Full list of texts

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.

...

a review of

Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by James C. Scott. Yale University Press, 2017 yalebooks.yale.edu

In his latest book, James Scott continues his exploration of the relationship between domestication and the development of hierarchies of power in pre-modern and modern societies. He is particularly interested in examining the situations of people who resisted being incorporated into states. Against the Grain rejects the view that human history is a story of linear progression leading to the conveniences of contemporary civilization.

...

a review of

In Search of the Masterless Men of Newfoundland by Seaweed & Ron Sakolsky. Ardent Press, 2017 ardentpress.com

Seaweed and Ron Sakolsky have put together a book to inspire current and future rebels. Much more than history, it relates a myth with the potential to nurture hope for freer ways of life.

...

a review of

May Made Me: An Oral History of the 1968 Uprising in France by Mitchell Abidor. AK Press, 2018 akpress.org

May Made Me joins thousands of other books published over the past fifty years dealing with the insurrectionary events in France during May and June 1968. Unfortunately, most of them are quite superficial, inaccurate and often highly distorted by authoritarian presuppositions.

...

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.

...

[one_half padding=“0 0 0 30px”]AK Press

370 Ryan Ave. #100 Chico, CA 95973 USA

(510) 208–1700

info@akpress.org

akpress.org

AK Press (AKUK)

33 Tower St., Edinburgh EH6 7BN, UK

+44 131 555 5165

ak@akedin.demon.co.uk

akuk.com

Autonomedia

autonomedia.org

Black & Red

P.O. Box 02374, Detroit MI 48202

...

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.

...

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.

...

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.)

...

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.

Enjoyed your review of John Zerzan’s A People’s History of Civilization, “The Way of the Passenger Pigeon,” by Peter Werbe in FE #401, Summer 2018. In your reviewer’s analogy of civilization being a train heading towards a bridge that is out without the realization of those supping in the dining car, if I enjoy that last supper as it crosses that trestle, is that decadence?

...

We are seeking analytical articles, news reports, essays, poetry, and fiction on acts of refusal and resistance, either individually or collectively; also graphic illustrations and photographs. Before submitting essays or articles, please read our writer’s guidelines at www.FifthEstate.org.

...

The theme for this issue, Anything Can Happen, originated as the title of a 1968 Fredy Perlman essay at a time when everything did, indeed, seem possible. The ebullience of that era, in which many believed revolution was on the horizon has faded, but the engagement of activist projects in confronting the worst abuses of the system continue apace.

...

In late August, a sizable crowd gathered in a downtown Detroit park well past its glory days to eat chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry ice cream...and learn about Sacco and Vanzetti.

The event, known as the Sacco and Vanzetti Ice Cream Social, honored the memory of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian-born anarchists framed for allegedly robbing and killing a paymaster and security guard in South Braintree, Massachusetts in April 1920.

...

The Machine and Its Discontents, a collection of writings by Fredy Perlman (1934–1985) has recently been jointly published in the U.K. by Theory and Practice and Active Distribution (theoryandpractice.org.uk and activedistribution.org). Perlman, a prolific writer of radical texts, was a ten-year participant in the Fifth Estate.

...

“Sous les paves, la plage!” [Under the paving stones, the beach!]

—Revolutionary slogan; Paris 1968

1968 was an “Anything Can Happen” kind of year.

It was the year of the Prague Spring, the Tet Offensive, President LBJ’s abdication, massive student protests, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the police riots at the Chicago Democratic Convention. The most historically momentous occurrence of that year was the May June uprising and general strike by students and workers in France.

...

Since the 19^th century, anarchists have made opposition to representative democracy and electoral politics central to our critique of the state and all forms of hierarchy. As radicals who envision a world without government, we don’t want to lend legitimacy to the system of politicians and parties. The theme of this Fifth Estate issue is Anything Can Happen. This is not an empty slogan!

...

“If voting could change anything, it would be illegal.”

—Anarchist anti-electoral slogan

It’s difficult to imagine that there isn’t at least some joy, even among the most ardent electoral abstentionists, about the losses Donald Trump and the Republicans suffered in the November mid-term elections.The party and the president’s final call to continue their hard right agenda based on a relentless campaign of fear and hatred of immigrants was so fascistic that one could easily substitute Jew for those attempting to enter the country at the southern border.

...

Has an unintended alliance of Silicon Valley censorship, alternative news rebuttals, mainstream journalistic scrutiny, and especially antifa street-fighters, discouraged what passes as the intellectual wing of the most reviled political movement of the last half-century?

Although fascist street attacks continue, the alt-right has been undergoing something of a brain drain in North America recently.

...

Norman Nawrocki’s “No way! No way! Trees that Talk” was presented at the 2018 Montreal International Anarchist Theatre Festival, the theme of which was Anti-Fascism. The play is based on the lives of six anarchist, anti-fascist women—four from 20^th century opposition in Italy, Spain, Germany and Poland, and two recent ones from Greece and Syria.

...

Joseph Mahmoud Dibee, a fugitive animal-rights activist, was intercepted by Cuban authorities in early August and turned over to the FBI.

Popped by Cuban cops on an INTERPOL Red Notice, Dibee was flown to Portland, Ore., where he pleaded not guilty to taking part in a 1997 arson attack on a meatpacking plant—the first of several charges he faces.

...

Daily life has a new rhythm: routine disruptions. DPacing an accelerated news cycle and affective bursts from smart phone notifications, our subjective autonomous systems are increasingly synced up with crisis-state and techno security tempos.

We don’t know what the next surprise is going to be, but we know it’s coming.

...

In the 1990s, environmentalists and animal rights activists engaged in campaigns to put a stop to climate change, animal exploitation, and the destruction of biodiversity. They shut down board meetings, interrupted construction projects, organized demonstrations and sit-ins, held public outreach events at punk shows and vegan potlucks, liberated animals from captivity, and occasionally utilized vandalism, sabotage, and arson against corporations involved in particularly egregious behavior.

...

Canada’s Federal Court of Appeal ruled in August against the government, effectively suspending the TransMountain expansion (TMEX) project, a proposed twining of a bitumen pipeline, parallel to the first, from the Alberta tar sands to an oil refinery in Burnaby, Metro Vancouver.

The TMEX has long been opposed by a diversity of Indigenous communities, environmentalists, and anarchist activists. Recently, the Canadian government nationalized the Trans Mountain pipeline to assure the expansion would be built, putting up 4.5 billion Canadian dollars ($3.5 billion) to purchase the project from Texas oil giant, Kinder Morgan.

...

Who the hell needs bad news? Well, we all do. At least if it’s bad news for the state, capital, and patriarchy.

B(A)D News is a monthly English language info show founded at the 2013 Anarchist Balkan Bookfair in Slovenia as the International Network of Anarchist and Anti-authoritarian Radio Projects, known as A-Radio Network (A-RN). Participants were Anarchist Radio Berlin, Radio Libertaire from Paris and Crna Luknja (“Black Hole”) from Slovenia’s capital, Ljubljana, as well as by individual radio activists from Eastern Europe.

...

In Raoul Vaneigem’s 1967 Situationist treatise, The Revolution of Everyday Life, he recounts what resulted from the flooding of the basement of Ivan Pavlov’s laboratory where the Russian physiologist kept his famous salivating dogs as experiments in classical conditioning.

It was a traumatic event for the dogs that had to struggle to live in the rising water. The ones who survived completely shed the conditioning Pavlov had worked so diligently to place in them.

...

In 1917, unable to break the unity of the miners, armed vigilante gangs organized by the copper corporations, rounded up 2,000 strikers at gun point in Bisbee, Az. They were forced onto crammed cattle cars and dumped in the desert.

A hundred years ago, in September 1918, more than a hundred leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) were convicted of conspiracy to obstruct World War I. The trial marked a critical turning point for the union and the Left. In marking this centenary, we remember the Industrial Workers of the World as the most successful organization holding to a radical vision in U.S. history.

...

On June 17, Father’s Day, a march and vigil was planned outside of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) headquarters in Southwest Portland, Ore., to protest the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. It quickly developed into something that the organizers hadn’t planned for: a six week occupation of the building that effectively shut it down for an extended period of time and brought ICE activities into sharp public attention.

...

AK Press is a worker-run anarchist collective that publishes and distributes radical books as well as visual and audio media. The collective was established in 1990 and is now run by seven people in five cities and two countries. They currently publish around twenty books each year.

Four collective members, who have been involved from 12 to 28 years, posed questions to themselves about anarchist publishing to take a look at their project.

...

Quick call the police;

The Negroes are barbecuing at the lake.

Quick call the police;

The Negroes are drumming too loud

Quick call the cops

The colored choir is singing too loud.

Quick call the cops

That pregnant Negro’s belly is swollen;

Search that shoplifter’s belly!

Quick call the cops;

...

Members of Feral Crust, a small DIY ecologically-minded anarchist collective in the mountains of Marilog Davao (Southern Mindanao), Philippines are developing a rural community based on balance with the surrounding environment and social solidarity. Their community is located in a forest home to wildlife and indigenous people.

...

a review of

Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bisson. PM Press, 2009

Forget Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Lincoln was wrong or disingenuous when he told Harriet Beecher Stowe that her novel brought on the Civil War. The Slavocracy was not frightened by mawkish sentiment.

No, it was rifle-toting abolitionist zealots willing to die that caused Southern panic.

...

a review of

Long Day, Counting Tomorrow by Jim Feast. Autonomedia, 2017

“Outside across a swath of bay was the Statue of Liberty its torch, like a match head in night’s gutter.”

—from Long Day, Counting Tomorrow

Set in the late 1990s, Jim Feast’s Long Day, Counting Tomorrow is a sequel to an earlier novel, phobe, written by him and Ron Kohn. Both are mysteries involving the same group of anarchist writers. Long Day’s main character is Rask Harp, an ex-drug addict, son, brother, poet, friend, occasional prostitute, a young man who is dying from AIDS.

...

This first issue of Fire Ant, an anarchist prison solidarity zine, is published by Robcat and the incredibly energetic comrades in rural Maine.

It is a long term project for and with anarchist prisoners specifically, not a general prisoner support publication.

The goals are to raise material aid for imprisoned anarchists, spread information about imprisoned anarchists and anarchy, and foster communication between imprisoned and free roaming anarchists.

...

“Every time I think about us women, I think about the trees, the subversive trees laden in blood but not bleeding the rebellious trees encrusted but not cracking.”

—Jayne Cortez

“Unless rooted in poetry the experience of ‘outside’ from within—even the deepest ‘deep ecology’ barely scratches the surface.”

—Franklin Rosemont

...

A lone figure stood before a door. Townsfolk had ridiculed her for years because she walked daily to this same spot.

No one else saw any reason to do so. And when they asked her what drew her, she could only shake her head. An answer reverberated deep in her brain but she could never quite grasp what it was.

...

a review of

“BlacKkKlansman”

Director: Spike Lee

135 min.

“The cops and Klan go hand in hand!”

—frequent chant at anti-cop demonstrations

Spike Lee’s latest film “BlackKkKlansman,” the story of an African American police officer’s infiltration of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1970s, has received generally excellent reviews in mainstream publications and from anti-racist activists.

...

Mbeke Waseme in Malacca, Malaysia

I’ve never worked in a school with coloured people.

I looked at her wondering why she felt the need to tell us that. The day I submitted my poem, I found out why.

That moment when you submit a piece of work and you’re standing at the teacher’s desk not quite able to read what their thoughts are.

...

It is where the old man who said nothing Becomes the hero of the day

Where the time I choose to leave

Becomes the time I am willing to stay

It is where the cockroaches do not fly Scaring the shit out of me and my wards Where avocados are always in season And everyone will fight for a worthy cause

...

In July, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington DC finally gave up on its eighteen-month effort to prosecute people protesting the inauguration of Donald Trump as President.

The 217 people indicted on felony charges of conspiracy to riot, engaging in a riot and property destruction, related to the events of January 20, 2017, came to be known as the J20 defendants.

...

a review of

The Duty to Stand Aside: Nineteen Eighty-Four and the Wartime Quarrel of George Orwell and Alex Comfort by Eric Laursen. AK Press 2018

George Orwell’s fiction and non-fiction writings are among the most relevant works for understanding our current societal plight, although he died in 1950. All we need to do is turn on the TV or radio or check the internet to be confronted with denial of truth and misinformation. And all we have to do is walk down a street or enter a store, bank or public building to be reminded of the increasing surveillance all around us.

...

What first greeted me

upon entering that room

were the sad, quiet faces

as we all sat around the table.

.

Thinking of her,

wondering why

and what happened

and some of it came out later.

.

But what was also on my thoughts

was finding out how management

had known about it all day long

as they readily pursued their disturbing calculation

...

In June and July, during a visit to Spain, my partner Marilynn Rashid and I spread some of the ashes of Federico Arcos, a companero, friend, and mentor to many of us in Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, including those on the Fifth Estate. Fede, as he was called, died in 2015 at the age of 94.

(For Federico’s memorial in Detroit in 2015, see FE issue 394, Summer 2015 and 395, Winter 2016.)

...

During the outrage expressed in the national media following the delivery of over a dozen mail bombs in Late October addressed to prominent Democrats and a cable network, several commentators invoked the name of the Unabomber. (This ignores the role many of the targeted officials played in bombing other countries, but that’s a different story.)

...

If you or your loved ones don’t have citizenship, are Native American, aren’t white, aren’t Christian, are women, queer, or trans, live near environmental sacrifice zones, depend on the natural environment for your health or subsistence, work a non-white-collar job, or participate in a radical movement, you are at risk under the Trump presidency. Fighting back against the government is a question of self-defense.

...

a review of

Resisting Illegitimate Authority: A Thinking Person’s Guide to Being an Anti-Authoritarian—Strategies, Tools, and Models by Bruce E. Levine. AK Press, 2018

What makes someone anti-authoritarian? Bruce Levine, in his sometimes engaging book, Resisting Illegitimate Authority, starts by talking about his own childhood experiences testing adult authority, in this case, his teacher, and how he decided whether her authority was legitimate:

...

Bikes have no power until bodily given

and given, give back at higher gear.

Being mounted, being ridden

without armor plating, they’re

light in their taking

and being taken where.

Not that bikes can’t be taken, and take

to war: the U.S. in Havana, the British

against Boers, the Japanese in Shanghai,

...

a review of

The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth’s Past Mass Extinctions by Peter Brannen. Echo Press, 2017.

What is the best way to kill off most life on Earth? Forget those Hollywood asteroids and simply disrupt CO2 equilibrium in the atmosphere. The rest will take care of itself.

...

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.

As always, thank you for everything your team does. I’ve been working my way through the Winter 2019 issue of Fifth Estate after my shifts at Starbucks, and it really grounds me and makes me feel sane after working for capitalist madness.

...

There is no phrase that is more threatening to those in positions of power at any level of society than that of our theme, “I will not obey!” From the shop floor to the highest echelons of the state, the rulers depend on that short sentence not being uttered or, worse, acted upon, and in their worst nightmare, taken up by multitudes of us.

...

We seek analytical articles, news reports, essays, poetry, and fiction on ways of re-envisioning, re-creating and re-enchanting the world either individually or collectively. Also, art, graphic illustrations, and photographs.

Before submitting articles, read our writer’s guidelines at FifthEstate.org.

...

I traveled to Dharamsala, India in 2005 to set up a one-month summer study program, in collaboration with the Louisiana Himalaya Association, and have taken groups of students there periodically since then. During last summer’s trip, we visited renowned ecofeminist theorist and activist Vandana Shiva’s Navdanya Biodiversity Farm. We toured the fields and the seed bank, heard lectures by staff members specializing in various areas of agroecology, and were extremely fortunate that Shiva herself could speak to our small group about Navdanya and the ecofeminist politics of Earth Democracy.

...

We live in a technological life-world, more so by the hour. Our ecology is now all too largely technology, which has been irreversible, directional, and cumulative. The process that now characterizes civilization is a generalized technicization. Its success is measurable by how totally it has insinuated itself into society and into our consciousness––with grave consequences.

...

Five months after its explosive appearance on the French scene, the mass movement of the Yellow Vests (les Gilets jaunes) stands at a crossroads. It faces many choices.

Should it remain outside of the properly political world or should it enter into it and engage in debate: and even electoral campaigns? If it does the latter doesn’t it risk recuperation by the existing parties?

...

Last October 3 marked twenty-five years since eighteen US soldiers died in Mogadishu, Somalia during a famous firefight that most Americans know as Black Hawk Down, for the crashed US helicopters. The loss is embedded in the American consciousness through a self-pitying book and film, and was widely commemorated on the 25^th anniversary.

...

During my live shows, I often do a song I wrote about the San Patricios, a band of mostly Irishmen who deserted from the U.S. Army during the Mexican-American war and fought on the Mexican side.

I start by doing a call-and-response with the audience. “Give me a ‘T’,” “give me an ‘R.,’” cheerleader-style, until we spell out, “Treason,” to introduce the story of the “Saint Patrick’s Battalion.”

...

Longtime Fifth Estate friend and contributor, David Porter, died December 29; he was 79. A dedicated teacher, anarchist researcher, and grassroots community activist, Porter applied his anti-authoritarian principles to many projects.

David Porter in his office, 1975

Growing up near Chicago, Porter graduated from Oberlin College near Cleveland in 1961. He then attended the Institute of Political Studies in Paris. His doctoral studies in politics at Columbia University included a year in Algeria learning directly about the workers’ self-management movement there.

...

Moving from ideas to action has always been central to the anarchist project. Our work has long been inspired by visions of a transformed world, one in which prevailing institutions and relationships are overturned to create more liberatory ways of living and relating to each other.

Yet powerful forces stand in our way. Not only the entrenched ruling order with its vast resources including its repressive apparatus and cultural spectacle, but perhaps even more of a bulwark against change, a deeply ingrained mass culture of submission to authority which generates a fear of living liberated lives.

...

“Stop the madness and expand Tweed. Two neighborhoods can’t hold up economic progress,” pronounced a local newspaper columnist, directing his ire at residents on the edge of New Haven and East Haven, Connecticut.There, the grassroots Stop Tweed campaign has so far halted the expansion of Tweed Airport.

...

The art of Ricardo Levins Morales is rooted in the soil of the struggles that shape our lives. Inspiring, empowering and validating, his images both document and embody collective visions of unity in the face of power.

As a result of working with the Northland Poster Collective in South Minneapolis for over thirty years, Levins Morales has developed core insights about how art can be a powerful part of strategy in movements.

...

Most of us don’t like dealing with conflict in movement politics. There are times when our projects are rolling along smoothly and then we hit a point of contention and suddenly the room is full of tension and discord.

For many people, the reaction is to try and restore order by quelling the discontent and moving onto other matters.

...

A family in Idlib Province, Syria, home to three million people, half of them displaced, or forcibly evacuated. Idlib was recently captured by hard-line Islamists. The sign reads “We are one of 760,000 families in Idlib.” / #HumansOfIdlib

If 2011 looked like the moment when people could unite, both within and across countries, to topple decades-old dictatorships with the demand for freedom and social justice, today looks like the moment of counter-revolutionary success. After eight years of increasingly brutal conflict in Syria, Bashar al-Assad still presides as president over a now destroyed, fragmented and traumatized country. The dominant narrative is that the war is nearing its end. States once vocally opposed to Assad now have other strategic concerns which take precedence over the victims of his savage efforts to hold onto power. Yet, on the ground, conditions are far from stable and civilians remain trapped and are paying the price for ongoing struggles for power and territory between the regime, foreign states and ideological war lords.

...

From childhood, most of us are taught what is supposedly an essential skill for living within industrial capitalist society: how to be nice. To be nice is to act in a way that gives others pleasure, comfort, and satisfaction in order to receive social rewards or prevent social penalties. To succeed in capitalism, it is important to be liked and likable. Nice people can get and keep jobs, make business deals, have social lives, and more.

...

There is something faulty with the concept of humans as rational animals. It defines humanity by a limited criterion and tries to separate humans from our animal being. This sets up a hierarchy in which the true human is defined by the portion of the brain that is rational. Perhaps, even worse than the idea of the rational animal is the idea of the “rationalizing animal.” Pratkanis and Aronson in their 2001 Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion, place this as a central factor in how we are manipulated.

...

Groups like this performing at El Tanque at Havana’s Proyecto Cultural Muraleando will soon be subjected to official censorship.—photo: Peter Werbe

Pity the poor Marxist-Leninist militants now bereft of the police states for which they so earnestly apologized. But, not real pity as their dishonesty has caused as much damage to revolutionary possibilities as have the objects of their political ardor.

...

The cessation of praying daily, of praying up against dry trees,

the cessation of asking and answering, pondering no more, no

more will, no take, not bound, instead only undone down to

laces; shoes upon dogs still for haste may remain yet to be made.

Not for gesticulation but emergence. Not for the writings but

...

Excerpted from Fifth Estate #367–368, Spring-Summer 2005 40^th anniversary issue. This is an edited version of Don’s essay.

The design shows a pyramid surmounted by an eye being blasted by a bolt of lightning. Bannered beneath the collapsing pyramid is the motto, “NON SERVIAM.”

If English, Spanish, Italian, or French is your native tongue, then you can probably guess the Latin translation: “I will not serve.” The phrase is taken from Paradise Lost (1674) by the radical poet of the English Revolution, John Milton, wherein the archangel Lucifer refuses to obey God and is cast into the frozen lake of Hell for his rebelliousness.

...

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A demonstration against Iran’s execution of gays during a Christopher Street Day gay pride parade in Berlin.

My name is Arsham Parsi, a 37-year-old gay man born and raised in Iran. Neither of these facts were my choice. Discovering my difference from other men—not being interested in women—terrified me because I could be killed for who I was.

...

As has been the case throughout colonial conquest, the military police force of the Canadian state, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have facilitated the occupation of Indigenous lands by resource capital. Most recently, the state forced its way onto Wet’suwet’en territories in northern so-called British Columbia to secure access for a Coastal GasLink liquified natural gas pipeline (LNG).

...

A Joint Declaration by

Amphibians for Decolonization

Inner Island Surrealist Group (‘Kómoks/Pentlatch territory)

Ottawa Surrealist Group (Algonquin Anishnaabeg territory)

“It took me a long time to find out my mistakes But I’m not fattenin’ no more frogs for snakes.”

—Sonny Boy Williamson

The Unist’ot’en are the Big Frog clan of the Wet’suwet’en nation. They defiantly croak at the colonizer’s yoke without reservation. They are hungry for decolonization. We honor their spirited resistance to colonial authority and offer our wholehearted solidarity.

...

The solar array’s passive tracking system wakes to the first rays of the Pennsylvania summer sun. The solar panels don’t care that today is the solstice, or that the sun will rise on its arc to an angle of 72.5° at noon.

Its rusting actuators will strain to follow the sun all the way to its apex. As freon warms in the black copper tubes that run along the edges of the frame, the liquid vaporizes and moves from one side to the other. The tracker begins its daily task of following the thermal energy of the sun, keeping the photovoltaic panels facing into the sunlight as it moves along a course from east to west.

...

Stimulator, the disembodied, foul mouthed host of ITEOTWAWKIAIFF, a subMedia satirical news show.

A strange looking man walks out of a Sam’s Club superstore with a shopping cart filled with diapers, food, and chocolate, without paying. He fooled the cart checkers with a fake receipt. As his feet touch the parking lot pavement, a rent-a-cop yells, “Stop!!”

...

Don’t worry, the Anarchist Film Archive has got you covered. A project of anarchist publisher Christie Books, the archive has over 1000 titles ready to be streamed from the comfort of your squat.

While all the films are not anarchist, this impressive collection includes documentaries from the likes of Adam Curtis, many rare films about the Spanish Civil War and Revolution, Noam Chomsky talks, lots of mainstream films with liberatory themes, and even some subMedia videos.

...

AnarchySF is an online archive of the intersection between anarchy and science fiction. It’s an open-source repository of anarchist or anarchy-adjacent science fiction. Visit at anarchysf.com.

It features books, movies, and other media which are either anarchist in their politics or of interest to anarchists.

...

“La Patagonia rebelde”

Director: Hector Olivera

110 min. (1974)

The death of Argentine anarchist author and activist Osvaldo Bayer on December 24, 2018 came at a time of renewed interest in his long career. Recent translations of two of his works, The Anarchist Expropriators and Rebellion in Patagonia, were published by AK Press in 2016.

...

a review of

Running by Cara Hoffman. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks 2018

Inspired by her own youth spent travelling and working in Greece, Cara Hoffman’s third novel, Running, is a suspenseful punk adventure tale.

It follows Bridey, Jasper and Milo, wild, hungry youths luring unwitting tourists to stay at a shabby Athens hotel in exchange for a place to crash and a commission to spend at the bar.

...

a review of

Blood Lake: A Filomena Buscarsela Mystery by Kenneth Wishnia. PM Press edition 2014; Spanish translation 2018. Originally published HB 2002

Anarchist fans of detective novels and murder mysteries who don’t like cops have to suspend a little of their social critique since it is the police, ex-cops, and private eyes who are solving the crimes. Anarchists as a rule don’t do much sleuthing.

...

Una Revisión de

Lago de sangre: un libro de misterio sobre Filomena Buscarsela por Kenneth Wishnia. PM Press edición en español 2018; edición en inglés 2014; Publicado originalmente en 2002

Los anarquistas amantes de las novelas de detectives y de misteriosos asesinatos, a quienes no les gustan los polis, tendrán que suspender momentáneamente su crítica social porque son precisamente la policía, los ex polis y los detectives privados quienes resuelven los crímenes. Los anarquistas, segun la regla, no se encargan de actividades detectivescas de esa índole.

...

Friend and comrade, Joel Silvers, died unexpectedly at age 72 in Detroit on December 8, 2018.

Joel was present when the Fifth Estate was launched in 1965 and at the 2015 festivities that celebrated the 50^th anniversary of this publication.

As an award-winning filmmaker, he produced a documentary of interviews with some of the early staff, a trailer of which is available on our web site, FifthEstate.org, “Enduring Voices: 50 years of the Fifth Estate.”

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The 2019 Fight Toxic Prisons Convergence is June 14–17 in Gainesville, Florida and will include speakers, panels, workshops, protests and cultural activities exploring the intersections of anti-prison and environmental struggles. fighttoxicprisons.wordpress.com Above: Protest march following the 2018 FTP convergence in Pittsburgh. / photo: Jordan Mazurek

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National Jericho Movement: PO Box 2164, Chesterfield VA 23832. thejerichomovement.com

New York City Anarchist Black Cross (NYC ABC): PO Box 110034, Brooklyn, New York 11211. nycabc.wordpress.com

Bloomington Anarchist Black Cross: Focuses on solidarity with prison rebels, anarchist prisoners, and prisoners of other liberatory social movements. A books to prisoner project and huge number of links to other prison projects. bloomingtonabc.noblogs.org

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a review of

Taking the Rap: Women Doing Time For Society’s Crimes by Ann Hansen. Between the Lines, 2018

When offered the chance to review Ann Hansen’s memoir about her time in the Canadian prison system, I was enthusiastic but doubtful that I would be permitted to receive such a book.

With my Communications Management status and participation in the Rehabilitation Drug Abuse Program (RDAP) while imprisoned at Carswell Federal Medical Center in Texas, it seemed unlikely that this courageous and intensely honest account of real life in all manner of jails, holding facilities, and prisons would be allowed in.

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a review of

A Declaration of the Rights of Human Beings: On the Sovereignty of Life as Surpassing the Rights of Man, Second Edition by Raoul Vaneigem, Translated by Liz Heron. PM Press, 2019

“The freedom to live like a human being annuls the supposed freedoms of commerce and predation.”

So begins Raoul Vaneigem’s preface to the second edition of A Declaration of the Rights of Human Beings. Originally published in 2001, this second edition is his attempt to create a foundational document asserting the primacy of humanity against the dominance of commerce and state power.

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a review of

China On Strike: Narratives of Workers’ Resistance edited by Hao Ren; English edition edited by Zhong ]in Li and Eli Friedman. Haymarket Books, 2016

Striking to Survive: Workers Resistance to Factory Relocations in China by Fan Shigang, translated by Henry Moss. Haymarket Books, 2018

The modern state of China, by capitalist standards, is generally thriving. The nation’s economic growth rate, considered to be a prime indicator of prosperity, is significantly higher than that of the western industrialized countries, even with its recent slowdowns.

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Let’s hope Cape Breton wasn’t kidding

when they said we could move there

from this side if things got crazy scary.

.

The ones who shout hardest hardly

ever have it right, since such small

gods surge from somewhere far

.

back in the night. Light fills space

as it can. Dark does the same,

and the space is a brain. Attackers

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Demonstration in Rome’s Plaza San Silvestro November 23 against a law aimed at immigrants and squatters. Sign held by Kurdish refugees says, “From the mountains of Kurdistan to the heart of Rome, Ararat will not be evicted.” —photo: Bill Weinberg

It was a multicultural crowd that gathered in Rome’s Plaza San Silvestro to oppose the draconian Security Decree then pending in the Italian parliament. Popularly called the Salvini Law after Italy’s far-right Interior Minister, Matteo Salvini, the Decree was aimed at two broadly overlapping groups: immigrants and squatters.

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

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten.

Letters may be edited for length.

Fifth Estate note: We usually don’t print letters of this length, but thought this encapsulated the sexual immiseration suffered by many. We don’t offer advice in this matter, but invite others to suggest how best to navigate sex and partnering.

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As opposed to the mechanistic, cold, pseudo-scientific dogma of Marxists and others, we know that the urge for revolution has to come from a deeper place in our lives. The Spanish anarchists said they had “a new world in their hearts,” which provided a vision for their struggles. The idea of re-enchantment of the world mirrors that longing as a prefiguring of what we want. We dedicate this issue to those in the past who have fought for a new world and to those today who continue in their footsteps.

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The Camp Fire was also a health and environmental disaster. Smoke from the deadly fire resulted in widespread air pollution throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and Central Valley.

On November 8, 2018, a deadly wildfire—called the Camp Fire because it began on Camp Creek Road—swept the western Sierra Nevada foothills in northern California. The fire’s spark originated with Pacific Gas & Electric power transmission lines that ignited dry vegetation on a particularly windy day.

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Many are marking 2019 as the 400^th anniversary of the arrival of the first captured Africans in Jamestown. So, even more than usual, we will hear chattel slavery referred to as the nation’s original sin.

It isn’t.

That framing is itself a window into the white way of thinking. It’s meant to perpetuate the mythologies of Christianity That doctrine incorporates the belief that humans are flawed, weak and often badly behaved. And, since that’s God given, it will always be true.

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—and wait—for the wild power of nature—Om nama Shivaya—anything—could happen—to turn around—scream our lungs out—protesters in Gaza—under the burning—midday sun—Om Nama Shivaya—gun shots into the crowd—turn it off—turn it on—social programs slashed—corporate greed—protections for the environment—eliminated—the EPA rolls back—and David Buckel—self-immolates—in the meadow—in the park—Om Nama Shivaya—this winter—the coldest—since 1961—everyday when I hit—the sidewalk—I think—it will never end—and yet—slowly and surely—the temperature will rise—and the might and mystery—of the cold wind—will surely spread—Shiva—Brahma—Narayana—their seeds everywhere—Shiva—Brahma—Om nama Narayanaya—

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Volunteers and trainees in front of the Berkeley Free Clinic.

The Berkeley Free Clinic (BFC) is an all-volunteer, worker-owned collective that provides free medical and dental care, peer counseling, and information in Berkeley, Calif. We were founded in May 1969 on the ideas that healthcare is a human right, that professional licensing is not required to provide good medical care, and that medicine should not alienate people from their bodies. [See “Berkeley USA, 1969,” FE 81, June 12–25, 1969]

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Some readers have wondered why a print publication with such a strong, longtime criticism of modern technology would bother with a website.

We are certainly not counting on it for building the social cooperation and solidarity we so desperately need to go beyond the current doomsday destination of modern societies. For this it will be necessary to create and nurture the direct bonds between living beings so vital for re-enchanting the world.

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A dedicated band of idealistic working-class teenagers crash a meeting of techno-fascists at a New York hotel, confronting the group’s dictatorial leaders.

It sounds like an Antifa adventure plucked from today’s headlines—but in fact, this plot unfolded at the first ever World Science Fiction Convention in 1939. Despite its reputation for campy story-telling and escapist plots, science fiction (SF) has always been highly political at its core, and this story began when Dave Kyle, a member of a fan club known as The Futurians, attempted to distribute a pamphlet criticizing the convention organizers.

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Working on what was called, People’s Park Annex, 1969.

Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), in the late 1960s, demolished 200 Berkeley homes to trench and submerge their rail system. BART then filled in tons of dirt on top of the tube it built and in this way “reclaimed” the land that it bulldozed.

It strip-mined Berkeley to submerge the trains and above left four blocks along Hearst Avenue a barren, ugly field of dust in summer and mud in winter. An eyesore. BART officials said that they didn’t have funds (or mental bandwidth?) to develop it, that is, monetize it.

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“La Jeunesse de Bacchus” William Bouguereau 1884

Our call for the re-enchantment of the world isn’t a collapse into New Age dreaming, but rather a different, or perhaps more accurate description of what this publication has always stood for—revolution against capitalism, the state, patriarchy, and the forms of misery they generate.

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Allowed freedom, we are enchanted beings. The enchantment begins with our human, personal song, which discovered, cracks open a window into the cosmos, enabling us to experience reality with fewer boundaries.

The song, first personally and then communally, is the primary tool that unlocks our apprehension of deeper reality, and allows us to act from that vision. This process is deeply connected, integrated and anarchistic.

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Anarchy and surrealism have had many enchanting encounters over the years, and the convivial nature of their ongoing interplay is easy to understand. Much like anarchists, surrealists are dissatisfied with the impoverished version of reality that governs our relationship to the world and to one another.

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According to a certain conventional wisdom, there has been an unfortunate disenchantment of the world, and what is desperately needed is that we rediscover and recreate an enchanted world. This is, however, at best a half truth, and perhaps even a dangerous one.

True, there is a battle between disenchantment and re-enchantment in which we must rally to the aid of enchantment. But there is also a war between contending forms of enchantment that already exist, here and now This is the ultimate world-historical conflict that must engage our creative energies.

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Since the anti-wizard who disenchanted the world was Capitalism, we must assume that Capitalism will have to vanish by evolutionary necessity in order for re-enchantment to triumph.

Is it really possible to embrace such optimism? Let’s try.

An April 1, 2019 article in The Nation, “Warning: The Plastics Crisis is About to Get Worse,” begins with a “midrange” estimate of the amount of plastic garbage that is dumped in the ocean every year—eight million tons.

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