Most Recent Additions

Maybe the overground media will learn from the people.

Der Fuhrer unleashed his vituperative and narrow Goerbels to whip the media into presenting only what the government wants the people to know.

The networks and the newspapers tripped over their own feet in an effort to shuffle into line. Like their liberal counterparts of a previous generation, the managers of the media crumpled, cringed and quickly rearranged their objective reality to oblige the rightwing fanatics of the government.

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On Saturday, February 21, three members of the Detroit chapter of the National Committees to Combat Fascism were beaten and arrested while selling the Black Panther Newspaper in front of Kresge’s downtown. The NCCF is a group which is affiliated with the Black Panther Party.

This attack took place at the same time as 200 people were demonstrating against the convictions in the Chicago Conspiracy trial. The protesters massed in Grand Circus Park and then marched to the Federal Building.

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The League of Revolutionary Black Workers Demand:

1. Halt UAW racism. 50% representation for black workers on the international executive board and international staff. Open skilled trades and apprenticeships to black workers. Recognition of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and its affiliates as the official spokesman for black workers.

2. That the grievance procedure be completely revised so that grievances are settled immediately on the job by workers in the plant involved.

3. Elimination of all safety and health hazards in the auto industry. This means cleaning the air in the foundry and redesigning dangerous machinery and production cut backs on hazardous jobs.

4. The union must fight vigorously against speed ups and increases in production standards. The companies should double the size of their work force to meet the present workload.

5. The union must fight for a five-hour work-day and a four-day work-week. The profit level of industry is high enough to allow for more leisure time for workers.

6. The union must fight for an immediate doubling of the wages of all production workers. Since 1960 wages of black workers have risen less than 25%. Yet profits have risen more than 90%.

7. A cut in union dues. The union already collects $10 million a month from its members and can’t defend the rights of the workers.

8. The end of the checkoff of union dues. While the checkoff was progressive in the ‘30s, today it prevents workers from disciplining poor union leadership.

9. That all UAW investment funds be used to finance economic development in the black community under programs of self-determination.

10. That the union end its collusion with the United Foundation. Black workers should contribute only to black controlled charities working for the benefit of the black community.

11. That all monies expended for political campaigns by the UAW be turned over to the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and the Black United Front for black controlled and directed political work.

12. That the UAW end its collusion with the CIA, the FBI and all other white racist spy institutions.

13. That the UAW end all interference in the political, economic, social and cultural life of the black community.

14. An end to the harassment of black revolutionaries and their leaders by the auto companies with UAW cooperation.

15. That the UAW use its political and strike powers to call a General Strike to demand:

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Since its inception, Open City has served young people. Open City is now asking that members of the community return the favor.

In the past three years they have supplied the Wayne State area street people with free medical and legal aid, free clothing, rent-free crash pads and free job-placement for long-haired freeks.

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No one really consciously planned the thorough integration of the middle-class worker with capitalism. Capitalists were forced to develop a more productive worker, a more extravagant consumer, simply because their own fixation on accumulation (profit) is continuously frustrated by the tendency of the rate of profit to decline as automation grows.

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“If your children ever find out how lame you really are, they’ll murder you in your sleep.”

—Frank Zappa, December 1965

Some very strange action has been coming down at Southfield-Lathrup High School. Rick Cricow, a student there, has been selling Fifth Estates in the area and distributing them at his school. Last month the Assistant Principal of the school, Richard Leland, confiscated the papers and instructed Cricow to discontinue selling them on school property.

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in Cooperation with Detroit Adventure

THURS. FEB. 19

FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956) and This Island Earth (1957) two popular Sci-Fi epics that include travel to other worlds, ray guns, and robots. DeRoy Aud. WSU. 7 p.m. Single feature 50 cents, double 75 cents.

METROPOLIS (1939) dir. Fritz Lang Industry fights labor in Lang’s expressionistic nightmare of future society. Architecture Aud. U of M in Ann Arbor. 7 and 9:05 p.m. 75 cents.

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GHETTO...the white suburban mind conjures up visions of....

GHETTO is now a game, a “simu-life” game made by Western Publishing Company. For the outrageous price of $23.00, those affluent liberals that wish to “understand” ghetto life can do so in the comfort, privacy, and safety of their own home or school.

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a review of

1) The Matrix, Poems: 1960–1970, by N.H. Pritchard, Doubleday paperback, 1970, $2.45.

2) Arts in Society, volume 6, number 3, edited by Edward L. Karmack, University of Wisconsin, 1969, single issue $2.00, 1 year subscription (3 issues) $5.50.

Contemporary poetry covers a pretty wide range, far wider than these two examples would have us believe. Good modern poetry is as hard to find as good modern jazz and though these two volumes are approaching it, neither come close enough.

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I’d like to reply to SP Marc Nadeau whose trash was published in the Feb. 4, F.E. [Letters, FE #98, February 4–18, 1970]

Baby, I’m not under 25, and am old enough to be your mother. Guys like you make me want to vomit. You made a big issue out of an article on the Northland “happening”. I don’t condone what the “kids” have done, but they were exercising a constitutional right—free assembly.

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WASHINGTON (LNS)—Marijuana may well be very good medicine for victims of tetanus, migraine, high blood pressure, and sunstroke, according to long-secret medical research just made public.

Encouraging studies, done ten years ago at the Army chemical warfare laboratory at the Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland, were disclosed when proceedings of a 1969 National Institute of Mental Health conference were published, according to a February 2 Washington Post dispatch.

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The Motor City Nine—nine Weatherman SDS women who invaded a Macomb College classroom last July—were convicted of disorderly conduct by District Judge Robert Chrzanowski in Centerline.

The judge sentenced five of the women to jail terms ranging from six days to ninety days. He also issued bench warrants for three women who failed to appear and delayed sentencing on the remainder. He refused appeal bond requested by defense attorney Dennis James.

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Doctors have been screwing with people for a long time.

Those of us who have tried to have babies in the present structure of American medicine know how rigid, male dominated and money oriented that structure always is.

A friend of mine who had her child here in Detroit has had the following experiences. When she was six weeks pregnant she thought she was miscarrying and tried to get an appointment with a doctor, but every one that she called said he would not see her without a previous appointment (made three weeks in advance).

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Returning members of the Venceremos Cane Cutting Brigade encountered their comrades who will take up the work of the first contingent of the brigade in the sugar cane fields of Cuba. The Venceremos Brigade is a group of young Americans who have been and will continue to be participating in the Cuban sugar harvest of 1970, now known internationally as the Battle for the Ten Million Tons.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. (LNS)—If Americans ever believed there was an Olympus within their borders, the location had to be the chambers of the United States Supreme Court.

“I’ll take it all the way to the Supreme Court” has long been the sputtered refrain of the miffed and abused. Changes in personnel at the Supreme Court amount to a changing of the gods for Middle America.

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Editors’ Note: The following is taken from the Ft. Bliss “Gigline,” the GI anti-war paper at that base. Its address is Box 31094, Summit Hts. Sta, El Paso, TX 79931.

Ft. Bliss, Tex.—General William Westmoreland expected to visit Ft. Bliss to perform a ritualistic inspection of the base, make a few speeches, and accept the plaudits of local citizens.

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CHICAGO (LNS)—Across America, the GI movement and draft resistance are growing. Stockade rebellions, GI coffee houses, draft board demonstrations and induction refusals have been the most visible forms of resistance to the U.S. Army.

The Chicago Area Draft Resisters (CADRE) report an important increase in another less known form of resistance—simply not reporting for induction. In Chicago alone, there were 1,090 cases of men not reporting for induction in 1968–69. This is up from 659 in 1966–67, and means that on the average, more than 10 men a week are not reporting for induction. These figures were compiled from information publicly posted at Chicago draft boards.

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The following interview with Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld (HIPpocrates) is reprinted from the Summer 1969 edition of Sexual Freedom, the quarterly publication of the Sexual Freedom League. Subscriptions cost $4.00 a year and are available by writing to: Sexual Freedom Quarterly, Box 14034, San Francisco, California 94114.

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CU CHI, South Vietnam—Some time ago, Capt. Frank Smith (Bravo Company, Second Battalion, 27^th Infantry) passed the word down to his First Platoon that he needed a patrol near the Cambodian border.

The platoon, however, declined to go.

Smith, faced in fact with mutiny, said immediately that he was not asking for volunteers. He was ordering the platoon into activity and he expected instant compliance.

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If you are a serviceman in Vietnam receiving a free Fifth Estate subscription the only notice you will get of its expiration is the sudden disappearance of the paper from your life.

We still want to get you guys the news about our culture, the GI movement, and anti-war activity, so if you qualify for a renewal (still in ‘Nam) send us a letter telling us to put you back on our subscription list. If you are short we will be glad to send you papers for your remaining time. If you are still in the service, but not in ‘Nam, a year’s sub is $2; if you’re completely free of the green machine it’s $3.75. Power to you.

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WASHINGTON (LNS/CPS) — There may be almost twice as many American deaths in Vietnam as the Defense Department claims.

Former Senator Wayne Morse has charged the Defense Department has two sets of death statistics: the real ones and those released to the public in its weekly “statistical summary.” Morse first made the charge last August, claiming 70,000 rather than 30,000 Americans had been killed in Vietnam combat at that time.

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a review of

Polymath: The Life and Professions of Dr. Alex Comfort, Author of ‘The Joy Of Sex’ by Eric Laursen. AK Press 2023

“We are the enemies of society and we must learn disobedience. Then we shall probably inherit the earth by default when the maniacs have burnt each other to a cinder. We shall be alive; they won’t.”

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San Francisco (LNS) — The people of People’s Park received token retribution recently. Twelve sheriffs deputies involved in the struggle last May were indicted by a San Francisco Grand Jury on charges of conspiring to mistreat prisoners (many of the 423 arrested were brutally beaten), shooting persons with shotguns, and beating persons who were arrested.

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NEW YORK (LNS) — On January 26, two men identifying themselves as “being from the government” dropped a subpoena off at CBS.

The FBI and the Secret Service wanted to get their hands on all the tapes, memos, notes, letters and telephone calls that CBS has concerning the Black Panther Party from mid-1968 to the present, as well as the unedited tapes—outtakes—of interviews with Panther leaders David Hilliard and Eldridge Cleaver.

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Reprinted from Up Against The Wall Street Journal

“Watch out, he’s a bad one,” said one of the women in the picket line at Gate 2. The man to whom she referred was trying to drive his white Mustang through the moving pickets. Two pigs assisted him by clearing a path through the line. Three days before the man had run his car into the woman who shouted the warning.

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Reprinted from The Metro

ECOLOGY SUCKS! It sucks the life out of social reform. It sucks the energy out of campus movements. It sucks the irritants out of capitalism. It sucks change out of politics. It sucks reason out of thought.

Ecology has become the monster of our age. Unless revolutionaries, radicals, and liberal reformers soon recognize this, they, and humanism itself, will eventually be consumed.

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The Women’s Liberation Coalition of Michigan has opened a state office in the Ad Hoc building on Woodward, headquarters for several other movement organizations.

The Coalition’s goal is the abolition of male chauvinism—the domination, exploitation, and oppression of women by men.

The office will serve as a center for information exchange between the affiliated women’s groups and the general public. It will also be a coordinating center for the activities of the Coalition.

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from Community Reporter and Fifth Estate sources

For as long as most of them can remember, Larry Johns, Ernie Elswick, Van Johnson, Jimmy Brown, and their friends have been pushed around by Wayne State University.

They’ve seen their families forced to move because Wayne State “needed” the land their homes were on “for the good of the Community.”

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NEW YORK (LNS) — The three month old strike of 147,000 General Electric workers has been settled.

J. Curtis Counts, the federal mediator in the strike, called it “a triumph for voluntary collective bargaining.” Albert J. Fitzgerald, president of the United Electrical Workers Union (UE) called it “the first negotiated settlement with GE in 20 years.” And the Wall Street Journal said, “The agreement contains enough concessions for both sides to claim victory.”

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CHICAGO—Judge Julius (Magoo-Hitler) Hoffman finally had his day in court as he sentenced all of the Chicago Conspiracy Seven and their defense counsel to long jail terms in prison for contempt of his Kangaroo court.

Chief Defense attorney William Kunstler was sentenced to four years in prison; two years, five months to Dave Dellinger; two years, one month to Rennie Davis; one year, two months to Tom Hayden; eight months to Abbie Hoffman; Jerry Rubin received two years, one month; John Froines, six months; Lee Weiner, two months; and defense attorney Leonard Weinglass to a year and eight months.

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The Fifth Estate

EDITORIAL GROUP

Alan Gotkin

Peter Werbe

Cathy West

DISTRIBUTION

Keep On Truckin’ Co-op

ADVERTISING

Steve Dunn

STAFF

David Gaynes

Jim Kennedy

Rick London

Nick Medvecky

Bruce Montrose

Claudia Montrose

Bill Rowe

Marilyn Werbe

POLITICAL PRISONER

John Sinclair

The FIFTH ESTATE is published every other Thursday of each month by the Fifth Estate Newspaper, Inc., 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, Michigan 48201. Second class postage paid at Detroit, Michigan. Subscription rate is $3.75 for one year; $6 for two years.

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A little bit of justice was done in Detroit the other day.

Gene (Reb) Bell, president of the Highwaymen Motorcycle club, and Ronnie Rose, president of the Branded, appeared in Recorder’s Court on charges of running an illegal drinking spot. The charges stemmed from a police raid on the biker’s clubhouse January 11 when Detroit police confiscated property, wrecked the entire premises, beat one person with a pool cue and arrested everyone present.

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The future of John Sinclair, imprisoned chairman of the Youth International Party, hinges on two things at this point. John is currently serving a 9-1/2 to 10 year sentence for possession of marijuana in Marquette Prison.

The first is the expression of support for the freeing of Sinclair, and all political prisoners and the demand to legalize marijuana. This has been manifested in such events as the Free John Sinclair Day held across the country Jan. 24 that raised thousands of dollars in legal fees and educated people about the repressive use of the archaic narcotics laws.

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In cooperation with Detroit Adventure

THURS. FEB. 5

FIRST MEN IN THE MOON (1964)& THE ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (1933), two adaptations of H. G. Welles’ novels presented as part of the Science Fiction Film Festival. 7:00 p.m. Single feature 50 cents, double 75 cents. DeRoy Auditorium WSW.

THE STEEL HELMET (1950) & PARK ROW works of Samuel Fuller. Architecture Aud. in Ann Arbor. 75 cents 7:00 & 9:05 p.m.

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“Where grievances pile high and most of the elected spokesmen represent the establishment, violence may be the only effective response.”

—Justice William O. Douglas, U.S. Supreme Court

“Violence? We hate it. But is it violent to shoot a cop who breaks into your home bent on killing you? If so, the Panthers are violent.”

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

I’m strung out on heroin. This doesn’t seem to have any long term advantages.

There are a good many places which offer help to addicts who wish to kick. But to the best of my knowledge, all of them ask the name of the patients and take photographs, etc. The confidential file always eventually becomes available to the law enforcers.

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ANN ARBOR—The long awaited single by the Up has been slated for release on Feb. 6. The tunes will be “Just Like An Aborigine” and “Hassan I Sabba.”

Artwork for the record label and jacket will be done by Youth International Party (YIP) Minister of Culture in exile, Gary Grimshaw. Grimshaw, who was working in California with the Berkeley Tribe fled for parts unknown recently after a Federal Fugitive Flight warrant was issued for him. He is wanted in Traverse City on a frame-up dope charge along with Pun Plamondon, Minister of Defense.

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MADISON, Wisc. — (CPS/LNS) While many schools have been abandoning women’s curfew hours (most recently the University of Iowa), the state board of regents of the University of Wisconsin has voted to re-instate women’s hours for freshmen. The ruling takes effect in September, 1970. Hours for coeds were abolished in 1968.

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Youth capitalism is proving to be as repressive to its people as Nixon’s solution to Black Liberation, black capitalism. The young are being systematically robbed by the capitalists who get rich dealing the products and services of the alternate culture.

The black ghetto feels the bite of the businessman much worse because he robs the black community by selling high-priced, poor quality goods to low-income families. The less you got the more it hurts to get it.

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I’ve got the clap, but because of night classes, I can’t get to the Open City Free Medical Clinic. Is there anywhere I can get treatment during the daytime?

—J.M.

City of Detroit to the rescue! The Detroit Social Hygiene Clinic is the place you’re looking for. The clinic is located in building 7 of the Herman Keifer Hospital, 8811 John Lodge, which is on the west side of the freeway just south of Clairmont.

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Editors’ Note: The following is a Liberation News Service interview with two anti-war GIs recorded at the Ft. Dix Coffee House.

“People don’t realize why soldiers march,” says Staff Sergeant Rick Williams, a husky, quiet-spoken soldier of Southern poor-white origin.

“It’s because when you march you don’t have a mind of your own. You can’t think about a right face before you get the order, or you’ll do it before it’s time. Once you get a soldier to march, you can get him to do just about anything you tell him.”

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NEW YORK (LNS) — The Boy Scout movement has long been regarded as a paramilitary indoctrination course for Western Civilization’s children.

Now a Massachusetts autograph dealer is offering for sale a letter which confirms that view of the Scout movement. The letter, dated Oct. 16, 1928, was written by Sir Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts. It is addressed to a friend and financial supporter of the organization.

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Monogamy, Monogamy

God Shed His Grace on Thee,

And Crown Thy Mane

With Ball & Chain,

From Sea to Bourgeoisie

—An S. Cohen special doggerel

Mom, dad, kiddie—cozily huddled around the TV. Symbol of Monogamy, of the one-with-one “until death shall do you part.” Symbol of a Good, the insurance against sexual chaos, shield against the slings and arrows of outrageous promiscuity.

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NEW YORK (LNS) — An ex-GI has charged that electrical torture of prisoners and civilians is official U.S. policy in Vietnam.

Peter Martisen, 25, interrogated prisoners-of-war for the 541^st Military Intelligence Detachment. He was trained for his job at Fort Holabird, Md., and was stationed in Vietnam from Sept. 1966 to June 1967.

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Liberation News Service — Soldiers are shipping out for Vietnam from West Coast embarkation points at a rate that recalls the 1966 build-up—1,700 one day, 3,000 the next. The Oakland Army Terminal is so jammed with GIs on their way to war that hundreds had to sleep out in pup tents during the torrential rains of early January.

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Editor’s Note: The following is a taped rap by a young sister from East Detroit who was able to get a first hand glimpse of the medical care afforded the city’s poor.

I took an overdose of pills and I’d been throwing up and I couldn’t sleep or anything, and I had to be admitted to Detroit General Hospital because I was in the city.

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ATLANTA (LNS)—Super-patriots have been trying to turn Lt. William Calley, accused of playing a major role in the Song My massacre, into some sort of a military hero.

Last month, members of the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars planned a rally in support of Calley. They expected 3,000 people, but only 34 showed up.

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Part I

These are the last days of the Weimar Republic.

In Berkeley, police ‘opened fire with buckshot on unarmed people by the Peoples’ Park, wounding over a hundred and killing one, James Rector. Across the country—in Madison, in Ann Arbor—police repeated the same repression with only slightly less savagery. Meanwhile, the government is quietly extending its stop-and-frisk, no-knock police state over almost everybody under 30.

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Open City’s Free University is preparing for its Winter term and has published a beautiful catalog listing the available courses.

They range from blues harp instruction to massage, organic farming, urban folklore, encounter groups, yoga, dance, photography and many others that “involve the basic needs of all people—the need to touch, the need to share, the need for love, growth and self-discovery.”

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When Fidel Castro liberated the Cuban people from exploitation by United Fruit and other capitalist pilferage 10 years ago, an old folks home in Washington enforced an economic blockade on that small island country.

Their reasoning can only be explained as anger at not being allowed to continue pulling in a profit from the labor and resources of that nation. It is part of the same greedy anger being displayed by Pig Amerika in its genocidal mania against the peoples of Vietnam and the black colony here.

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