Last Word Blog: Daily Bleed for December 29th, A Radical Anarchist Daybook

Our Daily Bleed...

Most of the great works of juvenile literature are subversive in one way or another; they express ideas & emotions not generally approved of or even recognized at the time; they make fun of honored figures & piously held beliefs; & they view social pretenses with clear-eyed directness, remarking — as in Andersen's famous tale — that the emperor wears no clothes.

...If the best children's literature is subversive, it is perhaps because its creators knew the failings of the grown-up world too well. Because they tell the truth with ingenuity & charm, these stories will be read & reread long after more proper & sentimental tales have been forgotten.

— Alison Lurie, Don't Tell the Grown-Ups

DECEMBER 29

SHEIKH ANTA DIOP

Radical African historian, "The Pharaoh of Knowledge."

France, when a public holiday falls on a Tuesday or a Thursday, "FAIRE LE PONT" or "bridging the gap" (in a word: ABSENTEEISM) is common.

FESTIVAL OF AUTONOMOUS MEDIA.

"An art of life in continual rising up, wild but gentle —

a seducer not a rapist, a smuggler rather than a bloody pirate,

a dancer not an eschatologist."

— Hakim Bey

ANTI-SOPA: Boycott GoDaddy Day / Move Your Domain Day.

http://occupylosangeles.org/node/3185?page=15

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2011/12/go-daddy-really-screwed/46666/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Daddy#Backing_of_SOPA.2C_and_resultant_boycott

http://www.scribd.com/doc/76259944/SOPA-Supporters

1170 -- England: In disputes with King Henry II, Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, is murdered at the altar of Canterbury Cathedral by four knights.Beginning date of Shelley Mydan's novel Thomas (i.e., Becket). His life is the subject of two 20th century plays: Jean Anouilh's Becket & T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral.

1813 -- US: British burn Buffalo, during the War of 1812.

1823 -- England: Lord Byron sails to join Prince Alexandros to fight for Greek independence.

1835 -- US: Treaty of New Echota signed by Cherokee, agreeing to move beyond the Mississippi River. Leads to Trail of Tears & several thousand Cherokee deaths.

http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/trailtea.htm

1837 -- Canada: Authorities seize the American ship Caroline near Buffalo, NY, for running supplies to Canadian revolutionaries. The Canadian militia destroy the docked steamboat, while singing "Caroline On My Mind."

1876 -- US: The Ashtabula Plunge. 92 die as an Ashtabula, Ohio railroad bridge collapses under the weight of a passenger train.

1890 -- US: Wounded Knee Massacre of Oglala Sioux, Pine Ridge, South Dakota. 300 mostly unarmed Indians killed when the 7th Cavalry (Custer's old command) discharges artillery amidst women, children, & fleeing men. 29 soldiers die in this final major military battle in genocide against Native Americans. 18 soldiers get Congressional Medals of Honor for their 'bravery'.

"Any white person who brought the element of civilization had the right to take over this continent."

— Ayn Rand, not-too-racist property-before-people advocate, March 6, 1974, when asked at West Point how she reconciled her view of America with, among other things, "the cultural genocide of native Americans."

Four days after Christmas...the soldiers riddle women, children, & the few men with bullets like so many buffaloes.

The blizzard strikes the dead & freezes them on the snow.

http://woptura.com/

http://www.dickshovel.com/WKmasscre.html

1893 -- Vera Brittain lives. British pacifist & feminist, poet & novelist. Her novels are largely autobiographical, her best-known work being Testament of Youth (1933).

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/britta.htm

1896 -- Muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros (or Siqueros) lives (1896-1974). Mexican Social Realist Muralist.

Participating in several workers strikes, among other political actions, artist David Siqueiros was placed under house arrest. Siqueiros was one of the first artists to paint murals after the Mexican Revolution.

After being exiled from his home country, Siqueiros traveled to South America & the United States.

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/siqueiros_david_alfaro.html

http://proa.org/exhibiciones/pasadas/mexico/siqueiros.html

1906 -- England:

Thomas Cantwell (b.1864) dies. Militant anarchist expositor. Published the The Commonweal with David J. Nicoll, & also managed Freedom.
http://www.ephemanar.net/decembre29.html#cantwell

1910 -- México: The anarquista Práxedis Gilberto Guerrero is killed after leading a small band in capturing the town of Janos. He now has a city named for him.

... show details

1916 -- After being serialized by Ezra Pound in The Egoist during 1914/15, James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is published in New York.

http://www.lit.kobe-u.ac.jp/%7Ehishika/pound.htm

1916 -- Russia: Crackpot monk Rasputin assassinated.

1922 -- William Gaddis, American novelist whose long, experimental works portray the contemporary human condition, lives, New York. Influenced by the writings of James Joyce, Gaddis' fiction, in turn, influences the work of Thomas Pynchon.

http://www.themodernword.com/scriptorium/gaddis.html

http://www.notbored.org/vineland.html

1923 -- Senegal: Radical African historian Sheikh (common spellings, Sheik, Cheikh) Anta Diop lives, Caytou (a small village near Diourbel).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheikh_Anta_Diop

1926 -- Poet Rainer Maria Rilke dies, Valmont, Switzerland.

http://www.uib.no/ped/rilke.html

1930 -- US: (F)Red Newton arrives in New Orleans after swimming 1,826 miles down the Mississippi River ( 6 July).

1931 -- Identification of heavy water publicly announced, H. C. Urey.

1932 -- US: During this year:

Roosevelt tells Rexford Tugwell that Huey Long & Douglas MacArthur are the two most dangerous men in the country.

Gary, Indiana. Over one-half of the black population unemployed & on relief.

At the age of 65, Laura Ingalls Wilder sees her first book published, Little House in the Big Woods, by Harper & Row.

The Mills Brothers record "Diga Diga Do."

The Communist party in America has doubled its membership from 6,000 in 1929 to 12,000 in 1932.

The Southern Pacific Railroad reports that it has ejected nearly 700,000 vagrants from its trains (boxcars) this year alone.

Elsewhere: Mohandas Gandhi vows to "fast unto death" for electoral reform.

Source: Vanessa Collection

1934 -- Federico García Lorca play Yerma is produced, Madrid, Spain.

1936 -- Spain: Publication of issue No. 1 of the anarchist Ideas.

dans le Bas Llobregat (près de Barcelone), lancement par des militants anarchistes de l'hebdomadaire "Ideas", qui restera fidèle à l'idéal libertaire et à l'action révolutionnaire et se montrera hostile à la collaboration des anarchistes au gouvernement.
http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/spain/sp001780/chap1.html
http://www.ephemanar.net/decembre29.html

1937 -- US: Babe Ruth returns to baseball, (having retired in 1935). He was announced as the new manager of the Class D, De Land Reds of the Florida State League.

frio_en_el_frente poster; source lacucaracha.info

1937 -- Spain: Massive counterattack of Fascist troops under the command of General Varela at Teruel.

The Fascists rush reinforcements from the Madrid zone & launch a lightning counterattack against the Republicans at Teruel. They are supported by the superior aviation of the Legion Condor.

[Details / context]

Republican soldier at Teruel

1938 --

US: Construction begins on the Lake Washington Floating Bridge, Seattle, Washington.

1939 -- France: Madeleine Pelletier (1874-1939) dies. French doctor, intellectual, lesbian, anthropologist, psychiatrist, pacifist & militant feminist, member of the Socialist Party, later a Communist, then an anarchiste. Founded the review La suffragiste, & collaborated on other néo-Malthusian & libertarian newspapers.

... show details

1940 -- England: London suffers its most devastating air raid, & approximately 1,500 fires threatened to destroy the ancient city. Largely evacuated, the few who remained fought hard to contain the fires. The ability of Londoners to maintain their composure had much to do with their survival during the hard war years.

http://atschool.eduweb.co.uk/chatback/english/memories/blitz.html

1941 -- H.B.D. disembarks today at Fray Bento with Doctor Zhivago in search of the lost masterpiece of Nierenstein Souza.

To live for memory, forgetting almost all.

— Jorge Luis Borges & Adolfo Bioy-Casares,

"In Search of the Absolute," in Antaeus 19, Autumn 1975.

1943 -- US: Last Stroke? The Masses illustrator Art Young (1866-1943) dies, New York, New York.

ART YOUNG, Daily Bleed Patron Saint 2003-2004

New Masses cartoonist of whimsy & biting satire.

... show details

1952 -- US: First transistorized hearing aid offered for sale by Sonotone (Elmsford, NY). The first customer requested a refund. Said "It works, but most people just ain't worth listenin' to."

http://www.digitaldiscounts.com/ear4.jpg

1960 -- French-Canadian doctor-novelist, Philippe Panneton, dies in Lisbon, Portugal. As with his best work Trente Arpents, his books, like Fausse Monnaie (1947, "False Money") & Le Poids du jour (1948, "The Heaviness of the Day"), focus on the lives of displaced peasants. He also wrote under the pseudonym Sharon Ringuet.

1963 -- The Weavers, America's preeminent folk music group, give their farewell concert at Orchestra Hall in Chicago. They made a nationwide impact with their recordings in the late 40's & early 50's with songs like "Goodnight Irene" & "On Top of Old Smokey."

Soon we'll end this life of weaving,

Soon we'll reach a better shore,

Where we'll rest from filling batteries;

We won't have to weave no more.

http://www.folkarchive.de/weavers.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weavers

1963 -- Richard Buckle, London Sunday Times critic, calls Lennon & McCartney "the greatest composers since Beethoven."

"...my misfortune pains me doubly, in as much as it leads to my being misjudged. For me there can be no relaxation in human society; no refined conversations, no mutual confidences. I must live quite alone & may creep into society only as often as sheer necessity demands; I must live like an outcast. If I appear in company I am overcome by a burning anxiety, a fear that I am running the risk of letting people notice my condition...such experiences almost made me despair, & I was on the point of putting an end to my life — the only thing that held me back was my art. For indeed it seemed to me impossible to leave this world before I had produced all the works that I felt the urge to compose, & thus I have dragged on this miserable existence..."

— from Emily Anderson, The Letters of Beethoven, Vol. 3

1967 -- US: Star Trek's "The Trouble With Tribbles" first airs.

1970 -- US: Congress passes Occupational Health & Safety Act (OSHA). Duck-N-Cover!

1970 --

France:

ORIENTATION

Resignation of Christian Sébastiani (French section) formally accepted. This follows an exchange of letters with Guy Debord, Rene Riesel & Rene Vienet.

http://www.notbored.org/orientation32.html | http://www.notbored.org/debord-29December1970a.html
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]

1972 -- US: 101 people (of 176 aboard) die in first crash of a jumbo jet, in the Florida Everglades. After this "controlled flight into terrain" the L1011 aircraft is nicknamed, "Swamp Buggies."

1972 -- After 71 days, the remaining 14 of 16 survivors of an October plane crash are rescued from a remote location high in the Andes Mountains of South America.

After just over a week, the passengers are assumed dead & the search called off. Over the next nine weeks, a majority of the initial survivors manage to stay alive in the inhospitable conditions of the Andes Mountains, creating a makeshift shelter out of the wreckage of the plane, & cannibalizing the dead passengers to keep from starving to death.

1975 -- US: 11 people killed, 75 injured when a bomb explodes at TWA terminal at New York's La Guardia airport.

1979 -- John Bonham, John Paul Jones, Robert Plant perform in the Kampuchea benefit show at the Hammersmith Odeon in London.

1989 -- Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader author Vaclav Havel becomes president of Czechoslovakia.

"Man must in some way come to his senses. He must extricate himself from this terrible involvement in both the obvious & hidden mechanisms of totality, from consumption to repression, from advertising to manipulation through television. He must rebel against his role as a helpless cog in the gigantic & enormous machinery hurtling God knows where. He must discover again, within himself, a deeper sense of responsibility toward the world, which means responsibility toward something higher than himself."

— Vaclav Havel in prison

http://www.worldtrans.org/whole/havelspeech.html

1989 --  Hong Kong: Thousands of Vietnamese boat people fight riot police.

1989 --  Panama: US illegally ransacks the residence of Nicaraguan ambassador.

1994 -- US: A Washington State court rejects "property" rights advocates & reaffirms the fishing harvest rights of 15 Indian tribes.

1994 -- US: Gone With the Wind?: Lisa "Left-Eye" Lopes pleads guilty to arson charges. She set fire to & destroyed boyfriend Andre Rison's $1 million Atlanta mansion.

2000 --  US: Earth Liberation Front (ELF) burns four luxury homes on Long Island, NY.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Liberation_Front

2001 --  Afghanistan: US air strike kills 52 Afghans, nearly half of them children.

2009 -- Illustrator David Levine, who drew thousands of satirical portraits for The New York Review of Books & other publications, dies, age 83.

http://www.nybooks.com/galleries/

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122043019

3000 --

"The PIONEER has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extirmination [sic] of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong & wipe these untamed & untamable creatures from the face of the earth."

       — L. Frank Baum, publisher & editor of The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, & later, author of the Wizard of Ozbooks.

used anarchist books:

Used anarchist books / Anarchy books