Tag: Obituary

Say Good-Bye To Leonard Cohen

On the weekends I try to post on subjects other than what is in the news….and this Sunday some sad news….the songwriter Leonard Cohen has died….

Did you know that one of his signature songs was not that popular originally?

Don’t be surprised if you hear Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah dominating airwaves today as a tribute to the man described by some as the best songwriter who ever lived. But there’s quite the story behind the song covered by more than 300 artists, including Rufus Wainwright, Willie Nelson, Justin Timberlake, Neil Diamond, and Bob Dylan. Part of an album released in the US by an independent label in 1986—Sony “didn’t think it was good enough,” Cohen later said—it took more than a decade before it became famous, USA Today reports. Jeff Buckley, who first heard John Cale’s cover on a 1991 Cohen tribute album, recorded his own version in 1994. It was that version that finally became popular when Buckley died in 1997.

The creation of the song is also fascinating. Cohen reportedly wrote some 80 verses for Hallelujah—which took five years to complete—though the finished version contained only five, reports the Washington Post. He later recalled sitting in a New York hotel room in his underwear while “banging my head on the floor and saying, ‘I can’t finish this song.”” Today, it’s considered “pop music’s closest thing to a sacred text,” according to Maclean’s magazine. In his 2012 book on the song, Alan Light called it “an open-ended meditation on love and faith” that’s both “joyous and despondent, a celebration and a lament.” Of course, it’s not the only Cohen song worth listening to. Time points out five others, including one released this year.

In honor of his music and the sadness of his passing……I ask you to celebrate his music with me…..26 fabulous songs…..

Good bye old friend….you will be missed….Rest in Peace

Leonard Cohen–R.I.P

great poetic voice has been silenced…..

Sad night in the music world: Leonard Cohen has died at age 82, according to an announcement on his Facebook page. “We have lost one of music’s most revered and prolific visionaries,” it reads. A tribute at Rolling Stone agrees with that sentiment, saying that only Bob Dylan has had a greater influence among the classic songwriters to emerge from the 1960s and ’70s: “Cohen’s haunting bass voice, nylon-stringed guitar patterns, Greek-chorus backing vocals shaped evocative songs that dealt with love and hate, sex and spirituality, war and peace, ecstasy and depression.” One of his most covered songs is “Hallelujah.” No details about the cause of death were released.

 

Source: Like Falling Ashes: Leonard Cohen Dies | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community

Tom Hayden—R.I.P.

Back in the days of my youth there were special people if you were into the protest scene…..Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Tom Hayden…..among others.

It all began with the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and their Huron Statement and the movement ballooned from there…..into a nationwide protest against war….where have all the leaders gone?

They were the backbone of the anti-war activism…..we took our cue from their examples……slowly our “heroes” from those days are dying off and there seems to be NO one capable of taking their place as the leaders of a movement……

Sadly Tom Hayden has passed on….he will be missed…..

Famed ’60s anti-war activist Tom Hayden, whose name became forever linked with the celebrated Chicago 7 trial, Vietnam War protests, and ex-wife actress Jane Fonda, has died. He was 76. He died on Sunday after a long illness, said his wife, actress Barbara Williams, noting that he suffered a stroke in 2015. Hayden, once denounced as a traitor by his detractors, overcame his past and won election to the California Assembly and Senate, where he served for almost two decades as a progressive force on such issues as the environment and education. He was the only one of the radical Chicago 7 defendants to win such distinction in the mainstream political world, the AP reports.

In 1960, while a student at the University of Michigan, Hayden was involved in the formation of Students for a Democratic Society, then dedicated to desegregating the South. In 1968, he helped organize anti-war demonstrations during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago that turned violent and resulted in the notorious and circus-like Chicago 7 trial. Hayden and three others were convicted of crossing state lines to incite riot. The convictions were later overturned, and an official report deemed the violence “a police riot.” “Rarely, if ever, in American history has a generation begun with higher ideals and experienced greater trauma than those who lived fully the short time from 1960 to 1968,” he wrote in the essay “Streets of Chicago.” Read more about Hayden, who was married to Fonda for 17 years, here.

Good-bye old friend….Rest In Peace.

Muhammad Ali–R.I.P.

Sorry to start my weekend post with the sad news of the death of Mohammad Ali….the world’s greatest boxer.

He was fast of fist and foot—lip, too—a heavyweight champion who promised to shock the world and did. He floated. He stung. Mostly he thrilled, even after the punches had taken their toll and his voice barely rose above a whisper. He was The Greatest. Muhammad Ali died Friday at age 74, according to a statement from the family. He was hospitalized in the Phoenix area with respiratory problems earlier this week, and his children had flown in from around the country. A funeral will be held Wednesday in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. The city plans a memorial service Saturday, the AP reports.

“It’s a sad day for life, man. I loved Muhammad Ali, he was my friend. Ali will never die,” Don King, who promoted some of Ali’s biggest fights, told the AP. “Like Martin Luther King his spirit will live on, he stood for the world.” With a wit as sharp as the punches he used to “whup” opponents, Ali dominated sports for two decades before time and Parkinson’s Syndrome, triggered by thousands of blows to the head, ravaged his magnificent body, muted his majestic voice, and ended his storied career in 1981. “He was the greatest fighter of all time but his boxing career is secondary to his contribution to the world,” promoter Bob Arum told the AP. “He’s the most transforming figure of my time certainly. He did more to change race relations and the views of people than even Martin Luther King.” Click for much more on Ali’s legacy.

A sad day for the US……

May he Rest In Peace…..Good-bye.

Daniel Berrigan–R.I.P.

Who?  That will be the reaction from the society we have today…..a voice from a turbulent time……

As an aging “hippie” there are a few people that stand out in my past…..Abby Hoffman, Daniel Ellsberg, Joan Baez (not one of my faves) and Daniel Berrigan……..as an staunch anti-war protesters these people are in the Hall of Heroes…..voices from the “Movement”……

Over the weekend a “Hero” has passed away…..Daniel Berrigan….

His defiant protests helped shape Americans’ opposition to the Vietnam War—and they landed the Rev. Daniel Berrigan behind bars. The Roman Catholic priest, writer, and poet, who became a household name in the US in the 1960s after being imprisoned for burning draft files in a protest against the war, died Saturday. He was 94. Berrigan died “peacefully” after a “long illness” at Murray-Weigel Hall, a Jesuit health care community in New York City, according to a spokesman for the Jesuits USA Northeast Province. Berrigan and his younger brother, the Rev. Philip Berrigan, entered a draft board in Catonsville, Maryland, on May 17, 1968, with seven other activists and removed records of young men about to be shipped off to Vietnam. The group took the files outside and burned them in garbage cans.

The “Catonsville Nine” were convicted on federal charges accusing them of destroying US property and interfering with the Selective Service Act of 1967. All were sentenced on Nov. 9, 1968, to prison terms ranging from two to 3.5 years. After the case had been unsuccessfully appealed, the Berrigan brothers and three of their co-defendants went underground. Philip Berrigan turned himself in to authorities in April 1969 at a Manhattan church. Four months later, the FBI arrested Daniel Berrigan at the Rhode Island home of theologian William Stringfellow. Berrigan said in an interview that he became a fugitive to draw more attention to the anti-war movement. He served about two years at the federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut. When asked in 2009 whether he had any regrets, Berrigan replied: “I could have done sooner the things I did, like Catonsville.”

Source: Father Daniel Berrigan, S.J. May 9, 1921 to April 30, 2016 – LA Progressive

To realize his importance you had to be there……some of us will never forget his contribution…..or his voice…….a person that will stand by their convictions is an odd thing these days…..

Source: The Life and Death of Daniel Berrigan | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community

He was a friend and his voice will be missed…..

Rest In Peace…..my friend.

Master Bullsh*ter Is Dead

Do you remember the days prior to our ill informed invasion of Iraq in 2003?  One name should stick in your head…Chalabi.

This person spread more misinformation than WND has ever thought about spreading…….

Ahmad Chalabi was once a US darling who was supposed to lead Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. But with his death of a heart attack Tuesday at the age of 71, Chalabi’s legacy is a much different one: He’s now known mostly as the Iraqi figure who used faulty information about weapons of mass destruction to persuade the US to topple Saddam, reports the Wall Street Journal. It’s unclear whether Chalabi himself knew the information was bogus. Here’s how the New York Times puts it: “As it became clear that the evidence he promoted as proving that Mr. Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction was, if not fabricated, then manipulated and exaggerated, the Bush administration distanced itself from him.”

The split became even more pronounced a year after the invasion when US forces invaded his home looking to prove accusations that he was spying for Iran. The only charges that resulted, however, involved forged bank notes, reports the Guardian. “There are some people who will remember him in a good way, and there are others, to be honest, do not like and did not want his politics,” former prime minister Ayad Allawi tells Reuters. “But regardless, Iraq lost a man who had an important contribution, important commitments towards the nation and he tried to offer what he could to this country.” Chalabi was a member of parliament at the time of his death.

Reports of his death makes him seem like some sort of hero to the world…..which is total crap!

Years before the invasion he was tried in absentia in Jordan for bank fraud among other crimes and sentenced….so not only was he a liar but a crook and felon…..and on the lamb from the Jordanian authorities…..

The media seems to be trying to pad his contribution to the “new” Iraq…..well goody….his lies did as much to destroy the old Iraq as the planes and tanks of the US and her allies……

Sorry but I refuse to be one of those idiots that well say nothing bad about the dead……a fucking crook and liar is all he will ever be….at least in my book.

Obit: Kalashnikov

Not something that I care to celebrate…..but as a person who has faced and at times used an AK-47 I can say that it was a remarkable weapon….neither sand or mud or water could stop this weapon from firing…..it was a work of genius.

The inventor of this famed weapon has died at age 94…..

(Newser) – A man whose last name is all but certain to be remembered long after he has been forgotten has died at age 94. Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the AK-47 assault rifle, was hospitalized in mid-November, after weathering heart and intestinal problems; a cause of death will be released post-autopsy. In its obit, RT uses the header “Patriot, genius, villain?” Kalashnikov has long been revered as a hero in Russia (indeed, Putin has expressed “deep condolences,” and a public funeral will be organized), a self-made man who didn’t finish high school but manage to create the weapon known by his name in his twenties—one that has become the weapon of choice for terrorists and child soldiers.

Though initially pooh-poohed by the US as being inaccurate and poorly made, its ability to hold up in jungle and desert conditions became apparent in 1960s Vietnam, where Americans’ M-16s were no match for the Vietcong’s AK-47s, reports the New York Times. RT reports that he defended the rifle as having been invented “for the protection of the Motherland. I have no regrets and bear no responsibility for how politicians have used it.” Still, on one occasion he expressed sadness at the knowledge that terrorists used his weapon. “I would prefer to have invented a machine that people could use and that would help farmers with their work—for example a lawnmower.” Which, in fact, he did create … only much, much less famously.

May he find peace….more so than his weapon ever created.