I'm sorry to learn that, but he was active until the end. He was a very interesting fellow, in addition to his commitment to freedom for Palestinians.

Tue, 2014-08-26 14:15

#206

DaveW

Unionist wrote:

DaveW wrote:

Rod was profiled on CBC Ideas just 3 weeks ago; anyone have podcast?

Great loss.

Here was the episode.

And here's the downloadable podcast (mp3).

from an account of Rod's memorial/wake Sunday :

Montreal, Aug. 25

Greetings to all this sunny Monday. .... what a great and moving event the Rod Macdonald
memorial was on Sunday in Westmount, drawing a broad crowd from all
the family, high school, summer camp and academic/legal spheres of Rod's life.
...
No one has ever had a memorial service before -- it
is safe to bet -- at which the entire assembly, including the Governor
General of Canada, stood to sing a Bob Dylan lament (Don't Think Twice,
It's All Right). ....

Tue, 2014-08-26 14:16

#207

DaveW

Unionist wrote:

DaveW wrote:

Rod Macdonald was profiled on CBC Ideas just 3 weeks ago; anyone have podcast?

Great loss.

Here was the episode.

And here's the downloadable podcast (mp3).

from an account of Rod's memorial/wake Sunday :

Montreal, Aug. 25

Mon, 2014-09-22 02:50

#208

onlinediscountanvils

[url=http://www.theprovince.com/news/Vancouver+LGBTQ+activist+Deva+dead/10223... Deva, LGBTQ and anti-censorship activist, 65[/url]

Mon, 2014-09-22 14:33

#209

Unionist

Very sad to learn about Jim Deva, a great champion of human rights.

Fri, 2014-10-03 22:27

#210

6079_Smith_W

Small business, real cheese. Made in single batches. And they are the best.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2012/05/03/cheezies_inventor_dies_in_...

Sat, 2014-10-04 13:19

#211

lagatta

Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier has died of a heart attack at 63, but I doubt too many babblers, or Haitians, are mourning him.

Sat, 2014-10-04 13:34

#212

Unionist

"Heart" attack? I challenge the diagnosis.

Sat, 2014-10-04 15:09

#213

Ken Burch

self-delete. Dupe post.

Sat, 2014-10-04 18:01

#214

lagatta

Papa Doc, Baby Doc and Zombie Doc do form a rather twisted Trinity, non?

Thu, 2014-10-09 14:21

#215

onlinediscountanvils

[url=http://damomac.wordpress.com/2014/10/09/loukanikos-greeces-famous-riot-d..., dog, riot dog, 10[/url]

[url=http://roarmag.org/2014/10/loukanikos-riot-dog-dies/]A tribute to Loukanikos, the legendary Greek riot dog[/url]

Thu, 2014-10-09 18:20

#216

oldgoat

I have always thought, and I know most here will agree, that if you ever lose your moral compass follow your dog. A life well lived.

Thu, 2014-10-09 18:31

#217

ikosmos

A dog knows what side of the fence s/he's on. This is already a deeper level of social consciousness than that of a huge chunk of the population. Which just goes to show ... something.

Mon, 2014-11-17 13:34

#218

onlinediscountanvils

[url=http://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/books/2014/11/17/transgender-... Pioneer and Stone Butch Blues Author Leslie Feinberg Has Died[/url]

Leslie Feinberg, who identified as an anti-racist white, working-class, secular Jewish, transgender, lesbian, female, revolutionary communist, died on November 15. She succumbed to complications from multiple tick-borne co-infections, including Lyme disease, babeisiosis, and protomyxzoa rheumatica, after decades of illness.

She died at home in Syracuse, NY, with her partner and spouse of 22 years, Minnie Bruce Pratt, at her side. Her last words were: "Remember me as a revolutionary communist."

Mon, 2014-12-22 13:46

#219

josh

Joe Cocker.

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-30582761

Mon, 2014-12-22 14:03

#220

Unionist

Just came here to post the same, Josh. Rest in peace, Joe!

Mon, 2014-12-22 14:29

#221

swallow

[url=http://www.kairoscanada.org/home-page-feature-1/remembering-john-mihevc/... Mihevc, longtime activist with the Inter Church Coalition on Africa and other groups[/url]

Sun, 2015-02-22 21:36

#222

onlinediscountanvils

[url=http://bigstory.ap.org/article/573c07c56aa644b1b2c1ec279cf49e39/noted-do... Sinofsky, documentary filmmaker, 58[/url]

Sinofsky and Berlinger drew praise and attention for their "Paradise Lost" trilogy, a series of films about the case of three teenage boys convicted in 1994 of killing three boys in West Memphis, Arkansas. The films, released in 1996, 2004 and 2011, raised questions about evidence used to convict the teens, who became known as the West Memphis Three.

The teens each spent 18 years in prison, but in 2011 they were allowed to enter a plea in which they asserted their innocence while acknowledging there was enough evidence to possibly convict them. The initial film in the trilogy, "Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills," won an Emmy, while the final film, "Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory" was nominated for an Academy Award.

Thu, 2015-03-12 12:20

#223

Timebandit Timebandit's picture

Sir Terry Pratchett, novelist. He wrote something like 70 books, 40 or so of them in the Discworld series. Suffering from a form of Alzheimer's disease, he was only 66, but continued writing until last summer. He also made a documentary about physician-assisted suicide and the right to die.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/terry-pratchett-best-selling-fantas...

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/12/terry-pratchett-author...

Thu, 2015-03-12 12:40

#224

Slumberjack

onlinediscountanvils wrote:

[url=http://bigstory.ap.org/article/573c07c56aa644b1b2c1ec279cf49e39/noted-do... Sinofsky, documentary filmmaker, 58[/url]

Sinofsky and Berlinger drew praise and attention for their "Paradise Lost" trilogy, a series of films about the case of three teenage boys convicted in 1994 of killing three boys in West Memphis, Arkansas. The films, released in 1996, 2004 and 2011, raised questions about evidence used to convict the teens, who became known as the West Memphis Three.

The teens each spent 18 years in prison, but in 2011 they were allowed to enter a plea in which they asserted their innocence while acknowledging there was enough evidence to possibly convict them. The initial film in the trilogy, "Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills," won an Emmy, while the final film, "Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory" was nominated for an Academy Award.

Just seeing the bad news now. He was also involved with producing Metallica's Some Kind of Monster documentary.

Sat, 2015-03-14 12:31

#225

bekayne

Daevid Allen 1938-2015

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/mar/13/daevid-allen

http://www.noise11.com/news/r-i-p-daevid-allen-of-soft-machine-and-gong-...

Fri, 2015-03-20 21:13

#226

NDPP

RIP Danny Schechter, a good journalist...

Sat, 2015-03-21 22:53

#227

laine lowe laine lowe's picture

A good link about Schechter from Democracy Now!

http://www.democracynow.org/2015/3/20/remembering_danny_schechter_the_ne...

Mon, 2015-04-13 11:33

#228

sherpa-finn

Sad day in the literary world: RIP Guenther Grass and Eduardo Galeano.

Mon, 2015-04-13 13:24

#229

Unionist

I was heading here to post about Galeano - hadn't heard about Grass. We should honour their memories and contributions by (re)reading their works. Sad day indeed.

Mon, 2015-04-13 15:28

#230

lagatta

Also French radical editor, bookseller and writer François Maspero, who fought the good fight from Algeria (supporting the FLN) on. Such a bad day for the literary left.

Mon, 2015-04-13 19:53

#231

Left Turn

[url=http://newpol.org/content/eduardo-galeano-%E2%80%93-%C2%A1presente]Eduardo Galeano – ¡Presente![/url]

Quote:
Eduardo Galeano, the world-renowned leftist Uruguayan journalist and writer made famous with the publication in 1971 of his book The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, died today at the age of 74 in Montevideo, Uruguay, where he lived. Long admired as a journalist, with his three-volume Memory of Fire in 1982, Galeano also became known as a writer of non-fiction prose who might be compared to writers of fiction such as Gabriel García Márquez, author of the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude or Isabel Allende who wrote House of the Spirits. Like their novels, his trilogy captures the real spirit of Latin America’s magical history.

Born Eduardo Germán María Hughes Galeano in Montevideo on September 3, 1940, Galeano began his career as a journalist in the early 1960s working as a correspondent for Sol and then as an editor for Marcha, which published such writers as Mario Vargas Llosa and Mario Benedetti. When a rightwing military coup took power in Uruguay in 1973, Galeano was jailed and subsequently went into exile, first in Argentina, where he edited Crisis, and then in Spain where he wrote his trilogy Memory of Fire (Genesis, Faces and Masks, and Century of the Wind). Memory of Fire mixed history and journalism in vignettes and biographical sketches written in a creative prose style that reminded American readers of John Dos Passos’ 1930s classic U.SA. triology (The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money).

Open Veins of Latin America was a detailed, systematic, and sustained attack on European and U.S. imperialism in Latin America over five centuries, showing how first Spanish conquistadores, then English bankers and merchants, and finally U.S. corporations had dominated Latin America’s economy and pillaged the country’s natural resources while exploiting its enforced cheap labor. The book became a classic of the Latin American left and of the left around the world. In a famous gesture, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez gave a copy of Open Veins to U.S. President Barack Obama at the opening of the Fifth Summit of the Americas held in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tabago, in April of 2009.

In 1985 Galeano returned from exile to Uruguay, establishing himself in the capital, Montevideo.

Galeano created a stir in March of last year with his comment made at a book fair in Brazil where he was being honored on the occasion of the forty-third anniversary of the publication of Open Veins. Asked what he thought of his book today, he said, “I wouldn’t be capable of reading this book again; I’d keel over. For me, this prose of the traditional left is extremely leaden, and my physique can’t tolerate it.” Conservatives pounced on his remark as a repudiation of his leftist politics, when in reality it was the judgement of a mature author looking back at a book written in his youth in an altogether different period.

Galeano remained a leftist until his death. He supported the campaign of Tabaré Vázquez and the leftist Broad Front in the 2004 election and in 2005 he became a member of the board of TeleSur, the pan-American television network based in Caracas, Venezuela. For fifty years, Galeano’s voice spoke truth to power and inspired the oppressed.

Tue, 2015-04-14 23:08

#232

lagatta

Galeano did make the news - and a lot of comments from the hosts of programs - on Radio-Canada.

Tue, 2015-04-14 23:13

#233

ikosmos

lagatta wrote:
Galeano did make the news - and a lot of comments from the hosts of programs - on Radio-Canada.

Yes, I see. A link is here. Mort d'Eduardo Galeano : une forte voix latine s'éteint

The English language media in this country [always?] succeeds in being more reactionary than their Francophone counterparts.

Tue, 2015-04-14 23:17

#234

ikosmos

sherpa-finn wrote:
Sad day in the literary world: RIP Guenther Grass and Eduardo Galeano.

The CBC website, and TV News, had an obituary about Grass. Nothing about Eduardo Galeano.

This is what obsequious corporate media does all the time. And Galeano stuck up for the nobodies, the little guy, those always outnumbered and erased by official story tellers.

But this is a public broadcaster. What a disgrace.

Democracy Now! - Remembering Eduardo Galeano: Champion of Social Justice & Chronicler of Latin America’s Open Veins

Eduardo Hughes Galeano wrote:
“The Nobodies

Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream of escaping
poverty: that one magical day good luck will suddenly rain down on
them---will rain down in buckets. But good luck doesn't rain down
yesterday, today, tomorrow, or ever. Good luck doesn't even fall in a
fine drizzle, no matter how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their
left hand is tickling, or if they begin the new day with their right
foot, or start the new year with a change of brooms.

The nobodies: nobody's children, owners of nothing. The nobodies: the
no ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits, dying through life,
screwed every which way.

Who are not, but could be.
Who don't speak languages, but dialects.
Who don't have religions, but superstitions.
Who don't create art, but handicrafts.
Who don't have culture, but folklore.
Who are not human beings, but human resources.
Who do not have faces, but arms.
Who do not have names, but numbers.
Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the police
blotter of the local paper.
The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them.”

Long live the nobodies. Who, one day, will become everything. And long live their chronicler and protagonist, Eduardo Galeano. And may the small, shitty little minds at the CBC be long forgotten, like dirt scraped off the bottom of a shoe, while Galeano's memory lives through the ages.

ETA: One award that Galeano received that I was unaware of was the First Distinguished Citizen of the region by the countries of Mercosur. To be recognized, not only by your country/wo/men but by a number of neighbouring countries as well, is this not something remarkable and special?

Tue, 2015-04-14 23:23

#235

6079_Smith_W

http://www.cbc.ca/books/2015/04/eduardo-galeano-on-writers-company.html

Tue, 2015-04-14 23:55

#236

ikosmos

That's a nice try Smith, but promoting an old E Wachtel interview on the Writers and Company site from 3 years ago isn't NEWS. They've done as little as they can.

I'm still honouring nobodies and scraping the shit off my shoes.

Wed, 2015-04-15 00:05

#237

6079_Smith_W

You seem a bit more preoccupied with axe grinding, actually. Are we talking about writers or the CBC?

Wed, 2015-04-15 00:09

#238

ikosmos

Amy Goodman wrote:
In 2013, Nermeen Shaikh and I spoke to Eduardo Galeano in our New York studio when his book, Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History, had first been published. Before we go to a clip of that interview, Juan, the significance of Eduardo Galeano?

"JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, this is a huge loss, not only for Latin America, but for those who are fighting for social justice and for truth around the world. And, you know, it’s a remarkable reflection, the number of world leaders who made statements yesterday after learning of Galeano’s death. Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, said Galeano’s death was a "big loss," particularly for those fighting for a "Latin America that is more inclusive, just and united." And she went on to say, "May his work and example of struggle stay with us and inspire us each day to build a better future for Latin America." You had Evo Morales, the president of [Bolivia], call Galeano a "maestro of the liberation of the people." I’m sorry, Bolivia. And also, Greece’s president, Alexis Tsipras, noted that the death of Galeano affected "every citizen of Europe." So, there’s been an enormous outpouring of condolences and remembrances of the legacy of Galeano."

Eduardo Galeano was a world-historic figure about whom I see comments from neither the Master in Washington nor his poodle in Ottawa. Nice doggy.

Wed, 2015-04-15 00:23

#239

sherpa-finn

Just a local footnote to the bigger story: a number of Galeano's books were translated into English by Ottawa-based activist and solidarity worker Mark Fried, who was Oxfam's policy and advocacy officer for many years. It was only a couple of years back they held a book launch here with Galeano in attendance. There was quite the turnout.

Wed, 2015-04-15 03:07

#240

ikosmos

sherpa-finn wrote:
Just a local footnote ... There was quite the turnout.

Any official representation from the GoC?

Wed, 2015-04-15 03:17

#241

bekayne

ikosmos wrote:

Eduardo Galeano was a world-historic figure about whom I see comments from neither the Master in Washington nor his poodle in Ottawa. Nice doggy.

So what did Putin say about him?

Wed, 2015-04-15 08:33

#242

6079_Smith_W

Guenter Grass warned of sleepwalking into war in his last interview:

http://news.yahoo.com/gunter-grass-warned-sleepwalking-world-war-final-i...

And a very good article about Grass's own campaign about Germany's Nazi past, while hiding his own brief time in the Waffen SS as a 16 year old.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2007/aug/16/the-road-from-danzig/

Wed, 2015-04-15 11:58

#243

ikosmos

ha ha. Good luck heaping sh*t on Grass and Galeano. What a fu*king loser. The Putin non sequitur is an especially nice touch.

Wed, 2015-04-15 11:59

#244

ikosmos

duplicate post.

Wed, 2015-04-15 14:51

#245

lagatta

More on Galeano from Ricochet: https://ricochet.media/en/402/a-thank-you-note-to-eduardo-galeano

Especially the prose poem at the end. I'd never read an English translation of that one, and whoever did it has saved me the trouble

https://textosparalaindignacion.wordpress.com/2011/06/10/el-derecho-de-s... En castellano

Wed, 2015-04-15 16:02

#246

6079_Smith_W

ikosmos wrote:

ha ha. Good luck heaping sh*t on Grass and Galeano. What a fu*king loser.

Who's heaping shit on Grass and Galeano? That second one was a great article about the difficult legacy of that part of the world, and wasn't at all insulting to Grass in my opinion. If there is some difficulty in his revealing his own story (and it is a fair question), he has more than made up for it with his literary and political work.

And you DON'T think the west should have a better understanding of Russia? That was one of his main points.

For that matter, who's the loser. and why do you have a problem saying fuck?

Tue, 2015-04-28 23:44

#247

onlinediscountanvils

I didn't know Camilo, but I have friends who did, and I thought it was worth sharing this moving tribute.

[url=http://www.marxist.ca/events2/1018-the-death-of-comrade-camilo-cahis.htm... Death of Comrade Camilo Cahis[/url]

Wed, 2015-04-29 06:36

#248

lagatta

I'm very sad to read this. I never knew this comrade, though I have met members of his tendency (who attended QS meetings).

This reminds me of the death of environmental activist Tooker Gomberg several years ago.