Most Recent Additions

On June 13^th the Toronto Metropolitan Police raided a home of several people active in producing the Bulldozer prison support paper and in supporting the Vancouver Five. Ostensibly seeking links to the Litton bombing, a series of charges were brought against the residents. Details of the raid appeared in FE #313, Summer 1983. The following is a report on recent developments.

...

They’re at war! They appear nightly on television with their lying speeches trying to defend the growing slaughter. The body bags come home by the hundreds filled with the shattered remains of young men who swallowed the patriotic justifications for war, leaving grieving families, consoled only by the hollow speeches of politicians and generals.

...

The night the Korean airliner crashed into the newspapers, I dreamed of a tornado. A tornado is a kind of spiral, which is the labyrinth and which is Death.

Death is very powerful right now. Instead of being a passage, Death has become a kind of equipment failure, a technical slaughterhouse. Human and technical failure become indistinguishable when the unquestioning robot and the drooling sadist merge. (I see the Soviet pilot being interviewed—he could be any Air Force gunslinger in any military machine—“I’d do it again—and even more—and love every second of it.” Of course he had the cooperation of the CIA and the U.S. military, who listened in, taping it all, without issuing any warnings to save lives. That, after all, is certainly not their business.)

...

When millions of people fill the streets of Europe to protest the nuclear arms race, as occurred the weekend of October 22, 1983, only those most pessimistic about our prospects will fail to sit up and take notice. Whatever their shortcomings, the massive demonstrations against the installation of cruise and Pershing II missiles on European soil are an indication that human beings have not completely succumbed to the death instinct. And despite the fact that the demonstrators have failed in their objective to halt the Euromissiles, it is arguable that they will continue undeterred, and in perhaps more creative ways, to oppose the nuclear state.

...

In 1968, Kiyoshi Kuromiya designed this poster and sent orders by mail. He was arrested by the FBI and charged with sending indecent material through the Post Office. Later that year, after beating the charges, Kuromiya defied the authorities by handing out 2000 of the posters at the Chicago Democratic Convention.

...

There’s been little public notice, but the U.S. is on the verge of its first major national debate about military conscription since the early 1980s.

A bipartisan National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service (NCMNPS) appointed in late 2016 by lame-duck President Obama and Congressional leaders has been studying whether the current requirement for all young men to register with the Selective Service System (SSS) for a possible military draft should be ended entirely, extended to young women as well as young men, or replaced with some other system of (possibly compulsory) military and/or civilian national service. (See “A New Right for Women: Eligible for the U.S. War Machine”, Fifth Estate #397, Winter 2017.)

...

from The Eighth Night of Creation: Life on the Edge of Human History by Jerome Deshusses

Today there is no city that the automobile has not turned into a vast parking lot, no avenue that is not a rectilinear traffic artery bordered by concrete sidewalks and strips of sickly, dying dusty, grayish grass. It will soon be impossible for people to talk to each other in the street except by walkie-talkie, impossible to breathe except high up in the mountains (where the air is only a little less toxic than elsewhere, and cars will soon be as numerous as tourists, anyway), impossible to cross a lane without thinking of the danger of being run down and killed, impossible to regard other human beings as other than so many Sunday mechanics mucking about underneath the artificial armor of their coachwork....

...

Technology. We know that it offers no evidence whatsoever of having any sympathy for the nature of the world, and has nothing to do with human desires for an earth on which to dwell.

We’re the people who create it, perfect it and make it part of the American dream. We bring you the computer, which touches all our lives in ways we can hardly begin to imagine. And who can say what lies ahead?

...

GREEK LIBERTARIANS: As of May 14, Greek libertarians, Photis Danatos and Kyriakos Miras were in their 54^th day of a hunger strike. They were arrested on the apparently minor charge of “hooliganism”—a catch-all charge used to imprison protesters (peaceful or otherwise). The arrests took place during a march (to protest at the “suiciding” and torture of, prisoners in Greece under the so-called “socialists”) that took place in Piraeus when a motorist (presumably a provocateur/extremist) drove into the crowd so as to break up the march. In the resulting melee the two—who were in the crowd protesting and are known by the police as “politicals”—were picked up and they have been in prison ever since.

...

The FE Book Service is located in the same place as the Fifth Estate Newspaper, both of which are located at 4403 Second Avenue, Detroit MI 48201 — telephone (313) 831–6800. The hours we are open vary considerably, so it’s always best to give us a call before coming down.

INTERNATIONAL BLACKLIST by the Blacklist Group

...

The always provocative and irreverent The Match! (P.O. Box 3488, Tucson AZ 85722) is currently involved in a raging debate on pornography in which it inveighs against any censorship even by women who maintain they are victimized by it. “No one,” states The Match! “is fit to be a censor!”

Also, Kent Winslow’s serialized novelette, “Dream World,” is worth the price of admission alone.

...

a review of

Israel’s Global Role: Weapons for Repression. Israel Shakak. Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Inc., Belmont MA, 61 pp., 1982, $2.95.

Our Roots Are Still Alive: The Story of the Palestinian People. Peoples Press Palestine Book Project, Institute for Independent Social Journalism, New York, 1981, 190 pp., $5.45.

...

Resistance to the draft is happening around the world. The Fifth Estate recently received information from the editors of “A” Rivista Anarchica about Mauro Zanoni, a 20-year-old anarchist who was arrested February 13, 1983 in the “Pavia” di Pesaro, Italy army barracks for his total refusal to cooperate with the military. Zanoni had been scheduled to report four months earlier to fulfill the one-year military “service” required of all Italian men.

...

Just as today’s most obsessive notion is that of the material reality of time, self-existent time was the first lie of social life. As with nature, time did not exist before the individual became separate from it. Reification of this magnitude—the beginning of time—constitutes the Fall: the initiation of alienation, of history.

...

For us, here in inner-city Detroit, the crumbling of a “progress” oriented society is very real and present. Its tangible effects are concentrated here. Its evidence—ragged empty shells of concrete, lining streets leading to their untimely ends, amputated by expressways or isolated corporate megaliths, the occasional pathetic charades of well-being, the razed and desolate spaces—pervades everything we do, even attempts to distract ourselves from the ruin. Everyone living here is profoundly aware of the failure. It is bred in our bones, as during our lives we’ve witnessed, not just this city’s demise, but the cumulative result of misdeeds performed through history by an increasingly urban society impelled by a limitless want of power brought to self-destruction.

...

The chaos of a hundred packing boxes has finally been cleared away, lost correspondence found and misplaced book orders filled, and our new office space is beginning to take on the feeling of home. It’s quite a change since the paper was in its last office for 12 years, but the fact that we are sharing quarters with three other groups has made the transition one of positive expectations. The large building we are occupying is just a few blocks uptown from the old address (in the shadow of the General Motors world headquarters) and features office space in front with a large performance area in the rear. The latter will be utilized by the Layabouts, a new wave band (three of whose members also contribute to the FE), the Dramatic Research Company (the old Freezer Theatre Players), and the Duck Club Players (from the infamous club of the same name), so music, satire and plays will abound. We had a big, bang-up, Detroit style grand opening and May Day celebration (Workers of the World Relax!) and a small Fifth Estate open house to show off our new quarters and bookstore. A full schedule of events is not yet set, but with the above crew situated, events in the manner of the old Grinning Duck and Freezer Theatre can be expected.

...

Incarcerated subscribers to this magazine are being subjected to increasing censorship from prison authorities.

The worst has been Pennsylvania’s Department of Corrections which refused to allow delivery of the Summer 2019 issue of the Fifth Estate to subscribers in their prison system.

Pennsylvania initiated a policy last year that requires letters and periodicals to be sent to a central address rather than being delivered directly to individual prisoners in state lockups.

...

Fifth Estate:

The debate on sex; the burning of Porno Palaces, etc. was quite amusing. Last issue’s letter writer fumed over the actions of the Wimmin’s Fire Brigade who stated with alarming urgency—“the struggle for universal sexual freedom ought to be a top priority among anti-authoritarians” (see FE #312, Spring 1983).

...

This statement was received July 7 from the publishers of Bulldozer magazine.

On June 13^th the Metropolitan police raided our house on Cambridge Ave. as part of the ongoing investigation into the bombing of the Litton Systems Plant outside the city last October (see FE #311, Winter 1982–83).

On one level, this is just one of a series of raids which have taken place in Toronto. Unfortunately, there are many indications that this is a definite escalation of the harassment that has been directed against anti-authoritarians and activists within the peace movement.

...

Fifth Estate

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 5928 Second Ave., Detroit, Michigan 48202 USA; phone (313) 831–6800. Office hours vary, so please call before visiting. Subscriptions are $5.00 a year; $7.00 foreign including Canada. Second class postage paid at Detroit MI. No copyright. No paid advertisements.

The following was received by the Fifth Estate as a “Declaration to the Libertarian Movement in the West.”

We are a group of anarchists and anti-authoritarian left-wingers in Warsaw who came together in a discussion circle (Sigma) at the beginning of 1980. We all agreed on a general opposition to the existing political system in our country. Most of us came to anarchism via literature. For example, at the beginning of the 1950s some works of the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin were published in Poland in small editions. All of them were accessible to everyone in the public libraries. Another important source for us was a series called Library of Socialist Thought in which, during the 1960s, along with texts of Owen, Saint Simon, and Fourier, some works of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin were published. In addition, a very badly edited collection of works of the most important Polish anarchist, Edward Abromowski, was published.

...

Every crime in Oklahoma was added to his name.

—Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd by Woodie Guthrie

Seizing five anarchists on 17 charges of sabotage and conspiracy in British Columbia early this year (see FE #312, Spring 1983) gave the Canadian government the excuse it needed to begin “clearing” other unsolved bomb cases by attributing them to the arrested five.

...

In response to “Beginning of Time, End of Time,” FE #313, Summer, 1983.

The question of time and its relationship to domination is central to understanding our captivity. John’s article attempts to come to grips with this very difficult subject; while what follows is often critical of his attempt, I do not want to slight its radical intent or the hard work he put into it. Nor should these criticisms obscure the fact that it is an important introduction- to the question of time: it helps us to see our perception of time as unnatural, as something imposed upon us, as a force to be overthrown if we are to liberate ourselves.

...

When an economic system produces 32 million unemployed in the industrialized nations, it would almost seem unnecessary to inveigh against its profound inadequacies. But several factors make it worthwhile to look at the present state of disarray in which world capitalism is currently mired.

Although some wag (either a queen, Marx or the Bible) once said that the poor have always been with us, most people know by now that this is a culture-bound observation and no more than a justification for the privilege of society’s wealthy. However, the saying is nonetheless true for the modern world.

...

this courtroom is a public urinal reeking

with the suicidal odor of protocol

the oily horror of boredom illuminates my nausea

on a never ending ride into the hinterlands

of the loneliest chaos I have ever known

does the defendant waive time?

my lawyer winks flirtatiously

yes, your honor

he learned his ABCs

...

a review of

“Beggars Banquet”

The Rolling Stones

(London)

The Rolling Stones are in the same class as many other groups whose albums are beyond comment. There are people who like the Stones and those who don’t and I very much doubt if anyone ever changes sides.

The first cut on “Beggars Banquet” is set to what most glossy mags would call a “driving beat”—you know, the kind of rhythm you can make love to.

...

After talking about it for a long time, there finally is someplace to go on Sunday Mornings, someplace to pick up the Times and read it over coffee and danish.

Your own Eat It girl is opening Alvin’s Finer Delicatessen (Cass at the expressway) on Sundays. We started a few weeks ago with danishes and donuts, my mother’s homemade apple pan dowdy, and a special for the day, Sandy Feldheim’s cheese blintzes. We had a nice crowd and everyone seemed to encourage us.

...

* Asterisks mean this is a good place to sell FIFTH ESTATES. If you are going to the event anyway, stop by our office or the Green Grass House on Plum Street and pick up some papers. Make bread and spread the good word.

Fri., Nov. 15

THE MIRACLE WORKER, a play at Cass Tech. High School, 2421 Second. Curtain at 8:00 pm.

...

We look at them, their fat, sagging bellies, hard faces, tight lips, and we despair. It is logical in our eyes that they should support Wallace, for they are ugly and Wallace is ugly and we are beautiful and gentle and want to do nothing more than love everyone in the rising of each sun. We look at them and the conclusion is quickly reached that they will never change. They will always be filled with resentments, fears and hates. And having so concluded, we end our examination and analysis of them and prepare to wait for more propitious times.

...

NEW YORK (LNS) — A new press service especially for the growing network of high school underground papers has been established in New York City.

The High School Independent Press Service (HIPS) sends out news packets weekly to several hundred high school publications. HIPS works out of the LNS office at 160 Claremont Ave., New York, N.Y. 10027, phone: (212) 749–2200.

This letter was sent to the Editor of the Detroit Free Press.

About the arrogant note on page 7-C of the Free Press of Nov. 8 that “writer Richie Yorke of Toronto has supplied the Detroit Free Press with the first newspaper review in the United States of the Beatles’ new album, ‘The Beatles.’”

...

Detroit’s friendly neighborhood rock and roll band, the MC5, recorded their first album under their new contract with Elektra Records at the Grande Ballroom last month, and it was a killer affair. The festivities took place on the First International Zenta New Year, October 30 and 31, and what went down was an all-American Dionysian stomp-down rock and roll religious experience in the best Zenta tradition.

...

It would seem to me that the country, as a whole (you may eliminate the “w” from “whole” if you wish) is at last beginning to realize that you Cannot dictate from which area a certain style of music must come.

I realize that tradition dictates that blues should come from Chicago or the South, and that soul should come from Motown, but now at long last music is spreading. The MC-5 have spread into the bracket-of “national” groups, as did the SRC, but really that doesn’t mean much because all bands are local at some time.

...

a review of

“The Battle of Algiers”

How surprised we were three years ago by the success of “To Die in Madrid,” Francisco Rosi’s remarkable compilation of old news films from the Spanish Civil War. The distinction of that film was the poetic way in which it shaped and explained the ironic progress and outcome of the struggle. And now we have a new film, though in much the same vein, which is historically more immediate.

...

a film review of

“The Bride Wore Black”

Francois Truffaut’s “The Bride Wore Black” is terrific. Infused with his patented brand of gentle humor, the film is a modern horror story in which lovely Jeanne Moreau goes about methodically murdering five gentlemen with an iron calm and comic sunniness. Essentially an entertainment movie, a minor effort for Truffaut, other films of similar genre pale beside it.

...

Have you who are reading this article expecting to be told how good or how bad whatever record I have chosen to review really is, ever stopped to analyze what you personally think is good music? Have you ever tried to think of music (Rock music) outside of the context of an immediately occurring pleasure-displeasure-boredom reaction?

...

An interesting omen—a few days ago, barely preceding the Nixonian “renaissance” I received in the mail a strange newly-issued artifact of the Eisenhower-Nixon era. It was a pamphlet titled HOW TO SAVE THE WORLD, published by- none other than The Planetary Council, reminding me that not only is Dick Nixon still unfortunately alive (in a primitive biochemical sense) but so are FLYING SAUCERS, the favorite after-dinner conversation-topic of the former Eisenhower-Nixon era.

...

UNCLASSIFIEDS cost 50 cents per line per issue. Figure four words per line. (A word is a word including one and two letter words. A phone number is a word. Street numbers are words. Abbreviations should be sensible. DISCOUNT RATES: Five runs cost 35 cents per line. ALL UNCLASSIFIEDS MUST BE PAID FOR IN ADVANCE.

...

Marilyn Olson is a pretty, blue-eyed blonde from Stockholm, Sweden. She and her husband, Bertil, operate the Cafe Marx in Stockholm.

She is a warm and friendly woman who talks easily. And she tells stories. She speaks of “a lot of CIA agents around” her and her co-workers. She tells the story of “one fellow who was hiding in a closet for three months” in Japan.

...

Detroit police arrested 11 neighborhood street brothers and sisters over Nov. 10^th and 11^th and charged them with “conspiracy to place explosives with intent to cause damage,” a bullshit rap that carries a 25-year maximum prison sentence.

Snatched up were David Valler, who was already in the Wayne County Jail in lieu of $10,000 bond on two phony marijuana sales beefs; Joseph Clever; Antoine Daghuyt; Gary. Miltemore; Ronald Pierce; John Schmittroth; William Ladd; James Moscara; Sandra Rousseau; Benjamin Parks; and Diedre Flowers.

...

Police mass for attack on peaceful demonstrators / Photo: Ken Hamblin

“I really got this one guy who called me a fascist pig. I beat him to a pulp.”

— A Detroit Policeman (Detroit Scope Magazine, November 9, 1968)

The October 29 rally for George Wallace at Cobo Hall in downtown Detroit ended in what can only be called a full scale police riot. Events inside the Arena set the stage for what later occurred after the rally when 350 club-swinging Detroit pigs attacked a group of about 1,000 demonstrators who had assembled to express their opposition to Wallace’s candidacy.

...

The Detroit Police are out of control. They have completely slipped out from under the authority of the Mayor and his Police Commissioner and now comprise a vigilante force dedicated to maintenance of the status quo.

They have resorted to criminal methods and produced a string of murders, mass assaults, and severe injuries to citizens engaged in lawful conduct. Their connection with the Mafia and right-wing groups is well known and documented.

...

America’s election farce is over and proved to be one of the dullest in years reminiscent of the Eisenhower years as Hank Malone points out in this issue. The only pleasant surprise was the small number of Americans willing to vote for George Wallace’s militant brand of racism. They obviously prefer the more subtle and effective variety advocated by the other two creeps. Wallace pulled only 7.8 per cent of the vote outside of the South and this isn’t a hell of a lot given the amount of money he spent on his campaign.

...

Liberation News Service — Paul Krassner once had an article in The Realist about the death of actress Louise Beavers, who used to play the part of Beulah on the television series of the same name. Beulah was a fat, dumb but lovable, black woman who shuffled around the suburban home of a benevolent white family, frequently saying, “Yes. Mister Harry,” to the head of the family she worked for.

...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 29—The U.S. Treasury Department ordered the confiscation of perhaps the most unusual piece of campaign literature in use as the electoral farce drew near its completion.

Treasury agents broke into the New York Dick Gregory for President headquarters and seized all the Gregory campaign “dollar bills” they could find. Agents were reported scouring Chicago for the contraband material.

...

Dear Dr. Schoenfeld:

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

In a recent column you printed the letter of a girl whose “problem” was a boyfriend who had an almost continuous erection and made her sore with continuous and lengthy intercourse. I think you missed the obvious solution. Let her share her good fortune with a girl friend. God knows there are many sexually frustrated girls who would be happy to get half of such a good thing.

...

Reprinted from Detroit Scope

“Detroit is controlled 100% by the Mafia,” says a man close to Mafia kingpins. Many Detroit police officers admit there is a great deal of truth in that statement because of the extent to which the Mafia influences police department activities.

These officers say the department has been so infiltrated by men in the power of the Mafia that Detroit police cannot be effective against organized crime. The Central Intelligence Bureau (CIB) has been denied authority to investigate killings and other activities associated with the Mafia even though it was originally created for the purpose of combating organized crime. Some officers say the orders to “lay off’ the Mafia come from the highest levels.

...

Fifth Estate

A Newspaper of Detroit

EDITORS

Harvey Ovshinsky

Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Cathy West

CIRCULATION

Tommye Wiese

NEWS EDITOR

Alan Gotkin

MUSIC EDITOR

John Sinclair

PHOTO EDITOR

Mike Tyre

ART DIRECTION

Blalien

ADVERTISING

Gunnar Lewis

CALENDAR

Resa Jannett

IDEOLOGUE

...

Gradually the Kennedy legend is being demolished and there’s hope that one day both JFK and Bobby will be seen in less idolatrous terms. To the rest of the world, JFK will always be a superhero but Americans are obsessive about the “White Knight” syndrome—the myth of the untarnished pure prince who will ride out of nowhere to save us all from everything. It’s the favorite myth, oddly enough, of what rednecks describe as the pseudo-intellectual: the thinker with intellect but no intelligence, no depth or genuine humanity. The White Knight syndrome is a cop-out theory that somewhere is somebody who will solve all the problems that beset society. He will take power and sweep away inequities, injustice, greed, colonialism etc., etc. And, of course, once he’s in power we won’t have to bother about it any more ourselves will we? We can go on being vicious, greedy, rapacious, unfair to our fellow men, knowing that we already did our bit. Well, Kennedy (neither of them) was a White Knight. He was an ambitious, compromising, timid aristocrat who achieved power first and foremost through money and retained popularity largely through shrewd publicity. He was, admittedly, a cut above most of the disgusting illiterates who masquerade as our “leaders” but just by definition that’s not saying very much.

...

The Detroit Police are out of control. From the Algiers Motel to Cobo Hall they have left a trail of broken heads, illegal arrests and even murders.

The most recent example of this state of affairs followed right on the heels of the Wallace demonstration [see “Cobo Hall Creep Scene” in this issue] and found drunken off-duty pigs beating and terrorizing black high school students at a church dance.

...