Eighty-three years of editorial freedom Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan Consumers pay for oil market anarchy 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mi. 48104 News Phone: 764-0552 THURSDAY, JANUARY 17, 1974 Yet another 'last straw' TSTIMONY BY technical experts that the 18-minute gap in the crucial April 21 Watergate tape could not have been caused accidentally has raised little outcry, not because the information is unworthy of the public ire, but because such outrages no longer come as sur- prises., . In this case especially, the conclusions of the experts were fully expected. The Administration's yarn about the hyper- human blunder of President Nixon's per- sonal secretary, Rose Mary "Stretch" Woods, was simply not credible. White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig's mumbling "some sinister force" be- ing behind the gap was even more in- credible. The Administration's inability to pro- duce a logical explanation for the gap in the tape, coupled with the disappear- ance of other key Watergate tapes, should convince all but the most guillible that Someone, Somewhere, is lying. THE REVELATION through notes of former presidential advisor H. R. Haldeman that the missing portion of the tape dealt with Watergate is mere icing on the cake. The technical experts, testifying be- fore federal Judge John Sirica, have put to rest any notion that the erasure of the tape could have been accidental. They said the examination of the tape showed the "record" button had been pushed not Sports Staff DAN BORUS Sports Editor FRANK LONO Managing Sports Editor Bob McGINN ..........Executive Sports Editor CHUCK BLOOM ..........Associate Sports Editor JOEL GREER ...... ......Associate Sports Editor RICH STUCK...........Contributing Sports Editor BOB HEUER .... ...Contributing Sports Editor BuuirNn Stff RILL BLACKFORD Business Manager :AY CATALINOi ............... Operations Manager SHERRY CASTLE ...... ........ Advertising Manager :SANDY FIENBEROt................. Finance Manager DAVE BURLESN....... ...........SBale Manager DEPT. MORS.: Steve LeMire, Jane Dunning, Paula Schwach ASSOC. MGRS.: Joan Ades. Chantal Bancihon, Lind Ross, Mark San:"ainte. S u a n n e Tiberlo, Kevin Trimmer ASST. 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They said it was possible that the markings from which they determined that several erasures had been made might have been the result of someone systematically listening, recording, eras- ing, then moving on to the next section of the tape. Nixon's lawyers prevented the experts from offering an opinion on whether the tape erasure was "deliberate," but the implication is clear. It must take years of practice to learn to "accidentally" press a tape recorder button five times. THIS LATEST disclosure raises once again question occurring with ever- increasing frequency: How much longer will it be before the American people do something about the systematic decep- tion - Nixon style - that has become a part of their lives? For months the Watergate investiga- tion has run through lush and varied fields of scandal. From the plumbers to the tapes, from the milk deal to the ITT affair, from Howard Hughes to Robert Vesco - wherever the Watergate probe has touched down, it has found corrup- tion, ineptitude, and deception. House Majority Leader Thomas O'Neill of Massachusetts called the case of the inexplicable tape gap "just one more item on the avenue of impeachment." He is right, and it is high time that the ave- nue is followed to its logical destination. There are only so many "items on the avenue" that should be allowed, and the track record of the Nixon Administration gives no promise that the skullduggery of his first five years in office has stopped or even declined. The "now it's true, now it's not" press releases emanating from the White House reflect more and more the desperate graspings of a doomed man. THE POINTS against Richard Nixon have long since surpassed those need- ed to bring the man to trial by Con- gress. The testimony on the tape gap is not a final decisive step on O'Neill's "aye- nlue" - it is just one more of a series of steps. The American public should be spared the anguish of watching the score roll up any higher, and spared the disasters the president can yet bring on the nation. The avenue has been traveled far enough. It is time to move the action from Sirica's court to that of the House. The tape gap testimony should be put in its proper place - as one more point on a list of reasons to indict. By KEN RICHARDS DURING THE PAST few weeks there have been numerous ar- ticles in the bourgeois press an- nouncing an impending "fuel cri- sis" recession. Both Britain and Japan are in the throes of a sharp economic crisis, while in the U.S. both auto and airline workers have been hit with large "indefinite" layoffs. These layoffs promise to be only the first in what is quickly becom- ing a recession of major propor- tions. The Arab oil boycott, while of major political importance, is at best only a supplementary cause of the present crisis. As far back as Nixon's April 1973 "energy policy statement" it was recognized that the U.S. fac- ed a fuel shortage, entirely inde- .pendent of the amount of Mideast crude oil which could be imported. This shortage is due to the fail- ure of the oil companies to extract the necessary amounts of natural gas to meet increasing demand, and continue investment in addi- tional refinery capacity during the economic slump of 1969-1970. GIVEN THE PRICING structure of the natural gas market (deter- mined by the Federal Power Com- mission) and the decline in fuel consumption during the 1969-1970 slump, the oil companies found it unprofitable to continue the capi- tal expansion necessary to insure the economy of adequate fuelnsup- plies. Using the Arab oil boycott as an excuse, the capitalist class is forc- ing the working class to pay the costs of marketplace anarchy by driving large numbers out of pro- ductive labor, forcing the unem- ployed to subsistoncharity or the public dole. Even without the help of Nixon and widespread oil shortages, the American economy was headed for a bad year in 1974. The rate of economic growth fell from eight per cent in the first quarter of 1973 to three per cent in the third quarter. Nixon oil policies, whether or not justified by the extent of physical shortages, make virtually certain a serious decline in early 1974. Should the economy turn down, an unlimit- ed supply of oil would not in itself overcome it. THE OIL BOYCOTT tactic has its origins in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), a producers' association formed in response to the cut in royalty payments which the major oil companies forced on the pro- ducing nations in the late 1950's. In its early years the OPEC was dominated by the oil companies. During the 1970s however, the OPEC has successfully used the imperialist rivalry between t h e European powers, the U.S. and Japan to greatly enhance their po- sition, gaining a steady rise in both the price of crude oil and their royalty share in it. It is from this strengthened posi- tion Saudi Arabia's King Faisal, influential in the OPEC, attempt- ed to use the oil boycott to force a reversal of U.S. pro-Zionist fore- ign policy in the Middle East. While defending the oil-produc- ing countries against any attempt by American imperialism to smash the boycott (as it did when the Iranian oil fields were nationalized in the early 1950s), revolutionary socialists can place no political confidence in the Arab nationalism which has dominated the political nature of the struggle against Zion- ism. IN THE NUMEROUS wars of the past quarter century, neither tine Zionist or the Arab nationalist re- gimes have represented the inter- ests of the workers or peasants of their respective countries, much less these of the displaced Pales- tinians. The total domination of Hebrew and Arab nationalism in the Near East has effectively suppressed re- volutionary proletarian struggle in the area. Only a proletarian socialists re- volution can produce a genuinly democratic solution to the national conflict in the Near East - a bi- national Padestinian workers state, with full guarantees of the right -f both Hebrew and Arab peoples, as part of a socialist federation of the Near East. While this is at all times our fundamental program, we must also oppose genocide or national oppression on either side. Thus it is obligatory for socialists to uphold the right of both Pales- tinian Arabs and the Hebrew speak- ing population to self determination - that is, to secede and form their own states - no matter how dif- ficult the resulting territorial di- vision. AS LONG AS the imperialist sys- tem continues to exist, the working class, whether in the Middle East or in the U.S., will be subjected to the pernicious effects of continual crises and wars. It is clear that the ruling class will now seek to blame any layoffs, further inflation, (in short, a n y source of economic discontent) on the oil boycott. It is important that revolutionary Marxists try to pre- vent the rampant economic dis- content from being deflected from the capitalist system and its de- fenders and channeled into chauvin- ist hostility towards "Arab aggres- sion". With the looming recession, the focus of workers' struggles w i1ll shift from speed-up and compul- sory overtime to the question of un- employment. Socialists must coun- terpose to the layoffs a program that links the fight against the layoffs to the need to overthrow the capitalist system of exploita- tion itself. Instead of minimal re- forms, a revolutionary program would call for a sliding scale of wages and hours, i.e. to divide the available work among all work- ers with no loss in pay and a full cost of living escalator clause. There must. be strikes agamnst layoffs, rather than meek accep,- ance of the capitalists' "right" to throw millions of workers onto the bread lines. To expose the sup- posed poverty of the oil monopolies, socialists demand that the coin- pany books be opened for workers inspection, to reveal the trutn about the "energy crisis ' AND TO PUT an end to ruthless exploitation by the privileged few who run the country, such a pro- gram would call for a workers' party based on the unions to fight for nationalization of industry un- der workers control and a workers government. Tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. in Room 4203 of the Union, Joseph Seym ur will be speaking on the "World Oil Tangle - a Marxist anaiysis of the 'energy crisis' ." Seymour, a Spa:- tacist League Central Committee member, is a graduate of tho Lon- don School of Economics and form- er professor at the New School, of Social Research. Ken Richards is a member of the Revolutionary Communist Youth and the Spartacist League. i i Letters to The Daily high crimes To The Daily: THIS IS WHAT Richard Nixon has done. These are facts which can not be disputed. On July 23, 1970, Richard Nixon personally approved the Huston plan for political surveillance, bur- glary, wiretapping, eavesdropping and spying of students by the CIA and other agencies.