Obituaries

[ThePythonicCow]

See also:

• Dr. Hervé Hugon passed away on 13 November 2024,
  two days short of his 72nd birthday, in Paimpol, Côtes-d'Armor, France.

[Sue (Ayt)]

Legendary Soul Singer Sam Moore, Half of Sam & Dave, Dies at 89

Moore was best known as half of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame soul duo behind "Soul Man" & "Hold On, I'm Coming."

Sam Moore, half of the seminal duo Sam & Dave, died Friday (Jan. 10) in Coral Gables, Fla. The cause of death was complications from surgery. He was 89.



Moore, who was revered by artists including Bruce Springsteen, Phil Collins, Garth Brooks and Jon Bon Jovi, had an instantly recognizable tenor, first heard on such call-and-response classics as Sam & Dave’s 1960s hits “Hold On, I’m Coming” and the Grammy-winning “Soul Man,” both of which reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot R&B Singles chart, as well as “I Thank You” and “When Something Is Wrong with My Baby.” The duo, who performed at Martin Luther King Jr.’s memorial concert at Madison Square Garden following his assassination in 1968, was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 by Billy Joel.
https://www.billboard.com/music/rb-h...ad-1235874461/

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=AREppyQf5uw

[Kryztian]

UFO Researcher Legend D. Robert Wood Has Passed
January 11, 2025 * Fernanda Pires * MUFON News
https://mufoncanada.com/2025/01/11/u..._Itqo2TZX5NPag

t is with profound sadness that I announce the passing of my father Dr. Robert (Bob) M. Wood, who left us on August 26, 2024, at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach, California, due to cardiopulmonary arrest. He was 96 years old. A memorial service to celebrate his remarkable life will be held at the United Methodist Church in Costa Mesa, California, on Sunday, September 29th, at 2 PM.

Dr. Wood was a man of extraordinary intellect, integrity, and curiosity, whose contributions to the fields of aerospace engineering and UFO research have left an indelible mark on both scientific and ufological communities. Born on April 4, 1928, in Ithaca New York, Bob’s journey through life was characterized by a relentless pursuit of knowledge and a deep commitment to uncovering the truths that lie beyond our immediate understanding.

Academic and Professional Achievements

Bob Wood‘s academic journey began with a B.S. in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Colorado in 1949. He furthered his education by earning a Ph.D. in Physics from Cornell University in 1953. His early career saw him working for General Electric Aeronautics and Ordnance, followed by a two-year stint in the U.S. Army at Aberdeen Proving Ground. In 1956, he joined Douglas Aircraft, which later became McDonnell Douglas and eventually Boeing, where he spent an impressive 43 years.

During his tenure in the aerospace industry, Dr. Wood was involved in numerous groundbreaking projects. His work included the thermodynamics of missile cooling, managing independent research and development projects, antigravity research and investigations, designing radars to discriminate between Soviet ballistic missiles and their decoys, and contributing to the Space Station’s development. He also played a pivotal role in promoting the Delta launch vehicle as NASA’s workhorse for orbital payloads.

UFO Research and Contributions

Dr. Wood‘s interest in UFOs began in the late 1960s when he led a proprietary project aimed at understanding how UFOs “worked.” This “Boys in the Back Room” (BITBR) project employed the late Stanton Friedman and had funding of $4.5 million in today’s dollars. Ultimately this blossomed into a lifelong passion, and upon his retirement in 1993, he became deeply involved in the forensics of authenticating the Majestic-12 UFO trove of documents. He collaborated closely with his son, Ryan S. Wood, and together they made significant strides in the field.

Bob was a long-time Director of Research for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) and served on the Board of Directors for MUFON the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization. He was also a counselor for the Society for Scientific Exploration and a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics since 1947. His scholarly contributions included authoring numerous articles on UFOs and the groundbreaking 1968 AIAA talk “Giant Discoveries of Future Science”. He authored, edited and contributed to several books—Alien Viruses, Selected by Extraterrestrials by fellow Douglas Aircraft employee Bill Tompkins, and the Encyclopedia of Flying Saucers by Vernon Bowen.

Personal Life and Legacy

On June 11, 2000, Bob married Lynda Sardou Gagliano in Costa Mesa, California. Their union was a testament to his belief in love and companionship, and they shared many happy years together. Bob was also a dedicated member of his community, actively participating in Rotary International, Toastmasters International, Newport Beach Exchange Club and an active member of the United Methodist Church.

Dr. Wood‘s legacy extends beyond his professional achievements. He was a mentor, a friend, and a guiding light to many. His work in UFO research was not just about uncovering the unknown but also about fostering a sense of wonder and curiosity in others. He believed in the importance of scientific integrity and the pursuit of truth, values that he instilled in all who had the privilege of knowing him.

A Life Celebrated

The memorial service at the United Methodist Church in Costa Mesa will be an opportunity for family, friends, colleagues, and admirers to come together and celebrate the life of a man who dedicated his life to pushing the boundaries of human knowledge. It will be a time to share stories, reflect on his contributions, and honor the legacy of Dr. Robert M. Wood.

Dr. Robert M. Wood‘s passing is a significant loss to the scientific and UFO research communities. However, his legacy will continue to inspire future generations of researchers and enthusiasts. His life’s work serves as a reminder that the pursuit of knowledge is a noble endeavor, one that can lead to profound discoveries and a deeper understanding of the universe we inhabit.

Rest in peace, Dr. Bob. Your contributions to science and your unwavering quest for truth will never be forgotten.

His son, Ryan S. Wood.

[Kryztian]

David Lynch, Auteur Drawn to the Dark and the Dreamlike, Dies at 78
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/mo...ve-1236110711/
With such hallucinogenic masterworks as 'Eraserhead,' 'Blue Velvet,' 'Mulholland Drive,' 'Twin Peaks' and 'The Elephant Man,' he often left more questions than answers.

David Lynch, the writer-director whose films and TV series including Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and Twin Peaks portrayed a seemingly bucolic America, only to reveal it as teeming with the mysterious and macabre, has died. He was 78.

Lynch’s death was announced on his Facebook page:

“It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch. We would appreciate some privacy at this time. There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say, ‘Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.’ … It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way.”

In August, he revealed that he was suffering from emphysema after many years of smoking and that he couldn’t leave home for fear that he would get COVID-19.

Nobody who saw Lynch’s works could mistake them for anyone else’s. Unlike other leading auteurs, he didn’t belong to a movement or fit easily into a genre; while his pictures echoed the mindset of a Luis Buñuel or a Salvador Dalí — critic Pauline Kael called him “the first populist surrealist” — and were influenced by such film noir landmarks as Billy Wilder’s Sunset Blvd., they were sui generis; his creations, in fact, appeared timeless, strangely disconnected from any particular era or place, which made them all the more startling and disturbing.

These were horror stories that mixed the monstrous with the mundane, that emerged from a landscape of dreams or nightmares, their happy endings doing nothing to erase the discomfort they left behind. They were as perplexing as any drawing of M.C. Escher, as haunting as any Grimms fairy tale, only far harder to decipher — which sometimes led skeptics to wonder whether even Lynch had the key to unlocking them. Few doubted the power of his vision and imagination, though naysayers questioned his logical thread.

While the filmmaker could occasionally descend into self-parody, critics’ groups included his major pictures on lists of the most important movies of the past century. In a 2012 poll of nearly 900 experts, Sight & Soundmagazine ranked Mulholland Drive (2001) at No. 28 and Blue Velvet (1986) at No. 69.

There was, however, a notable discrepancy between Lynch’s international standing and his domestic reputation: none of his films is featured in the American Film Institute’s most recent ranking of the 100 greatest movies, published in 2007.

Nor was the Academy always supportive: nominated for four Oscars (as director for Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and 1980’s The Elephant Man, which also garnered him an adapted screenplay nom), Lynch was finally accorded an honorary Academy Award in 2019.

Like the only other modern American filmmaker to rank above him on the Sight & Sound list, Francis Ford Coppola (whose Apocalypse Now ranked 14th while The Godfather came in 21st), Lynch was that rarity in Hollywood: an artist who eventually turned his back on the art form he had mastered.

While he revisited his celebrated 1990-91 ABC series Twin Peaks with 2017’s disappointing Twin Peaks reboot for Showtime, his filmic output sputtered in the final decades and seemed to halt for lengthy stretches following his last feature, Inland Empire (2006).

Later in his life, Lynch drew more attention for a 17-minute short, 2017’s What Did Jack Do?, in which he played a detective interrogating a monkey, than for anything else he had done recently on film. That endeavor seemed as much a sly joke as an artistic statement.

Instead, after the panned Inland Empire, he devoted himself to his paintings (an interest that had preceded film) and two other primary endeavors: a coffee-making business and transcendental meditation, the Buddhist practice he had embraced in his late 20s.

“Everything in me changed when I started meditating,” he reflected in his unusual 2018 memoir, Room to Dream (co-written with Kristine McKenna), which alternated third-person and first-person chapters. “Within two weeks of starting, Peggy [his first wife, Peggy Lentz] comes to me and says … ‘Your anger. Where did it go?'”

David Keith Lynch was born in Missoula, Montana, on Jan. 20, 1946. His father, Donald, was a research scientist and his mother, Edwina, an English teacher; their work led them to move frequently, from Montana to Idaho to Washington state to Virginia.

Never a stellar student, Lynch was shaped by the Boy Scouts, and in later years, many of those who knew him expressed surprise at the contradiction between his mild manners and the eruptions of violence and profanity in his art.

Anyone searching to explain Lynch’s work through his upbringing would have trouble. “My parents were so loving and good,” he wrote in his memoir. “They’d had good parents, too, and everybody loved my parents. They were just fair.” He added that “a lot of who we are is just set when we get here. They call it the wheel of birth and death, and I believe we’ve been around many, many times.”

After dropping out of several colleges (including Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts and New York’s Cooper Union), Lynch was working as an artist and printmaker in 1966 when he made his first film, the four-minute short Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times). That and other early efforts led him to win a place at the AFI, which had just opened a Los Angeles-based conservatory that would subsequently rank among America’s finest film schools.

Enrolled alongside an unrivaled collection of students that also included Terrence Malick and Paul Schrader, Lynch spent the next several years making his first feature, Eraserhead (1977), a dystopian vision shot in black and white. Adored and abhorred in equal measure, the movie became a cult favorite, playing at midnight screenings in art houses across the country; no less a figure than Stanley Kubrick proclaimed it one of his favorite films.

Eraserhead improbably landed Lynch his first feature proper, The Elephant Man, when Mel Brooks (its equally improbable producer) fell in love with the director’s esoteric work. Based on the true story of Joseph Merrick (renamed John Merrick in the picture), Elephant Man told the story of a grotesquely deformed 19th century freak show performer (played by John Hurt) who’s discovered and cared for by an enlightened surgeon (Anthony Hopkins).

Lynch was still new to the profession of director and quirky enough that at one point the mercurial Hopkins allegedly tried to have him fired. “Hopkins wasn’t openly hostile, but he was aloof,” remembered producer Jonathan Sanger, “and one day he called me into his dressing room and said, ‘Why is this guy getting to direct a movie? What has he done? He did one little movie. I don’t understand this.'”

When Hopkins flew at Lynch and demanded, “Just tell me what you want!,” Lynch recalled that “this anger comes up in me in a way that’s happened just a couple of times in my life. It rose up like you can’t ****in’ believe — I can’t even imitate the way I was yelling, because I’d hurt my voice. I screamed some stuff at him, then screamed what I wanted him to do, and [actress] Wendy Hiller turns to Tony and quietly says, ‘I would do what he says.’ So he did.”

On-set difficulties were forgotten when the movie proved a terrific critical hit, earning eight Oscar nominations (though it failed to win a single one).

That was as close to mainstream Hollywood acceptance as Lynch would ever get, and he was burned by his next venture, a big-budget adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel Dune. After a year and a half of production in Mexico, editing got underway in Los Angeles.

“It was horrible, just horrible,” he explained. “It was like a nightmare what was being done to the film to make this two-hour-and-17-minute running time that was required. Things were truncated, and whispered voice-overs were added because everybody thought audiences wouldn’t understand what was going on.”

Lynch didn’t so much blame producer Dino De Laurentiis as himself. “I always knew Dino had final cut on Dune,” he wrote, “and because of that I started selling out before we even started shooting … It was pathetic is what it was, but it was the only way I could survive.”

The movie was panned by critics when it opened in 1984 and seemed likely to bring a sudden end to Lynch’s meteoric rise, only for him to be redeemed by his fourth feature, Blue Velvet.

Taking its title from the classic Bobby Vinton song, Blue Velvet used one of Lynch’s favorite narrative tropes — the detective story — to follow a naive young man (Kyle MacLachlan) as he sets out on a voyage of discovery triggered by a cut-off ear. His exploration leads him to a sexually abused lounge singer (Isabella Rossellini, cast after Helen Mirren turned down the role) and the deadly, perverse and menacing thug who keeps her under his control (Dennis Hopper).

Hopper’s villain, Frank Booth, a man driven to paroxysms of sexually fueled rage made all the more terrifying by the oxygen mask with which he covers his face, heightening his desires as he chokes off his air supply, remains arguably the most petrifying bad guy ever to grace an American film, one on the same iconic level as Hopkins’ own Hannibal Lechter in the more mainstream horror-thriller The Silence of the Lambs.

When Hopper first discussed the part, he told Lynch, “I have to play Frank Booth because I am Frank Booth.” Answered Lynch, “That’s good news and bad news.”

But it wasn’t just Hopper who made the movie so memorable; it was also the director’s sheer skill at narrative, not least when he has his over-curious lead break into the singer’s home and hide in her closet, where his voyeurism matches the director’s own — only to be upended when the singer, whom he has observed naked, holds him at knifepoint and makes him disrobe, too.

This was the kind of virtuoso filmmaking Lynch had never displayed before and perhaps would never do again (with the arguable exception of Mulholland Drive). It made stars of MacLachlan, Rossellini and Laura Dern (as MacLachlan’s wholesome girlfriend) and became the most talked-about movie of 1986.

The New York Times‘ Janet Maslin called it “an instant cult classic. With Eraserhead, Elephant Man and Dune to his credit, Mr. Lynch had already established his beachhead inside the realm of the bizarre, but this latest venture takes him a lot further. Kinkiness is its salient quality, but Blue Velvet has deadpan humor too, as well as a straight-arrow side that makes its eccentricity all the crazier. There’s no mistaking the exhilarating fact that it’s one of a kind.”

That one-of-a-kindness may have won plaudits, but it also led to a puritan backlash, especially for Rossellini, who was lambasted for taking the kind of role that would have shamed her mother, Ingrid Bergman — an ironic critique, given that Bergman had been equally condemned when she left her husband and ran off with Roberto Rossellini.

Adding to the layers of irony, Lynch in turn left his own wife, Mary Fisk, for Rossellini, with whom he would have a yearslong liaison. (Married four times, he is survived by his last wife, Emily Stofle, and four children, including filmmaker Jennifer Lynch.)

Lynch’s foray into television with Twin Peaks proved an even greater sensation. The horror-mystery once more centered on a detective — played by MacLachlan — who teams with a fellow FBI agent (Michael Ontkean) to investigate the murder of homecoming queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). Its spooky view of the fictional, eponymous town in Washington was rendered all the more haunting by Angelo Badalamenti’s score, and the mysteries upon mysteries of the plot generated endless speculation (and some irritation) among fans.

While often cited as one of the greatest TV shows of all time, Twin Peaks lost steam when Lynch left in the middle of the series to shoot Wild at Heart — the 1990 Cannes Palme d’Or winner that starred Dern and Rossellini alongside Nicolas Cage — and he later blamed season two’s weakness on his relative lack of involvement, compared to that of co-creator Mark Frost.

“Mark got the recognition he wanted with the second season, when he was sort of in charge,” said agent-turned-executive Tony Krantz. “David wasn’t happy with the scripts, though, and there were storylines he hadn’t pre-approved. It was like, ‘Hey, wait a minute, you’re misperceiving the dream that made the first season of Twin Peaks so great. You’re mimicking and making faux versions of them.'”

The series was canceled in its second season; still, Lynch revisited it many times, not just with a feature (1992’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me) but also the 2017 series, with little critical or commercial success.

Twin Peaks marked both the apogee of Lynch’s career as a popular influencer and a turning point in his ability to tap into the zeitgeist. Nothing he did again had quite the same ripple-effect through society, including his two immediate follow-up features, Lost Highway (1997) and The Straight Story (1999). The former never caught on with audiences, who found its story incoherent, while the latter, a road trip movie starring Richard Farnsworth, was better-received critically but also failed financially, despite landing its lead an Oscar nomination.

Those who had begun to find Lynch’s work gimmicky were shocked and even awed when he leaped back with the film many consider his masterpiece, or at least Blue Velvet‘s equal: Mulholland Drive. Starring Naomi Watts as a budding actress who’s newly arrived in Los Angeles, the 146-minute drama follows her as she forms a friendship with another young woman (Laura Elena Harring), who has become an amnesiac following a horrific car accident that’s left her for dead.

The project was something of a miracle, having begun as another TV series that was killed by ABC. It was only after the extraordinary efforts of Lynch’s friend, executive producer Pierre Edelman, that the venture was resuscitated a year and a half after the pilot was filmed in spring 1999. That protracted break may have helped Lynch gather his thoughts: he managed to cobble together his original cast and shoot an additional 18 pages, rounding out the plot and giving his mystery a coherence that Twin Peaks had lacked.

Again, the director used his favorite film structure, an investigation of sorts, as the two women attempt to learn about the amnesiac’s mysterious past, leading them into an ever-stranger world peopled by thugs, murderers, singers and filmmakers (including Justin Theroux in a spectacular turn as a narcissistic director).

If the movie at times teetered on the edge of the ridiculous — with some strangely over-the-top acting — Lynch left no doubt about its deliberateness; that was made clear in a dazzling “scene within a scene,” when Watts auditions for a role in a bad movie — one that Lynch staged to be not only dramatically mesmerizing but also heart-stoppingly real.

What is real, what is false? What is imagined, what is true? What is acted, what is genuine? These were just some of the questions Lynch posed in his most artistically and philosophically complex work, one that has been the subject of speculation ever since.

“When I saw [Mulholland Drive] the first time,” Harring once observed, “I thought it was the story of Hollywood dreams, illusion and obsession. It touches on the idea that nothing is quite as it seems, especially the idea of being a Hollywood movie star. The second and third times I saw it, I thought it dealt with identity. Do we know who we are? And then I kept seeing different things in it …

“There’s no right or wrong to what someone takes away from it or what they think the film is really about. It’s a movie that makes you continuously ponder, makes you ask questions. I’ve heard over and over: ‘This is a movie that I’ll see again,’ or, ‘This is a movie you’ve got to see again.’ It intrigues you. You want to get it, but I don’t think it’s a movie to be gotten. It’s achieved its goal if it makes you ask questions.”

Long after Lynch finished his last film, the questions still linger.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=AF9gNKJi79g

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=nCn3LYqCnrk

[ThePythonicCow]

.
Clif High posted in this tweet:

Cathy Ann, my wife of 52 years has died this day.
Peace and Comfort are hers now.
Gratitude for all gifts.

Not able to deal with contact.
Forgive my distance at this time.
Withdrawal aids healing for me.

The above tweet was also posted here on Avalon at Clif High Predictions -- Post #373.

[Rawhide68]

I would like to pound into his gravestone, these words

Dear dead Mr Lynch

I'm not afraid of dwarfes or giants thanks to you, because Ive seen them in Twin Peaks and they were all nice.

He scared me with Elephant man movie, and it was a blast to me to find what true meaning of life is.

[Vicus]

RIP David Lynch: Filmmaker, Meditator, 9/11 Truth-Seeker

No wonder "they" never gave him an Oscar


That’s a good way to read today’s David Lynch obituary. The Times, like the rest of the Amerikan Establishment, views Lynch as a crazy artistic weirdo with entertainingly offbeat views—perhaps a great filmmaker, but hardly to be taken seriously in terms of getting at the most important truths about our world.

From the Establishment point of view, the fact that Lynch was a 9/11 truth-seeker seems par for the course. Of course his legendarily paranoid imagination would wonder what was crawling around beneath our perfectly-manicured Amerikan lawn.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=SDT6URLj--0

David Lynch knew how to rigorously study the world with the heart of a little boy, through the eyes of innocence. That’s how you come to see the depravity. If you allow shades of cynicism to darken your heart, even a little, you lose the ability to discern darkness from light. That’s why professional mainstream journalists, the most cynical people in the world, can’t bring themselves to see the blindingly obvious truth that the official 9/11 story is an evil psy-op.

https://kevinbarrett.substack.com/p/...aker-meditator

[Bill Ryan]

Dear Friends: I had missed this, and only just learned that the very famous 'Alice' had passed away a couple of months ago in November 2024.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Brock

My post just now on the Here and Now thread:

This is Alice May Brock, the inspiration for Arlo Guthrie's epic anti-war ballad Alice's Restaurant. *

* We have a whole Avalon thread about this:

• Arlo Guthrie and Alice's Restaurant: the important legacy of the 60s
  

[Sue (Ayt)]

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=_phZZgkT1Jk

Marianne Faithfull has passed away peacefully with her family beside her at the age of 78.

The actress and singer, had a film and music career that spanned more than 60 years, her film credits include modern movies that Marie Antoinette, Faces in the Crowd and most recently she voiced a part in the 2021 epic sci-fi film DUNE. She was also a Grammy winner, which she won for Best Female Rock Performance in 1981 with the album Broken English her music career started in the mid-sixties and continued all the into the 2020’s. An icon in the swinging 60’s in London, Faithfull dated Mick Jagger and inspired songs like Wild Horses and You Can’t Always Get What You Want.

https://euroweeklynews.com/2025/01/3...-died-aged-78/

[norman]

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=gHrsv0NVa6k

[Johnnycomelately]

Yup.

Marianne Faithfull - Witches' Song

Christian Davies
20.3K subscribers

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Kq3fBKGDIOw

[Eva2]

'Dr. Francis Boyle Died January 30, 2025
American Hero Dies At 74
DR. JOSEPH SANSONE
FEB 2

Sadly, it appears that Dr. Francis Boyle died on January 30th, 2025 at the age of 74. According to the News Gazette he died at 12:22 a.m. Thursday (Jan. 30, 2025) at Carle Foundation Hospital. Funeral arrangements were incomplete at Evergreen Cremation Services, 314 Tiffany Court, Champaign. This also apparently has been corroborated by someone in contact with his brother on X.com

Dr. Boyle actually stated that the COVID 19 injections were bioweapons in 2020 before they even came out. As you are probably aware Dr. Boyle provided an affidavit stating that mRNA nanoparticle injections are bioweapons in my case. So many cowards still refuse to tell the truth about that. Among other things, Dr. Boyle was an advisor to National ARM. May he rest in peace

Here is a brief highlight of his professional career from the University of Illinois college of Law where he was a law professor.

Francis Boyle is a professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law. He received an AB (1971) in Political Science from the University of Chicago, then a JD degree magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, and AM and PhD degrees in Political Science from Harvard University. He practiced tax and international tax with Bingham, Dana & Gould.

Professor Boyle serves as counsel to Bosnia and Herzegovina and to the Provisional Government of the Palestinian Authority. He also represents two associations of citizens within Bosnia and was involved in developing the indictment against Slobodan Milosević for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Over his career, he has represented national and international bodies including the Blackfoot Nation (Canada), the Nation of Hawaii, and the Lakota Nation, as well as numerous individual death penalty and human rights cases. He has advised numerous international bodies in the areas of human rights, war crimes and genocide, nuclear policy, and bio-warfare. From 1991-92, he served as Legal Advisor to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations.

Professor Boyle served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International, as a consultant to the American Friends Service Committee, and on the Advisory Board for the Council for Responsible Genetics. He drafted the U.S. domestic implementing legislation for the Biological Weapons Convention, known as the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, that was approved unanimously by both Houses of the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush.

Education

AM, PhD Harvard University
JD Harvard Law School
AB University of Chicago

Areas of Expertise

Constitutional Law (U.S. Foreign Affairs)
Human Rights
Jurisprudence
U.S. Foreign Affairs'






https://josephsansone.substack.com/p...dRedirect=true

[Kryztian]

Lifelong member of the Ecuadorian Cofáns and defender of the Amazon, Randy Borman dies at 70
Feb 20, 2025
https://cuencahighlife.com/proud-mem...an-dies-at-70/

By Rhett Ayers Butler

Randy Borman was never meant to be Cofán. And yet, from the moment he was born in 1955, deep in the Ecuadorian Amazon, he belonged to them. His parents, American missionaries, had come to translate the Bible into the Cofán language, but their eldest son took to the forest as though it were written into his bones. While his parents pored over scripture, Randy learned to track tapirs, fish with a harpoon, and wield a blowgun with quiet precision. He spoke A’ingae, the language of the Cofán, before he spoke English. The rainforest was his cradle, his school, and in the end, his charge.



It was a world already slipping away. When Randy was a boy, the Cofán still lived as they had for centuries, hunting and fishing along the Aguarico River, moving lightly through a landscape they understood with an intimacy that few outsiders could fathom. By the time he reached adolescence, the first seismic thuds of an oil-rig drill had shattered the silence. The arrival of Texaco in the late 1960s, and the roads and colonists that followed, turned the Cofán homeland into a wasteland of blackened rivers and felled trees. Randy, shuttled between his village and missionary school in Quito, found himself straddling two irreconcilable worlds: one vanishing, the other indifferent.

At 18, he left for Michigan State University, a brief attempt at a life in the land of his ancestors. It did not take. Everything felt regulated, fenced in, he later recalled. I needed the forest.

He returned to Ecuador, determined to fight for the people who had raised him, the people whose land was being siphoned away, one oil well at a time.

The Cofán were not legal owners of their own territory. As a people who had always lived with the land, the very concept of land ownership was foreign to them. Randy, realizing that the only language the Ecuadorian state understood was bureaucracy, set out to win formal land titles for the Cofán. He learned the law, navigated the corridors of power in Quito, and pushed for Indigenous land rights in meetings where he was often the only Cofán present. By 1992, after years of lobbying, he secured the first legal recognition of Cofán territory, an expanse of nearly 200,000 acres. In the years that followed, he helped expand Cofán-controlled land to over a million acres, ensuring that one of the most biodiverse forests on Earth would endure.

His strategy was simple: if the state could not protect the land, the Cofán would do it themselves. He helped establish the Cofán Ranger Program, training Indigenous guardians to patrol the forests, expel illegal loggers and miners, and monitor biodiversity. It was a triumph. While deforestation surged elsewhere in Ecuador, Cofán lands stood as a testament to resilience—verdant and life-sustaining. The program became a model for Indigenous-led conservation, studied and admired far beyond the Amazon.

Randy had a far-reaching vision for Cofán land, stretching from the Andean piedmont to the Amazon lowlands. He worked closely with the Ecuadorian government to establish protected areas, helping to create the Reserva Ecologica Cofán Bermejo, safeguard the water conservation area of Cofanes-Chingual, and integrate Zabalo into the zoning and management plan of the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve. These efforts ensured not only territorial security but also a framework for conservation that would endure for generations.

To walk with Randy through the forest was to witness a rare synthesis of Indigenous wisdom and scientific knowledge. He could read the landscape with an uncanny fluency, tracing the stories written in tree bark and animal tracks, linking Cofán traditions to Western ecological science. His ability to bridge these worlds made him a formidable force for both conservation and Indigenous rights, ensuring that Cofán ways of life remained central to the future of their land.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=j4yCdGB2NG4

It was not without cost. Randy was threatened more times than he could count. In 2012, his son Felipe was kidnapped by armed men linked to the gold mining trade; for 40 days, he was held in chains in the jungle. The Borman family never paid a ransom. Instead, Felipe, using skills his father had taught him, escaped by himself, slipping through the undergrowth until he found safety. Randy had raised his children the way he had been raised — to understand the forest as both home and refuge.

His body bore the weight of his battles. A near-fatal bout of encephalitis in his 40s left him reliant on hormone therapy. Years of relentless exposure to the equatorial sun led to multiple rounds of surgery to remove skin cancer. In the end, it was the disease that killed him at 70.

And yet, the forest he fought for still stands. The Cofán, once a people on the brink, are now some of the most successful Indigenous land managers in the Amazon. The rivers Randy navigated as a boy remain clean, the trees still hum with the calls of macaws and howler monkeys. His son Felipe, now a leader in his own right, continues the fight.

Indigenous people know that we need the forest to survive, Randy often said. The question is whether the rest of the world will wake up to that fact.

He did not live to see the world fully awaken. But thanks to him, one corner of it, at least, still breathes.

[AutumnW]

What a wonderful man and interesting story, Kryztian! He left quite a living legacy.

[Eva2]

From Project Camelot:

'CYRUS PARSA: BRILLIANT AUTHOR FOUND DEAD – UPDATED

Another brilliant whistleblower, Cyrus Parsa from the AI Organization was found dead by gunshot wound to the head. He had a lot of spiritual training and would not have taken his life since he knew that that meant the moment he left his body. He likely was suicided since he also mentioned to not take him out in his tweet from January 2025.

This is a great loss for humanity. Just like Dr Robert Duncan who was found dead last year and knew that he would be taken out 2 weeks before it happened - Cyrus gave information to humanity of tremendous importance about the Artificial Intelligence takeover of humanity. Please note the recurrent deaths of AI whistleblowers within the last year - with recent Open AI whistleblower murdered after police called it suicide:

Open AI Whistleblower Suicided - The Common Terminal Method To Get Rid Of Truth

Dr Robert Duncan, PhD, DARPA, CIA, Targeted Individual Government Program Whistleblower - Found Dead.

This murdering of AI whistleblowers does tell us something big about the importance of the threat of AI to humanity. Anybody who brings attention to this is on the hit list.

Cyrus was one of the few people who discussed the Alien connection to the COVID19 bioweapon and he explained in his books and videos the Alien connection to the AI takeover as well. The self assembly nanotechnology is the interface to the Artificial Intelligence platform. This AI is the Demi Urge AI Supercomputer that the elites worship as God.

This should alert the public to request Disclosure of the Alien Agenda - this connection is intimately linked with this technocratic transhumanist takeover. If you watch the twitter video which is a bit disjointed and cryptic, he clearly states that the US military has weapons we cannot even imagine, that hyperdimensional beings are coming in and out of our reality manipulating our timelines and that of course we have a lot of very sophisticated reverse engineered craft. That technology in people’s blood is not from here as I have said from the beginning.'

[arwen]

Cyrus Parsa's (I think) last video was on January 8, 2025. I have not followed him for a while, but I think this 22 minute broadcast by him is relevant in the context of his death:

https://x.com/CyrusAParsa1/status/1877064565583663419

(I am kind of getting Gonzalo Lira vibes around this - Cyrus seems to have been positioned as on the Israeli side, on Trump and Obama's side, mediating against Iran. Way too complex for me, but it does not seem his work on AI was the issue, rather the possible political role he was playing. Seriously weird vibes on this, though)

[madrotter]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
Dear Friends: I had missed this, and only just learned that the very famous 'Alice' had passed away a couple of months ago in November 2024.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Brock

My post just now on the Here and Now thread:

This is Alice May Brock, the inspiration for Arlo Guthrie's epic anti-war ballad Alice's Restaurant. *

* We have a whole Avalon thread about this:

• Arlo Guthrie and Alice's Restaurant: the important legacy of the 60s
  

Thank you so much for this Bill, never heard of her and was also not aware of the song Alice's Restaurant, love it!!! Reminded me of Belgium protest singer Ferre Grignard who had an anti-war hit song back in 1966, not sure if you know about it but if you don't I have a feeling you might like it, it's on my youtube channel:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=j6cz-KiI0Kg

[Paul D.]

Roberta Flack has passed at 88

Her biggest hits were ' The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face' & 'Killing Me Softly ' . The first song sends shivers through me. A masterpiece i.m.o. It sounded religious almost, certainly spiritual.
She was my sister's favourite artist, so I have some great early memories of hearing her voice.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/m...ad-1235277622/

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=VqW-eO3jTVU

[grapevine]

Gene Hackman: January 30, 1930-February 27, 2025

Gene Hackman dead: Legendary actor and wife Betsy Arakawa found dead at home with their dog



Oscar-winning US actor Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy Arakawa have been found dead at their home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, according to reports.

In a career that spanned more than six decades, he received two Academy Awards, two Baftas, four Golden Globes and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

A statement from the Santa Fe County Sheriff in New Mexico said: "We can confirm that both Gene Hackman and his wife were found deceased Wednesday afternoon at their residence on Sunset Trail.

"This is an active investigation - however, at this time we do not believe that foul play was a factor."

Hackman won the best actor Oscar for his role as Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle in William Friedkin's 1971 thriller The French Connection, and another for best supporting actor for playing Little Bill Daggett in Clint Eastwood's Western film Unforgiven in 1992.

His other Oscar-nominated roles were in 1967 movie Bonnie and Clyde, as Buck Barrow, 1970's I Never Sang for My Father, and as the agent in Mississippi Burning (1988).

Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza confirmed the news to local media just after midnight on Wednesday that the couple had died, along with their dog.

The news was later confirmed to the Press Association news agency. Hackman was 95 and his wife 63.

Mr Mendoza said there was no immediate indication of foul play.

But he did not provide a cause of death or say when the couple might have died.

"All I can say is that we're in the middle of a preliminary death investigation, waiting on approval of a search warrant."

Much celebrated actor Hackman played more than 100 rules including Lex Luthor in Superman movies in the 1970s and 1980s.

He also starred in the hit movies Runaway Jury and The Conservation, as well as Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums.

His last big screen appearance came as Monroe Cole in Welcome to Mooseport in 2004.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cewkkkvkzn9o

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by grapevine (here)
Gene Hackman: January 30, 1930-February 27, 2025

Gene Hackman dead: Legendary actor and wife Betsy Arakawa found dead at home with their dog

Wow, that's quite a shock.

He was a terrific actor, one of the best ever. And OMG, I never realized he was 95.

There are several news platforms with a running live updates page. Here's just one:

https://news.sky.com/story/gene-hack...egend-13317906

With their dog being found dead as well, and no signs of foul play, one might suspect something like a faulty heating system leading to overnight carbon monoxide poisoning. But that's merely an immediate initial thought. There'll be so much public interest in this that a full police statement will come very soon.