Most Recent Additions

The article from which this excerpt is taken, “Stopping the Industrial Hydra: Revolution Against the Megamachine,” appeared in our Winter 1990 issue. It provides analyses of the Exxon Valdez oil spill of March 1989 from the standpoint of a global criticism of industrial capitalist society.

The Valdez was the source of the worst oil spill to that date in U.S. history, spilling eleven million gallons into Alaska’s Prince William Sound, where it ran aground.

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a review of

Lives of the Orange Men by Major Waldemar Fydrych, edited by Gavin Grindon, translated by David French, with an introduction by the Yes Men Minor Compositions/Autonomedia, 2014, 330 pp.

While many historically-minded radicals are familiar with the imaginative counter-cultural actions undertaken by the Dutch Provos in the 1960s, the Orange Alternative’s subversive cultural resistance tactics emanating from Poland in the 1980s are less well known.

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There is a monster outside of our window.

The monster roars and shudders; threatens, blusters; blows off steam and rusts. It is a beast of the sea; it is a massive machine; it is dangerous; it is explosive; it has no jaws, but a smaller subtler and more secret weapon... It is crawling with maggots.

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An enduring image of Vietnam War resistance is men burning their draft cards. And, draft resistance played a big role in raising the profile of war tax resistance. Vietnam era draft resisters like Randy Kehler and Ed Hedemann followed up their refusal to fight with a refusal to pay for fighting, following the example of World War I and II draft and war tax resisters like Ammon Hennacy and Wally Nelson.

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Here’s a good one! A listener from Shanghai asks, “What about self-management?”

Excerpted from “Class Struggle in ‘Red’ China” by C.D. Ward, in World Revolution

In China and similarly throughout the world, the trade unions are a part of the state machine; their function is to integrate the working class into the nation’s economy. Their main task is defined by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as stimulating labor discipline and productivity:

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Unbeknownst to the vast majority of people in this country, we’ve once again over the last few months been inundated with a rash of extremely serious attempts on the part of the state apparatus via bourgeois legalism to further severely limit our personal freedoms.

This time around they’re coming at us armed with a triple threat: an attempted compromise between liberal and conservative forces in the Senate to push through the notoriously repressive S-1 Bill; the revival of the death penalty upon the seven-to-two vote of the nine U. S. Supreme Court Justices and, finally; the re-introduction of the old “conspiracy” ploy by a crusading anti-pornography assistant U. S. attorney in Memphis, Tennessee.

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“The whole of Poland is on strike today.”

— A worker from the city of Ursus, Poland, June, 1976

On July 20, six Polish workers from Ursus (a suburb of Warsaw) and seven from the city of Random were sentenced to prison terms ranging from three to ten years for their alleged participation in a series of food riots that swept Poland in June.

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A review of The Emergence of a UAW Local, 1936–1939: A study in class and culture by Peter Friedlander

There are few books which provide an inside view of the early years of CIO organization, and even fewer of them are as rich as this study. For this reason alone it is well worth reading. Nevertheless, this book is seriously flawed. Yet it is in the flaws themselves that the most important questions arise, questions which must be posed, paused over, and answered. This review is intended to explore these areas, hopefully to stimulate discussion and debate.

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Reprinted from Internationalism No. 3

Unionism corresponded to a particular historical period of workers ‘ struggles. Its form was determined by its reformist content. Unions regrouped only a minority of the working class, just enough to be able to put pressure on the capitalist class. Unions organized workers in the image of the capitalist system itself: according to trade, job skills, industrial sector. Unions became increasingly bureaucratized as capitalism itself became more complex. Hierarchical relations became the norm as unions entered the field of bourgeois legality. Economic demands were the unions’ exclusive preoccupation and a political view of the system was relegated to a separate compartment: the political parties. But as long as reformism was a valid perspective, unions continued to play a role in improving the lot of the working class.

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NEW YORK (LNS)—A Colorado University Professor thinks he has discovered the real reason millions of Americans hate their job.

Professor Eugene Koprowski, who is also an industrial consultant on employee relations, said these attitudes are the result of permissive parents and television. Both lead children to expect “immediate gratification” he said, and when they don’t get it on the job as adults, they become dissatisfied. The result is that many workers do as little as possible while at work.

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If you are reading this newspaper and are not a subscriber, please be advised that you are able to do so only through the support and generosity of those who are. On about July 18 we realized that we had no money for our August print bill, the July rent and a multitude of other smaller obligations. We sent out a special mailing to our subscribers asking for $1.00 donations per person and the response was overwhelming, with some contributions as high as $25.00! The total was $500 and is enough to allow us to hang on another month. We were all really pleased with the tremendous response from our readers; we thank you all greatly for your support, and hope for your continued interest in our future...

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In these lackluster months of 1976 in which “our revolutionary heritage” is paraded like a hairless, three-legged dog from the past down main street, the people of America are content to follow mere fads and hobbies in place of the nearly infinite possibilities of creative experiments, and revolutionary “outrages”. The most current and popular fad is the C.B. (Citizens Band) radio craze with its own particular jargon, catch phrases and all of the pseudo-sexual connotations that dominant fads command in this sociocarnival.

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Millard Berry

Guyora Binder

Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

Pat Halley

Kathy Horak

Pat Kazenko

Bob Nirkind

E.B. Maple

Pat O’Bryan

Pete Rachleff

Algirdas Ratnikas

Dennis Rosenblum

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.

The struggle for unionization in the 1930s has always been shrouded in myth and revered by both the labor movement and the Left as a period of labor militancy. A closer look at the developments shows a much different picture than was generally thought to be the case and exposes what the real role of the unions was.

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The State is the organized authority, domination and power of the possessing classes over the masses... the most flagrant, the most cynical, and the most complete negation of humanity. It shatters the universal solidarity of all men on the earth, and brings some of them into association only for the purpose of destroying, conquering, and enslaving all the rest.... This flagrant negation of humanity which constitutes the very essence of the State is, from the standpoint of the State, its supreme duty and its greatest virtue... Thus, to offend, to oppress, to despoil, to plunder, to assassinate or enslave one’s fellow man is ordinarily regarded as a crime. In public life, on the other hand from the standpoint of patriotism, when these things are done for the greater glory of the State, for the preservation or the extension of its power, it is all transformed into duty and virtue... This explains why the entire history of ancient and modern states is merely a series of revolting crimes; why kings and ministers, past and present, of all times and all countries—statesmen, diplomats, bureaucrats, and warriors—if judged from the standpoint of simple morality and human justice, have a hundred, a thousand times over earned their sentence to hard labor or to the gallows. There is no horror, no cruelty, sacrilege, or perjury, no imposture, no infamous transaction, no cynical robbery, no bold plunder or shabby betrayal that has not been or is not daily being perpetrated by the representatives of the states, under no other pretext than those elastic words, so convenient and yet so terrible: “for reasons of state.”

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Some might have thought that the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellite states, along with the abandonment of socialist economics across less industrialized countries would have sounded the death knell of Marxism. But Marx’s loyal tribe are keen to regurgitate his mantras at any available opportunity.

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[In response to Rich Take Non-Aspirin Over FE Ad, #274, July 1976]

Dear Sirs (sic):

We have kidnapped your staff member, E.B. Maple. If you do not deliver $300,000 in one dollar bills or the Chairman of the Board of General Motors, whichever weighs more, to a site known only to us, we will be forced to release him.

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Do you think it will go on forever?

The foul city spreading its ugly suburbs like an ink-blot over the fresh green woods and meadows,

Its buildings climbing up to ten, twenty, thirty shapeless stories,

Its lurid smoke smothering the blue sky;

The mad rushing hither and thither, by steam and electricity, as of insects on a stagnant pool, ever faster and faster;

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Forget those L.L. Bean and Harry & David catalogs! When you’re picking out presents for the holidays, send revolutionary literature as gifts and help support independent publishers and booksellers. If you want a wider selection of anti-authoritarian titles, contact Left Bank Books, 92 Pike St., Seattle WA 98101; tel and fax: 206-622-0195; or AK Press, P.O. Box 40682, San Francisco CA 94140; tel: 415-864-0892.

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Pumpkin Hollow, Tenn.—I’m trying to pick this narrative up off the gravel road, gyrating back into the woods. This odyssey of drift must stop somewhere; that somewhere is here. Perhaps my nomadic motion can continue in psychic space as my body plants itself firmly on the ground, my ground, our ground. I previously chose to be homeless, a vagabond, a hobo, roaming, raving and misbehaving.

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To FE:

In the last issue of FE in the Letters section, FE made a comment that I really didn’t understand, and as a P.O.W., I was somewhat disappointed with: “This paper has a long history of supporting political prisoners. Some of them committed acts of terror against the state.” (emphasis added) Why was the word terror used to describe our armed campaign? This would imply that we are terrorist. It is this type of language that gives credence to the KKKovernment’s effort to criminalize the legitimacy of our armed struggle in order to justify our illegal imprisonment and their refusal to acknowledge our P.O.W. status. From the late 60s to the early 80s, the death or injury of a civilian has never occurred as a result of the Black Liberation Army. All targets were legitimate.

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Several new books of interest have recently come our way. We only have space to mention them in this issue, but hope to review them in the near future.

A new edition of ‘occasional FE contributor Richard Drinnon’s Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating & Empire-Building is once again available, in a new edition from the University of Oklahoma Press. We have recommended Drinnon’s book for years; it is an inspired, encyclopedic counter-history of U.S. colonial-settler culture, connecting the massacres from colonial Massachusetts to My Lai, and the imperial rationales that justified them.

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For several issues of the Fifth Estate, On Gogol Boulevard (OGB) produced a two-page spread on former Eastern Bloc and Third World anti-authoritarian struggles. However, due to numerous glitches, we’re missing from the FE again except for these short items. But, by next issue we should be back. In the meantime, OGB is available on our website shared with other New York City anarchist groups: http://Flag.Blackened.net/agony.

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For 22 years the doors of justice have been closed to Leonard Peltier. Now, the door may be opening a crack. A few months ago AIM activist Dennis Banks announced that Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs, had agreed to hold oversight hearings into the events leading to Peltier’s arrest and conviction. Wounded Knee, the COINTELPRO programs against AIM, Peltier’s illegal extradition from Canada, and the many irregularities in his trial will be among the issues brought to light.

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Artistic anarchism has a long and complex history. Certainly one of its most interesting chapters in France is the development of two competing anarchist discourses about art’s libertarian possibilities during the years leading up to the ill-fated Paris Commune of 1871. Then the paintings of the anarchist artist Gustave Courbet served as a foil for a debate in which Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s praise for Courbet’s “Realist” aesthetic was pitted against the young novelist Emile Zola’s enthusiasm for the stylistic qualities of Courbet’s art. Proudhon encapsulated his views in his last book, Du principe de l’art et de sa destination social (The principle of art and its social goal), published in 1865. [1] Here he situated art production socially so as to affirm the artist’s freedom to transform history. Proudhon argued art was inescapably social, and that the artist was free only to the degree to which he or she sought to transform society. He admired Courbet’s Realism because it pushed history forward through critique, extending the dialectical interplay between anarchist criticism and social transformation into the artistic realm.

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Two interviews with the poet on life, death, sex, poetry, Kerouac, and meditation—the first from 1991, published here for the first time; the second from the October 1969 issue of Fifth Estate.

Note: In October 1991, Fifth Estate staff member Peter Werbe interviewed poet Allen Ginsberg on the radio talk show he hosts. Ginsberg was in Ann Arbor for the performance of his opera, “Hydrogen Jukebox,” a collaboration with composer and pianist Philip Glass. As were so many of Ginsberg’s Michigan appearances, the opening was a benefit for Jewel Heart, an international organization of Tibetan Buddhist and cultural centers.

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Dear Allen,

Are you really dead? I don’t believe it. My hands are black with ink & my eyes are wet with the sting of The New York Times front page. You are embalmed in the headlines as “Countercultural Guru” & “Master of the Outrageous,” by journalists who try to synthesize & summarize the volumes of your subversive words. I’m at work in a drab warehouse in Nashville where most of the folk don’t even know I’m a faery, where even gentle graffiti evokes the talisman of fear. The closet you helped me explode has its door shut & locked tightly here.

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Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland and other entertainers performing in FTA, a satire on the army & Vietnam war. From the documentary “F.T.A.: (F**k the Army)” available from StoneyRoadsFilms.com

“Jane Fonda, Traitor Bitch”

—Bumper Sticker at Old Miami, a Detroit Bar

In 1968, Jane Fonda was best known for the role she played as the scantily-clad Barbarella in the film by the same title. Shortly thereafter, she emerged as an influential voice in the movement against the war in Vietnam, leaving as her most lasting contribution the support she gave the resistance efforts of GIs and veterans.

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Welcome to our Fall 1997 edition, #350. We think we’ve assembled numerous informative and challenging articles for you and are particularly pleased with the issue’s art work. Thanks to Stephen Goodfellow for the cover’s ominous drawing and no less to the creative talents of Richard Mock, Maurice Spira, Bill Koehnline, and Marilynn Rashid whose drawings grace our pages; also, to Alexis Buss for her tasty layout of Alan Antliff’s art and anarchy article. Thanks to all of you whose contributions keep our project going. Prisoners and GIs: if this is your first issue, please notify us if you want to be on our subscription list.

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The July, 1967 Detroit rebellion left 42 dead, hundreds of millions of dollars in damages and scars still unhealed today. The Fifth Estate office was in a hard-hit area: the August 1, 1967 issue featured first-hand accounts from staff members who went directly into the fray while half the city was still in flames.

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I’m writing this on Labor Day 1997, the third such holiday since five newspaper unions began their strike against the Detroit News and Free Press in July 1995. The spirits of many of the strikers remain high, their weekly paper continues to publish, and a national AFL-CIO-sponsored march brought out tens of thousands of supporters, yet victory or even a return to work appears more and more distant.

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All of a sudden the media has discovered police brutality after years of denying its existence. The spotlight on this public secret came as a result of a particularly hideous incident of police torture recently by New York City cops who rival their L.A. counterparts for racism, brutal behavior and right wing politics.

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Looking to change my life, at the age of nineteen I decided to pack my belongings into a knapsack and hitch-hike to California. Two miraculous rides carried me through prairies, deserts and mountains into Los Angeles to a friend’s place at the edge of Hollywood. In those days, at least, California was considered the ultimate destination for every dream of freedom and opportunity, spiritual and economic.

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54 people from a San Francisco Bay Area cluster of anarchist affinity groups, Homes Not Jails, and several homeless activists were arrested after occupying, barricading, and sitting-in outside of three vacant homes on the Presidio, a former army base. They demanded that the 466 units kept empty by the National Park Service be used for the city’s desperate need for housing. Last year, 154 homeless people died on San Francisco’s streets. Earlier that afternoon, homeless, tenant, anti-poverty, anarchist and environmental groups held a rally, followed by a 300-person march carrying giant puppets and cardboard effigies of homes. To support them, contact the Tenants Union at 415-282-5525. —photo: Anders Corr

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Winter is approaching in wolf country. The last of the sugar maples have surrendered their leaves, and there’s a colder bite in the air that tells you its time to die. It’s nature at its realest, the life cycle of the wild that will never be stopped. Winter is coming and if you are not strong, you will not survive.

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Collage: James Koehnline

A review of the following texts:

Green Apocalypse, Luther Blissett, Stewart Home, and the Neoist Alliance (London: Unpopular Books [Box 15, 138 Kingsland High Street, London E8 2NS UK], 1996), £3.50

Into the 1990’s With Green Anarchist, Steve Booth (London: Green Anarchist Books [PO Box 407, Camberley GU15 3FL, England], 1996), £4

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For years, the U.S. government has denied that the Gulf War Syndrome exists, refusing to admit the severity of illnesses suffered by tens of thousands of veterans of that conflict. Recent studies, however, show that the soldiers’ illnesses are indeed real, and troops deployed to the Gulf were more than three times as likely as U.S. soldiers elsewhere to suffer chronic diarrhea, joint pain, skin rashes, fatigue, depression, and memory loss.

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FE Note: David Watson’s “Swamp Fever” appears in Fifth Estate #350, Fall, 1997

Dear Fifth Estate:

Since I am someone drawn into the dispute between Green Anarchist (GA) and the so-called “Neoist Alliance” because of my long-standing support for GA against state repression, I would like to make the following comments concerning your article.

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A review of:

In TERRORgation: The CIA’s Secret Manual on Coercive Questioning, edited by Jon Elliston and Charles Overbeck, illustrated, Parascope, 1430 Willamette, #329, Eugene, OR 97401, 56 pp., $5.95 or www.parascope.com

One anniversary you may have missed in 1997 was the 50-year anniversary of the birth of the Central Intelligence Agency, the secret government organization principally devoted to waging covert state terrorism. To put the spotlight on this repressive legacy, Parascope, a small publisher, has released the previously classified 1963 KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation. (KUBARK is the CIA’s code name.) Thanks is due to Elliston and Overbeck for helping make available this chilling manual used in the agency’s long-hidden crimes.

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Letters Policy We welcome letters commenting on our articles, stating opinions, or giving reports of events in your area. We don’t guarantee to print everything received, but all letters are read by our staff and considered for publication.

Typed letters or ones on disk are appreciated, but not required. Length should not exceed two double-spaced pages. If you are interested in writing longer responses, please contact us.

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Reviewed by Allan Antliff unless otherwise noted

The Uncontrollables vs the Grotesque Frame-Up Against Anarchists in Italy: Dossier, 1997 documents the Italian government’s efforts to target Italy’s anarchist movement using the confession of an activist’s former lover. The government is using her testimony to pin numerous unsolved kidnappings, bank robberies, and direct actions (attacks on energy pylons, etc.) on over 50 anarchists.

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On 28^th September last, a group of unknown people approached a field in County Carlow, Ireland, with malicious intent. They proceeded to tear apart an acre of sugar beets’ then disappeared back into the night from which they came.

The field was the property of Teagasc, a semi-state agricultural research organization. The catchily-branded Roundup Ready Sugar Beet that was destroyed had grown from seed provided by the U.S. multinational, Monsanto (See p. 2). The sabotage was claimed by the Gaelic Earth Liberation Front.

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One, two, three, four, we don’t want your fuckin’ war!

Again and again they chanted the couplet as they slowly made their way downtown along New York City’s Fifth Avenue, and then crosstown on 42^nd Street to the United Nations. There, they would hear Martin Luther King and several other luminaries express these same sentiments against the Vietnam war, albeit in somewhat milder language.

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This essay originally appeared in John Clark’s now out-of-print The Anarchist Moment: Reflections on Culture, Nature and Power (Black Rose Books, Montreal, 1984) as “Master Lao and the Anarchist Prince.” John is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of Environmental Studies at Loyola University, New Orleans. He edits the Freeport Watch Bulletin, covering the activities of the evil Freeport-McMoRan mining corporation from POB 79, Loyola Univ., New Orleans LA 70118.

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This section is produced for the Fifth Estate by Neither East Nor West; a New York City group linking alternative oppositions in the East and West, and printing news and documents unavailable in the corporate and “left” media. Our title refers to Moscow’s Gogol Boulevard, a favorite hangout of Soviet-era counterculture youth dissidents, artists, and peace and human rights activists.

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“The tramps refused to obey; they abandoned time, possessions, labor, slavery. They walked and slept in counter-rhythm to the world.”

—Anais Nin, The Tramps, 1946

Anais Nin’s encounter-with the homeless wanderers of her day—the tramps of Paris, “in counter-rhythm to the world” reminds me of an enduring duality in anarchism. We stand at one remove from capitalism, attempting in our own way to live in a degraded world in spite of it. In the quest to realize our ideals many of us have joined the ranks of such rebels, who subsist on capital’s margins.

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In December 1997 two writers died who influenced our perspective: Rudolf Bahro and Cornelius Castoriadis, both former marxists capable of valuable insights as well as highly questionable positions. Bahro and Castoriadis were original thinkers, nevertheless, and deserve recognition as important voices in the breakup of traditional leftism and the emergence of new forms of radicalism.

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With the hope of leaving a fruitful seed, the bodies of the Spanish libertarians are sowing the earth in various continents of the planet. In Montreal, it is our dear Cisco Rebordosa. He was preceded by Enrique Castillos, who dedicated many years of his life to militancy, Alfred Munrós (see Fall 1996 FE), whose illustrations are well known to readers of our publications, and Alfred Ruiz, a veteran of the anti-Franco struggle in Spain, where he was imprisoned.

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Honoring the Haymarket Martyrs

The U.S. National Park Service has declared Chicago’s Haymarket Martyrs’ monument a National Historic Landmark and the Illinois Labor History Society (ILHS) is sponsoring a celebration, Sunday afternoon, May 3. The ceremony will take place at the former Waldheim cemetery, now called Forest Home, at 863 Desplaines Ave. in Forest Park, Ill., outside of Chicago.

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MOSCOW—Sometimes I wonder who has more sexual hang-ups: Moscow anarchists or Bill Clinton? Only serious perverts can truly understand Clinton’s conflict with Iraq as more than the quest for domination; it’s penis envy of Zhirinovsky-esque proportions, the sublimated sexual aggression of two presidents played out on the world political stage.

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