The Daily Bleed January 24: Michèle Bernstein, Guy Debord, Asger Jorn, 2nd Internationale Situationniste Conference, Emma Goldman, "Chummy" Fleming, Kurt Wilkens, André Mournier, Hippolyte Prosper Olivier Lissagaray, Émile Pouget, Emile Roger; Timeline, Almanac of Radicalism, Arts, Literature, Authors, Poets, Anarchists... a radical annotated chronology, almanac, anarchist CALENDAR, anarchism, anarchico, anarchiste, anarquista, anarsizm, anarþizme, Anarþist, Anarquismo, Anarchismus, anarchia, anarchisme, anarchizm, anarkisme, libertarian, What Happened on this day, in recovered history January 25
As a child, fresh out of the hospital
with tape covering the left side
of my face, I began to count birds.
At age fifty the sum total is precise
& astonishing, my only secret.
— Jim Harrison, "Counting Birds"
JANUARY 25
GERARD DE NERVAL
Walked his pet lobster on a blue ribbon
through the streets of Paris, "because it does not bark
& it knows the secrets of the sea." Visionary, great poet, suicide.
FEAST DAY OF ST. DWYNDEN. Welsh patron saint of troubled lovers. Men with amorous difficulties go around in a state of dishevelledness. Duh.
DINNER PARTY DAY.
DIES MALA (Egyptian Day): considered unlucky in the Middle Ages.
WEATHER SIGNS DAY: "Sun means a good year, rain or snow foretells indifferent weather, a mist means want, while thunder predicts 12 months of winds & death" - Shepherds Almanack, 1676.
1640 -- ‘I Told You So’!?: Robert Burton, author of The Anatomy of Melancholy, dies at 62, in Oxford, near the date (some say on the very day) he had predicted by casting his own horoscope.
1759 -- Bard of Caledonia, Scottish poet Robert Burns lives at Alloway in Ayrshire. In 1859, at a centenary dinner in Boston, Ralph Waldo Emerson affirms that "The Confession of Augsburg, The Declaration of Independence, the French Rights of Man, & the 'Marseillaise' are not more weighty documents in the history of freedom than the songs of Burns."
It is for his songs that Burns is famous. More than any other one factor, they have sustained the cultural consciousness of Scotland.
Burns gathered fragmentary songs & legends & transmuted them into something more wonderful & more socially powerful than the originals. As the revolutionary nationalist MacDiarmid also notes, Burns took folksongs of Scottish nationalism, of Stuart legitimism, & subtly altered them into something quite different. Jacobite becomes Jacobin.
The songs of partisans filtered through Burns become battle songs of freedom, hymns to the integrity & independence of the individual...
1787 -- US: Daniel Shays & 800 followers march to Springfield to seize the Federal arsenal, but are repulsed & put down by the Massachusetts State militia.
Shays' Rebellion, begun in August, opposed the imprisonment of Massachusetts farmers for debts.
A few of Shays' militia were tried, convicted & hung for treason. Shays himself fled to Vermont & was later pardoned. Even so, the concern of landowners was evident. General Henry Knox, a veteran of Washington's army founded an organization of veterans, the Order of Cincinnati, possibly to resist radicalism wherever it might surface.
The American Revolution is celebrated as an heroic liberation from colonial rule. But a major impetus for adopting the US Constitution, a compromise between slaveholding interests of the South & moneyed interests of the North, was a fear of the common people & to prevent further rebellions such as Shays'.
As Howard Zinn notes,
"The Constitution was set up for the big government.
It was set up to protect the slave owners, bankers, land prospectors & merchants. We've been living with a big government since 1787."
See also William M. Brinton's An Abridged History of the United States.
1825 -- Russia:
Strange Stuff:
Fall of little symmetric objects of metal, Orenburg (second fall of these objects; 1st in Sept 1824] [Quar. Jour. Roy. Inst., 1828-1-447]
http://www.resologist.net/damn03.htm
1851 -- US: Sojourner Truth joins the first Black Women's Rights group, Akron, Ohio. Gave her famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech, linking the cause of black freedom struggle with women's rights. http://www.kansasheritage.org/crossingboundaries/pagex6b3.html
1855 -- Gerard de Nerval hangs himself in the streets of Paris, France.
1855 -- Dorothy Wordsworth, dies in Rydal, Cumberland, leaving Grasmere Journals unpublished.
1871 -- France: Émile Roger lives. Ardennes anarchiste, member of "Les desherities" & "Les libertaires de Nouzon." Correspondent for Gustave Hervé's newspaper La guerre sociale. Died in 1917 during the war by civilized nations that ended all wars by "civilized" nations. http://www.ephemanar.net/janvier25.html#roger
1874 -- William Somerset Maugham lives in bondage, in Paris at the British Embassy.
Then he added a note of cautionary advice: "Do not become a cheap writer. Keep up your standards. It is better to be read by 800 readers & be a good writer than be read by all the world & be Somerset Maugham."
1882 -- Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) lives. British author who made an original contribution to the form of the novel — also a distinguished feminist essayist, critic in "The Times Literary Supplement," & a central figure of Bloomsbury group. Her books were published by Hogarth Press, which she ran in her living room with hubby, critic & writer Leonard. After mental illness & shock when her house was destroyed by a bomb, she put rocks in her pockets & waded into the River Ouse near her home on March 28, 1941. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/vwoolf.htm
1885 -- Japanese poet Hakushu Kitahara lives, Fukuoka. A major influence in modern Japanese poetry with his aesthetic & symbolic style. His first collection of poems, Jashumon (1909), depicts Christian missionaries in 16th-century Japan.
1890 -- Nellie Bly (Elizabeth Cochrane) completes 72-day trip around the world. Daily Bleed Patron Saint, January 27. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Bly
Brilliant light seen in the sky, explosion heard, quake felt, Llanthomas & Clifford; half hour later, similar occurrence, with illumination so brilliant that for half a minute everything was almost as visible as by daylight, near Hereford & Worcester, Stokesay Vicarage, Shropshire [Symons' Met. Mag., 29-8, Nature, 49-325]
http://www.resologist.net/damn03.htm
1894 -- Spain: En Barcelona, un obrero hiere de un disparo al gobernador civil de la ciudad, Ramon Larroca.
Another brick in the wall?
A bricklayer shoots & wounds Ramon Larroca, the civil governor of Barcelona.
1899 -- US: Emma Goldman begins a nine-month lecture tour of 11 states, beginning in Barre, Vt., where she is hosted by Salvatore Palavicini. She delivers several lectures in Barre, including "The New Woman" & "The Corrupting Influence of Politics on Man" — the first anarchist lectures in English ever presented there.
While in Barre, Emma meets Luigi Galleani, editor of the journal Cronaca Sovversiva.
Lissagaray wrote Huit journées de mai derrière les barricades, published in Brussels where he had taken refuge, before being exiled in England. He returned to Paris in the amnesty of 1880, & founded the newspaper La bataille. He is best known as author of the remarkable Histoire de la Commune de 1871, published in 1876, & immediately banned in France.
"La dernière barricade des journées de mai est rue Ramponneau. Pendant un quart d'heure, un seul fédéré la défend. Trois fois il casse la hampe du drapeau versaillais arboré sur la barricade de la rue de Paris. Pour prix de son courage, le dernier soldat de la Commune réussit à s'échapper."
1911 -- US: At a meeting of the Superior Trades & Labor Assembly in northern Wisconsin, Louis Olson shows up wearing an Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) button. A motion is made & seconded that Olson discard the button or lose his seat. The motion is defeated.
Numerous IWW organizers are reporting no success in trying to organize Wisconsin labor. Indifference toward the union is due partially to influential Milwaukee Socialist Victor Berger, who sees the group as a threat to the Socialist Party.
Controlled by Berger's party, the Milwaukee Federated Trades Council & the Wisconsin State Federation of Labor actively block IWW efforts to organize Milwaukee workers.
"Whether the IWW increases in power or is crushed out of existence, the spirit that animates it is the spirit that must animate the labor movement if it is to have a revolutionary function."
Yet more reports of lights in the sky: ."..this evening, the lights grow bolder. Streets & houses in the locality of Totterdown were suddenly illuminated by a brilliant, piercing light, which, sweeping upward, gave many spectators a fine view of the hills beyond", Cardiff, Wales - p513 [Cardiff Evening Express, Jan 25] http://www.resologist.net/damn03.htm
1915 -- US: The Wise & Objective Justices of the Supreme Court upholds "yellow dog" contracts, which forbid membership in labor unions.
[Sources]
1923 -- Argentina: Kurt Wilkens (Gustav Wilckens) assassinates the "Killer of Patagonia" in Buenos Aires.
An anarchist pacifist emigrant in Argentina, Wilkens killed Colonel Varela, who was responsible for the massacre & torture of more than 1,500 workers in Patagonia a year ago.
When arrested he declares:
"He will not kill anyone again. I have avenged my brothers."
Condemned to life in prison, he was shot in his cell, June 16, 1923, by the rightwing nationalist, Perez Millan, while sleeping. Millan was killed in turn on November 9, 1925, by the Russian anarchist German Boris Vladimirovitch.
See on this subject Osvaldo Bayer, Les anarchistes expropriateurs.
Also "Kurt Wilckens, la eterna justicia,"
http://reocities.com/athens/4351/kurt.htm http://www.afed.org.uk/org/issue54/wilckens.html
"You are the ones who can say the word Solidarity. & call each other comrades. The oppressor can claim nothing but his greed."
— Mother Jones
1926 -- France: Emma Goldman in Nice for most of the month, finishing a prospectus for "Foremost Russian Dramatists," a book based on her lectures, for which she hopes to receive an advance from Doubleday, Page & Company, leaves for Paris. Alexander Berkman is also in Nice, helping Isadora Duncan edit her autobiography.
1930 -- US: New York police rout a Communist rally at the Town Hall.
1931 -- Paavo Haavikko lives. Prominent Finnish poet, dramatist, & fiction writer, winner of Neudstadt International Prize for Literature in 1984.
"I have seen quite a few things in my time. I don't recall that a single one of them seemed reasonable."
1937 -- Spain: The Consell d'Economía de Cataluyna (Catalan Economic Council) launches a campaign called the Batalla de l'Ou (Battle of the Egg), designed to alleviate the scarcity of eggs in the region.
As the Spanish Civil War progressed, the campaign proved foolhardy. A paradoxical situation developed as families that had the money to pay for hens (at highly elevated prices) found a grain shortage prevented them from providing for their animals, & ultimately, forced them to eat their chickens.
1938 -- England: Perhaps due to intense sunspot activity, the aurora borealis is observed throughout Northern Europe & as far south as London's West End. Source: [Calendar Riots]
1947 -- US: Chicago gangster Al Capone, making quite a racket, dies of syphilis at 48.
1950 -- US: 73ºF (23ºC) highest temperature ever recorded in Cleveland, Ohio in January.
1950 -- Australia: Anarchist John William "Chummy" Fleming, late this evening or in the wee hours of the 26th, dies, age 86. Tomorrow's alternate Daily Bleed Patron Saint.
A tattered cow-bell
'... Every Sunday until his death... he took his stand under a tree at the Yarra Bank & summoned a few cronies with a tattered cow-bell....'
Paris, January 25-26: Participants: Michèle Bernstein, Guy-Ernest Debord, Asger Jorn, Abdelhafid Khatib, Giuseppe Pinot Gallizio. Exclusions of Walter Olmo, Piero Simondo & Elena Verrone of the Italian Section.
1961 -- El Salvador: Military coup deposes leadership.
1968 -- Czechoslovakia: Alexander Dubcek ascends to power & launches the short-lived "Prague Spring" of liberalization.
1969 -- Czechoslovakia: 500,000 attend funeral of Jan Palach, Prague.
From Jan. 16 to Palach's funeral on the 25th, a group of young people held a protest hunger strike at the statue of St. Wenceslas for the fulfillment of his demands. Among them was also the next "torch", Jan Zajic.
1971 -- Charles Manson (36), Susan Atkins (22), Patricia Krenwinkel (23), & Leslie Van Houten (21) convicted of the brutal "Manson Family" "cult" murders of Sharon Tate, four of her friends, & a Los Angeles businessman & his wife. Norman Mailer later called Manson "the robber bridegroom of American dream life."
Charles Manson & three female members of his "family" are found guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit murder & seven counts of murder in the first degree & are sentenced to life imprisonment. During one of the most sensational trials in history, it was revealed that Manson regarded the Beatles as angels who communicated to him through their music. In particular, "Helter Skelter," "Piggies," "Revolution 9" & other songs on the "The White Album."
1971 -- Grace Slick & Paul Kantner of the Jefferson Airplane become the proud parents of a baby girl, which the they originally wanted to name God, but settled on China.
("She's a neat little person," boasts Grace. "She has a funny vocabulary 'cause she's around rock 'n' roll musicians all the time.")
1981 -- China: Mao's widow Jiang Qing sentenced to death. Apparently belonged to a motorcycle gang with three others; her sentence is later commuted to life.
1982 -- US: Steam-generator pipe breaks at Rochester Gas & Electric Company's Ginna plant near Rochester, New York. Small amounts of radioactive steam escaped into the air.
1982 -- Germany: Berlin Appeal for European-wide nuclear-free zone.
1983 -- US: Court of Appeals affirms rights of six Chippewa bands to hunt, fish & cut timber on lands ceded to the US.
1984 -- Yoko Ono makes $375,000 donation to Strawberry Fields, an old folk's home that inspired the John Lennon song of the same name.
1984 -- US: INFACT (Infant Formula Action Coalition) wins settlement with Nestle Corporation after a seven year boycott.
The earth is not dying,
it is being killed,
& the people who are killing it
have names & addresses....
1988 -- México: An electrical short-circuit sparks an explosion & fire in a coal mine near Las Esperanzas, killing 41 miners.
1988 -- Frisco, California approves renaming 12 streets for local writers & artists. Includes Jack Kerouac alley.
1994 -- Singer Markey Mark is sued by a Portland, Oregon woman claiming she was trampled during one of his shows. She said he invited the crowd to rush the stage after he stripped down to his underwear.
1995 -- Soldiers' Mothers Committee begins 56 mile march between Nazran & Grozny, Chechnya.
2001 -- Switzerland: In Davos, under massive police protection the "World Economic Forum," bringing together heads of states & business leaders, anti-Globalization protesters (having slipped through closed borders) try, as in Seattle, to disrupt the Forum, today & tomorrow.
Meanwhile, in Oporto Alegre, Brazil, the first "World Social Forum" convenes for nearly a week, conposed of many "Non-Governmental Organizations" & thousands of militants of various political persuasions, all opposed to globalization. Themematically the 400 conferences, workshops & debates are characterized by their opposition to economic liberalism & the implacable logic of the fric:
"The world is not merchandise" (José Bové).
Additionally, computer pirates succeed in hacking into the computer systems of the Forum in Davos & accessing the confidential data (addresses, credit card numbers, etc.) of the heads of states & other participants.
Direct Action...implies that the working class subscribes to notions of freedom & autonomy instead of genuflecting before the principle of authority. Now, it is thanks to this authority principle, the pivot of the modern world — democracy being its latest incarnation — that the human being, tied down by a thousand ropes, moral as well as material, is bereft of any opportunity to display will & initiative.
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France: Émile Roger lives. Ardennes anarchiste, member of "Les desherities" & "Les libertaires de Nouzon." Correspondent for Gustave Hervé's newspaper La guerre sociale. Died in 1917 during the war by civilized nations that ended all wars by "civilized" nations. 
US: Emma Goldman begins a nine-month lecture tour of 11 states, beginning in Barre, Vt., where she is hosted by Salvatore Palavicini. She delivers several lectures in Barre, including "The New Woman" & "The Corrupting Influence of Politics on Man" — the first anarchist lectures in English ever presented there.
Hippolyte Prosper Olivier Lissagaray (1838-1901) dies.
An anarchist pacifist emigrant in Argentina, Wilkens killed Colonel Varela, who was responsible for the massacre & torture of more than 1,500 workers in Patagonia a year ago.
France:
http://www.fastcompany.com/1720692/egypt-protests-mubarak-twitter-youtube-facebook-twitpic
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