"You have only to speak for once — they will melt like the dust:
you have only to spit in their faces — they will go
howling like devils to swindle somebody else

but if you choose to obey, we shall not blame you
for every lesson is new. We will make room for you
in the cold hall where every cause is just.

Perhaps you'll go with us to frosty windows
putting the same choice as the years go round
or sit debating 'When will they disobey?'

wrapped in our coats against the impartial cold."
All this I think the buried me would say,
clutching their white ribs & their rusted helmets

nationless bones, under the still ground.

— Alex Comfort (1920-2000), excerpt, The Soldiers
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/ComfortAlex.htm

Would imperial Chinese or Turks have been less lethal had they "discovered America''? All three empires regarded aliens as less than human & therefore as legitimate prey. The Chinese considered others barbarians; the Muslims & Catholics considered others unbelievers. The term unbeliever is not as brutal as the term barbarian, since an unbeliever ceases to be legitimate prey until she or he is made over by the civilizer.

— Fredy Perlman, The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism

"Every job has it's ups & downs."

Today's Daily Bleed Saint 2004-5; also Feb. 12, 2007
American Knights of Labor founder, union strategist.

The song was written in 1931 during a strike by the United Mine Workers of America. During this strike, the sheriff, J.H. Blair, led his gang of thugs on a violent rampage, beating & murdering union leaders. They found themselves at the Reece's home, looking for her husband Sam, where Florence was alone with the children. The men ransacked the house to no avail. While Florence waited inside for her husband, she wrote the song on an old wall calendar.

They say in Harlan Co.
There are no neutrals there
You'll either be a Union man
Or a thug for J.H. Blair.

Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?

About 1940, Pete Seeger, an "eager young college dropout wanting to learn union songs," learned the song from Tillman Cadle, a coal miner. In 1941 it was recorded by the Almanac Singers & made the song famous. It continues to be sung at gatherings for labor workers & many other social causes throughout the world.

One writer notes, "Florence symbolizes that ordinary people out of their own life experiences can capture in simple words & feelings the idea of struggle."
http://www.geocities.com/Nashville/3448/whichsid.html
http://web.archive.org/...songs/whichsid.html
http://www.rounder.com/index.php?id=album.php&catalog_id=4155
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Reece
http://athena.english.vt.edu/~appalach/writersM/protestsongs.html#reece
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Seeger

A poet of promise who died young in World War I. Instrumental in founding, along with George Marsh, the periodical Georgian Poetry.

His death caused him to be represented as the hero of the first phase of the war & a symbol of all the gifted youth destroyed by the conflict.

However, Brooke's heroic, dreamy & patriotic view, went out of public fashion as the appalling carnage of the trenches was fully understood.

http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poet/32.html
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/rbrooke.htm

The courthouse is encircled by the army &, in a climate of anti-anarchist hysteria & anti-Italian feelings, no lawyer will agree to defend Caserio, who is executed on August 16, 1894.

... show more

[Details / context]

This annual gathering of free thinkers clashes with the authorities who, over the years, try to prohibit them. During the German occupation, the statue of Etienne Dolet (as that of Chevalier De La Barre) is unbolted & melted down.

http://www.ephemanar.net/aout03.html

In June metallurgical workers, typesetters, bakers, painters, & store clerks gathered to lay plans for a municipal federation. Although the new organization grew slowly, it managed to take hold among workers outside the city. A year later it expands into a regional federation, embracing 112 labor syndicates throughout Catalonia with a membership of 25,000 workers.

Radical "leaders" were disconcerted by the emergence of this new rival for working-class support. After an exchange of suspicious cordialities, they began to move against the union, intending to either dominate or destroy it.

See Murray Bookchin's The Spanish Anarchists,

http://struggle.ws/spain/tragic_book.html

1910 --

Ricardo Flores Magón, Antonio I. Villarreal & Librado Rivera are freed from the Florence, Arizona, jail where they were serving an 18 month sentence for alleged "violation" of the neutrality laws.

The three Mexican anarchists immediately went to Los Angeles where they were met at the railway station by hundreds of P.L.M. sympathizers. At the end of August Praxedis left San Antonio, where he had been working in the railway workshops, & joined Ricardo Flores Magon & in September publication of "Regeneración" was resumed with Praxedis as a member of the editorial board.

Postcard in Latvian (or possibly Lithuanian) of MEXICAN REVOLUTIONARIES JUAN SARABIA RICARDO FLORES MAGON LIBRADO RIVERA ANTONIO I. VILLEREAL
Translation: Mexican Revolutionaries Sentenced on 16 May (the last three) to 18 months in prison, Tombstone, Arizona; the first was kept in prison for a year without trial, released by agreement.
They were all prosecuted for "neutrality border violations."

http://struggle.ws/anarchists/guerrero/biography.html



1913 -- US: Four die in the so-called "Wheatland riots" when police fire into a crowd of California farmworkers trying to organize for better working conditions. Two labor leaders, one not even present on this day, are later convicted of murder for encouraging workers to organize, which, by the legal logic of the time, apparently forced officials to shoot & kill.

Conditions on the Durst farms are abominable — with no water in the fields, the workers suffer from dysentery, malaria & typhoid fever.

During an Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) strike at the Durst hops farms in Wheatland, California, armed county officials fired on a union meeting. An ensuing gun fight left four dead, including the district attorney & sheriff.

Four union officials were arrested. Richard Ford & Herman Suhr were convicted of murder & sentenced to life at California's Folsom penitentiary. Eugene Debs, in a letter to James P. Cannon, called the persecution of Ford & Suhr a disgrace to the courts of California (1/26/1926). From his letter it appears Ford was later acquitted on appeal.

[ Suggestions for further reading ]

"Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas,

Ease after warre death after life, does greatly please."

Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent … [constructs] anarchism as a form of fraudulent self-deception symptomatic of a widespread social degeneracy in British society. The...novel's ambivalent engagement with Nietzsche, showing how through a dialogue with Nietzschean intertexts anarchism is constructed as a form of religious fanaticism that is connected with the dangers of both foreign imperialism & the lower classes.

http://www.bibliomania.com/0/0/15/
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/jconrad.htm

A victim of the Stalin's Great Purge, Ghezzi perished in the Siberian Vorkuta concentration camp. He had been hospitalized, beaten, tortured, now a mere skeleton, dying. First arrested in 1929, during Stalin's consolidation of power. An international campaign for his release got him out of prison, but he was not allowed to leave Russia. He was arrested again in 1937 (at the same time fellow Italian anarchist Otello Gaggi disappears in the Gulag).

[ More on the arrests ]
http://www.ephemanar.net/aout03.html

The walls were stained with blood — the blood of fleas squashed on a daily basis...

We were ... moved to the political wing with the Gaullists & communists...& when the National Liberation Movement orchestrated a breakout in March 1944, the communists refused to open our cell on the grounds that "we were not patriots." On the night of 24-25 April 1944, the Franc Tireurs et Partisans (FTP) resistance group organised an escape with assistance from inside the prison. This time we were included.

[ More on the arrests ]

Paul Roussenq (1885-1949) dies, Bayonne, France. Best known as the "anarchist convict."

Roussenq became an anarchist as a youth with his reading of libertarian newspapers & Elisee Reclus. His years in prison began at age16, when he was arrested for vagrancy & sent to jail for three months.

Worse still, in 1903, he threw a crouton (a piece of dried bread) at a prosecutor, & this dastardly terrorist act landed him in a disciplinary battalion in Biribi in Africa for five years.

Over there, under this marvelous Algerian sun... & the blows, still with the blows & always with the blows. The rebel rebelled again of course... insulting his "superiors," earning 3,779 days in the dungeons & yet another 20 years more...

Prematurely aging & in poor health, today Roussenq takes his life.

[Details / context]

[...] with liberty & justice for all

— Final line from the "The Pledge of Allegiance," force-fed school children during the 20th Century.

Originally written by Francis Bellamy, a Christian Socialist & brother of Edward Bellamy (author of the American socialist utopian novels, Looking Backward (1888) & Equality (1897). He considered placing the word, 'equality,' in his Pledge, but knew that the state superintendents of education on his committee were against equality for women & African Americans.
http://history.vineyard.net/pledge.htm

http://www.colette.org/
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/colette.htm



1954 -- US: National Security Council calls the Geneva accords a "disaster," & orders aid for South Vietnam.



1955 -- Samuel Beckett play "Waiting for Godot" opens in London.



1959 -- Portuguese Guinea: Officials kill 50 striking port workers in Bissau.


1961 -- John Cage conducts the premiere of his "Atlas Eclipticalis," Montreal; A mixture of experimental music & the visual arts entitled the "International Week of Today's Music" opens.


1964 -- Vietnam: South Vietnam stages two more PT-boat attacks on North Vietnam.


1965 -- US: First American report of US war crimes in Vietnam is broadcast, by CBS TV.



1966 --

"I'm sorry if I'm not very funny tonight, but I'm not a comedian, I'm Lenny Bruce."

---

When you can't say 'fuck',
you can't say
'fuck the government.'

---

http://web.archive.org/...lenny/sounds.htm
http://www.lennybruceofficial.com/audio-and-video-clips/
http://web.archive.org/...~darklady/lenny.html
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2391

In 1998 it is reported that Seattle's homeless — despite a robust economy — has doubled during the past year. Significantly, 20% (a huge increase over the same period) of these people are now called the "working" homeless — people with jobs who cannot find affordable housing.

1971 -- England: The "Oz" magazine obscenity trial ends in London with the jailing of Richard Neville & his codefendants.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Neville_(writer)


1972 -- US: Federal Communications Commission (FCC) upholds a political candidate's right to broadcast paid commercials with racist content if such broadcast presents no danger of violence or incitement to violence.


1972 -- England: British government declares a state of emergency to allow troops to replace striking longshoremen; Britain's 42,000 striking dock workers go back to work.


1977 -- US: One man killed, seven injured when a bomb explodes at NY City's Mobil Oil building. The FALN, a Puerto Rican independence movement, claims responsibility.


1979 -- US: Fastest jai-alai shot (188 mph), Jose Arieto at Newport Jai Alai, Rhode Island.


1979 -- Juan Rulfo play "Pedro Paramo" opens, Mexico.


1980 -- Bolivia: 500 miners are massacred at Caracoles.



1981 -- US: Coffee, Tea or Jobless?: Federal air traffic controllers began an illegal nationwide strike after their union (PATCO) rejects the government's final offer for a new contract. Most of the 13,000 striking controllers defied the back-to-work order, & were dismissed by Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Acting President Ronnie Reagan, a stalwart union man & FBI snitch (complete with his own informant number), on August 5.


1982 -- US: In order to convey the Administration's crackdown on Israel over its attacks on Beirut, the White House points out the difference between a February 1981 photo showing acting Reagan sitting next to Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir & laughing, & today's photo, in which Reagan frowns at him from across a table. Later, the President goes to Iowa & poses with a boar.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/PerlmanFredy/antisemitism.htm




1983 -- Carolyn Jones actress, dies at 54 of cancer.


1983 -- US: The Joker's On Him? John Sain of South Bend, Indiana, builds a 12 ft. 10 in. house of cards. Wife sues for divorce, gets real house.



1986 -- Canada: Eight women arrested in Motherpeace action, U.S.-Canada war test site, Vancouver, B.C.


1986 -- US: Florence Reece dies. Active in Harlan County, Kentucky coal strikes & author of the famed labor song "Which Side Are You On?"

[Details / context]

Radio Libertaire, in Paris, which fought since its creation (1981) against the socialist government to defend freedom of expression on the radio waves, is finally authorized by the C.N.C.L (National Commission of Audio-visual Communication) to legally broadcast on 89.4 MHz, with a power of 4kW — but this is not yet the end of their problems with the government.

See Élisabeth Claude, et al, La plus rebelle des radios... c'est Radio Libertaire, 1981-1998 (Le Monde Libertaire (Paris); Alternative Libertaire (Bruxelles)).

Radio Libertaire online: http://www.federation-anarchiste.org/rl/
http://www.ephemanar.net/aout03.html
http://www.increvablesanarchistes.org/articles/1981_2000/RL_histoir87.htm

1988 -- South Africa: 143 resisters publicly refuse military call-up.
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/history.html


1992 -- Germany: Dismantling of non-nuclear weapons begins, fulfilling a 1990 treaty.


1992 -- Central African Republic: Prodemocracy protests shut down the capital, Bangui.


1995 -- US: INS frees 60 Thai slaves in a garment factory, El Monte, Calif. Another gross example of sleaze-bag government bureaucrats meddling with the wonderful Free Market mechanism.


1997 -- China: A Chinese newspaper reports 225,000 in reeducation-through-labor camps.


1997 -- The island of Anjouan declares independence from the Comoros.


1999 -- Abd-al Wahhab al-Bayyati, Iraqi writer who revolutionized Arabic poetry, dies, age 73. Lived in Jordan, quitting his diplomatic post in Madrid after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.

The dictator hides his disgraced face in the mud.
Now he is having a taste of his own medicine,
& the pillars of deception have collapsed,
his picture is now underfoot,
trampled by history’s worn shoes...

from Bayyati’s poem, "The Dragon" (with commentary).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abd_al-Wahhab_Al-Bayyati



2000 -- Colombia: 24-hour national labor strike. Light tanks, troops & anti-riot police guard key entry routes into Bogota at the start of strike by 700,000 state workers against government austerity measures.




2000 -- Indonesia: Ex-dictator Suharto is charged with stealing $570 million.


2000 -- México: Armed paramilitaries burn six homes of alleged Zapatista supporters, Paraiso, Chis.



2002 -- US: New world record for simultaneous breastfeeding, Bezerkeley, California.

1,135 moms breast-feed their babies together.

Obviously inspired by The Fugs' raucous good ol' time tune, "Boobs A Lot."
http://web.archive.org/...jacobreviews/fugs.html
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/Kupferberg/Fugs_1st_Album.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPVgKoruWdA



2004 -- France: Famed photographer & anarchist Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) dies, Chanteloup. Member of the photographer-owned outfit (Magnum) founded by Robert Capa & others. Like Capa he photographed during the Spanish Revolution (1937), his "Victoire de la vie" documenting the hospitalized. On May 1, 2000, he provided a photo collection, "Vers un autre futur, un regard libertaire" (Towards another future, a libertarian glance) sponsored by the anarcho-syndicalist French CNT. Cartier-Bresson notes: "L'anarchie c'est une éthique avant tout. Une éthique d'homme libre. Relisez Bakounine."

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Daily Bleed Saint August 22
Anarchist photographer.

"Dans un monde qui s'écroule sous le poids de la rentabilité, envahi par les sirènes ravageuses de la Techno-science, la voracité du pouvoir, par la mondialisation -nouvel esclavage- au delà de tout celà, l'Amitié, l'Amour existent."
http://slash.autonomedia.org/node/3427
http://www.ephemanar.net/aout22.html#cartierbresson

3000 --

---

Industrial contests take on all the attitudes & psychology of war, & both parties do many things that they should never dream of doing in times of peace. Whatever may be said, the fact is that all strikes & all resistance to strikes take on the psychology of warfare, & all parties in interest must be judged from that standpoint. — Clarence Darrow

---

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