Our Daily Bleed...
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"caminante no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar""Walker, there is no road, the road is made by walking."
— Machado, Spanish poet, exiled by the forces of General Franco, who died in exile, cited in Esther Ferrer's Letter to John Cage on the future of anarchism (1991)
--APRIL 13 GYORGY LUKACS
Marxist philosopher, cultural theorist, social critic
likely dupe of Stalinist counter-revolution.
REVOLUTIONARY TRICKS OF HISTORY DAY
MEME APPRECIATION DAY
FEAST OF ROTTEN ENDINGS.
Vaisakhi or Vishu in Indian solar calendar.
"Vishu with you?"
1360 -- Black Monday: the Army of Edward, King of England, is destroyed by a hailstorm & freezing rain.
1387 -- Better than TV?: Party of 29 pilgrims hanging out at the Tabard Inn preparing to travel to the shrine of Thomas Becket in Canterbury .... After supper, they enliven their journey by telling stories. The next day the tellers of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales begin their journey.
1570 -- Guy Fawkes lives; was instrumental in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 to blow up the English Parliament & King James I. Very popular hero in history. See the Daily Bleed Guy Fawkes Gallery page, http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/sinners/FawkesGuy.htm
1729 -- Thomas Percy lives, Bridgnorth, Shropshire. English antiquarian & bishop whose collection of ballads, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765), awakens widespread interest in English & Scottish traditional songs.
1743 -- American politician Thomas Jefferson lives, Shadwell, Virginia. Radical dude for all that:"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent & inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.
1796 -- US: First elephant arrives in New York from India.
1828 -- Josephine Butler lives, Glendale, Northumberland. Advocate of prostitutes' rights.
Source: Autonomedia Calendar
1845 -- Victor Hugo is made a peer of France: Vicomte Hugo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Hugo
1860 --Belgium: James Ensor lives (1860-1949). Symbolist & expressionist painter & anarchiste. Joined the milieu of Fernand Knopff, Félicien Rops, Théo Van Rysselberghe & professor E. Rousseau, & his work was promoted by critics such as Emile Verhaeren.
http://www.ephemanar.net/novembre19.html#ensor
... more (in French)
1864 -- US: Confederate soldiers massacre black prisoners of war at Fort Pillow, Tennessee.
1873 -- US: Colfax Massacre. An orgy of brutality by the White League leaves more than 200 hundred African Americans dead in Grant Parish, Louisiana.
1877 -- México: Enrique Flores Magon (1877-1954) lives, Teotitlan del Camino, Oaxaca. Mexican revolutionary anarchist & brother of anarchist Ricardo Flores Magón.
http://struggle.ws/mexico/history.html
1878 -- US: 1,000 troops arrive in New Mexico Territory to fight against Victorio & Mescalero, San Carlos, & Chiricahua Apache.
1884 -- France: Jules Vignes lives (1884-1970). Anarchist publisher, propagandist & idist (Ido, international language, a simplification of Esperanto). "anti-parlementaire"
1885 -- Hungary: Marxist philosopher Gyorgy (or Georg) Lukács lives (1885-1971), Budapest. Loyal to the Communist Party, becoming more publicly critical of the Soviet Union & Hungarian Communist Party in his last years following the uprisings in France & Czechoslovakia in 1968.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Lukacs
1892 -- US: "Johnson County War," fought between Wyoming homesteaders & an invading army of mercenaries hired by cattle interests, came to an end as the US Cavalry rescue the cowmen's troops from the settler's "Ark of Vengeance" — a wagon filled with dynamite.
1894 -- "The Worker's Maypole" written, a song to accompany Walter Crane's "The Workers Maypole" illustration; published in "Justice," 1894.
http://www.marxists.org/subject/mayday/poetry/crane.html
http://www.zpub.com/notes/aan-art.html
1898 --US: Emma Goldman makes her first visit to Denver, April 13-18, where she is hosted by a small group of American anarchists. Her five lectures are met with surprising enthusiasm — "The Basis of Morality" noted as her best. Sponsors include the Denver Educational Club, a largely Jewish group.
1901 -- French anarchist Clément Duval, with eight other prisoners, puts to sea in a fragile canoe & silently makes for the open sea.[Details / context]
1905 -- France: The French "Illegalist" newspaper "l'anarchie" first appears in Paris today, & every Thursday until the outbreak of WWI in 1914."Resignation is death. Revolt is life."
— from the first issue of "l'anarchie"
... image
1906 -- Samuel Beckett lives (1906-1989), Dublin. One of the great names of Absurd Theatre, with Eugéne Ionesco. Beckett received the Nobel Prize in 1969.Daily Bleed Saint 2002-05
Great Irish novelist of Nothingness & Never."I had little talent for happiness."
His first work, Whoroscope, a collection of poems (1930), was followed with essays, Proust, & a novel, More Pricks than Kicks (1934). Moved to Paris permanently (1937) & became friends with James Joyce, whose unpaid assistant he was for a period. During World War II Beckett joined the resistance movement & worked also as country laborer.
Beckett wrote both in English & in French & translated his own works into English. His best known play is Waiting for Godot (1952), the major work of Absurd Theatre.
http://www.almaz.com/nobel/literature/1969a.html
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/beckett.htm
http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/sfe/1960/03.htm
1909 -- American writer Eudora Welty lives, Jackson, Mississippi. Wrote The Robber Bridegroom; Losing Battles
1912 -- Too poor to book the Titanic, Theodore Dreiser waits for another ship.
1913 -- Belgium: General Strike demanding universal suffrage.
1918 --
... more (in French)
1919 -- US: Eugene Debs imprisoned for opposition to WWI. Socialist, pacifist, & labor leader. While in prison he received over one million votes for President in 1920.
[Details / context]
While there is a lower class, I am in it;
While there is a criminal element, I am of it;
While there is a soul in prison, I am not free!
"Eugene V. Debs & the Idea of Socialism," by Howard Zinn,
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Heroes/EugeneDebsSocialism.html
"The Great War: 80 years on,"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/special_report/1998/10/98/world_war_i/197437.stm
1919 -- Bavaria: A military attempt at a putsch against the Republic of the Workers Councils is repelled by the workers, led by the anarchists. Unfortunately the Communists of the KPD capitalize on the event to increase their power. It is the second phase of the Council Republic.
1919 -- India: Massacre of Armitsar: British troops open fire on demonstrators, Armitsar, killing an estimated 379 & injuring 1200.
1919 -- US: Madalyn Murray O'Hair, American atheist, lives. God is Dead.
1920 --
[... show details]
1921 -- Italy: Street fighting in March 1921 resulted in the death of one local Fascist. In response they mounted a revenge raid on the Borgo dei Cappuccini, a working class area with a very militant history. Suffice to say the Blackshirts had to run for it when the entire neighbourhood mobilised against them. ... show details
1922 -- John Braine lives. British journalist/author, best known for Room at the Top.
1933 --
... more (in French)
1934 -- US: 20,000 students in one day antiwar strike against all wars.
1938 -- England: "Fascism Is Destroying European Civilisation" is the theme of a protest meeting in London sponsored by the CNT-FAI;Emma Goldman makes an appeal for money for arms — illegal under the terms of the Non-Intervention Pact.
1939 -- Seamus Heaney lives, Castledowson, Londonberry, North Ireland. His poetry, drawing on Irish history, myth, & rural life, scores a Nobel in 1995 for "works of lyrical beauty & ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles & the living past."
There are the mud-flowers of dialect
& the immortelles of perfect pitch
& that moment when the bird sings very close
To the music of what happens.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seamus_Heaney
http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/heaney.php
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/heaney.htm
1943 --
"A Jap's a Jap. There is no way to determine their loyalty... This coast is too vulnerable. No Jap should come back to this coast except on a permit from my office."
— General John L. DeWitt, head, Western Defense Command; before the US House Naval Affairs Subcommittee.
1944 -- Italy: Viene istituito l'Alto commissariato per l'epurazione che diventerà il 26 Maggio l'Alto commissariato per la punizione dei delitti e degli illeciti del fascismo. I nuovi padroni dello stato riscrivono la storia. D'ora in poi fascismo è male e antifascismo è bene. La fattoria degli animali ha cambiato direttori ma la zuppa è sempre la stessa, vale a dire statismo per tutti.
[Source: Crimini e Misfatti]
1945 -- Germany: Belsen & Buchenwald Nazi concentration camps liberated. The Allied camp will flaunt the Nazi horrors to cover their own.
1949 -- England: Marie Louise Berneri (1918-1949) dies, age 31.The elder daughter of Camillo & Giovanna Berneri. Editor of "Freedom," author of Neither East Nor West & Journey Through Utopia.
Into the silence of the sun
Risen in dust the rose is gone,
The blood that burned along the briar
Branches invisibly on the air.
Flame into flame's petal
Her grief extends our grief,
Over the ashy heat-ways
A green glance from a leaf
Shivers the settled trees.
A child walks in her grace
The light glows on his face,
Where the great rose has burned away
Within the terrible silence of the day.
— Louis Adeane, "In Memory of M.L.B."
Tribute published following her death,
http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/berneri/MLBerneriTribute.html
1950 -- France: Hoche Arthur Meurant, French anarchiste, anarcho-syndicaliste, antimilitarist, dies.
1953 -- US: CIA starts MK-ULTRA, drug "investigation" program. Yup.
http://gnn.tv/videos/1/Crack_The_CIA
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/archive/gunsdrugscia.html
1959 -- US: Flushed with the success of its second successful Vanguard in eight tries (see 17 February), the US attempts to launch two Vanguard satellites with one rocket. The attempt fails.
1959 -- Vatican: Edict forbids Roman Catholics voting for communists.
"Let me just tell you how thrilling it really is, & how, what a challenge it is, because in 2000 the question is whether we're going forward to tomorrow or whether we're going to go past to the — to the back!"
1960 -- Italy: Il presidente della provincia di Milano fa sospendere la lavorazione del film di Luchino Visconti, Rocco e i suoi fratelli, giudicandola un'opera "non molto morale e denigratoria".
[Source: Crimini e Misfatti]
1962 -- Rachel Carson's book indicting the pesticide industry, Silent Spring, is published.
... show details
1964 -- New Zealand: Shear nonsense? Colin Bosher shears a record 565 sheep in one work day.
1964 -- Something Else Press founded by Dick Higgins. Its first publication was his Jefferson's Birthday/Postface, two books bound back to back.John Cage's anarchist philosophy of integrating art & life influenced Higgins' own artistic & theoretical ideas. Higgins' important concept of "intermedia," stated in 1965, is a direct outgrowth of Cage's ideas. Higgins identified Happenings & contemporary experiments in theatre & the visual arts as arts that "fall between media."
1967 -- "Catch My Soul" closes after grossing over half a million dollars.
Jerry Lee Lewis portrayed the villain Iago in the modernized version of Shakespeare's Othello & received rave reviews. He played it straight except he brought a new approach when he once ad-libbed, in Act V:"Great Balls of Fire, My Friend Roderigo!"
1970 -- Outer Space: Apollo 13 announces "Houston, we've got a problem!" as Beech-built oxygen tank explodes en route to Moon.Stranded more than 200,000 miles from Earth, that famous line is actually the sanitized NASA "rated G" version. Revealed here, for the first time in history, is the undeleted truth: "Great Balls of Fire, Houston, we've got a problem!"
For information on independent space initiatives contact the Association of Autonomous Astronauts at BM Box 3641, London WC1N 3XX.
1972 --"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
1973 -- Jim Ryun is the first professional runner to break the 4-minute mile.
1976 -- US: $2 bill re-introduced as United States currency. Protesters unite, chanting"Buck the System!"
1980 -- US: Wahoe tribe wins federal court decision that it can enforce its own hunting laws in the Pine Nut Mountains of Nevada.
1980 -- US: La Donna Harris, running mate of Barry Commoner, becomes first Native American running a major campaign for US Vice President. (Winona LaDuke, 1996 VP candidate with Ralph Nader, is the second.)
1980 -- José Ester Borrás (1913-1980) dies.Spanish anarquista, active in the resistance in France, arrested & sent to Mauthausen concentration camp. After the liberation he co-founded the Spanish Federation of Former Political prisoners & camp inmates (FEDIP).
1981 -- Canada: The Parti Quebecois wins increased majority in Quebec.
1987 -- US: John Hinckley Jr loses his bid for a 12-hour Easter pass after a psychiatrist reveals that he's established a pen-pal relationship with Florida Death Row inmate Ted Bundy.
1992 -- US: Business district of Chicago shuts down for days when the Chicago River breaches the city's underground tunnel system.
1995 -- US: Catholic Worker activists arrested in protest at World Bank headquarters, Washington DC.
http://www.catholicworker.com/
http://www.catholicworker.org/
1996 -- Lebanon: Israeli Defense Force missile kills two women & four children in ambulance as 'legitimate targets,' southern Lebanon.
1999 -- US: Microradio movement news accounts on the struggle to free the airwaves: "Protest at the Tampa, Florida FCC Office" — Radio4All
[Source: Pirate Radio Kiosk]
2005 -- André Bösiger (1913-2005) dies. Swiss militant, a member of the ligue d'action du bâtiment (L.A.B), & associated with Luigi Bertoni ("Réveil Anarchiste") & Lucien Tronchet. A founder of the CIRA (Centre International de Recherches sur l’Anarchisme).
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2006 -- US: International Anarchist Academics & Activists Conference, April 13-15, Pitzer College, Claremont, California. Academics & activists mix it up for three days of culture jamming, music, film, art, panel presentations, discussions, lectures, & demonstrations.
2009 -- Spain: Abel Paz (1929-2009) dies.
... further details
3000 --
3000 --
Of all the upness accessible to mortals, there is no upness comparable to the mountains.
— John Muir