Last Word Blog: Daily Bleed for April 16th

Our dead fathers came down to us in the river.
Thousands of fathers & grown brothers
Bobbing in the Euphrates...
The two generals rode their horses
Over the hill
Like happy widows on strong donkeys.

— Norman Dubie, excerpt,
"The Desert Deportation of 1915",
from The Mercy Seat

No mercy here,
Web page in full, some 75 entries, ditto+ on the links,
cuppla pictures in real color,
http://www.recollectionbooks.com/bleed/0416.htm

A few modest excerpts:

MERCE CUNNINGHAM
American dance visionary, anarchist choreographer.

LIBERATING THE RAINBOW LOST IN WHITE LIGHT FESTIVAL.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/BB/fly_rods_reels_small.jpg

_______________________________________________

1844 -- French novelist/urbane critic Anatole France lives
(1844-1924), Paris. Awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921.

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids
the rich as well as the poor to sleep under
bridges, to beg in the streets,
& to steal bread."

1854 -- US: "Army of the poor" leader Jacob Coxey lives.

JACOB COXEY, Daily Bleed Saint 2003,
Leader of "Coxey's Army" of hobos, who marched
on Washington in Protest in 1894. Arrested for
strolling on the White House lawn.

"We will send a petition to Washington with boots on."

1866 -- Gustave Henri Jossot lives (1866-1951). French
painter, illustrator & caricaturist who targeted the mainstream
institutions of family, army, justice, churches, schools, etc.
Jossot, deeply libertarian, refused to be labeled an anarchist.

1871 -- Ivan Turgenev arrested & jailed for publishing an obituary
banned by the St. Petersburg censorship committee.

1889 -- Charlie Chaplin, tramp, lives (1889-1977) .

"In the end, everything is a gag."

1902 -- Philippines: Surrender
of the last resistance to US intervention.

Apparently the benevolent US occupying forces left a few
resisters alive despite a policy of genocide, with orders to
kill every man, woman & child above the age of 10.

Look out Iraq! Look out World!

1903 -- Mexico: The buildings of the paper "El hijo del
Ahuizote" are seized by the police for the second time. The staff,
Ricardo & Enrique Flores Magon & Librado Rivera are arrested
for having "ridiculed public authorities."

1919 -- US: Anarchist choreographer Merce Cunningham lives.

1922 -- US: Where's the Beef? First sermon preached
from an airplane.

Ranks up there with dropping cows from an airplane
though not half as exciting.

1989 -- US: Frances Steloff dies at the age of 101.
Founded the Gotham Book Mart on January 1, 1920.

She died, Fine in Fine jacket but for light
wear at the edges.

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

Her customers included George & Ira Gershwin, Ina Claire
& Charlie Chaplin, & more recently Alexander Calder, Stephen
Spender, Woody Allen, Saul Bellow, John Guare & Garson Kanin.

She championed the experimental & challenged the censors. Her
courage in purchasing shipments of the banned Lady Chatterley's
Lover directly from D. H. Lawrence in Italy in the late 1920's & in
ordering smuggled copies of Tropic of Cancer from Henry Miller in
Paris during the 1930's led to lawsuits & landmark decisions on
censorship....

1994 -- The Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, dies in New York,
never completing his second novel.

"I am an invisible man.
No, I am not a spook like
those who haunted Edgar
Allan Poe; nor am I one
of your Hollywood-movie
ectoplasms. I am a man of
substance, of flesh &
bone, fiber & liquids--&
I might even be said to
possess a mind. I am
invisible, understand,
because people refuse to
see me."

2000 -- US: Seattle songster Jim Page plays at the
A16 Anarchist & Anti-Capitalist Activities in Massive
Rally & Non-Violent Protest at the IMF &
World Bank in Washington DC.

A couple tunes:
http://www.liquidcity.com/sounds/jimpage/world.ram
http://www.liquidcity.com/sounds/jimpage/stranger.ram

2009 -- Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Barack Obama releases
Bush torture memos allowing the CIA to torture al-Qaida & other "suspects" ...

___________________

The professed concern for freedom of the
press in the West is not very persuasive in
the light of ... the actual performance of
the media in serving the powerful &
privileged as an agency of manipulation,
indoctrination, & control.

A "democratic communications policy," in
contrast, would seek to develop means of
expression & interaction that reflect the
interests & concerns of the general
population, & to encourage their
self-education & their individual
& collective action.

— Noam Chomsky, Necessary Illusions:
Thought Control in Democratic Societies