The Other Press

October 28th to November 10

 

 

 

 

 

0
Where’s Our Coneratar? |

I sit here in the dark writing this issue’s editorial:
why do I do so? I had planned to type it on the IBM
Selectric; why do I not do so? I was in the middle of
typesetting a story, but the typesetting machine
slowly died as the glowing red blips of my story
faded into the machine; why did it do so?

It is Friday, October 22 1982. The wind and rain
have converged on the sleepy little college in the
valley of McBride Avenue. Once a busy bustle of
students moved about, classes bristled with excite-
ment, and the vending machines were spewing out
junkfood. No more. All that remains is the eerie glow
of the college’s emergency lights strafing the empty
halls. No, nuclear radiation has not killed everyone
off, no, the plague has not sent everyone home; it’s a
power outage!

Why should a power outage cause such unbeliev-
able havoc and desolation? The reason is because
the college has no damn generator! Why? Ask the
administrators, who flee to the warm bars while we
students shiver in the darkness, secure only in the
knowlege that things that go bump in the night don’t
come around at ten o’clock in the morning. Though it
lasted but twenty minutes, the power outage was,
shall we say, a touch inconvenient?

They say that necessity is the mother of invention,
and as we don’t need to invent the generator, we do
need to invent a way to convince administration of
our need to get one.

One final note. It is going to be a long, cold, dark
winter...does the new campus have a generator?

by Warren Laine

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Si

: fx ‘The Other Press will normally publish all letters received, subject to
such provisos as appropriateness, due regard for libel, taste, and

_ Writers should aim to keep letters under 300 words; longer lecters
me be condensed to meet space requirements. Priority will be given to

 

 
    
   
  

College students and employees. All
| Segore nares
| fot be printed). The staff will cor

 
      

 

 

 

 

a =
Diamonds Aren't Forever!

by Kevin Russel
reprinted from The Manitoban

Imagine a picture three quarters the
size of this page. In it is a young woman
holding a young man’s face and gazing
lovingly into his eyes because he has
bought her a new diamond ring. The
caption above it reads:

“Ts two months salary too much to
spend for something that lasts forever?"’

That is what you would be seeing now
if we were a bunch of unprincipled
profiteers. As it is, The Manitoban (and
The Other Press) has refused to print this
advertisement from the South African
corporation, De Beers. Here’s why we
haven't printed the ad.

I trust everyone noticed the words
“South African’’ in the last paragraph.
De Beers is the largest, and for all
purposes only, diamond company in the
world. It is an integral part of the
economic and political establishment in
South Africa whose apartheid policies
enslave a race. Your average mine worker
in South Africa gets 880 rands per month
in salary. White, that is. Blacks, who
make up most of the mining workforce,
only get 148. Do you want your student
paper running on money that was made

by enslaving 20 million people for the

colour of their skin?

The ad was thrown out without further
consideration. But that’s not all that’s
objectionable about it. The Western
Regional Conference of Canadian Univer-
sityPress has labelled the De Beers ad
sexist. It says, in effect, ‘‘For two
month’s salary, you can buy this wo-
man,’’ Does De Beers actually believe
that Canadian women are stupid enough
to throw themselves at the first jerk who
bribes them with a diamond? And why do
they refuse to even consider the possibil-
ity that a woman might want to buy a man
a diamond? This ad is the product of a
sick mind that treats woman as chattel
and believes that love can be bought and
sold like a hunk of rock.

So you think you’ll buy your diamond
from some other company, maybe one
that treats blacks and women as human
beings? Fat chance! In one way or
another, De Beers controls the sale of
every diamond mined in the entire world.
Purchasing a diamond supports apar-
theid.

Maybe it’s time you considered why
you want a diamond in the first place. So
it looks nice. Admit it, you can’t tell the
difference between a diamond and cut
glass. Well they’re worth a lot. they’d be
a good investment, wouldn’t they?

I hate to ruin your dreams of wealth,
but diamonds come churning out of South
Africa like oil out of Alberta. De Beers
uses its monopoly to stockpile diamonds
and keep them ‘‘scarce’’. If they didn’t,
the diamond market would collapse
overnight, and you would get about 10
cents on your dollar.

So how does De Beers keep.the prices
high for these chunks of compressed
coal? Easy. You have been brainwashed!
Several years ago, in an attempt to keep
up its profits, De Beers launched an

advertising campaign that convinced the
ke world that love equals De Beers diam-

 

=,

onds. And I'll bet you never guessed
you’re a victim of corporate mind
manipulation.

‘However, diamond sales have been
flagging recently, so De Beers is starting
a new hype campaign aimed at the 18-25
age range to fill you with the crap that if
you really love someone, you'll give them
a De Beers diamond. The management of
the Manitoban sincerely regrets that you
will not be able to participate in this
campaign.

But it doesn’t really matter that the
entire diamond industry is rotten to the
core. Even the fact that De Beers’ ad
agency has the taste of a barn hog is
secondary. What’s important is that any
support in any way for De Beers

corporation is a support for apartheid.
support apartheid.

We refuse to

 

Power Forever!|

by Warren Laine

Contrary to the stance taken by The
Other Press to boycott the ads of the
DeBeers company, I feel that we should
not do so. DeBeers is a South African ©
corporation with world wide offices; it
holds the worlds monopoly on diamonds.
It is being accused of aparthied policies,
slavery, discrimination, and deplorable
working conditions. 1 feel that the
company’s policies should not dictate
whether we should run advertising for
them.

I think it was Machiavelli who said that
morality has no place in politics and quest
for power; so is the same in business. To
strive for wealth, prestige, power, and
success, morality can play no part
whatsoever; or success will be eluded.

DeBeers is a multinational corporation.

It is very successful and extremely
affluent; good for them! If people get in
the way of big business and the ensuing
strive for power then they will have to be ~
sacrificed. It is the price that must be
paid; or else, the people must keep away -
from such things. Go ahead Other Press,
boycott DeBeers; in doing so you only |
naively assume that DeBeers will give a:

1
damn! AES

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