pound notes. * * * Having briefed on a few clues at lunchtime, I hid in a shop door­ way and waited like a spider for its victim. After a few minutes, I saw a middle aged, rather stout woman hurrying across the street at an acute angle. I drew my note book, loaded my biro, and as soon as she stepped onto the footpath, I pounced. “ Excuse me, madam,” I said, with what I hoped was a charming smile, “could I have your name and address please?” She looked a nice enough old lady, but her looks belied her nature. “What do you want my name and address for?” she snapped. “ I’m in a hurry. I’m late for work.”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to report you for J-walking madam. Now could I have your name and address please?” “ Oh” she said haughtily. “My name is Ms J. T. Rigby.” I started to write it down. “What will this cost me?” “ Oh only about 10 shillings madam,” I replied, still writing. I’d hoped to pacify her, but somehow I’d lit the fuse on an atomic bomb.

“What,” she screamed. “ I’m not going to pay 10 shillings just for crossing

the street. You’re only picking on me.” And with that she snatched my notebook out of my hand, break­ ing my pen in the process, tore it in half at the binding, and started to run up the street, through the thick lunchtime crowd.

I was completely flabbergasted.

No-one had told me that anything like this might happen. I decided I would have to follow it through to the bitter end, and picking up the remains of my note book and pen, I set out after her. It only took me a short dash to catch up with her, but what would I do now? It Would look lovely, I thought, a great big hulk of a policeperson handling a little old lady. I decided to stick with her until she knocked up, so, like a big dog running along behind his mistress, I trotted along behind her, right on her heels for about 30 yards until to my relief she. finally stopped. Having made her point she decided to give in and tell me her address, along with the statement that I was just a badly brought up young lout. This was a very touchy matter, and I badly needed advice, so I let her go and went back to the station. Up in the traffic room I told my story to a kindly old sergeant who listened calmly to what I had to say. The only time he evidenced surprise was when I told him I hadn’t arrested her.

Thé local police went around and obtained her full particulars, then as the sergeant said, “She apparently likes to tear up books, so we’ll throw the book at her and see how she gets on with that.” And we did.

The story went quickly around the station, and on top of all the heckles, I received much advice. The gist of it was, as expressed by one of my more well spoken colleagues, “Why didn’t you grab the old hag by the hair and throw her in with all the old pros­ titutes and methos down at Central?

That’d give her a bit of respect for police, and teach her not to be cheeky.” I asked Tom and also Sergeant Watson about this, and they both gave me more or less the same advice. They said that although I had good grounds for arrest I’d done the I right thing. In the first place, arréstj ing a woman is always unsavoury, and if ever I’ve got any doubts about an arrest, let it go. It’s not the guilty ones you let go that get j you into trouble, it’s the innocent ones you don’t.

One nice sunny morning just be­ fore we were due to change over to night work, I was leisurely strolling down George Street minding my own | business when I heard a voice raised in anger in nearby Campbell Street.

Now Campbell Street is about the centre of Sydney’s Chinatown and its hostelries provide a midday resting place for some of the tasty citizens who frequent the adjacent City Markets. Therefore it was most un­ likely that a few raised voices would greatly disturb the regular inhabitants.

Nevertheless it was still on my beat and would have to cease, so I set out to investigate.

Naturally I had to turn a corner.

I suppose about three quarters of thd people who are caught in the act of breaking some law are caught by

policepeople turning comers and getting off trams and buses. This is because the wrong-doer doesn’t no­ tice the uniform until it is too late to run, and the policeperson doesn’t notice the wrong-doer until it is too late for him to look the other way.

I turned a corner and saw a crowd of people standing on the footpath outside a hotel, watching something inside. Now that I was nearing the scene, the words became clearer, and what I heard was not pretty. I think the language being used was the foulest my tender ears had yet heard.

I quickened my pace so that I would be able to grab The offender before someone in the crowd warned them, but I needn’t have worried, for not ope person took their eyes off what was happening for an instant.

I reached the bar door as the voice reached a new height o f incen­ tive and I triumphantly opened it, stepped in, and then stopped dead.

A woman about 45 years old, immaculately dressed in the latest fashion, was standing in the middle of the floor with her back to me, glaring at a group of about 30 men who were standing pressed back against the bar. They were all shapes, sizes, types, and nationalities, and as tough a group of men as you’d find in any pub in the markets, but right now they looked anything but tough as they cringed under this terrible tongue-lashing. They were so intent on what was happening, that I don’t think anyone noticed me come in, least of all the lady doing all the talking.

For a few seconds I was im­ mobilised by shock. I just couldn’t believe my eyes. I could not ignore my ears however, and as she took a deep breath and started to curse their mothers for bearing them, and their wives and sweethearts for sleeping with them, I swallowed the last of my illusions about women, and grabbed her. An audible sigh of relief ran around the room and I dragged her out oh the footpath.

I’ve heard women swear before, and I’ve used quite a bit of it myself, but I never could have imagined that anything could approach the performance I’d just witnessed.

Out on the footpath she told me that her name was Maureen Smith and she was very- sorry for what she had said. Her wrath had been aroused when, as she was walking from the Ladies’ Parlor to the street, she had slipped and fallen over.

Some ill-bred lout had laughed at her plight, so she had taken them to task in the manner outlined.

This was only my second clash with a woman since I had been in uniform but I knew from my first experience that to stand and argue would be fatal. I listened politely for a minute or two and then cut her off sharply.

“Yes, well, I’m sorry Maureen, but you were still swearing and you’ll have to come along.” Maureen thought this was most amusing and threw her head back and laughed gaily, displaying about half a dozen rotten tobacco stained teeth hanging out of a pair of sagging gums. “You, ya little black bastard,” she screeched scornfully. “ You’re taking me nowhere.” I’d heard this song before, and despite the blood-curdling

look that accompanied it, I was not impressed.

I reached out to grab her, and as quick as a flash she reached up to her hat and drew a wicked looking 15 inch hatpin. This was really some­ thing new, and I circled her warily wondering what to do, while the crowd looked on in amusement.

Someone giggled and I decided I’d have to do something. I lunged out quickly to grab her, but she was quicker, and the needle-like point dug deep into my hand. I jumped back like a startled deer and stared at the little trickle of blood starting to run across mv hand whilp Maureen’s eyes gleamed with triumph and contempt. I made a few more attempts, each time with the same result, and started to feel really worried. If she’d have been a man, I could have stepped in and clocked him on the jaw, or grabbed him in a headlock, but I just couldn’t bring myself to hit a woman. The hat pin was by no means a really lethal weapon, but if it caught you in the right spot then it really stung, and my main worry was that she might stick it in my eye.

We had been sparring around on the footpath for about 10 minutes and quite a large crowd had gathered most of whom thought it was very funny. By now my hands and arms felt as if I’d been wrestling a porcu­ pine, and I was beginning to wish that I’d never thought o f becoming a policeperson. The crowd had spilled onto the roadway and I saw them scatter as a car screamed into the kerb behind Maureen. Two burly detectives jumped out and grabbed hold of an arm each before she could move a muscle. With his free hand one of them opened the back door, and together they just hurled young Maureen in. They let her go when she was still about three feet off the floor, and as soon as she made contact one of my saviours dived in and sat on her.

As her breath returned the ser­ geant quizzed her about her vital statistics. “ What’s your name?” “ L. J. Hooker, dearie. I’ve always got something to let.” “ Her name’s Maureen Smith,” I said, “and she’s about 110 years old.” Maureen had to resort to sign language to answer this, and her reply cannot be illu­ strated here.

The old sergeant blushed to the roots of his hair and Maureen, still cursing, was led away to the cells.

I think that everything taken into consideration, Maureen was the hard­ est arrest I’ve ever had. I saw Maureen once again, at the trots. I was working in* the flat enclosure one night when I saw a woman elbowing her way through a crowd of wharfies and bricklayers to get to the bar. She emerged shortly after holding a schooner and immediately spotted me. She sank her beer in about two gulps and staggered across.

“How are you tonight ya little black bastard.” A few people passing heard this and stopped, but I was a much wiser man now. “ Alright thank you, Maureen,” I said politely. Then turned my back and shot off like a rabbit. I wasn’t scared, but I wasn’t going to go through that again for pounds.

November 10 — December 8, 1973

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Cartoon

by

Bob

Daly

BOOKS-AWorking Life A Working Life Polly Toynbee Peacock Books, 75c.

by Jill Jolliffe Polly Toynbee's A Working Life is ostensibly written for readers in the 14 plus age group.

While they should read it as a cautionary . tale, it certainly should not be confined there.

The writer traces the arc of an average working life in Britain. Beginning with a chap­ ter called "Y o u th " she sits ip on vocational counselling sessions conducted in schools by a Youth Employment Officer. This is the first contact point between ado­ lescent ambition and the real world. A boy who wants to work on a farm is bundled off to be a clerk. Edwards, who is a little more independent than average; wants to read Capital and Mein Kampf and has thought about Vietnam, wants to study design or com­ mercial art. ,He is dispatched to a Window Display course.

The writer then takes us through a series of work ex­ periences: for the book she worked in a cake factory, a maternity ward, a car assembly line and a soap factory, she looked at a colliery and steel works and joined the army for a period of six weeks. She also looked over a labor exchange and, finally, at what happens to people when their working life is over — when their use value in terms of capitalism is exhausted.

For the overwhelming ma­ jority of people work is a mon­ ster which gobbles up their real lives — eight hours a day, five days a week. To survive, a whole culture is constructed around the work ethic — pub, hire purchase, overtime — until the real human orjly occasionally emerges from the socially-cre­

ated wage slave. The misery and boredom of work is not necessarily consciously experi­ enced. Polly Toynbee deals with this question at length: Because they are used to it, and because they've been more or less born into it, it is easy for people to say: "But they're happy. They wouldn't want to do anything else".

That doesn't seem to me to be any answer at all. If I went up to a sweaty, exhausted steel wor­ ker and said "D on't you wish you were editor of the New Statesman? Wouldn't you like to have had a fellowship to All Souls?" What would he say? He would stare at me with utter incomprehension.

His horizons have been stretched no further than what is reasonably within his grasp . . .

To say that he liked and was happy in his work is to say that he is not positively unhappy. Very few people are. The human mind is resilient and accepting. I do not think it patronising or interfering to look at people who are in jobs that they cannot be said in any real way to have chosen, and to say that they are not happy.

The writer worked long enough in each job to form links with the people she worked with and to imbibe some sense of the totally separate world that exists in a work situation.

She made some friendships, especially witn women she wor­ ked with, and on one occasion came across a class-conscious articulate worker who argued that unofficial strikes and shop floor organisation were the wor­ kers' only weapon in the face of increasingly complacent trade union leaderships.

Working in a factory or on an assembly line is relentlessly demanding work: I was horrified by the work and became depressed within

was to Mexican cinema, or what

Dalm as & Flesh

by Tim

Pigott

"A towering achievement m the use of the cinema." " It spans cinematic styles with ease, offering a little something for everyone. It works at opening up communication — and it works very well.” "Bert Deling's Dalmas is to Australian cinema what Bunuel's Les Olvidados

a tew days — tired, and bored.

In the evenings I had meant to take notes, but was too deadened by the day to do anything except watch tele­ vision . . . Sociologists who examine the so-called leisure problem might find the answer lies in work. Look how they waste it in bingo halls, the palais, the pub . . . Why don't they go home and read a good book? Throw a pot or two in the pottery at the local arts centre? . . . Such William Morris thoughts about the worker who loves to weave and paint of an evening area long way from how things really happen.

The chapter on the soap factory is fascinating. "Port Sun­ light" is a company town built on the Mersey. The factory dominates the town and the air is heavy with soap which, according to the author (who appearsto have a very discerning nostril) smells sometimes like Surf, sometimes like Lux. The place was built as a grotesque Owenite experiment by the late Lord Leyerhulme, whom the author describes as a mono­ maniac. A t the turn of the centruy Leverhulme built Port Sunlight as part of a profitsharing scheme for his workers.

He designed and regulated the whole social community — concert hall, library, gymnasium, literary societies — even down to determining that the church should be non-denominational to avoid religious dispute. The vicar was heard to say "I some-, times feel that I am intended to be an advertisement for Sun­ light soap more than fro the Kingdom of God".

The village was, of course, designed around the factory.

The site and the bizarre archi­ tectural styles caused consider­ able controversy when the vill­ age was built: the site was the muddy foreshores of tlm Mer­

Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad was to the French New Wave."

"Crawl over five miles of dirty heroin syringes to see it."

Well, the last time I crawled over five miles of dirty heroin syringes I couldn't see anything, but if I could have, it wouldn't have been the publicity handout for Dalmas (from which the quotations above were taken).

Dalmas begins as a detective story and then disintegrates into a documentary in which some freaked out middle class kids (at least one of whom has ended

sey, which just happened to provide ideal conditions for soap-making, if not for residence.

All the houses in the village were said to be damp, and this was the dampest house I had ever been in. In my room the curtains were wet all the time, and it smelt so strongly of wet and mould that when the lights were out one could imagine mushrooms blossoming out of the cracks in the walls.

One highlight of this sur­ realist nightmare of a place was that two of the workers' houses were designed as actual replicas of Shakespeare's house at Stratford-on-Avon.

The final chapter, "Old Age" is the most depressing of all.

Toynbee describes the lot of a working couple in retirement — Reg and Mary Atkinson. Gin rummy, the Darby and Joan Club, gossip, the death notices and a reduced standard of Ilying on the old age pension are the things of their post-laboring years.

When Reg left the firm he was presented with a wall plaque inscribed "F o r services to Steel, Peach and Tozer from 1907—1957". Had he come two years later, he observes, he would have received a stainless steel tea service and tray. Even though he is retired his life is still determined by the steel works: he continues to rise and retire at the same time and constantly watches the steel­ works from his window.

On Wednesday afternoon he and Mary go to the Darby and Joan Club, where they sing the Darby and Joan song: Just like Darby and Joan In a world o f our o.wn We'll build a nest Out in the West.

Be it so humble We 'll never grumble.

A fte r Summer has flown And the grey locks have

pregnancy aproblem?

FOR HELP AND INFORMATION Phone: 61.7325, Mon. —Fri., 6 —9 pm WOMEN’S LIBERATION HOUSE 25 ALBERTA STREET. SYDNEY.

in Divine Light) endlessly dis­ cuss the Meaning Of It All. Ten tons o f hippie metaphsyics later it's hard not to feel subtly oppressed — even bored — by this rather pretentious movie.

Some of the camera-work is very good and both the director and the actors are so obviously right into the experience being filmed that it does have an unusual feeling.

What happened between the people making the film is what usually seems to happen to groups of personal liberationists who turn inwards to each other shown Age may betide us But love will guide us Just like Darby and Joan.

The author comments: "A sadder, more resigned and de­ feated song is hard to imagine.

These old people hadn't much in life when they were young, and now they had nothing, ex­ cept resignation and acceptance of their lot".

During the course of the book, the author observes that "the nobility of work is a bi­ zarre concept". Could work ever be pleasure, even under an alter­ native social system? Tread lightly when a socialist tells you that the difference is whether one's wor.king for capi­ talism or socialism; the Protes­ tant ethic lurks in the most unlikely places. Have a close look at those heroic laboring proletarians in the posters — what tools are they using? how many hours a day do they work? is their work mono­ tonous? does it coincide with their interests?

It may be that our own view is too blighted to glimpse alternatives. Perhaps given a situation where natural skills and interests are taken into account, labor could be creative and exciting.

Polly Toynbee recognises that there can be a creative beauty about machinery: The melting shop at Steelo's

away from the world. It's like being sucked inwards on a whirl­ pool, going round and round in circles, and, finally, ending up at a very meaningless centre.

This attitude gives the film a curiously passive quality. At the end, with the footage of street actors surging through Mel­ bourne with 70,000 anti-war marchers, the screen is charged with a kind of life energy it lacks most of the time.

Many friends who are com­ mitted to a really intense per­ sonal liberationist line loved this film . They found the inter­ changes between those in the film really meaningful. But the form of the film isn't really like a documentary: it's much more like a commercial feature movie about a certain life-style in which the "actors are being themselves".

The publicity blurb ends: 'I urge you most strongly to accept the challenge Dalmas throws out. If this film has to wait five or ten years for its audiences, it will be a serious reflection on us all.' Well, this is probably a serious reflection on myself, because in the next five or ten years I'm going to see lots of movies by Andy Warhol because, after the child­ like world of Dalmas, Warhol's savage lacerations of all the people and streetscapes of New York seems bleak and empty enough to be just like real life again: Dalmas is loaded with attempts at Meaningfulness that don't communicate meaning­ fully. Flesh simply records life without any comment by the filmmaker who makes his films as he produced his prints and paintings of coke bottles and soup cans.

was the most beautiful, the most terrifying, the most breath-taking sight I have ever seen. High up on the metal catwalk we gazed down in silence for a long time. It was the biggest building I had ever been in, dark with no windows, and dim lights far up in the ceiling. Every piece of machinery was so vast that the tiny furnacemen milling about below didn't seem to be controlling it at all, a place for fiery giants but not for human beings . . .

What if paintings hung on factory walls? Or workers de­ signed their own work environ­ ment? What if workers deter­ mined the product they pro­ duced? What if the product was for their own collective and not a commodity to export o r 't o »fulfil an artificial need domestically?

Butf for now, under capital­ ism, tSfi? w o rK lrf ifurBifbed:IS?* surplus value and robbed by the nature of work of the hours and days of her/his real life. This is not the case because most workers are either fools or naive, as Richard Neville re­ cently claimed. Most workers work because they must sell their labor to live.

Fbt- Sfût*. fti -Ffni P4£c ' - SZ909T1 AlÇO) ä p r a eM/cuuíoubCü /¿y-

Pubs

&

27-Jan. 27, except Mondays; matinees» Fri. and Sat.; Waltzing \ Matilda — a National Pantomime with Tomato Sauce, 8.30 pm. Student concessions.

Pumpkin Players, 314 Church Street, Richmond. 848.2534.

Dec. 1, 4-8, 11-15; A Flea in Her Ear, 8.15 pm.

Discos Mushroom Tour: Wed. 5 /1 2 Co lac. Thu. 6/12 Warrnambool. Fri. 7 /12 Mt. Gambier.

Stumbles might pop up where you're least expecting them.

Parks round Carlton, mostly they make you laugh and sing.

Greville Ballroom (Prahran): Sat. 17/1,1 Matt Taylor, Mc­ Kenzie Theory, Capt. Match­ box, Myriad. Sat. 7/1 2 Ariel, Sid Rumpo, McKenzie Theo­ ry.

Funk Unfound Funk: it's on for young and old at Ormond Hall, Mou­ bray Street, Prahran, 6-midnight, Nov. 25, $2. Sharks, Sky­ hooks, Jerry and the Ree Boppers, Reuben Tice, Graham Lowndes, Biggies' Fly Boys.

Chelsea City Hall: Sat. 17/11 69ers, Ray Brown Lord Dog. Sat. 24/11 Kush Buster Brown, Fat Alroy Sat. 30/11 Mushroom Spec tacular: Madder Lake, Din goes; Matt Taylor. Sat. 8/12 Mississippi, Sid Rumpo, Fat Alroy.

Matthew Flinders: Sat. 17/11 69ers. Sun. 18/11 Ariel. Thu. 22/11 Ariel. Sat. 24/11 Band of Light, Sid Rumpo. Sun. 25/11 Madder Lake. Thu. 29/11 Dingoes, Fri. 30/11 Kush. Sat. 1/12 Dingoes, Country Radio.

Sun. 2 /12 Kush. Thu. 6 /1 2 Ayers Rock. Fri. 7/12 Kush.

Sundowner: Fri. 16/11 Up. Sat. 17/11 Up. Wed. 21/11 Colored Balls.

Thu. 22/11 Up. Fri. 23/11 Madder Lake. Sat. 24/11 Rondells. Wed. 28/11 Missi­ ssippi. Thu. 29/11 Big Push.

Fri. 30/11 Tank. Sat. 1/12 Rondells. Wed. 5/12 Up. Blaises: Sat. 17/11 Tank, Madder Lake, Flake. Sat. 24/11 Band of Light, Up. Sat. 1-/12 Madder Lake, Up. Sat. 8 /1 2 Up, Tank.

Organised by the Nimbin Land Co-Op. and Friends — have you joined?

Ormond

Hall,

Moubray

Street, Prahran.

Flicks Dendy, 20 Church Street, Brighton: Sun. 18/11, 6 pm, Zabriskie Point, Blow-Up (An­ tonioni). Sun. 25 /11 , 6 pm, Ben Hur, Day at the Races.

Still kicking.

Frank Traynor's, 100 Lt. Lons­ dale Street, City, 8QK, Sun.Thurs., 8-midnight.

Footscray Grand: 8 Paisley St:, Footscray. $1.40 student con­ cession. Nov. 22-24, Five Fingers of Death, Billy Jack. Nov. 29-31, French Connection. Dec. 6-8, Paint Your Wagon. Dec. 13-15, Sham us.

Union, Melbourne University Union. Nov. 26-31, Festival of Famous Films, 8 pm start.

Student concessions. Nov. 26, Russian Hamlet. Nov. 27, Um­ berto D (de Sica), Heatwave Island (Shindo). Nov. 28, Octo­ ber (Eisenstein).

Nov. 29 Mother Joan of the Angels (Kawalerowisz). Nov. 30, Kwai dan (Kobayashi). Nov. 31 Shoot the Pianist (Truffaut) Kanal (Wajda). Details347.4186

Polaris Inn Hotel, 551 Nicholson Street, North Carltom, Wed. and Friday.

Prickly Bush, Dan O ’Connell Hotel, cnr. Canning and Princes Streets, Carlton. Thurs. and Sat. from 3 pm, $1. Jammers wel­ come.

Outpost Inn, 52 Collins Street, City, 8-midnight, Fri.-Sun. Commune Coffee Lounge, 580 Victoria Street, North Mel­ bourne.

Joanna's, cnr. Elgin and Can­ ning Streets, Carlton, Fri. and Sat. Folk till 11.45 then jazz.

Food if you want.

Dorset Gardens Hotel, 335 Dor­ set Road, Croydon. 8-midnight, 40c, free supper. Tuesdays.

International Hotel: Fri. 16/11 Sherbet, Able Lodge. Fri. 23/11 Band of Light, Gathering. Fri. 30/11 Mississippi. Fri. 7/12 Tank.

National Film Theatre ($3 mem bership, $1.20 at door. Student concessions).

Nov. 21, Paris N'existe pas, Orphee (Dental Theatre). Nov. 27, King Kong, Exterminating Angel (Buñuel, Carlton Theatre).

Dec. 17, Un Chien andalou.

Seashell and the Clergyman, Entr'acte, Blood of a Poet (Dental Theatre).

Events Adelaide: Sunstone back to the Earth Fair, Nov. 24. Categories proclaimed include Dope, Sex, Rock and Roll, and Country Music.

Penthouse Hotel.

Thu. 22/11 Mississippi. Thu. 29/11 Mighty Kong. Thu. 6 /12 Colored Balls.

Fitzroy Film Society, 124 Na­ pier Street, rear of church. $1 membership, donation at door.

Nov. 18, La Bete humaine, Le Crime de M. Lange (Renoir).

Dec. 2, Moana, Sarre Bique.

Melbourne: Nimbin Party. Re­ creating Nimbin spirit. Guaran­ teed no star system but people who we know can play will be there. Maypole, feast, lights.

Teaser: Fri. 16/11 Fahm, 69ers.

Sat. 17 Mighty Kong, Rock Granite, all night revue, 9.30 pm — 3 am. Sun. 18/11 Sid Rumpo. Fri. 23/11 Bus­ ter Brown, Ariel. Sat. 24/11 Threshold, McKenzie Theory, Ayers Rock. Sun. 25/11 Mis­ sissippi. Fri. 30/11 Bourke and Wills, Dingoes. Sat. 1/12 Fat Alroy, John Brownrigg and Friends, Madder Lake.

Sun. 2 /12 Country Radio.

FrL 7 /1 2 Ski Light.

PRIVATE LESSONS m

Blues&Counlry

j

Harmonica About $2.50*. i.

Theatre"

v-

Hitch or ride to 88 Victoria Ave., Albert Park and ask for Jim Conway. Or phone 6621691

Actors' Theatre, cnr. Church and Cameron Streets, Richmond.

50.2534. Nov. 23-25, 30-Dec. 1 7-9, Happy Birthday Wanda June (Vonnegut Jnr.), 8.30 pm.

Dec. 14-16, Snow Queen (by junior students). Dec. 21-23, Fall and Redemption (by senior students).

AUSTRALIAN PERFORMING GROUP To satisfy the desire for the sublime and the ridiculous aroused duriqg the Christmas season the APG will present

A N A T IO N A L PANTOM IM E WITH TOM ATO SAU CE

Pram Factory, 325 Drummond Street, Carlton, 347.7133. Nov.

Q °oa h<r*UL - CrAtnttAv

Worlds W orst Questionaire Results w ill appear in Tuli Kupferberg's forthcoming book, THE WORST OF EVERYTHING. Please return questionnaire to Tuli at 381 East 10 Street, New York City, New York, 10009, USA. What 1.

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is the: worst sound worst smell worst color worst« taste worst food worst vegetable worst beer worst brand of liquor worst restaurant worst joke most unlucky number worst curse word worst car worst toilet paper worst country worst city worst religion worst newspaper worst book worst author worst rock and roll group worst song.

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worst singer worst TV show worst TV commercial worst actor ugliest personality worst dressed person worst clothing fad worst single event worst US president worst figure in public office : worst government worst crime worst criminal worst job worst disease worst hour of day’ worst day of year worst year in history worst hotel worst movie worst sport two or th re e . worst problems facing us today.

If you would like to nominate anything or anyone for a category not included, please add them to your reply.

Magic

NOT ONLY THE ZILCHIEST GEAR BUT ALSO THE ZAPPIEST POTTERY JEWELRY AND CANDLES. PS:

Wildest

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Koalas,

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Kangaroos, Crazy

MELBOURNE'S ONLY DISCO

Æ

Maypole Feast — lights, dancers, music, didgeridoo, fancy dress, fairy tales. Bring a plate, a musical instrument and your own (no alcohol).

Melbourne: Fitzroy Festival of All Nations, Nov. 18-25. Most events free. Ethnic dances, films, music, carnival. Programmes and details from Fitzroy Town Hall.

Highlights: Free music, Nov. 18, Fitzroy Town Hall: Captain Matchbox, Blerta (N Z ), Skyhooks, Danny Spooner, 2-5 pm.

Greek concert, Nov. 18, Fitzr roy Town Hall, 7.30 pm.

Kolobok o f Australia, Nov. 20, Ukrainian, Polish, Russian, Greek and Eastern dancing.

Fitzroy Town Hall, 8 pm.

Children's concert, Nov. 21, Town Hall, 1.30 pm.

Carnival, all day Nov. 24, Edin­ burgh Gardens.

Folk

rocksoff SUNDAY, November 18 - $2.00. Kids FREE 6.00 p.m. COME EARLY; Surprises!

fancy dress. For Nimbin Land Co-Op. benefit, $2 a throw, 6 to midnight. Nimbin spirit embraces children, of course.

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SUN. 18: SID RUMPO. FR I. 23: BUSTER BROWN, A R IE L .

SAT. 24: T H R ESH O LD , M C K EN ZIE T H E O R Y , AYERS ROCK. SUN. 25: MISSISSIPPI. F R I. 30: BOURKE AND W ILLS, DINGOES. SAT. 1: F A T A L R O Y , JOHN BROWNRIGG A N D FRIEN D S, M ADDER LAKE. (SUN. 2: C O U N TR Y RADIO .

I f RI. 7: SKI LIG H T.