Fifth Estate 290, March 2, 1978 Add to the Bookbuilder

Dear FE,

Puritanism is pernicious & petty. It goes against the grain of libertarianism. In the sexual sphere are two Puritan-isms, of the right and of the left.

The Puritanism of the right we’re quite familiar with—the old Victorianism, sex as dirty, sex for procreation only, no sex before marriage, etc. The Puritanism of the left, however, is more subtle, less easy to explain. This is because it often wears libertarian clothes.

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Angela DeSante

Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

Bill Griffith

Pat Halley

Jay Kinney

E.B. Maple

Tina Nachalo

Rudy Perkins

Duke Skywatcher

Sonny Tufts

Bratach Dubh

Peter Werbe

Marilyn Werbe

Brenda Sabbagh

Norm Thomas

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.

Several people have asked us if the back page of last issue’s FE [#289, January 24, 1978] depicting the “thoughts” of Kim Il Sung was real or just another put-on. Well, we wish that it was something we had thought up, but unfortunately those tragic State comedians in North Korea beat us to the punch. Everything on the back page was taken from official North Korean propaganda publications—everything except, of course, the segment by the Italian fascist Mario Palmieri—or was it the other way around; it’s hard to tell. Also, we’d like to thank the members of the IWW group in Hawaii for sending us the info for the North Korean movie “The Engineers” which also appeared on the back page...

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When I first saw the headline of the article on pornography in the last issue of the Fifth Estate (“Fashionable Fascism—The Slick Misogyny of Porn,” #289, January 24, 1978) I was pleased that the question was finally being taken up. It is a complex issue, and its treatment would certainly contribute to the ongoing discussion in these pages of human sexuality and its distortion within modern society.

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Bad news! Two of the numeral codes given in the last issue of the FE [#289, January 24, 1978] for the 1978 Long Distance Credit Card Code were incorrectly reported to us by the Yippies and will not get your call through. The corrected numbers and corresponding letters are: 2-Z and 9-L. Send us a quarter for last month’s paper if you want the entire code. Below are several Revenue Accounting Office codes which allow you to construct your own codes. Remember: never believe anything you read.

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The response to last issue’s “Contest of Contests” [FE #289, January 24, 1978] was underwhelming to say the least, but we did receive enough entries to fill the first three winning spots (in fact, exactly that number). The contest was to describe what you could imagine doing at the gathering of ghouls assembled for Hubert Humphrey’s funeral at the Capitol in Washington D.C. Here are the winners:

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The Chinese people have a new hero, according to the Peking Peoples Daily. He is Teng Hsiang-erh, a Shantung province coal miner who is being hailed as a model worker. To earn the distinction, Teng did the following: refused to take time off for his honeymoon, never took a vacation in 28 years, worked on his days off, and stayed at work rather than care for his terminally-ill mother. However the acclaim is not unanimous. According to Japanese reporters in Peking, many of Teng’s fellow coal miners think he’s a fruitcake. (IWW)

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Related: see “Technology and the State: An Introduction” in this issue.

For the anti-nuclear movement the question “What forces have pushed the development of nuclear power in the U.S.?” should be an important one. For in the cause one usually finds the cure. The fact that this question is so infrequently raised, and where raised, so narrowly answered, says something about the nature of American opposition to nuclear power at this time.

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Perhaps the most insidious aspect of modern, centralized technology, even more than its pervasiveness, is its complete acceptance in almost all quarters as an integral part of the human experience (and among so-called “revolutionaries” as a prerequisite for a change to a humane society).

Humanoids and humans have spent the vast portion of our time on the planet with little or no technology and only in the last 10,000 years or so (an infinitesimal portion of our existence) has the rise of mechanical and technological improvements begun to affect us and the other species with which we share the planet. The capacity for innovation and invention seemed almost innate in humans once the first rudimentary developments of prehistoric times became wide-spread. The first inventions were employed as a means to improve what was often a harsh and dangerous existence, but they immediately put us on the road on which we currently find ourselves.

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It doesn’t take an astute observer to point out that an increasingly important product of our society is death and disease. Neutron bombs, cruise missiles, satellite warfare, radioactive wastes, carcinogenic drinking water, mercury poisoning, chemical plagues, industrially-induced cancers, all are prominent parts of our daily lives.

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Related: see “Technology and the State: An Introduction” in this issue.

While the attention of the world remains, as it has now for over thirty years, on the proliferation of conventional land, air, and sea-launched nuclear-warheads and delivery systems, recent breakthroughs in the areas of theoretical and applied physics are bringing us radically new and even more frightening weapons of global catastrophe. Most people, unaware of these developments, have assumed that the technology of space warfare is still decades, or perhaps centuries, in the future. A series of seemingly unrelated anomalies, however, suggest that space warfare between the U.S. and the USSR is not only being developed for the immediate future, but that the opening battles may have already occurred.

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CAUTION! There are terrorists among us.

THEY infest this planet from Washington to New York, from Nuremburg to Moscow, from Peking to Santiago.

THEY detain millions of hostages every day and give them the ultimatum—become a slave to the state or an enemy.

THEY maintain large armies that are trained to kill in support of the ideology of the state.

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The article below is part of a series of discussions that took place in Hong Kong in the early part of 1977, in which the participants (all ex-Red Guard members) attempt to make clear their reaction to Mao Tse-Tung and the Chinese Communist Party during the Cultural Revolution.

During the three years that mark the most active period of the Cultural Revolution (1966–69), Mao Tse-Tung executed perhaps one of the most alarming examples of George Orwell’s “doublethink.” In an attempt to regain control of the Party and purge the bureaucracy, Mao called upon the students to build a society along the lines of the Paris Commune (1871), but quickly labeled such actions “counterrevolutionary” when it became apparent that he and the Party were losing control over the situation. The Peoples Liberation Army was then used to crush the general uprisings in blood.

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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, Michigan 48201.

DONNA & CARL—We all received your letters. Glad to hear that you’re both having a great time. Miss you both, Love “the gang.”

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