Fifth Estate 289, January 24, 1978 Add to the Bookbuilder

To The Fifth Estate:

The latest issue of Invariance (in French) is at the printers in Milan, but to pay for the printing we need one million Italian lire (FE note: about $1,350). So we’re wondering if among people interested in Invariance in the U.S. there might be some who could help us financially. Please excuse this request, but we are really at an impasse.

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Richard Ades

Michael Betzold

Angela DeSante

Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

Pat Halley

Govinda Habersplatt

Amelia Jones

Jay Kinney

Don Kirkland

Jerry Lemenu

E.B. Maple

Tina Nachalo

Peter Rachleff

Richard Rollins

Clayton Sheridan

Peter Werbe

Marilyn Werbe

Hughthir White

The Fifth Estate Newspaper, a non-profit Michigan corporation, is published monthly at 4403 Second Ave., Detroit MI 48201; phone: (313) 831–6800. Office hours are sporadic, so call before coming down. Subscriptions are $4.00 for 12 issues; $6 for foreign. Call 259–1888 for retail sales outlets. Second Class postage paid at Detroit, Michigan. No copyright. No paid advertising accepted.

Rather than try to reconcile the obvious disparity between a newspaper that indicts the entire edifice of civilization and the technology it has developed with the fact that the FE mail subscriptions have just been converted to a computer list, we’ll just take another sip of beer. We think the transition (required of us by our mailing house) went fairly smoothly, but if there are any serious errors, please bring them to our attention....

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The following is a letter forwarded to us (after translation) by friends in Seattle. Though some of the factual information has already been published previously in the FE (see Oct./Nov. and Dec. ’77 issues) we found its first-hand nature and compelling sense of urgency more than sufficient reason to reprint it intact. Thanks to Wayne Parker and Helene Ellenbogen.

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LNS/Peoples News Service, London — As part of its ongoing hysteria campaign against both “terrorists” and their “sympathizers” (that is, literally, anybody who refuses to condemn the “terrorists”), West Germany’s notorious Bild Zeitung (a Springer newspaper) has now offered its readers a chance to predict whether their children will wind up on the most wanted list some day.

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As the letter on the preceding page indicates [“Who Are the Real Terrorists?,” FE #289, January 24, 1978], though the more spectacular aspects of the repression in West Germany are now fading from the popular imagination, the “policification” of the Federal Republic proceeds apace.

In recent weeks the criminalization of all who express even the slightest sympathy for the “terrorists” has intensified markedly; though it becomes increasingly difficult to say which is the most astounding of the actions taken by the state to achieve this, a sure candidate can be found in the charges recently brought against the father of murdered RAF member Gudrun Ensslin. For having the temerity to suggest that his daughter had no reason to kill herself but was in fact killed by the state, Ensslin (a minister) is now accused of “defaming the state” and faces three years in prison if convicted.

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I read the news today, oh boy. A million holes in American Apple Pie. Thirty-eight million to be exact; thirty-eight million battered wives in the good ole U.S.A! Thirty-eight million wife-beaters! That means that 26% of the population of the U.S. are playing this grotesque game of tackle. And those are only the reported cases. The only participatory sport in Modern America! Egg-beaters like steamirons. Strong right arms. Weak Knees. Never needed to Bring the War Home. It never left! These statistics were reported on a T.V. network program; local T.V. news, and in a speech by an LA city councilman. Can you believe it? Twenty-five percent of all murder victims are killed by their husbands! Can you believe it?

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

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

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Original poster by: SOCIAL WARFARE / WILDCAT, Room 37, 200 West 72^nd Street, New York, New York 10025 / USA

Panel 1: Drawing of an angry man.

Angry man: Work stinks!

Response, off: Well, you’re not the only one.

Panel 2: Two men in conversation

Man 1: When we fuck up on the job and steal from our boss, we begin to realize our own power.

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The western Massachusetts area was rocked on Monday, October 10, with the news that a 31 year-old drill press operator at the Springfield American Bosch airplane and truck parts plant had returned from lunch with a .22 caliber rifle and killed a general foreman and critically wounded his immediate foreman.

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The recent opening of a small Nazi “bookstore” on West Vernor has touched off dozens of demonstrations by liberal and leftist pickets. Community, Jewish, civil rights and Marxist organizations have denounced the promulgation of neo-Fascism and the threat to civilization represented by the “white hate” literature sold in the storefront.

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a review of

Ecotopia, Ernest Callenbach, Bantam Books, $1.95

Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia, an underground novel for two years, recently released as a Bantam paperback, regrettably could become the fable of the age. And if it does it will duplicate Looking Backwards’ performance of 80 years ago, ironically for the opposite reasons. Bellamy’s story provided an outlet for a wave of discontent and despair following a series of working-class defeats and economic crises. It literally propelled thousands into the countryside to form communes with little more than a new shovel and an old hope.

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(Left photo) From left to right: Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and Tricky Dicky

(Right photo) From left to right: Nelson Rockefeller, Jimmy Carter, Happy Rockefeller, Muriel Humphrey, Nancy Kissinger, Walter Mondale and Henry Kissinger

Never is such joy brought into the homes of so many people as when a high-ranking state official decides to pack his bags and catch a one-way train to the never-never land.

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Tough times had befallen the Easy Space Theater, and to help them pull out of their financial woes, the Somebody Else Players called in the help of that perennial moneymaker, Jerry Loose, for a grand Begathon.

It opened with Loose dancing out on stage, cigarettes stuffed up his nose and dressed in a sleazy Las Vegas suit. This guy was disgusting.

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Ammunition Books shares space with the Fifth Estate Newspaper and can be found at 4403 Second Avenue, Detroit, Mich. 48201 (telephone-313-831-6800). Our hours vary, but we are generally open on Monday and Thursday afternoons (from 1pm to 5pm) and at scattered hours other times. It’s always a good idea to telephone us before you start the trek down, just to be safe.

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Though we do not accept commercial advertising, this Unclassified ad space is free for our readers’ use. We do not accept ads over the telephone, so please send your ads in writing to our office at: 4403 Second Ave., Detroit 48201.

RICK—No! You haven’t lost your boyish charm. Still love you. Happy Birthday til we meet again. Love, M & P

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2 Felix the Cat (Cartoon)

Thinking that they will save the world, Felix & the professor make and sell enough acid to finance a communal farm, but Rock Bottom turns it into a gambling casino.

4 George Pierrot (Travelogue)

George’s guest today is distinguished Korean traveler, Tungsen Park, who shows films of mating customs in a small town in the District of Columbia.

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MUSSOLINI’S ITALY

“A hero is he who can pierce with the mystic light of an inner vision to the very heart of things; he who can re-discover the greatest and most profound of all truths: viz., that beyond his realm of fugitive appearances there lies, immutable and eternal, what Fichte called the ‘Divine Idea of the World;’ finally, he who, living already in spirit in this realm of timeless and absolute Reality, is able to translate his vision into deeds and to act according to the dictates of an inner voice telling him that ‘...they wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death are the allurements that act on the heart of man.’

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