The Daily Bleed: René Bianco d'Acierno, Louis Simon, Fabio Luz, Anna Mahe, Adalgisa Fochi, Adolphe Willette...

JULY 31
PRIMO LEVI
Italian-born chemist, Auschwitz survivor, writer...suicide?

ALWAYS LIVE BETTER THAN YESTER DAY.

FESTIVAL OF INNER WORLDS

LAMMAS EVE.

Once upon a Lammas Night
When corn rigs are bonny,
Beneath the Moon's unclouded light,
I held awhile to Annie...

1315 -- Gates of Paris treacherously opened for Charles, King of Navarre.
http://www.greatorlandodiscounts.com/disney/indiana.htm

1485 -- Caxton publishes Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.
Source: [Robert Braunwart]
[Hereafter attributed with symbol: ]

1566 -- Fray Bartholomew de Las Casas, fanatic for human dignity, dies, in Madrid, Spain.
... show more

Will he be punished for his disobedience?

To the 92-year-old, little it matters to him. Half a century fighting.

The fingers don't obey, so he dictates the letter. Without permission of anybody, he addresses himself to the Holy See. He asks Pope Pius V to stop the wars against the Indians & the plunder that uses the cross like an alibi.

While he dictates he becomes infuriated, the blood rises, & the hoarse & feeble voice that remains to him trembles.

Suddenly he falls to the floor.

http://web.archive.org/...eduardo.galeano/memoria.del.fuego/15660731.htm

1703 -- England: Daniel Defoe forced to stand in the pillory in front of Temple Bar, for seditious libel (The Shortest Way with Dissenters), draws sympathetic crowds who pelt him with flowers instead of mud.
http://www.ipl.org/div/litcrit/bin/litcrit.out.pl?au=def-15
http://www.incompetech.com/authors/defoe/

1774 -- We Can Breathe Now?: Joseph Priestly discovers oxygen.

1784 -- Encyclopedist, Enlightenment writer Denis Diderot dies, Paris. Will-free!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Diderot

1811 -- Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, Mexican hero priest, executed by Spanish.

1831 -- [Old style] Russian theosophist & traveler Elena Blavatsky lives, Ekaterinoslav. Born August 12, new style.
http://www.wmea-world.org/TEACHINGS/HPB.htm

1843 -- William T. Lowndes dies in impecunious circumstances in London. Wrote The Bibliographer's Manual of English Literature.

1857 -- France: Adolphe Willette lives. Painter, illustrator ("L'Assiette au Beurre", etc), anarchiste, caricaturist, lithographer, ran as a one-time "anti-semitic" candidate in the Paris elections of 1889.
http://www.graphicwitness.org/group/beurre1.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolphe_Willette

1859 -- China: US troops land in Shanghai to protect American interests (-Aug. 2).

1864 -- Brazil: Fabio Luz (Fabio Lopez dos Santos Luz) lives (1864-1938), Valença, Bahia. Novelist & outstanding figure of Brazilian anarchism.
... show more

Involved in the antislavery movement as a youth & discovered anarchism with the reading of Peter Kropotkin.

Wrote d'Ideólogos, (1903), d'Os Emancipados, (1906), & Virgem-Mãe, (1908), the first novels in Brazil to tackle the social question.

[Details / context]

1865 -- Adalgisa Fochi lives (1865-1957). Mother of Camillo Berneri, grandmother of Maria Luisa Berneri & Giliana Berneri. Antifascists & anarchists, the whole lot of them.
http://www.ephemanar.net/juillet31.html
http://www.comune.re.it/manifestazioni/berneri/adalgisa.htm

1881 -- Anna Mahe lives (1881-1960), Bourgneuf-in-Retz (Loire-Inférieure). French militant individualist & free-love advocate. Co-founded L'anarchie with Albert Libertad.
... show more

Like her sister Armandine, the partner of the individualist Albert Libertad...Wrote for many movement papers, author of L'hérédité et l'Education (1908).

"Démontons la pédagojie oficièle faite pour fabriquer des esclaves. Bâtissons une pédagojie qui conviène à des cerveaus d'homes."

[Details / context]

1904 -- Brett Halliday lives. Prolific American mystery writer. Also wrote as Asa Baker, Mathew Blood, Kathryn Culver, Don Davis, Hal Debrett, Anthony Scott, Wayne Anderson.
... show more

Married mystery writer Helen McCloy. They ran a literary agency & Toquil Publishing Company. In the late 1950s he used ghostwriters to continue his work. appeared in 1956, until cancellation in 1990.

His Mike Shayne novels have been translated into seven languages, made into motion pictures, television series, & radio plays.

Founding member of the Mystery Writers of America, & 1953 recipient of an Edgar Award for his criticism.

Note: Brett Halliday is also a pseudonym of Bill Pronzini, who writes as Robert Hart Davis, Jack Foxx, William Jeffrey, Alex Saxon, John Barry Williams.

1916 -- México: Electricity workers strike, DF; the beginning of a General Strike.

1917 -- SlaughterHouse: 3rd Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele), Belgium (-Nov. 10); 500,000 casualties on both sides by the end of the battle; Britain loses 300,000 men.

1919 -- Primo Levi lives, Turin. Italian-Jew, writer & chemist. Gained fame with his autobiographical story If This is a Man (1947), of survival in Nazi concentration camps.
... show more

Levi also wrote poetry, science fiction, essays, & short stories.

Perhaps best known is The Periodic Table (1975). Uses chemist Mendeleyev's periodical table of elements as base of autobiographical meditations, each named for a chemical element; 'Vanadium' represents an unexpected encounter with a former Auschwitz official & 'Zinc' explores the fascist myth of racial purity.

Levi wrote for the resistance magazine "Giustizia e Libertàand." Captured & sent to Auschwitz. His last 40 years were devoted to problems resulting from the fact of his survival of the camp.

His constant & compulsive rationalizing of life's irrationality could not save him in the end — died April 11, 1987, an apparent suicide.

Also wrote: If This is a Man / Survival in Auschwitz; The Truce / The Reawakening; The Sixth Day; The Monkey Wrench; The Drowned & the Saved; The Mirror Maker.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primo_Levi

1920 -- Founding convention of the British Communist Party opens (-Aug. 1); Cecil Malone is one of the founders, becoming the first Communist MP.

1920 -- England: Wisps of wet hay larger than dinner plates fall, Stone. Cudda swore we weren't stoned...

1921 -- Germany: Nie Wieder Krieg ("No More War") demonstration, Berlin.

1921 -- US: No Place Like Home? More of them damn green frogs raining from the sky, in Sterling, Connecticut. We need another Green joke?
"Tell you a story about, uh, old black singer called Clarence "Frogman" Henry. I wonder who remembers him, anybody at all?
"I don't know why I love you but I do," is what he sang, he sang it very well indeed, it was great. I, I like frogs in general & Clarence "Frogman" Henry is, is, is part of that."

http://web.archive.org/...http://rylibweb.man.ac.uk/data1/sy/jch/alwords/als90.htm

1922 -- US: 18-year-old Ralph Samuelson rides world's first water skis, Minnesota. Part of a commie plot to destroy every waterway on the globe.

1922 -- Italy: Nationally the coup de grace comes with the calling of a General Strike against Fascism, the "strike for legality" of 31st July to 2nd August 1922. With the collapse of the strike the Fascists attacked, massing their numbers to deal with the last outposts of resistance.
English language introduction to Italian fascism no longer online; there is a Spanish language version,
http://www.galeon.com/ateneosant/Ateneo/Historia/SigloXX_1/sxx-antifaIt.html

1931 -- Jimmie Rodgers records "The TB Blues," San Antonio, Texass.

1932 -- Chaco War begins between Bolivia & Paraguay (-June 1935).

1932 -- Germany: Nazis win 230 Reichstag seats, Socialists 133, Center 97 & Communists 89.

1936 -- Puerto Rico: Pedro Albizu Campos, Juan Antonio Corretjer, Clemente Soto Vélez & other independence fighters sentenced to 6-10 years in federal prison. In 1937 Albizu Campos & others are transferred out of Puerto Rico to serve time in Atlanta, Georgia.
http://welcome.topuertorico.org/history.shtml

1937 -- Russia: Politburo's Operative Order 00447: executions of 193,000 Russians.

1937 -- Irwin Edman reviews Thomas Mann's Freud, Goethe, Wagner, Saturday Review.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/tmann.htm

1938 -- US: Not Jake? Baseball's NY Yanks suspend Jake Powell after he said on Chicago radio he'd "hit every colored person in Chicago over the head with a club".

1940 -- US: Head-on train collision at Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, kills 43.

1940 -- US: Bans the export of aviation fuel outside the Western Hemisphere.

1940 -- Germany: Adolf Hitler bans the practice of Christian Science; Reichs Commissar Seyss-Inquart bans homosexuals.

1941 -- Slaughterhouse5: Hermann Goering officially launches the Nazi mass extermination of Jews; Japan apologizes for bombing US river-gunboat Tutuila at Chungking; Military Police Corps becomes a permanent branch of the US army.

1942 -- Slaughterhouse5: The German SS gasses 1,000 Jews in Minsk, Belorussia; RAF stages a heavy night bombing raid on Dusseldorf, Germany; U-boats sink 96 allied ships this month (476,000 tons); FDR creates the US army Transportation Corps; Peter Lorre movie "Invisible Agent" is released.

1944 -- France: Author/pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupery disappears on a flight over southern France.

1944 -- Slaughterhouse5: Allies retake Sansapor, Dutch New Guinea from the Japanese; Transport nr. 77 departs with French Jews to Nazi Germany; The last deportation train out of Mechelen departs for Auschwitz; Gypsy camp at Auschwitz is liquidated; Street fighting begins in Kaunas (Kovno), Lithuania.

1947 -- France: The Smugglers' Union in Hendaye goes on strike. Take home pay is an issue?

1947 -- Charles Laughton opens in Brecht's "Galileo."

1949 -- US: Florida ~~Marlins~~ Caribou? Lightning strikes a baseball field in Baker, Florida, killing 3rd baseman, 2nd baseman & shortstop. Unassisted outs...(see 30 July).

1952 -- Luis Bunuel movie "Un mujer sin amor" premiers, Mexico.

1957 -- US: Non-commercial radio pioneer, Pacifica Foundation founder, Lewis Hill, poet, pacifist & journalist, dies.

http://www.kpfa.org/
http://web.archive.org...LewisHill/jan0452.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Hill
http://www.whitings-writings.com/lengthening_shadow.htm
http://web.archive.org/...alsopreview.com/columns/foley/jfoley.html

1958 -- Tibet: Guerrillas form to oppose the Chinese occupation.

1963 -- Spain: The anarquistas Francisco Granados & Joaquín Delgado are arrested for crimes they did not commit. They are executed within two weeks in a grand display of justice.
Granados & Delgado were wrongly accused of exploding two bombs on July 29, in the Main directorate of Seguridad (DGS) of Madrid —"symbol of the pro-Franco torture" — & another in the National Delegation of Unions.

They were brutally interrogated & condemned to death in a field court martial behind closed doors marked by legal irregularities.
[Details / context]

1964 -- US: Pleasant Grove Baptist Church, in Brandon, Mississippi is leveled by a fire, allegedly set by the Ku Klux Klan.

1964 -- High Seas: Tonkin Gulf Hoax incidents begin as the US Navy destroyer Maddox (DD-731) begins a "reconnaissance" patrol along the coast of North Vietnam. The string of Tonkin Gulf lies, serving the interests of American corporations, media, military & the state, launch America headlong into the Vietnam War. The lies continue for at least another decade & cost 50,000 American boys their lives as true flag-waving patriots cheer them on to their deaths.

... show more

With fresh evidence now available, claims that the Tonkin Gulf incident was deliberately provoked gain new plausibility.
By Captain Ronnie E. Ford, U.S. Army

[snip] On August 7, 1964, the Senate passed support for Tonkin Gulf Resolution 88-2, with Senators Morse & Ernest Gruening (D-Alaska) voting nay. The House voted 416-0 in support. Prophetically, Senator Morse closed his argument by saying, "I believe that within the next century, future generations will look with dismay & great disappointment upon a Congress which is now about to make such a historic mistake."
Johnson's deceitful speech of Aug. 4, 1964, won accolades from The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, & most other so-called "objective" media — which served as a unquestioning war chorus, bamboozling an American public with LBJs fabrication of the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The hoax begins with four US boats, under Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader General Westmoreland's directions, attacking two North Vietnam islands.

Over the next few days, two destroyers are brought in for support (the USS Maddox & the Turner Joy) & during maneuvers the Maddox mistakes TJ for a N. Vietnamese vessel attempting to attack.

Washington is advised by Navy Pacific command the ships are both under attack. Johnson will use this excuse to escalate the war in Vietnam, & his administration clamps down on the fact the attacks never took place.

BleedMeister is aboard another destroyer, which was rumored to have been the ship that was supposed to have been where the TJ was, before it was ordered replaced by the TJ.

http://fair.org/media-beat-column/30-year-anniversary-tonkin-gulf-lie-launched-vietnam-war/
http://www.42explore2.com/vietnam.htm

August 2 & 4, 1964
The Gulf of Tonkin Incident. North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked the US destroyer Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin. A second attack allegedly occurs on August 4.

BleedMeister gets one of these things for his part in the Glorious War to Stop Vietnam From Invading the US:

A "business " card currently online from a former sailor who served aboard BleedMeister's ship, the USS Sproston (DDE 577), which did numerous tours off the Vietnam coast during the 1960s:

1965 -- England: Cigarette commercials banned from British Television.
I was with some Vietnamese recently, & some of them were smoking two cigarettes at a time. That's the kind of customers we need!

— Beloved & Respected Comrade Senile US Senator Jesse Helms, on his meeting with the Vietnamese ambassador designate at a dinner given by the R J Reynolds Company

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIN8MmMloZE

1966 -- US: Several radio stations ban the playing of Beatles records after John Lennon's remark that the band is "more popular than Lenny Bruce."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenny_Bruce

1966 -- US: Two men pin down 4,000 National Guards in a sporadic, week-long sniper campaign in Chicago.
Source: 'Calendar Riots'

1968 -- México: Violent battles in México City between students & Granaderos special corp (riot police).
... show more

Students occupy many schools & faculties, & convocate a General Strike.

The movement has its tragic climax on the 2nd of October in the Tlatelolco Massacre: Over 300 persons die, many wounded, thousands arrested & tortured; government forces chose Tlatelolco as the site of the massacre, & bystanders, even small children, were targeted. Tlatelolco residents showed the potential for the student movement to unleash an even more powerful wave of mass rebellion against the ruling class.

Source: 1968: a wall between this century (apparently no longer online)
http://www.revcom.us/a/v20/970-79/975/mex1.htm
http://historicaltextarchive.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid;=161

1968 -- US: Seattle police arrest 69 blacks at Garfield High School for failing to disperse. Hizzoner Braman promises mass arrests will continue after racial disturbances in the Central Area.

1969 -- US: Beached? Beach Boy Carl Wilson indicted for failure to report for community service in place of spending two years in military service.

1969 -- Russia: 3 Chords & You're Out?: A Moscow police chief reports that thousands of telephone booths have been made inoperable by thieves who have stolen phone parts in order to convert their acoustic guitars to electric.

1970 -- Disco?: To fill a contractual obligation, the Rolling Stones hand over the disc, "Cocksucker Blues" to Decca Records. They are now free to form Rolling Stones Records.

1970 -- High Seas: The "rum ration" is ended in the British navy after 283 years. Shipwrecks, drownings & lost anchors drop dramatically.

1971 -- Outer Space: "I Brake for Aliens"? Dave Scott is first person to drive on the Moon. Pothole Heaven, but parking is cheap....

1971 -- England: Despite police protection, the home of Secretary for Trade & Industry, John Davies, is bombed by the Angry Brigade. Davies had declared his intention to close Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, throwing thousands out of work.
'You can't reform profit capitalism & inhumanity.

Just kick it till it breaks.'

— Angry Brigade, communiqué 8.

http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/AngryBrigade/
http://www.huzzam.com/etext/angbdocumchro/Communique11.html
http://www.huzzam.com/etext/angbdocumchro/Introduction.html

1972 -- US: 1,000% Thomas Eagleton withdraws as Democratic vice president candidate.

1974 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader John Ehrlichman sentenced to a 20 months to five years Country Club term for his role in the burglary at the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist under Dick M Nixon's reign of terror.

John Ehrlichman & G. Gordon Liddy were indicted on September 4, 1973 in connection with the 1971 burglary of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist. Ellsberg had given Pentagon documents to The New York Times in 1971, & Ehrlichman's & Liddy's "White House Plumber's Unit" was designed to plug such security leaks.

... show more

On October 20, Attorney General Eliot Richardson resigned during the "Saturday Night Massacre." He had refused to fire special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox. Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus also refused to fire Cox & also resigned. Solicitor General Robert Bork then took over the job of firing Cox.

On October 23, eight impeachment resolutions were introduced in the House, & Dick M Nixon announced he would turn over the Watergate Tapes.

On November 21, an 18.5 minute gap in the tapes was revealed, & on November 27, Nixon's personal secretary Rose Mary Woods testified she "accidentally" erased five minutes of the tapes.

1977 -- France: 60,000 strong demonstration against Super-Phenix nuclear reactor, Malville. One person killed.

1980 -- Louis Simon (1900-1980) dies. French militant pacifist & individualist anarchiste, mathematician, as well as a writer & poet. Organized the "Ligue d'Action Pacifiste" with Pierre Martin, & a proponent of the ideas of Han Ryner.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/gallery/galleryindex.htm#SimonLouis

1982 -- France: 46 kids & seven adults die as two buses & several cars collide.

1983 -- US: No (R)egrets?: Avinger, Texass is ankle-deep in bird shit. Caused by cattle egrets imported by ranchers in 1953.
Inspires shit-kicker's gospel song, Wide, Wide River, by that ol' anarchist-Fug, Tuli Kupferberg:
I've been floating in this river of shit
Over 20 years & I'm gettin' tired of it
But I've got to keep swimming in this river of shit,
'cause I don't want to die...

... Some politicians say we've got to stop violence in this country
While he's spending 15,000 dollars a second snuffing gooks....

River of shit, bringing health, wealth, & prosperity to every man, woman, & child.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2aKE9VL-f0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fugs

1984 -- Panama: Our Man in Miami? CIA's William Casey & Reagun's sweetheart, Oliver North, arrive, seeking Manuel Noriega's aid for the contras. Birds of a feather...only Manuel gets his clipped.

1987 -- Guns n' Roses song "Appetite for Destruction" is released.

1989 -- US: Socialist leader Michael Harrington dies. A chronicler of poverty during an age of affluence.
http://www.dsausa.org/
http://academics.hamilton.edu/history/misserma/Harrington.html

1990 -- US: Bush administration opposes congressional sanctions against Iraq.

1991 -- START I nuclear arms reduction treaty signed. No idea where & when it will end...WWIII mayhaps.

1992 -- Togo: General Strike begins over the murder of an opposition leader.

1992 -- El Salvador: Military gunmen shoot the head of the Salvadoran Office for Defense of Human Rights, Eduardo Pineda Valenzuela, but he survives.

1993 -- US: A dust devil does $10,000 damage to a turkey farm, near Locust, NC. The Locusts survive.

1996 -- Germany: During this month the eviction of the wagon places on the East-Side-Gallery & the rear house at Kreutziger Strasse 11. Next month the last squat in West Berlin is evicted: Marchstrasse/Einsteinufer. By this month next year only three "squats" are left in Berlin. anarchisten / German anarchists
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/10ref.htm#03/1990
http://www.notbored.org/squatworld.html

1996 -- Indonesia: Government begins arresting democratic & labor leaders.

1996 -- South Africa: Police cause a stampede in a railroad station, 15 die.

1996 -- Australia: Brotherly Love? The Christian Brothers announce they will pay nearly $3 million to over 200 men who say they were sexually abused as children by the Brothers.

1999 -- US: James Ray is arrested for sexual assault of FFA sheep, San Diego.

2001 -- US: Bush League? Debt to the UN reaches a record $2.33 billion. A drop in the bucket compared to the national debt, 5,718,303 (in millions). The National Debt continues to increase an average of $1.67 billion per day since September 2002, & the "balanced budget" rightwingers in the White House have "reduced" the national public debt, as of today at 04:51:06 PM GMT to 6,734, 871,777,795.48.
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

2001 -- US: The 1937 Twin Teepees Restaurant on Aurora Ave., about a half mile from Recollection Fine Used Books, is demolished, Seattle, Washington. Known as the place where Harlan, a young cook, allegedly perfected his fried chicken recipe, & later became known as Colonel Sanders.

[The lot where it formerly stood remains an empty eyesore in 2007; in 2008 new construction stops...progress!...]

Photo by Paul Dorpat

... show more

http://web.archive.org/...histsea/advocacy/lost_saved_end.htm
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/29207
http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File;_Id=2890
http://web.archive.org/...drunkinseattle.com/reviews/twin_teepees.html
"...now that the Twin Teepees, the Pioneer Square pergola, & most of Fremont, just to name a few, have been flattened, I figure it's only a matter of time before somebody slaps a Master Use Permit over my husband Bob, the children & the hamster."

— Jane Lotter, Jet City Maven, Sept 2001

http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2002/12/09/daily20.html
http://www.callihan.com/seattle/deaddiners.htm

2005 -- France: René Bianco d'Acierno (??-2005) dies, Marseille. Son of an Italian immigrant, Bianco learned to read by reading his father's anarchist papers. While maintaining his militant activities, over the years he took a degree in philosophy, then education (ultimately a professor of geography & history) & was a prolific writer as well.
[Details / context]

2006 -- Cuba: Cuban jefe Fidel Castro cedes state power to brother Raul.

2007 -- England: Millennialist historian Norman Cohn dies, London.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Cohn

3000 --

Meanwhile everyone wants to breathe & nobody can & many say,
"We will breathe later."
& most of them don't die because they are already dead.

— graffiti, Paris May '68

3500 --