8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888
January 31, 2013
Cachalia, Amina
Amina Cachalia (b. Amina Asvat; June 28, 1930 Vereeniging, South Africa – d. January 31, 2013, Johannesburg, South Africa) was a longtime friend and ally of Nelson Mandela. Her late husband was political activist Yusuf Cachalia.
Cachalia was born Amina Asvat, the ninth of eleven children in Vereeniging, South Africa, on June 28, 1930. Her parents were political activists Ebrahim and Fatima Asvat. She began campaigning against Apartheid and racial discrimination as a teenager. She became a women's rights activist, often focusing on economic issues, such as financial independence for women.
Amina and Yusuf Cachalia were friends of Nelson Mandela before his imprisonment at Robben Island in 1962. She became a staunch anti-apartheid activist. She spent fifteen years under house arrest throughout the 1960s and 1970s. She was the treasurer of the Federation of South African Women (Fedsaw), a leading supporter of the Federation of Transvaal Women, and a member of both the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress and Transvaal Indian Congress during the Apartheid era.
In 1995, Mandela asked Cachalia to marry him. At the time, he had been separated from his wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Cachalia turned down Mandela's proposal because she said that "I'm my own person and that I had just recently lost my husband whom I had enormous regard for". Mandela divorced Madikizela-Mandela a year later and married Graca Machel in 1998.
Cachalia was elected to the National Assembly of South Africa in the 1994 South African general election, the country's first with universal adult suffrage. In 2004, she was awarded the Order of Luthuli in Bronze for her contributions to gender and racial equality and democracy.
Cachalia died at Milpark Hospital in Parktown West, Johannesburg, January 31, 2013, aged 82. The cause of death was complications following an emergency operation due to a perforated ulcer.
Her funeral was held in her home in Parkview, Johannesburg, according to traditional Muslim customs. It was attended by South African President Jacob Zuma, former Presidents Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe, ANC Deputy Cyril Ramaphosa, former First Lady Graca Machel, former Finance Minister Trevor Manuel and fellow activisti Ahmed Kathrada, among others.
After her death, in March 2013, her autobiography When Hope and History Rhyme was published.
8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888
*Mohamed Morsi was ousted from the presidency of Egypt (July 3).
Mohamed Morsi (Arabic: محمد محمد مرسى عيسى العياط, ALA-LC: Muḥammad Muḥammad Mursī ‘Īsá al-‘Ayyāṭ) (b. August 20, 1951) is an Egyptian politician who served as the fifth president of Egypt, from June 30, 2012 to July 3, 2013, when he was removed by the military after mass protests. He is considered by most to be the first democratically elected head of state in Egyptian history. Although his predecessors also held elections, these were generally marred by irregularities and allegations of rigging. He was also the first president to have first assumed his duty after an election, as opposed to coming to power as revolutionaries (in the case of Gamal Abdel Nasser) or as appointed successors (Sadat, Mubarak).
Mohamed Morsi was educated in Egyptian public schools and universities. He was later granted a scholarship from the Egyptian government to prepare for a Ph.D. degree in the United States. Morsi was a Member of Parliament in the People's Assembly of Egypt from 2000 to 2005, and a leading member in the Muslim Brotherhood. He became Chairman of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) when it was founded by the Muslim Brotherhood in the wake of the 2011 Egyptian revolution. He stood as the FJP's candidate for the May–June 2012 presidential election.
Morsi's victory in the presidential election was announced on June 24, 2012 after he won the run-off election winning 51.7 percent of the vote against Ahmed Shafik, deposed leader Hosni Mubarak's last prime minister.
As president, Morsi granted himself unlimited powers on the pretext that he would "protect" the nation from the Mubarak-era power structure, which he called "remnants of the old regime" (Arabic: فلول, ALA-LC: Foloul), and the power to legislate without judicial oversight or review of his acts. In late November, he issued an Islamist-backed draft constitution and called for a referendum, an act that his opponents called an "Islamist coup"." These issues, along with complaints of prosecutions of journalists and attacks on nonviolent demonstrators, brought hundreds of thousands of protesters to the streets in the2012 Egyptian protests.
On June 30, 2013, mass protests erupted across Egypt which saw millions of protesters calling for the president's resignation. In response to the events, Morsi was given a 48 hour ultimatum by the military to meet the people's demands and to solve political differences or else they would intervene by implementing their own road map for the country and made it clear that they were not planning a coup.
Morsi was declared unseated on July 3, 2013 by a council consisting of defense minister Abdul Fatah al-Sisi, opposition leader Mohamed El Baradei, the Grand Imam of Al Azhar Ahmed el-Tayeb, and Coptic Pope Tawadros II. The military suspended the constitution, and established a new administration headed by the chief justice, and initiated a "brutal" crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood.
On September 1, 2013, prosecutors referred Morsi to trial on charges of inciting deadly violence. The date was set for November 4, 2013 and he was being tried on charges of incitement of murder and violence.
*Malala Yousafzai was awarded the Sakharov Prize.
Malala Yousafzai (Pashto: ملاله یوسفزۍ; Urdu: ملالہ یوسف زئی; Malālah Yūsafzay) (b. July 12, 1997) is a Pakistani education activist from the town of Mingora in the Swat District of Pakistan's northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. She is known for her activism for rights to education and for women, especially in the Swat Valley, where the Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school. In early 2009, at the age of 11–12, Yousafzai wrote a blog under a pseudonym for the BBC detailing her life under Taliban rule, their attempts to take control of the valley, and her views on promoting education for girls. The following summer, a New York Times documentary was filmed about her life as the Pakistani military intervened in the region, culminating in the Second Battle of Swat. Yousafzai rose in prominence, giving interviews in print and on television, and she was nominated for the International Children's Peace Prize by South African activist Desmond Tutu.
On October 9, 2012, Yousafzai was shot in the head and neck in an assassination attempt by Taliban gunmen while returning home on a school bus. In the days immediately following the attack, she remained unconscious and in critical condition, but later her condition improved enough for her to be sent to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England, for intensive rehabilitation. On October 12, 2012, a group of 50 Islamic clerics in Pakistan issued a fatwā against those who tried to kill her, but the Taliban reiterated its intent to kill Yousafzai and her father.
The assassination attempt sparked a national and international outpouring of support for Yousafzai. The United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown launched a United Nations petition in Yousafzai's name, using the slogan "I am Malala" and demanding that all children worldwide be in school by the end of 2015 – a petition which helped lead to the ratification of Pakistan's first Right to Education Bill. In the April 29, 2013 issue of Time magazine, Yousafzai was featured on the magazine's front cover and as one of "The 100 Most Influential People in the World". She was the winner of Pakistan's first National Youth Peace Prize and was nominated for the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize (which was awarded to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons). On July 12, 2013, Yousafzai spoke at the United Nations to call for worldwide access to education, and in September 2013 she officially opened the Library of Birmingham. Yousafzai was also the recipient of the Sakharov Prize for 2013.
Yousafzai was born on July 12, 1997 into a Sunni Muslim family of Pashtun ethnicity. She was given her first name Malala (meaning "grief stricken") after Malalai of Maiwand, a famous Pashtun poet and warrior woman from southern Afghanistan.Her last name, Yousafzai, is that of a large Pashtun tribal confederation that is predominant in Pakistan's Swat Valley, where she grew up. At her house in Mingora, she lived with her two younger brothers, her parents, and two pet chickens.
Yousafzai was educated in large part by her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, who was a poet, school owner, and an educational activist himself, running a chain of schools known as the Khushal Public School. She once stated to an interviewer that she would like to become a doctor, though later her father encouraged her to become a politician instead. Ziauddin referred to his daughter as something entirely special, permitting her to stay up at night and talk about politics after her two brothers had been sent to bed.
Yousafzai started speaking about education rights as early as September 2008, when her father took her to Peshawar to speak at the local press club. "How dare the Taliban take away my basic right to education?" Yousafzai asked her audience in a speech covered by newspapers and television channels throughout the region.
Samira Ibrahim (Arabic: سميرة إبراهيم) (born c. 1987) is an Egyptian activist who came to prominence during the Egyptian revolution .
On March 9, 2011, she participated in a sit-in at Tahrir Square in Cairo. The military violently dispersed protest participants, and Samira and other women were beaten, given electric shocks, strip searched, and videotaped by the soldiers. They were also subjected to virginity tests. The tests were allegedly carried out to protect the soldiers from claims of rape.
After succeeding in placing the case in front of a civilian court, a court order was issued in December 2011 to stop the practice of “virginity tests”. However in March 2012, a military court exonerated Dr. Adel El Mogy from charges laid in connection with the virginity testing of Ibrahim.
Ibrahim vowed to take her case to the international courts.
In early March 2013, Ibrahim came under criticism after Samuel Tadros, writing in The Weekly Standard, accused her of posting anti-Semitic and anti-American statements on her Twitter account. These statements included quoting Adolf Hitler, writing: "I have discovered with the passage of days, that no act contrary to morality, no crime against society, takes place, except with the Jews having a hand in it. Hitler.” In reaction to a suicide bombing of a bus of Israelis in Bulgaria, she wrote "Today is a very sweet day with a lot of very sweet news.” In 2012, on the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, she tweeted "Today is the anniversary of 9/11. May every year come with America burning".
The United States State Department subsequently announced that it would not be giving the International Women of Courage Award to Samira Ibrahim in light of these comments.
Initially, Ibrahim claimed that her Twitter account had been "previously stolen" and that "any tweet on racism and hatred is not me”. However, she later stated "I refuse to apologize to the Zionist lobby in America regarding my previous anti-Zionist statements under pressure from American government therefore they withdrew the award." The United States State Department later stated that Ibrahim had since left the United States to return to Egypt.
On March 8, 2013, a spokeswoman for the United States State Department stated that "Upon further review, the department has decided not to present her with the award" as American officials "didn't consider some of the public statements that she had made appropriate. They didn't comport with our values" while adding that "There were obviously some problems in our review process, and we're going to do some forensics on how that happened."
*****
*****
Hassan Rouhani (Persian: حسن روحانی), born November 12, 1948, became the 7th President of Iran, in office since 2013. He is also a former lawmaker, academic and diplomat. Beginning in 1999, Rouhani became a member of Iran's Assembly of Experts. He was also a member of the Expediency Council since 1991, a member of the Supreme National Security Council since 1989, and head of the Center for Strategic Research since 1992.
Rouhani was deputy speaker of the 4th and 5th terms of the Parliament of Iran (Majlis) and Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council from 1989 to 2005. In the latter capacity, Rouhani was the country's top negotiator with the EU three, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, on nuclear technology in Iran, and has also served as a Shi'ite ijtihadi cleric, and economic trade negotiator. He expressed official support for upholding the rights of ethnic and religious minorities. In 2013, he appointed former miner and Isfahani legislator Eshaq Jahangiri as his vice-president.
On May 7, 2013, Rouhani registered for the presidential election that was held on June 14, 2013. He said that, if elected, he would prepare a "civil rights charter", restore the economy and improve rocky relations with Western nations. Rouhani was viewed as politically moderate. As early vote counts began coming in, he took a large lead. He was elected as President of Iran on June 15, defeating Tehran mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and four other candidates. He took office on August 3, 2013. In 2013, TIME magazine named him 9th of the Most Influential People in the World. In domestic policy, he encouraged personal freedom and free access to information, improved women's rights by appointing female foreign ministry spokespersons, and was described as a centrist and reformist who improved Iran's diplomatic relations with other countries through exchanging conciliatory letters.
Ansara, Michael
Michael George Ansara (April 15, 1922 – July 31, 2013) was a Syrian-born American stage, screen, and voice actor best known for his portrayal of Cochise in the American television series Broken Arrow, Kane in the 1979–1981 series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Commander Kang on three different Star Trek television series, Deputy U.S. Marshal Sam Buckhart on the NBC series, Law of the Plainsman, and providing the voice for Mr. Freeze in Batman: The Animated Series and several of its spin-offs.
In 1976, Ansara starred (in the role of Abu Sufyan) in the movie Mohammad, Messenger of God (also titled The Message), about the origin of Islam and the message of prophet Mohammad.
The filmography of Michael Ansara includes the following:
The filmography of Michael Ansara includes the following:
|
*****
Paul Aussaresses (November 7, 1918 – December 4, 2013) was a French Army general, who fought during World War II, the First Indochina War and Algerian War. His actions during the Algerian War, and later defense of those actions, caused considerable controversy.
Aussaresses was a career Army intelligence officer with an excellent military record when he joined the Free French Forces in North Africa during the Second World War. In 1947, he was given command of the 11th Shock Battalion, a commando unit that was part of France's former external intelligence agency, the External Documentation and Counter-Espionage Service, the SDECE (replaced by the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE)).
Aussaresses provoked controversy in 2000, when in an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde, he admitted and defended the use of torture during the Algerian war. He repeated the defense in an interview with CBS's 60 Minutes, further arguing that torture ought to be used in the fight against Al-Qaeda, and again defended his use of torture during the Algerian War in a 2001 book, The Battle of the Casbah. In the aftermath of the controversy, he was stripped of his rank, the right to wear his army uniform and his Légion d'Honneur. Aussaresses remained defiant, he dismissed the latter act as hypocritical.
Aussaresses, recognizable by his eye patch, lost his left eye due to a botched cataract operation, not combat.
Aussaresses was born on November 7, 1918, just four days before the end of World War I, in Saint-Paul-Cap-de-Joux, Tarn department, in Languedoc. His father, Paul Aussaresses senior, was serving in the French military at the time of his son's birth because of the war.
In 1941, Aussaresses served a year as an officer cadet in Cherchell, Algeria. The next year, in 1942, he volunteered for the special services unit in France. He was a member of a Jedburgh team and a member of Team CHRYSLER which parachuted into France behind the German lines in August 1944. The Jedburghs worked clandestinely behind enemy lines to harness the local resistance and coordinate their activities with the wishes of the Allied Commanders. CHRYSLER deployed from Algeria via an American aircraft to work with the local French Resistance in Ariège. On September 1, 1946 he joined the 11th Choc Battalion and commanded the battalion from 1947 until 1948, when he was replaced by Yves Godard. Later, he served in the First Indochina War with the 1st Parachute Chasseur Regiment.
In the spring of 1956, Aussaresses attended a top-secret training camp in Salisbury, England for a one-month training to prepare for the battle at Suez Canal. He returned to Bône, Algeria in May 1956 to continue exercises with paratroopers on their way to the Suez Canal. On June 1, 1956, he received a spinal fracture from a parachuting exercise, which prevented him from participating in the Suez operation.
General Jacques Massu, who had noted Aussaresses' work against the insurrections in Philippeville, ordered Aussaresses to work under him in Algiers as an agent to control the FLN in Algiers. Aussaresses reported for duty in Algiers on January 8, 1957. He was the main executioner and intelligence collector under Jacques Massu during the Battle of Algiers. On January 28, he broke a city-wide strike organized by the FLN using repressive measures. Soldiers forcibly dragged all public utilities workers to their jobs. Store fronts were torn open so that the owners had to open the store for fear of being looted. Later in 1957, he ordered his men to hang Larbi Ben M'Hidi, an important member of the FLN, as if he had committed suicide. In a separate incident he ordered that an officer throw Ali Boumendjel, an influential Algerian attorney, from the 6th floor of the building he was held prisoner in, claiming that Boumendjel had committed suicide. France decreed that both deaths were suicides, but Aussaresses admitted both assassinations in 2000.
Aussaresses contends, in his book, that the French government insisted that the military in Algeria "liquidate the FLN as quickly as possible". Subsequently, historians debated whether or not this repression was government-backed or not. The French government has always claimed that it was not, but Aussaresses argues that the government insisted upon the harsh measures he took against Algerians - measures which included summary executions of thousands of people, hours of torture of prisoners, and violent strike-breaking.
Aussaresses was quite candid in his interview in Le Monde forty years later (May 3, 2001):
"Concerning the use of torture, it was tolerated, if not recommended. François Mitterrand, the Minister for Justice, had, indeed, an emissary with Massu in judge Jean Bérard, who covered for us and who had complete knowledge of what went on in the night."Aussaresses justified the use of torture by saying how shocked he was by the FLN's massacre at the El Halia mine. He suggested that torture was a small but necessary evil that had to be used to defeat a much larger evil of terrorism. Aussaresses also claimed that he used these methods because it was a quick way to obtain information. He also defended its use by saying that the legal system was meant to deal with a peacetime France, not a counter insurgency war that the French army was faced with in Algeria.
In an interview to Marie-Monique Robin, Aussaresses described the methods used, including the creation of death squads (escadrons de la mort), the term being created at this time.
Following Aussaresses' revelations, which suggested that torture had been ordered by the highest levels of the French state hierarchy, Human Rights Watch sent a letter to President Jacques Chirac (RPR) to indict Aussaresses for war crimes, declaring that, despite past amnesties, such crimes, which may also have been crimes against humanity, may not be amnestied. The Ligue des droits de l'homme (LDH, Human Rights League) filed a complaint against him for "apology of war crimes," as Paul Aussaresses justified the use of torture, claiming it had saved lives following the Necessity Defense [AKA: Choice of Evils] and/or the Self-Defense (although he did not explicitly use this expression). He was fined 7,500 Euros by the Tribunal de grande instance court of Paris, while Plon and Perrin, two editing houses who had published his book in which he defended the use of torture, were sentenced each to a 15,000 Euros fine. The judgment was confirmed by the Court of Appeal in April 2003. The Court of Cassation rejected the intercession in December 2004. The Court of Cassation declared in its judgment that "freedom to inform, which is the basis of freedom of expression" does not lead to "accompany the exposure of facts ... with commentaries justifying acts contrary to human dignity and universally reproved," "nor to glorify its author." Aussaresses had written in his book: "torture became necessary when emergency imposed itself."
Aussaresses had a successful military career after the war. Unlike many of his fellow officers, he did not choose to join the OAS militant group to continue the fight in Algeria after the French military began to withdraw their forces. In 1961, he was appointed as a military attaché of the French diplomatic mission in the United States, alongside ten veterans of the Algerian War formerly under his charge. In the United States, he also served at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, alongside the 10th Special Forces Group, a military unit that specialized in tactics of unconventional warfare. There he taught the "lessons" of the Battle of Algiers", which allegedly included counter-insurgency tactics, interrogation, and torture. According to Aussauresses, he specifically taught lessons from Colonel Trinquier's book on "subversive warfare" (Aussaresses had served under Trinquier in Algeria). The Americans' Vietnam era Phoenix Program was inspired by these American students of Aussaresses, after they had sent a copy of Trinquier's book to CIA agent Robert Komer.
Aussaresses relocated to Brazil in 1973 during the military dictatorship, where he maintained very close links with the military. According to General Manuel Contreras, former head of the Chilean DINA, Chilean officers trained in Brazil under Aussaresses' orders and advised the South American juntas on counter-insurrection warfare and the use of torture that was widely used against leftist opponents to the military regimes in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile and Paraguay.
The character of Julien Boisfeuras in the novels The Centurions and The Praetorians by Jean Larteguy was according to Larteguy not based on anyone, but many believe that he was at least partially inspired by Aussaresses and Roger Trinquier.
***
Amiri Baraka, also called Imamu Amiri Baraka, original name (until 1968) (Everett) LeRoi Jones (b. October 7, 1934, Newark, New Jersey — d. January 9, 2014, Newark, New Jersey), was an African American writer who presented the experiences and anger of black Americans with an affirmation of black life.
Jones graduated from Howard University (B.A., 1953) and served in the U.S. Air Force. After military duty, he joined the Beat movement, attended graduate school, and published his first major collection of poetry, Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, in 1961. In 1964, his play Dutchman appeared off-Broadway to critical acclaim. In its depiction of an encounter between a white woman and a black intellectual, it exposes the suppressed anger and hostility of American blacks toward the dominant white culture. After the assassination of Malcolm X, Jones took the name Amiri Baraka and began to espouse black nationalism.
In 1965, Baraka founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre in Harlem. He published much during this period, including Black Art (1966) and Black Magic (1969). In addition to poetry and drama, Baraka wrote several collections of essays, an autobiographical novel (The System of Dante’s Hell [1965]), and short stories. In the mid-1970s he became a Marxist, though his goals remained similar. “I [still] see art as a weapon and a weapon of revolution,” he said. “It’s just now that I define revolution in Marxist terms.” In addition to writing, Baraka taught at several American universities. The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka was published in 1984.
The works of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka include:
The works of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka include:
Poetry
- 1961: Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note
- 1964: The Dead Lecturer: Poems
- 1969: Black Magic
- 1970: It's Nation Time
- 1970: Slave Ship
- 1975: Hard Facts
- 1980: New Music, New Poetry (India Navigation)
- 1995: Transbluesency: The Selected Poems of Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones
- 1995: Wise, Why’s Y’s
- 1996: Funk Lore: New Poems
- 2003: Somebody Blew Up America & Other Poems
- 2005: The Book of Monk
Drama
- 1964: Dutchman
- 1964: The Slave
- 1967: The Baptism and The Toilet
- 1966: A Black Mass
- 1969: Four Black Revolutionary Plays
- 1978: The Motion of History and Other Plays
Fiction
- 1965: The System of Dante's Hell
- 1967: Tales
- 2006: Tales of the Out & the Gone
Non-fiction
- 1963: Blues People: Negro Music in White America
- 1965: Home: Social Essays
- 1968: Black Music
- 1971: Raise Race Rays Raize: Essays Since 1965
- 1979: Poetry for the Advanced
- 1981: reggae or not!
- 1984: Daggers and Javelins: Essays 1974–1979
- 1984: The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka
- 1987: The Music: Reflections on Jazz and Blues
- 2003: The Essence of Reparations
Edited works
- 1968: Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing (co-editor, with Larry Neal)
- 1969: Four Black Revolutionary Plays
- 1983: Confirmation: An Anthology of African American Women (edited with Amina Baraka)
- 1999: The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader
- 2000: The Fiction of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka
- 2008: Billy Harper: Blueprints of Jazz, Volume 2 (Audio CD)
Filmography
- One P.M. (1972)
- Fried Shoes Cooked Diamonds (1978) .... Himself
- Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement (1978) .... Himself
- Poetry in Motion (1982)
- Furious Flower: A Video Anthology of African American Poetry 1960–95, Volume II: Warriors (1998) .... Himself
- Through Many Dangers: The Story of Gospel Music (1996)
- Bulworth (1998) .... Rastaman
- Pinero (2001) .... Himself
- Strange Fruit (2002) .... Himself
- Ralph Ellison: An American Journey (2002) .... Himself
- Chisholm '72: Unbought & Unbossed (2004) .... Himself
- Keeping Time: The Life, Music & Photography of Milt Hinton (2004) .... Himself
- Hubert Selby Jr : It'll Be Better Tomorrow (2005) .... Himself
- 500 Years Later (2005) (voice) .... Himself
- The Ballad of Greenwich Village (2005) .... Himself
- The Pact (2006) .... Himself
- Retour à Gorée (2007) .... Himself
- Polis Is This: Charles Olson and the Persistence of Place (2007)
- Revolution '67 (2007) .... Himself
- Turn Me On (2007) (TV) .... Himself
- Oscene (2007) .... Himself
- Corso: The Last Beat (2008)
- The Black Candle (2008)
- Ferlinghetti: A City Light (2008) .... Himself
- W.A.R. Stories: Walter Anthony Rodney (2009) .... Himself
- Motherland (2010)
*Amina Cachalia, a South African anti-Apartheid activist, women's rights activist, and politician was born in Vereeniging, South Africa. In 1995, while President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela proposed to Cachalia.
Amina Cachalia, (b. Amina Asvat; June 28, 1930 Vereeniging, South Africa – d. January 31, 2013, Johannesburg, South Africa) was a longtime friend and ally of Nelson Mandela. Her late husband was political activist Yusuf Cachalia.
Cachalia was born Amina Asvat, the ninth of eleven children in Vereeniging, South Africa, on June 28, 1930. Her parents were political activists Ebrahim and Fatima Asvat. She began campaigning against Apartheid and racial discrimination as a teenager. She became a women's rights activist, often focusing on economic issues, such as financial independence for women.
Amina and Yusuf Cachalia were friends of Nelson Mandela before his imprisonment at Robben Island in 1962. She became a staunch anti-apartheid activist. She spent fifteen years under house arrest throughout the 1960s and 1970s. She was the treasurer of the Federation of South African Women (Fedsaw), a leading supporter of the Federation of Transvaal Women, and a member of both the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress and Transvaal Indian Congress during the Apartheid era.
In 1995, Mandela asked Cachalia to marry him. At the time, he had been separated from his wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Cachalia turned down Mandela's proposal because she said that "I'm my own person and that I had just recently lost my husband whom I had enormous regard for". Mandela divorced Madikizela-Mandela a year later and married Graca Machel in 1998.
Cachalia was elected to the National Assembly of South Africa in the 1994 South African general election, the country's first with universal adult suffrage. In 2004, she was awarded the Order of Luthuli in Bronze for her contributions to gender and racial equality and democracy.
After her death, in March 2013, her autobiography When Hope and History Rhyme was published.
Cachalia died at Milpark Hospital in Parktown West, Johannesburg, January 31, 2013, aged 82. The cause of death was complications following an emergency operation due to a perforated ulcer.
Her funeral was held in her home in Parkview, Johannesburg, according to traditional Muslim customs. It was attended by South African President Jacob Zuma, former Presidents Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe, ANC Deputy Cyril Ramaphosa, former First Lady Graca Machel, former Finance Minister Trevor Manuel and fellow activisti Ahmed Kathrada, among others.
*****
Farhat, Mariam
Maryam Mohammad Yousif Farhat (Arabic: مريم محمد يوسف فرحات), or Mariam Farahat (c. 1948 – 17 March 2013), popularly known as Umm Nidal (Arabic: أم نضال), "the mother of Nidal", was one of the Hamas' candidates elected in the Palestinian legislative election, 2006. Three of her six sons performed Hamas suicide attacks against Israel. The word "Nidal" in the Arabic language is a secular term, meaning "struggle", "effort" or "work".
Farhat attracted public attention after being filmed advising her 17-year old son, Muhammad Farhat, for his March 2002 operation against Israeli settlers. After entering the Gaza Strip former settlement of Atzmona, opening fire on the Israeli students and throwing hand grenades at the school where they were studying, killing five students and wounding 23 others, he was shot dead. Upon hearing of her son's death, she proclaimed "Allahu Akbar!" and gave out boxes of halva and chocolates. Her eldest son, Nidal, was killed in February 2003 by bombs planted by Israeli intelligence. A third son, Rawad, died in 2005 in an Israeli airstrike on his car carrying a Qassam rocket.
Farhat died on March 17, 2013, from multiple organ failure, in Gaza. Her funeral was attended by 4000 Palestinians and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
*****
The filmography of Jiah Khan reads as follows:
*****
Lateef was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His family moved, in 1923, to Lorain, Ohio and again in 1925, to Detroit, Michigan, where his father changed the family's name to "Evans".
Lateef's last albums were recorded for Adam Rudolph's "Meta Records". To the end of his life, he continued to teach at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Hampshire College in western Massachusetts. Lateef died on the morning of December 23, 2013 at the age of 93 after suffering from prostate cancer.
The discography of Yusef Lateef include the following:
*****
Khan, Jiah
Jiah Khan, born Nafisa Rizvi Khan, (b. February 20, 1988, New York City, New York – June 3, 2013, Juhu, Mumbai, India) was an American born British Indian actress, model and singer who appeared in Bollywood films. She made her film debut in the 2007 film Ram Gopal Verma's Nishabd for which she was nominated for Filmfare Best Female Debut Award. She was later noted for portraying modern, independent women in Ghajini which was the highest-grossing Bollywood film of 2008. Her performance in the latter earned her significant acclaim. She last appeared in Sajid Khan's film Housefull which was the second highest-grossing Bollywood film of 2010.
On June 4, 2013, Jiah Khan was found dead in her apartment in her residence in the Sagar Sangeet building in Juhu, Mumbai. She had apparently committed suicide by hanging herself.
Jiah Khan, born Nafisa Rizvi Khan, (b. February 20, 1988, New York City, New York – June 3, 2013, Juhu, Mumbai, India) was an American born British Indian actress, model and singer who appeared in Bollywood films. She made her film debut in the 2007 film Ram Gopal Verma's Nishabd for which she was nominated for Filmfare Best Female Debut Award. She was later noted for portraying modern, independent women in Ghajini which was the highest-grossing Bollywood film of 2008. Her performance in the latter earned her significant acclaim. She last appeared in Sajid Khan's film Housefull which was the second highest-grossing Bollywood film of 2010.
On June 4, 2013, Jiah Khan was found dead in her apartment in her residence in the Sagar Sangeet building in Juhu, Mumbai. She had apparently committed suicide by hanging herself.
The filmography of Jiah Khan reads as follows:
| Year | Film | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | Nishabd | Jia | Nominated, Filmfare Best Female Debut Award |
| 2008 | Ghajini | Sunita | |
| 2010 | Housefull | Devika |
Yusef Abdul Lateef (born William Emanuel Huddleston, October 9, 1920 – December 23, 2013) was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist, composer and educator. He became a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community after his conversion to the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam in 1950.
Although Lateef's main instruments were the tenor saxophone and flute, he also played oboe and bassoon, both rare in jazz, and also used a number of non-western instruments such as the bamboo flute, shanai, shofar, xun, arghul and koto. He is known for having been an innovator in the blending of jazz with "Eastern" music.
Lateef wrote and published a number of books including two novellas entitled A Night in the Garden of Love and Another Avenue, the short story collections Spheres and Rain Shapes, along with his autobiography, The Gentle Giant, written in collaboration with Herb Boyd. Along with his record label YAL Records, Lateef owned Fana Music, a music publishing company. Lateef published his own work through Fana, which includes Yusef Lateef's Flute Book of the Blues and many of his own orchestral compositions.
Lateef was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His family moved, in 1923, to Lorain, Ohio and again in 1925, to Detroit, Michigan, where his father changed the family's name to "Evans".
Throughout his early life, Lateef came into contact with many Detroit-based jazz musicians who went on to gain prominence, including vibraphonist Milt Jackson, bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Elvin Jones and guitarist Kenny Burrell. Lateef was a proficient saxophonist by the time of his graduation from high school at the age of 18, when he launched his professional career and began touring with a number of swing bands.
In 1949, he was invited by Dizzy Gillespie to tour with his orchestra. In 1950, Lateef returned to Detroit and began his studies in composition and flute at Wayne State University. It was during this period that he converted to Islam and became a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.
Lateef began recording as a leader in 1957 for Savoy Records, a non-exclusive association which continued until 1959. The earliest of Lateef's album's for the Prestige subsidiary New Jazz overlap with them. Musicians such as Wilbur Harden (trumpet, flugelhorn), bassist Herman Wright, drummer Frank Gant, and pianist Hugh Lawson were among his collaborators during this period.
By 1961, with the recording of Into Something and Eastern Sounds, Lateef's dominant presence within a group context had emerged. His 'Eastern' influences are clearly audible in all of these recordings, with spots for instruments like the rahab, shanai, arghul, koto and a collection of Chinese wooden flutes and bells along with his tenor and flute. Even his use of the western oboe sounds exotic in this context; it is not a standard jazz instrument. Indeed, the tunes themselves are a mixture of jazz standards, blues and film music usually performed with a piano/bass/drums rhythm section in support. Lateef made numerous contributions to other people's albums including his time as a member of saxophonist Cannonball Adderley's Quintet during 1962–64.
Lateef's sound has been claimed to have been a major influence on the saxophonist John Coltrane, whose later period free jazz recordings contain similarly 'Eastern' traits. For a time (1963–66) Lateef was signed to Coltrane's label, Impulse. He had a regular working group during this period, with trumpeter Richard Williams and Mike Nock on piano.
In the late 1960s, Lateef began to incorporate contemporary soul and gospel phrasing into his music, still with a strong blues underlay, on albums such as Detroit and Hush'n'Thunder. Lateef expressed a dislike of the terms "jazz" and "jazz musician" as musical generalizations. As is so often the case with such generalizations, the use of these terms do understate the breadth of his sound. For example, in the 1980s, Lateef experimented with new age and spiritual elements.
In 1960, Lateef again returned to school, studying flute at the Manhattan School of Music in New York City. He received a Bachelor's Degree in Music in 1969 and a Master's Degree in Music Education in 1970. Starting in 1971, he taught courses in autophysiopsychic music at the Manhattan School of Music, and he became an associate professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College in 1972.
In 1975, Lateef completed his dissertation on Western and Islamic education and earned a Ed.D. in Education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. In the early 1980s, Lateef was a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Nigerian Cultural Studies at Ahmadu Bello University in the city of Zaria, Nigeria. Returning to the United States in 1986 he took a joint teaching position at the University of Massachusetts and Hampshire College.
Lateef's 1987 album Yusef Lateef's Little Symphony won the Grammy Award for Best New Age Album. His core influences, however, were clearly rooted in jazz, and in his own words: "My music is jazz."
In 1992, Lateef founded YAL Records. In 1993, Lateef was commissioned by the WDR Radio Orchestra Cologne to composeThe African American Epic Suite, a four-part work for orchestra and quartet based on themes of slavery and disfranchisement in the United States. The piece has since been performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
In 2010, Lateef received the lifetime Jazz Master Fellowship Award from NEA, the National Endowment for the Arts, an independent federal agency.
The Manhattan School of Music, where Lateef earned a bachelor's and a master's degree, awarded him a Distinguished Alumni Award in 2012.
Lateef's last albums were recorded for Adam Rudolph's "Meta Records". To the end of his life, he continued to teach at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Hampshire College in western Massachusetts. Lateef died on the morning of December 23, 2013 at the age of 93 after suffering from prostate cancer.
The discography of Yusef Lateef include the following:
- Savoy 1957-1959
- Jazz for the Thinker (1957)
- Jazz Mood (1957)
- Jazz and the Sounds of Nature (1957)
- Prayer to the East (1957)
- The Dreamer (1959)
- The Fabric of Jazz (1959)
- Impulse! 1963-1966
- Jazz 'Round the World (1963)
- Live at Pep's (1964)
- 1984 (1965)
- Psychicemotus (1965)
- A Flat, G Flat and C (1966)
- The Golden Flute (1966)
- Atlantic 1967 -1991
- The Complete Yusef Lateef (1967)
- The Blue Yusef Lateef (1968)
- Yusef Lateef's Detroit (1969)
- The Diverse Yusef Lateef (1969)
- Suite 16 (1970)
- The Gentle Giant (1971)
- Hush 'N' Thunder (1972)
- Part of the Search (1973)
- 10 Years Hence (1974)
- The Doctor is In... and Out (1976)
- Yusef Lateef's Little Symphony (1987)
- Concerto for Yusef Lateef (1988)
- Nocturnes (1989)
- Meditations (1990)
- Yusef Lateef's Encounters (1991)
- YAL Records 1992-2002
- Tenors of Yusef Lateef and Von Freeman (1992)
- Heart Vision (1992)
- Yusef Lateef Plays Ballads (1993)
- Tenors of Yusef Lateef and Archie Shepp (1993)
- Woodwinds (1993)
- Tenors of Yusef Lateef & Ricky Ford (1994)
- Yusef Lateef's Fantasia for Flute (1996)
- Full Circle (1996)
- CHNOPS: Gold & Soul (1997)
- Earth and Sky (1997)
- 9 Bagatelles (1998)
- Like the Dust (1998)
- Live at Luckman Theater (2001)
- Earriptus (2001)
- So Peace (2002)
- A Tribute Concert for Yusef Lateef: YAL's 10th Anniversary (2002)
- Meta Records
- The World at Peace (1997)
- Beyond the Sky (2000)
- Go: Organic Orchestra: In the Garden (2003)
- Towards the Unknown (2010)
- Voice Prints (2013)
- Other labels
- Before Dawn: The Music of Yusef Lateef (Verve, 1957)
- The Sounds of Yusef (Prestige, 1957)
- Other Sounds (New Jazz, 1957)
- Lateef at Cranbrook (Argo, 1958)
- Cry! - Tender (New Jazz, 1959)
- The Three Faces of Yusef Lateef (Riverside, 1960)
- The Centaur and the Phoenix (Riverside, 1960)
- Lost in Sound (Charlie Parker, 1961)
- Eastern Sounds (Moodsville, 1961)
- Into Something (New Jazz, 1961)
- Autophysiopsychic (1977, CTI Records)
- In a Temple Garden (1979, CTI Records)
- Yusef Lateef in Nigeria (Landmark, 1983)
- Influence with Lionel and Stéphane Belmondo (2005)
- Roots Run Deep (Rogue Art, 2012)
With Cannonball Adderley
- The Cannonball Adderley Sextet in New York (Riverside, 1962)
- Cannonball in Europe! (Riverside, 1962)
- Jazz Workshop Revisited (Riverside, 1962)
- Autumn Leaves (Riverside, 1963)
- Nippon Soul (Riverside, 1963)
With Nat Adderley
- That's Right! (Riverside, 1960)
With Ernestine Anderson
- My Kinda Swing (1960)
With Art Blakey
- The African Beat (1962)
With Donald Byrd
- Byrd Jazz (Transition, 1955)
- First Flight (1957)
With Paul Chambers
- 1st Bassman (1961)
With Art Farmer
- Something You Got (CTI, 1977)
With Curtis Fuller
- Images of Curtis Fuller (Savoy, 1960)
- Boss of the Soul-Stream Trombone (Warwick, 1960)
- Gettin' It Together (1961)
With Grant Green
- Grantstand (Blue Note, 1961)
With Slide Hampton
- Drum Suite (1962)
With Louis Hayes
- Louis Hayes featuring Yusef Lateef & Nat Adderley (1960)
With Les McCann
- Invitation to Openness (1972)
With Don McLean
- Homeless Brother (1973)
With Charles Mingus
- Pre-Bird (aka, Mingus Revisited, 1960)
With Babatunde Olatunji
- Drums of Passion (1960)
With Sonny Red
- Breezing (Jazzland, 1960)
With Leon Redbone
- Double Time (Warner Bros., 1976)
With Clark Terry
- Color Changes (1960)
With Doug Watkins
- Soulnik (New Jazz, 1960)
With Randy Weston
- Uhuru Afrika (Roulette, 1960)
With Frank Wess
- Jazz Is Busting Out All Over (1957)
Metsu, Bruno
Bruno Metsu (January 28, 1954 – October 14, 2013) was a French footballer (soccer player) and football (soccer team) manager. In his senior career from 1973 to 1987, he played for seven different clubs in his native France. From 1988 onwards, he was the manager of a total of nine French and Gulf Arab state clubs, the United Arab Emirates national football (soccer) team and the Qatar national football (soccer) team. He was perhaps most famous for coaching Senegal to the quarter-finals of 2002 FIFA World Cup, including a surprise victory over defending champions France in the opening match of the tournament. Metsu converted to Islam when he was the manager of the Senegal national football (soccer) team, taking the name Abdou Karim Metsu.
*****Mimoun, Alan
Alain Mimoun (January 1, 1921 – June 27, 2013) was a French runner and Olympic marathon champion.
Born in the arrondissement of Maïder in the town of Telagh, then in French Algeria (his birth name was Ali Mimoun Ould Kacha), Mimoun lost several years of competition to World War II. After the war (in which he was a combatant), he was French champion in the 5000 meters and 10000 meters.
Mimoun's path to an Olympic gold medal was blocked in both 1948 and 1952 by Czech runner Emil Zatopek. Mimoun won silver medals in the 10000 meters in 1948 and 1952 as well as another silver medal in the 5000 meters in 1952. His second place finishes behind Zatopek gave him the nickname "Zatopek's Shadow." He finally won a gold medal in the marathon at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Zatopek finished sixth.
Mimoun made the French team for the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. He won his final national championship in 1966, twenty years after his debut.
Mimoun died at age 92 on June 27, 2013. The athletics stadium in Bugeat, France is named in Mimoun's honor.
After the agreement between Egypt and Britain, the Egyptian National Workers’ Movement asked everyone in the English camps to quit their job. Negm was then appointed by the Egyptian government as a laborer in mechanical workshops. He was imprisoned for 3 years for counterfeiting form, during which he participated and won first place in a writing competition organized by the Supreme Council for the Arts. He then published his first collection “Pictures from Life and Prison” in vernacular Egyptian Arabic and became famous after Suhair El-Alamawi introduced his book while he was still in prison. After he was released, he was appointed as a clerk in the organization for Asian and African peoples. He also became a regular poet on Egyptian radio.
In 2007, Negm was chosen by the United Nations Poverty Action as Ambassador of the poor.
*****
Peter O’Toole, in full Peter Seamus O’Toole (born August 2, 1932, Connemara, County Galway, Ireland—died December 14, 2013, London, England), was an Irish stage and film actor whose range extended from classical drama to contemporary farce.
O’Toole grew up in Leeds, England, and was educated at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. He was a reporter for the Yorkshire Evening Post in his teens and made his amateur stage debut at Leeds Civic Theatre. After serving two years in the Royal Navy, he acted with the Bristol Old Vic Company from 1955 to 1958 and made his London debut as Peter Shirley in George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara (1956). He appeared with the Shakespeare Memorial Company at Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, in 1960 in highly praised performances as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice and as Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, and he played the lead in Hamlet for the inaugural production of the National Theatre in London in 1963. A prominent film star by this point in his career, O’Toole continued to appear on stages throughout the world to great acclaim. He was named associate director of the Old Vic in 1980.
O’Toole made his motion picture debut in Kidnapped in 1960 and two years later became an international star for his portrayal of T.E. Lawrence in David Lean’s epic Lawrence of Arabia (1962). In 1964 he played Henry II in Becket, and he had the title role in Lord Jim (1965). He appeared as Henry II again in The Lion in Winter (1968), a film notable for the witty verbal sparring matches between O’Toole and costar Katharine Hepburn. The Ruling Class (1972), a controversial black comedy that has become a cult classic, cast O’Toole as a schizophrenic English earl with a messiah complex. Personal problems contributed to a decline in his popularity during the 1970s, but he made a strong comeback in the early ’80s with three well-received efforts. He portrayed a duplicitous and domineering movie director in The Stunt Man (1980), and his performance as the Roman commander Cornelius Flavius Silva in the acclaimed television miniseries Masada (1981) was hailed as one of the finest of his career. His most popular vehicle during this period was My Favorite Year (1982), an affectionate satire on the early days of television, in which O’Toole played Alan Swann, a faded Errol Flynn-type swashbuckling screen star with a penchant for tippling and troublemaking.
O’Toole subsequently maintained his status with fine performances in such films as the Oscar-winning The Last Emperor (1987), the cult favorite Wings of Fame (1989), the miniseries The Dark Angel (1991), and Fairy Tale: A True Story (1997), in which O’Toole portrayed Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Notable screen roles in the 21st century include an aging romantic in Venus (2006), the voice of a haughty food critic in the animated Ratatouille (2007), and a priest in the historical drama For Greater Glory (2012). In addition, in 2008 he portrayed Pope Paul III in the TV series The Tudors.
In 1992 O’Toole published a lively memoir, Loitering with Intent: The Child; a second volume, Loitering with Intent: The Apprentice, appeared in 1996. He was nominated for an Academy Award eight times: for Lawrence of Arabia, Becket, The Lion in Winter, Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), The Ruling Class, The Stunt Man, My Favorite Year, and Venus; in 2003 he was awarded an honorary Oscar. O’Toole received an Emmy Award for his performance as Bishop Cauchon in the television miniseries Joan of Arc (1999).
*****
The discography of Wadih El Safi as a sideman includes the following:
Thomas’s first assignment that related to the presidency—covering a vacation of President-elect John F. Kennedy and his family—whetted her taste for presidential coverage, and from then on she attended presidential press conferences and briefings. She gained a reputation for asking blunt questions with an irreverent and populist flavor.
In 1970 Thomas was promoted to the position of White House correspondent, and two years later she became the only print journalist to accompany President Richard Nixon on his historic trip to China. Not long afterward the Watergate Scandal gripped the country, and Thomas distinguished herself through a number of exclusive stories.
In 1974 Thomas became UPI’s White House bureau chief, the first woman to hold such a position for a wire service. This was one of a number of firsts for Thomas as a woman reporter, starting in 1959 when she and some female colleagues forced the then all-male National Press Club to allow them to attend an address to the group by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. When the National Press Club finally opened its membership to women in 1971, Thomas became its first female officer. In 1975 the Gridiron Club, Washington’s most exclusive press organization, invited her to become its first female member, and she became its president in 1993. As the senior wire-service correspondent at the White House, Thomas was known to television viewers as the reporter whose dignified “Thank you, Mr. President” signaled the end of White House press conferences. She wrote two books of memoirs, Dateline: White House (1975) and Front Row at the White House: My Life and Times (1999).
Thomas abruptly resigned from UPI in 2000, after the news agency was acquired by News World Communications, Inc., a company founded by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, the founder of the Unification Church. That same year she joined Hearst News Service as a columnist. In 2010 Thomas announced her immediate retirement following controversial remarks she made regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The following year she began writing a column for the Falls Church News-Press, a weekly newspaper in Virginia.
Among her other writings are Thanks for the Memories, Mr. President: Wit and Wisdom from the Front Row at the White House (2002), Watchdogs of Democracy?: The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed the Public (2006), Listen Up, Mr. President: Everything You Always Wanted Your President to Know and Do (2009; with Craig Crawford), and a book for children, The Great White House Breakout (2008; with cartoonist Chip Bok).
***
Ahmed Fouad Negm (Arabic: احمد فؤاد نجم) (b. May 22, 1929 – d. December 3, 2013), popularly known as el-Fagommi (الفاجومي), was an Egyptian vernacular poet. Negm is well known for his work with Egyptian composer Sheikh Imam, as well as his patriotic and revolutionary Egyptian Arabic poetry. Negm has been regarded as "a bit of a folk hero in Egypt."
Ahmed Fouad Negm was born in Sharqia, Egypt, to a family of fellahin. His mother, Hanem Morsi Negm, was a housewife, and his father Mohammed Ezat Negm, a police officer. Negm was one of seventeen brothers. Like many poets and writers of his generation, he received his education at the religious Kutaab schools managed by El-Azhar.
When his father died, Ahmed went to live with his uncle Hussein in Zagazig, but was placed in an orphanage in 1936 where he first met the famous singer Abdel Halim Hafez. In 1945, at the age of 17, he left the orphanage and returned to his village to work as a shepherd. Later, he moved to Cairo to live with his brother who eventually kicked him out only to return to his village again to work in one of the English camps while helping with guerilla operations.
After the agreement between Egypt and Britain, the Egyptian National Workers’ Movement asked everyone in the English camps to quit their job. Negm was then appointed by the Egyptian government as a laborer in mechanical workshops. He was imprisoned for 3 years for counterfeiting form, during which he participated and won first place in a writing competition organized by the Supreme Council for the Arts. He then published his first collection “Pictures from Life and Prison” in vernacular Egyptian Arabic and became famous after Suhair El-Alamawi introduced his book while he was still in prison. After he was released, he was appointed as a clerk in the organization for Asian and African peoples. He also became a regular poet on Egyptian radio.
Negm lived in a small room on the rooftop of a house in the Boulaq el-Dakror neighborhood. When he met singer and composer Sheikh Imam in the Khosh Adam neighborhood, they became roommates and formed a famous signing duet. Negm was also imprisoned several times due to his political views, particularly his harsh criticism of Egyptian presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak.
The residence of Ahmed Fouad Negm in the poorest neighborhoods of Cairo, Egypt, exposed him to the most talented professionals such as Sheikh Imam Issa, and impoverished poets and artists. It was Sheikh Imam in particular who compensated Negm for the earlier rejection by his orphanage-mate Abdel Halim Hafez.
In 1962, Negm was introduced to Sheikh Imam by a friend who believed that the two, poet Negm and composer Imam, could make a perfect duo. On the first occasion, Negm noticed that Imam took over an hour to tweak the strings of the Oud before starting his first demonstration to the new guest. Negm shouted "Allah" upon listening to Imam's singing and playing the Oud. The blind Sheikh was equally longing for inspiring words of the sort Negm had. That was the spark that lasted 30 years of concerted writing by Negm, composing by Imam, and singing by the two combined.
Negm was quick enough to sense that the blind Sheikh was a hidden treasure of Islamic literacy and music talent, and with his physical handicap, he could use the help of Negm's eyes and words. Hence, Negm proposed to stay in Imam's residence. As he recounted, his other rented room had property worth 6 Egyptian pounds, thus if he threw away the key for his other room, the landlord was required to take three months before breaking into the room and possessing its contents. Negm took the risk, abandoned his rented room with its contents and stuck with Sheikh Imam from 1962 throughout 1995.
In the early hours of 3 December 2013, Negm died at the age of 84 in Cairo.
In 2007, Negm was chosen by the United Nations Poverty Action as Ambassador of the poor.
Ahmed Fouad Negm won the 2013 Prince Claus Award for ‘Unwavering Integrity’.
*****
Peter O’Toole, in full Peter Seamus O’Toole (born August 2, 1932, Connemara, County Galway, Ireland—died December 14, 2013, London, England), was an Irish stage and film actor whose range extended from classical drama to contemporary farce.
O’Toole grew up in Leeds, England, and was educated at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. He was a reporter for the Yorkshire Evening Post in his teens and made his amateur stage debut at Leeds Civic Theatre. After serving two years in the Royal Navy, he acted with the Bristol Old Vic Company from 1955 to 1958 and made his London debut as Peter Shirley in George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara (1956). He appeared with the Shakespeare Memorial Company at Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, in 1960 in highly praised performances as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice and as Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, and he played the lead in Hamlet for the inaugural production of the National Theatre in London in 1963. A prominent film star by this point in his career, O’Toole continued to appear on stages throughout the world to great acclaim. He was named associate director of the Old Vic in 1980.
O’Toole made his motion picture debut in Kidnapped in 1960 and two years later became an international star for his portrayal of T.E. Lawrence in David Lean’s epic Lawrence of Arabia (1962). In 1964 he played Henry II in Becket, and he had the title role in Lord Jim (1965). He appeared as Henry II again in The Lion in Winter (1968), a film notable for the witty verbal sparring matches between O’Toole and costar Katharine Hepburn. The Ruling Class (1972), a controversial black comedy that has become a cult classic, cast O’Toole as a schizophrenic English earl with a messiah complex. Personal problems contributed to a decline in his popularity during the 1970s, but he made a strong comeback in the early ’80s with three well-received efforts. He portrayed a duplicitous and domineering movie director in The Stunt Man (1980), and his performance as the Roman commander Cornelius Flavius Silva in the acclaimed television miniseries Masada (1981) was hailed as one of the finest of his career. His most popular vehicle during this period was My Favorite Year (1982), an affectionate satire on the early days of television, in which O’Toole played Alan Swann, a faded Errol Flynn-type swashbuckling screen star with a penchant for tippling and troublemaking.
O’Toole subsequently maintained his status with fine performances in such films as the Oscar-winning The Last Emperor (1987), the cult favorite Wings of Fame (1989), the miniseries The Dark Angel (1991), and Fairy Tale: A True Story (1997), in which O’Toole portrayed Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Notable screen roles in the 21st century include an aging romantic in Venus (2006), the voice of a haughty food critic in the animated Ratatouille (2007), and a priest in the historical drama For Greater Glory (2012). In addition, in 2008 he portrayed Pope Paul III in the TV series The Tudors.
In 1992 O’Toole published a lively memoir, Loitering with Intent: The Child; a second volume, Loitering with Intent: The Apprentice, appeared in 1996. He was nominated for an Academy Award eight times: for Lawrence of Arabia, Becket, The Lion in Winter, Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), The Ruling Class, The Stunt Man, My Favorite Year, and Venus; in 2003 he was awarded an honorary Oscar. O’Toole received an Emmy Award for his performance as Bishop Cauchon in the television miniseries Joan of Arc (1999).
*****
Wadih El Safi (Arabic: وديع الصافي, born Wadi' Francis) (November 1, 1921 – October 11, 2013) was a Lebanese singer songwriter, and actor. He became a Lebanese cultural icon, and was often called the "Voice of Lebanon". Born in Niha, Lebanon, Wadih El Safi started his artistic journey at the age of seventeen when he took part in a singing contest held by Lebanese Radio and was chosen the winner among fifty other competitors.
Wadih El Safi was a classically trained tenor, having studied at the Beirut National Conservatory of Music. He became nationally known when, at seventeen, he won a vocal competition sponsored by the Lebanese Broadcasting Network. El Safi began composing and performing songs that drew upon his rural upbringing and love of traditional melodies, blended with an urban sound, and creating a new style of modernized Lebanese folk music.
In 1947, El Safi traveled to Brazil, where he remained until 1950.
El Safi toured the world, singing in many languages, including Arabic, Syriac, French, Portuguese and Italian.
In the spring of 1973, El Safi recorded and released a vinyl single with the songs "Grishlah Idi" (lyrics by Ninos Aho) and "Iman Ya Zawna" (lyrics by Amanuel Salamon), first one in Western Syriac and second one in Eastern Syriac. The music arrangements were done by Nuri Iskandar and the songs were produced especially for an Aramean Festival, which occurred in the UNESCO building in Beirut at that time where El Safi participated as a singer.
El Safi has written over 3000 songs. He is well known for his mawawil (an improvised singing style) of 'ataba, mijana, and Abu el Zuluf. He has performed and recorded with many well-known Lebanese musicians, including , Fairouz, and Sabah.
In 1990, Wadih El Safi underwent open heart surgery. In 2012, he broke his leg and had to have surgery to mend the fracture. After the surgery, his health declined quickly. In 2013, he was admitted to hospital, suffering from pulmonary consolidation. On October 11, 2013, he fell ill at his son's home and was rushed to the Bellevue Medical Center where he died. His funeral was held at Saint George Maronite Cathedral, Beirut on October 14, 2013.
The discography of Wadih El Safi as a singer includes the following:
- Best of Wadi – Vol. 1
- Best of Wadi – Vol. 2
- Best of Wadi – Vol. 3
- Inta Omri
- The Two Tenors:Wadi Al Safi Aad Sabah Fakhri
- Wadih El-Safi and José Fernandez
- Wetdallou Bkheir
- Rouh ya zaman al madi atfal qana
- Chante Le Liban
- Wadi El Safi / Legends Of The 20th Century
- Mersal El Hawa
- Mahrajan Al Anwar
- Youghani Loubnan
- Ajmal El Aghani
The discography of Wadih El Safi as a composer includes the following:
- Cantiques de l'Orient
- Psaumes Pour Le 3ème Millénaire
The discography of Wadih El Safi as a sideman includes the following:
- Music of Arabia, Hanaan and her ensemble (withWadih El-Safi on oud)
- ***
Helen Thomas, (b. August 4, 1920, Winchester, Kentucky, United States — d. July 20, 2013, Washington, D.C.), American journalist, known especially for her coverage of United States presidents, who broke through a number of barriers to women reporters and won great respect in her field.
Thomas was born to Lebanese immigrants, the seventh of nine children. When she was four years old, the family moved to Detroit. While attending high school, Thomas decided to become a journalist, finding the work to be a perfect outlet for her boundless curiosity. At Wayne State University, Detroit, she worked for the campus newspaper, and, after receiving a B.A. in 1942, she moved to Washington, D.C. The following year Thomas was hired by the United Press (later called United Press International [UPI]) to write local news for radio. She was given a regular beat at the United States Department of Justice in 1955, a job that would come to include coverage of Capitol Hill, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
Thomas’s first assignment that related to the presidency—covering a vacation of President-elect John F. Kennedy and his family—whetted her taste for presidential coverage, and from then on she attended presidential press conferences and briefings. She gained a reputation for asking blunt questions with an irreverent and populist flavor.
In 1970 Thomas was promoted to the position of White House correspondent, and two years later she became the only print journalist to accompany President Richard Nixon on his historic trip to China. Not long afterward the Watergate Scandal gripped the country, and Thomas distinguished herself through a number of exclusive stories.
In 1974 Thomas became UPI’s White House bureau chief, the first woman to hold such a position for a wire service. This was one of a number of firsts for Thomas as a woman reporter, starting in 1959 when she and some female colleagues forced the then all-male National Press Club to allow them to attend an address to the group by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. When the National Press Club finally opened its membership to women in 1971, Thomas became its first female officer. In 1975 the Gridiron Club, Washington’s most exclusive press organization, invited her to become its first female member, and she became its president in 1993. As the senior wire-service correspondent at the White House, Thomas was known to television viewers as the reporter whose dignified “Thank you, Mr. President” signaled the end of White House press conferences. She wrote two books of memoirs, Dateline: White House (1975) and Front Row at the White House: My Life and Times (1999).
Thomas abruptly resigned from UPI in 2000, after the news agency was acquired by News World Communications, Inc., a company founded by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, the founder of the Unification Church. That same year she joined Hearst News Service as a columnist. In 2010 Thomas announced her immediate retirement following controversial remarks she made regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The following year she began writing a column for the Falls Church News-Press, a weekly newspaper in Virginia.
Among her other writings are Thanks for the Memories, Mr. President: Wit and Wisdom from the Front Row at the White House (2002), Watchdogs of Democracy?: The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed the Public (2006), Listen Up, Mr. President: Everything You Always Wanted Your President to Know and Do (2009; with Craig Crawford), and a book for children, The Great White House Breakout (2008; with cartoonist Chip Bok).
No comments:
Post a Comment