On August 30 each year, organizations such as the UN and Amnesty International play an active role in raising awareness that enforced disappearance is a crime and should not be used as a tool to deal with situations of conflict. Many activists openly share personal stories, via the media or public event, about victims of enforced disappearances and the impact that these disappearances have on their families and communities.
Public life
The International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances is a UN observance and not a public holiday.
Background
Enforced disappearance is used as a strategy to spread terror within the society. It occurs when people are arrested, detained or abducted against their will and when governments refuse to disclose the whereabouts of these people. Enforced disappearance is a global problem and is not restricted to a specific region of the world.
In December 2010, the UN officially declared that it would annually observe the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances on August 30 each year, starting from 2011.
International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances Observances
Weekday
Date
Year
Name
Holiday type
Where it is observed
Tue
Aug 30
2011
International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances
United Nations observance
Thu
Aug 30
2012
International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances
United Nations observance
Fri
Aug 30
2013
International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances
United Nations observance
Sat
Aug 30
2014
International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances
United Nations observance
Sun
Aug 30
2015
International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances
United Nations observance
Tue
Aug 30
2016
International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances
United Nations observance
Wed
Aug 30
2017
International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances
United Nations observance
Thu
Aug 30
2018
International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances
United Nations observance
Fri
Aug 30
2019
International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances
United Nations observance
Sun
Aug 30
2020
International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances
Marcy Borders at her home in Bayonne, N.J., on Nov. 26, 2014.Credit Reena Rose Sibayan/The Jersey Journal, via Associated Press
Marcy Borders, who became known as the “dust lady” from a defining picture of her covered in ash and grime on Sept. 11, 2001, died on Monday. She was 42.
Marcy Borders on Sept. 11, 2001.Credit Stan Honda/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Her sister, Dawn Borders, said she died from stomach cancer.
Ms. Borders was an employee of Bank of America in 2001, and was working on the 81st floor of the north tower of the World Trade Center on the day of the terrorist attacks.
“We had no idea what was going on,” she said of the plane’s impact. “The way the building was shaking, I couldn’t sit there.”
In the chaos that followed, Ms. Borders retreated to a crowded stairwell where she was chased by a cloud of smoke and dust.
“Every time I inhaled, my mouth filled up with it, I was choking,” she said. “I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. I was just saying to myself and saying out loud that I didn’t want to die.”
She was eventually led downstairs and into a neighboring building by another person, where her picture was taken by a photographer for Agence France-Presse, Stan Honda.
A resident of Bayonne, N.J., Ms. Borders told The Jersey Journal last year that she was suffering from stomach cancer, the latest in a string of hardships that she experienced after the collapse of the towers. She also struggled with depression and drug addiction, and was having trouble paying her medical bills which left her unable to take medication in the prescribed dosages.
Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York and Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, tweeted in remembrance of Ms. Borders.
Ms. Borders told The Journal that she avoided looking at Mr. Honda’s image of her.
“I don’t want to be a victim anymore,” she said.
She is survived by her daughter, Noelle, and son, Zayden.
AMELIA BOYNTON ROBINSON, A PIVOTAL FIGURE AT THE SELMA MARCH
Amelia Boynton Robinson crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge with President Obama in March.Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times.
By Margalit Fox
Aug. 26, 2015
Amelia Boynton Robinson, who was called the matriarch of the voting rights movement — and whose photograph, showing her beaten, gassed and left for dead in the epochal civil rights march known as Bloody Sunday, appeared in newspapers and magazines round the world in 1965 — died on Wednesday in Montgomery, Ala. She was 104.
Her death was confirmed by Shawn Eckles, a family spokesman.
Mrs. Boynton Robinson was one of the organizers of the march, the first of three attempts by demonstrators in March 1965 to walk the 54 miles from Selma, Ala., to the capital, Montgomery, to demand the right to register to vote.
As shown in “Selma,” the Oscar-nominated 2014 film directed by Ava DuVernay, Mrs. Boynton Robinson (played by Lorraine Toussaint) had helped persuade the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who would lead the second and third marches, to concentrate his efforts in that city.
Bloody Sunday took place on March 7, 1965. As they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, some 600 black demonstrators, led by John Lewis and the Rev. Hosea Williams, were set upon by Alabama state troopers armed with tear gas, billy clubs and whips.
Walking near the front of the line and subject to the full force of the troopers’ blows, Mrs. Boynton Robinson, then known as Amelia Boynton, was knocked unconscious. One widely reproduced press photograph shows her lying insensible on the ground with a white officer standing over her, nightstick in hand. Another shows a fellow marcher taking her in his arms and struggling to lift her up.
News coverage of Bloody Sunday — in which at least 17 demonstrators, including Mrs. Boynton Robinson, were hospitalized — was considered pivotal in winning wide popular support for the civil rights movement. After her release, Mrs. Boynton Robinson was a guest of honor at the White House on Aug. 6, 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the federal Voting Rights Act into law, an event seen as a direct consequence of the marches.
Mrs. Boynton Robinson with a fellow marcher in 1965 after being knocked unconscious by Alabama troopers at the bridge.Credit Pictorial Parade/Archive Photos/Getty Images
Mr. Boynton died in 1963, and the next year, Mrs. Boynton Robinson ran for Congress from Alabama. She was the first black person since Reconstruction, and the first black woman ever, to do so. She received about 10 percent of the vote, a noteworthy figure given how few African-Americans were registered in her district at the time.
Mrs. Boynton Robinson in 2003.Credit Gregory Smith/Associated Press
Mrs. Boynton Robinson, who had met Dr. King in 1954 and been involved with the work of his Southern Christian Leadership Conference ever since, had long opened her house in Selma as a meeting ground for civil rights leaders in the area. The Selma-to-Montgomery marches were planned there, and an early draft of the Voting Rights Act was written there.
In later years, Mrs. Boynton Robinson incurred criticism for her association with Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr., a former Marxist activist who came increasingly to be considered a member of the right-wing fringe. (Mr. LaRouche served time in prison after being convicted in 1988 on charges including mail fraud and conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service.)
For years, until her retirement in 2009, Mrs. Boynton Robinson served on the board of the Schiller Institute, a think tank founded in the 1980s and closely associated with Mr. LaRouche. Her memoir, “Bridge Across Jordan,” was reprinted by the institute in 1991.
Mrs. Boynton Robinson also made headlines in 2004 when she lost a multimillion-dollar defamation suit against ABC and the Walt Disney Company over the 1999 television film “Selma, Lord, Selma.” She charged that the film depicted her as an “Aunt Jemima” who sang gospel songs and spoke in a stereotyped dialect. (She had nothing but praise for Ms. DuVernay’s film.)
At her death, Mrs. Boynton Robinson lived in Tuskegee, Ala. Her second husband, Bob W. Billups, died in 1973; her third husband, James Robinson, died in 1988. A son, Bill Boynton Jr., died last year. Survivors include another son, Bruce Carver Boynton, whose godfather was George Washington Carver, and a granddaughter.
Among her laurels is the Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Medal, which she received in 1990.
In an interview with The New York Post in December, Mrs. Boynton Robinson reflected on the events of Bloody Sunday and the long road since.
“I wasn’t looking for notoriety,” she said. “But if that’s what it took,” she added, “I didn’t care how many licks I got. It just made me even more determined to fight for our cause.”
DR. JAMES ‘RED’ DUKE, ICONIC SURGEON WHO STARTED LIFE FLIGHT
Dr. James “Red” Duke Jr., Houston’s iconic, cowboy-style doctor who delivered homespun health advice on nationally syndicated television and founded the Life Flight helicopter ambulance system, died Tuesday. He was 86.
Duke, a trauma surgeon who attended to Gov. John Connally on the day of President John F. Kennedy‘s assassination, succumbed to natural causes at Memorial Hermann Hospital in the Texas Medical Center. He had been in declining health the past year.
“Red was a true pioneer in medicine for our community – a visionary in trauma care, a dedicated doctor, a superb educator, the larger-than-life figure that everyone knew,” said Dan Wolterman, president of Memorial Hermann Health System, where Duke practiced for four decades. “His personality was so contagious. You couldn’t help but like Red and want to engage him in conversation. He was everyone’s friend.”
His passing was announced Tuesday evening in a statement from his family issued by Geo. H. Lewis & Sons funeral directors.
“To countless colleagues, friends and patients, he was a skilled physician, innovative healthcare provider, exceptional communicator and dedicated conservationist,” the statement said. “We, however, mourn him as a caring father, grandfather and devoted brother who will be deeply missed by his family.
It was Duke’s colorful, country-boy style that captured the public imagination – the trademark bushy mustache, chewing tobacco habit and Texas twang. He dressed in faded jeans, bolo ties and cowboy hats, called most everyone Bud or Babe and spoke in a vernacular known as Dukeisms. “It ain’t the fall that’s so bad,” he’d say, crusading against preventable injuries. “It’s the sudden stop that hurts.”
The images were so rich, prime-time television exploited them. Duke was the model for the 1987 television show Buck James, which starred Dennis Weaver as a country doctor at a Houston academic hospital. Weaver shadowed Duke for two weeks to create the character.
Duke had already gained a national following from his non-fiction doctoring on television. He first came to the public eye when Life Flight was featured in a 1979 prime-time documentary. He was such a natural that the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, where he was a professor of surgery, choose him to give its Texas Health Reports. These were short, folksy but no-nonsense segments on everything from proper nutrition to preventing skin cancer that ran on local newscasts in 30 states. He also hosted the PBS series “Bodywatch.”
By the late 1980s, his profile was so high he was talked about as a candidate to succeed Surgeon General C. Everett Koop. In a 2012 tribute, U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Houston, summed up Duke’s appeal as “John Wayne in scrubs.”
“Dr. Duke has the personality of an old-fashioned country doctor that makes house calls but knows people and medicine like no one I have ever met,” Poe wrote. “(He) is somewhat of a phenomenon to foreigners (who don’t live in Texas) because of his simple, straight-shootin’ style. People are drawn to him because he has the rare ability to put a complicated subject into simple terms everyone can understand. But don’t let him fool you. He is a world-class surgeon trapped in a Texan’s body.”
Duke, who acquired the nickname Red because of his curly red locks, was born Nov. 16, 1928, in Ennis, a southeastern suburb of Dallas. Shortly thereafter his family moved to Hillsboro in central Texas, where he picked cotton, dug ditches and delivered the Dallas Morning News and the Saturday Evening Post. Hunting and fishing in the surrounding countryside, he became lifelong friends with another redhead, Willie Nelson. Later, as a doctor, he was given to bursting into Nelson songs without warning.
Duke, a Southern Baptist, originally intended to go into the ministry. As a boy, he had asked his mother whether a preacher or a doctor made more money, and even though she said a doctor earned more, he decided to become a preacher. He went on to earn a divinity degree at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth before he decided medicine was his real calling, motivated by a book he’d read on Albert Schweitzer.
He attended medical school at UT Southwestern in Dallas, then did his surgical training at Dallas Parkland Hospital, where he was on duty on Nov. 22, 1963, when Kennedy and Connally arrived after being shot by Lee Harvey Oswald. Accompanying the chief of surgical services, Duke arrived at a trauma room where Kennedy lay when he was told a patient across the hall needed help, too. There, Duke saw a man lying on the table, dressed in a dark suit and a bloodied dress shirt.
“I don’t know when I finally realized it was the governor of Texas,” Duke recalled in 2013.
Duke found a serious gunshot wound that needed immediate treatment. He quickly closed the wound and inserted a chest tube, and the governor was rushed into an operating room, where surgery proved successful.
After a stint as an academic surgeon in Afghanistan, Duke came to Houston in 1972, joining UT’s new medical school, then just two years old. The school had no buildings, and its surgery department had just three members at the time. Duke would help build a program that culminated in the establishment of Memorial Hermann’s Level 1 trauma center, now the nation’s busiest.
During that time, he also quickly realized the potential of the helicopter landing pad that had been built at Hermann Hospital and began pushing for it to be used for emergency patients. In 1976, the idea became Life Flight, considered one of the premier air ambulance services in the country.
“He was the Life Flight champion,” said Dr. Kenneth Mattox, a trauma surgeon and longtime chief of staff at Ben Taub General Hospital, which operates the city’s other Level 1 trauma center. “He was a gee-whiz character who had a practical approach to the medical system and medical problems. He knew how to make things work.”
Neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks speaks at Columbia University in June 2009 in New York City. Sacks, a prolific author and commentator, has died at age 82. Chris McGrath/Getty Images
Neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks speaks at Columbia University in June 2009 in New York City. Sacks, a prolific author and commentator, has died at age 82.
Chris McGrath/Getty Images
Oliver Sacks, the famed neurologist and best-selling author of books such as The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, died of cancer today in New York City at the age of 82, a longtime friend and colleague has confirmed.
The London-born academic’s 1973 memoir Awakenings, about his efforts to use the drug L-Dopa to bring patients who survived the 1917-1928 encephalitis epidemic out of their persistent catatonic state, was turned into a 1990 Hollywood film starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro. He was the author of a dozen other books.
A friend and colleague, Orrin Devinsky, who is a professor of neurology at New York University, where Sacks worked for many years, emailed NPR to confirm the death.
“As a medical doctor and a writer, Dr. Sacks achieved a level of popular renown rare among scientists. More than a million copies of his books are in print in the United States, his work was adapted for film and stage, and he received about 10,000 letters a year. (‘I invariably reply to people under 10, over 90 or in prison,’ he once said.)
“Dr. Sacks variously described his books and essays as case histories, pathographies, clinical tales or ‘neurological novels.’ His subjects included Madeleine J., a blind woman who perceived her hands only as useless ‘lumps of dough’; Jimmie G., a submarine radio operator whose amnesia stranded him for more than three decades in 1945; and Dr. P. — the man who mistook his wife for a hat — whose brain lost the ability to decipher what his eyes were seeing.”
Author Lisa Appignanesi, writing in The Guardian earlier this year, said of Sacks that he could transform his subjects into grand characters.
“For all their lacks and losses, or what the medics call ‘deficits’, Sacks’s subjects have a capacious 19th-century humanity, ” Appignanesi wrote. “No mere objects of hasty clinical notes, or articles in professional journals, his “patients” are transformed by his interest, sympathetic gaze and ability to convey optimism in tragedy into grand characters who can transcend their conditions. They emerge as the very types of our neuroscientific age.”
In his later life, Sacks began studying hallucinations, partly inspired by his youthful experimentation with LSD. He wrote a book and conducted lectures on the subject. In an interview with Terry Gross, host of NPR’s Fresh Air, in 2012, Sacks said:
“I was fascinated that one could have such perceptual changes, and also that they went with a certain feeling of significance, an almost numinous feeling. I’m strongly atheist by disposition, but nonetheless when this happened, I couldn’t help thinking, ‘That must be what the hand of God is like.’ ”
Sacks did a TED Talk on the subject in 2009.
In an Op-Ed that appeared in the Times in February, Sacks announced that what had started out as a melanoma in his eye had spread to his liver and that he didn’t have long to live.
“It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me. I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can,” he wrote.
“I have been lucky enough to live past 80, and the 15 years allotted to me beyond Hume’s three score and five have been equally rich in work and love,” Sacks wrote. “In that time, I have published five books and completed an autobiography (rather longer than Hume’s few pages) to be published this spring; I have several other books nearly finished.”
And, in an opinion piece published in the Times earlier this month, Sacks wrote:
“[N]ow, weak, short of breath, my once-firm muscles melted away by cancer, I find my thoughts, increasingly, not on the supernatural or spiritual, but on what is meant by living a good and worthwhile life — achieving a sense of peace within oneself. I find my thoughts drifting to the Sabbath, the day of rest, the seventh day of the week, and perhaps the seventh day of one’s life as well, when one can feel that one’s work is done, and one may, in good conscience, rest.”
TV actress Melody Patterson, best known for playing Wrangler Jane on “F Troop,” died Thursday at the age of 66. Patterson died in a nursing home after multiple organ failure, according to reports.
In addition to her starring role on “F Troop” from 1965-1967, Patterson appeared on other television shows of the era including “The Monkees,” “Adam-12” and “Green Acres.” She was also in a handful of episodes of “Hawaii Five-O,” which featured her husband at the time, James MacArthur.
Patterson also appeared in a few films, landing roles in “The Angry Breed,” “The Cycle Savages” and “Blood and Lace.”
Patterson’s “F Troop” co-star Larry Storch announced her death via Facebook post, saying, “It’s with a heavy heart that we can let you know our beloved Wrangler Jane, Melody Patterson passed away today. Our hearts are sad today. RIP Sweet Melody. We love you.”
Broadway actor Kyle Jean-Baptiste has died after falling off his mother’s fire escape. He was 21.
Kyle Jean-BaptisteCredit Laura Marie Duncan
Jean-Baptiste made Broadway history as the understudy for “Les Miserables” character Jean Valjean. When Jean-Baptiste stepped into the role, he became both the youngest actor to do so and the first African-American actor to play Valjean on Broadway. When he was not filling in as Valjean, the actor played the roles of Constable and Courfeyrac in the musical.
The company of “Les Mis” released the following statement on Jean-Baptiste’s death: “The entire ‘Les Miserables’ family is shocked and devastated by the sudden and tragic loss of Kyle, a remarkable young talent and tremendous person who made magic — and history — in his Broadway debut. We send our deepest condolences to his family and ask that you respect their privacy in this unimaginably difficult time.”
Broadway veteran Kristin Chenoweth tweeted her condolences, sending her “love and hugs to his family” and the “Les Mis” cast.
The United Nations’ (UN) International Day against Nuclear Tests brings public awareness and education about the effects of global nuclear weapon tests. The day aims to end nuclear testing and to promote peace and security.
The International Day against Nuclear Tests aims to raise people’s awareness on the need to prevent nuclear catastrophes to avert devastating effects on humankind, the environment and the planet. Many people use the day as an opportunity to share their perspective on the issue of nuclear weapons and testing. Different organizations may host educational and public activities to bring awareness of the use of nuclear weapons and the dangers involved with nuclear weapons testing and usage.
Public Life
The International Day against Nuclear Tests is a global observance but it is not a public holiday.
Background
The history of nuclear testing began on July 16, 1945, when an atomic bomb was used at a desert test site in Alamogordo, New Mexico, in the United States. More than 2000 nuclear tests were carried out worldwide between 1945 and 1996. Nuclear weapons tests are generally broken into different categories reflecting the test’s medium or location:
Atmospheric tests.
Underwater tests.
Underground tests.
Over the years, there have been calls to ban nuclear test to ensure the protection of people’s lives and the environment around them. The UN approved a draft resolution in late 2009 for an international day against nuclear tests to raise public awareness about the threats and dangers of nuclear weapons. It was also hoped that UN’s member states would move towards the idea of nuclear disarmament.
The International Day against Nuclear Tests was declared to be annually held on August 29, which marks the closing of one of the world’s largest nuclear test sites (in Kazakhstan) in 1991. The day is devoted to enhancing public awareness and education about the effects of nuclear weapon test explosions or any other nuclear explosions. It also promotes the need for a nuclear weapon-free world. The day’s first official observance was marked for August 29, 2010.
The United Nations’ (UN) International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition is annually observed on August 23 to remind people of the tragedy of the transatlantic slave trade. It gives people a chance to think about the historic causes, the methods and the consequences of slave trade.
Each year the UN invites people all over the world, including educators, students and artists, to organize events that center on the theme of this day. Theatre companies, cultural organizations, musicians and artists take part on this day by expressing their resistance against slavery through performances that involve music, dance and drama.
Educators promote the day by informing people about the historical events associated with slave trade, the consequences of slave trade, and to promote tolerance and human rights. Many organizations, including youth associations, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations, actively take part in the event to educate society about the negative consequences of slave trade.
Public life
The UN’s International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition is a United Nations observance worldwide but it is not a public holiday.
Background
In late August, 1791, an uprising began in Santo Domingo (today Haiti and the Dominican Republic) that would have a major effect on abolishing the transatlantic slave trade. The slave rebellion in the area weakened the Caribbean colonial system, sparking an uprising that led to abolishing slavery and giving the island its independence. It marked the beginning of the destruction of the slavery system, the slave trade and colonialism.
International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition was first celebrated in many countries, in particular in Haiti, on August 23, 1998, and in Senegal on August 23, 1999. Each year the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) reminds the international community about the importance of commemorating this day. This date also pays tribute to those who worked hard to abolish slave trade and slavery throughout the world. This commitment and the actions used to fight against the system of slavery had an impact on the human rights movement.
Symbols
UNESCO’s logo features a drawing of a temple with the “UNESCO” acronym under the roof of the temple and on top of the temple’s foundation. Underneath the temple are the words “United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization”. This logo is often used in promotional material for the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition.
Have you spotted Mars and Venus yet? They’re coming up into the dawn, beginning long and exciting apparitions. And on Monday, Neptune is at opposition.
Pictures are great, but there’s nothing like holding another world in your hands to appreciate its unique characteristics. (And if you hurry, you can get these at a great deal! Sale ends Friday night at midnight Mountain Time.)
ALABAMA FLAGGERS INVITE THE LEAGUE OF THE SOUTH TO A CONFEDERATE BATTLE FLAG RALLY
The Alabama Flaggers, a pro-Confederate battle flag group, is planning a rally this weekend at the Alabama Statehouse to protest continued efforts to take down the flag. And members of a neo-Confederate hate group are planning to attend.
The Alabama Flaggers, a “Southern heritage” organization, have invited prominent members of the League of the South (LOS) to join them this Saturday on the steps of the Alabama Capitol to demand secession from the United States, the latest in a tide of pro-Confederate events in the wake of June’s tragic shootings in Charleston.
“We are rallying for the Secession from the United States of America,” reads a statement posted to a Facebook group for the rally. “Brings [sic] your flags bring your secession flags bring your secession signs.”
One prominent image promoting the event on Facebook features Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley, who removed the Confederate battle flag from a memorial of Jefferson Davis on the Statehouse grounds last June, with the word “TURNCOAT” emblazoned across his face in red. The comments accompanying the picture label him a “Spineless Scallywag” and express outrage that charges haven’t been filed over his removal of the flag.
The Alabama Flaggers have made it clear that everyone is welcome, including members of the LOS, which was extended a special invitation despite being barred from many Confederate flag rallies in the past months for their extreme views.
As of Thursday, more than 300 people have indicated that they will attend Saturday’s event.
Lloyd Caperton, an Alabama LOS member, William Flowers, vice chairman of the Georgia chapter of the LOS, and Charles Bodenheimer, a LOS and Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) member who organized an SCV sponsored Confederate flag rally on the Alabama Capitol steps in June, have all confirmed that they will speak on Saturday. The Alabama Flaggers approved LOS President Michael Hill as a speaker, but he has yet to confirm.
The LOS has become increasingly radical in recent years, and even more notably in recent months, as they have eagerly taken on a mantle of victimhood as the Confederate flag has come under fire and begun preparing themselves for an inevitable race war. The group has characterized such actions as part of an ongoing “cultural genocide” against white southerners.
“If negroes think a ‘race war’ in modern America would be to their advantage, they had better prepare themselves for a very rude awakening,” Hill concludes. “White People may be patient, but our patience does have a limit. You do not want to test that limit.”
At least ten other LOS members have indicated their intention to attend the rally, among them Eric Meadows, the training director for the LOS’s paramilitary wing, “the Indomitables,” and a veteran of both the U.S. Army and Navy with 12 years of service.
In a separate essay to the LOS website in July 2014, Hill chillingly explored the idea of “fourth generation warfare.”
“The primary targets will not be enemy soldiers; instead, they will be political leaders, members of the hostile media, cultural icons, bureaucrats, and other of the managerial elite without whom the engines of tyranny don’t run,” Hill wrote.
Hill decried objections to his post as nothing more than “progressive bedwetting.”
Since the Charleston shooting, and the subsequent removal of the Confederate flag from the Statehouse grounds in Alabama and South Carolina, there has been outrage accompanied by a flood of protests, predominately across the Southeast.
Hatewatch has documented more than 200 rallies and estimates more than 24,000 have attended, with close to 70 more rallies scheduled in the coming months.
While hate group members predominately associated with the LOS have attended some protests, they have rarely been sought out, especially to address a crowd.
Given the combustible climate at these rallies, where blind passion has trumped empathy and reason, the LOS’s presence at the forefront of such an event is worrisome. At a time when the deeply racist beliefs of groups like the LOS should be pushed to the margins, they are instead being showcased in the public square.
LOUIS STOKES, LONGTIME OHIO CONGRESSMAN WHO LOOKED IN ASSASSINATIONS AND SCANDALS
Associated Press Aug. 19, 2015 | 8:33 a.m. EDT
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Former U.S. Rep. Louis Stokes, a 15-term congressman from Ohio who took on tough assignments looking into assassinations and scandals, has died. He was 90.
Rep. Louis Stokes, D-Ohio, announces in 1998 that he will retire from Congress at the end of the year. Stokes, a 15-term Ohio congressman who took on tough assignments looking into assassinations and scandals, died late Tuesday.
His death, confirmed by a family statement, comes a month after he announced he had brain and lung cancer.
Stokes was elected to the House in 1968, becoming Ohio’s first black member of Congress and one of its most respected and influential. Just a year earlier, his brother, Carl, had been elected mayor of Cleveland — the first black elected mayor of a major U.S. city.
Louis Stokes was the dean of the delegation until he stepped down in 1999.
Stokes headed the House’s Select Committee on Assassinations that investigated the slayings of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the late 1970s and concluded that in both cases, there “probably” had been a conspiracy.
Later, he served on the Iran-Contra investigative committee, where he drew attention with his unflinching interrogation of Lt. Col. Oliver North.
“What we seek to do in covert operations is to mask the role of the United States from other countries, not from our own government,” Stokes told North at a highly publicized hearing in 1987.
He was just as unflinching with his probe of fellow Democrats when he led the ethics committee investigation of a corruption scandal known as ABSCAM, which led to convictions of one senator and six House members. The senator and five of the House members were Democrats.
Stokes was repeatedly called upon to exercise his law training and diplomatic skills. He did two tours of duty as chairman of the ethics committee and stepped in upon request during the investigation of a case involving the private life of Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who retired in 2013.
He was one of the Cold War-era chairmen of the House Intelligence Committee, headed the Congressional Black Caucus and was the first black on the House Appropriations Committee — a powerful panel that decides how much each authorized federal project actually gets to spend.
That post gave him a platform for protecting major Cleveland employers, such as NASA Lewis Research Center, and for directing federal dollars toward hometown projects.
He said he was proud to be in a position to put money into programs that he hoped would improve the quality of life of black people and poor people.
His seniority on that panel eventually brought him the chairmanship of the subcommittee with jurisdiction over all federal housing programs, plus the Department of Veterans Affairs, NASA and many other independent agencies.
Stokes’ public demeanor was patient and analytical, but colleagues also knew him as tough, principled and skillful.
He was one of only nine blacks in the 435-member House when he first took the oath of office in 1969 and never forgot his roots as the child of poverty and great-grandson of a slave.
He spoke often of his admiration for his younger brother, who served two terms as Cleveland mayor and was later a broadcaster and judge. Stokes lost some of his zest for politics after his brother died of cancer in 1996.
He also spoke of his mother, Louise C. Stokes, a widow with an eighth-grade education who supported her sons by working as a cleaning woman. She constantly prodded her boys to “get something in your head so you don’t have to work with your hands like I did,” he recalled. When her boys wanted games, she instead bought books.
Stokes served in the Army from 1943 to 1946 in a segregated unit where he said he experienced racism for the first time in his life.
Heading from Cleveland to take his entrance physical in Columbus, he was warned by his mother that “colored people cannot go in restaurants in downtown Columbus.”
Stationed in Mississippi, he and other blacks were sentenced to the guard house for refusing to pick up papers around the white soldiers’ barracks, and once confined, found the guard house had separate toilets for white and black soldiers.
Years later, when an anti-busing amendment was debated on the House floor, Stokes described the humiliation of segregation. “I was forced to ride in the back of the bus wearing the uniform of my country,” he said.
Struggles with racism lasted a lifetime.
In 1991, a Capitol Hill police officer ignored Stokes’ valid parking tag and refused to let the congressman into his own office building; he didn’t believe the black man behind the wheel was a member of Congress.
Stokes leveled his complaint through official channels and did not complain publicly about the demeaning delay at his own office building.
At one point in his career he said he had his eye on the Senate. But long careers by fellow Democrats John Glenn and Howard Metzenbaum meant no open seat until Stokes was well entrenched in the House and on his way to becoming one of the powerful appropriations subcommittee chairmen.
In 1992, Stokes ran for president as a favorite son, winning the delegates from his home district and then, in a minor convention drama, refusing to release their votes until the Clinton campaign formally asked.
The G.I. Bill made it possible for Stokes to go to college and law school.
A criminal lawyer for two decades before running for Congress, he argued a landmark “stop and frisk” case before the Supreme Court and worked on the NAACP lawsuit that forced Ohio to redraw the lines of what would become the state’s first black-majority congressional district.
DOUDOU N’DIAYE ROSE, SENEGALESE DRUMMER AND ‘HUMAN TREASURE’
Master percussionist collaborated with Miles Davis and the Rolling Stones and was named a ‘living human treasure’ by Unesco in 2006
Doudou N’diaye Rose holding his sabar drumstick. Photograph: Seyllou Diallo/AFP/Getty Images
Wednesday 19 August 2015 23.18 EDT Last modified on Thursday 20 August 2015 01.15 EDT
Senegalese drummer and band leader Doudou N’diaye Rose, who was named a “living human treasure” by Unesco, has died at the age of 85.
The musician, whose real name was Mamadou N’diaye, died in a Dakar hospital after being taken ill on Wednesday morning.
The so-called “mathematician of rhythm” was a master of the sabar drum and led the Drummers of West Africa orchestra, made up of his children and grandchildren, in mind-bogglingly complex beat medleys. He also conducted his daughters and granddaughters in the the all-female group, Les Rosettes.
“Today we lost our father, our friend, a great man,” his nephew Doudou N’diaye Mbengue told Agence France-Presse.
Doudou N’diaye Rose performing in Dakar in 2013. Photograph: Seyllou/AFP/Getty Images
Born in 1930 into Senegal’s griot caste of musicians and storytellers, N’diaye revealed in a 2010 interview that his accountant father did not want his son to be a musician and that they went for seven years without shaking hands when he defied him.
He was mentored by Senegal’s then drum-major Mada Seck, who “knew all the secrets of percussion” and eventually passed on his instruments to N’diaye, who travelled deep into the west African countryside to develop his talent. Once N’diaye had learned “more than 100 different rhythms”, elders named him the new chief drum-major.
He first caught the wider world’s attention when, in 1959, US singer and dancer Josephine Baker invited N’diaye to perform with her shortly before Senegalese independence. He has since collaborated with musicians including Miles Davis, the Rolling Stones and Peter Gabriel, and toured Africa, Japan, France and the US.
Unesco’s “living human treasure” title was bestowed in 2006 to honour N’diaye’s custodianship of Senegalese culture and his work in passing on that knowledge to younger generations.
Continuing to play until his death, N’diaye told reporters he was at peace having transferred his skills to his children and grandchildren to carry on the tradition. His son Moustapha teaches percussion at the Cité de la Musique in Paris.
“I thank the good lord,” he said. “My children have learned the language of percussion well.”
The actress who gave the world its first portrayal of Batgirl died of complications from breast cancer Monday.Yvonne Craig, 78, died surrounded by loved ones at her home in Pacific Palisades, Calif., her family announced Tuesday in a statement.
20th Century Fox Film Corp.
Yvonne Craig joined the third and final season of the ’60s TV series ‘Batman,’ becoming the first actress to play Batgirl.
“She felt that she lived a wonderful life and was blessed in many ways,” the statement said.
“She was able to travel the world and see many places. Yvonne spent quality time with those that she loved and was able to accomplish many goals and ambitions that she set for herself. “
Craig was born in Taylorville, Ill. She started her performing career in the ‘50s as the youngest member of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, and soon started appearing on screen, acting in “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” and “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.”
By the time of her death, she had scored more than 80 film and TV credits, most recently in the Nickelodeon cartoon series “Olivia.”
But Batgirl was her best known role. She joined Adam West and Burt Ward in the final season of the ‘60s series, and that legacy lasted a lifetime.
“I hear from women that I was their role model,” she told CNN last year. She said fans would tell her: “When I was a little girl, I realized that girls could kick butt just like guys.”
ABC Photo Archives
Yvonne West joined Burt Ward (as Robin) and Adam West (Batman) on the show.
Those heroic lessons reemerged online as fans mourned Craig’s death.
“Yvonne Craig is the reason I became a comic writer,” Gail Simone, a DC Comics Batgirl writer, said on Twitter.
“Most of the joy in my current life can be traced back in some way to seeing Yvonne Craig be amazing as Batgirl, my first real life hero.
After “Batman,” the woman wonder appeared in “Starsky and Hutch,” two Elvis Presley films and “Star Trek,” as a green-skinned Orion slave girl who tries killing Captain Kirk.
Craig eventually stepped away from acting to enter the real estate business, but continued visiting comic conventions to greet new generations of fans. Earlier this year, she canceled several scheduled appearances because of health problems, writing on her website her doctor advised her to “recuperate properly, and also stay out of crowds.”
Bobby Bank/WireImage
Yvonne Craig, 78, appeared in more than 80 film and TV roles before her death Monday.
Craig published a memoir of her career, “From Ballet to the Batcave and Beyond,” in 2000.
After she fought breast cancer for the past two years, it metastasized and went to her liver, the family said. She is survived by her husband, sister and nephews.
Her family said one of Craig’s dying wishes was “that no one waste a moment of their time in mourning for her loss in sadness but instead celebrate the awesome life she had been fortunate enough to live.”
Craig’s death came one day after a Maryland man who dressed up as Batman to visit sick children in hospitals was killed in an accident involving his custom-made Batmobile.
TONY GLEATON, WHO CREATED A LEGACY IN PICTURES OF AFRICANS LIVING IN THE AMERICAS
August 19, 2015
Tony Gleaton, a professional photographer that transformed his back on an occupation in New york city style as well as started a travelling creative mission, recording the lives of black cowboys as well as producing pictures of the African diaspora in Latin The u.s.a, passed away on Friday in Palo Alto, Calif.
He was 67. The reason was dental cancer cells, his spouse, Lisa,
stated. Mr. Gleaton made his photos in the American West as well as Southwest, then, most plainly, in Mexico, where he lived amongst little-acknowledged neighborhoods of blacks– offspring of African servants gave the New Globe centuries previously by the Spanish– in towns on the seaside levels of Oaxaca, southern of Acapulco.
An exhibit of those pictures, “Africa’s Legacy in Mexico,” which showed up in galleries around the nation for greater than a years start in the 1990s, was sponsored by the Smithsonian Organization.
Tony Gleaton in a 1998 photo. His profession started in the fashion business however swiftly took a sharp turn.
Bruce Talamon, All Civil liberty Reserved
Mr. Gleaton focused on black-and-white pictures, their topics– kids as well as grownups|grownups as well as kids, alone or in teams– usually in direct interaction with the video camera as well as typically in limited frameworks that recommend however do not check out a particular setup, like an office or a barroom|a barroom or an office. In a meeting with The L.a Times in 2007, he called his pictures “abstractions from life,” stating “they might look all-natural however they are very crafted, extremely determined.”
“This is not journalism,” he included. “I am making fine art.”
The pictures he caught– or, much better, produced– could not be called intimate even certainly brilliant, as if Mr. Gleaton were assisting individuals arise from obscurity, enabling them to reveal their really presence. Undoubtedly, this was his mentioned function.
| This was his mentioned function.
“These are lovely photos of individuals that are not usually depicted in a gorgeous method,” he stated.
Leo Antony Gleaton was birthed in Detroit on Aug. 4, 1948. His dad, Leo, was a policeman; his mom, the previous Geraldine Woodson, showed institution. In the late 1950s the household transferred to L.a, where Tony finished from secondary school.
He employed in the Militaries as well as offered in Vietnam; when he returned, in the very early 1970s, he registered at the College of The golden state, L.a, where his passion in digital photography was stimulated. He likewise went to the Fine art Facility University of Style in Pasadena as well as the College of The golden state, Berkeley, though he never ever made a bachelor’s level.
He invested 3 years in New york city, functioning as a professional photographer’s aide in the fashion business as well as taking pictures for Information as well as various other publications prior to choosing that there was much more significant job somewhere else.
He remained in his very early 30s, as well as he started bumming a ride, winding up in Nevada, where he took photos of Indigenous American cattle ranch hands as well as black rodeo bikers.
Plumbing system the society of nonwhite cowboys, he took a trip to Texas, Colorado, Idaho as well as Kansas; his program “Cowboys: Rebuilding an American Misconception” showed up in galleries in Oklahoma, Nevada as well as The golden state. His years of taking a trip as well as photographing|photographing as well as taking a trip in Mexico started with a passion in Mexican rodeo.
“Among the intriguing aspects of Tony was that he might do much more with much less,” Bruce Talamon, the administrator of the Tony Gleaton Photo Depend on, stated in an e-mail. “By that I indicate as we reside in a time of celeb professional photographers with huge budget plans, as well as unknown varieties of aides as well as stylists|stylists as well as aides, Tony would certainly have a little bag with one medium-format cam, one lens, $ 5 in his pocket, as well as a couple of rolls of Tri-X movie.
“He constantly fired in offered light. He might discover stunning light all over he went.”
For his journeys to Mexico as well as Latin The u.s.a, Mr. Talamon stated, Mr. Gleaton “would certainly get a one-way ticket on a Greyhound bus.”
“These were self-financed journeys. As well as since he got on a budget plan, he had actually found out that there was constantly an extra bed at the town church, which benefited a minimum of 5 days. He would certainly provide to help dishes then, based upon the clergyman’s intros, he would certainly begin to photo, remaining for a couple of weeks, then he would certainly return house with magic.”
A huge guy– he was more than 6 feet high as well as evaluated greater than 300 extra pounds– Mr. Gleaton was referred to as a charmer, particularly with his topics as well as with pupils of digital photography. He was separated 3 times prior to he wed Lisa Ellerbee, an instructor, in 2005. She is his only instant survivor. They resided in San Mateo, Calif.
. Mr. Gleaton, that was light-skinned with eco-friendly eyes, stated he frequently needed to clarify to individuals that both his father and mothers were black which he was not biracial, which the prejudgments individuals had of him discovered their method right into his job.
He would certainly not explain his topics as Afro-Mexican, a tag put on them by outsiders; race, he stated, is “a social construct, not a bio-empirical truth.”
In the last few years Mr. Gleaton broadened his job to consist of various other countries in Central as well as South The u.s.a.
“Exactly what is essential regarding these photos is that they provided a face to something that no one had actually truly considered previously,” he stated in 2007 regarding his Mexican photos. “As well as it’s a location to start the conversation regarding exactly what we mean Mexico to be.
“We have a stereotyped sight of exactly what Mexico is, as well as Mexico is numerous points. You could have blemishes as well as red hair as well as be Mexican– as well as you could have extremely black skin as well as be Mexican.”
| Mr. Gleaton specialized in black-and-white pictures, their topics– kids as well as grownups|grownups as well as kids, alone or in teams– nearly constantly in direct interaction with the video camera as well as typically in limited frameworks that recommend however do not check out a particular setup, like an office or a barroom|a barroom or an office. The pictures he caught– or, much better, produced– could not be called intimate so a lot as certainly vibrant, as if Mr. Gleaton were assisting individuals arise from obscurity, enabling them to reveal their extremely presence.”One of the intriguing points regarding Tony was that he might do much more with much less,” Bruce Talamon, the administrator of the Tony Gleaton Photo Depend on, stated in an e-mail.
Tony Gleaton in a 1998 photo. Mr. Gleaton specialized in black-and-white pictures, their topics– kids as well as grownups|grownups as well as kids, alone or in teams– nearly constantly in direct interaction with the cam as well as normally in snug frameworks that recommend however do not check out a particular setup, like an office or a barroom|a barroom or an office. The pictures he caught– or, much better, produced– could not be called intimate so a lot as certainly vibrant, as if Mr. Gleaton were assisting individuals arise from obscurity, enabling them to reveal their extremely presence.”One of the fascinating points regarding Tony was that he can do much more with much less,” Bruce Talamon, the administrator of the Tony Gleaton Photo Count on, stated in an e-mail. A huge guy– he was well over 6 feet high as well as evaluated even more compared to 300 extra pounds– Mr. Gleaton was understood as a charmer, particularly with his topics as well as with pupils of digital photography.
As the IAU General Assembly in Hawai’i draws to a close, the results were still coming in: a new bevy of dwarf galaxies discovered around the Milky Way, the celebration of the first Dark-Sky Sanctuary, and a new directly imaged exoplanet to boot.
Watch the fattening Moon swing away from Saturn in this week’s twilight sky. And if you can find dark skies, August is a perfect time to explore the Milky Way, which runs from Sagittarius in the south, through the Summer Triangle very high in the east, and on down through Cassiopeia to Perseus rising low in the north-northeast.
Twilight. Gloaming. Dusk. Blue Hour – all names for that colorful and contemplative time between day and night. We explore twilight’s brief but fascinating sights and learn why it gets shorter as summer turns to fall.
Learn more about the new Jupiter-like exoplanet in this interview with team leader Bruce Macintosh, who discusses why this discovery might help us understand how planets arise.
We finally know the ingredients that fire up a particular kind of supernova. Four researchers explain why a better understanding of how certain stars die can help reveal the evolution of the cosmos and its galaxies.
An examination of the growing extremism over public lands; What you need to know about Republicans and birthright citizenship; Bomb-carrying man leads to abortion clinic evacuation; and more.
Center for Western Priorities: A look at the anti-government extremism behind the growing movement to seize America’s public lands.
Salon: Everything you need to know about the Trump-led Republican plot to end birthright citizenship.
Right Wing Watch: Oath Keepers, preparing for an Obama-provoked race war, say they will provide arms for black Ferguson protesters.
Think Progress: Kansas abortion clinic evacuated after man caught trying to enter while carrying an explosive.
The Daily Beast: Anti-immigration extremists love Trump’s harsh immigration proposal.
WBUR-FM (Boston): Rallies in support of Confederate flag continue to pop up around the country.
Raw Story: Two Texas men face hate-crime charges for raping and torturing black man.
Ann
BEAUTIFUL, ALSO, ARE THE SOULS OF MY BLACK SISTERS 