Fifth Estate 319, Winter, 1985 Add to the Bookbuilder

[Web archive note: The original print edition of this article did not list an author. The article was reprinted in David Watson’s Against the Megamachine (Autonomedia, 1998).]

The cinders of the funeral pyres at Bhopal are still warm, and the mass graves still fresh, but the media prostitutes of the corporations have already begun their homilies in defense of industrialism and its uncounted horrors. Some 3,000 people were slaughtered in the wake of the deadly gas cloud, and 20,000 will remain permanently disabled. The poison gas left a 25 square mile swath of dead and dying, people and animals, as it drifted southeast away from the Union Carbide factory. “We thought it was a plague,” said one victim. Indeed it was: a chemical plague, an industrial plague,

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The Fifth Estate is a co-operative project, published by a group of friends who are in general, but not necessarily complete agreement with the articles herein. Each segment of the paper represents the collective effort of writing, typesetting, lay-out and proofreading.

The Fifth Estate Newspaper (ISSN No. 0015–0800) is published quarterly at P.O. Box 02548, Detroit, Michigan 48202 USA;

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Greetings:

The summer ’84 issue of the Fifth Estate was quite good. I’m glad that Bill Kellerman and Bill McCormick put the christian anarchist position so well [“Anarchy & Christianity: An Exchange,” FE #317, Summer 1984], and I’m glad that George Bradford responded in a calm and reasonable manner. But he is missing one important point.

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All of us at the Fifth Estate want to extend our warmest greetings and wishes for a happy, healthy and revolutionary New Year to those of you who have supported our project through your subscriptions, donations and participation. We made it through the long-dreaded 1984 and although the megamachine of the state seemed all but undeterred in its vicious reproduction of itself, our capacity to maintain our ideals, our dreams and our resistance seems heightened. It may be too early to declare the resurgence of a mass anti-authoritarian/anarchist movement, but from much of what we receive at the FE office, there is a definite upsurge in libertarian activity. 1985—the year to go for the master’s throat.

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On November 6^th, the night of the presidential election, San Francisco’s amorphous and semi-marginal anti-authoritarian “community” called for a funeral march to mourn for freedom, the dead of the next war, and to hope for the death of imperialism and the system that keeps it alive.

At about 6:30 pm 150 people walked between City Hall and the Democratic Party’s San Francisco headquarters; we also went by polling places and imitated sheep, finally ending up at the Republican Party’s victory celebration. At 8:00 we set up a soup kitchen across the street to dramatize the immense gap which separates the ruling class from the rest of us.

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Humankind truly was not meant to fly, and birds keep trying to tell us so. As people and their flying machines continue to overpopulate the skies, not only do plane -to-plane collisions increase, but bird to plane collisions drastically increase as well, especially since new technology has created sleeker and quieter engines which sneak up on birds and scarcely give them any warning of their approach. Needless to say, it is the birds which must attempt to change their natural flight patterns to avoid fatal collisions.

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The Innu Indians of Labrador, Canada, like all native peoples caught in the tentacles of civilization, are constantly threatened with imminent annihilation. Since 1980, West Germany has been using this flat barren land, a territory about the size of Nevada and the home of the Innu for over 10,000 years, as a training area for their pilots. West German F4 Phantom jets regularly zoom by at altitudes of less than 300 feet, spewing exhaust and totally upsetting the natural balance of things. Ducks have laid eggs a month early, the caribou have changed migration patterns, beavers and other game have vanished, and Innu families have been forced to deal with this latest blatant insult to their traditional way of life, which has already been substantially disrupted and destroyed by encroaching development.

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Nationalism was proclaimed dead several times during the present century:

—after the first world war, when the last empires of Europe, the Austrian and the Turkish, were broken up into self-determined nations, and no deprived nationalists remained, except the Zionists;

—after the Bolshevik coup d’etat, when it was said that the bourgeoisie’s struggles for self-determination were henceforth superseded by struggles of workingmen, who had no country;

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The graphics/collages on pages 9–13 are taken from “Manual for Revolutionary Leaders” by M. Velli, and appear in the book in full color. It is available through our book service and is listed on page 18.

Each construction contains a variety of images representing the rise to power of the leader and his party, and the process of modernization and industrialization.

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In a decision that outraged the Toronto anarchist community, Ken Deyarmond was sentenced to six months in jail for assaulting two cops during a demonstration in September 1983 against British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Deyarmond was grabbed by pig Dusko Markovic during the demonstration for “lunging” at Thatcher and during the resulting fracas, as Ken tried to squirm free, he was manhandled by three cops.

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Visitors are welcome, but our hours vary so please call before dropping in.

HOW TO ORDER BY MAIL:

1) List the title of the book, quantity wanted, and the price of each;

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We continue to receive a tremendous variety of publications for mention in this column, some of them anarchist and/ or syndicalist and libertarian communist, but many of them uncategorizable. It appears that an anarchic, autonomous underground press is flowering. Whereas the old underground press found its format in the multicolored tabloid, this new movement makes use of the photocopy—undoubtedly many of them printed free on liberated time, materials and machinery at workplaces. Some of the collage work is exceptional as well. We should also mention that they are often published in conjunction with street activities such as spraypainting, disruption and guerrilla theater.

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Fifth Estate Home > Issue 319, Winter, 1985 >

Back so soon?

Well, we didn’t make it as a monthly publication, but we did make it back. This issue—#3—marks a turning point for the Daily Barbarian...this broadsheet can no longer be considered a bi-decadal. In fact, we’re pushing for quarterly status, if we can get the next issue—#4—out by 1989?!

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