In memoriam : RI Obituaries

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Re: In memoriam : RI Obituaries

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Apr 01, 2014 2:03 pm

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Frankie Knuckles spins in London in 2007. The influential Chicago DJ and producer has died at age 59


By Randall Roberts Los Angeles Times Pop Music Critic
April 1, 2014, 10:40 a.m.

Many waking up to find the name "Frankie Knuckles" trending this morning may have been a little baffled, wondering whether perhaps an old-time pugilist had passed. In a sense this was true, but instead of his fists, the Chicago dance music producer Knuckles, who died Monday at age 59, used steady, relentless rhythms to send his message.

In the process, he helped set a course for house music in the 1980s and for electronic dance music in the decades to come.

House music was born in Chicago when a team of Knuckles, Marshall Jefferson, Jesse Saunders and other young DJs brought the ideas and energy of the late 1970s New York City loft scene to the Midwest and started messing with its sounds. Knuckles was among the most transformative of those artists.

In fact, the DJ and producer is one of the key connectors of American electronic beat music, bridging the New York scene through his work with famed DJ Larry Levan and planting the seeds of Detroit techno through Knuckles' early relationship with important producer Derrick May.

The sound that Knuckles made was hard, mesmerizing and repetitive, focusing on Roland 808 drum machines and bass-line generators, strange synthetic washes that were as trippy as they were alien. One of his key works from this period, "Baby Wants to Ride," sounds as fresh today as it did when released in 1987.

House music spread from a regional to an international sound as Knuckles, Saunders and Jefferson starting DJing in Europe, where they jumpstarted the British rave scene. From there the steady thump that Knuckles helped codify spread and morphed, becoming a catch-all genre beneath which subgenres including progressive house, microhouse, happy house, tech house and dozens of others have proliferated.

Pop music royalty understood this. A list of Frankie Knuckles remixes reads like a history of dance pop: Michael Jackson, Madonna, Janet Jackson, Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys, Whitney Houston and others commissioned him to rework their recordings.

My favorite of them is Knuckles' remix of Hercules and Love Affair's "Blind," a glorious 2008 post-disco New York jam that in the Chicago godfather's hands becomes something majestic. An eight-minute slow build that adds layers every 16 bars until this beast of a groove rises, the song features vocalist Antony Hegarty in perfect form. Knuckles understood this, and like much of his work, crafted his music as a pedestal for his singer, giving space to shine by surrounding voice with groove.



Even more, the sounds that Knuckles created were pedestals built for dancers, each crafted to levitate sweaty late-night revelers to a place a few levels above the ground. Some people call that the astral plane. For Knuckles, it was called house.


Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: In memoriam : RI Obituaries

Postby elfismiles » Sun Apr 06, 2014 11:56 pm

I got to see Mr. Matthiessen at the after conference banquet in 2009:
http://cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/pm-tx/

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Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy - 2 hrs ·

It saddens us to report that Peter Matthiessen, one of the 20th Century's towering literary figures, is dead at 86. Matthiessen led a life filled with more adventure and intrigue than could fit in his dozens of award-winning novels and non-fiction books.

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We were honored when Matthiessen agreed to speak at the 2009 Texas Bigfoot Conference where he shared his experiences and sighting of a undocumented hominoid species. He is shown at right in the attached photo along with ornithologist Victor Emanuel and NAWAC chairman Alton Higgins.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... 1&theater#
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/books ... .html?_r=3
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Re: In memoriam : RI Obituaries

Postby elfismiles » Fri May 23, 2014 11:42 pm

Loren Coleman said 6 hrs ago
Friend and past editor of PURSUIT The Journal of the Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained, born 7-7-1938, died 5-21-2014 in NJ.
https://www.facebook.com/loren.coleman. ... 2090129714


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SITU Status: Summer 2012.
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
http://thebiggeststudy.blogspot.com/201 ... -2012.html

Society for the Investigation of The Unexplained: SITU.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
http://thebiggeststudy.blogspot.com/201 ... on-of.html


A Short History of the Shipton Snowman Track Photographs and the Tchernezky Cast
©Loren Coleman 2012
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...

Sanderson founded the Ivan T. Sanderson Foundation in August 1965 on his Blairstown, New Jersey property, which became the Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained (SITU) in 1967. SITU was a non-profit organization that investigated strange phenomena ignored by mainstream science. I was an early member, and later an honorary one. I do not wish to discredit any of the fine work done by Ivan, or any of the other members of SITU. But sometimes, little errors can become overblown.

“Assisting him in his research was his nonprofit organization, Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained, or SITU, made up primarily of renegade scientists, researchers, adventurers, strange geeky characters and other interested parties who had helped him investigate and compile information on unusual creatures, artifacts and phenomena found throughout the world,” wrote Sanderson biographer Richard Grigonis.

SITU produced a newsletter that was neither a peer-reviewed journal nor frequently a well-edited publication. It was often a collection of thoughts of Sanderson’s, other staff, and visitors, and was known as Pursuit for most of its existence.

In one issue of Pursuit, from July 1971, it has been incorrectly assumed that “Sanderson” said there was a cast made by Shipton in the field. Let me deconstruct what occurred, and straighten out the record.

A caption was placed at the bottom of a photograph in Vol. 4, No. 3 of Pursuit, reading “Imprint of right foot of ‘Yeti’, taken from a plaster cast made by Eric Shipton in snow on the Melung Glacier in 1951, on his reconnaissance of the route to conquer Mount Everest.”

The caption had a series of errors. First off, it was not written by Ivan T. Sanderson. Second, it is the imprint of a left foot alleged of the Yeti, not a right foot. And third, the plaster cast was not made by Eric Shipton “in snow.” We know that no casts were made in 1951 by Shipton or anyone else on that expedition.
...

http://www.cryptozoonews.com/shipton-cast/
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Re: In memoriam : RI Obituaries

Postby semper occultus » Wed Jun 04, 2014 7:42 am

Alexander Shulgin – obituary

Alexander Shulgin was a chemist dubbed the 'Godfather of Psychedelics’ who synthesised the drug that became known as Ecstasy

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Alexander Shulgin, who was known as the 'Godfather of Psychedelics' Photo: REX
6:37PM BST 03 Jun 2014


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10872900/Alexander-Shulgin-obituary.html

Alexander Shulgin, who has died aged 88, was an American chemist known as the “Godfather of Psychedelics”. In his psychopharmacological studies Shulgin used himself as a guinea pig to analyse human reactions to more than 200 psychoactive compounds. His experiments most famously introduced the empathogenic drug MDMA into the popular consciousness — under its street name, Ecstasy.

MDMA — known chemically as 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methamphetamine but by Shulgin as a “low-calorie martini”— had originally been created as a blood-clotting agent in 1912 . In the mid-Seventies, however, Shulgin synthesised (artificially concocted) the drug and took it himself, noting its beneficial effects on human empathy and compassion. Effectively Shulgin had created a “love drug”.

“I feel absolutely clean inside, and there is nothing but pure euphoria,” wrote Shulgin in his journals. “The cleanliness, clarity, and marvellous feeling of solid inner strength continued through the next day. I am overcome by the profundity of the experience.”

Shulgin and his friend Leo Zeff, a psychologist from California, promoted MDMA across America to hundreds of psychologists and therapists as an aid to talk therapy. One of those therapists who embraced the drug was the lay Jungian psychoanalyst Ann Gotlieb, who met Shulgin in 1979. The pair bonded over their interest in mind-altering substances and married two years later.

Alexander Theodore Shulgin (often known as Sasha) was born on June 17 1925 in Berkeley, California. Both his parents were schoolteachers in Alameda County. Shulgin studied Organic Chemistry at Harvard University as a scholarship student but dropped out in 1943 to join the US Navy, and while serving during the Second World War he became interested in psychopharmacology. Prior to having surgery for a thumb infection he was handed a glass of orange juice, and, assuming that the crystals at the bottom of the glass were a sedative, he drank it and fell asleep. After the surgery he discovered that he had simply drunk fruit juice with added sugar and he had been given a placebo. He was, he said, amazed that “a fraction of a gram of sugar had rendered [him] unconscious”.

On leaving the Navy, Shulgin returned to Berkeley, where he earned a PhD in Biochemistry. He continued with postdoctoral work in psychiatry and pharmacology at the University of California before working in industry, first at Bio-Rad Laboratories and then as a senior research chemist at Dow Chemicals.

At Dow, he first started experimenting with mescaline. In the late Sixties he left the company to spend two years studying Neurology at the University of California School of Medicine in San Francisco. He then built a lab — known as “the Farm” — behind his house and became an independent consultant.

During this period he developed ties with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), giving seminars to agents on pharmacology and providing expert testimony in court. The administration granted him a licence for his analytical experiments, allowing him to synthesise illegal drugs.

Shulgin tested on himself hundreds of psychoactive chemicals, one of which was MDMA — the “emotional and sensual overtones” of which he soon extolled. He had first synthesised the drug in 1965, but took it himself only a decade later after an undergraduate from San Francisco State University described its effects.

The MDMA trials with therapists led Shulgin to Ann Gotlieb, whose father had been New Zealand’s consul to Trieste before the Second World War. The couple married in their back garden in a ceremony conducted by a DEA officer.


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Dr Alexander Shulgin and his wife Ann at their home in California

The benefits and dangers of MDMA have long been debated (it was made illegal in Britain in 1977 and in the United States in 1985). The debate accelerated as the drug was rebranded, and often dangerously recut, during the Eighties and Nineties to become the colourful little tablets known as Ecstasy, Molly or simply “E”. For partygoers in raves across New York, London and Ibiza the drug was to become a byword for the elevations and crises inherent in clubbing.

Shulgin, however, maintained that the drug could help patients overcome trauma or debilitating guilt. He conceded that there had been “a hint of snake-oil” to its initial promotion, but insisted that it remained “an incredible tool”. He liked to quote a psychiatrist who described MDMA as “penicillin for the soul”.

Shulgin wrote hundreds of papers on his findings and several books, including the bestseller PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story (1991), which he authored with his wife; the acronym stood for Phenethylamines I Have Known And Loved. A sequel, TIHKAL (Tryptamines I Have Known And Loved), followed two years later. “It is our opinion that those books are pretty much cookbooks on how to make illegal drugs,” said a spokesman for San Francisco’s division of the DEA. “Agents tell me that in clandestine labs that they have raided, they have found copies.”

Alexander Shulgin is survived by his wife.


Alexander Shulgin, born June 17 1925, died June 2 2014
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Re: In memoriam : RI Obituaries

Postby chump » Wed Jun 04, 2014 10:45 am



http://www.independent.co.uk/news/peopl ... 78223.html
Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin, the pioneering pharmacologist who introduced MDMA to psychologists in the 1970s, has died aged 88 after a battle with liver cancer.

Shulgin was famed for having synthesized and tested over 200 psychedelic drugs.

He earned the title, the “Godfather of ecstasy”, after developing a new synthesis method for MDMA – the purest available form of ecstasy – in 1976. He passed it on to his therapist friend Leo Zeff, who began using the drug’s effects on an individual’s emotional states during sessions with clients.

Shortly after his introduction, ecstasy broke into the mainstream, infiltrating the club culture in New York and Chicago, and hitting the shores of Ibiza, before finally landing in the UK.

The first psycho-active molecule he invented for pharmaceutical brand The Dow Chemical Company was an amphetamine slightly milder than LSD, which was sold to biker gangs by a chemist in New York by the kilo, because of the drug’s potent psychedelic highs.

However, Shulgin’s relationship with Dow Chemical deteriorated after the origin of the drug was identified, so he parted ways with the company in 1965, and set up his own home lab in Berkley, California to focus his research purely on psychedelic drugs.

Vice magazine's Hamilton Morris met with Shulgin and his wife, chemical researcher Ann Shulgin, at their home in San Francisco for an interview in 2010.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIFM5dRlsOg

“Pretty much every psychedelic drug known came from this house,” he said, describing himself as a “personal fan” of “the grandfather of ecstasy”.

Shulgin, who also published TiHkal (Tryptamines I Have Known And Loved) and PiHKAL (Phenethylamines I Have Known And Loved) with his wife, died peacefully in his sleep surrounded by friends and family.

“In today’s legal climate, there is no way” Shulgin could reproduce his work of the 1960’s, Morris continued. “There can never be another Alexander Shulgin.”
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Re: In memoriam : RI Obituaries

Postby justdrew » Fri Jun 13, 2014 2:23 am

By 1964 there were 1.5 million mobile phone users in the US
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Re: In memoriam : RI Obituaries

Postby elfismiles » Wed Jul 02, 2014 9:34 am



Forward.com

… Imich began donating his archives to the University of Manitoba in 2012 when his eyesight started to fade. A believer to the last, he made sure that there, among manuscripts of his published and unpublished works, are found “various pieces of silverware which were bent by Joe A. Nuzum.”

http://forward.com/articles/199741/alex ... z36JeKBPTU




Alexander Imich: An Inventory of his records at the University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections
http://umanitoba.ca/libraries/archives/ ... 2013.shtml

http://www.anomalyarchives.org/public-h ... alexander/
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Re: In memoriam : RI Obituaries

Postby elfismiles » Wed Jul 02, 2014 9:38 am

Entrepreneur Felix Dennis dies at 67

1:12pm Tuesday 24th June 2014 in News

FELIX Dennis, the entrepreneur publisher who was the driving force behind the Alne Wood Park natural burial ground in Great Alne, has died.

A statement from his website reads: “We are deeply saddened to announce that Felix Dennis passed away yesterday surrounded by his loved ones. After a long and painful battle with cancer, Felix died peacefully at his home in Dorsington, aged 67.”

Mr Dennis came to fame as one of the editors on the underground alternative magazine ‘Oz’ which was involved in a celebrated obscenity trial in 1971, where he and co-editor Jim Anderson were acquitted on appeal after initially being found guilty and sentenced to harsh jail terms.

He later became a highly-successful magazine publisher with responsibility for such titles as ‘Viz’, ‘Fortean Times’ and ‘Bizarre’ as well as ‘Maxim’ and ‘Stuff’, and forged a successful second career as a poet.

Alcester residents will be most familiar with Mr Dennis as the guiding force behind the Forest of Dennis, a plantation of more than a million native saplings near Great Alne, and more recently, the controversial plans to create the Alne Wood Park natural burial ground, an 85-acre area of forest off Spernal Lane, with space for 50,000 internments.

http://www.redditchadvertiser.co.uk/new ... ies_at_67/



rigorousintuition.ca • View topic - The Wikileaks Question
http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/ ... &start=690
Dec 17, 2010 - 15 posts - ‎11 authors
But the likes of Australian journalist Phillip Knightley, flamboyant publisher Felix Dennis and Jemima Khan, who called her hero "the new Jason ...

rigorousintuition.ca • View topic - Economic Aspects of "Love"
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Sep 30, 2011 - 15 posts - ‎1 author
For six weeks in the summer of 1971 the three editors of Oz: Richard Neville, Jim Anderson and Felix Dennis, were forced to defend themselves ...
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Re: In memoriam : RI Obituaries

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Jul 17, 2014 11:46 am

Johnny Winter, longtime ambassador of Texas blues, dies at 70

In the '70s Johnny Winter was a darling of the music press and helped drive a germinating boogie rock sound
With his imposing height and flowing white hair, late blues guitarist Johnny Winter cut an imposing figure
With his imposing height and flowing white hair, Texas blues guitarist Johnny Winter cut an intimidating figure as he roamed the stage. The guitarist died at age 70 on Wednesday in Zurich, Switzerland, during a European tour, a passing that confirms a musician dedicated to exploring his muse until the end.

A guitarist who rose out of East Texas in the 1960s to become an ambassador to a generation of young fans digging for American music's roots, Winter was the most visible Texas blues progenitor of the era, at least until his avowed disciples, brothers Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughn, took up the torch.

Winter was best known for his string of albums released on Columbia Records in the years after label-mate (and one-time lover) Janis Joplin and her band Big Brother and the Holding Company proved the market ripe for a striking hotshot like Winter. After signing a multi-album contract that offered him lots of money, freedom and an avenue to fame -- and helped land him a slot at Woodstock -- the guitarist released a string of successful albums featuring both his own band and luminaries of classic Chicago blues.

Along with his brother Edgar (who, like him, was born with albinism), Johnny became a darling of the music press, and helped drive a germinating boogie rock movement. Their striking appearances -- how much whiter could they be? -- served to emphasize a truth that blues knows no color. But, then, one listen to "Mean Town Blues" or Johnny's version of Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited" served the same purpose.

A nasty drug habit, though, sidelined Winter's career, as did his steadfast refusal to abandon blues for more commercial guitar rock sound as popularized by then-chart toppers such as the Rolling Stones and Peter Frampton.

After Winter got clean, he returned to his chief role, one that consumed his life: celebrating the raw, imposing sound of electrified Texas blues, one more link in a chain of fretmen including Freddie King, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown and Johnny "Guitar" Watson.

Winter went on to produce three Grammy-winning albums for blues icons Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker while continuing to record and tour.


Before he died, he was in the beginning stages of promoting "Step Back," his forthcoming album of collaborations. The list of guests underscores Winter's stature. It features recordings with artists including Eric Clapton, Billy Gibbons (ZZ Top), Joe Perry (Aerosmith), Dr. John, Ben Harper and others. Winter was slated to celebrate its release on Aug. 22 in Anaheim.


Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: In memoriam : RI Obituaries

Postby semper occultus » Sun Nov 23, 2014 10:24 am

Bill Stevenson - obituary

Bill Stevenson was an author whose imaginative inside track on the world of espionage helped him write a bestseller in a week

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10673705/Bill-Stevenson-obituary.html

6:27PM GMT 03 Mar 2014

Bill Stevenson, who has died aged 89, was a British-born Canadian journalist and author who used his espionage connections to write two bestselling books, A Man Called Intrepid and 90 Minutes at Entebbe.
The first of these, published in 1976, told the story of Sir William Stephenson (the similar names were coincidental), the Canadian-born intelligence operative who, under the codename Intrepid, acted as the head of British intelligence operations in the United States during the war.

Stevenson had first met the spymaster while training as a pilot in Canada, and in the post-war years he worked as a voluntary agent for Intrepid’s front company, the World Commerce Corporation. At the same time as he pursued a career at the Toronto Star, Stevenson assisted in the transfer of highly-sensitive intelligence documents from the British Security Coordination (BSC) headquarters in New York, while Sir William in turn suggested possible destinations of journalistic interest.
Stevenson’s unusual relationship with his near-namesake ensured that A Man Called Intrepid was criticised for the extravagant claims made on behalf of its subject, notably that Stephenson had played a central role in almost every successful intelligence operation of the war.

The espionage author Nigel West wrote that it was “almost entire fictional in content”, alleging that even the codename of Intrepid was given, not to Stephenson himself, but to the BSC’s New York operation; while Hugh Trevor-Roper, who had himself served in the Radio Security Service and the Secret Intelligence Service during the war, wrote a particularly excoriating review in the New York Review of Books, suggesting that to hold Stevenson to account for his inaccuracies would be “like urging a jellyfish to grit its teeth and dig in its heels”.

For the general readership, however, Stevenson had tapped into a prevailing fascination with secrecy and intrigue, fuelled by that year’s Church Committee hearings into CIA activities worldwide. Translated into 13 languages, A Man Called Intrepid spent a year on the New York Times bestseller list and spawned a television miniseries starring David Niven.

Soon afterwards came 90 Minutes at Entebbe, an early example of the “instant book”. At 216 pages long, it recounted the spectacular rescue by Israeli forces of 100 hostages from Uganda’s Entebbe airport on July 4 1976, and was published by Bantam on July 26, receiving serialisations in The New York Times and other papers around the world. Stevenson had dashed off the manuscript in just over a week from a New York hotel room .
The son of a Scottish merchant marine sailor, William Henri Stevenson was born in London on June 1 1924. On the outbreak of war the family moved near to Bletchley Park, where his father was employed; meanwhile, Bill’s French mother trained Oxford students in the appropriate dialects for service in the French Resistance.
He left school at 16 and wrote his first book, Sarka the Seagull, before enlisting in the Royal Navy as a pilot and qualifying from the Service Flying Training School at Kingston, Ontario . Beginning as a Fleet Air Arm carrier pilot, from 1943 he moved into aerial reconnaissance, flying Sea Spitfires, Corsairs and Hellcats equipped with spy cameras over Japanese-occupied territory.

Questioned about the distinction between his dual role as agent and investigative reporter, Stevenson was very clear: “There is none. 'Spyglass’ is the word I’d prefer to use. All through the centuries, reporters of one kind or another have put the spyglass to events.”

The naval intelligence officer – and later James Bond author – Ian Fleming then urged him to “go somewhere exotic”. But Stevenson instead returned to Canada where, by 1950, he had risen to the foreign desk of the Toronto Star.
During the Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation of the early 1960s Stevenson worked for the Near & Far East News Agency (NAFEN), a front organisation belonging to the Foreign Office’s Intelligence & Research Department (IRD); and in 1965 he joined other observers of the Indo-Pakistani war. Further assignments took him to Korea, Maoist China, Taiwan, French Indochina and North and South Vietnam.

In addition to the two bestsellers, his other books included Intrepid’s Last Case (1983), a follow-up to his 1976 work, and Spymistress: The Life of Vera Atkins, the Greatest Female Secret Agent of World War II (2006). The Bushbabies (1965), a children’s adventure story inspired by his experiences in Kenya, was adapted for film by MGM. He also wrote and produced several documentaries for CBC Television.
Stevenson’s autobiography, Past to Present: A Reporter’s Story of War, Spies, People, and Politics, was published in 2012. Narrated in the present tense, its style is characteristically anecdotal, a typical sentence beginning: “I rediscover Rena, the Polish news agency girl I first met in Mexico when I cornered Trotsky’s assassin.” Other supporting characters include Vera Lynn, who was the daughter of a neighbouring plumber from Stevenson’s boyhood London street; the 14th Dalai Lama; and King Bhumibol of Thailand, subject of Stevenson’s 2001 biography The Revolutionary King.

Bill Stevenson is survived by his second wife, Monika, and by four children. A son predeceased him.

Bill Stevenson, born June 1 1924, died November 26 2013





William Stephenson, British Spy Known as Intrepid, Is Dead at 93

By ALBIN KREBS
Published: February 3, 1989

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/03/obituaries/william-stephenson-british-spy-known-as-intrepid-is-dead-at-93.html

Sir William Stephenson, the Canadian-born millionaire industrialist whose adventures as Britain's World War II chief of intelligence in the Western Hemisphere were chronicled in the 1979 bestseller ''A Man Called Intrepid'' died Tuesday in Paget, Bermuda. He was 93 years old. Sir William, who had been living in retirement in Bermuda and Jamaica for many years, was given the code name Intrepid by Winston Churchill because long before his cloak-and-dagger days began he had been one of Britain's top fighter pilots in World War I, an inventor and a financier.

Operating out of a suite in Rockefeller Center in New York, Sir William sometimes served as a go-between for Churchill and Roosevelt and was sent potential American intelligence agents for training at secret bases in Canada.

He also helped in the organization of the United States' wartime intelligence operation, the Office of Strategic Services, whose head, Maj. Gen. William J. (Wild Bill) Donovan, later said: 'Bill Stephenson taught us all we ever knew about foreign intelligence.''

William Samuel Stephenson was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on Jan. 11, 1896.

In 1914 he dropped out of college to join the Royal Canadian Engineers and suffered gas poisoning in France. He later said he faked his medical history to join the Royal Flying Corps and flew into action after only five hours of flight instruction. He was credited with shooting down 26 enemy planes and won Britain's Distinguished Flying Cross and the French Croix de Guerre.

Eventually the young pilot was himself shot down and imprisoned. Before he escaped from prison camp, William Stephenson came across an ingenious can-opener that had been patented only in Germany. After the war he adapted it, obtained patents worldwide and made it the cornerstone of a future fortune. Millionaire and a Boxer

Before he was 30 years old he had become a millionaire, with a finger in the manufacture of radios, phonographs, automobiles and airplanes. He was also in the construction, real estate, and steel businesses, and had invented the first device for sending photographs by radio. He also won the European lightweight boxing championship.

When Hitler was preparing for World War II, William Stephenson, under cover of his own business operations in Germany, gathered intelligence on Nazi steel, arms, and munitions production and passed the information on to an unofficial intelligence network that reported to Churchill, then out of office but soon to become First Sea Lord and then Prime Minister.

''That was my only training in espionage,'' Sir William later recalled, but in 1940 Churchill sent Intrepid to New York with the title of British Passports Control Officer. After the United States got into the war he became British Security Coordinator for the Western Hemisphere.

Reminiscing about his wartime service, Sir William said that in addition to serving as a link between Churchill and Roosevelt and supervising the training of Americans for intelligence work, he operated a spy network that uncovered the activities of Axis agents in South America and provided valuable information to Washington and London on the movements of Vichy French operatives. Knighted in 1946

Afterward he liked to pass off his job as ''80 percent paperwork,'' but in 1946 the British honored him with a knighthood and the Americans presented him the Medal for Merit, then the United States' highest civilian award. The medal's citation, signed by Truman, said Sir William ''gave timely and invaluable aid to the American war effort.''

After the appearance of ''A Man Called Intrepid,'' written by the similarly named William Stevenson, some of Sir William's recollections were contested by Churchill's private secretary, John Colville.

Mr. Colville, in his 1981 book ''Winston Churchill and His Inner Circle,'' said that foremost among Sir William's false assertions were that he was a constant liaison between Churchill and Roosevelt and that he was in constant contact with Churchill on intelligence and military matters.

Sir William replied: ''Those charges are completely untrue, absolute nonsense.''

After the war Sir William joined with several wartime associates, including General Donovan and former Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius, to form the World Commerce Corporation, which provided tools, machinery and technical information to developing countries to set up industries.

Sir William, who was buried yesterday in Bermuda, is survived by a daughter, Elizabeth, and a grandson, Rhys. A spokesman for the family declined to give their surname.

Photo of Sir William Stephenson (1954)
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Re: In memoriam : RI Obituaries

Postby stefano » Tue Nov 25, 2014 10:03 am

Thanks semper! Fascinating stuff.
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Re: In memoriam : RI Obituaries

Postby semper occultus » Tue Nov 25, 2014 3:57 pm

....oh thanks stefano.....just a bit of thread-padding tbh.....spotted Stevenson when chucking out some old papers...

...it doesn't mention he also wrote The Bormann Brotherhood ( 1973 )

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which oddly seems to pre-date Ladislas Farago's Aftermath ( 1974 ) .....always thought it was the other way around...
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Re: In memoriam : RI Obituaries

Postby elfismiles » Thu Dec 04, 2014 2:53 pm

I'm so sad today ... last night I learned of the passing of someone very significant to me, a friend and inspiration to my family of "Kooks" ...

I hope to post my own feelings and thoughts on Wes Nations soon.

From UFOs to Johnny Vagabond, Wes Nations Takes His Final Trek
http://copycateffect.blogspot.com/2014/12/Wes-obit.html

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Re: In memoriam : RI Obituaries

Postby conniption » Wed Apr 15, 2015 6:47 am

April 14, 2015
R.I.P. Günter Grass
Image
A legend has left us. R.I.P. Günter Grass.
videos at link.



MoA
(embedded links)

April 13, 2015

Repost: Günter Grass - What Has To Be Said

The German poet and writer Günter Grass died today. In his honer a repost from April 4 2012.

---

Today the German Süddeutsche Zeitung published a poem by Günter Grass about the conflict between Israel and Iran. The usual subjects immediately condemned the writer.

The following is my unauthorized (amateur) translation of the complete poem into English. I tried to stay as near as possible to the, sometimes seemingly awkward but certainly intended, original line breaks and punctuation.

What has to be said

Why am I silent, conceal too long,
what is obvious and in war games
has been trained, at whose end we as survivors
will at the most be footnotes.

It is the alleged right of first strike,
with which the Iranian people,
subjugated by a loudmouth
and steered towards organized elation,
could be snuffed out with,
because the building of a nuclear bomb
within its fiefdom is assumed.

But why do I prohibit myself,
to name that other country,
in which for years - though kept secret -
a growing capability exists
though out of control as
not open for audit?

The general concealment of this fact,
to which my silence subjugated,
feels for me like a burdoning lie
and a coercion, which promises punishment;
the verdict "antisemitism" is commonly used.

But now, because from my country,
which for its very own crimes,
which are incomparable,
is called up again and again and taken to task,
repeatedly and businesslike, though
by slippy lips declared as reparation,
another submarine to Israel
shall be delivered, whose specialty
consists of, steering all-annihilating warheads
whereto, the existence
of a single bomb is unproven,
but as a fear shall be conclusiveness,
I say, what has to be said.

But why my silence so far?
Because I though, my origin,
which has a not redeemable taint,
prohibited me, to strain,
with this fact as spoken truth,
the country Israel, to which I am
and want to stay beholden.

Why do I speak only now,
aged and with my last ink:
The nuclear power Israel endangers
an already fragile world peace?
Because it has to be said,
what already tomorrow could be too late;
also because we - as Germans burdened enough -
could become supplier for a crime,
which is foreseeable, which is why our complicity
could not be redeemed
with the usual subterfuges.

And admittedly: I no longer remain silent,
because I am disgusted with
the hypocrisy of the west; additionally there is hope
that many may liberate themselves from their silence,
to request the originator of the discernible danger
to abstain from force
and also insist,
that unhindered and permanent control
of the Israeli capability
and the Iranian nuclear installations
through an international authority
shall be allowed by both countries governments.

Only this way can all, the Israelis and the Palestinians,
even more, all people who live in the delusion occupied region
near by near as enemies and in the end even us,
be helped.


Posted by b on April 13, 2015


~

Repost from an eighty page, "temporarily" locked thread, here at RI:

Posted by AlicetheKurious
Thu Apr 12, 2012 12:25 am

Because he could no longer remain silent as Germany continued to provide Israel with devastating weapons of mass destruction, including highly advanced nuclear-capable submarines specially designed for the Israelis, capable of delivering their deadly payload 1500 km away, the German poet Gunther Grass wrote a poem. Here it is, translated (I've bolded the "offending" lines):

What Must be Said

By Günter Grass

Why have I kept silent, silent for too long
over what is openly played out
in war games at the end of which we
the survivors are at best footnotes.

It’s that claim of a right to first strike
against those who under a loudmouth’s thumb
are pushed into organized cheering—
a strike to snuff out the Iranian people
on suspicion that under his influence
an atom bomb’s being built.

But why do I forbid myself
to name that other land in which
for years—although kept secret—
a usable nuclear capability has grown
beyond all control, because
no scrutiny is allowed.


The universal silence around this fact,
under which my own silence lay,
I feel now as a heavy lie,
a strong constraint, which to dismiss
courts forceful punishment:
the verdict of “Antisemitism” is well known.

But now, when my own country,
guilty of primal and unequalled crimes
for which time and again it must be tasked—
once again, in pure commerce,
though with quick lips we declare it
reparations, wants to send
Israel yet another submarine—
one whose speciality is to deliver
warheads capable of ending all life
where the existence of even one
nuclear weapon remains unproven,
but where suspicion serves for proof—

now I say what must be said.

But why was I silent for so long?
Because I thought my origin,
marked with an ineradicable stain,
forbade mention of this fact
as definite truth about Israel, a country
to which I am and will remain attached.

Why is it only now I say,
in old age, with my last drop of ink,
that Israel’s nuclear power endangers
an already fragile world peace?

Because what by tomorrow might be
too late, must be spoken now,
and because we—as Germans, already
burdened enough—could become
enablers of a crime, foreseeable and therefore
not to be eradicated
with any of the usual excuses.


And admittedly: I’m silent no more
because I’ve had it with the West’s hypocrisy
—and one can hope that many others too
may free themselves from silence,
challenge the instigator of known danger
to abstain from violence,
and at the same time demand
a permanent and unrestrained control
of Israel’s atomic power
and Iranian nuclear plants
by an international authority
accepted by both governments.

Only thus can one give help
to Israelis and Palestinians—still more,
all the peoples, neighbour-enemies
living in this region occupied by madness
—and finally, to ourselves as well.

“Was gesagt werden muss” published in Süddeutschen Zeitung (4 April 2012)

Translation by Michael Keefer and Nica Mintz Link




Western media exploded in outrage that Grass would dare to point out that "Israel’s nuclear power endangers an already fragile world peace" and to describe Israel as "the instigator of known danger". Israel placed Gunther Grass on its list of undesirables, and officially labeled him a Nazi.

Grass was drafted when he was 17 years old into the German Waffen SS during the last days of the war: he never saw combat, nor did he commit or participate in any war crimes. For 60 years, the Nobel Laureate has been one of Europe's leading pacifists and his writings have focused on the need for Germans to face their guilt for the crimes committed by the Nazis.

In response to Gunther Grass' "What must be said", the Israeli Yaoz-Kest, one of Israel's most acclaimed poets, wrote a poem of his own, which was published in Arutz Sheva Israel National News, a popular right-wing Israeli publication:

Danger,

I want to be a danger,

I want to be a danger to the world,

so that after my destruction, not a single blade of grass will remain on the face of the Earth,

or a single blade of grass for Gunther Grass's pipe,

upon the Earth where, since I was born, I pose a danger to the world.

Because it is my right!

It is my right to live or die while annihilating my annihilators, without riding again as a crying-boy in a transport train,

Into the world-vacuum, while placing my head in the lap of a mother who is disappearing into the fresh air of the Land of Wotan,

and the urine tin darts dark-yellow specks onto the walls of the cabin – like gunshots that spray

a yellowish-reddish liquid from besides the train guards, and among them – maybe – the soldier G.G., also, wearing a steel helmet.
...
And so, as the strong light of the Land of Israel enters my home, I turn on the radio and cannot help listening to the sermons of the ayatollahs of Iran and to the words of the respected Iranian minister, who shows the map of the Land of Israel with his two hands, to say: "It is so small… Within six or seven days it can be erased from the map", or in your language: "ausradieren". And here I am listening to the sermons of the imams in the mosques of the Land of Israel and the Arab lands as they declare "ausradieren!", but they are always referring to me and not to you, Gunther Grass.

And yet, there is a right reserved only to us Jews (if indeed any human on Earth has this right): to be destroyed and to take the weary and sated world with us to the non-existence, along with its wondrous libraries and heart-stirring tunes – just so, after we descend to the grave, while the ground emits radioactive rays to all four winds.

Indeed – we have the right! It is mine, too!

For it is the right of the Nation of Israel to finally shut the gates to the world after it leaves this place (not of its free will!), and we have the right to say, at the price of the 3,000 year old fear: "If you force us yet again to descend from the face of the Earth to the depths of the Earth – let the Earth roll toward the Nothingness." Link


Despite the poem's description of Israel's explicit apocalyptic threat, its sick claim that it has "the right" to exterminate millions, perhaps billions of human lives, it has provoked no outrage, no outcry, by those who attacked Grass for suggesting that Israel's militarism poses a danger to the world.

As Gilad Atzmon notes, "The poem is a clear reminder of horrific danger that is embedded within Jewish identity politics and contemporary Jewish nationalism. It is a glimpse into unique psychotic genocidal sense of retribution."

I would add that, far more telling than the poem itself, is the thunderous silence that greeted it, in Israel itself and in the same media that so shrilly condemned Gunther Grass' poem.
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Re: In memoriam : RI Obituaries

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Nov 10, 2015 12:23 pm

Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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