Obituaries

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Just a reminder on how dangerous COVID-19 is. It is doing great harm to the Iranian elites.

(Nasty fellow, and I would never miss him).


Sayyid Hassan Aghaee Firouzabadi (Persian: حسن فيروزآبادی‎; 3 February 1951 – 3 September 2021) was an Iranian ophthalmologist, military officer and a member of the Expediency Discernment Council.[5]
He served as the Chief-of-Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces –the most senior military authority in Iran– from 1989 to 2016.[6] After that, he was a senior military advisor to the Supreme Leader of Iran.[7]

Firouzabadi was born in the town of Malabad, in Mashhad, Iran to religious parents who came from Yazd.[8] He studied at the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, graduating in 1980, one year after the Iranian Revolution.[9] He then took part in the Iran–Iraq War and rose in prominence. He was in charge of industrial war engineering and the committee for the construction of surface-to-surface missiles. After the end of the war on October 25, 1989, Ali Khamenei appointed him head of the General Staff.[9]

Firouzabadi expressed anti-American sentiment, rejecting a letter sent to him by the US Congress and said that "the scourge of Americans were a 

Firouzabadi was a supporter of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's ideology and called on the Higher National Defense University to add to his ideology.[12] Defending the continuation of Ahmadinejad's presidency, he also said in a speech that provoked criticism from most of the presidential candidates: Now some believe that the distance that groups of politicians have created between the government and the people has been successful and has been able to attract the attention of the people; Therefore, in this presidential election, they can nominate a new presidential candidate and end the issue of Ahmadinejad; But this does not happen, they make mistakes. He further criticized former president Mohammad Khatami.[13] However, towards the end of Ahmadinejad's presidency, he came critical of his positions.[14][15]

Firouzabadi had no military experience before he was appointed the chief-of-staff, neither in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) nor the Islamic Republic of Iran Army (Artesh), and goes by the title Basiji.[16] On 17 April 1995, the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei granted him the rank of major general, the highest military rank practically available in Iran.[17] According to a report published by The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, he was credited with "husbanding the IRGC from a war-ravaged organization to a hybrid conventional-asymmetric military force overshadowing the still-lagging Artesh.[18] He also oversaw a growing military industry that produced a wide range of products amid international sanctions, from ammunition to space rockets".[6]

Following the death of Kavous Seyed-Emami in custody in 2018, Firouzabadi claimed that “Several years ago, some individuals came to Iran... In their possessions were a variety of reptile desert species like lizards, chameleons... We found out that their skin attracts atomic waves and that they were nuclear spies who wanted to find out where inside the Islamic Republic of Iran we have uranium mines and where we are engaged in atomic activities”. Several scientists dismissed his remarks as absurd.[19][20]
In October 2011, he was banned from entering the European Union for alleged violation of human rights.[21]

Firouzabadi died on 3 September 2021 at the age of 70, from COVID-19, amid the COVID-19 pandemic in Iran.[22]

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Willard Scott, long-time weather forecaster on NBC's Today Show.... and the original Ronald McDonald.

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Adlai Ewing Stevenson III (October 10, 1930 – September 6, 2021) was an American attorney and politician of the Democratic Party who represented Illinois in the United States Senate from 1970 until 1981. A member of the prominent Stevenson family, he also served as a member of the Illinois House of Representatives and Illinois Treasurer. He unsuccessfully ran for governor of Illinois in 1982 and 1986.

Adlai Stevenson III was born in Chicago, the son of Ellen Borden and two time Democratic Party presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson II.[1] He attended Milton Academy in Massachusetts, Harrow School in England, and Harvard College.[2] He received a law degree in 1957 from Harvard Law School.[3]

Stevenson was commissioned as a lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps in 1952, served in Korea and was discharged from active duty in 1954.[4] He continued to serve in the Marine Reserves and was discharged in 1961 as a captain.[4]

In 1957, Stevenson went to work as a clerk for a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court and worked there until 1958 when he joined the law firm of Mayer, Brown and Platt.[5]

In 1964, Stevenson was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives as an at-large representative due to reapportionment problems, serving from 1965 to 1967.[5][6] He then served as Illinois Treasurer (1967–1970).[7]
United States Senate[edit]

After U.S. Senator Everett Dirksen died in office in 1969 and Ralph Tyler Smith was appointed to the seat, Stevenson defeated Smith in a 1970 special election by a 58% to 42% margin to fill Dirksen's unexpired term.[8] Stevenson introduced legislation requiring an end to all foreign aid to South Vietnam by June 30, 1975.[9]
He authored the International Banking Act of 1978, the Stevenson-Wydler Technology Innovation Act of 1980 and its companion, the Bayh–Dole Act, to foster cooperative research, organize national laboratories for technology utilization and commercialization, and permit private sector interests in government-funded research.[10] He was the first chairman of the United States Senate Select Committee on Ethics charged with implementing a code of ethics he helped draft.[11] Stevenson was also chairman of a special Senate committee that reorganized the Senate and served on the United States Senate Democratic Policy Committee.[12] He also conducted the first in-depth congressional study of terrorism as chairman of the Subcommittee on the Collection and Production of Intelligence, leading to introduction of the Comprehensive Counter Terrorism Act of 1971.[12] He warned of "spectacular acts of disruption and destruction" and an amendment that proposed reducing assistance for Israel by $200 million.[13] His amendment received seven votes.[12]

Stevenson was re-elected to the seat in 1974; in 1980, he declined to stand for re-election.[4]
Stevenson was encouraged to run for president in 1976 by Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago.[14] He declined to run, but was one of the finalists for vice president at the Democratic Convention that year.[15] U.S. Senator Walter Mondale from Minnesota was nominated for the vice presidency.[15]

Stevenson ran for governor of Illinois in 1982 and 1986, losing both elections to James R. Thompson.[16] In 1982, the initial vote count showed Stevenson winning;[17] however, the final official count showed him losing by 0.14 percent.[18] Stevenson promptly petitioned the Illinois Supreme Court for a recount and presented evidence of widespread election irregularities, including evidence of a failed punch card system for tabulation of votes.[17] Three days before the gubernatorial inauguration, the court denied the recount by a one-vote margin, asserting that the Illinois recount statute was unconstitutional.[19]

In the 1986 statewide Democratic primaries, Democratic voters nominated allies of Lyndon LaRouche for lieutenant governor and secretary of state.[20] Stevenson objected to their platform and refused to appear on the same ticket.[20] Instead, he organized the Illinois Solidarity Party to provide an alternate slate for governor, lieutenant governor, and secretary of state, which was endorsed by Democratic Party of Illinois.[21] Persuading Democrats to vote for most of the Democratic ticket as well as the Solidarity candidates for governor, lieutenant governor, and secretary of state was an unconventional strategy; however, Stevenson and the candidate for lieutenant governor position, Mike Howlett, won 40% of the vote.[22]

After leaving the Senate, Stevenson was active in business and cultural relations with East Asia.[11] He was chairman of SC&M Investment Management Corporation,[23] and co-chairman of HuaMei Capital Company (the first Chinese-American investment bank).[24]

He also held many positions with non-profit organizations in this area.[11] He served as chairman of the Japan-America Society of Chicago, the Midwest U.S.-Japan Association, and the Midwest U.S.-China Association, and as president of the U.S. Committee of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC).[11] He was also co-chairman of the PECC's Financial Market Development Project, a member of the U.S.-Korea Wisemen Council, and sat on the board of directors of the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy.[12]
Stevenson was honored by the government of Japan with the Order of the Sacred Treasure with gold and silver star and was an Honorary Professor of Renmin University in China.[23] He was also inducted as a Laureate of the Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the State's highest honor) by the governor of Illinois in 1981 in the area of government.[25]

He was chairman of the international Adlai Stevenson Center on Democracy housed at the family home, a national historic landmark, near Libertyville, Illinois.[26] Stevenson authored The Black Book, which records American history and culture from within its politics as his family knew it over five generations, starting with his great great grandfather, Jesse W. Fell, who was Abraham Lincoln's patron and persuaded him to run for president.[27]
Stevenson was a member of the ReFormers Caucus of Issue One.[28]
On December 8, 2012 Stevenson endorsed the proposal for the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA), one of only six persons who served in the United States Congress ever to do so.[29]

Main article: Stevenson family

Stevenson's great-grandfather Adlai E. Stevenson I was Vice President of the United States (1893–1897) during Grover Cleveland's second term.[4] His grandfather Lewis Stevenson was Illinois secretary of state (1914–1917).[4] His father, Adlai Stevenson II, was governor of Illinois, Ambassador to the United Nations, and two-time Democratic presidential nominee.[30] Actor McLean Stevenson was his third cousin.[31]
Adlai Stevenson IV, Stevenson III's son, became a television reporter in Chicago in the 1980s.[11] Though he had said that he intended to become "Adlai the Last",[32] his son, Adlai Ewing Stevenson V, was born in the summer of 1994.[33]

Stevenson died from complications of Lewy body disease at his home in Chicago on September 6, 2021, at age 90.[11][4]

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Jean-Paul Charles Belmondo (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃pɔl ʃaʁl bɛlmɔ̃do]; 9 April 1933 – 6 September 2021) was a French actor, initially associated with the New Wave of the 1960s and a major French film star for several decades from the 1960s. His best known credits include Breathless (1960), That Man from Rio (1964), and Pierrot le Fou (1965). He was most notable for portraying police officers in action thriller films and became known for his unwillingness to appear in English-language films, despite being heavily courted by Hollywood.[1][2]


During his career, he was called the French counterpart of actors such as James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Humphrey Bogart.[3] Described as an icon and national treasure of France, Belmondo was seen as an influential actor of French cinema and an important figure in shaping European cinema.[4][3][5]

In 1989, Belmondo won the César Award for Best Actor for his performance in Itinéraire d'un enfant gâté. He was nominated for two BAFTA Awards throughout his career. In 2017, he received a lifetime achievement honor at the 42nd César Awards.[6]

Much more at Wikipedia.

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Michael Constantine of ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ dies at 94
By The Associated Press


Michael Constantine, an Emmy Award-winning character actor who reached worldwide fame playing the Windex bottle-toting father of the bride in the 2002 film “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” has died. He was 94.

Constantine died Aug. 31 at his home in Reading, Pennsylvania, of natural causes, his family said. The news was confirmed to The Associated Press on Thursday by his agent, Julia Buchwald.

Constantine made appearances on such TV shows as “My Favorite Martian,” “The Twilight Zone,” “Bonanza,” “Hogan’s Heroes,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “The Fugitive,” “Quincy, M.E.,” “The Love Boat,” “Remington Steele,” “MacGyver” and “Murder, She Wrote.” His big break came in the role of a principal on “Room 222,” an ABC comedy-drama set in a racially diverse Los Angeles high school, for which he won an Emmy for outstanding performance by an actor in a supporting role in 1970.

But he became best known for his work in the indie comedy “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” which centered on a middle-class Greek American woman who falls in love with an upper-middle-class White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Constantine reprised his role on the TV series “My Big Fat Greek Life” and in the 2016 film, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2.”


“My Big Fat Greek Wedding” became the highest-grossing romantic-comedy of all time with a $241.4 million domestic gross. It was based on writer-star Nia Vardalos’ one-woman play and produced by Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson for just $5 million.

“Michael was always the kindest person,” Wilson wrote on Instagram. “He had time for everyone, and when you were with him he made you feel like you were the only person in the room. He will be with us forever in our hearts and for future generations who will watch his work.”

Constantine initially auditioned for the part of Gus and told The Hollywood Reporter that he was anxious to read Vardalos’ script, leery about how it might represent the Greek American experience.

“I was anxious about someone writing some Greek thing. Was it going to be baloney or was it going to be something by somebody who really knows Greeks? So I read the script and I said, ‘Yes, this person obviously knows Greeks,’” he said.

Vardalos paid tribute to Constantine on Twitter, writing: “Acting with him came with a rush of love and fun. I will treasure this man who brought Gus to life. He gave us so much laughter and deserves a rest now.”

Constantine was the son of Greek immigrants. He started his career on stage and was on Broadway in the late 1950s and early ’60s in such shows as “Arturo Ui,” “The Miracle Worker” and “Inherit the Wind.”

He made his big-screen debut alongside Mickey Rooney in “The Last Mile” and had roles in “The Hustler,” “Don’t Drink the Water,” “Prancer,” “The Reivers,” “My Life” and “The Juror.”

Constantine was married and divorced twice. Survivors include his sisters, Patricia Gordon and Chris Dobbs.

https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-ent...bc7f290c55

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Inventor of the "Happy Meal" at "Chez Mac".

Yolanda Fernández de Cofiño (July 29, 1934 – September 6, 2021) was a Chilean-born Guatemalan businesswoman and philanthropist. She managed the McDonald's franchise in Guatemala from its start in 1974 and is recognized for having introduced a concept for a small childrens' menu to the company that would lead to the creation of the "Happy Meal".


In 1974, Fernández and her husband purchased the first McDonald's franchise for Guatemala. Fernández de Cofiño was involved in the business from the beginning. She focused on marketing the franchise as a family restaurant; to be better prepared, she attended Hamburger University in Oak Brook, Illinois and participated in seminars and conventions.[1] While working in the restaurant, she noticed that the menu portions offered were too large for children. This led her to introduce the "Ronald Menu", which included a small hamburger, a small portion French fries and an ice cream, in addition to a toy.[3] The idea was noticed by executives at the McDonald's corporate offices in the US, who advised her to present the menu in the World Franchisee Convention in 1977. McDonald's adopted the idea and implemented it worldwide in 1979, renaming it to "Happy Meal".[4] Fernández de Cofiño received a "Ronald Award" from the corporation.[1]


Another innovation that was implemented by Fernández de Cofiño locally and then adopted by McDonald's internationally was the concept of birthday celebrations in the restaurants.[4] She was granted a second "Ronald Award" for this idea.[1]

After her husband died, Fernández de Cofiño continued managing the restaurant chain; in 2006 she acquired the franchises for El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua, establishing "McDonald's Mesoamérica".[5][4] In 2018 she left the franchise management to her children, although she continued participating occasionally.[4]


More at Wikipedia.

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Good riddance!

Manuel Rubén Abimael Guzmán Reinoso (American Spanish: [maˈnwel ruˈβen aβimaˈel ɡusˈman rejˈnoso]; 3 December 1934 − 11 September 2021[1][2]), also known by his nom de guerre Chairman Gonzalo (Spanish: Presidente Gonzalo), was a Peruvian Maoist leader. He founded the Communist Party of Peru – Shining Path in 1969 and led a people’s war against the Peruvian government until his capture by authorities in September 1992. He was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment for terrorism and treason.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Guzmán was a professor of philosophy active in left-wing politics and strongly influenced by Marxism and Mao Zedong Thought. He developed an ideology of armed struggle stressing the empowerment of the indigenous people.[3] He went underground in the mid-1970s to become the leader of the Communist Party of Peru, which began what it called "the armed struggle" or "people's war" on 17 May 1980.

Guzmán was born in the village of Tambo near Mollendo, a port town in the province of Islay, in the region of Arequipa, about 1,000 km (620 mi) south of Lima. He was the illegitimate son of a well-off merchant, who had eight children by five different women. Guzmán's mother, Berenice Reynoso, died when he was only five years old.[4]


From 1939 to 1946, Guzmán lived with his mother's family. After 1947 he lived with his father and his father's wife in the city of Arequipa, where he studied at Colegio De La Salle, a private Catholic secondary school. At the age of 19, he became a student at the Social Studies department of San Agustín National University, in Arequipa. His classmates at the university later described him as shy, disciplined, obsessive, and ascetic. Increasingly attracted by Marxism, his political thinking was influenced by the book Seven Essays on the Interpretation of the Peruvian Reality of José Carlos Mariátegui, the founder of the Peruvian Communist Party.






At Arequipa, Guzmán completed bachelor's degrees in philosophy and law. His dissertations were entitled The Kantian Theory of Space and The Bourgeois Democratic State. In 1962, Guzmán was recruited as a professor of philosophy by the rector of San Cristóbal of Huamanga University in Ayacucho, a city in the central Peruvian Andes. The rector was Dr. Efraín Morote Best, an anthropologist who some believe later became the true intellectual leader of the "Shining Path movement." Encouraged by Morote, Guzmán studied Quechua, the language spoken by Peru's indigenous population, and became increasingly active in left-wing political circles. He attracted several like-minded young academics committed to bringing about revolution in Peru. Guzmán was arrested twice during the 1970s because of his participation in violent riots in the city of Arequipa against the government of presidents Velasco Alvarado and Belaunde Terry. He visited the People's Republic of China with his then-wife Augusta La Torre for the first time in 1965. After serving as the head of personnel for San Cristóbal of Huamanga University, Guzmán left the institution in the mid-1970s and went underground.



In the 1960s, the Peruvian Communist Party had splintered over ideological and personal disputes. Guzmán, who had taken a pro-Chinese rather than pro-Soviet line, emerged as the leader of the faction which came to be known as the "Shining Path" (Mariátegui wrote once: "Marxism–Leninism is the shining path of the future").[citation needed] Guzmán adopted the nom de guerre Presidente or Comrade Gonzalo and began advocating a peasant-led revolution on the Maoist model. His followers declared Guzmán, who cultivated anonymity, to be the "Fourth Sword of Communism" (after Marx, Lenin, and Mao). In his political declarations, Guzmán praised Mao's development of Lenin's thesis regarding "the role of imperialism" in propping up the "bourgeois capitalist system". He claimed that imperialism ultimately "creates disruption and is unsuccessful, and it will end up in ruins in the next 50 to 100 years". Guzmán applied this criticism not only to U.S. imperialism, but also Soviet imperialism, to what he termed as "social-imperialism".

In February 1964, he married Augusta la Torre, who was instrumental in founding Shining Path.[5][6] She died under unclear circumstances in 1988. It has been rumored that she was murdered by Elena Iparraguirre, a long-time lieutenant of Guzmán's and his lover, with his complicity.[citation needed] Both have refused to talk about La Torre's fate since their imprisonment. In the fall of 2006, while in prison, Guzmán proposed to Iparraguirre, who is also serving a life sentence in a separate prison. After fighting for the permission to marry with a hunger strike, the couple wed in late August 2010.[7]
Guzmán had always identified with atheism.[8] He agreed with Karl Marx about religion as the "opium of the people", and viewed it as a "social phenomena product of the exploitation and that will extinguish while exploitation finishes to be swept and a new society arise". However, he pleaded respect for religious diversity and claimed religion would not be an obstacle for the armed struggle.[9]


The Shining Path movement was at first largely confined to academic circles in Peruvian universities. In the late 1970s, however, the movement developed into a guerrilla group centered around Ayacucho. In May 1980, the group launched its war against the government of Peru by burning the ballot boxes in Chuschi, a village near Ayacucho, in an effort to disrupt the first democratic elections in the country since 1964. Shining Path eventually grew to control vast rural territories in central and southern Peru and achieved a presence even in the outskirts of Lima, where it staged numerous attacks. The purpose of Shining Path's campaign was to demoralize and undermine the government of Peru in order to create a situation conducive to a violent coup which would put its leaders in power. The Shining Path targeted not only the army and police, but also government employees at all levels, other leftist militants such as members of the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), workers who did not participate in the strikes organized by the group, peasants who cooperated with the government in any way (including by voting in democratic elections), and ordinary middle-class inhabitants of Peru's main cities. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission later estimated that the resulting conflict led to the deaths of some seventy thousand people, approximately half of them at the hands of the Shining Path and a third at the hands of the state.[10]



Initially Guzmán attempted to win over the support of citizens by punishing people they viewed as corrupt government officials and other unpopular leaders. However, Shining Path's increasingly brutal methods together with strictly imposed curfews, the prohibition of alcohol and an overall sense of insecurity and fear led to an increased popular reaction against the communist party[citation needed]. Eventually Guzmán's plan backfired as rural militia or "rondas" rallied support for the military against Shining Path. The very peasants Guzmán claimed to defend had turned against the Shining Path[citation needed]. This resulted in a cyclical state of violence in which Maoist guerillas embarked in ruthless punitive expeditions against Peruvian civilians living in the Andean region. In 1983, 69 people (including women and children) from the highland town of Lucanamarca were tortured and murdered by the Shining Path in what became known as the Lucanamarca massacre.[citation needed]



Guzmán's image as a dispassionate murderer became widespread after he moved against the city of Lima. After a series of bombings and selective assassinations the whole nation was shocked in 1992 when a car bomb exploded in one of Lima's busiest commercial districts on Tarata street, thus causing many casualties and enormous material losses. To this day, Guzmán denies responsibility[11] for the Tarata bombing by claiming that it was carried out without his knowledge.



The movement promoted the writings of Guzmán, called Gonzalo Thought, a new "theoretical understanding" that built upon Marxism, Leninism, and Maoism whereby he declared Maoism to be a "third and higher stage of Marxism," having defined Maoism as "people's war." In 1989, Guzmán declared that the Shining Path (which he referred to as the "Communist Party of Peru") had progressed from waging a people's war to waging a "war of movements." He further argued that this was a step towards achieving "strategic equilibrium" in the near future, based on Maoist theories of waging people's war. Guzmán claimed that such an equilibrium would manifest itself by ungovernability under the "old order." When that moment arrived, Guzmán believed that Shining Path would be ready to move on to its "strategic offensive".



Theodore Dalrymple, a conservative English journalist, has written that "the worst brutality I ever saw was that committed by Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) in Peru, in the days when it seemed possible that it might come to power. If it had, I think its massacres would have dwarfed those of the Khmer Rouge. As a doctor, I am accustomed to unpleasant sights, but nothing prepared me for what I saw in Ayacucho, where Sendero first developed under the sway of a professor of philosophy, Abimael Guzmán."[12]



In 1992, during the first administration of President Alberto Fujimori, the National Directorate Against Terrorism (DIRCOTE) began casing several residences in Lima because agents suspected that terrorists were using them as safehouses. One of those residences, in the upper-class neighborhood of Surco, had been operating as a ballet studio. The DIRCOTE operatives routinely searched the garbage taken out from the house. The house was supposedly inhabited by only one person, the dance teacher Maritza Garrido Lecca, but it was soon noticed that the household produced more garbage than one person could account for. Furthermore, agents found discarded tubes of cream for the treatment of psoriasis, an ailment that Guzmán was known to have.[13] On 12 September 1992, an elite unit of the DIRCOTE raided the Surco residence. On the second floor of the house, they found and arrested Guzmán and eight others, including Laura Zambrano and Elena Iparraguirre, Guzmán's female companion.

At the time of capture, the police seized Guzmán's computer, in which they found a very detailed register of his armed forces and the weapons each regiment, militia and support base had in each region of the country. Guzmán had recorded that, in 1990, the Shining Path had 23,430 members armed with approximately 235 revolvers, 500 rifles and 300 other items of military hardware such as grenades. The Shining Path remained active after Guzman's arrest.



Guzmán was tried by a court of hooded military judges under provisions of articles 15 and 16 of Law 25475 adopted by Fujimori's government in May 1992 after April's constitutional crisis.[14] The reason for this was to protect the judges' lives, as Shining Path was known for brutal retaliation against judges who convicted their members. After a three-day trial, Guzmán was sentenced to life imprisonment and incarcerated at the naval base on the island of San Lorenzo off the coast of Lima.[15]



Subsequently, he was said to have negotiated with a presidential advisor at the time, Vladimiro Montesinos, in order to receive some benefits in exchange for helping the Peruvian government put an end to the Shining Path's militant activities. Guzmán appeared several times on Peruvian television and on 1 October 1993, he publicly declared "peace" with the Peruvian government.[16] This declaration split the Shining Path and raised questions about the organization's future. About 6,000 guerrillas within the party accepted it as a sign of defeat and surrendered.[17] Others held that it was either a forgery or an insincere statement made under duress.



Although there was little doubt that Guzmán was indeed the leader of the Shining Path, more than 5,000 individuals presented an appeal to Peru's Constitutional Court in 2003 asking that the verdicts against more than 1,800 prisoners convicted of terrorism, including Guzmán, be voided. The court agreed, declaring that the military trials had been unconstitutional and ordering new trials before civilian courts. The new trials began in 2003. Since then, more than 400 prisoners who had been found guilty by military courts have been freed.



Guzmán's re-trial began on 5 November 2004. The international press was held in a sound-proof chamber and all media was banned from observing the trial after the Shining Path cadre turned their backs on the judges and delivered a revolutionary salute to the media gallery. The only words Guzmán spoke in the presence of the international press were "Long live the Communist Party of Peru! Glory to Marxism–Leninism–Maoism! Glory to the Peruvian people! Long live the heroes of the people’s war!" After he made this statement, the courtroom microphones were silenced and the press was unable to hear any of the proceedings that followed. When the trial resumed on 12 November, no reporters were allowed to observe the proceedings. Eventually two of the judges recused themselves and the trial ended in chaos. Guzmán's third trial began in September 2005 and was opened and closed amid a media blackout. No reporters were allowed to attend. On 13 October 2006, Guzmán was sentenced to life in prison on charges of aggravated terrorism[18] and murder.[19] At his sentencing, three judges read the charges in a verdict that lasted more than six hours.[19]

In 2014, Guzmán and his wife Iparraguirre were tried again, for the 1992 Tarata bombing in Lima in which 25 people died.[20] On 11 September 2018, he was sentenced to a second life term in prison.[21]



Guzmán was incarcerated in the maximum security prison of the naval base of Callao, the port of Lima until his death in 2021. Fellow prisoners there include Víctor Polay, leader of the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, and Vladimiro Montesinos, the former head of the National Intelligence Service who supervised the construction of the prison and served under the (now also imprisoned) President Alberto Fujimori.[15][22]


On 13 July 2021 he was attended by medical personnel of the Ministry of Health after he refused to eat. He was given blood tests and an ultrasound. A few days later, on 17 July, he was transferred to a hospital for further monitoring. He died on 11 September 2021 at the Maximum Safety Center of the Callao Naval Base, at the age of 86.[23]


More at Wikipedia.

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Henry Michael Tingelhoff (May 22, 1940 – September 11, 2021) was an American professional football player who was a center for the Minnesota Vikings of the National Football League (NFL) from 1962 to 1978. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2015, his 32nd year of eligibility.

Tingelhoff attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He earned three letters during his football career there, but did not become a starter until his senior season in 1961. He was a co-captain of that 1961 team, which had its biggest offensive output in over five seasons.[1] Tingelhoff participated in the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Alabama, and in the All-American Bowl after the regular season was over.

After graduating from Nebraska, Tingelhoff entered the 1962 NFL Draft but was not drafted and instead signed with the Minnesota Vikings as a free agent in 1962. He became their starting center during his rookie season and held that spot until he retired in 1978. He was an AP First Team All-Pro selection for the first of five times in 1964 and also began a streak of six straight Pro Bowl appearances (1964–1969) that season. In 1967, he was named First Team All-Pro by Newspaper Enterprise Association and UPI and Second Team All-Pro by the AP. In 1969, he was named the NFL's Top Offensive Lineman of the Year by the 1,000-Yard Club in Columbus, Ohio.[1] In 1970, he was named First Team All-Pro by both the PFWA and Pro Football Weekly. He was also named Second Team All-Pro by Newspaper Enterprise Association. He was named First Team All-NFC for that season by the AP.

Tingelhoff was one of 11 players to have played in all four Vikings Super Bowl appearances in the 1970s, and is generally considered to have been the premier center of his era. At the time of his retirement he had started in the 2nd most consecutive games (240 games) in NFL history behind teammate Jim Marshall (270). He was inducted into the Vikings Ring of Honor in 2001 and has had his #53 retired by the franchise.
He is also a member of the Nebraska Football Hall of Fame and was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2015.[2]
In 2011, Tingelhoff was named as that year's recipient of the Gerald R. Ford Legends Award. The award was presented to him during the 12th Annual Rimington Trophy Presentation banquet on Saturday, January 14, 2012, at the Rococo Theatre in Lincoln, Nebraska.[3]

More on Mick Tingelhoff here.

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Norman Gene Macdonald[/url] (October 17, 1959[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm_Macdonald#cite_note-2][ii] – September 14, 2021) was a Canadian stand-up comedian, writer, and actor known for his deadpan style.
Early in his career, he wrote for the sitcom Roseanne. In 1993, Macdonald was hired as a cast member on Saturday Night Live (SNL), spending a total of five seasons on the show, which included anchoring the show's Weekend Update segment for three and a half seasons,[1] during which time he also made guest appearances on shows such as The Drew Carey Show and NewsRadio. After leaving SNL, he starred in the 1998 film Dirty Work and in his own sitcom, The Norm Show, from 1999 to 2001.

In 2013, Macdonald started a video podcast, Norm Macdonald Live, on which he interviewed comedians and other celebrities. In 2018, he released Norm Macdonald Has a Show, a Netflix talk show with a similar premise to his podcast. Throughout his career, he appeared in numerous movies and was a regular favorite comedian panelist of talk show hosts such as Conan O'Brien, David Letterman, and Howard Stern, with many considering him to be the ultimate late night comedy guest.[2] He was also a voice actor, best known for providing voice roles in Mike Tyson Mysteries, The Orville, and the Dr. Dolittle films.

Much more at Wikipedia.

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Reuben Klamer (June 20, 1922 – September 14, 2021) was an American designer, developer, inventor, entrepreneur, and sales and marketing executive[1], best known for creating and designing the modern version of classic Milton Bradley (now Hasbro) board game The Game of Life.[2]
The Game of Life was marketed in 59 countries and translated in 26 languages. It is estimated that 70 million copies have been sold, and it is the second most popular board game only to Monopoly.[1]

Mr. Klamer, although best known for his work in the toy and gaming industries, held credits in a numerous of other diverse industries including textiles, plastics, aviation, publishing, music television and film.[1]

Klamer was born in 1922 in Canton, Ohio, to Romanian Jewish emigrants Joseph Kramer and Rachel Levenson[3] He studied ancient and modern history at George Washington University in Washington D.C. and earned a Bachelor of Science in marketing from Ohio State University. He completed postgraduate work in engineering at the University of Michigan.[2]  He enlisted in the U.S. Navy midshipman school at Northwestern University in 1943 and served in the South Pacific.


Post WWII, he worked as a marketing developer for an air cargo company, designing his first invention for air freight travel before starting his own advertising agency, The Klamer Company

Klamer career started with the Ideal Toy Company in 1949. He created the Art Linkletter Spin-A-Hoop (to compete with the Wham-O hula hoop), Gaylord the Walking Dog, and Busy Blocks. He also created the Fisher-Price Preschool Trainer Skates.[4]

Klamer was approached by the producers of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. to design a special weapon for the show's secret agents.[5] He produced a toy version for Ideal.

Impressed with Klamer's work, and under pressure from network executives to make his show more "action packed," Star Trek producer Gene Roddenberry enlisted Klamer to design "a really big gun." He built the phaser rifle used in the episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before."[citation needed]
He created the Pink Panther Travelling Show Car, build on an olsmobile chassis for the Pink Panther Cartoon Series[1]

In June 1959, Klamer pitched an art center concept to Milton Bradley that featured their crayons and finger paints. The company declined, but Milton Bradley president James Shea, Sr. asked Klamer to develop a game in celebration of the hundredth anniversary of Milton Bradley Company. After months of development, Klamer unveiled The Game of Life at the 1960 American International Toy Fair in the Milton Bradley showroom. Spurred by the endorsement of TV personality Art Linkletter, the game went on to sell more than fifty million copies.[6]

Klamer died on September 14, 2021, at the age of 99.[1][7]

More at Wikipedia.

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One loudmouth Boomer SOB who died of practicing what he preached about COVID-19


Robert Enyart (January 1959 – September 13, 2021) was an American conservative talk radio host and pastor of Denver Bible Church in Denver, Colorado. He was an outspoken anti-abortion advocate, theologian, and political commentator. Enyart was an opponent of COVID-19 vaccinations and mask mandates. He died of COVID-19.

Enyart, who grew up in New Jersey, served as a spokesman for the anti-abortion group American Right to Life.[1][2]
In 2000, Enyart took up the position of pastor at Denver Bible Church, a Protestant Christian church in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, close to Denver.[3]

Real Science Radio was a creationism radio show and podcast created by Enyart. It was originally titled Real Science Friday and was renamed in 2013 after an intellectual property lawsuit was brought by NPR for the similarity to their show Science Friday.[4]

Enyart picketed the homes of doctors who performed abortions, causing one Colorado town to ban such protests in residential neighborhoods.[5] He criticized presidential candidates who did not share his view on abortion.[6]

Enyart angered families of AIDS victims when he read a man's obituary on his television show, Bob Enyart Live, calling the deceased a sodomite.[7] A regular feature of the show involved reading obituaries of AIDS sufferers while playing "Another One Bites the Dust" by Queen, whose lead singer, Freddie Mercury, died in 1991 from complications from AIDS.[8]

Enyart was a proponent of corporal punishment of children.[9] He served a 60-day jail sentence after being convicted of child abuse for hitting a 7-year-old boy with a belt so violently that he raised welts and broke the skin of the child.[10][11]
He agreed to stop making late-night telephone calls to Kenosha, Wisconsin, residents who were upset with the content of his program on a Kenosha television station after Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) called for a Federal Communications Commission investigation to see if the talk show host had broken laws.[12]

In June 2009, Enyart was sentenced to 11 days in jail after he refused to pay a fine upon his conviction of criminal trespassing at the Focus on the Family headquarters.[13]

In 1999, Enyart bought about $16,000 worth of O. J. Simpson memorabilia which he burned on the steps of the Los Angeles courthouse where Simpson was acquitted in protest of the verdict in the O. J. Simpson murder case.[14][15]

In October 2020, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that the state of Colorado could not impose mask-wearing mandates or limits on the size of gatherings at Denver Bible Church following a lawsuit brought by Enyart.[16]
Enyart and his wife were unvaccinated against COVID-19 after supporting the theory that vaccinations had been tested on aborted fetuses.[1][17] [18] Enyart died from complications of COVID-19.[1]

An August 2021 update to his website announced that Enyart and his wife had developed COVID-19.[19] Enyart died of COVID-19 on September 13, 2021.[2][20]

[Eric the Green]

Well, another one bites the dust!

[David Horn]

(09-17-2021, 10:51 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Well, another one bites the dust!

I doubt that will have any impact outside the immeiate family of the decieased.  Ideology is a powerful thing.

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Jane Powell, actress and danseuse:


Jane Powell was singing and dancing at an early age. She sang on the radio and performed in theaters before her screen debut in 1944. Through the 1940s and 1950s, she had a successful career in movie musicals. However, in 1957, her career in films ended, as she had outgrown her innocent girl-next-door image. She has made brief returns to acting in front of the camera -- on television, in commercials, and in a workout video. She has had a variety of roles on stage since the end of her movie career, including the musicals "South Pacific," "The Sound of Music," "Oklahoma!," "My Fair Lady," "Carousel," and a one-woman show "The Girl Next Door and How She Grew," from which she took the title of her 1988 autobiography.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0007225/bio?..._ov_bio_sm


Jane Powell (born Suzanne Lorraine Burce; April 1, 1929 – September 16, 2021) was an American actress, singer, and dancer who first appeared in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musicals in the 1940s. With her soprano voice and girl-next-door image, Powell appeared in films, television and on the stage.[1] She was notable for her performances in A Date with Judy (1948), Royal Wedding (1951), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), and Hit the Deck (1955).

Powell also made appearances on stage such as in My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music. She also appeared occasionally on television, including recurring guest roles on The Love Boat (1981–1982), as well as the sitcom Growing Pains (1988–1992). She was one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Much more at Wikipedia.

Clip from one of the greatest musical musicals ever (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers):

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Sir Clive Marles Sinclair (30 July 1940 – 16 September 2021) was an English entrepreneur and inventor, most commonly known as being a pioneer in the computing industry, and as the founder of several companies that developed consumer electronics models from the early 1970s through to the early 1980s.
After spending several years as assistant editor of Instrument Practice, Sinclair founded Sinclair Radionics Ltd. in 1961, where he produced the first slimline electronic pocket calculator, the Sinclair Executive, in 1972. Sinclair subsequently moved into the production of home computers in 1980 producing the Sinclair ZX80 (the UK's first mass-market home computer for less than £100), and, in the early 1980s, the ZX81 and ZX Spectrum with Sinclair Research Ltd.. The latter is widely recognised by consumers and programmers for its importance in the early days of the British and wider European home computer industry, as well as helping to give birth to the British video game industry.

Amongst other honours, Sinclair was knighted in 1983 for his contributions to the personal computer industry in the UK.

Sinclair was also recognized for several commercial failures, including the Sinclair Radionics Black Watch wristwatch, the Sinclair Vehicles C5 battery electric vehicle, and the Sinclair Research TV80 flatscreen CRT handheld television set. The failure of the C5 along with a weakened computer market forced Sinclair to sell most of his companies by 1986. Through 2010, Sinclair concentrated on personal transport, including the A-bike, a folding bicycle for commuters, and the Sinclair X-1, a revised version of the C5 electric vehicle but which never made it to market.

(You may have had one of these):

While Sinclair was dealing with the NEB and had seen problems developing, he had a former employee, Christopher Curry, establish a "lifeboat" company, called Science of Cambridge Ltd, in July 1977, called such as they were located near University of Cambridge and planned for Curry to develop technology from ideas from the school.[15][16] An early product out of Science of Cambridge was a wrist calculator kit which helped to keep the company afloat. By the time that Sinclair had left Radionics and joined Curry at Science of Cambridge, inexpensive microprocessors had started appearing on the market. Sinclair came up with the idea of selling a microprocessor teaching kit, and in June 1978, Science of Cambridge launched the MK14 kit, based on the National SC/MP chip, in June 1978.[16] As Sinclair began postulating on the followup to the MK14, Curry got into discussions with Hermann Hauser and opted to leave Science of Cambridge to co-found Acorn Computers with Hauser in 1978. Acorn became a direct competitor to Sinclair's products, with the Acorn System 75 as its answer to the MK14, effectively an MK14 chip with a keyboard.[16]


To follow up on the MK14, Sinclair starting looking to build a personal computer. At around that time (1979), premade systems such as the Commodore PET cost about £700, and Sinclair believed he could get the price of a system to under £100.[17] Keeping the cost low was also essential for Sinclair to avoid his products from becoming outpriced by American or Japanese equivalents as had happened to several of the Sinclair Radionics products.[13] In May 1979, Jim Westwood, a former Sinclair Radionics employee Sinclair hired for this new company, started the ZX80 project at Science of Cambridge; it was launched in February 1980 at £79.95 in kit form and £99.95 ready-built.[17] The ZX80 was immediately successful, and besides sales in the UK, Sinclair also sought to introduce the computer into the United States.[17] Science of Cambridge was subsequently renamed Sinclair Computers Ltd, and then again to Sinclair Research Ltd.[18][19]

On hearing that the BBC was preparing to run a television series to teach viewers about computing and programming, both Sinclair and Curry pressured the BBC to choose computers from their respective companies to use as the primary tool. This pushed the development of the Sinclair ZX81 ahead as Sinclair's standard for the BBC. The ZX81 was launched at £49.95 in kit form and £69.95 ready-built, by mail order. Ultimately, the BBC chose Acorn and standardized on a successor to the Acorn Atom—originally named Acorn Proton, but ultimately branded as the BBC Micro.[17] Despite losing out to the BBC, Sinclair's push had established the ZX80 and ZX81 as one of the highest-selling brands of computers across the UK and the United States as well as establishing a deal with distribution in Japan with Mitsui.[17] A number of users' groups, magazines and homebrew hardware accessories for both systems also arose.[17]

[/url]
The [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum]ZX Spectrum (introduced in 1982)

In February 1982, Timex obtained a licence to manufacture and market Sinclair's computers in the United States under the name Timex Sinclair. In April, the ZX Spectrum was launched at £125 for the 16 kB RAM version and £175 for the 48 kB version.[20] It was the first computer in the ZX line to support colour output. The ZX Spectrum remained more affordable than other computers on the market, including the BBC Micro, the Commodore VIC-20 or Apple II, and during a time of recession and high unemployment in the UK, was positioned by Sinclair as a low-cost home computer for productivity applications.[21] However, it also proved to be a popular gift for teenagers and young adults that year. This led to a number of these young people learning to program on the ZX Spectrum, using its newfound colour support, to make quirky video games inspired by British humour which they sold through word of mouth and mail order. So-called "bedroom coders" using the ZX Spectrum gave rise to the start of the UK's video game industry.[22][23] By 1984, over 3500 games had been released for the ZX Spectrum.[24]

The popularity of the ZX Spectrum spread to Western Europe. While Sinclair could not import into Eastern European countries still within the Soviet bloc at the time, numerous low-cost clones of the ZX Spectrum sprung up within these countries, further boosting the start of video game development by similar bedroom coders.[25] The ZX Spectrum went on to become the UK's highest-selling computer, selling more than 5 million units before it was discontinued in 1992.[26] Sinclair Research computers accounted for 45% of the British market in 1984, including those from British and American companies.[27]

The continued success of the computer market continued to help boost Sinclair Research's profit. In 1982, the company has a pre-tax profit of £9.2 million on a turnover of £27.6 million. Sinclair himself was estimated to a net value of over £100 million in 1983, two years after launching the first of the ZX computers.[28] With the additional funds, Sinclair converted the Barker & Wadsworth mineral water bottling factory into the company's headquarters in 1982.[29]


More at Wikipedia.

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Jay Henry Sandrich(February 24, 1932 – September 22, 2021) was an American television director. In 2020, he was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame.[1]

Jay Sandrich was born February 24, 1932, in Los Angeles, California. He was the son of director Mark Sandrich.[2] The younger Sandrich attended the University of California, Los Angeles, graduating with a B.A. in 1953.[3]

Sandrich began his television work in the mid-1950s as a second assistant director with Desilu Productions, and began his career as an assistant director on I Love Lucy and assistant to the producer on The Andy Griffith Show.[3] Sandrich directed and/or produced episodes of The Bill Dana Show, The Bill Cosby Show, Get Smart, The Odd Couple, Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers, Loves Me, Loves Me Not, Soap, two-thirds of the episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show in early seasons, and the first three seasons of The Cosby Show.[3] He was responsible for the series pilots of The Bob Newhart Show, WKRP in Cincinnati, Benson, Empty Nest and The Golden Girls. His last work as a director on television was an episode of Two and a Half Men in 2003. Sandrich also directed for Theatre Aspen, in Aspen, Colorado, Rounding Third (2008), Chapter Two (2009), and Same Time, Next Year (2010). The only theatrical movie he directed was the film Seems Like Old Times (1980), originally written by Neil Simon.

In 1965, Sandrich put in his only stint as a producer, serving as associate producer for the first season of the NBC-TV comedy Get Smart, which co-starred Don Adams and Barbara Feldon. He enjoyed the experience but vowed to stick to directing in future. He told Andy Meisler of Channels magazine, "I really didn't like producing. I liked being on the stage. I found that, as a producer, I'd stay up until four in the morning worrying about everything. As a director, I slept at night."

Meisler's article also paints an appealing portrait of the director's relationship with Bill Cosby, who preferred Sandrich, who directed 100 episodes of The Cosby Show from 1985 to 1992, the series' last season, as the director of choice of the series, and with other Cosby production personnel, quoting co-executive producer Tom Werner on the show's dynamics: "Although we're really all here to service Bill Cosby's vision, the show is stronger because Jay challenges Bill and pushes him when appropriate." Sandrich was proud of the program's pioneering portrayal of an upper-class Black family, and of its civilized view of parent-child relations.

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Good riddance to this terrorist!

Ali Ahmad, known popularly as Ali Kalora (30 May 1981 – 18 September 2021), was an Indonesian Islamic militant and leader of East Indonesia Mujahideen. He was referred to as Indonesia's most wanted militant leader and was the main target of both Indonesian military and police during Operation Tinombala.[1] He became leader of the militant organization after Abu Wardah was shot and killed in July 2016. He waged an insurgency and committed several attacks against villages around Poso Regency and Parigi Moutong Regency until 18 September 2021, where he was shot and killed by the Madago Raya Operation task force.[2][3]

Ali Ahmad was born on 30 May 1981 in Kalora village, Poso Regency. As he grew up, he identified himself more with his village and gave himself the nickname Ali Kalora.[4][5]

Ali was a follower of Santoso, also known as Abu Wardah in East Indonesia Mujahideen. After the death of Daeng Koro, prominent leader of the organization under Santoso, he was chosen as a replacement and soon became close with Santoso.[3] As a native from Poso, he became a guide for other militants due to his knowledge of the local area.[5] Santoso was shot and killed on 18 July 2016, followed by the arrest of another prominent leader Muhammad Basri on 14 September. His wife, Tini Susanti was arrested by police in November 2016. He continued to wage an insurgency around the jungles in Poso and Parigi Moutong as the organization shrank in size.[5]
[/url]

According to experts from the Community of Ideological Islamic Analyst, his team had less than 10 people but was resilient and able to take refuge in the jungle for a long time. He was involved in various attacks on police stations and Christian communities in the region, particularly between 2019 and 2020. [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Kalora#cite_note-:1-6][6] One of the most infamous attacks he carried out was on 19 November 2020, when his group massacred a family of four, and burned down a church and three houses. The attack caused villagers in the region to panic, and as many as 150 families took refuge.[7]

He was reported to be willing to surrender in March 2021, but was said to be threatened by other factions in the group. In August, Basri, a former leader of the group, made a video asking Ali to surrender which became viral on the Indonesian internet.[6]

On 18 September 2021, Kalora was killed alongside commander Jaka Ramadhan during a shoot-out with Indonesian soldiers and police, who were carrying out the joint Operation Madago Raya.[8] The clash happened around the small village of Astina in Parigi Moutong Regency, in Central Sulawesi.[8]

Several explosives inside a rag bag were found around his remains. The presence of explosives delayed the evacuation of Ali's corpse by police until the location was secured.[9] The harsh terrain also made the entire process difficult. The evacuation was done by the Mobile Brigade Corps and his remains were thereafter brought to the city of Palu to be identified.[10][11] After forensic identification in Palu Bhayangkara Hospital, the remains were confirmed to be those of Kalora.[12][13]

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Anybody connected to the University of Texas at El Paso, as through having attended it?


Diana Natalicio (née Diana Siedhoff August 25, 1939 – September 24, 2021)[1] was an American academic administrator who served as president of the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) from 1988 to 2019. After growing up in St. Louis, Natalicio studied Spanish as an undergraduate, completed a master's degree in Portuguese and earned a doctorate in linguistics. She became an assistant professor at UTEP in 1971, and was named the first female president of the university on February 11, 1988.

As of February 2016, Natalicio had the longest tenure among incumbent presidents at major public research universities. In 2016 Natalicio was named to Time Magazine's list of 100 most influential people. She was named President Emerita of UTEP by the University of Texas System Board of Regents in August 2019.

Natalicio was born Diana Siedhoff in St. Louis. Her father Bill owned a small retail business and her mother Jo was a homemaker. After high school, Natalicio took a job at the switchboard of a company called Nordberg Manufacturing. Natalicio said that she learned to operate the switchboard quickly, but about a month into the job she realized that she did not want to make it a career. She said that the desire for a more fulfilling career led her to enroll in college at Saint Louis University (SLU).[2]
Natalicio said that when she entered SLU, she realized that her high school preparation had been subpar. While she said that she was behind in math and literature, Natalicio had taken Spanish in high school and had an aptitude for it.[3] She earned an undergraduate degree in Spanish at SLU and was a Fulbright Scholar in Brazil. She completed a master's degree in Portuguese and a doctorate in linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin.[4]

In 1971, Natalicio came to UTEP. She was hired as an assistant professor, and later served as the modern languages department chair, dean of the liberal arts college and vice president of academic affairs.[5]

In 1988, Natalicio became the president of UTEP. She was the school's first female president.[5] One of her initial goals was to recruit a student body that reflected the demographics of El Paso County. The student body was 50 percent Hispanic in 1988; that figure had increased to 66 percent by 1998, not including approximately 1300 Mexican nationals.[4] Between 1998 and 2013, the university's budget increased from about $65 million to over $400 million, and research expenditures increased ten-fold.[5] The school has expanded its doctoral program offerings from one in 1988 to 22 in 2019.[6]

As of February 2016, Natalicio has served as university president longer than any sitting president at a U.S. major public research university.[7] She has been criticized for low four-year graduation rates during her tenure (13 percent in 2013, compared to 2.6 percent in 1999), but she has said that four-year graduation rates are not the most important measures of a university's success.[5]
Natalicio served as president of UTEP for 31 years before she stepped down in August 2019. The University of Texas System Board of Regents named her President Emerita that month.[8]

Natalicio won the Harold W. McGraw Prize in Education in 1997.[9] She was inducted into the 1998–99 class of the Texas Women's Hall of Fame.[10] In 2006, Natalicio received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of Texas at Austin.[11] In 2011, the Mexican government recognized Natalicio with the Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest award given to non-Mexicans.[12] She was the 2013 recipient of the Hesburgh Award from TIAA-CREF.[13] She received the 2015 Carnegie Corporation of New York Academic Leadership Award.[14]

In 2001, Natalicio received an honorary Doctor of Laws from Smith College.[15] She was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Georgetown University in 2011.[16]

In 2019, Natalicio received the Clark Kerr Award from the UC Berkeley Academic Senate for distinguished leadership in higher education.[17]

In 2013, Natalicio was elected president of the board of directors for the American Council on Education.[18] She served on the Committee on Underrepresented Groups and the Expansion of the Science and Engineering Workforce Pipeline of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.[19] Natalicio was on the board of directors for the Hispanic Scholarship Fund.[20] She was a principal investigator in a National Science Foundation program to increase participation in the STEM fields.[21]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_Natalicio

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"Sissy" Farenthold, a throwback to the civilized part of Texas politics before Texas went Hard Right

Frances Tarlton "Sissy" Farenthold (October 2, 1926 – September 26, 2021) was an American politician, attorney, activist, and educator. She is best known for her two campaigns for the office of Governor of Texas in 1972 and 1974, for being placed in nomination for the office of Vice President of the United States and finishing second at the 1972 Democratic National Convention, and she was elected as the first chair of the National Women's Political Caucus in 1973.[1]

Farenthold was born in Corpus Christi, Texas on October 2, 1926. After attending the Hockaday School,[2] Farenthold graduated from Vassar College in 1946. In 1949, she graduated from the University of Texas School of Law. She was one of only three women in a class of 800. Farenthold comes from a line of lawyers and judges. Her grandfather, Judge Benjamin D. Tarlton Sr., served as Chief Justice of the Texas Court of Civil Appeals, a state legislator, professor at the University of Texas School of Law and is the namesake of the University of Texas School of Law Tarlton Law Library.[3][4] Her father, B. Dudley Tarlton Jr., was also an attorney.

Farenthold started her political career in 1968 when she was elected to represent Nueces and Kleberg counties in the Texas House of Representatives. She ran against Jack K. Pedigo of Corpus Christi, Texas, Graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and World War II veteran. She was the only woman serving in the Texas House at the time. Senator Barbara Jordan was then the only woman serving in the Texas Senate. They co-sponsored the Equal Legal Rights Amendment to the Texas Constitution.[4]

Farenthold was the third woman whose name was put into nomination for Vice President of the United States at a major party's nominating convention. The first was Lena Springs, who was not a public official and whose 1924 nomination was a gesture of affection. The second was India Edwards in 1952, whose nomination was also a gesture of gratitude for her influence over Harry Truman. At the Democratic National Convention in 1972, Farenthold came in second to the presidential nominee's choice, U.S. Senator Thomas F. Eagleton of Missouri. She garnered more delegate votes (404.04) than then-U.S. Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska, Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana, and future U.S. President Jimmy Carter of Georgia, among others.

In 1972 and 1974, she unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for Governor of Texas. She was defeated both times by Dolph Briscoe of Uvalde, who went on to win the general election each time. In 1973, she was elected as the first chair of the National Women's Political Caucus.[1] She later served as president of Wells College in Aurora, New York, from 1976–1980.

Farenthold founded the Public Leadership Education Network in 1978 with key support for her vision from Ruth Mandel, who directed the Center for American Women and Politics, which is a part of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University and Betsey Wright, who headed the National Women's Education Fund. The organization was founded on Farenthold's proposal that women's colleges needed to work together to educate and prepare women for public leadership.

During her tenure at Wells, Farenthold expanded her work with women’s groups and anti-nuclear, peace, and human rights groups. She was an active member of Helsinki Watch, the predecessor to the organization Human Rights Watch and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.[5]

Farenthold left Wells College in 1980 to return to Houston, where she opened a private law practice and taught law at the University of Houston. She also continued to devote significant time to the international women’s movement and began a collaboration with her cousin, Genevieve Vaughan, that would last the next decade.[6]

Farenthold and Vaughan organized the Peace Tent at the 1985 U.N. NGO Forum in Nairobi, Kenya, in conjunction with the third United Nations World Conference on Women.[7] They also were founding members of Women For a Meaningful Summit, an ad hoc coalition of female leaders voicing concerns for nuclear disarmament at the Reagan–Gorbachev summits.[5] Farenthold worked with the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a progressive multi-issue think tank devoted to peace, justice, and the environment. With IPS, Farenthold made trips to investigate human rights violations in Central America and Iraq.

She was an emeritus trustee for the Institute for Policy Studies and served on the Advisory Board of the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at the University of Texas. She also served as Honorary Director of the Rothko Chapel in Houston.

She married George Farenthold (1915–2000) in 1950 and divorced him in 1985. They had five children: Dudley (born 1951), George Jr. (born 1952), Emilie (born 1954), twins Vincent Bluntzer Tarlton (1956–1960) and James Robert Dougherty, (born 1956; disappeared 1989).[8] Her cousin Genevieve Vaughan is a feminist writer and philanthropist and has written on the philosophy of the gift economy. Her step-grandson, Blake Farenthold, was elected in 2010 to the United States House of Representatives as a Texas Republican, and served as a member of the Tea Party Caucus until he resigned April 6, 2018, due to allegations he used $84,000 of taxpayer money to pay a settlement to a former aide who accused the Texas Republican of sexual harassment and other improper conduct.[9]

Frances died from complications caused by Parkinson's disease on September 26, 2021, at the age of 94.[10]

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publicist Bobby Zarem

Robert Myron "Bobby" Zarem (September 30, 1936 – September 26, 2021) was an American publicist.[1] After starting his own publicity agency in 1974, Zarem created lengthy, personalized pitch letters, a business style, and many campaigns. His clients have included Dustin Hoffman, Cher, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Michael Douglas, Michael Caine, Sophia Loren, Ann-Margret, and Alan Alda, among others.[2][3][4]

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Zarem's first job in show business began at [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Artists_Management]Columbia Artists Management, a job that lasted five years.[13] Zarem noticed that he had an affinity for public relations and artist promotion, and began his career as a PR agent under producer Joseph E. Levine in 1968. Zarem became an agent by accident. The company had seventeen minutes of the film The Lion in Winter starring Katharine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole. Though Zarem had been working for the company in a business capacity, he invited a number of his friends to watch the preview of the film, a group which included some journalists. When articles on the movie began to appear in publication, Zarem realized he had become a PR agent. Levine later made him head of magazine publicity.[14]

Zarem moved on to the PR firm Rogers & Cowan in 1969.[13] There he served some of his first A-list clients, including Ann-Margret and Dustin Hoffman.[1] He began handwriting long, personalized pitch letters and press releases that became industry legend.[7]
In 1974, Zarem started his own agency: Zarem, Inc. He promoted Tommy which premiered in the West 57th Street subway station in front of hundreds of prominent New York socialites.[1]

Zarem earned the nickname “Superflack” at a party he threw for Stevie Wonder in the late 1970s. Mick Jagger and New York Times reporter Judy Klemesrud were standing by the elevator waiting to leave when Wonder finally showed up. Zarem reprimanded Wonder for his tardiness (Wonder hadn't realized the party wasn't going to be intimate) in front of Klemesrud. She deemed him “Superflack,” which was later popularized in a profile on Zarem in Newsweek.[15]

Aside from his press releases, Zarem frequently promoted films. He would call outlets and say that films “reeked of Oscar,” threatening to kill himself if the outlet refused to write a piece for him.[16] He regularly worked fourteen hour days, had a notoriously short temper, and was known to hold grudges.[17] Publicist Peggy Siegal insists that he threw a typewriter across a desk at her for incorrectly taking down a phone message. Zarem denied the charge by pointing out how difficult it would have been to miss her with such a large instrument at such close range.[1]

Zarem is credited with having helped to save Saturday Night Fever from obscurity. Though Paramount and Robert Stigwood had hired Zarem to publicize the movie, they expected the movie to flop and did not let Zarem send promotional pictures to media outlets. But several magazines were already eager for material on the film and when Martha Duffy, Time’s art editor, asked Zarem how soon he could get her pictures, he stormed the Paramount office. Saturday Night Fever’s marketing director refused to give Zarem any pictures, so Zarem pushed the marketing director onto a couch and rushed across the hall to the art department, absconding with six color negatives that he sent to The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, and People.[18]

Arnold Schwarzenegger also has Zarem to thank for his success. Zarem watched an early screening of the documentary, Pumping Iron, starring the then-unknown Schwarzenegger. Zarem secured the documentary's first national coverage on his own initiative and was hired to promote the film. At Schwarzenegger's request, Zarem scheduled a meeting between Schwarzenegger and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. A picture from the meeting gained significant media attention and earned Schwarzenegger a spot on 60 Minutes, cementing his fame.[1] Schwarzenegger and Zarem would collaborate again on the Planet Hollywood restaurant franchise in the early 1990s. Schwarzenegger was one of the principal celebrity investors; Zarem, who had previously promoted the Hard Rock Café, was hired to promote the new restaurant chain. Zarem claimed that he came up with idea to make Planet Hollywood a national chain, conceived the signature aesthetic of the restaurants, and put together its financiers, Keith Barish and Robert Earl. But he ultimately feuded with Barish and Earl over credit, and parted company a year later.[19]

Throughout the 1970s, 1980s. and 1990s, Zarem would promote the films Tommy, Saturday Night Fever, The China Syndrome, Rambo, Scarface, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, and Dances With Wolves.[18] By the turn of the century, Zarem's fees were among the highest in the industry, estimated to be upwards of $10,000 a month per client.[7]

In 1994, Zarem was sent 10 copies of John Behrendt’s true crime book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by the publisher, Random House, in hopes that he would spread the word to his contacts in Savannah, where the book is set.[20] The book quickly became a hit in the city. Zarem wrote an item for Neil Travis’s column in the New York Post about the stir the book caused, which he said secured the book’s international bestseller status. The book went on to break sales records for the non-fiction novel genre, spending 216 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list.[21] Today Savannah enjoys tourists drawn to the city by the book and its landmarks, and there are many options for guided tours of the locations immortalized in the book.[22]
 


Zarem conceived the public relations for “I Love New York” campaign and helped in its development. On a Saturday in 1975, Zarem was walking home from Elaine's Restaurant on Second Avenue in Manhattan, and realized “you could have rolled a coin down the street and nobody would have stopped it. The city was dying. Something had to be done.” Distraught by the decline of New York's reputation as a cultural hub and declining Broadway ticket sales. William Doyle hired Zarem and brought on the advertising agency Wells Rich Greene to implement his ideas for the television campaign starring Broadway stars, which ended up helping turn around tourism for the city. Governor Hugh Carey ultimately raised $16 million for the campaign and when it proved a success, New York mayor Ed Koch started claiming credit for the slogan, as did Wells Rich Greene. But Zarem insisted that, other than the iconic heart-shaped logo designed by Milton Glaser, he was responsible for the campaign.[1]
 
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