Everyboy's talkin' at me,
I don't hear a word they're sayin'

I'm goin' where the sun keeps shinin'
Through the pourin' rain...

— Fred Neil, (1937-2001)

JULY 15
WALTER BENJAMIN
Superb German visionary cultural critic & philosopher. Victim of fascism. Destroyer of art’s aura.

Swaziland: Reed Dance Day.

Paris, France: Night Watch. Torchlight processions, bands in the street.

Japan: BLACK SHIP FESTIVAL commemorates Commodore Perry's arrival in 1853.

England: ST. SWITHIN'S DAY: If it rains, it'll rain for 40 more days.

862 -- Death of St. Swithin.

971 -- St. Swithin's body moved to a basilica.

1097 -- Capture of Jerusalem (first Crusade) 10,000 massacred, in the traditional christian manner.

1205 -- Pope Innocent III says Jews are doomed to perpetual servitude & subjugation due to the crucifixion of Jesus.

1381 -- England: Peasants Revolt instigator John Ball executed, St. Albans.
http://www.shsu.edu/~eng_wpf/history/johnball.html

1430 -- France: Jeanne d'Arc handed over to Pierre Cauchon, the Bishop of Beauvais.

1543 -- England: Henry VIII, King of England, marries Catherine Paar. Being a traditionalist, he therefore, hereafter, always shot over Paar.

1606 -- Dutch Painter Rembrandt lives.

1779 -- Clement C. Moore lives. Author of the classic holiday poem, "The Night Before Christmas." His most famous work is often called "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" or "A Visit from St. Nicholas."

1796 -- Thomas Bulfinch, mythology man, lives, Newton, Massachusetts.

1837 -- US: Smallpox epidemic reaches the Mandan in Dakota Territory; out of 1,600 people, only 125 survive:
Russell Freedman describes the epidemic:
"The Mandans were the first to be stricken, followed in swift succession by the Hidatsas, the Assiniboins, the Arikaras, the Sioux, & the Blackfeet."
In the 17th century, there were 30,000 Narragansett in Massachusetts. Their chief Miantonomo, "sensing danger, . . . sought to build on his Mohawk alliance to create a general Amerindian resistance movement." He is reported to have said to the Montauk in 1642: "We [must] be one as they [the English] are, otherwise we shall all be gone shortly, for you know our fathers had plenty of deer & skins, our plains were full of deer, as also our woods, & of [turkeys], & our coves full of fish & fowl. But these English having gotten our land, they with scythes cut down the grass, & with axes fell the trees; their cows & horses eat the grass, & their hogs spoil our clam banks, & we shall all be starved."
— Ian K. Steele, Warpaths: Invasions of North America.

http://www.watchtower.org/e/19960908/article_01.htm

1861 -- Italy: Il generale Enrico Cialdini riceve i pieni poteri per attuare la repressione di qualsiasi fenomeno di insurrezione nell'Italia meridionale.
Dal 1861 al 1865 lo stato eseguirà più di 5000 condanne a morte (la cifra ufficiale é di 5212), per la maggior parte contadini.

Source: [Crimini e Misfatti]

1863 -- US: New York anti-draft riots end after three days. Over 1,000 died in the riots, including many free blacks attacked & murdered by Confederate sympathizers.

1869 -- France: Need a Lube-Job?: Margarine is patented in Paris, for use by French Navy, & as a lubricant by the less prosperous classes.
http://www.margarine.org/

1878 -- Gustave Flaubert writes to his protégé Guy de Maupassant: "You must — do you hear me, young man? — you MUST work more than you are doing."

1883 -- France: Louise Michel
Louise Michel est transférée à, la prison de Clermont-de-l'Oise.

[Source: Michel Chronologie]

1886 -- France: Charles Gallo appears again before "justice" for his failed attack on the Paris Stock Exchange (March 5). Quite the repentant, he defiantly expresses regret for his failure.
"I was certain to get a speculator or a tripoteur who speculates in the misery of the people. I threw the bottle (of hydrocyanic acid), unfortunately I did not kill anybody."

[Details / context]

1890 -- Gottfried Keller, dies in Zürich, four days short of his birthdate. Best-known for his novel Green Henry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Keller
http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Gottfried_Keller

1892 --

1892-1940

[Photo: Walter Benjamin, 1937]

Germany: Cultural theorist Walter Benjamin lives, Berlin.

Walter Benjamin

Unable to obtain visas to leave France, Benjamin fled to the unoccupied south when France surrendered to Germany in June of 1940.

A visa was finally secured for him by friends in New York. He merely had to get to Lisbon, Portugal. However, French authorities, anxious to cooperate with the Nazis, refused to let German exiles cross the border. Benjamin attempted to walk across the Pyrenees into Spain & was captured by Spanish authorities. He was carrying the Arcades manuscript with him.

Rather than face being turned over to the Gestapo, Benjamin chose to take an overdose of morphine. He died on 27 September 1940.

The next morning the rest of the group of refugees that Benjamin was traveling with were allowed to pass through into Spain.

[Details / context]

1894 -- Argentina: In Buenos Aires Fortunato Serantoni, an Italian militant propagandist, publishes the first number of "La Questione social" (title borrowed from Errico Malatesta's paper). Published in Italian, it included, beginning in September, a supplement in Spanish. It represents the organisational current of Argentinian anarchism. The movement in this country becomes the strongest in Latin America.
http://www.ephemanar.net/juillet15.html
http://www.ephemanar.net/decembre23.html#serantoni

1895 -- US: "La Questione sociale" begins publishing in Paterson, NJ (anarchist paper, first series, 127 numbers issued between July 15, 1895 — Sept. 2, 1899). Includes an article by Errico Malatesta who later arrives in the US (1899?) to address meetings in Italian & Spanish, & temporarily edits the "Questione sociale" (new series) for a few months. Contributors include Giuseppe Ciancabilla, Carlo Tresca, Aldino Felicani, Luigi Galleani, etc.
"The Italian-American anarchists from Paterson, the city that the press described as ‘anarchy’s capital’ & where there was indeed a massive anarchist presence, when you think that "La Questione Sociale" was a massive weekly with a print run of 15,000 copies!"

[ Source: Max Nettlau, Errico Malatesta ]

http://www.ephemanar.net/juillet15.html
http://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/69p8xn

1898 -- Belgium: Ernest Ernestan (aka Ernest Tanrez) lives, Ghent. Militant, writer, theorist of libertarian socialism, & a significant figure of Belgian anarchism.

1905 -- Songwriter Dorothy Fields lives, Allenhurst, New Jersey. Wrote "I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby," & "On the Sunny Side of the Street."

1906 -- US: Emma Goldman, on or about this day, vacations at Ossining farm with fellow anarcho-sunbathers Alex Berkman & Max Baginski.

1908 -- Jean Cocteau, 18, publishes his first poem, "Les Façades," in the chic Parisian journal Je Sais Tout. (See also 5 July.)
"The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, they finish by loading honors on your head."

— Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)

1912 -- México: Premier issue of ¡Luz!, an anarchist periodical issued by the group of the same name (Grupo Luz).
[Source: Casa Obrero Mundial]

1913 -- Hammond Innes lives, Horsham, Sussex, of Scottish descent. Wrote The Angry Mountain; North Star.
Wrote also as Ralph Hammond. British bestseller writer, published 35 books. Central themes are man against the forces of nature. Travelled the world to ensure the authentity of his works. As in the novels of Andrew Garve, his knowledge of sea & ships, & his experiences as a seaman provided material for books.

1914 -- US: Mid-July, Emma Goldman travels to Eureka & Arcata, lumber towns in Humboldt County, California; Emma delivers first-known anarchist lectures there to enthusiastic audiences.

1915 -- Wales: In spite of the Munitions of War Act, 200,000 Welsh mine workers strike for more pay.

Illustration by Mike Jones
Source: [Calendar Riots]
http://www.agor.org.uk/cwm/themes/Life/society/unions/national_union_of_mineworkers.asp

1915 -- (Otto) Olavi Siippainen (1915-1963) lives. Finnish writer with a working class background. Inspired by such works as Knut Hamsun's The Hunger, Jack London's Martin Eden & Toivo Pekkanen's, Tehtaan varjossa as a youth. Before WWII Siippainen was a prominent member of the leftist literary movement Kiila.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/chraibi.htm

1917 -- US: Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman & many others indicted under new Espionage Act for their anti-draft activities: they wind up with two years in prison & $10,000 fines in the land of the free.

1917 -- US: 50,000 lumberjacks strike for 8-hour day.

Don't come into these woods with scabbing on your mind,
you'd better think again before you cross our line.
I've worked thirty years to keep this union mine,
you gyppo loggers head on down the line.

When I was very young my daddy told me,
son, a logger life is full of ups & downs.
The trees the loggers fell, the union keeps us well,
but the company owns the bloody town.

— Don't Come Into These Woods,
excerpt from the song by John O'Connor

1917 -- Historian Robert Conquest lives.

1918 -- US: Intelligence agencies begin to circulate the names & addresses of over 8,000 "Mother Earth" magazine subscribers, targeting them for investigation. Emma Goldman also reluctantly concurs with Stella Ballantine's decision to close the Mother Earth Bookshop.

BleedMeister starts a small bookstore of the same name in Seattle, Washington, on or about 1971, shortly after the Id Bookstore closes in the University District. Anarchist Stan Iverson worked at the Id, was a co-founder of Mother Earth Books, & Red & Black Books. Other participants included Paula Silverman, Joy Cameron Knox, Charlie Knox. This Mother Earth was eventually superseded by Red & Black Books & Left Bank Books & aka Used Books, all collective efforts in which BleedMeister was involved. Red & Black closed its doors after 25 years, but Left Bank Books continues. Recollection Books has more or less taken up where aka Books left off.

1919 -- Iris Murdoch lives, in Dublin. British writer, Communist, university lecturer, prolific novelist. Her first published work was a critical study, Sartre, Romantic Rationalist (1953). Wrote The Sea, The Sea, which won the 1978 Booker Prize. The Fight From the Enchanter (1956) was dedicated to Elias Canetti.

1919 -- US: War Department announces it has classified more than 337,000 American men as "draft dodgers." Minneapolis was the scene of the first so-called "Slacker Raid," a dragnet of men without draft cards. Throughout the war, the raids seized more than 40,000 non-registrants across the country.

'I have already given two cousins to the war & I stand ready to sacrifice my wife's brother.'
— Artemus Ward (1834-1867)

http://cinepad.com/reviews/slacker.htm

1920 -- Russia: Eight-member expedition for the Petrograd Museum of the Revolution, including Henry Alsberg, travels through the Ukraine (July 15-August 6).
Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman are given responsibility for collecting materials... In Kharkov they meet anarchists they worked with in the US, including Aaron (executed in 1940) & Fanya Baron (executed on Lenin's personal order by the Cheka in 1921), Mark Mratchny, & Senya Fleshin...They receive a plea to aid Nestor Makhno's movement...

[Details / context]

1920 --

Moscow, Russia:
Second Congress of the Third International opens / celebra la Conferència prèvia a la constitució de la Internacional Sindical Roja (ISR). Hi va participar Àngel Pestaña representant la CNT.
Pestaña is a delegate for the anarcho-syndicalist CNT & the Spanish spokesman. When Pestaña leaves Russia on September 6, he is profoundly disillusioned by all he has observed.

[Details / context]

1923 -- Italy: Drastic measures against the press approved by the Cabinet.
Prefects have the power to warn editors against the continuation of articles or cartoons tending to foment class hatred, favoring the interests of foreign states to the detriment of Italian interests, or offensive to the nation, the members of the Royal Family, the Pope, the State religion, national institutions or friendly powers / Il prefetto di Trieste ordina la cessazione della pubblicazione del giornale comunista "Il Lavoratore."

http://www.corkscrew-balloon.com/travel/9807france/

1923 -- France: The journal "Le Semeur de Normandie" organe de libre discussion, first appears during this month, in Caen.
Changes its name in 1931 to "Le Semeur contre tous les tyrans", organe de culture individuelle. Devoted to cultural ideas & the defense of the conscientious objectors, this periodical had many contributors, making it of some influence. Ceased publishing in November 1936, with the departure of Alphonse Barbe, who went to fight in the Spanish Revolution.

1926 -- Driss Chraïbi lives. French-Moroccan novelist, considered the father of the modern Moroccan novel. Among the pioneers of Maghrebian writers to explore the oppression of women & children in an Islamic, patriarchal society.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/chraibi.htm

1927 -- Playwright-turned-director Ann Jellicoe, lives, Yorkshire, England. Author of The Knack & The Sport of My Mad Mother (1958).

1927 -- Julien Content (1892-1927) dies. French anarchist militant, antimilitarist, revolutionary trade unionist involved with numerous libertarian papers. Secretary of the Paris section of the Fédération Communiste Anarchiste & a principal instigator in restarting its paper "Libertaire". Administrator of that paper & "La Revue anarchiste" until discord in 1924 led to his working with "l'Idée anarchiste." Crippled in a car accident in 1926, today he commits suicide.
http://www.ephemanar.net/juillet15.html

1929 -- Austrian writer / poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal dies in Vienna. Backed by a reputation for lyrical poems & plays, he was also internationally famous for his collaboration with the German operatic composer Richard Strauss.

1930 -- Philosopher/linguist Jacques Derrida is constructed, el Biar, Algeria — a leading light of the post-structuralist movement. Distrusting the search for meaning, the yearning for certainty, he analyzes texts ("deconstructs") to show alternative meanings.

1933 -- Irving Babbitt dies, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Leader of the New Humanism school of literary criticism. In the rightwing "libertarian" mold of Ayn Rand, hated by progressives of his time, & probably the model for a famed Sinclair Lewis novel.
http://www.nhinet.org/babbitt2.htm

1940 -- Robert Wadlow, the world's tallest man (8'11.1"), dies at 32.

1944 -- Irene Morgan arrested for not giving up Greyhound seat to a white passenger on a ride from Virginia to Maryland (leads to a 1946 Supreme Court anti-segregation decision).

1946 -- US: The Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team is received on the White House lawn by Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Truman. "You fought not only the enemy but you fought prejudice — & you have won," remarks the president.
[Sources]

1955 -- West Germany: 52 Nobel laureates, led by Albert Einstein, call on all states to renounce force as an act of policy, Mainau.
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. "

— Albert Einstein (1879-1955), (uncle of the Bleed Saint Carl Einstein)

1958 -- US: Marines ordered into Lebanon by Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Eisenhower. They land to protect elected Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Government Officials from a threatened overthrow.

1958 -- The noted folk music venue, The Ash Grove, opens in Los Angeles.

1958 -- Julia Lennon, mother of John, dies in an auto accident.

1959 -- US: United Steel workers begin longest strike in US, ending 4 January 1960.

1965 -- US scientists display close-up photos of Mars from Mariner IV.

1966 -- US: Negro, Puerto Rican uprising Brooklyn (July 15-22).

1968 -- US: The Yippies apply for permits to camp in Lincoln Park (about two miles north of the Chicago Loop) & to rally at Soldier Field (on the lakefront south of the Loop).
[Source: Chicago '68: A Chronology]

1970 -- James Johnson, Detroit factory worker, shoots his foreman.

1970 -- US: Oglala Sioux seize area on Sheep Mountain, North Dakota, demanding its return.

1973 -- 1-Step Recovery Program?: Ray Davies announces he's leaving The Kinks because of exhaustion & his wife leaving him. Returns to the group within the week. Very kinky.

1974 -- Time Off For Good Behavior?: Elmer Wayne Henley, alleged participant in the sex murders of 27 teenage boys, convicted on six counts of homicide, sentenced to 594 years in jail.

1974 -- US: Lead Story? Appearing live on a Florida TV station, newswoman Christine Chubbock finishes reading the news to her Florida audience & says, "And now, in keeping with Channel 40's policy of always bringing you the latest in blood & guts, in full color, you're about to see another first — an attempted suicide," reaches into a shopping bag behind her desk, pulls out a revolver, & shoots herself in the head. She successfully dies in hospital three hours later.

1976 -- US: 36-hr kidnap of 26 schoolchildren & their bus driver in California.

1978 -- US: The Longest Walk, transcontinental walk for Native American justice, begun on February 11, arrives in Washington D.C. from Alcatraz Island ("Alcatraz is Not an Island"), California, with 30,000 marchers.

[Source: Eat the State]
http://www.pbs.org/itvs/alcatrazisnotanisland/activism.html
http://www.longestwalk.org/

1978 -- Bob Dylan performs before the largest ever open-air concert audience (for a single artist) this evening. Some 200,000 fans turn out to hear Dylan at Blackbushe Airport in England.
http://www.bobdylan.com/

1980 -- US: New violence erupts in the riot-torn Liberty City section of Miami, Florida. Two months after riots that killed 18 & resulted in $100 million in property damage, today's violence results in 40 injuries & 40 arrests.

1982 -- US: Body of Wendy Caulfield, the first Green River serial killer victim, found near Seattle.

1982 -- US: Supreme Court Justice Byron White attacked in Salt Lake City by a large bearded man shouting, "That busing & pornography just doesn't go!" Newton Estes, explains he went after White because he "is causing four-letter words to come in my living room through my television set. I don't know how else to stop except to go direct to the source."

1983 -- Joan Baez presents a free concert dedicated to nonviolence, in Paris on the Place de la Concorde, attended by 120,000. Baez receives the French Legion D'Honneur Award, her album Live Europe '83, is awarded a French gold record, & the Academy Charles Cros Award for "Best Live Album of 1983." Whew.

1985 -- US: Animal Rights activists begin sit-in at National Institute of Health to protest funding of the Experimental Head Injury Lab at the University of Pennsylvania.

1985 -- Kenya: 12,000 women attend U.N. World Conference of Women, July 15-27.

1987 -- US: John Poindexter testifies at Iran-Contra hearings.
"The decision to go ahead with the operation was mine. The buck stops here with me. The decision making process at the White House was so vile, projectile vomiting was the norm among staff. That shiite for brains, mommy whopped, ex-hack B-actor, couldn't wipe his ass without clearing it with that dingbat astrologer in Frisco."

http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_03.htm

1989 -- Maria Kuncewicz dies, Kazimierz Dolny, Poland. Novelist, essayist, playwright, & short-story writer. Escaped Poland during WWII, living & writing in France, England, & the US. Cudzoziemka (The Stranger) is considered her best book.

1989 -- More than 200,000 people cram into Venice, Italy for a free Pink Floyd concert. Residents complain about noise, litter & drug use.

1990 -- England: The head offices of Madagans, the Northampton bailiff company that has taken up the contract to proceed against poll tax defaulters, is firebombed.
Source: [Calendar Riots]

1991 -- Yugoslavia: Center for Anti-War Action founded, Belgrade.
http://balkansnet.org/ethnicl.html

1992 -- Yugoslavia: "Yellow ribbon" rally against ethnic cleansing, Belgrade.
http://balkansnet.org/ethnicl.html
http://www.glypx.com/BalkanWitness/watson2.htm

1992 -- Rwanda: Cease-fire agreed to after genocidal levels of tribal violence.

1994 -- Chris Sartor McArrested by McDonalds.

http://www.adbusters.org/search/node/McDonald%27s

1994 -- Brazil: Anarcho-punks from the north & north-east hold a conference at the University of Ceara, 15 - 17th July. The meeting brings together individuals & groups from five separate states to discuss various themes.
http://www.spunk.org/texts/pubs/freedom/intnews/sp000894.txt
http://www.reocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/3471/

1996 -- US: Jason Sprinkle, whose art project precipitated a bomb scare (parking a truck with the word "bomb" painted on it in Westlake Park) in downtown Seattle, Washington, arrested.
Like hyenas ravaging a cold corpse, the law-and-order shock troops continue their relentless march to the sea. From an obscurely-placed inside article in the October 30, 1996 Post-Intelligencer comes the following bit of insanity:
Judge refuses to dismiss bomb scare charges against Sprinkle
http://www.eljefe.net/sprinkle.html

DA calls for Death Penalty

1997 -- Italy:
Otello Menchi (1922-1997) dies, Milano. Mort de cet ancien de Rosignano proche du Circolo Anarchico Ponte della Ghisolfa de Milan (CAPDG).
http://artic.ac-besancon.fr/histoire_geographie/HGFTP/Autres/Utopies/anitadat.doc

1998 -- Australia: Vicente Ruiz (1913-1998), a Spanish-Australian anarchist who participated in the Spanish Revolution of 1936, dies in Melbourne after a long illness.
[Details / context] aka Vincent Ruiz; anarquista

1998 -- South Korea: 110,000 Workers strike.

1998 -- Blondie Wong, a Chinese hacker who last year temporarily disabled a Chinese satellite, forms a new global hacking organization — the Cult of the Dead Cow — in the US, Canada, & Europe to fight human rights abuses in China.
Nov 1999
This is incorrect. Blondie formed the Hong Kong Blondes — which allied with cDc for several years — this alliance is now defunct for security reasons (cDc is high profile, & its members are easy to track down this is dangerous for the Blondes). Blondie helped initiate the Yellow Pages, a California based hacker group that supports HKB & gets their message out but which has no direct ties.
— Michael J. Graffam

"Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine."
— Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience"

http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1998/07/13693
http://www.cultdeadcow.com/cDc_files/cDc-0356.txt
http://www.cultdeadcow.com/

2006 -- US: Providence, Rhode Island Anarchist Bookfair.

3000 --
Today's Memorable Quote:
"This isn't an attempt to legislate morality,
it's an attempt to legislate immorality."
— Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Hizzoner Mayor, Renton, Washington

3000 --

Fifteen million hand grenade banks to go to children.
— Outlook, 6/18/19

anti-CopyRite 1997-3000, more or less
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