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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 36, Number 22. 1973

Letters

page 18

Letters

Letters to the Editor: should be given to one of the editors, left in the box outside the office or posted to Box 1347. If at all possible they should be typed, or printed legibly, double-spaced on one side of the paper only.

We try to impose a limit of 300 words per letterif you find yourself unable to work within these limits then come and see us about the possibility of putting it in the form of an article.

Hopefully we will not receive any more forged letters from the pens of well-meaning but, nevertheless misguided correspondents who seek to propagate their foul smears while remaining anonymous. Letters should be signed by the writers real name even if a nom-de-plume is used.

Drawing of a girl writing a letter

Cricket Colonialism

Sirs,

IT seems most important to me that the present scries of cricket test between England and New Zealand should not be ignored by progressive people. So it is most encouraging to me to note the study of cricket that is occurring among the staff of Salient.

Perhaps it is not apparent to readers why the current cricket series is so important. In simple terms, it is a matter of the struggle against neo-colonialist domination by the mother country. Since the granting of independence to New Zealand in 1907, Britain has employed a diversity of means to continue its colonial domination of New Zealand. Many of these we see and freely recognise, such as the shipping of our exports of primary products to the British market in British- owned ships. But the continuation of attempted imperialist domination of New Zealand on the sports field is less generally recognised.

To examine this idea in greater detail, I will illustrate from the two most recent tours of New Zealand sporting teams to Britain. The 1972—73 All Black tour of Britain (before it got to France) was, on its playing record, quite a success. However, there appeared to be a danger that the victims of colonial oppression might think they were capable of an independent existence. Therefore, to stifle any such radical murmurings of discontent from among the exploited masses, the British Press started a campaign to slate our boys as dirty players. That was why our Keith was sent home. After all, if the colonial peoples play their sport dirty, you can't say that they won.

Drawing of a faceless figure holding paper

And so now the importance of the current cricket series is becoming clear. Every time the New Zealanders approach a victory in a test match, monopoly capitalism cringes in fear. Thus we witness the event, in the First test, of the Englishman Greig bowling a short ball to Dayle Hadlee, causing him to collapse on to the stumps when hit by it, and thus sealing victory for England. Such are the filthy tricks that arc employed by imperialism.

That is why progressive forces in this country should be taking an acute interest in the cricket scries. Until the colonies can beat the mother country at its own game, how can they possibly throw off the last shackles of imperialist domination?

Yours sincerely

D.S. Grace

Salient Selling Out

Dear Roger and Peter,

I was one of the disappointed many at the "Why I Am Pissed Off With Salient Forum". There were so many criticisms from the right wing and the God Squad about Salient (most of them unjustified) that honest lefties and others, such as me, did not get a chance to attack and smear the reputations of the current editors.

Salient is giving far too much column space to people who could best be described as part of the emerging ruling class, i.e., your average students. It is getting so bad that its hard to find the Marxism—Leninism—Mao Tsetung thought among all the reactionary crap.

Large numbers of articles written from a rabidly left wing point of view have been rejected by yourselves due to lack of space. In fact Roger Steele admitted to me that Salient has been playing down the secterian raving, and has rejected letters that attack class enemies! Certain members of the progressive movement in Wellington arc beginning to ask an important question: Is Salient selling out to the impartial, 'giving both points of view'?

We will be eternally vigilant against any creeping liberalism in Salient. Transgressions will be remembered, and, come the revolution, three guesses what will happen.

Fraternally yours,

Clark Kent.

Another View of NZUSA

Dear Eds,

Mr Steele's article on NZUSA reveals a basic misunderstanding of the make-up of that much maligned body. His criticisims are sound, but they arc not criticisms of NZUSA but of the Students' Association who at present exercise a majority vote. If Auckland and Canterbury students can find no better representatives than the career bureaucrats they elect to manoeuvre behind the scenes for further advancement and self-gratification, then NZUSA Officers can do no more than follow the directives these people vote through at Council and National Executive meetings. Since "Salient" is an organ of VUWSA Mr Steele would do more service for students if he told them how much effort Victoria student representatives put into trying to direct their funds in directions other than bureaucrats salaries.

His assertion that NZUSA is a mutual protection society for student bureaucrats is pure crap. At the last National Executive some of the delegates were more interested in manoeuvring for their own political futures than in running a national students' association. The way they spread despicable lies behind one another's back hardly sounds like mutual protection.

The blame for all these charades lies not with NZUSA as a body but with the silent majority of apathetic ignoramuses who don't bother to vote, or don't know how to vote when students' association officers are elected. How about an analysis of the political ignorance of Auckland and Canterbury students who elect these people. How about an analysis of the distorted articles on NZUSA which appeared in "Canta" and "Craccum".

Dave Cunningham

VUWSA/NZUSA Liaison Officer

Stephen Chan Says — Cederella Needs new Clothes

Dear Roger,

Drawing of a faceless figure holding paper

I was delighted by your article on NZUSA in the June 27 issue of Salient. No doubt this will serve to arouse much debate either for or against the Salient styled bureaucrats who inhabit NZUSA offices. I am only sorry that your article was so factually incorrect and that it saw fit to devolve from time to time into pettiness.

I shall answer your points one by one.

1)When a Salient staff member rang NZUSA offices enquiring about the number of university students in this country the NZUSA receptionist did not know. She passed the call on to an NZUSA officer who spent some time in compiling a comprehensive list of student numbers university by university. This list was given to your Salient reporter with the note-added that the numbers listed were for the end of 1972 as most universities had not yet themselves acquired final student numbers for 1973.
2)There is very fine liaison between NZUSA and its Student Travel Bureau. Ultimately it is hoped that the STB will become an independent agency but at this stage, in its first year under full time directorship, it is obviously premature to state that it should immediately become a separate entity. The STB has not been held back by NZUSA's petty wrangling. In fact NZUSA is very pleased with the way the STB is running.
3)The new salary structure for NZUSA officers is outlined below. President, $2500 + $1000+ $70 cost of living (no change); Education Vice President $2500 + $70 cost of living (no change). Any future officers who are elected as opposed to appointed will receive the basic $2500 plus cost of living increases. Education Research Officer, $3800 (formerly $3500); Arts Council Director $3800 (formerly $3000). Any future officers who are appointed will receive the basic $3800 plus future cost of living increases. Two appointed officers arc now paid on another level. Director STB $4300 (formerly $3500); administrative officer $4300 (formerly $3500). N.B. All cost of living increases require Executive clearance.

In your article you were at pains to state that David Cuthbert neither wanted nor needed the money. David has in fact accepted his well deserved rise in salary.

At a recent Victoria University Students Association Executive meeting I quite clearly explained that the question of salaries would have arisen at some imminent date any way. If I could take up your badly related example of STB, I should point out that this service to students is rapidly gaining gigantic proportions. David Cuthbert will not be director for ever. By the time he leaves the post, the operations of STB will be such that no amount of unskilled enthusiasm will be able to keep such high standards.

All elected officers of NZUSA will retain the same reasonably low salary. However, the NZUSA Council that fixed such "egalitarian" and unworkable salary structures built in a dichotomy between rates of pay for elected officers and appointed officers. The appointed officers were chosen by a committee set up to investigate their professional skills. These "professional" people were to have been paid $1000 more than the elected officers. This recognition of professionalism or whatever was advanced as an egalitarian exercise which failed to appreciate its inbuilt dichotomy. NZUSA has now simply exaggerated that dichotomy. It has not this year begun the wild exercise of differentiation between this salary and that salary. It has simply made more workable the badly conceived legacy it was saddled with.

4)Because NZUSA has now been able to decipher its accounts, it might now be possible to employ a full-time worker in international affairs. This of course does nothing for Joris de Bres who was, as you quite rightly mentioned, under paid.
5)You wrote that the last National Executive meeting was the scene of several exaggerated charges against the Director of the Student Travel Bureau. The fact that the NZUSA resolved quite firmly in favour of David's integrity hardly seems to fit in with your earlier point that there is nothing but petty wrangling between NZUSA and STB.
6)You write that NZUSA is now a residence for "ambitious student politicians." I assure you that the kind of person stupid enough to come to NZUSA can hardly be ambitious for anything else apart from his or her own loss of private life, interruption to studies and the delights of being a target for all manner of exciting criticism.
7)Your article stated that all the NZUSA Administrative Officer had to do to clear up the messy accounts from 1972 was to call in a team of accountants. These accountants in fact spent a total of just under six weeks to work through the complete wreckage that passed for bookkeeping and the filing of invoices last year. You might note that the Administrative Officer last year was paid even more than Sharyn Cederman despite Sharyn's recent increase in pay. Sharyn in fact spent some considerable time trying to piece the accounts together herself. However it became clear that if she was to keep up with the administration required for present NZUSA activities, somebody else had to clean up the mess from former years. The fact that it took qualified people so long to make sense of the NZUSA accounts only indicates that student money is actually wasted in the employment of enthusiastic, politically conscious incompetence.
8)As I made clear in a preceding paragraph, NZUSA is the last institute on earth that promoted status seekers. I have no idea where you got the impression that I "sought only an increase in my status by coming to work for NZUSA in Wellington." I have no idea either of how you discovered that the Presidents of Auckland and Canterbury were status seekers. Apparently a person can work as hard as he or she can on behalf of students but might still be damned for holding a different ideology. Just what do you know about the Auckland and Canterbury situations anyway?

Drawing of a faceless figure holding paper

9)In your article I believe you made some attempts at humorous commentary by describing Sharyn's obviously bourgeois origins in terms of her "fetching and stylish clothing." You were at pains to describe her "full length skirt, flattering bright yellow sweater, and latest style, form [unclear: ting] coat." Your eye was obviously [unclear: unatntive] as Sharyn's full length skirt is three years old, her bright yellow sweater is Four years old and her latest style form fitting coat is five years old.
10)You mentioned that I did not reply to your last article about NZUSA. You quoted me as saying "I don't think it was worth it." You will recall that my exact words were "How do you expect me to reply sensibly to such a radically vindictive article."
11)You constantly express the hope that Sharyn and I should resign. I should point out that it took several attempts and well towards the end of 1972, to find either a President or Administrative Officer for NZUSA. It seems that while multitudinous armchair critics have been stringing sentences together as proof of their basic educations, no-one was prepared to come in and attempt to run this monolith. The fact is that NZUSA is a monolith and the current personnel had nothing to do with making it such. The fact is that it had become an incredible, clumsy and badly ordered monolith that needed clearing up and this is what the current personnel has done.

As for your final point about cutting NZUSA in to autonomous sections, I am pleased to inform you that this is in fact almost exactly the case. Each one of NZUSA's divisions is given a separate annual budget. Moreover this year I have been quite confident that the various officers looking after the various divisions arc fully competent individuals. Consequently, they are not at all directed by myself but rather left to develop the fields that they are most expert in.

I hope this clears up a few points.

Yours sincerely,

Stephen Chan.

page 19

Man vs Woman

Dear Sirs,

A couple of Salients ago J. Olsen, in an endearingly honest disclosure informed us that a man's main fear was his fear of sexual failure.

The Men's Club-Playboy atmosphere which permeates our society would hardly be one which would dispel this sort of fear. In that atmosphere pretentions to and recipes for the attainment of instant and everlasting stiffness would be an impossible achievement which could only be upheld by myths maintained by the Brotherhood.

It would not take many women to dissolve these myths — hence my conjecture that this is one of the keys to the apartheid-like situation which exists between the sexes — at least in the big world outside university (a situation 'explained' by J. Olsen's "equal but different" theory). The fear of sexual incompetence is one reason which makes it imperative for men to keep control over women (John Stuart Mill called it "keeping them in subjection") so that it is men who make the rules and call the tune — in sexual relationships as in the larger society. The particular "system" doesn't seem to make much difference although we do hear some hopeful reports from Sweden occasionally.

The divide and conquer approach seems to have applied fairly universally and so we have the dichotomy of "pure" and "evil" women (not men, note), virgin and prostitute. The need for female eunuchs — pure and ignorant virgins and monogamy (for women only of course) can be seen. These people have no basis for making invidious comparisons.

Then on the other hand is that very convenient category of evil women ranging from the high-class call girl to the common or garden-variety prostitute, who serve the twin function of sewer and scapegoat for the baser instincts of none-the-less noble man.

This is a sad and hypocritical situation to say the least but I would remind J. Olsen that reputable experts assure us that male "sexual failure" (so much more visible than the female variety) is more a psychological thing than a physiological one. It should also be of interest to note that some female experts have made the astounding (?!) claim that "a man without a penis could make a very good lover." This statement should be recognised as a liberating idea and not as a castrating one (because a penis in its more usual place is lovely too) — its just that its not always essential and there should therefore be no need for talk of "sexual failure".

The sooner we get away from the Kama Sutra thirty-day-crection performance mentality the happier we might all be.

Yours sincerely

Susan Tanner

Thou Shall Not Kill What?

Dear Mr Editor Sir!

In this day and age, what earthly use are principles? Take No. 1: 'Thou shalt not kill'. To kill presumably means to deprive something of life. That includes not only humans, animals, and jelly fish but plants and bacteria. So, to slick to this principle one must never cat any animal, plant or jelly fish. One must not use soap, disinfectant or any kind of antibiotic — and of course, never use flyspray, or rat poison. So one lives in considerable discomfort. So where does everyone draw the line? Presumably at killing humans. Why is a human being worth anything more than a blade of grass? Isn't it easier to discard this principle, and prefer to think in terms of convenience for those living a full life now, where an unborn child's life is perhaps worth as little as a blade of grass? Even though it is extremely abhorrent to sterilise, the concept of abortion is perhaps necessary, to allow life to function adequately as it is now, in society.

An Unprincipled Heathen

Norman the Conquerer

Dear Sirs,

It is interesting to read that 'Norman the Conquerer' claimed that the 'Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam had no status as a government and suggested that it was merely a puppet of Hanoi.

This argument seems to ring a bell. Checking through 'Keeping's Contemporary Archives' (page 23507 1969/1970) I came across a statement which was rather similar to that of our great conquerer, Norm. That statement was made by none other than the man who in front of the Pope swore, that 'there are no political prisoners in South Vietnam' — Adolf Von Thieu. On June 11 1969, when the P.R.G was established. Adolf Thieu described its establishment as 'a propaganda trick' and said 'of what value are governments formed by men hidden in the jungles and mountains who do not even dare reveal the place where their government is established?'

Well it seems that birds of a feather still stick together.

H.T. Lee

Sydney.

P.S. In 1959, the Saigon government diplomatic representative in Phnom Penh told British reporter Michael Field; "We are a government of desperadoes." Perhaps the Norman conquerers share this sentiment.

Salient or the Dominion

Dear Sir,

Image of two shocked faces looking at each other

With reference to your plans to sell Salients in Wellington — what are you some sort of latent capitalist? Are you not aware as Mr Tripe (symbolism there?) points out in his fascinating letter (June 27) that 'Marxism-Leninism, however, shows the impossibility of using the institutions of the bourgeois state for the purposes of the proleterian state'? If selling papers isn't a capitalist trick what would you call messers Blundell/Gendall — cultural revolutionaries?

On the other hand, possibly your reluctance to perform the 'heroic act of the peoples' revolution' i.e., giving the fucking things away is based on your shrewd appraisal of the fact that 'the masses' of Wellington would probably, like us students, prefer the Dominion: But going by the piss-poor rag you produce, who's fault is that?

Yours sincerely

Doug Wilson

P.S. I'm sorry I spelt Leninism wrong the first time, but it's not a word I use very often — on the other hand, I suppose that considering the number of limes I've read the bloody word in Salient in the last three years, you're probably right, the mistake was inexcusable. Fraternally yours, Doug.

Trots & Nasties

Dear Sirs,

When, in his letter to you, Don Carson writes about the National Socialist Educational conference that the Socialist Action League held recently, he almost exposes the true nature of the organisation. However, there is a subtle, though unimportant distinction between Trotskyism and Fascism. Trotsky was an international socialist whereas it was Hitler who was the national socialist. I hope that it will now be possible for your readers to understand the relationship between the Young Socialists and Hitler Youth, and therefore to see the Young Socialists in their true light.

Yours,

Anti-Fascist.

Tangle in Paris

Dear Sir,

"It's a dog-eat-dog world" drawing

How, I ask, can your correspondant claim to have reviewed Bertolucci's Let's Tangle in Paris when he committed all reference to that powerful central scene, so arresting in its primitive aggression, which strains from every pore to the single leaping flame, - a veritable flagstaff - that climbs unstoppably, hopefully, towards the ceiling, so that she trembles as the colours approach, wondering if she should stand, or kneel, out of respect. His hands rasp over her, burning her spine, shoulders, biceps, nipples, navels, thighs, shins, never tarrying, eager for new ground, new lands to prospect and milk of their precious secretions, until her body bums, melts like buttered toast and she reaches out resolutely with both hands for — it is some distance away — the central heating switch. 'Get your head down that end,' he says, ' and dangle your legs over the clothesline.' So saying, he crawls under the bed, balances on his neck backwards, and does it over her left shoulder.

I must say that on first viewing the extraordinary, highly significant scene, I thought that it represented the crowning, well-nigh miraculous achievement of an artiste long up- and-coming, now truly engage vers the unique possibilities that are his, available to his penetrating — and the word seems scarcely adequate — intellect, which is so typical of the thrusting restlessness of the modern age, - its eternal quest for new vistas of experience, - while pursuing the ultimate relentlessly, revoltingly.

'Do you think ultimate sex is really possible?' is Jeanne's critical question, as she lies smoking at the end of the scene.

It is scarcely one of the questions modem cinema would not do well to avoid.

Yours

O.R. ('Org') Gallaher

Don's Dogma

Dear Companions in Crime,

I suppose I'd better apologise to Alan Coulston for "destroying a beautiful ideal in the eyes of the people". That is, if a simple cartoon of a yank loving piano player can actually accomplish such a heinous act. I can't support Ashkenazy's views either Alan, in fact I actively oppose them. To keep silent in the face of a homage to imperialism just because an apologist for Western decadence can play the piano "en- thrallingly" and has been given a hard time in a revisionist country is mere sentimentality. And my fellow traveller doesn't substantiate with any examples his charge that I'm a rigid dogmatist. I try not to be dogmatic in my own "twisted" way, although I'll certainly admit to the odd blue here and there. Dogmatism is a tendency to be watched for and corrected, but as the Chairman said once "It is better to be a dogmatist than a revisionist." I would submit that it's also better to be dogmatic than to represent the USA as an admirable country.

Yours flexibly,

Don Franks.

Readers Guide

Dear Sirs,

Your guide to vocabulary in Salient; I don't want to scratch all that handyman's gloss sprayed over the complicated world, only to note your claim that "questions and criticisms will be published and answered as is necessary". As is necessary? If you like them? If you think you can edit or discredit them easily? Anyway, try the following quote for size. It's certainly not at all "necessary" to publish it, as it's by that old hack Orwell; none of your favoured governments sees it as "necessary" to allow their citizens to read him, so I guess you'll forget to publish this too.

"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible... thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called 'pacification'. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry; this is called 'transfer of population', or 'rectification of frontiers'. People arc imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called 'elimination of unreliable elements'. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.... When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink."

You, if not your readers, might like to look at your own collection of dead lumber in the light of those principles. Marx actually wrote well in German; what you can't understand is that a term like bourgeois died as a meaningful word or concept a long time ago. You're using it as a Catholic mutters responses to the Mass, essentially because you can't be buggered thinking or analysing freshly for yourselves.

Right on, comrades,

Alec Don.

This criticism will be answered in the "Readers Guide Forum" next issue. D'F'