Welch "passed away peacefully early this morning after a brief illness," her manager Steve Sauer confirmed to PEOPLE on Wednesday.
Sauer added, "Her career spanned over 50 years starring in over 30 films and 50 television series and appearances. The Golden Globe winner, in more recent years, was involved in a very successful line of wigs. Raquel leaves behind her two children, son Damon Welch and her daughter Tahnee Welch.
Welch made her film debut in the mid 1960s, with breakout roles in 1966's Fantastic Voyage and One Million Years B.C. that same year.
She would go on to star in dozens of films, including 1973's The Three Musketeers, which earned her a Golden Globe for best actress in a motion picture comedy or musical.
"I played a lot of action figures, like in Westerns… I carried a gun, I was a very formidable woman who could handle herself, who could ride and shoot… I also showed myself in a lot of different periods of time… I worked in Spain for a lot of the Westerns, which is where most American Westerns were filmed."
She capitalized on her fame in the mid-’70s with a long-running nightclub musical act/one-woman show in Las Vegas. Then in 1981, Welch parlayed those musical skills when she replaced Lauren Bacall in Broadway’s “Woman of the Year,” a musical adaptation of the George Stevens movie. In 1997, she followed Julie Andrews and Liza Minnelli in Broadway’s “Victor/Victoria.” A supporting role in the 2001 movie “Legally Blonde” seemingly heralded the beginning of her “legacy talent” phase, beloved in the present for people’s memories of her past work. But a fascinating transformation occurred as Welch entered her 60s: She was finally able to play the Latina characters she’d been advised against portraying in the early part of her career.
In 2001’s “Tortilla,” Maria Ripoli’s recasting of “Eat Drink Man Woman” as a dramatic comedy about a Mexican American family, she played Hortensia, the mother of one of the main characters. At the same time, she played Aunt Dora in Gregory Nava’s groundbreaking PBS series “American Family,” the first U.S. drama series to star a predominantly Latinx cast. At long last she was able to represent her heritage, even winning an Imagen Award for her efforts in positively promoting Hispanic and Latino representation.
"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Two defectors from Iraqi intelligence said yesterday that they had worked for several years at a secret Iraqi government camp that had trained Islamic terrorists in rotations of five or six months since 1995.
They said the training in the camp, south of Baghdad, was aimed at carrying out attacks against neighboring countries and possibly Europe and the United States.
They also said they had no knowledge of specific attacks carried out by the militants. But they insisted that those being trained as recently as last year were Islamic radicals from across the Middle East. An interview of the two men was set up by an Iraqi group that seeks the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein.
The defectors said they knew of a highly guarded compound within the camp where Iraqi scientists, led by a German, produced biological agents.
''There is a lot we do not know,'' the former general, who spoke on condition that his name not be printed, admitted. ''We were forbidden to speak about our activities among each other, even off duty. But over the years you see and hear things. These Islamic radicals were a scruffy lot. They needed a lot of training, especially physical training. But from speaking with them it was clear they came from a variety of countries, including Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria, Egypt and Morocco. We were training these people to attack installations important to the United States. The gulf war never ended for Saddam Hussein. He is at war with the United States. We were repeatedly told this.''
Unfortunately, the story was an elaborate scam. The purported general had indeed met with American intelligence agents in Turkey, but unbeknownst to Hedges the agents had dismissed his claims out of hand. What the reporters also didn’t know, and what has never before been reported, is that it now appears that the man himself was a fake. According to an ex-INC official, the Ghurairy who met with the Times and PBS was actually a former Iraqi sergeant, then living in Turkey and known by the code name Abu Zainab. The real Lt. General Ghurairy, it seems, had never left Iraq.
That I should live as freely
As those who live outside
To the rights to be endowed
And when I've got something to say, sir
I'm gonna say it now
You'd like to be my Dad
And give me kisses when I'm good
And spank me when I'm bad
I've forgotten how to bow
So when I've got something to say, sir
I'm gonna say it now
You've twisted and you've turned my mind
Because of all the dark I find inside of you
'Side of you, got to let me lie
Burn your hatred out on someone else
I don't need the things you say
You're bringing me down every day
As well as you
We're at the crossroads wet with tears
And I don't want to spend my years hating you
Hating you, got to let me lie
The Final Deathblow to Imperialism Will Only Come Under The Leadership of The Organized Colonized Masses
Efforts to marginalize, disregard, and erase the presence of radical Black-, Brown-, and Indigenous-led anti-imperialist organizations, as well as our political positions, is proving to be endemic to the politics of too many who consider themselves radical anti-imperialist and anti-war activists. For this reason, the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) reiterates that the peoples who bear the brunt of the brutal and lethal practices of U.S. imperialism are at the forefront of the struggle to dismantle the global system of white supremacist, patriarchal capitalism.
The colonized within the U.S. settler state see more clearly than the privileged the holistic nature of the system as well as the interdependencies between our domestic repression and U.S. wars abroad. Some forces that claim to be anti-war have an unsophisticated understanding of peace.
We understand that peace is not the absence of conflict, but rather the achievement, by popular struggle and self-defense, of a world liberated from the interlocking issues of global conflict, nuclear armament, and unjust war. A condition for real peace is the defeat of global systems of oppression that include colonialism, imperialism, patriarchy and white supremacy. Anyone with genuine concern for the well-being of humanity and the planet should be deeply concerned that some supposed “leftist” forces consider it easier to find common cause with right wing libertarian forces than with the Black radical movement, as BAP Coordinating Committee member Jacqueline Luqman writes in this Black Agenda Report piece.
And as Chair of the BAP Coordinating Committee, Ajamu Baraka points out:
“The white left in the U.S. is deeply delusional. Elements of the left actually believe a radical movement leading to revolutionary change will be led by white activists with Black & colonized people as backdrops. #AntiWarSoWhite”
We cannot afford any confusion, complicity, silence, or outright collaboration with some “liberal/left” forces on armed intervention into Haiti, the reactionary role of NATO, the intensification of state repression in the United States, the plight of the working class being subjected to an induced recession, and austerity. For BAP, all of these contradictions reaffirm why it is absolutely necessary for colonized people to be organized or face an inescapable subjugation and eventual annihilation. The comfortable will dismiss this as hyperbole.
We—the colonized, the exploited, the oppressed—are in the midst of a war. It is clear that the colonial-capitalist rulers will continue to deceive, mislead and co-opt to maintain their dominance. Our responsibility in opposition is to keep the focus on the imperialists and not be confused by the machinations of their supporters. That task and responsibility will continue to inform our work in 2023.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) denounced marriage equality as a sign that Democrats have “turned their backs on God.”
She then made comments about how 9/11 proves that an aircraft crashing isn’t dangerous for people on the ground.
She said that “these people in Washington” – a group that includes herself – have “turned their back on the truth and they turned their back on God.”
She then said that House Democrats voted twice to pass a bill legalizing murdering babies “up until the date of birth” as a sign of Democrats turning their backs on God.
“They passed a bill to make it a federal law to protect gay marriage,” Greene then complained. “Marriage is between a man and a woman, and that’s between God and a man and a woman.”
No one can say they weren’t warned. Mass opposition to wars tends to emerge only after they have been waged for some time, yet protests against the Iraq war reached unprecedented heights well before it began. On 15 February 2003, the largest demonstration in British history took place in London, attended by an estimated 1.5 million to 2 million people. It was also part of the largest ever international anti-war protest, with perhaps as many as 30 million people demonstrating across every continent.
The march itself was a carnival of resistance. There were people of every age, race, religion and nationality, from huge numbers of school students to members of the Muslim community and other faith organisations and trade unionists. There were tens of thousands of banners and placards ranging from “make tea not war” to “not in my name”. Part of the reason for the sheer size of the march was that people thought that being there in person, as individuals, really could make a difference and convince the government not to go to war.
This turned out not to be the case. The march and the wider anti-war movement did not stop the war. And we still live with the consequences of both the conflict itself, and the rejection of democratic accountability demonstrated by the government.