ItAUidoscopE milwaukee, Wisconsin member: underground press syndicate (o.p.s.) liberation news service (l.n.s.) JAN. 16-29, 1970 VOL. 2 NO. 25 (#51) Madison, Milwaukee Bombings P. 3 - GE Strike P. 2 - Freeway Fact S Faction P. 6 •^mm^m^JWtwJ % #«**»*- '•-p ^M&&3$*fm*m»'r Anaerson photo: Jess Anderson PAGE 2 January 16-29, 1970 KALEIDOSCOPE 6 £: PoD/ER Bf E- FQR THE CQBPQAdTlQN by Liberation News Service built the jet runways in Thailand at more than ten times the market ing breaks. If the line stops, 147,000 workers are on strike and Laos that are used for bomb­ value. Convicted of conspiracy everyone has to keep busy wiping against General Electric. There ing raids on Viet Nam. The by a U.S. court, GE got off with and sweeping until the white shirts are at least that many reasons why bombers' engines and their mach­ a petty-cash fine of $36,000. get it rolling again. There is GE should be defeated. ine guns are part of GE's war In 1961, a Philadelphia grand nothing you can do that GE doesn't General Electric is run by nine­ production. jury uncovered another of GE's have a rule against. One man at teen men, all white, all but one General Electric's power to patriotic' deals. For years the the Oakland, California, transfor­ Anglo-Saxon Protestants. They make national policy pays the company had been conspiring with mer plant summed it up: he said hold more than half the company's company very well. General Elec­ other major electrical manufac­ working for GE is like being voting stock and hire the chief tric was stagnating in 1964, with turers to fix the prices of heavy VON inside San Quentin, except they executives and managers. They profits scarcely higher than in equipment sold to government let you out at night. are some of the most powerful 1960. Then came the 1965 escala­ agencies. The total bill of this •STRIKE GE has a peculiar idea of men in the world, heads, of the tion of a war that GE helped fraud, running into uncounted hun­ •progress' in its products. In fourth largest industrial corpora­ plan, and GE's balance sheet dreds of millions, came out of 1931 the company spent millions tion in the U.S. (Only General JHf took a great leap forward. Avera- taxpayers' pockets. .,7 -* fwn to make a lightbulb that would Motors, Standard Oil of New Jer­ age annual profits since 1965 have In 1966 and '67, after ten years burn out twice as fast. This sey and Ford are bigger.) These been 43% higher than thev were in of arguing that it could not pay year GE announced it had stopped men usually see the inside of a the five years before. General higher wages here because of working on a smog-free electric GE plant only on the yearly guided Electric war contracts have more the 'foreign competition,' GE set that it be abolished. car. The management claimed tour; they can't tell the difference than doubled since 1965, for a up branch plants in Hong Kong, Few big companies have fought its cost was prohibitive, yet between a relay and a rectifier. total of $6.5 billion in five years. South Korea and the Philipines. unions as hard as GE. General expenditures for research and de­ They don't care about producing This year, with war sales of $1.6 Here, behind the lines of the Electric does all it can to under­ velopment (R&D) of an electric anything in particular, but only billion, GE is the number two Pacific war, GE pays people from mine union authority. For exam­ car were a small fraction of about extracting profit from ever­ •military contractor. 25 to 30# per day to make cheap ple, in a Bloomington, Indiana the hundreds of millions of dollars ything in general. General Elec­ General Electric directors are .transistor radios and tape recor- plant, shop stewards may not talk spent on research for military tric is only one of the profit- on the governing boards of at projects. During the last week making schemes that they control. least eleven major American uni­ of September, GE received more For example, take GE director versities and colleges, including "Don't rock the boat!" money on R&D contracts for an Gilbert Humphrey, one of the Stanford, Harvard and Princeton. Intercontinental Ballistic Missile nineteen. He is also board chair­ General Electric men control the re-entry system (the Mark 12) man of the Cleveland-based quar­ faculty and curriculum to see than the total R&D expenses for ter-billion dollar Hanna Mining that potential GE stagehands in the the electric car. Remember that Corporation. Or take Directors form of brainwashed company- GE's nineteen directors also run Neil McElroy and George Love; loving engineers, technicians and five oil companies and Chrysler they also run Detroit's Chrysler managers are turned out in every Auto; an electric car would be Corporation, the fifth biggest U.S. graduating class. bad for their business. Now GE corporation. There are about 75 General Electric is part of the has the key patents for the electric " other corporations that GE direc­ worldwide U.S. system of imperi­ car and can keep anyone else from tors control. Whether you inspect alism. The men at the top turn building one for 17 years. That's bottles at Coca-Cola, blast ore for a profit on everything from cars progress, GE style. Hanna, make buttonholes in a to cornflakes, from dime stores General Electric markets pro­ Stevens sweatshop, or stamp out to life insurance in twenty-five ducts that make the world a worse dashboards for Chrysler, the pro­ countries. What GE men cannot place to inhabit. In November, fits from your time go into the do for themselves they have poli­ 1966, it cut costs in color TV same set of pockets. The major ticians, judges and professors do production; now all their sets companies are wired together for them. General Electric makes emit possibly sterilizing radia­ at the top. Chrysler cars use GE weapons and communications de­ tion sideways and downward. But lightbulbs: GE's company fleet vices to keep the empire in power this seems minor compared with uses Chrysler cars. "Coca-cola and to shoot people down when GE's future plans. General Elec­ has the concession in GE lunch­ they rise up, as in Viet Nam. tric has the contract for the rooms; Hanna's tungsten mines General Electric's private em­ Supersonic Transport (SST), the supply filaments for GE lamps. pire is widespread. There are giant jet that will send out a con­ Hanna owns part of Chrysler. GE branch plants and subsidi­ tinuous shock wave which will not And so on. But that's just the aries in 25 other countries. One only break windows and eardrums beginning. of every four people who works but will also disrupt the reproduc­ The nineteen men who run GE for GE (100,000 out of 400,000) tive patterns of wildlife. And its are powerful voices in the White lives outside the U.S. Starvation exhaust fumes will form a pernia- House and the Pentagon. Four GE wages make these foreign opera­ nent layer of smog at 30,00o directors were at the top of the tions super-profitable. In Colom­ feet that may alter world weather military establishment when the bia GE' pays 25£ an hour; in patterns and deprive all plant Vietnam war was being planned. Bombay, GE's going rate is 6 life on the ground of the sun­ Thomas S. Gates and Neil H. Mc­ to 7# an hour; in South Africa shine needed to flourish and grow. Elroy were Secretaries of De­ black workers get 28£ an hour. General Electric's idea of pro­ fense under Eisenhower, Robert Most of GE's branch plants gress is to force more to work T. Stevens was Secretary of the are in countries run by mili­ harder on worse products to sell Army and Fred J. Borch was a tary dictatorships that depend ders, which it then imports to to people on company time with­ at higher prices. member of the Defense Industry on military aid from the U.S. (Editor's Note: The preceding Advisory Board. General Electric the States. After years of urging out company permission, and Much of this military equipment people to 'Buy American,' GE , workers cannot see the steward story appears on a wall poster keeps close ties with the Penta­ is made by GE. available from: People's Posters, gon through the 89 retired colo­ now is the 'foreign competition.' without going through the super­ Whoever protests, whoever or­ GE is also a long-time contri­ visor. Shop stewards tend to be 330 Grove St., San Francisco, nels and generals who now work ganizes and moves against the Calif. 94102. The poster also has for GE. butor to the Southern States In­ cut out of overtime so that they power of the small circle of men dustrial Council, a group that are not on the line when the a table showing GE's connections General Electric has used its at the top is branded by GE and fights to keep the U.S. divided worst speedups and the heaviest with other corporations, and a into the so-called high-wage j company pressure comes down, large cartoon on the other side. North and the cheap-labor South.; hi most plants, workers may Bulk orders: $2.00 per 100 in­ This group supports the racism- not talk to each other except dur­ cluding the postage.) which keeps the South a depressed area, with wages one-third lower than the U.S.