Culture and Life

by Rob Gowland

Stinkers

Some months ago there was a report in the media about the latest devious 
initiative of the US ruling class: experiments with "the worst smells 
imaginable" for dispersing demonstrators. It seems those creative folk, the 
US military, were doing the research.

Apparently other popular methods of clearing the streets of troublesome 
protestors, such as the use of clubs, savage dogs and fire hoses or water 
canon, tend to make the authorities appear in a bad light. (Pursuing 
different policies so as not to antagonise the public in the first place is 
apparently not an option.)

Hence the great stink bomb idea. I see a problem, however. Think about it: 
protestors gather outside posh hotel or office building, police release 
stink bomb, protestors hurriedly leave, stink remains.

I suspect the owners of businesses in the area would be less than pleased. 
And they couldn't use a stink that dissipated very quickly or the 
demonstrators would merely fall back and then reassemble.

However, the US military would be aware of these possible problems, and 
could well be pursuing more insidious solutions. What if they produce a 
chemical that stinks and sticks to your clothes — or your skin?

It would not be beyond the fiendish thinking of the US military's boffins 
to go for a chemical that could even be absorbed into your skin and make 
your body or your sweat or even your saliva stink like dead fish. They 
would think it a great joke on the bothersome left.

In fact you can almost guarantee that huge amounts of money have been 
allocated for research and development of "Noxious Stinks, Demonstrators, 
For the dispersal of". This has no doubt been appreciated by whatever 
military contractors have been lucky enough to get the job.

It is surely a source of much boardroom gratitude to a government that is 
so considerate of the interests of the corporate sector as to hand out 
great gobs of money for such odious "research".

As Homer Simpson says, "Only in America!".

A retired Canadian union activist wrote to People's Voice, the 
Canadian Communist paper, with an interesting sidelight to this story. He 
told of the use of "odiferous compounds" by workers in the province of 
British Columbia back in the '60s.

When a strike-bound Vancouver plant was kept going by the use of scabs, an 
oil refinery worker supplied the picketing strikers with a particularly 
foul-smelling substance that had been developed for use in locating oil-
pipeline leaks. Its smell could be detected even when diluted "millions of 
times".

Armed with a full canister of this substance, the strikers waited until the 
day-shift scabs were all in the building, then poured the noxious gloop 
into the air intake duct. "Within seconds a torrent of screaming scabs 
stampeded out."

Hastily summoned experts confirmed the company's fears: the plant would 
have to be shut down for several days in order to "decontaminate" it. The 
luckless scabs were told to go home.

"But upon opening their car doors, they were again overcome by another, 
even stronger, whiff of this anti-scab potion." Courtesy of hypodermic 
needles supplied by a sympathetic health worker, the stuff had been 
injected into each locked car through the rubber window mouldings.

"Some scabs had to junk their cars", he wrote, "because, like the odour of 
scabbing itself, the smell would just never go away".

Identifying himself only as "a retired BC picketer", the People's Voice 
correspondent noted: "This little known but true incident of worker 
ingenuity and solidarity is part of our labour history.

"However, make no mistake about it, the class warfare tactics of four 
decades ago would today be considered by our odorous ruling class as 
falling under the new 'anti-terrorism' law."

Such considerations, however, in no way inhibit capitalist governments from 
attempting to develop more and nastier substances with which to "control" 
the population. After all, the use of stink bombs, like the use of tear 
gas, nausea gas, capsicum spray, itching powder, or any other irritant, is 
unquestionably a form of violence.

As "retired BC picketer" concludes: "The military scientists need 
experiment no further — the worst smell imaginable is the stench of 
decaying capitalism."

To which one can only say: "Hear, hear!"

* * *

Weird

They came looking for bargains, but did not find any. The occasion was 
the auction of office fittings and equipment belonging to the failed Enron 
Corporation, and a good proportion of the 3000 or so who attended 
apparently thought that liquidators sold off the assets of failed companies 
for a song.

Ho, ho, not to ordinary folk they don't. Prices for computers and TVs, etc, 
were reportedly about the same as retail, to the vocal disappointment of 
bargain hunters lured by ads that had billed the event as the "auction of 
the year".

What was weird, however, was the fact that a lot of people went because of 
the "mystique" of Enron, epitomised by the people who came solely for the 
purpose of bidding for the Enron company logo!

As the Sydney Morning Herald put it, "the name Enron is synonymous 
with coporate greed", yet one guy brought US$20,000 with him to buy the 
company's tilted-E logo. He wanted to put it on the top of a building.

Whatever for, one wonders. He didn't get it, as it turned out. The polished 
metal logo, about four feet square, went for a mind-boggling US$44,000 — 
(that's over $80,000).

A local computer store bought it and plan to "display it in the store". The 
logo of a bankrupt corporation, whose bosses were devious and crooked, is 
going to help their sales?

Capitalism in its decadent phase is a truly strange phenomenon, isn't it?