"Wacko Jacko - where'd that come from? Some English tabloid. I have a heart and I have feelings. I feel that when you do that to me. It's not nice. Don't do it. I'm not a 'wacko'." Speaking to TV journalist Barbara Walters in Paris, 1997
SHOOT: Personally I find the term 'Wacko' or 'Jacko' in reference to Michael Jackson in the press highly insensitive and highly offensive. The tabloids of course, love it, but they're in the business of glossing over reality, or distorting it, as long as they make money from it. It's just business. Like Princess Diana, Jackson was a victim of a media turned mean, predatory and savage.
"I love ET 'cos it reminds me of me. Someone from another world coming down and you becoming friends with them and this person is, like, 800 years old and he's filling you with all kinds of wisdom and he can teach you to fly. That whole fantasy thing which I think is great. I mean, who don't wanna fly?" Interview in Smash Hits, January 20, 1983
"Our parents taught us to always be respectful and, no matter what you do, to give it everything you have. Be the best, not the second best." USA Today interview 2001
"I was so little when we began to work on our music that I don’t remember much about it. When you’re a showbusiness child people make a lot of decisions concerning your life when you’re out of the room". Jackson mused in his autobiography Moonwalk, published in 1988
"I believe I’m one of the loneliest people in the world." He wrote, in what was to become the most frequently quoted remark from his Moonwalk book
More on Michael the parent: Kids weren't allowed to look at mirrors. We are the world... Michael in the background with his hair on fire (shooting a pepsi commercial.) His brother, in the foreground was unaware of this at the time the photo was taken.
While filming a Pepsi commercial in 1984, Jackson's hair caught on fire. The next day -- with visible burn marks along his ear and cheek -- the singer went out to dinner with Webster TV star Emmanuel Lewis. It is believed that he first began dabbling in plastic surgery at this time.
Interview with Oprah Winfrey in 1993, as first child molestation charges surfaced. Watch those interviews here. Michael with Lisa Presley - Elvis' daughter. Within a year they had divorced. Michael arrived for this hearing an hour late, in his pajama pants. He was told bail would be revoked if he did not appear. Michael with sisters Latoya and Janet after a recent court appearance. Have a look at the state of his left hand.
These are clumps of annelid worms, almost certainly tubificids (Naididae, probably genus Tubifex). Normally these occur in soil and sediment, especially at the bottom and edges of polluted streams. In the photo they have apparently entered a pipeline somehow, and in the absence of soil they are coiling around each other. The contractions you see are the result of a single worm contracting and then stimulating all the others to do the same almost simultaneously, so it looks like a single big muscle contracting. Interesting video.- Dr. Timothy S. Wood, an expert on freshwater bryozoa and an officer with the International Bryozoology Association
Imperious Brazil are back to a familiar position at the top of the world rankings, from 5th place, after retaining the Confederations Cup.
Bafana Bafana remain relatively becalmed in 70th position in spite of the improved showing at the recently completed tournament in South Africa.
And, while many South Africans were expecting a dramatic improvement in Bafana’s ranking from the previous 72nd place, it’s all a case of the pronouncement by renowned United States baseball coach Leo Durocher that “you ain’t going anywhere unless you’re winning”.
Iraq, another team who raised their level of play in the Confederations Cup beyond expectations, also suffered from the no-win syndrome after drawing with Bafana and New Zealand and losing narrowly to Spain. Instead of an improved ranking, Iraq dropped from 77th place to a disappointing 94th.
KB:...you cut back asymmetrically, so you cut your overseas trip, you leave your car for a year longer before you replace it, you cut your hotel bill, but you buy more chocolate, you buy more CDs. You pay your pay-TV subscription because it's the cheapest form to fill an hour more or less tolerably for the family. So, just by accident, pay-TV tends to be relatively recession-proof. When there's a boom we won't benefit much. We won't lift like some other companies would. On the Internet we were equally lucky. Many Internet companies have an exposure to advertising. Our advertising exposure is fairly limited. It's about 16% of our total income as a group. We happen to be in e-commerce and subscription services - Tencent and so on - and these things benefited. People spend time at home, and what do you do? You potter around on the Internet and you go buy a new pair of takkies, and we earn some income.
SHOOT: The recession will send people home. Thus home-based enterprises and services will do better.
ALEC HOGG: Koos, there are not many major media companies around the world that have managed to lift headline earnings at all. Most of them have been contracting, and your revenue growth has been strong. Is your door being knocked on a lot now by perhaps bigger media players wanting to get closer to you?
KOOS BEKKER: Alec, not really. I think most media companies are in such bad shape that they are more defensively inclined at the moment than aggressive. But, you know, we were just lucky. I think in general business managers, when bad luck hits them, complain about fortune, and when they have a stroke of luck they usually attribute it to their own foresight. I don't think we showed any foresight. If you look at pay-TV, it just happens to be, accidentally, recession-proof. What happens in a recession? You lose your bonus, you have to cut back.
KOOS BEKKER: Yes. Alec, I think it's a judgement, but I think the Internet is as Important to our economy now as, let's say, railroads were in the 19th century or the automobile in the 20th century because it creates the basis for the whole economy, whether it's a doctor looking for an operation procedure somewhere in an overseas video library or whether it's a kid looking at the YouTube video - they are all using broadband. In fact, your service, your radio service, should be on broadband all across the country, and I should be able to do my emails and listen to you at the same time. And I think that's what's coming.
SHOOT: True to a point. It's not true obviously for those swathes of hungry people who don't have computers and never will. They are completely sidelined, sidetracked, sideswiped by the benefits of a more intelligent and freer knowledge-base. The other aspect is that computers and the internet are still energy users. You might think it's a negligible amount until you consider this: what do hundreds of thousands of people actually do, or create, other than jigging and re-jigging pixels into various formations? They don't grow food or do much that is of consequential interest. Computers do impact on efficiency but there's alays a counter argument. The gamers, those who consume porn or chat all day - how effective are they as consumers. And then there's online advertiisng. how effective is it compared to everything else?
ALEC HOGG: Koos, however you want to have a look at these results, the big message that comes through is that most of the money is still being generated by pay-TV. You are investing aggressively and have made some fantastic investments around the word - in China, Russia, Brazil. And those investments are now - particularly in China - coming home strongly.
KOOS BEKKER: Yes, if you look at the accounting convention again it's a bit funny because if we own 49% of a company we are not allowed to add one rand to our top line. But if we own 2% more, 51%, we add 100% to our top line, even though we don't earn 49% of it. So we are trying to overcome it by showing managed results - let's say in the case of Tencent we add 35% of their top line and their operating income. So if you look at that, at the moment the mix is about 44% of our revenues come from pay-TV, 21% from the Internet - that's together something like 65%, about two-thirds.
What if travel like that isn't possible next year? That would be ironic, that peak oilers can't meet to discuss peak oil because of... peak oil. I guess I'll ride my bike to Italy (from Connecticut). Or what if even worse happens? Blackouts could cause a massive failure of large parts of the internet, rendering us unable to post on TOD!
In my view, it is financial collapse (arising from the inability of the economy to grow fast enough to support all the debt, because of the higher cost of extracting oil) that is the limiting situation. Exactly how soon we reach a major financial disruption, and what the impact will be on world trade and things like the internet is unclear. It is possible things may hold together for years, but it is also possible that we may see a big change within weeks.
It seems to me that Liebig's Law of the Minimum will be what is important. Its impact is hard to predict, because so many pieces that we don't fully understand are involved.
"It was like watching a clumsy robot. There he was, one of the most talented guys on the planet, unable to even eat because he was so doped up."
Meanwhile, Michael's friend David Gest has revealed he begged the 50-year-old star not to have any more cosmetic surgery.
"I begged him not to have any more, I said, 'Your nose is perfect', but the plastic surgeon kept encouraging him to have more procedures," David, who first met Michael when they were teenagers, is quoted as saying.
SHOOT: And Michael of course. He probably surrounded himself with 'enablers', and in the interview with Oprah in '93, you can tell, Michael was a subtle manipulator. Kind hearted, soft hearted, but not very strong willed off the dance floor. Personal responsibility was low, but he probably learned that bad habit from his father Joe, who had even less.
Los Angeles - Michael Jackson's former manager claims his drug taking was out of control since 2003.
Dieter Wiesner - who worked for the late pop legend from 1996 to 2003 - alleges the star used medicinal drugs for years, but became addicted to them in the wake of Martin Bashir's 2003 documentary, in which Michael revealed he slept in the same bed as young boys.
When Living with Michael Jackson was aired, Dieter says Michael "died" and never recovered from it.
"It broke him. It killed him. It took a long time to die, but it started that night," he said.
"Previously the drugs were a crutch, but after that they became a necessity. They got him through his days and insomnia-riddled nights. And the people who gave them knew what they were doing. They should never have been around."
Dieter also claims Michael - who died last Thursday after a suspected cardiac arrest - was once so spaced out on drugs he couldn't even lift a fork to put food in his mouth.
SHOOT: Imagine that, 1.7 million of your countrymen dying around you, and you, one of seven others, living on. And the reason - because you can paint (even without toenails).
"I survived because I could paint exact portraits of Pol Pot," he said. His first job was to copy Pol Pot's image from a photograph and make a towering painting that was 10 feet high and 5 feet wide (3 meters high and 1.5 meters wide). It took three months to complete.
Duch would sometimes oversee his work and smile at him when he did a good job or give him cigarettes, Bou Meng said.
Survivor Chum Mey, 79, testified Tuesday that he endured beatings, electric shocks and had his toenails pulled out but was spared execution because he knew how to fix cars, tractors, sewing machines and typewriters.
The only other living survivor, 63-year-old Vann Nath, testified Monday that he too escaped execution because he was an artist and painted portraits of Pol Pot.
SHOOT: Interesting perspective. So God allows 152 to die, and then saves His miracle for 1 person, and we're supposed to be, "Wow, God, thanks?" The more realistic response: "Jeepers, what a tragedy that everyone died, and how fortunate this one girl didn't. Maybe we can study the wreckage, where we sat and find out how to improve survival during crashes. And shame, the poor girl must be traumatised, having everyone around her wiped out in a heartbeat."
An Associated Press reporter saw 14-year-old Bahia Bakari in a Comoros hospital Wednesday as she was visited by government officials. She was conscious with bruises on her face and a gauze bandage on her elbow. Her hair was pulled back and she was covered by a light blanket.
Her uncle, Joseph Yousouf, said Bahia had a fracture on her collarbone.
"It is a true miracle. She is a courageous young girl," Alain Joyandet, France's minister for international cooperation, said at the hospital. He said she held onto a piece of the plane from 1:30 a.m Tuesday to 3:00 p.m., then signaled a passing boat, which rescued her.
"She really showed an absolutely incredible physical and moral strength," he said.
"She is physically out of danger, she is evidently very traumatized," he said.
SHOOT: As soon as you start using drugs to calm you and put you to sleep, you start to interfere with two of the most important systems in the body - the brain and nervous system. And this obviously can have an impact on other systems, which are more delicate than we know. Like the heart. Heath Ledger also suffered from chronic insomnia in his last days. When you are desperate to rest, but with huge amounts of inspiration going through you, trying to sleep can be a horrible, panic-filled malaise. When I was treated for exhaustion earlier this year, I was given just 4 tablets to help me sleep. They worked so well I wanted more. That's how it starts to become a problem. For these stars with so much more at stake, the risks they take will obviously be much greater. Sadly.
Michael Jackson was so distraught over persistent insomnia in recent months that he pleaded for a powerful sedative despite warnings it could be harmful, says a nutritionist who was working with the singer as he prepared his comeback bid.
Cherilyn Lee, a registered nurse whose specialty includes nutritional counseling, said Tuesday that she repeatedly rejected his demands for the drug, Diprivan, which is given intravenously.
But a frantic phone call she received from Jackson four days before his death made her fear that he somehow obtained Diprivan or another drug to induce sleep, Lee said.
"At that point, I knew that somebody had given him something that hit the central nervous system," she said, adding, "He was in trouble Sunday and he was crying out."
"I don't know what happened there. The only thing I can say is he was adamant about this drug," Lee said.
SHOOT: It's illuminating that Michael doesn't cede any assets to any family members other than his children (who also aren't his biological children). Being isolated from one's family can explain a great deal of the tortured state Michael was in for much of his life. Jackson's father |Joe seems a particularly pernicious, money grubbing character in the Jackson clan.
Jackson's own health was a concern in his final days. A nutritionist who was working with the singer as he prepared his comeback bid said Jackson was so distraught over persistent insomnia in recent months that he pleaded for a powerful sedative despite warnings it could be harmful.
Cherilyn Lee, a registered nurse whose specialty includes nutritional counseling, said she got a frantic phone call from Jackson four days before his death that made her fear that he somehow obtained Diprivan or another drug to induce sleep.
Lee said Jackson in the call complained that one side of his body felt hot and the other side was cold, prompting her to believe the "somebody had given him something that hit the central nervous system."
"He was in trouble Sunday and he was crying out," she said.
"He knew he was loved, but he didn't know he was this loved," said one participant, Rosiland Sargent, 59, of West Orange, N.J.
...documents exist that can confirm the birth arrangements of all three of Jackson's children.
SHOOT: These documents confirm in vitro (out of body) fertilisation. Perhaps Michael was sterile. One thing is for sure, is that a father who uses the press conference over his son's death to plug his own record label, is no father at all. Just a greedy rat. A douchebag.
Michael Jackson did not father any of his children, and his ex-wife Debbie Rowe is not the biological mother of the two children they had together, an exclusive report on the website TMZ.com claims.
The website says that “multiple sources deeply connected to the birth” have confirmed that Jackson was not the sperm donor for any of his three children, all of which were conceived outside of the womb, in vitro. These same sources also claim that the Rowe, Jackson's wife at the time, was only a surrogate, and that her eggs were not used.
Joe Jackson has also made headlines in recent days for conversations with the media about his new record label, Ranch Records. The king of pop's father attended the BET Awards on Sunday, and responded to questions about the emotional state of his family by introducing his business partner, Marshall Thompson, saying, “Marshall and I we own a record company called Ranch Records.”
Iraqi citizens are cheering, faceslit by fireworks erupting in the sky. US troops are pulling out. So where is George Bush now, where is the aircraft carrier, why no MISSION ACCOMPLISHED? And as they pulled out, a handful of US troops were killed. Imagine that. Doing your time, and dying on the way out, another war lost (well, did anyone win?).
The veneer of normalcy is starting to peel off the wood grain of everyday life. Slowly, but surely, and now, less slowly.
As usual, this year, it's Wimbledon. Except that it's Wimbledon with ball boys and girls suffering from swine flu. And there was the Confederations Cup in South Africa. South Africa claims to be ready for 2010, yet it's doctors are striking, minibus taxi operators (who ferry people to stadiums) threatened the same. Was there a problem with crime? If you don't count the money stolen from the Egyptians, out of there hotel rooms, nah, there wasn't any crime. 2010 here we come.
Psst. Let's just imagine that swine flu doesn't exist, and that if it does, tens of millions of infections won't matter in June 2010. [Er...they will matter.]
You know there is trouble when mainstream media open up their articles like so:
Armageddon. Apocalypse. Disaster: These are the words being used to describe California's staggering $24 billion budget deficit. With a midnight deadline to balance the budget, state lawmakers are facing a daunting task: Find a way to bridge the gap or start issuing $3 billion in IOUs this week to cover the bills.
Almost every state is suffering from the effects of the recession, but not every state accounts for 12 percent of the national gross domestic product. According to AP, if California goes down, so goes the nation: California's annual $1.7 trillion economy is the world's eighth-largest economy and provides a significant chunk of tax revenue for the government; California alone funds many social programs for the entire nation.
Like the Big Three automakers, California may be "too big to fail." If the state implodes, the ripple effect could slow the entire nation's recovery from the recession. Burt P. Flickinger, a retail consultant, tells AP:
"California is the key catalyst for U.S. retail sales, and if California falls further you will see the U.S. economy suffer significantly."
It is of course perfectly appropriate that the governor of California is a movie star, and a muscle man. He has famously portrayed a robot sent to hasten the end of the world, in Terminator and the sequel, Judgement Day. Let's see Mr. Arnold Schwarzenegger slay some real dragons for a change. The recession, hyperinflation. Drought.
— State employees will be forced to take another day of unpaid leave a month, in addition to the two days leave they were forced to take starting in December. (NYT)
— Funding for the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement will be slashed by $20 million. The "little-known unit" has played a key role in several of the state's high-profile cases: The bureau's agents helped arrest Scott Petersen for the murder of his wife and unborn child, and their investigation led to charges in Anna Nicole Smith's overdose death. (AP)
If the above is gibberish to you, here's the takeout. When a state or country starts to run out of money, systems slow and then break down. One such system is law enforcement, but there are many others besides.
Right now, we really can't afford an international crisis. Literally. There's no money to fight a pandemic. And right now H1N1 has officially, in 2 months, surpassed the H5N 1death toll over the past 4 years. H5N1 was a real killer. 262 died out of 433 confirmed infections. That's 60% kill rate. That means 2/3 people infected, died. H5N1 never disappeared. We now have a clever exotic strain that is a hybrid of swine, avian and human flu. Woe betide us when it recombines with virulent H5N1. There is absolutely no reason to believe that it won't.
And while the bleak scenario of pandemic flu unfolds, and the dark tides of global recession and depression swim further and further ashore, there is more to worry about. The climate for one, and energy for another. These last two may seem the least important, until you ask yourself this question: Is it important to eat? And if so, is it important to cook the food you eat. Climate change and an energy crunch will conspire, like evil twins, to create a scenario even less solvable, less easy for clever individuals to extricate themselves from. Have you noticed the salvos, the flack, filling the sky. Harmless seeming pockets of black smoke. But then the pilots of that fateful Air France plane probably thought the columns of cloud hulking off the coast of South America, somewhere in the darkness above the Atlantic, were no match for 'superior technology'. Things soon feel apart after that. As they are for us. But don't panic.
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