Full list of texts

WRIGHTSTOWN, N.J. (LNS)—This town is a commercial appendage to Fort Dix. Wrightstown is shopping centers, gas stations, greaseburger palaces and bars.

The town is a bore. GIs leaving the base leave their money in Wrightstown cash registers. They return to the base broke and desperate.

A group of experienced movement organizers rented a vacant imitation ice cream store on the main street of town, walking distance from the Fort. The organizers turned the store into a coffee house—coffee, punch, posters, underground newspapers, music; a place to talk and be relaxed. The GIs came.

...

FORT HOOD, TEXAS July 12 (LNS)—The war in Vietnam is now the longest war in America’s violent history. In addition to the genocide being committed against the Vietnamese, thousands upon thousands of American G.I.‘s have been killed or wounded. But “G.I.” is merely a label we use; beneath the uniforms are real people. Sometimes we forget that.

...

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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a review of

GI Guinea Pigs: How the Pentagon Exposed Our Troops to Dangers More Deadly Than War by Michael Uhl and Tod Ensign. Playboy Press, 1980, 256 pp., $6.95

This account of the exposure of GIs to the atomic tests of the 1950s and the toxic herbicides in Vietnam is a teeth gritter of a story—both from horror and from anger.

...

On April 5^th in Chicago, GIs and civilians will be marching together against the war in Vietnam. The demonstration will be protesting the suppression of GI rights in the army and demanding that the troops be brought home now.

Six other major demonstrations will be held that week in cities near army bases across the country.

...

Editors’ Note: this interview with poet Allen Ginsberg took place at 10 a.m. on October 15 while driving from Detroit’s inner city to Macomb College, where he was reading. Ginsberg was in the area doing a series of readings for the John Sinclair Defense Fund and a benefit for the Ann Arbor Argus.

Fifth Estate: What place does poetry have in the United States, at the present time, in connection with the movement?

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Tom Sincavitch is uptight with the draft and the Army.

Fifth Estate readers are perhaps best acquainted with Tom through his artwork on the front pages and calendars in this paper. He drew the October calendar in last issue.

Tom was in the active Army Reserves and fulfilled 4-1/2 years of a six year “obligation” when he decided he had had enough. He felt he could no longer “justify his participation in the military with his efforts in the peace movement.”

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FT. JACKSON, S.C.—Pvt. Henry Mills has refused orders to Vietnam.

According to the American Serviceman’s Union, Mills came to New York to consult with them and then turned himself in at Ft. Dix, the nearest base.

Mills, who is black, has stated that he will not participate in a war that is immoral and racist.

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“Welcome to the Republic of Darkness and Unemployment”

— Baghdad graffiti

It’s hard to be gleeful about the deteriorating situation in Iraq even when realizing that everything the anti-war movement predicted about Bush’s invasion for oil and empire has come true. Even mainstream publications are using the word “quagmire” to describe the situation while seventy percent of American’s in a recent Newsweek poll think the US will be bogged down in its $1 billion a month occupation efforts for years.

...

“I’d rath

er face the uncertainty of opposing the war and going AWOL than face the certainty of being shipped and fighting in a war that I am against.

“I’m going to continue to speak up because I want to encourage other people to not go quietly.”

-- Carl Webb

The Pentagon says more than 5,500 soldiers have deserted since the war started in Iraq. From Iraq Veterans Against the War to Military Families Speak Out, a new anti-war movement finds its center in the disaffected and disillusioned ranks refusing to go. We offer solidarity to each one.

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FT. JACKSON, S.C.—Anti-war GIs here are circulating a petition addressed to their commanding officer calling on him to have a meeting on the post to discuss the war in Vietnam.

[See Ft. Jackson Leaflet in this issue.]

They also want to discuss whether their rights as citizens and soldiers are being violated by post authorities. The answer seems obvious. Since the soldiers calling themselves GIs United Against the War in Vietnam began their petition drive there has been a steady stream of harassment and attempted intimidation of their group by Army officials.

...

Threats of possible disciplinary action by the Navy against Seaman Norman Gelnaw for distributing copies of The Bond, the newspaper of the American Serviceman’s Union, to fellow GI’s at Metropolitan Airport, January 4, have evidently been dropped. (See last issue.)

The Navy’s decision came after one of the nation’s top military lawyers, Mike Kennedy of the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, had expressed interest in using the incident as a test case in Federal Courts.

...

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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SAN FRANCISCO (LNS)—In a startling development, recent figures in the San Francisco Chronicle show field desertions in Vietnam to be running at the rate of ten a day.

Many of the GIs are joining the military forces of the Provisional Revolutionary Government, their alleged enemy.

Those deserters who would rather switch and fight join up with the PRG, bringing with them detailed knowledge of how to work American equipment and how American units operate. There have been reports of misdirected artillery and helicopter fire in the Mekong Delta because deserters used stolen radios to cut in on Army frequencies.

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FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (LNS) Fayetteville witnessed its first anti-war GI-civilian demonstration on Oct. 11 as 50 GIs from Ft. Bragg led a march of 1,000 people down the town’s main street.

The crowd marched through the streets shouting slogans like: “Rich Man’s War, Poor Man’s Fight,” “Um, Umgowa, People Got the Power,” and “Nixon’s Indicted by GIs United.” They encountered little harassment from either the cops or town residents.

...

The American Servicemen’s Union (ASU) at Selfridge Air Force Base is inviting the peace movement to join them on the base in a “Picnic for Peace” on Memorial Day, May 30.

This is an excellent opportunity for the entire anti-war movement in the area to give support to and show solidarity with a vital faction of the movement, the GIs who are standing up to be counted.

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FT. DIX, N.J.—The trials of the Ft. Dix 38 accused of a variety of charges stemming from a stockade rebellion last June are continuing.

On Nov. 20 Pvt. Thomas Catlow was convicted at his court-martial of aggravated arson and riot despite the Fire Chief’s testimony that fire damage was of such a minor nature he did not even bother to examine it closely.

...

Three Michigan men are among a group of 18 GIs who have sought sanctuary in a Honolulu church because of their opposition to the war in Vietnam. They are Matthew Biggerstaff of Westland, Arthur Parker of Holland and Daniel Overstreet of Garden City.

The scene began when Airman Louis Parry came to the Church of the Crossroads which offers refuge to military asylum. By August 15 the other 17 men, from all branches of the service had joined him.

...

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.”

...

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.

(Washington) — Robert Luftig, 22, a soldier from New York City, Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to block the Defense Department from sending him to Vietnam.

Luftig, a draftee now stationed at Ft. Benning, Ga., has claimed in his suit that the war in Vietnam violates the U. S. Constitution and international agreements. He said the war is undeclared by Congress and abridges due process guarantees of the Fifth Amendment. Drafted September, 1965, and trained as a cook, Luftig is seeking a permanent injunction against Secretary of State Robert McNamara, contending that no person can be ordered to violate the law of the land.

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Pioneering French anthropologist Marcel Mauss studied “gift economies” like those of the Kwakiutl of British Columbia. A former amateur boxer, he was a burly man with a playful, rather silly manner, the sort of person always juggling a dozen brilliant ideas rather than building a great philosophical system.

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Over 100 persons picketed the Chrysler main headquarters in Highland Park on October 25 to protest the auto company’s role in the production of war material and its support of the racist government of South Africa. The marchers also were supporting the demands of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) against the Chrysler Hamtramck assembly plant. The demonstration was sponsored by the Black Panther Party and Students for a Democratic Society.

In November of 1970, Benjamin Mendoza y Amor attempted to assassinate Pope Paul VI at Manila’s International Airport. Unfortunately, Mendoza made one mistake—-he was caught. Give this man a second chance!

In what ranks among the finest assertions of life over death in human history, Benjamin Mendoza y Amor, a Bolivian surrealist, stated that he had made an attempt on the Pope’s life because “There is no God” and that Pope Paul “represents the kind of superstition which must be destroyed by removing him.

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Consensus is boiling that humans have become hyper-exploiters, impacting and taking so much from nature that remaining ecosystems are entering death spirals. Is it possible for human’s bred-in exploiter culture to shift from a taking lifeway from the wild to a way of giving?

Just as humans can turn civilization’s wrenches against logging machines to halt destruction, they can turn their civilized brains and bodies to recovering earth’s wild.

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This 1986 intervention by the Fifth Estate gang (under the banner of the Eat The Rich Gang, the Workers Revenge Party, and Citizens for Clean Urine) was carried out at an anti-Reagan demonstration at Detroit’s Cobo Arena. At the height of the “Just Say No to Drugs” hysteria, we brought a five-gallon bucket of what we said was our drug-free piss to present to the president. Arguing that the war on drugs was more important than other wars, our leaflet announced, “Let’s show our President we support his war on drugs! Bring him a sample of your urine to present to him at Cobo Hall to show you are drug free!”

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When small political groupings of people raise the possession of weapons to the level of military strategies and tactics, rather than the need for protecting their personal security, it usually guarantees the reverse.

By 1969, the Fifth Estate founder, feeling increasingly isolated by the radical fervor of the staff, quit the paper following his disagreement with a vote to print a front cover taken from a Cuban poster featuring an array of guns and the quintessential one-word slogan of revolutionary impatience, “NOW!,” in four-inch type.

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Groups in Argentina and across the globe are calling for global days of Action to demonstrate that those who are building alternatives to the dictatorship of the markets are not alone. On the 20^th of December, a day when tens of thousands will take to the streets of Argentina to celebrate the first anniversary of last years’ uprising, actions and events will take place across the world in solidarity with the people of Argentina.

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* The world’s 225 richest men have a combined wealth of over $1 trillion—equal to the annual income of the poorest half of the world.

* Globally, the richest fifth of humanity holds 85 percent of the world’s wealth; the poorest fifth, 1.4 percent.

* The three richest men in the world have assets greater than the combined gross domestic product of the 48 poorest nations.

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For years, the U.S. government has denied that the Gulf War Syndrome exists, refusing to admit the severity of illnesses suffered by tens of thousands of veterans of that conflict. Recent studies, however, show that the soldiers’ illnesses are indeed real, and troops deployed to the Gulf were more than three times as likely as U.S. soldiers elsewhere to suffer chronic diarrhea, joint pain, skin rashes, fatigue, depression, and memory loss.

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Arthur P. Hughes is a short, timid appearing young man of 23. He wears thick glasses and a large turquoise ring.

On May 19, Mr. Hughes, a painter who resides in New York City, stood before hundreds of stockholders of the General Motors corporation assembled for their annual Freakout in Cobo Hall.

He announced that a few days before, upon learning of the nature and extent of GM’s investments in South Africa, he had divested himself of 955 shares of General Motors stock by turning it over to the African Aid and Legal Defense Fund. The stock was worth more than $80,000.

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a review of

Godless: 150 Years of Disbelief edited by Chaz Bufe; Introduction by Don Arel. PM Press, 2019 pmpress.org

More than a thousand years ago, a Chinese Zen master wrote: Magical power, Marvelous action! Chopping wood, Carrying water. The eleven essays assembled here by See Sharp Press publisher Chaz Bufe are effective diatribes against belief in gods that completely destroy every aspect and argument on which Christianity and other religions are based.

...

“No, I think He looks better on the right,” Bejewel said.

Lisp slid god back over to a right-of-center place on the mantel. The electric god was plugged into a wall outlet, casting a shimmering white light on either the right or left of Lisp’s face--depending on where Lisp’s older sisters directed.

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At this writing it is completely unclear what to expect in Chicago. It looks like the YIP and the National Mobilization Committee, the group coordinating the political activity, is going to let everybody “do their own thing.” So YOU be ready to do it because it doesn’t look like anyone is going to assist you.

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Streams of 70 MPH mechanical plankton seethe out from radio nurtured exhaust warmed (”...and the murk index rating today is a low lean keen 50...”) metal sargasso sea. Detroit. FoMoCo Roto Moto get down town.

“Yeah...the people there are all ready to shoot even tho they don’t know what for...”

Detroit—R. Crumb’s furnace fantasy—recedes into a smudge over I-75’s cornfield borders. But childhood flashes born of a vacation packed car bring ghosts of summers past all back home.

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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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The most insidious biases one carries are those of which we are unaware. Philosophy and history, as far back as the very origins of our present civilization, have carried within them an enormous bias that remains strangely transparent, yet hidden. They have, almost in their entirety, been thought, discussed, constructed, analyzed and transmitted by men, for men.

...

The following is excerpted from a longer critique of the Emma Goldman Papers Project and its director, Candace Falk. For a copy of the complete article, write: c/o the Last Blast, Box 410151, San Francisco, CA 94141. [Authorship in the print edition is attributed to “Marie Berneri & Francois Ravachol.”]

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When I was a kid, the guys in my crowd used to view changing the oil in our cars as sort of a manly rite of passage on the way to adulthood. We’d dump the used oil down the nearest sewer laughingly, saying, “Hello Cleveland,” knowing that it would travel through the Great Lakes waterways to the cities downstream. That was before the age of ecological awareness, but we still had the realization the oil was going somewhere.

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Spitball of Buddha leaflet

“The destruction of a troop transport truck or the public execution of a police torturer is more effective propaganda for the local population than a hundred speeches. Such conduct convinces them of the essential: that the Revolution is on the march, that the enemy is no longer invulnerable.”

—Regis Debray, Revolution in the Revolution

...

from The Rat/UPS — Let’s run it on down. White males are most responsible for the destruction of human life and environment on the planet today. Yet who is controlling the supposed revolution to change all that? White males (yes, yes, even with their pasty fingers back in black and brown pies again). It just could make one a bit uneasy. It seems obvious that a legitimate revolution must be led by, MADE by those who have been most oppressed: black, brown, and white WOMEN with men relating to that the best they can. A genuine Left doesn’t consider anyone’s suffering irrelevant or titillating; nor does it function as a microcosm of capitalist economy, with men competing for power and status at the top, and women doing all the work at the bottom (and functioning as objectified prizes or “coin” as well). Goodbye to all that.

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The Selective Service Repeal Act of 2021 was introduced in Congress on April 14 with bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate. If this becomes law, registering for the hated draft will no longer be required.

The draft laws have always contradicted the 13^th Amendment that forbids involuntary servitude. The draft laws are the worst kind, forcing citizens to do the dirty, and often criminal work of the government in its endless wars, almost all of which are based on lies.

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a review of

“Karma,” Pharoah Sanders (Impulse)

Editors’ Note: The following review of Pharoah Sanders’ killer new album was found in the Fifth Estate office without the author’s name on it. Would he please contact us so proper credit can be given.

Saying that “Karma” is Pharoah Sanders’ new album should be enough. Beginning with his close association with the late giant John Coltrane, Sanders has been a moving force in the new jazz of the 1960s. Though he undoubtedly stands in Trane’s shadow to a certain extent, he is forging his own path, one as wide and deep, important as any before him.

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Hot diggity! Free food and good vibes on a Wednesday evening at Royal Oak’s Memorial Park, courtesy of potluck and the Yipfugs.

Tomatoes, rice, guitars and flutes were shared by pretty suburban hi skool frocks who are into turning on their brothers and sisters heads with feed festivals and films instead of TV and pep rallies.

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a review of

Parenting Without God: How to Raise Moral, Ethical, and Intelligent Children, Free from Religious Dogma Second edition by Dan Arel; forward by Jessica Mills. PM Press 2019

Although this may be beating a dead horse (that would be gods), there remains the pro-religionist argument that without God, anything is permissible. However, since under the sign of God, all horrors imaginable have occurred, it makes sense to look for a secular grounding for our ethics.

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The Internet wasn’t supposed to be like this. John Perry Barlow, Internet pioneer and friend of the Grateful Dead and contributor to their very early virtual community, The Well (or Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link), wrote this in his 1996 A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace:

“Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.”

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Since the arrest last May of four Earth First! (EF!) activists on charges of attempting to sabotage a nuke plant (see Summer 1989 FE), the federal government has widened its campaign against the radical environmental movement.

Throughout the summer and fall, the FBI fanned out across the Western states interviewing numerous people associated with EF!, and in several areas, grand jury subpoenas were issued, suggesting that more indictments and arrests could follow. On October 4, seven people associated with Wild Rockies EF! were called before a grand jury in Missoula, Montana investigating a tree spiking incident.

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In the 1990s, environmentalists and animal rights activists engaged in campaigns to put a stop to climate change, animal exploitation, and the destruction of biodiversity. They shut down board meetings, interrupted construction projects, organized demonstrations and sit-ins, held public outreach events at punk shows and vegan potlucks, liberated animals from captivity, and occasionally utilized vandalism, sabotage, and arson against corporations involved in particularly egregious behavior.

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Signs are that the government has begun an assault on radical environmental groups with the arrest of four people associated with the Earth First! movement and the order that 12 others appear before a federal grand jury. As we go to press, all we have are sketchy reports from the daily media and a quick call to the EF! Tucson headquarters, but it appears as though a class set-up is at work.

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NEW YORK—The American Civil Liberties Union has warned that a new round of anti-Communist investigation by congressional committees could turn into a “congressional inquisition” and jeopardize freedom of speech and association.

In a statement issued by John de J. Pemberton, Jr., the Union’s executive director, the ACLU sharply attacked the sweeping investigation by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee of New Left organizations and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and the House Un-American Activities Committee’s inquiry into the alleged role of Communist influence in last summer’s rioting.

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The Grande Ballroom, through the goodness of Uncle Russ, will again be the scene of a huge benefit dance/concert for Trans-Love Energies Unlimited, the Detroit hippie / artists coop.

Titled “Homage to John Coltrane,” the concert will celebrate the birth of the late musical giant (Trane was born September 23^rd, 1926, on the first day of Libra) and commemorate his passage from this planet July 17^th, 1967. Music will be donated by the MC-5, the Up, and the Charles Moore Ensemble, Detroit’s first and most forward avant-garde jazz unit. Moore’s original group, the Detroit Contemporary 5, performed in a “Homage to John Coltrane” concert at the old Artists’ Workshop on Forest Avenue in November of 1964.

...

There’s so much to say, man, that I don’t know where to start...maybe with the Five...the MC5 are a really classic example of environment and music coming together. There’s a Simple declaratory sentence for you...

The music affects the environment and...the environment affects the music. Dig? The machine, man. Detroit is a machine, The Machine even, and in the music of the Five...the frenzy, the anger...is the music of the Machine. Did you ever work in a factory? Jesus, I hope not. There’s music in the factory, but it’s the music of...metal crunching metal...a melody of violence...the Five are Man against Machine, baby, that’s all.

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Unaccustomed though I may be to giving advice which will earn money for someone other than myself I feel duty bound to give you some information concerning two forthcoming attractions at the Grande Ballroom.

Foremost, by date of appearance only, is the Jeff Beck group. Some of you will probably remember Jeff as being the guitarist in whose shadow stands, and always will stand, Jimmy Page, present “Lead Player” with the Yardbirds, who having now disbanded leaves him as the lead player to Chris Dreja, bassist.

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On January 28, a guard woke anarchist grand jury resister Jerry Koch in his cell and told him to get ready for court. They handed him some thin prison sweats and cotton slippers, then kicked him out in downtown New York City without even a phone call. He had to run six blocks in fifteen-degree weather to his lawyers’ office.

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“The work we are going about is this, to dig up Georges Hill and the waste grounds thereabouts, and to sow corn, and to eat our bread together by the sweat of our brows.

“And the first reason is this, that we may work in righteousness, and lay the Foundation of making the Earth a Common Treasury for All, both Rich and Poor, that everyone That is born in the Land may be fed by the Earth his Mother that brought him forth, according to the Reason that rules in the Creation.”

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(reprinted from the LA Free Press)

Somewhere in Los Angeles this week, a small group of men and women are preparing the tenth in a series of weekly radio programs of news and critical commentary on America’s foreign policy which they tape and send to Hanoi for broadcast to American troops.

Since it is very possible that the activities of Radio Stateside, as the group calls itself, are illegal (they are urging American soldiers to oppose America’s role in Vietnam), everything is done in clandestine fashion.

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The graphics/collages on pages 9–13 are taken from “Manual for Revolutionary Leaders” by M. Velli, and appear in the book in full color. It is available through our book service and is listed on page 18.

Each construction contains a variety of images representing the rise to power of the leader and his party, and the process of modernization and industrialization.

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a review of

The Solutions are Already Here: Strategies for Ecological Revolution from Below by Peter Gelderloos. Pluto Press 2022

The climate crisis is here. While climate change coverage in mainstream media remains paltry, it is impossible to miss the ways the climate crisis is unfolding. Year after year of record wildfire seasons, of the warmest years on record, of devastating heat waves in Europe and Asia. And, this is only the beginning.

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The work that’s being done by the new Italian cinema continues to amaze me, and the latest entry proves no exception.

“Grazie, Zia” (Thank you, Aunt) was written and directed by Salvatore Samperi at the preposterous age of twenty-four. Yet it is a film of uncommon depth and shapeliness, so clearly the work of a mature, sophisticated artist.

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Three years ago, Fifth Estate ran an article on the activities of the two dozen or so privatized armies in Occupied Iraq. The essay claimed that the name of one rent-a-gun company--Blackwater USA--was derived from the term used by the US Navy to describe stealthy, night-time Swift Boat assaults (like the one that former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey went on in 1969 when he single-handedly cut the throats of at least twenty women, children, and old men in the small Vietnamese hamlet of Thanh Phong).

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The march of human social organization is essentially the story of how people have found ways of harvesting ever more energy from their environments in order to sustain ever more humans. The story began with the harnessing of fire and the domestication of plants and animals, but it took a fateful turn at the commencement of the industrial revolution when we discovered fossil fuels.

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John Wayne BIFF! has made a new movie POW! called “The Green Berets” AAP! It’s currently appearing at the Adams Theatre, and I want all you weak-kneed, yellow-bellied draft dodgers out there to double time down to see it.

The real-life John Waynes display their handiwork in Vietnam. The photo was sent to Vietnam GI, an anti-war paper edited by Vietnam Vets in Chicago. Photo courtesy of Vietnam GI/LNS.

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Developments in what is being called the “Green Scare” continue at a fast pace as the government increases its attack on forest, animal, and earth defenders.

Four environmental campaigners from Detroit including a Fifth Estate writer were arrested in March for eco-sabotage. Other activists around the country were subjected to the heavy hand of justice with harsh sentences and arbitrary acts. The possibilities of more arrests and indictments are on the horizon.

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SACRAMENTO, CALIF.--On January 8, Green Scare prisoner Eric McDavid was ordered released from prison after nine years because the government admitted to withholding documents from the defense at his 2007 trial.

Eric McDavid leaves prison with his lawyers after serving nine years after a rigged trial in which the government withheld evidence.

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An international campaign demanding that imprisoned environmental activist, Marie Mason, be transferred from the repressive, high-security Carswell federal prison at Fort Worth, Texas, to a minimum security unit close to her family and friends, is in high gear.

Actions include a world-wide letter writing effort addressed to the U.S. federal Bureau of Prisons, legal action, and increased distribution of information about her case.

...

Marie Mason, who is serving the longest prison term of any Green Scare prisoner, lost her appeal as the U.S. 6^th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati on December 16 upheld her almost 22-year sentence for two acts of eco-sabotage. Following oral arguments in front of the court in October, Mason’s attorney, Anastatse Markou, said he was encouraged by the questions the judges asked about the harshness of the sentence which is the basis of the appeal, but it came to naught. As usual, American justice, not impartially blindfolded to her supplicants, but with one eye open, winked obscenely at the power she serves so dutifully. Green Scare is the name given to recent prosecutions of radical environmental and animal liberation activists who are labeled terrorists by the government and given exceptionally long sentences. No one has been killed or injured as a result of their actions. Mason accepted a plea agreement that called for a sentence of 15–20 years, although the judge tacked on even more time to the maximum agreed upon with the prosecution. It’s not clear whether any further avenues within the legal system are worth pursuing. An appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, given its right-wing composition, and the cost involved, makes it probably prohibitive. In early July, Mason was remanded to solitary confinement for a month before being transferred to a facility in Fort Worth, Texas. She was told by prison officials at Federal Correction Institution (FCI) Waseca (Minnesota) that her confinement and transfer, during which she was not allowed to retain many of her personal belongings including books and photos, was “administrative” and not punitive. Mason had been a model prisoner and was teaching guitar to other prisoners. She was known for her peacekeeping efforts inside the prison. Mason’s plea agreement included the crime of arson at the Michigan State University Biotechnology Support Project in East Lansing, Michigan, a genetically modified organism (GMO) research site. In 1999, she and her husband at the time, Frank Ambrose, set fire to research records at the lab causing considerable damage to the building. Ambrose became a snitch for the federal government almost ten years later, taping incriminating conversations with Mason, and later with dozens of other activists around the country at the behest of the FBI. Ambrose is serving a nine-year term in spite of all his work as a government informant. He was sentenced by US District Judge Paul Maloney who also presided in Mason’s case. Ambrose and Mason had been divorced prior to their arrests. There were initial fears that Mason had been transferred to a newly established Communications Management Unit (CMU) at the Federal Medical Center (FMC) Carswell in Fort Worth. In CMUs, prisoners are subjected to a heavily repressive regimen that allows only severely reduced contact with friends and family. Lawyers with the New York City-based Center for Constitutional Rights say the feds have consistently denied that Carswell is a CMU. However, the wing Mason is in is clearly a special control unit, and has restrictive conditions. Carswell’s web site states that it “provides specialized medical and mental health services to female offenders,” but the facility is notorious for its bad services for ill or disturbed prisoners and has been the subject of past law suits. Although Mason says she preferred the prison in Minnesota with its larger population, she is reconstructing her life at Carswell and reports that she has improved access to fresh foods to accommodate her vegan diet. Mason receives support from environmentalists and animal rights activists world-wide, many who do not approve of her tactics, but are appalled at her harsh sentence. She says she wants to assure them that, contrary to rumors, she steadfastly maintains her vegan diet even though so doing was beginning to erode her health given the lack of proper food at the Minnesota facility. Supporters help provide Mason with money for food of her choice from the prison commissary, stamps, clothing, supplies, phone calls and internet communication. Mason’s son and daughter receive stipends from the Rosenberg Fund for Children that makes grants to the offspring of persecuted activists. The fund is administered in part by Robert Meerpol, one of the two children of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who were executed as atomic spies in 1953 following a frame-up trial. In other developments, Mason urgently asks that her supporters not send money directly to her commissary account, since when it reaches a certain level the government confiscates the overage to pay toward her $4 million restitution she has been ordered to repay. All donations should be sent to her mother, Karin Mason, at PO Box 352, Stanwood MI 49346. Money sent to her is put into Mason’s commissary account as needed. Please circulate this information. Benefits continue to support Mason including recent ones in Cincinnati, and another in October in Detroit’s Trumbullplex featuring singer/songwriter David Rovics which raised over $700. Mason welcomes mail, but please contact her before sending her anything other than a letter to insure she can receive a particular item. Her address is: Marie Mason #04672–061 FMC Carswell P.O. Box 27137 Fort Worth, TX 76127

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The ludicrous charges against the federal Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act Four (AETA4) show the absolute depths to which the Green Scare has plummeted. According to the Civil Liberties Defense Center (CLDC), the four animal liberation activists are charged with “terrorism” under the AETA for (and, we kid you not, because I could not make up something so ridiculous if I wanted to) “protesting, chalking the sidewalk, chanting and leafleting--and the alleged use of ‘the Internet to find information on bio-medical researchers.’”

...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 29—The U.S. Treasury Department ordered the confiscation of perhaps the most unusual piece of campaign literature in use as the electoral farce drew near its completion.

Treasury agents broke into the New York Dick Gregory for President headquarters and seized all the Gregory campaign “dollar bills” they could find. Agents were reported scouring Chicago for the contraband material.

...

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.

...

a review of

Rebellious Mourning: The Collective Work of Grief, ed. Cindy Milstein. 37 essays, 412 pp. with 32-page color insert. AK Press, 2017

Rebellious Mourning is an ambitious edited volume by Cindy Milstein with enormous depth and breadth of highly relevant and timely cross-cultural case studies. This work by Milstein (sole author of Anarchism and Its Aspirations, AK Press) represents her third edited book project.

...

The infamous Grimshaw kite case has reached its first conclusion, with an astounding miscarriage of justice.

The case, as you may recall, concerned a kite, made out of an American flag, with the inscription: “Fuck America—Go Fly a Kite” and an Egyptian peace eye symbol. The kite was hanging from a light fixture in The Sun office, 4863 John Lodge.

...

LANSING—Justice moves slowly.

Two years ago Gary Grimshaw, who at that time was art director for the Fifth Estate, was arrested in the Artists’ Workshop office on John Lodge for displaying an obscene kite.

The kite had on it an Egyptian peace eye symbol and the words “Fuck America Go Fly a Kite.”

...

GRINNELL, Iowa (LNS) Brice Draper is a PR man for Playboy Magazine. He travels around to college campuses, selling the Playboy line and “promoting products for our advertisers.”

When Hefner’s boy Draper came to Grinnell, the local folk engaged him in naked confrontation. Ten students, six of them girls, took off their clothes to protest Playboy’s exploitation of the female body.

...

FILM. “King of Hearts” at the Studio North. Student rates Mon. & Tues. ce

FILM “A Man For All Seasons” at the Studio New Center. Student rates Mon. & Tues. ce

CANTERBURY HOUSE. 330 Maynard, Ann Arbor. Skip James performs Nov. 4–6. Adm. ce

RAVEN GALLERY. 29101 Greenfield. The Gun Folk perform thru Nov. 5 Then Charley Latimer and Paul Bowles, Nov. 6–19, Adm. ce

...

“Grooving,” which we’ve been doing since birth, has recently taken on some formal definition as the Kulchur Kritiks attempt to sympathetically dig the spirit of the multimedia art forms. Grooving, they say means to yield yourself to the flow of activity around you. Grooving requires a lot of personal freedom, and a lot of self assurance. It is the opposite of uptight perception, the opposite of categorizing experience, the opposite of traditional logical “understanding”. Grooving is the ability to receive several clashing stimuli simultaneously, a form of perception dictated by the new urban environments.

...

not since I was seventeen

have I been in a similar state of lockdown

.

back then it was

beaming home with the early light

with complete disregard for any promises

of minding a curfew or sobriety

jeep a degenerate comet

reeking of beer and weed

and I an alien approaching a staircase

where I cross paths with my captors

...

A review of

The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization and Resistance (Ed., M. Annette Jaimes, South End Press, 1992)

“Native Americans as a group experience the most extreme poverty...far and away the greatest rates of malnutrition, plague disease, death by exposure, infant mortality, and teen suicide of any group on the continent.”

...

Fifth Estate Note: Since his 1991 review/essay “Operation Gender Blur” [FE #336, Spring, 1991] Sunfrog has written about radical sexuality for the Fifth Estate. Both 1992’s “Pornography and Pleasure: Beyond Capital, Beyond Patriarchy” [FE #340, Autumn 1992] and 1993’s “Queer Anarchy: Anarcha-Faggots Demand to be De-Manned, a (de)Manifesto” [FE #342, Summer 1993] garnered extensive reactions from our readers, from thankful praise to condemnatory criticism. With “Group Sex,” we welcome the return of Sunfrog’s thoughtful, passionate, and uncompromising erotic politics to our pages.

...

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.

...

Since 1954, when a U.S.-backed coup toppled the democratically elected reformist government of Jacobo Árbenz, there has been a succession of military regimes aided by the U.S. The Guatemalan people, 60% of whom are Mayan Indians, have fought through both peaceful and violent means for social change; the Guatemalan state’s response has been the brutal suppression of any and all movements of opposition or reform.

...

The Guerrilla Roofreadings started May 28 at Guerrilla: Sector North, on Allen Van Newkirk’s roof, above the Artist’s Workshop with Andrei Codrescu reading from his forthcoming book: Insane People With Beautiful Sidewalks.

Andrei Codrescue was born in Romania and has lived throughout Europe. His book (in English) is a reflection of this multi-language trip. His convulsive fights with language make the structure of this poetry.

...

The San Francisco Mime Troupe, which has earned an international reputation for slaughtering sacred cows, will be performing its anti-war commedia dell ‘arte “l’Amante Militaire” in a benefit performance for the Fifth Estate on Saturday, October 28.

R.G. Davis, the articulate and energetic director of what he has called the ‘guerrilla theatre,’ had this to say about charges of obscene, suggestive gestures, disloyal treatment of the Vietnam War and presidential policies, and shock for shock’s sake in his show:

...

(Page 1 of The South End insert)

President George Gullen took a late-night meeting of the WSU Board of Governors by surprise Tuesday with the announcement of his resignation from the University’s highest post effective immediately.

Citing what he called the “massive dehumanization” which distinguishes “this and every other university,” the 57-year-old administrator said he could no longer justify “a single day more” at the helm of the State’s third largest university.

...

Guy Debord, the French author of Society of the Spectacle and a founder of the Situationist Internationale, took his own life on November 30, 1994. He was 62. His insights are valued and utilized by rebels and social critics.

Guy Debord (1932–1994)

In the past 20 years he lived largely in rural areas and this is where he died (at his home in Auvergne, a mountainous region in south-central France). He was born in Paris, however, and credits this city as well as other urban centers with furnishing him the elements to analyze contemporary society.

...

is áille ná bratacha an domhain é ...

an níochán

ar an líne

.

more beautiful

than the flags of all nations ...

washing on the line

A haiku in Irish and English by Gabriel Rosenstock (Ireland) with artwork by Masood Hussain (Kashmir) whose first book together, Walk with Gandhi, commemorates the 150^th anniversary of the Mahatma’s birth. More bilingual haiku posters from them are available at

...

In March Jean-Luc Godard’s film “Hail Mary” came to Detroit’s Wayne State University, drawing sell-out audiences and violent demonstrations from christian-fascist groups. The film is a modern retelling of an already boring (and over-told) tale, the events leading up to the birth of Jesus (the little guy attached to crucifixes). In the film, Joseph is a taxi driver, the angel Gabriel is a foul-mouthed drifter, and Mary is a gas station attendant. Despite a few nude scenes of Mary, the film is rather tame, eliciting such reactions by people who saw it as “actually rather sensitive” and “a snore.” True to form, the pope has condemned the film as sacrilegious.

...

In politics nothing can be taken at face value; many times what passes for an elaborately drawn political point of view is little more than a posture which conceals psychopathology. Trotskyism, a stillborn variety of marxism notable for the bizarre historical ironies embodied in it, is a particularly appropriate example.

...

Press accounts have generally referred to the kidnapped Hans-Martin Schleyer as “a major West German industrialist.” He was certainly that—head of the West German Employers Association and top board member of Daimler-Benz, the multinational giant which produces Mercedes-Benz cars and trucks and invests throughout Europe, Africa and the United States.

...

In the waning moonlight, three bands of sullen men with ash-blackened faces stealthed through the woods and dales of central Yorkshire, one of the first counties in England to industrialize.

Quietly, the three groups, each traveling from different villages, picked themselves through paths they traversed since childhood and assembled in a clearing near their target. Though they passed outlying cottages, no dogs betrayed them.

...

It is a mystery to us why a small number of anarchists and primitivists are attracted to Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who carried out a murderous bombing campaign between 1978 and 1995 against targets representing technology. The homemade bombs he planted or mailed killed three people and injured 23. Although imprisoned for life since 1996, he continues to be cited as an influence by writers, and one group recently called for birthday cards to be sent to him.

...

This year marks five-hundred years since the appearance of English social philosopher, author, statesman, and Renaissance humanist Thomas More’s famous Utopia. We might also consider that it is just over five-hundred years since the definitive anti-utopia, Machiavelli’s The Prince was published.

We might say that the entire modern age has been a struggle between utopia and anti-utopia. Even more, it is a struggle between utopia and the dystopia that is at the heart of the dominant utopia.

...

Marius Mason was struck by the story of these early civil rights activists and their assassination by the Ku Klux Klan. He painted this portrait (“Harriet and Harry T Moore”, 2022) using prison coffee as the main medium.

The Moores incurred the wrath of the Klan for their advocacy of voting rights in segregated Florida in the 1940s. They were both killed on Christmas night 1951 by a bomb set at their home in Mims, Florida. This followed their both being fired from teaching because of their activism.

...

The Court Theatre will begin its third season with revivals of two successful productions—HARRY THE RAT WITH WOMEN and OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR.

“Harry the Rat with Women” is an adaptation of the Jules Feiffer novel of the same name. It is the biography of Harry, the beautiful and narcissistic youth who is corrupted and eventually de oyed by the society which forces him to accept love and involvement on its terms.

...

In a decision that outraged the Toronto anarchist community, Ken Deyarmond was sentenced to six months in jail for assaulting two cops during a demonstration in September 1983 against British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Deyarmond was grabbed by pig Dusko Markovic during the demonstration for “lunging” at Thatcher and during the resulting fracas, as Ken tried to squirm free, he was manhandled by three cops.

...

One of the major topics debated in this newspaper and others like it is the reason(s) for the dramatic change in social organization during the transition from “primitive” societies to the “modern” one. Most contemporary anthropological accounts agree that the vast majority of human life has been lived in non-hierarchical, cooperative communities. Then why did the last ten thousand years or so result in a hierarchical, competitive society which has expanded its bounds to encompass virtually the entire globe?

...

Perhaps the only positive result of the reign of the murderous moron in the White House as chieftain of the American empire is to what depths he has sunk the popular perception of Christianity.

The Bush mob’s initial political approval following the 9/11 catastrophe he allowed to occur, utilized both the flag and bible as its key iconography to fool the rubes. Although this is standard fare for craven politicians, the Republicans raised this cultural imaging to levels not seen in a hundred years. But, the unraveling of the reigning racket’s lies, the exposure of their greed, corruption, and their hypocrisy and that of their most pious spokesmen, both in the Congress and the pulpit, have created an opening for atheism that would have seemed impossible even a short time ago.

...

The failure of civilization: it has been given some eight thousand years to prove itself a superior mode of life to the ninety-nine percent of previous human existence, primarily in tribal, communal, mostly egalitarian societies. Has the transformation to complex civilizations made the species more peaceable, more communal, more egalitarian, or has it had the opposite effect? Let us consider not civilization’s ideal, but rather what might be termed “real-existing” civilization.

...

from The Eighth Night of Creation: Life on the Edge of Human History by Jerome Deshusses

Today there is no city that the automobile has not turned into a vast parking lot, no avenue that is not a rectilinear traffic artery bordered by concrete sidewalks and strips of sickly, dying dusty, grayish grass. It will soon be impossible for people to talk to each other in the street except by walkie-talkie, impossible to breathe except high up in the mountains (where the air is only a little less toxic than elsewhere, and cars will soon be as numerous as tourists, anyway), impossible to cross a lane without thinking of the danger of being run down and killed, impossible to regard other human beings as other than so many Sunday mechanics mucking about underneath the artificial armor of their coachwork....

...

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF., JULY 19 (Libeeration News Service)—The scene in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury was tense Friday evening. Street confrontations between cops and free men had occurred the two previous nights and more street activity was expected into the weekend. On Wednesday and Thursday night, according to one witness, “People were throwing molotov cocktails as freely as rocks and bottles.” Barricades were erected and set aflame in the streets of Hashbury and the pigs were greeted with flying objects.

...

A Chinese journalist was freed in February after spending nearly 17 years in prison for splattering paint on a portrait of Mao during the 1989 pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square.

Yu Dongyue, now 38, and two friends, hurled eggs filled with red paint at the famous painting of Mao, which still stares at the Square from across the street. Yu and his family are expected to reunite in Hunan Province, but his younger brother said the family was deeply concerned about Yu’s mental health.

...