Fifth Estate 266, September, 1975 Add to the Bookbuilder

Almost a year to the day after Bell Telephone first instigated charges against the Fifth Estate for publication of plans for an illegal “mute” box (a device for receiving free long-distance telephone calls), the Wayne County prosecutor’s office decided on August 20, that their case was still worth pursuing and hauled the current staff into court.

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Reprinted here are the instructions as they originally appeared in the FE for both the use of bogus credit card numbers (for free long-distance calls) and the subversion of computer-card billing (for reduced telephone bills). Also included is a description of the method whereby long-distance phone calls can be made by tapping into Bell’s own nation-wide test loop circuits, the bill for which goes directly to old Ma herself.

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Alice Allman, Millard Berry, Alan Franklin, Ralph Franklin, Mike Pinchera, Algirdas Ratnikas, Marilyn Werbe, Peter Werbe

THE FIFTH ESTATE Newspaper, a non-profit corporation is published every month at 4403 Second Avenue, Detroit, MI 48201, (313) 831–6800. Office hours are 1:00 til 5:00 P.M. Tuesdays through Fridays. Subscriptions are $3.00 per year (12 issues). Second Class postage paid at Detroit, Michigan. Copyright protection is taken on all Fifth Estate issues for the sole purpose of protecting our labors from misuse by capitalist publishers only and will not be invoked against revolutionary publications. Distribution: call 842–8888 for store locations.

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Sorry to be so late with this issue, but the FE staff had a lot of its time and energy sapped by Michigan Bell’s efforts to prosecute us out of existence. (See story elsewhere in this issue.) We just couldn’t pull the paper together after sitting in Recorder’s Court all day. However, our tardiness fueled more speculation (some of it gleeful) that we had finally gone under, but, after a rocky three months, the project has stabilized itself financially and has a functioning staff which is prepared to go ahead with long-range plans for the FE’s continued existence....We particularly want to extend our thanks to the many people who have shown their appreciation and support of our “new” direction by sending in subscriptions and donations--the money has helped cut into the still-large backlog of debts...Another reason we certainly don’t want to go under is that we want to be here to celebrate with you the 10^th anniversary of the Fifth Estate. We are tentatively planning a dinner/music celebration for Halloween evening, October 31^st at the Earth Center in Hamtramck. The first FE appeared in October of 1965--whew!

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Dear FE Readers:

Well, here we are with issue no. 2 from the new staff and only two letters--one a form letter that went out to all the left press. We can only conclude one of several things from the lack of reader response: a) all of you agree with everything we say and there is nothing to comment on; b) you don’t agree with anything we say, but are too disgusted to bother with a response; or c) you just don’t give a shit about anything we say and are doing something else. In any event, we would like your comments and criticisms of what is being said in the paper and welcome your letters.

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Collect unemployment and earn up to $97 a week for 39 weeks, $67 a week for another 26 weeks!

And pay no taxes! (just like the big corporations!)

Find out how easy it is to get paid for not working!

Tired of getting screwed by your boss and having to break your back at a useless job? All for a couple dollars an hour?

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Trying to make sense of the situation in Portugal with facts gleaned from reading the daily newspapers and watching the nightly news has become an increasingly impossible task.

Both sources of bourgeois mystification report diligently on which general enjoys the support of what faction of the Armed Forces Movement (MFA) today and which political party has trumpeted what particular demand.

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To avoid any confusion over the usage of terms, let us give a brief definition of the way in which Capital or capitalism is used in articles in the Fifth Estate: Capital is based on wage-labor, the production and exchange of commodities, with an agency above the working class extracting surplus value (profits) from the value of goods and services produced, and then re-investing a portion back into the enterprise.

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Faced with economic collapse the bourgeoisie can no longer pretend that there is no crisis. In the face of skyrocketing trade and payments deficits, the bourgeoisie of each country must seek to make its national capital competitive on the world market again.

Everywhere events impose one policy and only one policy on the bourgeoisie: draconian austerity programs. To make the national capital competitive, to take away markets from rivals, and to restore an adequate rate of profit for capital, requires drastic cuts in “social” spending (education, health care, public transportation, housing) and the installation of controls over wages.

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Mystique of Capital

Before people began to understand their natural environment, the forces of nature presented real, awesome and bewildering problems in the struggle for survival. Today the problems remain awesome and bewildering, not because of our failure to understand the forces of nature, but because of Our ineptitude to cope with and transcend the perversity of a socioeconomic system which has usurped control over both people and nature.

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This here’s Detroit,

home of hungering

dreams, home of my empty pockets

and tired worn fingers.

The shadows cast are Babylon’s,

that made scorpion death of my mother.

So many have sacrificed a mother

to become orphans of Detroit

grown cold in the shades of Babylon

that leave us hungering

with no place for our fingers

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“Traffic,” written by Guy Debord, originally appeared in 1959 in the Situationist International magazine, and is another reprint from Leaving the 20^th Century, The Incomplete Work Of the Situationist International, translated and edited by Christopher Grey (which is available from Free Fall Publications, Box 13, 197 Kings Cross Road, London WC1, England, for $3.00).

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The costs of religion should be born by those who practice it! Whether you go to church or whether you stay away from it, if you believe in god and religion or if you don’t, you are the one who pays for it in the end.

Section of a cartoon by 19^th century artist, Thomas Nast, who saw the organized forces of religion ready to devour a hapless public--little has changed in 100 years.

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Dear Contestants,

As most of you know, things were getting pretty hot here at Teamsters Headquarters what with the “little guy” about to run for the presidency of our union and threatening to spill the beans about the Pension Fund and our links with the Mafia. Well me and some of the guys thought it best if Jimmy sort of disappeared; you know, take a sort of ‘extended vacation.’ Since then, everybody from his family to the FBI has been trying to find him.

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Listed below, by area, are all the stores which carry the Fifth Estate. For any further information regarding distribution of the FE, call Big Rapids Distribution at: 842–8888.

Downtown

Smoke Shop

Grand Circus News

Majestic News

Triangle News

World Headquarters Records

Little Professor Books

Wayne State Area

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We hope this page becomes a place where we can communicate and take care of our basic needs outside of the capitalist, consumption market.

Categories are:

• Abodes (available or wanted)

• Wanted

• Gigs (jobs offered or wanted)

• Messages

• Trade or Sell

• Free Stuff

• Prisoners

• Rides (carpools too!)

All ads are run for one issue unless renewed, except Prisoners Ads which are run for 5 issues. We reserve the right to reject any ad at any time for any reason.

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THE SUN, Volume 3, Issue 18

(3 pages with 33-page ad supplement)

FLASH!

A high-energy, killer rally to “JAIL JOHN NOW!” has been announced by the Rainbow People’s Party (RPP) Minister of Information to be held at Ann Arbor’s Chrysler Arena on the eve of the Zenta New Year, Oct. 31. This monster event will climax several months of dynamite work by people of the Rainbow Nation to get RPP Chairman John Sinclair back into the Michigan prison system where he can best serve the people.

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