Transcribing the Past

  From Hunter S. Thompson’s ESPN page 2 column one week after 9/11.    We are At War now, according to President Bush, and I take him at his word. He also says this War might last for "a very long time." Generals and military scholars will tell you that eight or 10 years is actually not such a long time in the span of human history - which is no doubt true - but history also tells us that 10 years of martial law and a wartime economy are going to feel like a Lifetime to people who are in their twenties today. The poor bastards of what will forever be known as Generation Z are doomed to be the first generation of Americans who will grow up with a lower standard of living than their parents enjoyed. That is extremely heavy news, and it will take a while for it to sink in. The 22 babies born in New York City while the World Trade Center burned will never know what they missed. The last half of the 20th century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what's com...

  START TO FIGHT SERBIANS.  Montenegrins said to have declared a Holy War. LONDON, Feb, 22, A wireless message from Berlin today says that, according to Swiss reports, the Montenegrins have declared a holy war against the Serbians. Two Serbian regiments have occupied Cettinje[sic], Montenegro, and the situation is grave, the message says.    Published 23rd of February 1921 in the New York Times.  Thus reads the above news clipping. I was not familiar with this period before reading this news snippet. In the aftermath of the First World War it was decided to build a Kingdom in the Balkans uniting Croats, Serbs and Slovenes, which in 1929 would become known as Yugoslavia. The Montenegrins independent before the war were also absorbed into the Union. It was not a peaceful union, as this report from the New York Times makes clear.  In 1919, tensions between the pro Serb union and the federalist Montenegrins laid to a failed uprising in Christmas 1919 with ...

       From the Montreal Star, February 4, 1939:  𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗿 𝗚𝗼𝗲𝗯𝗯𝗲𝗹𝘀 𝗔𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗕𝘆 𝗔𝗻𝘁𝗶-𝗡𝗮𝘇𝗶 𝗪𝗶𝘁  Comedians Banned For Humorous Remarks on Leaders  BERLIN, Feb. 4 (U.P.) When Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels yesterday blasted Germany's cafe society, he called it "society rabble and intellectual snobs," for laughing at comedians who make Nazi leaders the butts of their jokes.  Goebbels turned his anger upon the "society rabble" after announcing that five German actors had been banned from the stage for publicly ridiculing Nazi party and state functionaries.  He denied that there was any lack of humor in Nazi Germany, but said that it must be kept "good-natured, decent and clean."  "There is plenty of humor in Germany, more than enough," he said in a three and one-half column editorial in the Nazi party's newspaper Voelkischer Beobachter . "But we do not permit ourselves to be ridiculed."  Th...

    "No social ideal, from the point of view of anarchism, could be referred to as absolute in a sense that supposes it’s the crown of human wisdom, the end of social and ethical quest of man." Alexei Borovoj Anarchism , 1918. Alexei Borovoi was a Russian Anarchist, teacher and writer. Born in 1875 he spent much of his life articulating an individualist anarchism and giving lectures on anarchist thought. During the Russian Revolution he remained active and was a founding member of the Unions of of Workers of Intellectual Labour, a union for doctors and teachers and the Union of Ideological Propaganda of Anarchism a group whose purpose was the spreading of Anarchist ideas. He edited both organisations newspapers. The Bolsheviks shut both organisations down, Borovoi continued to teach until 1922 when he was stripped of his professorship and banned from teaching. In 1929 he was arrested and exiled to Vyaltka, he spent the last years of his life in minor clerical posts. He died...

  IS COLORADO IN AMERICA? MARTIAL LAW DECLARED IN COLORADO!  FREE PRESS THROTTLED IN COLORADO! BULL-PENS FOR UNION IN MEN IN COLORADO! FREE SPEECH DENIED IN COLORADO! SOLDIERS DEFY THE COURTS IN COLORADO! WHOLESALE ARRESTS WITHOUT WARRANT IN COLORADO! UNION MEN EXILED FROM HOMES AND FAMILIES IN COLORADO! CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS QUESTIONED IN COLORADO!  CORPORATIONS CORRUPT AND CONTROL ADMINISTRATION IN COLORADO! RIGHT OF FAIR, IMPARTIAL AND SPEEDY TRIAL ABOLISHED IN COLORADO!  CITIZENS' ALLIANCE RESORTS TO MOB LAW AND VIOLENCE IN COLORADO! MILITIA HIRED TO CORPORATIONS TO BREAK THE STRIKE IN COLORADO! THESE are absolute facts and are not the only outrages that have been perpetrated on Colorado in the name of law and order. It has been charged and never successfully denied that the corporations contributed $15,000,00 towards the election of the present Republican administration, but Governor Peabody has been unable to "DELIVER THE GOODS." THE unions have not...

    Before reaching the Stars By Wat Wanlyangkun Mother walked slowly away from the abbot’s residence, past the sandy courtyard and the shade of the pikun tree, towards the rear of the central shrine, One hand carefully supported a water-bowl, while the other held a rattan basket used for carrying the things needed for merit-making. A horned owl moaned softly from a dark corner of the shrine’s eaves. The sweet scent of frangipani blossoms drifted towards he with the breeze and the gentle waving of the flowering grass. Mother sank wearily down in front of the mortuary containing her dead son’s body 1 . With its oblong shape it looked like a coffin, except that it was made of cement-- and the smell of fresh cement still lingered in the air. There were other, identical mortuaries stretched out in a long row. The empty ones looked like dark caverns. And adjacent to the mortuaries little memorial stupas ringed the central shrine, whose dingy white walls were crumbling away...