JANUARY 17

EARTHA KITT
American actress, cabaret singer, anti-war activist.

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Italy: CARNEVALE, from January 17th to Ash Wednesday, January 24th.

OLD TWELFTH NIGHT: Toasting the health of fruit trees.

ST. ANTHONY'S DAY. Blessing & polka-dotting of animals, refraining from all farm work.

STRAYING TOWARD THE PATH DAY.

WORLD RELIGION DAY.

THOMAS CRAPPER DAY.

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ANTHONY OF EGYPT
Anchorite hermit, Christian patron saint of hemp.

1600 -- Pedro Calderón de la Barca, the last great figure of the Golden Age of Spanish Drama, lives. Wrote La Vida es Sueño. The poet Shelley was a great admirer of Calderón & learned Spanish in order to be able to translate him.


1636 -- Jose Silvestre de los Dolores White Lafitte lives.



1706 -- Benjamin Franklin, electrician, printer, statesman, philosopher, writer, kite-flyer lives, Boston. His urbanity is sometimes downplayed in favor of his Yankee common sense. (His was one of the major scientific minds of the Age of Reason.)

There is the story of the young Franklin arriving in Philly so poor that all he could buy was a penny-roll to eat. A local girl, Deborah Powell, laughed at him. Years later she became his common-law wife. Mark Twain said of this American Success Story, "It's not that big a feat. Anybody could have done it."
http://www.fi.edu/franklin/

"Forget this fellow — illiterate him from memory."

[Sounds just dandy to us, esp when applied to any politician.]

"Any idiot can face a crisis. It's the day-to-day living that wears you out."

      — Anton Chekhov

The rectal area is, naturally, a very sensitive part of the human anatomy. No doubt you have mourned the endless spools of toilet paper that you have wasted, wishing that you could spend the money on something more enjoyable. In addition, often you come away with nothing more for your troubles than soreness. Isn't there a better way?

Daily Bleed Saint 2003-2004; Sept. 16 Saint, 2008-9
Early 20th Century Japanese anarchist, martyr.

[Details / context]

Bread riots had occurred in about 50 Italian towns, providing a pretext for arresting Malatesta & other anarchists.

When the trial was held, 3,000 anarchists signed a declaration confessing to be guilty of the same "crime," being malfattori...

[Details / context]

· Attentat on second lieutenant Cesare Sivelli by Giovanni MANFREDI. Manfredi is condemned to 7-1/2 years. Italy's antimilitarist campaign was largely animated by the libertarians. Graphic: The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli Carlo Carrà, 1911 Oil on canvas 198 × 266 cm, 78 × 104.7 inches Museum of Modern Art, New York City http://artic.ac-besancon.fr/histoire_geographie/HGFTP/Autres/Utopies/anitadat.doc

When the union's inspiration through worker's blood shall run,
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun;
Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one,
For the union makes us strong.
[Chorus]
Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite
Who would lash us into serfdom & would crush us with his might?
is there anything left to us but to organize & fight?
For the union makes us strong
[Chorus]
In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,
Greater than the might of armies magnified a thousand fold;
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old,
For the union makes us strong.
[Chorus]: Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever,
For the union makes us strong

Words by Ralph Chaplin

Ben Reitman was arrested in Cleveland in December for organizing volunteers to distribute birth control information at Emma Goldman's lecture on birth control.

... show more

Emma Goldman is angry that Margaret Sanger, in Cleveland at the time, failed to help rally support for Reitman.

Ben Reitman was also familiar figure at Chicago's Bughouse Square — a gathering place for the Dill (or Dil) Pickle Club, the Hobo College, & soapbox heroes Slim Brundage, Reitman, Lucy Parsons, & Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the "Rebel Girl."

On one side was the solemn, dignified Newberry Library, center for sedate scholarly pursuits; just off the square was Tooker Alley's Dill Pickle Club; & on the rising-sun side of the Square was the majestic New England Congregational Church.

See Mecca Reitman Carpenter's, No Regrets: Dr. Ben Reitman & the Women Who Loved Him: A Biographical Memoir & Frank Beck's Hobohemia: Emma Goldman, Lucy Parsons, Ben Reitman & Other Agitators & Outsiders in 1920’s/30’s Chicago, (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr; introduction & notes by Franklin Rosemont).

http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/goldman/hnetreview.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dil_Pickle_Club

"When we talk about property, State, masters, government, laws, courts, & police, we say only that we don't want any of them.

      — Luigi Galleani, The End of Anarchism?

Further Reading: Avrich, Paul. Anarchist Portraits, Princeton University, 1988.
& his book Sacco & Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background, Princeton University, 1991.

1920 -- Finland: S.S. Buford, full of labor activists, anarchists & radicals kicked out of the Land of the Free, lands at Hangö. On January 19 the deportees are met at the Russo-Finnish border by Russian representatives & received warmly at a mass meeting of soldiers & peasants in Belo-Ostrov.

http://newman.baruch.cuny.edu/digital/redscare/HTMLCODE/SUBJECTS/SUBJECTS.HTM

1921 -- Spain: Crackdown on Barcelona cenetistas involved with the Comité Pro-Presos de la CNT (Pro-Prisoner Committee).

Cenetistas (Juan Villanueva, Juli Peris, Ramon Gomar, Antonio Parra), delivering financial aid for prisoners, are arrested & accused of an attentat on ex-governor Salvatierra. Meanwhile Policía raid the Comité Pro-Presos de la CNT, detaining Pablo Martínez Casanova, María López, Juan Canales Moncax y Pablo Martín (using the identy of José Ramón Cuartero), confiscating documents & records which in turn are used to detain or arrest still others. Source: [Manel Aisa]

1927 -- Chile: General Strike, simultaneously, in Santiago & Valparaiso.

The ability of workers to openly seek economic & political liberation that has led to so many bloody fights culminates today, the last of the workers' major strikes for the next 10 years. In February a military dictatorship takes power & devastates workers' organizations through terroristic methods. Revolutionary anarcho-syndicalists refuse to strike their battle flags, but are forced to work clandestinely or from outside the country. http://recollectionbooks.com/anow/world/la/chile/ Source: http://www.antorcha.net/biblioteca_virtual/historia/anarquismo_chile/anarquismo_chile.html#3

1927 -- Cabaret singer, activist Eartha Kitt lives, town of North, South Carolina.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQ5VaBgXzuM


1929 -- US: Popeye makes his first appearance, in the comic strip "Thimble Theatre."


1935 -- Canada: After a disappointing turnout for her Jan. 17 lecture on moral censorship of current films Emma Goldman cancels further lectures.



1942 -- Muhammad Ali lives.

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Daily Bleed Saint, 2003 MUHAMMAD ALI
Boxing great, anti-Vietnam War activist.

"Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand.
I beat people up."

       — Muhammed Ali

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1944 -- Jan Guillou (1944-) lives, Södertälje. Swedish journalist/writer of popular spy novels.

Guillou was accused of espionage & condemned in prison for 10 months for his article about Sweden's intelligence service's illegal political register, where he conceived his mystery series. Guillou's protagonist, agent Coq Rouge, a Nordic James Bond, has appeared in 10 books which have sold over four million copies & adapted to screen. He comes from the Swedish aristocracy, but he is also former leftist, opposing the Vietnam War in the 1960s & a member of the Maoist Clarté group.

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/jguillou.htm

1945 -- Hungary: Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, credited with saving tens of thousands of Jews from the Nazis, arrested by secret police. He eventually lands in one of Stalin's prisons (for the next 30+ years); the USSR denies any knowledge of what has happened to him & he is never heard from again.

Daily Bleed Saint 2004,
Swedish anti-fascist activist,
mysteriously disappeared near end of WWII.
http://www.remember.org/imagine/wallenberg.html



1947 -- Eugène Lanti (true name Eugène Adam) (1879-1947), ardent Espérantist, anarchist, dies. A founding member of the French Communist Party, he left it after several disillusioning trips to the USSR. Founder of Sennacieco Asocio Tutmonda (SAT), dedicated to the liberation of the working class, the eradication of national boundaries, & the use of Esperanto as a means in this struggle.


1949 -- US: Land of the Free stages a Conspiracy Trial against 11 Communist Party leaders — charged by that Liberal & Conservative comedy duet, Opens Today! — with having impure thoughts.

1950 -- US: Brinks robbery in Boston. Masked bandits rob a Brinks's express office of $2.8 million, $1.2 million of which was in cash. The case was solved 6 years later, when 8 people were sentenced to life imprisonment.



1951 -- Italy: La polizia di stato reprime alcune manifestazioni in occasione della visita del generale Dwight Eisenhower, comandante delle forze militari della Nato in Europa : 4 morti.
Source: [Crimini e Misfatti]


1958 -- US: Lumbee Indians drive Ku Klux Klan off their land in Maxton, N. Carolina.


1961 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Eisenhower delivers Farewell Address warning the nation of the "Military- Industrial Complex" & its' "acquisition of unwarranted influence."


1961 -- Patrice Lumumba, a leader of anti-colonial struggle & former premier of the newly independent Republic of the Congo (Zaire), is assassinated by the CIA; Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Eisenhower ordered his murder. This was done in a joint US-Belgian operation, facilitated by officers serving in Moise Tshombe's Katangese gendarmerie, loyal to Mobutu. They shot him & dumped him in an acid bath.


1965 -- Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts' book, Ode to a High Flying Bird, a tribute to jazz great Charlie Parker, is published. The Stones also record "The Last Time" & "Play with Fire" today.


1965 -- US: Poor Room Service? Segregationists assault Martin Luther King, Jr., in Selma, Alabama, as he registers as the first black guest in a hotel built a century earlier with slave labor.


1966 -- Spain: US plane drops four H-bombs on Palmira, unexploded.

B-52 collides with an Air Force jet tanker while refueling over the coast of Spain. Two hydrogen bombs ruptured, scattering radioactive particles; a third landed intact near the village of Palomares; a fourth was lost at sea. Fifteen hundred tons of radioactive soil & tomato plants were removed to the US for burial. It took thousands of men three months to find & raise bomb number four. The US tried first to cover it up, then downplay the incident. (Rough Guide: Spain p.173)

1967 -- England: London's "Daily Mail" reports the Blackburn City Council's road hole survey. Forgettable were it not that John Lennon mentioned the 4000 holes in the song "A Day in the Life."


1967 -- Ike & Tina Turner Revue with the Ike-Ettes at California Hall in Frisco. Meanwhile Big Brother & the Holding Company appear at the Matrix.



1968 -- US: Eartha Kitt disrupts White House luncheon, giving her views on poverty & the Vietnam War.


1968 -- US: Police attack a crowd of 600 protesting an appearance by US Secretary of State Dean Rusk in Frisco, California.


1969 -- Japan: Police storm University of Tokyo to end a student occupation.


1970 -- US: Chicano activists gather in Crystal City, Texass, to found La Raza Unida Party.

La Raza Unida party founded to counter white control of the local school board. The town is 80-percent Mexican-American.
Led by Jose Angel Gutierrez, the party's candidates win both the school board & city council elections. The schools will undergo a minor revolution. Chicanos are hired into administrative, staff & teaching positions. The district begins bilingual education & courses in Chicano history & culture.
La Raza Unida goes on to organize other counties in Texass, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona & California.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Raza

1970 -- US: Jerry Rubin addresses an overflow Seattle crowd of 4,000 at the University of Washington Student Union Building.

See Walt Crowley's Rites of Passage,
ttp://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File;_Id=2131
http://recollectionbooks.com/SeattleRadicalTimeLine.htm

1970 --

Delegates Conference 17 to 19 January See Report from the Delegates Conference Held in Wolsfield & Trier, 17 to 19 January 1970, bilingual internal document in French & English signed by J.V. Martin, Claudio Pavan, René Riesel & Tony Verlaan. Exclusion of Robert Chasse & Bruce Elwell, American section. http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]

1971 -- Puerto Rico: 50 march against naval target shelling, Flamingo Beach, Culebra.


1977 -- US: Convicted murderer Gary Gilmore executed by a Utah firing squad in the first exercise of capital punishment in the US in 10 years. Gilmore opposed all attempts to delay the execution; his last words: "Let's do it!" Gilmore was the illegitimate grandson of magician Harry Houdini.



1982 -- Spain: Author Ramón J. Sender dies.

Sender's Seven Red Sundays was written in 1932, just prior to the Spanish Revolution of 1936.

The novel is about group of revolutionaries in Madrid affiliated with the anarchist FAI. An upheaval begins with the murder of a comrade at a syndicalist meeting, followed by a General Strike throwing the country into a chaos — a situation in which it is unclear as to whether or not there will be a revolution or if things will return to normal....
Says one reader,

"The most interesting use of perspective I've ever encountered. Sender gives the view of the beginning of the revolution through 10 different points, even the moon! Even though fiction, you get a comprehensive feel of what it must have been like. He dissects conflict with poetry.

1984 -- US: Supreme Court rules (5-4) private use of home VCRs to tape TV programs for later viewing does not violate federal copyright laws. Just think ... one vote away, from the iron boot of the government, kicking you in the head, every time you touch that little red button.


1985 -- Japan: Hashimoto Yoshiharu, 55, dies in Tokyo.

Japanese anarchist & founder, in the 1960s, of the publishing house "Barukan-sha," & a writer for the review "Anaki" (Anarchy). Yoshiharu was a writer & translator of many works of the classical thinkers & theorists of the international anarchist movement, such as Proudhon, Peter Kropotkin, Emma Goldman, & Oscar Wilde, et al. In the 1970s he was involved with the group of Miura Seiichi, centered around the publication, "Libertarian." http://www.bopsecrets.org/CF/opinions1.htm#No anarchist do refute http://www.ephemanar.net/decembre20.html

1985 -- Frankly speaking? With Frank Sinatra in town to produce & direct the inaugural galas, the "Washington Post" runs a piece recapping the sleazy glories of the "Rat Pack." When reporters try to interview him later, he is not a happy man. "You read the Post this afternoon?" he snarls, eyes blazing & index finger waving. "You're all dead, every one of you. You're all dead."



1990 -- Hank Ballard, The Four Seasons, The Four Tops, The Kinks, Simon & Garfunkel, the Platters & The Who inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
http://www.thesouthside.org/Posters%203.html




1990 -- US: Possessed? James Pough shoots four neighbors, killing two; before committing suicide the next day, he kills eight & injures four more in the office of the loan company that repossessed his car, Jacksonville, Florida.



1993 -- US: Native Hawai'ians demonstrate against US control of their homeland.

1996 --

David Bowie, Tom Donahue, The Jefferson Airplane, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Pink Floyd, Pete Seeger, The Shirelles & the Velvet Underground are inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

"Some may find them merely diverting melodies. Others may find them incitements to Red revolution. & who will say if either or both is wrong? Not I."

       — Pete Seeger, "Rolling Stone" April 13, 1972

http://www.peteseeger.net/
http://www2.centenary.edu/home/jhendric/left_culture/people.html
http://www.notbored.org/bowie.html

“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
                http://www.holtlaborlibrary.org/

1997 -- NBA suspends Dennis Rodman indefinitely, with $25,000 fine, for kicking a cameraman, in the basketballs.


1997 -- New Zealand: 20 activists arrested for trespass at the Waihopai spy station.


1998 -- México: Over 2000 indigenous Tzeltals & Tojolbals from the state of Chiapas occupy the military barracks of the 39th Military Zone in protest over Army incursions into their communities.

On January 3, 2000, the Mexican daily "La Jornada" reports that the Mexican Army is bombarded by the Zapatista Air Force in an Air(mail) Attack.

Amador Hernandez, Chiapas — The Zapatista Air Force today attacked the Federal Army encampment here with paper airplanes. Some flew well & maneuvered themselves right into the dormitories, hidden by vegetation & large black plastic sheeting. Others sputtered in flight & barely cleared the barbed wire fence.
... show details

The aircraft, white in color & letter size, carried written messages for the federal troops which have occupied a portion of the outskirts of this community for the last five months. The barbed wire is not the only cutting edge:

"Soldiers, we know that poverty has made you sell your lives & souls. I also am poor, as are millions. But you are worse off, for defending our exploiter — Zedillo & his group of moneybags."

Also 17 - 24 de enero: Peregrinación por la paz organizada por la diócesis de San Cristóbal a México D.F.

http://www.zapata.com/
http://www.thing.net/~rdom/zapsTactical/zaps.html
http://struggle.ws/mexico/ralertdx.html

2001 -- Que en paz descanso, Gregory Corso, Beat poet, dies after a lengthy struggle with cancer.

Que en paz descanso, Gregory Corso, my second favorite Beat poet, died ... after a lengthy struggle with cancer.

The Beats got me through the bleak years of the 1950's for which I shall always be grateful. (I was once suspended from high school for 3 days for bringing a copy of Howl to school.)

I think Corso's poem about the bomb — in the shape of a mushroom cloud — was the first I had ever seen that used its typography as an integral part of its message. It was at least the first to make enough of an impression on me to be still remembered.

As one who learned throughout his school years to hide under my desk in a ball with hands protecting my neck in case of atomic attack, I remember clearly the enlightenment brought by several Beat poets, but especially Corso, that there might be another way, through art & protest, to protect oneself.

Corso was the baddest of the bad & one of the best of the best. He worked to the last apparently, recording a cd of readings with his daughter. I can hardly wait to hear it.

— Lynn DeWeese, Bookman

http://www.joslinhall.com/help.htm
http://www.rooknet.net/beatpage/writers/corso.html
http://www.topfoto.co.uk/gallery/beathotel/default.htm

3005 --

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"What honorable thing can come out of a shop? What can commerce produce in the way of honor?

Everything called shop is unworthy an honorable man. Merchants can gain no profit without lying, & what is more shameful than falsehood?

Again, we must regard as something base & vile the trade of those who sell their toil & industry, for whoever gives his labor for money sells himself & puts himself in the rank of slaves."

— Cicero

4000 --

http://www.pulpcards.com/

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