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Editor’s Note: The following interview with General Vo Nguyen Giap, leader of the People’s Army of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, first appeared in Europeo Magazine in Milan. The Interviewer was an Italian newspaperwoman, Oriana Fallaci. Liberation News Service is distributing excerpts from the interview as published in the Capitol Times of Madison, Wisc.

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The factories of Detroit are the guts of the city. They are a central, common reality in the lives of Detroit people, whether people are working a 10-hour day on the line or just watching from their office windows as factory chimneys fill the air with thick, black smoke.

Most public art in Detroit tries to ignore this centrality. Factories are not pretty places. For the people who work in the factories life is not a pretty matter. So “The Spirit of Detroit” is a jolly green giant.

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Special to the Fifth Estate

OAKLAND, Calif.—1969 has been a year of increasing pig repression in all areas where the movement has been active.

The black movement has many political prisoners already sentenced and the New York 21, the New Haven 8, and other key Panthers are awaiting trials with bails for individuals set up to $200,000 for each of the New Haven brothers and Sisters.

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Detective Lieutenant,

Detroit Narcotics Squad,

who has been single-handedly responsible

for busting me on two separate occasions

for possessing and selling marijuana

.

and who stumbled into my new apartment last night by accident

over a year since the last time he saw me

& two years to the day after he first busted me —

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“La Patagonia rebelde”

Director: Hector Olivera

110 min. (1974)

The death of Argentine anarchist author and activist Osvaldo Bayer on December 24, 2018 came at a time of renewed interest in his long career. Recent translations of two of his works, The Anarchist Expropriators and Rebellion in Patagonia, were published by AK Press in 2016.

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Ten women from the Detroit SDS summer project invaded Macomb Community College July 31. They filed into a social science class chanting, “Work, study, get ahead, kill.”

The students were in the middle of a final exam and were perplexed by the interruption.

The SDS women barricaded the door with a desk. They proceeded to talk about how America fucks people over, especially blacks, Third World people and women and how people had to get together and fight this.

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Patrick Eady, the Lamphere High School teacher who lost his job last March when a White Panther speaker used the word “fuck” at a student assembly, struck back in three broad-ranging court actions.

Eady has filed suit in Federal District Court for $450,000 damages under the Ku Klux Act of 1871 for deprivation of his civil rights against the Superintendent of Schools, members of the Lamphere Board of Education, a police officer who brought criminal charges against Eady, and Madison Heights Municipal Judge Edward W. Lawrence.

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The man accused of murdering a Detroit policeman at the New Bethel Church last March had his charge reduced from first to second degree murder.

Judge Robert L. Evans, who has presided over the long Recorder’s Court pre-trial examination of Rafael Viera, bound Viera over for trial July 30 on the reduced charge.

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NEW YORK (LNS)—The Army is planning a heavy vengeance for the June 5 rebellion of over 150 GIs imprisoned in the Ft. Dix stockade. [See “Army Stockades Blow,” FE #84, July 24-August 6, 1969.]

Apparently, 38 prisoners have already been hit with some kind of charge, or to declare the nature of the charges.

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a review of

Earth House Hold by Gary Snyder, New Directions Paperback, 143 pp., $1.95

Liberation News Service — Gary Snyder spoke at a Berkeley teach-in on ecology and politics recently. It was the end of a long afternoon, at the end of two very long weeks, and most of the students had gone on about their business, but those who stayed found their poet.

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Editors’ note: This article is being printed so that we can stop brothers and sisters from being needlessly busted. It was written by a Detroit lawyer who wants to remain anonymous. Don’t be careless! Learn from the way the man is dealing with John Sinclair.

The drug laws are enforced very selectively in this country. Everybody smokes pot, but it is the blacks, the long-hairs, the political movement people, the students, the underground press and the army organizers who get busted for it.

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Recorder’s Court Judge Robert J. Colombo, the pig who sentenced John Sinclair to almost ten years in prison, recently renewed his subscription to this paper for two years. Because of the barbaric sentence he placed on John, we are cancelling his subscription, confiscating his money and donating it to the John Sinclair Defense Fund. Money is urgently needed for legal fees and we hope all brothers and sisters will contribute generously to his defense. Send donations to John Sinclair Defense Fund, 1510 Hill St., Ann Arbor, Mich. 48104.

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The solar array’s passive tracking system wakes to the first rays of the Pennsylvania summer sun. The solar panels don’t care that today is the solstice, or that the sun will rise on its arc to an angle of 72.5° at noon.

Its rusting actuators will strain to follow the sun all the way to its apex. As freon warms in the black copper tubes that run along the edges of the frame, the liquid vaporizes and moves from one side to the other. The tracker begins its daily task of following the thermal energy of the sun, keeping the photovoltaic panels facing into the sunlight as it moves along a course from east to west.

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John Sinclair

Southern Michigan State

Prison Jackson, Michigan

Dear Leni & Everybody:

My letter yesterday from the Wayne County jail should be disregarded in large part since I was transferred up here this morning. It’s really good to get here at last—just like when you’ve been threatened with something for years and find out it ain’t so bad after all.

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Editors’ note: On July 21 at Central Methodist Church over 200 persons representing the Detroit anti-war movement met to discuss a series of actions against the war that had been proposed at an Independence Day conference in Cleveland.

The proposals included an SDS sponsored anti-imperialist action for October 8–11 in Chicago; an October 15 student strike called by the Vietnam Moratorium Committee; and a “legal, peaceful” March on Washington on November 15. The New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam has appointed two staffs; one each to coordinate the marches in Chicago and Washington.

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Fifth Estate

“To Serve the People”

EDITORIAL GROUP

Alan Gotkin

Peter Werbe

Cathy West

BUSINESS & ADVERTISING

Bill Rowe

DISTRIBUTION

Keep On Truckin’ Co-op

STAFF

Dena Clamage

Rick London

Bill Melater

Bruce Montrose

Claudia Montrose

Dave Watson

Tommye Wiese

Marilyn Werbe

POLITICAL PRISONER

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“Your day has come. You may laugh, Mr. Sinclair, but you will have a long time to laugh. I sentence you to not less than and not more than ten years in the state penitentiary.”

—Judge Robert J. Colombo, July 28, 1969

John Sinclair is in the State Penitentiary at Jackson, Michigan, where he is supposed to spend the next decade.

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1. Andy Warhol would have given his right arm (and probably his left buttock) to have created that epically-dull 2-1/2 hour underground film (starring Neil “Jack” Armstrong and Edwin “Archie” Aldrin) that was shown on American TV under such unusual circumstances a couple of weeks ago.

2. Weird-picture-of-the-Century-Award goes to a three minute TV segment during moonwalk: Nixon intruding (in color) with a pink telephone on split-screen image, talking to Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon; they are standing at military attention, with the American flag-prop reduced to red (and symbolic) black and white in foreground, LEM in background. Very weird unconscious satire. Deep-meaning picture.

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Excerpted from Fifth Estate #367–368, Spring-Summer 2005 40^th anniversary issue. This is an edited version of Don’s essay.

The design shows a pyramid surmounted by an eye being blasted by a bolt of lightning. Bannered beneath the collapsing pyramid is the motto, “NON SERVIAM.”

If English, Spanish, Italian, or French is your native tongue, then you can probably guess the Latin translation: “I will not serve.” The phrase is taken from Paradise Lost (1674) by the radical poet of the English Revolution, John Milton, wherein the archangel Lucifer refuses to obey God and is cast into the frozen lake of Hell for his rebelliousness.

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From childhood, most of us are taught what is supposedly an essential skill for living within industrial capitalist society: how to be nice. To be nice is to act in a way that gives others pleasure, comfort, and satisfaction in order to receive social rewards or prevent social penalties. To succeed in capitalism, it is important to be liked and likable. Nice people can get and keep jobs, make business deals, have social lives, and more.

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Groups like this performing at El Tanque at Havana’s Proyecto Cultural Muraleando will soon be subjected to official censorship.—photo: Peter Werbe

Pity the poor Marxist-Leninist militants now bereft of the police states for which they so earnestly apologized. But, not real pity as their dishonesty has caused as much damage to revolutionary possibilities as have the objects of their political ardor.

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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.

Girls 18 and over who believe in free love. Pretty and sexy, come to 2641 E. Michigan Ave. Ask for California.

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in Cooperation with Detroit Adventure

WED. JULY 23

HELP KEEP SONNY’S DADDY OUT OF JAIL. Legal Self Defense Benefit at the Grande Ballroom. MC5, Stooges, and Tate Blues Band. All proceeds to go to the John Sinclair Defense Fund 7 to 11 pm. Incase you are unable to attend please send any contributions to LSD, 1510 Hill Street, Ann Arbor.

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The opening shot in Airman Ted Goldflies versus the Air Force, Round Two, was printed in the last issue of the Fifth Estate [FE #83, July 10–23, 1969]. That was a letter of “Admonition” from Major Fred Smith, Commander of Selfridge Air Force Base, to Goldflies, warning him that he would face prosecution under Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for “conduct unbecoming a soldier” if he continued to distribute either The Fifth Estate or The Ally either on base or off base.

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

QUESTION: I have six children and would like to find a way to present my soul-mate with a more shrunken area to play in. Dig?

My physician told me that I had an unusually good pelvic floor for having had so many children (whatever that means). I have exercised my vaginal muscles but I think I have accomplished all that can be done that way. My husband is sweet and says it doesn’t make that much difference, but...

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“We might as well leave, Fred.”

Not many of us are fortunate enuf to have parents like the above.

For a book directed at (against) the establishment & the reaction, Tuli Kupferberg is seeking info about young people with ideas radically different from their families: case histories of the generation gap. For example: at the last great Pentagon demo, the daughter of Gen. Hershey’s first assistant was arrested. “A colonel’s son was arrested in Lawrence, Kansas, for parading in front of the local draft board with a sign reading: “Fuck the Draft.” An admiral’s son is a member of the Cornell resistance. Sen. McGovern’s daughter has been busted for dope, &c &c. (He is looking for people in all branches of the establishment, not just the military: i.e., in industry, finance, government, education, &c.)

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Greet The Man!

Be the first in your commune, home, block, etc., to wear the latest in fashion—“All Power to the People” and fist on finest quality T-shirt; sizes S, M, L and X-Large. Send $2.50 to: T-Shirts, Box 1711, Ann Arbor, Mi. 48106. Also custom T-shirting for your group or club.

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I am a dumb old GI and I hate this MF Army. I want to subscribe to your underground paper. It’s not a very pleasant thing being here where I really don’t want to be.

The only thing that I want is to be back home (Detroit) and to be with my girl. I don’t want the war in Vietnam, or the Army or all of this unnecessary harassment. I’m not really proud of being in the Army although my parents seem to think so.

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The pre-trial examination of Rafael Viera, accused of murder in the New Bethel shooting, heard testimony that may clear him of the charge.

Viera is accused of murdering Patrolman Michael Czapski last march in a shoot-out between police and several armed citizens. Patrolman Richard Worobec who was shot also, testified from a bed in Detroit General Hospital that Viera did not resemble the man he saw shoot Czapski. He did say Viera looked like one of the dozen armed men he saw flee the scene right before the shooting began.

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The on again-off again break up of the Red, White and Blues Band is On-again-off again. After the original guitarist-harpist quit, he was replaced by two people, a singer-harpist and a lead player who never really worked out.

It was announced that the group was breaking up for good, then that they would just replace the singer and the guitarist with two new people. But bigger things were in the air, and now, it seems, piano player Skip has left the group to join the Wilson Mower Pursuit.

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NEW YORK: City officials have turned down, sight unseen, a plan to turn NYC’s individual subway stations into fascinating communities, more or less reflective of the areas in which they exist.

The vast space in Greenwich Village’s West 4^th Street station, for example, would be tenanted by a sort of miniature Mulberry Street festival with push carts selling vegetables, church-operated gambling wheels, an art show and second-hand bookstalls of the type found along the banks of the River Seine.

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Woodstock Music & Art Fair presents</strong>

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Moving from ideas to action has always been central to the anarchist project. Our work has long been inspired by visions of a transformed world, one in which prevailing institutions and relationships are overturned to create more liberatory ways of living and relating to each other.

Yet powerful forces stand in our way. Not only the entrenched ruling order with its vast resources including its repressive apparatus and cultural spectacle, but perhaps even more of a bulwark against change, a deeply ingrained mass culture of submission to authority which generates a fear of living liberated lives.

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SAIGON (LNS)—To stem the gold flow and inflation caused by six-hundred thousand Americans spending large monthly salaries in Vietnam, the PX and the military clubs have gone to great lengths to provide for the needs of the Americans in Saigon.

One commodity in great demand, however, cannot be found in the PX shelves or at the bar of the Officers’ Clubwomen.

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Murray Bookchin is the editor of Anarchos magazine, a periodically appearing journal of anarchist thought published in New York City. Copies of his magazine and other writings are available from Anarchos, P.O. Box 466, Peter Stuyvesant Station, N.Y., N.Y. 10009 or may be picked up in person only at the Fifth Estate office.

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Most of us don’t like dealing with conflict in movement politics. There are times when our projects are rolling along smoothly and then we hit a point of contention and suddenly the room is full of tension and discord.

For many people, the reaction is to try and restore order by quelling the discontent and moving onto other matters.

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Rarely is an entire region of the world so caught up in the collapse of hierarchical politics as Eastern Europe of a year ago. The infamous “spectre of anarchy” astonished and horrified Communist, dissident and Western politicians alike as millions suddenly demanded control of their own lives. [1]

Tragically, but predictably, politicians of all sides—Party members and bureaucrats of the old regime, oppositional leaders and Western “advisors”—moved rapidly to protect their interests. Thus, Polish General Czeslaw Kiszczak, Interior Minister of the Jaruzelski regime, began talks in February 1989 to restore Solidarity’s legality in order to prevent the “anarchy and destruction” of its original phase (1980–81). [2]

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The art of Ricardo Levins Morales is rooted in the soil of the struggles that shape our lives. Inspiring, empowering and validating, his images both document and embody collective visions of unity in the face of power.

As a result of working with the Northland Poster Collective in South Minneapolis for over thirty years, Levins Morales has developed core insights about how art can be a powerful part of strategy in movements.

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Our courageous contemporaries in Eastern Europe had clear ideas about the urgency to do away with a malignant growth which usurped their self-powers and which claimed to be indispensable to social well-being. They were less clear about what, if anything, might replace it. The toppling of governments in Eastern Europe was the opposite of a palace coup. Did the people who came out to challenge the entrenched regimes realize how insecure the position of the bureaucrats was?

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The League of Revolutionary Black Workers has moved onto the Wayne State University Campus.

In a move to combat racism in employment and bad working conditions, members of the League have organized a group of thirty to forty black secretaries into the Ad Hoc Committee to End Racism, Exploitation and Oppression at Wayne State University.

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a review of

Man’s Rise to Civilization As Shown by the Indians of North America from Primeval Times to the Coming of the Industrial State by Peter Farb, E.P. Dutton, 332 pp. 1968, $8.95.

Man’s Rise to Civilization As Shown by the Indians of North America from Primeval Times to the Coming of the Industrial State is quite an eyefull title. Don’t be fooled.

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The past week has seen an effort by the Army to give undesirable discharges to three anti-war GIs. All three are known for their anti-war views and their active struggle for the constitutional rights of American servicemen, and have been defended by the GI Civil Liberties Defense Committee.

At Fort Jackson, S. Carolina, where GIs United Against the War in Vietnam was founded, Pvts. Joseph Cole and Tommie Woodfin, two members of the famous Ft. Jackson Eight have been given official notice that they will receive undesirable discharges from the Army.

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According to a recent article in the Detroit Free Press only 17% of “deprived” families eligible for State aid under the Federal Food Stamp plan have taken advantage of it.

Food stamps are purchased from the Michigan Department of Social Services for, say $56 a month, and are redeemable at most supermarkets for $86 worth of groceries. That is a bonus of $30.

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Yas, free music. Free livin’. Free heads. Free Old Tarter Field for awhile at the WABX free Sunday afternoon concert.

After three solid days of rain, the sun shone on Old Tarter Field July 20. Deep in the crotch between the John C. Lodge and Edsel Ford Expressways five bands jammed for the whole afternoon.

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A Joint Declaration by

Amphibians for Decolonization

Inner Island Surrealist Group (‘Kómoks/Pentlatch territory)

Ottawa Surrealist Group (Algonquin Anishnaabeg territory)

“It took me a long time to find out my mistakes But I’m not fattenin’ no more frogs for snakes.”

—Sonny Boy Williamson

The Unist’ot’en are the Big Frog clan of the Wet’suwet’en nation. They defiantly croak at the colonizer’s yoke without reservation. They are hungry for decolonization. We honor their spirited resistance to colonial authority and offer our wholehearted solidarity.

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After messing around with Tom Sincavitch’s “Discharge for the good of the service” and finally turning it down, the Army has offered him a deal.

If Tom agrees to plead guilty to the charges of violating the orders of a sergeant and a captain they will drop the charge of violating an Army regulation, give him nine months confinement at Fort Leavenworth and then give him a Bad Conduct Discharge.

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NEW YORK, N.Y., July 1—The national office of the American Servicemen’s Union announced that two revolts had taken place in army stockades recently; on June 14 at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina and on June 22 at Ft. Riley, Kansas.

The uprising at Jackson was touched off by the beating of a prisoner, Julio Rivera, who had refused to pull K.P. Rivera was severely beaten by three sergeants and had to be hospitalized.

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Editors’ Note: The so-called “riot manual” described on the opposite page [FE #84, July 24-August 6, 1969] should be seen for what it is—a battle plan for the subjugation of the black community, demonstrators, and anyone who challenges the way this system is run. Its ruthlessness and cynicism should be ample evidence that the police are not an agency to protect the people, but rather to terrorize them.

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Some ways to think about the meaning and significance of three white, Christian males, two of whom are members of the armed forces, going to the moon.

“This is it,” said Cal Rogers, an elderly Oklahoman, who stood beside a tent and sipped a container of coffee. “This is what we’ve been working and paying for so long? That’s why I’m here to see what its all about.” (N.Y. Times Wednesday July 16, 1969).

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(via The Ann Arbor Argus) When the insurrection of July, 1967 began, Detroit police were ready with Schutzstaffel rules.

The Argus secured an official copy of the police riot manual issued in 1966 and signed by Ray Girardin, police commissioner, 1961–68. Among the manual policies still in force are the following.

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