Full list of texts

On 19 May this year Brenda Earl Christie, a co-founder of the anarchist publishing house Cienfuegos Press, and her two-year-old daughter Branwen, were arrested at Hanover Airport in West Germany as they were boarding a Gatwick (England) bound flight following a three week holiday with her sister-in-law. Both Brenda and her daughter were held by GS-9 antiterrorist police when the Central Police Computer in Wiesbaden indicated that Brenda was wanted on a warrant issued against her eleven years ago in Frankfurt.

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a review of

Let’s Get Free: a zine about Jeff “Free” Luers: Earth Defender, Anarchist, and Political Prisoner 11x17, 28 pages. Order for $5 (postage paid) from Break the Chains (checks made out to “Howl For Freedom”, and well concealed cash only) POB 11331 Eugene, OR 97440

Let’s Get Free is a new zine created by the Defense Network for ELF prisoner Jeff “Free” Luers. Serving a 22 year sentence for burning 2 SUVs in the summer of ’00, Free continues to fight for his freedom through the legal system, and to speak out for the liberation of all life. This zine is a major forum for Free’s writings, and a useful introduction to his case and his motivations for those who are just learning about radical eco-defense. The zine features reprints of mainstream media reports, letters and op-eds (some by Free himself), Free’s poetry, personal letters of support from Lorenzo Ervin and Grand Jury resistor Josh Harper, and an interview between Free and another Oregon anarchist prisoner, Rob “Los Ricos” Thaxton.

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OTTAWA, Ont. (LNS)—Canadian Health Minister John Munro has indicated that the Canadian government is considering action within months to liberalize, and possibly abolish, laws which ban possession and use of marijuana.

Munro told a Canadian newspaper that increasingly widespread use of pot showed that harsh penalties were not working as a deterrent. He did not give any indication, however, that the government would change its stiff laws against the sale of grass.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. (LNS)—The Supreme Court has upheld (7 to 2) the right of three Des Moines high school students to wear black armbands to school in protest of the Vietnam War.

The majority opinion stated that students and teachers don’t shed “their Constitutional right to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

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ATHENS, Greece (LNS) — Greece’s military dictatorship has imposed a rigid code of conduct on university students. Greece is already under martial law, but the new code could be used if martial law is relaxed later this year, as promised by the dictatorship.

The code imposes stringent penalties on students who show “disrespect” or participate in strikes or demonstrations. The code also permits action against students “not imbued with the spirit compatible with the established system.”

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Global books, a long-time Detroit Marxist bookstore, has moved its headquarters to 4415 Second at Canfield.

The bookstore, which has been in operation since 1958, carries radical literature, both current and classic, periodicals from Socialist countries and books on black liberation, labor and economics.

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Radical cheerleaders give a playful, yet militant, feminist flavor to anti-authoritarian protest. After reading through the third edition of the Radical Cheerleader Handbook, I want to grab a pair of pompoms and take to the streets.

The inspiring cheers and rants throughout this radical handbook prepare wimmin for the front lines and can transform a sober action into a party. Cheers for every occasion from a “Take back the night” rally to the anti-WTO/IMF/World Bank protests are represented in full voice.

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by the Roach Editor

The Red Roach coffee house is open!

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

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

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LONDON (PWS)—Traffic, one of Britain’s most highly rated groups, officially disbanded last week. The announcement was made here last week just as the group’s new single, “Medicated Goo,” was released and as their current album, “Traffic,” continued up the charts.

Originally formed in early 1967 when singer Stevie Winwood parted company with the Spencer Davis Group, to join forces with Jim Capaldi, Chris Wood, and Dave Mason, the group scored heavily through live performances and several hit singles.

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The Winter Offensive against the war in Vietnam is beginning. The Fall Offensive culminated in 800,000 persons in Washington and people came back to Detroit with even a greater sense of the need to bring all the troops home now.

The December Moratorium will focus on organizing and support of anti-war GIs.

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SOMERSET, Ky — A 14-year old boy jailed for auto theft led three other prisoners in a break from the Pulaski County Jail Thursday.

Authorities said the boy obtained what appeared to be a.32-calibre pistol from an unknown source.

Deputy jailer Gary Johnson said a prisoner, Donald Ray Lynn, 24, of Somerset, received a telephone call and was let out of the cell block to take the call.

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Greet The Man!

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

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A Federal indictment was returned May 3 charging three suspended Detroit cops and a private guard with violating the civil rights of ten persons during last summer’s uprising.

Included among those whose civil rights were violated were two of three black youths shot to death by the cops at the Algiers motel.

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The 3^rd Annual Twin Cities Anarchist Book Fair (TCABF) is the weekend of Sept. 15–16 at the Powderhorn Park building in Minneapolis.

The organizers say while the primary purpose of the Book Fair is to promote and debate the ideas of anarchism, it is also open to organizations and individuals who seek a radical restructuring of our current society to be more democratic, less oppressive, and just for all people.

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In Southern Germany in a town by the name of Bayreuth, the German police are in a quandary. The town’s dog poo is under attack. Police are hunting pranksters who have been sticking miniature US flags into piles of dog shit in public parks. Josef Oettl, parks administrator for Bayreuth, said: “This has been going on for about a year now, and there must be 2,000 to 3,000 piles of excrement that have been claimed during that time.”

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Editors’ Note: Larry Miller, known to his longtime listeners in the Detroit area as the man who invented “underground radio,” has returned to Detroit after two years as “Midnight Miller” on KMPX-FM in San Francisco and is presently partying on at WABX on Saturdays and Sundays.

His radio programming is probably the most tasteful in the country, and his influence has spread to stations and disk jockeys all over the U.S.A. Miller’s Saturday afternoon shows on WDTM in Detroit in 1965 and 1966 introduced contemporary rock and roll music (Beatles, Stones, Bob Dylan and the Byrds at that time) into the FM radio scene, and his midnight-to-6 am show on KMPX in San Francisco set the scene for the current FM-rock revolution.

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The latest escalation of the fighting in Iraq is a clear sign that the people of Iraq reject their “liberation.” The United States, led by the Bush regime, can’t decide why it invaded Iraq and refuses to pull out of Iraq. The Bush regime is dedicated to the continuation of the American program of empire building. A withdrawal from Iraq would be seen as a setback of this ongoing effort to build a Thousand Year Reich in which the world would be run by America. The quagmire in Iraq has not deterred the United States as it continues to intervene in the internal affairs of other countries (Haiti) and actively threatens other countries (Syria, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and on and on).

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The trial lasted 61 days, but in December a hand-picked jury pulled off a major surprise by finding four anarchist defendants in the British “Persons Unknown” trial not guilty!

The case started in 1978 when the British government’s elite Special Branch and Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) arrested Iris Mills, Dafydd Ladd, Ronan Bennet, Stewart Carr Vincent Stevenson and Trevor Dawton charged with being “terrorists” planning to take “positive steps” to overthrow society.

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We recently received the good news from England that some of the six comrades who were arrested last spring on charges of “Conspiracy to Cause Explosions” (see “Anarchists Arrested in Britain,” FE #293–294, August 21, 1978), have been released on bail and the “Conspiracy” charges have been dropped.

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PHILADELPHIA—The police state atmosphere legitimized at the Democratic Convention continues to grow. The arrest of four people here September 9 dramatizes the fact that the “authorities” will no longer tolerate any form of dissent.

The four arrested were among those seeking to make a peaceful protest at the opening of Hubert Humphrey’s presidential campaign in Philadelphia. Three of the four were members of the Philadelphia Resistance. The fourth, Ronald Whitehorse, is a member of People for Human Rights (PHR), the Philadelphia affiliate of National People Against Racism (PAR).

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Buddhism holds that the universe and all creatures in it are intrinsically in a state of complete wisdom, love and compassion; acting in natural response and mutual interdependence. The personal realization of this from-the-beginning state cannot be had for and by one-“self’ because it is not fully realized unless one has given the self up; and away.

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Honoring the Haymarket Martyrs

The U.S. National Park Service has declared Chicago’s Haymarket Martyrs’ monument a National Historic Landmark and the Illinois Labor History Society (ILHS) is sponsoring a celebration, Sunday afternoon, May 3. The ceremony will take place at the former Waldheim cemetery, now called Forest Home, at 863 Desplaines Ave. in Forest Park, Ill., outside of Chicago.

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The body is the locus of authoritarian control in Meg Elison’s Big Girl (number twenty-five in PM Press’s Outspoken Authors series.) Gorgeously surreal, the collection includes speculative short stories, essays and an interview with Elison by Terri Bisson.

Elison, whose debut novel Book of the Unnamed Midwife won a Phillip K Dick Award in 2014, has a stunning emotional range. Her work can be prosaic, comic, rageful, grotesque and full of sorrow, all within the same piece, sometimes within the same sentence. The title story recounts, through news reports, the journey of a sixteen-year old girl who grows to enormous proportions. She wakes one morning with birds roosting on her eyelashes, she slogs through the San Francisco bay, she flicks away men who climb her, and she comes to occupy her own island like a B-movie monster.

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The resistance to the Draft Resistance Committee office at 12820 Hamilton in Highland Park has been stepped up into a Mississippi-style harassment campaign.

At 11:20 p.m. the night of August 28 someone shot three slugs from a large-caliber rifle through the front window of the office. Two more shots were fired through the front windows of the office in the dark hours of the morning of September 1.

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On March 21, four people demonstrated at the Federal Bldg. in downtown Detroit for the right to be anti-patriotic. In so doing, they burned a small American flag, much to the outrage of passersby and security guards.

The date of the protest coincided with a US Supreme Court hearing of a criminal conviction of a demonstrator who also burned a flag as a political statement at the 1984 Dallas Republican convention. We give full support to all acts of flag desecration and encourage others to commit similar provocations.

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2023 has officially been designated as the worst fire season on record in so-called Canada, with almost 20 million acres burned by summer’s end. While these wildfires deeply ravaged many communities, they have most severely impacted Indigenous communities, many of whose territories are northern, rural, or wilderness.

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I have just left Black Rock City, the site of Burning Man, a yearly arts festival and temporary autonomous zone based on radical self-expression, and find myself in the paradoxical situation of being inspired to give written form to things that are utterly inexpressible.

In the desert of Nevada, Black Rock City is constructed entirely of art. It exists in material form for only one week in August every year, and then it disappears, as though into the ethers, its citizens dispersed to various faraway places.

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The first Burning Man festival in China, with several hundred in attendance

Burning Man began with a wooden effigy and a single match on a beach in San Francisco in the late 1980s. When the police came and closed down the beach burning of the Man it was John Law and Michael Michael, two members of the Cacophony Society, a group of legendary urban pranksters, who told local artist Larry Harvey of a place they knew of in the desert “where you could burn things.”

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Freeing ourselves from the state, capital, and civilization requires radical action. Radical means going for the jugular. The blood pumping through the jugular is money.

Without money, labor power can no longer be commanded. Nor can wealth be hoarded, which means labor power cannot be commanded further down the line. Without taxes, the state’s war machine can not reinforce capital, nor police our bodies.

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Anarchists sweat in Florida. Dumpstered foods spoil quicker, black bloc protests require balaclavas made with moisture-wicking, breathable materials, and mosquitoes relentlessly target the sugary-sweet blood of anti-capitalists.

Out of this sultry subtropical environment has sprouted Burnpile Press. Founded in 2012, Burnpile is an informal, community supported project dedicated to producing, printing, and distributing radical literature free-of-charge. They often distro as many as 200 Fifth Estates each issue as well as Berkeley’s Slingshot periodical, and many other radical used books, zines, and accessories at no cost to the reader. With no current info-shop location, all material is literally hand distributed through face to face interactions with those living in the region.

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Your voice always whacked me right on the funny bone

of the great-hearted suffering bitch fantasy

that ruled me like a huge copper moon with its phases

until I could partially break free.

How could I help but cherish you for my bad dreams?

Your voice would grate right on the marrow filled bone

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“When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school; it’s a wonder I can think at all.”

--Paul Simon; “Kodachrome”

Trying to make sense of the busing issue is like the classic story of the blind men and the elephant--every piece you touch feels different and suggests a different definition. The trick is to make sense of the whole animal.

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Bush is clearly gearing up for another “short” war before next year’s elections. Although many people have mentioned Cuba, Libya, and Korea as possible targets, it is likely he’ll go back into Iraq to “finish the job.”

Regardless of the location of the next “zap” war, however, anti-war activists in the U.S. have yet to seriously grapple with the inability of our movement to stop the last war. From the start of the “crisis” we were lied to by the government and corporate media, who carefully planned their deceptions to rouse the breast-beaters and militarize the public mind.

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NEW YORK—Despite the lingering bitterness over the hostage crisis and the horrible events surrounding the inaugural crash, as many as 50 inquiries a day have been pouring into the Commerce Department from companies interested in resuming business ties with Iran.

“Even as the remains of the dead were being removed from Pennsylvania Avenue, businesses were calling up asking for information. In fact the number of inquiries reached a high point in the hours after the crash,” a department official said.

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a review of

A Busker’s Adventure by David Rovics. Various e-book formats at davidrovics.com/

David Rovics hails from a long lineage of gifted topical American folk guitar singers originally birthed by Joe Hill, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, and Pete Seeger, with blazing torches passed on through its most notable stepchildren, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton and, of course, Bob Dylan, at least before he “went electric” (as alarmingly noted in that 1965 first issue of the Fifth Estate).

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a review of

Seizure of State Power, Part 3 of Manual for Revolutionary Leaders by Michael Velli. Sources of Velli’s thought annotated by Fredy Perlman. Black & Red (2019) BlackandRed.org

Spoiler alert: This text is not well-intentioned advice for those seeking to lead the working class and seize the power of the state. Quite the opposite. It is a polemic against those who seek such a role.

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a review of

And Yet It Moves: The Realization and Suppression of Science & Technology, by Boy Igor, 1986, 120 pp., $5, Zamisdat Press, GPO Box 1255, Gracie Station, NY NY 10028.

Boy Igor’s provocatively titled text gets off to a start that suggests a real depth. It challenges modern science as inseparable from the development of capitalism and pronounces “proletarian” science as bourgeois as proletarian art or the proletarian state.

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“I want my plastic.” All bright colors and boppy hairstyles, it looks more like a music video than a television commercial. She’s a free young woman of the late ‘eighties, she wants it all, and she wants it NOW. These days, a little square of plastic can get it for her—instant cash or commodities, instant gratification, instant recognition. No wonder she wants her plastic. And you, the viewer, are hypnotized by desire, yet redeemed by the message. You too can be as cool and confident as the new-wave chick with her polyvinyl petroleum product. On the TV, the clean and sexy mannequin flashes her smile along with her new status symbol...after decades of manufacturing cardboard applicators for their “feminine hygiene” products, in order to compete with the other companies. Tampax has finally switched to plastic. And the cool chick, knowing this will get her everything and everyone she ever wanted out of life, sparkles and exclaims, “I want my plastic!”

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ANN ARBOR—This city witnessed the first public expression of dissent by Women’s Liberation groups of Michigan Saturday night, March 22, at the Miss Ann Arbor Pageant.

Outside the Auditorium doors of the Ann Arbor High School where the Pageant was being held about 100 women picketed in protest of the local meat auction which will eventually culminate in the Atlantic City Miss America prostitution rites.

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The calendar is prepared by Fifth Estate calendar girls, Karen Kovac and Naomi Epel, [Naiomi Epil —Web Archiver] with cooperation from Detroit Adventure. Copy deadline is the 6^th and 22^nd of each month and should be sent to the Fifth Estate, Calendar, 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, Michigan 48201.

WED. NOV. 15

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Saturday October 15

FILM. Famous Films of Famous Directors: Part. II. Akira Kurosawa’ s “Yojimbo”. Rackhman Aud. 80 Farnsworth, 8 p.m. Adm. 10/15

Sunday October 16

FILM, Famous Early Movie Series. Henry Ford Museum Theatre. 2 and 4 p.m. Adm. 10/16

PROGRAM. Student Sunday Program, movies and dancing. International Inst. 4–6 p.m. 10/16

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The calendar will be a regular FIFTH ESTATE feature. We know that there is more happening in the Detroit and Ann Arbor areas than what we have listed, so we need your help. Send us information about what your group is doing or just anything you hear about. We think the items listed below disprove the contention that “nothing ever happens in Detroit.” The deadlines for the calendar are the 8^th and 23^rd of each month.

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Wed. Nov. 1

PLAY “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” WSU Hillberry Classic Theater, 2:30 p.m. Adm. 11/1.

LECTURE Sander Vanocur speaks, Mercy College, 12:30 p.m. 11/1.

CONFERENCE Communism in China: Democracy in India, Oakland U. Center, 10:00 a.m., 11/1.

FILM “Old and New” (1929), Sergei Eisen-stein, Architectural Aud., Ann Arbor. 7 p.m. and 9:05 p.m. Adm. 11/1.

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The calendar is prepared by Fifth Estate calendar girls Karen Kovac and Naiomi Epil with cooperation from Detroit Adventure. Copy deadline is the 6^th and 22^nd of each month and should be sent to the Fifth Estate Calendar, 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, Michigan 98201.

Thurs the 15^th

Muhamed Ali-Lewis Fight. Exhibition. Cobo Hall at 8:00 p.m. Adm. 6/15

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Thursday June 1

JUSTICE! Judge Gillis’ Courtroom 1326 St. Antoine. Trial Preliminaries concerning the “great reefer raid” of January 24^th. John Sinclair and others will be up before the bench. Friends and sympathisers are urged to attend. 6/1

FILM: “Ipcress File,” 7:30, WSU Community Arts. Free. 6/1.

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Fri. Sept. 6

DIALOGUE ’68. A festival of radical rock music for three nights. The UP, Billy C. and his Killer Blues Band, and the Psychedelic Stooges will play Prior to the performances

A SHOWING OF UNDERGROUND FILMS will be presented by the Detroit Repertory Theatre, at the first Unitarian Church, Forest and Cass. $2.50 per night or $6.00 for all three nights. Tickets may be purchased at Hudson’s, Grinnell’s, or at the church.

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SAT., SEPT. 30

PLAY: Pantageize, APA repertory company, Michel de Gheldero’s “farce to make you sad” Lydia Mendelssohn Theater, Ann Arbor, 8:00 p.m. 9/30

SUN., OCT. 1

PLAY: Same as 9/30 2:30 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. adm. 10/1

CONCERT: The Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Premiere of a new work by Roger Sessions commissioned for the U. of M. Sesquicentennial Celebration. Hill Aud., 2:30 p.m. adm. 10/1

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PLAY — Court Theatre presents George Buchner’s “Leonce and Lena” opening May 10–20. 8:30 p.m. at Court Theatre 2555 Burns Ave. Phone 822–6655 Adm.

PLAY Sheridan’s “The Rivals” WSU Hillberry Classic Theatre, Cass & Hancock 2:30 p.m. Adm. May 27.

PLAY, Children’s Holiday Theatre. Talking Drums, Percival Borde Dance Co. Det. Inst. Arts Aud., John R St. entrance. 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Adm. May 20.

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The calendar is prepared by Fifth Estate calendar girls Karen Kovac and Naomi Epel with cooperation from Detroit Adventure. Copy deadline is the 6^th and 22^nd of each month and should be sent to the Fifth Estate, Calendar 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, Michigan 48201.

SUN the 16^th

HEAL along with Oral Roverts at Cobo Hall. Sponsored by North American Baptist Convention. Call Cobo for ticket info. 8/16

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The calendar is prepared by Fifth Estate calendar girls Karen Kovac and Naiomi Epil with cooperation from Detroit Adventure. Copy deadline is the 6^th and 22^nd of each month and should be sent to the Fifth Estate, Calendar, 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, Michigan 48201.

Sat the 1^st

CONCERT—Meadow Brook Music Festival. Detroit Symphony with Sixten Ehrling. Oakland Univ. 8:30 Adm. 338–7211, ext. 2301. 7/1

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The calendar is prepared by Fifth Estate calendar girls Karen Kovac and Naomi Epel with cooperation from Detroit Adventure. Copy deadline is the 6^th and 22^nd of each month and should be sent to the Fifth Estate Calendar, 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, Michigan 48201.

wed. the 2^nd

DEMONSTRATION: LBJ in Detroit August 2^nd. All opposed to the war, demonstrate on August 2^nd at Cobo Hall, 7:30 p.m. For information call 832–5700 or 963–7711. 8/2.

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June 28-July 5 — Earth First! Round River Rendezvous

Annual gathering of the Earth First! Movement. Contact: www.maineef.org, maineEF@yahoo.com, 1-800-MY-YAHOO mailbox # 922-487-3887, 224 West Side Drive, Verona Island, ME 04416

June 30-July 4 — We Are Resisting! Conference Anti-Imperialist/Anti-Capitalist gathering in Lawrence, KS, followed by a day of action on July 4, in Leavenworth, KS. For more information, please visit the website http://www.kansasanarchist.net/WAR/

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April 5: Trial of Camilo Viveiros scheduled to begin in Philadelphia. Defend Camilo! Defend Dissent!

www.friendsofcamilo.org

April 9–11 — Positive Action’s Fourth Annual DIY/T (Do It Yourself/Do It Together) Fest and gathering in Athens, Ohio. If you’re interested please email pos_act@yahoo.com for more info.

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

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

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In July, 2008 heads of the states that monopolize two-thirds of Earth’s wealth will gather at Toya Lake in Hokaido, Japan. Although the so-called “Group of Eight” (G8) does not have any legitimate right for deciding planetary affairs, they have self-appointed themselves world ruler. Thus the G8 has driven neo-liberal globalization at the same time as spreading poverty, violence, hatred, segregation, and environmental destruction.

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Unless we build a sustained practice of free relationships and liberated lives, we risk lengthening the long list of those who have created partial revolutions. The revolution is inside as well as outside ourselves. Misery and alienation reproduce themselves--not just in authoritarian institutions--but in our own character structure, imprisoned by the catastrophe of repressive consciousness.

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The long-denied files of Wayne University students’ political and personal activities were discovered last week amid a protest about the lack of student involvement in the decision-making processes of the University.

While 30 student leaders staged an all-night vigil Wednesday, outside the University president’s office, James McCormick, vice-president for Student Affairs, and a delegation of five students found the “non-existent” files in the University’s department of Safety and Security office.

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The ultimate representation; the symbol of all that is alienated in the modern world; the driving force of pathological greed; the whip that coerces wage labor; the basis of wars. Ten million millionaires world-wide control $37.2 trillion dollars in financial assets, assuring a planet of immiseration for billions of people.

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We seek analytical articles, news reports, essays, poetry, and fiction on ways of re-envisioning, re-creating and re-enchanting the world either individually or collectively. Also, art, graphic illustrations, and photographs.

Before submitting articles, read our writer’s guidelines at FifthEstate.org.

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We are seeking analytical articles, news reports, essays, poetry, and fiction on acts of refusal and resistance, either individually or collectively; also graphic illustrations and photographs. Before submitting essays or articles, please read our writer’s guidelines at www.FifthEstate.org.

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Revelations

The word apocalypse, counter to centuries of disinformation, does not refer to the end of the world. The word’s actual meaning is “uncovering” — a revelation of truths that are concealed from the majority of the human population. This spring we suggest a rebirth of understanding about the world around us-through revelation.

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Deadline: September 15

Publication date: October 15

Themes

* FE — Celebrating fifty years of promoting revolution everywhere

* Resistance to the U.S. Vietnam War

Before contacting us, please read our Writers’ Guidelines.

<strong>Submit manuscripts for short pieces and proposals for longer essays, along with graphics and photographs, to:

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Deadline: May 1

Publication date: June 1

The war in Vietnam, the first great defeat of American imperialism, came to an ignominious conclusion 40 years ago, at the end of April 1975.

The United States Congress has authorized the Secretary of Defense “to conduct a program to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the Vietnam War.” This obscene commemoration of a shameful war should not go unanswered. We need to remind the world of its true heroes and victims--the Vietnamese people, the anti-war movement, and the draft resisters--and say No! to the celebration of the imperial war machine.

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Deadline: July 1

Publication date: August 1

Issue Theme: Art & Anarchy. The creative spirit of anarchy often acts as muse in all aspects of the arts, historically and today. We welcome your help in celebrating this in essays and graphics. Also, general articles in keeping with the ideas of this publication are sought.

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The Fifth Estate has always proudly displayed the FBI’s description of this publication as “supporting revolution everywhere,” but the world has greatly changed since the U.S. secret police prowled around our offices and kept tabs on staff members in the 1960s.

Those evil gumshoes knew little about what constitutes an authentic overthrow of the current misery and the restructuring of its causes along revolutionary principles. But, perhaps the armored toadies of the state intuited something important: that society perpetuates itself through people’s habit of submission to authority, and that even the smallest act of rebellion contains the seeds of total revolt.

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As we go to print, the US Ministry of Fatherland Security has just raised its color-coded freakout level to ORANGE, citing “credible and specific” terrorist threats against “financial institutions in New York, New Jersey and Washington DC.” Sure, we all hate capitalism, but what is it, exactly, that inspires people to load a truck with dynamite and drive it into the lobby of a stock exchange? Would desperate terrorists plot for four years to blow up a community-supported agricultural farm, a free store, a mutual-aid labor exchange center, or a file-sharing website?

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Never SUBMIT! Contribute to the Fifth Estate!

Next issue: CULTURE, RACE, & RITUAL

deadline: November 1^st

Q: When radicals adopt, appropriate, or adapt the cultures and rituals of marginalized minority groups, they

(a) disrespect the integrity of the original forms through cultural tourism and neo-racism;

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This year marks the 100^th anniversary of the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The IWW is the oldest anti-capitalist trade union federation in history. Their mission, the abolition of the wage system, still holds today; their practice of justice and fairness and their commitment to worker empowerment serves as a model for all trade unions.

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“Full sexual consciousness and a natural regulation of sexual life mean the end of mystical feelings of any kind. In other words, natural sexuality is the deadly enemy of mystical religion.”

--Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man

Deadline: November 1, 2012 Publication date: December, 2012

Sex. It is perhaps the most loaded word in the English language, with numerous connotations and denotations. In this issue of Fifth Estate, we want to explore sex and sexuality in all its forms, exposing the naked truths, and teasing out the possibilities. No topic is too risqué.

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SUBTEXT, SUBVERSION and SABOTAGE

This winter, Fifth Estate seeks to put out good reading for hibernation. Work that focuses on underground political, cultural and social activity as well as subtextual analysis. We seek discussion on how radicals and everyday folks subvert the dominant culture in a meaningful way. We seek analysis on the unspoken meanings of current social, economic, semiotic and political phenomena such as the environmental crisis and the Green Scare, bio-ethical decisions, entertainment, gender, institutionalized violence. We seek to examine the parts we play in subjection and subjugation This winter we seek to exhume the churchyard and provide readers with an invisible choir that will sing audibly and precisely about the hidden meanings of things.

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For: Fifth Estate, Fall 2012

Deadline: August 1

Publication date: September 5

Fall is the traditional time when students resume their studies. At present, there are tuition strikes, austerity strikes, student loan debt crises, and other dilemmas regarding education playing out in the public arena. For much of mainstream society, even the very value and meaning of education is now in question.

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Deadline: August 15 Publication date: September 15

Issue Theme: Mad! A word whose meaning ranges from rage to enthusiasm to mental illness and more, even as an acronym for the truly insane Cold War nuclear policy of the U.S. and the Soviet Union [Mutually Assured Destruction].

Your ideas for news articles, essays, and art are welcome. Submit manuscripts for short pieces and proposals for longer essays, along with graphics and photographs to:

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Deadline: April 15

Issue Theme: Sex

Your ideas for news articles, essays, and art are welcome. Submit manuscripts for short pieces and proposals for longer essays, along with graphics and photographs to: fe--AT--fifthestate.org or Fifth Estate, PO Box 201016, Ferndale, MI 48220, USA. Please put “Submission 389” on the subject line of email.

Next issue will be our 400^th since we began publishing 52 years ago. If you’d like to be part of this historic edition, please send proposals for essays, articles, and fiction to our email address or post office box.

Photographs, art, and poetry are also welcome. Please view our submission and manuscript guidelines on our web site. All submissions should be consistent with our political views.

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Deadline: April 1,

Publication date: May 5

For the past several years, each edition of the Fifth Estate has had a specific theme. Maybe it’s the excitement of the era which has just opened up, but we have decided not to have a particular theme for our Summer edition, and simply let the imagination of writers get as wild as the times demand.

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Play as a concept has always animated the anarchist/underground milieu with an infectious spirit of playful experimentation and exuberance. Riding wild and playful energy, we created seeds of an insurrectionary alternative reality that could one day replace or overthrow the dominant system. Physical, political, ideological, and imaginal spaces seemed open to us.

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Theme: “DIY: Culture, Ethics, Aesthetics”

Next issue: FIFTH ESTATE #384 Winter 2011

Maybe the most persistent of all forms of external authority in our lives are the day-to-day tyrannies of specialists and experts. The Fifth Estate’s next issue investigates strategies of resistance to and liberation from this insidious system of technocratic mystification and domination with a look at the culture, ethics, and aesthetics of do-it-yourselfism.

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Belief systems--cognitive constructions--determine our perception of reality which can chain us to old ideas or free us with visions that go beyond dominant paradigms. The entire modern era has been one of contestation as to which belief systems will rule in societies--ones that link us to submission and acquiescence to hierarchal authority or those which rebel against them.

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This winter, the Fifth Estate seeks to publish good reading for winter hibernation. Work that focuses on underground political, cultural, and social activity, as well as subtextual analysis. We seek discussion on how radicals and everyday people subvert the dominant culture in a meaningful way.

We seek analysis on the unspoken meanings of current social, economic, semiotic, and political phenomena such as entertainment, gender, institutionalized violence, the environmental crisis, the Green Scare, bio-ethical decisions or anything you can fit into the theme. We seek to examine the parts we play in subjection and subjugation. This winter we seek to exhume the churchyard and provide readers with an invisible choir that will sing audibly and precisely about the true meanings of things.

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Deadline: January 15

Publication date: February 15

Issue Theme: Anarchy, Anarchism & Anarchists.

We welcome your ideas for news articles, essays, and art. Submit manuscripts for short pieces and proposals for longer essays, along with graphics and photographs to:

fe--AT--fifthestate--DOT--org

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The winter issue of FE will critically reflect upon contemporary anarchist and radical anti-authoritarian political movements. What directions should radicals--who wish to both create a revolution in our everyday lives, as well as to destroy the various and overlapping systems of oppression--take in our current political situation? We welcome theoretical, historical and practical pieces on political and cultural issues.

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When the voice on the phone announced himself as Alexander Graham Bell calling from the Yipster Times newspaper in New York, we knew the Yippies had done it again—snatched the new long distance credit card codes almost as soon as Ma Bell put them out.

The publication of the secret codes has been an annual event in the Fifth Estate as a small way the captive customers of profit-swollen Bell can even the score a bit. Since last February when we published the 1976 codes, the Michigan Public Service Commission has caved into Bell requests for a multi-million dollar rate hike and the upping of pay-phone calls to 20 cents—both unnecessary other than to fatten the company’s profit margins.

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The Yippies have done it again—snatched the new long distance credit card codes almost as soon as Ma Bell put them out.

The publication of the secret codes has been an annual event in the Fifth Estate as a small way the captive customers of profit-swollen Bell can even the score a bit. Since 1976 the Michigan Public Service Commission has caved into several Bell requests for multi-million dollar rate hikes and the upping of pay-phone calls to 20 cents—both unnecessary other than to fatten the company’s profit margins.

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“One hates to see Los Angeles go up in flames unless one’s got a camera running,” joked the British anarchist comedian Peter Cook after the 1992 LA riots. A variation on this idea applies to Western state-corporate media, which seldom covers the non-Western world unless it is gripped by disaster.

This is true of the Philippines today and its vicious president, Rodrigo Duterte, whose rule is characterized by a frenzied cocktail of leftish-style populism, state authoritarianism, cynical nationalism, toxic masculinity and, most appalling of all, the government-orchestrated mass-murder of drug abusers and traffickers.

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Publication date: Early 2008

Issue theme: ESCAPE!

Prisoners. Deserters. Divorcees. Vacationers. Junkies. Exile, exodus, emigration, and escape velocity. Shelters, sanctuaries, and safe-houses. Escaping consequences, escaping responsibility, and escaping attention. Escape to or escape from? Is escapism helpful or harmful? Is it useless to try to escape? We seek original, critical, and analytical assessments of theory and practice of escape, as well as essays, articles, and artwork on general themes.

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Realizing that he who jumps into the middle of a fight gets shot at from both sides, I must say that both sides in the debate over “On Organization” are wrong: Ed Clark with his impersonal formal organization, and Camatte/Collu, and their defender Maple, with their unorganized formal persons. [See “On Organization: Two Reviews of The Camatte/Collu Pamphlet,” FE# 279, December, 1976.] Here are two positions badly in need of dialectic. (I’m more sympathetic to Clark, mostly because I worked with him for a number of years, but also because he’s less pretentious and dogmatic than Camatte/Collu.)

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LIBERATION NEWS SERVICE—As the unexpectedly early monsoon rains fell on War Zone “C” by the Cambodian-South Vietnamese border, a U.S. divisional planning officer said, “The people who advised President Nixon to start something like this at this time of year must be the same ones who advised him on candidates for the Supreme Court.”

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“The free election of masters eliminates neither the masters nor the slaves.”

—Herbert Marcuse

American politics, as has been noted here before, is the politics of non-alternatives and pseudo-choices. If we needed any evidence, the present election provides it. Search and fantasize as we might there simply are not any radical possibilities. Consider the following:

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The August second primary was almost enough to send one to the political physicists with their slide rules and computers to find out what happened. Why was it such a disaster?

But then we don’t really need political physicists to tell us what happened. We know. Racism, confusion, manipulation, “apathy” and one-dimensional politics happened. What happened is the logical consequence of a political system which for too long has never provided any alternatives for people beyond bright shining faces and good family men. The result is that people did not know that in a few isolated cases there were alternatives or didn’t believe them when they saw them or for other, more complicated reasons, rejected them.

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The following are some random comments and recommendations on the upcoming August 2 primary election races.

It is entirely possible that Recorders Court is the worst criminal court in the United States. Its brand of “justice” has been discussed, exposed and documented in a number of reports, studies and editorials by the daily press.

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The Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons held its third annual conference in Pittsburgh, June 8–10. It included lectures, workshops, and discussions about the Prison/Industrial Complex’s mass incarceration and its links to erosion of environmental health both inside and out.

Workshops ranged from toxic conditions in prisons (such as unsafe drinking water and air), to political repression and resistance inside and solidarity outside, to fighting white supremacy in prisons, support for those with disabilities, queer and trans prisoners, as well as support for undocumented detainees.

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“You could say that cyberpunk is intrinsically anarchistic. It’s endlessly anti-authoritarian, and it can be employed like a weapon, like a computer virus, injecting new information by means of the existing mechanisms. The pop image of anarchism has always been a bomb—yeah, well, this is an ideological bomb that has been planted in the culture.”

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On the front page of the latest issue of Black Flag (organ of the Anarchist Black Cross) is the picture of Spanish anarchist Laureano Cerrada Santos with the word MURDERED printed under it in large type.

According to Black Flag, Cerrada, who fought in the Spanish revolution and later became a skilled forger in passports and Spanish food rationing coupons, was shot to death in the streets of a Paris suburb by a Spanish secret agent last October.

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The positioning of this article in the back pages in no way reflects our assessment of the gravity of the situation described herein. We extend our full solidarity to these comrades, victimized for committing no “crime” other than to cross a point of land arbitrarily designated as a “border” by those who we hold in utter contempt. It is small acts like this, carried out by cretinous functionaries of the State, that further steels our resolve to work actively for its total elimination.

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The recent arrest of Andrew Mikolasch, editor of Toronto’s Underground Press Syndicate paper, Satyrday, has completed the cycle of busts on all of Canada’s U.P.S. papers. Earlier this year the Canadian Free Press from Ottowa and Georgia Straight from Vancouver were busted.

The police based the Satyrday arrest on an irate parent’s complaint about an article entitled “The way the platform is.” Mikolasch did not write the article himself but said: “It was a sort of satire on the music business and dealt with various sex practices, using honest words to describe them. You can pick up any book downtown using the same words, but they busted me.” He was released on personal bail.

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Jon R., a semi-retired North Dakotan farmer in his late 60s, eased his big, beat-up pickup truck off to the side of the dirt road and turned off the ignition. He turned in his seat and pointed to low wire fence running through the heavily-wooded field to the right.

“Usually, I would try to get here right before midnight. That fence is a good guide in the dark. You stay on the other side and follow that all the way to the corner of the field; straight ahead is an old fieldstone wall that you need to follow west until you find a small stream. You go upstream there for about two hours. Then you bed down for the night. I tell them ‘No fires at night. Dress warm, eat some food, fill your canteen at the stream, but no fires. Stay there until sunrise.’ Then I need to give them the compass readings...”

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Reprinted from the Guardian (NYC)

CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG, a color film in Super-Panavision (sic), produced by Albert R. Broccoli (sic), directed by Ken Hughes, based on a story by Ian Fleming; United Artists (sick).

At this moment long lines of anxious parents are dutifully forming lines at box-offices to buy their expensive reserved-seat tickets to this melange of candy-coated garbage, assuaging their doubts about themselves and their empty lives with the force-fed illusion that they are providing a delicious treat for their offspring.

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“Candy” must be the world’s first avant-garde Gallop poll movie; there’s something for everybody... dirty old men, freaks, sadists, mom and dad, the kiddies, and homosexuals.

The director, Christian Marquand, started out with a fool-proof formula guaranteed to appeal to the “with-it” film audience. Consider this: the screenplay, by Buck Henry, was loosely based on Terry Southern’s notorious best seller; the casting department had lined up no less than Marlon Brando, Richard Burton, Ringo Starr, Walter Mathau, James Coburn, Charles Aznavour, John Astin, Elsa Martinelli, and a much-publicized little Swedish dish, Ewa Aulin, to play the title role; and then toss in all sorts of movie madness...bits and pieces of “Persona,” “Dr. Strangelove,” “The Graduate,” “Barbarella,” “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” a whole segment from “8-1/2,” nods to Lester and Godard, and finally, a little “2001” mysticism thrown in for box-office measure.

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a review of

Karl Marx, Private Eye by Jim Feast. PM Press, 2023

Karl Marx Private Eye is a fascinating chimera: it is simultaneously a cozy mystery, a Conan Doyle parody, and a philosophical meditation on Karl Marx’s reaction to the failed 1871 Paris Commune.

Author Jim Feast weaves a compelling narrative that can capture the imagination of anyone who slept through most of their European Civilization 101 course. The plot rivals the twisty whodunits of Agatha Christie, while the prose feels authentically Victorian, in the line of Charles Dickens or even Charlotte Bronte, but with the pacing on fast-forward.

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The Canned Heat came to Detroit to do a gig at the Masonic Temple and got busted by the real heat.

Canned Heat’s drummer Adolph De Laparra was charged with being a disorderly person and the group’s equipment manager Ron Stender was charged with possession of grass. They and 25 other persons were arrested Feb. 20 in a Southfield home. The charges range from disorderly persons to sale of LSD and possession of marijuana.

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