you have only to spit in their faces — they will go
howling like devils to swindle somebody else
but if you choose to obey, we shall not blame you
for every lesson is new. We will make room for you
in the cold hall where every cause is just.
Perhaps you'll go with us to frosty windows
putting the same choice as the years go round
or sit debating 'When will they disobey?'
wrapped in our coats against the impartial cold."
All this I think the buried me would say,
clutching their white ribs & their rusted helmets
nationless bones, under the still ground.
— Alex Comfort (1920-2000), excerpt, "The Soldiers"
http://recollectionbooks.com/
AUGUST 3
WAHHAB AL-BAYYATI
Urbane Iraqi left-communist writer, exile; he revolutionized
modern Arabic poetry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
______________________________
FEAST OF CALIGO, Mother of Chaos.
England: BELL-BELT DAY in Congleton, Cheshire: drunken excesses
were announced by midnight runners wearing belts of bells. In
1601, money destined for the church was hijacked to buy a
replacement town bear:
"Congleton rare, Congleton rare,
Sold the Bible to pay for a bear."
______________________________
1492 -- Columbus sets sail from Palos, Spain for the "Indies" to
plague the rest of the world with avaricious mercantilism.
1546 -- Etienne Dolet, printer, is hanged & burnt for blasphemy,
sedition & heresy. About time they got an arm on that printer crowd...
1861 -- Last installment of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations
is published.
1882 -- US: Congress bans the immigration of "lunatics, idiots,
& people likely to become a public charge." We note they missed
the ancestors of American politicians.
1894 -- During this month Alfred Levitt lives (1894-2000), Belarus.
Artist, anarchist, philosopher & adventurer. Moved to the US with
his family in 1911. Friends & colleagues included the likes of Jack
London, Marcel Duchamp & Emma Goldman. Produced hundreds of
paintings. Influenced by American artist & teacher Robert Henri, &
he modeled nude at the Ferrer Modern School so he could hear
Henri's lectures for free.
http://recollectionbooks.com/
1910 -- US: Ricardo Flores Magón, Antonio I. Villarreal & Librado
Rivera are freed from the Florence, Arizona, jail where they
were serving an 18 month sentence for alleged "violation" of
the neutrality laws.
1913 -- US: Four die in the so-called "Wheatland riots" when police fire
into a crowd of California farmworkers. Two labor leaders, one not even
present on this day, are later convicted of murder.
Lengthy reading list, http://recollectionbooks.com/
1915 -- Thomas Mann publishes "Thoughts on the War" in "Frankfurter Zeitung."
1918 -- Russia: Large-scale Allied invasion to overthrow the Bolsheviks begins.
http://web.archive.org/web/
1921 -- Hayden Carruth lives. American poet & anarchist,
published 23 books of poetry in addition to other works.
http://www.thedrunkenboat.com/
1924 -- Joseph Conrad, 66, dies suddenly of a heart attack.
His tombstone reflects his wife's uncertain grasp of the Polish language as
his name is misspelled. Conrad was 66 years, eight months old when he died:
exactly two-thirds of a century, to the very day. His epitaph comes from
Spenser's "Faerie Queene":
"Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas,
Ease after warre death after life, does greatly please."
1937 -- American poet Diane Wakoski lives.
1939 -- Jean Genet's "Ondine" premiers in Paris.
1943 -- André Arru, an anarchist organizer in the French
underground during WWII, is arrested.
The walls were stained with blood — the blood of fleas
squashed on a daily basis...
http://recollectionbooks.com/
1948 -- US: Whittaker Chambers, "Time" magazine editor, appears before
HUAC & accuses Alger Hiss of being a communist spy. Meanwhile Beloved
& Respected Comrade Leader Attorney General Tom Clark asks the FBI
to begin its Emergency Detention Program.
1950 -- US: The Red & the Black? Government cancels the passport
of African American singer Paul Robeson.
http://recollectionbooks.com/
1955 -- Samuel Beckett play "Waiting for Godot" opens in London.
1966 -- Not the Goy Next Door
US: Lenny Bruce dies from a morphine overdose.
http://www.fair.org/index.php?
1971 -- England: The "Oz" magazine obscenity trial ends in
London with the jailing of Richard Neville & his codefendants.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
1979 -- Juan Rulfo play "Pedro Paramo" opens, Mexico.
1986 -- US: Florence Reece dies, born on this day in 1886.
Active in Harlan County, Kentucky coal strikes & author of
the famed labor song "Which Side Are You On?"
They say in Harlan Co.
There are no neutrals there
You'll either be a Union man
Or a thug for J.H. Blair.
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
1986 -- Pilot / author Beryl Markham (1902-1986) dies of pneumonia.
1995 -- US: INS frees 60 Thai slaves in a garment factory, El Monte,
Calif. Another gross example of sleaze-bag government bureaucrats
meddling with the wonderful Free Market mechanism.
1999 -- Abdel Wahab al-Bayati, Iraqi writer who revolutionized Arabic
poetry, dies, age 73. Lived in Jordan, quitting his diplomatic post
in Madrid after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.
2000 -- México: Armed paramilitaries burn six homes of alleged
Zapatista supporters, Paraiso, Chis.
2002 -- US: New world record for simultaneous breastfeeding,
Bezerkeley, California. 1,135 moms breast-feed their babies together.
Obviously inspired by The Fugs' raucous good
ol' time tune, "Boobs A Lot."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
(with the volume cranked up reeeal loud....)
2004 -- France: Famed photographer & anarchist Henri Cartier-Bresson
dies. Member of the photographer-owned outfit (Magnum)
founded by Robert Capa & others.
http://slash.autonomedia.org/
______________________________
Industrial contests take on all the attitudes & psychology of war,
& both parties do many things that they should never dream of doing
in times of peace. Whatever may be said, the fact is that all strikes
& all resistance to strikes take on the psychology of warfare, & all
parties in interest must be judged from that standpoint.
— Clarence Darrow
______________________________
— anti-Fleas 1997-2010
Web page in full, http://www.recollectionbooks.
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