Our Daily Bleed...
... 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. Mariners, Renegades & Castaways |
DECEMBER 27
THEODORE DREISER
American social critic, activist, Stalinist sympathizer, realist novelist. Died December 28.
South Africa: FEAST OF MARIMBA, Goddess of Musical Happiness.
Tonalpohualli, the sacred Aztec calendar: Today is Calli (House), it's protector is Tepeyollotl, Heart of the Mountain.
Calli is a good day for rest, tranquility & family life. Not a good day for participating in public life. Best spent cementing relationships of trust & mutual interests.
1512 -- Puerto Rico: The Burgos Law is issued, by Ferdinand II, the Catholic, of Aragón, regulating relations between Spaniards & the conquered Indians, particularly to ensure the spiritual & material welfare of the latter, who were often severely treated.
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, author
1763 -- New World: A troop of 50 armed men enter the Workhouse at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, & hatchet to death the only 14 surviving Conestoga Indians (the rest of the tribe having been similarly dispensed with 13 days ago).
Having finished their fine work, the troop, in the words of Benjamin Franklin,
"huzzahed in triumph as if it had gained a victory, & rode off unmolested."
1815 -- US: Peace Society founded, Massachusetts. & none too soon.
1821 --
France: Joseph Dejacque lives (1821-1864). 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).
1822 -- Louis Pasteur, bacteriologist, lives, Dole, France.
1827 -- US: Georgia passes law proclaiming "all the lands of Georgia belong to her absolutely. The Indians are tenants at her will." In another three years, legislation will mandate forcible removal of all Indians to west of the Mississippi River.
1831 -- Jamaica: The relative 'freedom' provided by designated holidays becomes the vehicle for the 'Christmas Rebellion' of upwards of 60,000 Jamaican slaves. Damaged estimated at over £1,132,000 [1831 prices] — see also 14 April & 18 August.
Source: [Calendar Riots]
1834 -- Essayist/critic Charles Lamb, whose lighthearted style belies his tragic life, dies at 69 at his home in Middlesex.
1845 -- US: Ether first used in childbirth in US, Jefferson, Georgia. A tough choice: ether, or?
1850 -- Hawaiian Fire Department established.
This 1940 Ford is powered by two Rolls/Royce Viper engines with afterburners. Guaranteed to be the first at any fire (if it doesn't start one), perhaps arriving before its own sirens! Developing 12,000 pounds of thrust, how fast will it go? Depends on how well you hold on!
1861 -- England: Mikhail Bakunin, the Russian anarchist, having landed in Liverpool yesterday, arrives in London.
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"Nothing is more dangerous for man's private morality than the habit of command. The best man, the most intelligent, disinterested, generous, pure, will infallibly & always be spoiled at this trade. Two sentiments inherent in power never fail to produce this demoralization; they are: contempt for the masses & the overestimation of one's own merits."
1866 -- Charles Dickens writes to an inquiring reader: "Dear Madame, you make an absurd, though common mistake in supposing that any human creature can help you to be an authoress, if you cannot become one in virtue of your own powers...."
1889 -- Bunk Johnson lives, New Orleans, Louisiana. Black American trumpeter, one of the first musicians to play jazz & a principal figure of the 1940s traditional jazz revival.
1893 -- Victor Considerant dies. French socialist who sought to develop & implement the theses of Fourier, in particular on the idea of the phalanstery. Published numerous papers: "Phalanstère," "La réforme industrielle," "La phalange" (1836), "La démocratie pacifique" (1843). Elected to the legislature in 1848, but forced into exile in 1849 in Belgium, then in Texass (1852), where he tried to found a colony. Amnestied, he returned to Paris &, in March 1871, Considerant joined the Paris Commune. Author of Destinée Sociale (1838), Manifeste de l'école sociétaire (1845), Théorie du droit à la propriété et du droit au travail (1848), etc.
"Si donc on veut la liberté..., il faut rechercher les conditions du bien-être général et de l'aisance universelle, premières bases du développement des droits, des libertés, première conditions de la véritable émancipation de tous."
— Destinée sociale.
"Dans aucune oeuvre, la Commune sociétaire n'a été aussi bien élaborée que dans les écrits de Considérant.
— Max Nettlau, anarchist historian
1896 -- American novelist/essayist, Louis Bromfield, lives, Mansfield, Ohio.
1896 -- In Nackenheim, Germany, Carl Zuckmayer lives. Much of his work was affected by the World Wars, such as his Der Hauptmann von Köpenick (1931, The Captain of Köpenick), a satire on Prussian militarism, Der Schelm von Bergen (1934, The Village of Bergen), &, one of his best-known dramas written in America, Des Teufels General(1946, The Devil's General), dramatizing the plight of men torn between loyalty to country & the demands of conscience.
1900 -- US: Smashing Hit?: Terrorist Carrie Nation stages her first bottle-smashing raid on a saloon at the Carey Hotel in Wichita, Kansas. Nation carries the day; usually did her damage with a hatchet, calling her vandalism hatchetation.
1901 -- Stanley William Hayter lives, London. English printmaker/painter who founded Atelier 17, the most influential print workshop of the 20th century.
1901 -- Actress Marlene Dietrich lives, Berlin.
"Dietrich would never do that..."
— Marlene Dietrich
1904 -- Peter Pan, by James M. Barrie, opens at the Duke of York's Theatre, London. Typical liberal media celebration of pedophillia & godless redskins. (Peter Pan is how old!)
1906 -- Andreas Feininger lives to take Route 66. American photographer & writer on photographic technique, noted for his nature & cityscape photographs.
1908 -- Snow Job?: Followers of Lee Spengler gather atop South Mountain in white to await the world's end.
— Rev Hal Lindsey, author of The Late Great Planet Earth on his discovery that the world was coming to an end.
1910 -- "Archaeologist of morning" Charles Olson lives, Worcester, Massachusetts.
Son of a mail-carrier, postmodern avant-garde poet & literary theorist, notable for his influence on American poetry during the late 1950s & assault prose, a dynamic mix of bold assertion & documentary material lacking conventionally logical connectives. From 1951 until its closing in 1956, Olson served as rector of Black Mountain College, inviting poets such as Robert Creeley & Robert Duncan to teach.Take a look at these words of Charles Olson
I take SPACE to be the central fact to man born in America from Folsom cave to now. I spell it large because it comes large here. Large, & without mercy. (Call Me Ishmael, 1947)
& their expansion three years later in his manifesto Projective Verse:From the moment he ventures into FIELD COMPOSITION — put himself in the open — he can go by no track other than the one the poem under hand declares, for itself.
Olson had been defining a working poetry, rejecting the formal tradition as an alien inheritance from Europe. The new verse was one "in which a poet manages to register both the acquisitions of his ear & the pressures of his breath."Olson called this COMPOSITION BY FIELD. 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.
"A few facts: by 1833, 70,000 persons & $70,000,000 were tied up in whaling & such associated crafts as shipbuilding, sail-lofts, smiths to make toggle irons, the thieving outfitters, their agents & the whores of ports like New Bedford; by 1844 (peak years roughly 1840-60) the figure is up to $120,000,000, whaling competes successfully in attracting capital to itself with such opening industries as textiles & shoes, & the export of whale products — one-fourth of the catch — is third to meat products & lumber."— Charles Olson
1913 -- Canada: Mass rebellion by IWW workers in Edmonton, Alberta forces city to house 400 unemployed during winter. Typical Canadians, too lazy to build their own igloos.
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.
1914 -- England: Founding of International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR), multi-faith peace group, Cambridge.
1916 -- US: Steelworkers strike in Ohio demanding the 8-hour day & an increase in wages. The strike ends in the New Year in their favor; the US government needs steel for armaments.
Source: [Calendar Riots]
1919 --
Germany: On the initiative of Rudolf Rocker, the founding Congress of F.A.U.D. (Freie Arbeiter Union Deutschland), free union of the German workers, is held in Berlin, from the 27th-30th.
Arthur Lehning & Augustin Souchy are among the founders, along with Rocker. FAUD declares itself anarchist-syndicalist — opposed to both the State & to parliamentarism.
It eventually counts 125,000 members.
1927 -- Russia: 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 U.S.S.R. nearly assured. Communist party congress bans all opposition to Stalin's policies. With Trotsky & others purged from the party, the Show Trials will soon begin, but not on CNN or HBO just yet.
1930 -- Wilfrid Sheed, editor, critic, & novelist (as Max Jamison), lives, London.
1938 -- In Chicago, Illinois, American novelist/playwright, Zona Gale, dies. Aside from her most popular Miss Lulu Brett, she wrote Friendship Village (1908), A Daughter of the Morning(1917), Birth (1918), considered by many to be her finest work, & Preface to a Life (1926).
1944 -- US: Truman authorizes the Secretary of War to seize all Montgomery Ward's property to force compliance with War Labor Board orders which Ward's was flagrantly ignoring.
1943-44, Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Chairman of Montgomery Ward refuses to comply with War Labor Board orders to extend contract signed in 1942.
Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Roosevelt orders seizure of Ward's property in Chicago, with Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Secretary of Commerce as manager.
After union elections, the seizure was terminated until December 27, 1944, when an executive order authorized the Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Secretary of War to seize all Ward's property to force compliance with War Labor Board orders which Ward's was flagrantly ignoring. The seizure was terminated in 1945 by Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Truman."A corporation cannot be ethical; its only responsibility is to turn a profit!"
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 Santillán share memories of clandestinity & repression due to their anarchist ideas & activities during the Spanish Revolution.
Host Abad de Santillan (1897-1983) was a leading figure in both the Spanish & Argentine anarchist movement. Fabbri (1908-2000) was forced to leave her country of birth in the fascist period & spent most of her life as a professor of Italian literature in Uruguay. Souchy (1892-1984) left Germany as a conscientious objector & went to Sweden in 1915, thereafter living in Spain & South America. |
1960 --
Also during this month, "Internationale Situationniste" #5 is published, edited by Guy Debord & Editorial Committee: Debord, Jorn, Kotànyi, Nash, Sturm, Wyckaert (resignation of Abdelhafid Khatib, Algerian section). Includes a report on the Fourth SI Conference in London, its Resolution Concerning the Imprisonment of Alexander Trocchi, & Jorn's "Open Creation & Its Enemies."
Spur #3, journal of the German section of the SI, appears in Munich. Includes 29 original lithographs by Asger Jorn & the Spur group (Helmut Sturm, Heimrad Prem, Hans-Peter Zimmer & Lothar Fischer).
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]
1965 -- US: Old leadership of SDS unseated & women hold a closed door workshop at the SDS convention.
1968 -- Spain: Hunosa despide a 10 mineros asturianos. La huelga afecta a 5.677 obreros. 10 Asturian miners are fired. The resulting strike affects 5,677 workers.
1972 -- North Korea: New constitution comes into effect. Sure, you betcha.
Now both Koreas rival US democracy, where American voters are free to choose between Ikea & Sleep Country,Pepsi Cola or Coca-Cola.
1979 -- Ian Dury & the Clash headline the second of four concerts for the people of Kampuchea, in London.
1981 -- Hoagland Howard "Hoagy" Carmichael, pianist, vocalist & songwriter dies of natural causes in Rancho Mirage, California. Raconteur of the early days of jazz & Ten Pan Alley.
1981 -- US: Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist — who has, for several months, been taking substantial doses of Placidyl (legal drug: not sold by blacks) to relieve intense back pain — checks into George Washington Hospital for treatment of side effects, including speech so severly slurred that he was frequently incoherent in court & according to a hospital spokesman, he is,
1985 --
http://www.filosofia.org/aut/001/1932relg.htm
1989 -- Disco line dance craze.
2007 -- Pakistan: A suicide gunman shoots former Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto, killing her, & then blows himself up killing at least 22 others at an election rally.
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.
anti-CopyRite 1997-3000, more or less
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