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NEW DELHI, India—The ascension to the throne of Richard Nixon has not been greeted with enthusiasm in India. Most of the papers think he is a drag—“the winning candidate who took the greatest care not to commit himself—others that he is a menace. A literary and political mag called Shankar’s Weekly calls him “the obedient robot of the American conservative establishment” and says his election has put the American clock back by twenty years. Bombay’s flashy weekly Blitz goes further and attributes Nixon’s election to “the notorious J. Edgar Hoover... the master-brain behind the two Kennedy executions.” This factor, says Blitz, “added to his own unseemly record on which the FBI is bound to have complete files, will make the new President a convenient tool in the hands of the Police Chief and the State-within-a-State he commands.”

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The biggest mistake in bringing Shakespeare to the screen is to construct some sort of stone effigy to him. But France Zeffirelli’s film production of “Romeo & Juliet,” at the Studio 8, pulsates with a life all its own.

In translating a stage drama to a visual medium, much of the dialogue has been cut in favor of the action. Surprisingly, this works beautifully. “Romeo & Juliet” is a remarkably visual movie that could stand on its own for the imagery alone. The result is a thoroughly “cinematic” film adaptation.

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Ted Lucas knows exactly where he wants to be in relation to his art: “You can’t b.s. on an instrument—it’s impossible! Everything that’s there just comes out. What I got to do is just get my head together enough so that when I play I can just be what I am—Hey! What a groovy title for a song! ‘I Wanna Be What I Am!’ Where’s a pencil?”

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UNCLASSIFIEDS cost 50 cents per line per issue. Figure four words per line. (A word is a word including one and two letter words. A phone number is a word. Street numbers are words. Abbreviations should be sensible. DISCOUNT RATES: Five runs cost 35 cents per line.

Overground paper: Independent Eye, a newspaper of southwest Ohio. P.O. Box 20017, Cincinnati, Ohio 45220. 6 issues for $1. Remember, the Queen City.

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ANN ARBOR, Dec. 5—White Panther Minister of Information John Sinclair announced today that the newly-formed revolutionary organization has named its first Central Committee.

In their first formal meeting the Committee discussed matters of immediate importance to the White Panthers and to the world, including the threatened imprisonment of Brother Eldridge Cleaver, Minister of Information, Black Panther Party, and the arrest and imprisonment of 13 brothers and sisters in Detroit for alleged “conspiracy to place explosives with intent to do damage.”

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Well, here we are at the advent of yet another season of goodwill and love to all men, etc. I wish you a very happy something. Did you ever think how many people, at Christmas, celebrate the birth of someone they don’t believe in?

Congratulations, firstly, must go to Audio Arts of Detroit for the fine way in which they turned Hendrix’s thing into a superfluous shamble of chaotic hostility. Special thanks to Phil Ober of Audio Arts who, having denied me an interview with Hendrix (an interview arranged with Hendrix’s manager over a month before the concert) on the grounds that there wasn’t time—which there wasn’t—and told myself and a photographer with me “But you can stand right at the front to get some good shots!”

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NEW YORK (LNS)—The media of the revolution is mushrooming through America.

The growth of the underground and movement press is phenomenal. Equally notable is the outrage and fear which it creates in those whose interests it opposes. As the radical media grows, so do the attempts to repress it.

In recent weeks, the minions of law and order have been beating on the doors of the underground press. The Great Speckled Bird in Atlanta has been threatened with grand jury indictments for obscenity. Dallas Notes has seen its office torn apart by the cops and its equipment confiscated. Bloomington, Indiana’s Spectator and Ithaca, New York’s First Issue, have had their editors busted for resisting the draft.

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“If we want to do much more fucking, we’re going to have to start fighting. If we want to be able to live we have to start fighting and not let ourselves be fucked around any longer by this shitpile society. We are the only hope in a crumbling world of lies and deception. Young people look to us—the dropouts, the radicals, the freeks—for information only we can provide. The Black Panthers are our brothers and sisters and point the way for action. We see their situation and realize it is ours too. Our music and our lives are the same. One is not possible without the other. The Music must go on.”

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LONDON (LNS)—The Beatles are considering doing a series of free concerts in the U.S. next spring or early summer, according to a report in the rock tabloid, Rolling Stone. The concerts would be an expression of the Beatles’ thanks for support from their American fans.

The latest issue of Rolling Stone is chock full of other good Beatle data, such as:

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CHICAGO, LNS—City Hall sources were buzzing this morning as the mayor’s office shamefacedly admitted to what may be one of the greatest blunders in the history of law enforcement. A mud-splattered blue Chevrolet van carrying 14 dangerous political criminals had passed through the clutches of the city’s police and was allowed to escape through what Mayor Daley called “criminal negligence” on the part of his force early Sunday morning.

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When the President appointed a Commission to study violence after Chicago’s freak-out Convention activity last August, not even the most turned on prophet in the movement could have suspected the bombshell report which would become, after a single day on the stands, a runaway best seller.

Maybe hippies, Yippies, Panthers, college students, politicos, and assorted freeks have been saying it all along, but now the Establishment has come out and said it.

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Nothing much to report or rap about; so just a few brief notes.

Our abortive record deal with ESP records is still fouled. We wrote the record company in New York and asked if they could mail the bonus records to our new subscribers, but they have not answered to date.

A few people have come into our office to pick up their albums, but the majority of them remain here in the office confronting us accusingly. If you live in the Detroit area please come and get your record or if you live a distance away write us a note and we will send it to you.

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A “National GI-Civilian anti-war Action Conference” has been called for Chicago on December 28^th. This conference is part of a weekend series of meetings between GIs and civilians to plan joint projects and call a mass anti-war action in the spring.

The conference will be held during the Christmas holidays and in centrally located Chicago to make it easier for GIs to attend during their holiday leaves.

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Since their seems to be some controversy about calling police “Pigs,” I would like to say that when you call any group any one name, that you are generalizing.

Whether you call a policeman a pig, a long haired freak a hippy, or a black man a nigger it’s all the same.

Believe it or not police are people and by classing them together as one name, you are guilty of exactly what their doing. Not to say that the majority of police aren’t sadists, I’m sure they are, but you have to realize that police work naturally caters to sadists.

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Last issue we hinted that perhaps Detroit Police Commissioner Johannes Spreen was trying to do something about the brutal and racist nature of his police by disciplining officers involved in incidents of brutality at the Veteran’s Memorial Building and Poor People’s March. Criminal charges were even brought against two officers for their roles in brutalizing two teenagers.

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Fifth Estate

A Newspaper Of Detroit

EDITORS

Harvey Ovshinsky

Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Cathy West

CIRCULATION

Tommye Wiese

NEWS EDITOR

Alan Gotkin

MUSIC EDITOR

John Sinclair

PHOTO EDITOR

Mike Tyre

ART DIRECTION

Blallen

ADVERTISING

Gunnar Lewis

CALENDAR

Resa Jannett

DISTRIBUTION

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MIAMI (LNS)—A variety of musicians and singers will get together for the 1969 Miami Pop Festival set for Dec. 29–30 at Gulfstream Park, Hallandale, Fla.

The following will perform:

Saturday, Dec. 28: Jose Feliciano, Country Joe & the Fish, Buffy Saint Marie, Chuck Berry, Infinite McCoys, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Booker T and the MGs, Dino Valente, Fleetwood Mac and the Blues Image.

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Breakthrough and Donald Lobsinger’s tactics may have backfired in their most recent confrontation with the Establishment—tackled from the right.

Lobsinger could do with some tactical pre-protest advice from some of those who confront from the Left, on how to stay exactly within the law until you are ready to get busted. He was arrested again and faces trial Jan. 15 on disorderly conduct for breaking up a meeting Dec. 3 at St. Lucy’s Catholic Church in St. Clair Shores.

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Editors’ Note: This article was sent to us by an airman stationed at a weather station in Florida. His name has been omitted to protect him from reprisal.

A few months ago it seemed that the military was more up-tight than usual. As it turned out, this is the understatement of the year.

I have a VW mini-bus that is painted with pop art, stars, signs of the zodiac, etc. In the rear window, I had painted an anti-war symbol.

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The author is editor-in-chief of Wayne University’s South End newspaper, former editor of the Inner City Voice and is an employee of the Detroit News.

Within the last four months, the management of the Detroit News has turned the News printing plant, located on the corner of Third and Lafayette, into a fortress.

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(by the Demolitions Editor)

“Send a boy to do a man’s job and naturally you can expect those involved to start falling apart when they get caught.”

This is the opinion of one of the defense attorneys for those accused of setting eight terrorist bombs in the Detroit area.

Halfway through the preliminary examination, where the prosecution is required to show the commission of criminal acts and the defendants’ connection with them, Judge Thomas Poindexter agreed to drop charges against six persons.

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Al Kooper, one of this country’s leading rock artists, was in town a couple of weeks ago. He has been performing, writing, and now producing rock musts for ten years and is best known for his work as an organist for Dylan, a member of tire Blues Project, and organizer of Blood, Sweat and Tears.

His latest album is “Super Session” with Mike Bloomfield and Steve Stills. In the next few months he will be releasing a double album that he recorded with Bloomfield at the Fillmore, a solo album, and an album he produced for the Don Ellis Orchestra.

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Where is Eldridge Cleaver, Minister of Information of the Black Panther Party?

Every pig from Oakland, California to New York City is looking for him since he failed to turn himself in for parole violation on November 25^th.

Like Spartacus or Zapata he is rumored to be everywhere. Word has reached this office that he was in Detroit, but most think that he has left the country and will wind up in Cuba or is living underground in an urban ghetto.

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“Once upon a time, or maybe twice, there was an earthly paradise called Pepperland, which existed 80,000 leagues beneath the sea...”

And so it was, a land of brilliant color and elegant people and Ming music, with words such as “love” and “know” and “yes” dotted about the landscape.

But Pepperland had enemies, the Blue Meanies, who hated music and bombarded Pepperland with rockets and Apple Bonkers and Hidden Persuaders and Snapping Turtle Turks—and an evil flying Blue Glove.

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Thursday November 28

AN ODE TO WILHELM REICH A sexual intellectual play in two acts. At the Red Roach Coffee House. 8:30 p.m. Plum St. at Filth St

THANKSGIVING SPECIAL. The Underground Cinema will have two special showings at 7:30 and 9:30 because it is a holiday. Films will run all weekend and include “The Breath of the Bones,” “Now that the Buffalo’s Gone,” “Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome,” “Sacred Mushroom Version,” “A Cherry Tale,” and “Voyage Optique.” Detroit Repertory Theatre, 13103 Woodrow Wilson Cali 868–1347 for information.

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Sometimes it seems that history does, indeed, repeal itself. The mistakes of a radical movement are sometimes repeated several generations later by another radical movement. At other limes, a radical movement will repeat its own mistakes within the same generation. Mistakes are, of course, inevitable. They ate not bad in and of themselves if the factors which caused the mistakes are recognized and corrected. Ignorance is our greatest enemy. To know what to do, when to do it and why it is being done is the preeminent task at all times. When mistakes are repeated, it 1 an indication that there is a serious, perhaps fatal, hick of revolutionary consciousness.

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Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

One in every 40 deaths in the United States is caused by lung cancer, and this ratio is expected to increase in the next ten years. according to the October 7^th issue of the Journal of the A.M.A. But this year sales of cigarettes declined for the first time: hopefully a snowballing trend. What has been the response of cigarette manufacturers?

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(by the Fifth Estate Creep Scene Editor)

Creep scenes abound from the Detroit area to Florida as power-authority heads try to suppress the Fifth Estate.

In Royal Oak, the Gas Company, at 290 W. Ten Mile Road, a head shop run by Andy Gingold, has had its request for an operating permit denied by the Royal Oak city commission solely on the grounds that he is selling “lewd and lascivious literature,” i.e., our paper.

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Just how do you go about opening a good movie in this town without getting jumped on? Ingmar Bergman’s Hour of the Wolf is the best film to appear in Detroit since his earlier Persona, yet by the time you read this, it will probably have already left the Studio North Theatre.

The mechanics of film distribution is often a complicated and unfair process: The survival of a small specialized film—Alain Resnais’ classic La Guerre Est Finie, for instance—depends entirely on the support of local critics. Hard-core Resnais buffs can fill a small theatre for maybe four nights, but after that, the film is on its own, La Guerre Est Finie opened in Detroit during the newspaper strike and, despite the rigorous attempts of the distributor and exhibitor to save it, it barely stayed above water for two weeks. If a Resnais film results in financial loss, will that same exhibitor be willing to risk playing any future films by Resnais? We can only hope and pray.

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UNCLASSIEIEDS cost 50¢ per line per issue. Figure four words per line. (A word is a word including one and two letter words. A phone number is a word. Street numbers are words. Abbreviations should be sensible.

DISCOUNT RATES Five runs cost 35¢ per line.

I’m sending (blank) lines at 50¢ per line for a one issue run.

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NEW YORK (LNS)—Tuesday night, Oct. 22, the inmates of the Lower East Side, inspired by Julian Beck’s Living Theater and led by Up Against the Wail Motherfucker, laid cultural claim to the Fillmore East. They needed the space, a motherfucker leaflet declared, “To survive, grow freaky, breathe, love, struggle and turn on.” Graham said over his dead body, Julian Beck said right on and the rest of the script of that real, living theater can be summed up by this exchange:

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Frank Zappa

Mothers of the American Revolution

Zappa, in England. must wield much power. Granada TV, a semi-national TV station, has asked Frank to produce an hour for their station to show.

Frank, when asked of the proposed idea for the show, said, “Visualize a huge aircraft hanger with at one end a huge form, 15 feet high, completely concealed by canvas and screened off with velvet ropes, with armed sentries pacing up and down in front of it.”

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People need music to live. We know that and act on it, all ways. Only straight people—honkies—think music is superfluous, that it doesn’t make any difference what you listen to, and their lives demonstrate their ignorance. Music shapes us and makes us whole, as we would never be without it. We have to have it. There’s no way you can get around it. For our generation music is the most vital force in most of our lives.

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Talking-pre-holiday-pre-final-two-papers-due-blues. No feel for cooking; no money for eating out and Peter says get your column in.

Heat oil, brown pork on both sides, salt and pepper. Peel 5–6 onions, cut in slices and smother the pork. Pour in a little water, reduce the heat and simmer 20 minutes.

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Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

Dear Dr. Schoenfeld,

Regarding your column warning about literal blow jobs.

A few years ago, one of the psychiatric journals carried a paper on an unusual accidental death of a woman following coital foreplay.

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On the afternoon of November I, there was a demonstration in front of the 13^th precinct police station on Woodward. The purpose of the demonstration was to protest the brutal treatment which the police inflicted upon a group of anti-Wallace demonstrators at a rally earlier in the week.

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The Living Theatre, triumphantly poised at the controversial edge of the avant-garde theatrical movement, will sweep into Detroit to take the chill off December.

The repertory troupe known as America’s most original and acclaimed by critics as the most artistic, Julian Beck and his energetic band will present three different productions December 12, 13, 14.

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George Wallace stood up and said all the magic words, “Dope Fiend, Outlaw, Pervert, Cuba, Masses, Red, Mao, Free, Fidel, Workers, Black, White!” These are magic words in America. These arc the words that make white America go to its knees in fear George Wallace got 9 million votes, 9 million honkies are behind George.

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by the Roach Editor

The Red Roach coffee house is open!

It’s hard to find, but look around the corner at Plum and Fifth, the barnwood door between two red and purple gaslights, go upstairs, you’re there,

The place is improvisional, a room for artists to meet, play their music, read they poems, just do their thing. There are two stages, one for the performer, one for the audience, a groove stage with bath tub and a large screen for light shows.

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Liberation News Service/The Movement

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.—Twenty-seven GIs at San Francisco’s Presidio Army Base stockade face the death penalty for staging a non-violent sit-down to protest the Oct. 11 murder of a fellow prisoner.

The victim, Richard Bunch, 19, was mentally ill. He had gone AWOL, returned to his home in Ohio, and told his mother he had died and been reborn as a warlock, able to kill enemy soldiers at a glance.

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Santiniketan, India

Special to the Fifth Estate

It’s weird.

Future historians, in analyzing the causes of the Laotian War (or World War II as the case may be) will be stumped by a curious footnote which will cause them to take off (or put on) their spectacles, shake their heads slowly, and say, “it’s weird.” They will be amazed, of course, at the presence of “hippies” in Laps and the part they play politically in the games of intrigue that are so characteristic of Laotian government.

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I’ve been in jail for so long now that I’ve lost count of the days, But such is the fate of the man who doesn’t have the money for bail ($10,000 or $1,000 for a bondsman).

I’ve found that there’s two types of justice in our illustrious nation: one for the rich, and one for the poor.

But if life in a “democracy” hands you a lemon, you don’t bitch. You find that there’s only steel bars to listen to you. So you do what any man who wants to make the world a better place to live would do. You squeeze the lemon and start a lemonade stand.

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Editors’ Note: Art Wohl studied exercises in T’ai Chi Ch’uan with various Chinese practitioners in New York. He has taught body sensitivity and coordination to athletes, dancers, actors, singers, and the physically and mentally disabled.

He will lead a workshop in body awareness and control on December 3, from 2 to 4–30 p.m. at St. Joseph’s Church, Woodward at King. The cost will be $2 for the session which will be an intensive series of guided experiences bringing about a progressively deepening state of concentration and awareness of the body’s spontaneous tendencies to release tensions and rigidities, center and realign itself, establish a state of dynamic equilibrium and to enhance its use as a vehicle for self expression.

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NEW YORK (LNS)—Mark Rudd has asked his local draft board to give him an occupational deferment on the grounds that he is a “revolutionary” working for SDS and engaged in fighting against “a small number of people who are bleeding and destroying our country.”

Rudd, a former chairman of SDS at Columbia and an active participant in last spring’s rebellion, wrote to his draft board in Irvington, N.J., on Nov, 14: “My occupation, revolutionary, is vital to the national interest of the United States.” Rudd was re-classified 1-A by his draft board in Irvington recently, after the Columbia registrar’s office notified the board that Rudd had been suspended from the college. The chairman of the draft board, Clifford Day, told the Columbia Spectator that the decision was not based on political considerations.

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Movement people should be familiar with the “conspiracy trial,” Its a favorite government tool to stop a radical movement it can no longer absorb or put to good use. It parallels the “Committee Hearing” but doesn’t get the same publicity.

Conspiracy trials are easy for the government to initiate. They usually deal with planning to break a law, a useful device since it is bound to catch the leaders who are the planners. Leaders have to talk to their constituents in court if the plan is to break the law.

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The pretrial examination of 14 street people for dynamite conspiracy has been marked by the incredible legal buffoonery of Judge Thomas Poindexter. the assault of a defendant by a bailiff. and the testimony of a freek turned stool pigeon.

The fourteen are charged with con-spring to dynamite several police stations, a draft board, the CIA office in Ann Arbor and several other sites in the Detroit area.

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Reading the Fifth Estate last issue was sort of a magical mystery tour with none of the teasers on the front page corresponding to the proper pages and a number of other horrors.

This was caused by last minute surgery when our printer decided he would be unable to print a two-page spread photo of John Lennon and Yoko Ono posing nude because he felt it would hurt his other business.

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DETROIT Nov. 14—In a joyous celebration at St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church, eight men returned their draft cards to the Selective Slavery System, including the pastor of the church.

In breaking their ties with the draft the men stated, “Young men are being forced to choose between being free to celebrate their existence and being forced to engage in acts of destruction. We choose freedom, life, and the joy involved in being true to ourselves.”

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Fifth Estate

A Newspaper of Detroit

EDITORS

Harvey Ovshinsky

Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Cathy West

CIRCULATION

Tormnye Wiese

NEWS EDITOR

Alan Gotkin

MUSIC EDITOR

John Sinclair

PHOTO EDITOR

Mike Tyre

ART DIRECTION

Blalren

ADVERTISING

Gunnar Lewis

CALENDAR

Resa Jannett

IDEOLOGUE

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Is Detroit Police Commissioner Johannes Spreen serious about trying to alter the brutal, racist and corrupt nature of the force he commands?

Some think he is.

He ordered the suspension on Nov. 13 of nine policemen in the unprovoked beating of several black teen-agers after a dance given by the Detroit Pig Officers Association (DPOA) at the Veterans Memorial Building. The youth were attending a church dance.

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