Today -100: July 15, 1913: Kill me or give me my freedom; I shall force you to make that choice

Theodore Roosevelt, who’s been awfully quiet lately, by his standards, plans to cross the Grand Canyon by mule, then hunt bears and mountain lions. Or possibly hunt mule and cross the Grand Canyon by bear, because he’s Teddy Fucking Roosevelt and that’s how he rolls!

Headline of the Day -100: “Mrs. Pankhurst Appears, Escapes.” British suffragettes are playing their Mice roles to the hilt. When out of prison on license while recuperating from hunger strikes, they’ve been attempting to give speeches, as Emmeline Pankhurst and Annie Kenney just did, and Sylvia Pankhurst did a couple of days ago, without being recaptured by the police and sent back to prison. Mrs. Pankhurst says, “Kill me or give me my freedom; I shall force you to make that choice.” The police raid (and are attacked by the audience), Kenney was caught, Mrs. P was not (Update: Actually, according to the LAT, she was. She got into a cab but was followed by a detective and arrested). The WSPU has been auctioning off Cat & Mouse licenses.

The US has sent two more warships to Vera Cruz, making four total. “This gives umbrage to the better class of Mexicans.”

An article on whether William Jennings Bryan can actually be expected to live on his salary mentions that one cabinet secretary who managed to do so was James Wilson, who I haven’t particularly noticed before but he was secretary of agriculture for 16 straight years under the McKinley, Roosevelt and Taft administrations (but he was a widower and lived in an apartment hotel). Cabinet secretaries evidently spend up to $20,000 a year (on a $12,000 salary) to keep up appearances and entertain. However, Bryan doesn’t serve booze, so he saves about $2,500 a year. As secretary of state, he is entitled to carriages and horses and the services of an official coachman.

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Today -100: July 14, 1913: Of moonlighting and creating the millennium with the ballot

William Jennings Bryan is skipping out on his day job to go back on the lecture circuit for six weeks. He’s still secretary of state, but he needs the extra money, he says. He will be paid $12,000 by the Chautauqua bureaus, equal to his annual government salary.

Alice Hill Chittenden, president of the New York State Anti-Suffrage Association (not to be confused with the contemporaneous painter Alice Brown Chittenden), has been investigating conditions in California since the establishment of women’s suffrage there, and she is appalled. The Legislature is now dedicating itself to “creating the millennium with the ballot and regardless of the staggering cost” (I hereby nominate that for the new state motto). School teachers and old people are to be given pensions, children will not be taken away from their parents because of poverty; the state is also wasting money by appointing inspectors for orphans, establishing an Industrial Accident Commission, etc.

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Today -100: July 13, 1913: Of pogroms, monsters in human form, Yankee go home, and poets laureate

Police in Kiev are conducting house-to-house searches for Jews and expelling them from the city.

King Constantine of Greece vows to “wreak vengeance” for alleged atrocities by Bulgarian “monsters in human form.”

Turkey will join in the fun, sending troops to attempt to recapture territory it lost to the Bulgarians in the last Balkan War.

The NYT reports on the front page a baseless rumor that King Ferdinand of Bulgaria has been assassinated and that a revolution is beginning. Sofia has only itself to blame for the spread of wild rumors, since it shut down all the newspapers.

The US ambassador to Mexico complains about anti-American demonstrations, so the Huerta Junta helpfully
bans all demonstrations.

The new poet laureate of Great Britain is Robert Bridges, who pretty much no one is familiar with. Some grumble that it should have been Rudyard Kipling, others consider Kipling too gauche.

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Today -100: July 12, 1913: Of overstimulated linemen, crazy lepers, the people’s fruit, and wanton and futile demonstrations

Headline of the Day -100: “Supposed Dead Man On Telegraph Pole An Overstimulated Lineman.” Someone spotted him and called the fire department, which spread out a net and climbed the poll before they realized that he was not an electrocuted corpse but was, in fact, snoring. Alcohol may have been involved.

Headline of the Day -100 (yeah, yeah, two headlines of the day, live with it): “Early, The Leper, Goes Crazy.”

The NYT appeals to the Senate not to put a tariff on the banana, the “people’s fruit.”

The governor of Oregon shows up at an IWW meeting outside a fruit-packing plant and, after hearing a strike leader say that the plant would be closed, got up on the soap box and said that the plant would be protected by all the resources of the state.

A male supporter of women’s suffrage, in what the London Times calls “another wanton and futile demonstration,” fires a toy pistol in the gallery of the House of Commons. Hilarity ensues.

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Today -100: July 11, 1913: Of Balkan wars and martyrs to x-ray

Romania, which was not a participant in the First Balkan War, joins the war against Bulgaria.

Leo Frank’s lawyers have found a man who confessed to the murder of Mary Phagan (and believed by historians to be the real killer). So that settles that.

Headline of the Day -100: “Dies a Martyr to X-Ray.” Burton Baker of the Baker X-Ray Tube Company.

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I should be thoroughly ashamed of myself for this post

Bill Clinton joined John McCain at the McCain Institute for (Snicker) International Leadership and talked about either Syria or Monica Lewinsky:

“Some people say, ‘Okay, see what a big mess it is? Stay out!’”

“Sometimes it’s just best to get caught trying, as long as you don’t overcommit”.

“we shouldn’t over-learn the lessons of the past”.

“What the American people are saying when they tell you not to do these things, they’re not telling you not to do these things”.

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Today -100: July 10, 1913: Of public bathing and ritual child-murders

Denver bans Japanese people from bathing in the lake in Washington Park. Negroes were already banned.

The lawyer for the Jew being tried for killing a Christian boy in Kiev asks the court to subpoena Christian theologians, presumably to ask them about ritual child-murder. He also wants the prosecution to produce Hebrew books cited by a prosecution witness, a Catholic priest who testified about Jewish child sacrifice, because, the lawyer says, those books don’t actually exist.

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Depth and maturity

11-year-old girl Chilean pregnant after two years of sexual abuse by her mother’s partner (but the mother says it was consensual, so that’s okay then) says (in a tv interview, because evidently Chilean tv is as awful and exploitative as ours) that she doesn’t want an abortion, not that she could legally get one in Chile. And the girl (did I mention she’s 11?) wants to raise it: “It will be like having a doll in my arms.”

Anti-choice Chilean President Sebastian Pinera says her decision in wanting to keep a baby because it will be like having a doll displays “depth and maturity,” because of course he fucking does.

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Today -100: July 9, 1913: Of hurt Slavonic feelings, scolds, roads, and lost independence

Someone finally declares war in the Second Balkan War, and it’s King Peter of Serbia, who issues a proclamation: “The Bulgarians, forgetful of the Servians’ brotherly help and the blood of the heroes who fell on the Thracian battlefields, have given the Slavonic nations and the civilized world an abominable example of ingratitude and greediness. This unbrotherly action has caused me the deepest pain and hurt my sincerest Slavonic feelings”. There’s probably an ointment for that.

More atrocity stories, which are probably about as true as the reports of great victories put out by all participants. Bulgarian troops supposedly imprisoned 700 men in a mosque in Kurkut and set it on fire.

A woman in Philadelphia is arrested as a common scold.

Gov. Elliot Woolfolk Major of Missouri has a plan for addressing the poor condition of the state’s roads: he will ask every able-bodied man to donate two days (in August, yet) to working on them. He plans to be out there with a pick himself.

Independence is gone. Independence, Louisiana, that is, wiped out by fire.

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Today -100: July 8, 1913: Of airlines, libellous statements, lethal golf balls, home rule and Havana shootouts

A Col. H. S. Maisy announces plans for a commercial airship service in England. Somehow Col. Maisy is exactly the sort of name someone who owns blimps should have. Maybe in a children’s book.

Yesterday the Daily Mail announced that the Cat and Mouse Act had destroyed militant suffragism in Britain. Which was more or less asking for it: today a pier is set on fire and a bomb exploded in Liverpool. And Christabel Pankhurst telegraphs from Paris protesting “the libellous statements in The Daily Mail.”

How They Died 100 Years Ago: “Killed by Acid in a Golf Ball.”

How They Died 100 Years Ago: a man in Plattekill, NY, hangs himself because it’s hot. He leaves behind a wife and ten children.

Parliament passes Irish Home Rule.

Over the weekend, police in Havana arrested members of a club owned by the governor of Havana Province, Ernesto Asbert, for gambling. A couple of days later the arrest of a porter at the club for possession of a firearm escalates into Gov. Asbert and two members of the Cuban congress shooting the chief of the National Police, Gen. Armando Riva, three times. He is still alive.

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Vast new powers

From a NYT article about how the Obama Administration became so, so disillusioned with Mohammed Morsi: “Mr. Morsi issued a decree claiming vast new powers, quickly puncturing the optimism in the White House and elsewhere in Washington.”

Because if there’s one thing Barack Obama cannot tolerate, it’s a government claiming vast new powers.

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Today -100: July 7, 1913: Of impersonation, Balkan wars, lynchings, and ice strikes

Sen. Cummins (R-Iowa) proposes legislation to make it illegal to impersonate members of Congress or engage in other fraudulent activities such as pretending to act on behalf of congresscitters.

So far, the Second Balkan War battles have been bloodier than First Balkan War ones, as is the way with sequels.

In Jacksonville, Florida, a negro who killed a sheriff who was trying to arrest some gamblers, is lynched. Hundreds of bullets are fired into him right outside a church where a service was going on, then his ears were cut up for souvenirs.

And in Coger, Oklahoma, site of a recent lynching, a mass meeting of white residents orders negro residents to leave forthwith.

The Great Cincinnati Ice Strike of 1913 is over, after the city seized the ice plants.

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Today -100: July 6, 1913: Of interracial marriage, charming rats and mice, and brunettes in the city

Headline of the Day -100: “Negro to Wed White Girl.” Yup, that’s news. The magistrate (in New York although the couple met in Virginia) refuses to marry them, though he claims it’s only because he doesn’t think magistrates should perform marriages.

Rodent Headline of the Day -100: “Rats and Mice Charm Queen Mary.” They ran through a maze for her at the Bedford College for Women.

A Dr. J.S. Mackintosh of London says in the NYT Sunday Magazine section that brunettes can stand city life better than blondes, which has something to do with his theory that races degenerate when they migrate from their ancestral homes.

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Today -100: July 5, 1913: Of Fourths abroad, Balkan wars, molested kings, post offices, and eugenic marriages

The US ambassador to Mexico went to Vera Cruz to celebrate the 4th of July with expatriates there, in order to avoid the festivities in Mexico City (actually on a US warship in the harbor) because Gen. Huerta planned to attend, and it would have looked like recognition of the Huerta Junta had they been seen together.

Elsewhere, though, attempts by expatriate Americans to celebrate were met by violence and trampling of the American flag. And by elsewhere, I mean Canada. In both Winnipeg and Moosejaw. Headline: “Serious Riot in Winnipeg.”

It’s oddly comforting to see rumors of atrocities being spread in the Second Balkan War, since you don’t get the anti-Muslim overtones of the First Balkan War propaganda when, for instance, the Greeks claim that Bulgarian troops massacred every resident of Nigrita and forced women to dance naked with bells around their neck.

King Constantine of Greece says that this new war is blessed by the Almighty.

Headline of the Day -100: “Suffragist Molests King.” Mary Richardson of the WSPU (we shall see her in a later post engaging in some art criticism) threw a petition into the king’s carriage, whereupon an equerry hits her with a sword, and then the whole crowd got involved.

South African police shoot striking gold miners (white ones; black and white miners never struck at the same time in South Africa, ever). Strikers burn down a newspaper and a railway station in Johannesburg. 40 miners are killed.

The US Post Office segregates its black and white clerks. There is no mention of this in the NYT that I can find.

The Pennsylvania Legislature has joined the trend of passing “eugenic marriage” laws, requiring couples to swear (or be certified by a physician) that they do not have TB or, ahem, other communicable diseases. The sponsor of this bill plans to introduce a more stringent bill banning from marriage anyone who within five years has been in an insane asylum or a home for indigent persons unless they are cured and can support a family.

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Today -100: July 4, 1913: Of the fate of the egg and hooting the Cabinet

Headline of the Day -100: “Hen Causes a Strike.” A porter at the North Eastern Railway Station in London takes an egg from a chicken in a crate and is arrested by a railway detective; a strike ensues until he is released although “the officials are still considering the fate of the egg”.

Sylvia Pankhurst has been summoned to police court for inciting a thousand or so suffragettes to go to Downing Street. Defending herself, she notes that Downing St. is a public thoroughfare: “What right have the police to stop the public from going there to hoot the Cabinet? ... Hooting was a time-honoured custom, showing public opinion.”

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An inclusive and transparent coup

Obama issues a statement: “I now call on the Egyptian military to move quickly and responsibly to return full authority back to a democratically elected civilian government as soon as possible through an inclusive and transparent process”.

Let’s take that keyword by keyword. “Quickly” is not the same as immediately, so he’s in essence accepting the coup for some unspecified period of time. Responsibly? I don’t know what that means. Responsible to whom? “A democratically elected civilian government” is not the same as THE democratically elected civilian government, you know, the democratically elected civilian government they had yesterday. Transparent, presumably like he considers the FISA court and NSA eavesdropping transparent. And what “process” is he calling for? A new election? Since he doesn’t call for the military to return Morsi to his elected office, or even to release him from custody, that would seem to be the assumption, an assumption which entails, again, an acceptance of the right of the Egyptian military to undo the results of those and any other elections.

Obama continued, “I have also directed the relevant departments and agencies to review the implications under U.S. law for our assistance to the Government of Egypt.” So he has to look up the relevant statutes on Lexis-Nexus to decide whether he should support a military coup regime with cash and arms, he can’t just have a, you know, foreign policy, or, and I feel silly for even saying it, some fucking principles?

“The United States continues to believe firmly that the best foundation for lasting stability in Egypt is a democratic political order with participation from all sides and all political parties —secular and religious, civilian and military.” So going in to the Fourth of July, the only thing he can dredge up in support of the principle of democracy is that in the long run it’ll lead to... stability. Thomas Fucking Jefferson, he’s not.

He “urges all sides to avoid violence,” which seems to be just about all the advice he’s got for any Egyptians who aren’t okay with military coups.

(Update: I forgot to mention this, but Morsi is a complete and total twat.)

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Today -100: July 3, 1913: Of frame-ups, commemorating fighting with fighting, and identity theft

NY Gov. William Sulzer says that the breach-of-promise suit (“frame-up” he calls it) against him was contrived by Boss Murphy of Tammany. He says Mignon Hopkins sued him for this once before and that they settled out of court.

50,000 veterans of the Battle of Gettysburg (from both sides) have set up tents at the site of the battle and have been celebrating its 50th anniversary with heatstroke and a brawl in the Gettysburg Hotel which started when someone insulted Abraham Lincoln and ended with seven men being stabbed. Seems appropriate.

The Senate is still investigating lobbying practices. Testifying today -100, Wall Street stock broker and lobbyist David “The Wolf” Lamar admits that in his lobbying endeavours he often impersonated members of Congress, including future attorney general A. Mitchell Palmer, in phone calls with financial leaders (this was not actually illegal) or threatened them with the wrath of important congresscritters.

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Democracies don’t work when everybody says it’s the other person’s fault and I want 100 percent of what I want

Obama held a press conference with President Jakaya Kikwete in Tanzania.

OUR COMMITMENT HAS BEEN TO A PROCESS: “Our commitment to Egypt has never been around any particular individual or party, our commitment has been to a process.” The signature Obama move: making hedging his bets sound like a principled position. “And when I took a position that it was time for Egypt to transition, it was based on the fact that Egypt had not had a democratic government for decades, if ever.”

VOICES YELLING IN PROTEST AND THEN IN PAIN AS THE POLICE BEAT THEM, THAT’S WHAT YOU MEANT, RIGHT? “And what is clear right now is that although Mr. Morsi was elected democratically, there’s more work to be done to create the conditions in which everybody feels that their voices are heard”.

BECAUSE IT’S ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS ABOUT AMERICANS: “we’ve been watching these big protests. Our number-one priority has been making sure that our embassies and consulates are protected.”

IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING: “assaulting women does not qualify as peaceful protests.”

WE’RE STILL TALKING ABOUT EGYPT, RIGHT? “Democracies don’t work when everybody says it’s the other person’s fault and I want 100 percent of what I want.”

COMPOUNDED: Asked about the Congo (the bad Congo, not the good Congo, and we can please go back to calling the bad Congo Zaire?): “Well, the people of Congo need a chance. They need a fair chance to live their lives, raise their families. And they haven’t had that opportunity because of constant conflict and war for way too many years. And of course, the tragedy is compounded by the fact that Congo is so rich in natural resources and potential, but because of this constant conflict and instability, the people of Congo haven’t benefitted from that.” Oh, and the genocidal killings. The genocidal killings, AND their not being able to sell us minerals. Both pretty darned tragic.

Evidently the Congo conflict (Congflict?) isn’t anything the US can (or will) do much about: “We can’t force a solution onto the region. ... If you have one of the biggest countries in terms of geography in all of Africa with all these natural resources...” Funny how those natural resources keep coming up. “...but it’s constantly a problem as opposed to being part of the solution, everybody suffers.” So it’s up to the arbitrarily delineated “region” around Congo, itself composed of nations whose artificial borders were drawn up by European colonialists, to... well, to do what? Evidently to increase inter-African trade, because commerce solves everything. “[I]t’s easier to send flowers or coffee to Europe than it is to send it across the way.” Why does he think that is?

On Snowden’s leaks about US spying on NATO allies: “the problem is that these things come out in dribs and drabs. We don’t know necessarily what programs they’re referring to, we don’t know how they’re sourced. And so, what I’ve said is, to my team, take a look at this article, figure out what they may or may not be talking about, and then what we’ll do is we’ll communicate to our allies appropriately.” In other words, he needs to calibrate his cover-up based on whether Snowden knows about that thing they did, or about those other things they did. If you just, you know, told the truth, you wouldn’t need your “team” to do all that heavy analysis of the Snowden leaks.

TRYING TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD BETTER: He goes on to say that all intelligence agencies are just “trying to understand the world better and what’s going on in world capitals around the world from sources that aren’t available through the New York Times or NBC News”

WHY, WHAT DID YOU HAVE FOR BREAKFAST? (THE FOURTH AMENDMENT AND TOAST?) “And I guarantee you that in European capitals, there are people who are interested in, if not what I had for breakfast, at least what my talking points might be should I end up meeting with their leaders.” So what’s the point of all the travel, then? The respective spies could just meet on a park bench; a Tanzanian spy could hand a plain envelope with Obama’s talking points hidden in a newspaper to a CIA spy in exchange for a box of donuts with a microdot of Kikwete’s talking points (do they still do microdots? I suppose not) on a sprinkle.

Since one of the issues under discussion during this trip was human trafficking, Pres. Kikwete is asked about his adviser, a diplomat (I can’t find a more specific job title) who was sued by a woman he kept as a domestic slave in Washington for 4 years and fled the US when a court ruled against him for $1m. A fraction of that was paid last week after 5 years of stalling in advance of this trip. Kikwete says it was just a family dispute and has been put to rest, doesn’t answer whether the guy still works for him.

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Today -100: July 2, 1913: Of breach of promise, balkan wars, and regattas

New York Gov. Sulzer is sued for breach of promise of marriage by a Miss Mignon Hopkins, who claims he proposed to her in 1903 (he married someone else in 1908). Sulzer says he’s never heard of her.

A committee of the NY Legislature will go after Gov. Sulzer, investigating charges that he failed to report campaign contributions, that he made promises of favors to William Randolph Hearst and others in exchange for financial support, that he threatened to veto bills to extort legislators into voting for his direct primary bill, etc. Sulzer calls the investigation “rot.” Note that this is Democrats trying to destroy a Democratic governor.

Greece announces that it will fight Bulgaria without issuing a formal declaration of war (it doesn’t want to take responsibility for officially starting a war which it claims Bulgaria actually started). Serbia simultaneously announces that a state of war exists and that it accepts Russian arbitration.

British police are out in force to protect the Henley Regatta against suffragette attack.

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Today -100: July 1, 1913: Of Balkan wars, big armies, and suffragette plots

After weeks of minor skirmishing, the Second Balkan War begins in earnest with a major Bulgarian (or, as the increasingly erratic NYT Index puts it, Fulgarian; if there are no such people as the Fulgarians, there should be) attack on Serb forces in Macedonia and Greek forces in, I think, Salonika. Serb Prime Minister Pasitch was addressing his Parliament in support of accepting Russian mediation when the news arrived. Fulgaria did not issue a declaration of war (indeed, it claims that the Serbs and Greeks started the war).

The German Reichstag gives the kaiser the larger army he demanded. Some of the money for this will be raised by revoking the exemption of federal princes (whoever they might be) from taxation. The government said this was a patriotic gesture on the princes’ part and could not constitutionally be written into law, but the Reichstag wrote it into law anyway, because fuck those guys.

In Britain, the Daily Express says there is a suffragette plan to murder cabinet ministers if any suffragette dies in prison.

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