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OfflineLearyfanS
It's the psychedelic movement!
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Registered: 04/20/01
Posts: 34,089
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Today in counterculture history (03/08) * 3
    #14085281 - 03/08/11 05:33 AM (12 years, 10 months ago)

  • 1950:  Volkswagen bus goes into production for the first time




Quote:

Mar 8, 1950:
VW bus, icon of counterculture movement, goes into production





Volkswagen, maker of the Beetle automobile, expands its product offerings to include a microbus, which goes into production on this day in 1950. Known officially as the Volkswagen Type 2 (the Beetle was the Type 1) or the Transporter, the bus was a favorite mode of transportation for hippies in the U.S. during the 1960s and became an icon of the American counterculture movement.

The VW bus was reportedly the brainchild of Dutch businessman Ben Pon, an importer of Beetles to the Netherlands, who saw a market for a small bus and in 1947 sketched out his concept. Volkswagen engineers further developed the idea and in March 1950, the vehicle, with its boxy, utilitarian shape and rear engine, went into production. The bus eventually collected a number of nicknames, including the "Combi" (for combined-use vehicle) and the "Splittie" (for its split windshield); in Germany it was known as the "Bulli." In the U.S., it was referred to by some as a hippie van or bus because it was used to transport groups of young people and their camping gear and other supplies to concerts and anti-war rallies. Some owners painted colorful murals on their buses and replaced the VW logo on the front with a peace symbol. According to "Bug" by Phil Patton, when Grateful Dead musician Jerry Garcia died in 1995, Volkswagen ran an ad featuring a drawing of the front of a bus with a tear streaming down it.

The bus was only the second product offering for Volkswagen, a company whose history dates back to the 1930s Germany. In 1933, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany and announced he wanted to build new roads and affordable cars for the German people. At that time, Austrian-born engineer Ferdinand Porsche (1875-1951) was already working on creating a small car for the masses. Hitler and Porsche later met and the engineer was charged with designing the inexpensive, mass-produced Volkswagen, or "people's car." In 1938, work began on the Volkswagen factory, located in present-day Wolfsburg, Germany; however, full-scale vehicle production didn't begin until after World War II.

In the 1950s, the Volkswagen arrived in the U.S., where the initial reception was tepid, due in part to the car's historic Nazi connection as well as its small size and unusual rounded shape (which later led to it being dubbed the "Beetle"). In 1959, the advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach launched a groundbreaking campaign that promoted the car's diminutive size as a distinct advantage to consumers, and over the next several years VW became the top-selling auto import in the U.S. In 1972, the VW Beetle passed the iconic Ford Model T as the world's best-selling car, with over 15 million vehicles produced.


(http://www.history.com/)









  • 1965:  Bob Dylan releases the single for "Subterranean Homesick Blues"




Quote:

"Subterranean Homesick Blues" is a song by Bob Dylan, recorded on January 14, 1965, and released as a single on Columbia Records, catalogue 43242, on March 8. It appeared some two weeks later as the lead track to the album Bringing It All Back Home.  It was Dylan's first Top 40 hit in the U.S., peaking at #39 on the Billboard Hot 100. It also entered the Top 10 on the singles chart in the United Kingdom. The song has subsequently been reissued on numerous compilations, the first being his 1967 singles compilation Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits. One of Dylan's first 'electric' pieces, "Subterranean Homesick Blues" was also notable for its innovative film clip, which first appeared in D. A. Pennebaker's documentary, Dont Look Back.

An acoustic version of the song, recorded the day before the single, was released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991.

B-side "She Belongs to Me"
Released March 8, 1965
Format 7" single
Recorded January 14, 1965, Columbia Recording Studios, Studio A, New York
Genre Folk rock, blues rock, rock and roll
Length 2:20
Label Columbia
Producer(s) Tom Wilson


(https://en.wikipedia.org)









  • 1968:  Bill Graham opens The Fillmore East




Quote:

Fillmore East was rock promoter Bill Graham's rock venue on Second Avenue near East 6th Street in the (at the time) Lower East Side neighborhood, now called the East Village neighborhood of the borough of Manhattan of New York City. It was open from March 8, 1968, to June 27, 1971, and featured some of the biggest acts in rock music at the time. The Fillmore East was a companion to Graham's Fillmore Auditorium, and its successor, the Fillmore West, in San Francisco, Graham's home base.

Former names Commodore Theater
Village Theater
Location 105 Second Avenue
at East 6th Street
Manhattan, New York City
Type Concert Hall
Genre(s) Rock
Capacity 2,654
Opened March 8, 1968
Closed June 27, 1971


(https://en.wikipedia.org)









  • 1971:  Media, PA FBI office is broken into (leads to COINTELPRO being exposed)




Quote:

COINTELPRO (an acronym for Counter Intelligence Program) was a series of covert, and often illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations.

COINTELPRO tactics included discrediting targets through psychological warfare, planting false reports in the media, smearing through forged letters, harassment, wrongful imprisonment, extralegal violence and assassination. Covert operations under COINTELPRO took place between 1956 and 1971, however the FBI has used covert operations against domestic political groups since its inception.  The FBI's stated motivation at the time was "protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order."

FBI records show that 85% of COINTELPRO resources targeted groups and individuals that the FBI deemed "subversive," including communist and socialist organizations; organizations and individuals associated with the civil rights movement, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others associated with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Congress of Racial Equality and other civil rights organizations; black nationalist groups; the American Indian Movement; a broad range of organizations labeled "New Left", including Students for a Democratic Society and the Weathermen; almost all groups protesting the Vietnam War, as well as individual student demonstrators with no group affiliation; the National Lawyers Guild; organizations and individuals associated with the women's rights movement; nationalist groups such as those seeking "independence for Puerto Rico" and a United Ireland; and additional notable Americans, such as Albert Einstein. The remaining 15% of COINTELPRO resources were expended to marginalize and subvert "white hate groups," including the Ku Klux Klan and the National States' Rights Party.

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover issued directives governing COINTELPRO, ordering FBI agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities of these movements and their leaders.

History

COINTELPRO began in 1956 and was designed to "increase factionalism, cause disruption and win defections" inside the Communist Party U.S.A. (CPUSA). However, the program was soon enlarged to include disruption of the Socialist Workers Party (1961), the Ku Klux Klan (1964), the Nation of Islam, the Black Panther Party (1967), and the entire New Left social/political movement, which included antiwar, community, and religious groups (1968). A later investigation by the Senate's Church Committee (see below) stated that "COINTELPRO began in 1956, in part because of frustration with Supreme Court rulings limiting the Government's power to proceed overtly against dissident groups..."[8] Congress and several court cases[9] later[when?]concluded that the COINTELPRO operations against communist and socialist groups exceeded statutory limits on FBI activity and violated constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and association.

Program exposed

The program was successfully kept secret until 1971, when a group of left-wing radicals calling themselves the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI burglarized an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania, and took and exposed several dossiers by passing the information to news agencies. Many news organizations initially refused to publish the information. Within the year, Director Hoover declared that the centralized COINTELPRO was over, and that all future counterintelligence operations would be handled on a case-by-case basis.

Further documents were revealed in the course of separate lawsuits filed against the FBI by NBC correspondent Carl Stern, the Socialist Workers Party, and a number of other groups. A major investigation was launched in 1976 by the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities of the United States Senate, commonly referred to as the "Church Committee" for its chairman, Senator Frank Church of Idaho. However, millions of pages of documents remain unreleased, and many released documents have been partly, or entirely, redacted.

In the Final Report of the Select Committee, COINTELPRO was castigated in no uncertain terms:

    Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that...the Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence.

The Church Committee documented a history of FBI directors using the agency for purposes of political repression as far back as World War I, through the 1920s, when they were charged with rounding up "anarchists and revolutionaries" for deportation, and then building from 1936 through 1976.

Range of targets

In an interview with the BBC's Andrew Marr, MIT professor of linguistics and political activist Noam Chomsky spoke about the purpose and the targets of COINTELPRO saying, "COINTELPRO was a program of subversion carried out not by a couple of petty crooks but by the national political police, the FBI, under four administrations... by the time it got through, I won't run through the whole story, it was aimed at the entire new left, at the women's movement, at the whole black movement, it was extremely broad. Its actions went as far as political assassination."

According to the Church Committee:

    While the declared purposes of these programs were to protect the "national security" or prevent violence, Bureau witnesses admit that many of the targets were nonviolent and most had no connections with a foreign power. Indeed, nonviolent organizations and individuals were targeted because the Bureau believed they represented a "potential" for violence -- and nonviolent citizens who were against the war in Vietnam were targeted because they gave "aid and comfort" to violent demonstrators by lending respectability to their cause.

    The imprecision of the targeting is demonstrated by the inability of the Bureau to define the subjects of the programs. The Black Nationalist program, according to its supervisor, included "a great number of organizations that you might not today characterize as black nationalist but which were in fact primarily black." Thus, the nonviolent Southern Christian Leadership Conference was labeled as a Black Nationalist-"Hate Group."

    Furthermore, the actual targets were chosen from a far broader group than the titles of the programs would imply. The CPUSA program targeted not only Communist Party members but also sponsors of the National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee and civil rights leaders allegedly under Communist influence or deemed to be not sufficiently "anti-Communist". The Socialist Workers Party program included non-SWP sponsors of anti-war demonstrations which were cosponsored by the SWP or the Young Socialist Alliance, its youth group. The Black Nationalist program targeted a range of organizations from the Panthers to SNCC to the peaceful Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and included every Black Student Union and many other black student groups. New Left targets ranged from the SDS to the InterUniversity Committee for Debate on Foreign Policy, from Antioch College ("vanguard of the New Left") to the New Mexico Free University and other "alternate" schools, and from underground newspapers to students' protesting university censorship of a student publication by carrying signs with four-letter words on them.

Examples of surveillance, spanning all Presidents from FDR to Nixon, both legal and illegal, contained in the Church Committee report:

    * President Roosevelt asked the FBI to put in its files the names of citizens sending telegrams to the White House opposing his "national defense" policy and supporting Col. Charles Lindbergh.

    * President Truman received inside information on a former Roosevelt aide's efforts to influence his appointments, labor union negotiating plans, and the publishing plans of journalists.

    * President Eisenhower received reports on purely political and social contacts with foreign officials by Bernard Baruch, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.

    * The Kennedy administration had the FBI wiretap a congressional staff member, three executive officials, a lobbyist, and a Washington law firm. US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy received the fruits of an FBI "tap" on Martin Luther King, Jr. and a "bug" on a Congressman, both of which yielded information of a political nature.

    * President Johnson asked the FBI to conduct "name checks" of his critics and members of the staff of his 1964 opponent, Senator Barry Goldwater. He also requested purely political intelligence on his critics in the Senate, and received extensive intelligence reports on political activity at the 1964 Democratic Convention from FBI electronic surveillance.

    * President Nixon authorized a program of wiretaps which produced for the White House purely political or personal information unrelated to national security, including information about a Supreme Court justice.

The COINTELPRO documents disclose numerous cases of the FBI's intentions to stop the mass protest against the Vietnam War. Many techniques were used to accomplish the assignment. "These included promoting splits among antiwar forces, encouraging red-baiting of socialists, and pushing violent confrontations as an alternative to massive, peaceful demonstrations." One 1966 Cointelpro operation attempted to redirect the Socialist Workers Party from their pledge of support for the antiwar movement.

The FBI claims that it no longer undertakes COINTELPRO or COINTELPRO-like operations. However, critics claim that agency programs in the spirit of COINTELPRO targeted groups such as the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, the American Indian Movement, Earth First!, the White Separatist Movement, and the Anti-Globalization Movement.

Methods

According to attorney Brian Glick in his book War at Home, the FBI used four main methods during COINTELPRO:

  1. Infiltration: Agents and informers did not merely spy on political activists. Their main purpose was to discredit and disrupt. Their very presence served to undermine trust and scare off potential supporters. The FBI and police exploited this fear to smear genuine activists as agents.
  2. Psychological Warfare From the Outside: The FBI and police used a myriad of other "dirty tricks" to undermine progressive movements. They planted false media stories and published bogus leaflets and other publications in the name of targeted groups. They forged correspondence, sent anonymous letters, and made anonymous telephone calls. They spread misinformation about meetings and events, set up pseudo movement groups run by government agents, and manipulated or strong-armed parents, employers, landlords, school officials and others to cause trouble for activists.
  3. Harassment Through the Legal System: The FBI and police abused the legal system to harass dissidents and make them appear to be criminals. Officers of the law gave perjured testimony and presented fabricated evidence as a pretext for false arrests and wrongful imprisonment. They discriminatorily enforced tax laws and other government regulations and used conspicuous surveillance, "investigative" interviews, and grand jury subpoenas in an effort to intimidate activists and silence their supporters.
  4. Extralegal Force and Violence: The FBI conspired with local police departments to threaten dissidents; to conduct illegal break-ins in order to search dissident homes; and to commit vandalism, assaults, beatings and assassinations. The object was to frighten, or eliminate, dissidents and disrupt their movements.

The FBI specifically developed tactics intended to heighten tension and hostility between various factions in the black militancy movement, for example between the Black Panthers, the US Organization and the Blackstone Rangers. This resulted in numerous deaths, among which were the US Organization assassinations of San Diego Black Panther Party members John Huggins, Bunchy Carter and Sylvester Bell.

The FBI also conspired with the police departments of many U.S. cities (San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Philadelphia, Chicago) to encourage repeated raids on Black Panther homes—often with little or no evidence of violations of federal, state, or local laws—which resulted directly in the police killing of many members of the Black Panther Party, most notably the assassination of Chicago Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton on December 4, 1969.

In order to eliminate black militant leaders whom they considered dangerous, the FBI conspired with local police departments to target specific individuals, accuse them of crimes they did not commit, suppress exculpatory evidence and falsely incarcerate them. One Black Panther Party leader, Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, was incarcerated for 27 years before a California Superior Court vacated his murder conviction, ultimately freeing him. Appearing before the court, an FBI agent testified that he believed Pratt had been framed because both the FBI and the Los Angeles Police Department knew he had been out of the area at the time the murder occurred.

The FBI conducted more than 200 "black bag jobs", which were warrantless surreptitious entries, against the targeted groups and their members.

In 1969 the FBI special agent in San Francisco wrote Hoover that his investigation of the Black Panther Party (BPP) revealed that in his city, at least, the Black nationalists were primarily feeding breakfast to children. Hoover fired back a memo implying the career ambitions of the agent were directly related to his supplying evidence to support Hoover's view that the BPP was "a violence-prone organization seeking to overthrow the Government by revolutionary means".

Hoover was willing to use false claims to attack his political enemies. In one memo he wrote: "Purpose of counterintelligence action is to disrupt the BPP and it is immaterial whether facts exist to substantiate the charge."

In one particularly controversial 1965 incident, civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo was murdered by Ku Klux Klansmen who gave chase and fired shots into her car after noticing that her passenger was a young black man; one of the Klansmen was acknowledged FBI informant Gary Thomas Rowe.  Afterward COINTELPRO spread false rumors that Liuzzo was a member of the Communist Party and abandoned her children to have sexual relationships with African Americans involved in the civil rights movement. FBI informant Rowe has also been implicated in some of the most violent crimes of the 1960s civil rights era, including attacks on the Freedom Riders and the 1963 Birmingham, Alabama 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.  In another instance in San Diego the FBI financed, armed, and controlled an extreme right-wing group of former Minutemen, transforming it into a group called the Secret Army Organization which targeted groups, activists, and leaders involved in the Anti-War Movement for both intimidation and violent acts.

Hoover ordered preemptive action "to pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them before they exercise their potential for violence."

Illegal surveillance

The final report of the Church Committee concluded:

    Too many people have been spied upon by too many Government agencies and too much information has been collected. The Government has often undertaken the secret surveillance of citizens on the basis of their political beliefs, even when those beliefs posed no threat of violence or illegal acts on behalf of a hostile foreign power. The Government, operating primarily through secret informants, but also using other intrusive techniques such as wiretaps, microphone "bugs", surreptitious mail opening, and break-ins, has swept in vast amounts of information about the personal lives, views, and associations of American citizens. Investigations of groups deemed potentially dangerous -- and even of groups suspected of associating with potentially dangerous organizations -- have continued for decades, despite the fact that those groups did not engage in unlawful activity.

    Groups and individuals have been harassed and disrupted because of their political views and their lifestyles. Investigations have been based upon vague standards whose breadth made excessive collection inevitable. Unsavory and vicious tactics have been employed -- including anonymous attempts to break up marriages, disrupt meetings, ostracize persons from their professions, and provoke target groups into rivalries that might result in deaths. Intelligence agencies have served the political and personal objectives of presidents and other high officials. While the agencies often committed excesses in response to pressure from high officials in the Executive branch and Congress, they also occasionally initiated improper activities and then concealed them from officials whom they had a duty to inform.

    Governmental officials -- including those whose principal duty is to enforce the law --have violated or ignored the law over long periods of time and have advocated and defended their right to break the law.

    The Constitutional system of checks and balances has not adequately controlled intelligence activities. Until recently the Executive branch has neither delineated the scope of permissible activities nor established procedures for supervising intelligence agencies. Congress has failed to exercise sufficient oversight, seldom questioning the use to which its appropriations were being put. Most domestic intelligence issues have not reached the courts, and in those cases when they have reached the courts, the judiciary has been reluctant to grapple with them.

(wikipedia)


The Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI was a leftist activist group operational in the US during the early 1970s. Their only known action was breaking into a two-man Media, Pennsylvania office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and stealing over 1000 classified documents. They then mailed these documents anonymously to several US newspapers. Some news outlets refused to publish the information, as it related to ongoing operations and they contended disclosure may have threatened the lives of agents or informants. "The complete collection of political documents ripped-off from the F.B.I. office in Media, Pa., March 8, 1971" was published for the first time as the March, 1972 issue of WIN Magazine ("Peace and freedom thru nonviolent action"), a journal associated with the War Resisters League. The documents revealed the COINTELPRO operation, and led to the Church Committee and the cessation of this operation by the FBI.

    "According to its analysis of the documents in this FBI office, 1 percent were devoted to organized crime, mostly gambling; 30 percent were "manuals, routine forms, and similar procedural matter"; 40 percent were devoted to political surveillance and the like, including two cases involving right-wing groups, ten concerning immigrants, and over 200 on left or liberal groups. Another 14 percent of the documents concerned draft resistance and "leaving the military without government permission." The remainder concerned bank robberies, murder, rape, and interstate theft." - Noam Chomsky

The theft resulted in the exposure of some of the FBI's most self-incriminating documents, including several documents detailing the FBI's use of postal workers, switchboard operators, etc., in order to spy on black college students and various non-violent black activist groups.

Some forty years after their successful infiltration, some of the perpetrators decided to go public. In 2014, Betty Medsger's book The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret F.B.I. was released, which contains the burglars' description of the burglary, and revealed the identities of five of the eight burglars.  Filmmaker Johanna Hamilton also made a documentary titled 1971.

Members

The FBI closed their investigation into the group's burglary on March 11, 1976 without conclusively identifying any of the perpetrators. The group's identity remained a secret until early 2014, when four of its eight members agreed to be interviewed prior to a book on the burglary being published. The members breaking their silence were Keith Forsyth, John C. Raines and Bonnie Raines, and Robert Williamson. William C. Davidon (the recruiter and informal leader) died in 2013 but had planned to reveal his involvement.

Keith Forsyth and Robert Williamson were also members of the The Camden 28, who broke into a draft board to destroy documents to impede the war draft and make an anti-war statement.
Burglary

The burglars did extensive surveillance of the FBI office, to ensure they knew when the office was empty. The break-in was perpetrated on the day of Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali's Fight of the Century, in the hope that any security guards would be glued to their radios.

The picture of the office shown in the New York Times' video corresponds to 1 Veterans Sq, Media, PA.

Statement

In a 2014 interview, John Raines said that while returning from the burglary early in the morning, the group had stopped at a pay phone, called a Reuters journalist and delivered the following statement:

    On the night of March 8, 1971, the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI removed files from the Media, Pennsylvania, office of the FBI. These files will now be studied to determine: one, the nature and extent of surveillance and intimidation carried on by this office of the FBI, particularly against groups and individuals working for a more just, humane and peaceful society; two, to determine how much of the FBI’s efforts are spent on relatively minor crimes by the poor and the powerless against whom they can get a more glamorous conviction rate, instead of investigating truly serious crimes by those with money and influence which cause great damage to the lives of many people—crimes such as war profiteering, monopolistic practices, institutional racism, organized crime, and the mass distribution of lethal drugs; finally, three, the extent of illegal practices by the FBI, such as eavesdropping, entrapment, and the use of provocateurs and informers.

    As this study proceeds, the results obtained along with the FBI documents pertaining to them will be sent to people in public life who have demonstrated the integrity, courage and commitment to democratic values which are necessary to effectively challenge the repressive policies of the FBI.
    As long as the United States government wages war against Indochina in defiance of the vast majority who want all troops and weapons withdrawn this year, and extends that war and suffering under the guise of reducing it, as long as great economic and political power remains concentrated in the hands of a small clique not subject to democratic scrutiny and control, then repression, intimidation, and entrapment are to be expected. We do not believe that this destruction of democracy and democratic society results simply from the evilness, egoism or senility of some leaders. Rather, this destruction is the result of certain undemocratic social, economic and political institutions.

Investigation

FBI had up to 200 agents working on the case, but it was never solved, and the investigation was closed when the five-year statute of limitations ran out.


(wikipedia)









  • 1973:  Paul McCartney goes to trial and is fined for growing pot on his Scotland farm




Quote:

  On 19 September, a uniformed officer of the Campbeltown police, PC Norman McPhee, paid an unannounced visit to High Park Farm. Paul and Linda were in London, just back from Wings Over Europe, and no one else was at the property. McPhee later claimed merely to have been carrying out a routine security check. But just a few days previously he'd been away on a drug-awareness course in Glasgow, learning how to recognise illegal substances, both artificial and natural. Nor could he have been unaware of the Daily Mail's 'WHY I SMOKE POT—BY PAUL' headline, and of feelings among Kintyre's predominant conservative, God-fearing element. It's even possible he was acting on a tip-off from one of Paul's less-enamoured neighbours.
  The spot-or, rather, pot-check yielded rich dividends. In the farm's tumbledown greenhouse were growing five of the distinctive spikey-leaved plants PC McPhee now knew to harbour cannabis resin. He took one away for analysis and, the results proving positive, returned with a search-warrant and seven colleagues to seek further drugs in the farmhouse, Rude Studio and other outbuildings. But the five cannabis plants proved the extent of it.
  Next day, Paul was charged with three counts of growing and possessing cannabis, a crime far graver in 1972 than nowadays and usually punished by imprisonment. As Scotland's legal system differs radically from England's, a Glasgow-based solicitor, Len Murray, was engaged to represent him. Murray entered a plea of not guilty to all three charges by letter and the case was set for trial at Campbeltown Sheriff Court the following March.
---------
Paul's trial, on 8 March 1973, brought the world's media to Kintyre and caused telescopic camera lenses to be trained for the first time from the slopes above High Park Farm. But the outcome was better than he'd dared to hope.
--------
  The case lasted barely 25 minutes. In mitigation, McCluskey told Sheriff Donald J. McDairmid that his client had had 'an interest in horticulture for many years'—causing an involuntary spasm of mirth among the assembled journalists—and that fans often sent him gifts of seeds by post, which he planted in his greenhouse without necessarily knowing what they were. Those five spikey-leaved culprits were just such an innocent modem version of 'Jack and the Beanstalk'.
  McCluskey added that the matter was already potentially damaging to Paul since America's immigration authorities refused admission to drug-off enders on principle even where the off ence was, as in this case, purely technical.
  Sheriff McDairmid's summing-up suggested a swingeing penalty. 'I take into account that the seeds were sent to you as a gift,' he told Paul, `but I also take into account that you are a public figure of considerable interest to young people and I must deal with you accordingly.' A fine of just £100 was then imposed. As if pleading for some penniless vagrant hauled up for urinating in public, his counsel requested time for him to pay off the £100, and the court granted a month.
  Outside the courthouse, Paul gave an impromptu press conference with Linda clinging to his arm and jokingly wearing John McCluskey's bowler hat. As many a hack noted, she was 'in high spirits'—whether assisted by seeds received in the post would never be known—and seemed to be treating the occasion with less than due seriousness.
  A totally serious Paul was at his diplomatic best as he paid tribute to the Sheriff as 'a great guy' and said he bore his prosecutors no ill will.


(Paul McCartney: The Life By Philip Norman)
















Edited by Learyfan (03/06/21 09:12 AM)


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InvisibleBodhi of Ankou
*alternate opinion blocks path*
Other


Registered: 06/02/09
Posts: 24,778
Loc: Soviet Canukistan Flag
Re: Today in counterculture history (03/08) [Re: Learyfan] * 2
    #14085284 - 03/08/11 05:35 AM (12 years, 10 months ago)

Blasphemy! tis a conspiracy :tinfoil:


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Invisiblevinsue
Grand Old Fart
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Re: Today in counterculture history (03/08) [Re: Learyfan] * 1
    #14085418 - 03/08/11 07:08 AM (12 years, 10 months ago)



--------------------

"All mushrooms are edible; but some only once." Croatian proverb. BTW ...
  Have You Rated Ythans Mom Yet ?? ... :taser:  ... HERE'S HOW ... (be nice) .  :mod: ... :peace:


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Invisiblekoraks
Registered: 06/02/03
Posts: 26,672
Re: Today in counterculture history (03/08) [Re: vinsue]
    #14085443 - 03/08/11 07:17 AM (12 years, 10 months ago)

The one about McCartney is interesting...so he was growing pot, in early March, in Scotland? Was this an indoor grow? Otherwise :wtf:


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Invisiblevinsue
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Re: Today in counterculture history (03/08) [Re: koraks]
    #14085505 - 03/08/11 07:49 AM (12 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

koraks said:
The one about McCartney is interesting...so he was growing pot, in early March, in Scotland? Was this an indoor grow? Otherwise :wtf:


. . . Paul McCartney   liked  :happyweed:  (and :lsd:)... don't we all? 
Quote:

On 16 January 1980, Wings went to Tokyo for 11 concerts in Japan. As McCartney was going through customs, officials found 7.7 ounces (218.3 g) of cannabis in his luggage. He was arrested and taken to a Tokyo prison while the Japanese government decided what to do. McCartney had been previously denied a visa to Japan (in 1975) because he had been convicted twice in Europe for possession of cannabis.  After ten days in jail, McCartney was released and deported. He was told that he would not be welcome in Japan again, although a decade later he played a concert in Tokyo. In 1984, Paul and Linda McCartney were both arrested for possession of cannabis


. . . :peace:


--------------------

"All mushrooms are edible; but some only once." Croatian proverb. BTW ...
  Have You Rated Ythans Mom Yet ?? ... :taser:  ... HERE'S HOW ... (be nice) .  :mod: ... :peace:


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Invisiblekoraks
Registered: 06/02/03
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Re: Today in counterculture history (03/08) [Re: vinsue]
    #14085580 - 03/08/11 08:13 AM (12 years, 10 months ago)

Yeah, I get that, but do you know what the average weather conditions are in Scotland in late February/early May? That's what surprises me. I mean, he must have been a hell of a cultivator :rasta:


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OfflineLearyfanS
It's the psychedelic movement!
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Re: Today in counterculture history (03/08) [Re: vinsue] * 2
    #14088044 - 03/08/11 05:54 PM (12 years, 10 months ago)

Vinsue, thanks for the Richard Farina.  I'll add that.  I don't think the rest qualifies though.  No offense. 

koraks:  Good question.  I have no idea what the outdoor growing conditions were.  But apparently he did it. 





















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Re: Today in counterculture history (03/08) [Re: Learyfan] * 1
    #14088083 - 03/08/11 06:04 PM (12 years, 10 months ago)

But let us not forget that the FBI's COINTELPRO program was exposed on this day, 40 years ago.  Very important to recognize that the government was (and is, I'm sure) very involved in an effort to disrupt and destroy political organizations that it finds threatening.  This effects us all.  You should be outraged.















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Mp3 of the month:  The Apple-Glass Cyndrome - Someday



Edited by Learyfan (03/08/15 11:33 AM)


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Re: Today in counterculture history (03/08) [Re: Learyfan] * 1
    #15917938 - 03/08/12 05:55 AM (11 years, 10 months ago)

Annual bump.





















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Re: Today in counterculture history (03/08) [Re: Learyfan] * 2
    #15917961 - 03/08/12 06:02 AM (11 years, 10 months ago)

This is really sick.. Can't say things have changed though, things like this are still happening today.

Nice job learyfan, it's always a good read! :wink:


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Re: Today in counterculture history (03/08) [Re: Constantine] * 1
    #15918033 - 03/08/12 06:29 AM (11 years, 10 months ago)

Right on brother.  It's great that it was exposed by The Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI.  I'd love to meet those ballsy hippies and shake their hands.  I mean, how did they find out where those files were?  How were they able to infiltrate that office and steal the documents?  That's crazy!

But yeah, even though they publicly ended the program, you know damn well that the FBI regrouped, learned from its mistakes and continued the project under a different name.  I have no doubt that it still exists today.  Imagine the great changes that would have been made in the world if this wasn't going on in the background. 























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Mp3 of the month:  The Apple-Glass Cyndrome - Someday



Edited by Learyfan (03/08/12 06:42 AM)


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Re: Today in counterculture history (03/08) [Re: Learyfan]
    #17923036 - 03/08/13 05:57 AM (10 years, 10 months ago)

40th anniversary of Paul's outdoor grow bust.















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Re: Today in counterculture history (03/08) [Re: Learyfan] * 1
    #19667235 - 03/08/14 11:30 AM (9 years, 10 months ago)

Not sure if you guys heard about this or not, but some of the members of The Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI have FINALLY come out of the shadows and shown themselves to the world.  Today we should salute these brave Americans, who took an enormous personal risk 43 years ago today, to bring the government's disgusting COINTELPRO program to light.  Everyone should watch the following 13 minute NY Times video and article about it.  These guys were the Edward Snowden of 1971.

Thank you to John and Bonnie Raines, Keith Forsyth, Robert Williamson and the late William Davidon, as well as those still unnamed.  Your bravery will never truly be appreciated in your lifetime by those who benefited from it.  You are true American heroes. 









Quote:

Burglars Who Took On F.B.I. Abandon Shadows

By MARK MAZZETTIJAN. 7, 2014

PHILADELPHIA — The perfect crime is far easier to pull off when nobody is watching.

So on a night nearly 43 years ago, while Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier bludgeoned each other over 15 rounds in a televised title bout viewed by millions around the world, burglars took a lock pick and a crowbar and broke into a Federal Bureau of Investigation office in a suburb of Philadelphia, making off with nearly every document inside.

They were never caught, and the stolen documents that they mailed anonymously to newspaper reporters were the first trickle of what would become a flood of revelations about extensive spying and dirty-tricks operations by the F.B.I. against dissident groups.

The burglary in Media, Pa., on March 8, 1971, is a historical echo today, as disclosures by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden have cast another unflattering light on government spying and opened a national debate about the proper limits of government surveillance. The burglars had, until now, maintained a vow of silence about their roles in the operation. They were content in knowing that their actions had dealt the first significant blow to an institution that had amassed enormous power and prestige during J. Edgar Hoover’s lengthy tenure as director.
Photo
John and Bonnie Raines, two of the burglars, at home in Philadelphia with their grandchildren. Credit Mark Makela for The New York Times

“When you talked to people outside the movement about what the F.B.I. was doing, nobody wanted to believe it,” said one of the burglars, Keith Forsyth, who is finally going public about his involvement. “There was only one way to convince people that it was true, and that was to get it in their handwriting.”

Mr. Forsyth, now 63, and other members of the group can no longer be prosecuted for what happened that night, and they agreed to be interviewed before the release this week of a book written by one of the first journalists to receive the stolen documents. The author, Betty Medsger, a former reporter for The Washington Post, spent years sifting through the F.B.I.’s voluminous case file on the episode and persuaded five of the eight men and women who participated in the break-in to end their silence.

Unlike Mr. Snowden, who downloaded hundreds of thousands of digital N.S.A. files onto computer hard drives, the Media burglars did their work the 20th-century way: they cased the F.B.I. office for months, wore gloves as they packed the papers into suitcases, and loaded the suitcases into getaway cars. When the operation was over, they dispersed. Some remained committed to antiwar causes, while others, like John and Bonnie Raines, decided that the risky burglary would be their final act of protest against the Vietnam War and other government actions before they moved on with their lives.

“We didn’t need attention, because we had done what needed to be done,” said Mr. Raines, 80, who had, with his wife, arranged for family members to raise the couple’s three children if they were sent to prison. “The ’60s were over. We didn’t have to hold on to what we did back then.”

A Meticulous Plan


Keith Forsyth, in the early 1970s, was the designated lock-picker among the eight burglars. When he found that he could not pick the lock on the front door of the F.B.I. office, he broke in through a side entrance.

The burglary was the idea of William C. Davidon, a professor of physics at Haverford College and a fixture of antiwar protests in Philadelphia, a city that by the early 1970s had become a white-hot center of the peace movement. Mr. Davidon was frustrated that years of organized demonstrations seemed to have had little impact.

In the summer of 1970, months after President Richard M. Nixon announced the United States’ invasion of Cambodia, Mr. Davidon began assembling a team from a group of activists whose commitment and discretion he had come to trust.

The group — originally nine, before one member dropped out — concluded that it would be too risky to try to break into the F.B.I. office in downtown Philadelphia, where security was tight. They soon settled on the bureau’s satellite office in Media, in an apartment building across the street from the county courthouse.

That decision carried its own risks: Nobody could be certain whether the satellite office would have any documents about the F.B.I.’s surveillance of war protesters, or whether a security alarm would trip as soon as the burglars opened the door.

The group spent months casing the building, driving past it at all times of the night and memorizing the routines of its residents.

“We knew when people came home from work, when their lights went out, when they went to bed, when they woke up in the morning,” said Mr. Raines, who was a professor of religion at Temple University at the time. “We were quite certain that we understood the nightly activities in and around that building.”

But it wasn’t until Ms. Raines got inside the office that the group grew confident that it did not have a security system. Weeks before the burglary, she visited the office posing as a Swarthmore College student researching job opportunities for women at the F.B.I.

The burglary itself went off largely without a hitch, except for when Mr. Forsyth, the designated lock-picker, had to break into a different entrance than planned when he discovered that the F.B.I. had installed a lock on the main door that he could not pick. He used a crowbar to break the second lock, a deadbolt above the doorknob.

After packing the documents into suitcases, the burglars piled into getaway cars and rendezvoused at a farmhouse to sort through what they had stolen. To their relief, they soon discovered that the bulk of it was hard evidence of the F.B.I.’s spying on political groups. Identifying themselves as the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the F.B.I., the burglars sent select documents to several newspaper reporters. Two weeks after the burglary, Ms. Medsger wrote the first article based on the files, after the Nixon administration tried unsuccessfully to get The Post to return the documents.

Other news organizations that had received the documents, including The New York Times, followed with their own reports.

Ms. Medsger’s article cited what was perhaps the most damning document from the cache, a 1970 memorandum that offered a glimpse into Hoover’s obsession with snuffing out dissent. The document urged agents to step up their interviews of antiwar activists and members of dissident student groups.

“It will enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles and will further serve to get the point across there is an F.B.I. agent behind every mailbox,” the message from F.B.I. headquarters said. Another document, signed by Hoover himself, revealed widespread F.B.I. surveillance of black student groups on college campuses.

But the document that would have the biggest impact on reining in the F.B.I.’s domestic spying activities was an internal routing slip, dated 1968, bearing a mysterious word: Cointelpro.

Neither the Media burglars nor the reporters who received the documents understood the meaning of the term, and it was not until several years later, when the NBC News reporter Carl Stern obtained more files from the F.B.I. under the Freedom of Information Act, that the contours of Cointelpro — shorthand for Counterintelligence Program — were revealed.

Since 1956, the F.B.I. had carried out an expansive campaign to spy on civil rights leaders, political organizers and suspected Communists, and had tried to sow distrust among protest groups. Among the grim litany of revelations was a blackmail letter F.B.I. agents had sent anonymously to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., threatening to expose his extramarital affairs if he did not commit suicide.

“It wasn’t just spying on Americans,” said Loch K. Johnson, a professor of public and international affairs at the University of Georgia who was an aide to Senator Frank Church, Democrat of Idaho. “The intent of Cointelpro was to destroy lives and ruin reputations.”

Senator Church’s investigation in the mid-1970s revealed still more about the extent of decades of F.B.I. abuses, and led to greater congressional oversight of the F.B.I. and other American intelligence agencies. The Church Committee’s final report about the domestic surveillance was blunt. “Too many people have been spied upon by too many government agencies, and too much information has been collected,” it read.

By the time the committee released its report, Hoover was dead and the empire he had built at the F.B.I. was being steadily dismantled. The roughly 200 agents he had assigned to investigate the Media burglary came back empty-handed, and the F.B.I. closed the case on March 11, 1976 — three days after the statute of limitations for burglary charges had expired.

Michael P. Kortan, a spokesman for the F.B.I., said that “a number of events during that era, including the Media burglary, contributed to changes to how the F.B.I. identified and addressed domestic security threats, leading to reform of the F.B.I.’s intelligence policies and practices and the creation of investigative guidelines by the Department of Justice.”

According to Ms. Medsger’s book, “The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret F.B.I.,” only one of the burglars was on the F.B.I.’s final list of possible suspects before the case was closed.
Photo
Afterward, they fled to a farmhouse, near Pottstown, Pa., where they spent 10 days sorting through the documents. Credit Betty Medsger

A Retreat Into Silence

The eight burglars rarely spoke to one another while the F.B.I. investigation was proceeding and never again met as a group.

Mr. Davidon died late last year from complications of Parkinson’s disease. He had planned to speak publicly about his role in the break-in, but three of the burglars have chosen to remain anonymous.

Among those who have come forward — Mr. Forsyth, the Raineses and a man named Bob Williamson — there is some wariness of how their decision will be viewed.

The passage of years has worn some of the edges off the once radical political views of John and Bonnie Raines. But they said they felt a kinship toward Mr. Snowden, whose revelations about N.S.A. spying they see as a bookend to their own disclosures so long ago.

They know some people will criticize them for having taken part in something that, if they had been caught and convicted, might have separated them from their children for years. But they insist they would never have joined the team of burglars had they not been convinced they would get away with it.

“It looks like we’re terribly reckless people,” Mr. Raines said. “But there was absolutely no one in Washington — senators, congressmen, even the president — who dared hold J. Edgar Hoover to accountability.”

“It became pretty obvious to us,” he said, “that if we don’t do it, nobody will.”


(http://www.nytimes.com)



















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Mp3 of the month:  The Apple-Glass Cyndrome - Someday



Edited by Learyfan (03/08/14 12:17 PM)


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Re: Today in counterculture history (03/08) [Re: Learyfan] * 2
    #19667387 - 03/08/14 12:06 PM (9 years, 10 months ago)

my friends dad was involved with some of these people in a different scenario, he was with a group of them in Camden when they tried to raid a draft office or some shit. They made a movie about it, the Camden 28. Check it out.


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Re: Today in counterculture history (03/08) [Re: theonlysun81] * 1
    #19667434 - 03/08/14 12:15 PM (9 years, 10 months ago)

nice :thumbup:


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Re: Today in counterculture history (03/08) [Re: theonlysun81]
    #19667503 - 03/08/14 12:30 PM (9 years, 10 months ago)

Yeah, I know about the Camden 28 and I've seen the documentary, which is great.  Everyone should watch that on Netflix.  Anyway, it's really interesting that Keith Forsyth and Robert Williamson were apart of the Camden 28 as well.  It's a shame for the directors of the Camden 28 documentary, that the revelations of Forsyth and Williamson's involvement in the FBI office break in are so new that the two groups were treated as completely separate entities in the film.  If they had only waited until January 2014, they would have known that there was an actual tie between the two groups. 

I can't wait until the documentary on The Citizen's Commission To Investigate The FBI comes out this year.  It's called 1971 and is directed by Johanna Hamilton.  It's going to be epic. 

:cool:

















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Re: Today in counterculture history (03/08) [Re: Learyfan]
    #21377859 - 03/08/15 11:40 AM (8 years, 10 months ago)

The 1971 documentary is still not out and from looking at the website, it doesn't appear as though they intend on or are able to release it commercially, anytime soon.  If you want the DVD, you have to pay $300.  But they still show it at film festivals and the website has a schedule of screenings.  Hopefully by next year, I'll be able to say that I've seen it. 
















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Re: Today in counterculture history (03/08) [Re: Learyfan]
    #22984850 - 03/08/16 06:20 AM (7 years, 10 months ago)

45th anniversary of the Media, PA FBI office break in by The Citizen's Commission To Investigate The FBI, which eventually led to the COINTELPRO program being exposed today.  They stole 1000 classified documents and sent them to US newspapers.  None of the people involved in the crime were ever arrested for that particular crime.  The FBI did not even officially know who did it until 2014, when John and Bonnie Raines told the world.  The CCTITFBI were the Edward Snowden of their day and should be seen as heroes. 

One of the many interesting things about that night is that the intentionally planned the break in to coincide with the big Muhammad Ali vs. Joe Frazier, Thrilla In Manilla fight.  They broke in as the fight was going on because they knew everyone would be distracted.  Here's a video of the fight.  As you watch it, keep in mind that the burglars were timing each move to coincide with a "swell" in the noise of the crowd and those watching.  Some parts of the break in were noisy and that noise was masked by the uproar from those at the fight as well as those watching at home.  I salute these people for bringing the dark truth of the government's secret programs to light.  Especially John and Bonnie Raines, who had small children and risked missing them grow up, if caught.  That is true sacrifice. 
















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Re: Today in counterculture history (03/08) [Re: Learyfan] * 1
    #24145544 - 03/08/17 05:45 AM (6 years, 10 months ago)

Wow, they have the 1971 documentary on YouTube!  Watch this now!
















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Re: Today in counterculture history (03/08) [Re: Learyfan]
    #25047898 - 03/08/18 05:37 AM (5 years, 10 months ago)

45th anniversary of Paul McCartney's trial for growing five pot plants on his Scotland property. 




Quote:

  On 19 September, a uniformed officer of the Campbeltown police, PC Norman McPhee, paid an unannounced visit to High Park Farm. Paul and Linda were in London, just back from Wings Over Europe, and no one else was at the property. McPhee later claimed merely to have been carrying out a routine security check. But just a few days previously he'd been away on a drug-awareness course in Glasgow, learning how to recognise illegal substances, both artificial and natural. Nor could he have been unaware of the Daily Mail's 'WHY I SMOKE POT—BY PAUL' headline, and of feelings among Kintyre's predominant conservative, God-fearing element. It's even possible he was acting on a tip-off from one of Paul's less-enamoured neighbours.
  The spot-or, rather, pot-check yielded rich dividends. In the farm's tumbledown greenhouse were growing five of the distinctive spikey-leaved plants PC McPhee now knew to harbour cannabis resin. He took one away for analysis and, the results proving positive, returned with a search-warrant and seven colleagues to seek further drugs in the farmhouse, Rude Studio and other outbuildings. But the five cannabis plants proved the extent of it.
  Next day, Paul was charged with three counts of growing and possessing cannabis, a crime far graver in 1972 than nowadays and usually punished by imprisonment. As Scotland's legal system differs radically from England's, a Glasgow-based solicitor, Len Murray, was engaged to represent him. Murray entered a plea of not guilty to all three charges by letter and the case was set for trial at Campbeltown Sheriff Court the following March.
  With that cheerless prospect ahead, Paul took Wings back into the recording studio to finish the album that had been interrupted the previous spring, only now as a single one rather than the double he'd first intended. Guitarist Henry McCullough took credit for persuading him it would be better shorter—something that George Martin had so signally failed to do with the Beatles' White Album. After the problems with Glyn Johns, he decided to produce the remainder of it himself.
  Midway through the sessions, as it happened, the Beatles' old producer offered him a commission only someone with his talent for multitasking could have accepted. Martin had been asked to score the eighth James Bond film, Live and Let Die, and had persuaded its producers that the title song—invariably a hit in the pop charts—should be written by Paul and recorded by Wings.
  Stimulated as always by composing to order, he speed-read Ian Fleming's novel, then set to work, calling on Linda for help yet again. Like a famous co-composition with John, the song ended up in two distinct halves, its soft, pensive opening by Paul, its perky reggae middle by Linda. As arranger and producer, George Martin brought in percussionist Ray Cooper, and added 'Day in the Life'-like symphonic effects as explosive as a Bond car chase. With that kick from 007, Wings really rocked for the very first time.
  The problem was that Bond movie songs had previously been recorded by solo artistes, usually female ones. When the franchise's co-producer, Harry Salzman, heard Wings' track, he assumed it was merely a demo. 'That's great—now who do we get to make the record?' he asked Martin. 'Whaddaya think of Thelma Houston?' Only with great misgivings was he persuaded that Paul McCartney's new band was the better bet.
  With Wings' new album—now titled Red Rose Speedway—still not ready for the Christmas market, Paul released their third single in 1972, the rock-boogie 'Hi Hi Hi'. It earned him his second BBC ban of the year, both for its blatant drug-references ('We're gonna get hi hi hi') and crude, not to say chauvinistic, sexual sentiments like 'Get ready for my body-gun', which he rather implausibly claimed was a mishearing of `polygon'.
  It reached number five in the UK and ten in America, but was the unwisest possible prelude to appearing before Campbeltown Sheriff Court.
  Paul's trial, on 8 March 1973, brought the world's media to Kintyre and caused telescopic camera lenses to be trained for the first time from the slopes above High Park Farm. But the outcome was better than he'd dared to hope.
  Just before the case came to court, his barrister, John McCluskey QC—a future Solicitor-General for Scotland—spotted procedural errors in two of the three charges against him. McCluskey and solicitor Len Murray sought a private meeting with Campbeltown's Procurator Fiscal, or prosecutor, kin Stewart, who conceded both errors and agreed to accept a not guilty plea on two of the charges in question if Paul would plead guilty to the third. The McCartney legal team could not but feel a twinge of sympathy for the Procurator as he lamented that he'd practised law for 30 years in obscurity and now that the eyes of the world were about to be on him, he'd botched his case.
  For his court-appearance, Paul exchanged the persona of local sheep-farmer for that of international superstar, flying up from London with Linda in a private jet. At Machrihanish airport, they were met by Murray and McCluskey and driven in the solicitor's Jaguar to Campbeltown's granite Victorian courthouse. Paul was told that two of the charges would be dropped if he admitted the third one and (according to Murray) replied `Yes, let's go with that and get it over with' while Linda 'sat quietly, sipping an orange juice'.
  The case lasted barely 25 minutes. In mitigation, McCluskey told Sheriff Donald J. McDairmid that his client had had 'an interest in horticulture for many years'—causing an involuntary spasm of mirth among the assembled journalists—and that fans often sent him gifts of seeds by post, which he planted in his greenhouse without necessarily knowing what they were. Those five spikey-leaved culprits were just such an innocent modem version of 'Jack and the Beanstalk'.
  McCluskey added that the matter was already potentially damaging to Paul since America's immigration authorities refused admission to drug-off enders on principle even where the off ence was, as in this case, purely technical.
  Sheriff McDairmid's summing-up suggested a swingeing penalty. 'I take into account that the seeds were sent to you as a gift,' he told Paul, `but I also take into account that you are a public figure of considerable interest to young people and I must deal with you accordingly.' A fine of just £100 was then imposed. As if pleading for some penniless vagrant hauled up for urinating in public, his counsel requested time for him to pay off the £100, and the court granted a month.
  Outside the courthouse, Paul gave an impromptu press conference with Linda clinging to his arm and jokingly wearing John McCluskey's bowler hat. As many a hack noted, she was 'in high spirits'—whether assisted by seeds received in the post would never be known—and seemed to be treating the occasion with less than due seriousness.
  A totally serious Paul was at his diplomatic best as he paid tribute to the Sheriff as 'a great guy' and said he bore his prosecutors no ill will.


(Paul McCartney: The Life By Philip Norman)












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