Our Daily Bleed...
The thing that I saw in your face
No power can disinherit,
No bomb that ever burst
Shatters the crystal spirit.— George Orwell, poem written for Unknown Italian militiaman in Spain, 1936
--
NOVEMBER 20
BUENAVENTURA DURRUTI
Anarchist theorist & warrior,
prominent in Cuban & Mexican struggles,
& the Spanish Revolution in 1936, bookstore owner
(Durruti Column — not the same as the rock group, so sorry).
200-500,000 attend his funeral. http://struggle.ws/spaindx.html
Mexico: REVOLUTION DAY.
WRITING ON THE WALL DAY.
1521 --
Arabs attribute shortage of water in Jerusalem to Jews making wine. Holy Water... 1602 -- Otto von Guericke, the inventor of nothing (a vacuum), lives (in a vacuum?).
1695 -- Honduras: Zumbí, head of the Quilombo de Palmares, assassinated.
|
1752 -- British poet Thomas Chatterton lives. Spent his short life (died at 17) imitating ancient authors & representing his poems as being of genuine antiquity.
http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poet60.html
1757 -- Author le doyen Bridel (Philippe Sirice Bridel) lives.
1816 -- The term 'scab' is used for the first time, at the Albany Typographical Society.
After god had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, the vampire, He had some awful substance left with which he made the SCAB....
A SCAB is a two-legged animal with a cork-screw soul, a water logged brain, a combination backbone of jelly & glue....
When a SCAB comes down the street, men turn their backs, angels weep in heaven, & the Devil shuts the gates of Hell to keep him out....
Judas Iscariot was a gentleman compared to a SCAB. For betraying his master, he had character enough to hang himself. A SCAB has not.
— Jack London (not wanting to mince words) 
A STRIKE BREAKER IS A TRAITOR
TO HIS GOD, HIS COUNTRY, HIS FAMILY
AND THE WORKING CLASS
1817 -- US: Attack by settlers on Florida Indians starts Seminole Wars, during which Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader General Andy Jackson invades Spanish East Florida.
1856 --
China: US marines fight in the Battle of Canton Forts. 1858 -- Selma Lagerlöf lives. Swedish novelist, whose work is rooted in legend & saga, & in 1909 the first woman writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/lagerlof.htm
1862 -- Edvard Westermarck lives. Finnish anthropologist/scholar. Westermarck gained international fame with his doctoral thesis, The History of Human Marriage. Travels in Morocco to study marriage & rituals predate the interest of literary expatriates in the country (Paul Bowles, et al.)
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ewester.htm
1862 -- France: Georges Palante lives (1862-1925). Philosopher preaching an aristocratic & libertarian individualism.
Influenced by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche & Max Stirner, he developed a radical anarchist philosophy & "une morale désespérée, mais élégante, de la résistance."
1866 -- France: The rotary crank bicycle is patented, by Pierre Lallemont, Paris. The bike, incidentally, was known as "the bone shaker." Still is.
1875 -- Henry James's first novel, Roderick Hudson, is published. James had many acid-witted critics, including H.G. Wells, just before Henry's death,
"Ought there, in fact, to be Henry James?"
"I don't think so..."— H.G. Wells
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._G._Wells_Society
http://www2.newpaltz.edu/~hathaway/james-3x.jpg
1884 -- US: American socialist & CIA informant Norman Thomas lives, Marion, Ohio.
1888 --
William Bundy
patents
the
timecard clock.
1889 --Eddie "Hub" Hubble, astronomer (discoverer of galaxies, red shift), lives.
"The grander the problem, the more wonderful must be the imagination."
There is Hubble's zone of avoidance, the Hubble galaxy type, the Hubble sequence, the Hubble luminosity law for reflection nebulae, the Hubble luminosity profile for E galaxies, the Hubble constant, the Hubble time, the Hubble diagram, the Hubble redshift-distance relation, the Hubble radius for the universe, & now the Hubble Space Telescope. He was a humble man.
1892 -- US: Hired thugs, gunmen & state militia break the Homestead / Carnegie steel strike, begun on the 1st. See July 6
See Jeremy Brecher's Strike!, pp53-61.
http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/acs/1890s/carnegie/strike.html
1894 -- Nicaragua: US intervenes in Bluefields. To "protect US Interests."
1896 -- US: Rose Pesotta lives. Labor activist & an anarchist, the only woman on the General Executive Board of the International Ladies' Garment Workers (ILGWU), from 1933-1944, but returned to organizing, her real passion. She was disgusted that the Board was all men but her, while women comprised 85% of the union members. Active in the defense of Sacco & Vanzetti. Pitcher for baseballs' Armageddonia Anarchists 1998.
1905 --
1906 -- Robert Altman gets mashed. Film director, M*A*S*H, Straw Dogs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Altman
1908 -- Author Alistair Cook lives.
1910 -- Pauli Murray lives. Lawyer/author. Wrote Song in a Weary Throat; Proud Shoes; Dark Testament & Other Poems. A powerful theologian & the first African-American woman priest ordained by the Episcopal Church.
1910 -- Down for the Count?: Russian anarchist, novelist Leo Tolstoy dies, Astapovo train station. (Thought he was going someplace?)
Leo Tolstoy, 82, author, christian, anarchist (The Kingdom of God is Within You) dies of pneumonia contracted when he flees from his wife of 48 years & heads for the Caucasus, accompanied only by his doctor & his youngest daughter Alexandra.
1910 -- México: Revolution gets Francisco I. Madero an office.
1912 -- US: Arturo Giovannitti sits in the Salem Jail. He is considered the "black sheep" of the Giovannitti family by many (he's in the can, so it must be true). Arturo was one of the great IWW poets. Emigrated from Campobasso, near Rome. He had a long & interesting life, as a seminarian, as a hobo, famed Wobbly organizer & anti-fascist agitator.
His TV isn't working, heard all the CDs, radio talk show is same old crap, & he's not into Magic Cards, so he writes a poem:Aye, brother, death all woes relieves
Yet this low world that well you knew,
This Christian world of sainted thieves
& fat apostles of virtue.
This world of brutes & prostitutes,
Must see its end revealed by you!
Rise then! Your rags, your bleeding shirt,
Tear from your crushed & trampled chest,
Fling in its face its own vile dirt,
Your scorn & hate to manifest,
& in its gray cold eyes of prey
Spit Out your life & your protest!— Arturo Giovannitti, excerpt from "The Bum"
(written in Salem Jail, Nov. 20, 1912)http://www.eclipse.net/~basket42/arturo.html
http://www.italianstudies.org/iam/essay.htm
http://books.google.com/books...Giovannitti+charged+as+accomplice
http://www.iww.org/
1916 -- James Guillaume dies. Anarchist militant & historian of the First International.
Guillaume met Mikhail Bakunin in 1869 & adopted his anarchist-collectivist ideas.
1919 -- Liu Shih-p'ei dies, at the early age of 36. Chinese anarchist, involved in the Chinese anarchist movement which emerged in Tokyo about the same time as another important group emerged in Paris, France.
Liu Shih-p'ei, his wife Ho Chen, Chang Ping-lin & Chang Chi were leading members of the group in Japan.
[Details / context]
1920 -- US: This month the new 1920 Alien Land Law, a more stringent measure intended to close loopholes in the 1913 Alien Land Law, passed as a ballot initiative in California [ed. note: I don't have the exact date].
Designed to prevent Japanese immigrants from owning or leasing their own land. It was to become effective on December 9. By 1925, similar prohibitions were effected in Washington, Arizona, Oregon, Idaho, Nebraska, Texas, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, New Mexico, Minnesota, & Missouri. During World War II, Utah, Wyoming, & Arkansas also joined.
1920 -- Spain: The government declares the anarcho-syndicalist CNT illegal & 64 union leaders are jailed.
Signals the bloody repression of Spain's largest union over the next few years, militants being attacked, jailed, &/or assassinated.
[Background / context]1922 -- US: Muere Ricardo Flores Magón, anarchiste, en la prisión de Leavenworth.
—Cuando muera, mis amigos quizás escriban en mi tumba: «Aquí yace un soñador», y mis enemigos «Aquí yace un loco». Pero no habrá nadie que se atreva a estampar esta inscripción: «Aquí yace un cobarde y traidor a sus ideas». |
1923 -- South African novelist Nadine Gordimer (A World of Strangers) lives, Springs in the Transvaal. Received Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991. Main themes are exile, loneliness & strong political opposition to racial segregation. A founding member of Congress of South African Writers.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/gordimer.htm
1934 -- First play by US playwright, Lillian Hellman, 29, "The Children's Hour," opens at Maxine Elliott's Theater, New York. Hints at sexual abnormalities. Runs for 691 performances, unequaled for a first play.
See excerpt from Herbert Mitgang's excellent book, Dangerous Dossiers, about Hellman & her FBI file,
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/hellman-per-fbi.html
1936 -- American Amazon, Cleo Birdwell lives. Pseudonym used by Don DeLillo, American novelist whose first book, Amazons was purportedly the autobiography of a the first hockey babe to play in the National Hockey League.
"History is the sum total of the things they're not telling us."
— Don DeLillo, Libra
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/233.Don_DeLillo
1936 -- Spain: Buenaventura Durruti y Domingo, the famous & beloved Spanish anarchist, shot in the lung yesterday, dies this morning at 6a.m.
Son of a socialist railroad worker, he began working for railroads at age 14. Later became a bookseller, briefly, in Paris, with his closest friend, Francisco Ascaso (who was also killed during the Spanish Revolution). Durruti became, & remains today, the major legendary figure of the Revolution.
See also 14 July 1896
Durruti's body was taken to Barcelona, where he was buried in a ceremony attended by over 200-500,000 people.
His total belongings, when he died, were a few clothes, two pistols, sunglasses & a pair of binoculars.
Durruti was a member of "Los Justicieros" & "Los Solidarios," who fought against the pistoleros of the capitalist employers & the clergy. But the groups were decimated by repression, leaving only Gregorio Jover, Ascaso & Garcia & himself. They fled to France & began the "International Bookshop."
Durruti went also to Cuba, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay & then was involved in a plot against King Alphonse XIII. Eventually arrested, Spain & Argentina tried to extradite them, but they were successfully defended by the Anarchist Union & Louis Lecoin. Released & expelled, they went to Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, & Germany before slipping clandestinely back into France.
In Spain, when Franco & the military attempted to overthrow the Republican government, Durruti participated in an attack on the military garrison of Barcelona, where Ascaso was killed. On July 23 he formed the column which bears his name & defeated the fascists in Aragon, where the liberated peasants & workers reorganized themselves into anarchist collectives.
Attempts to liberate Saragossa failed for lack of weapons & the Durruti column was then asked to defend Madrid, now threatened by the fascists. It is here that Durruti is killed, apparently from a stray bullet to the lung.
Durruti's funeral in Barcelona was attended by 500,000 people
http://flag.blackened.net/liberty/durruti.html
In Spanish: http://usuarios.lycos.es/durruti/
http://struggle.ws/spaindx.html
1940 -- In una lettera a Mussolini, Hitler critica aspramente la decisione di attaccare la Grecia. Il padrone rimprovera il servo.
[Source: Crimini e Misfatti]
1945 -- Nuremberg war crimes trial begins.
1945 -- Novelist Ellen Glasgow dies in Richmond, Virginia, leaving instructions that her dogs (Billy, a French poodle, & Jeremy, a Sealyham) are to be exhumed from her garden & placed in her coffin, & that she is to be buried nowhere near her father.hhttp://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/glasgowbattle/bio.html
1946 -- US: Bituminous coal workers strike again, this time directly against the US government.The US government had seized all the bituminous coal mines on May 21. The miners were on strike, & continued to strike, forcing the government to grant demands the owners would not. But the miners struck again today. The government secured an injunction toprevent the strike, but they struck anyhow, & the UMW was fined 3.5 million dollars.As Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Truman wrote:
"We used the weapons that we had at hand in order to fight a rebellion against the government."
Source: Jeremy Brecher, Strike!, p229.
1951 -- W.E.B. Du Bois, a chief advocate of the Stockholm Peace Appeal (to ban atomic weapons), tried unsuccessfully in US federal court as a "foreign agent," is released.
1957 -- France: Jean-Baptiste Knockaert (1857-1957) dies. Anarcho-syndicalist, communist, then a free thinker.
1962 -- U.S.-USSR mutual withdrawal ends Cuban missile crisis.
1963 -- United Nations issues declaration on ending racial discrimination.
1965 -- US: 20,000 march against Vietnam War, Berkeley, California.
1966 -- Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) fundraiser at the Fillmore in Frisco, California, with the James Cotton Chicago Blues Band. Stokely Carmichael & his staff were there. Jon Hendricks was master of ceremonies.
http://interchange.org/KwameTure/
http://www.sftoday.com/enn2/summerlove2.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cotton
1967 -- US: Times Awastin?: At 11 AM, US Census Clock at Department of Commerce ticks past 200 million.
1967 -- "Time Magazine," reviewing the Doors second albums, "Strange Days," reports the groups music "takes its listeners not only past such familiar landmarks of the youth odyssey as anal sex butt, into symbolic realms of the unconscious — eerie night worlds filled with throbbing rhythms, shivery metallic tones, unsettling images." The albums soon hits #3 on the national chart.
1968 -- Las bolsas de Francia, Reino Unido y RFA, clausuradas durante tres días por la crisis.
http://www.elmundo.es/larevista/num132/textos/crono.html
1969 -- US: Beady-Eyed Reds? 78 Indians from 20 tribes, saying it belongs to them "by right of discovery," seize & occupy Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. American Indian Movement activists occupy it, demanding it be made into a cultural center, offering to purchase the island from the federal government for $24 worth of beads.Seminole, Winnebago, Cahuilla, Lakota, Innuit, Luiseno, Cherokee, Choctaw & Mohawk Amerindians successfully occupy Alcatraz & hold the island for 19 months. They offer to pay $24 in glass beads & red cloth for the land — the price paid by the white man for Manhattan Island.
For related issues/views, the American Indian Movement (AIM) has an excellent page of sources & links, http://www.aimovement.org/
1970 -- England: Women protesters disrupt the Miss World contest during live TV transmission. Flour bombs are hurled at Bob Hope. The BBC broadcast van parked outside Albert Hall is blown up. The first widely known link between anarchists & Situationists in England.
A BBC van outside the Albert Hall in London covering the Miss World contest is bombed at 2,30 am. The prosecution claimed that Jake Prescott was responsible for this explosion, but also brought a witness who vouched that Jake was in fact in Edinburgh at the time. They were forced to drop this charge.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/gallery/galleryindex.htm#AngryBrigade
http://www.spunk.org/library/writers/meltzer/sp001591/app1.html
http://www.spunk.org/texts/groups/agb/sp000540.txt
1973 -- Jet Set?: Keith Moon collapses twice on the first date of The Who's US tour, in San Francisco. Falls over his set during "Won't Get Fooled Again." After being tended to, he plays for 10 minutes before he's carried off again, allegedly due to jet lag.Pete Townshend asks for a volunteer from the crowd to replace him & a 19 year old comes up & finishes the show. The kid was Scot Halpin, then 19, who took a shot of brandy & sat down at his idol Moon's drum kit. Townsend counted off & Halpin began drumming — he lasted for 3 songs: "Smokestack Lightning," "Naked Eye" & the anthem "My Generation."
http://www.thewho.com/
1973 -- US files anti-trust suit against AT&T.
1973 -- The gravesite of Mary Seacole, a Jamaican nurse who served in the Crimean War, is restored in England.
We fall from life,
Values fall from history like men from shellfire,
Only a minimum survives,
Only an unknown achievement.
They can put it all on the headstones,
In all the battlefields,
“Poor guy, he never knew what it was all about.”— Kenneth Rexroth, excerpt “August 22, 1939"
http://www.bopsecrets.org/PS/Rexroth.htm
Traveling to the battlefield at her own expense when her expert services are rejected by English authorities & Florence Nightingale, Seacole opened her own nursing hotel, which she operated by day, serving as a volunteer with Nightingale at night.
1975 -- Spain: The Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Fascist Dictator Francisco Franco (for 36 years) dies (& he's still dead!) He is replaced by another General — General Rejoicing (!!).In 1992 the TV film, A Matar Franco (To Kill Franco) is made in Madrid, a documentary telling in full, for the first time, of the many, mostly unpublicised, attempts to kill Franco by the Spanish CNT, the Basque nationalist ETA & various international anarchists (Spanish, Mexican, Belgian, French, Italian & British).
1977 -- Louis Mercier Vega (aka Charles Ridel; 1914-1977) dies. Anarcho-syndicalist, propagandist, libertarian thinker who joined the movement at 16. Lifelong writer for the libertarian press. Founder of several reviews like "Revision" (1938) "Aporte" (trilingual review, 1966-1972), "Interrogations" (1974), & author of numerous books.Mercier-Vega was a member of l'Union Anarchiste. Joined the International Group of the Durruti Column during the Spanish Revolution. In 1939, Mercier-Vega went to Belgium, then South America, Argentina & Chile. In 1958, he founded the "commission internationale de liaison ouvrière" (international network of libertarians & revolutionary trade unionists).
1978 -- Surrealist painter, cultural renegade Giorgio de Chirico dies, Rome, Italy.
1978 -- Guyana: Troops find the bodies of over 900 people who, along with leader Jim Jones, drank too much Kool-Aid in a bizarre cult ritual.
1980 -- Steve Ptacek in Solar Challenger makes first solar-powered flight.
1983 -- US: The Day After shown on TV — 100 million watch.
1983 -- Germany: Opposition Social Democratic Party opposes Cruise missile. Meanwhile, back in England, the Cruise has just been deployed.
1985 -- No Bull?: Bill Scott, voice of Mr. Peabody & Bullwinkle, dies at 65.
http://www.rockyandbullwinkle.com/
1987 -- US: SANE & FREEZE merge at first combined convention in Cleveland, become the largest US peace organization.
1991 --
1993 -- US: As Wisconsin deer killers take to the woods & fields on opening day of gun hunting season, Alliance for Animals members protest at Devils Lake State Park. The activists spent part of last night hiking through woods in the area so their scent would scare deer away from the macho killing ritual.You simply attach the deer to the Deer Dragger II by cutting the skin on the back leg & exposing the leg tendon, slip the hooks under the tendons, grip the Deer Dragger II by the comfortable handle grips, stand up, & take your deer to the truck. You will be able to travel 3 to 4 times farther before tiring.
1994 -- Delivered!?!: David Crosby gets a liver transplant, from a walrus.
1995 -- US: Stick This? Native Hawai'ian activist John Marsh is acquitted in Honolulu of tax evasion charges, using the defense that since the US illegally colonized Hawai'i in 1898, the islanders' descendants are not legally subject to US taxation.
2000 -- US:Florida....Republic of Chad teaches a nation how to count & recount....(to no good end).
2002 --
2002 --
2003 -- US: School of Assassins protest (School of the Americas), FortBenignBening, Georgia.As a result of their protests 27 human rights activists are sentenced to prison or probation in January of 2004 for their nonviolent actions against the School of the Americas.
2004 -- US: Demonstrators protest (Nov 20-21) human rights abuses taught at the army School for the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia (The American "School of Assassins," best known for training armies of Latin American murderers & torturers in the fine arts; renamed the "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation" in January 2001).
Since 1990 about 15,000 demonstrators attend the vigil each year. Using the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 along with the Patriot Act as an excuse, officials began requiring demonstrators to go thruough metal detectors, but in October of this year a Federal Appeals Court unanimously delcared the practice unconstitutional, stating, "Sept. 11, 2001, already a day of immmeasurable tragedy, cannot be the day liberty perished in this country."
http://www.soaw.org
http://911review.org/Wiki/AmericanStateTerrorism.shtml
2006 -- US: Bleedster Scott White (b.1950) dies during his third bout with colon cancer. Now residing in a small box, ashes to be scattered: "Helix" newsboy, Venceremos brigadista, chef, investment advisor, collector of beer cans, costumes, hats, & world-wide traveler. Most valuable to him were the many people he met & cultivated for their friendship; many are we whom he brought into his food gardens or to his table for feasting (days or weeks in the making), able to collect together the people he knew & loved. Like the many children who wondered at all the crazy toys, oddities & wonderments in his home — or the stories he would tell to kids & adults alike — he never quite grew up. His memorial, replete with many testaments & stories, is held on February 4, 2007 & reminds one & all of a life well-lived. Thank you, Scott White!
http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/ScottWhite/scottWhitePacificMag1.jpg
http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/ScottWhite/scottWhitePacificMag2.jpg
http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File_Id=1990
2009 -- Switzerland: WORLD TO END FRIDAY, NEWS AT 11. Reruns at 11:30. (What? Not again?!)
You don't have to worry about finding a job anymore, your next meal or having a shelter over your head. Or paying that parking ticket...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/nov/18/cern-lhc-startup
3000 --
Short interview with Durruti on the Anarchy list index, article # 2386 at
http://struggle.ws/spain/durruti_interview.htmlFor the rock group Durruti Column, discography, links, etc.: http://users.rcn.com/rpsweb/durutti-column/
"The world of 'pop' music & fashion appears like a section through the Spectacle & its spurious opposition. All the elements are there — primarily, it is a show for passive consumption, offering release, but is dressing up in the image of rebellion. It takes the desire for real revolt, contains it, & sells us back its image.
The Spectacle scours proletarian history for symbols of revolt & resistance in order to derail them of all meaning & power. Only then can they be sold back to us as wholesome food.
It is a mark of our own alienation from our own history — the history of people fighting to win back their own lives — that we do not find it absurd, or even offensive, that groups of multinational record company musicians call themselves such names as 'The Communards' or 'The Durruti Column' [sic]. No matter how 'radical' their songs, or 'innovative' their music, we should roll them in manure for their pretentiousness."
— quote cited at Durruti Column web site
4500 --
anti-CopyRite 1997-3000, more or less
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