Cedella Booker, mother of international reggae icon Bob Marley, has died in her sleep in Miami.

I had the privilege of hanging out with this marvelous and vibrant woman several times when I was a guest in her Wilmington, Delaware, home and she a visitor at the farm where I lived. As matriarch of that city’s small Jamaican community, she always had an open door and offered a helping hand.

“Mama Marley” or “Mama B, “as she was alternately known, was born in Rhoden Hall, Jamaica and later moved to Nine Miles, St. Ann, where at age 18 she married Norval Sinclair Marley, a white Jamaican marine officer and ships captain with English roots. Their son Robert Nesta Marley was born in 1945.

Norval Marley died when Bob was 10. Mother and son then moved to Trench Town in Kingston, and in 1963 to Wilmington to live with her sister. There she met and married Edward Booker, who owned a local record store.

Bob returned to Jamaica in 1964, but his musical career foundered and in 1966 he returned to Wilmington with wife Rita, whom he had just married and later became a member of the I Threes, his back-up singers. He worked at a Chrysler Corporation auto manufacturing plant (the inspiration for his song “Night Shift”), but soon realized that his destiny was not toiling on an assembly line and he again returned to Jamaica, where his career finally took off.

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The Plain Dealer has a great obituary.

Say what you will about William F. Buckley’s contributions to conservatism and civil discourse. They were immense. But he picked a really lousy time to die.

Republican conservatism today bears scant resemblance to the movement that Buckley nurtured over a half century as the founder and longtime editor of National Review, a widely read syndicated columnist and host of the popular Firing Line program on PBS.

There is no question that Buckley’s greatest achievement was making conservatism respectable.

If it was a neoconservative brain trust that was the engine behind the ascendancy of George Walker Bush and helped open the door to the extremists who have hijacked his beloved GOP, it was Buckley more than anyone else who was responsible for the nomination of Barry Goldwater in 1964 and the coming of Ronald Reagan in 1980, who checked the liberal advances made since the New Deal in the 1930s.

Buckley, ever the independent and outspoken thinker, had been one of the first conservatives to break with Bush. I can only imagine that he went to his grave embittered over how his legacy has been so tarnished by self described conservatives drunk with power who champion fear mongering and cultural warfare above all else.

Buckley, who died this morning, was 82 and had been suffering from diabetes and emphysema.

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I was a Beatles’ fan in my teens. A few years after the famous British pop group had visited their Guru’s ashram, I undertook a journey to Rishikesh in India. Situated on the banks of the mighty/holy river Ganga/Ganges when it enters the plains (with the Himalayas providing a picturesqe backdrop), the ashram became our abode for a few days in the early 1970s. Our co-blogger at the TMV, Brij Khindaria, who was then with the Reuters, accompanied us.

It was a fascinating experience. Although I ‘crashlanded’ learning the Maharishi’s ‘flying yogic’ technique, I thoroughly enjoyed my stay for a couple of days there…

“Crank? Crackpot? Charlatan? Maybe all three. Yet Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who died on February 5th (in his ‘home’ in the Netherlands), was generally benign,” says The Economist. “He did not use his money for sinister ends. He neither drank, nor smoked, nor took drugs. Indeed, he is credited with weaning the Beatles off dope (for a while). He did not accumulate scores of Rolls-Royces, like Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh; his biggest self-indulgence was a helicopter.

“Nor was he ever accused of molesting choirboys; his greatest sexual impropriety, it was said, was to make a pass at Mia Farrow…After the 1960s he seldom appeared in public.

“Moreover, his message was entirely laudable. He did not promote a cult or even a mainstream religion preaching original sin, purgatory and the likelihood of eternal damnation. He just wanted to end poverty, teach people how to achieve personal fulfilment and help them to discover ‘Heaven on Earth in this generation’. And yogic flying, of course…”

More here…

All the announcements and tributes mention Congressman Tom Lantos’ distinction as being the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to Congress. I don’t know how many Holocaust survivors have ever run for congress, but regardless, the fact that he will no longer bring the ideas and experience of that distinction to the legislative branch of our American government is unfortunate.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi:

As the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to Congress, Tom Lantos devoted his life to shining a bright light on dark corners of oppression. He used his chairmanship of the Foreign Affairs Committee to empower the powerless and give voice to the voiceless throughout the world.

Capitol Briefing:

Though a party-line Democrat on most issues, Lantos was known for teaming up with conservatives on the panel like Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.J.) to bring scrutiny to the suppression of free speech in China and other issues. He also teamed up with many Republicans to back the Iraq war and advocate staunch support for Israel.

House Republican Whip Roy Blunt:

“Chairman Lantos will be remembered as a man of uncommon integrity and sincere moral conviction — and a public servant who never wavered in his pursuit of a better, freer and more religiously tolerant world,” House Republican Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri said in a statement.

JTA:

Lantos was not afraid to take on his allies. On the foreign affairs committee, he blasted Silicon Valley giants like Google and Yahho for colluding with China’s government in censorship. He authored tough Iran sanctions legislation but broke with pro-Israel orthodoxy by offering to meet with the Islamic Republic’s leaders. Pro-Israel groups also opposed a non-binding resolution that recognized the Ottoman era massacres of Armenians as a genocide, worried that it would cause a rift between Israel and Turkey — Lantos pushed it through the committee, unwilling to countenance what he saw as genocide revisionism.

His appeal crossed political aisles: Both the National Jewish Democratic Council and the Republican Jewish Coalition issued statements mourning his passing. Top Republicans on his committee also chimed in: “An unfailingly gracious and courageous man, Tom was recognized by friends and colleagues alike as a leader who left an enviable legacy of service to his country,” said U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros Lehtinen (R-Fla.), the committee’s ranking member.

DNC:

Our nation has lost a great public servant with the passing of Representative Tom Lantos. In serving his constituents and his country, Tom never forgot the Democratic Party’s ideals of freedom, fairness, and opportunity for all. As Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, he was an authority on foreign policy issues and a voice for the oppressed. The only Holocaust survivor in Congress, he was a forceful and passionate advocate for civil liberties and human rights. Today, I join with countless others across the country in offering my thoughts and prayers to Rep. Lantos’ family and friends as we honor his life and legacy.

NJDC:

Among his first major legislative accomplishments was legislation to give honorary citizenship to Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, a hero, who protected Lantos and many others from the Nazis. He went on to sponsor U.S. aid for Eastern European countries that had broken the shackles of communism, and became a strong voice of conscience against human rights abuses in China He was one of the leading voices in the House for sanctioning Myanmar’s regime due to human rights abuses. Among his other accomplishments, Rep. Lantos teamed with the late GOP Rep. Henry Hyde to secure $1.3 billion to fight AIDS around the world and to incentivize India to cooperate with international weapons inspectors.

Save the GOP:

In October, when Dutch parliament members came to Washington to complain to congress about Guantanamo Bay, Lantos reminded them that if not for the United States, they would be a province of Nazi Germany. He also added that “Europe was not as outraged by Auschwitz as by Guantanamo Bay.”

Lantos himself was an opponent of the Bush administration on the prosecution of the war, on Guantanamo, and on most other issues. But he never balked at an opportunity to defend the United States against those that would denigrate it. He recognized that politics stops at the waters edge. He was a great man, and he will be missed in Washington.

Although non-Whites worldwide loved to hate him when he ruled Rhodesia (later renamed Zimbabwe), Ian Smith remained an enigmatic and powerful personality right up to his death. “The former Rhodesian prime minister, who made his unilateral declaration of independence from Britain in 1965 and fought a bitter rearguard action to prevent black majority rule, never lost the ability to inspire strong emotion.

“When he died last week, aged 88, he was still hated by many for his unrepentant belief that white rule was better for all races in Rhodesia,” writes RW Johnson in The Times.

“Many had predicted he (Ian Smith) would flee to South Africa if Robert Mugabe came to power, but he never considered it. He loved Rhodesia passionately, and as Mugabe’s rule became intolerable, he stood his ground, even after Mugabe had deprived him of citizenship in 2002.

“His last days were spent in a clinic in the Cape, trying to raise funds to help poor white pensioners in Zimbabwe. He died within a stone’s throw of where Cecil Rhodes, Rhodesia’s founder, had died a century before.

“When he needed to travel abroad he drove himself unescorted to the airport, parked his car and carried his own bag. Just before the last presidential election in 2002, Smith said to me: ‘If Mugabe and I walk together into a black township, only one of us will come out alive. I’m ready to put that to the test right now. He’s not’…

“Visiting him at his house in Harare (next to the Cuban embassy, the hammer and sickle flying) I marvelled at the fact that, after the death of his wife Janet, he lived alone with just a cook and minimal security. When he walked the streets of Harare, Africans would almost queue up to grasp his hand and wish him well. How could this be? ”

More here…