Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1999 20:08:09 -0500 (EST)
From: danceswithcarp <dcombs-AT-bloomington.in.us>
Subject: Daily Never Wrong: 4/22 NICOLA SACCO




http://www.eskimo.com/~recall/bleed/0422.htm

APRIL 22

NICOLA SACCO
Italian-American anarchist executed with partner
Bartolomeo Vanzetti, wrote stunning letters from prison.

FESTIVAL OF FABULOUS ANDROGYNES.


1348 - Edward III, King of England, retrieves the Garter of
the Countess of Salisbury, & remarks "Shame be to him who
thinks evil of it," thus beginning the Order of the Garter & Sororities.

1500 - Portuguese sailors find westward progress
obstructed by Brazil.

1526 - First New World slave revolt in an
"American" settlement occurs.

1707 - Henry Fielding lives (1707-1754). British writer,
playwright, journalist, founder of the English Realistic
school in literature with Samuel Richardson. Wrote 25 plays
but acclaim came with novels, notably * The
History of Tom Jones *.
http://history.hanover.edu/early/fielding.htm
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/hfieldin.htm

1724 - Immanuel Kant lives (1724-1804), K=F6nigsberg. German
philosopher/professor. His habits were so regular people used
to check their watches when as walked past their houses -- the
only time when schedule changed was when reading Rousseau's
*Emile*, & forgot his walk.

His most important works were three *Critiques*. The last
attempted an objective basis for aesthetic judgments,
influencing later art criticism. Argued that aesthetic
judgments do not depend on any property --such as
beauty -- of the object.  http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ikant.htm

1766 - Mme de Sta=EBl lives, Paris. Wrote *Ten Years Exile*.
http://www.luc.edu/depts/english/lm/destael.htm

1864 - "In God We Trust" is approved as the
national motto.

1870 - Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Russian
Soviet Marxist Vladimir Lenin, Patron Saint of Fremont
district in Seattle, Washington, lives. This statue -- rescued
from Eastern Europe, after "falling" over -- now stands
at the corner of 36th & Evanston in Fremont -- just a few
blocks from BleedMeister Auntie Dave's house:
http://www.seattle-pi.com/pi/neighbors/fremont/art/lenin.jpg

1873 - Ellen Glasgow lives, Richmond. Pulitzer Prize-winning
novelist whose realistic depiction of life in Virginia steered
Southern literature away from sentimentality & nostalgia.
Overcame irregular schooling & delicate health to fulfil a
dream of being a novelist of stature.

1873 - France: Luigi Lucheni lives. Anarchist adherent of
"propaganda by the deed," killed the impératrice Elisabeth of
Austria. See *Daily Bleed* Gallery page,
http://www.eskimo.com/~recall/bleed/sinners/LucheniLuigi.htm


1893 - Nicolo Sacco lives. His pal Vanzetti, strapped into the
electric chair, said, "I wish to tell you that I am an
innocent man. I never committed any crime but
sometimes some sin. I wish to forgive some people for what they
are now doing to me."

They both spoke nobly at the end, left a great heritage of
love, devotion, faith, & courage, believing the time would
come that no human being should be humiliated or
be made abject.

Vanzetti further noted that for both of them if it had not
been for "these thing" he might have lived out his life
talking at street corners to scorning men, died unmarked,
unknown, a failure:

"Now, we are not a failure.

This is our career & our triumph.

Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for
tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man as now
we do by accident. Our words--our lives--our pains--nothing!
The taking of our lives--lives of a good shoemaker & a poor
fish peddler--all!

That last moment belongs to us -- that agony is
our triumph."
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/oj/porterf.htm

1897 - Italy: In Rome the anarchist Pietro Acciarto, 26,
attempts to stab the king of Italy, Beloved & Respected
Comrade Leader Humbert 1st. Tried & sentenced May
28, after a parody of a trial, Acciarto gets life in prison.

1898 - Adrien Perrissaguet (1898-1972) lives,
Limoges. Founder of "L'association des fédéralistes anarchistes" &
the weekly magazine "The Libertarian Voice" & "Combat
syndicaliste".

Activist in the Sacco & Vanzetti committee, he
also fought in the Spanish Revolution of 1936 & was a member of
the French Resistance during WWII.
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/spain/pam_intro.html
http://perso.club-internet.fr/ytak/janvier2.html#perrissaguet

1899 - Kate Chopin publishes *The Awakening*,
early feminist novel.

1904 - Nuclear scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer
lives, New York City. Excerpted testimony by Edward Teller against
Oppenheimer, accused of being a security risk, questioned by
Roger Robb, attorney for the Gray Board:

Robb: Do you or do you not believe that Dr.
Oppenheimer is a security risk?

Teller: In a great number of instances I have seen
Dr. Oppenheimer as -- I understood that Dr.
Oppenheimer acted -- in a way which for me was exceedingly hard to
understand. I thoroughly disagreed with him in numerous issues,
& his actions frankly appeared to me confused &
complicated. To this extent, I feel that I would like to see the vital
interests of this country in hands which I understand better &
therefore trust more. In this very limited sense, I would
like to express a feeling that I would feel personally
more secure if public matters would rest in other hands.

Robb:  ... it would endanger the common defense &
security to grant clearance to Dr. Oppenheimer?

Teller:  I believe . . . [his] character is such that he would
not knowingly & willingly do anything that is designed to
endanger the safety of this country. To that extent,
therefore, that your question is directed toward intent, I
would say I do not see any reason to deny clearance. [But then
he added] If it is a question of wisdom & judgment
as demonstrated by actions since 1945, then I would
say one would be wiser not to grant clearance.

After this exchange, a remarkable scene took place
in the hearing room. Teller went over to Oppenheimer,
shook his hand & said, "I'm sorry."

Oppenheimer replied, "After what you've just said,
I don't understand what you mean." Oppenheimer lost his
clearance, & Teller lost most of his friends & associates in
the physics community (exactly as he feared, as later revealed
in FBI documents) & often cried.

He had numerous times led Oppenheimer to believe
he would testify in his support. He claimed he hadn't
intended to testify or question Oppenheimer's loyalty ("I
don't want to suggest anything of the kind."), FBI records tell
otherwise, of an deal planned/orchestrated to damage
Oppenheimer as much as possible without rupturing Teller's standing in
the science world.

As Halberstam notes in *The Fifties*, the hearing
-- "a trial, really -- ...was one of the lowest moments in
American politics."

The science world was stunned -- including Wernher
von Braun, a German  rocket scientist working for the US who
had served Nazi Germany ("in England Oppenheimer would have
been knighted for his achievements").

It stank so bad even Harold Green, the AEC
security lawyer who drew up the charges against Oppenheimer,  was
enraged at Teller ("You double-dealing, lying son of a
bitch") & resigned, deeming the hearing *"a lynching"*.

Writer John Mason Brown suggested to Oppie he had
been subjected to a "dry crucifixion"; Oppie smiled &
mused,

"It wasn't so dry. I can still feel the warm blood
on my hands."

1915 - First modern military use of poison gas:
Germany uses chlorine gas during WWI at the Franco-Belgian border.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/special_report/1998/10/98/world_war_i/newsid_197000/197437.stm

1922 - Ah, Um: Pork Pie Hat Chef great Charles
Mingus lives, *Beneath the Underdog*, Nogales, Arizona.
http://www.mingusmingusmingus.com/mingusbio.html

1922 - India: Bengal Trade Union Conference
convenes, one of the country's first.

1930 - Jeppe Aakjaer dies in Jenle. Wrote of harsh
conditions endured by farm laborers but is best known for
poetry, especially the collection *Fri felt* (Free Fields,
1905) & * Rugens sange* (Songs of the Rye, 1906).

1937 - Jack Nicholson actor (*Little shop of
Horrors; Easy Rider; One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; The
Shining*) lives.

1944 - US: Sit-in by 200 blacks results in
desegregation of restaurants in Washington, D.C.

1952 - US: First atmospheric bomb test -- Yucca
(YUKK -- Kah) Flat, Nevada.

1955 - Pennies From Heaven?: Congress orders all
US coins bear motto "In God We Trust"

1956 - Rebecca West writes of her profession in
the *New York Herald Tribune*: "Journalism -- an ability to meet
the challenge of filling the space."
http://www.tile.net/weldon/rebecca.html

1963 - (F)Redism: Secretary of State Rusk states
that South Vietnam, under Diem, was "steadily moving toward a
constitutional system resting upon popular consent."

Six months later, South Vietnamese generals,
charging Diem had "trampled on the people's rights," seized power in
a coup "encouraged" by the U.S.
http://www.bev.net/computer/htmlhelp/vietnam.html

1964 - New York World's Fair opens.

1968 - Tlatelolco treaty for denuclearizing Latin
America comes into force.

1969 - US: Harvard faculty votes to create black
studies program & give students vote in selection of its
faculty.

1969 - US: City College of NY closed after black &
Puerto Rican students lock selves inside asking higher
minority enrollment.

1970 - First Earth Day observed. Millions of US citizens
participate in anti-pollution demonstrations & events.
Corporate sponsorships to hide their real practices were
notably absent.

*We really wanted to join in the first Earth Day.
It meant we got to get out of school.  We spent maybe 20
minutes picking up trash near the High School & since then
absolutely nothing.
People see earth day events sound/photo bits on
the news & delude themselves that "something" is getting
done.*

1970 - Huey Newton, black activist, shot dead at 47.

1970 - US sends war ships to Caribbean island of
Trinidad to "protect American citizens" during unrest against
the U.S.- backed government.

1971 - US-backed Haitian dictator, Beloved &
Respected Comrade Leader "Papa Doc" Duvalier dies. He is succeeded
by his son, Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader "Baby Doc"
Duvalier.

1972 - US: 50,000 in New York City & 30,000 in San Francisco
march against the war in Vietnam/Southeast Asia.

1973 - Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader
President Dick Nixon calls John Dean to wish him a happy Easter &
assure him he was "still the Presidential counsel." Eight days later
he fired Dean.

1976 - Last American-built convertible left the
Cadillac assembly line.

1977 - Slick Trick? Well blowout in the Ekofisk
oil field results in the release of 8,200,000 gallons of oil
into Great Britain's North Sea.

1978 - Bob Marley & the Wailers perform at the One
Love Peace Concert in Jamaica. It was Marley's first public
appearance in Jamaica since being wounded in an assassination
attempt a year & a half earlier.

1985 - US: Hundreds arrested at White House demonstration
against U.S. policy in Central America.

1990 - The people of Guilford County, North Carolina get their
priorities in order: They postpone the celebration
of Earth Day 1990 from this date to April 28th so as not to
interfere with the Kmart Greater Greensboro Open Golf
Tournament.

1992 - Yugoslavia: 60,000 attend anti-war rock
concert, Belgrade, Serbia.

1993 - US: Holocaust Museum dedicated, Washington,
D.C. Rightwing-think tanks, who know there was no
Holocaust, seethe.

1995 - Gray Panther Maggie Kuhn dies,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1995 - Hey, NATO?: San Francisco police, in an
equitable swap, trade computers for handguns.

1996 - Nonviolent activists (ETS! readers!) Tom &
Donna Howard-Hastings cut down three poles supporting
the U.S. Navy's nuclear submarine radio "trigger", Clam
Lake, Wisconsin. The antenna collapsed & left the Navy
unable to launch a first strike* for several days.
http://www.sonic.net/~books/new.html


The trial of Jesus of Nazareth, the trial &
rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, any one of the witchcraft trials in
Salem during 1691, the Moscow trials of 1937 during which
Stalin destroyed all of the founders of the 1924 Soviet Revolution,
the Sacco- Vanzetti trial of 1920 through 1927--there are
many trials such as these in which the victim was already
condemned to death before the trial took place, & it took place
only to cover up the real meaning: the accused was to be
put to death.

These are trials in which the judge, the counsel,
the jury, & the witnesses are the criminals, not the accused.
For any believer in capital punishment, the fear of an
honest mistake on the part of all concerned is cited as the main
argument against the final terrible decision to carry out
the death sentence. There is the frightful possibility in
all such trials as these that the judgment has already been
pronounced & the trial is just a mask for murder.

     ---Katherine Anne Porter, *The Never-Ending Wrong*


Auntie-Security Risk 1999
--
Recollection Used Books
4519 University Way NE Seattle Wa 98105
phone: (206) 548-1346 email: recall-AT-eskimo.com
web site: http://www.eskimo.com/~recall
[15 catalogs + 100s of book-related links]


 "A man that would expect to train lobsters to fly
in a year is called  a lunatic; but a man that thinks men can be
turned into angels by an election is a reformer & remains at large."

         ---Finley Peter Dunne, author of various books by Mr. Dooley