Daily Bleed for December 9th, A Radical Anarchist Daybook

Our Daily Bleed...

"Any person who has had the following dream. You are in a subway station of a major city. At the far end you see a coffee machine. You put in two coins. The Holy Grail drops down. Then blood pours into the chalice."

"The person who borrowed my Martin Beck thriller, read it in a sauna which melted the glue off the spine so the pages drifted to the floor, stapled them together & returned the book, thinking I wouldn't notice."

      — Michael Ondaatje, Elimination Dance

DECEMBER 9

PYOTR KROPOTKIN
"The Red Prince," Russian anarchist theorist.

http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/KropotkinPeter.htm

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Patzcuaro, Mexico: FIESTA OF THE MOTHER OF HEALTH. Fishermens' Fiesta, with much dancing, clowning & fireworks.

& this reminder, lest things are going too well in your life, this is:
NATIONAL INDIGESTION SEASON.
INTERNATIONAL (GOVERNMENT) ANTI-CORRUPTION DAY. Yup.

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656 --  'Ali's forces win the Battle of the Camel
in the first Muslim civil war.

Float like a butterfly sting like a bee!

1292 -- Sa'di, great Persian poet (Orchard; Rose Garden) dies.


1460 -- Madcap medieval rhymester John Skelton lives.

Once, when being upbraided by Cardinal Wolsey he quipped, "I pray, your grace, to let me lie down & wallow, for I can kneel no longer."

Source: [Calendar Riots]


1531 -- México: Virgin of Guadalupe appears to an Indian boy.


1570 -- Geuzen under Herman de Ruyter occupies Loevestein.

1608 -- British "Paradise Lost": epic writer John Milton lives, Bread Street, Cheapside, London. The "Prince of Poets" also wrote First Defense of the English People, justifying the execution of Charles I.

On his birthday in 1631 he wrote: "How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,/ Stoltn on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!"

After completing his First Defense of the English People, he went blind at 43. Alfred, Lord Tennyson later apostrophizes the author of Paradise Lost: "O mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies, /O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity,/God-gifted organ-voice of England, / Milton, a name to resound for ages."

http://www.literature.org/authors/milton-john/paradise-lost/
http://johnmilton.org/
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/jmilton.htm

1640 -- New Old World: Settler Hugh Bewitt is banished from colony of Massachusetts when he declares himself to be free of original sin. Much like the Old World.


1777 -- England: Reverend Benjamin Russen executed at Tyburn, for rape.


1801 -- German writer Johann Gottfried Seume starts his tour on foot from Saxony, crosses the Alps & walks through Italy to Sicily. His return trip takes him through Switzerland & even to Paris. The whole trip takes only eight months & results in Spaziergang nach Syrakus im Jahre (A Stroll to Syracuse).

1828 -- Joseph Dietzgen, socialist, lives, near Cologne, Germany. Important socialist theorist whose writings exerted considerable influence on the workers' movement. Wrote The Nature of Human Brain-Work (1869).

"While the anarchists may have mad & brainless individuals in their ranks, the socialists have an abundance of cowards. For this reason I care as much for one as the other."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/dietzgen/index.htm
http://www.pmpress.org/content/article.php?story=JosephDietzgen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Dietzgen

1842 -- Russia: Prince Peter Kropotkin, important geographer & anarchist communist, lives, Moscow. "The prince who became a revolutionist."

PYOTR KROPOTKIN
Russian revolutionist, anarchist, landmark geographer.
The Prince who shunned material wealth.

     

In the Encyclopedia Britannica (for which he wrote the "anarchy" definition in the famed 11th edition) Kropotkin describes himself:

"Although he achieved renown in a number of different fields, ranging from geography & zoology to sociology & history, he shunned material success for the life of a revolutionist."

1848 -- Folklorist Joel Chandler Harris lives, Putnam County, Georgia. Discovers Tar Baby syndrome. Creator of Uncle Remus & Brer Rabbit.
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG97/remus/contents.html

1854 -- Alfred Tennyson's The Charge of the Light Brigade published six weeks after the Battle of Balaclava.


1868 -- Italy: Paolo Lega lives (1868-??). In 1894 the young anarchist attempts to shoot Francesco Crispi, président du conseil Italien. The bullet lodged in Crispi's car rather than Crispi; Lega was arrested & did 20-years in prison for his poor aim.
Source: Ephéméride anarchiste


1869 -- US: Knights of Labor founded in Philadelphia, as a secret society open to all members of the producing classes except "parasites" including stockbrokers, gamblers, & lawyers. Founded by Uriah Stevens & five other garment workers. Stevens, a tailor who once studied for the Baptist ministry, leads the order.
http://www.history.umd.edu/Gompers/chron1.htm


1889 --  US: The Press expedition arrives in Port Angeles to begin exploring the Olympic Mountains (Washington State).



1889 --  US: First issue of Golden Argosy magazine is published.


1892 --  George Bernard Shaw play "Widowers' Houses" premiers, London.
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/goldman/socsig/shawintro.html



1893 -- France: Auguste Vaillant throws a small bomb into the Chamber of Deputies. A symbolic gesture, meant to wound rather than kill, Vaillant is condemned to death, & guillotined February 5, 1894. The deputies use the event to suppress the anarchists & their presses.

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Auguste Vaillant explains why he, an anarchist who strove for a society of peace, resorted to acts of violence:

"I have seen capital come, like a vampire, to suck the last drop of blood of the unfortunate pariahs. Then I came back to France where it was reserved for me to see my family suffer atrociously. This was the last drop in the cup of my sorrow. Tired of leading this life of suffering & cowardice I carried this bomb to those who are primarily responsible for social misery."

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http://www.jtosti.com/histoire/anarchistes.htm

1893 -- Italy: Moti di rivolta in Sicilia contro le tasse comunali, il dazio di consumo, che porta al rincaro delle farine. La brutale repressione delle stato provoca circa un centinaio di morti e decine di feriti.
Source: [Crimini e Misfatti]


1896 -- France: First performance (dress rehearsal) of Ubu Roi, subversive play by Alfred Jarry. Sets off a riot.
http://www.milkmag.org/jarry.htm



1898 -- Emmett Kelly, circus clown (Weary Willie) lives.

Daily Bleed Patron Saint 1997; March 28, 2006 Best of the hobo clowns. Patron saint of the Big Top.

1899 -- England: "Grand Meeting & Concert for the Benefit of the Agitation in Favour of the Political Victims in Italy" staged in London. Among a cast of international anarchist speakers areEmma Goldman, Louise Michel, &Peter Kropotkin .

1902 -- Actress Margaret Hamilton lives, Cleveland, Ohio.

1905 -- Dalton Trumbo, writer (Johnny Got His Gun), film director, one of the blacklisted "Hollywood Ten," lives. Johnny Got His Gun published two days after the beginning of WWII. Won an American Booksellers Award for 1939.

The most talented member of the Hollywood Ten, one of a group who refused to testify before the 1947 US House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) about alleged communist involvement. He was blacklisted & in 1950 spent 11 months in prison. After his blacklisting, he wrote 30 scripts under pseudonyms.

Johnny Got His Gun

Johnny has fought in the war & been severely wounded. He has no arms & legs any more, nor can he talk, see or hear; basically he can only feel.

What Joe wants most is to let the world know about the horrors of war. He assures his keepers that he could support himself in this venture if only they would let him out (people would be glad to pay to see a "freak" such as himself). The answer he receives in return, one which had to be "literally" pounded into his forehead:

"What you ask is against regulations."

See Hollywood Blacklist, by Dan Georgakas (from Encyclopedia of the American Left):http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/blacklist.html

http://www.english.emory.edu/LostPoets/Casualties-note.html
http://www.moderntimes.com/blacklist/
http://www.weeklywire.com/ww/11-17-97/boston_books_2.html
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/trumbo.htm
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/july-dec97/blacklist_10-24.html
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAtrumbo.htm

1905 --  Russia: The Moscow Soviet of workers revolts (-Dec. 19) (OS).


1909 -- US: Great Sioux leader Red Cloud dies, Pine Ridge, South Dakota.
Daily Bleed Patron Saint 2003-4
Great Native American leader, Sioux warrior.


1913 -- France: "Mona Lisa," stolen from the Louvre Museum in 1911, recovered.


1915 --  George Bernard Shaw play "Major Barbara" makes its US premiere, NY.
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/goldman/socsig/shawintro.html


1919 -- In a snap, Roy DeCarava, photographer, lives, From Harlem to San Juan in Black & White, as it were. Four Harlem images were included in Steichen's immensely popular 1955 Family of Man exhibition & book, & 140 accompany a text by Langston Hughes in the classic Sweet Flypaper of Life. His images have immortalized such jazz greats as Billie Holliday & John Coltrane.
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/D/decarava/decarava_articles1.html
http://icarusfilms.com/cat97/a-e/conversa.html http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/decarava_roy.html


1922 -- Redd Foxx, actor / comedian, lives. Calendar of SubGenius Saint, October 2nd.


1926 -- Benny Goodman's first recording session. Plays clarinet with the Ben Pollack Orchestra on a tune titled, "Downtown Shuffle" on Victor Records. Goodman, incidentally, was all of 17 years old.


1939 -- US: ¶ During this month Beatster Jack Kerouac loses his virginity with a Manhattan prostitute.... [Exact date not given -- ed.] This year he has graduated from high school, smoked marijuana for the first time, is exposed to & influenced by jazz he hears at Harlem clubs, & paid money to lose his virginity.
http://www.cosmicbaseball.com/jkchrono.html



1949 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader, the Honorable Representative J. Parnell Thomas, former chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), sentenced to 6 to 18 months in federal prison. This great patriot "padded" his Congressional payrolls & pocketed the money himself, showing the world the true face of "Americanism."

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/learn-from-blacklist.html
http://www.moderntimes.com/blacklist/
http://www.weeklywire.com/ww/11-17-97/boston_books_2.html 



1952 -- South Africa: Four white resisters arrested for using "non-European" booths in post office, Cape Town.
http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?include=docs/misc/2010/umzabalazo.html



1953 -- US: General Electric announces all Communist employees will be fired.

"Originally DuPont, & throughout most of my childhood General Electric, was the government town. If you had Westinghouse appliances or something like that in your household you were almost a traitor. I guess the bad word for that time in the fifties was a “communist.” You know, you had to have General Electric this & General Electric that. So I was more associated with General Electric than I was with the Atomic Energy Commission."

Rep. John Rankin of Mississippi used his seat on the House Un-American Activities Committee to argue that blacks had been happy with segregation until stirred up by "communist agitators."

General Electric president Charles Wilson said: "The problems of the US can be summed up in two words: Russia abroad, labor at home."

Accordingly, Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which denied unions the right to organize unless their leaders took an oath swearing they weren't communists.

1955 -- Marianne Moore, hired by the Ford to name the car eventually called "Edsel," suggests Utopian Turtletop. Ford sends her a dozen roses.
http://reocities.com/Area51/chamber/6168/
http://utopianturtletop.blogspot.com/2005/10/rock-critic-douglas-wolk-is-hosting.html
http://www.edsel.net/


1957 --  Czechoslovakia: The International Puppeteers Union (formed 1929) is reorganized, Prague. Now politicians can get union benefits too!


1958 -- US: Robert H. Welsh & 11 other men meet in Indianapolis to form rightwing John Birch Society.



1959 -- Vita Sackville-West writes her husband Harold Nicolson: "It always makes me cross when Max [Beerbohm] is called 'The Incomparable Max.' He is not incomparable at all."


1961 -- England: Committee of 100, including Bertrand Russell, hold demonstrations at various US air & nuclear bases.
http://www.mcmaster.ca/russdocs/russell.htm
http://www.zpub.com/notes/aan-read.html


1962 -- 'Honouring the dead, the convicted, & the dead still to be killed' was the theme of the first real happening in Amsterdam. The title 'Open the grave' was a reaction to the death of the Dutch queen-mother & a large fund-raising campaign for handicapped persons called 'Open the village'. The happening was a more or less improvised art project including a 'Shrine for Marilyn Monroe', a 'Danse Macabre' & a 'Kiss of Death'. A number of collaborators took part in the Provo movement & joined in other happenings in Amsterdam.
photo courtesy International Institute of Social History

http://www.iisg.nl/today/en/09-12.php


1966 -- US: 700 Tuskegee (Alabama) Institute students riot after acquittal of a white for killing a black student.


1967 -- Jim Morrison arrested onstage in New Haven, Connecticut. Backstage before the gig, Morrison mouthed off to a policeman, who responded by macing him.

Later, during the concert while singing "Back Door Man," Morrison delivered a tirade about the incident, which prompted police to turn on the house lights, pull Morrison offstage & charge him with breach of peace & resisting arrest.


1968 -- US: Clouds of radioactive steam from a Nevada nuclear test breaks through the ground, releasing fallout, violating the limited nuclear test ban treaty signed five years ago. This has happened before, in 1961.
http://zvis.com/nuclear/ndb/usnuks.shtml
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/facility/nts.htm


1968 -- Actress Tallulah Bankhead dies at 66.

1970 --

1970 ... CIRCULAR Regarding Vaneigem, circular by the French section of the Situationist International, Paris. http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]

1977 -- Brazilian novelist, short story writer & journalist Clarice Lispector dies.
http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/benjamin-moser/why-you-should-know-name-clarice-lispector
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarice_Lispector 


1981 --

1981 US: Black Philadelphia journalist & activist Mumia Abu-Jamal is arrested & charged with the killing of a Philadelphia policeman. "If Mumia Abu-Jamal has nothing important to say, why are so many powerful people trying to shut him up?" See Terry Bisson's Newsday article: http://www.sff.net/people/tbisson/MUMIA.html; also Thoughts on the New Media Attacks on Mumia, &http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumia_Abu-Jamal   — John Edgar Wideman, author,Philadelphia Fire "There are many trials . . . in which the victim was already condemned to death before the trial took place, & it took place only to cover up the real meaning: the accused was to be put to death . . . the trial is just a mask for murder."       — Katherine Anne Porter, The Never-Ending Wrong http://www.revcom.us/a/v21/1010-019/1013/philly.htm Among the irregularities: Evidence disappears, witnesses are intimidated by police, police officers change their testimony to fit the official line, & the prosecutor will eventually be the judge considering Mumia's appeal of his death sentence. Phillie's Police Guild mounts an unprecedented media campaign to assure his execution.

1983 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader & Well-Fed Attorney General Edwin Meese says people go to soup kitchens

"...because the food is free & that's easier than paying for it...I think that they have money."

Of the 26 million people served through Second Harvest, the national food banking network:

62% are women
37% are children under age 18
39% of households have at least one adult who is working
Nearly 60% have no car
More than 24% have no facilities for cooking, such as a stove or oven
Over a third had to choose between food & rent

1985 -- US: 248 US soldiers & eight crew members die in Arrow Air charter crash.


1987 -- Palestine: Start of Intifada for Palestinian Independence.


1989 --  Yevgeny Pasternak accepts the Nobel medal his father was forced by the Russian government to refuse.


1991 -- After a long legal battle, Bob Marley's $11.5 million estate is awarded to his wife Rita & her children. Ziggy Marley's daughter is born on this day & he names her Justice in honor of the verdict.



1991 -- France: Maurice Joyeux, an outstanding French proponent of anarchism, dies.

Following WWII helped in rebuilding the Fédération Anarchiste & publishing Libertaire. In 1981, he is the first guest of Radio Libertaire (radio libre de la FA, à Paris). He leaves, in addition to various theoretical works, two books of memoirs, Sous les plis du drapeau noir, & Souvenirs d'un anarchiste.

1992 -- Somalia: US Marines wade ashore in Somalia at 2 A.M. (on live evening network television in the US) in "Operation Restore Hope." American forces retreat in disarray & disgrace within the year.


1992 -- Egyptian writer / novelist Yahya Haqqi dies. Father of short story & novel in Egypt & one of the great pioneers of contemporary short story writing in the Arab world. Editor of the banned Egyptian magazine Al-Majalla from 1961 to 1971.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahya_Haqqi



1994 -- US: Wee Willy Clinton fires Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders after her masturbation comments are criticized by a bunch of jerk-offs.

May is "National Masturbation Month," & May 7 is "National Masturbation Day."

Some pundits suggest we all form a circle & celebrate this seminal event.

http://www.solotouch.com/home.php

1994 --  France: Greenpeace members are arrested at a French nuclear reprocessing plant.



1995 -- US: Four activists are arrested for leafleting, holding a banner & "ruining peoples' day" at the public commissioning ceremony for a new aircraft carrier. Norfolk Naval Base, Virginia.


1999 -- Mars: Please call home!



2001 --  Beginning date of the movie "2010"


2002 -- Stan Rice dies of cancer, age 60. Poet, painter & husband of novelist Anne Rice.

Rice met his future wife in a high school journalism class. They married in 1961 & enrolled at San Francisco State University, where he went on to become assistant director of the Poetry Center & later headed the creative writing department.

In 1988, they moved to New Orleans, where Rice eventually opened the Stan Rice Gallery.

In Prism of the Night, a biography of Anne Rice, she said: "He's a model to me of a man who doesn't look to heaven or hell to justify his feelings about life itself. His capacity for action is admirable. Very early on he said to me, 'What more could you ask for than life itself?'''

Victoria Wilson, who edits Anne Rice's novels & worked with Rice on his 1997 book, Paintings, said Rice refused to sell his artworks: "...He refused to play the game as a painter, & he refused to play the game as a poet."

2009 -- US: The government agrees to pay $3.4 billion to settle Cobell v. Salazar, a class-action lawsuit brought by Native American representatives claiming it has incorrectly accounted for Native American trust assets.


2010 -- Thousands of WikiLeaks supporters launch further & more intense denial-of-service attack against companies who have blacklisted the website. 



3000 --

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"Humour is the essential ingredient of a democratic society" http://www.retroweb.com/prisoner.html#maxims

3500 --

 http://www.crimethinc.com/

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anti-CopyRite 1997-3000, more or less
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