Most Recent Additions

Reprinted from San Francisco Express Times

Surely it isn’t brazen self-confidence that drives Nelson Rockefeller, scion of the most powerful network of vested interests in the Free World, to appear as the Galahad of the forces of Change in the pre-convention scramble. After all, empires are not administered by headstrong individuals but by hereditary networks, families, tribes—Nelson does not go off on his own to contest control of the Republican Party. Then what could he have in mind?

...

Who are the long list of names in the oceans

Who are the figures standing in the cabin doors

as the train highballs North

Who are the wailing children,

bodies ripped into bits of flesh?

I catch aspects of their profiles,

am wound around them like a serpent

grasping for life.

whose eyes are these, gouged out

mucus smeared in the red earth,

figure hanging tarred above the lynch fire?

what bodies are these crushed and maimed,

or brains kicked out on the piss pavements

of the cities?

How many aspects of truth do you need Negro leaders?

How many angles are there to any story?

Whose church was that now charred smoldering in time?

Whose mamma getting laid in the cotton patch:

Whose orishas call blood-warnings?

Whose shall die, and die, and die, and die?

Whose soul fucked on the assembly floor?

whose mind picked clean in air-conditioned offices?

whose children shot to pieces in Newark tenements?

whose blood is that efficient lackey-tom motherfuckers?

...

Carrying signs demanding “No Target Practice on Kids,” twenty youths picketed Danny’s Market on Puritan at San Juan, July 13, protesting the wild shooting by a Negro guard at two little black girls aged eight and ten.

The white owner, Danny Knopper, was told to “keep his goons under control” to “protect black kids” and to “provide good will and not bad guards”.

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discussed in this article:

The Algiers Motel Incident by John Hersey. 397 pages, Hardbound, $5.95. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.; Paperback, $1.25, Bantam Books

Editors’ Note: Detroit News reporter Joseph Strickland was the first newsman to break concrete news about the Algiers Motel slayings during last July’s rebellion. The editors of the Fifth Estate quizzed Strickland about John Hersey’s new book, The Algiers Motel Incident.

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Fifth Estate

A Newspaper of Detroit

EDITORS

Harvey Ovshinsky

Peter Werbe

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Cathy West

CIRCULATION

Tommye Wiese

NEWS EDITOR

Alan Gotkin

MUSIC EDITORS

Tony Reay

John Sinclair

OFFICE MANAGER

Debbie Quigg

PHOTO EDITOR

Mike Tyre

ADVERTISING

Gunnar Lewis

CALENDAR

Resa Jannett

...

After finally freeing John Sinclair and Fred Smith from the iron grip of the Oakland County pigs July 25, the MC5 was awakened the next morning by representatives of the Ann Arbor Police Dept. and charged with “disturbing the peace” and being “disorderly persons” as a result of their free West Park concert the Sunday before.

...

“Shortly after the riot in Detroit last summer, I talked to a Negro in his late thirties, and I asked him what he thought about the 12-year old boy lying in the street after being shot by a white policeman in Newark. A newsmagazine had the picture on its cover in living color. The man said he thought it was a joke. ‘A joke?’ I inquired. He said, ‘Yeah, the whole goddam thing is a joke. Every year, they pass some new damn civil rights bill; and every year, Emmett Till gets younger.”

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“In a rebellion, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end” (Alexis de Tocqueville)...

In the north of England there’s been an outbreak of bow-and-arrow “sniping”...

If the war in Vietnam was suddenly ended, says a confidential banking letter called Intercom, most of the supposed savings in military expenditures would be grabbed for other “high priority military projects deferred because of the costs of the war”. So projected tax increases, budgetary cuts, etc. would still be needed. And, of course, the military could always start another little war somewhere (Haiti? Guatemala? Bolivia? Thailand?)...

...

Poet John Sinclair and MC5 guitarist Fred Smith were brutally assaulted, beaten, MACEd, and arrested by members of the National Security Police and the Oakland County (Michigan) Sheriffs Dept. while performing at a Michigan teen-club on July 23^rd.

The scene took place at the Loft, located on Army Road in Leonard, Michigan (between Pontiac and Lapeer), where the MC5 had been contracted to play a dance job.

...

Editor’s note: Brother Sinclair’s Coatpuller column is re-printed here exactly as it appeared in this paper one year ago. It was written at the height of the July Rebellion and contains one of the best impressionistic sketches of that week.

You know that it would be untrue

You know that I would be a liar

...

The Detroit American is a racist newspaper.

It is written by racists and for racists. Its pseudo-populist rhetoric about defending the little man from “crime in the streets” and fighting against “THE BIG PRESS ESTABLISHMENT” is nothing but subterfuge for its racism.

The American defends itself against attack by saying that the bleeding-hearts can’t bear to have accused criminals referred to as “curs”, “punks”, “whelps”, etc. This, of course, is not the central issue.

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NEW YORK—The Yippies died for a few months this year, partly from under-exposure and partly because, as Abbie Hoffman believes, “the establishment became even more absurd than the idea of YIP.” Hoffman is one of the leaders of the Youth International Party (YIP or Yippies for short).

YIP has renewed its plans for the Chicago Festival of Life conceived last December and forgotten in the mayhem of this year’s politics. The dates of the Festival are August 25–30 and will coincide with Democratic Party Death Convention.

...

The confrontation between Iran and the United States over the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran Nov. 4 and taking of 63 hostages (later reduced to 50) by Islamic student militants has brought to the fore the worst features of this epoch. The grotesque spectacle of a million Iranians marching in lockstep, chanting praises of a decrepit mullah and a reactionary religion is matched in this country by a sudden upsurge of patriotism one would have thought impossible just a few weeks ago.

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FIFTH ESTATE, #300, December 4, 1979, vol. 14, no. 5, page 1

Fifth Estate

Published by the Fifth Estate Newspaper (ISSN 0015–0800) bimonthly at 4403 Second Ave., Detroit MI 48201; phone (313) 831–6800. Subscriptions are $4.00 for 6 issues; $6.00 for foreign. Second class postage paid at Detroit, Michigan. No copyright. No paid advertising.

Barbarian: 1. A fierce, brutal or cruel person. 2. A brute, uncivilized, rude, savage, cruel, barbarous.

Example: “he is merely a barbarian on the loose in a museum” (Yvor Winters).

Civilization: 1. The process of civilizing or becoming civilized. 2. To civilize; to bring out of a condition of savagery or barbarism; to better the habits or manners of; refine.

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Send letters to fe@fifthestate.org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220.

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten. Letters may be edited for length.

Thank you for finally calling out your fellow privileged white lefties for their, “I choose not to vote,” bullshit. (See “In Defense of Tactical Voting,” by Bill Weinberg, FE #400, Spring 2018.)

...

The following is an excerpt from an article commenting on the 1993 Palestine Liberation Organization/Israel peace agreement, “The PLO/Israeli Treaty: Another Defeat for the Palestinians,” from Fifth Estate #343, Fall/Winter 1993.

Eew realize that in the 45 years of Israeli existence, fewer than 700 Israeli civilians have been killed by Palestinian guerrillas. In the same period, Israel has slaughtered tens of thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians (including scores of children whose “crime” was throwing stones), wiped out 400 villages, imprisoned thousands without trial, dynamited houses, cut down thousands of trees in orchards, and engaged in collective punishment in an attempt to terrorize the “natives” into submission.

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It’s been fifty years since the exciting events of May 1968 in France that shook the country to its foundations. It is still inspiring to remember the widespread revolt of high school and university students, and then workers, that erupted throughout the country, leading to the largest general strike in French history. These events brought society to a stop, temporarily transforming daily life, and posing the possibility of a complete social revolution. The 1968 turmoil in France was part of a worldwide upsurge.

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a review of

Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims by Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1883; Kindle edition, 2017. Also, free online

This is an amazing autobiography and first-hand account from Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins (born Thocmentony, meaning “Shell Flower;” c. 1844—1891) the grand-daughter of Chief Truckee (d. 1860), medicine chief of the Northern Paiute.

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The 14^th annual Montreal International Anarchist Theatre Festival, the world’s only event dedicated to anarchist theatre, seeks plays, monologues, dance-theatre, puppet shows, mime, in English and French, on the theme of anarchism or related themes such as opposition to all forms of oppression including the State, capitalism, war, and patriarchy. Also, pieces exploring ecological, social and economic justice, racism, feminism, poverty, class and gender oppression from an anarchist perspective. We welcome work from anarchist and non-anarchist writers.

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a review of

In the Skin of a Lion (1987); The English Patient (1993) by Michael Ondaatje

Some people read novels solely for a good story. Others also want quality writing that flows well and doesn’t distract from the story line. For me, if the novel reflects my values, all the better, but this is not a criterion.

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a review of

True Stories: Tales from the Generation of a New World Culture by Garrick Beck. iUniverse, 2017

Garrick Beck spans a personal journey through radical bohemia in the 1950s, hippie utopianism in the 1960s, back-to-the-land communalism in the 1970s, to applying those ethics today through community work and urban Land-reclamation back in the New York City of his youth.

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It’s been said that a revolutionary’s first weapon is a book.

When the Fifth Estate occupied a physical office in its first thirty years of existence, it always had a bookstore space where texts supporting ideas we published and stimulated us lined the shelves. The last one, in Detroit’s Cass Corridor, carried the name of Ammunition Books and in one listing of our titles used a photo of a .357 magnum pistol as an illustration.

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Fifth Estate #401, Summer 2018, Vol. 53 No. 2

Fifth Estate: Radical Publishing since 1965

The Fifth Estate is an anti-profit, anarchist project published by a volunteer collective of friends and comrades.

No ads. No copyright. Kopimi — reprint freely.

www.FIFTHESTATE.org

Fall 2018 Fifth Estate

...

The Epilepsy Foundation of America is warning that the simple act of watching television may trigger seizures in nearly a third of all individuals with epilepsy. The Washington-based organization says there is substantial scientific data indicating that the moving images of lights and shadows on TV screens can provoke the seizures.

...

The positioning of this article in the back pages in no way reflects our assessment of the gravity of the situation described herein. We extend our full solidarity to these comrades, victimized for committing no “crime” other than to cross a point of land arbitrarily designated as a “border” by those who we hold in utter contempt. It is small acts like this, carried out by cretinous functionaries of the State, that further steels our resolve to work actively for its total elimination.

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a review of

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison by Michel Foucault. Trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977)

The book is now a Vintage paperback; the original French version was Surveiller et punir, Naissance de la prison (Paris: Gallimard, 1975)

Foucault insists that “delinquency, controlled illegality, is an agent for the illegality of the dominant groups” (p.279). Delinquency is a uniquely modern development, which first materialized in the nineteenth century. As Foucault delineates the process, tine Enlightenment reforms of the penal code and prison conditions were adapted to the new conditions of early industrial capitalism. Delinquency, then, is depoliticized crime, distinct from popular illegalities such as peasant uprisings, sans-culotte direct democracy, Luddism, strikes, insurrections and so on. The reformed penal code and the new criminal justice bureaucracy (police, courts, lawyers, prisons) created, in the nineteenth century, a circumscribed zone of illegality that was easily controlled and which posed no threat to the ruling class. On the contrary, delinquency became one of the principal modes by which the bourgeois regime maintained its legitimacy as a ruling class.

...

The FE Bookstore is located in the same place as the Fifth Estate and can be found at 4403 Second Ave., Detroit—telephone (313) 831–6800. The hours that we’re open vary quite a bit, so it’s always best that you give us a ring before coming down.

HOW TO ORDER BY MAIL:

1) List the title(s) of the book, amount wanted and price of each;

...

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.

PARTISAN PRESS is a new libertarian publishing project in Seattle. We are currently preparing several works for publication, including THE CHRISTIE FILE, the autobiography of British anarchist Stuart Christie; THE PRACTICE OF UTOPIA, the English translation of Louis Mercier Vega’s last book; and an as-yet untitled anthology on Italian insurgency, 1976–78. If you have a manuscript relating to libertarian themes (fiction is also welcome), we’d like to see it; and of course, donations toward the publication of our first titles will be gratefully accepted. Hoping to hear from you: Partisan Press, Box 2193 Seattle WA 98111.

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Mega-Death

Coming soon... (crossed out)

Already here

Rarely does a horror movie of such magnitude reach the public, but when it does, it seems to obtain an unshakable grip on the public imagination, if not on its very being. Such a movie is the latest product from 20^th Century Tech.—MEGA-DEATH’

...

On May 9, 1973, three prisoners of Washington State Penitentiary, Carl Harp, Shane Green and Clyde Washburn seized the Classification and Parole Building with ten hostages, and held it nonviolently for 12 hours. During that time they were in constant communication by phone and bullhorn with media, prisoners and people outside to whom they talked about maltreatment and cruel conditions inside the prison.

...

In a victory for Russ Little, the California Supreme Court has let stand a lower court order reversing his conviction for the 1973 SLA assassination of an Oakland, California school official.

Little should be back in court for re-trial by this Fall setting the stage for his eventual release if found innocent at that proceeding. However, at the same time, the Court refused to hear the appeal in the same case of Joe Remiro whose conviction was left standing by the lower court.

...

Abbie Hoffman, fugitive Yippie, has been on the lam for over three years following a New York City cocaine deal set-up by the police. Abbie has had plastic surgery to alter his appearance and has managed to elude the authorities even while popping up at protest demonstrations, rallies held in his behalf and he once even appeared as the guest chef on a Toronto TV cooking program.

...

The article which follows was originally produced as a leaflet and distributed at the Monroe anti-nuke demonstration on June 2^nd, 1979. The Monroe demo was itself even more frustrating than the Midland gathering, and has solidified for many of us involved in it our determination to undertake our own anti-nuke activities in our communities, outside of the context of the increasingly paralytic mass organizations.

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“Without government life is nasty, brutish and short.”

—Thomas Hobbes

Every person gazing even casually at the sordid history of government realizes that the Hobbesian dictum is nonsense and, in fact, just the opposite is true: with government, humanity has thusly had its life defined.

Viewing the organized political state as the culprit in human affairs for the presence of universal misery is standard fare for the anarchist and libertarian tradition and as a theory is not without merit as far as it goes. Certainly, other attempts historically to locate the culprit in evil spirits, the Devil, human nature or even capitalism, are much more shortsighted as they fail to deliver an explanation of the daily mechanism through which people have been subjugated during the epoch of Civilization.

...

Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

E.B. Maple

The Entire Nachalo Family

Mr. Venom

Primitivo Solis

Marilyn Werbe

Peter Werbe

Michael Scrivener

Buster Brown

The Fifth Estate Newspaper (ISSN-0015-0800) is published bi-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; $6.00 for foreign. Call 259–1888 for retail sales outlets. Second-class postage paid at Detroit, Michigan. No copyright. No paid advertising accepted.

The ambush-style shooting death of an anti-nuclear activist in Houston, in April, has sent waves of alarm through the Texas anti-nuclear community. The victim of the assault was 28-year-old Michael Eakin, who was formerly the editor of the University of Texas newspaper and founder of the Austin Sun, a weekly alternative paper.

...

adapted from Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics

The following essay, “The Original Affluent Society,” is written by Marshall Sahlins and was taken from the book Stone Age Economics published by Aldine-Atherton, Inc. We have liberally edited Sahlins’ important investigation into societies prior to the rise of what we generously call “civilization” but hope we have maintained the author’s clarity and purpose. We would suggest a reading of the original piece if at all possible.

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Bon Jours Cinque Etate:

Allors!—as France’s leading Anarchist & Public Enemy Number One, I wish to offer my congratulations on your fine paper. As a revenue generating device, may I suggest an idea for a t-shirt: on the front a picture of padre Jim Jones w/logo, “He died for your sins” & on the back the picture of Sid Vicious with logo, “I died for mine.”

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The FE Bookstore is located in the same place as the Fifth Estate Newspaper (?) [sic] and can be found at 4403 Second Avenue—telephone (313) 831–6800. Our hours vary quite a bit, so it’s always best to give us a ring before coming down.

HOW TO ORDER BY MAIL:

1) List the title of the book(s), amount wanted and price of each;

...

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.

WE ARE IN THE PROCESS OF STARTING a collectively run non-profit natural foods restaurant-coffeehouse-community center here in Binghamton. We are looking for considerate, responsible, hard-working, open-minded people who are not into power tripping but who are willing to take initiative. No experience is necessary, however this is a heavy long-term commitment. If anyone is interested, please contact us as soon as possible.

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The only good thing the Three Mile Island accident has provided is a needed kick in the butt to the anti-nuclear movement. Or rather the small, dedicated groups across the country which have been waging mostly losing struggles against nuclear energy may be at the point where the movement will take on mass proportions.

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A couple of quick prison notes: Revolutionary prisoners at Washington State Prison in Walla Walla have published Vol. I, No. 4 of the Anarchist Black Dragon, a newsletter. Written by the locked-down brothers from the collective of the same name, the publication features articles of both prison news and general anarchist interest. The Dragon is printed on the outside by supporters and is available from Countdown, PO Box 1163, Madison, Wisconsin, 53701; a small donation would be appropriate. However, the Anarchist Black Dragon Collective may be written directly at Box 520, Walla Walla, Washington, 99362.

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On March 19, 1979, several of us reached into the dustbin of history to resurrect the old Eat the Rich Gang and the Workers Revenge Group. The occasion was a Greenpeace anti-sealing demonstration in downtown Detroit that, as it turned out had as its demand only a one year moratorium on the Canadian hunt, to determine whether or not these beautiful creatures were an endangered species. The trap of this sort of logic is so bountifully clear that it’s surprising that even these weepy-eyed reformers fell for it—the Canadian government counts the seal heads, says, “Nope, not endangered,” and the slaughter begins anew next year, to provide furs for the rich. The ETR/WRG prepared the following leaflet which was distributed at the rally.

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This issue’s sports roundup shows radical changes in fortune for many players.

Finishing last was Ali Bhutto, former prime minister of the “Islamic Republic” of Pakistan. Despite the pleas of other government leaders around the world, Ali just didn’t make the finals. Calling for leniency in his behalf were such ideological opponents as Leonid Brezhnev and Jimmy Carter, which proves once more that birds of a feather flock together. No matter what their line, politicians in general are not enthusiastic about such precedents being set. To All we can only say, you plays the game—you takes your chances.

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The Safe Energy Coalition (SECO) is a broadly-based, loose coalition which meets in private homes and encourages the formation of local groups, some of which have been established in places such as Allen Park, Romulus, Westland and other areas. There is no real leadership and little organization. SECO supporters advocate every possible strategy for an anti-nuclear struggle from direct action and occupations to inviting sleazy politicians like Coleman Young to speak at their public forums. Political hacks, such as the Socialist Workers Party, have (in their own jargon) “intervened” in the movement undoubtedly in hopes of transforming such a movement into an SWP-led “peaceful, legal” pressure group and a recruiting ground for their party along the lines of its activities within the U.S. anti-Vietnam war movement. So far its results have been minimal and unimpressive.

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How beauteous it would have been to see your lifeless corpse dangling from the iron gate before your majestic estate, as the flames began appearing as ghosts might appear in the windows of the second floor. To hear the sound of breaking glass, and the occasional report of a gun, to see the broken fragments scattered across the lawn, discarded during the looting, the smell of smoke, acrid and oily of your burning limousine, your shiny rich man’s shoes turning like a weathervane, first south, then east, then south, then west, then north, in the direction of all your crimes...
But you died in comfort, perhaps surprised that you were not, after all, immortal. Attica went unavenged. I think of you and I spit, happy at least that you are dead and gone!
—Mr Venom

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Although we got a lot of positive response to our last issue (as well as our fair share of abuse), no one noted a major error in our Hungary poster which attributes the date of the events to being “13 years ago” (making it 1966) rather than 23 years ago. Every one of us must have looked at the layout twenty times and never noticed the obvious blunder. Oh, well, we can tell people it’s a reprint of a ten-year-old poster...

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This special section of the Fifth Estate Newspaper was produced shortly after the April 1979 disastrous events took place at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant at Middletown, Pennsylvania.

The first two articles were composed in response to the accident. “Eight Theses on Nuclearism” discusses what confronts us as a species, while “Progress and Nuclear Power” traces the history of the destruction of this continent by industrial technology. The remaining material was compiled from past issues of this newspaper and aptly describes the threat which nuclear power represents in any form.

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