91 A iiie Sir gign Dadfj Eighty-two years of editorial freedom Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan Seeds of subversion sown in 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mich. News Phone: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. FRI DAY, DECEMBER 8, 1972 The fate of mass transit STATE FUNDING for mass transit meets its fate in the state legislature next week. The issue is whether a quarter of the money from a two cent increase in the state gasoline tax will be allocated to mass transit programs. Although the bill diverting gas money to public transit passed the House last spring, it had the subsequent misfortune to fall into the hands of Sen. James Fleming (R-Jackson), Chairman of the tipper chamber's Highway Committee. Fleming, who has declared himself a "hardened and ardent" foe of any pro- posal to divert the gas tax of suffering motorists to mass transit, is an example of the magnificent wrongheadedness which members of the human race- especially politicians-can attain. For ten months he locked the bill up in his committee against the wishes of most of the other members on it. Even then, the bill would never have gotten onto the Senate floor if supporters had not promised Fleming to hinge its passage to a constitutional amendment, to be put before the voters in 1974, which would place a constitutional ceiling of 5.6% on the amount of tax money that could be diverted to mass transit. IWIE THE AMENDMENT passed the Senate a week ago Tuesday, it was Editorial Staff SARA FITZGERALD Editor PAT BAUER ............. Associate Managing Editor LINDSAY CHANEY..............Eitorial Director MARK DILIEN...................Magazine Editor LINDA DREEBEN........Associate Managing Editor TAMMY JACOBS ................. Managing Editor ARTHUR LERNER ................ Editorial Director ROBERT SCHREINER.............Editorial Director GLORIA JANE SMITH ................. Arts Editor ED SUROVELL..................Books Editor PAUL TRAVIS ..........Associate Managing Editor NIGHT EDITORS: Robert Barkin, Jan Benedetti, Di- ane Levick, Jim O'Brien, Chris Parks, Charles Stein, Ted Stein. COPY EDITORS: Meryl Gordon, Debra Ta. EDITORIAL NIGHT EDITORS: Fred Shell Martin stern. DAY EDITORS: Dave Burhenn, Jim Kentcb, Marilyn Riley, Judy Ruskin, Eric Schoch, Sue Stephen- son. Ralph Vartabedian, Becky Warner. T iEGRAPR/ASSOCIATE NIGHT EDITORS: Prakash Aewant, Gordon Atcheson, Laura Berman, Penny Blank, Dan Blugeran, Bob Burakoff, Beth Eg- nater, Ted Evanoff, Cindy Hill, Debbie Knox, David Stoll, Terr Terrell. STAFF WRITERS: Howard Brick Lorin Labardee, Ka- thy Ricks, Eugene Robinson, Linda Rosenthal, Zachary Schiller, Marcia Zoslaw. ARTS STAFF: Herb Bowie, Rich Glatzer. Donald Sports Staff JOHN PAPANEKS Sports Editor ELLIOT LEGOW Executive Sports Editor BILL ALTERMAN.............Associate Sports Editor BOB ANDREWS............Assistant Sports Editor SANDI GENIS ............... Assistant Sports Editor RANDY PHILLIPS.........Contributing Sports Editor MICHAEL OLIN...........Contributing Sports Editor OCUCK DRUKIS ........ Contributing Sports Editor JOEL GREER.............Contributing Sports Editor T oday's staff: News: Debbie Allen, Pat Bauer, Jan Bene- detti, Dan Biddle, Tammy Jacobs, Sue Stephenson, David Unnewehr Editorial Page: Denise Gray, Robert Schreiner Arts Page: Richard Glatzer Photo technician: Tom Gottlieb defeated in the House by an eight-vote margin two days later. If it doesn't clear both houses and get on the ballot, the, money for mass transit won't be allo- cated. Worse, last Friday the mass transit bill itself suffered a tie and was defeated in the Senate. Like the constitutional amendment in the House, however, it will be considered again next week after legislators return from a series of con- ferences in Miami Beach. The humor of the situation is that even if both measures pass, mass transit programs stand to gain a paltry $21 million a year. That is barely enough to keep the fast-failing local bus companies in the lower-figure red. Still, passage of the state subsidy will clear the way for federal matching grants and make the blue-print Southeastern Michigan Transportation Authority (SE- MTA) a reality. Although public inaction on mass transit has assured us decades of grief on our fast, modern freeways, SEMTA has the potential of developing a small but seminal public transit net- work in the near future. -DAVID STOLL Smear tactics against Gill POLITICAL VENDETTAS at this Uni- versity have been the object of hilar- ity in many places, including the pages of this newspaper. But the leaflet cam- paign being conducted against SGC Vice President of Minority Affairs Lee Gill is far from funny. Late Tuesday night, uni- dentified persons posted leaflets in Gom- berg House of South Quad warning resi- dents to "Lock you doors! Your RD may Rip'You Off!" Gill is resident director of Gomberg House. The leaflet reproduced from a local newspaper a notice of Gill's exam- ination on charges of larceny in Ann Arbor Circuit Court. The charges against Gill, according to reliable sources, are far from substan- tiated. Whether politically or personally motivated, such smear tactics accomplish nothing constructive. -T.M. Power corrupts. THERE ARE REPORTS in the wind that since Henry Kissinger had a reveal- ing interview last month with an Italian journalist, the White House has launched a campaign of sorts to make it clear to everyone that it is Richiard Nixon-and not Kissinger-who is calling the shots in the Paris peace negotations. In the interview, the president's top foreign affairs advisor compared himself to a Wild West cowboy who "enters the village alone and does everything on his own." All we can say, Mr. Nixon, is you better not let him get behind your back. -R.S. By JAMES EASTLAND N MARCH 16, 1970, in a speech before the Senate, I alerted my colleagues and the nation to a serious danger to the internal se- curity of our country, that w a s about to result from the return of a group of young Americans who had gone to Cuba for theaalleged purpose of cutting sugar cane and thus helping the Communist regime that strangles the freedom of that island republic. The group called itself the "Ven- ceremos Brigade." It has grown from an initial membership of 213 to nearly 2,000. The Communist regime of Cuba was quick to realize thatthe seeds of subversion sown in Cuba among members of this group would bear handsome fruits in the U n i t e d States. WHAT I predicted two and a half years ago has come to pass. Testimony taken by the Inter- nal Security Subcommittee has es- tablished the subtle method of training of the "Venceremos Bri- gade" members. Copies of Cuban manuals on guerrilla warfare and urban terrorism seized from re- turning members, dog-eared and with salient points underscored, in- dicate intensive study of such dead- ly literature. Diaries of the brigade members indicate that the Cubans held sem- inars. where Latin American, Af- rican, North Vietnamese, and Viet- cong guerrilla experts lived, work- ed and gave performances of their skills. In his address to the second con- U.S. disregard the revolutionary w h o spoke best in favor of the activist who fought the police the hardest (sic). Members of the Venceremos Brigade, according to their diaries, made it possible for Van Ba to cros the border from Canada into Detroit for an on-the-spot inspection of what he considered the "enemy camp." Brigade members have been ar- rested in Massachusetts,. and in California, and elsewhere, for pos- session of explosives and manu- fact:ring of bombs. Others h a v e infiltrated computer data centers of oil companies and were found in possession of maps of pipelines with strategic locations marked in red pencil. I could cite more exam- ples. THE DANGER is by no means past. I once introduced into the Congressional Record the names of the first contingent of the Vencere- mos Brigade. I think it appropriate, in view of the continuing threat which these Venceremos Brigade members constitute, to add t h e. names of the members of the four brigades which followed the first, so that anyone who reads the Re- cord may know who there activists are. Jaynes Eastland, a U. S. senator from Mississippi, delivered these remarks on the Senate floor Oct. 18. Following his article in the Congressional Record were the names and home towns of 2,000 members of the Venceresos Bri- gade. 'S r t 'I f k tingent of the brigade Fidal Castro was optimistic about the future performance of the brigade mem- bers. He said: "I believe with this we are' be- ginning a great movement. I be- lieve that this creates the basis for a tremendous development - which will have a tremendous im- pact on the whole world . ." WHAT FIDEL CASTRO was ex- Castro visiting the people pecting has become manifest in many ways and in many parts of this country. For instance, on the weekend of April 16-18, 1971, a group of Venceremos brigade or- ganizers held a "working semin- ar" with a workers' committee of Cesar Chavez' United Farm Work- ers Organizing Committee. Two of the items on the agenda of the meeting involved the "exchange of information and show of solidar- ity with UFWO workers." What actually happened accord- ing to the May, 1971 bulletin of the brigade was a full-scale indoctrin- ation seminar on organizing along Marxist lines. Then there is the case of one Van Ba, a Vietcong representative in Cuba who exhorted the Ameri- cans of the Venceremos Brigade to I' Getting y By PETER LAFRENIERE SITTING ON A limb of your mind, you watch the flow of your thoughts be- neath you. The river moves on endlessly, its small waves, riding on years of mo- mentum, strike incessantly against t h e world's shore. Sparkles of sunlight laugh and cry as they dance upon the surface, unaware of the fallen logs and dams ahead. Sitting, you watch; witnessing, you learn, as your thoughts reveal their innermost secrets. Soon you understand their proper- ties and how to control and direct them straight towards the ocean of clear con- sciousness. You fall from your mind and become one. * * * SPIRITUALLY IS a term long desecrat- ed by the "modern" world. Since these has been a flurry of mystical activity through- out the ages, the tendency has been to lump them all together under one heading, which can only lead to confusion and misnomers. Yet, upon careful inspection, spirituality crystallizes into a unified, consistent sci- ence which was first experienced inter- nally through developed methods and then written down as a system composed of both practical techniques and philosophy. Hence, although the theoretical accounts allow us to digest it analytically, it is only the experimentation done in our own men- tal laboratories that synthesize the know- ledge into spiritual realities. Yoga is such a precise technique which, if taught by a qualified acarya (one who )urs el tog has studies under a realized being) will systematically open the mind to higher conscious planes. Ananda Marga (which means Path of Bliss) is a spiritual society which teaches the practice of tantric yoga, another area greatly misunderstood. Start- ed about 6500 years ago by Lord Siva in Northern India as a powerful method of mind liberation ,tantra was corrupted by Mongul invaders .who turned it into a mere sex cult thereby taking from a purely spirit- ual plane to a physical one. ether th rough Yoga 4 THIS DOES not mean that tantric yoga strives to suppress certain basic drives in man nor does it attempt to deny the tran- cient reality (maya) we normally exper- ience, but rather expand our conscious minds to encompass all the realms of exist- ence produced by higher causal laws. Suc- cess in this form of meditation comes only through much clash and cohesion; the pro- cess whereby the mind's vibrations struggle with the object of its thought until har- mony is reached between them. So really everyone does tantra at some level, the highest being when the mind penetrates into its source and evolves to its true nature of complete happiness. This is the goal of all spirituality and all paths are hard, yet persistent effort will purify the mind, layer by layer, until consciousness alone reveals the real Self. ANANDA MARGA conducts a Free-Uni- versity Yoga class here in Ann Arbor. Everyone in the class has been participating in collective perception games, meant to demonstrate different aspects of the phil- osophy. A talk usually follows on a new topic each week, then we flow into yoga asanas (exercises) which are concerned with perfecting the glands in our bodies in order to maintain a parallelism between our physical sphere and our psychic one as the latter is developing through the prac- tice of meditation. After the deep relaxa- tion which follows, we have a short medi- tation, then sing some songs. At the end of class there is a discussion about how the class went that week. Not only is this beneficial to the teachers, but the sharing of opinions helps each of us to get a perspective of where we are in relation to others. All in all, the sessions attempt to bring spiritual philosophy alive by relating it to our everyday lives as well as impart enough knowledge to continue meditating on our own. ALONG WITH ITS spiritual practice, Ananda Marga has an intense interest in social upliftment. The spiritual Master of the yoga society states . that we are all brothers and sisters of one undivided human society. He also says "Let no one get the scope that his life has become useless." In the United States, social service has been done in these areas: setting up cheap kitch- ens for the elderly, a childrens school in California, a girls home in Wichita, Kan- siis, yoga classes in prisons, and an emer- gency relief team is now being ,set up for the whole country. In India hundreds of children's homes as well as schools, col- leges, and emergency relief teams, which played an important role in Bangala Desh, have been established. In doing social service the spiritual Mas- ter Shrii Ananda Murtijii has said "The life of the person becomes mechanical if he remains overwhelmed with the sentiment that one must do such acts, one must per- form such service and sacrifice, one must rise in this manner, and so on. Happiness disappears there. For this reason, such ritualism cannot be called real Karma. To serve others at one's own sacrifice is called penance. In the absence of love, the serv- ices rendered and penance undergone for show only are fruitless . . . Divine Bliss is easily available only to those who base their action on Love." SO ANANDA MARGA is a continuous movement towards growth in thephysical, mental, and spiritual planes. All that we have to do is have faith in our true self, then we will find that nothing is impossible. First we have to dive deep into ourselves to see that the true light of love exists in each of us, so then we can move the whole of humanity towards that goal. When we realize this, we will "See that not a single individual lags behind." Peter LeFreniere has written several ar- tides on yoga and meditation for The Daily. 4 A { i . i 41 A On legalizing prostitution: Chasing after skin is bizarre By PETE HAMILL POLITICIANS can usually think of more ways to waste money than ordinary mortals can, and the current "war" on pornography, peep shows and massage parlors is a good example. This is a city which can't raise enough money to rebuild Brownsville, clean the streets, fill the potholes or catch the crooks and it has its cops and other employes running around chasing skin. It's bizarre. The Times Square area does have a seedy, crawly look to it these days, but the sex clean-up isn't going to change things very much. The prostitutes will be on the streets as long as heroin ad- diction eats away at the city's heart, and as long as there are johns willing to pay for the serv- ices of the women. A crackdown does not stop prostitution; it only moves the prostitutes to another part of town. If the people running the crack- down were serious, they wouldn't waste the time of the cops and the others who chase around the town. They would be pressing for full le- galization of everything. IF PROSTITUTION were legal- ized, the masage parlors would be- come the basis of the system. In- stead of having cops posing as johns at our expense, the parlors would be brought into the tax sys- tem, the women would be licensed and forced to have medical check- ups against veneral disease, and a big hunk of hypocrisy would go out of our lives. The brothels would exist in the open; a generation would grow up knnwin ahnt their existence. and true crime; the law is making a moral judgment and asking cops to enforce that moral judgment. A certain element of the pop- ulation objects to the existence of prostitution, but that does n o t mean that prostitution wil go away. All i means is that somebody objects. But the basic tactic of t h o s e who truly object is to refuse. They do not have to use brothels, b u y pornographic books or magazines, or line up at the peep shows. But some people want, perhaps even need, those things, and in a free society, they should have that right. Legalization would also mean re- gulation. There could be specific zoning codes to control the more blatant sort of advertising. And there could be some regulation of prices. Most civilized nations have red light districts, and those countries which have abolished them (like France and Italy) have found to their chagrin that the system goes haywire, that venereal disease spreads, and that the pimps and racketeers continue to provide the services, but with a vicious under- tone. New York now has legalized gambling on horse-racing, and the public morals did not suffer; the horseplayers simply moved from the illegal bookmaker to the legal bookmaker. Within a few years, all sports gambling will almost certainly be legalized with the only objections coming from the mob guys, and af- ter that we will no doubt have full casino gambling, along the lines of Las Vegas. the true obscenity: street crime, violence, poverty, drug addiction, rotten housing. To continue to ask grown inen and women to go chasing around after skin is a waste of time. Pete Hamill is a columnist for the New York Post. Copyright 1972, New York Post Corporation Letters to The Daily should be mailed to the Editorial Di- rector or delivered to Mary Rafferty in the Student Pub- lications business office in the Michigan Daily building. Letters should be typed, double-spaced and normally should not exceed 250 words. The Editorial Direc- tors reserve the right to edit all letters submitted. *i Why hreak up a winig team? Letters to The Daily Crass sensationalism To The Daily: YOUR TODAY column of Thurs- day in which you saw fit to point out that Mark Friesen "believes he is Gob, a counterpart of God, and in touch with the planet Ven- us" shows crassness, interest in sensationalism, and a most repug- nant lack of humaneness and sen- sitivity in dealing with human af- fairs. Did you think that q u o t e would illicit chuckles? After having received help for Bull----! You're a common part of the great unfeeling, undignified majority. -Scott Zimmerman Dec. 7 Dirty little kids To The Daily: ON MY first visit to Ann Arbor in about ten years I picked up the December 1st Daily. The vulgarity, on its front page would indicate it's now in the hands of a bunch Saturn rocket you printed on your front page Thursday morning. Un- fortunately, when your caption writer identified the photograph as having been taken, "last night," he or she should have realized that such a thing was clearly impos- sible. The picture, which featured the rocket standing against a black sky with a full moon, could not have been taken last night'because the moon was not full last night. Indeed, the moon last night w a s "new," and only barely visible. ,.v ift mnnn haei en full- r 3 t 4 mt.; --I -- -- M= il Wfak m