"Oh roar a roar for Alice, Nora Alice in the night; for she has seen Aurora Borealis burning bright. Hoo-roar a roar for Alice...."

— Walt Kelly

AUGUST 25
GERARD LEBOVICI
Radical French Champ Libre publisher, martyr.

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Lake Champlain, New York: FEAST OF THE GREEN CORN.
A pageant presented by the Society for the Preservation of Indian Lore, performed by actors from the six Iroquois nations.

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325CE -- The General Council of Nicea settles on the rules for calculating the date of Easter each year.
Source: 'Calendar Riots


383 -- WhoDone'Em?: Gratian, Roman Emperor, slain at Lugdunum.


1608 -- France: UFO appears at Martigues, near Marseille.
Source: [Robert Braunwart] [Hereafter attributed with symbol: ]


1609 -- Galileo presents his 30X telescope to the Venetian Senate. They look in the wrong end, & the rest is history.


1669 -- Sweden: Dozens of witches are burnt at Mora.


1689 -- New Old World: 1,200 Iroquois warriors attack Montreal.


1775 -- England: New Exchange Rate? Two thousand Liverpool seamen ignore the reading of the Riot Act to liberate nine of their fellows imprisoned for wrecking a ship when paid short wages.

All ships in port are boarded & de-rigged, making them unable to sail & money is levied from local merchants. When several demonstrators are killed at the Liverpool Exchange, the sailors raid warehouses & gunsmiths for arms & seize two cannon from a whaling vessel. On the 30th they "hoist the bloody flag," attack the houses of merchants & other "obnoxious persons," & bombard the Exchange.

Source: 'Calendar Riots

1776 -- Scotland: Philosopher/historian David Hume dies in Edinburgh, 65.


1803 -- Irish rebel Robert Emmet is captured by the British.



1819 -- US: Birth of the fink (Allen Pinkerton, whose strike breaking detectives ('Pinks') gave us the word 'fink'.)

"Thanks for a nation of finks...."

— William S. Burroughs

1822 -- Young Lust?: William Herschel discovered Uranus, dies at 85.


1828 -- US: Pennsylvania Workingmen's Party holds its first convention, Philadelphia.


1830 -- Dutch Rub?: Belgium revolts against Netherlands, a rebellion against the oppression of being constantly in dutch.



1835 -- US: NY Sun publishes a moon hoax story claiming astronomer Sir John Herschel has observed little men living there; the paper's circulation goes "way up."



1836 -- US: Bret Harte lives, Albany, New York. Leaves school at 13 to go to work, travels to California before moving to NY to pursue a writing career.
http://www.malakoff.com/bret.htm


1838 -- US: The ever-curious Ralph Waldo Emerson seeks out Thomas Carlyle in Cumberland, gets himself invited to dinner, initiating a lifelong friendship.


1845 -- Mad King of Bavaria, Louis (Ludwig) II lives. Dream King, the Swan Prince, the Recluse of the Alps — a legend in his own time. Ludwig's grandiose castle capped a building boom that nearly bankrupted Bavaria.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ludwig.htm


1860 -- In Bonderup, Denmark, playwright, poet, literary critic Johan Heiberg dies. The influential literary paper he edited in Copenhagen from 1827 to 1830 introduced many new writers, including Soren Kierkegaard & Hans Christian Andersen.


1864 -- 'Remember the Alameda'?: Combination rail & ferry service available from San Francisco to Alameda.



1873 -- France: Charles Gogumus lives (1873-1915), Dijon. Militant syndicaliste révolutionnaire, anarchiste et antimilitariste.
http://www.ephemanar.net/aout25.html#gogumus
GOGUMUS, Charles INDEXED?: D'abord employé dans un magasin de Nouveautés à Dijon, il y créé un syndicat. En 1906, il se fixe à Paris où il vend des lainages. En 1908, il fonde le "Syndicat des employés de la région parisienne." En 1909, en tant que secrétaire de ce syndicat, il dirige plusieurs actions dans les grands magasins. Membre du comité de la C.G.T, mais aussi de la "Fédération Anarchiste Communiste Révolutionnaire," il préconise à plusieurs reprises dans des réunions de grévistes l'emploi de l'action directe, du boycottage et du sabotage. Notes de la police: "- Mai 1911, prépare le sabotage des magasins qui ne fermeraient pas à 7 heures, en formant des équipes de 10 hommes, chargées de renverser les étalages, briser les glaces. - Juin 1911, des bombes soufrées de l'acide sulfurique et des oeufs remplis d'encre doivent être utilisées. Un sabotage a déjà été commis dans ces conditions au magasin -Aux Elégants- avenue du Maine." Fin 1911, il devient administrateur du journal "La Bataille syndicaliste" qui sera à l'origine de la création en juin 1913 du "Comité de Défense des Soldats" créé dans le but de soutenir les appelés frappés pour avoir protestés contre le maintien sous les drapeaux de leur classe et assurer une aide matérielle aux victimes de la répression. Charles Gogumus en est le trésorier. Mais tuberculeux, il meurt à Paris à l'âge de 42 ans, le 24 juin 1915. Il sera incinéré au cimetière du Père-Lachaise.


1875 -- Matthew Webb is the first to successfully swim the English Channel, crossing from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in 22 hours.


1882 -- Iivo Härkönen (1882-1941) lives. Finnish writer, journalist, teacher, advocate of Karelian culture. Secretary of the Union of Finnish Writers from 1920 until his death.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/iivoh.htm


1893 -- US: "Colored Peoples' Day" at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago.


1897 -- First date in the movie "Bram Stoker's Dracula."
Nancy Joyce Peters on Backyard Bombs, http://books.google.com/books ...Horror Films on TV


1900 -- "Mad" German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche dies, Weimar, Germany after a long mental illness.

"...this time however I come as the victorious Dionysus, who will turn the world into a holiday ... Not that I have much time..."

— Nietzsche (from his last "insane" letter to Cosima Wagner)

1901 -- Clara Maass, army nurse, sacrifices her life at 25 to prove that the mosquito carries yellow fever.
http://whyfiles.org/016skeeter/

1907 -- Hans Castorp is diagnosed with TB, in Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain.


1910 -- Dorothea Tanning lives, Galesburg, Illinois.

American painter, moved to NY in 1935, & met the Surrealist artists in exile there. Married Max Ernst in 1946, & shared his life for 35 years — much longer than any of the other women associated with him — Louisa Straus, Marie-Berthe Aurenche, Leonora Carrington, or Peggy Guggenheim.

Her art evolved & changed over a long career, including a series of sculptures using the techniques of upholstery. A room-size installation in this medium is in the permanent collection of the Beaubourg Museum, Paris. Tanning’s autobiography, Birthday, published in 1986, describes her life through her 75th year.

— Bleedster "Wild Bill" Koehnline

http://www.dorotheatanning.org/dorothea-tanning.php
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/tanning_dorothea.html

1913 -- "Pogo" creator Walt Kelly lives.

"There is no need to sally forth...."

"We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities."

"There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve, then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving & tiny blasts of tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, & not only may he be ours, he may be us."

— Walt Kelly

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogo
http://www.comic-art.com/bios-1/kelly001.htm
http://web.archive.org...halhigdon.com/kelly/

1914 -- México: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Pres. Carranza calls a conference of revolutionaries.


1918 -- Russia: First All-Russian Conference of Anarcho-syndicalists meets in Moscow (August 25-September 1). ... show more

Les délégués sont réunis dans le but de définir un programme commun de luttes et d'organisation pour lutter contre les ennemis de la révolution et de la classe ouvrière actuellement sous la triple menace des gouvernements étrangers, de la réaction intérieure (armées blanches) et de la dictature bolchevique.

The industrial resolution accuses the government of "betraying the working class with its suppression of workers' control in favour of such capitalist devices as one-man management, labour discipline & the employment of 'bourgeois' engineers & technicians. By forsaking the Factory Committees — the beloved child of the great workers' revolution — for those 'dead organisations', the trade unions, & by substituting decrees & red tape for industrial democracy, the Bolshevik leadership was creating a monster of 'state capitalism', a bureaucratic Behemoth, which it ludicrously called socialism."

— Maurice Brinton

http://www.ephemanar.net/aout25.html#panrusse TO DO: TRANSLATE FRENCH PLACEHOLDER Ils se prononcent pour la suppression du capitalisme d'Etat et de tout pouvoir, et son remplacement par un système basé sur les principes du communisme libertaire. Ils entendent de fait réaliser une union des soviets libres sur la base du fédéralisme. Les soviets actuels devant impérativement se débarrasser des "commissaires du peuple" et du centralisme qui étouffent toute liberté.

1920 -- Russia: Late August, Alexander Berkman & Emma Goldman visit Kiev.

The majority of the population is Jewish. Here they find valuable material on the rightwing Denikin pogroms; interview local Jews whose views on Bolshevik anti-Semitism differ....

Visited by two women representing the Ukranian guerrilla Nestor Makhno ... it is too risky to meet with him in person.

[Details / context]

1921 -- "The slave is always in a state of legitimate defence & consequently, his violence against the Boss, against the oppressor, is always justifiable, & must be controlled only by such considerations as that the best & most economical use is being made of human effort & human sufferings."

— Errico Malatesta (Umanita Nova, August 25th, 1921)


1921 -- US: West Virginia Governor Morgan asks Beloved & Respected Comrade Lover President Warren Harding for Federal troops & military aircraft, saying miners have been inflamed & infuriated by radical officers & leaders. Actually most officers of the UMW union, including its president, have been followers — trying desperately to suppress the workers militant actions.
[Sources]


1922 -- Frank Harris finishes writing volume 1 of My Life & Loves.
http://oddbooks.co.uk/harris/harrislinks.html



1922 -- Spain: Ángel Pestaña is ambushed by a rightwing death squad.

Returning from a lecture tour, Pestaña, militant anarcho-syndicalist & CNT reformist, is shot down by "pistoleros du syndicat libre" in the industrial town of Manresa, Catalonia.

... show details

The pistoleros are thugs commonly employed during this period by the Catholic Church, Barcelona governor Martínez Anido & big businesses.

Seriously wounded, Pestaña is hospitalized in a private clinic, but the pistoleros, which have openly sworn to kill him & enjoy total impunity, try again upon his release from the clinic (unsuccessfully).

Excluded from the CNT in 1932, he joins the "Parti Syndicaliste" & is elected to the "Popular Front" government in February 1936. Imprisoned during the street fighting during the first days of the Spanish Revolution, CNT combatants free him & he rejoins the CNT & is appointed an officer in the army before his death in 1937.

[Details / Links]

Àngel Pestaña, Angel Pestaña Núñez anarquista Angel PESTAÑA NÚÑEZ , PESTAÑA NÚÑEZ, Angel


1925 -- US: African American labor organizer A. Philip Randolph founds the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

The union attracts an exceptional group of organizers, but suffers devastating defeats & only modest victories until the Pullman Company finally agrees to recognize the Brotherhood in 1935.

Pullman Porters are among the black elite. Although their duties are menial, they are relatively well paid & enjoy high visibility. Porters are often the only jobs college-educated African Americans can find. Both Langston Hughes & Claude McKay were porters before & during their writing careers.

1925 -- Althea Gibson lives, Silver, South Carolina. Pioneer tennis player, the first African American to play at the US Open in 1950 & at Wimbledon the following year. In 1957, she won the singles & doubles titles at Wimbledon.


1925 -- England: Emma Goldman spends most of this month in the British Museum reading Russian dramatists in preparation for her upcoming lectures.

M. Eleanor Fitzgerald, Goldman's close associate from NY, visits at the end of the month & through her Goldman meets African-American singer & actor Paul Robeson, who is starring in Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones in London.

Prompted by a publisher's fleeting interest in a book of reminiscences, Red Emma begins asking correspondents to send her letters she had written them over the years.

1925 -- Donald Justice, lives, Miami, Florida. American poet / editor best known for his finely crafted verse that frequently illuminates the pain of loss & desolation of an unlived life. His Selected Poems (1979) wins the Pulitzer Prize, & his lifelong interest in music leads to the writing of the libretto for The Death of Lincoln.


1930 -- Perú: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Augusto Leguía resigns the presidency during a revolt.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/lo/countries/pe/pe_full.html


1930 -- Poland: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Josef Pilsudski forms a ministry & arrests leftists. Józef Pilsudski rose to national prominence as an anti-Russian socialist agitator.



1932 -- Radical French publisher Gerard Lebovici lives. Founder of Editions Champ Libre in 1969. Assassinated in 1984, probably executed by the police for supporting the memory & family of convicted bank robber Jacques Mesrine. The French press attempted to implicate Lebovici's friend Guy Debord; he sued several newspapers for libel & won judgments against them all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A9rard_Lebovici
http://www.notbored.org/considerations.html
http://www.akpress.org/considerationsontheassassinationofgerardlebovici.html



1933 -- Germany: Hitler's first list of Germans to be deprived of citizenship is announced — author Heinrich Mann is on it.


1937 -- US: Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters signs its first contract with Pullman.
http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/PullmanStrike.htm


1938 -- Emma Goldman leaves London for Paris, having secured a British visa for Spain at the last moment.



1940 -- A Match Made in Heaven?: First parachute wedding, at the NY World's Fair. Parachutists include minister, bride, groom, best man, maid of honor & four musicians (obviously the woodwinds section; no tubas or grand pianos here, puhleeze!).


1940 -- Germany: RAF terror bombs Berlin in a retaliatory night raid (a civilian target, a war crime).


1941 -- Iran: UK & USSR invade following the Shah's refusal to expel Germans; Britain & the USSR demand that Iran accept Allied "protection."

1944 -- France: French divisions march into Paris followed by the US 4th Infantry Division. Nazi resistance was light & a quick surrender is negotiated, ignoring Hitler's orders to burn the city to the ground.

Paris is occupied by the Maquis, driving out the Nazis; but the armed presence of Spanish anarchists within the Maquis causes alarm & the British Home Office gives a directive to penetrate the London-based Spanish anarchists.

Divisions between middle class pacifists & liberals, involved with the British anarchist movement during the war, & the rest of the movement, causes one split. Reaction against those from Spain who entered the bureaucracy during the Civil War & became ossified in those positions — tending to rely on the Allied cause rather than resistance — causes another split, though these divisions are not clear-cut until later.

========================================
'Forgotten Heroes: Spanish Resistance in France 1939-45'
Video: http://www.ateneuenciclopedicpopular.org/spip.php?article64&var_recherche=Maquis
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/spain/MAQUIS06-300x212.jpe

1948 -- US: Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors founded in Philadelphia.


1950 -- US: The Train Stops Here? Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Harry Truman orders US Army to seize all the nation's railroads to prevent a General Strike. The railroads are not returned to their owners until two years later. (See 8 April.)


1953 -- T.S. Eliot play "The Confidential Clerk" is first performed, Edinburgh.


1957 -- Umberto Saba dies in Gorizia. Italian poet of simple, lyrical autobiographical poems. His first work, Il canzoniere ("The Songbook," 1921), is followed by Storia e cronisoria del canzoniere ("History & Chronicle of the Songbook," 1948), & his later Freudian work on such topics as desire & childhood memories.


1964 -- US: 200 protest Vietnam War at Democratic National Convention. Convention held August 24 to 27.

Another very significant happening at that convention was the attempt by the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to get seated.

— Bleedster Greg C.

1966 -- Yardbirds perform at the Carousel Ballroom in Frisco. The Carousel was the former El Patio Ballroom on the second floor of the car dealership on the southwest corner of Market & Van Ness.
http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/rock.html
http://www.warr.org/yardbirds.html


1967 -- Gone Whaling?: Beatles go to Wales to talk to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi about Transcendental Meditation.


1967 -- US: FBI circulates memo detailing plans to "disrupt" Black Liberation groups. Results in the infamous "COINTELPRO" terrorist program (still being used today). The memo advocates "any tactics" against groups like Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Ward Churchill: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14W5hYRHjD0
Paul Wolf's COINTELPRO page
http://www.judibari.org/America's_Secret_Police.html
http://mediafilter.org/MFF/USDCO.idx.html
http://www.globalafrica.com/COINTELP.htm

1967 -- US: Hard to Get Good Help? George Lincoln Rockwell, the leader of the American Nazi Party, is shot dead in Arlington, Virginia. Former aide John C. Patler is arrested for the shooting.

& for those of you who don't know what the Ku Klux Klan is — that's the people who get outta bed in the middle of the night — & take the sheet with 'em!... You always see pictures of them wearing those pointed hoods? Those hoods are flat! It's the heads that are pointed... — Dick Gregory, 1962

1967 -- Western Maintenance Presents Dave van Ronk, Mimi Fariña & Fred Neil at Berkeley Community Theater & San Francisco Masonic Auditorium, August 25-26, 1967. Artist: Greg Irons. From The Art of Rock, plate 2.262.

Dave Van Ronk & Dick Ellington put together & published the fabulous Bosses Songbook, circa 1964. A small anarchist contribution to the needy & deserving.

http://www.richardandmimi.com/ads.html

1968 -- US: Battle of Lincoln Park; Democratic Convention in Chicago: demonstrations & police riot; 10,000(?) demonstrators vs. 11,000 Chicago police, 6,000 National Guard, 7,500 US army troops & 1,000 FBI, CIA & army/navy intelligence services agents (Dump the Hump nominated on a platform supporting the Vietnam War.)

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Police club people attending a music festival in Lincoln Park who refuse to leave at curfew. Rennie Davis & Tom Hayden meet to lead march to the Conrad Hilton, the main Convention hotel.

At 9 p.m., police confront & attack some demonstrators. Jerry Rubin allegedly urges demonstrators to attack police.

At 10:30 p.m., two police officers observe the future Beloved & Respected Comrade Senator From California Tom Hayden letting the air out of tires of their police car.

The Hog Farm commune, during the protests rightly nominated a pig for president.


http://web.archive.org/...chicago68.com/
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/14550

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1976 -- Working-class novelist Eyvind Johnson (1900-1976) dies.

Brings new themes & points of view to Swedish literature while experimenting with new forms & techniques. Shares the 1974 Nobel Prize with fellow Swede Harry Edmund Martinson.

To the Eyvind Johnson particulars it could be noted that EJ from early years on considered himself an anarchist. In his teens he was very active as an agitator for the youth anarchist movement & the anarchosyndicalist organisation, contributed vividly to their press in the twenties & in his own works consequently threw light on the corruption of power.

Although disillusioned by the defeat of anarchism in Spain 1937 he maintained a lifelong contact with the Swedish movement. Since his Berlin days in the 20's he was a close friend of Max Nettlau, Rudolf Rocker & Augustin Souchy.

— Bleedster Ingemar Johansson

Influenced by Marcel Proust, André Gide & James Joyce. Wrote Return to Ithaca: The Odyssey Retold as a Modern Novel; Rain at Daybreak; The Days of His Grace.

Further reading: Eyvind Johnson by G.K. Orton (1972); The Ulysses Theme by W.B. Stanford (1963)

1977 -- Police break up a human-rights march by 2,000 Filipinos — 100 injured.


1981 -- John Lennon's murderer, Mark David Chapman, gets 20 years in prison.


1981 -- Outer Space: Voyager 2's closest approach to Saturn (63,000 miles/100,000 km).


1984 -- In Cold Blood?: Truman Capote dies. Southern Gothic novelist, journalist, & celebrated man-about-town who wrote Breakfast at Tiffany's.


1985 -- US: White House confirms Beloved & Respected Comrade Fink (see 1819 entry today) Ronald Reagan was an FBI informant (with his own secret number) in Hollywood in the late 1940s while heading the Screen Actors Guild.

"Thanks for a nation of finks. Thanks for a nation where nobody is allowed to mind their own business."

— William S. Burroughs

1992 -- Brazil: 200,000 demonstrate for Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Pres. Collor's impeachment, Sao Paulo.


1994 -- Robert Plant & Jimmy Page reunite in a London studio to record their MTV "Unplugged" show, which they call, "Unledded."



1994 -- Brazil: The five-volume juvenile series, João Pão, as aventuras de um menor abandonado (The Adventures of Joao Pao, an Abandoned Youth) by the anarchist writer Roberto Freire, published today (by Casa da Soma in Sao Paulo).

... show details

The series is a fictional account for young people about the adventures of street children in Brazil, all written from an anarchist perspective.

The books are Moleques de Rua; Domadores, mágicos e ladrões; O milagre da santa chorona; A fórmula da esperança; A revolta dos meninos.

Roberto Freire is a writer, dramaturg, journalist, doctor, psychiatrist, ex-psychoanalyst, who also worked with theatre, television & cinema. His novels won him a youth readership. In psychology & politics, he has several books of essays. In all his work the themes are always love, creation & freedom.

During the dictatorship period in Brazil, Roberto Freire had an important political & cultural role, participating in many subversive groups from 1963 to 1979. He was arrested & tortured 13 times, causing him the loss of vision in his right eye.

anarchismo, anarchici, anarquista / alt. spelling: Brasil

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Freire_%28psychiatrist%29
http://www.spunk.org/texts/pubs/freedom/intnews/sp000894.txt

1997 -- Robert Pinget dies. Novelist & playwright.


1997 -- Honduras: Beloved & Respected comrade Colonel Manuel Suarez Benavides is arrested for human-rights abuses.


1999 -- US: Salon reports on an allegation that Beloved & Respected Comrade President G.W. Bush performed community service in Texass to expunge a criminal record. A clean slate to scribble on again.

"Wow! Texas used to be a separate country.....Why'd we change that?"

— Charlie in Two & a Half Men

2000 -- US: Last Call? Coors Brewery spills 300,000 litres of beer into a Colorado creek. Rather than belly-up to the bar, the fish belly-up to heaven.


2003 -- US: Pony Up? Three days after the Landed Gentry doff their feedbags ($2,000 each) & Beloved & Repected Comrade Bush rides off with 1.2 million buckaroonies for his meagre campaign coffers, the homeless scratch their bellies & the Seattle Public Library lays off its workers & shuts down for one full week in a fine tribute to tax relief for our betters. Something for the McCawCaws to crow about. Bush will come back & do it again in 2004, travel expenses all paid for by American taxpayers.


2006 -- US: 3rd Annual Reunion Party of The Tribes of the Cass Corridor, Detroit, Michigan: "Think where man's glory most begins & ends, & say my glory was I had such friends." — William Butler Yeats
http://corridortribe.com/


2009 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Ted Kennedy dies. A microcosm of American politics: dogged by sex scandals, alcoholism, & rampant xenophobia (his father Joe during World War II), target for assassination, celebrated by a large part of the American public, yet vilified by the other.
... show more

Played a significant role in passing major legislation affecting lives of millions of commoners: the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, & the Family & Medical Leave Act.

A rich voice for the poor, Kennedy scored a perfecto: a person working for a right-wing pressure group once explained how their score card for judging liberal or conservative leanings worked, noting,

"There is only one member of either house who fails on all 24 [benchmarks] & that is Senator Edward Kennedy."


2012 -- US: Seattle Anarchist Book Fair.
http://seattleanarchistbookfair.org/


4000 --