Undercurrents 63 February/March 1984

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ost communes are NOT hippy dope s< ies or gurus exploiting innocent babies.

That's just the media trying to sell papers to bored suburbia.

There are a t least 100 communities in. in already - why don't you,live in one? in communes Someday most people wi ecome part of the future join the culture of the future you don't have to live in a bedsit

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leave the fossiled culture of the past All you have to lose are your chains stop worrying about your security learn to make friends instead So what, you make mistakes those who don't take r so what, you're shy

if you wish t o grow why lock yourself in a house

Worried about the standards of the local school?

Why not join a commune and run your own school?

Stop thinking about communes - join one Stop being put off by problems - solve them So what, the first one collapses - learn from it and mak sure the next one is better send off for more information else you'll always be fear Alternative Communities Movement you only live once 18Garth Road, Bangor, N.Wales Qw?

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With this issue Undercurrents teams up - in perpetuitv we hope with Catalyst, the journal previously sponsored b y the Ecoiogy Party and the Liberal Ecology Group, which is ceasing publication because of staffing difficulties. We hope this merger will benefit everyone. o n the one hand Catalyst, whose demise would be a loss t o the Eco-oolitical debate, and her readers who may be enticed t o l o i n us; and on the other hand, U C readers whom suspect will Value our hijacking writers like Tony Bearnish, John Foster and David Flemina whose contributions will add some desperately needed 'weightGt o Undercurrents.

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And now our Readers' Survey. A friendly DHSS supervisor returned the survey w i t h a reauest for 'the earth's mysteries'.

Evidently the dolepayroll must be a b i t o f a bundle by now,and this reader needing something more than observation of the unmysteriously massed British, is rejecting advice from Wittgensteir who said - w e l l almost - that 'to pay is t o think about the meaning o f life'. Bearing this i n mind wa offer i n U C 6 3 the mystery o f modern human-creation, and the mysterious few who think it's such a bad thing - procreation and all that - t h a t they are quite willing t o knock people o f f i n bulk, even after the unfortunates have got the hang of walking and no longer idle life away i n their respective test tubes.

This will do nothing for 'Worried about your Macho Image', who vrites, 'Tell me about ordinary people who care the stilted ~ f t i e si n U C who spoke down t o me over the years leave me quite old'. We can't please everyone, I'm afraid. Stilted we grew, stilted we stay, stuck t o our workshop desks, not macho enough -sorry, activist enough - even t o take u p 'Trade Union Official BeanoQuidstrike at 'leather bound suites in semis', the essence of

Eddies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 A c i d rain blamed for c o t deaths, areenino the NILE. is i t WISE?

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Thanks, however, are extended t o 'Rural Shopkeeper', not only for the admirable copy ideas of 'Constructive Anarchy and Clandestine Farming', but the suggestion we print a guide t o cheap printing, which we admit would be an education for us as well. And cheers t o P & T of course we'll include more football.

Andrew Taylor o n drums a n d trials

Castro-enteritis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Disease, plagues; war goes biodegradable, b y M i k e Osborne

Kenya: one step forward, two steps back

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Keen w i t h us for U C 64 i f v o u can. Bv that time we hope t o publishthe results of the ~ e a d e r sSurvey ' (Your Answers Questioned, and Who are the Other Six?), and we're planning a look at the energy scene - w i t h football, but no machismo.

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thank y o u Helen, We had financial help for this issue t o o .

Malcolm Brighting, Tom Burke, Catalyst, CND, Environmental Data Services, Greenpeace International, John ITDG, Marek a n d David Ross.

JNDERCURRENTS was Drought t o Y O U b y at Sinclair, Barry Assinder, Lowana Veal, i t u i i i e n steonen ~ o s e o h and John ... ,......... odd, Jo smith. John Dawe, Wolf. ~ i i a r y and Faith.

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deployment of nuclear weapons there, the address is: The Chinese Embassy, 3 1 Portland Place, London Wl. N J Cox, Far Eastern Dept., Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London, SW1A 2AH, seems t o be dealing with protests t o the Foreign Secretary over Britain's disinterest in the plight of Tibet.

Stephen Loveless New Bradwell, Bucks

I've thought a l o t a b o u t the cause of all these things and conclude that there are three possible causes physical, radiation and psychological factors Physical causes- eg. backache caused by the wrong sort of chairs, eyestrain by bad lighting, headaches b y excessive noise o r screen flicker etc. A sympathetic manager can arrange comfortable pleasant working conditions and s o Tibetan Conscripts remove these problems (although in my experience VDU blues I t seems the map of the most managers don't eive a nuclear-armed world grows damn). every day. Sadly now one Radiation - I don't know In answer t o your letter country, though large but enough about it t o know about VDU's in UC61, I've isolated from the world, has which (if any) of the sympworked full time with VDU's become part of nuclear for 7 years,and have definite!} toms I've mentioned could be geography. caused by it. I also worry experienced certain sympTibet was invaded and about cancer, sterility etc. toms. overrun by t,he Chinese 33 Psychological - partly the 1. For the last 6 months years ago. The west seemed intense concentration over o r s o I have been seeing a t o care little that the one black spot in front of my left long periods required of VDU country in the world that had eye as if there were a fly in it operators and programmers, put spirituality and simplicity -an optician I consulted and also t h e feeling that the in life above everything else computer is a person, god o r couldn't see anything wrong was being raped. For three boss o r whatever, and some-said it was probably a cruel decades Tibet has been 'floater' and harmless (though how more important than brutally administered, mere humans - which I I seem t o remember Mrs suffering attempted genocide Thatcher's eye operation think causes a withdrawal leaving a million murdered. earlier this year was t o remove from the real world and real Of their three t o four people, a rigidity of thought, 'floaters'). thousand monasteries and 2. At about the same time and difficulty in forming relationships (how many religious monuments, only 1 3 I began t o suffer from bouts teenagers sit in their rooms all survive after attempts t o of extreme dizziness - j u s t destroy their culture. Young like being sea sick - the pave- night with home computers Tibetan men have been ment seemed t o heave up and instead of going o u t and forced t o become conscripts making friends?) down like the deck of a ship in the Chinese army and I still work with VDU's and everything seemed t o posted to Sight in Vietnam. because I need the money, spin round. The doctor says Now they suffer perhaps but I'm very worried a b o u t it's vertigo and can offer n o the final humiliation of treatment except sea sickness ill effects. If you could send occupation. Their countiy me the results of your tablets. has become China's largest researches I'd be very grate3. After a few hours a t nuclear base, three bases with work I begin t o feel 'bogful - I'll d o the same for you.

ICBMs aimed at the USSR, You could try contacting eyed' - a confused, spaced'Women and Computing', c / o India and the Indian Ocean, o u t buzzingsort of feeling supported by the army of involving my head and eyes - A Woman'sPlace, Hungerford occupation, numbering over it's a bit like when you've House, Embankment, London half a million, plus eleven stayed awake all night but WC2 - t h e y may be able t o radar stations and nine without the tiredness, a bit help you, and would be intermilitary airfields. like the disorientation I ested in anything you may The west allows this t o usually feel o n coming o u t find out. happen - China threatens the of a cinema. It's as if my Sue Stanwell eastern borders of the USSR thoughts are short-circuiting. and could become good It makes it hard t o concencustomers for western arms trate o n anything o r relax Economy Scrapes dealers. Soon China will bits of ideas zoom around swallow u p Hong Kong. Will Re the article by Steven inside my head t o o fast t o that become yet another Joseph in your Dec 83/Jan 84 keep track of them. It's not base? The world is also ready a headache, it doesn't hurt edition. Your magazine was t o allow Taiwan t o go the smuggled (under plain (though t h e skin o n my face same way. Perhaps one day wrappers) north of Watford feels a bit odd sometimes). people will protest outside Gap, t o Manchester, There I 4. Also I p u t o n weight, the Chinese Embassy over its feel generally apathetic, anti- read, with gathering wonder, nuclear arms escalation. It is your correspondent's feature social and depressed when now known they also have working, far more than when on the 'black economy'. their own version of the unemployed.

I t is a monument t o Polaris, the Xia. 5 . I have n o t suffered the inaccuracy in its mention of effects that are usually menChildren's Scrap Projects. I If any readers would like 2an't think of anyone on the to write and protest t o the tioned (and dismissed) in the scientific journals- backache, management committee or Chinese Embassy over the occupation of Tibet and headache, eyestrain. working at a Play Resource

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Centre (Unit e t c ) who would be happy t o be counted in the 'black economy'. We're not proud, but bloody hell, the amount of work Mr Joseph put into his research we d o o n a Monday morning making tea. F o r your information, 'Children's Scrap Projects' (there's only one called that in the country, but I suppose it is in London) were started in Manchester in 1978. Prior t o that playleaders in the area 'scrounged' waste and surplus materials from industry o n a n ad-hoc basis, as and when they needed it. We started as a n MSC scheme t o try and co-ordinate this collecting, storing stuff firms threw away and distributing it t o people involved in play. There are now 1 4 operational centres across the country, including one in Belfast. Not all of them serve schools, mainly because we think it's more important t o provide resources for voluntary organisation than shore up cuts in school budgets. By the way, the London project moved from the address you published over a year ago.

As for 'even a telegraph pole has changed hands', Manchester supplied hundreds o f poles over the years until the intervention of the Health and Safety people o n adventure playgrounds.

Industrial waste could, I suppose, be classed as the 'informal economy' but only by someone who's never tried t o extract it from a company.

It's big (legal) business for some people.

Janet Heron Manchester I t is business men and politicians that accuse people o f being 'scroungers' in the 'black economy '. We regret any confusion caused by misunderstanding the article, which showed the constructive ways skills and resources can be used outside the official structures. We thank Janet for giving us more information on 'Play Resource Centres', which were only a small part of the overall article, and for correcting us on the address o f the 'Children's Scrap Project' now 1 3 7 (not Wenlock barn) Homerton High St. London E 9 , We would like t o point out that many of the schemes mentioned were 'north o f Watford Gap' in areas where many of the collective were born.

ATMOSPHERIC pollution may be largely responsible for the tragic and mysterious phenomena of infant cot-deaths, according to a recent issue of Der Spiegel, West Germany's current affairs weekly.

Jochen Borsche, whose book on the health hazards of acid rain is due to appear soon in Germany, considers a variety of statistical and medical evidence concerning cot-deaths, and concludes that, far from being quackery, the theory warrants urgent attention, something Der Spiegel underlines by pointing out in its leader that not so long ago those who warned of damage to forests and lakes were derided by most sections of the establishment.

The theory, first propagated bv Bernd Dost last vear in a book called Die ~ r b e h des Ubels (the heirs of ill

health) states that pollutants cause damage to the breathing apparatus of infants, so that

uncivil hosts THE NEED for positive safeguards in any putative 'Freedom of Information Act'is being underlined by the case of South African refugee and former 'Leveller* nalist Jonathon Bloch. f t e r a long battle with Home Office immigration Mr Bloch has been denied the ' t of permanent residence to acting, allegedly, 'in a way which might be construed as inimical to his host country's interests'.

After eight years of living in this country, the right to reside would normally be assumed. However the Home Office is also responsible for 'security' matters and here the difficulty arises, because Bloch is the co-author of a recent book (British Intelligence and Covert Action Junction Books 1983) detail-

ing the seamier side of British intelligence activities over the years.

The Home Office was unable through any number of legal and quasi-legal ploys (vanishing manuscripts, telephone taps and mysterious interviews with 'Colonel X') to prevent the book's publication - but it is exerting considerable pressure (and legal expense) on the author by placing him permanently under threat of deportation.

As things stand the state is thus able to bypass the question of the de jure legality of published work altogether, and, invoking 'security '. plunge anyone involved in tendentious journalism into a discrete legal universe with the topography of an Escher painting.

Paul Todd

they are rendered helpless infant's breathing, and this fi against even minor infections. more likely if the respiratoq Support for the theory comes system is already damaged in 1 from several sources. ReI some wav.

1 searchers and doctors in Borsche considers it likely Germany and the USA have that such damage is being discovered relationships caused by pollution, especially between the level of pollution sulphur dioxide and nitrous at various times and in whose adverse effect 1 various places, and the inci- oxide, on human breathing in dence of cot-deaths (as well general is already well-known, as other illness, especially if not fully understood, pseudo diphtheria - a nightthough research being carried time cough which frequently out in Munich points t o the kills if untreated - and lethal effect of a combination cancer, now the second of those poisons on the biggest killer of children, Adenosine Triphosphate after accidents. Der Spiegel which is essential to the also reports on the work of functioning of the bronchial forensic doctor, Professor defence systems.

Althoff. who has examined.

It is to be hoped that the hundreds of ' reeent victims of 'Sudden publicity given to the theory Infant Death Syndrome' will result in greater efforts (SIDS) as it is now called, and on the part of medical who claims that 80% of these practitioners, health authorishow signs of infection in the ties and politicians to assess respiratory system, mostly in its validity and take approthe throat or nose. He alleges priate action. Bonn's Green that most pathologists seldom Party planned to introduce a even bother to look at a discussion of infant mortality baby's nose after sudden in the German parliament in death. Althoff believes that mid-January, an event with cot-deaths follow a chainwhich the Spiegel article was reaction of events which lead timed to coincide. rapidly from a small infection to a total collapse of the Steven Fligelstone

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Mute virus 1^

IRAINTREE and Essex ;ounty Councils are t o hold mergency sessions t o examhe local Animal Rights camaigners' claims that a re'arch laboratory's insistence n secrecy has masked the me dangers of its activities nd could have led t o the pub-

lic being exposed t o deadly viruses and pathogenic chemicals.

The controversy surrounc the receipt of a document b; Essex Animal Liberation which contains information about viruses held a t Brocades (GB) LtdJMycofarm

on the Park Drive Industrial Estate at Braintree, and contingency plans for dealing with fire or explosions on the premises.

The document, Essex Fire Brigade, Operational and Training Instructions - Biological Hazards - outlines procedure for setting up a decontamination zone a t the laboratory which is situated between a housing estate, and a sewerage and water treatment plant. Ambulance personnel are warned that casualties could be contaminated with Class A pathogens, which includes rabies and anthrax, and that evacuation of the local population by the police may be necessary. EAL is concerned that the renort contains a directive forbidding the release of information about the nature of the risks.

"Confidentiality is stressed throughout the document', says Jenny Spence of EAL, 'we suppose this was to spare the lab the embarrassment of having their activities revealed, knowing there would be a public outcry. But it's outrageous that the Fire

1983 the CEGB closed the station. You might think the expense would have prompted the use of preI VAST reservoir of hot months, even nearer the heated water to reduce the surface than forecast. Free rater known as the Wessex amount of heating required. hot water to feed boilers is lasin will probably be left But the CEGB keeps a cageful ndiiurbed underground be- significant in the of economists to disprove any ause the Department of coal-versus-nuclear debate. If common sense proposition. nergy is unlikely to put up a less energy is needed to raise The scene then switched ew hundred thousand water temperature t o produce to another borehole in steam, the CEGB loses in its ounds to exploit it as an Southampton which was to nergy resource. argument that coalfied heat the civic centre, a The story of geothermal electricity generation is, by shopping development and nergy in the Southampton comparison with nuclear swimming pool. But scientists power, expensive. However, rea is one of the more from the British Geological Marchwood was an oil-fired isgraceful episodes in the Survey now believe that the tory of the renewables. station, oil was becoming reservoir on this site is limited Scientists discovered that a expensive and in October because it is divided by rock ast pool of hot water, at barriers. So it would not lore than 74O C lies underproduce hot water as fast, or round, stretching from for as many years, as planned. outhampton to But it would repay itself a lournemouth. There are six thousandfold if the Departther comparable areas, ment would agree to finance ffering us the chance of free it as a field trial. ot water: under Bath; Southampton would like it. iheshire; East Yorkshire and So would the scientists in,incolnshire;Worcester; the volved. Yet word (from lidland valley of Scotland; within the Department of Energy) is that a plan which nd Ulster.

Where t o start boring? The could demonstrate a cheap means of obtaining hot water EGB bounded forward with kind of offer. The Departfor large areas of Britain is lent of Energy could dig, likely to be abandoned by the :eely, in the grounds of penny-pinching En -with a larchwood Power Station, little help from the CEGB ear Southampton. In 1979, which does not want to see igging began and hot water any rival t o its nuclear plans. 'as found within two Promising geothermal sites in U K David Ross

Brigade and the police were a party to the concealment.

Local councillors knew nothing about it'.

The Welfare group staged a die-in at Mycofarm and throughout Braintree diistributed leaflets about the dangers. A public meeting spawned concern to prompt further action, which could possibly close the laboratory.

Source: Jenny Spence, EAL

Dustbin BATTERSEA Power Station, long dead and neglected was the apt launching pad last week of a new campaign in London t o produce energy for heat and electricity from waste materials.

Refusederived fuel is not a fledgeling energy source.

There are in Britain today four large RDF plants operating which satisfy in part, local energy demand, usually for industrial or district heating schemes. But what is surprising is the so far sparse application of a technology known and practised to some extent by first century Romans. Revival of interest, it must be said, is prompted again by 'aliens'. The Warmer Campaign, with an eye on the UK'S 30.000.000tonnes of rubbish buried annually, is funded by the World Resource Foundation founded last vear - .

by Swedish Industrialist &ns Rausing.

The government's interest to date has been to offer grant aid, through the Energy Efficiency Office, t o twenty demonstration projects connected with waste combustion technology. But the campaign with its ability t o promote commercial interest - such as for better or worse, metered heat from Associated Heat Services' mobile boiler the Energy Capsule and Easiburn's fuel pellets - could pushRDF schemes on to wider fields. WC hopes t o b e working closely with the Keep Britain Tidy group, organising sightseeing tours of installations with the Combined Heat and Power Association, and offering research scholarships with guidance from the Institute of Waste Management. ~

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PLANS for a community action scheme to stop desertification of a flood plain in Northern Sudan are proving practicable and could be irnplemented. This is the recent hopeful message from the project's founder, Green Deserts.

The conservation group, in conjunction with SOS Sahel International, the fund-raising body that assists poor communities across a vast region in North Africa, has produced a document which outlines the scheme, and which shows how outside support, sensitive t o local needs, could succeed where foreign cash-aid probably would not.

The Village Extension Scheme, in the Seyal and Kabushiya areas along the Nile, will draw heavily upon local inhabitants for its energy. The area, an agricultural 'oasis'in a depression bordered by denuded slopes upon which the Sahara is encroaching, is suffering from exposure t o harsh winds and irratic water supplies from recently dug irrigation ditches, The first step taken by Puppets for Trees: Green-Haired Tree Spirit, Abbas the Axeman, Sudanese farmers t o stabilise Grandmother Habooba, Goat, and Lazy Boy At; the land will be t o plant shelter belts of exotic and operate commercially for the Green Deserts suggested native trees around their local economy and increase the scheme initially t o affected fields. But the proMohammed Abdullah, the ject also includes establishing the autonomy of the 4 8 villages involved.

Umdah of Seyal (Chief of tree nurseries which could

IS WISE'84, the campaign promoted by the Equal Opportunities Commission and the Engineering Council to encourage girls and women to take up science and engineering, likely to achieve its aims?

For one thing the engineering industry expects its total workforce t o increase by 14% by 1990, and if it does it will need women workers a t higher grade work than machine operator o r technicianlclerk, jobs which occupy 94% of women in the industry now.

The EOC's main contribution is a year long publicity campaign, mainly through schools and colleges, and there are over 200 WISE projects already scheduled throughout the year and across the country. The list

of courses and educatio.ial organisations involved is in fact impressive. The publicity concentrates on why industry needs women, and the reasons why women aren't being trained for industry, but the emphasis is o n initial training The companies so far involved include Esso, BP, and Shell -well known for improving the quality of womens' and mens' lives by despoiling their planet and replacing it with plastic - as well as Westmoreland Helicopters, and British Aerospace, both armaments

makers. It seems the majority of companies involved have slight problems with their public images.

The CBI and TUC both see moves towards desegregating science and engineering as desirable. Neither would comment t o Undercurrents, however on the possibility that women might have their own ideas o n the values and uses of technology. They agree that WISE'84 will be a positive step for women if it changes attitudes towards women working in technology or makes it easier for girls who seek such employment.

Perhaps it's t o o much t o hope that women who d o get into science and engineering won't become another generation of technocrats, as dangerous t o us all as the present male dominated force of scientists and engineers. Ă&#x201A;ÂĽFurthe Details o f W I S E S 8 4 from: W I S E ' S 4 Coordinator, EOC, Overseas House, Quay St, Manchester M 3 3 H N .

Sheikhs), who had requested government protection for existing tree belts planted under a Council of Churches and government Joint Afforestation Project. The trees, planted to protect land rather too drastically cleared under another government move, the Agricultural Development Scheme begun in 1973, were being 'poached' by semi-nomads for grazing and firewood. Irrigation for crops was also a problem because villagers were relying on government installed diesel pumps which supply only two thirds of the region's 1,200 five-acre plots - and which proved anyway, expensive for communities.

A n Overseas Development Agency proposes t o renovate the pumps, but tree cover, say Green Deserts, will in the long term create a microclimate thereby increasing humidity, besides soil fertility.

The project, Green Deserts hopes, will last for four years and involve all sectors of the communities. It should enhance especially the status of women whose work of wood collection could be supplanted by growing - and selling - seedlings. Aside from technical assistance Green Deserts plans t o spread the message with a travelling puppet show; the characters are folklore archetypes but get o n their goat (see left) like the good tebbits they are.

THE RATIONAL use of energy is the main aim of LEEN, the new London and Employment Network, a federation very keen t o 'provide tangible results as rapidly as possible*. We can be optimistic; despite LEEN beingaratherwimpey acronym it's proving neither laid back nor mingey. The network is linking u p with community and tenants' groups in preparation t o running energy saving schemes in domestic buildings, though eventuallyfactories and offices should benefit too.

LEEN is holding a public meeting o n March l o t h , a t 10.30am, in County Hall, London. They need t o encourage involvement from anyone interested in their work. Telephone Colin Hines 01-278 2069 for details.

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Sun rundrugs inspace THE ROCKWELL Intemational Corporation is develop ing a billiondollar-plus proposal t o commercially construct, launch and maintain solarpowered satellites that will serve as private electric utilities for future energy consumers in space.

The major aerospace contractor says the concept, now under active investigation by its Shuttle Orbiter Division, would place three or more 50 KW-and-larger photovoltaic power stations approximately 250 miles above the earth.

The proposed station would have a 1 0 t o 20 year life, and would provide essential requirements t o a host of space operations, including gravity-free pharmaceutical and other materials manufacturing plants that the National

Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and various major raw materials processing industries have now planned for the 1990s.

'As space-based working platforms, stations, shuttles or any other form of space vehicle need electrical energy while on-orbit, they can rendezvous with a solar power module and stay online as long as they need the energy', says Charles Stone, Rockwell's development manager for the division. He says keeping the 10,000 pound power station aloft would eliminate the need for customer vehicles t o carry powerproducing equipment, thus reducing the cost of the launch and re-entry cycle that today reportedly approaches $200 million per trip.

Rockwell is presently pursuing long-term contracts

DENMARK: A salt water lagoon will be established behind the new south Waddensea dyke which on completion would have threatened a site internationally important for 1 5 species of birds. Saltmarshes and heaths will also receive better protection now as the Danish Act o n Nature Conservation has been amended t o prohibit cultivation of such land without local government permission.

Oryx

ing environmental and archaeological sites and unique Aboriginal art, o n the Arnhem Plateau. Within this region the Kakadu National Park houses 'Ranger' mine which leaves tailings with 20 times the level of radium contamination 'anticipated' by the authorities.

Chain Reaction

AUSTRALIA: The federal Labour government is allowing the uranium mining industry t o develop in the Northern Territory threaten-

CUBA: Sugar cane waste, called 'bagasse', is being used to make high quality but cheap newsprint, after forty years of research into the pulp technology. Assisted by the United Nations Development Programme the Cuban Research Institute has built a pilot plant in Havana which :an produce 35 tonnes of paper daily.

Earthscan ZAIRE: At the most only twenty individuals of the northern white rhino population which lives in 3aramba National Park are dive and well. After an intensive aerial survey aided i y ground counts involving 150 guards revealed their true lumbers, the Elephant and Rhino Specialist Group of the !UCN recommended immediite action be taken t o prevent 'urther poaching.

World Wildlife Fund

with large pharmaceutical companies, as many as 1 9 of which anticipate the need for electricity t o run advanced space-medicine manufacturing plants over the next 20 years.

Among the potential earth-bound benefactors, Stone says, are those suffering from diabetes. Gravityfree medicine manufacture, employing a general technique called 'electrophoresis', would significantly

purify and improve current remedies for blood-sugar abnormalities.

The Rockwell plan would place 'as many as three, and perhaps more', 55 KW space solar stations above the Earth a t 28.5 degrees, 57 degrees and polar latitudes. Industry analysts estimate the cost would approach $5 billion t o place three orbiters in space, with launches beginning in 1990.

Christopher Pope, RE News

Targets on air not tight COULD BRITAIN'S county councils take a leaf o u t of t h e books of the governors of New England and like them, take local steps t o reduce acid rain but plan a national programme for coping with pollution as well?

While financial resources may not be what they are in the States, taking up the initiative might shame the CEGB for its move t o spin o u t research o n acid rain in place of implementing controls of emissions. The governors in the US are pledged t o reduce sulphur dioxide emissions by 1 0 million tonnes and NOx by 4 million tonnes by 1995, by contributing t o a national fund that will aid installation of scrubbing facilities at coalfired stations, but also encourage switching t o alternative fuels.

Co-chairman of the New England Governors' Conference on Acid Rain, John Kerry, o n the last leg :>fan'acid' tour around Europe, painted a grim picture afhisown contaminated home state a t a recent PARLIGAES neeting in the House. Describng the effects of acidic fallaut o n Massachusetts lakes, ind the corresponding drop n fish numbers in Boston's

water reservoir due t o the low pH, he said, that, so far, 1 million dollars had been spent, in treating corroded plumping systems. Restoration costs tor crumbling marlstone and sandstone buildings affected by acid rain had reached 12.5 million dollars, and cases of chronic asthma were attributable t o the deposition.

Though a UK programme may not yet be feasible other rooms at Westminster are at least opening u p t o the debate. On January 1 8 t h the Environment Committee announced the start of an Enquiry o n Acid Rain (oral evidence will be heard publicly in mid-March), and meanwhile we have the recently proposed EEC Directive t o hand. Approved by the European Commission in December '83 its target -like the US'S for 1995 - - is for member states t o reduce, overall, SO2 emissions by 60% and dust and NOx, by 40% respectively.

And from 1985 all new combustion plants will, with luck, be adhering t o the new Community Emissions Standards set o u t by the document.

I n t e r n a t i o n a l A c i d Rain Week, this year is 2-8th A p r i l . Contact S E R A , 9 Poland Street, L o n d o n , W 1 V 3DG f o r details.

Should the Obscene Publications Act be used ainst 'drug-related' books? Andrew Tylor warns of scapegoat politics and hypocrisy in recent case.

A Case of rug use by Britons of every age and type is catching up with the media hype. There really are double-barrelledsouthern county junkies selling off mummy's jewellery. There really are tower block runts in Dublin and Bradford taking their £ daily wraps of 'scag' (many aren't aware it's even heroin) and leading the good, soporific life of the underclass. And older users who once fought shy of 'hard drugs' because they knew the consequences, suddenly don't care so much.

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And to add flavour to the broth, the majority of UK heroin comes via the Afghan/Pakistan border area and is increasingly cut and sold on arrival by old fashioned criminal families who see it as a safer, more lucrative undertaking than, for instance, ripping off banks.

What opportunities for the high minded to vent their prejudices!

Just before Christmas, Home Secretary Leon Brittan addressed a Cafe Royal meeting of the London Diplomatic Association telling them that drug abuse is an international problem and required concerted action.

To this end a number of key measures were envisaged. Among them: A customs officer and £180,00 a would go to Pakistan to 'strengthen law enforcement efforts'. A senior police officer would be posted to the Netherlands - a major heroin distribution centre. a The UK will ratify the 1971 Convention On Psychotropic Substances which extends controls to synthetic drugs like barbiturates. a There would be better security and n i t r o 1 of drugs in the UK and a further million provided over three years for ,"~alschemes that help addicts.

These announcements were generally bought by the press as worthy steps on the long haul to licking a spiralling drugs crisis. Yet without wanting t o be churlish, both the philosophy and scope of what is being attempted is not only unsound, it is grossly hypocritical.

Pakistan, under General Zia, does not need more 'law enforcement'. The tribes

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people growing and processing the poppies need an alternative means of making a living as well as political autonomy.

Perhaps a bobby in Amsterdam (one of dozens of processing/trafficking centres throughout Europe and the Middle East) will have some luck. We wish him well.

As t o the ratification of the 1971 Psychotropic Convention, this comes self evidently - 1 3 years after the event.

It comes after the deaths of literally thousands of UK citizens from Westernmade pharmaceutical preparations that lack proper manufacturing, prescription and pricing controls. There was no such tardiness by Britain in ratifying the equivalent convention controlling opium. Opium is a product of the East and is therefore a foreign,non-profitable

evil. Barbiturates, which killed roughly 5,000 Britons a year in the mid-'70s. are a far more sophisticated can of worms: a medical necessity.

In regard t o ~ r k t a n ' s£6 addict support scheme, this, in fact, had already been promised a year ago. The Cafe Royal re-announcement was, at best, redundant. Aside from these objections, a graver complaint can be set against a vague declaration that came under the heading 'Education and Treatment'.

'Ways have to be found of dissuading people, particularly young people, from embarking on the disastrous course of experimentation. We are looking closely at the whole of this area.'

Indeed, Brittan's Home Office are doing precisely that. While producing virtually no constructive reading material on the subject of drugs themselves they have been setting loose the police, these last 17 months, on bookshops throughout the country with orders to seize anything drug-related.

As a consequence, some 20,000 hooks involving 250 titles have been charged under sections 2 and 3 of the

Obscene Publications Act. This is the 'tending t o deprave and corrupt' statute.

Section 3 is heard in magistrates' courts and carries a forfeit-and-destroy penalty but no further punishment. Among volumes charged are Aldous Huxley's Doors Of Perception; Tom Wolfe's Kool Aid Acid Test; Hunter Thompson's Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas; A Field Guide To Poisonous and Hallucinogenic Mushrooms, and Marijuana Reconsidered from Harvard University Press.

Some of the Section 3 magistrates' hearings have already taken place and have yielded, if nothing, inconsistent results. Something of a Home Office setback was endured recently in Nottingham when a majority of titles were acquitted. nteresting though these results might be, the precedent-setting events will take place later this year, probably at the Old Bailey, w en Airlift Books and Knockabout Comics are to be tried - separately under the more serious Section 2. These cases, as the Director of Public Prosecutions has already acknowledged, represent 'new ground being broken'.

Not only is it the first time OPA has been used in a high court against drugrelated reading material; the 17 titles charged cover the gamut from field guides t o nutty sex and drugs comics.

Thus, if the prosecution succeeds it will be - in the words of Knockabout's Tony Bennett - 'impossible or at least inadvisable t o publish anything on the subject in the future'.

And if the Home Office is producing nothing of its own, where are 'vulnerable youth' going t o get their information? From behind the bicycle shed? By the canalside where they presently fill up o n ignorance?

The use of OPA against Knockabout has a significance beyond that case and beyond the whole subject of drugs. If the Act can be brandished successfully in this instance it can be used by the Whitehouses and Teddy Taylors against gay literature or rock records, o r any other manifestation of popular and political culture.

Already it has been used t o hit a variety of targets. Among those who've had material seized in the past two years are a Manchester S F and soft porn publisher, a political bookshop in the same town specialising in gay and feminist literature, and a wholesaler dealing predominantly in American and New Beat poetry.

Even more curious is the curb put on

a middle-aged Liverpool man recently who had attempted to produce a most sobre educational booklet o n the subject of hallucinogenic mushrooms.

For information and approval he had gone to local social services and health

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agencies. He had canvassed local politicians, and was proceeding nicely when drugs squad officer stood up at a planning meeting and told him his boo was not allowed under the OPA. End c project.

Aside from the OPA's far-reaching applications (and other pieces of legislation might easily be so manipulated) is the randomness of its use that it so disconcerting. Books that have been or the market for years are suddenly seized. Items destroyed by magistrates in one part of the country are released as uncorrupting elsewhere. An Americ: work called Mama Coca dealing with tl uses and political dimensions of cocain has been confiscated by the thousand, and yet British customs are still allowii fresh stock t o enter the country.

Knockabout's Tony Bennett says he hi written to Customs asking for guidelini as to what is permitted. But they will offer none. Neither will Scotland Yard.

This way Bennett and his ilk are kept c the hook. e t a sign that the Home Office is \ not thoroughly confident in its usi of OPA alone -particularly after the Nottingham defeat - came three months ago when further charges were set against Knockabout and Airlif under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.

The sixteenth count against Bennett claims that he conspired, together with Airlift Books, to contravene section 5 <

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the MDA 'by causing such persons as might purchase o r obtain books relating t o controlled drugs, unlawfully t o possess such drugs, namely cocaine and psylocibin'. The seventeenth charges the same but in respect t o the cultivation of cannabis.

Untangled, this means Bennett and Airlift's proprietors, by selling their drug-related material, have effused persons unknowningly t o acquire illegal drugs.

Does it then follow that an author writing o n the historical development of firearms is vulnerable t o charges of conspiracy t o cause murder i t the person who fires a gun owns the said book? Or, equally, is a government department, such as the Home Office, t o be vulnerable t o charges of conspiracy t o cause rape because it produces annual statistics o n such events?

When does information become prohibitively dangerous? And is the Obscene Publications Act the correct yardstick?

No doubt the language in much of what has been seized these last seventeen months is not to the taste of Leon Brittan, Norman Lamont, o r Teddy Taylor. But then I doubt that those gentlemen could utter anything on the subject of drugs that would be remotely plausible t o those who are using o r abusing them.

Yes we d o have a 'drugs problem'.

And it won't get capped by capping information about what drugs are, what they do, and what is their broader political social context. Nor will it help to blame books for problems caused by parents, politicians o r the feebleness of the individual.

It has also to be said that the kind of flip glorification of drugs that took place in the '60s and early '70s is misplaced now. Times are grimmer. The context is more sordid. No real glamour attaches to the drug taker any more, and the amount of ignorance about the subject is appalling. In Glasgow I learned of 15-year-olds injecting talcum powder between their toes. In Salford I learned of pub toilets splattered with blood, hosed from syringes. The best that can be done in the current circumstances is for people t o keep their r~alanceand if they possess any useful nformation offer it undistorted.

I am able t o offer that the biggest manufacturer and dealer in killer drugs ,n the UK is still the pharmaceutical industry, under licence from the DHSS

-not P a k h d tribesmen or 'kkiish terrorists.

And I would suggest that the responsibiity for what is ingested is still the individual's, or if that individual is too young or not competent then it is primarily his or her parents' or guardians'. After that it is the 'fault' of the social environment which includes schools, social agencies, the business community and the medialarb.

But, of course, when things go wrong' a scapegoat must be found. People need to hold up an item or object and cry it is THIS! The silttpleheaded theorists of the new crude right must always find a THIS' to justify the lapses and callous programmes of their own government.

And they have their equivalent on the he latest 'THIS' is a book published last year by Otherwise Press called Alternative London. It is a lively, useful, intelligent volume with sections on Survival; The Flesh and Spirit; Communication; Action and Involvement and Getting In and Out (of the capital). One @+ection relates to

drugs and it includes a passage on solvents.

It is 'THIS' solvent passage which is now being held responsible for the death of a sixteen-year-old Bexley youth who choked on his vomit after sniffing solvents by a railway bridge.

Thames TV who had initially described the book as indispensible, subsequently invited the boy's grieving father and a Bexley councillor onto a news pmgramme where the finger was aimed at Alternative London. 'Any book,'said councillor Graham Holland, 'that encourages a young lad to eventually kill themselves (sic) must surely be withdrawn from sale'.

He will be meeting with the Home Office this month to press his case.

My main objection to these developments - to the Knockabout case, the Uveroool mushroom book man: the i d s o n political and poetry book dealers is not that libertarian values about bee expression are at stake. That is a soft concern given the problems that need surmounting. My objection is to scapegoat process and political hypo-

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criny. My objection is to the brandishing of an act, the OPA, out of its intended context; it is to the stupidity of crude social theoreticians who seem to have the ear of the Prime Minister and the Home Office,and are making a bad drugs scene worse.

Issues like pornography and drugs have badly split the left. It's time to recognise what is at stake. Knockabout have established a legal defence fund and would welcome contributions to account no. 7337635. Uoyds Bank, 32 Oxford Street, L o n d o n ~ l .

Andrew Tyla

Campaign for the Reform of the Obscene Publications Act*, 1 5 Sloane Ct, West London, SW5.01-730 9537. 'Â¥"'<A Release, Advice and Referral in law, drugs and abortion.01-289 1123.

Legalise m an nab is Campaign,01-289 3883.

Both at 1Elgin Ave, London W9.

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Is there truth in the allegations that the United States is waging covert ecological war against Castro's Cuba? Mike Osbourne does some digging in America's 'back-yard'. . .

Castro- enteritis f the weapons available to undermine the political and economic stability of a country, chemical and biological warfare (CBW) ranks as possibly the most effective, the least detectible, the most odious and the easiest available.

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As an 'advanced' nation the USA has had not only the capability in CBW but the desire and the advanced technical ability to use this mode of warfare.

From the 1950s onwards CBW became available to groups of ruthless men who saw no moral limits to their fight against communism and more than any other country it has been Cuba that has suffered from clandestine attacks in this war against the 'reds'. A wealth of evidence has built up over the years, some direct from the US Government and its intelligence agency, the rest circumstantial or indirect, that since the revolution of 1957 the USA has been promoting a continuous programme of destabilisation using means that include CBW. The activities of projects code-named MK ULTRA, and MK NAOMI, were among those exposed in-1977 by the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Committee on Intelligence and the Committee on Human Resources.

Among the revelations of hearings before these committees were the details of the links between the Technical Services Division (TSD) and the Special Operation Division (SOD) of the chemical corps at Fort Detrick.

They worked intimately to produce a stockpile of diseases under the auspices of MK NAOMI from the 1950s onwards. The list included at the benign end Staph. enterotoxin, a mild form of food poisoning, and more virulent germs including Venezualan equine encephalomyelitis and brucellosis which could incapacitate for a period of months.

Additionally the CIA asked SOD to ;udy the use of biological agents against crops and animals. In 1967 a CIA memorandum stated 'three methods and systems for carrying out a covert attack against crops and causing severe crop loss have been develoned

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and evaluated under field conditions'.

The CIA claimed that the capability was never used.

An idea of the resources available to the CIA can be gathered from a then 'TOP SECRET' presentation made as early as 1950 by Colonel William M. Creary, Research and Engineering Division office of the Chief Chemical Corps. According to this presentation to an ad hoc committee of the Secretary of Defence, as well as developing antipersonnel diseases, his unit was working with, among other diseases, virus diarrhoea of cattle and hog cholera.

A full list of the diseases being considered by the army can be gathered from the 1956 Technical Manual No 3-216. Revelations of the Select Committee on Intelligence show that in all the US Army was studying over a hundred diseases that the enemy might use.

Other reports have indicated that other anti-crop diseases were stocked, including a new type of fungus that gave rise to rice blast. This was a disease severely damaging to Asian ricefields. It is therefore likely that a variety of BW agents were available to the CIA during the course of MK NAOMI which was terminated in 1970.

Its cancellation was prompted by the renunciation of BW agents which kill or incapacitate by the USA. In November 1969 President Nixon ordered the destruction of such bacteriological weapons and later ordered the disposal of toxins. Nonetheless the CIA still was able to acquire Hgm of the deadly shellfish toxin from SOD personnel at Fort Detrick and keep it in a little-used laboratory for five years. It is possible therefore that the CIA maintained supplies of agents even after the presidential edict. Such a possibility was further encouraged by the availability of BW weapons from non-governmental sources.

When MK ULTRA became MK SEARCH in 1964 its sub-project 2 involved a $150,000 a year contract with a Baltimore biological laboratory.

This was run by at least one former CIA germ expert and gave the TSD 'a quickdelivery capability to meet anticipated future onerational needs' according to

an agency document. It provided amongst other things a private place for 'large scale production of microorganisms'. What's more the outlet allowed Dr Gotlieb access to a supply of BW weapons without having to use the army.

It is against a background of massive capability in BW that the allegations of destabilisation through biological means by the US toward Cuba can be investigated. The earliest recorded attempt was in 1962. According to a statement of a Canadian adviser t o the Cuban government he was paid $5,000 by a Defence Intelligence Agency rep to infect Cuban poultry with a viral disease. The 1977 report of this event in the Washington Post states that 'the major details of the Canadian's story have been confirmed by sources within and outside the American intelligence community'. Certainly the CIA would have had access to poultry viruses since Newcastle's disease was one of the BW weapons being developed at Fort Detrick from 1950 onwards.

It was 1964 before Castro voiced his suspicions concerning US covert action in relation ~OCBW. Subsequent to an alarming incident in the town of Sancti Spiritus in Las Vilas province. A communiqu6 reported that 'a great quantity of brilliant objects' descended through the air. 'Witnesses including members of the armed forces found that they were balloons of various sizes which seemed to come from a ereat altitude and dissolved upon contact with the ground leaving a gelatinous substance. . . that quickly dissolved.'

This was compared to an agar gel as used in bacteriological cultures. No samples of these balloons were collected because heavy rainfall washed them away

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major target in the destabilisation of the Cuban economy has been the sugar production and distribution.

In 1970 Cubans were mobilised for a campaign to produce 1 0 million tons of sugar, a target that eventually had a short-fall of 1% million tons. The causes of the failure have been primarily attributed to organisational problems in the transport and milling of the cut sugar cane. H--er it has been revealed that

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it this time the CIA had approached a specialist firm, The International Research and Technology Corporation, for advice on possibilities of altering the weather conditions around Cuba.

An IRTC consultant, Lowell Ponte, revealed 'that the CIA and the Pentagon had co-operated in 1969-70 in a programme involving cloud-seeding in the wind patterns which carry rain to Cuba.'

Simply, various chemicals were to be distributed in cloud systems to prevent rainfall. The aim was to cause local and/or short droughts at crucial times in the growth of young sugar cane. It cannot be determined as to whether that plan was carried out successfully or not.

There were adverse weather conditions on a limited scale but the organisational problems may have outweighed any meteorological imbalance.

It was animals not plants which were to be the next target of the CIA. The outbreak of African Swine Fever (ASF) in the Havana province of Cuba was described by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations as the most alarming event of the year and what's more it was the first appearance of the disease in the western hemisphere. In conclusion the F A 0 notes that 'the source of the infection appears to be still unknown.'

The source remained unknown until 1977 when the New York newspaper Newsday reported that early in 1971 he was given a sealed unmarked container at Fort Gulick in the P a n p a Canal Zone, a US army base where the CIA operated a paramilitary training centre for career personnel and mercenaries.

The source said he was instructed to turn over the container t o an anti-Castro group. He gave it t o someone in the canal zone who took it by boat to a fishing trawler off the Panamanian coast.

A CIA-trained Cuban exile who was involved in the operation told Newsday that he was on the trawler when the virus was put aboard. He said the container was carried to Navassa Island, a tiny deserted US property between Jamaica and Haiti. From there it was taken to Cuba in late March 1971 where it was given to other operatives in the southern coast near the US navy base as Guantanamo Bay. The exile added that there were no CIA officials aboard the boat but that 'we were well paid for this and Cuban exile groups don't have that kind of money Reports have not indicated how the virus was transported from Guantanamo

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T h e Big Bang For Bureaucrats'by Loon Kuhr.

?%tiare. rblished by Burning Issues at Ă&#x201A;ÂŁ3.95

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to Havana, 500 miles north-west.

Neither could Newsday confirm that this was a CIA operation. The agency when questioned said 'We don't commen on information from unnamed and, at best, obscure sources'. Nonetheless, several pieces of 'evidence' back up the Newsday claims.

Following the sugar crisis of 1970 and concomitant restricted supply of other luxury goods like rum and coffee which were being exported in large quantities to make up export deficits, the Cuban government could point only to the growing supply of meat as a positive factor in food production. 1971 would therefore have been a fortuitous time for the CIA to strike.

Prior to 1971 ASF was restricted mainly to Africa, where it is endemic to wild swine, and some parts of Southern Europe. The Cuban outbreak was the first in the Western Hemisphere and it did not subsequently appear in the Americas until 1978. ASF is a highly contagious viral disease khich affects ail ages and breeds of domestic pig, whilst not affecting other domestic animals. The disease is characterised by high fever, anorexia and incoordination.

As a BW weapon it has the added advant age of not being easily detected and that its clinical symptoms may frequently be indistinguishable from classical swine fever (hog cholera).

The virus is easily transmitted from wild swine populations to domestic pigs by a tick vector. Once in a population the disease is transmitted by direct or

indirect contact. Furthermore, according to Dr W.Plowright of the Institute for Research on Animal Diseases 'people can spread ASF if they carry around with them uncooked, infected pork meat, and allow scraps to be fed to pigs.'

The disease is hence very easily introduced t o a population.

It is not clear whether the CIA had access to a supply of ASF from Fort Detrick but it is known that the Chemical Corps maintained a stock of another pig disease, hog cholera, for the agency. And indeed the Plum Island Animal Disease Laboratory of US Department of Agriculture in New York which has a considerable research programme on ASF was shown to have links with the CIA in 1975.

The CIA certainly took advantage of Cuba's misfortune in its propaganda war. According to some authors, after the slaughter, William Buckley, Ray Cline and the network pumped out stories about the lack of meat under communism in Cuba; they feature pictures of Cubans standing in line waiting for rations. ASF did not appear again in the Caribbean until July 1978 in the Dominican Republic which was followed shortly by a 1979 outbreak across the border in Haiti. The disease found its way t o Cuba in early 1980 where it appeared in the eastern province of Guantanamo just after outbreaks of sugar cane rust at a time when the world prices were booming and when the Cuban authorities had just overcome tobacco blue mould.

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ugar cane rust caused by the fungus Puccinia m e l a n o ~ h l firsL a appeared in the western hemisphere in 1978. The only cane variety affected was the Barbados B43-62 which was also attacked in Cuba in 1680. Rust affected as much as 40% of the crop and forced the industry to prolong the harvest. Of course prices had boomed initially in response to the Cuban disaster. On 3rd March 1980 when Castro had called for emergency action to save the sugar crop, the London daily price was raised by £2 to £250'tonne. On the futures market of that day the price jumped at one stage to £29as a speculative response to the potential Cuban short-fall.

The importance of good sugar yields is very great given that this crop and its products account for over 50% of exports according to 1977 statistics. It is also interesting to note that Cuba's sugar failure coincided with a time when industry was booming in Florida, mainly due to the efforts of Cuban exiles. It is the second largest agricultural business therewith an annual crop in excess of one million tons.

Cubans' suspicion of external attack had already been fuelled in 1979 by a disease which affected its tobacco crop.

Although tobacco products represent only 2.3% of exports according to 1977 statistics this does bring in $loom in foreign exchange. Tobacco Blue Mould (TBM) however, attacked 90% of the export crop thus substantially affecting domestic supplies as well. TBM caused by the fungus ~eronosporatabacina, first appeared in 1978 resulting in 20% of the following year's crop being lost, but really began to take a. grip on the best tobacco areas in early 1980.

Growers were unable to keep pace with the disease which is spread by airborne spores which can destroy a plant within 72 hours. The losses were substantial and were estimated at about $625m.

Factories were shut down and over 20,000 workers were temporarily unemployed at a time when the progeny of the early 1960's baby boom were entering the labour market.

Then in 1981 a massive human disaster occurred when over 270,000 people in Cuba contracted dengue fever and 113 died. Dengue fever, also known as 'Breakbone fever' for the aches and malaises it causes, is one of the world's incurable viral diseases. It is transmitted by the mosquito, Aedes aegypti, which is also the vector for yellow fever The milder form occurred in Mexico and the Caribbean, including Cuba,

during 1977-78. However, no other country apart from Cuba suffered the virulent form in 1981; this fact has intensified Cuban beliefs of covert warfare. Furthermore, Fidel Castro claimed that the US stood in the way of Cuba's efforts to obtain insecticides.

There exists a US embargo on trade with Cuba and allcense from the Ban-American Health Organisation was required before the chemical product, Asate, could be exported. Eventually Cuba received thirty tons of Asate from the US and the dengue outbreak was controlled by its rigorous application.

The suspicion remains however, that the US only supplied this product when it believed its population might be threatened by dengue.

Suspicion of the US was also engendered by its own history of research into the use of mosquitoes as disease carriers. Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman have described how colonies of Ae&s aegyptf were bred at Fort Detrick; half a million mosquitoes could be produced monthly in the mid1950's and a plan was drawn up to increase this 260-fold by the late fifties.

These Insects were to be infected with yellow fever and fired from 'cluster bombs' dropped from aircraft and from the warhead of the 'Sergeant' missile.

Even after the 1969 order for destruction of BW weapons, allegations were made which contradicted this edict. In 1975 a controversy broke out in India when the Bombay magazine, Science Today, revealed that a study was being conducted there involving the very same diseases for which Fort Detrick had considered using mosquitoei as carriers. The UN World Health Organisation (WHO) was involved in a study involving mosquitoes, yellow fevel malaria, dengue fever and migratory birds. The magazine claimed that the project was 'a camouflage for conducting research on BW and that it had discovered the US to be the secret funding source. WHO could not produce the report on the project for Indian scientists because it had been sent to the Army's Migratory Animals Pathological Survey office in Bangkok.

Indeed this was not the f i t time thai the US had been accused of using migratory bird studies as a cover for clandestine military operations. In 1969 Senator Joseph Clark of Pennsylvania alleged that 'under screening of the Smithsonian Institute and a bird-banding project [the Army] were looking for a relatively safe place to conduct CBW testing.' They had hoped to use Baker

Island, a small uninhabited atoll about 1,700 miles south-west of Hawaii, as an isolated spot for tests using birds and animals as vectors for diseases. The army admitted sponsoring a Smithsonian study into the migratory habits of Pacific Island birds, but denied that the project had a BW basis. Nonetheless Dr. KW-Pheilper,Professor of Zoology at the University of Montana, stated that he had evidence to the c o n h y .

According to John Powell, a US expert on BW, the director of the Smithsonian S.Dilion Ripley created a one million dollars special fund which he used for pet projects such as the migratory bird project in India. After a 1977 special study he was relieved of the day-to-day management of the organisation.

However it wabtoo late for the institute to cover its tracks. Already earlier that year, the senate subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research had named the Smithsonian as an outside contractor providing cover for germ warfare experiments. Indeed the revelations fron Project M K ULTRA included the CIA'S suggestion of using migratory buds.

They believed that birds destined to fly over Europe could carry whooping cough or a canine bacterial infection.

Little wonder with this background that the Cubans believed that dengue was introduced as a US plot.

The outbreak in Cuba began suddenly in Havana, barely four months after the dengue affected almost two thousand people. According to the official Communist Party newspaper Gmnma, this 'strange and inexplicable' appearance of the disease 'confirms our deepest suspicions that [the US] is using BW against our country'. When faced by crisis after crisis it is of course natural to blame one's closest enemy when no other explanation is forthcoming. As J.M.Waller commented, 'plant disease; tend to be a favourite scapegoat for the economic ills of agricultural enterprises in situations where object assessments are difficult.'

However, when repeatedly, different diseases are striking plants, animals and humans virulently, and often for the first time in your part of the world, then your suspicions need to be voiced.

And when the suspected perpetrator has admitted planning and carrying out acts of sabotage, including those using CBW weapons against your country, then your allegations deserve a wider audience. Cuba has a strong case which merits further investigation rather than dismissal.

Mike Osbourne

Green.---e is steadily building up if international campaign against the dumping of highly acidic, iron-rich wastes from the Titanium Dioxide I dustry into the North Sea. In 1983 group took direct action against TIOZ producers whose wastes are causing severe m e n to marine organisms i n the river Humber. Later in the year Greenpeace submitted evidence to the House of Lords Environmental committee on this topic; the only one of twelve submission! tooppose recent EEC legislative attempts to reduce pollution from (his industrial sector.

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Nine billion acres of the earth is now desert.

Kenya's wood fuel, Mark Newham reports, is vanishing helped by inappropriate technology

Kenya. Three-quarters of all the country's energy comes from the burning of wood and charcoal and, unless a major reafforestation and fuelwood substitution programme takes off soon, with Kenya's 1 7 million population growing at a world record rate of 4% a year, the country could be totally deforested by the end of the century. Just think what that will mean to not only the helpless Turkhana but also t o the country's tourist companies dependent on the wildlife and hence the wildlife's habitat.

Without the annual mass invasion from the less impoverished nations of the world, Kenya's jealously-protected foreign currency coffers would soon become about as productive as the barren lands of the Turkhana. And such a situation would do little to help initiate programmes aimed a t conserving the natural habitat of the wildlife or indeed of the rural human hordes.

Kenya is fortunate in some respects in that it does attract large sums from the aid agencies intended for irrigation and reafforestation projects. But this does not necessarily mean the money arrives at the intended destination, neither that the projects now being established are appropriate to the people whose needs are greatest.

The problem is two-fold. First, many projects proposed by government ministers and aid agencies appear to be designed not to extend a helping hand to the needy but rather to show off to those most likely to be impressed the wondrous technical wizardry dreamed up by technocrats in first world laboratories - technologies which cannot be readily integrated into First World infrastructures, and cannot be afforded by peoples in the Third World at whom the technologies are aimed.

An example is the 200 kilowatt generator for use in Kenya proposed by Arco Solar, the solar energy whizzkid subsidiary of US oil major, Atlantic Richfield. The generator will use thousands of solar cells to generate electricity for the people of Moyale on the KenyaIEthiopia border and is likely to cost in excess of $6 million. It will probably be supplied by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a strange and clandestine organisation staffed largely by Vietnam veterans who have overseas experience but very little else to offer.

The tiny population of Moyale (thought to be certainly less than 2000 although no-one is really sure since few

in their right mind ever visit the place) has never had electricity supplies simply because it's so remote that the country's electricity grid does not extend to within 500 miles of the town and the cost of transporting diesel for a diesel generator works out far in excess of the benefits of having electrical supplies in Moyale.

Nevertheless, being so close to the border with Marxist Ethiopia means that Moyale is strategically important to capitalist Kenya and hence to the USA and, in order to keep the largely forgotten Moyaleans sweet and on the side of Kenya's one-party government, a few scraps from the table are thrown occasionally to this outpost.

The generator is just such a scrap but a very expensive scrap in view of the usual minimal assistance arriving in the town annually. In the eyes of many involved in solar energy developments and in fuelwood substitution studies in Kenya, the expense could be better spent on smaller, more appropriate projects in the region.

Just installing a few solar powered water pumps rather than a generator of megascale proportions would not only alleviate drought problems but would also help the scrub to grow.

With more vegetation available, the women of the area (who traditionally tramp for miles each day in search of wood) would be able to spend less time on fuelwood collection and more

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on tilling and planting the otherwise barren land.

The second, and potentially most damaging part of the aid problem centres on the final destinationof monej allocated by aid agencies like USAID to projects geared to slowing and ultimately reversing the deforestation trend.

Kenyan government officials are happily creaming off aid money for certain 'development' projects which hear little or no relation to the projects for which the aid money was originally intended. An example involves the World Bank, that Washington-based hypebank that is supposed to coordinate the spending of funds culled from the consciences of America's more influential money lending establishments.

It concerns a group of four experts who, two years ago, set out to implement a soil conservation, fuel and fodder production project at Lake Baringo in north central Kenya but accomplished nothing in that time for want of funds. Apparently, there are $4.5 million available from the World Bank to fund such schemes but in this case nothing arrived at the project's location because the government could not match the World Bank's contribution. Nevertheless, the funds have been with the Treasury since the project was supposed to start and questions have been asked in private diplomatic

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'To keep the forgotten Moyaleans sweet and on the side of Kenya's one-party government, a few scraps from the table are thrown occasionally '

circles as to where that money is now.

Even when the money destined for appropriate projects does reach the intended location, it is invariably spent on unnecessary and at times potentially ecologically and socially damaging projects. Take, for example, the Euphorbia programme currently being run by KenyakMinistry of Environment and Natural Resources and largely funded by the Belgian government.

Euphorbia is a species of fleshy plant which grows rapidly in semi-arid regions and is thought to contain large quantities of latex. Latex, said experts three years ago, could be processed, in large quantities, into methanol (an alcohol suitable for blending into petrol). It could displace expensive oil imports.

The biomass left over could be used as a fuel by the local inhabitants of the semi-arid regions who are struck by the escalating fuelwood shortage problem.

With these potential benefits in mind, the Ministry started a major programme to grow Euphorbia widely over

the country's marginal areas and is continuing with the programme despite howls of protest from a growing number of agricultural and agroforestry researchers convinced that the widespread growth of the plant will prove ultimately even more disastrous than deforestation.'Not only does Euphorbia fail to supply the quantities of latex it was originally thought to produce, but it saps water from the soil without releasing it to the atmosphere like other plants. If Euphorbia is planted at 60,000 plants per hectare in semi-arid regions, it will sap the entire rainfall of the area in an average year.

Ultimately it could start eating into the water table. Lowering the water table would lead to soil erosion, endangering crops, the indigenous plants which form the staple diet of the pastoralists' herds. The end result no doubt would be feuding between the local inhabitants over fertile land areas.

As if all that isn't bad enough, the new theory is that the Ministry is wrong in its assertion that the semi-arid lands

ITS!The World's Foremost Journal of

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are under-used and should be put over to mass Euphorbia plantations. These lands, claim the researchers, are overgrazed by the pastoralists' herds. By reducing grazing land further it will lead only to hardship for the herds and those dependant on them.

If these lands have t o be used at all, goes the latest wisdom, they should be planted with a species known as Prosopis, a fast-growing hardwood which has potentially twice the energy content of Euphorbia, and which releases its moisture content back to the atmosphere, and its nutrients back to the soil.

If the researchers are right, Kenya could be heading for big trouble unless the Euphorbia project is nipped in the bud before it has the chance to do any real lasting damage. At the moment, the last thing the country needs is another environmental disaster. Its rate of deforestation and the misuse of aid funds are quite enough to be

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in nearly every room of the ranch-style house. By now the Gilbert Volunteer Fire Department was really mystified.

Believing the fires were caused by an electrical malfunction, Appalachian Power Co. employees cut pll the lines going into the house and the church next door. The next day, fires broke out in the church's basement and its nearby all-purpose centre.

'Some of the clothing from the house was still good', recalled Clemons, 'so I gathered it up and gave it to my wife and told her t o go to my mother-inlaw's. And as they got up the hill, some of the clothing in the trunk was on fire.'

Since then, most of the flies occurred at the Beech Creek home of Chloe Kennedy, Clemons' mother-in-law.

Chemical analysis of some of the burned clothing from the 13th June fires, conducted by a Columbus cornpany on 11th July, only deepened the mystery. The clothing showed no traces of gasoline or other accelerant, and a company official stated he had never seen similar bum patterns. On 19th July, Clemons began to move back into his home which he had vacated a month before. Three fires broke out the game day, and he moved out again, having decided it wassafer to live in Beech

stuff 1 the

summer of 1983 the tiny West irginia coal town of Whamcliffe and s b y Beech Creek were plagued by iysterious outbreaks of fire. The first idication for Visitors that something as very wrong came when they saw ie wasps. Their wings were burnt tf and they were walking.

The 200 residents of Wharncliffe rst becan to fear fin on 27th Mav. At .3opma flash fin engulfed ~ o b b i ueen's split-level home, three miles om the church. By the time firemen rived the house was an inferno, and ueen barely escaped. About 4am on th June, firemenarrived in time to e fire destroy William Murphy's w e , about 100 yards from the lurch. Murphy, asleep and attached to respirator, also barely survived.

On the hot muggy afternoon of 3th June, fire returned -this time I the home of Eugene Clemons, 40, lay minister at the Ben Creek Church 1 Christ. Eight separate fires broke i t in a four hour span, burning articles

Creek.

Several different explanations hare been put forward, all with passionate supporters. Robert R. Hall, supervisor of the arson section of the West Virginia fire marshall's office, was convinced the fires were intentionally set. At the beginning of July, his office gave lie detector tests to Clemons' daughters, Lisa, 18, and Melissa, 15. Lisa passed, but the results of Melissa's test were

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inconclusive. This approach enraged Kendell Simpson, assistant chief of the Gilbert File Department. T h e fire marshal1 has said that he has several suspects, why doesn't he charge than?'

Also discounting the possibility of arson is Larrv E. Arnold, director of Parascience Internationh of Harrisbuig, Pa., which specialises in spontaneous human combustion research. 'It's inconceivable to us that those files were set by human means. The Clemons episode, in part, falls very nicely into the poltergeist experience.'

The prevailing theory among Wharncliffe residents, however, is that they are toicrowave radiation fires caused by a 120-foot Norfolk & Western Railroad communications tower on Horsepen Mountain. The tower has five microwaver<(lay,phes, which it uses to communidate with other N 81 W facilities 40 miles away. Governor Jay Rockefeller became worried enough to despatch researchers from the state health department on 8th July to test the area for microwave radiation. The tests were negative. 'The wavelength on the relay is so long it just won't start flies,' said Beattie Debord, the d e partment's radiological health specialist.

'I'll be honest with you: a lot of people are saying we're just a bunch of dumb hillbillies,'said Kendell Simpson to the Columbus Dispatch. 'But I'm out of aces. I've been in the fire service for twelve years and I've never seen anything like it.'

Paul Sieveking (Shortened version of a report by Ted Wendling in the ColumbusDispatch.

24th July 1983. ThanKs to John Chaike and John Hitchens.)

BEAST It wasn't exactly front-page news but you may have read that the dramatic climax to the Sean Connery James Bond film Never Say Never Again had to be cut after pressure from the RSPCA and the British Board of Film Censors.

Cruelty to animals is forbidden under the Cinematograpb Film (Animals) Act 1937 which states that such footage cannot be legally shown in British theatres.

The scene in question shows a horse plunging 40 feet into the sea and hitting the water on its back. David Wilkins, the RSPCA's Chief Veterinary Officer said: 'They had a beautiful cinematic effect in the climax which has been marred because of the cut - and I'm delighted. I hope it will teach them a lesson.'

'I was shocked when I saw uncut footage of the stunt,' he said. 'The horse was put in a wooden box on top of a scaffolding, with a man and woman stunt team. The box was tilted and all three fell out, with the horse landing on its back in the water. There's no way you can train a horse to do that. It must have caused the animal great terror.'

Now there are several interesting things about this story and subject, one of the main ones being that readers can judge what's left of the incident with their own eyes at their local Essoldo. Remember, the stunt happened but it's now intercut with a new shot that 'spoils' the effect.

Secondly there were misgivings within the production crew itself over

firm evidence for this in the form of an anonymous letter, which reached us via two otiier people who were equally at a loss to know what to do about it at the time.

Dated 1 5 January 1983, it reads in part: 'There is a story circulating that the production team for the James Bond film 'Never Say Never Again' intend a scene in which there is a certainty that the horse will die. The horse will be made to jump from a cliff. Because of our laws they are going to shoot this scene abroad.' As it turned out the horse survived, so the film company says. As it was filmed in Spain the RSPCA were powerless to prevent it.

Another interesting coincidence is that in 1979 Starling Productions, who made The First Great Train Robbery which also starred Sean Connery, were found guilty of baiting animals during the making of the film. It was Ihe first case of its kind since the 1911 Protection of Animals Act was introduced.

The film, set in Victorian England, included a scene showing rat baiting in a pen at a public house. Between eight to ten rats were attacked and killed for the cameras by a terrier called Lover.

Assistant producer Anthony Waye said in court: 'I thought as it happened in the wild it was all right in the film.'

Starling Productions were found guilty and fined £10 with £10 costs.

Which leads us on the wider question of the use and abuse of animals in movies and other visual entertainments.

a subject The Beast has only tackled in part.

Our Hollywood correspondent at the time, Valerie Hoffman, got an interview with Corky Randall, horse trainer on The Black Stallion. He told her that everything on American TV is supervised by the Humane Society 'but independent productions don't belong to the association and a& not bound by the rules. It depends how strong the rammdder is as to how far they'll go.'

For the record, in all motion pictures the horses are whip-broken.

Back in 1978 there was a flurry of interest in the subject. Pauline Morley, a social administration graduate, wmte an Opinion piece in the Sunday Times called 'JawsJs Bad for Sharks, New Trends in Cruelty.' After complaining bitterly about the treatment dished out to animal 'actors' and the trend towards horror movies featuring homicidal animals, she wmte: 'Without wishing to exaggerate, I feel that these films not only affect our attitudes towardsanimals unfavourably but they also encourage callousness towards animals by making them objects of fear.'

The point was picked up the following week by a letter, run with a picture from the chariot race in Ben Hur. The writer asked people interested in doing something about the situation to contact him which The Beast did.

The 'movement' got as far as a name (FATS0 or something like that) but that was all.

For the record, the American Humane Association blacklist includes the following movies: Heaven's Gate: in which five horses were killed - one was literally blown up - and tour others died as a result of their injuries. There were also scenes of an illegal cockfight and a steer having its throat cut. Director Michael Cimino insisted on using real blood, drained from living cattle, to smear on his actors. (Cimino made The Deer Hunter too).

Apocalypse Now: in which a water buffalo is ritually slaughtered. The scene was approved by the RSPCA on the grounds that the severing of the animal's spine with an axe was judged to be amongst the quickest possible ends. (Incidentially, the horse's head found in the movie producer's bed in The Godfather was procured from a pet food factory).

The Missouri Breaks: A Western with Marion Brando and Jack Nicholson in which a rabbit is impaled with spikes and drowned. The American UNDERCURRENTS 6

Humane Association comment: 'The iron penetrates the rabbit's back, blood spurts and the rabbit squeals. All this shown including the opening of the rabbit's mouth for the squeal.

Many other movies, like The Long Riders, feature horse trips using a device called the running W. Cables are strapped to the horse's front feet, the horse's legs are then jerked from under him at a full gallop to create a spectacular, bone-crunching fall.

What about commercials? Less hard evidence to go on here but this story from 1979, about the 100 bulls used in a Merrill Lynch Commercial shot in Mexico, illustrates the point: according to Tibor Hrisch the producer: 'We had to create a stampede so we set the bulls going by shooting guns into air. I felt we got the shot but the advertising agency asked for a second one. Unfortunately, the bulls wouldn't go this time so we tried everything, including shooting salt into their rumps -and that hurts. I was later told that all the bulls had been bred for bullfighting but after their traumatic experience in the commercial, they couldn't be used in the bullring so they were all destroyed.'

Watch the screens!

Blood Did you know that in 1982 alone more than 800,000 tons of blood residue from slaughterhouses was dumped into public drainage systems throughout Europe.

That Japan is one of the world's leading consumers of pork, at present importing 200,000 tonnes of pigs a year. , That Americans don't eat lamb, partly for cultural reasons and partly because they were turned off it during World War 11, when meat that was sold as lamb was usually goat. Mr Frank Greise, a Maryand butcher, is set to change all that with lamb sticks, which he believes could become as popular as the fish finger. 'This product,' he says, 'introduces a new generation to lamb.' At present the average American only eats l'hlbs of lamb a year, compared with 1031bs of beef and 731bs of pork.

Kilter &

Two significant new articles from the States have reached Beast HQ. They reflect not only how fast the issue is moving over there but also the steadily deepening nature of the argument and discussion, spreading out from the source to unsettle traditional thinking.

The public furore over the Defense Department's dog experiments (see Undercurrents 61), triggered off an essay in Time by Lawrence Morrow entitled: 'Thinking Animal Thoughts'.

He writes: 'The notion of an Animal Rights movement can be faintly satirical. . . it smacks of a slightly crosseyed fanaticism that might have amused Dickens, of battle-axes who file classaction suits on behalf of canaries. . . ' 'But the animal rights issue has developed particular power. Although a candidate running on an animal liberation ticket in 1984 might provoke witticisms about dark horses and fat cats, he or she would receive a respectably serious share of popular sympathy, if not of the popular vote. It is not some revolution that has suddenly come to critical mass, but it is there, a presence.'

Morrow combines a strong and tense style of journalism with a deep understanding of the subject.

As he puts it: 'Animals tend to be either embodiments of ideas and phantasms or else cellophaned food units.' Terrific.

By contrast but equally impressive is a long essay in Natural History magazine (November 1983) by Matt Cartmill entitled: 'Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad' and subtitled: 'Man's Place (if Any) in Nature'. Cartmill, a professor of anatomy and anthropology, treats us to nothing less than a full-blown overview of our relationship to the natural world. He weaves a fresh chronological pattern out of the historical evidence and new data, linking fossil ape discoveries with animal imagery and literature, world events and psychological developments.

He shows how, 'since 1960 the picture of Homo sapiens as a disease of nature-a mentally unbalanced predator threatening an otherwise harmonious natural order -has become so pervasive that we scarcely notice it anymore.'

Kubrick's 'killer ape' in 2001 is the key image.

T h e hunting hypothesis,' he writes, 'captures a deeply felt perception of human beings and their technology as antagonists of life. Whether or not the hypothesis fails, the underlying perception is correct. Homo sapiens is a real threat to life on earth.'

action They don't mess about in the States when it comes to organising. Mobilization ForAnimals is the name of a massive new coalition group or, in their words, an all-volunteer coalition-based structure dedicated to direct action to end animal suffering. They write: 'We began work about eighteen months ago, and since that time, the coalition has grown to embrace almost five hundred animal welfare and protection, environment and social change groups in twenty three countries, including organisations in all fifty States and on every continent.'

Impressive.

Their first major action was on April 24th 1983 when there were large-scale demonstrations at four of the major US Regional Primate Research Centers in the US, with smaller rallies at research and breeding facilities in a dozen other countries. That action will be repeated on the same date in 1984, culminating in a twenty-four hour vigil.

Earlier in the year they plan mass protest actions against 'Trapping and Mass Extermination' on April 7th. More than 17 million wild animals are trappid for their fur every year in the US and 'ovemment predator control programnes are extensive. The pressure is for iew legislation.

On August 24-26th their third major action will be on the theme of 'Psychology Experiments'. They are encouraging small, decentralised actions at psychology labs throughout the world, culminating in a 'massive, internal mobilization' at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association in Toronto, Canada (Sounds like a job for Hunter S. Thompson).

Mobilization For Animals can be contacted at PO Box 1679, Columbus, OH 43216. USA. International co-ordinator: ~ i c h a r dMorgan.

John May -

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Let's remember that the walls of Jericho looked just as miahtv and impenetrable forty seconds before they-wllapsedas they had done forty days previously!

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Promised Land azel Henderson calls it the 'politics of the last hurrah': to 'avert' catastrophe, it goes (or delay it maybe), why not plunder the earth's resources, in yet another fling of economic accumulation for the rich countries? What of it when the present policies of all authorities along the familiar right-left political spectrum are without exception on the same bandwagon?

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'While much can be said about the complex economic and financial issues of the day, it all really boils down to this: how do we maximise the probabiilit of strong and sustained worldwide economic growth? That is the crucial task before us all', says Mr Regan, economic overlord of the Reagan administration. And here is Herr .

Mattohfer, Minister of Finance in the West German social democratic administration of Helmut Schmidt: 'All political decisions must in future be governed by this question; how can we ensure so much sling growth in the production of goods and purchasing power that the free competitive economy remains viable?'

A document of the UNEP Nairobi Conference: 'Economic growth is an essential instrument in achieving social goals. In developing countries particularly, economic growth is vitally important and remains a major force for improving the health and welfare of people. An East German handbook on economic policy: 'The uninterrupted growth of production is an objective necessity.' Finally Neil Kinnock: We should 'employ money for the only rational purpose - the making of more money by a process of making things in more countries.'

How much more growth is needed, for how much longer this must go on we are never told. There are apparently no limits. 'If it is agreed that economic output is a good thing, it follows by definition that there is not enough of it.' Ă&#x201A;ÂĽ" the US Council of Economic

Advisors in 1971. In a world facing increasing shortages a main worry of our leaders is that we are not consuming the remaining resources fast enough.

In West Germany the government, th trade and consumers' organisations are currently appealing to the reluctant citizens to consume more, save less and increase their indebtedness 'in older to contribute to the hoped-for economic recovery'. 'The action most urgently needed in the world economy is for the strong economies to accept higher levels of living. Their reluctance to do so seems to be of calvinistic proportions,' says P.McCracken, ex-Chairmanof the US President's Council of Economic Advisors.

One worried man asked me recently: 'But if I consume less, won't the economy collapse?' The call to consume rather than conserve is seen as rational by a system which acknowledges as valuable only what can be measured in present money units. Thus 'conservation of whales and whale oil would merely have delayed the petroleum age, and conservation of petroleum will merely delay the next step in the march of provident technology, be it the age of the atom, the sun, or the pure abstract radiant energy emanating from the God of the Market,' according to Herman Duly.

The hero of the growth fanatics toda; is the US economist Simon whose main thesis is (a) what cannot be counted is infinite, (b) nobody can count how man barrels of oil are left in the ground, c ) therefore resources such as oil are infinite. Against such intellectual feats we can only point out that the per capita production of wood had peaked already in 1967 and fish catches pc peaked in 1970. Cereals production afte climbing by 30% between 1950 and 1971 peaked in 1976.

President Carter's commission report on the year 2000 is only one of several which has spelt out in great detail the consequences of continuing these policies. The UNEP Conference on Desertification in 1977 concluded that up to a third of the world's agricultural land was likely t o be lost by desertification before the end of the century and

much of the rest seriously eroded. To counteract these trends, UNEP calculated that 2-4 billion dollars woulc be needed for twenty years. Four yews later 5,000 dollars had been contribute! to the special fund set up for this purpose. The lethal effects of sulphuric smoke emissions on trees were pointed out by Prof Stockhardt in Hanover in 1878.More than a century later we ma; have reached the point of no return. In school we learnt Louis XVs comment 'After me, the deluge!' as the height of degeneration and irresponsibility.

Today we know that we are ruled by men of like minds!

The opponents of further economic growth are accused of ignoring the Third World, whose only solution, we are told, is to sell more to us. If so, we need not worry, for the Third World has been steadily increasing its volume of exports to us - only, they receive less and less in return. ThetpW countries in Africa were net exporters of high qualify foods during the famine there.

Selling the food the locals could not .* afford to the West with its stronger purchasing power. he minimum yearly 'growth' rates seen as necessary for an economic recovery in the West work out at a higher yearly per capita income increase than the total income pc in many poor countries. At this rate, we will all have our own private yachts before the basic needs of the poorest have been met. But the World Bank admits that even in its most optimistic high growth scenario, 'by 1995 lowincome sub-Saharan Africa still fails to retain its 1970 per capita income*.

After watching food riots in London 100 years ago Cecil Rhodes wrote: 'The' empire. is a bread and butter question. If you want to avoid civil war you must become imperialists.' If you do not want to share, you must hold , out the promise of an ever increasing ' cake. The Third World has no-one to. colonise but if it will just be patient ant let us use the rest of its raw materials we will create paradise on earth. By a propagandist masterstroke, the rich have been transformed from the antagonists of the poor to the model

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for the poor; no longer are the rich parasites and idlers living at the expense of others, these terms of abuse have been turned on the poorest Paul Ehrlich discovers during a taxiride through Calcutta that there are too many people in the world, forgetting that it is not the many poor but the few rich nations which a& threatening the eco-system. Other reactions to the realisation that the cake is limited are even more hvsterical: Garrett Hardin thinks that it would be kinder to drop atomic bombs on the poor than to feed them, for, if resources are fairly shared 'the USA will be lost'. 'It is un1ikelv'he writes, 'that civilisation and di&& can survive everywhere, but better in a few places than none. Fortunate minorities must act as the trustees of a dvilisation . we must keep the race pure for our children.' (International Herald Tribune, May 21st 1980). I quote this madman only because he is sometimes presented as an environmentalist by his supporter!. In comparison Herman Kahn sounds quite tame with his queer warning that 'many civiliiations failed to take off economically because of an excessive pre-occupation with the protection of the environment, social justice, safety and health regulations'.

Today, as the human costs of these economic take-offs are becoming unbearable, what green alternative have we to offer? While simplifying our lifestyles we need first of all to stop and reverse the monetarisation of every field of human endeavour. Money, altered from being a facilitator of fair exchange to a device for unlimited accumulation must be stopped.

One recent victim of rapid economic 'growth' is Norway. The increase in GNP due to North Sea oil has been accompanied by rapidly increasing crime rates, alcoholism, drug addiction, t o n t o nh e fibre in Our Hun& Network and the Nordic Alternative Campaign have been ' able to win broad-based support and a substantid government grant for a study on how to de-link the Scandinavian countries from the present e n world order, while establishing solidary relations with a number of Third World countries.

In Holland, a study at the University ~ ~ t has considered e ~ dthe con~ ~ sequences of a political policy giving priority to the preservation of nonrenewable resources and environmental protection and clean-up instead of econo~inirofits. The benefits,

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especially in increased quality of life . and reduced unemployment were found to be very substantial, the economic cost negligible in the short run and in the long run moderate.

There can be no ready blueprints for a Green Europe, but the first step* on the path are dear. Stop the perverse tax write-offs which make it profitable to exploit non-renewable resources as quickly as possible and price such resources so as to reflect lone-term scarcity. Such measures will have widespread support. For the past several years, large majorities in West Germany, Britain, France, Scandinavia, and the USA have declared their willingness to make sacrifices to preserve the environment, to opt for less materialistic lifestyles, to ban advertising and excessive profiteering. o why have the Green ideas not broken through yet? Those same opinion polls show that people knothe answer: there is a strong and growing distrust of large organisations, which are simply unable to make the necessary moves. As the Bank of America put it to Amory and Hunter Lovins: 'We are too large to nuke your input operational.' Recognising that these dinosaurs are too large to be able t o move in new directions but that we must try to prevent them from falling on top of us, we should find ways of withdrawing and neutralising their excessive Power.

One idea came from the recent meeting the International Peace Bureau- which suggested that we P"O"?s~ Amnesty, the Prisoners of this system Our top politicians, military commanders, media and economic 'growth' fanatic* and liberate them from their mental prison.

The Green political party nyutt of be Port a wider green movement or it will be just another reformist minority party. Yeta green "l~vementwithout a political wing Weatthe fatal the German youth the lg2@ which refused political responsibility an victim to and thus Nazism. Many Of my 'green' friends Imaginethat all we ever do is contribute in opposition, or as junior making the mainstream slightly less inhuman. But this 'mainstreams is breaking down *l m ~ n us d and sooner perhaps much sooner than we think, we will have to pick up the pieces and create viable alternatives when the present ruling classes have dunk away

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in disgrace, cursed by their children whose inheritance they have squandered on Concordes, nuclear plants and bombs.

We must not make the mistake of believing that our responsibilities will increase slowly according to some linear scale, until one day we have 51% support As soon as our alternative becomes visible, I think the confused, alienated majority will desert the sinking ship and come looking for us.

Arnold Toynbee said that civilisations collapse when the ruling classes lose their 'charm', that is when nobody believes them any more. The erosion of trust in almost all our institutions and authorities has been very rapid over the past 20yeara , We don't need an actual collapse of the world's financial system, only the realition that the banking system is already technically bankrupt as the loans which they have pressed on the Third World elites have been squandered and cannot be repaid.

Similarly, the question is not how many resources are still left in the ground, but when will the Third World discover it is being defrauded, and stop that exploitation?

ur attitude to the Third World will be the crucial test. The ecodevelopment debate ranges from the ideas of Ignacy Sachs who advocates net transfer of wealth to the Third World and bee access to our markets, to the de-linking recommendations of Dieter Senghaas, which points to historical examples in Europe; all successful nations he says, began by filling their own basic needs, protecting and building home markets and economic bases.

Free trade between countries at unequal stages of 'development' only increase global discrepancies. The German Greens are now coming out against further international division of labour, opposing the Brandt Report's recommendations of retaining the old order while improving the terms of the poor. Industrialization of the Third World to Western standards following past models could mean the end of life on earth through a rapid breakdown of the eco-system. Better we decide to introduce sustainable models in the industrialised world.

A few years ago I established Right Livelihood Awards ('The Alternative Nobel Prizes') because I saw that it was important that we create our What can we do? I have a few own values, our own awards, rewards, suggestions: and solidarity, and that we support those who are creating the cornerstones of a green, liveable world. We need to 1.We must learn, in the words of the mystics, to be 'in' but not 'of the world, encourage our known but silent majority support those who agree with our to be active w i t l p t w i n g attached, without becoming dependants, parasites. main proposals on stopping the arms race and further environmental degradation - into effective action.

Every meeting of the present power 2. We must look at the worldwide relevance of our lives and act accordingly structures - those summit meetings for instance, the Bilderberg and Trilateral We must ask who will die of hunger so that grain may be fed to cattle to produc~ conferences - needs to paralleled by Green meetings, setting out alternative the hamburger we eat on a night out? solutions and perspectives. In West Who has crawled on his or her belly for Germany recently a Federal High Court how long to win the ore for the declared that ecological conservation ornaments we wear? needs override private property rights; it ought to be brought into public view.

3. We must choose our values before we And we should call for a crash programme against acid rain not with a choose our technologies. We should 10-year but with a 10 month implement start a values debate, forcing out in the ation period. open for examination the values which Our task is not easy but has there underlie the present order. ever been one more important? Let's remember that the walls of Jericho looked just as mighty and impenetrable 4. 'If money is the answer, then what is forty seconds before they collapsed as the question?' We must re-direct they had done forty days previously! resources especially from the military As the French ecologists say, Europe and break the de-stabiilising power of must be green or it will not be at all. the banks and multinationals by drastic monetary reforms, without re-enacting Jacob von Uexkull life in our present consumerist society.

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VS volunteers work to

'remote peace by improving understanding letween peopled Zurrent volunteer vacancies

Carpentry Instructors, Coordinator for Poultry Project; Agriculture Tmchers & Instructors: Print Workshoo Manamr: Coordinator for Workcwmh ~&iation; Marketing Officw/Businm Skills Instructor;

MOZAMBIQUE Librarian for Refugee Settlement; Youth & Community work* ~ursery/lnfant Tfachars; Food Technologist; Water Technicians: Metal Workshop Advisers for ural technology development; Coordinator for Development Trust.

LESOTHO Water Engineer SWAZILAND 4griculturalists; Foresters; Engineers; Craftsmen e.g. fitter turners, mechanics, boilermakers, plumb&; Building Supervisors; Topographers: Economists; Planners;Architects; Accountants; EFL and Science Teachers; Doctors;Nurse Tutors; Medical Laboratory Technicians.

Infant & Primary Teachers; Maths, English vnd Maths & Physics Teachers at secondary level, for the International School in Maputo.

Two year contracts including modest living illowance and flights.

Regret no funding available for dependants.

Applicants must be resident in the UK. Write for details including a short C.V.and 5.a.e. to: Infrna$onal Voluntary Service, U4, 53 Regent Road, Leicester L E I 6YL.

UNDERCURRENTS 6

REVIEWS The Nuclear War File.

C.Chant & I. Hogg.

Ebury Press. £5.95 Crisis Over Cruise.

P. Webber, G. Wilkinson & B. Rubin.

Penguin. £1.25 The Forgotten Treaties.

A . McKnight & K. Suter.

Law Council of Australia, 160 Queen St, Melbourne.

It'll Make a Man of You. Penny Strange.

Peace News/Mushroom. 95p.

WITH the exception perhaps of It'll Make a Man of You. I can't reallv see why these books were published- they add nothing new to the nuclear debate.

The Nuclear War File and Crisis Over Cruise are basically similar types of books and overlap considerably in their content, which is not so surprising considering that they both seek to educate the person who feels that s/he is against nuclear weapons but wants to come to terms with the technical facts.

The Nuclear War File, qn first glance, looks like a school textbook - lots of headings, tables, unimaginative drawings, etc. Its strength lies in the detailed descriptions of all the major types of weapon possessed by the USA, USSR and France. For each of these, there is a short description and history of the development of the weapon, mention of its proposed targets, its strengths, weaknesses, guidance systems, deployment and possible countermeasures. This is useful information for those who want to argue in technical terms The rest of the book has tables and maps which graphically depict the number of weapons possessed by NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries, and short sections on the links with nuclear power, the existing treaties, spy satellites, plans for survival, and war exercises in peacetime (which the authors see as necessary for our 'defence' But the tables and maps are rather misleading, as they show the USSR as being Far superior in strength to NATO - but

maybe this is to be expected considering that, as their reference source, the authors used the Official US Department of Defense Data, NATO/Warsaw Pact Force Comparisons, and information from the International Institute of Strategic Studies. Rather biased information.

Crisis Over Cruise is a hastily produced little paperback written by three of the co-authors of London After the Bomb. Again, it gives information about Trident, Pershing 11, Cruise, SS-20s, and other nuclear weapons, but from a more anti-nuclear standpoint It also covers the causes of the nuclear arms race, and even the link with male aggression and scientific competitiveness (unusual for such an introductory book) One of its good sections is the one on Government propaganda. This shows the distortions in the Government figures on numbers of weapons produced by each side, and the problems inherent in playing the numbers game, eg. the age of weapons, where they're aimed, quality of weapons, etc. The propaganda section also covers the glossy booklets given to residents of Newbury and Molesworth, and the 'nukespeak' and technical terminology used t o disguise unpalatable facts of nuclear war. Crisis Over Cruise is a much better book (and a lot cheaper too) than The Nuclear War File, but I'm sure that the material has already been covered in previous books.

The Forgotten Treaties is another book that could easily be forgotten Its best section is at the beginning, when it mentions snippets of information on the risk of being killed, the continuing economic cost, and the numbers of scientists who are currently involved in military research.

The book goes on to describe the McCloy-Zorin treaty (formulated in 1961), the US and USSR treaties of 1962, and the McKnight treaty (1978).

The text of the McKnight treaty forms the major part of the book. According tc the authors, this treaty could be the basis of 'a practical plan lor world disarmament'. Well, it's a comprehensive treaty - but treaties are Government playthings, and usually get broken anyway. I doubt that many people would be interested in this book.

It'll Make a Man of You differs quite radically from the other books mentioned, in that its prime concern is the relationship of militarism to the male sex and to the upbringing of male children. Penny Strange argues that the institutions of a male-dominated society are based on competitive, power-

seeking behaviour, and that social pressures encourage in boys the develop ment of a character that has much in common with the military ideal. She shows the parallel between proving man hood and proving nationhood - both are based on winning power (one of the character traits encouraged in men), backed up by the threat of violence.

She' starts off with a general section on the arms race, then launches into the meaning of masculinity, how women are despised by the military and by society in general, male values in the war-making system, and why women are active in the peace movement The last section is important because some radical feminists are unsure about the validity of a women's peace movement because they say it reinforces the 'woman as carer for life' image. Strange says that it is not because women are 'natural pacifists' that they are integral to the peace movement (they're not, it's conditioning that makes men aggressive and women quiet), but because of the feminist qualities of mutual support and co-operation In this way, she links the personal with the political.

There is a l o t more that could be said about the links between patriarchy and militarism, but Penny's pamphlet is a ~ s e f uintroduction. l 5

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The co-operative way: Worker co-ops.in France, Spain and Eastern Europe ICOM £2.9 AS THE UK worker co-operative

'movement' grows in strength, from something like a dozen co-ops a decade ago to over 700 now, the proportion from the 'alternative' sector has decreased. Many 'conventional' types of trade are now represented in the co-op scene. The 'alternative' were probably more ready (and able) to take the plunge when co-operative working in this country had much less of a track record and lower profile. Now others are following their example and experience. The average size of the workforce in the non-alternative sector is perhaps also larger. If this is true, then the relevance of looking at the success of co-ops in other countries increases.

This book brings together 3 (all previously published) papers: on co-ops in France, Mondragon in Spain, and in Eastern European countries. One contrast with the UK is immediately apparent and brought out to some extent by Jenny Thornley's foreward.

That is the differing aims between the foreign co-ops and many of the 'new-wave' co-ops in this country.

The section on France states that 'a (co-op) member is entitled to expect from his producer co-op a fuller life, stability of guaranteed employment, a fraternal working atmosphere and a peaceful old age. 'Alternative co-ops here would have somewhat different priorities -job satisfaction and the production of a socially useful product being at least as important as security now and for the future.

This attitude amongst co-ops may be changing, but it is useful to note that the driving force behind setting up (and running) co-ops in Eastern Europe was more t o provide any type of job which would pay decent wages. Once this was established, then perhaps wider social aims could be looked at. Up to quite recently, with a well-established welfare state, this outlook was definitely foreign to UK co-ops - a co-op was likely to be established i ich for

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political and social reasons as for job creation.

So the emerging co-op sector may have something to learn from the book.

But I would suggest that it is more recommended background reading for co-op development workers and research ers than anything else. With so many differences in legislation and outlook for co-ops in France, the 40 pages on 'How to start, organ+ and succeed in running a producer co-op, French Style' are likely to be confusing to new co-ops here. Although much of the advice is sound, the pack produced by Lambeth CDA (Startinga Workers Co-op) provides most of this in more relevant contexts.

I would have liked fuller discussion than Jenny could squeeze into her foreword on the relevance of these papers. Also, those on Mondragon and Eastern Europe could have been updated and expanded from their original publication. I would certainly swop the paper on Mondragon for the old Horizon programme any time.

As it is, Jenny's statement 'The fact is that a co-op system must emerge from the drive and energy of people who need it rather than the theoretical visions of politicians and others' may be glossed over by those in the Greater London Enterprise Board and elsewhere who don't seem aware of the more 'libertarian' undercurrents of the UK co-op scene.

John Howe;

Breakdown The Religion of the Machine Age. Dora Russell. Routledge & Kegan Paul £12.95 The Dora Russell Reader: 57 years of writing and journalism 1925-1982. Pandora Press £3.95 OF THESE two books, the Dora Russell Reader is the more readable and accessible. It is campaigning polemical journal. ism at its best. Dora Russell, active and vigorous in 1984, can remember well the days whon women did not have the

vote, the most basic right of a citizen in a 'democracy'. Nor was it easily won, as she recalls: 'We made ourjust demands and were met with ridicule. We follower with abuse -all the pent-up anger, misery and despair of centuries of thwarted instinct and intelligence. Man retaliated with rotten eggs. We replied with smashed windows, he with prison and torture. ' The sex war was not an invention of the 1970s.

The book is also good on the nineteenth century feminist pioneers, who were living at a time when women were not generally taken very seriously as human beings at all, and even knowledge and learning were regarded as being 'unfeminine' in a woman. She writes powerfully in praise of the maligned and caracatured Victorian 'spinsters' who 'won for us schools and colleges, free limbs, health and the open air; unlocked for us the classics, science, medicine, the history of our world; drew us from our paltry ladylike accomplishments; wrote upon our schoolbooks: "Knowledge is now no more a fountain sealed", and flungwide the gate into the world. ' Her honesty, humanity and vision comes over throughout the book.

Back in 1958, when the Cold War was in full swing, she was one of the organiers of the Womens Caravan of Peace, which went from Edinburgh toMoscow throughout the countries of Europe, protesting against the insanity of the nuclear arms race and implicitly against the 'iron curtain' - the division of Europe imposed by the 'great powers' in 1945. What she wrote then about the iifficulties of staying genuinely impartial in a world of heavily armed sower blocks and rival blinkered ideolog. ies remains valid today. Her defence 3f Fuchs, the scientist who gave the secrets of the H-bomb to the Russians, in the grounds that he was putting loyalty to human knowledge above oyalty to one nation' does read rather iddly in that context. Are there not ,imes when too much knowledge is a iangerous thing?

The Religion of the Machine Age s a more difficult book to get to grips with. It might be worth getting your ocal public library to get a copy before ieciding whether to get your own. The wok was started in 1922 and was mblished in 1983, which much be omething of a record. It certainly ;overs ground, from the beginning of luman civilisation, through the ancient >reeks, plus what Jesus Christ was rying t o say and how Christianity turnUNC

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ed into something completely different -taking us through the tortuous history of Western 'civilition' to what Dora Russell calls the machine age.

The chapter on the early development of humanity is interesting, especially for her ideas as to why male domination is so prevalent in so many different types of society. She discounts any idea of a matriarchal golden age on the grounds of lack of evidence. Only the Kaga people of Columbia in South America give 'supreme power and universality' to woman in their myth of creation.

In starting to gain control over species by means of hunting, fishing and farm, early man (the male of the species that is) sought to free himself fmm 'biological bondage'. In this 'male flight from the body' early man starts to see himself as being somehow superior.

Womankind reminds him of his biological origins, which is why he seeks to dominate and exploit her as he does the rest of the natural world. Yet from the point of view of survival and for living a reasonably pleasant life, a co-operative equal relationship would have made more sense.

Later on there is the paradox of Jesus as a historical figure preaching love, tolerance, forgiveness and mutual aid in the harsh world of the Roman Empire at its height. Yet at the same time he was caught up with the ideas of his time, such as god the all powerful father, everlasting life and rendering unto Caesar everything Caesar felt like being rendered. She also traces how as soon as Christianity became a religion with doctrine and orthodoxy, the radical element came to be largely ignored and repression and intolerance became the order of the day. Christianity also developed a strong anti-woman tendency, which was again tied in with the idea of the body being inherently sinful and thus needing to be suppressed.

The 'enlightenment' philosophers and scientists, such as Galileo, Descartes and Newton also come under critical scrutiny. In reaction perhaps to the stifling orthodoxy of the medieval church (which held that there were certain mysteries in life which should not be looked into too closely) they held that there was a rational explanation for everything. It is true that 'knowledge spelt invention and power', and there were material benefits to be had.

Yet the driving force behind this explosion in science was just insatiable intellectual curiosity.

At the start of the book there is a preface, written 1920-1921entitled

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The Soul of Russia and the Body of America', in which Dora Russell writes enthusiastically of Russian communism as 'a new ideal of civilisation', contrasting it with the materialism and machine worship of the United States. She had a vision of 'the spirit of communism in Russia had leapt like a great wave to meat the West' where 'the power of the machine was broken forever, it served instead of commanding. . ..'

Yet even in 1920 Russia was under the tight control of a party committed to philosophical materialism. Lenin would have regardedeven the use of words such as 'spirit' and 'soul' as symptoms of bourgeous superstition.

No country, then or now, has a more uncritical attitude to technological progress than the Soviet Union. If there is a 'religion of the machine age' then surely it is Marxism!

Despite all the disillusioning experience of the twentieth-century, she remains optimistic and cheerful. In her last chapter she puts forward her belief in liberty and love as the alternative to fear, greed and alienation. She says 'If we believe in ourselves and assume responsibility for the planet to which we belong, we still have a great destiny. 'And perhaps more realistically 'Humanity will ever seek, but never attain perfection. Let us at least survive and go on trying. ' John Bradbiool

Forgotten Cousins A Complete Guide to Monkeys, Apes and other Primates.

Michael Kavanagh.

Jonathan Cape. £10.95 MODERN bookshops are stuffed with 'nature gloss', vapid volumes with insipi text. No point, no substance. At first glance this might look like one of the same species; in fact, it's a timely book of real value.

The f i t book since 1967 to survey all the primates, since when our knowledge has undergone a complete revolution, it is the very first b contain pictures of every living genus. Some of these are extraordinary:- the goldenhaired female simakobu from the Mentawai Islands of Indonesia, the

iciCTinft- Monkey: "Cut it off short, Tim;I cadi iffon)to await developments before I can IÈk mj )roper position in Society.' beautiful golden snubnosed monkeys from the bitterly cold mountains of Western China; the brightly-patterned doucs of South-East Asia, whose few survivors cling on in a habitat that is still trying to rebuild itself after the bomb ing and defoliation of the Vietnam War. Informative essays on the lifestyle and characteristics of them are all are complemented by maps and photos (of uneven quality). A perspectives chapter sets the scene, discussing our biological classification systems, the origin of primates and our current distribution patterns.

If this were all, the book would be worthy but unexceptional. What distinguishes it is the introduction by Desmond Morris and the author's own powerful concluding chapters.

Make no mistakes, this is an urgent issue. Most primates are found in forests and the forests are being destroyed Morris reminds us of this fact and urges us to think primate. He writes; 'The more we can come to accept ourselves os members of their family, the sqfer we will be.' Our new knowledge, he says, should 'make it impossible for all but the most obtuse of us to see monkeys and apes in the old light ' Michael Kavanagh outlines in stark detail what we are actually doing to our fellow primates. Aside from hunting them for meat, exporting them as pets and destroying their habitat to make discount furniture, we are also using them extensively as laboratory animals.

Here is a major intersection in the network where animal welfare interests and animal conservation concerns can meet on common ground, hopefully to stop the current trade which runs at the rate of 65,000primates a year.

This is new natural history with bite.

Buy it, digest it, use it - fast.

John May

BRIEFING MEETINGS International affairs will be the theme of the t w o Dunamis meetings i n February.

The first one, on February 22, will be a talk b y Julius Holt on Food Emergency and Famine: Improving Disaster Relief. The second, on February 29, will be on Chemical and Biological Warfare: How States Behave, and will be led b y Julian Perry Robinson of the University of Sussex. The talks will take place at St James Church, Piccadilly, London W1, and start at 6.30pm. Entrance costs £ (50p unwaged). During Lent there will also be a lecture series on Spirituality and Politics Holiness and Anger. For more details about these, phone 01 437 6851.

The 12th annual lecture o f the Minority Rights Group will bt on 1984 and Human Rights and will begiven by Dr Theovan Bover (former U N Director of Human Rights) on February 23. This will take placeat6pm at 10 St James's Square, London SW1. Admission

meetings on the politics of Science, organised b y Manchester Science for People, will be held in March and April. The topics are:March 13 Science for the Boys?

April 10 Asbestos on our Doorsteps.

The speaker for the first one comes from the Girls Into Science & Technology project at ManChester Polytechnic; for the second, there will be a researcher on asbestos and a speaker from UCATT. The meetings start at 7.30pm, and take place at the Polytechnic Students Union. Sidney St ( o f f Oxford Rd), Manchester 10.

future courses, send an SAE t o CAT, Machynlleth, Powys, or shone (06541 2400.

Lower Shaw Farm run a ~ a r i e drange of courses. The next ines are: Warch 9-11 Voice and Circle Dance.

4pril 6-8 Growing and Using Herbs.

The first one promises t o be quite energising. The cost of ?ach weekend is £25b u t concessons are available. For more letails of these, send an SAE t o Lower Shaw Farm, Shaw, nr Swindon, Wiltshire, or ring 07931 771 080.

There will be a course on different techniques used in healing from March 16-18, based at The Nurtons centre.

The course will be led b y Sarida Brown, and aims t o develop the powers of healing i n oneself and other people. The course fee is £40To book, or obtain further information, contact Adrian and Elsa Wood, The Nurtons, Tintern, nr Chepstow, Gwent, or phone 102918) 253.

A new, small co-operative interested i n Third WorldIRural Development issues w i l l be running a number of holiday study tours this year, based i n Berkshire. These will consist of visits t o groups/enterprises concerned w i t h intermediate technology, alternative energy sources, improved food plants, small co-ops, and rural activities: projects which the organisers see as relevant t o the current needs of Britain as t o those of the Third World. Small group discussion evenings and visits t o places of general and historical interest will also be included. If interested, send a 9"x4" SAE t o Heritage Holidays, c/o 10 Highfield Close, Wokingham, Berkshire.

COURSES The Centre for Alternative Technology have a number of courses planned. The next ones are: March 2-4 Wholefood Vegetarian Cooking.

March 9-11 Biofuels.

March 30-April 2 Self-Build Workshop.

April 6-9 Windpower.

Fees vary, b u t are approximately £20/day less for the unwaged.

For details of these and other

The Green Gathering Collective are unable t o use a site in Glastonbury for this year's Green Gathering because of bureaucratic problems w i t h the council. Thus they need an area of at least twenty acres, preferably somewhere i n central1 southern England, and available at the end of July. I f you can help, :ontact the collective c/o 4 Bridge House, St Ives, Cambs.

The Directory of Social Change, which has established itself as one of the main providers of information and training t o the voluntary sector, will be holding several two-day seminars on fund-raising, budgetting, and writing grant applications. These should be particularly useful t o groups involved in environmental improvement and t o those undertaking projects needing capital.

The next ones will be held at the following centres:February 29-March 1 Manchester.

March 7-8 Liverpool.

March 21-22 London.

The cost is £1 for the t w o days, or £7.5 for one day only. For more details contact the Directory of Social Change, 9 Mansfield Place. London NW3. tel: 01794 9835.

Several universities are now holding Alternative Careers Fairs, t o give students and other interested people an idea of the sorts of socially useful work they can do, rather than work for the UKAEA, ICI, Plessey or one of the other nasty big recruiters.

Usually an alternative careers day will involve speakers, exhibitions, advice and information on a wide range of topics, such as

co-ops, holistic medicines, Third World work, community work, alternative education, and appropriate technology. The universities which are holding them include: February 29 Warwick.

March 3 Cambridge.

March 7 York.

The one at Warwick will be i n the student union building from 115pm; the one at Cambridge, from 10-5.30 at the Wesley Centre, King St; the one at York, from 12.00-4.30 at Vanbrugh Collage at the University.

CONFERENCES The Co-operative Union, ~hich runs the Co-op shops and sank, is using the opportunity of the Co-operative Trade Fair t o 'un a conference on Partners i n Co-operation. This will provide m e of the few opportunities for nembers of the long-established :o-operative movement and those ?f the more recently formed nanufacturinglretail co-ops t o meet and discuss problems of mutual concern. Subjects for jebate include the evolution ? f worker co-ops and the role af Co-op Development Agencies, .he neeas of co-ops, helping co-op ievelopment, marketing and ~usinessskills i n the co-op sector, and avenues of finance. The conerence will start at 10.30am on =ebruary 21 at the Council chamber, Kensington Town Hall, i o r n t o n St, London W8, and :osts £2The trade fair will also i e held in the town hall on =ebruary 21-22.

A New Labour Daily?

Media Alternatives for 1984 is the theme for an important conference organised for February 26 by the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom.

Many notable media and trade union people, such as Jill Tweedie, Jake Ecclestone and Polly Toynbee, will be speaking on a variety of aspects associated w i t h the production of a new paper, such as financial problemsand potential political disagreements. There will also be general discussion about the alternative press. I t starts at l o a m at County Hall, London SE1 and costs £ for delegates, £3.5 for individuals, £1.5 for the unwaged. A creche will be provided. bookable in advance, For more information, contact people from the CPBF on 01-437 2795, or write t o them at 9 Poland St, London W1.

The T o w n and Country Planning Association have various events planned on the topic o f the urban environment. The first of these is on February 28-29, and is a conference and exhibition o n Urban Studies at the Zoological Society, Regents Park, London NW1. Then in March there i s the first of three seminars t h e others are i n April and May) which will look at public transport and planning with the community i n mind. These three

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miles away. As it's winter and the peacecamp is new, itemssuch as thermal underwear,gas heaters, water containers, caravans and pallets and desperately needed, as is money. Prospective campers are also welcome. Contact them c/o Susanna Moon, 9 Tennyson Avenue, St Ives, Cambs, tel: 10480) 61391.

8903.

The national conference

of the CampaignAgalmt tha Arms Trite will tçk place o n March

34.The weekend will focus on anti-arms trade- campaigning techniques and skill-sharing, but should also be of use t o all peace movement activists. The cost will probably be £ (£ unwaged); accommodation can be arranged. There will also be a m i a l on the Saturday night. The conference starts at 10.30am at the Pax Christ! centre, Pottery Lane, London W11. For more details contact CAAT, 5 Caledonten Road, London N1 or phone 01-278 1976.

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Watch out for events happening on or near Intarnational Women's Dç on March 8, and kbrruburg Day on March 29.

Details can be found out nearer the relevant dates: for the former, from a Womans Place (01-837 68011; for the latter,from ~rieifels of the Earth (01-837 0731).

March 29 is also the date for the next Stop the City demon stration. The aim, like the one last year, is to show the links Between the City and the arms trade. Local groups should feel free t o plan any type of nonviolent action they feel iseppropriatg. The main action will be in the city of London, but action in provincial cities would be welcome. For further information write to STC, c/o Greenpeace ILondod.6 Endsleigh Street, London WC1.

CAMPAIGN 0

A net4 peace camp has just been set up at USAF Alconbury, near Huntingdon. Alconbury is important because it will act as a cruise support base for Matusworth, which is only 8

A community heating advice unit from the West "Mdlands has produced a pamphlet entitled How to Winet Draughts.

It takes the reader through the problems encountered in draught proofing and DIY double glazing in the home, and shows how simple and cost-effective this can be. If interested, send 40p (inc. p&p) to Smethwick Energy Advice Unit, 96 Cape Hill, Smeth wick, West Midlands.

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DEMONSTRATIONS Somerset and Gloucestershire peace groups have planned an action for Ftbruary 29 at Little R i n g t o n , lathe Cotswolds. Little Rislington isen RAF place which is being convened t o a fully-equipped hospital for use

by USAF I n time; o f war. Both direct acton and a conventional demonstration are beina olanned. starting at 7.30am at themain gate end lasting all day. For more details, phone Ken Brown on (04536) 78391.

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A major campaign called WARMER -Warmth and Enemy from Rubbish -has just been launched in Britain. It will concentrate on study tours to Europ ian installations, an annual scholarship into energy from rubbish, lecture end conference programmes, exhibitions, work with schools, and quarterly bulletins to target groups. They will also be trying to centralise all evailable information on energy from rubbish and entering this into a data bank. If interested in the campaign, contact them at Wadhum. East Sussex TBS 6NR, tel: 1089288) 2155.

PUBLICATIONS,

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A basic introduction t o the problems and solutions t o acid rain has been written by the Acid Rain Information Group.

The layout of this short pamphlet makes it very easy t o read, and hence it would be suitable for those with no prior knowledge of the subject. There is also a chronology of key dates relevant to the acid rain issue, and some detailed references. It isavailable, on receipt of an Assize SAE, from Friends of the Earth Ltd, 377 City Rd, London EC1, or from the Scottish Wildlife Trust, 25 Johnstone Terrace, Edinburgh EH1.

8 The Bad Days mil End is the title of the latest pocketbook in the Spectacular Times series. 11 fact, this is a depressing little publication on the whole, full of snippets about suicide, depression, passivity, capitalist manipulation of pleasure - only in the last two pages is there anything about the ending of the bad days.

It colts 45p and is available from Spectacular Times, Box 99, Freedom Press, Whitschapel High Street, London El.

Third World First publish a magazine called Links twice yearly, in September and March.

The most recent one, no. 18, is on Disarmament and Developmerit. It contains articles on energy, arms end power; arms conversion; the problems in Central America;and the US Rapid Deployment of Force. It costs 95p + 25p postage and is available from 3W1,232 Cowlay Rd, Oxford. Their issue due out in March will focuson environment and the Third World, which should also be interesting.

Housmans have reprinted April Carter's pamphlet Direct Action, first written in 1962 but still very relevant today. She avers constitutional action [petitioning, lobbying, etc), symbolic action (marches) and various types of nonviolent direct action including boycotts and strikes, civil disobedience and physical intervention, and action against the State. It costs 60p and is available in certain bookihops or direct from Housmans, 5 Caledonian Rd, London N1.

RESOURCES

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Camerawork, the communt y photographic centre in East London, has over 50 exhibitions ~ncontemporary issues for hire o galleries/pressure groups. rhose which might interest Undercurrents readers include Jnderdeveloping Bangladesh; ¥SantAirport (Japan); No Mucleer Weapons (photomontage), 3omb Disposal: Peace Camps end direct Action; Demonstrations, ind Social Change, which focuses in the economic and political ise of labour. The hire price aries, according t o the number if panels and duration of hire. :or details, contact Camerawork 1121 Roman Rd, London E2, el 01-980 6256.

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Films and videos on all

sorts of subjects such as energy, co-ops, peace, acid rain, feminism and alternative ways of living are available for hire from Concord Films. They have a catalogue of all the films they stock, which costs £2.50 while

for a subscription of £ you receive all the supplements describing their most recent purchases. Included in the latest supplement are The Truth Game, No More Hibakushad Dark Circle; Starting point films on ways of dealing with conflict, and various films on Grwnham; Co-Lignum and A Co-operetivs Mommont about co-ops;Acid Ram: Requiem or Recovery; For Export Only Pesticides; Lovlns on the Soft Path (renewable energy); Sacrifice Area (uranium mining in Dakota); Rabbits Don't Cry, and many more. If you're interested in hiring any of these or subscribing t o the supplement, contact Concord Films Council, 201 Felixtowe Road, Ipswich, Suffolk, or phone (0473) 760121 715714.

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Creative Mind is a collective housed i n a converted police station in Merseyside. They produce a magazine called CreatMMiwl which will have theme issues in future on topics like co-ops/community, health, art and society, environment, and spirituality; they have already produced an Alternative Merseyside Directory which will be updated for 1984; there is also an information exchange service with lists of individualsand groups, and a guide to available resources.

The directory costs 50p + 1 6 % ~ post; subscription t o the magazine is £3.1 or Kip/single issue; membership costs £4.5 which includes the magazine, occasional newsletters, and participation in thegroups's activities. The address to write t o is Lark Lane Community Centre, 8 0 Lark Lane, Liver- , pool 17, tel: (051) 727 8293.

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If you're in a Londonbased group end are looking for e small office, Coldharbour Works is a building which has recently been subdivided into offices and studios. A telephone is provided, as are several other services. If interested, Contact the Manager, Great Eastern Workspace Ltd, Coldherbour Works, 245a Coldharbour Lane, London SWS, tei. 01-274 7700.

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Bau Invaders is an alternative video game invented by two Newcastle women. The aim is t o cut down the fence of any army/RAF base, and try to avoid being arrested. The game costs £ line p&p) and is available from Maginations, 21 Stratford Grove, Heaton, Newcastle-uponTyne. Specify whether you want the Spectrum, BBC or Cornmodare version. If you're slightly iubioui, it should be reviewed in UC64.

SMALL ADS COST 10 PENCE PER WORD AND MUST BE PRE-PAID. BOX NUMBERS COST £1.6 PUBLICATIONS ARTEMIS: the new magazine for women who love women, £1 BM Perfect [71, London WC1 N 3XX. THE BOOK OF RHIANNE presents a true philosophical alternative t o the modern worldview, based on the feminine principle. £1An Droichead Beo (U), Burtonport, Donegal, Eire.

'GREEN PAPER' -Conservation news1 - 12 months subscription only £3.9 - o r no.1: Send name & address plus two 1 2 % stamp; ~ to: Landscape Press, Home Index,

information about the modern world. Human Rights, Wars, Potential Wars, Regimes. All the sovereign and potentially sovereign territories of the world.For the Sinclair Spectrum (48k).

Needs Campbell Systems Masterfile t o display. With Masterfile £15alone £5.00 Should be on Micronet 800 soon. Or SAE for more information to: Wimsoft, 20 Brookside Road, Wimborne, Dorset.

COURSES HANDWEAVING in Pembrokeshire (weekly, Apr-Oct) on secluded organic smallholding.

Spin, dye and weave your own rugs, furnishings, wallhangings, clothing, accessories etc. Learn t o make your own simple equipment. Expert tuition, friendly atmosphere. SAE Martin Weathhead (UC), Snail Trail Handweavers, Penwenallt Farm, Cilgerran, Cardigan, Dyfed.

THE NURTONS; weekend courses in The Wye Valley -the Timless Wisdom Today, Feb 24-26, May and June; Natural Healing. March 16-18; Vegetarian Cookery, March 30-April 1; Spinning and Natural Dyeing, April 6-8; and How To Start and Run a Small Farm, April 27-29 and May 18-20. Other courses, too, or come for your own private Spring break; delightful scenery, vegetarian, wholefood cookery, (of some renown), frierm

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Details. Adrian & Else Wood, Tintern Gwent, NP6 7NX, (a stamp appreciated, thanks), or tel. 029 18 253.

ANTI-NUCLEAR workshops lad

by Fiona Adamson.

Saturday 18th February. Womm only.

Sunday 18th March. Dealing wMi sexism. Mixed.

Saturday 31st March. Mixed.

Phone 01-221 1310 for details.

Fiona also works with peace groups and does individual counselling.

WORK 'YOUNG couple seek work ana acwm. on organic farmlsmallholding from mid-March. Skills include livestock, agriculture, building, renovation, carpentry.

Will work for board end small wage. T. Gunn, 8 Wordsworth Road, Braintrae, Essex CM7 S X .

HOLME PLACE Community hat space for two more people. We are ten adults running a seven-acre smallholding, holiday accommodation and doschooling our children. Varied interests and consensus decisionmaking.

Capital needed. SAE Hoime Place, Oakford, Tiverton, Dewn.

NEW MEMBERS needed North Wales household. Four acre organic farm, barn renovations for personal growth centre, preferably female mature countrv loving. Tel. 0352 771678.

HOLIDAYS ITALY, open farmhouse. Write Pratale, Scritto, Perugia.

CYCLETOURING. Vegetarian1 wholefoods, luggagevan, camping.

July/August: Welsh Border Rides (U), Erwood, Builth Well*, Powys.

ETCETERA SOMETHING playable inspirec

by Herman Heste's Glass Bead Game. Non competitive. A mapping of thought sequences.

For information write to Dunbar Aitkens, 1460 SW"A" St. Cowellis, Oregon 97333, USA$

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A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE Help pioneer a truly economi way of life possible for ell th world's people. Stop lending prestige t o wasteful, unhealthy, destructive feeding habits and agricultural methods. Details and recipe sheet for 25p stamp. Vegan Societv. D a.~ tF. . . 47 Hiohlands atherhead, Surrey.

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RADICAL TECHNOLO6V

BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT with the publishers, Wildwood House, we are now able to offer our book Radical Technology to Undercurrents readers at less than half price - only  £ 2 . 9 postpaid. ' , . this book is different. I t has sharp criticisms of society and j ust about everything else you might think of , . . coupled with the best presentation of 'Visions'of what may be done that I've seen. . . The only book in this part of the culture that I have personally found exciting and excited." J. Baldwin in The Next Whole Earth Catalog.

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". . . a tightly

packed compendium of information covering subjects like organic gardening, indirect solar energy, phone phreaking and how to make your own shoes. . .Radical Technology is packed with sustained outbursts of sanity about the way we live. . ." - Michael White in The Guardian.

the office, "-=-I '

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in

Send just £2.95(whic includes UK and overseas surface mail costs) t o Undercurrents, 27 Clerkenwell Close, London E C l R OAT.

N D OUT what you've been missing. Any ten of e issues listed below cost just £3.50Or, even ~ t t e rall , the issues below PLUS a free copy of the ndex of the first nine years for only £12surface nail, worldwide.

Please note that nos. 25.27.28.45 and 47 are low out of print. BUT some issues from 1976 and 1977 have turned up and are available for 50p iach, or as part of our special 38 issue bulk offer.

14 AT round the w o r l d Building with natural energy; DIY insulation; Windmills.

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Who needs nukes? Biodynamic gardening; Radteld technology; AT and job creation.

l6

Garden villages; Woodfood guide; DIY new towns; Self-sufficient solar terraces; Citizens Band.

l7

Dowsing, Ley lines; Christopher Wren's beehive; Saving your own seed.

Intermediate Technology issue; Chinese science;

l8IT and the Third World.

at 27 Clerkenwell Close London EClR OAT

38

Anti-nuclear campaigns; Denmark;Seabrook;Guerilla tactics; The English Earthquake; The Russians and Nicola Tesla.

39

Communes: Co-operative work- Christians- Communes & anarchism. Pearce's polemics; US windpower Inc.

40

Fusion: Wave Power- Viewdata' Deprogramming Ecoropa; Third World ~ i p - o f f - c a n a l s.Jobs ; & Social Change.

4

Co-operators Fair: Suma- Winds o f change- Working collectively; Orgasmic labour; Macho nations; capitalism and Co-ops.

42

Protopia Convivial computing' Manifesto f o r the 80s. END; N A T T A . ' T ~ S IDarrieus ~; windmill design; Pirate ~ a d i o .

43

Bombs into windmills- Atoms f o r peace- Land reform - n o thanks: Greentown; ~ i f without e TV;EST; Propertarians.

44

Media Special- Pen pushing- 4th world- Arts Council- Open radio camwigin; Derek .larkan interview; R u f f Tuff b e e m Puff.

46

Women in CO-OPS:Their Experiences and Roles' Childcare in Co-ops; Building without Men; S American ~ o l i e c t i v ereport.

48

Women against mi?isiles' Free Sexuality. Nukespeak- Edward Bond o n Democracy William ~un-ouch'sinterview; CB Mania.

49 50

Alternative defence- DIY Super 8 films- Illich o n sexism' The new West Coast; ~ o ^ o impact p o n the labour movement: Tenth Birth Issue; Disarming Thinking; Planning for r e d ; ChemIBiological Warfare; AT Revisited I 0 Years of Eco-Action.

1

Pirate T V Socialist Radio- Animal L i b Nuclear Power guide; Wave power, Timothy L&Y; the new Alternative London.

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Special health issue; Alternative medicine; Findhorn; National Centre for AT.

2

Cartoonist Against the Bomb- Feminist Radio- Stuart Hood on TV; Technology in ~ e p a l , ~ e y o nthe d B&.

20

Tony Benn o n the Diggers; Farming; Solar energy; Broadcasting; Canals.

53

Citizens Intelligence' Nuclear Disease' Hornpathy; Isolation Tanks. Tantric Sex; East-west Peace Exchanges.

24

Eavesdroppers; DIY; Cheese and cider; Compost and ComuIuniSm; Alternative e n e a y ; Planning; Magic mushrooms.

5

Environment Special: Acid Rain' Land Reform; Safe Energy Savaged, Global Underclass; Festivals.

26

AT & the Portuguese revolution- The Russians aren't coming; Boat repairs, New Age Access; 0rkney crafting; Growing dope.

551 Electric bikes; Zoos' Greenwork; 2.4.5-T; Acupuncture;

Women & Energy; New Clear Energy; Feminists against nukes; Women & Science. Womanthought; Alice & ATman.

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Windscale- Ecofeminism- Solarcal: AT & the British StateMuscle powered revolutionary samadbi. Greening socialis& Food politics; Factory fanning; Additives; Wholefood co-ops; Commodity campaigns; Common agricultural policy.

Eco olitics' British road t o Ecotopia' Larzac' Nukes & unions; wor%ers3pi&; DIY VHF transmittei; ~ h o t t A nMicros. ;

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Planning; Garden cities; Urban wasteland; National parks; Shetland, Country life. WWOOFing; At workshop.

35

COMTEK79 Wave power' Teamwork Training Trust; campaign for the tiorth; DIY ~ o o d s ' t o v edesign; Decentralising AT. children & the Environment; Future perfect; City jungles; ysheet camps. Ma Gaia; Community schools & services.

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Petra Kelly o n ECO-l'emimsm.

57

Green Breakthrough; Computer Paranoia; CHP; Sizewell.

White whales; Space Wars.

58

Rudolf Bahro Interview; Mount Fuji Peacecamp; Lucas Aerospace; Europe's Green Parties: Women for Life on Earth

59

Dora Russell, Petm Kelly and the German Greens; Lead; Drugs; Plant power; Nuclear-free Pacific.

60

Festivals issue; Cynics guide t o Sizewell; Green Rally; Conservation strategy; Beast News.

Nukes and unions; Nukes in the South Pacific. Howard Brenton; North Sea pollution; Acid rain update.

62

Black economy; Free schools; Electric vehicles; The shooting of Reagan; Cancer given the boot.

LULL

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Undercurrents 63 February/March 1984 5 Eddies 9 A case of Abuse - Andrew Taylor 12 Castro-enteritis - Mike Osbourne 16 Kenya: one step forward, two steps back - Mark Newham 19 Weird stuff - Paul Sieveking 20 Beast News - John Mays 22 A Promised Land - Jacob Von Uexkull 25 Reviews 28 Briefing 30 Classified With this issue Undercurrents teams up - in perpetuity we hope - with Catalyst, the journal previously sponsored by the Ecology Party and the Liberal Ecology Group, which is ceasing publication because of staffing difficulties. We hope this merger will benefit everyone: on the one hand Catalyst, whose demise would be a loss to the eco-political debate, and her readers who may be enticed to join us; and on the other hand, UC readers whom we suspect will value our hijacking writers like Tony Beamish, John Foster and David Fleming whose contributions will add some desperately needed ‘weight’ to Undercurrents.

And now our Readers’ Survey. A friendly DHSS supervisor returned the survey with a request for ‘the earth’s mysteries’. Evidently the dole payroll must be a bit of a bundle by now, and this reader, needing something more than observation of the unmysteriously massed British, is rejecting advice from Wittgenstein who said - well almost - that ‘to pay is to think about the meaning of life’. Bearing this in mind we offer in UC 63 the mystery of modern human-creatlon, and the mysterious few who think it’s such a bad thing - procreation and all that - that they are quite willing to knock people off in bulk, even after the unfortunates have got the hang of walking and no longer idle life away in their respective test tubes.

This will do nothing for ‘Worried about your Macho Image’, who writes, ‘Tell me about ordinary people who care . . the stilted lefties in UC who spoke down to me over the years leave me quite cold’. We can’t please everyone, I’m afraid, stilted we grew, stilted we stay, stuck to our workshop desks, not macho enough - sorry, activist enough - even to take up ‘Trade Union Official Beano· Buyer’s’ advice that we should strike at ‘leather bound suites in semis’, the essence of evil.

Thanks, however, are extended to ‘Rural! Shopkeeper’, not only for the admirable copy ideas of ‘Constructive Anarchy and Clandestine Farming’, but the suggestion we print a guide to cheap printing, which we admit would be an education for us as well. And cheers to P & T . . of course we’ll include more football.

Keep with us for UC64 if you can. By that time we hope to publish the results of the Readers’ Survey (Your Answers Questioned, and Who are the Other Six?), and we’re planning a look at the energy scene - with football, but no machismo.

We had financial help for this issue too. , . thank you Helen, Malcolm Brighting, Tom Burke, Catalyst, CND, Environmental Data Services, Greenpeace International, John ITDG, Marek and David Ross. _______________________________________________________________________________________