The PBEC conference demonstration and subsequent reaction again highlights the tactless ignorance and facile pettiness of all those who organise university politics. Once the rumpus had died away the traditional witch hunting began... by both sides. Wednesday's "open forum" on the subject was nauseusly predictable as all the "innocent" parties sought to lay the familiar charges of irresponsibility, mismanagement and abuse. We've seen it all before and it only confirms our apathetic students' opinion that V.U.W. politics are designed for the greater glorification of those idiots prepared to publicly admit to their condition.

Graeme Collins makes a hopeful plea for the facts, then speaks categorically without them. As if, with all the half-truths and hysteria, they will ever become evident. He does have a point however, which may well have been taken up by our student spokesman before the demonstration ever started; It's about time those opposed to certain ideas and practices thoroughly familiarised themselves with the facts upon which such ideas and practices are founded. Moreover it's quite incredible that the argument against New Zealand's involvement with PBEC was never spelt out in the media. "Don't blame us, we tried", cried the innocent activists. Crap. However the use of any amount of common sense or diplomatic manoeuvring to ensure any such statement was made would have been too taxing, too idealogically distasteful for our concerned campus colleagues.

Surprisingly enough, even those of us who don't dominate the S.U.B. microphone arrogantly alleging concern for humanity while secretly hating the next door neighbour are opposed to big business exploiting developing countries. However, were the demonstrators opposed to Canadian, Japanese and American business investment in New Zealand? If they were, I suggest Economic Hostorians like Rob Campbell and Timmy Groser forget the histrionics and consider the economics and what N.Z. will look like in twenty years without foreign investment. Or don't they really care?

Why not a student population which knows what it is demonstrating about before it starts getting involved in all these too easily over-simplified causes? For the sake of our credibility, and continued existence as an influential pressure group, I suggest we find out what we are talking about before borer bombs antagonise those who may have appreciated our arguments. As things now stand, V.U.W. politicians are rapidly engineering their own destruction as personal prejudice and rampant egotism on their behalf, and gullibility on the students behalf, is rapidly draining away all productive effort. Loud-mouthed socialists may do well to study the mafia's methods of how to infiltrate the establishment and employ its resources for its own ends without the bureaucrats even suspecting it. Incidentally Mao Tse Tung recommends a similar strategy: the ultimate success is to win without open confrontation.

R.A. (Apathetic) Priest.

A message for all those students at Vic, who study indifference, [unclear: apath] and downright hostility towards 'the usual few' who bother to [unclear: analyse] actions of those who govern: get off your arses before your leaning [unclear: to] of ivory collapse around you!

I will begin my diatribe, if I may be permitted, with a small and [unclear: seemig] innocuous quote: "we are only in this area to perform a CIVIC duty [unclear: "the] speaker. . . is he so innocuous? Depends upon which side of the [unclear: bri] you stand, I suppose. You see Mr. George. C. Prill happens to be the [unclear: pi] dent of the Lockheed Corp. The only reason that he is so unknown [unclear: (an] infamous), is because Boeing got in first with the contract [unclear: acceptance] Prill had been quicker off the mark, and had noticed which way the [unclear: W] House air freshener was pointed, then maybe those lucky [unclear: Vietnamese] would be sounding the praises of the L-52's! Even so old Prill hasn't [unclear: be] half that slack really; I'm told that he knocked up something like [unclear: ten] a half Billion dollars mainly in defence contracts over the period [unclear: 19170] . . . give or take a billion or two!

This is the kind of mother that [unclear: Muldoon] saw so fit to [unclear: welco] must confess, in all honesty, that I was little acquainted with the rest [unclear: of] fat-daddies present, suffice to say that they represent such notables [unclear: as] harto of Indonesia and Sato of Japan. (What I object to are the sort [unclear: of] friendships which are being lined up at present by our government. [unclear: The] erative word here is "present" - you and I are the future - whatever [unclear: th] will be of it! We will be called upon to handle such delicate matters as waters for the Showa Denkos, military support for bankrupt [unclear: Indonesia] generals and maybe sanctuary for China's foe from Taiwan (they'll [unclear: be] bing the first plane to their numbered Swiss bank accounts very [unclear: soon!]

Now I confess quite readily (and dare I say it, proudly), that I'm [unclear: simply] common manual labourer; maybe you will say that I have absolutely [unclear: n] business poking my nose in around campus — be that as it may, I am [unclear: a er] of taxes and I do subscribe to the idea of a university to educate [unclear: tho] who wish to serve the country. That's the crunch isn't it. What are you on the hill for? Obviously you are there for one sole purpose — to [unclear: keep] the good old clapped-out system functioning smoothly; Why else would arts grad or quite often the science, end up in shitty swivel-chair [unclear: medio]

And believe you me, I've been there and it's all that Bristow makes it. [unclear: o] be. If there really is to be a credible society, complete with a [unclear: Credible] University, then there's got to be some change made. One of the first is to view life through polished spectacles. Believe it or not [unclear: Godzo] culture and opportunity doesn't operate anything like fairly. How [unclear: ma] people from Newtown born and bred, or maybe Porirua, do you [unclear: drink] coffee with in the Caf? Sweet F.A. I'll bet. Do you feel that maybe [unclear: the] systematised values are a wee bit fucked up and that maybe we all [unclear: oug] to join hands a little more often, instead of scurrying swiftly along [unclear: city] streets like so many ants being followed by a steamroller. You will [unclear: leav] the university, most of you anyway, and you will grab the best [unclear: padded] seat going and turn to the most important things in life - money, car, [unclear: pitige], and extensive home and wife; (Muldoomist education usually [unclear: ma] sure that she isn't mentally so.)

Those who assembled in the Student Union Building were the [unclear: biggest] bunch of dollar- eyed harpies I've yet to lay eyes on. Some of the comments thrown at the demonstrators included: "get a wash", "you're [unclear: jus'] cists the lot of you", and the usual epithet, "bloody longhairs". [unclear: Now], you take this sort of talk from those who control the economic [unclear: destiny] this country (the Japs didn't appear to savvy the Kiwi lingo, so I'll [unclear: exc] them.) I was personally invited to have a go by a meat-headed yank [unclear: wh] apart from his suit, looked as though he had just emerged from a [unclear: tour] Calley's American Division in Vietnam. I declined politely of [unclear: course,] whole tenor of the afternoon was one of Mighty Mr Big-shot and [unclear: mini] rabble. Needless to say the local papers coloured up the whole affair [unclear: by] adding a liberal sprinkling of Communist Party members (there was [unclear: on] only), and of course the whole thing was attributed to the local [unclear: editor] a "scurrilous magazine" when the great Gauleiter's porcine features appeared on the box over the week-end. This sort of smearism is just [unclear: total] unwarranted and it will endure for time to come as the statement [unclear: of] honest, conniving pricks whose intellect and humanity are about as [unclear: lo] as the time they have left to carry on ruling us. Didn't they tell you [unclear: w] living in an age of revolution — the N.Z. Communist Party claims [unclear: that] section of the world wide (and that's what it is) rev' began with the [unclear: fo ing] of the Party in the 1920's I couldn't disagree more, quite frankly — began with Hone Heke's axing of old glory up in the Bay of Islands, [unclear: an] it will only end when Robert, the Watties and the Kitts, [unclear: the] reactionary Kirkites, and all the foreign land-grabbers who so eagerly [unclear: a] [unclear: ived] at the P.B.E.C. with visions of a despoiled N.Z. floating upon a [unclear: sea] greenbacks split the scene . . . good and permanent!

We can embark immediately upon a great programme of bridge building create gigantic spans to South Africa ... oh joyous vision. . .I can see [unclear: t] look on Nelson Mandela's face as he steps ashore from his exile on [unclear: Ron] Island. Terribly sorry to upset you Sandy King, and all those who [unclear: witt ly] or otherwise support the projected Springbok Tour. . .Adolf [unclear: Balthaza] Vorster awaits at the other side of the Marshall Bridge; despite the [unclear: indu gent] prattle in the local press about the great man's bravery in the [unclear: field] words. You and I can sink a few more vessels too, by facing the fact [unclear: th] the Vietnamese aren't being manipulated by fiendish little men in [unclear: Peki] who sit atop piles of little red books operating little levers labelled [unclear: "we] proletarian revolution."

By the way of conclusion, I would like to leave you with a few thoughts from the minds of more highly regarded personages than myself:

1.	"I think, in the classical Marxist sense, that for a proper rational use of resources in the U.S. the socialisation of the country's economy is essential" The speaker? None other than ecology pioneer, Barry Commoner, and Time's man of the week on the front cover in early 1970. Try Mr. Prill on that one!
2.	"The ecological movement must seek a radical transformation of the very institutions and enterprises which waste our resources and pollute the earth." Philosopher and teacher of Angela Davis, Prof. Herbert Marcuse, University of California.
3.	"In the end, we are altering people's aspirations without providing the means for them to be satisfied. In the rush to industrialise we break up communities, so that the controls which formerly regulated behaviour are destroyed before alternatives can be provided." From A Blueprint For Survival Jan., 1972. Signed by 33 of the United Kingdom's top intellectuals in the economic, scientific and environmental spheres.
4.	The greater the extent to which a country tends to start its development upon the foundation of large scale industry (as does the United States, for instance), the more rapid is this process of destruction. Capitalist production, therefore is only able to develop the technique and the combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the foundations of all wealth — the land and the workers." Karl Marx. Das Capital. 1867.

Power to the People.