Most Recent Additions

Michael Betzold

Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

E.B. Maple

Tina Nachalo

Mike Neiswonger

Speedo

Mr. Venom

Marilyn Werbe

Peter Werbe

Dennis Rosenblum

The Fifth Estate Newspaper, a non-profit Michigan corporation, 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 for foreign. Call 259–1888 for retail sales outlets. Second Class postage paid at Detroit, Michigan. No copyright: No commercial advertising accepted.

...

To The Fifth Estate:

There you go again: the $pliterates attacking TV! (See FE #292, June 19, 1978).

1. Literacy produced modern technology, including capitalism and industrialism. 1, 2, 3 = a, b, c; that’s why men invented it.

2. What about the “dehumanized aspects of the centralized $pliteracy source: left brained publishers—depressed, repressed presses?

...

By the time this is published, the J20 trials, the prosecutions of protesters mass arrested at Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, will likely be in full swing.

Despite having charges dismissed against 129 of the 230 people indicted and the first trial resulting in unanimous acquittals for six defendants in January, the US Attorney’s office has doubled down on its year and a half long legal effort to prosecute the 59 remaining defendants.

...

During Whale Head’s sleep, her organs grew very impatient and bored since they had become hyper intelligent. In order to amuse themselves, they read all the books in a twenty-seven-mile radius by spatial osmosis, and also managed to solve the paradox of the radial ostrich, which had been plaguing the King’s court philosophers for many decades now.

...

Ammunition Books shares space with the Fifth Estate Newspaper (?) [sic] and can be found at 4403 Second Ave, (telephone (313) 831–6800. Our hours vary quite a bit, so it’s always best to give us a telephone call 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.

MELEN LUAN, we found your letter (last FE) highly stimulating. Would like to be in touch. Direct dialog with others equally encouraged. John and Paula Zerzan at UPSHOT, P.O. Box 40256, S.F. 94110

...

In November of 1970, Benjamin Mendoza y Amor attempted to assassinate Pope Paul VI at Manila’s International Airport. Unfortunately, Mendoza made one mistake—-he was caught. Give this man a second chance!

In what ranks among the finest assertions of life over death in human history, Benjamin Mendoza y Amor, a Bolivian surrealist, stated that he had made an attempt on the Pope’s life because “There is no God” and that Pope Paul “represents the kind of superstition which must be destroyed by removing him.

...

As the 1,000 Philadelphia cops assembled outside the home of the anti-government, anti-technology group called MOVE on Aug. 8, they must have thought it was going to be like shooting fish in a barrel. The forces of state terror were in full battle gear and were assisted by a large contingent of city firemen preparing to evict the group for what really amounted to housekeeping standards that offended the city’s vicious mayor, Frank Rizzo.

...

Fighting got serious as antifa stopped white power in East Lansing, Mich. in March.
Above, neo-Nazi Matthew Heimbach of the Traditional Workers Party (rt) looks worried.

For those curious whether Antifa tactics can actually deliver the goods when it comes to disrupting fascist organizing efforts, the activity surrounding white supremacist Richard Spencer’s early March visit to Michigan should serve as a resounding, “Yes!” The alt-right leader, who heads the racist National Policy Institute and wants to turn the U.S. into an exclusively white ethno-state, canceled the remaining dates of a college campus speaking tour after being confronted by a militant antifascist presence during a stop at Michigan State University in East Lansing.

...

a review of

A People’s History of Civilization by John Zerzan. Feral House, 2018 feralhouse.com

Beginning with John Zerzan’s 1970s jeremiads in this publication, his predictions of social collapse and later of civilization’s were best summed up by the title of his FE #276, January, 1976 article, “The Decline and Fall of Everything.”

...

During the last two score of years anarchism and its movements have witnessed a sort of re-discovery due to the disillusionment of the intellectual world that has for a long time supported the Marxian Government of Russia and all its allied Marxian Governments in other countries. This, in turn, has led to the appearance of quite a few volumes dealing with anarchism and its movements, along with reprints of most of the works of its theoreticians.

...

On Sunday, November 7, 3,000 people had descended on the Piazza Vetra, Milan, taking the police, who were prepared for a routine operation, completely by surprise. Bursting into four cinemas, they soon mounted a demonstration some 4,000 strong. Following this, a price reduction was proposed for (movie) matinee performances. The response was a new demonstration, this time involving 52 of Milan’s “youth circles,” with their banners decorated with garish colors and drawings. The Apache emblem (a hatchet) in the forefront, flags, guitars, the pink and flowered flags of the feminist and gay groups.

...

“Bread and roses.”

(Paterson, N.J., 1912, slogan of the revolutionary women)

“Molotov, Champagne!”

(Milan, 1977)

For all those who, due to opportunism or congenital idiocy, believe it impossible that the communist movement should ever reappear, the Italian events of the past year have demonstrated that the capitalist project of domesticating humanity has encountered insoluble contradictions. If after the days of May the Situationists could write of the mouvement des occupations that it was “the refusal of all authority, of all specialization, of all hierarchical alienation; the refusal of the state and thus of parties and unions as well as sociologists and professors, of repressive morality and of medicine” (Internationale Situationniste No. 12, September 1969), we perceive in the 1977 riots of the “Italian Spring” a continuity with the modern revolutionary project contra the real domination of capital, a project which, having announced itself near the end of the ‘60s, having been suppressed and recuperated afterwards, is now returning to express itself with renewed radicalism in one of the weakest spots in the whole precarious world economy.

...

FE note: See our introduction, “Revolution & Counter-revolution in Italy,” [FE#293–294, August 21, 1978] in this issue.

A conspiracy of silence and careful distortion of what doesn’t fit the picture of Italy as a panting country trying to catch up with the other industrial “democracies” have mystified the Italian events in the past year. If one believes the American press, the only problem is to know how long the Carter Administration will succeed in keeping the so-called Communist Party out of the government: however, another much more dangerous reality, whose lineaments we will attempt to trace, seems to threaten the management of the crisis and the project of integration of the country into the new international economic order.

...

Staff Note: The following is a letter that was recently sent to the Fifth Estate by Lorenzo Komboa Ervin. For more information about Komboa, see “Komboa: Anti-Vietnam Warrior,” FE #292, June 19, 1978.

Dear Comrades:

I am an Anarchist political prisoner confined in the infamous Control Unit Behavior Modification Program at the Marion Federal Penitentiary. Ten prisoners have died in the Control Unit In the past few years (3 deaths in 1977 alone!) and hundreds of others have been-driven to self-mutilation or insanity.

...

Attacking what they call “terrorists” and “idealistic persons” who would take “positive steps” to overthrow society, the British government’s elite Special Branch and Anti-terrorist Squad (ATS) have conducted a series of raids designed to create an atmosphere of conspiracy and suspicion.

The raids, generally directed against leftist groups and anarchists, have proven to be at times little more than acts of sheer buffoonery. One carefully planned foray into an assumed “den of anarchy” on the part of ATS landed the Special Branch in a legally licensed night club in North London which had been occupied by a political group two years earlier. In Highbury the ATS broke into a flat after bashing down the door with a sledge hammer and took three family photo albums; and in Finsbury Park on a raid, they arrested one person for a small quantity of dope.

...

Like a full moon, like the blazing collapse of a bank in an earthquake, like the comedic sinking of an imperial barge, the death of a pope, and the giddy and liberatory revelation that we are now—if only momentarily—living during a time when there is no pope, is a cause for celebration. Firecrackers, stink-bombs, and rockets should be fired in every aisle and nave, on the steps of every church from Rome to St. Clair Shores! Celebrate! The pope is dead!

...

The following two articles, “The Return of the Social Revolution, Or, Well Dug, Old Mole!” and “Economic Crisis & Revolution. Or, a Propos of Capital and its Contradictions,” were written by a comrade from Milan who took part in revolutionary upsurge which engulfed Italy from the early part of this decade to its peak (so far) in 1977 and the Italian Spring.

...

The question of what constitutes revolutionary activity is raised again on these pages in two articles; 1) an in-depth analysis of the Italian situation and 2) a review of a book on anarchism in the U.S. Claudio Albertani explodes the mystification surrounding the militancy of the autonomous groups and the fetish of armed struggle held by organizations such as the Red Brigades. The article by Marcus Graham, a long time friend of the Fifth Estate, raises the question in a more subtle way (see FE #293–294, August 21, 1978, page 14). We have had his manuscript for several months, but had declined to print it due to a staff disagreement over his usage of the terms “anarchist” and “anarchism.”

...

Well this issue of the FE is a little late in coming out because three-quarters of the staff is off taking a much awaited summer break. This is the last FE you’ll see until September (this issue is a double issue—July/Aug.), when we hope to be back in the swing of things...

As usual, we’re operating the paper by the skin of our teeth and would like to thank all of those people who resubscribed and sent in those much needed donations—it saved us this month. If you received a “renewal” notice in the mail and haven’t re-subscribed yet, we hope that you do so soon since it’s your subscriptions that help us cover costs each month...

...

Dear Comrades,

At a picnic held July 9 at Los Gatos we received an income of $841 in which we distributed as follows:

Freedom $75; Black Flag $75; Open Road $75; Fifth Estate $75; Rivista A $200; L’Internazionale $150; Volonta $121; Interogation $70.

Some of the contributors were not present—those being: John Vattuone $20; T. Martocchia $20; Peter Puccio $20; Fred Francescutti $20; Dal Fondo Nicola $100; San Vitulli $10; Armando $10; Romeo $10.

...

Claudio Albertani

Angela DiSante

Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

Marcus Graham

John Grant

Maynard G. Krebs

E.B. Maple

Tina Nachalo

Mr. Venom

Marilyn Werbe

Peter Werbe

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.

The bullet-ridden body of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, which was discovered a short distance from the Italian Communist Party (CP) headquarters on May 9, brought the expected cries of protest from the expected quarters. From the crowned heads of Europe to political parties of all stripes came expressions of horror and demands that Red Brigade-style terrorism be eradicated.

...

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.

...

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.

WOMEN IN THE SPANISH REVOLUTION—Liz Willis’s excellent pamphlet first published by Solidarity, London, has been reprinted in New York with some additional material by Liz and is available by writing to: Gonzalez/Kleinman, p.o. box 562 Cooper Station, New York, NY 10003. If you can afford it, send $1 to cover costs of publication, mailing and free copies which will be sent to people who are incarcerated and others without funds, upon request. Less (or of course, more) is acceptable. We will take valid US postal stamps, cheques (made out to N. Kleinman or J. Gonzalez) or real green money. In Europe, write to: Solidarity, c/o 123 Latham Rd., London E. 6, England; in New York, stop by Come!Unity Press.

...

Despite the change of bureaucracy in China and attempts by the new rulers to make peace with the workers by offering them meager wage increases, it seems that political and social unrest continues. According to a recent French news agency report, there have been a series of executions of political and “criminal” prisoners in China since the beginning of 1978.

...

In recent months Israel has been dismaying even its closest imperialist allies with its policy of retaliation against southern Lebanon for a single act by a small group of Palestinian guerrillas. The Israeli assault on Palestinian and Lebanese civilian villages has left the world press filled with horror shots of dead women and children at the hands of U.S.-made Israeli planes in what has become the modern equivalent of the Nazi’s ten-for-one policy of retribution.

...

a review of

David F. Noble, America by Design: Science, Technology, and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism (N.Y.: Knopf, 1977). 384 pages, $12.95.

David Noble has written a genuinely path-breaking book, one which addresses critical issues in an analytically creative and historically concrete fashion. America by Design is distinguished not only by its scope, by the picture it offers of capitalist development in the first three decades of this century, but above all by the questions it poses. In this sense, the book itself represents a leap in historical perspectives, and it is to be hoped that future studies will begin with the concrete approach offered here, not those which it has surpassed.

...

It is estimated by reputable quacks in the American Medical Association that at least one out of five people in the U.S. has some problem with mental illness. (Are the rest pretending?) It appears, surely, that there is no shortage of fools. Surely, should a swelling quantity of grads high-hurdle over the artificially maintained barriers of the psycho-therapeutic industry, thereby driving down rates through an overabundance of shrinks, the AMA will announce peculiarly that there is an alarming amount of oddballs, neurotic, and misanthropes.

...

“Workingmen: Arm yourselves and appear in full force!”

—1886 Haymarket leaflet

The initial clamor about controlling gun violence following the horrible mass shooting at Parkland, Fla. high school this February mostly subsided following huge demonstrations of students across the country in March and April. Young students appeared everywhere in the media advocating reforms, but no legislation has passed that will staunch the blood flow, and probably none will be forthcoming.

...

The following is a statement sent to us by Emily Harris, who, along with Bill Harris, Joe Remiro and Russ Little, is one of the surviving members of the SLA. The four are currently prisoners of the State of California; six others were murdered by police in Los Angeles in 1975.

I was one of the prisoners in the women’s section of Santa Rita Jail near Oakland on the night of May 14 when it was destroyed by fire. Many women could have lost their lives in that fire because they came within a hair’s breath of being left locked in their cells with no way to get out. It was an outrageous and frightening experience and I want to share it so at least people will know what happened and will understand better how prisoners’ lives are threatened everyday in a million different ways by the very fact that one class of people—the police—has been granted the power of a key that locks the door.

...

April of 1978 marks the closing of a publication that has had a definite impact on the gay movement of Detroit, even though most straight leftists (and probably many gays) were never aware of its existence—The Metro Gay News.

Its story begins a few months after the radical Gay Liberator closed its operations in March 1976. The Metro Gay News (MGN) commenced publication and its first meetings were well-balanced between men and women (one of its few points over the Liberator), but even in this early stage it was very obvious where the power of the paper was truly centered: in David Krumroy, a former steel lot salesman. Though MGN always had some articles by a few women, gradually they seemed to shift to the bottom of the staff box, or drop out entirely.

...

Special thanks to all those readers who sent in contributions and became sustainers in response to last issue’s plea for funds. Financially we are at somewhat of an equilibrium, but still remain on the edge, so although we don’t want to keep calling “emergency” before the situation warrants it, we still urge readers to become sustainers and to renew their subscriptions when the time comes....

...

Lorenzo “Komboa” Ervin is a thirty year old ex-GI now serving life in Marion maximum security jail for hijacking a plane as a protest against US involvement in Vietnam.

In the early ‘sixties, soon after joining up, he and other young black GIs serving in Mannheim, West Germany, secretly formed Black GIs United to fight racism in the army, and became involved in anti-Vietnam war activities, taking part in demonstrations with West German students. Later, as whole units of GIs in France and West Germany were sent to Vietnam, Black GIs United responded by calling on soldiers to desert. The consequent harassment suffered by Komboa and his friends came to a head when Komboa was himself drafted to Vietnam and decided to go AWOL instead.

...

When Lenin and 32 other Russian refugees (30 adult revolutionaries and 2 children) were returning to Russia via a sealed train through Germany they encountered a number of problems living together. One of the earliest conflicts in the railroad carriage arose between smokers and non-smokers. Lenin was a nonsmoker and detested smoking. It had been agreed at the beginning of the journey that those people who wanted to smoke had to do so in the toilet. A line formed in the corridor outside the toilet and eventually arguments broke out between the smokers and the “comrades” who wanted to use the toilet for its intended purpose. Since the vast majority of the people were Bolsheviks, Lenin, as the leader of the Party, was called upon to settle the question. He wrote out passes, which had to be presented in order for the toilet to be used. There were two kinds of passes—those for organic use had the first priority, and those for inorganic, smoking purposes had second priority.

...

To F.E.:

Anarchism can provide the perfect defense mechanism for dilettantes. In your “reply” to John and Paula Zerzan [“FE Criticized & Our Response,” FE #291, April 30, 1978] you come perilously close to demonstrating this when you excuse your conceptions of the. FE by reference to the nexus of capital within which, not surprisingly, you find yourselves.

...

“The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously; any sound that Winston made, above a whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment.”

— George Orwell, 1984

...

Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

E. B. Maple

Tina Nachalo

Sonny Tufts

Marilyn Werbe

Peter Werbe

Pat Halley

Edward R. Flynn

Peter Rachleff

Richard Schrader

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.

The absolute removal of the blight of organized religion from the face of the planet. This will necessitate the immediate removal from every church, synagogue, mosque, temple, ashram, cathedral, etc. of any and every self-styled “representative of God on earth” including nuns, priests, ministers, rabbis, etc. and their (if necessary) forced dispossession of all the enormous wealth and power they have accumulated in centuries of domination and exploitation. Let the wealth, and the buildings, be used for the creation of playgrounds, abortion clinics, or whatever the people whose labor went to create them see fit.

...

The “glorious” days of the Ford family empire seem to be numbered as its headcheese, Henry Ford II, finds himself in a swirl of legal, corporate, labor, marital and physical troubles.

Reports have floated into the Fifth Estate office that during his “emergency” press conference of May 1, 1978, the “chairman” not only seemed to be suffering from a bad case of the shakes, but also seemed to be losing his hearing. Oh, the woes of the super rich.

...

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.

...

Since the kidnapping of Aldo Moro in Rome last month, newspapers around the world-have been covering the story of the abduction of this “poor man” while attacks by fascist groups in Italy go unreported, and in fact condoned by the Italian high courts (the Feb. 28, 1978 issue of In These Times reported that three judges in Rome have ruled that the self-proclaimed fascist group Ordine Nuovo—New Order—were not at all a fascist organization, which are illegal under Italian law. Upon hearing the ruling of the three judges, the Ordine Nuovo members in the courtroom started singing, ‘All ‘armi siam fascisti’—‘to arms, we are fascists.’).

...

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.

“ANARCHISM & SOCIALISM”—Houston SRAFlet FREE for the asking. Please send SASE or a few stamps to help out with mailing costs. P.O. Box 35253, S. Post Oak Sta., Houston TX 77035.

...

a review of

Society Against the State, by Pierre Clastres. Mole Editions, Urizen Press, N.Y., 1977, 186 pp. $12.95

A shockingly high price for such a slim volume, but this book from a publishing house “owned by its employees and sharing profits with its authors and translators” is the best general work on anthropology I’ve read. Clastres not only evaluates “primitive communism” from the inside, the viewpoint of the tribe itself, but also manages, almost despite himself, to avoid romanticizing everything for the poor civilized reader, so hungry for rumors of freedom.

...

The letter from “Kirk Johnson” (FE #290, March 2, 1978), which equated Fifth Estate’s practice of running a profit-making book service (to support itself) with Search & Destroy’s record company ads (for the same end), makes public a discussion that has been private too long.

That the opening of this critique—which really began with FE’s important remarks on Black Rose Books’ capitalist procedures—finally arrives via a spokesman for Search & Destroy is a sad irony. S & D is a completely uncritical promo rag which hopes to be accepted by what it sees as the latest cultural fad, punk rock. Done anonymously, it (characteristically) helped organize a recent two-day benefit for the UMW strike, this piece of liberal/ leftist reformism easily coexisting next to censored interviews and ads for rip-off night clubs.

...

NO MEN HERE! Usually the scene of anger and tears, an eviction is carried out smoothly, with no hard feelings, at a Detroit apartment building. Wayne County Circuit Court bailiffs, Ruth Rath and Beatrice Armour (with chair) carry out the furniture of Wanda Waif (left) from property owned by a group of women bankers. Asked about the incident, Wanda said, beaming, “I’d really be pissed off if men were doing this to me.” Photo by Tom Giacoma

...

Last month the Detroit City Water Board was boasting to the news media that Detroit’s water was some of the cleanest in the country. By clean, City officials mean that the chances of there being any harmful (or non-harmful for that matter) bacteria in our drinking water is almost zero. But considering all of the chemicals added to the already polluted waters that surround Detroit, it’s not surprising. What is surprising though, is that we’re still alive! An example of the amount of chemicals the water board uses to clean up our drinking water can be found in the fact that people at the Detroit Print Co-op have found that the needed content p h for the fountain solution in their presses (the fountain solution is a mixture of water and chemicals that keeps ink off of the non-print areas of a printing plate), can be found in plain old Detroit tap water. Drink up...

...

Dear FE & Readers:

Some clarification of myself is needed here before too many people waste time making statements about me that are completely out of whack with who I am. (See Letters, FE #290, March 2, 1978).

First off, I’m not afraid of bruises, nor am I afraid of putting my life on the line. I’ve put my life on the line many times in the 25 years of it. I’ll do so again right here:

...

The following series of letters have joined the debate regarding the connection between pornography and violence against women that began in our January 24, 1978 issue [#289] with an article by Michael Betzold and was answered the following issue [#290, March 2, 1978] by Sonny Tufts. The two authors respond again to one another and several readers also offer their opinions. We invite further comment from readers.

...

Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

E.B. Maple

Paul Mavrides

Tina Nachalo

Brenda Sabbagh

Jim Stodder

Norm Thomas

Sonny Tufts

Marilyn Werbe

Peter Werbe

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.