"Richard Batchelder; led national education group" by Kathleen McKenna | Globe Correspondent, March 10, 2013
When National Education Association members met in Washington, D.C., to celebrate the 40-year anniversary of integrating the nation’s teachers unions, they gave a standing ovation to Richard Batchelder.
He was the NEA’s president in 1966 when two unions, one representing white teachers and one for African-American teachers, combined to form one organization, whose membership now exceeds 3 million.
“We became a different organization because of him and we will never go back,” said Dennis Van Roekel, the NEA’s current president. “It was such a powerful moment in our history and it was a testimony to Richard Batchelder’s tenacity and his commitment to social justice.”
Mr. Batchelder, who remained active in education issues after retiring to Cape Cod, died of Parkinson’s disease Feb. 26 in his Chatham home. He was 87.
Known to friends and colleagues as Batch, Mr. Batchelder also was credited with helping shift the NEA from being led mainly by administrators and higher-education professionals to an organization led by teachers....
Oh, so he's the one responsible for the troublesome teacher's unions.
Mr. Batchelder’s views on segregation formed while he served in the Navy during World War II, said his son, Richard Jr. of Weston.
“When he saw the segregated troops, that had a profound impact on him,” his son said. “He had a very strong moral compass. He was such a good role model.”
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Mr. Batchelder helped negotiate better pay for teachers....
Thanks for busting our budgets.
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"Joseph Kelner, 98; sued on behalf of Kent State victims" by Bruce Weber | New York Times, March 10, 2013
NEW YORK — Joseph Kelner, a lawyer who took on the governor of Ohio, a former university president, and the National Guard in a suit on behalf of the student victims of the Kent State shootings in 1970, died Monday in Manhasset, N.Y. He was 98....
Mr. Kelner took on a number of notable clients, including, for a time, Bernhard H. Goetz, the ‘‘subway vigilante,’’ who became a lightning rod in a national debate about crime, race, and guns in December 1984 when he, a white man, shot four black teenagers he said had tried to rob him in a subway car.
But even more significant was the Kent State case. On May 4, 1970, after a weekend of student rallies against the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia — an ROTC building was set afire during the protests — National Guardsmen called to the campus by Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes shot into a crowd of demonstrators, killing four students and wounding nine others.
Four dead in Ohio.
An investigating commission found the shootings ‘‘unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable,’’ but public sentiment was with the Guard, and with Rhodes, who, the night before the shootings, declared: ‘‘We are going to eradicate the problem. These people just move from one campus to another and terrorize the community. They are worse than the brownshirts and Communist element.’’
Ah, the good old days.
Mr. Kelner was hired by the mother of Jeffrey Miller, a slain student who appeared in a widely reproduced photograph lying face down on the pavement with an anguished young woman kneeling over him....
One of the most iconic photos of the 20th century. That and the one with the naked little Vietnamese girl running with napalm burns on her.
In 1980, Mr. Kelner was the author, with James Munves, of the book ‘‘The Kent State Coverup,’’ in which he alleged that ‘‘one governmental agency after another had managed to suppress evidence and shield those responsible for the shootings in a monumental cover-up.’’ He added, ‘‘The same process continued in the Cleveland courtroom.’’
Seems to be a pattern.
Related: US Quiet on Kent State Killing
Forty three years later and they still won't talk.
Joseph Kelner served in the Army Counter Intelligence Corps in World War II....
Mr. Kelner’s other notable clients included two professional umpires, Al Salerno and Bill Valentine, who were fired in 1968 by Joe Cronin, then the American League president, on grounds of incompetence. But Cronin’s probable motivation, it was widely believed, was that the umpires were involved in organizing the league umpires into a union....
Mr. Kelner also represented people whose homes had been mistakenly broken into by the police in drug raids....
Too bad he died. He'd be seeing a lot of work even now.
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"Dirk Coetzee, 67, led police squad in killing apartheid protesters in South Africa" by William Yardley | New York Times, March 10, 2013
Dirk Coetzee, who led a South African police hit squad that killed antiapartheid activists, and who eventually confessed to his crimes as his country began shifting away from apartheid, died Wednesday at a hospital in Pretoria. He was 67.
The cause was kidney failure, a hospital spokesman told South African news outlets.
Coetzee was a divisive and complicated figure: a convicted murderer and a whistle-blower whose detailed accounts of a violently corrupt police force shed new light on South Africa’s racist government.
His confession prompted accusations that he was an opportunist, out to protect himself when political winds began to change. But he was also viewed as brutally honest in a culture of cover-ups.
‘‘There wasn’t anything he told us that wasn’t true,’’ Jacques Pauw, who wrote the first articles about Coetzee’s role in 1989 for a small South African weekly, said recently. ‘‘And for that I will always respect him.’’
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Coetzee was a captain for the South African security police at Vlakplaas, a 100-acre farm on the outskirts of Pretoria, where police officers were trained in counterinsurgency to help defend white control in other African countries. Yet under Coetzee and other leaders, officers at Vlakplaas also led a war within South Africa.
So South Africa had its own Operation Condor, huh?
Coetzee oversaw multiple killings of antiapartheid activists, including members of the African National Congress, which the government had outlawed.
It was one of those black South Africans, a former police officer named Almond Nofomela, who first revealed the actions of Vlakplaas in 1989 and implicated Coetzee in a number of killings, among them the murder in November 1981 of Griffiths Mxenge, a black lawyer linked to the Congress.
The allegations prompted Coetzee to flee the country and, in an interview with Pauw, the journalist, to confess to having led the death squad.
At the time, President F.W. de Klerk of South Africa was under increasing pressure to end apartheid, and the government was considering releasing the African National Congress’ leader, Nelson Mandela, from prison. In early 1990, de Klerk, who had initially rejected calls for an investigation into Vlakplaas, created a commission to lead one. It quickly issued an arrest warrant for Coetzee.
Related: Stopping in South Africa
Coetzee, who by that time was living outside the country under the protection of the very group whose members he had once targeted, said he welcomed the investigation. He said that the killings had been ordered by the government to preserve white rule and that they had continued after he left Vlakplaas in the early ‘80s.
‘‘The responsibility for the death squads goes right to the top,’’ Coetzee said in an interview with The New York Times in Zimbabwe in 1990.
Coetzee said that he had been involved in 13 killings and that government officials, including de Klerk, had been involved in crimes in Africa.
But government prosecutors eventually dismissed the allegations by Coetzee, Nofomela and another black officer, calling them ‘‘groundless.’’
Years later, after the end of white rule, prosecutors would reverse course, affirming many of Coetzee’s claims about Vlakplaas.
A lesson in those last two paragraphs for you, American.
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Related:
"Dr. Mashayekhi’s family said he voiced the support he could for students protesting the shah’s much-despised secret police, the Savak."
Which wasn't much because judging by the guy's obit he was a CIA asset.
"Milo O’Shea, at 86; Irish character actor was a two-time Tony Award nominee" by Douglas Martin | New York Times, April 07, 2013
NEW YORK — Milo O’Shea, an Irish character actor — recognizable by his black bushy eyebrows, tumble of white hair, and impish smile — whose films included ‘‘Ulysses,’’ ‘’Barbarella,’’ and ‘‘The Verdict,’’ died Tuesday in New York. He was 86....
Sometimes opportunity knocks.
Also see: Goodbye and God Bless, Mr Galvin!
In addition to his scores of film roles, Mr. O’Shea appeared on US sitcoms such as ‘‘The Golden Girls,’’ “Cheers,’’ and ‘‘Frasier,’’ and played the chief justice of the Supreme Court on ‘‘The West Wing.’’
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On television he was at the center of events in the 1992 episode of ‘‘Cheers’’ in which Woody, the bartender (Woody Harrelson), marries his girlfriend, Kelly (Jackie Swanson). He played an antimarriage minister who could perform the ceremony only if drunk. He succeeded....
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"Matthew Warren, 27, son of prominent evangelist pastor" Associated Press, April 07, 2013
LAKE FOREST, Calif. — Matthew Warren, the 27-year-old son of Rick Warren, the popular evangelist pastor of a Southern California church, died Friday.
The Saddleback Valley Community Church said in a statement Saturday that Mr. Warren, who had struggled with mental illness and deep depression for many years, took his own life....
Rick Warren, the author of the multimillion-selling book ‘‘The Purpose Driven Life,’’ said in an e-mail to church staff that he and his wife had enjoyed a fun Friday evening with their son before Matthew Warren returned home to take his life in ‘‘a momentary wave of despair.’’
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"Lawrence Fuchs; professor crafted immigration law changes" by Bryan Marquard | Globe Staff, April 07, 2013
Lawrence H. Fuchs helped shape Brandeis University....
He was the first Peace Corps director in the Philippines, worked with Democrats and Republicans in Washington to craft changes in immigration laws, and once engaged in a kind of shuttle diplomacy to thaw the chilly political relationship between Mrs. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, who was then a US senator seeking the presidency....
Dr. Fuchs, the author of books including “The American Kaleidoscope,” an award-winning examination of race and ethnicity in America, died of complications from Parkinson’s disease March 17 in Canton’s Orchard Cove retirement community. He was 86....
Through the years Dr. Fuchs extended his reach by working with organizations including the American Jewish Historical Society, the United World Federalists, and the Commission on Law and Social Action of the American Jewish Congress. He also was a key board member for Brookline-based Facing History and Ourselves, which pioneered a school curriculum that raises awareness about anti-Semitism, racism, and prejudice.
Part of the Protocols.
“He brought history alive,” said Margot Strom, the organization’s executive director. “He was a fabulous teacher and storyteller.”
And that is exactly what he was telling.
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His father was an Austrian immigrant and his mother’s ancestors were from Central Europe and Ukraine....
At the end of the 1970s, he spent two years in Washington as executive director of the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy, which issued a report during the Carter administration that was a foundation for bipartisan bills to change immigration laws....
Oh, so he's the one who gave us amnesty bills under Reagan.
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"Ralph Klein, 70; Calgary mayor brought 1988 Winter Games to Canada" by Douglas Martin | New York Times, April 07, 2013
NEW YORK — Ralph Klein — a rambunctious Canadian politician who helped bring the 1988 Winter Olympics to Calgary as the city’s mayor and then, as premier of petroleum-drenched Alberta for 14 years, spurred development of the province’s massive oil sands deposits — died March 29 in Calgary. He was 70....
Mr. Klein followed an unusual route to become one of his nation’s most influential politicians. The son of a professional wrestler known as Killer Klein, who had abandoned him, Mr. Klein dropped out of high school, became a television weatherman, and, as something of a lark, ran for mayor in 1980. With a rumpled, folksy manner, he held court for years in the smoke-filled beer hall of the King Louis Hotel in Calgary. He was called King Ralph and liked it.
As a politician, Mr. Klein rode the rising and falling tides of the oil market in a province that trails only Saudi Arabia and Venezuela in proven crude oil reserves. In boom times, petrodollars fueled the local economy and helped him expand the light-rail transit system, as well as attract and produce the Olympics.
But after being elected premier in 1992 following a collapse in oil prices, he confronted a towering deficit and the largest per-capita debt of any province. He proceeded to erase the debt with the help of a subsequent rise in oil prices and by drastically cutting services, laying off thousands of employees, and privatizing government services, like the provincial telephone company.
Related: Sunday Globe Special: Canadian Conservatives
Mr. Klein was instrumental in pushing the industry to begin recovering the heavy, gunky crude from oil sands in Alberta’s north. Oil executives had considered the effort such a gamble that they had almost ceased to invest in it by 1995, so Mr. Klein’s government came up with a plan to kick-start development: It charged companies only 1 percent on their revenue until all construction costs were paid. Royalties eventually rose to 25 percent of revenue.
Mr. Klein’s original goal was for tripled production over 25 years. But the projects exceeded that goal in less than a quarter of that time, at a cost to the oil companies of $21 billion to $30 billion. ‘‘The reality is that we got there in eight years,’’ Eric Newell, former president of Syncrude Canada, the biggest oil sands producer, told a Canadian newspaper, The National Post, in 2006. ‘‘And the really good news is when we got there we had another $30 billion in projects on the table ready to go.’’
The success of the oil sands development has spurred the proposal for the Keystone XL pipeline to take the crude from Canada to refineries in Texas, a plan the Obama administration is evaluating in the face of competing pressures from the oil industry and environmentalists and their political allies.
Ralph Phillip Klein was born in Calgary in 1942....
In 1992, he was elected leader of the Progressive Conservative Party and became premier later that year when the conservatives won an election. After winning his third election, he proclaimed in 2001, ‘‘Welcome to Ralph’s world.’’
Later that year, he burst into a homeless shelter, yelling that the residents should get jobs, threw money on the floor, and left. ‘‘I drink too much from time to time,’’ he said. ‘‘But I wasn’t drunk. I was in good spirits.’’
He was elected for the fourth time in 2004.
His irreverence about Edmonton, the province’s capital city, never abated. He called it a fine place with too many socialists and mosquitoes. ‘‘At least you can spray the mosquitoes,’’ he said.
His penchant for colorful comments won him friends, enemies, and considerable attention. In 2003, after the United States banned Canadian beef imports because of a case of mad cow disease, Mr. Klein seemed to endorse a coverup to protect the $5.1 billion industry. ‘‘I guess any self-respecting rancher would have shot, shoveled, and shut up,’’ he said.
At the Olympics, Mr. Klein mistook the King of Norway for his driver and asked him to fetch the car. The startled king explained who he was as he pulled out his silver cigarette case. Mr. Klein apologized and bummed a cigarette.
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"Robert Remini, 91; wrote ‘Life of Andrew Jackson’" by William Yardley | New York Times, April 07, 2013
NEW YORK — Robert V. Remini, an admired historian best known for his study of Andrew Jackson, including an exhaustive three-volume biography that traced how the seventh president harnessed his populist appeal to wield unusual executive power, died March 28 in Evanston, Ill. He was 91....
‘’No historian knows more about Andrew Jackson than Robert V. Remini,’’ John William Ward, also a Jackson biographer, wrote in a review in The New York Times in 1981.
Mr. Remini, who spent most of his academic career at the University of Illinois, Chicago, wrote many books about the emerging US democracy in the first half of the 19th century....
His magnum opus, ‘‘The Life of Andrew Jackson,’’ three volumes totaling 1,600 meticulously researched pages, were published in 1977, 1981, and 1984. The final volume won a National Book Award.
Mr. Remini’s Jackson was imperfect but often heroic, a passionate man on horseback whose victory in the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812 helped make him a symbol of new US strength and independence, and of fading affection for England culture. As president, Jackson was an exceedingly popular outsider with little patience for the trappings of Washington. He clashed frequently with Congress and left a legacy of violence against and displacement of American Indians.
And he took on the banks, something upon which my history book is either vague or silent.
At a time when historians were emphasizing broad political, intellectual, and cultural shifts — a trend nurtured by Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s landmark ‘‘Age of Jackson,’’ published in 1945 — Mr. Remini stayed close to the individual. He held firm that Jackson was a defender of the common man, however limited the president’s concept of common might have been, even as some historians began focusing on Jackson’s oppressive treatment of Indians, slaves, and women.
Yup, they didn't and don't focus on the fact that the bankers tried to kill him. Instead they focus on destroying his character and reputation.
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"Bud Palmer, an originator of the jump shot" by Douglas Martin | New York Times, March 24, 2013
NEW YORK — Bud Palmer gained fame as a sports telecaster, covering everything from the Olympics to dog shows. He was Mayor John V. Lindsay’s official greeter, welcoming dignitaries to the city. He was the first writer of Glamour magazine’s ‘‘Ask Jake’’ column, offering women advice from a man’s viewpoint. And he was the first captain of the New York Knicks.
But perhaps his most consequential role was in helping to change the game of basketball in a fundamental way: If he did not invent the jump shot, Mr. Palmer was one of the first to shoot one....
Bud took up boxing at 6, but after mothers of boys whose noses he had bloodied complained to his mother, he switched to basketball....
After three seasons with the Knicks from 1946 to 1949, during which he started his advice column, Mr. Palmer decided to move to television. He briefly ran a children’s show for NBC and did a stint as Palmo, the Hindu magician, on a local show called ‘‘Globo’s Circus.’’ He began as a sportscaster covering the Knicks for WMGM radio, and later for television on WGN-11. He covered sports for all three major networks.
From 1966 to 1974, he held a $1-a-year job as New York City’s Commissioner of Public Events. He greeted and planned social affairs and ticker-tape parades for leaders including the Duke of Edinburgh and the Israeli leader Golda Meir; champion athletic teams; and astronauts.
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