TUESDAY'S

make their Chemically we are no more than a compound of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and sulphur, whose current market price is no more than a few shillings, yet we are capable of the rarest mental ingenuity, physical dexterity, touch, taste, behind THE NEWS SALES CONFERENCE smooth coverings of skin, the surface of which, we learn, is actually dead tissue.

For the biologically ignorant, among whose number I am one, there is a wealth of clear, exciting information that comes as a revelation. Part of the experience of the film is knowledge itself.

Yet beautiful though the body is, a precise, intricate, complicated mechanism, it does not exist in some biological or aesthetic vacuum.

It inhabits-a world, is part of and subject to the laws of nature, and defines itself by a struggle with nature to wrest an existence, a livelihood, a future.

This basic contradiction, and more precisely, the form that it takes at this particular historical juncture, is at the centre of this film, and it is this that raises the level above a simple catalogue of biological information.

The relentless, never-ending, never-stopping, production line churning out the wealth for the few, yet created by the sweat muscle of the many for wages, driven, exhausted, cut off from their real potential, their creative possibilities, is a recurring image that hammers its way throughout the film and serves as a constant reminder that this is where capitalist society begins.

And it is this relentless process, the drive for profit, that malms bodies, brutalizes them, deforms them, and denies them their true expression; that pollutes rivers, that plunders the earth, that threatens the continued existence of our planet itself.

It is this system that throws men and women into the lost succeed in communicating, the youth are rejecting.

The ruling class, and even more so those who do their dirty work for them, often like to use phrases like "failure of communication' when what they're really talking about is a failure of kidology.

The problem which the conference at the Sheraton Park Hotel had to discuss was that the youth of America-despite years of militarist and chauvinist comic books, films and television programmes, as well as distorting newspapers—-are no longer being kidded.

Air Force General Jack J Cotton spoke at the conference of the diminishing respect for the military, and the need for gaining the confidence of our younger people'.

It seemed to be generally agreed that more glossy photos of aircraft or slick movies about the marines, would not do the job. Nor did anyone suggest that John Wayne could help-at least if they did, it wasn't reported.

An Army information officer said the trouble was that the Vietnam war had split the nation, and that most members of the generation now being drafted were opposed to the war. twilight of old age, gives them a pittance to survive on merely because they are no longer productive and cannot work.

It is this system that plunders the underdeveloped countries of their natural resources and enslaves them with poverty and malnutrition.

One of the most remarkable sequences in the film, and remarkable for its very simlicity and directness, is to show leaped together the average amount consumed by western man over a period of 50 years and to contrast it with the meagre bundle of rice, a little bacon and some vegetables that is the average consumption of an Indian over the same period.

The Indian diet does not even "Then how do you explain the war to them?' he was asked.

'You try to tell them why we're in Vietnam.' 'Do you succeed?' 'It's difficult, he replied, 'because the reasons are always changing.' Other speakers referred to the My Lai massacre, saying that the revelations about this had done irreparable harm to the Army's 'image'. (Burn down a village, murder the women and children, but whatever you do, make sure it doesn't harm the Army's 'image'.)

A colonel raised the issue of the service clubs inquiry, which had revealed rackets involving officers.

He wondered how could you explain to the ordinary soldier why the Army was not court martialling key figures in the service clubs scandal, although a Senate committee has accused them of getting rich illegally.

Finally, an Air Force colonel told the conference:

'Our image is at a new low. If you find out what we can do to mend the fences, let us know, will you?' On that hopeful note, the Sheraton Park sales conference ended.

Ah well. If they can't sell their goods, then it looks as though the firm is on its way to going out of business!

•.. This relentless process, the drive for profit, that maims bodies, scars them, deforms them, brutalizes them and denies them their true expression