Thursday, December 30, 2010

Daily Bleed for December 31st

People always ask what
am i going to be
when i grow
up & i always
just think
i'd like to grow
up

— Nikki Giovanni


Daily Bleed web page in full:
http://www.recollectionbooks.com/bleed/1231.htm

Excerpts, short & sweet, December 31:

JOHN WYCLIFFE
Leader of the dangerous Lollards,
13th-century English spiritual revolutionaries.

ANNUAL WORLD PEACE MEDITATION.

Japan: NAMAHAGE. Men dressed as devils
go door-to-door screaming,

"Any good-for-nothings here about?"

______________________________



-46 -- The last day of the Year of Confusion,
a 445-day Roman year(OS).

Ahhhhhh, the Good Ol' Days!

1320 -- John Wycliffe lives. Here...

1384 -- John Wycliffe dies. Dead & gone there...

1846 -- Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis lives.
Pioneer of Dutch anarchism & the International
Anti-Militarist Association. Born in Amsterdam, a
preacher in Harlingen in 1870. Leader of a socialist
union & first socialist senator (1891) in The Netherlands.
He then abandoned politics for the anarchism of Bakunin
in 1897.
http://www.iisg.nl/collections/domela.php
http://www.fdnmuseum.nl/
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jeroenvu/gwv/domela.htm

1777 -- Gross Out?: P.D.Q. Bach completes his "Gross Concerto".

1793 -- England: Three-day week introduced in Britain.

Revolutionaries! — one more push to be
zero-workers.

1869 -- Henri Matisse lives — Jazz, odalisques,
goldfish, a wealth of choices...

1877 -- Gustave Courbet (1809-1877) dies. French painter,
revolutionary socialist, man of independent character.
Leader of the realist school. Influenced the anarchistes
around Camille Pissarro's circle. Courbet is the Daily Bleed
Saint for June 10.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/PissarroCamille.htm
http://www.recollectionbooks.com/bleed/0610.htm

1887 -- US: Frances Steloff lives. Founded the Gotham Book Mart
on January 1, 1920. She died in 1989, ripe at the age of 101.

Stories about the shop & Steloff's dedication to it &
to writers grew over the years till they assumed
the quality of legend.

She championed the experimental & challenged the
censors resulting in landmark decisions on censorship...

http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/12ref.htm#31/1887

1918 -- Dr. Marie Equi (1872-1952) is found guilty of
sedition (as were countless others opposing American
involvement in one of Europe's bloodiest wars) under
a newly amended Espionage Act. She was a lesbian
anarchist & labor organizer & birth control advocate
despised & hounded by the US government.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/07ref.htm#13/1952

1919 -- Italy: Huge crowds turn out in Milan to greet &
honor Errico Malatesta, touring the country following his
return from exile on the 24th. Animation par Armando Borghi.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/12ref.htm#24/1919

1930 -- Nicaragua: Troops lead by the Sandinista Miguel
Angel Ortez ambushes a Marine patrol in the muddy
ravines of Achuapa.

In vain the invaders seek
victory through hunger, by burning huts & crops.
Families are forced to flee & wander unprotected in
the mountains, leaving behind pillars of smoke &
bayoneted animals.

The campesinos believe Sandino knows how to lure
the rainbow to him; & as it comes it shrinks until he
can pick it up with just two fingers.

1931 -- US: 60,000 unemployed workers rally at Pitt Stadium
in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh near Father Cox's
Shantytown.

1958 -- Cuba: The guerrilla columns of Camilo Cienfuegos &
Che Guevara take Yaguajay & the city of Santa Clara.

The feat Cienfuegos is most proud of is that time
up in the mountains when he fooled a light military
plane by painting himself red with iodine & lying
still with his arms crossed.

1959 -- First projection of Guy Debord's film "On the Passage
of a Few Persons through a Rather Brief Period of Time," Paris.

1967 -- Paulette Brupbacher dies. Born in Raygrodski,
Russia, an opponent of all conformisms & partisan
disciplines. Partner & collaborator of Fritz Brupbacher
(1874-1945), doctor in Zurich, friend of James Guillaume,
Kropotkin, et al. Translated "The Confession" of Michael Bakunin.

1967 -- Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Paul Krassner,
Dick Gregory, & friends pronounce
themselves "Yuppies". "Yuppie!!"

1969 -- Over 100,000 Americans have died in Vietnam.

1970 -- US: Congress repeals the Gulf of Tonkin resolution.
Congress finally fesses up to having been hoodwinked by a
pack of lies the US military, NSA & the government had
produced to test their knee-jerk reaction. Good knees meant
heavy bombing & dramatically increased US military
involvement in Vietnam.

1970 -- US: Elvis tours FBI headquarters.
Great gathering place for cross-dressers, drug addicts
& rock-n-roll has-beens.

1997 - "Pop. 1280"?: More Swedes died than were born
in 1997, first time since 1809.

Clean Slate
It is 1938 in the French West Africa village of
Bourkassa & the police force is tired of being a
doormat. In this dark comic adaptation of Jim
Thompson's 'POP 1280,' the hapless officer
decides to take the law into his own hands &
rid the town of its human waste.
Foreign Films, English , 1981, Color, 128 min.
NTSC, Rating: Not Rated

[...]"but then you start to think about starving kids,
little girls sold into slavery, women whose sex is
sewn up.

"God created murder out of pure kindness. Murder's
nothing compared to those horrors."

http://www.gutter-dog.com/2009/02/regeneration-books-jim-thompson.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Thompson_(writer)


1999 -- New Year Resolution:

Follow not too closely on the
heels of the truth, lest it
dash thy teeth in.

— HemoMeister

1999 -- Criswell predicts a black rainbow will suck oxygen from
face of earth. "Black Rainbow" is clearly a codeword for politicians.

2005 --

If we have learned well to recognize ignorance & dependence
in ourselves & the world at large, & if we have learned to
draw on the inexhaustible well of humor within which laughs
aside our fears & pretensions, cheering us in our search for a
true humanity, then we shall be the shining citizens of the
Great Dismal City of Refuge, brothers & sisters in the global
swamp-rat communion.

— Jim Koehnline,
"The Legend of the Great Dismal Maroons"
http://www.koehnline.com/

2008 -- BleedMeister, under duress, is forced to confess,
in addition to name, rank & cereal nummer:

All
bleeding
eventually
stops.

2010 --
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it

I feel fine...

— Rem

All things eventually fade & are no more. As
impermanent beings ourselves, we know &
ungracefully accept this fact. One day, the
end will come for our friends, our family, our
neighbors, our IRS auditors, & even for
ourselves. Yes, even the world, itself will one
day stop spinning on its familiar axis & its
property value on the open market will
plummet.


2010 -- Daily Bleed suspends further publication
until next year. Thanks for the ride!

More or less....

http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/BB/richter.jpg

Monday, December 27, 2010

Daily Bleed for December 27th

... candidates for the Universal Republic are bound together
     by the fact that they work together on a whaling-ship. They
     are a world federation of modern industrial workers.

     They owe allegiance to no nationality. There are Americans
     among them, but it is the officers who are American. Among the
     crew nobody is anything. They owe no allegiance to anybody or
     anything except the work they have to do & the relations with
     one another on which that work depends. & we may add that they
     are not to be confused with any labour movement or what is
     today known as the solidarity of labour.

                                   — C.L.R.James,
                                  Mariners, Renegades & Castaways

Daily Bleed in full, the web page:
http://www.recollectionbooks.com/bleed/1227.htm

excerpts,

DECEMBER 27 --  THEODORE DREISER
American social critic, activist, Stalinist sympathizer, realist novelist.

South Africa: FEAST OF MARIMBA,
Goddess of Musical Happiness.

______________________________
_______________________


1512 -- Puerto Rico: The Burgos Law is issued, by
Ferdinand II, the Catholic, of Aragón, regulating
relations between Spaniards & the conquered Indians.

   The Spaniards & Taíno Indians had a falling out
   in 1510, & the following year the Taíno Indians
   revolt against the Spaniards. Ponce de León orders
   6,000 shot; survivors flee to mountains or
   leave the island.

       "The history of an oppressed people is hidden
        in the lies & the agreed-upon myth of its conquerors."

                          — Meridel Le Sueur

1815 -- US: Peace Society founded, Massachusetts.
& none too soon.

1821 -- France: Joseph Dejacque lives. French anarchist,
got two years in prison for a volume of poetry(!), Lazaréennes:
Socialist Fables & Poems
. First publisher of "Le Libertaire"
(while in exile in the US, in New York, 1858).
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/DejacqueJoseph.htm

1850 -- Hawaiian Fire Department established.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/BB/jettruck.jpg

1896 -- In Nackenheim, Germany, Carl Zuckmayer lives.

  Much of his work was affected by the World
  Wars; one of his best-known dramas, "Des Teufels
  General" (1946, The Devil's General), dramatizes the plight
  of men torn between loyalty to country & the demands
  of conscience.

1910 -- "Archaeologist of morning," Charles Olson
lives, Worcester, Massachusetts.

   This is poetry
   that fills the air as well as the page, that
   constitutes an extension of the living body of the
   poet, that celebrates the moment, the here & now in a
   non-hierarchical language in a special American space.

1913 -- Canada: Mass rebellion by IWW workers in
Edmonton, Alberta forces the city to house 400 unemployed
during winter.

   There are many in this old world of ours who hold
   that things break about even for all of us. I have
   observed for example that we all get the same
   amount of ice. The rich get it in the summertime &
   the poor get it in the winter.

        — Bat Masterson, Western philosopher

1927 -- Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Uncle Joe Stalin's
faction wins All-Union Congress in USSR, Beloved & Respected
Comrade Leader Leon Trotsky expelled. Stalin's complete control
of USSR nearly assured. The Show Trials will soon begin, but
not on CNN or Fox News just yet.
http://www.corpse.org/archives/issue_5/critical_urgencies/elias.htm

1947 -- US: First "Howdy Doody" television
show broadcast.

                   "Hey kids... What time is it?

                    It's Howdy Doody time!"

1958 -- Argentina: A reunion of old friends at a meeting
of the Argentinian Federación Libertaria today.

    The Italian Luce Fabbri, the German Augustin Souchy &
    the Spaniard Diego Abad de Santillan share memories of
    clandestinity & repression due to their anarchist ideas &
    activities during the Spanish Revolution.

    http://www.iisg.nl/today/en/27-12.php

1960 -- Broken Nose

    Asger Jorn records his first musical experiments with Jean
    Dubuffet (Nez cassé [Broken Nose])...

    Also during this month, "Internationale Situationniste" #5 is
    published, edited by Guy Debord & Editorial Committee.
    Includes a report on the Fourth SI Conference in London, its
    Resolution Concerning the Imprisonment of Alexander Trocchi,
    & Jorn's "Open Creation and Its Enemies."

    Spur #3, journal of the German section of the SI, appears in Munich.
    Includes 29 original lithographs by Jorn & the Spur group.

1979 -- Ian Dury & the Clash headline the second of
four concerts for the people of Kampuchea, in London.

1985 -- Uruguay: The Senate & the House of Representatives
grant the anarchist & antimilitarist Eugenio Relgis (1895-1987) a
«pensión graciable»; the decree (law 15,796) provides N$20,000
(pesos) monthly. Apparently even aging anarchists like to eat.

               ____________________

        The mansion was on a promontory,
        high over the Pacific.
        Money could see farther in the 1920s,
        & one could look out & see whales &
        the Hawaiian Islands  & the Kuomintang
        in China.

              — Richard Brautigan,
             Trout Fishing in America


— anti-ever so much more than twenty, 1997-2010 or thereabouts

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Daily Bleed for Christmas Day, December 25, 2010

What has been separated from the mother,
Must again be joined; for we were born of spirit,
& to spirit all mortal things return,
As it is necessary in the method of the earth.
So sings the parable of singleness.
My comforter does not conceal his face;
I have seen appearances that were not marshalled
By sleep.

— Kenneth Patchen,
excerpt from The Cloth of the Tempest

Daily Bleed, web page updated, in full,
http://www.recollectionbooks.com/bleed/1225.htm

excerpts,

DECEMBER 25 -- JESUS OF NAZARETH
Persecuted leader of an underground liberation movement,
jubilator, social radical, martyr, son of a God.

CHRISTMAS. Santa Claus -- Capitalist Tool or Red Menace?

BIRTHDAY OF MITHRAS.

Congo: CHILDREN'S DAY.

______________________________


0 -- Symbolic beginning of the destruction of the
world in the name of Jesus Christ & Western
Civilization.

Apocryphal birth of Jesus Christ, in an obscure village,
child of a peasant woman. Worked in a carpenter shop
until 30. Then for three years an unemployed itinerant
preacher. Never wrote a book, never held office, had
a family or owned a house. Didn't go to college, had
no credentials. Never visited a big city nor traveled
more than 200 miles from his birthplace. Did none of
the things one usually associates with greatness.

He was 33 when the tide of public opinion turned
against him & his pals ditched him.

Fully fits the description of a bum, a vagrant, a
ne'er do well.

1611 -- Merry Christmas?:

Settlers under Sir Thomas Dale
destroy Apamatuks village on the
lower Appomattox River in Virginia.

Christ-bearer & his accomplices find things,
objects, which they automatically categorize as
obstacles or as potential instruments...The names
are not only projections. They are also
definitions. Once defined, the objects can be
manipulated. Savages are potential instruments;
they can be put to work. Cannibals are obstacles;
they have to be liquidated.

— Fredy Perlman, Against His-story, Against Leviathan!
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/PerlmanFredy.htm

1621 -- No More "Age of Empires"?: Massachusetts halts
all sinful game-playing, confiscates toys. Sorry, No more
Wii. No more Sony Playstation. Toy R Us lays off thousands.
Toys.com sees shares fall
from 86 bucks
to two-bits.

1887 -- Overwhelmed by poverty, ideological
confusion, grief at his grandmother's death, &
ineligibility as a peasant to enter the Imperial
Kazan University, Maxim Gorky
attempts suicide at 18.

1892 -- Rebecca West lives. English journalist,
novelist, critic. Her companion for 10 years was
H. G. Wells. Their son Anthony is also a noted
author & critic. West is perhaps best known for
her reports on the Nürnberg trials (1945-46).

1899 -- Film tough-guy Humphrey Bogart lives again.
Stars in John Huston's film of B. Traven's
novel, Treasure of the Sierra Madre & other excellent
films such as The African Queen, Casablanca, The Big
Sleep & The Maltese Falcon.
http://www.thrillingdetective.com/eyes.html
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/TravenB.htm

1902 -- England: Dec 25/26, founding Congress of the
Federation of the Anarchist Groups of Yiddish language
of the United Kingdom & Paris, held in London. Rudolf
Rocker was the most influential figure in the movement...
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/12ref.htm#25/1902

1903 -- Radical illustrator Raphael Soyer, lives —
the quintessence of weary wistfulness.

1914 -- All Quiet on the Western Front?: Just after
midnight on Christmas morning, the majority of
German troops engaged in WWI cease firing guns
& artillery, & commence to sing Christmas carols.

At certain points along the Eastern & Western fronts,
the soldiers of Russia, France, & Britain even hear
brass bands joining the Germans in their joyous
singing. At the first light of dawn, many of the German
soldiers emerge from their trenches & approach the
Allied lines across no man's land, calling out
"Merry Christmas" in their enemies' native tongues.

At first the Allied soldiers suspect it to be a trick,
but soon climb out of their trenches & shake hands
with the German soldiers. The men exchange presents
of cigarettes & plum puddings & sing carols & songs
& the Christmas Truce lasts a few days.

Documentation is fragmentary since it was contrary
to direct orders & the legal penalty for such fraternizing
with the enemy was death! But even in this brutal war,
peace was found on this day by ignoring political
& military authority.

All quiet on the Western Front, nobody saw
A youth asleep in the foreign soil, planted by the war
Feel the pulse of human blood pouring forth
See the stems of Europe bend under force

All quiet
All quiet
All quiet on the Western Front

— Music by Elton John,
Lyrics by Bernie Taupin
http://homepage.mac.com/dmhart/WarFilms/AQWF.html

1923 -- ToysRUs?: 57-year-old author/socialist
H. G. Wells spends Christmas morning
playing with his new toy soldiers.

1926 -- Nicaragua: The prostitutes of Puerto Cabezas
help Augusto Sandino obtain arms & ammunition.

1936 -- Spain: Generalitat de Catalogne publishes a decree
legalizing abortion. Pushed for by the women's group
"Mujeres Libres." Article 4 specifies abortions should not
exceed three months pregnancy, except in the event of
therapeutic need.

1946 -- W.C. Fields shoots his last billiard ball.
Loved dogs & children.

"Taint a fit night out for man nor beast..."

1946 -- First of several years of White House
Christmas demonstrations seeking amnesty for
conscientious objectors (COs) convicted for refusing
to fight in the ever-popular World War II.

1948 -- Bulgaria: The Bulgarian Communist Party
declares as "outlaws" the anarchist founders of the
FACB (Federation Bulgare Anarcho-Communist).

1956 -- US: A good white Christian bombs the home of
anti-segregationist Fred Shuttlesworth. Birmingham,
Alabama.

1963 -- Tristan Tzara, Romanian-born French
poet/essayist known mainly as the founder of Dada,
a nihilist revolutionary movement in the arts, dies.
http://www.peak.org/~dadaist/English/Graphics/tzara.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_Tzara

1965 -- Timothy Leary stopped at the Mexican border
& busted for marijuana.

1977 -- Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977) dies.
Daily Bleed Saint 2002-2004

"In the end, everything is a gag."

1983 -- Joan Miro, Spanish surrealist, dies
at his home in Majorca at 90.

1990 -- India: Mass demonstration to protest dam building
& flooding of thousands of farms. Project is eventually
significantly reduced, proving that the IMF & World Bank
don't always succeed in keeping the rabble in line.

2006 -- James Brown, Godfather of Soul, dies.

Singer, jail bird, soul brother #1 ('Say It Loud - I'm Black
& I'm Proud' (1968). A massive influence on most forms
of black music — soul, hip-hop, funk, R&B & disco.

______________________________


Who's this bum
crept in from the streets
blinking in the neon
an anarchist among the floorwalkers

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti,
Director of Alienation
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/huntingSanta.jpg

_________

Christian, n.

One who believes that the New Testament is
a divinely inspired book admirably suited
to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.
One who follows the teachings of Christ in
so far as they are not inconsistent with a
life of sin.

I dreamed I stood upon a hill, &, lo!
The godly multitudes walked to & fro
Beneath, in Sabbath garments fitly clad,
With pious mien, appropriately sad,
While all the church bells made a solemn din —
A fire-alarm to those who lived in sin.
Then saw I gazing thoughtfully below,
With tranquil face, upon that holy show
A tall, spare figure in a robe of white,
Whose eyes diffused a melancholy light.
"God keep you, strange," I exclaimed. "You are
No doubt (your habit shows it) from afar;
& yet I entertain the hope that you,
Like these good people, are a Christian too."
He raised his eyes & with a look so stern
It made me with a thousand blushes burn
Replied — his manner with disdain was spiced:
"What! I a Christian? No, indeed! I'm Christ."
— G.J.

— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

Garrison Keillor had it right some years ago
when he said that these "Christmas Letters"
should be composed by Liars Anonymous. To
wit:

"Bookends has rejected take-over offers from both
Amazon.com & Barnes & Noble in the past year. Bruce
was pleased this year to have won the Nobel Prizes for
both Peace & Literature, a feat never before
accomplished in history. Judy will be using her
MacArthur Grant to further her research in
micro-nuclear-anthropological physics, when she's not
lecturing at the Sorbonne on Cordon Bleu culinaria. Our
children have been selected as Time Magazine's first
ever People of the Year & our grandchildren (all of them)
have been invited to join the Bolshoi Ballet, where they
will be featured performers."


— anti-Pouring Forth, 1997-4070

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Daily Bleed for December 23rd

It roamed on earth many long nights & days,
Filled with a wonderful thirst,
& earth's boring songs could not ever replace
The sounds of heaven it lost.

— Mikhail Lermontov


Daily Bleed in full, 58 entries,
http://www.recollectionbooks.com/bleed/1223.htm

a few excerpts (it's late & I'm tired),

DECEMBER 23 -- SAMUEL MOCKBEE
Selfless, inspired architect to the "Other America."

Oaxa, Mexico: FEAST OF THE RADISHES.
Non-fat we trust.

______________________________


1617 -- Penal Envy?: First penal colony in North
America established in Virginia. (Sorry, Bill Clinton,
that is p-e-n-a-l, not p-e-n-i-s.)

'The soul is
the prison of
the body...'

— Michel Foucault,
Discipline & Punish

1860 -- Harriet Monroe, founder/longtime editor of
"Poetry" magazine, lives, Chicago, Illinois.

1870 -- "Downtown" John Marin lives. Stableman
in Alfred Stieglitz's "stable," second only to Georgia
O'Keeffe.

1877 -- Luigi Fabbri lives.
Professor, Italian anarchist, theorist, writer.

Contributed to "Umanita Nova", the
daily paper published by Errico Malatesta in
Milan, along with Gigi Damiani, Camillo Berneri,
Nella Giacometti, Armando Borghi, etc. Fabbri
escaped the fascist regime in 1926.
http://www.iisg.nl/archives/en/files/f/10748404full.php
http://flag.blackened.net/ksl/bullet11.htm#Fabbri

1888 -- Vincent Van Gogh cuts off his ear.

Lost one of his earphones,
so he didna need it anymore.

1902 --
"...one way all men are born
equal is in being born at least
a little bit crazy, some being
born more equal than others."

Norman Maclean (1902-1990) lives
Firefighter, fly-fisher, scholar,
storyteller. Author of A River Runs Through It.

Eventually, all things merge into one, & a river
runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great
flood & runs over rocks from the basement of time.
On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under
the rocks are the words, & some of the words are
theirs.

I am haunted by waters.

1918 -- US: Randolph Bourne dies.
American literary radical, anarchist.
It is in literature itself that Randolph Bourne
appears most unforgettably, in a haunting
stanza from 1919 (1932), centerpiece of
the U.S.A. trilogy by John Dos Passos:

This little sparrowlike man,
tiny twisted bit of flesh in a black cape,
always in pain & ailing,
put a pebble in his sling,
& hit Goliath squarely in the forehead with it.
. . . If any man has a ghost,
Bourne has a ghost,
a tiny twisted unscared ghost in a black cloak
hopping along the grimy old brick & brownstone streets
still left in downtown New York,
crying out in a shrill soundless giggle:

War is the health of the State.

http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/05ref.htm#30/1886

1944 -- US: Architect to the poor Samuel "Sambo"
Mockbee lives (1944-2001), Meridian, Mississippi.
Educated young designers about the social responsibilities
of architecture. Posthumously awarded the American
Institute of Architects' (AIA) Gold Medal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Mockbee

1952 -- Russia: Vasily Eroshenko (1890-1952) dies.
A blind anarchist, novelist, translator, & an important
figure in the Esperanto Movement.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/EroshenkoVasily.htm
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/gallery/galleryindex.htm#Esperanto

1953 -- North Korea: 21 American POWs
refuse to come home.

1954 -- England: Bertrand Russell broadcasts
on "Man's Peril" — the H-bomb.

"One of the symptoms of an
approaching nervous
breakdown is the belief that
one's work is terribly
important. "

— Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

http://www.mcmaster.ca/russdocs/russell.htm
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/russell/

1966 -- Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader
Catholic Cardinal Spellman arrives in Vietnam for
a five-day Christmas visit, stating US troops are
there for the

"defense, protection, & salvation not only of
our country, but...of civilization itself."

Who says there is no shame, eh, George?

1972 -- The Real Dirt?: Charles Atlas, body
builder, dies at 79 after some weak skinny creep kicks
sand in his face.

______________________

HALLIE FLANAGAN 1997 SAINT
Purveyor of Depression-era, socially-
conscious theater.
______________________


"Whenever people agree with me, I
always feel I must be wrong."

— Oscar Wilde

— anti-BasementTime, 1997-3000, more or less

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Daily Bleed for December 21st

      Mary is seven. Homer
                  Is her favorite author.
                  . . . She says, "Aren't those gods
                  Terrible? All they do is
                  Fight like those angels in Milton
                  & play tricks on the poor Greeks
                  & Trojans. I like Aias
                  & Odysseus best. They are
                  Lots better than those silly
                  Gods."

             — Kenneth Rexroth,
                 fishing while his daughter reads
                 Homer


DECEMBER 21

 EMMA TENAYUCA
Blacklisted Texan labor leader, Hispanic rights pioneer.

WINTER SOLSTICE

CHAOS DAY. Eat wontons.

England: ST. THOMAS' DAY. A Tradition of
"Thomasing," begging gifts, door-to-door.

______________________________


1790 --  US: Samuel Slater's thread-spinning factory goes into
production, Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The beginning of the
Industrial Revolution in America.

    The workers at his machines are 4 to 10 years old.

1859 -- Gustave Kahn, French poet/literary theorist who
claims inventing vers libre, lives.

1872 -- US: The Battle of Lost River, the first hostilities
between the US Government & Captain Jack's band
of Modoc Indians.

1879 -- Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader
Uncle Joseph Stalin, Russian dictator, lives;
murdered 11,000,000.

           We live, not feeling the country beneath us,
           Our speech inaudible ten steps away,
           But where they're up to half a conversation —
           They'll speak of the Kremlin mountain man.

           His thick fingers are fat like worms...

            — Osip Mandelstam,
                We Live, Not Feeling, 1934(?)

            http://www.historyguide.org/europe/lecture10.html

1899 --

  "Take me this way: a stray guest, a bird of passage,
  splashing with salt-rimed wings through a brief moment
  of your life — a rude & blundering bird, used to large
  airs & great spaces, unaccustomed to the amenities
  of confined existence."

     — Jack London to Anna Strunsky, December 21, 1899;
         first published in "The Masses," July 1917

1902 -- Black surrealist artist, musician Peetie Wheatstraw
lives. See below, 1942.

1907 -- Chile: Massacre of miners working in Iquique.

    Santa María School Slaughter of workers, women &
    children in Santa María, Iquique during a strike headed
    by anarchists. (2000 & 3600 dead)

1911 -- France: First use of get-away-car in bank robbery,
by the anarchist Bonnot Gang.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonnot_gang
The band: http://www.mindspring.com/~acheslow/AuntMary/bonnot/bonnot.html

1916 -- Wobblies (anarchosyndicalist union, Industrial
Workers of the World) outlawed in Australia.

1916 --US: Emma Tenayuca lives. Labor militant, firebrand
leader in the Texan pecan shellers strike.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Tennayuca

1917 -- Heinrich Boll lives, Cologne.
German novelist/playwright, social critic, wins the
Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972.
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Holocaust/boll-brief-bio.html

1919 -- US: At dawn, Alexander Berkman, Emma
Goldman & 247 radical aliens set sail on the S.S.
Buford ("The Soviet Ark"), deported to Russia from
the "Land of the Free."
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/12ref.htm#21/1919

1924 -- Germany: After five years of prison for his
participation in the Republic of the Workers Councils,
anarchist Erich Mühsam is amnestied. Thousands of
workers turn out for his release. German anarchist poet,
murdered by the Nazis at the Orianenburg concentration camp.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/MuhsamErich.htm

1925 --  Eisenstein's silent movie "The Battleship
Potemkin" premiers, Moskva.

1940 -- Mother of Invention, Fug, Frank Zappa lives.

1942 -- Black surrealist artist, musician
Peetie Wheatstraw dies. "High Sheriff of Hell."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peetie_Wheatstraw

1948 -- "The girls lined up for the annual relay of the Young
Communist League Cup."

 Miss Krapivnitskaya, the fastest of them all, was at the tape. Just
 as the starter was about to fire his gun, a man on a motorcycle
 snatched up Miss Krapivnitskaya & sped away. He turned out to
 be the coach of a rival team. But Miss Krapivnitskaya refused to
 surrender.

 She broke away, dashed toward the river, jumped into a boat, &
 began rowing. She reached the opposite bank & began a race
 against time to reach the track before the race began.

 Miss Krapivnitskaya lost the race, but she & her team were
 promised justice.

 "RELAY MISCHIEF": MOSCOW, International Herald Tribune

1952 -- World ends, according to the entity Sananda.
(Well, some still believe it did...)

1964 --  SciFi author Theodore Sturgeon's
"How to Forget Baseball" is published in "SI". A real fantasy.

1959 -- Spain: Antonia Maymón (b.1881) dies. Militant
activist, rationalist teacher, naturista, libertarian &
a feminist. Maymón collaborated in numerous congresses
& publications, such as "Generación Consciente", & was a
founder of the FAI.

1965 -- "The Class Struggles in Algeria," Situationist International
poster/leaflet distributed in Algeria; reprinted in Internationale
Situationniste
#10, Paris.

1966 -- Exclusions of Timothy Clark, Christopher Gray &
Donald Nicholson-Smith, English section. "Vient de paraître"
(Coming Soon), flyposter of détourned comics announcing
the publication of The Society of the Spectacle & The
Revolution of Everyday Life
appears.
http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord/
http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/pub_contents/5
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/sources.htm#Situationists

1974 --  US: "NY Times" reports massive, illegal CIA domestic
surveillance operations against the antiwar movement under the
Nixon administration.

1978 -- France: Roger Caillois — philosopher, anthropologist,
natural scientist, renegade Surrealist — dies. With Georges Bataille
& others attempted to shift the focus of Surrealism from the dream
life of little old rich ladies to the social arena.

1992 -- Blues guitarist Albert King dies of a heart attack.
               http://www.cascadeblues.org/History/AlbertKing.htm
               http://www.albertking.org/   
          

2001 --  US: Larry Mayes, 52, is released from an Indiana prison
after serving 21 years for a rape he didn't commit; he is the
100th innocent American convict freed by DNA evidence.
Justice is indeed blind.

2005 -- Italy: Paolo di Nella street in Rome, named after a fascist,
is re-named Viale Timur Kacharava, to the memory of a young
anti-fascist murdered November 13 in St. Petersburg, Russia.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/12ref.htm#22/2005

                                   ________________


                           "Sociability is as much a law of
                           nature as mutual struggle ...
                           mutual aid is as much a law of
                           animal life as mutual struggle."

                              
           — Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/KropotkinPeter.htm

                                   ________________

— anti-copyRite 1997-3046

Friday, December 17, 2010

Daily Bleed for December 17th

My brain was a hill country
& the moon was unequal to itself
Rivers were flowing through my head from ear to ear.

— Fouad El-Etr, "Tonight the Stars Are in Tatters"

Daily Bleed, web page,
http://www.recollectionbooks.com/bleed/1217.htm

excerpts,

DECEMBER 17 -- MARTY GLABERMAN
American radical political theorist,
proto-autonomist.

Ancient Roman SATURNALIA (December 17-23).
"Unrestrained & intemperate jollity". Relaxation of
social rules, no business transacted courts closed,
wars suspended, feuds forgotten, slaves take the place
of masters. LORD OF MISRULE selected.

______________________________
______________________________

1660 -- Andrew Marvell petitions House of Commons to release
John Milton from prison.
http://www.texaschapbookpress.com/magellanslog26/adquiz/0001.jpg

1807 -- John Greenleaf Whittier lives.
Author/Abolitionist. Many of his poems
are sung as church hymns.

When the "Atlantic Monthly" gives a party to celebrate
the poet's 70th birthday, Mark Twain, in a speech,
shocks the diners by comparing Longfellow, Emerson
& Holmes, (all guests) to three drunken tramps in the
Sierras.

1873 -- Ford Madox Ford lives, England. Novelist,
international influence in early 20th-century literature.
See Kenneth Rexroth's More Classics Revisited.

1878 -- A meeting is held at L.L. Zamenhof's home
to celebrate the creation of Esperanto.

Esperanto, a neutral & easily learned idiom (at least
for Westerners), is designed to facilitate comprehension
& communication between peoples.

Among its early enthusiasts were many libertarians, seeing
here not only a means of countering warmongering nationalisms,
but also a way to diffuse the libertarian ideal beyond the
official statist borders.

"Esperanto is the surest & the
speediest vehicle of civilization."

— Jules Verne

http://raforum.info/spip.php?article3664

1890 -- France: Pierre Lentengre lives (1890-1982) Paris.
Administrator of "La voix libertaire" (1928-1939) & active in
"The Friends of Sebastien Faure".
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/LentengrePierre.htm

1893 -- Theatrical director Erwin Piscator lives
(1893-1966). Famed for ingenious
Expressionistic staging techniques, originator of epic
theatre style later developed by German playwright
Bertolt Brecht.

1903 -- American author Erskine Caldwell lives,
Coweta County, Georgia. He is particularly esteemed in
France & the former Soviet Union. He struggled with
censorship more than any other writer in his time.

1904 -- Paul Cadmus, lives to see the Fleet arrive in
port. Gay painter of sailors on liberty & suchlike.
His notorious erotic painting The Fleet's In! launched
his career as a full-time artist.
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/cadmus_paul.html

1910 -- Jean Maitron lives. French libertarian historian.
Wrote numerous works, including Histoire du mouvement
anarchiste en France (1880-1914)
.
http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/12.maitron.htm

El horror a la revolución

«¿Por qué temer al la guerra? Si se tiene
que morir aplastado por la tiranía
capitalista y gubernamental en tiempo de
paz, ¿por qué no morir mejor combatiendo
lo que nos aplasta? Es menos espantoso
que se derrame sangre que conquista la
libertad y el bienestar, que continúe
derramándose bajo el actual sistema
político y social en provecho de nuestros
explotadores y tiranos.»

Ricardo Flores Magón
"Regeneración," 17 de diciembre de 1910

Deconstructing Columbus
Mexican workers revise history:
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/BB/colon1.jpg
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/MagonBros/elHorror.htm

1913 -- Ford Madox Ford begins writing The Good Soldier.

1919 -- South African author/teacher
Ezekiel Mphahlele lives.

1936 -- USSR: In Moscow, Pravda announces that in
Catalonia (Spain), the "cleaning" out of Trotskyites &
the anarcho-syndicalists has already started. Stalin's
agents will carry out these purges:

"As for Catalonia, the purging of Trotskyist &
anarcho-syndicalist elements has begun; this
work will be carried out with the same energy
with which it was done in the USSR."

http://www.reocities.com/CapitolHill/9820/spain11.html
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/berneri/in_government.html

1944 -- Abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky dies.

1951 -- Netherlands: Too UnRuly? Dutch Communist Party
members are forbidden to be civil servants.

1965 -- Largest newspaper ever Sunday NY Times
at 946 pages ($0.50) almost as big as a Daily Bleed!
but nowhere as interesting or factually correct.

1965 -- US: Ken Kesey holds his 4th Acid Test.

1966 -- Benefit for Legalization of Marijuana
(LEMAR) at California Hall. Country Joe & the Fish entertain.

1977 -- Elvis Costello & the Attractions appear on
NBC-TV "Saturday Night Live" in place of the Sex
Pistols, who can't get a visa to enter the country.

1997 -- Five Poles, including members from the Polish
Anarchist Federation (FA) kidnapped in Chechnya, while
delivering medicine, food & other supplies
from a Polish-Chechen friendship society.
http://flag.blackened.net/agony/chechen.html

1997 -- US: Blue Moon Tavern forced to move a pool table!

One of the pool tables had to be moved out
of the way because more than 100 people show
up for readings by Deaf Poets Society.

Dave, sorry it took so long to reply, but with my
faulty memory I thought it would be best to ask some
of the deaf folk what they remembered about the
first night of the Deaf Poet Society.

The best I can cobble together out of the disparate
memories is that it took place on Wednesday,
December 17, 1997.

After researching this tiny bit of information with
people who actually participated, including myself, I
now sit in awe that any history is ever written. Or,
can't stand that it is written with a straight face.

All these years I thought that Impressionism
was simply an art movement. Oh well...

— Bleedster Gus (aka Joe Schmoe)

:(Sorry, We're open!):
http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/bluemoon.htm

1999 -- US: Welcome mat for WTO in Seattle, Washington.
Ya'll come back, hear!? &, no, this image is not the Blue Moon
on Opera Nite!:
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/BB/wtopep2.jpg

2001 -- US: Martin Glaberman (1918-2001) dies.
Influential Marxist, teacher, & militant autoworker.
Historian of wildcat strikes in the American auto
industry during WWII, poet, small press publisher,
& a specialist in Marx's Das Kapital.
_____

2002 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Bush orders
deployment of an illegal "Star Wars" missile defense system even
though it doesn't work. Should probably contract it out to China or
Halliburton-Walmart, get the job done quick, right & cheap.

___________

Secretary of Labor:

Sir, the workers are
revolting, they demand
shorter hours!

President Rufus T. Firefly
(Groucho Marx):

Excellent! We'll begin by
shortening the lunch hour.

— Duck Soup
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/BB/zomb001.jpg

___________


— anti-Shortening, 200(1)(2)(3)(4)(5-10)(11-99)
(3000 moor or les)
who now bikes to work (speaking of Home):
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/war/homelandsecurity.jpg

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Wikileaks Public Statement as of December 10th, 2010

By: Anonymous

From http://yubanet.com

Dec. 10, 2010 - In their most recent public statement, WikiLeaks is the only group of people to identify Anonymous correctly. Anonymous is not a group, but rather an Internet gathering.

Both Anonymous and the media that is covering it are aware of the perceived dissent between individuals in the gathering. This does not, however, mean that the command structure of Anonymous is failing for a simple reason: Anonymous has a very loose and decentralized command structure that operates on ideas rather than directives.

We do not believe that a similar movement exists in the world today and as such we have to learn by trial and error. We are now in the process of better communicating some core values to the individual atoms that comprise Anonymous - we also want to take this opportunity to communicate a message to the media, so that the average Internet Citizen can get to know who we are and what we represent.

Anonymous is not a group of hackers. We are average Internet Citizens ourselves and our motivation is a collective sense of being fed up with all the minor and major injustices we witness every day.

We do not want to steal your personal information or credit card numbers. We also do not seek to attack critical infrastructure of companies such as Mastercard, Visa, PayPal or Amazon. Our current goal is to raise awareness about WikiLeaks and the underhanded methods employed by the above companies to impair WikiLeaks' ability to function.

What is Operation: Payback

As stated above, the point of Operation: Payback was never to target critical infrastructure of any of the companies or organizations affected. Rather than doing that, we focused on their corporate websites, which is to say, their online "public face". It is a symbolic action - as blogger and academic Evgeny Morozov put it, a legitimate expression of dissent.

The background to the attacks on PayPal and the calls to attack Amazon.com

Amazon, which was until recently WikiLeaks' DNS provider, was one of the first companies to drop support for WikiLeaks. On December 9th, BusinessInsider.com reported that Amazon.co.uk were hosting the recently leaked diplomatic cables in e-book form. (Amazon.co.uk has since ceased selling the bundle of the diplomatic cables.)

After this piece of news circulated, parts of Anonymous on Twitter asked for Amazon.com to be targetted. The attack never occurred.

While it is indeed possible that Anonymous may not have been able to take Amazon.com down in a DDoS attack, this is not the only reason the attack never occurred. After the attack was so advertised in the media, we felt that it would affect people such as consumers in a negative way and make them feel threatened by Anonymous. Simply put, attacking a major online retailer when people are buying presents for their loved ones, would be in bad taste.

The continuing attacks on PayPal are already tested and preferable: while not damaging their ability to process payments, they are successful in slowing their network down just enough for people to notice and thus, we achieve our goal of raising awareness.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Daily Bleed for December 15th

... here we require the proof in solidarity,
iron on iron, body on body, & the large single beating.

— Muriel Rukeyser

Today's Daily Bleed updated, in full, splasha color
http://www.recollectionbooks.com/bleed/1215.htm

Cuppla excerpts:

CHICO MENDES (1944-1988),
Defender of Amazon rain forest, native peoples rights;
murdered for his leadership in the struggle against
the destruction of Amazon rainforests.

USA: BILL OF RIGHTS DAY. Yep. Bush & his Democrats are frantically
working to announce the Bill of Rights will no longer interfere with
your Right to Sleep.

______________________________


1683 -- Biographer/author Izaak Walton (The Compleat
Angler), 90, dies at Winchester.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/humor/fishing.jpg

1711 -- Trumpeter John Shaw invents the tuning fork.

Now he can play trumpet & eat tuna
at the same time!

1787 -- US: First street person arrested for illegal goofing off.

1791 -- US: Bill of Rights ratified as first 10 amendments to
Constitution.

Numerous modern polls have shown that, with questions
couched in law & order terms, most Americans oppose the
Bill of Rights. You don't have to tell it to Bushcroft.

1854 -- First street-cleaning machine used.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/BB/policia-federal.jpg

1869 -- US: Norton I, Emperor of the United States &
Protector of Mexico, & the greatest American ruler in
history, leaves Frisco to seek his yearly tribute
from the legislature & lobbyists.

1870 -- Achille Daude lives (1870-1963), Bancel, Gard.
French anarchist, trade unionist & especially involved in
co-operatives.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/DaudeAchille.htm

1890 -- Sioux Chief Sitting Bull (Tatanka Iyotake) murdered by the US.

1896 -- Paul Citroen lives, Berlin, born of Dutch parents.
Painter, graphical workman, photographer, writer.

After working in a bookshop for some time, Citroen was
asked to establish a special book shop for art by Herbert
Walden, owner of the famous gallery Der Sturm.

This was not an easy job, because there were few art
books at that time.

Walden introduced Citroen to the main artists of the Berlin
Dada-movement, such as George Grosz, Walter Mehring
& John Heartfield.

1910 -- Musical producer John Hammond, Jr. lives, NYC.

JOHN HAMMOND 1997 SAINT
Rock, Jazz, popular musical producer
without equal.

1913 -- American poet Muriel Rukeyser lives. Depicted
social & political problems. In addition to her 14 volumes
of poetry, she wrote biography, books for juveniles, criticism, &
translations of the poetry of Octavio Paz, Gunnar Ekelof, & others.

"The universe is made of stories,
not of atoms."

1916 -- US: Dr. Ben Reitman is again arrested for
distributing illegal birth control literature at one of
Emma Goldman's lectures in Rochester, NY.

See Mecca Reitman Carpenter, No Regrets:
Dr. Benjamin Reitman & the Remarkable Women
Who Loved Him. A Biographical Memoir
.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/GoldmanEmma.htm

1921 -- Mollie Steimer, Jacob Abrams, Samuel Lipman,
& Hyman Lachowsky arrive in Moscow after being deported
from the US as victims of the Red Scare in America.

Mollie & company were arrested for distributing leaflets
against the American invasion of Soviet Russia in 1918.

One of those arrested never made it to court. He was
beaten to death by the cops.

The Abrams case, as it is known, is a landmark in the
repression of civil liberties in the US, cited in all
standard histories as one of the most flagrant violations
of constitutional rights during the Red Scare hysteria.

http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/11ref.htm#24/1921

1930 -- Albert Einstein urges militant pacifism & an
international war resistance fund.

1932 -- Edna O'Brien lives, Ireland. Novelist, short-story
writer, screenwriter noted for portrayals of women & sexual
candor. Like James Joyce & Frank O'Connor, Ireland has
banned her books.

1936 -- George Orwell dispatches his manuscript of
The Road to Wigan Pier to publishers & leaves for the
revolution in Spain.

"This was in late December,
1936...The anarchists were
still in virtual control of
Catalonia & the revolution was
still in full swing...when one
came straight from England the
aspect of Barcelona was
something startling &
overwhelming. It was the first
time that I had ever been in a
town where the working class
was in the saddle."

— George Orwell, Homage To Catalonia

1943 -- Black American jazz singer Fats Waller dies.

1953 -- Veteran James Kutcher, who lost both his legs
in WWII, informed his disability is being cut off (sic)
due to his membership in the Socialist Workers Party.
In America ...first they come for your legs, then your food...

1966 -- Animator & fascist sympathizer Walt Disney dies.
(He's still in the fridge).

1969 -- Italy: Anarchist railway worker Giuseppe Pinelli
"accidentally" defenestrated to his death by the police.

Pinelli, secretary of the Anarchist Black Cross,
a member of the resistance during WWII, a founder
of the Sacco & Vanzetti Circle, a youth organizer, &
involved with the USI, was thrown through a window to
his death by police, creating a national scandal.

Only much later is it revealed that
the bombing was the work of rightwing fascists,
in collusion with government reactionaries.

Pinelli's police murder was the subject of Nobel
Prize-winner Dario Fo's play, "Accidental
Death of an Anarchist", filmed by Pasolini...

http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/12ref.htm#15/1969

1970 -- Poland: Youths & workers torch the Gdansk
Communist Party HQ & quietly watch it burn.

1970 -- US: Bank of America bombing, Santa Barbara,
California.

1980 -- Allen Ginsberg completes his poem "Capitol Air".

1983 -- Cliff Notes?: Ed Meese tells the National Press
Club that literature's classic miser, Ebenezer Scrooge,
to whom he has recently been compared, suffered from
bad press in his time.

"If you really look at the facts, he didn't exploit Bob
Cratchit." Explains Meese, "Bob Cratchit was paid 10
shillings a week, which was a very good wage at the time
... Bob, in fact, had good cause to be happy with his
situation. He lived in a house, not a tenement. His wife
didn't have to work ... He was able to afford the traditional
Christmas dinner of roast goose & plum pudding ... So
let's be fair to Scrooge. He had his faults, but he wasn't
unfair to anyone."

1993 -- Nobel author Gabriel Garcia Marquez
calls for legalization of drugs.

1999 -- US: Great Seattle radical songster Jim Page plays the
Freight & Salvage.
http://www.liquidcity.com/sounds/jimpage/world.ram
http://www.realchangenews.org/pastarticles/interviews/fea.Page.html

2000 -- Canada: SANTACHY!! Vancouver becomes the
first Canadian & non-American city to host a full on
Santa event. The tradition started in San Francisco
with a bunch of DEGENERATE FREAKS in 1995
& has since spread like a red cheap-suited cancer
across the US.

"No force on earth can stop 100 Santas!"

http://www.santarchy.com/


2000 -- US: Congress mandates Internet censorship software for
libraries.

__________

there's a shadow on the promised land
shiver in the winter
freezin' in the empty space
seems like nobody really cares about anybody anymore

if you ain't got a lot of money
or a pretty face
& it's slander for slander, it cuts like a knife
this ain't no game we're playin', this is real life

& all they want to talk about at city hall
is how to build a better building to play baseball

— Jim Page, Seattle Songster

Whose World is This?
http://www.liquidcity.com/sounds/jimpage/world.ram
Stranger In Me
http://www.liquidcity.com/sounds/jimpage/stranger.ram

__________


— anti-
BleedMeisterNoHairLeftOnTopOfHead&Where'dMyTeethGo 1997-2009

Monday, December 13, 2010

Daily Bleed for December 13th

Let us have madness openly.
    0 men Of my generation.
    Let us follow
    The footsteps of this slaughtered age:
    See it trail across Time's dim land
    Into the closed house of eternity
    With the noise that dying has,
    With the face that dead things wear –
    nor ever say
    We wanted more; we looked to find
    An open door, an utter deed of love,
    Transforming day's evil darkness;
    but We found extended hell & fog Upon the earth,
    & within the head
    A rotting bog of lean huge graves.

           — Kenneth Patchen, "Let Us Have Madness"


Daily Bleed in full,
http://www.recollectionbooks.com/bleed/1213.htm

excerpts,

DECEMBER 13 -- KENNETH PATCHEN
"Naturalist of the Public Nightmare." Poet, artist, hellraiser.

Alternate Patron Saint: FLOYD RED CROW
American Indian Movement activist, musician, artist, actor.

ST. LUCY'S DAY: In Scandinavia, a day for boisterous
winter fun... Singing must be loud enough to frighten off
the gnomes. Loaves of ceremonial bread are baked in
shape of cats (echo of pre-Christian sacrifices to earth
powers) formerly a procession followed a cow with
candles on her horns.
In Hungary, witches ride broomsticks & boys & girls
pull all  the pranks they can get away with.

______________________________

1795 -- According to SciFi author Philip Jose Farmer, a meteor
impacts near Wold Newton, Yorks — beginning of the Wayne Newton
families. [The family tree what Fig Newtons come from??]

1797 -- Lyric poet, satirist, rebel Heinrich Heine lives,
Dusseldorf, Germany. He prophesies:

             "Wherever they burn books,
              they will also, in the end burn human beings."

              HEINRICH HEINE 1997 SAINT
              Tragic poet of the "mattress grave,"
              revolutionist, comrade.

1895 -- Lucia Sanchez Saornil (1895-1970) lives, Madrid.
Spanish poet, painter & militant anarchist.
Co-founded "Mujeres Libres"
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/12ref.htm#13/1895

1903 -- No More Drooling?: Italo Marcioni patents the ice
cream cone, New Jersey.

1908 -- Seattle police take Emma Goldman into custody
after the lock on a closed hall is broken to allow Emma entry
to speak; released when she promises to leave the city.  

    Freedom is so grand...sometimes you actually
    have the freedom to leave.
    http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/GoldmanEmma.htm

1911 -- American poet Kenneth Patchen lives. Author
(The Journal of Albion Moonlight; Memoirs of a Shy
Pornographer
) poet (Sleepers Awake, Poems
of Humor & Protest
), playwright. Pioneered jazz poetry
("Kenneth Patchen Reads with the Chamber Jazz Sextet").
See also Kenneth Rexroth's Bird in the Bush.

  His writings remain youth cult classics, from the
  Beats, to the hippies to today. Written before
  widespread public awareness of modern threats such
  as nuclear war & environmental devastation,
  portended today's concerns with clarity & gentle
  humor. Among his most charming/eloquent works are
  "picture poems," intuitive free verse combined with his
  fanciful paintings.

  See the very fine fan site, Kenneth Patchen Homepage:
               http://www.connectotel.com/patchen/

1915 -- American/Canadian Ross Macdonald
(aka Kenneth Millar), detective (Lew Archer) novelist,
lives. Environmentalist, activist, married to author
Margaret Millar.

1918 -- US: Martin Glaberman lives (-2001). Influential
Marxist, teacher, & autoworker. Associated with the
Johnson-Forest Tendency (Trotskyite split-off), which
understood the Soviet Union as a state capitalist society
rather than as a degenerated workers' state.

1924 -- US: Death of labor honcho Samuel Gompers, 74,
president & founder of the AFL, in San Antonio,  Texass.

1926 -- Theo van Rysselberghe (1862-1926) Belgian
painter (pointillisme), dies.
Contributor, along with Paul Signac, Maximilien Luce,
Aristide Delannoy, Alexandre  Steinlen, Camille
Pissarro, Van Dongen, George Willaume, etc., to the
anarchiste magazine "Temps Nouveaux".
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/PissarroCamille.htm

1930 -- Hanns Eisler/Bertolt Brecht opera "The Measures Taken"
premiers, Germany.

1932 -- Argentina: 2nd Anarchist Congress of Rosario.
Participants include Antonio Casanova among as many
as 50 delegations.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/CasanovaAntonio.htm

1933 -- Movie "Les Miserables" premiers, Paris.

1933 -- Spain: Some provinces experience uprisings, initiated by
anarchists. In several villages, they declare anarchist-communism,
destroy property files, & abolish the currency. But these movements
remain insulated, & the government sends in the army. As in Casas
Viejas, repression is severe: 87 dead, many arrests, tortures, &
more than 700 imprisoned.

1960 -- France: The Long Voyage & Other Tapestries (1941-1960)
by Asger Jorn & Pierre Wemaëre, with essays by Gaston Bachelard
('La Création ouverte' [Open Creation]) & Michèle Bernstein ('The
Long Voyage'), third monograph by the Bibliothèque d'Alexandrie,
Paris. It exhibits on the 16th.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/sources.htm#Situationists

1968 -- 30,057 Americans killed in Vietnam since January 1, 1961.

1971 -- US: White Panther Party founder, music critic &
author, John Sinclair (sentenced to 10 years in jail for selling
two marijuana joints) is freed.

1981 -- Poland: Dictatorship of the Proletariat declares
a "state of war" against the proletariat.

1983 -- France: 6,500 turn out in Paris as Léo Ferré
sings for a benefit to support Radio Libertaire.
Thank you Ferré:
http://www.leo-ferre.com/
http://www.biographybase.com/biography/Ferre_Leo.html
Radio Libertaire :http://rl.federation-anarchiste.org/

1985 -- Ahrne Thorne (1904-1985) dies. Editor of
the "Freie Arbeiter Stimme."
See Paul Avrich, Anarchist Voices: An Oral History
of Anarchism in America
, page 54.

1998 -- England: McPark?: Local residents in
Hinchley Wood, Surrey, move caravans onto the parking
lot of their well-loved local pub, leased by McDonald's.

    Exactly 18 months later, of determined opposition,
    McDonald's threw in the paper towel & handed
    back the lease on the pub to the original owners.

2004 -- US: 'Bush Monkeys,' a painting by Chris Savido of
President Bush, today displays at the Animal Gallery on NY
City's Lower East Side.

    The portrait, using monkeys to form Bush's image, led to
    the closure of a NY art exhibition last weekend on
    opening night where some 2,000 patrons gathered.

    That's when the management of the upscale Chelsea Market
    shopping center took a closer gander at the painting ...
    the outraged manager went banana-apeshit, bellowing,
    "The show is over! Get this work down!," threatening the
    organizer with arrest if the monkey wasn't taken down &
    the planned one-month 60-piece group exhibit immediately
    closed.
    http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/art/bushmonkeys.jpg

2007 -- US: American Indian Movement activist, actor Floyd Red Crow dies, Los Angeles.
http://www.floydredcrowwesterman.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Red_Crow_Westerman
                                       _______

                 "Not long before I worked with a poet
                 named Patchen. He was wearing his
                 scarlet jacket & sitting on a stool on a
                 little stage in a theatre you walk upstairs
                 to down on 14th street. We improvised
                 behind him while he read his poems,
                 which I read ahead of time "It's dark out,
                 Jack" — this was one of his poems —

               "It's dark out, Jack, the stations out there
               don't identify themselves, we're in it raw —
               blind like burned rats, it's running out all
               around us, the footprints of the beast, one
               nobody has any notion of. The white & vacant
               eyes of something above there, something that
               doesn't know we exist. I smell heartbreak up
               there, Jack, a heartbreak at the center of
               things, & in which we don't figure at all."

  Patchen's a real artist, you'd dig him, doctor. "I believe
  in truth" he said, "I  believe that every good thought I
  have, all men shall have. I believe that the
  perfect shape of everything has been prepared.""

              — Charles Mingus, From
                   Beneath the Underdog [p.330]

Sure is One Peculiar Way to Run a Ballgame
http://www.connectotel.com/patchen/patcal.html
http://www.mingusmingusmingus.com/

                             
         _______


—anti-Hollow; also, while we be about it, anti-CopyRite 1997-67342 (more or less)

Yep. We oppose, more or less, intellectual property rights...

The Daily Bleed, accessible 600 days of the year
http://www.recollectionbooks.com/bleed/calmast.htm

An alternative, literary/book-oriented version of the Daily Bleed goes out
to a thousand or so booksellers on bookseller subscription email lists.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Andrej Grubajic at Last Word

Our event the other night was successful. For anyone who missed it, we still have copies of Andrej's two books, "Wobblies & Zapatistas" and "Don't Mourn, Balkanize" for sale. Quite a few people showed up and the conversation was fantastic.

Andrej discussed the current state of affairs in what once was Yugoslavia, the real definition of Balkanization and accompaniment. For anyone who believes the NATO backed war in the Balkans had a religious tinge to it, find out what really happened. Articulate and informative, Andrej Grubajic provided us all a fantastic evening of conversation.

Also, follow this link to find out how to help the people of Roma (not the Romanians) without throwing your money away to some worthless, piece of shit capitalist NGO: http://www.voiceofroma.com/

Check out our website and sign up for our newsletter to find out what other great events we'll be hosting in the future.

Monday, December 06, 2010

Andrej Grubajic - Speaking Event - Wobblies, Zapatistas, Anarchism, the Balkans, and more!

Friday, December 10th, 7:00 PM at Last Word Books 
 ___________________________________________
Andrej Grubacic is an anarchist dissident and historian who has written prolifically on anarchism and the history of the Balkans. He is a lecturer at the ZMedia Institute and University of San Francisco.
Following the collapse of Yugoslavia, Grubacic was based in Belgrade, before leaving his position as assistant lecturer of History at the University of Belgrade (due to tensions relating to his political activism) and relocating to the Fernand Braudel Center at SUNY Binghamton in New York, United States where he taught in the Sociology department.

Grubacic is founding member of the Global Balkans network of the Balkan anti-capitalist diaspora, the Yugoslav Initiative for Economic Democracy, Kontrapunkt magazine, and ZBalkans – a Balkan edition of Z Magazine on whose editorial board he also sits. He is or has been active as an anarchist organizer in networks such as Planetary Alternatives Network, the post-Yugoslav coalition of anti-authoritarian collectives DSM!, Peoples Global Action, the World Social Forum, Freedom Fight and, most recently, as a program director for the Global Commons.

His works include books in Balkan languages, chapters and numerous
articles related to the history and utopian present of the Balkans.

His affinity towards anarchism arose as a result of his experiences as a member of the Belgrade Libertarian Group that derives from the Yugoslav Praxis experiment.

Friday, December 03, 2010

Daily Bleed for December 3rd

I'm going to write a heart that knows no arithmetic
that won't leave some to one side
& others on the floor in fractions
that suffers only childbirth & feigned illness
I'm going to fly a heart like a comet
one of blood & cosmic dust
a mixing of earth with stars
a heart that has no country
that knows no borders
a heart that will never be fired
that has never signed a single check
that has never had a strongbox
a heart, unnerving, unnameable
something simple & sweet,
a heart that has loved.

— Rosario Murillo , excerpt from
"I'm Going to Plant a Heart on Earth,"
translated by Barbara Paschke

Daily Bleed in full, the web page has a coupla pictures
& few more entries than this "short" email...
http://www.recollectionbooks.com/bleed/1203.htm

excerpts,

DECEMBER 3 -- ALEKSANDR RODCHENKO
Inspired Soviet celebrator of the New Man (for a while.)

Alternate Saint:

ALLAN BÉRUBÉ
Gay American historian, activist, independent scholar.

China: FEAST OF LU-HSING, the Stellar God of Happiness.

England: FESTIVAL OF NEPTUNE: Marine saturnalia &
on-beach picnics (weather permitting).

US: CARNIVAL AGAINST CAPITALISM, Seattle.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/BB/fatcat6.jpg

______________________________

1805 -- France: Fourier publishes his Universal Harmony
(or 1803?), announcing the theory of "passional attraction"
which will "lead the human race to opulence, to sensual
pleasures, to the unity of the globe." But, hey, who has time?

1854 -- Australia: Eureka Rebellion suppressed. December 2004
the 150th anniversary of the Rebellion is celebrated.
http://www.takver.com/history/eureka.htm

1866 -- Quality Time?: US: Textile strikers win 10-hour
work day, Fall River, Massachusetts.

1894 -- Robert Louis Stevenson, 44, dies suddenly of
apoplexy in Apia, Samoa

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON SAINT 1998
Superb travel writer, conspiratologist, adventure novelist.

1897 -- William Gropper (1897-1977), artist, lives.
A Social Realist.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/01ref.htm#06/1916

1903 -- US: Cooper Union mass meeting protests in NY City
against anti-anarchist proceedings against John Turner,
who is still awaiting deportation.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/04ref.htm#06/1904

1906 -- US: Bucks the Trend?: US Supreme Court jails
Samuel Gompers & other worker-union organizers for
violating an injunction against Buck's Stove & Range Co.

1910 -- Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
Brotherhood of Timber Workers Union organized.
http://www.iww.org/
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/BB/leighton1931.jpg

1921 -- England: Anti-authoritarian educator
A.S. Neill establishes his school, Summerhill.
http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/pages/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.S._Neill

1927 -- US: Blind Willie Johnson records

"Dark Was
The Night
(Cold Was
The
Ground)"

This haunting impression of the 'lining out' of a hymn &
church 'moaners' in prayer is the distillation, filtered through
generations of African-American experience, of a hymn
penned in 1792 by English cleric Thomas Haweis as
"Gethsemane." Johnson was the greatest of the 'guitar
evangelists' who enjoyed a brief vogue on record before the
Depression. His work was widely influential and enduring:
Roebuck "Pops" Staples still performs Johnson's "Nobody's
Fault But Mine." (For more of Johnson's music, see The
Complete Recordings of Blind Willie Johnson
,
Columbia/Legacy C2K 52835.)

1931 -- US: Unemployment in American reaches 13.5 million —
almost 1/3 of the American work force.

"This old town should have burned down in 1931
When the rain refused to come
Air filled up our bellies
And dust filled up our lungs,
We thought our time had come."

— Janis Ian & Jon Vezner

"Nobody is actually starving. The hobos, for example,
are better fed than they have ever been.

One hobo in New York got ten meals in one day."

— Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader
President Herbert Hoover

1946 -- US: Gay American historian, activist Allan Bérubé lives.

“None of us can do our best work until we believe
that the life of the mind really does belong to us.”


1946 -- General Strike in Oakland, California. 100,000
workers from 142 AFL unions — including workers
from factories, industries, services, retail stores,
transportation systems & more — declare
a "work holiday" & walked off their jobs.

Bars were allowed to stay open, but they could
serve only beer & had to put their juke boxes
out on the sidewalk to play at full volume & no charge.

'Pistol Packin' Mama, Lay That Pistol Down,'
the number one hit, echoed off all the buildings.

http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/12ref.htm#3/1946

1953 -- During this month, the foundation of the
International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus begins.

1956 -- Soviet artist Aleksandr Rodchenko dies.
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/rodchenko_alexander.html

1969 -- John Lennon is offered role of Jesus Christ
in "Jesus Christ Superstar."

"I would've been a
fisherman, but I
can't, because I'm a
fucking genius!"

1997 -- Abe Bluestein, a lifelong activist, dies, age 88.
See the Anarchist Encyclopedia,
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/BluesteinAbe.htm

1999 -- WTO Day Four: World Trade Organization
delegates meet as the core off-limits area is reduced
from a 50 block area of downtown Seattle to 25 blocks.
Over 600 protesters have now been arrested & most
denied access to lawyers or phones.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/wto.htm

2000 -- Gwendolyn Brooks, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet,
dies at 83. Her candidly written poetry often delved into
poverty, racism & drugs.

2000 -- US: Florida... anarchy rains... & reigns...
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/BB/wf166.jpg

2002 -- US: Dummy Up? An antimissile missile, in a test delayed
by weather, scores a hit on a dummy warhead; now, as long as
the weather is clear & the enemy puts homing beacons on its
warheads (no dummy he/she), we are probably safe
(no dummy us).

2005 -- The Netherlands: The 7th Annual Dutch Anarchist Bookfair
at De Kargadoor, Oudegracht 36, Utrecht.


... what
is virtue but the lack of strong temptation;
better to leave us with our lie of being good.

— Stephen Dobyns, in "Bleeder"


____________________

Got your flu vaccination?
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/BB/virusdownload.gif
___________________


— anti-SpanishJail, 1997--30062345, more or less