Full list of texts

I mistrust people who smoke pot loudly. Bragging, yelling, telling.

I don’t think it’s wrong to turn new people on. I’d just never thought of trying to sell marijuana in mass form. It seemed that LEMAR was trying to prove that psychedelics were safe “for the whole family.” I think they’re right, only I instinctively shrink away from anyone trying to lay something on me. American TV commercials did that to me.

...

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.

...

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.”

...

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.

...

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.

...

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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MADISON, Wisc.—A Federal Grand Jury here has indicted three army enlisted men on charges that they dynamited installations at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin last July 26^th, the anniversary of Fidel Castro’s attack on the Moncada Barracks.

All three GIs are members of the American Servicemen’s Union.

Damage to the camp’s central telephone exchange, a Western Electric transformer and the base’s waterworks was estimated at $100,000 by United States Attorney John Olsen. Destruction at the two old WWII buildings housing the telephone exchange was almost total, putting the phone service out of operation for almost a month.

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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.

...

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.

...

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.

...

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.

...

“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.”

...

(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.

...

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.

...

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.’”

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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.

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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.”

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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

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“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.

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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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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.

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On Thursday, February 23 at 8 p.m. the editorial board of GUERRILLA will present a program of new Latin American poetry in Lower Helen DeRoy Aud. at Wayne State University. The program will include a film on the Venezuelan guerrilla struggle and a lecture on Hugo Blanco, the imprisoned Peruvian peasant leader. The evening will be presented in cooperation with the Committee To Defend Latin American Political Prisoners.

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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.

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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:

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(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

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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.

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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.

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When “Hair” first appeared in 1967, at New York’s Open Theatre, it promised to be a refreshing, honest statement about ourselves and an emerging life style.

That was in 1967.

Now, three years later, that same life style makes it impossible to accept “Hair” as anything less than a cultural rip-off and a bold faced lie. This conclusion has nothing to do with the production as theatre, because “Hair” is not just another Broadway musical singing about surrey’s with fringes or weather conditions in Spain. “Hair’s” whole hype is that it’s about us and that makes it dangerous.

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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.

...

In the 1971 movie, Harold and Maude, a boy-man sewn into an upper class lineage headed by a satirically tyrannical matriarch stages his own suicide again and again. The first scene depicts his fake self-hanging, “OH HARRROLD!” His mother’s admonishment is delivered with all the horror-shock Harold meant for her, but also cloying authority, the absolute order Harold cannot escape.

...

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.

...

What follows is an edited entry from “Hauling Secrets” an anonymous job-blog written by a handful of waste haulers in the Upper Mid-west. (haulingsecrets.com). The site offers interesting entries on bizarre on-the-job findings, as well as reflections on the cosmology of the waste stream in our over-developed civilization.

...

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

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

...

Through September 2

A traveling RV-gypsy gathering that will join with local people in 14 cities across North America to create temporary autonomous zones, make art, cook food, establish squats, play music, celebrate, & protest. For a complete list of cities, call Arrow at 212/ 614–0393 or write: 209 E. 7^th St., NY, NY:

...

a review of

Hayduke Lives! by Edward Abbey, Little, Brown, Co., Boston, 1990

Hayduke lives? Well, after reading the late Edward Abbey’s sequel to his 1976 novel, The Monkeywrench Gang, one almost wishes the “wilderness avenger, industrial saboteur, night-time trouble-maker, barroom brawler, free-time lover...” had not made it safely off the cliff where we had assumed he plunged to his death at the end of the first book.

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About 12 of us from Detroit made the trek to Chicago this May Day to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of the Haymarket riot and subsequent state murder by execution of five anarchists.

Anarchy then and now: Above, Haymarket 1886. Below, Chicago Anarchist Gathering, May 1986. By the way, that’s “Workingmen of all tongues unite.” Photo: S. Izma

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This article is the fourth in a series of counter-Bicentennial pieces dealing with the more sordid and often less-acknowledged incidents in America’s 200year-old history.

As discussed in last month’s issue of the Fifth Estate (see Bicentennial Moment No. 3, “The Ludlow Massacre”), the period beginning in 1865 with the conclusion of the Civil War and continuing through 1919 marked the turning point in America’s economy from individual, agrarian-based capitalism to corporate monopoly capitalism.

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Response to:

A Bicentennial moment: Haymarket Square Riot by Bob Nirkind, Fifth Estate #272, May, 1976, Vol. 11, No. 8, page 10

To the Fifth Estate:

A brief note concerning Bob Nirkind’s treatment of the Knights of Labor in the May issue of the Fifth Estate.

Most historians have seen the Knights of Labor as a backward-looking organization grounded in the craftsman’s rejection of the development of wage-slavery and the destruction of his skills—and privileges. There is a certain grain of truth in this, especially as far as the early years of the organization are concerned (1879 through 1884), and the leadership itself. However, in my own work (which meant looking at the Knights in great detail on both the local and national level) I found a more useful framework.

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Special to the Fifth Estate from Satyrday Publications, Toronto

Toronto—as well as most large Canadian cities—is becoming a haven for youthful Americans who, for reasons of their own, don’t want any part of U.S. President Johnson’s war on the Vietnamese people.

“It’s not that I’m scared to fight... I just don’t believe in killing people for the phony cause that our leaders tell us we’re fighting for,” one U.S. draft-dodger told Satyrday magazine recently. He preferred to remain anonymous because Federal Bureau of Investigation officers, hand-in-hand with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (Canada’s FBI), are trying to keep tabs on draft-dodgers.

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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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CHICAGO—Hundreds of SDS members, responding to two separate calls, moved in the streets of Chicago and braved police gunfire on several occasions in the opening days of the Oct. 8–11 action against U. S. imperialism.

Workers at Harvester Plant in Chicago say “Right On” to demonstrators. photo / LNS

On the first night four hundred young people, mostly members of SDS’s prominent Weatherman faction—wearing helmets and carrying sticks—charged through Chicago’s fashionable Gold Coast district, smashing left and right the windows of stores, banks, cars, apartments and hotels.

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Game (1) “Shelf Life”

How to Play: You take a series of books off your shelf in the order they sit there. Working through them in sequence, you open them at random, selecting the phrase or clause that strikes you, and create a text in this way. (It’s also possible to make a title in this way). As a variant, this can also be played with more than one player, by taking it in turns to add a sentence, phrase, clause or half-sentence.

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

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

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On October 16, young men in Detroit and in cities across the United States will have turned in their draft cards to federal officials.

In Detroit, at least 20 men are expected to take part in the actual resistance at Cadillac Tower in Downtown Detroit, site of the Selective Service System while a support demonstration will take place outside beginning at 3:00 p.m.

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October 16 was the first day of massive draft resistance in Detroit and throughout the United States. From coast to coast thousands of Americans demonstrated against the Vietnam war and against draft slavery.

The rain didn’t stop draft resisters from demonstrating on Oct. 16.

In total, over 2,000 young men returned their draft cards to the Federal Government. In San Francisco over 200 cards were returned; in New York over 300; in Chicago, 250. Similar actions were held in Denver, Kansas City, St. Louis, Des Moines, and Philadelphia. In Washington D.C. prior to the giant Mobilization almost 1,000 young men said no to the draft by depositing their cards at the office of the Attorney General.

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Over the course of a decade, almost ten million Americans served the US military in the Vietnam War, and one quarter of those were draftees. Almost 60,000 Americans died, and almost 60% of those were under the age of 21. In terms of sheer numbers, today’s all-volunteer army is much leaner. And many young people who signed up out of economic necessity aren’t that stoked about Bush’s War Without End.

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The international press is constantly writing about the economic crisis in Greece. Economic pundits speculate less about whether or not Greece will default but in what manner and when. Absent from these considerations is the massive popular revolt in Greece against the Draconian measures already in place. Totally absent from mainstream commentary is the effect on European stability the mass resistance developing in Greece might have if replicated in other EU nations. The massive marches in Greece have gotten considerable coverage, but far more significant are the unreported successes of the I Won’t Pay movement and the communal revolt in Keratea, a small seaside town 25 miles southeast of Athens.

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Age 90 is very different. A dusty journey has been traveled, a time-tunnel has been penetrated. Her 20^th Century is a vast prismatic blur, a fantasy in which some parts hold up for the Truth.

In 1900, this beautiful woman was 21 years old. So many years ago that what you’re saying, what I’m saying today is a drop of curious mist in the great and sheer storm of human survival. Little more than a grunt, glint, tiny fart, etc., of the 90 year old cosmic voyage of this lady.

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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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The Fifth Estate needs a minimum of forty persons willing to pledge $5.00 a month to insure this paper’s survival and increase our ability to do such things as enlarge page size or do special issue supplements. A long rap probably won’t convince you one way or the other about whether or not the paper is worthwhile to maintain—either you like it and that makes it worth five bucks a month or you don’t. (By the way, this isn’t meant to be a guilt trip—we know some people just cannot afford a monthly sum like that.) Fifth Estate sustainers will receive a free publication each month as well as free admission to all FE events such as benefits and film showings. If you can help us, mail this coupon and we’ll contact you next month.

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The Detroit Black Panther Party has just opened up a new office and asked the community to aid them in securing needed supplies.

If you have desks, typewriters or other office machines available they can be put to immediate use in aiding the work of the Panthers.

If you can help or wish to make a donation to the Panthers contact the Fifth Estate office, 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, 48201 or call 831–6800.

The Fifth Estate is not reaching everyone that it should. Conservative distributors and frightened merchants will not handle or sell the paper because it is too controversial. Hence, there are many people who are not able to read what we have to say simply because there is nowhere they can buy the paper.

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The FE HQ in rural Tennessee seeks volunteers and interns for extended visits of one to three months.

Help maintain our Bistro. Participate in every aspect of magazine production. Learn new skills and meet interesting people. Live in a rural intentional community.

Applicants must be willing to live rustically, pay for own expenses, and share basic chores. Please submit letter of introduction with writing samples and activist references.

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(for Federico Arcos)

In 1937, at the opening of the London exhibition, “Surrealist Objects and Poems,” anarchist art critic Herbert Read delivered a short talk proclaiming the movement’s artists as “angels of anarchy.” The show’s catalogue cover also featured a sculpture by the Argentinean-English surrealist Eileen Agar entitled, “The Angel of Anarchy.” Who was this “Angel?” The mystery was cleared up in the December 1938-January 1939 issue of the English surrealists’ London Bulletin, where a photo of Read, author of Poetry and Anarchism, appeared alongside a reproduction of the work.

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Just before 1998, he started taking advice from the talking crow.

It started like you might have imagined. The crow was perched on a spindly branch near the hospital parking lot. It quietly assessed him.

He was getting his car keys out of his pocket, and the crow was drawn in by his smooth knuckles as they slid into the denim of his jeans and then slid out barely concealing something shiny.

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The interview originated with a long-distance telephone call from Los Angeles to the office of the Fifth Estate the day of the Oct. 15 Moratorium. The operator wanted “whoever writes about movies.” There wasn’t anybody else in the office, so I took the call.

“This is Casey Kasem.” A good professional voice and manner. “I’m from Detroit and I’m starring in my first movie, ‘Free Grass,’ which is premiering there next week. I’d like to talk to you about it, if you’re interested.” Poised, easy. Right on. Free passes.

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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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I have called this a “Hidden Chapter in the Fight Against War” because the vast majority of our generation is totally unaware of the fact that the end of 1945 and the beginning of 1946 saw the greatest troop revolt that has ever occurred in a victorious army. The central issue was whether the troops would be demobilized, or whether they would be kept in the Pacific to protect Western interests from the growing colonial revolution.

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The Draft Resistance Committee has pulled off a minor victory in an attempt to stop some of the harassment directed at it by landlords, vigilantes, and the City of Highland Park. (See Fifth Estate, Sept. 15–30).

On Sept. 22, the Committee brought their landlord, Tom Jewell into the Circuit Court room of Judge Carl Weideman in an attempt to keep Jewell out of the groups storefront headquarters at 12820 Hamilton. Jewell had entered the building several times and had torn down signs and done other damage.

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Highland Park Junior College and High School students went on strike April 13. They returned to school on the 25^th, vowing to continue their struggle by other means. For two weeks the students and the Highland Park community have engaged in a non-violent demonstration, allowing those who wished to return to school to do so, though less than a quarter of the college attended classes.

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In contrast to the Dearborn decision on a Vietnam referendum, Highland Park’s City Council voted, 4 to 1, on Oct. 17, not to place the issue on the November ballot. The vote was surprising in a community which is more urban, more sophisticated than Dearborn, with a high percentage of Negroes, active in civic affairs.

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“What the fuck are we going to do about those crazy White Panthers?” “I don’t know, man....I’m too wasted to even think about it.”

“Me too, man, shit, how are we gonna have a legislative session this afternoon?”

“Look, go wash your face with cold water and drink some coffee,” the fat one said, “I’ll call Schweigert and tell him what’s happening. If we can’t get it together, we’ll call the State Police and have everyone thrown out. It’ll be rough for those junior high kids from Petoskey, but we sure can’t let them see us like this.”

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I. STUDENTS HAVE THE RIGHT TO EXERCISE ALL RIGHTS ENUMERATED IN THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION, THE BILL OF RIGHTS AND ALL OTHER AMENDMENTS AND THOSE ESTABLISHED BY THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT.

II. STUDENTS HAVE THE FULL FREEDOM OF POLITICAL ACTIVITY IN THE HIGH SCHOOLS.

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NEW YORK (LNS) — A new press service especially for the growing network of high school underground papers has been established in New York City.

The High School Independent Press Service (HIPS) sends out news packets weekly to several hundred high school publications. HIPS works out of the LNS office at 160 Claremont Ave., New York, N.Y. 10027, phone: (212) 749–2200.

“This is a lot of shit,” was the reaction of one Cass Technical High School student to a recent Underground addition to the growing number of publications at Detroit’s largest inner-city school.

South Hampton Illustrated Times, better known to the student body as SHIT, arrived on the scene without the thunder and lightning that usually accompanies the appearance of an unsponsored (or rather, uncensored) school publication. Officials were concerned, but didn’t know who to blame, and the students were more than slightly tongue-in-cheek in their acceptance.

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Detroit area high school students will protest the war in Vietnam and commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King in a student strike on April 3^rd.

April 4^th marks one year since the assassination of Dr. King, who was an outspoken opponent of the war in Vietnam and an active participant in the antiwar movement.

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As part of the April 26 Student Strike against the Vietnam War, hundreds of high school students from the metropolitan area walked out of school or protested by other means.

At Cass Technical High School, which draws students from the entire city and beyond, 300 walked out at 9:30 under the direction of the Cass Afro-American Club and the Detroit High School Student Mobilization Committee. An undeterminable number of other students stayed in school wearing black armbands, which were distributed by DHSSMC.

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The revolutionary spirit among young people has begun to rage in the secondary schools and one may be seeing a multitude of mini-Columbias as high school students begin to demand their rights.

A recent example occurred at Mumford High on the Northwest side the week of Oct. 1. Because of student grievances, a protest walk-out was being planned, but relatively few students knew about it.

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A conference for high school underground publications has been set up. All high school students working on publications or interested in starting underground papers are invited.

The purpose of the meeting is to discuss all aspects of establishing a paper, and compare experiences for the benefit of other papers. It would be beneficial if those people who are already printing a paper would bring copies with them.

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Editors’ Note: Roman Gribbs is Sheriff of Wayne County and candidate for mayor of Detroit. Part of his attempt to sell himself to the people of our city has been on the basis of his role in reforming the Wayne County Jail, which is his responsibility.

Long a chamber of horrors, the Sheriff has been able to enlist the cooperation of Detroit’s two daily papers to create an illusion that his dungeon has become a fit place for humans to inhabit due to his work.

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