FEBRUARY 16


PAUL AVRICH
Dean of American anarchist historians.

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Lithuania: INDEPENDENCE DAY.

FEAST OF STICKY BUNS.

Detroit, USA: ARETHA FRANKLIN DAY.

YEAR OF THE RABBIT. Start of Chinese New Year.

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1600 -- Spain: Jesuit missionary for the conquistadors Jose Acosta dies, Salamanca. Acosta described in a report suppressed until 1985 the horrific treatment inflicted upon the barbarians by the civilizing Spanish & missionaries: "we have betrayed in our deeds what we professed in our words."
http://www.thefileroom.org/documents/dyn/DisplayCase.cfm/id/783


1659 -- England: First known check (œ400) (on display at Westminster Abbey).

"Once outside, starting to run again, she slipped on a rotten vegetable & tore in two, at the same time as the big bank check." — Gisèle Prassinos, "The Big Bank Check"

1675 -- Tituba lives (exact year unknown), West Indies.

Enslaved in the home of Reverend Samuel Parris in Salem, Massachusetts, Tituba entertained neighborhood girls with stories from her homeland, including tales of voodoo & spirits. The girls, in turn, accuse a series of helpless people, including Tituba, of witchcraft. In 1692, she was sentenced to death. In 1693, however, a jury failed to agree on her fate. To pay for her prison expenses, Tituba was sold to another slave owner.

1751 -- Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, by Thomas Gray, published anonymously.



1804 -- US Navy Lt. Stephen Decatur, accompanied by 75 sailors, climbs aboard US frigate Philadelphia & sets it afire. Tripoli pirates had seized the Philadelphia intact, & the Navy, unable to recapture the frigate, wanted to minimize the Tripolians' advantage. The successful burning of its own vessel was considered a great victory by the Navy, & Decatur was promoted to Captain.


1828 -- US: Red Bird (Wanig-Suckka), Winnebago chief, dies in an American prison.


1838 -- Henry Adams lives, Boston. Wrote The Education of Henry Adams (1906).


1844 -- James Guillaume (1844-1916) lives, London. Historian of the First International, an anarchist active in the Swiss Jura Federation. Aligned with Mikhail Bakunin, with whom he was kicked out of the International Workingman's Association in a coup by Marx & his followers.
[Details / context]



1848 -- France: Octave Mirbeau (1848-1917) lives. Prolific short story writer (1,200), novelist, anarchiste, antimilitarist, dramatist. A founding member of the Académie Goncourt.

Daily Bleed Saint 2001-2006
French anarchist, writer, decadent sensualist.

Intensely antimilitarist & anticlerical. Among his other causes were feminism, the abolition of child labor, the fight against Russian Czarism & the repression of Japanese dissidents, abolition of capital punishment, defending the rights of working people & their unions, & the defense of libertarian education.

[Details / context]

1848 -- US: Seneca Falls (New York) Women's Rights Convention.



1854 -- India: William Charles Owen (1854-1929) lives, Dinapore. Anglo-American militant & anarchist individualist propagandist.

Member of the International Workmen's Association. Discovers the writings of Kropotkin & becomes his translator.

Owen became an anarchist individualist under the influence of Benjamin Tucker.

1866 -- Ivanov Vyacheslav Ivanovich, leading poet of the Russian Symbolist movement, lives, Moscow.


1876 -- G. M. Trevelyan, author of English Social History & History of England, lives, Stratford upon Avon., England.


1885 -- US: Knights of Labor strike Wabash Railroad.



1886 -- Van Wyck Brooks (1886-1963) lives. Van Wyck Brooks lives. Influential American critic, biographer, & conservative literary historian.



1898 -- US: Emma Goldman begins a speaking tour, February 16-20.

Emma's tour begins in Philadelphia where she lectures before several well-attended gatherings sponsored by the Ladies' Liberal League, the Single Tax Society, the Society of Ethical Research, & the German Anarchist Society.

Emma notes an increasing interest in anarchism among younger members of the Friendship Liberal League, to which she lectures twice. Topics include "The Absurdity of Non-resistance to Evil," "The Basis of Morality," & "Freedom."

1916 -- US: In the Land of the Free, the anarchist feminist Emma Goldman is arrested in New York City for lecturing on birth-control.

When a law has outgrown time &
necessity, it must go
& the only way to get
rid of the law is to
awaken the public to
the fact that it has
outlived its purpose
& that is precisely
what I have been doing
& mean to do in the
future.

— Emma Goldman to the Press, a
few days after her arrest in New
York City, February 11, 1916.

1916 -- US: On or about this day in Chicago Chef Jean Crones (pseudonym for Nestor Dondoglio) discovers he needs to refine one of the recipes in his cookbook.

A chef by profession, Crones poisoned some 200 guests at a banquet to honor Archbishop Mundelein by lacing the soup with arsenic.

None of the guests died — Chef Crones had used too much poison, prompting the victims to vomit it back up.

Dondoglio's rooms were searched, turning up many phials of poison, but the poisoner himself was never apprehended. After leaving a series of taunts for police, he skeedaddled to the East Coast, where he was hidden by other Galleanists until his death in 1932.

Chef Crones-Dondoglio was never apprehended & thus his goose was never cooked.

With Apologies to Julia Child:
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=5751336342435677477&hl=en
http://images.rottentomatoes.com/images/movie/coverv/82/217282.jpg

1921 -- Italy: The Fascists attempt to break a strike by operating the trams. But they meet mass resistance, with one tram load attacked by over 400 people.

See, "The First Anti-Fascists: The Fight Against Mussolini's Rise to Power in Italy" (Barricada, October 2001)
http://www.ainfos.ca/01/oct/ainfos00198.html

Of related interest, see Larry Gambone's The Road To Fascism: The Rise Of Italian Fascism & Its Relation To Anarchism, Syndicalism & Socialism (AK Press, 2001) & also "Italian Syndicalism & Fascism",
http://struggle.ws/anarchism/writers/anarcho/anarchism/italianfascism.html

1931 -- Poet/critic Makoto Ooka lives, Japan.


1932 -- It's the Pits?: First patent issued for a tree, to James Markham for a peach tree.



1932 -- Spain: The anarchists take the Catalan city of Terrassa & proclaim libertarian communism. But their success is of short duration. Among those arrested is Julià Abad.

http://www.struggle.ws/spaindx.html
http://libraries.ucsd.edu/speccoll/visfront/campesino.html
http://www.struggle.ws/spaindx.html




1933 -- US: Repeal of the 18th amendment, ending American prohibition.



1933 -- Germany: "Arbeiter-Echo" (Worker Echo), the unofficial organ of the German AnarchosyndikalistInnen published by the FAUD in Dresden, is banned by the Nazis.
(Google translation from the German): http://web.archive.org/...projekte.free.de/dada/ask7.htm
http://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/hx3g6n
Source: [Kate Sharpley Library, Bulletin #5]

1933 -- Wales: Emma Goldman delivers four well-received lectures in South Wales, February 16-22, including "Crime & Punishment" & "The Spirit of Destruction & Construction."
Emma Goldman Papers



1934 -- US: Thousands of Socialists battle Communists at a rally in New York's Madison Square Garden.



1936 -- Spain: Election & formation of the Popular Front government against the fascist Franco. Anarchists [a few, most opposed], socialists, communists, republicans & labor groups form a republic.
http://recollectionbooks.com/anow/history/spain/
http://www.reocities.com/CapitolHill/9820/spain11.html



1937 -- Nylon (developed by Wallace H. Carothers) patented by the Dupont Corp.



1939 -- France: Jacques Vallet lives, Stenay (dép. de la Meuse). Journalist, poet, art critic, dramatist & libertarian author.

Vallet wrote for numerous journals, including "Libération." Critical of modern art, he began "Le Fou parle", a libertarian review of art & humor. During this year he also participated in the "International Anarchist Meeting" in Venice, Italy. Began an art show on Radio Libertaire & other broadcasts.

Vallet attacked the "police procedural" genre while writing his own novels in the "Octopus" mystery series.

In 2002 he became involved with "Anartiste" & "La Vache folle" (The Mad Cow).

"Dois-je mettre le nez dans le cloaque du monde? La vie est trop vaste trop fuyante pour que je la comprenne. Alors, j'écoute les poètes."

— cited in "Libé" July 12, 2003

[Details / context]

1942 -- US: Conscientious objectors arrested after walking out of work camp, Merom, Indiana.


1948 -- Miranda, a moon of Uranus, photographed for first time.


1952 -- ¶ Jan Kerouac lives, in Albany, NY. Beatster Jack Kerouac's daughter with Joan Haverty. Kerouac is living with Neal & Carolyn Cassady in California (January-April) & during this month, Jack & Carolyn Cassady get intimate. (It is during this period, as noted back on the 1st, that Kerouac has his first psychedelic experience, on peyote provided by poet Philip Lamantia.)



1962 -- US: Today & tomorrow, Boston SANE & a fledgling SDS hold first anti-nuclear march on Washington; 4,000-8,000 show up.



1965 -- US: Four members of Black Liberation Front arrested for plot to blow up the Statue of Liberty.



1968 -- India: Beatles study with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, at Rishikesh on the Ganges. One of their fellow students is Prudence Farrow, sister of Mia Farrow. She took meditation seriously & John Lennon wrote the song "Dear Prudence" to urge her to "come out to play." Donovan there also. Paul stays nine weeks, John & George longer, & Maharishi Mahesh, it is announced, is coming to the US. Meanwhile, Ringo & wife cut short their stay, after 10 days, complaining of the spicy food.



1968 -- US: Draft deferments for most graduate students & all occupational deferments eliminated so more young Americans can get first-hand experience in South Vietnam.


1970 -- US: Demonstrations for "The Chicago Seven" at City Hall Park & Foley Square (NYC?). Their verdict & sentences are issued within a few days.


1970 -- México: Pedro Vallina Martinez (1879-1970) dies , in Veracruz. Outstanding figure of Andalusian anarquismo. Medical doctor, militant involved in the labor movement, in & out of prison & exile for his opposition to Spanish repression & fascism.

Implicated in the attempt on the Spanish King Alphose XIII, active with theCNT, director of hospitals during the Spanish Revolution of 1936 in Madrid & Barcelona. Escaped to México where he helped poor Indians, & wrote his memoirs.

[Details / context]

1971 -- Alan Pasaro, the Hell's Angel tried & acquitted for the stabbing death of Meredith Hunter at the Altamont Speedway in 1969, sues the Rolling Stones, for invasion of privacy because the Maysles brothers' film, "Gimmie Shelter", showed the stabbing.


1973 -- Greece: February 16-22: Student uprisings.


1977 -- Italy: "Italian Spring," thousands reject authority, universities occupied throughout Italy. Students eject Communist union bosses from Rome campus. Started as a protest against university reform, evolved into generalized criticism of all forms of alienation — especially bureaucrats, unionists, & political parties.


1978 -- Canada: BC Federation of Labour condemns sexual harassment.

1982 -- US: "She really just got tired of people misinterpreting what she was doing."

— An aide telling the public that Nancy Reagan will no longer accept free clothing "on loan" from top designers.

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"He especially liked ads for shampoos & hair coloring. The women in them seemed to regard their hair as independent, capricious entities, whom they must placate & provide with food."

— Thomas M. Disch

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1985 -- West Germany: 20,000 demonstrate against nuclear reprocessing plant, Schwandorf.


1986 -- Duvaliers flee Haiti after 28-year rule by the family.


1989 -- Russo-Afghani war officially ends with withdrawal of last Russian troops from Afghanistan.

1990 -- Singer Ike Turner gets 4 years in prison on cocaine charges.


1991 -- US: A calico cat rescued after 6 days on a roof in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Torn Notebook Coosje Van Bruggen / Claes Oldenburg, Lincoln, Nebraska

1992 -- Novelist/poet George Mann MacBeth dies in Ireland. A radio producer for the BBC where he presented many poets.


1996 -- Brownie McGhee dies at 80. Blues Performer, Singer/Guitarist, Pianist, Kazoo, Songwriter, of Brownie & Sonny.


1996 -- US: Seven activists arrested for blocking the road to the ceremony commissioning the nuclear warship U.S.S. Greenville at the Norfolk (Virginia) Naval Base.


1996 -- Ireland: Thousands attend peace rallies throughout Northern Ireland.

2001 -- US:

Giuliani On Art, Hitler On Art II
by Robert Lederman

NY City's #1 art critic is at it again. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, the noted adulterer who married his cousin, dumped his second wife on live television, parades about town with his mistress at taxpayer expense & violates the US Constitution as if doing so was a form of yoga now wants to create a decency task force to police the Big Apple's art museums.

"A peeved Mayor Giuliani vowed yesterday to form a commission to set decency standards for taxpayer-funded cultural institutions after the Brooklyn Museum mounted another exhibit he deemed anti-Catholic.

ART-SICK RUDY WANTS 'DECENCY' TASK FORCE NY Post 2/16/2001

From his first days as NYC Mayor & proto-fascist Giuliani has engaged in a relentless attack on artists & free speech.

[Details / context]

2006 -- US: Paul Avrich (1931-2006), devoted & sympathetic biographer & historian of anarchism, dies this evening of the 16/17thsome sources list his death today, others on February 17. Among many notable books, Anarchist Voices gathered 200 interviews made over a 30-year period, allowing these "anonymous" militants to avoid oblivion, opening the way for innumerable works of research & reflection. Avrich was a trusted friend to many of the older members of the movement, putting them in touch with each other, following their reunions, & visiting them regularly.


3000 --

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If you dream alone, it's just a dream.
If you dream together, it's reality.

       — Brazilian folk song
http://www.spunk.org/library/misc/sp000137.txt

9003 --

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