Most Recent Additions

NEW YORK—The 200 garment industry executives listened attentively as the seminar speaker, with evangelical fervor, told them how their industry can be brought “kicking and screaming into the 20^th Century.”

The Saturday seminar for New York-area producers, at $30 a head, was designed to show them how to use new assembly line techniques to cut costs. Workers assigned to a single task, such as sewing buttonholes, would work faster as the repetition increases their efficiency, the executives were told.

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Gordon Barry

Millard Berry

Ed Clark

Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

Pat Halley

Terry Hawkins

Kathy Horak

Tina Nachalo

Bob Nirkind

E.B. Maple

Pat O’Bryan

Stuart Perry

Pete Rachleff

Donna Saffioti

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: 1:00–5:00 P.M., Mondays through Fridays. Subscriptions are $4.00 for 12 issues. Call 842–8888 for retail sales outlets. Second Class postage paid at Detroit, Michigan. No copyright. No commercial advertising.

Dear Dr. Hypocrisy,

My boyfriend just got over a “dose” of Trotskyism. He says he is “safe” to begin relations again, but I’m worried. What do you think?

Livonia Libertarian

I get lots of letters like this and it never ceases to amaze me how ignorant many people are of the dangers of social diseases.

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Greetings Comrades:

I thought I’d forward some news about authority inside prison....

I did 30 days in solitary for wearing a “Fuck Authority” tee shirt! They went nutty behind it. I’ve found out that one can fuck ANYTHING of theirs, but if one fucks with their authority they put you in the BOX! What ever happened to the First Amendment???????

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Ammunition Books, 4403 Second Avenue, Detroit, MI 48201

Bookstore Hours: Mon. thru Fri. 1 pm-5 p.m.

LUCY PARSONS, AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY written by Carolyn Ashbaugh

Lucy Parsons is a central figure in the Haymarket Affair—“Dark Lucy” was a woman so feared by the Chicago Police that they broke up her meetings for 30 years. Historian Carolyn Ashbaugh interprets the radical response to industrialization, the robber barons, and monopoly in the post civil war era through Lucy Parsons’ career—adding a new dimension to the historiography of the period by showing us an important role played by this woman.

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Cass City Cinema—First Unitarian Church (Cass and Forest), $1.50 admission, 7:30 & 10:00 p.m. Nov. 19 & 20: “The Twelve Chairs,” (Mel Brooks). Nov. 26 & 27: “Emitai” (1971 from Senegal). Dec. 3 & 4: “This Man Must Die” (Chabrol, France).

Detroit Film Theatre—Detroit Art Institute Auditorium, $2.00 admission ($1.50 students), 7:00 & 9:30 p.m. Nov. 19: “Emitai” (Senegal). Nov. 20: “Breathless”, (1959 Goddard). Nov. 21: “Uncle Vanya” (USSR 1972). Nov. 26: “The Round Up” (1965, Miklos Jansco). Nov. 27: “L’Avventura “ (Antonioni). Nov. 28: “Jamilya” (USSR). Dec. 3: “Funnyman” (1967 John Korty). Dec. 4: “Millhouse—A White Comedy” (1971, Nixon). Dec. 5: “The Twelve Chairs” .

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Tay-lor-ism n. 1. The scientific management of industrial operations. 2. The systematic reduction of work within a given industrial operation to separate, distinct, routinized tasks devoid of policy decisions. Each aspect is measured and timed for its highest efficiency. 3. The system of such developed by Frederick Taylor in the late 1880s.

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This article is the third in an originally-planned two-part series on the perils of radioactive waste materials and highly toxic chemicals.

Part One of the series (Capitalism’s Industrial Plagues, # 276, September 1976) dealt with the devastating results of nuclear and chemical dumps, leakages and accidents in the United States and around the world. Part Two (Is Michigan Slated For Nuclear Landfill? #277, October 1976) then followed with a look at the Federal Government’s intention to test land in Michigan as a possible construction site for a nuclear waste disposal system.

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Zerowork No. 1; Available from P.O. Box 515, Station C, Toronto, Ontario, Canada or through Ammunition Books (see further in this issue).

The last few years have seen the appearance of few new journals, even fewer of which are worth taking seriously. Zerowork, however, is one of the exceptions. Despite a density of text and an absence of graphics and photographs, this journal is well worth reading.

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“We understand you tore the little tag off your mattress.” (Louisiana Worker/cpf)

To paraphrase an ex-president; we won’t have The Detroit Sun to kick around anymore—the city’s “hottest paper” collapsed financially after its Oct. 22 issue, ending several months of weekly publication. In a desperate attempt to raise needed cash (the staff hadn’t been paid in several weeks), Editor John Sinclair began a campaign of favorable publicity for the mayor and the police that even outdid The Sun’s previous performances. But even though grinning cops and politicians dominated the front pages of the last two issues, no one in the city administration was willing to secure the financial commitment the paper needed to continue publishing. The Sun was never like the other “alternative” liberal weeklies which appear in other major U.S. cities such as the Boston Real Paper or the Los Angeles Free Press with their combination of left-liberal politics and “hip” culture which meant that city hall is always fair game for investigative reporting.

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As of this writing the fate of Marie and Noel Murray, the two Irish anarchists who have been sentenced to hang for their alleged murder of a Dublin cop, remains uncertain.

The Sept. 24 edition of Freedom magazine published in London (which reached us two weeks ago) reported that Noel Murray had asked that his appeal of his conviction and sentence be withdrawn. This would have opened the way for an October execution.

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The presidential election farce is over and Nobody won!

Although we were hoping for an absolute majority, those unwilling to humiliate themselves by participating in their own enslavement by voting for who will rule us still chalked up an impressive 46.8% of the adult population.

By contrast slimy James Earl (Jimmy) Carter was able to pull down only a measly 27% of those eligible to vote, while Ford followed up with about 25.5%.

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In the last August 1976 Fifth Estate [#275, Polish Food Riots] we gave a sketchy report (all that was then available) of repression against striking workers centering in the Polish cities of Ursus and Radom. This major strike wave which swept Poland in June was the second in six years that resulted from arbitrary government raises in food prices.

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When 1976 is all over and done with not long from now and we look back on it as history, it may well be remembered as the “Year of the Swine.” No, not the Jimmy Carter variety, but the four-legged, corkscrew-tailed, snouted species currently being much maligned as the source of virus strain A/New Jersey/’76, more commonly referred to as swine flu.

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Three persons prosecuted for their participation in the raid last March 13 on the Piedras Negras jail in Mexico were acquitted October 1 of most of the charges against them although two still face jail terms.

Mike Hill, Billy Blackwell and Sterling Davis held Mexican prison guards at gunpoint while eleven Americans and five Mexicans fled the jail and crossed the Rio Grande border to Eagle Pass, Texas.

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To the Fifth Estate:

The FE is usually a delight to read. Only a couple of small things have detracted from that: Using “man” to mean “people”(in the article on a Michigan landfill) is sexist and a turnoff to me.

In the cover article of your gang issue [#276, September 1976] I was never certain what you felt about the gang attacks. Seems when you sound more situationist—like you become less clear and less subjective. The other articles on gangs were fine—the open letter to the columnists, a delight.

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On the frontiers of what has been termed “moral autonomy,” a long-range anti-ship missile is being developed for the U.S. military by Lockheed Martin Corp. which can pick its own target and destroy it independent of human minders. A team at George Mason University is also developing large groups of small robots that can work together to carry out tasks (which could include killing individuals or groups of people) without the need for humans to undergo the stress of making decisions or intervening in any way. The Pentagon realists, along with their counterparts in other nation-states, welcome the ghastly robotic potential as delivering the much sought after shelter from all responsibility for crimes committed in the service of the preservation of the system they defend.

Borders are authoritarian by their nature. Nation state borders are formed by men with weapons; those in our heads by fear and conditioning. Each creates suffering, and even death, as at the boundaries between the U.S. and Mexico, those demarking the European Union, and borders and other divisions in the Middle East. Borders protect states and the elites that rule them, not the rest of us.

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Beginning in the late 1970s, punk as a form of rebellion, along with the do-it-yourself ethos, engaged many people with anarchist and anti-authoritarian ideas.

But, whatever happened to the Sex Pistols, one of the punk rock scene’s founding groups?

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No Borders! is an easy slogan to put forth, but difficult to achieve since the modern world is constructed on them.

We put out the call in general to act as a challenge to what exists, and in our organizing, and, hopefully our lives, as consistent with our vision and as a model of the new world we want to bring into being.

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Opposition to the construction of potentially dangerous nuclear power plants escalated August 22 in Seabrook, New Hampshire as 176 people were arrested for conducting an “occupation” of a nuclear power plant construction site.

The action was organized by the Clamshell Alliance, a coalition of a dozen environmental and political groups in the New England area, and was preceded by a large rally of 1,500 persons in the Atlantic seaboard town. The rally organizers charge that the nuclear installation will be harmful to the environment and that an accidental release of radioactive material could kill nearly a million people.

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Don’t Vote—Piss in the Voting Booth

(back cover)

Another election, another opportunity to let someone else determine our lives. In modern capitalist society, the election of representatives has become an integral part of the general process of self-denial and self-repression standing at the center of modern life. It has become a prohibition to the real possibilities for self-realization. At root in bourgeois society—occurring fundamentally in creative human activity, in labor—is the phenomenon of alienation, an active process whereby human life and energy become crystallized in objects and institutions divorced from their creators and the creators become mere objects alien to themselves and available to be manipulated, dominated, controlled. This process is reproduced in the general life of bourgeois society and finds its political expression in electoral politics, in so-called “representative democracy”. Through the practice of voting we alienate the possibility for defining and administering our own lives by delivering this function to someone else. Electoral politics is an obstacle to both. And so we conclude that voting will get us nowhere. Don’t vote for reactionaries, don’t vote for liberals. They are all committed to the present state of affairs. Don’t vote for members of so-called Socialist or Communist Parties. They are charlatans incapable of a liberated vision of life. Don’t vote for fools, don’t vote for wisemen. Don’t vote for anyone. We can do it ourselves.

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 48201

DOG—I am looking for a good home for a 7-3/4 year old, male, Irish Setter. Please call 831–0622.

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Send letters to fe — at — fifthestate — dot — org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220. All formats accepted, including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length.

I am really glad the FE has published and continues to publish articles that cover the experiences of people in various parts of the world that haven’t conformed neatly to the dominant narratives on the left or the right, or the cheerleaders of any government. As anarchists, these are the stories we need to know about, and often the people are the ones we want to be in solidarity with, when we know they are there!

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Ammunition Books, 4403 Second Ave., Detroit, Michigan 48201

ILLUMINATUS TRILOGY

by Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson

Part I The Eye in the Pyramid 304 pp.

Part II The Golden Apple 272 pp.

Part III Leviathan 253 pp.

Incredible political fantasy tale of a world-wide, eons-old conspiracy to impose an authoritarian rule on the planet. Scenes range from SDS conventions to underwater battles at Atlantis to giant rock festivals in Germany. Sex, LSD, revolution, right and left wing anarchism all compete in one of the most bizarre pieces of fiction (or is it?).

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The Fifth Estate needs a minimum of forty persons willing to pledge $5.00 a month to insure this paper’s survival and increase our ability to do such things as enlarge page size or do special issue supplements. A long rap probably won’t convince you one way or the other about whether or not the paper is worthwhile to maintain—either you like it and that makes it worth five bucks a month or you don’t. (By the way, this isn’t meant to be a guilt trip—we know some people just cannot afford a monthly sum like that.) Fifth Estate sustainers will receive a free publication each month as well as free admission to all FE events such as benefits and film showings. If you can help us, mail this coupon and we’ll contact you next month.

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Gang fever, like the Bird’s pitching, seems to have been just a-passing summer phenomenon. Both served their purpose for the Motor City and then disappeared. Of course, youth crime has not disappeared—just its exploitation by the media and city hall politicians has waned.

Hizoner Coleman Young is now preoccupied with concern about how far up in his administration the Federal drug probe will go (it’s already touched his political associates and relatives), and with the exception of a few feeble attempts like Channel 7’s “Summer of Terror” series, the media has gone back to its usual drab fare.

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NEW YORK (LNS)—While fervently minimizing the danger of nuclear accidents, the federal government is busy making plans in case accidents do occur, according to a recent New York Times report.

A 43-page draft has been written by the Federal Preparedness Agency—a 700-member group within the General Services Administration. It details a plan to “cope with the casualties, property damage and loss of civilian control that might be caused by a serious accident at one of the nation’s 58 nuclear reactors.”

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It is a mystery to us why a small number of anarchists and primitivists are attracted to Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who carried out a murderous bombing campaign between 1978 and 1995 against targets representing technology. The homemade bombs he planted or mailed killed three people and injured 23. Although imprisoned for life since 1996, he continues to be cited as an influence by writers, and one group recently called for birthday cards to be sent to him.

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This article is the second of a two-part series on the effects that the indiscriminate care and usage of radioactive waste materials and dangerous chemicals are having, and will continue to have in the future, on man and his environment.

Part One of the series, Capitalism’s Industrial Plagues, #276, September 1976, dealt with the devastating results of nuclear and chemical dumps, leakages and accidents in the United States and around the world. Part Two now looks into the Federal Government’s intention of testing land here in Michigan for the possible construction of a nuclear waste disposal system.

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Since the July 10^th explosion at an Italian Chemical plant outside of the northern Italian city of Seveso, information has come to light to indicate that Michigan could be the setting for a similar disaster.

The explosion at the Icmesa plant, which sickened 500 persons and caused a mass evacuation of the area released approximately 4 1/2 pounds of the chemical dioxin (TCDD) into the atmosphere. TCDD is considered to be “the most toxic small molecule known to science—so dangerous that it is toxic at concentrations as low as one part per trillion.

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Both Marxist and liberal historians have always depicted the Nazi movement as the bitter enemy of unions and the victory of German fascism as the death knell of the labor movement. A critical examination shows that, in fact, the opposite was the case and the Nazis used the unions in the same manner as their predecessors.

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China is in fashion. Enthusiasm for China can be found amongst liberals, technocrats and members of the World Bank. In the popular view “the people are brave and the culture squeaky clean.”

Maoists and proto-Maoists proclaim China as a genuine Socialist country, valiantly struggling through the unity of its three “classes”—the peasants, workers and the glorious Peoples’ Liberation Army—to industrialize without the bureaucratic distortions of the revisionist USSR.

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U.S. Getting Radiation From China A-Blast

WASHINGTON — (AP) — Light radiation from a Chinese atomic test is sprinkling parts of the eastern United States, leading health officials in one state to warn residents to wash garden vegetables carefully before eating them.

Pennsylvania officials were first to report detection of the fallout from a Sept. 26 blast at Lop Nor in western China. Other areas reporting some radiation include New Jersey, southern Connecticut, Long Island, Delaware and South Carolina.

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We are all familiar with the ruthless stereotyping and blatant falsification of anarchism in the mass media employing out-dated, long exploded cliches such as that anarchists are solely interested in destruction, fueled by an infantile rage.

It was these stereotypes that were used, for example, in the 1880s to convict the Haymarket martyrs for a bombing they didn’t commit, and have been used repeatedly in U.S. literature to defame the most earnest opponents of capitalism and the state.

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The “socialist” government of unified Vietnam, after telling the Vietnamese people for the past twenty years that they must expel the imperialist nations of France and the United States, is proposing to invite private corporations of those same countries, along with those of Japan, Canada, Australia and Norway, to exploit Vietnam’s wealth of cheap labor and natural resources—all in the name of “industrial development” and production.

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Wowie zowie!—this issue marks the beginning of the 12^th year of continuous publication for the Fifth Estate. In 1965, 17-year-old Harvey Ovshinsky came back from the West Coast after a summer of working on the Los Angeles Free Press with the idea of starting a similar “underground” newspaper in Detroit. After varying fits and starts the FE rapidly became part of the dope, rock and roll and marching in the streets phenomena of the ‘60s and early ‘70s. With the demise of the “Movement” and an accompanying reduction in circulation from a high of 14,000 in 1969 to a low of about 5,000 in 1974, the paper made one last stab at survival as a commercial, youth-oriented weekly. That effort collapsed in July 1975 when the present staff revamped the works into a monthly publication of libertarian communism having a circulation of 3,000. None of us feel an “awesome responsibility” or anything like that, to continue what has turned out to be an institution in Detroit, but we do plan to keep on rolling for the time being—at least as long as we can maintain a degree of relevancy and have a touch of fun...

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While the main contribution of Marxism-Leninism remains its establishment of state capitalism in areas of the world where private capital could not develop, its project has also debased language to a point suggested in George Orwell’s 1984—where words are distorted so as to take on their opposite meaning. A case in point is the Aug. 11, 1976 front-page of The Guardian, a New York City based Mao-oid weekly newspaper, which announced proudly “The Liberation of Africa.” No matter that what is pictured is a civilian politician (President Samora Machel of Mozambique, who rules without even the pretense of an election) reviewing the troops—faceless cannon fodder, dressed identically, responding automatically to commands, ready to die for the State and the Leader.

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To the Fifth Estate:

If it is wrong for a woman to be put on trial when she is raped, isn’t it equally wrong for a society to be put on trial when it is raped?

Prejudice predates capitalism and is found in all societies. The same can be said of crime. Smash the State! Let the workers control the factories they work in. Do all of this and you will have a small residue who will want to do harm to their fellow man.

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A group of American prisoners serving time in Mexican jails attempted to call attention to their demands for an end to torture and for action by the U.S. government by staging a nation-wide hunger strike throughout the Mexican prison system on September 7. However, the Mexican head of prisons reported that the strike was not successful and only fifty Americans and two Canadians in Mexico City jails were said to have participated.

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Millard Berry

Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

Pat Halley

Kathy Horak

Rick London

Tina Nachalo

Bob Nirkind

E.B. Maple

Pat O’Bryan

Algirdas Ratnikas

Marilyn Werbe

Peter Werbe

John Zerzan

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: 1:00–5:00 P.M., Mondays through Fridays. Subscriptions are $3.00 for 12 issues. Call 842–8888 for retail sales outlets. Second Class postage paid at Detroit, Michigan. No copyright. No commercial advertising.

As Noel and Marie Murray approached their Dublin home after a morning stroll they were confronted by a garda (an Irish cop), wielding a sub-machine gun.

“You’re dead, Murray,” he screamed. A few months later, a justice of the Special Criminal Court concluded a political show trial by confirming the garda’s sentence.

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What happened to the future? The twenty-first century was supposed to be a new era; an age of liberty, love, and lucid life. The old world of misery was scheduled to be destroyed.

Instead, all we got is more slavery, hatred, and hyper-alienation.

Where are the dreamers? Why do we continue living on a prison planet? Why does it seem that it is each one of us alone against the universe?

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In one sense, anarchy is a desired end. In another, it’s an ever-present means, a universal tendency, a generative force that gives birth to new worlds.

In this latter sense, anarchy represents the ultimate achievement in human self-consciousness; the point at which we recognize—if only as a fleeting but transformative glimpse—that we are the artists who make and remake the human world of morality, social structure, and scientific theory.

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“SMV: Social Media Virus” by A. Esmie Wright was one of the many plays presented at the 11^th annual Montreal International Anarchist Theatre Festival (MIATF) May 17 and 18, 2016. It is the world’s only such event; a yearly, volunteer labor of love, presenting provocative, socially engaged, freedom-loving theatre from around the world at an affordable price. It adheres to the anarchist tradition of no government handouts or corporate sponsorship.

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CHARACTERS

SEVEN: A young woman, mid-20s. Architect of the virus.

GEORGIA: A young woman, mid-20s. Friend of Seven.

CLEANER: Works for Seven.

CLEANER: Works for Seven.

SETTING: A window-less room with a desk and chair. Located in Washington DC.

TIME: Present. Seven is in a window-less room, monitoring activity on her computer. Her friend, a woman by the name of Georgia enters the room distraught.

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a review of

Meat Market: Female Flesh under Capitalism by Laurie Penny. Zero Books, 2011, 68 pp., $12.95

“Contemporary pseudo-feminism is all about the power of yes. Yes, we want shoes, orgasms and menial office work. Yes, we want chocolate, snuggles, and straight hair. Yes, we will do all the dirty little jobs nobody else wants to do, yes, we will mop and sweep and photocopy and do the shopping and plan the meals and organise the parties and wipe up all the shit and the dirt and grin and strip and perform and straighten our backs and smile and say yes, again yes, we will do it all.”

—from Meat Market

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The Paris Commune, which lasted from March 18 to May 28, 1871, was an experiment in self-governance that is still inspiring today.

The Franco-Prussian war of 1870 saw the defeat of the French military by the more disciplined and technically better equipped Prussian military.

While the French government worked on negotiating the end to the war, many people living in Paris refused to surrender. Following a brutal four-month siege, they bravely took their fate into their own hands and declared Paris an independent Commune.

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Botox

Vajazzles

Spray-tan

Collagen

Foundation

Blusher, Shadow

Liner; Stick-on lashes

Anti-perspirant; Perfume

Body spray, Deodorant; Facelift

Tummy tuck, Magic knickers;

Padded bra, Corset

Silicone implants;

Waxed legs

Shaved armpits

Plucked eyebrows

A Brazilian; Detox, Diet

Diet, Diet; Teeth whitening

Anal bleaching, Liposuction;

Colonic irrigation, Pedicure

Manicure; Laser hair removal;

Cosmetic gynecology

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Imagine the United States split regionally into conservative-fascist and leftist popular front-anarchist zones. Civil war rages at the shifting boundary lines with half the country under the domination of an insurgent military right-wing junta determined to destroy the elected government and all individuals and organizations of the left. Then imagine that simultaneously, behind the lines in the popular front zone (say, most of the East and West coasts), there are widespread decentralized efforts to transform the society through economic and social collectivization in producers’ cooperatives, free schools, free health centers, neighborhood councils, local popular assemblies-the assumption of community self-responsibility through direct action from the bottom up.

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