Obituaries // Current TV

Robert Hegyes of "Welcome Back, Kotter" Has Died

Los Angeles Times... . Welcome Back, Kotter... . Robert Hegyes, Juan... more

EthicalVegan
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15 days ago
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21 comments

'Kim Has Left The Shambles' Kim Jong Il - Dead At 69. . .Or 70.

First bulletins and the first two hours of breaking news.

Gordonskene
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1 month ago
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A Word Or Two From Chistopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

An interview with Christopher Hitchens on the ABC National Australia program Late... more

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Wangari Maathai, nobel peace prize laureate and leader of Greenbelt Movement dies at 71

Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel peace prize, died on Sunday night of cancer. She was 71.

A towering figure in Kenya, Maathai was renowned as a fearless social activist and an environmental crusader. Her Green Belt Movement, which she founded in 1977, planted tens of millions of trees.

Maathai's death was confirmed in a statement on the movement's website.

"It is with great sadness that the family of Professor Wangari Maathai announces her passing away on 25 September 2011, at the Nairobi hospital, after a prolonged and bravely borne struggle with cancer. Her loved ones were with her at the time."

Maathai was a pioneer from an early age and in many spheres. After winning a scholarship to study in the US, she returned to a newly independent Kenya, becoming the first woman in east and central Africa to obtain a PhD. Maathai was also the first woman professor the University of Nairobi, where she taught veterinary medicine.

Her work with voluntary groups alerted her to the struggles of women in rural Kenya, and it quickly became her life's cause. Noticing how the rapid environmental degradation was affecting women's lives, she encouraged them to plant trees to ensure future supplies of firewood and to protect water sources and crops.

Maathai's agenda quickly widened as she joined the struggle against the repressive and corrupt regime of Daniel arap Moi. Her efforts to stop powerful politicians grabbing land, especially forests, brought her into conflict with the authorities, and she was beaten and arrested numerous times. Her bravery and defiance made her a hero in Kenya.

In awarding Maathai the Nobel peace prize in 2004, the Nobel committee said that her "unique forms of action have contributed to drawing attention to political oppression – nationally and internationally".

Maathai served as an assistant minister in President Mwai Kibaki's government from 2003 to 2005, but her refusal to keep silent on some issues saw her politically sidelined, and she lost her seat after a single term. Her work schedule remained hectic however, and she wrote several books and travelled widely.

Maathai had been in and out of hospital this year, though most Kenyans were unaware of her illness until it was reported in the local media late last week.

More at the linkWangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel peace prize, died on Sunday... more

JanforGore
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5 months ago
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Cliff Robertson ("Charly") Has Died

The New York Times... . September 10, 2011 Oscar Winner Cliff Robertson Dies in... more

EthicalVegan
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5 months ago
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15 comments

August 16, 1977 - "Elvis Has Left The Building". | Newstalgia

In the odd event you were planning on baking a cake today . . . .

Gordonskene
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6 months ago
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David Rayfiel, Screenwriter Who Collaborated with Sydney Pollack, Has Died

Los Angeles Times... * David Rayfiel, left, is seen with director Sydney Pollack... more

EthicalVegan
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8 months ago
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In Zimbabwe, Mike Campbell dies - A life of worth

A documentary film about the case and its tragic aftermath, Mugabe and the White... more

UrbanGypsy
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10 months ago
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The Many Burdens a GI Faces in Afghanistan | | AlterNet

The GIs are doing the best they can, in a "job" the politicians command them out of imperial hubris and historical ignorance.
April 7, 2010 |

"I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest." Lt Siegfried Sassoon, Royal Welsh Fusiliers, 1917

In a move calculated to change the subject from his new hot-to-touch healthcare law, President Obama recently made a six-hour visit to American troops in Kabul. On TV he smiled a lot, and looked light on his feet, perhaps because he wore nothing heavier on his back than a fetching Air Force bomber jacket vaguely resembling George Bush's macho flight gear in his notorious "mission accomplished" speech on an aircraft carrier a few years ago. He walked tall and erect.

In my infantry pack in basic training I had to carry only about 40 to 60 pounds on my back including weapon, ammo, water, webbing, K-rations etc. Add another 15 pounds for a mortar base plate. By contrast, today's deployed soldier on patrol in Afghanistan often carries twice that, up to 150 pounds that includes all the above plus body armor and radio and anything else he might need when miles from resupply. Forget the danger from sniper fire and cheap-to-make killer roadside bombs (IEDs), just think of the muscular-skeletal strain schlepping all that stuff at 8-11,000 oxygen-thin feet in freezing cold or down on the Helmand plains in stifling heat.

Obsessively I follow the trajectory of one of my old units where I was once sent as a stateside replacement, the Fourth ("Ivy") Division, from its capturing Saddam Hussein in Tikrit to to its recent combat presence in the Perch valley in Afghanistan. Although for years I carried its cloth four-leaf clover shoulder patch in my wallet as a good luck charm, I'm not sentimental about its thuggish side under inhuman stress. (Shooting prisoners, filling Abu Ghraib prison by indiscriminate arrests, and so on.)

The GIs are doing the best they can, and then some, sometimes staggeringly beyond the normal call of duty, in a "job" the politicians command them out of imperial hubris and historical ignorance. Graveyard of empires indeed. An example: despite a $17bn counter-measures programme, General Michael Oates, in charge of defeating the treacherous roadside bombs admits, "I don't think you can defeat the IED as a weapon system. It is too easy to use." In the past year the Taliban has doubled its use of these hard-to-detect explosives, and our casualties have doubled.

Almost every night, through a GI newsletter, I read the daily casualty lists often in the form of obituaries from home town newspapers. Overwhelmingly these boys, men and increasingly, women, are from small towns and rural areas like Bald Knob, Arkansas and Hungry Horse, Montana, or former factory cities. There's a certain pattern. "He wanted to be in the military since he was nine … he loved playing soldier … a true patriot … he did what was right for his country … he signed up on September 12 … a three letter high school athlete … dropped out of school when a recruiter came around … "

Our so-called mercenary all-volunteer army is full of young men and women who enlisted for mixed motives. A common thread runs through their stories. Patriotism aside (no small matter), they simply couldn't find jobs or needed money for college or wanted to "fast track" for citizenship papers. It's the economy, plus a need to serve their country.

Despite the fact, by now almost universally acknowledged (by all except Bush-Cheney and Blair-Brown), that we were suckered into a Middle Eastern war, and despite our leaders having not even a foggy notion of what "winning" in Afghanistan means, the military keeps grabbing them and making adults out of children (as it did for me) and, in so many cases, tossing them aside if they get badly injured. Until a few senators protested, the military, with Veterans Administration collusion, refused disability benefits to shell-shocked GIs on the fake diagnoses of "pre-existing personality disorder".

There is an American tradition of officers breaking ranks to speak truth to power at the risk of their careers, but this hasn't happened recently in Afghanistan. We don't have any parallels to a previous era's Marine general Smedley Butler ("War is a racket") or army general "Vinegar Joe" Stillwell. There was a "retired generals' revolt" a few years ago – led by Marine general Anthony Zinni – blasting Bush and Rumsfield for lies over Iraq. But Afghanistan has not yet produced its Smedley Butler or Anthony Zinni. Instead, overlording Afghanistan, we have the politically ambitious David Petraeus, already testing 2012 presidential waters, and Stanley McChrystal who is said to have covered up the truth about football star Pat Tillman's friendly-fire death.

Soldiers humping their 100-pounds-plus packs up and down Afghanistan's rugged mountain ranges have the additional burden of carrying on their backs the fanaticism and careerism of their politicized generals who may never get around to reading the home-town obituaries of the men and women they put in harm's way.The GIs are doing the best they can, in a "job" the politicians command them... more

Monkey_Films
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1 year ago
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Alex Chilton, R.I.P.

Alex Chilton, singer and guitarist of Big Star, and cult icon, has passed away at the... more

digitrash
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1 year ago
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'People's History' author Howard Zinn dies at 87

Howard Zinn, an author, teacher and political activist whose leftist "A People's History of the United States" became a million-selling alternative to mainstream texts and a favorite of such celebrities as Bruce Springsteen and Ben Affleck, died Wednesday. He was 87.

Zinn died of a heart attack in Santa Monica, Calif., daughter Myla Kabat-Zinn said. The historian was a resident of Auburndale, Mass.

Published in 1980 with little promotion and a first printing of 5,000, "A People's History" was — fittingly — a people's best-seller, attracting a wide audience through word of mouth and reaching 1 million sales in 2003. Although Zinn was writing for a general readership, his book was taught in high schools and colleges throughout the country, and numerous companion editions were published, including "Voices of a People's History," a volume for young people and a graphic novel

At a time when few politicians dared even call themselves liberal, "A People's History" told an openly left-wing story. Zinn charged Christopher Columbus and other explorers with genocide, picked apart presidents from Andrew Jackson to Franklin D. Roosevelt and celebrated workers, feminists and war resisters.

He attended New York University and Columbia University, where he received a doctorate in history. In 1956, he was offered the chairmanship of the history and social sciences department at Spelman College, an all-black women's school in then-segregated Atlanta.

During the civil rights movement, Zinn encouraged his students to request books from the segregated public libraries and helped coordinate sit-ins at downtown cafeterias. Zinn also published several articles, including a then-rare attack on the Kennedy administration for being too slow to protect blacks.

He was loved by students — among them a young Alice Walker, who later wrote "The Color Purple" — but not by administrators. In 1963, Spelman fired him for "insubordination." (Zinn was a critic of the school's non-participation in the civil rights movement.) His years at Boston University were marked by opposition to the Vietnam War and by feuds with the school's president, John Silber.

Zinn retired in 1988, spending his last day of class on the picket line with students in support of an on-campus nurses' strike. Over the years, he continued to lecture at schools and to appear at rallies and on picket lines.

Besides "A People's History," Zinn wrote several books, including "The Southern Mystique," "LaGuardia in Congress" and the memoir, "You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train," the title of a 2004 documentary about Zinn that Damon narrated. He also wrote three plays.

One of Zinn's last public writings was a brief essay, published last week in The Nation, about the first year of the Obama administration.

"I've been searching hard for a highlight," he wrote, adding that he wasn't disappointed because he never expected a lot from Obama.

"I think people are dazzled by Obama's rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president — which means, in our time, a dangerous president — unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction."

Zinn's longtime wife and collaborator, Roslyn, died in 2008. They had two children, Myla and Jeff.Howard Zinn, an author, teacher and political activist whose leftist "A... more

JanforGore
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2 years ago
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Eric Rohmer: 1920-2010

Eric Rohmer, the French critic and filmmaker who was one of the founding figures of... more

jlichman
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2 years ago
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Activist who denounced Mexico border killings dies

Esther Chavez, a women's rights activist who first drew attention to the brutal... more

TravG73
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2 years ago
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The Los Angeles Times' Notable Deaths of 2009

"When another year winds down, we look back at what moved us, and death always... more

EthicalVegan
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2 years ago
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Qian Xuesen dies at 98; rocket scientist helped establish Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Deported in 1955 on suspicion of being a Communist, the aeronautical engineer educated... more

knews121
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2 years ago
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August Coppola dies at 75; professor was father of Nicolas Cage and brother of Francis Ford Coppola

The educator taught comparative literature at Cal State Long Beach and cinema at San... more

knews121
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2 years ago
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Beloved comedian and Detroit television legend Soupy Sales dead at 83 - video interview

I was lucky enough to have worked with and for Soupy. Please read my story and see a... more

comedygary
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2 years ago
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Slapstick Comic Soupy Sales Dies At 83

The comedian acquired a cult-like following among adults with a show ostensibly meant... more

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2 years ago
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2 comments

Film, TV producer Daniel Melnick dies at 77

LOS ANGELES — Daniel Melnick, the producer who brought gutsy, smart movies like... more

knews121
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2 years ago
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Jim Carroll- RIP

another talent from the "blank generation" gone.

cyman01
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2 years ago
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