María Bruguera, José Peiro Olives from the The Daily Bleed: A Calendar Better Than Boiled Coffee!...

& I continue to resist him with all the strength I know
& most of the time I do just fine
'Til I hear that whistle blow
Then I catch myself rememberin' those days out on the main
The freedom of the open road & the romance of the train
— Buzz Potter, excerpt from "The Hidden Hobo Side"

DECEMBER 26
CORNELIUS CASTORIADIS
Turkish-born French theorist of radical political autonomy.

England/Canada: BOXING DAY. They beat each other silly.

Ireland: DAY OF THE WREN. Masked revelers & musicians go door-to-door asking for money. All day feasting.

NATIONAL WHINER'S DAY.

First day of KWANZAA (first fruits) — daytime fasts precede night-time feasts on soul food, the sharing of stories & musical recitation. The Swahili Nguzo Saba, the Seven Principles, provides seven days of celebration of black cultural heritage, linking modern black experience to the African homeland. Today is the feast of ujoma (unity).

1606 -- Shakespeare's King Lear performed at court. Pervert took pleasure in making male actors dress up as women.
http://shakespeare.mit.edu/works.html

1716 -- Thomas Gray ("Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard") lives, No. 41 Cornhill in London.

1776 -- New Old World: Battle of Trenton, where Washington surprises the British troops in a battle considered to be the turning point in the American War of Independence.

1787 -- Framed?: Anti-Federalist mob, displeased that a Pennsylvania State Convention ratified the US Constitution, attack a framer of the document, James Wilson, with barrel staves & nearly kill him.

1820 -- Writer Dion Boucicault (circa 1820; 1822?) lives. Irish actor, playwright.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dion_Boucicault

1825 -- Russia: Decemberist revolt.

1854 -- US: Nisqually tribe makes treaty at Medicine Creek, Washington, ceding all lands to the American government.

1857 -- Julian West, protagonist in Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, lives...into the year 2000. Inspires the adage "Old & in the Way."
See Franklin Rosemont's "Free Play & No Limit,"
http://books.google.com/books...rosemont+free+play+and+no+limit

1862 -- US: 39 Santee Lakota Sioux simultaneously hanged in the largest mass execution in US history. Mankato, Minnesota. Jesus loves you.

1865 -- Perky?: James Nason invents coffee percolator.

1867 -- France: Julien Benda lives (-1956). French philosopher / novelist, best remembered for his 1927 book La Trahison des Clercs (The Treason of the Intellectuals; Richard Aldington translation, with intro by Herbert Read, published by Beacon Press, 1955). Daily Bleed Paton Saint 2006. Theorist of the traitorous nationalist intellectual. Accused French & German intellectuals of lacking the will to reason dispassionately about political & military matters, & becoming apologists for crass nationalism, warmongering & racism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julien_Benda
http://erudito.livejournal.com/526911.html

1869 -- US: Knights of Labor founded.

Though the Knights' central office denounced socialists & anarchists, the Order spawned them; Victor Drury, Joseph Buchanan, Daniel DeLeon, & two of the Haymarket martyrs sharpened their radical teeth in KOL locals. The KOL denounced strikes, but grew when they were won; it called for an end to the wage system, but accepted employers into its ranks.

Powderly denounced Joseph R. Buchanan as an anarchist in 1888, but apologized four years later when he needed allies to fight Hayes. The fact that Buchanan was an anarchist was secondary to Powderly's quest to maintain personal power. (pg. xviii-xix)

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http://web.archive.org/...crocker.com/~acacia/kol_cult.html

See also, Joseph R. Buchanan, The Story of a Labor Agitator. (Outlook New York, 1903. Cloth 8vo, 461 pages; Reprint: Greenwood Press, 1970).
Marlatt, Gene Ronald. "Joseph R. Buchanan: Spokesman for Labor during the Populist & Progressive Eras." 429 p. Ph.D. dissertation, U of Colorado, 1975.

Buchanan published the Western labor paper, the Labor Enquirer & led its supporting group, the Rocky Mountain Social League. He was also an anarchist who affiliated with the Black International & led one of the first American divisions (Rocky Mountain).
Labor Enquirer (Chicago)
120p.5, 121p.1, 125p.5, 129p.1, 135p.1. Buchanan, Joseph R. (editor).

1872 -- England: Peace advocate Norman Angell lives. Labour Party MP, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1933. The pacifist movie The Grand Illusion was deliberately given its title in reference to his book, Europe's Optical Illusion (1909).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Angell

1877 -- US: Workingmen's Party reorganized as the Socialistic Labor Party. Political activists gain control. It is later named the Socialist Labor Party.

1891 -- Sex novelist Henry Miller lives, between Heaven & Hell. He writes in Tropic of Capricorn:

"Everything that happened to me happened too late.... It was even so with my birth. Slated for Christmas, I was a half hour too late."

Fifty percent of the people in this country don’t vote. They simply don’t want to be implicated in organized society. With, in most cases, a kind of animal instinct, they know that they cannot really do anything about it, that the participation offered them is a hoax. & even if it weren’t, they know that if they don’t participate, they aren’t implicated, at least not voluntarily. It is for these people, the submerged fifty percent, that Miller speaks.

— Kenneth Rexroth, "The Reality of Henry Miller," Bird in the Bush.
http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/henrymiller.htm
http://www.henrymiller.org/
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/hmiller.htm

1893 -- Chinese communist Mao Tse-tung (Mao Zedong), of Little Red Book fame, lives. Chairman, poet, founder of People's Republic of China, whose literary production contains mainly speeches, essays & poems. Published some 40 poems written in classical tradition with political message.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/mao.htm

1894 -- African American novelist (Cane) Jean Toomer lives. Known as part of the "Harlem Renaissance."

JEAN TOOMER 1997, 2005, 2010 PATRON SAINT
Harlem Renaissance leader, Gurdieffian, poet, scholar. Poetic chronicler of bittersweet life in the Deep South.

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1908 -- US: Jack Johnson becomes the first Black heavyweight boxing champ, stopping Tommy Burns in 14 rounds.

1913 -- No Return Address?: Author Ambrose "Bitter" Bierce, traveling with Pancho Villa's army, writes his last letter & is never heard from again.

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One of these mornings I murdered myself on some dusty Mexican road, & the event left a deep impression on me...until my recent death I have played havoc with my parents & various relatives, friends & colleagues. These touching episodes have splashed blood over my days — or my stories, which is all the same to me...

To put an end to my days, I joined the troops of Pancho Villa & chose one of those many stray bullets zooming through the Mexican skies these days. This method proved more practical than hanging, cheaper than poison, more conventional than firing with my own finger, & more dignified than waiting for disease or old age.
— Eduardo Galeano, Century of the Wind

"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over."

— Ambrose Bierce

"I went to the consulate & requested a visa. The form asked, among other things: Are you planning to assassinate the president of the United States of America? I responded modestly, certain the question was a joke, inspired by my teachers Ambrose Bierce & Mark Twain, that I was not even planning to assassinate the President of Uruguay.

My answer was a bad answer & the visa denied....

Perhaps I am confusing this convention of North American booksellers for a confessional...But where better for a writer to confess than before a bookseller? & for many sins, where better than before so many booksellers?"

— Eduardo Galeano, speaking at the annual convention of the American Booksellers Association, 1992

"Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him."

— Ambrose Bierce, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"

See Carlos Fuentes, The Old Gringo. (El Gringo Viejo, Fondo deCultura Económica, 1985; Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1985). Fuentes bases this novel on the mysterious disappearance of Ambrose Bierce. Bierce is looking for death & redemption as he travels into war-torn Mexico in search of Pancho Villa. The novel eventually comes to discourse on the tangled & tragic history shared by Mexico & the US.

CYNIC n.

A blackguard whose faulty vision causes him to see things as they are, not as they ought to be.

— Ambrose Bierce, Devil's Dictionary

http://donswaim.com/

1917 -- Spain: José Peiro Olives lives. Son of the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist theorist & militant, Juan Peiro Belis, fought in the Spanish Revolution.

[Details / context]

1917 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Woody Wilson orders federal government to seize the railroads for the duration of WW I. Collectivism rears its ugly head.

1921 -- Writer & TV personality Steve Allen lives.

Telegraph keys; olden-style email

1933 -- US: Government forswears armed intervention in Western Hemisphere nations. Yup...
Trust In God

1957 -- US: A Plot? Department of Agriculture reports it paid $614 million during 1957 for withholding 21,300,000 acres of cropland from production.

"The plotted book with the hero & heroine is an old-fashioned form. It's like capitalism, the goods distributed to a few favored players. . . . We should do away with the plot & its concentration in the hands of major characters."

— Meridel Le Sueur

http://college.cengage.com/english/lauter/heath/4e/students/author_pages/modern/lesueur_me.html

1966 -- US: Time magazine declares "The Younger Generation" Man of the Year.

Kwanzaa candles

1966 -- US: The first Kwanzaa celebration is organized in Los Angeles, California, by Dr. Maulana Karenga, chairman of Black Studies at California State University at Long Beach. Establishes Kwanzaa as a non-religious African-American holiday to celebrate family, community, & culture for seven days, today through New Year's Day.

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1967 -- The Beatles self-directed film, "Magical Mystery Tour" premieres on BBC-TV. Audiences are mystified, critics either disappointed or contemptuous, & the Beatles suffer their first flop.

In New York City, on rooftops, empty shirts flap their arms.

1971 -- US: Two dozen Vietnam Veterans Against the War "liberate" the Statue of Liberty (sit-in), to protest resumed bombings in Vietnam, & fly an inverted US flag from the crown (flying the flag upside down is a naval signal of a ship in distress).

Of the million Vietnamese dead, the majority are children. The soul of America is badly infected. Any autopsy will reveal the name of the infection. Any flag draped over the body is unequivocally upside down.

The Statue of Liberty seems pitted with smallpox.

The deadly breath of smokestacks is brought back to earth by rain & snow like a pox.

"We'd better ask God to start over," says a fisherman.

1972 -- US: A study rates conditions in half of Washington's state prisons to be "inhuman." A good Christian might remind you only 10% of the prison population is human anyway.

1981 -- US: Supreme Court upholds right of three Indian tribes to use gill nets to fish in Lakes Michigan, Superior, & Huron.

1985 -- Primatologist Dian Fossey, friend to a bunch of big ol' apes is killed by poachers, Karisoke Center. She had launched an international campaign against poachers who killed one of her favorite gorillas. Daily Bleed Saint, January 16.
http://www.dian-fossey.com/
http://gorillafund.org/

1988 -- Brazil: Funeral of Chico Mendes, murdered by landowners for his leadership in the struggle against the destruction of Amazon rainforests.

Daily Bleed Patron Saint December 15th
(1944-1988), Defender of Amazon rain forest, native peoples rights; murdered for his leadership in struggle against the destruction of Amazon rainforests.
http://www.chicomendes.com/

1988 -- England: Hunt Saboteurs' Association marks umpteenth year of anti-hunt activities by disrupting annual Boxing Day Hunts.

1991 -- Top Gun?: Jack Ruby's gun sells for $220,000 in auction: Almost brand new, only fired once, on a Sunday.

1992 -- Serbia: Women In Black begin campaign against rape in war, Belgrade.
They have failed to read their bible:

"Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, & kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves".

— Numbers 31:17-18

I take the rainy landscape from my window, remove the shadow of the wutong tree, wipe you off.

— Yang Mu, The Woman In Black

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/62/062.html

1992 -- Turkey: A group of Turkish anarchists begin publishing "Ates Hirsizi" (Fire Thief) in Istanbul, with articles mainly in Turkish, with a few in English & Kurdish.
http://www.reocities.com/kk_abacus/ht/kurd.html

1992 -- Spain: María Bruguera (1915-1992) dies. Member of Mujeres Libres, anarchist, antifascist fighter.
http://www.mujerpalabra.net/conoce_a/pages/maria_index.htm
http://www.nodo50.org/insurgentes/textos/mulher/05mariabruguera.htm

1996 -- US: In Boulder, Colorado, JonBenet Ramsey, a six-year-old girl, is found murdered in the basement of her home, several hours after her parents called the police to say she had been kidnapped.
Over 1,500 children are murdered in the US in 1996, but none of these murders attracts media attention as much as the case of JonBenet. In the year 2006 her case is still being worked over in the mainstream media.

1996 -- South Korea: The largest series of strikes & walkouts in South Korean history, involving hundreds of thousands of workers, takes place to protest new labor legislation allowing companies to lay off & fire workers more easily & to avoid paying overtime in a more flexible work system.

1997 -- Cornelius Castoriadis (1922-1997) dies. Aka Pierre Chaulieu or Paul Cardan.

Social critic & editor of the journal Socialism or Barbarism (1949-1967). Castoriadis was an activist in the extreme left of the Trotskyist movement before moving to France, where he formed the "Socialism or Barbarism" group in 1948 with Lefort & Lyotard.

Cornelius Castoriadis (aka Pierre Chaulieu & Paul Cardan) ... The former specialist of ultraleftist politics [Cornelius Castoriadis, aka Cardan] is awestruck at discovering, along with structuralism & social psychology, an ethnological ideology completely new to him: the fact that the Zuni Indians did not have any history appears to him as a luminous explanation for his own inability to act in our history.

"Now, the SI," Situationist International 1964
[More on Castoriadis]

1999 -- Curtis Mayfield dies. Combined pop music & social issues, civil rights, etc., to prod & push. No place like America today:
Don't you know — if you want a good life
Best look into yourself
'Cause the world is cold – & everybody's bold
And there's no one else
Time makes you suffer – when seasons change

http://curtismayfield.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Mayfield

2000 -- US: Tech Worker Guns Down 7 Co-Workers in Wakefield, Massachusetts. Our fellow Internet workers went to work & were murdered. Cheryl Troy Craig Wood Janice Hagerty Jennifer Bragg-Capobianco Louis Javelle Paul Marceau Rose Manfredi
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A heavily armed employee, armed with a loaded AK-47 assault rifle, a shotgun & a semiautomatic handgun guns down seven co-workers at a troubled Internet consulting firm.

The latest in a string of shootings in recent years in US workplaces, schools & churches.

Similarly, one in Honolulu in November 1999, also left seven dead. Others include July 1999 shootings leaving nine dead at two Atlanta brokerages; August 1999 shootings that left three people dead at two office buildings in Pelham, Alabama; & in Garden Grove, California, that same month when a man opens fire in an auto parts store killing two people.

http://web.archive.org/...fuckedcompany.com/edgewater.html
http://timelines.latimes.com/deadliest-shooting-rampages/

2004 -- High Seas: Massive 9.0 earthquake near Indonesia triggers deadly Tsunami, killing thousands & leaving nearly 1 million homeless along Asian, Indian & African coastal areas.

3000 --

"If ever time should come, when vain & aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin."
— Samuel Adams, Beer Brewer

3500 --
used anarchist books: Used anarchist books / Anarchy books
http://www.crimethinc.com/