How Some Progressives Die Continued
David Fraser McTaggart was another David who died in a car crash.
McTaggart died in a car crash in Italy in 2001. "He was a man of great energy," long time social activist Dorothy Stowe said. McTaggart chaired the environmentalist group 'Greenpeace' for many years. He showed his courage in 1973 when he sailed into the Muroroa Atoll in the South Pacific where the French armed forces detonated nuclear bombs.
French officials boarded his boat, knowing that McTaggart was trying to stop them from
letting off their nuclear devices. They beat McTaggart up and injured one of his eyes. Back in North America, McTaggart recovered. He then continued his endless campaign to save the environment.
He resigned from chairing 'Greenpeace' in 1991. He then joined up with pop singer Bryan Adams and the two of them then toured the world together. They held many concerts, urging the concert goers to write to governments. "Tell them to support the founding of a whale sanctuary," both men told the crowds.
As a result of the efforts of McTaggart and Adams, a Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary was set up in 1994. 23 countries came out in favour of the sanctuary. Only Japan, whose whalers 'Greepeace' had clashed with many times, opposed the sanctuary.
McTaggart's death deprived the world of a great activist. No charges were laid in his death. still, yet another car crash took another progressive life.
Then there's the life and death of Michael Hastings who died in a car crash in Hollywood, California in 2013 at the age of 33.
Hastings was a writer for 'Rolling Stone' magazine. He wrote stories about the campaign of U.S. general McChrystal in Afghanistan. "We'll hunt you down and kill you if we don't like what you write," one of Mchrystal's aides told Hastings. Hastings uncovered quite a few things in the U.S. war in Afghanistan that may have angered McChrystal.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation followed Hastings and definitely had him under surveillance. No charges were laid when Hastings died. Yet I do wonder why yet another progressive died in a car crash.
Monday 30 March 2015
Wednesday 25 March 2015
How Some Pogressives Die Part Three
How Some Progressives Die - Part Three
The first two parts of this story dealt with plane crashes. Now let's look at car crashes.
David Halberstam died in a car crash in who wrote some great liberal books.
alifornia in 2007. Halberstam was a liberal who wrote about American issues.
He started out as a reporter and ended up in Vietnam in the early 1950's working for 'The New York Times'. His stories angered the Kennedy administration as did his book 'Vietnam: The Making of a Quagmire'.
His main message in the book was simple: America is losing the war in Vietnam. Halberstam then moved back to the U.S. and wrote many books. They included works on the decline of the U.S. car industry, the big U.S. media, and one other big book on Vietnam called 'The Best and the Brightest'.
Here Halberstam skewered the liberal elites like U.S. president Lnydon Johnson and his secretary of defence Robert MacNamara, for their roles in the Vietnam war. Not all progressives liked the book.
Noam Chomsky dismissed it as just gossip. Mary McCarthy accused Halberstam of twisting the facts when he alleged that some government officials who helped make policy decisions in Vietnam lost their jobs. McCarthy said that most of these people kept on working for the U.S. government.
Still, Halberstam's portraits of powerful Democrats must have angered them.
Halberstam was researching a book on sports when he died in a car crash. His driver, a graduate student in Berkeley journalism school was sentenced to five days in jail after it was found out that he made a left turn into opposing traffic.
"This wasn't a crime," a Berkeley resident told me. "Halberstam died in a simple car crash because of his driver's mistake."
This was true. Yet I miss Halberstam who wrote some great liberal books.
Then there was David Fraser McTaggart, another David who died in a car crash.
The first two parts of this story dealt with plane crashes. Now let's look at car crashes.
David Halberstam died in a car crash in who wrote some great liberal books.
alifornia in 2007. Halberstam was a liberal who wrote about American issues.
He started out as a reporter and ended up in Vietnam in the early 1950's working for 'The New York Times'. His stories angered the Kennedy administration as did his book 'Vietnam: The Making of a Quagmire'.
His main message in the book was simple: America is losing the war in Vietnam. Halberstam then moved back to the U.S. and wrote many books. They included works on the decline of the U.S. car industry, the big U.S. media, and one other big book on Vietnam called 'The Best and the Brightest'.
Here Halberstam skewered the liberal elites like U.S. president Lnydon Johnson and his secretary of defence Robert MacNamara, for their roles in the Vietnam war. Not all progressives liked the book.
Noam Chomsky dismissed it as just gossip. Mary McCarthy accused Halberstam of twisting the facts when he alleged that some government officials who helped make policy decisions in Vietnam lost their jobs. McCarthy said that most of these people kept on working for the U.S. government.
Still, Halberstam's portraits of powerful Democrats must have angered them.
Halberstam was researching a book on sports when he died in a car crash. His driver, a graduate student in Berkeley journalism school was sentenced to five days in jail after it was found out that he made a left turn into opposing traffic.
"This wasn't a crime," a Berkeley resident told me. "Halberstam died in a simple car crash because of his driver's mistake."
This was true. Yet I miss Halberstam who wrote some great liberal books.
Then there was David Fraser McTaggart, another David who died in a car crash.
Monday 16 March 2015
More crashes and deaths of progressives
How Some Progressives Die - Part Two
I recently told a friend of mine about the blog I was writing. "Oh you believe in conspiracies," he said. He may or may not believe that conspiracies happen. I surely do. I believe that sometimes powerful people do get together to fix prices, commit dirty tricks and sometimes plot the deaths of people who attack the powerful. For this is what this story is all about.
In my last entry I wrote about car crashes and plane crashes that killed people. Here is the story of two men who raised thousands of dollars for environmentalist groups. Both died in plane crashes. Both were prominent artists.
Henry John Deutschendorf changed his name to John Denver. "In the 1970's, Denver outsold nearly all other musical artists in North America," a music industry p.r. man told me. Denver's big hits like 'Take me Home Country Road', 'Rocky Mountain High' and 'Annie's Song' regularly topped the charts. After his musical career cooled off, Denver raised tens of thousands of dollars for environmental groups and acauses.
And then he was dead. Denver died in 1997 when the experimental plane he was piloting, crashed. "He didn't have enough training on the plane he was flying," an investigator of the crash, said in effect. Denver's lack of piloting skills helped kill him. This was probably true. Still, a high profile fund raiser for Green causes was dead.
The same thing happened to Toni Onley, the talented British-born watercolourist. Onley moved to British Columbia, Canada's most beautiful province. Onley raised lots of money for environmentalist causes.
Onley died in 2004 in a plane he was piloting. "It's shocking news," said Jean Bailey of the Kamloops Art Gallery. The art gallery had displayed lots of Onley's work. Investigators said that Onley had a heart attack while piloting his plane. He blanked out in the plane and it crashed. killing Onley.
This may well be true. Yet another big fund raiser for green causes passed away. I still wonder how green groups made up for Onley's death.
I recently told a friend of mine about the blog I was writing. "Oh you believe in conspiracies," he said. He may or may not believe that conspiracies happen. I surely do. I believe that sometimes powerful people do get together to fix prices, commit dirty tricks and sometimes plot the deaths of people who attack the powerful. For this is what this story is all about.
In my last entry I wrote about car crashes and plane crashes that killed people. Here is the story of two men who raised thousands of dollars for environmentalist groups. Both died in plane crashes. Both were prominent artists.
Henry John Deutschendorf changed his name to John Denver. "In the 1970's, Denver outsold nearly all other musical artists in North America," a music industry p.r. man told me. Denver's big hits like 'Take me Home Country Road', 'Rocky Mountain High' and 'Annie's Song' regularly topped the charts. After his musical career cooled off, Denver raised tens of thousands of dollars for environmental groups and acauses.
And then he was dead. Denver died in 1997 when the experimental plane he was piloting, crashed. "He didn't have enough training on the plane he was flying," an investigator of the crash, said in effect. Denver's lack of piloting skills helped kill him. This was probably true. Still, a high profile fund raiser for Green causes was dead.
The same thing happened to Toni Onley, the talented British-born watercolourist. Onley moved to British Columbia, Canada's most beautiful province. Onley raised lots of money for environmentalist causes.
Onley died in 2004 in a plane he was piloting. "It's shocking news," said Jean Bailey of the Kamloops Art Gallery. The art gallery had displayed lots of Onley's work. Investigators said that Onley had a heart attack while piloting his plane. He blanked out in the plane and it crashed. killing Onley.
This may well be true. Yet another big fund raiser for green causes passed away. I still wonder how green groups made up for Onley's death.
Friday 6 March 2015
Plane crashes, car crashes and progressives.
How some progressives die
This is a story about mostly American plane crashes, car crashes and progressives.
Walter Reuther was one of the U.S. of A's great labour leaders. He put his life on the line when he helped organize auto workers in the 1930's and 1940's. Once someone shot and wounded him in his house in Detroit. Reuther's union, the United Auto Workers was a progressive force in the United States.
The UAW supported the civil rights movement, opposed the war in Vietnam, and helped liberals. A large part of these actions were due to Reuther himself. Buzz Hargrove the former head of the Canadian Auto Workers, an outgrowth of the UAW, said that Reuther was one of the greatest labour leaders he'd known.
"The labour movement is about changing society," Reuther said in 1969. "What good is another $100 pension if the world goes up in smoke."
Eight months later in May 1970, Reuther was dead. He, his wife May, and four others died in a plane crash in May 1970.
By then many powerful people disliked and even loathed Reuther. His list of enemies included U.S. President Richard Nixon, F.B.I. head J. Edgar Hoover and the right-wing head of America's main labour organization, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. George Meany.
In fact, Reuther and the U.A.W. had just pulled out of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. to form a new labour organization called the American Labour Alliance. Reuther's death hit the American labour movement hard. In the 1970's and after., the U.S. movement shrunk in size and power. To-day less than 15 per cent of the American workforce belong to unions. In Reuther's heday that number stood at 30 per cent.
"I go to parts of America these days where there are no unions," said political scientist Michael Parenti in effect. Parenti has charged that someone meddled with Reuther's plane and caused the crash. Reuther's not the only American progressive to die in a plane crash.
Paul Wellstone was one of the foremost American progressives in the American Senate. He was a Democrat and a member of the Democratic Farmer Labour Party of Minnesota. Wellstone supported trade unions, women's rights, opressed ethnic groups and the rights of poor people.
He died in October 2002 when the plane he was in crashed in Minnesota. Wellstone strongly opposed U.S. president George H. Bush's plans to invade Iraq, a project many Democratic senators like Hillary Clinton supported. After Wellstone's death, some critics claimed the plane he was in, was shot down by a directed energy weapon.
Mel Carnahan was the governor of Missouri in the 1990's. In 2000 he was running for a seat in the U.S. Senate. Carnahan died along with his son Randy who piloted the plane. Cranahan was running against the hard-nosed Republican John Ashcroft. Ashcroft lost the race to Carnahan's wife who took her husband's place after he died. Ashcroft went on to be president George W. Bush's Attorney-General.
No one has claimed that Carnahan's plane was tampered with. Nor was he the liberal that Wellstone was. Still it was another death of a somewhat liberal Democrat.
In Alberta Canada, Grant Notley was a very hard working New Democratic Party Member of the Legislature. In fact he was the only N.D.P.'er in the Albertan legislature which was dominated completely by Progressive Conservatives from the early 1970's down to to-day. Notley died in a plane crash in October 1984 along with five other people.
No one I know has claimed that the plane was sabotaged or meddled with. Yet in this case another progressive died in a plane crash.
Next time I'll look at other people who were lefties and progressives who died either in plane or car crashes.
This is a story about mostly American plane crashes, car crashes and progressives.
Walter Reuther was one of the U.S. of A's great labour leaders. He put his life on the line when he helped organize auto workers in the 1930's and 1940's. Once someone shot and wounded him in his house in Detroit. Reuther's union, the United Auto Workers was a progressive force in the United States.
The UAW supported the civil rights movement, opposed the war in Vietnam, and helped liberals. A large part of these actions were due to Reuther himself. Buzz Hargrove the former head of the Canadian Auto Workers, an outgrowth of the UAW, said that Reuther was one of the greatest labour leaders he'd known.
"The labour movement is about changing society," Reuther said in 1969. "What good is another $100 pension if the world goes up in smoke."
Eight months later in May 1970, Reuther was dead. He, his wife May, and four others died in a plane crash in May 1970.
By then many powerful people disliked and even loathed Reuther. His list of enemies included U.S. President Richard Nixon, F.B.I. head J. Edgar Hoover and the right-wing head of America's main labour organization, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. George Meany.
In fact, Reuther and the U.A.W. had just pulled out of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. to form a new labour organization called the American Labour Alliance. Reuther's death hit the American labour movement hard. In the 1970's and after., the U.S. movement shrunk in size and power. To-day less than 15 per cent of the American workforce belong to unions. In Reuther's heday that number stood at 30 per cent.
"I go to parts of America these days where there are no unions," said political scientist Michael Parenti in effect. Parenti has charged that someone meddled with Reuther's plane and caused the crash. Reuther's not the only American progressive to die in a plane crash.
Paul Wellstone was one of the foremost American progressives in the American Senate. He was a Democrat and a member of the Democratic Farmer Labour Party of Minnesota. Wellstone supported trade unions, women's rights, opressed ethnic groups and the rights of poor people.
He died in October 2002 when the plane he was in crashed in Minnesota. Wellstone strongly opposed U.S. president George H. Bush's plans to invade Iraq, a project many Democratic senators like Hillary Clinton supported. After Wellstone's death, some critics claimed the plane he was in, was shot down by a directed energy weapon.
Mel Carnahan was the governor of Missouri in the 1990's. In 2000 he was running for a seat in the U.S. Senate. Carnahan died along with his son Randy who piloted the plane. Cranahan was running against the hard-nosed Republican John Ashcroft. Ashcroft lost the race to Carnahan's wife who took her husband's place after he died. Ashcroft went on to be president George W. Bush's Attorney-General.
No one has claimed that Carnahan's plane was tampered with. Nor was he the liberal that Wellstone was. Still it was another death of a somewhat liberal Democrat.
In Alberta Canada, Grant Notley was a very hard working New Democratic Party Member of the Legislature. In fact he was the only N.D.P.'er in the Albertan legislature which was dominated completely by Progressive Conservatives from the early 1970's down to to-day. Notley died in a plane crash in October 1984 along with five other people.
No one I know has claimed that the plane was sabotaged or meddled with. Yet in this case another progressive died in a plane crash.
Next time I'll look at other people who were lefties and progressives who died either in plane or car crashes.
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