The Digger No.39 December 1974

ISSUE NO. 39, December 3 - January 13, 1975

■■I

BLANK PAGE FOR ISSUU VERSION ONLY

Oliver Strewe

Page 1

LETTERS

The advertising is hotting up so,

Say n o to N e w p o rt

by Philip Brooks Oil tanks line the foreshore of the bay around Williamstown. Grime elings to the old warehouses and fac­ tories cramped together in the area.

On smogbound days a pall of mist hangs between the unfinished Westgate bridge and the city skyline.

We pulled up next to the sign proudly proclaiming the proposed Newport power station. The old stat­ ion stands next door as a monument to the sprawling industrial architec­ ture of forty years ago.

We plodded down the muddy track to talk to the site engineer. He was sceptical about the possibilities of the power station being built.

“There are plenty of jobs here but I doubt if we’ll ever be able to muster the 1000 non-union labourers.”

The Builders’ Labourers’ Federat­ ion had banned work on the proposed station in November 197 2. In Decem­ ber 1973, they were joined by an<other six key unions.

The struggle around the Newport power station escalated the other week when the whole of the Victor­ ian Trades Hall Council swung in be­ hind the ban. And the Liberal Gov­ ernment was quick to come in with its hysterical cries about “who’s run­ ning the country”.

Charlie Faure, the energetic secre­ tary of the Electrical Trades Union, believes reactionaries in the cabinet, notably the youthful cycling Minister for Sport, Brian Dixon, may think Newport is a good issue to take on the unions over and get RSL private army support.

Clyde Holding, the Victorian Lab­ or Party leader, somewhat shame­ fully admits his party made a mis­ take when they originally supported the act in 1971. The only research the Labor Party did then was for deputy Wilkes to ring up the Will-

“ the limit to appliances which make the home chores more pleasant is bounded only by one’s imagination On average, fifteen new electrical appliances are developed every ten years and man’s ingenuity will not end”. Five thousand six hundred of its 9,000 staff are now involved in marketing and advertising, turning out slogans like “ Darkness is the friend of the criminal”.

John Marks of the Williamstown Conservation Council believes the SEC decided to build the Newport station before environmental aware­ ness became too great. He thanks the Builders’ Labourers ban in 1972 for giving conservation groups a year to whip up public support. John Marks works out of the back of his second hand dealers store in Will­ iamstown, his desk cluttered with bills, invoices and Newport pamph­ lets. Mufflers and car parts hang on the wall behind his head. He recalls with zest the early stirs of 1972, when there were spontaneous marches along the main street of Williams­ town after local activists became aware of the SEC plans» Since then they have widened their activity.

At that time environmental aware­ ness was low and the SEC tried to persuade the Williamstown Council that everything would be alright.

The council was “made up of con­ servative councillors more concerned with people up town than the people they represented”. Today the coun­ cil has changed, with six of its twelve members staunch conserva­ tionists, and it now opposes the station despite an SEC bribe of $250,000 to beautify The Strand, the main foreshore street.

In 1971 Esso-BHP were hoping to sell natural gas to a proposed furnacing oil producing station in Sydney.

When this station was canned for

We suspected all the time that we shouldn’t have been there but we thought we would work through official channels so they couldn’t point the bone at us later.”

Keith Tarrant is one of those persons who laughs raucously and a lot. It’s the laugh of someone who late in life began to play cloak and dagger games with the forces of authority. (He believes his phpne was tapped during the pipeline controv­ ersy.) Tarrant’s main aim has been to make the EPA work. “ It’s under the Ministry of Conservation which is full of people believing we’ve got 10,000 years to clean the place up.” He had once suggested that the power station be built in the grounds of Govern­ ment House because it would effect fewer people and give an effective extra hundred feet to the proposed 600 hundred foot stack.

The terms of reference of the EPA inquiry into the power station and the subsequent appeals specifically excluded questions of alternative en­ ergy sources, aesthetics and town planning. Their only concern was with air and water emissions. At the first tribunal and the subsequent appeal before the independent gov­ ernment appointed arbitrator (Opas Q.C.), an impressive array of wit­ nesses lined up against the granting of licences. The CSIRO, department of atmospheric physics at Aspendale, and the Melbourne University depart­ ment of Meteorology, gave evidence against the SEC claims of nonpollut­ ion, which included heat inversions and other unpredictable weather pat­ terns in Melbourne.

The two chief consulting physic­ ians at Royal Melbourne and Prince Henry’s Hospitals gave evidence about the medical dangers of increased poll­ utants in the air. Dr. David Smith, chief water quality officer for the

mÊÈmËlÈ!ÊlÊÊÊÊm

Larry Meitzer

Fine weather at Newport iamstown Town Clerk to ask if there was any opposition to the station.

Holding now sees it as a battle between conservation groups and the unions on the one hand and the SEC, with the government as the meat in the sandwich. For Keith Tarrant, a leading light in the Port Phillip Conservation Council, “ this issue is so big that we can’t afford to lose it, in terms of the power people have over government inst­ rumentalities.”

The make-up of the SEC board shows who wields the power behind decisions like Newport. The SEC is a public corporation but its direct­ ors are all businessmen. They include Sir Roger Darvell, who holds a dir­ ectorship with BHP amongst others — a company with which ESSO, hope to increase their profits from their Bass Strait oil fields by 90 per cent through supplies to Newport.

Since the Commission’s establish­ ment, it has used an advertising and marketing policy designed to create a need for more power stations such as those planned at Newport, Werribee, Sale and French Island. It shares the cost of advertising with manu­ facturers of goods such as electric­ ally heated toilet seats,, vibrating machines and robot sweepers. Acc­ ording to two senior SEC planners

environmental reasons, they app­ roached the SEC to use natural gas at Newport. But use of gas at the New­ port station will halve the supplies from the Bass Strait oil fields which even now are estimated to dry up in 1989. “We appreciate how good it is, but there are other methods nearly as good which don’t waste gas”, says Keith Tarrant. Gas efficiency de­ creases by ten.per cent when used to generate electricity.

Charlie Faure laughs whenever he speaks of the Esso-BHP contract with the SEC: “ As a peak load station consumers will have rationing whenever they cut it off. For a 500 million dollar investment you want to be able to use it all the time.” However, rationing may not occur when natural gas supplies are cut because under the terms of the licences issued oil may be used for 90 days a year. The government says that when the station is operat­ ing it may only operate 25 per cent of the time. Thus this natural gas station, as it is publicised, may use oil much of the time, spewing forth sulphur, NOX gas and dust haze into Melbourne’s atmosphere.

John Marks speaks confidently and good humouredly about the legal battles: “We were done like a dinner at every one of them.

EPA, and Paul Le Roy, the chief air quality officer, both recommended withholding of licences due to insuff­ icient research by the SEC. But att­ empts by conservationists to call these officers were rebuffed by the EPA who argued that it was the auth­ ority that made the decision, taking into account the technical officers’ report.

When Cyril Curtin, the senior CSIRO scientist, said he believed the SEC could not achieve and maintain the conditions of the licence, Gilpin, the chairman of the EPA asked Jack Johnson, chairman of the SEC for an unequivocal assurance that this was not so. Johnson gave the assurance.

Yet, at the second appeal before Opus Q.C., the SEC appealed against the conditions of the licence on the grounds that they could not be main­ tained with safety.

Most SEC witnesses came from London where a station in the centre of the city is said to add little visible pollution to its already smoggy en­ virons. The Pacific Gas Company, which has built similar stations on the west coast of the US where weather conditions are similar to Melbourne, refused to give evidence on the Continued on page 4

Was it sexist bullshit?

Merv Nixon doing his thing outside the Conspiracy boutique.

Women trash boutique boss

by Elizabeth Elliott ‘Conspiracy’ may sound like the title of a B grade flick, or an exciting new fragrance perhaps, but in fact it’s a Z grade boutique in Wollongong.

The story stars a man named John­ ston. A new face in town, he set up a groovy gear shop, with all the usual features of those shops. Brown light­ ing, Stones’ tapes, no staff amenities, bad pay and competition between sales staff. Employing only the most exploitable of labour, namely young girls, things were going his way until the girls decided to join the union.

Johnston then fired them. ‘The Gong’ has thousands of women out of work, always has had actually.

Johnston knew there’d be more where those lightweight little women came from.

But he hadn’t reckoned on the cal­ ibre of the daughters of the South Coast. The five women, including the manageress, began to picket the place.

And that takes guts, to stand in your home town shopping centre with a placard, when you still need a job, hopefully in that same shopping centre.

The pigs were soon on the scene, harassing the picket line. But there wasn’t enough action for Johnston.

So he brought down some young thugs from the big smoke...well, the bigger smoke...who started provoking the women and their supporters. No bite, Thursday night comes, and Johnston was losing dollars. He began hassling Irene Sanagan, a shop assist­ ants’ union organizer, and then took a swipe at her. Bob Dunne, a local unionist, intervened and got smashed on the head with an iron bar, (which just happened to be in Johnston’s hand). Half an hour later, an ambu­ lance arrived and Dunne was taken to hospital for six stitches arid observa­ tion. Needless to say the cops were nowhere to be seen, and refused to intervene.

Two nights later, on local radio, Johnston said he’d never employ any­ one without an Aussie birth certifi­ cate, let alone shiftless, thieving' blacks like the quarter-caste Maori girl who was among those sacked.

So what?

There are two principles at stake.

One is the right of individuals in small shops, offices, etc., to join a union, and the other is the use of per­ sonal violence by a boss ..so far not a feature of Australian labour history (unlike the U.S.).

For these principles, a Woollongong-wide strike and demonstration was called on Tuesday the 19th.What a demonstration!

Perhaps there were only a thou­ sand people, marching along the sunny main street. But one thou­

sand working people, old and young, old die-hards, shop girls, factory wo­ men, all understanding the issues ...

Led by the five girls, the march ended at the ‘Conspiracy’, with an impromptu rally featuring a migrant worker acting his poem, chants and demands to wreck the shop.

Well, perhaps you could say the union men speaking at the official rally before the march were tedious, over-concerned with unions and union history. Not even the communist male leaders talked about the current assault on the working class and noone said openly what many people thought: that Johnston-come-lately was an NCC-DLP-BHP front to see how far the workers could he pushed in times of unemployment. But the understanding was there among the rank-and-file. Next time a little more class consciousness, gentlemen!

The official rally was saved for me at least, by a woman worker who came to the mike when they were calling “anyone else?” Sally Bowman talked with a lifetime of struggle be­ hind her, and she didn’t pause for breath.

“We’re not only fighting today for these girls, but for the women of Wollongong who have fought for the right to work in a man’s town for 25 years. People who don’t show up in the unemployment statistics. And when they do get a job, have to sweep the floors, make tea for the boss, work Saturdays without penalty rates and get their time sheets filled out for them ... this is what fellow wor­ kers in this town have been putting up with, and it hasn’t changed in 25 years.”

This is only the beginning of this type of resistance by women workers.

The week before another rally was held by South Coast clothing wor­ kers, sacked, without dole, finding re­ training and sustenance pay schemes a farce. Newcastle women the week before had demanded worker control of their leather goods factory and approached BHP etc., to buy their goods.

Someday — and let’s hope it’s soon —there’s going to be some ama zing struggles from that 40 per cent pf the workforce which has swept, made tea, missed lunch breaks, sweat­ ed, screwed bottle tops on, blotted their brains out with APC to kill the spark that says I can’t go on working like this, accepting speed-ups, de grading pay packets, foremen, and fat union officials. There’s a hell of a lot of anger bubbling below the surface right now.

STOP PRESS: We have just heard that the. “Con­ spiracy1' has been sold as a result of the black ban —■and the girls have been re-employed.

Rather than waste one’s creative energies through blasts of non­ specific introspections, a review should be seen as yet another form of art, creation and communication, the content of which structure is books. This is far more important than using the said medium for the expression of the very things that Jean Bedford, in her article ‘Sylvia Plath and Suicide’ (Digger no. 38) accuses the “sexists” of this world.

It is her privilege to have ant­ agonistic feelings towards Alvarez, but that has very little to do with his work of art, to wit, The Savage God, A Study o f Suicide, that she was supposing to analyse. .

If Bedford wants to speak about the female race (specifically Plath — which is relevant) — about the uniqueness and individuality of each person on this earth — she could do so to her “victim” without putting him (Alvarez) down.

For example, Bedford writes: Quite frankly, old boy, who gives a stuff? ”, “Such naivete ... endearing if not for the patronizing sexist way ...” and “To be fair (let’s) he admits this, but doesn’t seem to realize the full cruelty and coward­ ice of it.”

We all know that sometimes a kick in the arse is the only help, but neurotic and (well, goddam me!) sexist bullshit from Jean Bedford is neither a swift kick nor a friendly hand.

Not to mention the review.

Love, always, Link, Payneham, SA.

Address to: P.O. Box 77, Carlton. Vic. 3053

more houses had been sold and the $110,000 collected?

If the sale of those six houses goes through, some development company will make a cool $40,000 profit — I suspect with little outlay of their own finances, but with the help of their friendly real estate mam I was repeatedly shown a house down on the books with one estate agent, only to be shown the same place in a different agency with a totally different story about who the owner was and why they wanted to. sell.

We have finally bought a house.

The agent through which it was sold, Kelly and Sons of Newtown, warned me sharply that my prac­ tice of finding out who the owner was through the rates department and going to see them was highly unethical. Unethical or not, I re­ commend such a practice to all people buying a house as the best way of protecting both owner and buyer from the kind of transactions which may be going on without the knowledge of either of them.

My little booklet from the Real Estate Institute of N.S.W. says: “The Institute has been very active, in keeping the public fully informed on property matters in addition to supplying its members with all the necessary information relative to real estate to enable them better to assist buyers and sellers.” My advice to anyone wanting to buy a home is to take that with a grain of salt and wonder what’s behind the helpful smile.

Carol O'Donnell, Glebe, NSW.

M ao’s m ate

In Digger no. 38 a letter, by Peter Poynton, denied the fact that the Chinese had solved the problem of hunger. Poynton wrote, “ Oh yes, Smith’s claim that the Chinese are doing ok — bullshit. China is overWhen we first started the search populated, cannot support 800 mill­ to buy a house we were given a ion people, and the leadership will little booklet which assured us that acknowledge this (and do).”

Firstly, there has never been any we could “place our confidence in acknowledgement by the Chinese of the Members of the Real Estate Institute of N.S.W. knowing they these claims of overpopulation —not will be completely honest with you, even from traitors such as Lin Piao.

Secondly, the claim of overpopul­ will work with you in a spirit of helpfulness, and assist you to find ation is bullshit — and one doesn’t have to refer to pro-Chinese sources the right home.”

I’d like to pass on a couple to verify that. For example, a ten of our experiences with estate agents person delegation of U.S. farm re­ who belong to the Real Estate In­ search experts spent four weeks in China recently. The delegation was stitute of N.S.W. The agents Dodd and Feltham headed by Dr. Sterling Wortman, of Erskineville showed us an old vice president of the Rockefeller terrace house in .Alexandria priced Foundation, and included Dr. Nor­ at $25,000. We offered $22,000, man Borlaug, winner of the Nobel but were told that such a price Peace Prize in 1970 and known as couldn’t be considered as the place the “ father of the green revolution.”

This group said that China had no was owned by a businessman who was1in money difficulties and needed food worries and that the Peoples the full $25,000 urgently. The story Republic “has been remarkably suc­ sounded a bit suspicious to us and cessful, for crops generally looked we rang up the council rates depart­ good wherever the team travelled.” ment to find out who the owner was. And this group did not sit around in He informed us that he had already the cities. Wortman said, “We were sold the place to a development able to do everything we wanted. In company (not listed in the phone fact we said that we were willing to book) for the $22,000 that he had go into the fields, and the dust and asked for. He had been waiting nine mud would not bother us, and that months for this money. He had no was the first thing we did.”

Further, many people misunder­ idea that the house was still listed stand the Chinese family planning for sale in the real estate office-.

It seems fairly likely that the programs. They see it as a “popula­ development company and the real tion problem” , rather than dialectestate agent needed a quick sale ally: as a step by China towards the of $25,000 so that the owner could liberation of women, as a means to be paid his $22,000 and they could plan smoothly the growth of pop­ ulation in step with the increase of clear a $3,000 profit.

We had another interesting ex­ food production, and — as a parti­ perience with the agents Argy and cular aspect of China’s policy — to Tryon of Redfern. They advertised aid the national minorities to in­ three terrace houses in Chippendale, crease their numbers, brutally dim­ each one being between $25,000 and inished by imperialism, if they so $27,000. We noticed a block of six desire. houses, not three, which looked Yours — a friend of the Chinese empty and neglected, Local residents people, told us that the block of six houses John Halpin, had been sold two months earlier Carlton, Vic. for $110,000 for the lot on a single title. So houses bought for roughly $18,000 each were being sold only THE N E X T ISSUE OF THE two months later for $26,000 each D IG G ER W IL L BE ON TH E and more. If the $110,000 hadn’t STREETS ON JA N U A R Y 14 been paid to the original owner W HICH G IV E S US A FEW what would be the legal position of WEEKS' BREAK. AFTER anyone who paid the $26,000 for T H A T WE W IL L BE BACK ON one house? Would the house be A M O N T H L Y SCHEDULE. theirs to move into straight away?

Or would they have to wait until

House sharks

Page 2

THE DIGGER

December 3 — January 13, 1975

0 Published by High Times Pty. Ltd. 350 Victoria Street, North Mel­ bourne, Victoria 3051. Tele­ phone: 329.0977, 329.0512 Postal Address: PO Box 77 Carl­ ton, Victoria, 3053.

Cover price is recommended ret­ ail maximum.

DIGGER COLLECTIVE Melbourne: Phillip Brooks, Grant Evans, Virginia Fraser, Phillip Frazer, Alistair Jones, Isabelle Rosemberg Working with us on this issue: Janie Conway, Rosie Elliot, Seana Gunn, Tim Pigott, Sandra Zurbo Advertising: Terry Cleary.

Sydney: Hall Greenland, Michael Zerman.

Advertising: Michael Zerman, 15 Avenue Road, Glebe, NSW 2037 Telephone: 660.6957 DISTRIBUTORS: New South Wales: Allan Rodney Wright (Circulation) Pty. Ltd. 36-40 Bourke Street, Wooloomooloo 2021. Ph: 357.2588.

Victoria: Magdiss Proprietry Ltd. 250 Spenger Street, Melbourne 3000. Ph: 600421.

South Australia: Midnight Distrib­ utors, 12 Chisolm Avenue, Burnside 5066.

Queensland: Mirror Newspapers Ltd, Brunswick & McLachlan sts, Brisbane.

The Digger accepts news, features, artwork or photographs from contributors.

Send material with a stamped self addressed envelope if you want it back, to The Digger, PO Box 77, Carlton, Victoria 3053.

The Digger is a member of the Alternate Press Service (APS).

EN — Earth News, California.

PNS — People’s News Service, Lon­ don.

NAN — New Asia News, Tokyo.

Digger notes With this issue of Digger we are beginning what we hope will be an intermittent collective communicat­ ion to Digger readers about some of the hassles we have when putting to­ gether the paper. But only about hassles we believe might be relevant in a wider context —and as a spin-off it may help to demystify the oper­ ation of the paper which appears as if out of thin air at the newsagents every month.

In the last issue of the paper we carried a piece on the Conference on Feminism and Socialism — an event we felt had to be covered. A short report was rushed together in the frantic final last forty hours of the paper’s production and was com­ pletely inadequate — we fell victim to the “any coverage so long as it’s covered” steamroller. And then the article was unsigned and so it app­ eared to be a Digger statement, which it wasn’t, and all agree in retrospect that it should not have been run.

the cataclysmic end of an earlier civilization.

Berlitz estimates that at least one boat a week and about two planes a month are still disappearing into the triangle — a figure which the Miami Coast Guard termed “not out of bounds”.

—From EN

Santa go home Yes, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus, at least for children in the African nation of Zaire. Santa — and even Christmas — is officially kaput.

It’s all part of President Seko’s campaign to return the nation to African, as opposed to Western, culture. So this year, for the first time, December 25th will not be a public holiday, and Virginia will have to go to school just like every other day.

The Council of Protestant Churchmen will decide on a new date for the holiday in February.

-From EN

T h e m iddle A new organization in Britain has been launched with the intention of mobilizing the middle class into a political unit comparable to organ­ ized labour. It’s called, appropriately, The Middle Class Association.

Organizers John Gorst and L.P. Orr, say they intended to launch the organization back in August, but de­ cided they didn’t like the name. How­ ever, after three months of soulsearching, they decided that The Middle Class Association isn’t so bad after all.

According to Orr, the middle class is “vilified and sneered at as a min­ ority and are laboring under penal­ ties not imposed on other sections of the working community.”

They say they hope the organ­ ization will eventually be strong en­ ough to sway nations and influence governments. But so far, The Middle Class Association has only two mem­ bers —the founders.

—From EN

Sutch a case o f security “As a New Zealander I regard Communism as evil and subversive.

A New Zealand Communist by con­ scious act when he joins the Party abandons his loyalty to God and country and gives allegiance to an atheistic and materialistic movement operated in the interests of and directed by a foreign power.” “(our) function is the protect­ ion of the country against subversion and espionage whether directed from within or without New Zealand.”

—Brigadier H.E. Gilbert.

From the Pentagon to Auckland reactionary rhetoric and paranoia, it seems, is invariable. But unfort­ unately reactionaries are usually in a position of power which enables them to vent their fantasies on any ‘red-under-the-bed’ they,f sue-peet.

Brigadier H.E.Gilbert, head of the New Zealand Security and Intell­ igence Service, did just this by order­ ing the arrest of leading New Zeal­ and leftist intellectual, Dr.W.B.Sutch “some time before midnight” on September 27.

Ten police and plainclothesmen (police or security?) arrested Sutch and searched his house book- by book and record by récord until 6am. His office was searched item by item at the same time. Else­ where a search by 50 police and army personnel was begun on a vacant lot in which trees were cut down and mine detectors used. A senior police officer said that some material had been found which didn’t fit into the official Secrets Act but anyway had been taken away ‘for assesment’.

Dr. Sutch has been charged on two counts under the Official Sec­ rets Act. No information was given on the charges and bail was req­ uested and granted on — surrender of passport, daily reporting to the police; though suppression of name was refused out of hand by the magistrate.

On page four of the same issue, ‘Land Rights in Tomorrow World’ Dr.Sutch has a Ph.D in economics, was accompanied by an anonymous (uncaptioned) photo of an aboriginal is one of the architects of New in northern New South Wales. This Zealand’s welfare state policies, was was objected to on the grounds of its adviser to the Minister for Finance anonymity, as an expression of “any for nearly a decade, a member of old black will do”. The patent ab­ the society ‘For Closer Relations surdity of an aboriginal in an over­ With the USSR’ when the Soviet coat accompanying an article about Union came into the second world aboriginals who live in the swelter of war, a director of a United Nations the Northern Territory (did you pick relief organization after the war, and it?) also caused embarrassed shuff­ then secretary general of New Zeal­ ling. The photo was used because it and’s delegation to the United Nat­ was such a good one and it was felt ions 1947-51.

Bill Sutch has never been a mem­ would make the article more attrac­ tive —whereas on reflection it simply ber of the Communist Party but prettifies it. The relation between is an unrepentant ‘man of the 1930s’ politics and photography (art) is a which makes him an immediate tar­ tricky one and we are still in the get for someone like Gilbert.

Sutch has been harrassed by sec­ process of trying to work out some answer for ourselves — but at least urity for many years now. Over we can begin by chalking up what the past two years there was a not to do. In the case of ‘Land check on Brigadier Gilbert, and that Rights in Tomorrow World’ it be­ was by Prime Minister, Norman Kirk, came “aesthetics for aesthetics’ sake” who kept strict watch on the Sec­ which immediately tended to have urity Service. But Kirk’s death was reactionary connotations. It’s one a signal for Gilbert to break out again, and he moved in on Sutch we’ll have to work on... to ‘finally get this red’, who’s been All you rotters who fish through, running amok since the ‘30s. old Diggers to send in the old subs The date for the case has still to form at the old rate of $7.80 for be set. Dr.Sutch has indicated he 26 issues will forthwith receive 19 will defend the case and if he is as issues for that amount of money. rigorous as he usually is the case We cannot afford to subsidize your could drag on for weeks. So it initiative and trickery any longer. looks as if Gilbert in his witch-

hunt will at least have Sutch on the grill for quite a few months. So much for the fantasies of security.

- and pensioners love 'em Victoria’s Minister tor Housing Mr. Dickie, called Housing Commiss­ ion flats “little Buckingham Palaces”.

He was speaking at the opening of the Commission’s latest block of flats in Richmond. Mr. Dickie said he thought high-rise flats were a good form of housing and he would always defend them.

Although the Richmond block is the last one planned, Dickie said: “We will build more for pensioners if the demand is great enough. They love them.”

The opening ceremony was by invitation only and residents were kept out by police and had to watch from behind a glass wall. After the ceremony was over the Minister for Housing entertained official guests at a supper which included lobster, beef, ckicken and watermelon.

W om en on Lip takeover Besancon, France — women work­ ers who compose 50 per cent of the workforce at the Lip watch factory are compiling a book about their part in the year long struggle to retain their jobs.

The book will consist of the acc­ ounts of numerous female workers and the wives of workers, and will show that in the extraordinary battle which involved taking over the watch factory and producing and selling the watches to pay their own wages, the women played a key role.

The book will reflect the polit­ icisation of the women, not only with regard to the fight with the management but also with regard to their position in society. They came to recognize that they were exploited in the factory, given infer­ ior pay and generally assigned to more boring jobs. During the struggle they also noticed that they were expected to do most of the menial tasks such as cleaning up, washing dishes, and working in the canteen,

Our feedout needs feedback WE WANT TO HEAR ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE DOING, WHAT YOUR FR11 NDS ARF DOING AND YOUR FRIENDS FRIENDS. Jl ARTICLES, PHOTOS, CARTOONS AND TIP-OFFS. WRITE OR PHONE US AT THE DIGGER: MELBOURNE - 350 VICTORIA STREET, NORTH MELBOURNI . PH:'329.0977.

SYDNEY - 15 AVENUE ROAD, GLEBE, (NSW). PH: 660.6957.

while the men took the more int­ eresting jobs. The women also com­ plained about the lack of creche facilities which prevented them from attending meetings at which import­ ant decisions, were taken.

—From PNS

Indians sell w ar bonds Dave Wheaton, tribal manager of i the tiny Kootenai Indian tribe in Idaho, says the tribe has raised $1,500 through the sale of their $l-a-piece war bonds. The Kooten­ ai’s declared war on the United States September 20th, and recently started selling war bonds at the Expo ’74 fair in Spokane, Wash­ ington.

Tribal manager Wheaton said dem­ and for the bonds has been fan­ tastic, with enquires from all over the US. He believes the tribe could probably sell as many as a million bonds.

The Kootenais have laid claim to 128,000 acres of ancestral lands in Idaho for a reservation, as well as a cash settlement of $1.5 million for lands seized by the government 120 years ago.

The 67-member tribe was recently given 12-and-a-half acres by President Ford, but they say the war’s still on until their demands are met.

—From EN

C IA set up G reek Junta In an article on the Cyprus crisis, former CIA agent and author of the Controversial book, The CIA and the Cult o f Intelligence, wrote: “The seeds of disaster were sown in Greece almost a decade ago, when the clan­ destine agency encouraged King Con­ stantine’s effort to thwart the pol­ itical reforms of leftist Premier Papandreouss reportedly a former CIA agent. Within two years, a military junta took control of the country.

If the CIA did not actively abet the coup d’etat, it undoubtedly coll­ aborated with the junta afterwards — despite official denials by Wash­ ington. By then the CIA’s operat­ ional imperative, replacing its thread­ bare ‘to keep the world free for democracy’, had become ‘to main­ tain stability’. Thus a repressive dic­ tatorship in Greece was preferable to a democratic left leaning govern­ ment.”

The London Observer article cont­ inued, “ Athens was also a large CIA station, from which operations could be supported and launched against other targets in the Middle East.

Eventually, the crude methods of the junta became a liability even to the CIA and the US. The agency quietly began to disengage, apparently trans­ ferring certain operational assets to Iran — a safer station, now overseen

by Ambassador Richard Helms, the former CIA director. There would, of course, be no trouble with the Shah. The CIA had restored him to his throne earlier by overthrowing Stevie Wonder says heJias written Premier Mussadiq. On Cyprus, mean­ while, Nicos Sampson moved —with two songs which “were fantastically the approval of the junta — to influenced” by the Symbionese Lib­ oust Archbishop Makarios. Allegedly, eration Army, particularly the May the CIA had ten days warning of the police attack on the home in which coup but chose to do nothing about most of the SLA’s members were it. Official Washington sources now staying in Los Angeles. claim the threatened parties were —From EN forewarned. Perhaps.”

Stevie Wfonder

Rape

W inchester

crisis centre

Jesse Winchester — singer, writer, and draft exile living in Montreal — says he has no intention of taking up The Melbourne rape crisis centre President Ford’s so-called amnesty is open for business. The centre is offer. Says Jesse, “I’ve no reason situated at 85 Johnston Street, Coll- to leave, I like it here.” The Tenn­ ingwood and will operate a phone essee-born singer’s new album is call­ service between 6pm and 10pm daily. ed Learn to Love it on Bearsville.

Women can contact the Centre dur-' —From EN ing these hours on 419-4644.

The Centre aims to provide sup­ port, help and information for victims of rape and sexual assault. The work of the centre will include: — Providing company/support to vic­ tims at police stations, hospitals and courts.

Only 29 per cent of Britons bel­ — Counselling and group discussion for victims and their families to ieve in God — 9 per cent less than help overcome reactions of guilt and in 1963 — acçording to surveys carried out by the Christian Science shame.

Monitor; but 39 per cent believe in —Medical care where necessary.

— Community education regarding life after death. rape and rape prevention. The Centre — Ghost Flame News. will also provide speakers and infor­ mation to schools and interested groups in the community.

Lost sheep

B oats and planes van ish The latest chapter to the cont­ inuing “Devil’s Triangle” controversy —concerning that mysterious triangle in the Atlantic Ocean — is a best-, selling book entitled, The Bermuda Triangle by Charles Berlitz. The mys­ terious expanse of ocean forms a 200,000-square-mile triangle between Bermuda, Miami, and Puerto Rico, and, according to various accounts, it’s the site of some pretty strange occurences. , The most famous incident invol­ ved the disappearance of five Navy fighters that flew into the area short­ ly after World War Two. Before disappearing from the radar screens, the leader of the training mission* radioed that “ Everything is wrong, strange, we can’t even be sure of any direction ... Even the ocean doesn’t look as it should,” he said.

All five aircraft, as well as a rescue | plane with 13 men aboard, disI appeared with no trace.

According to the Berlitz book, the mysterious triangle may be some I sort of gateway into another dim| ension, or may contain unexplained j electro magnetic properties that can j turn matter invisible. He believes the I secret of the area may also explain

Radical commander

The Swedish high command has just transferred the commander of an armoured unit because of his “extremist” political opinions. This rare disciplinary move was carried out against Commander Sture Karlsson, head of a unit stationed on Gotland Island, off Sweden’s Baltic Coast. Another case of a right-wing militarist? Not exactly. Karlsson gave press interviews criticizing Sweden’s reformist socialism because it com­ promised, he said, with capitalism.

The only way to bring on true soc­ ialism, Karlsson affirmed, is through armed struggle.

—From The Guardian

Published by High Times Pty Ltd, 350 Victoria Street, North Melbourne, Vic. Printed by Roger Day for the printers, Peelprint Pty Ltd, Peel Street,

V ietnam SAIGON — Although the routines of daily life go on here, the political pot is beginning to boil amidst ru­ mours that President Thieu may be gone by the end of the year. Jour­ nalists are attacking government press requirements while Catholic and Buddhist groups are hitting corrupt­ ion in the Thieu regime. There is growing discontent among middlelevel military officers, and students are beginning to stir.

Beginning with the organization of the “ People’s Anti-Corruption Movement to Save the Country and Create Peace,” launched in June by 301 Catholic priests, organized opp­ osition has become more and more open. On September 8 the anti­ corruption movement issued “Indict­ ment No. 1” charging that “the war which now continues to kill our troops and people is caused by the greed of Mr. Ngcreyn Van Thieu, who has considered his own position more important than the fate of the nation.”

On September 15 a Buddhistsponsored National Reconciliation Force made its appearance, and the People’s Front Against Starvation was founded on the 22nd, followed by the Committee to Protect the Rights of Workers on the 26th.

Meanwhile, the Struggle Committee for Freedom of the Press and Pub­ lishing, founded on the 6th, had its first confrontation with the re­ gime when three papers tried to publish “Indictment No. 1” and burned their editions rather than let the police confiscate them.

Forced to respond, Thieu went on television on October 1, using a rambling two-hour speech to pledge an end of corruption. He ended by asking, “If, as the Communist pro­ paganda says, the whole army and people have lost confidence in me, please let me know.” And people have been letting him know.

Protests mounted in October as journalists took to the streets on October 10 in a demonstration billed as “Journalists Begging Day”. The reporters called attention to unem­ ployment caused by the closing of some papers under heavy government pressure. The government has re­ quired large cash deposits from pub­ lishers and Some papers have lost up to four editions in a week through police confiscation —wiping out profits and forcing print shops to close.

The “ Begging Day” struck a sym­ pathetic chord among the people, and thousands of ordinary citizens defied police orders and joined in expressing opposition to Thieu. Since then Saigon’s “swinging” downtown quarter has a new atmosphere: police patrols have been doubled and coils of concertina wire warn that these streets are no longer the pleasure preserve of the war profiteers and their young.

Within one week two military men — an army sergeant and an airman — appeared on the steps of Saigon’s National Assembly building under the protection of opposition deputies. There they held news con­ ferences to describe their disillusion with Thieu. Afterwards, military per­ sonnel were restricted to their bases and Military Police armed with M-16s went on permanent duty around the assembly building.

But the police have tried to avoid bad press in dealing with demon­ strations. Although tear gas and clubs have been used in places where there is no foreign coverage, tactics in Saigon have concentrated on keeping “bystanders” away from demonstrat­ ors. When the journalists demon­ strated, however, this tactic failed as thousands broke through police lines and stayed with the march all morning, helping to overpower police who blocked the route.

How the police will deal with the new phase is unclear, although they have begun quietly arresting behind-the-scenes organizers. While opposition politicians suggest that Thieu may have to move gently to avoid antagonizing the US Con­ gress, others point out that this year’s aid decisions have already been made. With Thieu’s power at stake, anything can happen.

—From John Spragens, NAN hi an effort to improve the image of the world’s penal colonies, the Saigon government has announced that from now on the prison island of Con Son — famous for its “Tiger Cages” — will be known as Phu Hai, meaning “Prosperous Sea”.

The name change is also seen as a sign that the South Vietnamese may be planning to turn the penal colony into a major resort, catering to the influx of western oilmen. The 9000 prisoners now held there would be transferred elsewhere.

—From EN

Page 3

THE DIGGER

December 3 — January 13, 1975

Bathurst blow -ups

These are two of several official photos taken in the week following the February 3 uprising at Bathurst Jail.

They have not been published before. After they were taken, the jail was cleaned up and partly demolished.

The destruction of the jail was the ¡prisoners’ retaliation for being shot at by warders while they were staging a protest about jail conditions.

In early 1975 over forty prisoners will go on trial in Sydney on “damage” and “ destruction” charges — the maximum penalty being ten years jail.

The main evidence against the prisoners is the statements they were tricked into making by being told by the police that their statements would be put before a Royal Commission.

A feature of the committal proceedings this year was the fact that the police still have no evidence as to who actually started the fires that burnt the jail to the ground.

The warders who shot at the prisoners, wounding some and crippling one, and bashed prisoners after the up­ rising, will come under the scrutiny of a Royal Commission sometime in 1976 — according to the promises of Justice Minister Maddison in response to aicampaign by the defence lawyers.

Official photograph o f one facet of the burnt out Bathurst gaol.

In the next issue of Digger we hope to print more of the post-riot photos, and one prisoner’s long and amaz­ ing statement to the committal court.

Prison cells inside Bathurst gaol after last year’s riot.

“M ay day, M ay dayP W e’re being tailed by 15 M eserschm its and Senator Douglas M cLelland is in everyone o f them

by Grant Evans Over the past two months ther;e has been a fresh outbreak of skir­ mishes between the proponents of tiger moth radio and the radio barons of the ABC and the Department of’ the Media. And, as in previous en­ counters, the barons have quickly re­ treated behind a cloud of devious­ ness and bureaucratic manipulation (see ‘FM Dogfight: Tiger Moth Radio Takes on Jumbos’, Digger, No.34).

The disputed airwave cpace is in Melbourne where the Department of the Media has said it is going to es­ tablish a public ‘Access’ radio station.

The dispute is over what the term ‘access’ means.

The umbrella organization for ti­ ger moth radio is the Community Radio Federation whose forty odd affiliated members range from the Australia-Albania Friendship Assoc­ iation and Public Services Choir, through to the Waterside Workers’ Federation (Vic.) and groups like the Australian National Liberation Move­ ment.

But still, all of these groups are united by their desire to see the ‘access’ station in Melbourne inde­ pendent — “to ensure that the com­ munity is guaranteed continuous acc­ ess to radio without Government dep­ endence and without programs being tampered with by the ABC profess­ ionals or censored by the ABC ‘Legals’ ”.

The top-dogfighters in the ABC, however, obviously don’t want to lose their ‘access ’ to the new station and have so far resorted to the usual array of arguments concerning expertise, the problems of libel, and more dev­ iously the delaying and suppression of reports which are not disposed to the Department of the Media.

Within the Department of the Me­ dia there is a split between the plan­ ning and research section and the po­ licy making section. Last May, the planning and research section finished a lengthy and well argued report called ‘The Public and the Media’.

This report solidly supported the con­ cept of access broadcasting and saw the media as an important means of extending democracy. The release of this report was delayed until October — even then it was only released by the head of the Department of the Media, Senator Douglas McLelland, Under pressure — and in an attempt to cover its delayed release was dated August 1974. “I have nothing to hide”, said McLelland on tabling it in parliament.

Another crucial report, prepared

By Douglas Lummis in Tokyo

A visit to the toy section of a department store here is a visit to Futureland.

On all sides one is surrounded by the buzzing, clacking and whirring of bright plastic mach­ ines which automatically climb, whirl, walk, jump and crawl.

But behind this festive spectacle is a less festive reality. As Japanese urban life becomes increasingly host­ ile to children’s play, the toy indus­ try seeks to turn this fact to its ad­ vantage by introducing increasingly complex — and expensive — auto­ matic toys for use inside the house.

The growing invasion of this form of toy into the child’s world projects a revolution in the value of play itself.

There are few open spaces left in this city of ten million, and it takes hours to get past the last suburbs to true countryside. Nature has been virtually abolished from its centre where there are no longer enough trees to support bird and insect life.

For many children, “nature” is pot­ ted plants, canaries in cages, goldfish in bowls.

The changed environment takes its toll in ignorance. When one class Australian plays, music and poetry of primary school children was asked could be performed by ‘amateurs’ and to draw a chicken, some of the re­ ‘professionals’; ethnic groups could sulting pictures had two legs, some produce and control programmes broadcast in their own languages — had four, but most had three. A young woman told me that when music, ‘news’, interviews and discuss­ she took her nephew to the country­ ion.

“The resource base for an inde­ side, he was astounded to discover a beetle on a tree trunk rather than pendent,- distinctly suburban in a department store: since the old news service is already intact through children’s summer pastime of insect groups such as The Melbourne Times, gathering has become impossible in The Digger and the Light, Powder and the city a new * synthetic insect Construction Works”, says Griffiths industry has appeared. with a ‘self-managenient now’ There is no place where a child glimmer in his eye. “The Australian can run. The streets were not built Performing Group, the La Mama Theatre and the Melbourne Univer­ to accommodate the cars now racing down them, forcing pedestrians to sity Student theatre could provide escape into doorways and hide be­ information on drama and poetry, hind telegraph poles. Everywhere po­ groups such as FILEF (Federation of lice posters instruct mothers never to Italian Workers and Their Families) let go their child’s hand while out­ and the Greek Orthodox Community would feed the station with informat­ side.

Bicycle riding —one of the things ion about ethnic groups.” children here love most — is forbid­ David Griffiths doesn’t trust the ABC or the Department of the Media den by many schools, which means that children now search for places one inch and seems convinced that where they can ride their bike» they will want to control access to covertly. Some children pedal in end­ the proposed access station. It’s the old routine, “ I participate, you par­ less circles on the footpath around their apartment building, their repet­ ticipate, but they control”. itive motion taking on the neurotic But the proponents of tiger moth rhythm of caged animals. radio are manouvering in a skillful Like all countries, Japan has had way. The CRF has appealed to the ABC staff association not to co­ a special child’s culture, with tradit­ ional toys, games, stories and songs. operate in the opening of any access At its simplest level, play was pro­ station until the CRF has been given foundly educational, a re-enactment a licence. To date the NSW section of the fundamental steps by which has agreed, and if all goes well the first sortie against monopolistic con­ human beings build and maintain trol of the airwaves will soon be tak­ culture. A iboy wishing to make a lakeuma would take an object out of ing off.

“ Radio must be changed from a means o f distrib­ ution to a means o f communication. Radio would be the most wonderful means o f communication imag­ inable in public life, a huge linked system — that is to say, it would be such if it were capable not only o f transmitting but o f receiving, o f allowing the listeners not only to hear but to speak, and did not isolate them but brought them into contact. Unreal­ izable in this social system, realizable in another, these proposals, which are, after all, only the nat­ ural consequences o f technical development, help toward the propagation and shaping o f that other system .” —Bertolt Brecht.

Commission envisaged. by the Labor government’s Priorities On the other hand, David Griffiths Review Section and presented to Prime Minister Whitlam on August of the Alternative Radio Association (a group of miscellaneous revolution­ 17 is still to be released. Apparently aries) has a very clear idea of who he the PM’s Department considers that would like to see controlling the hew the PRS “exceeded their brief” and access station. “The station should be so the report will not be tabled. The controlled by a collective of commu­ essence of the PRS report is that the whole question of access broadcast­ nity groups and individuals which it­ self is accountable, participatory and ing be taken out of the hands of the accessible. The station should be ex­ Department of the Media. Rumour perimental station which (a) incorp­ has it that the report was suppressed through the influence of the PM’s orates public access; (b) operates for three years at the end of which the press secretary, Jim Spiegelman, who is angling for an ALP parliamentary experiment is reviewed, and (c) main­ seat. McLelland commands numbers tains an on-going critique of its own within the New South Wales section operations in particular and broadcas­ of the ALP and both Spiegelman and ting in general. The station could be Whitlam need those numbers. So if seen as a means to an end — the de­ the PRS report is heavy on good old mocratization of radio.”

Doug, then best ‘access’ to it be Dark, and with a slightly discon­ certing manner which seems almost limited.

A similar process has gone on at a deliberately designed to unnerve ABC bureaucrats, Griffiths knows the argu­ series of fortnightly meetings the ABC has been calling since October 4 ments for access radio backwards. He with outside groups interested in reels off suggested programmes for access radio in Melbourne. There has such a radio station without even blinking —direct broadcast of weekly been one large public meeting which I ‘attended’ via video tape (and a rele­ programming meetings of the collec­ vant aside is that the first half hour of tive; low income groups talking about the meeting was taken up with the their concerns and demands, e.g. the question of whether the meeting Housing Commission, the police, would take minutes, meanwhile the problems of unemployment and land­ whole thing was going down on lords; a regular review of the mass video! The revolution in electronic media. Critiques, complaints and in­ terviews; regular time slots for ideol­ media has still to hit in Australia).

While there is strong support for coll­ ogical viewpoints at variance with the ective control of the new access stat­ mainstream ideology, e.g., anarchist, ion by the various interested groups, marxist, gay liberation and women’s the well groomed ABC representative liberation; groups on strike could run at the meeting, Peter Dell, remained their own talk-back show and invite evasive about the sort of control the the public to talk with them, original

Toy toy takes over

Remaking Culture mechanically

nature (a stick of bamboo), apply work, learning and imagination to it, and present a humanised object of culture — a toy horse. A girl wishing to play otedama would first learn how to make the bean bags from her grandmother, and hear in the process stories of her grandmother’s child­ hood, and how she in turn learned to make the bean bags from her grand­ mother. Children playing street games had to learn how to organise themselves, establish rules, deal with contingencies and social conflict.

The toy companies have an en­ tirely different notion of play. Typ­ ical of their new mentality are the endless variations of the little plastic tramcar which twists and turns slowly along a plastic track. It (an only be assembled in one way. To touch it is to break it. It is entirely self-sufficient, and does not require any activity whatsoever on the part of the child. It is a toy that plays with itself.

In the world projected by these toy manufacturers, play is watching a machine operate. It is difficult to predict what effect this kind of play, supplemented by endless hours of watching television, will have on children’s conciousness. Before, play was activity: to play, the child had to do something.

But in this dense and intensely organised and supervised city, the space for doing is rapidly evaporat­ ing. Doing implies randomness, and randomness implies danger. Thus the child’s work and play is supervised:

at school by teachers (some schools forbid soccer, for example, as being “too dangerous”), the walk to and from school by “ Green Auntie” traffic safety volunteers, life . at home by parents, television, and the toys themselves. With the mechanical tramcar, the only change possible is breakage. The child’s activity is not only unnecessary ? it is interference.

We are often told by cheerful fut­ urologists how in the coming “post­ industrial society” the dreary world of the work ethic will give way to a wondrous new world based on the spirit of play. Small comfort if it turns out that the true spirit of play — creativity — is a reflection of the element of creativity in work, and the further mechanisation and alien­ ation of work accompanied by the further mechanisation and alienation of play. Rather than being an escape from mechanisation into the world of the imagination, play would be transformed into the training ground in which imagination itself would be mechanised.

But children are not so easily de­ feated. As parents know, when toys allow no other form of alteration children smash them and dream up new games out of the shattered pieces... despite the fact that this violates the rules and invites punish­ ment. It is quite possible that the urge to Complete Supervision will backfire and, instead of becoming training in obedience, play will em­ erge as a kind of guerilla warfare in defence of the imagination.

fio ok) 'lo % SMte) CV 0 d e h etici

% fyM *06

(Wf

f ç r

of A

W

C

S w e r v '.

Qc.'bif of l^JT Ù?

Page 4

THE DIGGER

Yellow ones or white ones, for working women

P ills are the way out

by Sandra Zurbo Helen Mutimer, a lively, energetic, dark haired shop steward in a Melb­ ourne factory, has a good idea of why a lot of working women are ‘pill poppers’: “ A man works for eight hours under a boss and when he’s finished he goes off to the pub or comes home and reads the paper or watches telly. But a woman works eight hours under the boss then has to come home and put in her hours there too. And most married women sure do most of the housework. He just sits there saying ‘gimme, gimme, gimme’.” Helen is separated from her husband and has four children.

Although women workers may not give any one single reason for their need to use pills to help them cope with life, a number of problems and worries appear to be common.

These include the worry of looking after children during worktime, es­ pecially in school holidays or when they’re sick, the worry of keeping up with the housekeeping while still working, hours and conditions set down by the bosses at work, money worries and trying to make ends meet. Another area of distress is am­ ongst' widowed women. For them, according to Helen, it has a lot to do with sexual frustration. A lot of them remember back to their married days and think about it a lot. They get de­ pressed. “They are sexually and em­ otionally lonely. Most of them are terrified. They are on their own.

They are terrified of getting involved with another man, and yet they want that at the same time.”

Helen and two other women stew­ ards in metal factories claim that the problem of drug abuse is very wide­ spread amongst working women and have experienced it to be so in their factories. It is something which is spoken about quite openly by the women (though never in front of male workers). Most of the women start off going to the doctor because they are depressed or “out of sorts”.

But the doctors don’t try and talk about the problems. Giving the wom­ en valium or other such pills seems to be the most important thing. They just hand it out — all gradings. And the women just accept it. One wom­ an will say “ I got the blue ones”, “I’m on the'yellow ones”, “I’m tak­ ing the white ones”. But they still feel depressed and they don’t under­ stand it. They still feel the same al­ though they’re taking the pills. “They (the women in the factories) think the doctors are balmy. They think the doctors don’t know anything. But they accept the pills because they can’t see any other way out.”

Most women’ work because they have to — their family wouldn’t sur­ vive without their wages. Almost all women are paid less and Work in worse conditions than men, and most trade unions which women belong to are not strong organizations.

A variety of anti-hypertension, sleeping and barbiturate tablets have now reached the ‘top ten’ most fre­ quently prescribed pills in Australia.

The number of valium sales alone in 1973/74 was 4.6 million. This is more than twice the 2.2 million prescrip­ tions of the 1970/71 year. The use of drugs by women suffering from stress nerves or a feeling of being “ out of sorts”, is alarmingly widespread. In Melbourne alone 720,000 ‘relaxing tablets’ are sold each week and a 1972 survey shows that about 15 per cent of women in Australia are using analgesics (common pain killers like Bex, Aspro, etc.) daily. The main users of both analgesics and tran­ quillizers are married women aged be­ tween 35-60, many of whom are working.

A N.S.W. Senate committee re­ ported that 220,000 women are dep­ endent on sedatives and tranquilliz­ ers, and a Brisbane survey showed that 20 per cent of women regularly attending G.P.s are sedative depend­ ent. As well as addiction, there is the risk of an accidental overdose, and some tranquillizers, if taken with al­ cohol may prove fatal.

Enormous profits are reaped from the sales of these drugs. The Swiss group, Hoffman La Roche (probably the largest drug company in the world) has three products (including two strengths of valium) in the ‘top ten’ in this country. The profits from the sales of valium alone in the last year are $6,649,446.00! Roche’s pro­ fits in the UK on the sale of valium became so high that the British gov­ ernment had to force them to bring their prices down.

While a number of drugs in these categories have to be obtained through a doctor’s prescription, the sale of pain killers outside o f chemist shops (i.e. in supermarkets, milk bars) is estimated at $12 million a year.

And the drug companies aren’t the only ones who are profiting. At between $4.20 and $5.20 a visit, doc­ tors aren’t doing too badly either.

Much quicker, easier and more profit­ able to have a series of 10 minute visits from patients and prescribe val­ ium or some other sedative for their problems than sitting out a discussion and trying to resolve the problems — after all, all the problems seem to sound the same. Women with the same complaints visit after visit after visit..., “Women in the factories are not as militant as they could be because they accept far too easily everything the boss says is right”, says Helen. “ Perhaps pills have the effect of help­ ing to dampen down militancy — of reinforcing women’s acceptance of their position.”

Talking about how some of the problems can be resolved Helen said: “There has to be a lot more talking to each other and to women’s liberationists to try and understand why we are like this and why we take the pills (I don’t take pills or drink myself — I just eat lollies! — she said with a twinkle). Women have to be able to understand themselves, to be able to talk to other women who have learnt a bit.”

“I think the union should be invol­ ved in the psychological problems of its members.

We’ve got to get through to the union that women are women and they’ve got different pro­ blems to a man.”

Both Helen and Thelma, one of the other women stewards, said that they felt that “if your mind is active, if you’re very active, you don’t need pills. Because why...why would you have to?”

The night I went out to do this interview with Helen, we ended up sitting around talking for about four hours. At one point she said that she had never talked about herself the way she had that night, and had felt that all the problems of her life had been peculiar to her — that no-one else could possibly have experienced the same miseries, ‘ignorance’ or feel­ ings of helplessness.

“Women don’t talk enough about what is actually worrying them. They shut off. If it’s in a group situation they might identify their own situat­ ion with whatever’s happening. But to actually say ‘I can’t do this...’ or ‘I don’t do this because...’. They don’t do this. Unless the group really comes out and talks about the things that are actually the facts of their lives.

But a lot of women are frightened to say that they are inadequate in some way — or they feel inadequate.”

RECORD COLLECTOR

CHR1SSY MESSAGE FROM SCROOGE Me.YOUNG YO,HO,HO,Chee Min,&a happy xmas to all the dozens of Digger readers all around the third world .1.loaded the xmas sleigh so high with l.p. s that my reindeers,namely Donuts.Blitz.kreeg, Baboon-bum,Wilson &Rubbo,Liverwurst &.

Acupuncture,,& Blotto complained bitterly & had to be whipped tirelessly down Toorak road. Never the less they’re absolutely dispens -able & quite edible, but the special xmas rip-off comes but once a year, so come on down & get one of our genuine reindeer-skin L.P. carrier bags almost free.

R EC O R D C O L L E C T O R - TWO SHOPS: CNR. TOORAK ROAD AND DAVIS AVENUE, SOUTH YARRA, 267.1885, AND 710 GLENFERRIE ROAD, HAWTHORN, 819.1917.

by Claire Rosemberg and David Sharp in Paris .

French workers, particularly in the vast public sector (which in France includes the Banks and the Renault car company) are in a mil­ itant mood. The government wants everyone to tighten their belts and work hard to avoid ‘the Crisis’; but some 180,000 workers in Paris (and many more in the provinces) demon­ strated decisively on November 19 that, for them, the government and the class it represents is the crisis.

“The bosses are able to pay” was one of the many slogans chanted on the huge demonstration. Another suggested that President Giscard d’Estaing go to work in a sorting office, and his wife in the telephone exchange!

The postal workers’ strike, which when it first started seemed quite a routine, short-term affair, has hard­ ened and radicalised and is now entering its second month. They are demanding not only a wage increase (about A$230 a month, which with the present inflation, is already mod­ est) but, also an increase in the num­ ber of employees, and halt to the ‘privatisation’ of the post office.

Large companies already have their own private postal services, which are working throughout the strike, and the tendency is for the public, small-user sector to be run down to the benefit of the big users.

The government wants to farm out the most profitable sections of the postal service to International Tele­

December 3 — January 13 1975

French national strike

G arbage in p ow er phone and Telecommunications of course, for a bit of pro-military (ITT): thus one of the strike slogans propaganda. is “ITT against Chilean workers — The national strike of November the posties against ITT”.

19 was called by the two biggest The initial strategy of the gov­ unions, the CGT and the CFDT, ernment was the usual attempt to plus the biggest of the teachers’ pjt ‘users’ against ‘workers’ — as if unions, the FEN. they weren’t often the same people.

An important development has On Thursday November 14 they been the unity of the big unions, who took the step of sending in the pol­ usually compete and disagree. The ice to occupy the sorting offices. feeling is, however, that the real The liberal mask of Giscard d’Est- force of the movement comes from aing’s government fell away com­ ■*the grass roots, and it gets a lot of pletely. (Significantly, the president its militancy from the general feeling spent the third week of November of unease created by the world sit­ riding around in a nuclear submarine uation. Inflation and recession are and visiting de Gaulle’s grave). But beginning to hit really hard in France the occupation of the sorting offices and there is a general feeling that only served to strengthen the det­ if the working class doesn’t put up ermination of the postal workers,' a fight now it’ll get harder later and to bring other workers out in on. sympathy with them.

‘Solidarity’ has been the real mot The garbage workers, most not­ d'ordre. The mass demonstration of ably. Garbage has been piling up at November 19 differed from previous an alarming pace on the streets of ones in that there* was far less sec­ Paris for the last week. Immigrants tarianism. ‘Gauchiste’ (extreme-left) (especially Algerians) are heavily ex­ groups were in little evidence, and ploited in this industry, which runs it seems as if they have been out­ two different wage scales, one for flanked by the workers’ militancy, so-called ‘seasonals’, and the other which since the worker occupation for ltitulaires'. The strike is sup­ of the Lip watch factory last year ported by 90% of the workers, has been leaping ahead, while that but is being broken by the army, of the students has almost disap­ who have been called in to clear peared. The faces filing past between up the mess. A good opportunity, - the Bastille and the Gare de l’Est

were neither those of young long­ haired freaks, nor middle-aged, hard­ ened stalinists, but those of young workers. The average age of those 180,000 or so people must have been well below 30.

The bank workers, greatly rad­ icalised since their strike last spring (“le Mai des Banques” ) trooped past waving red flags and chanting “ Sole solution, the revolution.”

The workers of the social security system shouted that they wanted to be able to pay out reimburse­ ments for abortion. (A reformist abortion law is going through parlia­ ment, but the abortions won’t be reimbursed by the state).

The hospital workers (lots of nurses in uniform) demanded free medicine for everyone, and chanted “Down with the state, cops, and bosses!”

Journalists from both press and television were out in force. The Parisien Libere ( a right wing sexist rag) refused to print a union tract, so the workers walked out. For those who like symbolic coinci­ dences, it was nice to note that on the same day the Liberation (a collectively run, non-sectarian newspaper — see Digger No. 36, page 9) finally reappeared, the Parisien Libere vanished.

I stood in the sun for three hours, and still the wide boulevard was crammed as far as the eye could see with banners. Not every­ one was out — in the private sector many firms functioned with almost full staff. But those who were out were unified and enthusiatic.

A lot has changed in the last year — for not so long ago tyere would have been two demonstra­ tions, ‘gauchistes’ on one side, and ‘cocos’ (communists) on the other.

Any contact between the two groups would have meant fights and insults.

Now the workers, and especially young workers, have taken the lead.

They are refusing to pay for a crisis which is not their crisis. The bourgeoisie has always tried to pass on the bill to its ‘demons’.

“When I realise that there is a team of destroyers at work ... then I understand that the old demons are not dead”, said Prirhe Minister Chirac, on television, the evening before the demonstration. The res­ ponse was clear and swift: “Chirac, it’s all over; the demons are in the street!” The garbage workers’ strike inspired the most basic slogan of all: “The real garbage is in power, and not in the streets!”

W k ter p istols d rip p in g L S D

By J.J. McRoach It’s strange, but suddenly every­ one involved in the drug business is looking for an insidious “Mr. Big”, the kirig-pin dope dealer, the god­ father of the marijuana.mafiosa.

Newspapers are seeking him, police are searching for him, and dopesmokers would like to find him.

Why is everyone so intent on finding Mr. Big now?

Dopesmokers who are reeling from the recent heavy dope drought want him brought to earth be­ cause they feel he is holding back big shipments of dope in a cunning ploy to force prices up. Dopesmokers also believe that the exposure of a Mr. Big will force police and authorities to admit that thair miserable mariju­ ana laws are futile and are only en­ couraging racketeers to take over the business.

Police would like to prove the ex­ istence of a Mr. Big so they could wag their fingers at parental groups saying “see, we told you so, mariju­ ana leads to criminality”.

Events which happened in a quiet beach resort in California provide a fascinating story of how Mr. Big was used by police.

The existence of a dope dealing hip mafioso was fabricated by a Sergeant Purcell who in 1968 busted Timothy Leary for dope possession.

The charge got Leary a prison sen­ tence and Purcell got promotion — from a “beat” cop who specialised in busting beach bound homosexuals to head of the Detective Squad.

Purcell, realising he was onto a good thing began to publicise a small commune, known as the Eternal Brotherhood of Love, as a sinister hip mafia group. According to Purcell the Brotherhood: ' Made millions of dollars a year and were the single biggest source of LSD and illegal hashish in the world.

Had caves in a nearby canyon which were arsenals of dangerous drugs complete with redwood vaults full of million dollar stashes.

Kept so much loose cash around their “hovels” that, when one of the treebound sentries blew a police whistle, thousands of dollars of spare cash would be flushed down toilets. .

Had dogs trained to attack at the smell of pistol oil.

Carried water pistols dripping with LSD. Operated a spy school on a moun­ tain top, training them to elude the FBI and Interpol.

Owned a schoolbus which was really a clandestine printing press mass producing passports and sec­ urity cards.

Were tied into the mafia and the weathermen and had a ruthless high command which viewed under­ lings as expendable.

Had a board of directors chaired from a remote Alpine peak in Switz­ erland.

Naturally Purcell’s claims alarmed the local citizenry, and two deaths on the commune, one from drown­ NEWPORT POWER S TA TIO N

co n tin u ed

from

page i

grounds that they would not now be allowed to build a similar station any­ where in the States. Tarrant incredu­ lously describes the nature of SEC scientific evidence. “The chairman brought in a bucket of water and from an eyedropper let fall a drop ot oil saying this represents oil going in­ to Hobson’s Bay. Clarke, a retired en

ing, one OD, added fuel to the fire.

Back in Australia on the idyllic Sunshine Coast, Queensland —Maroochydore, August 8, 1974. The calm quiet of this coastal town is shattered by a bomb blast which kills a three year old girl.

The bomb had been planted to kill a Detective Sergeant Dorries, the heaviest dope cop in Queens-

a police investigation. Dorries denied this, but said that he suspected Wardrop had paid a drug squad cop, Det. Hewitt, to warn him of police raids.

Wardrop and Taylor were com­ mitted to stand trial. On the door of their cell they wrote: “ Peter Wardrop and Gary Taylor —set up for the Maroochydore killing —hope they get Dorries while we’re on trial.”

The attraction of violent, hard-

friends, also supplies smaller dealers jufd distributors. One night, at 4am, a punk hammered on X’s door and de­ manded dope. X told him to come back the next day. Five minutes later there are footsteps on the roof. The punk is searching for X’s stash which he used to hide on the roof. Luckily the punk fell through some plastic corrugated sheeting he inadvertently stepped on, crushed his balls on a beam and disappeared into the night.

HEY, MOVE VA

WILLY* ? loe GtíT A VtètfEr £3 MoVïï

ked out a number of houses where dope ‘suspects’ live and, whenever the need for the odd arrest to bolsterthe record arises, guess who gets busted?

Recently the Melbourne branch of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was shaken by a series of raids. It all started when —according to Mel­ bourne Truth — Canberra narcs de­ cided to raid their Melbourne bro­ thers. However, someone tipped off the Melbourne branch and all narcs were notified —except one. Truth then reported that Canberra agents raided the house of a Melbourne narc and discovered dope in a table which had been smuggled into the country.

Then, on October 20, the Melbourne Observer reported that one of the bureau’s “ace officers” had quit after investigation had shown that $40,000 had passed through his bank account during two months of ’74.

NARCOTICS HEAVIES

HSftic'i» ivi*nV mow And ‘WeRs’S TwewrV MoRe wKtso you fcsr 6ACK..OH, M P A tfölMT to SMOKE 0*J 'TMB WAY IF Yt*» P O N T T H it f K \-VO L S l O W D o t t i s i T O D M UC j T . HEM

YOU

nosed criminals into the dope scene is land. Another cop had taken a phone inevitable. There’s illegal traffic and call for Dorries. The caller said there was heroin in a cupboard in an empty money to be made. house. The cop left a note for Dorr­ John Kaplan, in his book, Mari­ ies and on the bottom he wrote: juana, The New Prohibition, says: “hey watch this one, it could be a “Although the involvement of organ­ fix”. It was. Dorries never entered ized crime in the marijuana trade has the house, and never warned the apparently not yet (1970) been great, home owner either. A couple of there is no reason to think this state days later the homeowners daughter of affairs will continue. The fact that opened the cupboard. only those whp are willing to com­ Boom! mit illegal acts can traffic in mari­ The blast sent shockwaves through juana means that the only question is the hip community up and down whether disorganized or organized the coast. Solid Queensland citizenry crime will dominate the trade. As the were scared shitless that a drug cra­ market for marijuana grows and traf­ zed conspiracy was launching a wave fic in the drug becomes more profit­ of terrorism. Dorries claimed it‘was a able, the incentive for organized crime ring of drug pushers who had found to enter the picture increases.” police pressure too much to handle, What evidence of organized crime and were trying to booby trap police. has surfaced in Australia?

Queensland Police Minister Hod­ PUNK DEALERS ges said: “This will be the greatest shake-up While not strictly organized, these ever seen, particularly in the hippie are in it merely for the dollars and drug community, on the Sunshine will be more easily co-opted by or­ Coast.T have ordered police to use a ganized crime than the Robin Hood heavy hand.” dealers; those who have ‘political’ Eventually two men were arrested leanings, are sympathetic with the and committed for trial —a salesman, dope smokers cause, and who origin­ Peter Wardrop and a factory worker, ally evolved from dealing to close Gary Taylor. friends and a small circle of acquainDuring the pre-trial hearing, evi­ tences. dence was put forward that the bomb Here is an account of the hassles could have been part of an “inside one Robin Hood dealer has had with police job”, that Dorries “ had the punks. drop” on at least two Brisbane drug X lives in an inner Melbourne sub­ squad detectives, and had instigated urb, and, as well as selling ‘retail’ to

MASSAGE PARLOURS There’s an inherent spicy sexuality in hashish, This factor, coupled with its money making propensities, att­ racts massage parlour-proprietors to hash. A bit of underhand titillation, a bit of underhand dope dealing, and the cash registers ring with pleasure.

Recently a curious case came to light. Three “educational books and records” salesmen, working in Mel­ bourne for United Programming In­ ternational, claimed that their boss, Steve Hyman, had introduced a slogan —“Money, more money and sex”, and offered the salesmen, as an incentive to sell 3 or more books per night, a free 45 minute session in a massage parlour and a free deal of hash worth $45. Hyman was reported to have said that he had “a shipment of hashish coming down from Syd­ ney”.

Hyman denied the hash offer but agreed about the massage offer — UPI’s Regional Sales Manager in Syd­ ney, Simon Rigby, owns two Mel­ bourne parlours.

CORRUPT POLICE AND OFFICIALS

gineer from Colonial and Industrial Gas Company brought in a 20 centi­ metre bottle of air saying this repre­ sents the air pollution that will fall to the ground in an area the size of this mom.”

them for long enough and turned to the unions and the THC for full support.

This support has been forthcom­ ing.

Lobbying by the oil companies amongst union officials is noit as in­ tense as with the Esso-BHP pipeline, when the Trades Hall ban was lifted by one vote after Esso had sent the secretary of the THC and his assistant around the world to look at other in-

Nevertheless, the SEC, backed with such scientific ‘evidence’ and after a private meeting with the EPA, won its appeal against the conditions of the licence. The sulphur dioxide

emission figure was doubled, the NOX figure increased, and an ozone standard of 13 parts per million (more than double the World Health Organization standard of six ) was set.

For Tarrant, this was the last straw. By backing down on the li­ cence conditions without consulta­ tion with technical officers, he be­ lieves the EPA “became a paper tiger”. The conservation groups had played with the cards stacked against

As Kaplan points out, organized crime fosters police corruption and this is happening in Australia. In­ mates of Brisbane’s Boggo Road jail talk of Brisbane police who are “businessmen”, i.e. they wheel and deal with crims for profit. However, these police do need a record of arrests so apparently they have mar-

Really this area hasn’t got much to do with dope. The big narcotics dealers avoid it — the profitability isn’t high enough because of its bulk.

The big heavies much prefer to deal with a silky powder worth a fortune per pound - heroin.

Of course no-one really needs to be told that heroin attracts some of the biggest gangsters in the world, including in the recent past the U.S. military forces, and that violence is commonplace among traffickers.

We’re getting our share of organ­ ized heroin crime in Australia —two recent examples: * October 25 — Sydney narcs an­ nounced that they had smashed “one of the largest drug networks in Aust­ ralia”. Narcs claimed that network members had paid the deposit on a big off-shore cruiser and planned to arm it with machine guns and radio­ direction finding equipment. The •vessel was to pick up canisters of French heroin. * November 25 — Two Australians arrested in Honolulu in connection with the seizure of $A3 million worth of heroin. One is a pilot for Cathay Pacific Airlines and the other a Syd­ ney shipping executive.

If heroin and its traffic: is so heavy, why don’t drug enforcers stop arresting dope-smokers and concen­ trate on tlje heroin scene?

Rolling Stone correspondent, Joe Eszterhas, comments: “They (narcs) act from a sense of profound cyni­ cism. Marijuana isn’t going to lead anyone to the grave or the smack needle, and they know it. But a hund­ red marijuana arrests will gamer a hundred headlines — more headlines than working anonymously all year to bust a single kingpin heroin dealer.

They work busily for their hundred headlines because the headlines pay off in raises, promotions, prestige and power.

The victims they choose are most­ ly powerless. Smack kings might have influential friends, but long haired kids whose very life style is an affront to the all-American code are legally and politically impotent.” stallations. This time, despite intense International Public Relations group activity, Faure is sure they’ll win.

“We’re determined the station will not be built at Newport. It will only worsen conditions around that area.

Those people have enough problems with other industries. Public opinion is against it and they wouldn’t be able to recruit 1000 scab labourers.”

Page 5

THE DIGGER

December 3 — January 13 1975

Carol: So the overcoming o f the patriarchal society you see as a political struggle? Juliet: Yes, exactly, it isn't a libertarian one. Libertarian practices will only mean that you are less in conformity with finding your place . . . you won't be a threat to patriarchal culture, and you may live youFJion-cohformity as a painful disjuncture from the place where you're ‘supposed' to b e .........That doesn’t invalidate non-conformity . . . . I t ’s just that in itself non-conformity can t change anything. Because you can't change attitudes in and o f themselves; There is something that produces the attitudes: in that sense there really is a material baseband that material base is the patriarchal social organisation. ition, or perhaps vice versa. The Carol: When did you begin writing psychotic and neurotic expressions about women, and how did you prog­ of disturbance aren’t exclusive. It’s ress into writing Psychoanalysis and presently acceptable for a woman to Feminism?, be vaguely depressed most of the Juliet: I first got interested in think­ bits, and think, oh no, what non­ time: after all, it’s quiet and sub­ ing about women in the very early cause it doesn’t even notice a differ­ in fact, it isn’t that there isn’t any­ human, which is a cultural process. Juliet: Yes, exactly, itr isn’t a libert­ sense, whether you’re reading Freud dued. Whereas hysteria was a quite sixties, and wrote one article, ‘Wom­ entiation between men and women. thing like that in the theory, but Each little baby can’t repeat the arian one. Libertarian practices will or anybody. The analytical relation­ acceptable expression of a certain en: the Longest Revolution’. After And if you don’t even notice a diff­ just that certain things have been whole meaning of human history, only mean that you are less in ship is not like the radical therapy type of distress in the 19th cen­ that it went into cold storage, in a erentiation, how are you going to use picked up and developed, others it has to be acquired very, very* conformity with finding your place. one, an egalitarian relationship. This tury. It isn’t that hysterical women way. That article was before the that sort of work to ask what is spec­ haven’t. As far as women are con­ rapidly. That infant has to find In fact you won’t be a threat to is an important question, but really weren’t able to be depressed, too. women’s movement started, and it ific to women’s oppression? The cerned, those elements are dangerous: its place within the human order. patriarchal culture, and you may And while that place is a feminine it’s awfully involved. Perhaps we or that depressed women aren’t also such as the biological language they live your non-conformity as a pain­ work denies even the most minimal got an enormous response. But it was could take it up in another con­ hysterical. My interest is much more odd, after that I hit a total impasse. I psychological distinctions. I mean, are couched in, which is in a sense or masculine one, it’s never absol­ ful disjuncture from the place where versation. in the actual links of hysteria with you’re ‘supposed’ to be. That’s what found I just didn’t have the concepts, I’m not saying the distinctions are extrinsic to the theoretical develop­ utely so. That’s the psychological Carol: How have your ideas dev­ femininity. So Ghesler and I are on most non-conformity does turn out the terminology, to think about wo­ absolute ones, but as we live them, in ment of psychoanalysis itself. But concept of bi-sexuality which I do eloped, after working on Psycho­ different terrain, asking different men. As we’ve found in the ‘women society, there is a distinction between it was the language often used by think is true. Bi-sexuality, not in the to be for most people. Because, questions of the material.. analysis and Feminism?

Freud, etc. That’s one direction that popular sense of object-choice, loving in one sense, that’s all it can be. and sexuality’ group, we just don’t masculinity and feminity.

Carol: What's the ‘normal' end o f either a man or a woman, but in Juliet: Yes, ideas from the book has persisted, whereas it should’ve That doesn’t invalidate non-conform­ know what sexuality is at all, at the You wouldn’t know from a book been dropped. If you look at Freud’s the sense that one has the possibility have developed; but I’m at that the hysteria scale, given the male ity: because it is only through cert­ moment. A sort of panic starts in like, say, Sanity, Madness and the scale from ‘normal’ rationality to point of formulating them, rather your own mind, you wonder, what is Family, which is all about women by later writings, he was constantly anx­ of the other sex within oneself, ain forms of experimentation that ‘abnormal' obsessionality? always.

One’s social orientation is in a state of flux, and I find it ious to make his fellow analysts drop you can even begin to ask questions this subject Tm trying to think about. chance, in that they used a women’s terribly hard to talk about this sort Juliet: There isn’t any good value Then, through the women’s move­ ward of a hospital, that it was in par­ it. That’s where the ‘anatomy is always to the repression of the psych­ about conformity. It’s just that, in of stage. I’ve a number of things I for hysteria, because there aren’t ment, a lot more questions being ticular about women. Schizophrenia destiny’ line comes from. So when ological characteristics of the sex that itself, non-conformity can’t change want to do, things I want to look at, good values for women in this soc­ attitudes in and of themselves. There asked, and having contacts with may be non-gender specific, but that’s you get books saying, ah, but anat­ one, anatomically, is not; if you in particular I Want to do some work iety. ‘Femininity’, I suppose, would people thinking in very different a question that’s very important. One omy is not What you thought it was see what I mean. The important is something that produces the att­ on hysteria. But how I do it is be the ‘normal’, or maybe vivacity. ways, helped me to re-awaken and re­ wants to know whether it is,and if so in the 19th century, like the Mary point about psychoanalysis is that itudes: in that sense there really Jane Sherfey book on female sex­ about finding your place.

And that’s a very open question at the moment. The only positive values for women is a material base, and that material think lots of things. One of the reas­ why? I think, as a psychosis, schizo­ uality which upsets the whole anat­ a mental process, in the fullest sense base is the patriarchal social org­ I almost superstitiously don’t want in patriarchal society are caring, mat­ ons 1 had blanked on the whole sub­ phrenia isn't gender-specific, but that of the term.

It’s not who you are, to talk about it, because if I do, ernity, nurturing: things that are omical base that was referred to anization. ject was psychology, I had missed out isn’t a question contained within the if I actually say it, out there... related to other functions, not ones on it entirely in ‘Women: the Longest way the book is written. Everything within psychoanalysis, well, that’s but where you are, as a human being; Carol: I know that your concerns quite nice isn’t it? Because it says, it’s not a question of identity, but are primarily theoretical, but what connected with neurosis. I mean, Carol: Then you’ll have to do it!

Revolution’. In Women's Estate, I be­ in it is inter-generational conflict — the biological base is completely Juliet: Something like that, yes! even sexiness is very, very ambiv­ do you think about the various gan to be conscious of its absence. well, many of those situations are different. But actually I think ult­ of one’s place in human society.

Carol: In a different society, oneCarol: That brings up another ques­ alent. therapies in London? Is there one That one, by the way, came out of a also inter-sexual conflict, say between imately it’s rather irrelevant, because that was more liberal about taking sort you think could be more helpful tion. You talk, in your book about Carol: I have heard depression exp­ series of long evening talks with an a father and a daughter, which pro­ on o f masculine or feminine bo- to women than another? hysteria being essentially feminine lained as a reaction frustration, American friend; I returned to Eng­ bably gives a neurotic overlay to the I think the point was that psycho­ although men can have it too. Have coming from having no practical land and wrote the book in a month. schizophrenia anyway. But that’s you read Phyllis Chesler’s Women outlet for energy, particularly from Anyway, so I went, just sort of at never probed, or discussed, or even and Madness? She thinks that most Reichians. random, in the summer vacation to thought about. In none of the radical women are prone to depression. 1 Juliet: Yes, I also think Klein is the British Museum and opened the therapies then, and even now to a don't have a good working idea right about small babies having a first volume of Freud, came out at great extent, there is no question that o f what hysterical and depression very depressive phase. Very defin­ the end of the vacation closing the women might form a specific group. symptoms are, and how they differ. itely, when you look at small babies, final volume. I was absolutely fascin­ Carol: I agree completely. That lack Are they related, or are you and they’re obviously depressed! Serious­ ated, very, very turned on. has troubled me, and it's one of the Chester talking about two quite diff­ ly, Klein defines this depression as The reason I went to Freud first of reasons the women’s self-help thererent things? an acceptance of both deprivation all was the women’s movement, par­ apy groups were formed, to work on of and hostility to the mother, Juliet: That’s a tough question. ticularly American feminists who their own problems together.

You see, what I’m talking about is which would also involve energy were the most productive and articu­ Juliet: Yes, I think that is just not that women are prone to hysteria having no outley, and a depression of late at this point. I’d been in America terribly important. Because if you though that may very well be the- legitimate energy output. Then putt­ a fair bit, and the really striking fea­ have a whole area of thinking, espec­ case, but that there is actually some­ ing the energy back „within the self, ture in the magazines beginning to ially the psychological area, that thing in the formation of feminin­ and holding it there, which is always come out was the constant theme, id­ doesn’t say there is anything spec­ ity that is the same as in the form­ painful. entifying Freud as the arch-enemy, ific about women, what are you, I used to be frightened of dep­ ation of hysteria, i.e., there is a the misogynist of all time. He just re­ as feminists, to do with that? Now, connecting link between femininity ression for so long, I used to have presented sexism and the patriarchal you can get phenomenological acc­ and hysteria. It would come from really manic escapes from it. But society, both in his person and in his ounts that are quite good of radical actually, learning to be depressed very early childhood. writings. Now, one can see very clear­ therapy material, like a lot of those Hysteria can be understood in was a very positive thing, not to ly why the whole massification of a case studies of families that have a very simple way, if you recall how say I like being depressed, that would debased form of psychoanalysis in been written up and you can ask many of your friends, when having be absurd. I don’t personally sub­ America really did seem to say anat­ feminist questions of them. If you rows with husbands or boyfriends, jectively recognise the description of omy is destiny and that women are ask, what is particular about the depression being energy bursting but have been called the hysterical one. inferior because they are genitally in­ woman in this, you would, get very In fact, ydu are hysterical in that held in; to me, it’s a sort of rest ferior, the whole penis envy bit. So »different answers, I suspect, from situation. As he becomes more rat­ period, I suppose. Whenever 1 get one could understand the reaction the answers that are given there: depressed, 1 know at some level ional, you become more screechy, against Freud at that level, but there it would be a very different way of in response to his rationality, partly. it’s going to end, and that I think was something more behind the att­ using the material. That could be I think there is a connection between is the real distinction between some*ack on Freud than just this popular­ very interestingly done, but it just masculinity and what is known, bec­ body who is chronically depressed, ized Freudianism of the press. Betty isn’t there. and doesn’t know it is going to ause it is a value of the patriarchal Friedan comments on all that in her Carol: One o f the problems that society, as rationality. But in fact end, and someone depressed in the book, in the early sixties, but some­ comes up about post-Freudian anal­ there is a close connection between way you and I are discussing. I how something got more intense in ysis is that if you go to one of the feminist opposition to Freud. So, them, you are indeed considered analysis may have started with that haviour, those internal processes con­ Juliet: I just don’t know enough masculinity and obsessionality as the mean, the sort of depression Chester talks about, is the serious depress­ because of this double thing, I felt a specific entity as a woman! You sort of framework and language but nected with finding one's place about it. I certainly think people neurotic end of the rationality scale my own work had missed out psy­ will likely find the Freudian wanting really its triumph is that it moved would be very different? should only go into it if they redly And I think there is a definite conn­ ion. chology almost totally and because to help you through the Oedipal away from them. It’s actually not feel they need it. I shouldn’t evpr ection, in its formation, between Carol: To move away from psych­ Juliet: I think the processes are of this feminist opposition to Freud, conflict and into the ‘normal’ range that at all. We live in a very empir­ deeper than that, in the sense th a t... consider it an alternative or subs­ hysteria and femininity. This is all ology, what about your actual writ­ I went to Freud first of all. And sort o f behaviour. Femininity is very ical society, one which is oriented I mean so far, in all the important titute to the feminist movement or connected with the Oedipus com­ ings; do you enjoy it, how do you of perversely, found just the opposite clearly defined by society, in terms of to thinking in extremely concrete, specifics of any society, while some vice versa. I’d rather see women plex, and the place you find your­ do it?

Juliet: Oh, I really need a stretch that his theory was incredibly useful behaviour, and therefore by your biological terms, about everything; societies have been matrilineal, most joining the movement. I just do self in. The girl’s development with­ of time ahead in order to write. for understanding feminity. in the Oedipus complex is conn­ think the women’s movement is the analyst. What about this as an altern­ we don’t really have a concept of have been patriarchal, patrilocal, pat­ Carol: And so you hadn't done any ative to radical therapy? the mind, that is anything other ronymic, you can really see the evid­ most important thing for women to ected with the moment which prod­ That’s what’s so difficult, having to reading in psychology prior to Freud? Juliet: Oh, it isn’t an alternative. than either empirical, bahaviourist ence of patriarchal society: look at be involved in. Not that that will be uces hysteria as a pattern of reaction, do all the other work that one has Juliet: No, none at all. No, that’s I agree, there’s far too much norm­ or physiological. It’s very hard for the specific way kinship works. Given i a panacea or solution, one isn’t and the boy’s with obsessionality, to do. It’s often agony, really, I have going to get rid of one’s personal which is much more acceptable in to force myself to write. My main not true. I’d had rather long contact ative psychoanalysis going on. It’s people to even think their way that your society is patriarchal concern, you see, so far, is to pres­ problems, no way, life is just prob­ our culture. with radical therapy, Laingian ideas, become prescriptive of behaviour, outside that sort of framework; and where you are in that society is going That doesn’t necessarily sav that, ent ideas; but I’d also like to dev­ lematic. But having *a sense of id­ in the late sixties.I’d been in therapy, this and that constitute the ‘normal’. I think that a lot of analysts fall to be defined in a patriarchal way. briefly, in the mid-sixties, this was I’ve never had Freudian analysis into the same trap that most of the Your place in that society is going entification with other people over a s . a symptom of ‘mental illness’, elop some of that beautiful clarity problems is a fantastic liberating women are prone to showing hyst­ of style some writers have. That’§ an radical therapy as well. But it had myself, so I don’t know how it rest of us do, in our everyday to have a different meaning if you erical symptoms. There may very aim. I had a lovely time after fin­ experience. never, and for very good reasons, occ­ operates in that sense, but a lot thinking. are a boy or a girl. As a boy, Carol: What do you think o f the well, particularly in this part of the ishing this book. I decided to write urred to me to use it for understand­ of women have complained, and Carol: So, your point about Freud you will be an heir to patriarchal o f self-analysis, say 20th century, be a tendency toward a novel for fun. And it was fun, ing women, and so when I came back I can think of no reason to think was that he was looking at the springs culture, as a girl, you won’t. So possibility more psychotic ‘mental illness’ than just totally relaxed writing. If I through reading Freud? through feminism and to Freud, I they’re wrong. After all, the whole of behaviour, as it were, that deep- you have to actually change that neurotic. Depression could very well took it seriously, as a novelist does, Juliet: Oh, no , I don’t think that was then really interested in why society is pushing the analyst to lying sort o f mind, which is outside very fundamental organization ofcan ever work. There’s a special be a primary expression of ‘illness’ it would be much more difficult, radical therapy had never contributed respond in that way, to use his work physiology, and reflects the culture society. It really isn’t just a matter I realize. Didn’t finish it, of course. of an acceptance of a more trans­ relationship one has with the analyst, in our time. But when you remove anything. It had never cohered with z in that way. I mean, I just think it first comes into contact with? one just can’t reproduce it alone. the depression, I mean, Jet’s look Now I’m back into my mainstream, Juliet: I think Freud’s theory is sexual behaviour.

Marxist, Left analysis of the position that’s bad practice. thinking about expanding the last of women. When I looked again, ask­ I don’t think there’s anything in about the individual human being’s Carol: -So the overcoming o f the 1 mean, reading is good, you’re going at it like a daffodil bulb, or an chapter of Psychoanalysis and Fem­ onion, stripping off layers, what may to come across bits and think, that’s ing why, I realized, quite right, it Freudian theory that should lead acquisition of the general human cult­ patriarchal society, you see as a inism, and about hysteria. be revealed is a hysterical cond­ right, I recognize that, and other ure.

How does the infant become political struggle? really doesn't contribute anything be­ in that direction. When I say that,

IT S LIKE PEELING A N ONION

Jean Bedford and Grant Evans went to talk to Arianna Stassinopoulis, Jean Bedford writes:

en ou gh to m ake you cry Arianna Stassinopoulis in herself is not worth arguing about or with.

Her book The Female Woman is a diatribe of unclear thinking, question begging and ‘let them eat cake’ in individualism directed at a phantom Women’s/ Liberation Movement which has no existence outside the debating-team, black/white mind of Ms. Stassinopoulis.

However the effect she and her book are having on Australian women and the mostly"favourable press daily coverage she is getting here are worth countering.

To people afraid of extrem ist in any form she seems to offer a moderate, civilised approach to the ‘problem’ of women’s inequality. Her aim, she says, it to counteract the disturbing influence that feminism is having on the ‘average’ women, spreading as it does anxiety and dis­ content wherever it appears. That such anxiety and discontent might already be there and that feminist theory might be simply focussing on and analysing it, is, she says, irrelevant. According to her, people pretty much deserve whatever dis­ comfort they experience and you can’t blame societal conditioning for individual unhappiness — thus move­ ments like feminism should leave people alone and stop stirring up dissatisfaction with the status quo,

It is not worth going into every point she covers. Her delivery is a „well-prepared, selectively researched monologue and her reaction to specific questions is either to ignore them or to obscure them in richly cadenced, Cambridge-grammatical rhetoric. At the only stage in our ‘press interview’ (we had in fact only been invited along to hear a speech, as became obvious) when it seemed that we were actually engaging in real argument about intellectual commitments she accused one of us of ‘cheap sarcasm’ and threatened to end the interview because of our ‘obvious antagonisms’. This from the woman who proclaims loudly that Women’s Liberation is afraid to engage in dialogue with her!

She has constructed a bogus Women’s Liberation Movement that has little to do with reality, but pro­ vides her with a straw figure she can easily attack. The philosophies she ascribes to Women’s Liberation have little relation to those that feminists would be familiar with. In fact in most cases they are the direct opposite of feminist theory. For ex­ ample she says that Women’s Lib­ eration wants to destroy the family and the sacred institution of marriage because Women’s Liberation is concemed with self-exploration and egosatisfaction rather than interpersonal relationships. In fact feminist attacks

on the family and marriage are based on the belief that such institution­ alised relationships directly act against the possibility of valid interpersonal relationships by providing a rigid framework within which people act out stereotyped roles and are able to exploit each other with society’s approval. Useless to try to point this out to Ms. S. — she would think it irrelevant.

Her central thesis is that there is a fundamental difference between what she calls emancipation and what she calls liberation. Emancipation is the cry of the moderates, the ‘average women’ who want equal but different roles in society without changing the nature of that society, and liberation is the shriek of ‘disillusioned’ ex­ tremists who deny inherent differ­ ences of any sort, try to force women to take on masculine roles, and want to overthrow the state. A simplistic analysis to say the least, but most of her arguments are. At the same time as criticising Women’s Liberation for being an ‘elitist middle-class move­ ment of disenchanted intellectuals’ she states that the real reforms in the status of women have been carried out^— despite Women’s Liberation — by reformist businesswomen’s and professional organisations.

Not middle-class or elitist?

Her book (don’t buy it — if you must read it borrow it, but better

still don’t bother) is concerned mainly with attacking Germaine Greer and Kate Millet on a few spec­ ific points that many feminists would and do, also take exception

to assume, that feminism is.an icono­ clastic and dogmatic set of beliefs and rules and that the writings of feminists are slavishly used as gospels by other members of the movement.

Wê ê

*mÊÊÊÈÊÊÊÊÈM,

Ü J0i[Mrr L..

-jSSSBEipB mÊÊÊÊÈ,

1J ■

Iflp ' iiS

;*

(RJ ■

JiMBll ÆtmÊm JÊÈÊÈË ' ' / 3JBÌI1BIÌ— wÈÊMMÊÈÈÈÊÊÈMm

wÈÊÊÈÈÊÊÈÈÈÈÈÈM ï

•V

:

;V :m

1 ■

MÈÈÈSÊm jS I S—ocS ij® .

Arianna Stassinopoulis dismantling straw figures. to — particularly Greer’s idealistic Rather like the oldstyle DLP idea of view of communal child-rearing in Marxism. In vain to try and point out the olive groves. This is the central that feminism is a broad-front move­ fallacy in Ms. Stassinopoulis’ argu­ ment of great diversity and diver­ ment — she assumes, or pretends gences — she is only interested in

airing her own prejudices, not in real dialogue.

Her prejudices are many, too. She believes thaL.only in motherhood are women truely fulfilled (in this context another of her amazingly inaccurate attacks on Womerfs Lib­ eration alleges that ‘Women’s Libbers’ are anti-motherhood altogether and anti-procreation too. This despite the overwhelming amount of feminist dialectic, literature and practice to the contrary. Who is responsible for trying to get governmental and so­ cietal recognition of bringing . up children as a demanding and pres­ tigious enough occupation to com­ mand a reasonable salary and cond­ itions? Who is responsible for the increasing emphasis on good child care facilities, creches and schooling?)

She believes that women are not turned on by erotic visual images (apart from a few obviously perver­ ted exceptions) and quotes as proof that even in sexually liberated Den­ mark, pom is aimed at men, not women — good debating technique this of completely begging the ques­ tion and misusing evidence; she be­ lieves that male domination is an essential part of all sexual relation­ ships, that the Western version of the nuclear family is the best thing since boiled lollies (because it’s better than feudal, patriarchal Greek ones), that heterosexual marriages are the purest form of relationship (though of course one tolerates other sorts), etc. etc.

Basically, of course, she believes in the Status Quo. If- people are underprivileged then it’s probably

meant to be like that, or else they’re too shiftless to improve their lot (“they’ve got Trades Unions haven’t they — then what are they complain­ ing about?”)! No-one should attempt anything as irrelevant and destructive as trying to analyse or alleviate the causes of underprivilege (“I never use the word oppression”) because you might spread anxiety and discontent and no-one wants to be anxious, even if it’s true. I suspect that such fatuousness can only be based on a thorough-going political and social conservatism (at Cambridge, as presi­ dent of the Students’ Union, some of whose members were jailed for anti­ junta activities, she refused to speak against the junta) and that this is why she misses the point of so much of feminist theory and practice. Or per­ haps this is underestimating her in­ telligence — it could be the profound cynicism of conservative self-defence that causes her to so mis-state the tenets of Women’s Liberation. What­ ever the cause, she has has an un­ pleasant effect — letters to daily papers from women relieved at-find: ing a nice ‘sensible’ emancipist view, people coming up to her in the street, are proof that she can not only get away with the sort of specious mis­ representation she goes in for but she can also allay the perhaps wellfounded anxieties of bther women by providing them with a scapegoat Women’s Liberation movement that allows them to avoid the realities of feminist analysis. To wilfully mis­ quote her — whether or not she is dangerous, she is certainly offensive and needs exploding.

« M

Page

M

i

6

by Tim Pigott During the dizzy metaphysical roller-coaster ride of the late sixties (those golden, golden years when the most often used word was Liberation) we all wandered in a Rousseauian psychedelic garden of childhood. Nat­ urally along with dope and rock V roll we rediscovered comics/comix komix.

Bourgeois civilization looked like it was in ruins: theories of High Culture in English Departments really soun­ ded like academic bullshit and we entered the world of Mr. Natural, the Furry Freak Brothers, Pro Jun­ ior and Honeybunch Kaminsky, Angelfood McSpade, Wonder WartHog (was he the first anti-Superhero or the first Super-antihero?), and the sinister Trashman of the Sixth Inter­ national.

These characters arrived via Zap Comix, Motor City Comics, Rip-Off Press, Hydrogen Bomb and Bio-chem­ ical Warfare Funnies, Gothic Blimp Works, Slow Death Funnies, Mom's Homemade Funnies, Bijou, The Alienated War Baby Report, Skull.

Tasty Comix and too many other one-shot publishing efforts to even remember...

The campus-based onslaught ag­ ainst U.S. imperialism then also led us to discover the genius of amerikan popular culture. Rock V roll led back to the blues and country/bluegrass music. Lots of leisure and twen­ tieth century visual sophistication turned us on to the superb craftmanship of american movies and suddenly lotsa incredible comix: Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, S. Clay Wilson, Spain, Foolbert Sturgeon, Skip Williamson, Ron Cobb, Joel Beck and many others.

The manifesto by Denis Kitchen (who produced Krupp, Comic Works, Kitchen Sink Enterprises, Bizarre Sex, Death Rattle, Great Marijuana De­ bate, Home Grown Funnies, Teenage Horizons of Shangrila, etc.), although unusual in that it takes itself more seriously than underground comix usually do, is probably how most of the cartoonists would like to be seen: “The Underground Cartoonist holds a unique role among the in­ tellectual and cultural forces that shape our destiny. It is not enough that he be well-versed in the tech­ nique of ‘cartooning’, that peculiar form of story telling that has evolved only in the last seventy-five years. He must also have a firm grip on our en­ tire heritage, from the classic beauty of ancient Greece to the neurotic scribblings of modern Bohemians. In addition, he must be well-versed in fine literature, for cartoons rise above both art and literature in that they are hybrid of the two. By their mid­ twenties, most cartoonists, if prop­ erly schooled, have mastered the basic elements. At this point the cartoonist faces what has been best described as a massive fork in the road of his future. He must grapple at this point with the great social questions of our era. Most succumb to the harsh demands of capitalist economics and are swallowed up by the giant maws of faceless industry or the mass media, where their talent is soon exploited and drained. The others, through superior genetic chains (or perhaps divine guidance) choose the smaller path and become Underground Cartoonists. The re­ wards are small and the glory is never what they deserve but this band of hardy libertarians assume their role with Spartan dignity. It falls primarily on their shoulders to lead the masses against the corrupt bourgeois institu­ tions that oppress all humankind. The first comic strip on this page could have been drawn by a hack of the first category described above. Its insipidness alone condemns it; but, beyond that, it reinforces the sexist and anti-working class attitudes that have curtailed our growth for so long.

Contrast this cartoon with illustration B. which was drawn by an Under­ ground Cartoonist. Feel the vigor and forceful ness that mark it as a classic of the genre. If you cannot grasp its innate genius, you are probably a turd.”

This sure is a long way from Buck Rogers saving the world for U.S. Democracy in the twenty-fifth cen­ tury in a world ruled by technological data: the futuristic self-identification of Buck or Flash Gordon or Captain America or of The Shadow (“Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of men? The Shadow knows!” and “The weed of crime bears bitter fruit!

CRIME DOES NOT PAY!” ) no longer exists as the idealism of child­ hood comic-book-reading years but merely as kitsch. Well-drawn kitsch, though, mostly. .1 Short History Nevertheless.

THE

most underground cartoonists conn­ ect themselves to that tradition. The Marvel Comics gallery of Superheroes like Spider Man, Captain Marvel, Cap­ tain America and all the other Cap­ tains, the Incredible Hulk, Silver Surfer, Green Lantern, Flash, Thor, Superman, Batman and Robin, the Phantom (ghost who walks...can never die), and back beyond that to Krazy Kat, da Yellow Kid, the Kataznjammer Kids, early Tarzan comics, Disney Comics and even Little Nemo in Slumberland (a favourite of sur­ realists).

Before the 1930s, and the mobil­ ization of the Superheroes in the Adventure Comics, comics were about humour. The source of these earliest comics (that is, the funnies) comes from American humour: the ‘tall tale’ which covers everything from Mark Twain to Mack Sennett to western myth. Example: Pecos Bill, the cowboy who grew up with the wolves understanding the language of nature. Pecos Bill accepts a bet that he can ride a cyclone. He gallops all the way to Kansas, lassoes himself a tornedo and rides from Oklahoma all the way through to the Panhandle.

Bill cannot be shaken off. The tor­ nado realizes this and dissolves into a raincloud showering gently down to the earth. Thus is the tale of the only time Pecos Bill was unseated.

Before the big syndicates turned comics into a money making comm­ odity, comics were ludicrous, non­ sensical, experimental far-out slap­ stick. This humour depended mainly in delight in other people’s mis­ fortunes. (“ All comedy is based on man’s delight in man’s inhumanity to man.” — A1 Capp, creator of L’il Abner. “Jokes are a form of playful judgement.” — Sigmund Freud, creator of psychoanalysis.) The way funnies dealt with humour created the style for the early silent movies.

The innocent age of the Funnies stretched from 1900 to about 1930 followed by the decade of adventure comics. The Superheroes flooded the skies and the media from about 1940 to 1954, then — WHAAAAM! the notorious Comics Code and the Dreadful Dr. Wertham, the Joe McCarthy of the history of Comics.

Taboos. Censorship. Control.

And dialogue like this in Congress: “ Publishers, editors, artists and writers of comics books are degener­ ates and belong in jail, it goes with­ out saying...’ and “comic book com­ panies are staffed entirely by homo­ sexuals and operate out of our most phalliform skyscraper...” !

Gershom Legman (sounds like a comic book name, if I ever heard one) was a more perceptive critic. In his book Love and Death, Legman theorized that the violence in pulp literature and in comics is trans­ formation of and compensation for sexuality repressed and restricted by society. Back in the forties, Legman hinted • that the primary cause of damage done to the youthful psyche lay not in the mass media but in the society that produced that mass media.

Legman believed that frustration caused children to escape into this world of fantasy. Parents and school were the main causes of this frustrat­ ion: “Children are not allowed to fantasy themselves as actually revolt­ ing against authority — as actually killing their fathers — nor a wife ac­ tually killing her husband. A literat­ ure frankly offering images for such fantasies would be outlawed over­ night. But, in the identifications avai­ lable in comic strips — the Katzenjammer Kids — Father can be thoroughly beaten up, harassed, hu­ miliated and degraded daily...But the attack must be incomplete. Even being against this authority, it must be punished; and, in the last analysis, it must change nothing.”

During these dark days in the history of comics the following groups wanted to ban comics in Europe: the Communist parties (be­ cause comics were American and stressed individualism), the Right (be­ cause they were American and threat­ ened the National Spirit), theologians (against their ‘excesses’), local artists and editors didn’t want American competition. And the fascists .banned them.

Hard Times!

But then came the sixties. The comics came to life again: at first, on university campuses and then in spring 1968, Robert Crumb’s first Zap Comix hit the streets of Haight Ashbury. “ Obscene, anarchistic, sophomoric subversive, apocalyptic, the under­ ground cartoons and their creations attack all that middle Amerika holds dear.”

Yeah, that's how they looked then ...But, now although some of the

drawing is still great, lots of humour still very far out, ihqv sure don’t seem so...libertarian. The under­ ground cartoons are heavily involved with fucking (a reaction to the puri­ tan straight-jacketing of society) but haven’t absorbed anything much of the cultural critique that comes from the Women’s Movement Most of the comix are heavily sexist; some sadistic.

Sexism and Sadism: American sex­ uality was very' puritanical. Vary private; lots of taboos and the totems were Celluloid: frozen, unattainable moviestar goddesses and tightly muscled, rigidly athletic men. A cul­ ture like this naturally also marketed illicit ‘sexuality’ mail-order in plain wrappers. So when Crumb’s first Zap Comix appeared with its middlepage spread (‘The Grand Opening of the Intercontinental Fuck-In and Orgy Riot’) it appeared like a breath of fresh air...Perhaps until your eyes zero in on a dismembered cock flying through space from the pile of laughing bodies.

The Phantom Psychiatrist com­ ments on S. Clay Wilson (the most obviously sadistic cartoonist): “ All the people are so degraded — it’s a very one-sided story. Nothing really happens to show that any of these things is a little more fleshed out.

What I mean, I guess, is that sex is more than just screwing. It can in­ volve feelings of love, sharing and tenderness. And you can say, well, that’s for the movie magazines, not for underground comix. not for comix with political consciousness.

Well, political consciousness does not necessarily mean that all these other things are thrown out. Violence is such a one-dimensional thing: some­ one gets ripped up, someone gets his entrails taken out. I mean, violence can be all kinds of violence; but there’s no subtlety to this. You can say that the guy who’s drawing it doesn’t want any subtlety. Yet his medium is one of drawing, which can be subtle. It doesn’t have to be hammered. “ My basic complaint about Wilson's work is that it is moral in the narrowest, nastiest sense. I mean that he seems to share an attitude common to many people that sex — and by implication, life itself — is dirty and disgusting. It is in his strips certainly. His people are all warts, moles, sweat, flab and body hair (he can make any part of the human anatomy unappealing) and all freaks in one way or another...”

Trina, one of the few female cartoonists: “Why are all male car­ toonists on such bummers? They’re all hung up on something gross: shit, snot, cutting people’s dicks off, rape, necrophilia, always gross sex, always ugly sex. I’m not an amateur shrink, I don’t know. But I’d sure love to read a shrink’s report. What does concern me is the hostility towards women I see in this work, especially

by Crumb. It’s hard to relate to him as a person when you see what he does to women in his strips...

Crumb’s porn upsets me, as does the work of a whole lot of other guys who think underground comix means porn. Rape is NOT FUNNY! You write about the underground wanting desperately to change things in a political way: middle class values and morality, liberating oppressed peoplp etc. Alas, I feel I must tell you, in my opinion those underground cartoon­ ists most guilty of sexism are polit­ ically oblivious and have the social consciousness of an oyster. They’re mostly all nice guys but they’re political and social cretins.”

Paul Buhle Wrote in Radical America in 1970: “ No underground cartoonists are attempting to titillate you in the same way that the daily comic strips in the bourgeois papers do...the actual drawing of these strips is like the actual writing of poetry; it is a side-product, an after-effect, ot living and thinking a certain way. If that were not so, the comix artists would have watered down their stuff to get syndicated, and amuse as many people as possible.”

But the youth movement which looked like a revolutionary move­ ment couldn’t handle the counterculture implicit in the women’s move­ ment. The libertarianism turned out bourgeois non-conformism when the male new left and hippie men found the Revolution invading their ‘own’ private lives.

Juliet Mitchell (on page 5 of this issue) views the overcoming of the patriarchal society as a political struggle rather than a libertarian one: “ Libertarian practices will only mean that you are less in conformity with finding your place. In fact, you won’t he a threat to patriarchal culture, and

DIG GER

D ecem ber í

I'M LIKE A £>/MO$AO*— IN THE C R O -M A G N O N AGE? AN ANACHRONISM— WHO* O U T -L / M P

S.Clay Wilson (see. s<

throughout the country com5

PflR€KlSQO€SttON THeiR CHllDR

Captain America freaks out about the changing role of the comic-book Superhero. To paraphrase Charlie Brown: “The ideological implications alone are staggering."

you may live your non-conformity as a painful disjuncture from the place where you’re ‘supposed’ to be. That’s what non-conformity does turn out for most people. Because, in one sense, that’s all it can be. That doesn’t invalidate non-conformity: because, it’s only through certain forms of experimentation that you can even begin to ask questions about conformity. It’s just that, in itself, non-conformity can’t change any­ thing. Because you can’t change atti­ tudes in and of themselves. There is something that produces the attitudes ...the patriarchal social organization.”

COMIX NOW: But back to the mindless irrelevancies that comix freaks have come to know and love.

Did you know that Federico Fellini used to write comix in Italy? That Dashiell Hammett’s pulp-novel classic I, The Jury was originally written as a comic but he couldn’t find a pub­ lisher? So he went home and ham­ mered it into a novel...

And anyway, there is no such thing as a mindless irrelevancy, as Sigmund Freud alias Captain Psycho­ analysis alias the Subliminal Kid, twofisted founder of the International Psychoanalytic Movement, has taught us flashing across the skies hurling his slogan at wrongdoers everywhere: “Humour is the reassertion of the pleasure principle over the reality principle...”

Does this mean, as the bystanders used to say on the Marvel Comics' covers: “If the In­ credible Hulk can’t save us from the Metal Master this could mean the end of Civilisation as we know it”? These and other exciting questions will be answered, if you read on...

Recent exploitation by the straight’ business world has created a climate of suspicion, even paranoia, in the underground comix movement.

Although many co-operatives have collapsed, the best cartoonists have mainly gained a devoted following.

Crumb’s cartoons are now shown in art galleries.

Cartoonist Justin Green describes the present feeling of most under­ ground cartoonists. “ See, I don’t think there’s anything new. I think that there is always a dynamic force that counters dominant mediocrity and convention-ridden activity. Un­ fortunately it isn’t revered until long after it has occurred. So labels like Alternate Culture or Underground Comics are beginning to appear slightly fallacious to me, although we have to come to use these terms to qommunicate.”

So feast ya eyeballs on the sur­ rounding cartoons which we have been able to cram on in this, and the back page. And, don’t worry: if you are a comix freak, civilisation as we know it won’t end ’cause the In­ credible Hulk will save us. If he doesn't, someone very like him will...

■ ^ J g /& HE'S A L L SHOOK U P/" Ay <?. ' THOCW * 7*10* ao V ’ CRUf^fc

SOURCES: A History of Underground Comics,

by Mark James Estren,Straight Arrow Books, 1974, $9.95.

Comics: Anatomy of a Mass Medium,

by Rheinhold Reitberger &Wolfgang Fuchs, Studio Vista Publishers, 1972, $6.75.

Founder of Zap Comix. Robert Crumb, the most popular and influential undi Cartoonist. “Obscene, anarchistic, subversive, apocalyptic, the underground carlox their creations attack all that middle America holds dear" — Jacob Brackman

Page 7

3 — January 13, 1975

ex-ism and sadism in article.)

erground onists and

by Margaret Macintyre I will follow him, follow him where ever he may go There isn't an ocean too deep, a mountain so high it can keep, Keep me away, Away from my love.

I love him, I love him, I love him, And where he goes I'll follow, I'll follow, I'll follow, He'll always be my true love, my true love, my true love, From now until forever, forever, forever, HE IS MY DESTINY. (Sung by Peggy March) When I first started listening to rock and roll in the early 60s, most of my favourite songs were by female vocalists. It was the era of the female vocal group, with the Crystals, the Shirelles, and Martha and the Vandellas. And from ‘It’s My Party’ to ‘And Then He Kissed Me’, the mess­ age was always the same — ‘he’ was our destiny.

In 1963 rock and roll suffered its first violent upheaval with the emer­ gence of the Beatles. The extent to which the Beatles and the British Boom that followed changed the structure of the rock world is now very evident. From being mere pup­ pets of the backroom managers and record companies, the musicians themselves became, in the public eye at least, the prime movers. No longer was it enough for a singer to stand propped on the microphone and in­ terpret the latest Tin Pan Alley gem to the audience.

Suddenly there in the foreground was the electric guitar and the lead guitarist, producing some of the most aggressive and sexual sounds that people then had been exposed to...

The sexual urgency of rock music and the rhythm and blues it had sprung from, was resurrected by groups like the Stones and Manfred Mann, even before the lead singer —whose phys­ ical gymnastics on stage were as im­ portant as the music itself —also be­ came important as the lead guitarist.

The British Boom from 1963-66 was a very vital time for rock music and many of the significant musicians and groups it tefesed up are still around today. The Who, the Stones, various graduates from the Mayall bands, the Small Faces and others hover like kindly uncles over today’s music scene. But what about the fe­ male artists of that time?

The great rock revolution had very little impact on the female artists of its day, and even then the impact it did have seems to me to have been detrimental. The most exciting female acts, the vocal groups, quickly dated as a style (with the exception of the sugar Supremes), though luckily not before the Ronettes and Shangrilas had put their word in. The norm be­ came the girl vocalist, who stared doe­ eyed and motionless, delivering a pretty ballad —her main contribution to raunchiness being the length of her mini-skirt.

Rock and roll is innately sexual and really the women artists during the British Boom had about as much to do with rock as Tom Jones does today. In England there was Lulu, who, with her band the Luvvers, had the hit ‘Shout’ in mid-64, but event­ ually she was moulded into a nice little middle of the roader along with nice girl Cilia, bare footed Sandy, tor­ tured Dusty and doe-eyed Marianne.

In Australia we had the makings of a rock and roller in Lyn Randell who eventually stepped back in line with our own array of puppets: Olivia Newton-John, Marcie Jones, Pat Caroll.

There are three different types of musicians and entertainers: There are those who are known to (or thought to) control the musical side of their careers; there are those who are clear­ ly guided by managers etc., but they are their image, and they retain per­ sonal integrity usually in the form of the power of veto (manager Micky Most had this sort of relationship with the Animals); and there are the puppets. The puppets are manufact­ ured stars, moulded by the fantasies of their manager and what he sees as audience demand. During the British Boom there was not one female rock or pop artist who fitted the first cat­ egory, and the majority were in the third.

The male stars were putting across a part of themselves, maybe it was just a fantasy, but the sincerity was obvious. The female solo artists were following the rules and doing what their managers told them — none identified with nonconformity, sexual freedom or dope, instead they either gave up their career (Marianne Faithfull) or left the rock world to be­ come ‘all round entertainers’. The male stars were coming on as lovers, the females as virgins.

One reason put forward frequently by males for this segregation is that rock and roll is masculine music, that it is played by males for males. This may tell you something about the way these males see things, but it certainly tells you nothing about the rock scene.

During the early days of the

British Boom, girls usually outnum­ bered boys in the audiences at con­ certs by about 3 to 1. It was the adolescent girls in England, America and Australia who kept the scene alive until about 1966 when the boys eventually got hooked and the aud­ iences evened up a little. The rock music produced was evidently very much girls’ music as well — if it hadn’t reached into the hearts and fantasies of the girl fans it would have died in the arse before the rest of the world even knew about it. The feel­ ings communicated and released by rock and roll, the aggression, the frantic sexuality, the fantasies of power are all as much a part of the adolescent girl as the boy, and if any­ thing, since the girl has fewer socially accepted releases for such feelings, rock was more important to her than her male counterpart. Yet during those years the female’s contribution to rock was largely that of consumer rather than creator.

The times were conservative, and the minimal contribution of women then stems from this. Remember what happened to Jean Shrimpton in 1965 when she showed her knees?

And it wasn’t only the industry men who were conservative when it came to any display of sexuality in white women (a different set of rules was used for black women — after all “they got rhythm”), but also the women themselves and their aud­ iences.

We were a pretty sexist lot in those days. The only British groups who I remember featuring women on instruments were the Honeycombs and the Applejacks (remember Megan Davies on bass?), who played medi­ ocre pop, a fact I somehow tied in with the presence of women in the bands. The audience in those days accepted unquestioningly that rock was a male medium, even as we con­ sumed and consumed. It was the fashion of the day to denigrate women — “look at that stupid girl” we hummed as we rushed off to buy the latest Stones’ LP. And the women artists them­ selves: most of those who did try and become rock and rollers were brought back to the fold by protec­ tive managers — and the rest, well, when there are no models to follow and no examples have been set, it takes a lot of talent and a hell of a lot of guts to deviate from the proven path.

The accepted myth was that rock and roll, like a shearing shed, was a man’s world. Electric guitars were seen as masculine instruments, phallic symbols spurting forth masculine aggression and sexuality, and not surprisingly very few women played them. It was unfeminine, butch or weird, so on the whole they left them alone and stuck to singing.

What made a rock singer was the conviction he was able to pour into his act — acts that usually revolved around a magnetic sort of narcissism —what is so aptly described by black singer Claudia Lennear (in Rock 'n' “getting off on yourself on stage”.

Most rock singers appeared to be acting out their fantasies of them­ selves as the most sexy and desirable man in the world — and it works!

This is the conviction that female singers seemed to lack. They could conform to the male fantasies, look lost, sweet, becoming or feline, but they couldn’t get off on themselves while they did it. It was a confusing while liberating age for women. The beginnings of sexual freedom were evident but still there was the nice girl/bad girl syndrome. Things were still black and white, male and fe­ male. Women still allowed them­ selves to be manipulated in the be­ lief that ‘he’ knew best, and when it came to rocking on stage and exuding their own sexuality, they simply couldn’t, or weren’t game to find it.

Instead they dressed it up in all the accepted forms of their day anti be­ came dolly birds who sang at the Top of the Town. The necessary confi­ dence and ambition just wasn’t there.

The contribution of women to the music now loosely labelled rock music, has been growing steadily since those days. The San Francisco scene helped change that with their shift to cerebral rock and female lead singers. Janis Joplin changed it even more as one of the first white female vocalists to tackle rock head on. For Janis, as for Jagger and Jim Morrison, rock was body music and she del­ ivered it her way, true to herself.

Janis really was a phenomenon — think of one other female singer who breaks so many rules of conformity, and the biggest rule she broke was the one of appearance. So many women artists still show that they confuse traditional good looks with sexuality, but by the world’s stan­ dards, Janis was an ‘ugly’ woman. It’s Janis’ tragedy that to achieve her artistic freedom she felt she had to become ‘one of the boys’, and ad­ apted her life to a style which eventually killed her.

Another reason for the gradual in­ crease of women who fall into categ­ ory A, as musicians who control their musical lives, was the merging of the folk and rock scenes. The woman’s place in folk music was far more significant and the folk/rock merger allowed women like Joni Mitchell, Judy Sills and more recently Maria Muldaur to break through to rock audiences.

Most of the women involved in rock music today like Bonny Raitt, Alice Stuart, Jeannie Lewis and Mar­ garet Roadknight have their roots firmly in folk and blues rather than the less hospitable rock and roll. A few of the folk/blues women have

come to rock music as guitarists — Bonny Raitt, Ellen Mclllwaine and Alice Stuart but still fewer female folk guitarists have made that tran­ sition to electric guitar than their male counterparts. The old masculine/electric myth has frightened many women away from attempting to become guitarists and two excerpts from interviews in Rock 'n Roll Woman go some distance in explain­ ing why.

Linda Ronstadt says: “When I came out to Los Angeles, I knew a few chords on guitar, but there were so many men around who play so well that I thought, well, I’m a girl, why should I bother?” And Alice Stuart, a former acoustic gui­ tarist: “I picked up an electric guitar...about ‘68 or ‘69. I felt that people were going to laugh at me... and they did.”

Perhaps the most important ele­ ment influencing the contribution of women to rock is the developing awareness among women as a whole.

It is no longer enough to be a puppet who hides her self behind the un­ challenged stereotype.

To me, one of the most encourag­ ing developments in rock recently has been the popularity of Suzi

Quatro. Suzi is one of those stars who fall into category B. Manager Mickie Most certainly guides her, but what he is pushing is pure Suzi. She strides about the stage giving off sexual vibes as pure as Jagger’s, yet they are hers, a female expression of the same emotions if you like. In a recent interview she remarked that she was happy to be compared with Janis Joplin since they are both doing the same thing in different ways. How right she is, and the price has been smaller — she doesn’t have to be one of the boys.

At present the rock scene looks pretty encouraging for women. Rock and roll, folk/rock and just good old rock music are no longer male do­ mains, though in numbers it is still a little like being a woman in a shear­ ing shed.

Discrimination is still horribly evi­ dent and the idea of women as secon­ dary to the ‘real’ music industry is perpetuated by the industry, male critics and the audience alike. In their November 10, ’73 issue, Melody Maker ran a feature on women in pop which was subtitled ‘A Feminist Dialogue’, while in the very same issue a male reviewer opened his re­

view of Linda Ronstadt’s Don't Cry) Now with “ Looking as she does, an impossibly cuddley chicklet, it’s easy to forgive Linda Ronstadt any musi­ cal deficiencies”. In Rock V Roll Woman Bonny Raitt says passion­ ately of the all women rock group Fanny: “How many albums do they have to put out before the reviewers stop saying ‘This album really proves that they’re not just a gimmick, it’s time to take them seriously as mu­ sicians’ and then proceed to ignore the music just the same?” it certainly is an up-hill battle just as it is in any other male domi­ nated facet of society, but now at last the ground has been broken and the examples are there to be followed: guitarist and vocalist Yvonne Ellman is in the Eric Clapton band; both Zappa’s band and the Mahavishnu Orchestra contain wo­ men. Talented women like Joni Mitchell and Dory Previn dominate the singer/songwriter world and Suzi Quatro is fulfilling all those wishful fantasies that used to be channeled through males. We just may be on the eve of the day when music is music and musicians are musicians, regardless of their sex.

Page 8

THE DIGGER

Peter Dickie

December 3 — January 13, 1975

on Leunig

Rahsaan Roland Kirk

—i see the latest book not to be pub­ lished by angus and robertson is avail­ able in paperback at last.

—you mean the penguin leunig — middle earth’s answer to ralph steadman?

—yes that’s the one. did you read barry humphries’ innocent austral intorduction?

—certainly did but margaret whitlam is so much more compelling these days.

by T. Whyte The Vibration Society were al­ ready on the stage and warming up when Todd Barkan led Rahsaan Roland Kirk to centre stage in Mel­ bourne’s Dallas Brooks Hall on No­ vember 23. Kirk was here on his Bright Moments tour for the effer­ vescent promoter Kym Bonython; he reached over and picked up a didgeridoo, or were they the black mys­ tery pipes of Celestial Bliss fame? In any case, a huff and a puff and Rah­ saan was away, planting his dream seeds among the crowd.

He certainly is an amazing mus­ ician. Show him anything that can be blown and he does, usually very well. Whether On one of his many saxaphones, flutes or whistles, from either his mouth or his nose, it’s all the same, out comes Kirk’s incred­ ible, rich music. Music is his bag and he revels in it. There is no other jazz musician alive who is so complete — music from New Orleans or New York, it’s all a buzz, even his black classical music is full of life (Saxaphone Concerto is on Atlantic SD 1640). He is enthusiastic about music and openly admires other musicians like McCoy Tyner, and thinks Emmanual Paul is the greatest thing since Rico reeds. All this is totally opposed to the bitterness and heavy attitudes so popular at the moment.

The Bright Moments tour has been shitcanned by distinguished cri­ tics and nobodys alike. However I found the concerts to be among the best I have ever been to. It didn’t matter whether Rahsaan Roland Kirk was playing his clarinet (shades of Bigard) or any other of his instru­ ments. Rahsaan and the Vibration Society moved through ballads like Tf I Loved Yo u’, and traditional

—where do you think leunig gets his compassion and humanity from?

—well he inherited his compassion from the chooks —on his mother’s side, humanity from the dog on his father’s side, a sense of the ridiculous from his fish but his humour is all his own.

—that’s quite a mouthful.

—i’m sorry —i’ve just swallowed a parrot.

—i see.

—he’s a portrait painter you know...

—leunig?

—oh yes. he’s got the head of a cock atoo, body of a duck, legs of a dog, web feet and he chirps.

—that would make him a bit con­ fused.

—uh huh — when he wants to have a shit he doesn’t know whether to dig a hole or fly away.

—what else has influenced leunig — if you must continue?

—tragedy, tragedy, every newspaper he’s worked for has folded. “broadside! read all about it!” “how much?” “twenty cents.” “a copy?” “no —the whole company!” oh yes —broadside, newsday, obser­ ver, living daylights —and that’s just the tip of the rapidograph. no one’s ever satisfactorily explained the sud­ den demise of

uer, living daylights - and that’s just the tip of the rapidograph. no one’s ever satisfactorily explained the sud­ den demise of truth yet...

—but truth hasn’t folded!

oh yes — broadside, newsday, obser-

—it hasn’t? well why aren’t leunig’s services being offered to them at once? anyway nation review's not looking too hot these days.

—i’ll drink to that.

‘Red Beans and Rice’, a couple of Ellington numbers, old tunes like ‘We Free Kings’ to the newer Bright Moments’. All were played with consumate skill and feeling; the Vibrat­ ion Society palyed well and Hilton Ruiz really stood out on piano. The concert versions of ‘Old Rugged Cross’ and ‘Bright Moments’ were el­ ectrifying and on the Saturday night, Kirk stood at the edge of the stage, his tenor in one hand, his other held out touching the audience audiences’ outstretched hands. Weeks later this may be seen as hack theatre but at that moment it was a very moving emotional experience.

Bright Moments is like seeing Rahsaan Roland Kirk and the Vib­ ration Society playing music in Mel­ bourne.

But you can’t please everybody.

After the shows I spoke to a few people, jazz buffs —those celebrated musical cripples. Their responses were “more music man”, “who wants to hear all those jokes”, “you can get away with a show like that in the States but this is Australia”. This attitude gives fuel to the Radio Pro­ grammers who explain why they don’t give air time to black music in this chosen land. But you don’t have to be black fo react to music, or black to like jokes. If Rahsaan Ro­ land Kirk wishes to project himself as a human, why not? Jazz music­ ians talk too, some even eat!!!

Then there was the cool handed reviewer in Nation Review who was so concerned about Hilton Ruiz’s clothes — “I find it hard to under­ stand why some jazz musicians risk making an unfavourable impression by an eccentric appearance...in his tie-dyed pyjama suit' (he) looked like a fugitive from Deveil’s Island” — that he later found he hadn’t “been

listening intently to what’s being played”. He preceded this with a remark about Kirk’s body move­ ments (Kirk is blind), and noted his feelings of “ fascination, pity and embarrassment” ! These sound like the paranoid ramblings of a man who fears non-conformity —and I thought jazz was about musical ex­ pression!

Kirk is an important musician and he has been in the jazz vanguard for years. Today people like Robin Kenyatta and Herbie Hancock are making funk albums. Kirk did his in 1965 (Here Comes the Whistle Man).

In the early 60s he was almost alone in using bells and gongs. It seems, like Art Tatum and Sun Ra, he will be remembered as a curiosity rather than an innovator. Nothing could be further from, the truth, for along with Bird, Hawk and John Coltrane, Rahsaan'Kirk has taken Adolphe Sax’s instrument and PLAYED it.

Kirk’s amazing playing would not be possible without his breathing technique, which allows him to phrase at will and sustain limitless notes. It’s something others would probably be better off developing instead of playing into cry-baby wah-wahs or hitting the sustain switch on their high-powered amplifier. It’s not gimmick to play a duet, just a gift, and if it sounds right, it is right. It’s not how ybu. do it but how it sounds, and Rahsaan j Roland Kirk sounds real good, even when he sings Perdido!

“Bright Moments was like getting on the bus from Columbus, Ohio to Cleveland to hear Clifford Brown playing with Max Roach and getting to meet Clifford and talking to him."

Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Downbeat, 1974.

—so would i if i could forget my empty pockets for a moment...er.

The Penguin Leunig, by Michael Leunig, Penguin Books, Australia, 1974.

The Powder Magazine The Works is an information resources centre concerned with the relationship between western in­ dustrial society and the “third world” .

It is involved in the analysis of our western industrialised society and in the search for alternatives to it —the politics of people, communities and countries.

The Powder Magazine is a sources guide — including reviews, com­ mentaries and listings of books, articles, pamphlets, films, etc, plus regular feature articles. This issue: What’s Left of Alternative Techno­ logy? by Peter Harper Published by: The Light, Powder and Construction Works, Box 1806Q, GPO Melbourne, Australia, 3001.

SINGLE ISSUES AUST. 50 cents.

Overseas postage extra.

SUBSCRIPTIONS: Subscriptions for 12 issues: Individual subscriptions: $5.

Institutional subscriptions: $ 10.

Overseas: Surface mail —same rates as above.

Airmail - individual: AUST. $20 Institutions: AUST $25.

Light, Powder and Construction Works, Box 1806Q, GPO, Melbourne, Australia, 3001.

Bill’s Book sh o p , Bridge Road, R ich m o n d , 3 1 2 1 , Victoria.

S tu d io Bookshop, 6 Prior S tre et, E lth am , 3 0 9 5 , Victoria.

Whole Karth Bookstore , Bourke Stre et, Melbourn e, 30 0 1 , Victoria.

Third World Bookshop, 17 Elizabeth S tre et, Melbourn e, 30 0 1 , Victoria.

Euphoria Record s, Bourke S tre et, Mel­ b o u rn e, 3 0 0 1 , Victoria.

Euphoria Records, Princes ( late, Flinders S tre et, Melbourn e, 3 0 0 1 , Victoria.

The Sourc e, 4 Manchester Lane, Mel­ b o u rn e, 30 0 1 , Victoria.

Space Age, S w ansto n S tre et, Melbourn e, 3 0 0 1 , Victoria.

Richard Lee, Cardigan S tre et, Carlton, 3 0 5 3 , Victoria.

FILM FE STIV A L

by ‘ C LO U D R E IN F O R C E M E N T

CP000P°0^00®2?^500000000000< >00000000< 0O<> ---------- ~ ~ — - -- w w w w v w w v w w w w o o tX X X J O> O0 O00000000000001 OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOl

CROSBY. STILLS. NASH & YOUNG .JB A E Zl & JONI M ITCHELL in BIG SUR plus ZACHARIAH’ w ith COUNTRY JOE 8. THE FISH JAMES GANG

fFRICL JO fe fiU F 8 P.M.

I f l f O ™

O

D

S

T

O

SAT. DEC. 7 i 4 P.M. ■ in. THAT W ILL BE THE D A Y '

C

J

I f V “ * ' THE WH° . -»Ml H EN D RIX,S LY & THE F A M IL Y STONE TEN YEARS AFTER, ARLO GUTHRIE, CROSBY, STILLS f t NASH

JUICY LUCY 8, COLLOSEUM IN CONCERT

j

Readings, 388 Lygon S tre et, Carlton, 3 0 5 3 , Victoria.

Bookm as ter s-Record Co llector, Glenferrie Road, H a w th o rn , 3 1 2 2 , Victoria.

B o o k m art, Davis Avenue, S o u th Yarra, 3 1 4 1 , Victoria.

Melbourne University B o o kshop, The Union, Parkville, 3 0 5 2 , Victoria.

D octor Duncan Revolu tion Bookshop, Box 1 11 PO, E astw ood S o u th , 506 3 , SA. Minders University Book sh o p , Flinders University, Adelaide, 500 6 , SA. University Bookshop, University o f WA, Nedlands, WA, 6009.

M o t h e r ’s Bo o k farm , 1 C o ro n n an d el Place, Adelaide, 5000 .

Adelaide University Bookshop, Adelaide Uni, Adelaide, SA, 5000.

E d u catio n In fo rm atio n Service, 804 Brunswick S tre et, N orth I itzr oy, 3068.

ISSUE NO. 5 AVAILABLE DECEMBER

BINGO STAR.DAVID ESSEX.KEITH MOO n I plus

j p ij l -1 \ [\ / i _1

AMAZING OFFER One year’s worth of The Digger — thirteen issues — costs $5.20.

And for anyone who has more faith than investment sense, we are offering speculator’s subscriptions for more than a year.

You can help Digger's chances of surviving more than the next twelve months by paying now for the next two, three, four or however many years you’re willing to risk. We would stress that these multiple year subs are speculative because we can­ not guarantee to fulfil them! It’s an offer that unashamedly relies on readers’ faith and relative wealth.

We only take responsibility in law for twelve months or thirteen issue subscriptions.

ISSUE NO 3/4 AVAILABLE NOW AT THESE BOOKSHOPS:

Y /000 WATT SOUND SYSTEM THUR. DEC. 5 8 P.M.

IVhafcb Left of Alternative Techndogy?

I enclose $5.20. Please put me down for thirteen issues of the fourweekly Digger.

Subscriptions, The Digger, P.O. Box 77, Carlton 3053 Victoria.

Name___ _____________________

Address

Postcode

ALTERNATIVELY I enclose $------i— being for a spec­ ulator’s subscription for-------- years worth of Diggers, at $5.20 a year. I understand that The Digger only takes responsibility for one year’s worth, but that I will continue to receive Diggers at the rate of 40 cents an issue until my money or The Digger runs out.

Please make cheques or postal orders payable to Hightimes Pty. Ltd., and cross them not negotiable.

™ !

|SAT. loec.

BROS. JF A M E S TAYLOR. BOWIE,!'

8?J*.? «POOBIE B B.KING ih ccncerl Plus AREW ELL C R EA M SUN. DEC. 8 4 P.M.

M IC K JA G G E R PERFO RM ANCE! THEIKEROLLING S TO N E S .» gimme shelter' & T IM A T U R N E R & J E F F E R S O N A IR P L A N E J I M I H E N D R IX

SUN. DEC. 8 8 P.M. MON. DEC. 9 8 P.M.

:

THE STORY OF

With B.B. KING. ALICE COOPER. STONE GROUND. DfcLANIE* 8- UU„ IVIC

CHUCK BERRYrBlLL HALEY.FATS DOM INO BO DID D LEY 8, LITTLE RICHARD In LET THE GOOD TtMES ROLL' d Iih

THE THUR,

ROCK A R O H u n T u n g j w i n

BEATLES

__ ___,_________ ________________ RUSSELL JOECOCKER.LEON o 'E L V IS ' O N TOUR~

1 * • ’ •1*1

COOLIDGESt R IT A C O OLID GE*. C LA U D IA LENNEAR in MAD DOGS & »EENGLISHMEN' N G LISH M E N '

R

T f l l IB

I N K L A V i l T l R F Y P IN K ■FFLOYDrT-REX. H J Y U r I n E A , P

P p ^ 13

P lu s Soul to S o ill

S A N T A N A * , F L O C K ,C O U N T R Y JO E .B Y jK £f C A N N E D H E A T m STAMPING GROUND Starring IKE 8 T I N A T U R N E R , W ils o n P ic k e t, R O B E R T A F L A C K .

ERIC CLAPTON.GEORGE HARRISONDYLAN « m Concert for Bangladesh wHh B ILLY P R ESTO N ,*RAVI S H AN K A R SAT. DEC. 14 B P.M.

GRATEFUL DEADrHOT TUNA, S A N TA N A , Q U IC K S IL V E R , B O Z

S C A G G S .E L V IN

B IS H O P

liv e

at

th e

F IL L M O R E '

!06 6P.M C.15 A TRIBUTE TO B O B ' SUN. i DEC. 15 4 & 8 P.M

Little Big Digger

D Y L A N i n 'D O N 'T LO O K B A C K ' VA N M O R R IS O N ,Q U E E N ,G R A N D FU N k I

c T E lflF u u n iu m ; n JIMI buffet^ oe walsh & foghat l "

■■ U

lw

I I C

n ,

in

C O N C E R T ( f i r s t r e le a s e )

8

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 °^<><>POCtoOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO<K>a5

PALAIS THEATRE v;i.tr

SEASON TICKETS: 6 PROGRAMS $7.70. ALL PROGRAMS $14.70.

BOOK NOW FOR YOUR SEASON TICKET & SAVE! FROM ALL AGENCIES. SINGLE TICKETS- $2.50. FROM THE PALAIS ONLY.

The size of Digger seems to be a bit like walking around a print park continual source of controversy and apparently. Still others say that it is consternation. It burst to the surface impossible to sneak a look at the con­ again a few issues ago (Diggers Nos. tents of the paper in the newsagents.

33 & 34) when a reader Complained Other reports have filtered back tell­ of not being able to read it in the ing us that many people find it diffi­ bath because it was too large. An­ cult to open the paper. We viewed other reader replied that the bath was a splendid place to read it: “If this with some scepticism until one the water becomes a hassle I just pull of us presented visiting marxist schol­ out the plug.” It has all the signs of ar, Ernest Mandel, with a copy. He wrestled with it for a few moments an endless dispute...

One of the main objections to its without success, and then casually size has been thai it is impossible to slipped it in his briefcase, presumably casually read it on the tram or on the determined to crack it when back in his hotel room where no-one would bus without punching the person be looking. next to you in the eye every time Those for the present size say that you try to open it out. Others find it it looks good, is distinctive, and impossible to read without putting it allows an “elegant” layout. on the floor and literally walking to All of the people on the present the article they want to read. It’s a collective like the size of Digger, but

we have decided to ask our readers about any possible change.

It’s very hard to get replies to surveys but could you please try to help us with this one. Your answer will even be reply paid.

Please tick the one you prefer: ( ) the same old Digger; ( ) a half size Digger (tabloid) — the same size as when it’s fully folded up.

(We fully realize that this discrimi­ nates against those who would like a pocket size Digger, but we’ll have to take them one at a time.)

The news that we are running this survey has leaked out and we have been told that some people may attempt to sabotage it by buying multiple copies of the paper. Be warned!

HAVE A REAL GON STOMPY WOMPY SURFIN’ CHRISTMAS’.

GET INTO THAT LITTLE DEUCE COUPE & CRUISE ON DOWN TO US. WE’VE GOT REAL KEEN RECORDS FOR YOU AND ALL YOUR BUDDIES. OPEN THRU SUMMER 283 GLENFERRIE ROAD MALVERN. PHONE 50 1952.

December 3 — January 13, 1975

THE DIGGER

Page 9

by Fred Halliday Since the end of World War Two, no event has so affected the econom­ ies and politics of the- capitalist world as has the Middle East explo­ sion of spring 1973. Over one year later we can still see the irresistable consequences of this volcanic erupttion advancing across the globe. All are awaiting nervously for another eruption, perhaps equal to or sur­ passing the last. While no-one doubts the depths of the problems which the 1973 eruption unleashed, it is not clear what the next months will bring. Will there be another war? If there is, will it settle any more than the previous ones? Will the price of oil rise or fall?

Whenever there is cosmic disorder, prophets and charlatans appear. Since January 1974, Saudi Arabia’s Sheik Yamani has been predicting that the price of oil will fall. It has continued to rise. But analysis is not prophecy, and the present does not contain within it the seeds of a. necessary future. It is impossible to tell whether there will be another war or what, if it comes, its effects will be. What we can do is examine the effects of past actions and sketch the possible limits of future events.

The recent assertion of power by the Gulf oil states is not a sudden development: it has been possible for two reasons. Th e first is economic: there has been an oil boom in the Middle East since 1945 and rising re­ venues have been paid to the pro­ ducer states. Precisely because the qil revenues are paid to governments dir­ ectly this has meant that the states have become much stronger —how­ ever much the benefits of the oil boom have therefore been withheld from the population as a whole. The second reason is political: these states know that they have a preponderant hold on world supply and they have united, through the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and meetings of Arab oil ministers, to exert this power. Such a process is a perfectly logical result of capitalist development: the states now want, and appear able to acquire, greater control and better terms.

The advance of the states in the producer countries has been, to some extent, at the expense of the oil companies. Yet so ingrained within the left/liberal consensus is a distor­ ted picture of ‘multi-national com­ panies’, that many people refuse to reocgnize it. Critics point to the doubling and trebling of oil company profits in 1973 and 1974, and to the This is all true, but it does not USA. This arrangement has been alleged price fixing of the major contradict the fact that the oil in­ blocked by ‘anti-trust legislation’ — companies. The whole affair is a fraud dustry has problems. One of the most i.e. by the restrictive domestic prac­ they say. universal platitudes of the left is the tices of US imperialism.

A couple of general points should idea that capitalist companies are Were the oil states able to sell their be made here. First: modern capital­ never short of cash. But this is ob­ own oil, the oil companies would be ism has always been marked by the viously not the case — and the in­ driven massively onto the defensive, presence of powerful companies, op­ ability of specific firms to stay in except for supplies from wells they erating in several or many countries. business, pay wages or whatever controlled themselves. But even these The relative weight of different capi­ merely demonstrates that private ow­ sources would not save them: the oil talist countries and different comp­ nership is incapable beyond a certain from here would be far more expens­ anies varies from decade to decade. point of meeting the demands put up­ ive to produce than from the Middle Some major companies cease to exist on it. In the case of the oil industry, East. All the Saudis would have to do altogether: where is the East India the exploration of more costly areas would be to knock 25% off the gar­ Company now? Others come into ex­ ($8-10 per barrel in Kuwait, $3 or age price and they would be able to istence on a large scale for the first more in Alaska and the North Sea) corner the market. Of course, were time — who had heard of Internat­ and inflation of inputs has certainly this a likely scenario, the oil com­ ional Telephone and Telecommuni­ put a strain on some of the medium­ panies would probably be taken over cation (ITT) or Lockheed in 1900? sized companies, and even restricts or shielded by the consumer states, Others still remain in existence but no the activities of the larger ones. and there are indications that OPEC longer specialize in their original act­ A second major compensation is would, in the long run, like to handle ivity; the Shell oil company began by that in return for loss of ownership oil distribution on a state-to-state trading —in shells. the companies are acquiring guaran­ basis.

And so it may be with the oil teed supply, or so they hope. The The looming possibilities of de­ companies: there is no inherent rea­ process of displacement at the point pression, however, makes all this son why they should not be driven of production, which began with a rather shaky. There now exists a into a precarious and marginal twi­ 50-50 sharing of profits in the early tight interdependence between the light —like the great railway com­ 1950s will end in a new system, oil states and the major imported: panies that were so strong in the whereby oil states will sell their own the gamble and the conflict is about nineteenth century. Or, alternatively, oil to oil companies. The latter will how far each can go in improving why they should not move out of oil act as technical assistants in product­ their own position vis-a-vis the others into other energy sources —nuclear ion and as distributors and remain without bringing the whole structure power —or into quite different producers in countries which are down. This is a limit on oil price rises fields of operation? still too weak to take them over, such —although the oil states are now The massive oil profits of the last as South Vietnam, or where they are claiming the right to raise prices be­ year tell us nothing about the relative cause of the increased cost of their power position of oil companies in the ‘at home’ — Britain, the USA. There are therefore real compen­ imports from the industrailized west. producer states —and are quite com­ sations compatible with the general The position of the US government, patible with a real fall in power there. weakening of the oil companies. But expressed by Kissinger, is that the oil All they tell us is how much profit the present arrangement is an un­ price rises have already gone too far the oil companies made on operat­ stable one and clashes remain at diff­ —that inflation and the payment sur­ ions overall. The oil states of the erent points. At the point of produc­ pluses of the producers are having Middle East have taken over the set­ tion there are still disputes —over serious disruptive effects: they are ting of price and the ownership of oil price, supply and compensation; here sharpening class conflicts within cap­ in their own coutnries, and it is a the weakening of the companies is italist states, especially in the vulner­ facile or demagogic argument to clearest. The major oil states have able states of southern Europe, and claim that this is not the case because broken every treaty signed with the are exacerbating inter-imperialist con­ the Exxon company’s profits rose by oil companies — this is not said mortradictions. “Strains on the fabric and 59% in 1973. alistically, but to demonstrate the institutions of the world economy What has happened is that the oil point. The only limit on oil state threaten to engulf us all in a gen­ companies have been displaced from price rises is the objective limit of the eral depression”, he told the UN in their dominant position in the Middle market —the fear of a slump, or of a September 1974. The necessary an­ East but have gained marked com­ serious cutback in demand from the swers were to lower prices and recy­ pensations for this: their position in major consumers. The displaced oil cle the surpluses : so far there is no the consumer countries is still al­ companies hope for supply arrange­ sign of the former, and no organized most as strong as it was, although ments to remain, but there is no way or permanent form of the latter. even here states are beginning to in­ in which they could hold the oil states tervene more —through price con­ Kissinger’s alarm indicates that the to such arrangements if a dispute trols, international collaboration and oil crisis has produced major strains occurred. allocation policies. The most obvious in international capitalism, both withTwo other disputes concern down­ in major states and between them. It compensation for price rises is to pass stream problems where the compan-1 them on to consumers, and to is wrong to see ‘the Arabs’ as the only ies are still much stronger than the upvalue stocks bought at the old cause of this: but there can be no states.

It is too simple to talk in gen­ price and sell them at the new, higher doubt that the energy cutbacks of one. This was one reason for the spec­ eral about whether multinational 1973/74 plus the rise in oil prices has firms are still strong or are weaker: tacular profits of late 1973/early been an unparalleled instigator of the analysis must specify where and how. present situation, or, alternatively, 1974. Moreover, the rise in Middle In downstream operations there is a East oil prices to far above the pro­ has made it quite impossible for the potential clash over distribution. The \ ruling classes to offset thè mild 1973 duction cost per barrel has meant oil states are still co-operating with that other areas are now profitable slowdown with conventional Keynes­ the oil companies because they are for the first time —the North Sea, ian measures and mild international unable to market their own produce, adjustments. In 1974 the oil importer Alaska, the Orinoco River in Vene­ and this imbalance enables the major countries are running deficits of zuela. Restrictions on supply also en­ oil companies to go on making pro­ about $70-80 billions with the proable a company to squeeze weaker fits. Iran tried to break through this dueers —roughly 2% of world output competitors and take over rival dis­ and reached an agreement with the tribution points —as happened in small Ashland Oil Company for joint which with standard multiplier eff­ the USA in late 1973. ects will amount to a 5% depression distribution on the East Coast of the

W itc h d o c to r s n e e d le s an d p ressu re p o in ts

by Alistair Jones

The Digger has always favoured recurring features in front of regular columns. What we’ve lost in gossip we’ve gained in inches. One early recurring feature was “Diseases We Share”, a continuing saga of popular afflictions, mostly inguinal and often spectacular. The article below is the first in a projected series on alternative healing, particularly drugless healing.

A is for acupuncture, the ancient Chinese healing art. It has a myster­ ious basis which irritates convention­ al Western medecine into a sceptical acceptance of acupuncture’s uses.

My doctor reckoned acupuncture was a cultural thing that was difficult to lift out of China and transplant in the West, except for curing back­ ache, and maybe migraine. My doc­ tor has a friend, another doctor who’s referred to as “ Melbourne’s top acupuncturist”. The acupunctu­ rist is a surgeon operating out of two Melbourne public hospitals. He has been to China on trade delegations twice, is Chinese born (so can collect information in its native state) and asks to remain anonymous (for ethi­ cal reasons) to Digger readers. Call him Dr. X. Dr. X. has treated 500 patients with acupuncture in the last two years. Mostly people who have tried all medicine’s cures and were still in pain. Dr. X. reports around 70 per cent success in relieving muscular conditions, such as arthritis, low back pain and post-stroke pain, for varying lengths of time up to eight­ een months. F6r migraine treatment he gauges around 60 per cent success.

Acupuncture has also proved useful in the treatment of sinusitus and hay fever. Dr. X. could see no cultural reason why a Westerner wouldn’t understand acupuncture.

Acupuncture is based in a net­ work of energy meridians that road­ map the anatomy on courses sepa­ rate from the nervous system. Hairthin needles, up to five inches in length, are inserted at command points along the meridians. Careful twiddling of the needles (six turns clockwise sedates, nine turns clock­ wise will tonify) can regulate the flow of energy (chi) in sympathetic organs. If the needles are located accurately there will be no trace of blood when they are removed. Man­ ipulation of a point below the knee can relax stomach cramps; manipu­ lation of a point on the wrist can of output. This has led to the sharp accelerate a heartbeat. The Chinese increase in inter-imperialist contra­ dictions —between Europe as a whole have located up to 1000 of these and the USA, between France and her points through practical experiments over the last 5000 years; they are other European partners, and bet­ still discovering new combinations ween all of them individually.

Low growth plus 15-20% inflation such as the recently developed an­ aesthetic technique. has combined with a rise in working Korean surgeons claim to have class militancy throughout western Europe: and it is Kissinger’s fear that located something that might be an energy canal with microsurgery, but the social problems provoked in this way will encourage the growth of the the connective links between point and organ have not been scientifi­ Communist Parties in southern Eur­ cally located and this is what irks ope —especially in France, Italy and Western medecine. “ We don’t quite Spain and in the two newly demo­ know how or why acupuncture cratized countries of Portugal and works”, said Dr. X. “ But we do Greece. In Britain too trades unions know that an intact nervous system are playing a more militant role than is necessary for good health.” was the case five years ago —though You require no license to practise this was the case before the oil crisis acupuncture in Australia. Dr. X. broke. All these struggles appear to would like to see its practise res­ be imprisoned predominantly within an economist perspective — for higher tricted to the medical profession.

Just across the river in South wages —but the rise in discontent demonstrates one clear historical les­ Melbourne, young (guess 24) Grant Powell has set up an acupuncture son: that the social peace of the ad­ vanced capitalist countries depended' practice. Grant is not trained in Western medecine. He received a to a significant extent on the ability to import commodities cheaply from diploma in fundamentals from the the third world. Once this condition goes —and the commodity boom and the oil boom are bringing it about — Arab producers are also dependent on the economies to which they export. then one of the historical conditions TYirougn this new interdependence, a of class collusiqn in the advanced capitalist countries is removed. In it­ slump in Eruope„ Japan and North America would reverse, or at least self this is not enough — the radicalreduce, the recent tendency. Even if ization of mood could lead to a rise there was not strictly speaking a re­ in rightist forces as well. There has versal in the terms of trade —i.e. a been a strong streak not only of ecfall in the price of oil -- there would onomism but also of chauvinism, blaming everything on ‘the sheiks’ at be a fall in the volume of revenue, the popular level in the advanced cap­ once absolute demand fell.

The most difficult political ques­ italist countriesl Nevertheless, the opportunity exists to demonstrate the tions revolve around an analysis of who is receiving the oil revenues and incapacities of capitalism at home who is paying for them. The recip­ and internationally as a result of the ients of oil revenues in the Middle problems being experienced today.

East are, without exception, extreme­ This dramatic shift in wealth is a reversal of the trend of the 1950s and ly repressive governments whose en­ richment is a direct blow to the 1960s, when the terms of trade were revolutionary movement in that reg­ changing to the disadvantage of the ion. The Shah of Iran, the King of less developed countries: as such, the improvement in the terms of trade of Saudi Arabia, the Sultan of Oman, the Amir of Kuwait and the Sheiks of the primary product exporters is to Qatar and the Arab Amirates are now be welcomed. But. there are impor­ more secure. Within all of these tant technical and political qualifi­ countries —except, partially, Ku­ cations that should be made to this wait —all opposition is banned, and welcome. First of all, the money the modernized police forces and ! figures given for oil states’ income armies are now better equipped than overstate the real transfer of wealth: ever to crush opponents. those monies not absorbed by the producer states but re-invested in the Events in the period since the oil advanced capitalist countries (in bank crisis have confirmed the significance of the present boom. In Oman, up to banks, government securities, prop­ erty or production) are not in any 11,000 Iranian troops were sent in real sense transferred to the less deve­ December 1973 to attack the liber­ loped economies. The international ated areas of Dhofar, where guerrillas transfer is a purely paper one, and the of the People's Front have been fighting since 1965. The Sultan real circulation is within the ad­ vanced capitalist countries themselves. placed orders for British military equ­ Moreover, the change in the terms of ipment in the summer of 1974 worth an estimated 170 million pounds trade and the anticipated producer Sterling. This counter-revolutionary | revenues will only persist if the de­ offensive was made possible un­ j mand for Middle East oil continues: I iquely by the rise in oil prices: the the advanr-od capitalist countries are Sultan’s revenues have risen from 65 | dependent on Arab oil - but the million pounds Sterling in 1973 to an

Hong Kong College of Chinese Acu­ puncture (Sydney) after 11 months and later spent more fruitful study under Dean Rainer at the Acupunc­ ture Research Centre, also in Sydney.

Rainer, who has had acupuncture experience throughout Southeast Asia, was nationally telecast deliver­ ing a baby with acupuncture.

Grant has curly hair, a witty smile and used to collect snakes as a lad. He reckons he is as capable of boiling a needle as any doctor. “ I suppose there is some danger of puncturing a vital organ but only if you’re some kind of idiot. The needle depths are indicated in the books.

You have to follow the rules. There was a woman doctor, or she may have been a physiotherapist, in Syd­ ney who set up an acupuncture clinic at her hospital. She knew fuck-all about acupuncture.

She punctured someone’s lung; if she hadn’t been in a hospital the patient would’ve died. She must’ve been crazy. It’s not impossible for an untrained person to gain a good understanding of anatomy.”

I sat quietly with a needle plunged an inch and a half into each hand.

The needles — icy little devils — stayed in for half an hour. A mild but manic euphoria overtook me after ten minutes. For three days after this first jab my eyes felt as if their windscreens had been wiped and my nasal passages felt vacuumcleaned. Grant said I would feel like that all the time if I gave up ciga­ rettes.

Although my acupuncturist seem­ ed to know where to put the needles he did produce a black gadget with a meter and two electrical ‘feelers” on leads. He used it to locate the exact point for the needles. It measures electrical skin resistance.

Like a Geiger counter it tracks the merid­ ians and buzzes when it hits a com­ mand point. Over ten years ago pathways of decreased electrical re­ sistance were discovered on the sur­ face of our skins; these pathways co-incide exactly with the connective links described in ancient Chinese medicine.

for capitalism

Grant’s areas of success, like those The Western scientist examines reported by Dr. X. are mostly with the cell for causes of disease while symptoms normally treated with an­ the traditional Chinese doctor is kept busy studying ways in which an algesics (such as Panadeine, Codral, Aspro, et al). “If I’m ever unsure organ will fall sick and the symptoms it will produce.

Acupuncture is I’ll send someone to a doctor first.

Like with rectal bleeding, or chronic creeping forward, still a curiosity vaginal bleeding. You’ve got to be outside Asia and Southeast Asia, but wary. When people have back pains no longer superstition. Dr. X. says I’ll check whether their vertibrae are there is no one in Australia who in, or if the kidneys are functioning, knows enough to teach acupuncture. and often still send them to a doctor Grant reckons you can learn to be first.” useful in limited spheres.

In the name of “ guinea-pig jour­ “ A number of footballers in Syd­ nalism” this writer undertook acu­ ney are taking acupuncture treat­ puncture treatment. A dull electrical ment for injuries. I treated a couple numbness — like some mishap with a myself last time I was in Sydney. funny bone — worked its way up my They’ve been back on the field after arm when Grant sedated colon 4. a couple of days instead of weeks.

Colon 4, the fourth station on the A patient had ruptured vessels in meridian that runs from the thumb his calf from a karate blow; the to the top gum, is located between blood had to find new canals. I the thumb and fore-finger. It’s thet speeded up the energy flow* and he point for sinus complaints, head­ was back in action after a couple aches, nose and throat. I felt like an of days.” extra from the Doctor Who series as The needles are turning. estimated 400 million pounds Ster­ ling in 1975, thus enabling him to ex­ pand his military campaign without weakening his other development projects, aimed at a rapid capitalist ‘modernization’ of the country.

Most significant of all is the Saudiencouraged rightward shift in Egypt, the most populous country in the Arab world and the former champion of Arab nationalism. While foreign banks have reopened in Cairo for the first time since 1957, and investment laws have been altered, the mass of the population have experienced a horrendous economic decline. Per ca­ pita output has been stagnant since 1965, and every announced economic target has been abandoned. In March 1974, rationing was imposed on sugar, tea, rice, poultry, soap and ed­ ible oils. Inflation has eroded the liv­ ing standards of the poor, and the number of homeless and unemployed in the major cities has risen sharply, as peasants have flocked from the land to cities that have seen no in­ crease in production.

There is no sign that Egypt’s eco­ nomic situation is changing: the max­ imum to be expected will be that the middle class will prosper and the poor will be ground further down­ wards. However, the Egyptian re­ gime will continue to receive the support of Saudi Arabia because the latter approve of the rightward shift in Egypt’s internal politics, the re­ jection of the Nasser era and the re­ turn of writers and political activists exiled after the military coup of 1952. When Nixon received an app­ arently ecstatic welcome in Cairo in June 1974, the official Saudi paper, al-Madina commented: “ After twenty years of socialism, of revolutionism,

of friendship with the Soviet Union, thousands of Egyptians are now ex­ pressing their deepest feelings and by welcoming President Nixon as a lib­ erator they have condemned the past together with its ideology and slo­ gans, and have rejected the political, economic, social and diplomatic orientation which reflected it.”

Where the crisis of 1973 has de­ finitely had a progressive impact is in strengthening the position of the Pal­ estinian resistance at the internation­ al level. The resistance has been mili­ tarily marginal since September 1970 and its ability to operate against Is­ rael has not been significantly altered since the Arab-Israeli war of October 1973. But the support of the oil states and the increase in world aware­ ness has certainly advanced the poss­ ibility of a Palestinian state being es­ tablished. This would undoubtedly be a major step forward, since it would both increase the very small room for political maneouvre which the Pal­ estinians now have, and by setting up a Palestinian institution distinct from the Arab states would further weaken the Zionist chauvinism of the Israeli working class.

The major economic and social consequences of the 1973 crisis will persist whether or not there is an­ other war in the Middle East. The Arab states launched the 1973 war as a ‘war for peace’, and as part of an overall diplomatic offensive. How­ ever, the major global result was seen in the economic sphere, impinging only slightly on the Arab-Israeli ques­ tion itself. But until the latter is sol­ ved, another volcanic eruption —this time overwhelmingly for political purposes —could occur again.

Page 10

THE

December 3 — January 13, 1975

DIGGER

3S==

THE TRADE PRACTICES ACT 1974 OPERATES FROM OCTOBER 1.

On October 1, 1974, the Trade Practices Act came into effect.

With it comes a new code of conduct for the business community —a charter insisting on fair trading at all levels from the manufacturer right through to the consumer. The Act regulates anti-competitivê and deceptive practices. It provides new protection for consumers, manufacturers and other businessmen who are dealt with unfairly.

The consumer who is misled or deceived in a shoddy deal can now seek assistance from the Trade Practices Commission or take action himself to recover his loss. He will be entitled to seek legal aid.

It is important that all people involved in commercial transactions should become aware of the provisions of the new Act. It differs significantly from the old law. It creates new rights. It carries heavy penalties.

T h e Attorney-G eneral, Senator Lionel M urphy, Q.C.

Twenty of the questions all businessmen will have to ask themselves now.

1 . Does the understanding I have with my major competitors amount to price fixing?

2 . Will my exclusive distribution arrangement be prohibited?

3 . Will the Trade Practices Commission “authorise” or give a “clearance” for the agreement I had registered under the old Act? Must I first publicly disclose that agreement?

4 . Is it true that my company could be fined as much as $250,000 for breaking the Act? 5 . And. that I myself could be fined as much as $50,000 personally?

6 . As a retailer, do I, as well as a manufacturer, have responsibilities under the consumer protection provisions of the Act? 7 . Will there be a penalty now for resale price maintenance?

8 . What can I do to stop the restrictive practices those other firms are using to throttle my business? How can I use this Act to let my business compete more effectively?

9 . Is my company using its undoubted power to prevent a competitor entering our market?

10. What about the fine print my lawyer organised for my warranty? Is that now null and void?

11 . Is the merger I have been negotiating for the past eight months now in jeopardy? Might my company be compelled to dispose of the shares it acquires in this company?

12. Should I change my attitude to complaints by consumers now that they can get legal aid?

13. What instructions do I now need to give to my staff?

14. Can I justify the special prices that I am giving to some of our buyers?

15. What is the situation with the volume rebates I have been offering?

16. What sort of help is the Commission prepared to offer me as a businessman? As a consumer?

17. Will my advertising agency still be able to make the claims we’ve been using in this season’s campaign?

18. Or am I asking them to make false representations?

19. If a consumer suffers damage from one of my products not satisfying product safety or information standards, can he really recover damages from me?

20 . In those areas where my company’s current policy is breaking the Act, just how long have I got to get on the right side of the law?

And the four best ways to find the answers.

1. By purchasing a copy of the Act and studying it.

4. By contacting the Trade Practices Commission.

The Trade Practices Act 1974 cart be obtained from the Australian Government Publications and Inquiry Centres in Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Hobart (operated by the Department of the Media) or the Sub-Treasury in Brisbane. Or by mail from the Australian Government Publishing Service in Canberra.

Price is 65 cents plus 35 cents postage and packaging.

The Commission’s staff are ready to help you understand how the Act will operate. From October 1 the Commission will begin to consider applications for “authorisations” and “clearances” in cases where these are available.

The headquarters of the Commission is in Canberra and there are regional offices in each capital city. The addresses are:

2. By contacting your Chamber of Manufactures, Chamber of Commerce, or Trade Association.

Business associations have studied the Act on behalf of their members and they may be able to assist you with your specific problems.

3. By contacting a lawyer.

Lawyers will be able to advise you on your legal position and they will be able to prepare any applications that may be necessary.

? ^ f î ? ERRA: 5th Floor’ City M utual Building, H obart PI. Canberra City A.C.T. 2601. Tel: 48 1211. P.O. Box 1851, Canberra City, A.C.T. 2601.

SYDNEY: 12th Floor, 87 P itt Street, Sydney 2000. Telephone: 27 9689.

Box H25, Australia Square, N.S.W. 2000.

MELBOURNE: 2nd Floor, 99 Queen Street, M elbourne 3000.

Telephone: 67 7427. G.P.O. Box 520J, Melbourne, Vic. 3001.

BRISBANE: 10th Floor, M.M.I. Building, 344 Queen Street, Brisbane 4000. Telephone: 21 3096, 21 3022, 21 3182. G.P.O. Box 91, Brisbane 4001.

ADELAIDE: 5th Floor, B ennett & Fisher Building, 12 Currie Street, Adelaide 5000. Telephone: 51 7499. G.P.O. Box 922, Adelaide, S.A.5001.

PERTH: 5th Floor, T attersall’s Club Building, 5 B arrack Street, P erth 6000. Telephone: 25 3011. G.P.O. Box P1160, Perth, W.A. 6001.

HOBART: 5th Floor, City M utual Building, Liverpool Street, H obart 7000. Telephone: 34 5155. G.P.O. Box 1210M, Hobart, Tas. 7001.

DARWIN: 2nd Floor, No. 3 Administrative Building, Mitchell Street D arwin 5790. Telephone 89 6590. P.O. Box 1741, Darwin 5794.

ATTORNEY-GENERAL’S DEPARTMENT ATP4-367.104

Page 11

THE DIGGER

||jeiinc n \ b a c k s m ilin g WALLS AND BRIDGES, John Lennon. (Apple, SW-3416).

John Lennon has finally emer­ ged from the musical cacoon that was responsible for minor albums like Sometime in New York City and Mind Games. In Walls and Bridges Lennon is back playing good music.

In tone Walls and Bridges is a direct descendant of Imagine. But

it has been created more out of the need to forget the deportation order blues and do something for sheer enjoyment.

But Lennon’s wit and irony, his “heavily ironic, chuckle, chuckle” as he calls it, seems to be gone on this album. “ Steel and glass” , for example, has lots of musical power but is let down by obvious word playing like “your teeth are clean ANARÓHIST/LIBERTARIAN/ SELF MANAGEMENT WORKSHOP/CONFERENCE.............

Sydney, January 5 — 12, 1975 Contact: FAA, PO Box 45, North Richmond, 3121.

but your mind is capped”. The track “ Old dirt road”, written in conjunction with Harry Nilsson, comes closest to Lennon’s spark of old, but none of the songs have the directness of “ Gimme some truth”, “Jealous guy”, or “ How do you sleep?”

In this album Lennon has con­ centrated on the sophistication of the music —and with a line up

PROTEST A N D R A L L Y A G A I N S T T H E R A S C IS T Q U E E N S L A N D A C T A N D T H E T R I A L O F D E N N IS W ALKER, JO HN G A R C IA & L IO N E L LA CEY.

. . . a t th e Q u een slan d T o u rist B u rea u o n th e c o m e r o f E liz a b e th a n d C ollins s t r e e t s .......... . . . o n D ecem b er 1 8 a t 4 — 6 p m Melbourne

t>i c v e l e

op

THUR.5:A.C.D.C.,UP. FRI.6LA DE DAS. RED HOUSE ROLL BAND SAT.7:DADDY COOL A.C.D.C. SUN.B:JAM WITH LA DE DAS THUR12:DINGOES. FRI.13: SKYHOOKS SHADOW FACTS SAT14:LA DE DAS, A.C.D.C. SUN15:JAM WITH AC.DC. Hardrock has planned great parties fo r xm as eve & new years eve, w ith ex te n d ed licence and all. Watch fo r an a n n o u n cem ent.

O P E N PA YS»: M O N . T O PWf. N IG H T S : 8PM T O 3 A M .

A LA C A R TE M ENU *50S_ S T Y L E BYO ADMISSION: Z 50,

with membership 2,10

B i c y c l e r e p a i r s e r v i c e Sp ar e p a r t s Accessor i es Cr D r u m m o n d & E l g i n St C a r l t o n 3471674 F o r a com plete range o f racers a nd tourers, from roadster to 10 speed. Also fold-down Italian

R E S 6 3 .7 1 4 « S3 .BOSS 1 .S P R IN G S T R E E T , C I T Y

models. Open 10 to 6 M onday to Thursday, 10 to 8 .3 0 F riday and 9 .3 0 to 1 Saturday.

like Nilsson, Elton John, Jesse Ed Davis, Klaus Voorman, Nicky Hop­ kins, and so on, he could hardly fail. Tracks like “Number 9 dream”, the paranoic “ Scared”, and the funky “ Surprise surprise” show how much work went into the mus­ ical construction of the album as opposed to the minimal effort of Mind Games.

Lennon has always been a rock and roller at heart and the track that has also been made into a sin­ gle, “Whatever gets you through the night” is the best rocker on Walls and Bridges.

But there are problems: the marshmellow arrangement of “ Bless you” drowns the strength of Lenn­ on’s unique voice. And Lennon, like most of his superstar collegues these days, has jumped onto the brass bandwagon at the expense of solid raunchy guitar playing.

“Nobody loves you (when you’re down and out” is the most Lennon song of the album, and musically a microcosm of the entite set. The words cut deep. It’s a little sugary in its arrangement, but it’s got the best single line of the album:

i( )X ,T>

BOOKSHO

A COOPERATA h K >’\ Non-sexist & quality J hT'V

.Ut X )lvsl:KY!< F | (, . it f

FEMINIST* GAY LIBERATION HF!s<X'RGES with books like:

MOTHERS & AMAZONS: The First i Feminine History of Culture. $2.50.

RUBYI* RUIT JUNGLE: Rita Mae Brown iq grows up lesbian in Amerika. $3.35.

RELIGIOUS ROOTS OF THE TABOO ON HOMOSEXUALITY, 75cent pamphlet. ldy

FORUM

SPEAKERS: Neville C urtis-Ex Prè's’i d ëh t-N atio n al Union of S puth ¡j^rican S tudents.

BoT> HâvCk6- Président A ustralian C ouncil of Trade Unions Sim barashe M umbengegwi- Ex President All African S tudents Union of A ustralia,official Zim babw ean African N ational Union (ZANU) representative in Australia.

1

AMALOW AtCf^O&ATS . . .

AC U PU N C TU R E

YEUjOU). BRICK.ROftOSHOiO..

MAGICIAN . . RIFF- u * RAFF... T p k* RIDING...STC.....

Efficient drug-free treatment for all your physical and emotioal and emotional ills Grant Powell,6 Park St. South Melboume.Ph.69 5050.

MELBOURNE AKT1ST5

CHAIRMAN , JIM WEBB-

Director Community Aid Abroad.

M O N D A Y DEC EM B ER 9 T H . 8P.M.

ASSEM B LY H A L L C O L L IN S ST

w orkshop

z r j—z i9 KMJCj ST/zeer. a ry . ph o m s : v

Y O H O M O ts m w OAMOUD HAU/...M0D 23RDDEG Food £>.oopm Showstarts l.oopn'i RUn: Boster Keaton*THE6ARA06?....

CAPTAIN MATCHBOX VJBW SHAFTS....... AHMED ••••SAM AWGEUG0..MAG10 SE& OORGBJSON e.

POODeFVO VNsXE 1 2 2 1 6b 17)0CHO V\Cf\e.....

BO B & JOE'S REUEIIGE more mime and dance by joe bolza & bob thorneycroft

CELEBRITY SERVICES : 6543774

OPPRESSION IN SO U TH ER N A F R IC A

SOW I5bh Dec.. YAAPiAGL0 OAD. c,ooo FTOOO— Access .. ’skyhooks ':. capt matchbox PQACO BROS.... SHARKS Q AM ? o fA /U Q e is.. UifhiD .. 1

the A PG presents

BOOKINGS = 3477133

m

CHRISTMASHILLSFESt

Would anybody interested in discussing setting up a songwriters guild with a view to obtaining union strength for cheaper session work,tapes, promotions etc., call at î 14LEVESON ST. NORTH MELB. from Mon 9th. Dec. after 7p.m.

Excellent mail order service (please add postage). Free catalogue.

Monthly Book news $2.00. p.a.

P.O. BO X I 2 'N O R T H A D E L A ID E

p r n iV I fO C tO fy : 325 DRUMMOND ST. CARLTON NOW SHOWING T U E S -S U N 8-15

H X

“I’ll scratch your back, and you knife mine.”

The verses are soft and moving, but when he gets to the middle section, he launches into a raw and powerful cry that only Lennon is capable of producing. It’s not sus­ tained however, and it’s back to the new, mature, tamed John Lennon.

The smile on Lennon’s face that shines out from the sleeve booklet is infectious, and describes best of all the enjoyment he had in making Walls and Bridges. I suppose I should be glad that he’s back on top, feeling better inside himself than he has for years. ,But I can’t help but feel a twinge of disappoint­ ment now that the recalcitrant has finally stepped into line.

- A l Webb.

SONGWRITERS GUILD

DOCTOR DUNCAN

December 3 — January 13, 1975

DO YOU NEED HELP W ITH ABO RTIO N R E FER R A L? CO NTRACEPTIVE ADVICE?

[

travel jffiL__

4

_

6

TRAVEL THE STUDENT WA Y TRAVEL AUS! 84 Cleveland Street, Chippendale, NSW. Ph.: 898.3719 220 Faraday Street, Carlton, VIC. Ph.: W7.8462

PHONE WOMEN’S ABORTION REFERRAL SERVICE SYDNEY 617325.

WEEKNIGHTS 6-9P.mM WEEKNIGHTS 6-9P.M. SAT.2-4P.M.

WHERE IGNORANCE PREVAILS

RUBBERNOSE & IGOR THE BLACKSMITH . wish to extend a sneering xmas greeting to all the goofballs who bought records from their ratty little Carlton emporium this year,& extend hearty congratulations to the thousands of happy wackers who managed to steal L.P’s & cash from the till while Igor was full and old Rubbernose was thinking about a Rover2000.

international bookshop

THE HISTORY OF CHAIN 2 ALBUM SET FEATURING THE HIGHLIGHTS

17 E LIZA B E TH STREET, MELBOURNE PHONE 61.2859

DO YOU WANT TO WRITE FOR AN ALTERN ATIVE MAGAZINE? ‘Media for the PEOPLE,' wants to organise a .

Publishing Workshop to produce issues o f TUBE Creative Media Magazine.

Describe your interests & enclose s.a.e. to MERGE p.o. box s3 Homebush. S.A. 2140 TUBE is available in Abbeys Bookshop, Whole Earth,& third World Bookshop.

Subscriptions are three issues for $1.00.

Including broadsheets.

OF A U S T R A L IA N FOREMOST GROUP S OUTSTANDING CAREER 16 TRACKS 6 PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED RECOMMENDED PRICE $7.95

MEDIA SHE.............. ...................................,...$4.95.

CHARLES CHAPLIN. My life in pictures......$17.95.

MARXISM & FEMINISM................................$1-50.

NOEL COUNIHAN....;................ $28.50.

THE PENGUIN LEUN1G................... ......... ...$2.50.

THE 1975 BIG RED DIARY...........................$1.95.

Specialists in feminist, radical and socialist literature send for free book/list

OUT NOW

45531/2

Even sleepers are workers and collaborators in what goes on in the universe.

HERACLITUS

The machinery for dreaming planted in the human brain was not planted for nothing.

T H O M A S DE Q U I N C E Y KV / a/

fnofjp qeJ B p y—

h

• n **n

s7/ j y //v f&ont

e

'W ^ S you CAN

'

he

4cwiftfes.

S 7 ^ V

M o : t- s

v

s

£

sr/jy /<y f w w r Qfp

Si-JPo f VOU C-i/V ST^V/-—kU I .

f

¡

i

l

l

l

l

l

!

i

m.

AND 1F=YO(J1T O IA ^ fg&iMOitOG Tb W R E 0 AT6

“ART11TU£NT&THE: C©0rfR£ FA&E5 u

r n

s

N W crn ix..