Notable 2017 Political Obituaries

[waltky]

I remember him on the old Nightline program during the hostage situation...

Influential former Iranian leader Rafsanjani dead at age 82
January 8, 2017 — Former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a wily political survivor and multimillionaire mogul who remained among the ruling elite despite moderate views, died Sunday, state TV reported. He was 82.

Iranian media reported he suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized north of Tehran, where doctors performed CPR in vain for nearly an hour and a half before declaring him dead. A female newscaster's voice quivered as she read the news. She said Rafsanjani, "after a life full of restless efforts in the path of Islam and revolution, had departed for lofty heaven." Rafsanjani's mix of sly wit and reputation for cunning moves — both in politics and business — earned him a host of nicknames such as Akbar Shah, or Great King, during a life that touched every major event in Iranian affairs since before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, registers his candidacy for the elections of the Experts Assembly in Tehran, Iran. Iranian state media said Sunday, Jan. 8, 2017 that influential former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has died at age 82 after having been hospitalized because of a heart condition. Rafsanjani, who served as president from 1989 to 1997, was a leading politician who often played kingmaker in the country's turbulent politics. He supported President Hassan Rouhani.​

His presence — whether directly or through back channels — was felt in many forms. He was a steady leader in the turbulent years following the overthrow of the U.S.-backed shah, a veteran warrior in the country's internal political battles and a covert go-between in intrigue such as the Iran-Contra arms deals in the 1980s. He also was handed an unexpected political resurgence in his later years. The surprise presidential election in 2013 of Rafsanjani's political soul mate, Hassan Rouhani, gave the former president an insider role in reform-minded efforts that included Rouhani's push for direct nuclear talks with Washington. World powers and Iran ultimately struck a deal to limit the country's nuclear enrichment in exchange for the lifting of some economic sanctions.

Former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani casts his ballot for the parliamentary elections in front of a portrait of late Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini, at a polling station in Tehran, Iran. Iranian state media said Sunday, Jan. 8, 2017 that influential former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has died at age 82 after having been hospitalized because of a heart condition. Rafsanjani, who served as president from 1989 to 1997, was a leading politician who often played kingmaker in the country's turbulent politics. He supported President Hassan Rouhani.​

While Rafsanjani was blocked from the 2013 ballot by Iran's election overseers — presumably worried about boosting his already wide-ranging influence — the former leader embraced Rouhani's success. "Now I can easily die since people are able to decide their fate by themselves," he reportedly said last March. However, Rouhani now faces a crucial presidential election in May which will serve as a referendum on the deal and thawing relations with the West. Rafsanjani was sharply critical of a move by Iran's constitutional watchdog to block moderates, including Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of the Islamic Republic's founder, from running for a top clerical body in elections last year.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, right, and former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, left, who are members of the Assembly of Experts, attend an assembly in Tehran, Iran. Iranian state media said Sunday, Jan. 8, 2017 that Rafsanjani has died at age 82 after having been hospitalized because of a heart condition. Rafsanjani, who served as president from 1989 to 1997, was a leading politician who often played kingmaker in the country's turbulent politics. He supported President Hassan Rouhani.​

Rafsanjani was a close aide of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and served as president from 1989 to 1997 during a period of significant changes in Iran. At the time, the country was struggling to rebuild its economy after a devastating 1980-88 war with Iraq, while also cautiously allowing some wider freedoms, as seen in Iran's highly regarded film and media industry. He also oversaw key developments in Iran's nuclear program by negotiating deals with Russia to build an energy-producing reactor in Bushehr, which finally went into service in 2011 after long delays. Behind the scenes, he directed the secret purchase of technology and equipment from Pakistan and elsewhere.

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[Ringel05]

 

[waltky]

National leader of the Congress of Racial Equality passes away at 82...

Roy Innis, Black Activist With a Right-Wing Bent, Dies at 82
JAN. 10, 2017 - Roy Innis, the autocratic national leader of the Congress of Racial Equality since 1968, whose right-wing views on affirmative action, law enforcement, desegregation and other issues put him at odds with many black Americans and other civil rights leaders, died on Sunday in Manhattan. He was 82.

The cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease, a statement from CORE said. In a stormy career marked by radical rhetoric, shifting ideologies, legal and financial troubles and quixotic runs for office, Mr. Innis led CORE through changes that mirrored his own evolution from black-power militancy in the 1960s to staunch conservatism resembling a modern Republican political platform.

He came to prominence after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young and James Farmer had taken command of the civil rights movement and did not share their commitment to nonviolent civil disobedience. Nor did he embrace CORE’s pioneering roles in desegregation — school boycotts, sit-ins, Freedom Rides through the South and voter registration drives that led to the murders of the activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner in Mississippi in 1964.

Though court decisions and new laws banned discrimination in education, employment and public accommodations, Mr. Innis was disillusioned by that progress, saying integration robbed black people of their heritage and dignity. He pronounced it “dead as a doornail,” proclaimed CORE “once and for all a black nationalist organization” and declared “all-out war” on desegregation.

Under his black-power banner, which Mr. Innis called “pragmatic nationalism,” he purged whites from CORE’s staff and allowed the organization’s white membership to wither. He espoused segregated schools to encourage black achievement, black self-help groups, black business enterprises and community control of the police, fire, hospital, sanitation and other services in poor black neighborhoods.

Black nationalism was hardly a new idea. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee had already moved from integrationist to separatist aims. Malcolm X, the Nation of Islam and the poet Amiri Baraka followed in the footsteps of Marcus Garvey, who after World War I had attracted millions of American blacks to a “back to Africa” movement. But most black Americans regarded black power as too radical, and the creation of separate black institutions in America too remote.

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[waltky]

Man who revolutionized Chinese writing system passes on...

China's Zhou Youguang, father of Pinyin writing system, dies aged 111
Sat, 14 Jan 2017 - Zhou Youguang, who created a system to turn characters into words using Roman letters, dies aged 111.

Mr Zhou and a Communist party committee spent three years developing the Pinyin system in the 1950s. It changed the way the language was taught and helped raise literacy rates. Mr Zhou, who was born in 1906 during the Qing Dynasty, later became a fierce critic of China's communist rulers. He died in Beijing on Saturday a day after his birthday, Chinese media reported.

As a young man Mr Zhou spent time in the US and worked as a Wall Street banker. He returned to China after the communist victory in 1949 and was put in charge of creating a new writing system using the Roman alphabet. "We spent three years developing Pinyin. People made fun of us, joking that it had taken us a long time to deal with just 26 letters," he told the BBC in 2012. Before Pinyin was developed, 85% of Chinese people could not read, now almost all can.

Pinyin has since become the most commonly used system globally, although some Chinese communities - particularly in Hong Kong and Taiwan - continue to use alternatives. It is also widely used to type Chinese characters on computers and smartphones, leading some to fear it could end up replacing Chinese characters altogether. The achievement protected Mr Zhou from some of the persecution that took place under former leader Mao Zedong. However, he was later sent to the countryside for re-education during Mao's Cultural Revolution.

In his later years he became strongly critical of the Chinese authorities and wrote a number of books, most of which were banned. In a 2011 interview with NPR he said he hoped he would live long enough to see the Chinese authorities admit that the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989 had been a mistake. He said ordinary people no longer believed in the Communist Party, and that the vast majority of Chinese intellectuals were in favour of democracy.

China's Zhou Youguang, father of Pinyin writing system, dies aged 111 - BBC News

 

[ColonelAngus]

Harry Reid?

 

[Meathead]

Harry Reid?

Hillary Clinton

 

[waltky]

Author-columnist Jimmy Breslin passes on...

Jimmy Breslin, chronicler of wise guys and underdogs, dies
Mar. 19, 2017 — Author-columnist Jimmy Breslin, the Pulitzer Prize-winning chronicler of wise guys and underdogs who became the brash embodiment of the old-time, street smart New Yorker, dies Sunday. He was 87. Breslin died at his Manhattan home of complications from pneumonia, his stepdaughter, Emily Eldridge, said.

Breslin was a fixture for decades in New York journalism, notably with the New York Daily News. It was Breslin, a rumpled bed of a reporter, who mounted a quixotic political campaign for citywide office in the '60s; who became the Son of Sam's regular correspondent in the '70s; who exposed the city's worst corruption scandal in decades in the '80s; who was pulled from a car and stripped to his underwear by Brooklyn rioters in the '90s. With his uncombed mop of hair and sneering Queens accent, Breslin was like a character right out of his own work, and didn't mind telling you. "I'm the best person ever to have a column in this business," he once boasted. "There's never been anybody in my league."

With typical disregard for authority, Breslin once took out a newspaper ad to "fire" the ABC television network when it aired his short-lived TV show in a lousy time slot. That same year, he captured the 1986 Pulitzer for commentary and the George Polk Award for metropolitan reporting. More than 20 years earlier, with Gay Talese and Tom Wolfe, Breslin had helped create "New Journalism" — a more literary approach to news reporting. He was an acclaimed author, too, moving easily between genres. "The Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight" was his comic chronicle of the Brooklyn mob, "Damon Runyon: A Life" was an account of his spiritual predecessor, "I Want to Thank My Brain for Remembering Me" was a memoir.

Breslin was to Queens Boulevard what Runyon was to Broadway — columnist, confessor and town crier, from the Pastrami King to Red McGuire's saloon. He reveled in the borough, even as he moved far beyond it. "Breslin is an intellectual disguised as a barroom primitive," wrote Jack Newfield and Wayne Barrett in their book "City for Sale." The eccentric, entertaining Breslin acknowledged he was prone to fits of pique and a bad temper. After spewing ethnic slurs at a Korean-American co-worker in 1990, Breslin apologized by writing, "I am no good and once again I can prove it."

But the Pulitzer committee, in citing Breslin's commentary, noted that his columns "consistently championed ordinary citizens." The winning pieces exposed police torture in a Queens precinct, and took a sympathetic look at the life of an AIDS patient. A few days after the 2001 World Trade Center attacks, he wrote of the dwindling hopes for the families. "The streets have been covered with pictures and posters of missing people," he wrote. "The messages on the posters begging for help. Their wife could be in a coma in a hospital. The husband could be wandering the street. Please look. My sister could have stumbled out of the wreckage and taken to a hospital that doesn't know her. Help. Call if you see her. But now it is the ninth day and the beautiful sad hope of the families seems more like denial."

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[waltky]

Grandson of Standard Oil Co-Founder, Dies at 101...

David Rockefeller, Grandson of Standard Oil Co-Founder, Dies at 101
Mar 20 2017 - David Rockefeller, the billionaire businessman and philanthropist who was the last in his generation of one of the country's most famously philanthropic families, died Monday. He was 101.

Rockefeller died in his sleep at his home in suburban Pocantico Hills, New York, according to his spokesman, Fraser P. Seitel. He was the youngest of six children born to John D. Rockefeller Jr. and the grandson of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller. With the passing of his siblings, he became the guardian of his family's fortune and head of a sprawling network of family interests, both business and philanthropic, that ranged from environmental conservation to the arts. To mark his 100th birthday in 2015, Rockefeller gave 1,000 acres of land next to a national park to the state of Maine.

David Rockefeller, brother of New York's Gov. Nelson Rockefeller and president of the giant Chase Manhattan Bank, appears on NBC's "Meet the Press" in 1963.​

Aspects of the Rockefeller brothers' upbringing became famous, including the 25-cent allowance, portions of which had to be set aside for charity and savings, and the inculcation that wealth brings great responsibility. Two of his brothers held elected office: Nelson Rockefeller served as the governor of New York, hungered for the White House and briefly served as vice president. Winthrop Rockefeller was a governor of Arkansas. David Rockefeller, however, wielded power and influence without ever seeking public office. Among his many accomplishments were spurring the project that led to the World Trade Center.

David Rockefeller in 1981.​

And unlike his other brothers, John D. III and Laurance, who shied from the spotlight and were known for philanthropy, David Rockefeller embraced business and traveled and spoke widely as a champion of enlightened capitalism. "American capitalism has brought more benefits to more people than any other system in any part of the world at any time in history," he said. "The problem is to see that the system is run as efficiently and as honestly as it can be." Rockefeller graduated from Harvard in 1936 and received a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago in 1940. He served in the Army during World War II, then began climbing the ranks of management at Chase Bank. That bank merged with The Manhattan Company in 1955.

David Rockefeller participates in the C40 Large Cities Climate Summit in New York in 2007​

He was named Chase Manhattan's president in 1961 and chairman and chief executive officer eight years later. He retired in 1981 at age 65 after a 35-year career. In his role of business statesman, Rockefeller preached capitalism at home and favored assisting economies abroad on grounds that bringing prosperity to the Third World would create customers for American products. He parted company with some of his fellow capitalists on income taxes, calling it unseemly to earn $1 million and then find ways to avoid paying taxes on it. He didn't say how much he paid in taxes and never spoke publicly about his personal worth. In 2015, Forbes magazine estimated his fortune at $3 billion.

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[waltky]

Babi Yar poet dies at age 83...

‘Babi Yar’ poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko dies at age 83
Mon, Apr 03, 2017 - Yevgeny Yevtushenko, an internationally acclaimed poet with the charisma of an actor and the instincts of a politician whose defiant verse inspired a generation of young Russians in their fight against Stalinism during the Cold War, died on Saturday in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he had been teaching for many years. He was 83.

His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by a close friend, Mikhail Morgulis, with the TASS news agency, Radio Free Europe reported. It said he had been admitted late on Friday in “serious condition.” His wife, Maria Novikova, and their two sons, Dmitry and Yevgeny, were with him when he died. Yevgeny said his father’s doctors said that he was suffering from stage 4 cancer.

Yevtushenko’s poems of protest, often declaimed with sweeping gestures to thousands of excited admirers in public squares, sports stadiums and lecture halls, captured the tangled emotions of Russia’s young — hope, fear, anger and euphoric anticipation — as the country struggled to free itself from repression during the tense, confused years after Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953. In 1961 alone, Yevtushenko gave 250 poetry readings.

He gained international acclaim as a young revolutionary with Babi Yar, the unflinching 1961 poem that told of the slaughter of nearly 34,000 Jews by the Nazis and denounced the anti-Semitism that had spread throughout the Soviet Union. At the height of his fame, Yevtushenko read his works in packed soccer stadiums and arenas, including to a crowd of 200,000 in 1991 that came to listen during a failed coup attempt in Russia. He also attracted large audiences on tours of the West.

He was the best known of a small group of rebel poets and writers who brought hope to a young generation with poetry that took on totalitarian leaders, ideological zealots and timid bureaucrats. However, Yevtushenko did so working mostly within the system, taking care not to join the ranks of outright literary dissidents. By stopping short of the line between defiance and resistance, he enjoyed a measure of official approval that more daring dissidents came to resent.

‘Babi Yar’ poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko dies at age 83 - Taipei Times

 

[waltky]

Carter era Nat'l. Security Adviser passes away...

Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Adviser to Jimmy Carter, Dies at 89
MAY 26, 2017 - Zbigniew Brzezinski, the hawkish strategic theorist who was national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter in the tumultuous years of the Iran hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the late 1970s, died on Friday at a hospital in Virginia. He was 89.

His death, at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, was announced on Friday by his daughter, Mika Brzezinski, a co-host of the MSNBC program “Morning Joe.” Like his predecessor Henry A. Kissinger, Mr. Brzezinski was a foreign-born scholar (he in Poland, Mr. Kissinger in Germany) with considerable influence in global affairs, both before and long after his official tour of duty in the White House. In essays, interviews and television appearances over the decades, he cast a sharp eye on six successive administrations, including that of Donald J. Trump, whose election he did not support and whose foreign policy, he found, lacked coherence.

Mr. Brzezinski was nominally a Democrat, with views that led him to speak out, for example, against the “greed,” as he put it, of an American system that compounded inequality. He was one of the few foreign policy experts to warn against the invasion of Iraq in 2003. But in at least one respect — his rigid hatred of the Soviet Union — he had stood to the right of many Republicans, including Mr. Kissinger and President Richard M. Nixon. And during his four years under Mr. Carter, beginning in 1977, thwarting Soviet expansionism at any cost guided much of American foreign policy, for better or worse.

He supported billions in military aid for Islamic militants fighting invading Soviet troops in Afghanistan. He tacitly encouraged China to continue backing the murderous regime of Pol Pot in Cambodia, lest the Soviet-backed Vietnamese take over that country. He managed to delay implementation of the SALT II arms treaty in 1979 by raising objections to Soviet behavior in Vietnam, Africa and Cuba; and when the Soviets went into Afghanistan late that year, “SALT disappeared from the U.S.-Soviet agenda,” as he noted in a memoir four years later.

Mr. Brzezinski, a descendant of Polish aristocrats (his name is pronounced Z-BIG-nyehv breh-ZHIHN-skee), was a severe, even intimidating figure, with hawkish features, penetrating eyes and strong Polish accent. Washington quickly learned that he had sharp elbows as well. He was adept at seizing the spotlight and freezing out the official spokesman on foreign policy, Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance, provoking conflicts that ultimately led to Mr. Vance’s resignation. Where Mr. Vance had endorsed the Nixon-Kissinger policy of a “triangular” power balance among the United States, China and the Soviet Union, Mr. Brzezinski scorned such “acrobatics,” as he called them. He advocated instead what he called a deliberate “strategic deterioration” in relations with Moscow, and closer ties to China.

Moving Fast

 

[waltky]

Jim Bunning, Hall of Fame pitcher and ex-US senator from Kentucky passes away...

Jim Bunning, Hall of Fame pitcher and ex-US senator from Kentucky, dead
May 27, 2017 | Former U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning, a major league pitching star who took his aggressive, no-nonsense brand of competitiveness into the game of politics as a congressman and senator from Kentucky, died at the age of 85.

The family of Bunning released a statement following his death, which was due to complications from a stroke he suffered last October. He died at 11:55 p.m. Friday, according to the statement. "The family is deeply grateful for the love and prayers of Jim’s friends and supporters," the statement read. "While he was a public servant with a Hall of Fame career, his legacy to us is that of a beloved husband, caring father and supportive grandfather." A strong right-hander with more than 100 wins and a no-hitter in each of the two major leagues, Bunning enjoyed national fame as an athlete before capturing Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District in 1986.

Former U.S. Senator and Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Bunning.​

The staunchly conservative Republican from Northern Kentucky’s Campbell County easily won five successive two-year terms before giving up his House seat to run for the U.S. Senate in 1998. He served in the Senate from 1999 to 2010. "He changed the face of politics in Northern Kentucky," state Sen. Damon Thayer said Saturday. "He took such an interest in supporting local candidates. "He worked very hard to reshape the political scene in Northern Kentucky and across the 4th Congressional District." At 6 foot-3, Bunning was physically imposing, and on both the baseball diamond and Capitol Hill he was known for a toughness that could be intimidating. “He was a hard man, but you’d want him on your side because you knew he would be ready to play and he would give you everything at his command,” a Detroit News sportswriter, Joe Falls, wrote years ago.

Jim Bunning greeted supporters in March 1997 before making his official announcement that he would seek the office of retiring Sen. Wendell Ford.​

He was referring to Bunning the pitcher but he could just as well have been talking about the politician. In his 17-year career in the big leagues, Bunning developed a reputation for throwing the ball close to batters, trying to back them off the plate. “If he had to brush back his mother, I think he’d do it to win,” former Detroit Tigers second baseman Frank Bolling said of his one-time teammate. In his second career, instead of baseballs, Bunning went after opponents and issues with strong rhetoric and an intense certainty in the correctness of his own views.

Bunning with then Jefferson County Ky. Judge Mitch McConnell Apr. `83​

That was especially true with abortion. A Roman Catholic with nine children, Bunning voted consistently to limit abortion as an option for women and had contempt for colleagues who softened their position on the highly emotional issue. “My training, from the very first day that I was trained as a kid, was that anything like that was wrong,” the Jesuit-schooled Bunning once said in a Courier-Journal interview. “Not only legally wrong, but morally wrong.” Principled — that’s how admirers described Bunning. To critics rigid was a more appropriate adjective. Unafraid of confrontation and unencumbered by an active sense of humor, Bunning could come across as pugnacious. “He’s as negative as any person I’ve ever met in my life,” state Sen. Michael Moloney, a Democrat, said of Bunning in 1983 when he made an unsuccessful run for governor.

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See also:

FLASHBACK: Jim Bunning's Historic and Heroic Stand
May 27, 2017 | [Editor's Note: This column originally appeared on March 3, 2010, when Jim Bunning was serving in the U.S. Senate. Bunning, who was born on Oct. 23, 1931, died last night in Southgate, Kentucky, at the age of 85.]

Republican Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky, a 78-year-old grandfather of 40 who is not running for re-election, has single-handedly fought a battle on Capitol Hill over the past week that ought to inspire all taxpayers to rally around his banner of commonsense. Bunning not only said "NO" to a Congress that week after week has been driving the nation deeper and deeper into debt, but decided to use what power he has under Senate rules to make sure his "NO" was heard.

Three weeks ago, President Obama signed a law allowing the federal government to borrow an additional $1.9 trillion. That law included a provision Washington insiders call "Pay-Go," which supposedly obligates Congress to offset any new spending it approves with new revenues or cuts in spending elsewhere in the budget. But this "Pay-Go" is a fraud.

A week after Congress enacted it, the House approved a bill that, among other things, "extended" for 30 days the current payment schedule for doctors treating Medicare patients, certain highway programs, the period of time that people can claim unemployment benefits and a provision included in last year's $787-billion stimulus law that temporarily provided federal subsidies to help cover COBRA health insurance payments for unemployed people. Each of these provisions was set to expire on the last day in February. But the House bill to extend them did not abide by Pay-Go. It contemplated adding $10 billion to the national debt.

Last week, the Senate approved a new $15 billion "jobs" bill pushed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. It also did not abide by Pay-Go. It contemplated adding $12 billion to the national debt. In the wake of this, Reid went to the Senate floor on Wednesday night to ask for the unanimous consent of his colleagues to bring up his version of the House "extension" bill. Like the House bill, it would add $10 billion to the national debt. If Reid had his way, the Senate would add $22 billion in new debt in two bills passed two weeks after enacting Pay-Go.

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[waltky]

Helmut Kohl of Germany passes on...

Former German chancellor Helmut Kohl dead at 87
16 June 2017 • Former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the architect of Germany's 1990 reunification and mentor to Angela Merkel, has died at age 87, his Christian Democratic Union party (CDU) said on Friday.

The mass-selling newspaper Bild reported that Kohl died on Friday morning in his home in Ludwigshafen, in western Germany. "We mourn," the CDU tweeted with a picture of the former chancellor. Germany's longest serving post-war chancellor from 1982 to 1998, Kohl was a driving force behind the introduction of the euro currency, convincing sceptical Germans to give up their cherished deutschemark. An imposing figure who formed a close relationship with French President Francois Mitterrand in pushing for closer European integration, Kohl had been frail and wheelchair-bound since suffering a bad fall in 2008. Tributes quickly flowed in from around the world.

Former U.S. President George H.W. Bush said he and his wife Barbara "mourn the loss of a true friend of freedom, and the man I consider one of the greatest leaders in post-war Europe." "Working closely with my very good friend to help achieve a peaceful end to the Cold War and the unification of Germany within NATO will remain one of the great joys of my life," he added in a statement. "Helmut was a rock." Gerhard Schroeder, Kohl's successor as chancellor, called him a "great patriot and European...The unification of our country and our continent will be linked to his name for all time." In Brussels, European flags were lowered to half mast in tribute.

Kohl with former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1986​

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who served as Luxembourg's prime minister while Kohl was in office, tweeted: "Helmut's death hurts me deeply. My mentor, my friend, the very essence of Europe, he will be greatly, greatly missed." At home, Kohl is celebrated above all as the father of German reunification, which he achieved after the November 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall despite resistance from partners such as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. He won voters in bleak communist East Germany by promising them "flourishing landscapes".

Shortly after leaving office, Kohl's reputation was tarnished by a financing scandal in his centre-right CDU, now led by Chancellor Merkel. Kohl mentored Merkel early in her career, appointing her to her first ministerial post. Until his death, Kohl refused to identify the donors, saying he had given them his word. European leaders said the EU must build on his legacy. Italian EU affairs minister Sandro Gozi tweeted: "We have lost a great leader, above all a European with vision and courage. We missed him and we will miss him. We must follow his example to relaunch the EU."

Source

 

[waltky]

Jalal Talabani, died in Germany...

Iraq's first non-Arab president has died in Germany
Oct. 3, 2017 -- Iraq's first non-Arab president and leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Jalal Talabani, died in Germany on Tuesday.

Talabani, 83, suffered a stroke in 2012 and left politics only to return in 2014. He suffered a period of deteriorating health in the days leading to his death. Known by Kurds are Mam Jalal, meaning uncle, Talabani was involved in political affairs from an early age. Born Nov. 12, 1993, he joined the Kurdistan Democratic Party at the age of 14 and graduated from Baghdad University with a degree in law in 1959.

Iraq President Jalal Talabani visiting the White House in 2007. Talabani died in Germany​

His career has gone through multiple phases, working as a journalist, politician and member of the Kurdish Peshmerga military. He played a major role in the September 1961 Kurdish uprising known as the Aylul Revolution while serving on the Kirkuk and Sulaimani fronts. He established the Kurdistan Democratic Party in 1975 while continuing to play a leading role in the Kurdish fight for independence. He was one of Kurdistan's pro-independence figures.

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan said of Talabani: "He was often seen as a unifying elder statesman who could soothe tempers among Iraq's Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds." Talabani was instrumental in drafting the Iraqi constitution in 2003 and won two terms as president of Iraq. Kurdish parties in Iran and Syria have expressed their condolences while Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has also extended his condolences.

Iraq's first non-Arab president has died in Germany

 

[Little-Acorn]

The mainstream liberal media.


After decades of boosting leftist candidates, covering up their crimes and scnadals, putting their failures on the back page, and putting all Republican problems in the headlines, the election of Donald J. Trump sounded the death knell for this fifth-column liberal force. Trumps neve takes any attack or misrepresentation lying down, but punches back and calls out the media for exactly who they are from the Bully Pulpit - the first President ever to do so. He leaves them with no alternate channel to clod and cover up his words or slant them in the media's favor, leaving them with no possible reply.

As a result, more and more people are coming to realize just how biased and unfair they are, and turning to them less and less for information. There usefulness as props for whatever leftist candidate that pops up, is diminishing and will soon end.

Good riddance.

 

[waltky]

MH370 not found after 300K-mile search...

Final report: No location for MH370 after 300K-mile search
Oct. 3, 2017 -- Despite more than 1,000 days of searching, the search for missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 has ended, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau said on Tuesday.

In its final report, the ATSB noted that the underwater search mapped nearly 300,000 miles of Indian Ocean sea floor. The search for the plane lasted from March 2014 until January 2017, making it one of the largest searches of its type in aviation history. The challenge for investigators was the limited amount of data they had to work, with including some aircraft performance information and satellite communication metadata, data found during the underwater search, and long-term drift studies to trace the origin of MH370 debris. Data from the plane's location was limited because no transmissions were received from the aircraft after the initial 40 minutes of flight. Automatic detection systems were unable to transmit the plane's position after this time, further limiting investigators.

Crew members aboard the Australian Navy ship HMAS Success watch as a helicopter participates in the search for Malaysia Airlines flight 370 in the Indian Ocean, about 1,000 miles off the coast of Perth, Australia.​

In 2015 and 2016, debris from MH370 was found on the shores of Indian Ocean islands and near the east African coastline. The debris gave investigators and scientists significant new evidence that allowed them to pinpoint the exact area where the plane may have ended its flight. "The underwater search area was located up to 2,800 km west of the coast of Western Australia and the prevailing weather conditions in this area for much of the year are challenging," the report said. "Crews on the search vessels were working for months at a time in conditions which elevated the operational risks." Of 661 areas of interest identified as locations for the crash, 82 were thoroughly investigated.

Although the understanding of where MH370 may be located is better now than it has ever been and despite the efforts of investigators, the aircraft still hasn't been located. "The reasons for the loss of MH370 cannot be established with certainty until the aircraft is found," the report said. "It is almost inconceivable and certainly societally unacceptable in the modern aviation era with 10 million passengers boarding commercial aircraft every day, for a large commercial aircraft to be missing and for the world not to know with certainty what became of the aircraft and those on board."

Out of 661 areas identified, 82 of the most promising were thoroughly searched. Despite 1,000 days of search efforts, the aircraft carrying 239 people has not been found.​

Malaysia Airlines flight 370 was lost from a flight from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to Beijing in China. The Boeing 777 was carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew members. It was thought to have blown off course and crashed in the southern Indian Ocean. In 2017, Malaysia Airlines said it has become the first carrier to enlist to a satellite flight tracking system that will monitor the location of company's fleet worldwide.

Final report: No location for MH370 after 300K-mile search

 

[waltky]

Former Presidential candidate John Anderson passes away...

Former Rep. John Anderson dies at 95
Dec. 4, 2017 -- Former U.S. Rep. John Anderson of Illinois, who ran for president as an independent in 1980, has died, his family announced Monday. He was 95. The circumstances of his death were not reported.

Anderson, who was born in 1922 and raised in Rockford, Ill., was elected to Congress in 1960. He served from 1961-81 and served as the chairman of the House Republican Conference.

He largely voted along with the Republican Party until 1968, when he supported the Fair Housing Act prohibiting racial discrimination in housing. He convinced some fellow Republicans to support the act, which passed.

John B. Anderson ran an unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 1980.​

In 1980, Anderson ran for president, coming in third behind Republican Ronald Reagan and then-President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat. Anderson, who served in the Army during World War II and worked as a lawyer prior to his political career, returned to law after finishing his stint in Congress. He is survived by his wife, five children and 11 grandchildren.

Former Rep. John Anderson dies at 95