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Our Daily Bleed...

Comandanta Ramona
"If nothing ever changed there would be no butterflies"

Amanda 'Goldilocks' Johnson





JANUARY 6

COMANDANTA RAMONA
Zapatista leader, military commander of
the taking of San Cristóbal, Chiapas, México on January 1, 1994.



12th day, EPIPHANY (Christ). Kenneth Patchen, anarchist

FEAST DAY OF ST. BALTHASAR: Patron saint of playing card makers. He was also invoked against epilepsy — as well he might, epilepsy being a serious handicap for card-players.

England: KING OF THE BEAN. Revels & harvest blessings, hanging bits of 12th Day cake on branches of fruit trees.
Twelfth Night, on which wags traditionally nailed the coat-tails of window shoppers to shopfronts.

Austria: PERCH TENLAUF. A pre-Christian festival with scary masks & dances to frighten winter away.

Jamaica: MAROON FESTIVAL.

OLD CHRISTMAS DAY. Still celebrated on Foula in the Orkneys, & in the Gwaun valley south-east of Fishguard; they are surviving British examples of resistance to calendar reform & work.





Joanie
1412 -- French military heroine Joan of Arc lives.

Joanie is a perfect example for teenagers today that are facing difficult times & problems.





1475 -- England: Birthday of Henry the Impotent (Henry IV of Castile).



Butler
1681 -- The Butler Did It?: First recorded boxing match
(Duke of Albemarle's butler vs his butcher).
http://www.butlersguild.com/


1818 --
Strange:


Outer Space: Unknown body crosses the sun,
observed for three & a half hours [Quar. Jour. Roy. Inst., 5-117]

http://web.archive.org/...dragonrest.net/fortfiles/sky_obs.html


1831 -- First world anti-slavery convention held.


?
1832 -- French illustrator Gustave Dore lives, Strasbourg, France.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jdore.htm


1838 -- Samuel F.B. Morse & Alfred Vail first demonstrate the telegraph.


1840 -- Wet Blanket?: Fanny Burney, Mme d'Arblay — novelist, diarist, & intimate of Samuel Johnson & his circle — dies in Bath at 87. http://www.samueljohnson.com/



1854 -- Sherlock Holmes lives, farmstead of Mycroft, near Sigerside, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, England. Always has a pipe in hand, a deerstalker cap, plays violin, & uses cocaine when bored. Resides at 221B Baker Street.
http://www.sherlockian.net/
http://www.diogenes-club.com/hoybaringgould.htm

l'Encyclopédie Anarchiste
1858 -- Sebastien Faure, anarchisteFrance: Sébastien Faure lives, Saint-Etienne. Studied to be a Jesuit priest, was a candidate for the Marxist Workers Party, but under the influence of Peter Kropotkin, Élisée Reclus & Joseph Tortelier he moved towards anarchism. Closely associated with Louise Michel, he became a major figure in his own right, & one of the best-known anarchistes in the country.
Further details / context, click here[Details / context]



1861 -- US: New York City mayor proposes New York become a free city, trading with North & South during the Civil War.


1864 -- US: Army captures 11,000 Navajos, later force-marching them 400 miles to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, killing thousands. Thousands more died of starvation after the army burned all Navajo crops & orchards.


Scriabin
1872 -- Alexander Scriabin lives (1872-1915). Enigmatic figure sometimes considered the first of the modern composers. George Perle said of Scriabin 'he was the first to exploit serial procedures systematically as a means of compensating for the loss of traditional tonal functions.'

"Scriabin was said to have declared to a friend, 'It would be terrible to remain nothing more than a composer of sonatas & symphonies.' Consequently he planned a major multimedia piece 'The Mysterium' that was to incorporate expanded orchestra, chorus, dancers, color keyboard, olfactory keyboard, poetry, utterances & bells suspended from zeppelins. All of this was to be held in a specially built amphitheater in India. It was, he believed, a purification ritual through art for humankind."


http://web.archive.org/web/20050826151059/http://newmillguitar.com/scriabin.html



1878 -- Carl Sandburg lives, Galesburg, Illinois. American poet, historian, novelist & folklorist, whose works are deeply rooted in the life of common people.
A labor organizer, editor of a business magazine, published articles in the International Socialist Review & later joined the staff of the Chicago Daily News. His poems started to appear in Harriet Monroe's magazine Poetry. In 1918 he visited Sweden & was accused upon his return of supporting the Bolsheviks in Russia by Federal authorities. From 1945 he lived as a farmer & writer, breeding goats & folk-singing, in Flat Rock, North Carolina. Sandburg died on July 22, in 1967.

"I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going but I'm on the way."


When his biography of Abraham Lincoln won the 1939 Pulitzer Prize, Edmund Wilson says: "the cruelest thing that has happened to Lincoln since he was shot by Booth has been to fall into the hands of Carl Sandburg."



1880 -- US: Record snow in Seattle — 47 inches.


1882 -- Canada: Toronto Labor Council supports equal pay for equal work.


1883 -- Poet Kahlil Gibran (The Prophet) lives, Bisharri, Lebanon.

"Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpetings, & farewells him with hootings, only to welcome another with trumpetings again."

The Garden of the Prophet, 1934

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/gibran.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalil_Gibran

1895 -- Hawaii: Former Hawaiian Queen Liliuokalani is arrested after a failed coup against the "republican" government of Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Sanford Dole.


Pietro Gori, Italian anarchist, source anarca-bolo.ch/a-rivista/311
1898 -- Italy: In occasione della inaugurazione del monumento commemorativo delle "cinque giornate", Pietro Gori tenne un acclamato discorso che fu poi assunto come uno dei capi d’accusa durante il processo in contumacia intentatogli davanti alla Corte marziale durante i fatti del ’98.

During this month [I don't have exact date —ed.]:

On occasion of the inauguration of the commemorative monument of "cinque days," Gori delivers a much applauded speech. Gori is treated as an instigator during the events of '98, & his speech was the basis of one of the charges against him during his trial in absentia before a court-martial.


[Source: Chronology by Franco Bertolucci]





1898 -- "You're All Wet"?: First underwater phone conversation.
http://www.deuceofclubs.com/moj/mojave.htm


1900 -- Boers attack at Ladysmith, about 1,000 killed or injured.


1901 -- Emma Goldman, anarchist feministUS: Emma Goldman supports herself (January-March) by working as a nurse in New York City; helps to arrange a US tour for Peter Kropotkin in March & April. Goldman reestablishes friendship with her former lover Edward Brady.



1906 -- Zulu poet, novelist, & educator Benedict Wallet Vilakazi lives, near Stanger, Natal. Devoted his academic career to the teaching of Zulu & to the study of Bantu languages.


1907 -- US: Free Speech? Emma Goldman is arrested by the New York City Anarchist Police Squad while delivering the same lecture she had successfully presented last month; Emma — God forbid! — is charged with publicly expressing "incendiary sentiments." Emma Goldman, anarchist feministAlexander Berkman & two others are also arrested. Police evidence presented before the New York City magistrate's court on the 11th; case is later dismissed.



1910 -- Emma Goldman, anarchist feministUS: From January-June, Emma Goldman delivers a total of 120 lectures before 40,000 people in 37 cities in 25 states; credits her success to the organizing skills of Ben Reitman.

Emma's tour of the "Land of the Free" begins with free-speech battles that thwart her from speaking.

The January issue of her anarchist magazine Mother Earth is seized by the US Postmaster on Anthony Comstock's objection to her essay "White Slave Traffic."



Further details/ context, click here[Details / context]





1911 -- Emma Goldman, anarchist feministUS: Emma Goldman begins her annual "pilgrimage" with a lecture in Rochester. Over the next six months she visits 50 cities in 18 states, delivering 150 lectures & debates.
US Factoid
Further details/ context, click here[Details / context]



anarchiste symbol
1912 -- Christian anarchiste Jacques Ellul lives, Bordeaux, France.

Ellul fought with the Resistance during WWII. As a theologian, Ellul wrote 43 books, mostly about theology & ethics & his concerns of how to maintain moral values in a technological society. In 1988 he published Anarchie et Christianisme, defining his anarchism, explaining why he admires the likes of Mikhail Bakunin & the early anarcho-syndicalists.

alt sp: Michael Bakunin, Michel Bakounine, Mihail Aleksandroviç Bakunin; Aleksandrovic, Aleksandrovich, Mihkail

Jacques Ellul, anarchist

If I rule out violent anarchism, there remains pacifist, antinationalist, anticapitalist, moral, & antidemocratic anarchism (i.e., that which is hostile to the falsified democracy of bourgeois states)...

      — Jacques Ellul, Anarchie et Christianisme (1991)

Further details/ context, click here[Details / context]





1913 -- France: During this month the libertarian review "Brug" first appears, in Lorient, Bretagne. Emile Masson, French anarchiste; source raforum.info/

Emile Masson publishes the bilingual monthly review, "Brug / Bruyère" (Breton-Français). The magazine involves François Le Levé, Monatte, Charles Péguy, Romain Rolland, André Spire, Marcel Martinet, Jean-Richard Bloch, Kropotkin, Jean Grave, Louise Michel, Gustave Hervé & many others. "Brug" publishes until the onset of the Great War That Ended All War.

Brug masthead, courtesy Ephemeride Anarchiste

exact day not given à Lorient (Bretagne) du premier numéro de la revue "Brug" Bruyères. Revue mensuelle libertaire, bilingue (Breton - Français) créée par Emile Masson. Celui-ci s'emploiera à défendre la langue bretonne dans toute sa diversité et à faire pénétrer les idées libertaires dans le milieu paysan breton. François Le Levé, militant de la Bourse du travail de Lorient, sera le gérant de la revue, et Pierre Monatte le correspondant parisien. "Brug," s'arrêtera en juillet 1914, avec la déclaration de guerre. "J'estime qu'il est aussi criminel de laisser mourir une langue que de laisser mourir un être humain." Emile Masson.



King Tut
1915 -- British-American free religionist, mystic Alan Watts lives, Chiselhurst, England. Wrote Book on the Taboo.

Daily Bleed Saint, 2002:
ALAN WATTS The original California guru, polymath, liberationist.

http://deoxy.org/watts.htm


1915 -- John Lilly lives (1915– 2001). American physician, psychoanalyst & writer (Man & Dolphin; The Mind of the Dolphin; Simulations of God; Tanks for the Memories: Floatation Tank Talks, etc.).
Daily Bleed Saint 2007
Dolphin communications researcher,
& experimenter with altered states of consciousness. Prominent member of the Californian counterculture of scientists, mystics & thinkers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Lilly


Youngstown
1916 -- US: Strike at the Youngstown Sheet & Tube plant declared by the 8,000 workers.

Tomorrow the strikers' wives & other members of their families join in protest outside the factories.

Company guards employ tear gas bombs & fire into the crowd; three strikers are killed & 25 others wounded.


"Youngstown Strike" is one of William Gropper's most compelling works.
Further details/ context, click here[Details / context]





1918 -- Russia: Dispersal of the Constituent Assembly, by a detachment led by the anarchist sailor Zheleznyakov, who announces:

"The guard is tired."




Facerias, Spanish anarquista, guerilla; Tellez book cover
1920 -- José Lluís Facerias, the ‘implacable fighter,’ lives. Spanish anarquista guerrilla. (Josep Lluís i Facerias, aka Petro or Petronio Face [1920-1957].)

... show details




Smiley Face
1920 -- Moon Pie?: Reverend Sun Myung Moonie, lives.


1927 -- Nicaragua: Marines re-invade to again "protect US interests" after ending a 13-year occupation.

Marines land, then forget to leave.

US airplanes bomb haphazardly, destroying villages.

Marines roam the forests, between abysses & high peaks, roasted by the sun, drowned by the rain, asphyxiated by dust, burning & killing all they find.

Even monkeys throw things at them.

Sandino's soldiers bite like jaguars & flit like birds. When least expected they lash out in a single jaguar leap, & before the enemy can even react are already striking from the rear or the flanks, only to disappear with a flap of wings.

Galeano, Century of the wind, p68


Electric chair
1927 -- US: Chary for the Memories?: On an exceptionally busy day, (a fri-day) free-lance executioner Robert Elliot conducts six electric chair executions, three in Charleston, Massachusetts & three at Sing Sing Prison, New York.


Emma Goldman, in Ragtime
1931 -- E. L. Doctorow lives, New York City. (His historical novel Ragtime, includes such fine citizens as Emma Goldman.)



1937 -- The Abraham Lincoln Brigade forms to fight fascism in the Spanish Civil War. Part of the International Brigade, it fights valiantly on the Aragon front & in defense of Madrid.

"No man ever entered the earth more honorably than those who died in Spain."

— Ernest Hemingway

Some 4,000 American men & women fight for the Loyalists. Nearly 2,000 of them die of wounds or disease. One of the casualties is Oliver Law, an African American commanding the Tom Mooney Machine-Gun Company & later the entire Lincoln Battalion. Law is the first black man known to command white U.S. troops. Poet Langston Hughes wrote, "before that time, the leading ambassadors of the Negro people in Europe were jazz-band musicians, concert artists, dancers or other performers. But these Negroes in Spain were fighters — voluntary fighters — which is where history turned another page."




1939 -- Alfred Lion records his first Blue Note session with boogie-woogie & blues pianists Albert Ammons & Meade Lux Lewis. He had just founded the jazz label in New York. He was later joined by his Berlin friend & photographer Francis Wolff.


1941 -- President Roosevelt introduces the term "Four Freedoms": free speech & expression; free to worship; free from fear; & free from want. Even if you're white you may still be waiting...


1944 -- Muckraking journalist Ida Tarbell dies, Bridgeport, Connecticut.


1955 -- Comedian Rowan Atkinson lives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowan_Atkinson


1958 -- e.e. cummings wins the Bollingen Prize for Poetry.
http://www.gvsu.edu/english/cummings/Places.htm


1960 -- Nice Guy Award?: NY attorney Julian Frank buys an $887,500 life insurance policy naming his wife as beneficiary, boards a plane with a passenger bag containing a homemade dynamite bomb. The evidence explodes while the aircraft is over South Carolina...all 34 passengers die.


1961 -- SI dingbat

Avantgarde ist unerwünscht!

January 6 to 8: Second session of the Central Council of the SI in Paris. Participants: Debord, Jorn, Kotànyi, Nash, Prem (standing in for Sturm), Wyckaert.
Also this month sees:
Study of the construction of an experimental city (Utopolis).
January Manifesto, manifesto on the festival, Spur group (Sturm, Prem, Fischer, Kunzelmann, Zimmer), Munich. Avantgarde ist unerwünscht! (The Avant-Garde is Undesirable!), tract by the German (Lothar Fischer, Dieter Kunzelmann, Heimrad Prem, Helmut Sturm, Hans-Peter Zimmer), Scandinavian (Asger Jorn, Stefan Larsson, Katja Lindell, Jørgen Nash) & Belgian (Maurice Wyckaert) sections, Munich.


http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]




1967 -- Philippines: Two homemade buses collide on a mountain road in Terpate, plunging off a cliff, killing 84, injuring 140.


1967 -- Young Rascals, Sopwith Camel, & the Doors at the Fillmore Auditorium, Frisco.
http://www.sftoday.com/enn2/summerlove2.htm


1968 -- China: The essay Whither China? appears, indicts old & new leadership, calling on the Chinese people to "overthrow the new bourgeoisie & build a new society without bureaucrats."
  • Bureau of Public Secrets, A Radical Group in Hong Kong
  • excerpts included in this page on the ultra-left, http://www.communistvoice.org/20cChinaLeft.html



  • 1968 -- José María San Juan obtiene el premio Nadal con su novela Réquiem por todos nosotros.
    http://www.elmundo.es/larevista/num132/textos/crono.html


    Blue Ribbon free speech
    1970 -- US: Supreme Court upholds prohibition of underground GI anti-Vietnam War newspaper at Fort Bragg Army Base.


    1970 -- West Virginia miners wildcat to protest the murder of their union reform leader.

    “Each of them [parties, unions, groupuscles] organizes repression against those who are not organized, or who are not organized according to their particular methods.

    The difference between these organizations is measured by the amount of repression they are prepared to exercise.”


    — Jacques Camatte, Against Domestication
    http://www.reocities.com/~johngray/agdom.htm




    1975 -- South Africa: 12,000 workers strike at Vaal Reefs gold mine.
    http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?include=docs/misc/2010/umzabalazo.html


    Sex Pistols logo
    1977 -- Restraint of Trade?: Three months after signing the Sex Pistols for 40,000 pounds, EMI terminates the contract after releasing only one single. No reason is given, but an office memo alludes to the group's "disgraceful...aggressive behavior" & EMI's responsibility to "encourage restraint."

    Obviously A Dirty Rotten Vicious Deal.



    Cruel site of the Day: Fuck You key board; ANARCHISTS
    http://www.sexpistolsofficial.com/
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICXdQR1VVhw
    http://web.archive.org...thesexpistolsfiles.com/index.html



    Sex Pistols album cover



    1981 -- Scottish novelist/physician who combines realism with social criticism, A. J. Cronin, dies in Montreaux, Switzerland. His fourth novel, The Stars Look Down (1935), which chronicles various social injustices in a North England mining community, is a classic work of fiction.


    1981 -- Mark David Chapman pleads not guilty, by reason of insanity, to murdering John Lennon.



    1981 -- Italy: Aggenti della Digos (servizi segreti) uccidono, a Roma, per sbaglio Laura Rendina, una ignara automobilista.
    Source: [Crimini e Misfatti] http://www.polyarchy.org/basta/crimini/tredici.html


    1982 -- Japan: Albert Meister (1927-1982) dies, Kyoto. Swiss author & anarchist sociologist. Founder of the international review "Community Development." In a totally unrelated "field" Meister & Jacques Vallet, founded, in 1977, "Le Fou parle" ("The Insane One Speaks"), a magazine of art & humor.

    Under various pseudonyms Meister wrote many works on the problems of labor associations, workers' self-management & development in poor countries, which include Coopération d'habitation et sociologie du voisinage (1957), Socialisme et autogestion, l'expérience yougoslave (1964), Participation, animation et développement (1969), La participation dans les associations (1974), L'inflation créatrice (1975), La soi-disant utopie du centre Beaubourg (1976). In English, see for example, Participation, Associations, Development & Change (Transaction, 1984).

    http://recollectionbooks.com/anow/world/as/japan/
    http://www.ephemanar.net/janvier06.html#meister




    1986 -- US: Cylinder of nuclear material bursts after being improperly heated at a Kerr-McGee plant at Gore, Oklahoma. One worker dies, 100 hospitalized.
    http://www.downtheyellowcakeroad.org/


    1994 -- US: I Scream, You Scream, We All...? Ice skater Nancy Kerrigan is attacked by Tonya Harding's bodyguard, who "ices" her knee.

    "You can be a part of Tonya Harding's life & help her on a daily basis when you buy an autographed photo or music cassette. Tonya is offering a new new color photo which is different from those she's been offering, although the others are still available too. The EVENING GOWN photo is an 8x10 color picture of Tonya in an evening dress, standing on one of the trucks she previously owned."

    http://www.tonyaharding.com/



    1998 -- Denmark: Heads Up? I have three different tails to tell: 1) Sonny Bono barks up the wrong tree, as vandals decapitate Copenhagen's Little Mermaid. 2) Two roller-skating youths take off the Little Mermaid statue's head with a hacksaw; 3) A thief saws the head off the Little Mermaid statue, Copenhagen harbor. See also 25 April 1964
    Source: [Calendar Riots]


    2006 -- anarchist diamond dingbat; anarquistaMéxico: Zapatista leader Comandanta Ramona dies, San Cristóbal, Chiapas.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comandante_Ramona
    http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comandanta_Ramona



    2009 -- Australia: 113 signatories of Independent Australian Jewish Voices (IAJV) condemn Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip, describing the action as "inhuman" & "abominable."




    3000 --

    Left Bracket Right Bracket

    At what moment was choice postponed?

    Guy Debord

    We have let things go.


          — Guy Debord




    Yeehaaaa!
    3500 --
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