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Fourteen members of the National Committee to Combat Fascism, accused of murder and conspiracy to murder in the killing of a Detroit patrolman at 14^th and Myrtle last October, are set to go on trial May 10^th. The NCCF is the organizing arm of the Black Panther Party.

Police had originally charged 15 members of the group with the shooting, but have since dropped charges against one defendant under mysterious circumstances

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Remember “Mademoiselle,” the Tony Richardson-Jean Genet collaboration in which lovely Jeanne Moreau raced around the French countryside in stiletto heels heaping destruction on a poor little town, and all because of sexual repression? Then there was Jules Dassin’s 10:30 p.m. “Summer,” the agonized tale of a traveling menage a trois.

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If you liked Buffalo Springfield, you will probably like the first ‘solo album of one of its departed members, Neil Young (on Reprise).

A Buffalo Springfield revival is taking place as people realize that of all the American groups that came out of the “Beatle revolution,” the Springfield rank with the very best. Not enough people seemed to realize that when the group was struggling to make it.

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WE HAVE NO WORDS FOR THE HORROR TO COME, for the screams and carnage of the first days of battle, the fear and brutality of the long night of occupation that will follow, the truck bombs and slit throats and unstoppable cycle of revenge, the puppets in the palaces chattering about “democracy,” the exultation of the anti-Crusaders, Baghdad descending into the shambles of a new, more dreadful Beirut, and the inevitable retreat (thousands of bodybags later) from the failed McJerusalem.

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The savage crimes of civilization cannot mute the cries of the savage. But the voice of the savage is not the machine buzz of chainsaws in the forest or the clank of garbage trucks in the ghetto. Her savage voice mirrors an angel, an angel wailing one last song of protest before the last bulldozer takes out the last wild place.

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Throughout the Pentagon’s preparations for nuclear war, it has waged genocide on the Earth and native people. As of 1987, the U.S. and Great Britain had exploded 670 nuclear bombs on Newe Segobia, the Western Shoshone Nation. All the nuclear “tests” in the world are conducted on the territory of native peoples. The Nevada Test Site (NTS) was created in 1951 by an executive order of President Truman, violating Shoshone land rights and the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley.

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

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

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Alfred Hibbitt: acquitted.

Raphael Viera: acquitted.

Clarence “Chaka” Fuller: acquitted.

Kenneth Vern Cockrell: charges dismissed.

The New Bethel case is not over. But the recent acquittals of Raphael Viera and Clarence Fuller have put it at a new stage. Every one of those charged with a crime arising from the incident has been vindicated.

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Dr. David Herreshoff, assistant professor of English at Wayne State University, is the author of a new book published by the WSU Press.

Dr. Herreshoff’s book, American Disciples of Marx, From the Age of Jackson to the Progressive Era (216 pages, $7.95) traces the activities of the first Marxists in America, including Orestes Brownson, Joseph Weydemeyer, Friedrich Sorge, and Daniel De Leon. The book traces the pressures faced by the first American Marxists in their efforts to organize a socialist working class movement.

In an unprecedented move Russ Gibb, Detroit rock and roll magnate and creator and owner of the Grande Ballroom, has announced that he is imposing a 1% community tax on the gate proceeds of the Detroit Rock and Roll Revival, held at the State Fairgrounds over the Memorial day weekend.

The 1% will come off the top of the gross proceeds, Gibb said, and will go into a new Community Fund which will then make disbursements through its Board of Directors to groups and/or individuals in the community who need money.

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“Shortly after the riot in Detroit last summer, I talked to a Negro in his late thirties, and I asked him what he thought about the 12-year old boy lying in the street after being shot by a white policeman in Newark. A newsmagazine had the picture on its cover in living color. The man said he thought it was a joke. ‘A joke?’ I inquired. He said, ‘Yeah, the whole goddam thing is a joke. Every year, they pass some new damn civil rights bill; and every year, Emmett Till gets younger.”

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“A fascist government is a one-party system, highly centralized and authoritarian, with rigid control over every phase of a nation’s life...This government is militaristic, nationalistic and imperialistic and it claims dogmatic political faith.”

—Herbert Matthews of the New York Times on Nazi Germany

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a review of

Love & Politics, Judith Malina, Preface by Ira Cohen, 2001, Black & Red, PO Box 02374, Detroit, Michigan 48202, $5 postage included, 84 pages

<em>

Love & Politics</em>: a perfect title for Judith Malina’s poems—politics of love, politics of the heart. Anyone who’s ever fallen for the Living Theatre—that grand Kabuki of the avant garde—would want to own this book.

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The laws regarding the use of marijuana may become significantly less stringent if several bills before the Michigan State House of Representatives are enacted into law.

A series of bills introduced by Rep. Dale Warner, Eaton Rapids Republican, would reclassify pot from a narcotic to a “dangerous drug,” make possession of it a misdemeanor, and reduce the maximum penalty for sales to four years in prison. Currently the maximum for possession is 10 years (which is being served by John Sinclair) and the minimum for sales is twenty years.

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So you think the Michigan Chronicle, Detroit’s only Negro newspaper, is conservative, its green color reflecting its primary purpose of making money rather than informing the community?

How does the idea of a Negro paper published by a white racist, who may have John Birch Society money behind him, grab you?

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The DAILY COLLEGIAN (the school newspaper), was the subject of attack at the Wayne University campus this past month. The Wayne Committee to End the War in Vietnam, Students For a Democratic Society, Young Socialist Alliance, National Student Association, Young Democrats and the Wesley Foundation have published two issues of an 8-page paper, the Wayne Reply, to counter the ineffective and inaccurate coverage of campus political events by the DAILY COLLEGIAN.

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NEW YORK—Dr. Benjamin Spock on August 1 called President Johnson “the worst betrayer of the American people” for recklessly escalating the Vietnam War.

“He (Johnson) was elected by an overwhelming majority who believed him when he promised to avoid escalation in Vietnam and avoid the sacrifice of American soldiers,” the famed pediatrician said.

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Organized political opposition to the Johnson Administration will be mapped in Chicago Labor Day weekend at a nationwide convention of grassroots activist organizations in the peace, civil rights and student movements. The convention, “New Politics—’68 and Beyond,” is expected to draw more than 2,000 delegates representing more than 200 local and national groups, said William Pepper at a recent news conference. Pepper is Executive Director of the National Conference for New Politics, sponsor of the convention.

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The DIY Bandits collective are many things: a record label, a distro, a booking agency, and a bunch of cool people from many walks of life who are tired of the status quo.

The Bandits do not see themselves as anarchists, as they say on their website, “DIY Bandits do not belong to the anarchist scene, punk scene, underground scene, or mainstream scene. Bandits are not interested in being seen as a scene but rather in dismantling all scenes.”

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Draft boards are bracing themselves for a deluge of requests for conscientious objector to war status as a result of a recent Supreme Court decision which said you don’t have to be religious to qualify.

Col. Arthur Holmes, Michigan selective service director, said 632 men are presently awaiting processing on conscientious objector claims. He admitted they represent only part “of the large number who get turned down” under procedures the court questioned.

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SLINGSHOT (700 Eshlecreature Hall, Berkeley, CA 94608) continues to be a thorough and thoughtful anarcho-newspaper from the always radical and socially tumultuous community of Berkeley. The Summer 1992 issue contains several interesting pieces of analysis on the Los Angeles rebellion and simultaneous uprisings throughout the world. Rather than resorting to reductionist cheerleading, the diverse collection of articles on LA provide a patchwork of revolutionary perspectives that reflect the event’s complexity and significance. The informative “News Briefs” about Berkeley and Jack Straw’s essay on psychedelic mushrooms balance out the issue.

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Several new books of interest have recently come our way. We only have space to mention them in this issue, but hope to review them in the near future.

A new edition of ‘occasional FE contributor Richard Drinnon’s Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating & Empire-Building is once again available, in a new edition from the University of Oklahoma Press. We have recommended Drinnon’s book for years; it is an inspired, encyclopedic counter-history of U.S. colonial-settler culture, connecting the massacres from colonial Massachusetts to My Lai, and the imperial rationales that justified them.

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Readers may have noticed that the important content last time limited our reviews sections. But now we are back. This summer, we caught up on our reading and offer the following four pages to comment on some of the many great books and ‘zines that we’ve received in the last several months. And we pledge to continue next time. We love to get mail! Please send us your journal or book to look at. Or send us a short review. If you publish or distribute magazines, please contact us about trade possibilities.

PO Box 6, Liberty, TN 37095

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An FE staff member currently traveling outside the U.S. wrote to us upon receiving his FE, that while the content and the layout were good, “there were a fair number of typos, which I’m sure you found as well.” We work hard on the paper, trying to catch every detail, to say things as best we can and to present it all in a dramatic, visually attractive format. Imagine our irritation, when we found, on the first page, that the typist had consistently put a typically gringo spelling Sandanista instead of Sandinista (staff members who speak Spanish had not gotten to proofread that page). That would make the Nicaraguan politicos disciples of Augusto Sandano rather than Sandino. Perhaps a niggling point, except that there are those of us who have always found something bothersome about foreign words and names being mangled in English language texts (though mangled English words in foreign language texts often strike us as amusing).

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The FE bookstore page is more than an advertisement—the actual bookselling part of the project takes time and makes little, if any, money. We like to pass on books that have interested us or that have been “self-published” by friends and comrades, even though we may not agree with everything in them. We also enjoy publishing notices of printing and publishing projects, periodicals and newsletters from around the country, so that our readers can contact each other and battle out their differences or discover their commonalities without having to go through us. Mention of a paper does not imply that we agree with it, just that we think people should check it out on their own. We are also interested in expanding our review section, and welcome contributions from our readers on books, pamphlets and publications that have come their way and had some significance, positive or negative.

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Writers and Artists: Guillotine Press is seeking poetry, short-short stories, and line art of a social/political/anarchistic basis documenting our struggle against the current implementation of fascist totalitarianism under the guise of Reagan/Bush Republicanism; the unleashing of Capital’s watchdogs, the police, on a brutal (and now thanks to the Supreme Court) legal rampage against personal freedoms; the militaristic nationalism surging through White America’s veins justifying the continued oppression of nature, women and all people of color; and the continued ecologic rape of Earth in the name of profit & progress by the industrial mega-machines of multi-national corporations.

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From Coimbra, Portugal comes Pravda, put out by Fenda Editions. Pravda, with its obviously tongue-in-cheek title, describes itself as “a magazine of evil arts” and has just published its third issue. Although it refuses categorization, it could be described as a dada-esque journal of anti-politics and anti-art. It is infused with an impassioned desire to fight against the isolation which consumes us all. It will do this, its editors tell us, “by the undiplomatic unjournalistic communication between individuals who do not recognize themselves in that which the world of practical shit happiness avows and promotes.” They are defiant against this world in which “misery is the vicious synonym of wealth, and submission the frenetic synonym of liberty.”

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The Clydeside Anarchist is a new quarterly publication from Scotland. They can be contacted at Box 3, 488 Great Western Road, Glasgow 12 Scotland. Black Bairn, an anarchist newssheet, can be contacted at the same address.

The May/June issue of Overthrow includes articles on South Africa, Chile, women’s struggles in India, and more. Write P.O. Box 392, Canal St. Station, New York NY 10013.

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A little belatedly we have received The Alternative Press Annual, for 1983 and 1984 published by Temple Univ. Press, Broad & Oxford streets, Philadelphia PA 19122, both of which contain articles by Fifth Estate writers. The 1983 edition has E.B. Maple’s article “The Pain of America and the Tylenol Killings” (FE Winter 1982–3) and the 1984 volume (the most interesting to date) features Lynne Clive’s “Newspeak and the Impoverishment of Language” (FE #315, Winter 1984) as the lead article. Publication price is a whopping $34.95 meaning it was published primarily with library reference sections in mind, where it might be a good place to read it.

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The Poet’s Coven is a relatively new photocopied publication distributed free in the Vancouver, B.C. area. It consciously defies categorization and is open to a wide variety of expression—poetry, collage, fiction, articles. The Coven describes its vision as coming from an “eclectic assortment of inspirations,” and considers itself to be “a propaganda or counter-information project that would like to encourage creativity as well as debate and analysis within the anarchist/ social-ecologist/ ‘primitivist’ milieu.” The Coven seeks contributions from “anti-authoritarians, misfits, earth worshippers, optimistic and social nihilists, and underground rebels,” with a promise that all correspondence will be answered. Contributions in the form of money are also welcome.

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We never could figure out which faction was responsible for the auto-destruction of New York City’s Sabotage Bookstore (the pamphlets published by either side casting blame are definitely not recommended reading), but we had the same sensation one does when watching a once loving couple rage at one another. Fortunately, people close to the excellent Shadow newspaper (PO Box 20298, New York NY 10009) have established the city’s only “underground anarchist bookstore” featuring publications, records, tapes and books, as well as pins, t-shirts, posters and the like. A-Central Books is located at 208 E. 7^th St., phone (212) 674–0581, and also contains a People’s Switchboard with information on local, national and international anarchist events.

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We could spend all day reading here in the basement apartment which serves as the office for the Fifth Estate. Our mailbox gets stuffed with several ‘zines and newspapers a week, and a few hundred each year. The underground press continues to flourish, yet even our favorite ‘zines rarely get mentioned in these pages. We’ve often left such zine-scene surveys to those who do it best: Factsheet Five, Anarchy and Maximum Rock N Roll. For this issue I tried to pick out some of my favorite mags to mention in a completely biased and subjective manner.

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Detroit’s Black & Red has just released The Story of Tatiana (see description [in Fifth Estate Books] to the right) by Jacques Baynac. A list of titles, including Fredy Perlman’s works, are available upon request from us or, write B&R at PO BX 02374, Detroit MI 48202.

Last issue we mentioned The Anarchist Cookbook along with Dave Foreman’s Eco-Defense as two books despised by the authorities, and were marveling at the 25,000 copies sold of the latter edition. However, the former has just celebrated its 2,000,000^th sale! The Anarchist Cookbook is not a culinary tract, but a how-to text of bombs, guns, booby-traps and incendiaries, and according to the New York Times, has become “a cult classic.” We have heard several times since it was published over twenty years ago that some of its “recipes” could backfire on the preparer. However, we never heard of an accident actually occurring.

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The prolific III Publishing group, PO Box 1581, Guala CA 95445, recently released two new books. Saab Lofton’s A.D. is set in 2410 where society is organized according to libertarian principles, but a menace from the past threatens the future. J.G. Eccarius, author of the blasphemous The Last Days of Christ the Vampire, latest book. Resurrection 2027, is a post-apocalyptic thriller set in the year of the title where rebellion is the only way out for children resurrected from the dead. III is also publishing Anti-Christ magazine, formerly The Stake, and wants to exchange ads with other zines.

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Reviewed by Allan Antliff unless otherwise noted

The Uncontrollables vs the Grotesque Frame-Up Against Anarchists in Italy: Dossier, 1997 documents the Italian government’s efforts to target Italy’s anarchist movement using the confession of an activist’s former lover. The government is using her testimony to pin numerous unsolved kidnappings, bank robberies, and direct actions (attacks on energy pylons, etc.) on over 50 anarchists.

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The 15 minutes of fame for Ted Kaczynski, the convicted Unabomber, are not up after all. He’s been in the news several times recently. Kaczynski is releasing an autobiographical account of his life, entitled Truth Versus Lie, printed by Context Media. This new, small, New York City publisher picked up the manuscript after hearing that Simon and Schuster rejected it.

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We welcome free literature, news, & announcements at: PO Box 6, Liberty, TN 37095 or fifthesatenewspaper — AT — yahoo — DOT — com.

Back in November, I had the privilege to see the Drawing Resistance traveling exhibition at Detroit’s Trumbullplex. This compelling collection addresses the anti-globalization movement, working class rights, the destruction of the environment, corporate control, police brutality, homelessness, gentrification, and the Zapatista liberation movement in Mexico.

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In the last issue of the FE, we reported that Cienfuegos in the United Kingdom had closed up shop. What we failed to mention was that the U.S. branch, Cienfuegos/Soil of Liberty, is still going strong publishing their own books and distributing Cienfuegos books. This group has two new publications, the latest Anarchist Review, and a book entitled With the Peasants of Aragon, by Augustin Souchy. Both are available from Cienfuegos Distribution, 3512 12^th Avenue S., Minneapolis Minnesota 55407. Cienfuegos UK will continue under the name REFRAC. For more information, write REFRAC Publications, BCM Refract, London WC1N 3XX, United Kingdom...

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Last autumn fascists nearly rioted when twelve volunteers, hooded to protect their identities, removed the equestrian statue of Franco from the Plaza del Pais Valenciano in Valencia, Spain. While the National Police looked on, ultrarightists sang fascist hymns, threatened the workers and attempted to disrupt the operation. Finally the cops dispersed the demonstrators.
Later, fascists bombed a statue of the American revolutionary Simon Bolivar in reprisal. The dismantled statue, which had been slated for removal for four years before action was finally taken, has gone to a military museum. (Photo: El Pais)

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We always enjoy receiving the North Country Anvil in the mail. Despite serious differences in outlook that we have with its editors, we never fail to find articles and letter exchanges in this “handcrafted” journal that strike a chord. We had the pleasure of meeting Pauline Redmond and Jack Miller, Anvil editors, a few years back when they came to see us during a family visit to Detroit, and we’ve seen pictures of their region and been told firsthand stories of the communities spread across the north country of Minnesota who read and contribute to the Anvil. But we get the same sense of place and attachment to the land from the magazine.

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Both this newspaper in our last issue and Bad Attitude, No. 3 (POB 11589, Detroit Ml 48211) failed to give credit for the poem/ritual, “The Appeal of Anarchy.” It was taken from the compelling pamphlet by John Moore, Anarchy & Ecstasy: Visions of Halcyon Day.

The author states that the text “has been adapted from renderings of ‘The Charge of the Goddess’ by Starhawk and Charles G. Leland...Some maintain that it contains sentiments which have been uninterruptedly passed down the ages from prehistoric times, whilst others aver that it derives wholly from the fertile imagination of Leland, who first published it in 1899.”

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The Fifth Estate office receives a large number of anarchist and environmental newspapers and ‘zines from the U.S. and the rest of the world. After we look at them, they rarely get much farther than a growing pile under a desk.

We feel this is too dismal an end for publications with so much information and creativity, so we are hoping FE readers would like to see them. We will send them out with book orders or on request if you send postage. Please indicate country of interest or language (including U.S., England, Australia, etc.). If you’re in the neighborhood, the papers can be picked up at our office or the 404 W. Willis space.

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Two wild Detroit theatre groups combined to open a cozy little theatre on the Southwest side on January 8 and 9. Somebody Else presented their raving, anarchistic “Double Coupon Day Afternoon,” plus other electrifying shorties, and the Acme Theatrical Agency threw in a few firecrackers by way of black-outs, satiric sketches and character assassinations (everyone’s favorite pastime).

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Issue No. 14 of Open Road is now out. This issue was made possible thanks to the generous response to the OR’s financial appeal. They welcome additional support, of course. The OR now costs $1.00 per issue. The current issue includes an interesting article by John P. Clark, “Anarchism and the World Crisis,” articles on pornography, the democracy movement in China, punk rock, the Amsterdam riots, and more.

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Citizen G of Citizens for a Non-Linear Future (see letter in this issue) has published an educational comic as well as an article and questionnaire on despair. Send a self-addressed stamped envelope to Citizen G at Wallingford Station, PO Box 31638, Seattle, WA 98103...

Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, is an irregular publication of the Columbia (Missouri) Anarchist League looking for readers and correspondents. Subscriptions are $3.00 for six issues, foreign subs are $6.00, and prisoners can receive subs for free. A recent issue (Vol. 1 No. 4) contains articles such as “Anarchy Under Fire,” “Marriage, Screwing, and Free Love,” “Ordinance to Limit Bicycle Right of Way” (?) and more. Write C.A.L., PO Box 380, Columbia MO 65205...

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Within the past several months the FE has received many publications and letters from Greece trying to make contact with radicals and libertarian revolutionaries in the U.S.

At a first glance the literature of the Greek anarchists looks like a collection of American ‘60s radical chic nostalgia, intellectually pureed for an ‘80s Mediterranean audience. Imagine for a moment the anthologies of the hip, the pseudo-hip, and the never-hip, but the always-trying of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s of American radicalism thrown together in a juxtaposition of grainy photos, poetry and prose—a hodgepodge of Buddy Holly, Jerry Rubin, the Who, Detroit’s own MC5, Abbie Hoffman and Zap comics, serving as a model for revolution.

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After years of wasted time and copy space, the Social Revolutionary Anarchist Federation (SRAF) has decided to exclude anarcho-anti-semite Joffre Stewart from the pages of its free-wheeling Bulletin (P.O. Box 21071, Washington DC 20009). Since the pages of the Bulletin are submitted pre-typed and hence, non-edited, SRAF hoped, and often achieved, a magazine created by its readers, in a truly libertarian fashion. The decision to finally censor Stewart after years of discussion must have indeed been a weighty one, but of the 13 SRAF groups who responded to the production group’s question about the matter, seven abstained, five clearly wanted the Bulletin “to immediately stop printing Stewart and one wanted the open policy to continue.” You could almost feel the reluctance of the abstainers to not be the one to initiate censorship, hoping other affiliates would bring the long standing policy to a close, but enough of the groups apparently had had it with Stewart’s embarrassing connection with their publication and he is hopefully gone from further consideration. The current SRAF Bulletin contains a discussion of the matter...

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Wooden Shoe Books, 112 S. 20^th St., Philadelphia PA 19103, is putting together an Anarchist Songbook and needs your favorite anarchist, protest, anti-nuke, feminist, gay, lesbian, animal liberation, Bob Avakian, etc. songs for the first edition to be available in Spring 1988.

And, they remind us, “Don’t forget to plagiarize.”

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The Work Resister’s Handbook is presently being assembled by John Zerzan and Morgan Feralchilde. The authors want true stories of work resistance, how to do scams, and practical hints for curing consumption blues, e.g. shoplifting, etc. Write: Box 11331, Eugene OR 97440.

Counter-Information is a dynamic bimonthly street sheet from Edinburgh, Scotland with a circulation of 10,000. It’s in the forefront of the struggle against the newly imposed Poll Tax by urging total non-cooperation. They stress “the importance of people directly controlling their struggles, outside the control of political parties, trade unions or leaders.” Depending as they do upon reader support since their paper is free, the production collective has sent out a plea for funds so they can maintain a regular publishing schedule. We have copies we can supply upon request or write them directly: Counter Information, p/h CI, 11 Forth St., Edinburgh, Scotland EH1

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Friends who attended the second annual Anarchist Book Fair held March 29 in San Francisco say it was a tremendous success. It was sponsored by Bound Together Book Store, 1369 Haight, SF CA 94117 and hundreds showed up for the all-day affair. Our gratitude to Lawrence for setting up a table this year and last to distribute Fifth Estates.

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