Dec. 20. 1957: Birth of British working class singer and activist Billy Bragg. 1991: CIA classifies task force report on greater openness as "secret."

Dec. 22. 1982: Congress passes first version of Boland amendment (411-0), which prohibited covert efforts by the President to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. So he ordered someone else to do it.

Dec. 24. 1907: Birth of activist journalist I.F. "Izzy" Stone, Philadelphia. Washington editor of The Nation magazine and founder of the legendary I.F. Stone's Weekly, he specialized in publishing information ignored by the corporate media (which he often found in The Congressional Record and other public documents overlooked by the big-circulation dailies). Not unlike George Seldes before him and Noam Chomsky today, doing the job corporate media refuses to do.

Dec. 25. 0: Apocryphal birth of Jesus of Nazareth. 1978: Four "Santa Clauses" arrested for climbing a fence at Pilgrim Nuclear Plant, Plymouth, Mass.

Dec. 26. 1854: Nisqually tribe makes treaty at Medicine Creek, Wash., ceding all lands to the US.

Dec. 28. 1931: Birth of Guy Debord, Paris. Co-founder of Situationist International, author of influential anti-capitalist tract "Society of the Spectacle," intellectual godparent of May 1968 Paris revolt. 1996: Three arrested at Capitol Hill post office in Seattle for refusing to leave after attempting to mail humanitarian supplies to Iraq in defiance of US.-led embargo.

Dec. 29. 1994: A state court rejects property rights advocates and reaffirms the fishing harvest rights of fifteen Indian tribes in Washington State.

Dec. 30. 1946: Birth of singer/poet Patti Smith.

Dec. 31. 1970: US Congress repeals the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which in 1964 authorized a dramatic increase in US military involvement in Vietnam in response to an attack on US forces that later turned out to have never happened.

Jan. 1. 1804: Haitian slaves, led by Jean Jacques Desalines, declare independence. Haiti becomes first free black nation-state in the world; US refuses to recognize Haiti for the next 70 or so years.

Jan. 2. 725: Eighteen-Rabbit, high Mayan king of Copan, installs Cauac-Sky as ruler of Quirigua. 1905: Conference of Industrial Unionists in Chicago forms the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), fondly known as The Wobblies.

Jan. 3. 2000: In Amador Hernandez, Chiapas, the "Zapatista Air Force" bombards the Mexican Army's barracks with paper airplanes to protest the army's incursion into indigenous villages and communities.

Jan. 4. 1961: Longest recorded strike ends after 33 years: Danish barbers' assistants.

Jan. 5. 1987: "Fiscal conservative" President Ronald Reagan produces the nation's first trillion-dollar budget, projecting 1988 outlays of $1,024.3 billion, revenues of $916.6 billion, and a deficit of $107.8 billion.

Jan. 6. 1937: Abraham Lincoln Brigade formed to fight Spanish fascism. Some 4,000 American men and women would fight for the Loyalists.

Jan. 7. 1969: California Governor Ronald Reagan asks California legislature to "drive criminal anarchists and latter-day Fascists off the campuses."

Jan. 8. 1894: Yakama sign away 23,000 acres of timber land formerly inhabited by Wenatchee tribe to the US for $20,000. 1992: President George Bush gets ill and pukes on Japanese prime minister's lap during Japanese tour.