Barry Tannenbaum statement

SHOOT: It's the simplest thing in the world to prove. You look at bank statements. If millions have been flowing in and out of your personal accounts, that needs to be explained. One would think if you're innocent, what do you have to lose by testifying in court? Surely by remaining 'on the run' you confirm the perception that you have something to hide, because guilty feet run.

clipped from www.abc.net.au It suffices for me to say that I have no intention of leaving Australia. I have no intention of disposing of whatever assets I possess, and I in fact assure whoever requires such assurance that I will not do so. I challenge him to produce one tittle of evidence to substantiate this outrageous and unsubstantiated piece of drivel. Thank goodness that the Sydney Morning Herald published one piece of information which must raise a question mark over the suggestion that I single-handedly, if at all, spearheaded a massive scam. In fact, I state categorically that I am not sitting with millions. I have not amassed some fortune that I have spirited away, and in due course an audit will bear out this statement, if people are still interested in hearing the truth. If there is no hard proof that they are guilty of any wrongdoing, there is likewise no proof that I have committed fraud. So why all the focus on me and me alone?

One investor says: "I put $800 million into Tannenbaum's scheme."

Tannenbaum, who moved to Sydney in 2007, said in a statement on June 13 there is “no proof that I have committed fraud.”

SHOOT: That's quite a chunk of change. How do you get money like that to disappear?

clipped from www.bloomberg.com July 1 (Bloomberg) -- South African government investigators have so far discovered 2 billion rand ($258 million) worth of investment in an alleged Ponzi scheme run by Barry Tannenbaum, the country’s finance minister said. “Current indications are that the scheme amounts to approximately 2 billion rand,” Pravin Gordhan, the minister, told lawmakers in Cape Town today, adding that there have been media reports of losses of between 5 billion rand and 18 billion rand. Tannenbaum has repeatedly denied wrongdoing. Adrian Lackay, a spokesman for a task force set up by the government to investigate Tannenbaum, said the minister’s figure is a measure of the cash that the force has found that investors gave to Tannenbaum and his associates and does not include the returns they made and the interest they were promised. Private investigators say one investor alone claims to have put $800 million into the scheme.

Tannenbaum insists claims of a R15 billion ponzi scheme are outrageous

Tannenbaum yesterday called the allegations “outrageous” in an e-mailed response to questions. He said he has no plans to return to South Africa, adding that his legal team will travel to the country.

SHOOT: Guess that means he's not sorry. Not yet anyway.

clipped from www.bloomberg.com June 18 (Bloomberg) -- First National Bank froze the bank accounts of Barry Tannenbaum to comply with a court order in the probe of what may be South Africa’s biggest ever fraud, a bank spokeswoman said. The Johannesburg-based bank, known as FNB, is working with the South African task team set up on June 14 to investigate Tannenbaum, who is accused of running a Ponzi scheme worth as much as 15 billion rand ($1.8 billion), Virginia Magapatona, a spokeswoman for FNB said in an e-mailed response to questions today. Tannenbaum has repeatedly denied the allegations. “The bank is cooperating with the task team,” Magapatona said, declining further comment. Tannenbaum sought people to finance the importation of pharmaceutical raw materials, providing guarantees that he had entered contracts with drugmakers, according to investigators hired by investors in his funds. Aspen Pharmacare Holdings Ltd. and the South African Reserve Bank have said he forged documents under their name.

Why Lisa couldn't save Michael

She did not believe that he was a paedophile, but it concerned her that he had not learned his lesson from the Jordie Chandler affair and still chose to spend time with young boys.

She squirmed as she sat beside him during a television interview, when he was adamant he was going to continue having boys come to his home for sleepovers.

It was after this that things started going bad. One of Lisa's friends said: 'The great sex continued but when they weren't in bed making love, they were fighting. Lisa started to wonder if she'd made a mistake in choosing him as a life partner.'

SHOOT: Lisa didn't believe Michael was emotionally mature enough for children, and when she wouldn't provide him with children, he asked someone else. Understandasbly, that was the final straw. The 'someone' he approached was Debbie Rowe.

DailyMail: Debbie Rowe. She had been a 'biker chick' in black leather when she was younger, swore like a sailor, drank beer and tequila and, despite having wealthy parents, was always penniless.

clipped from www.dailymail.co.uk Meanwhile, Lisa was realising that her mission to save Michael was not going to be easy. She was amazed by his emotional repression and felt he was resisting her efforts to help. Perhaps, she pondered, he rather enjoyed wallowing in his own pain, playing the victim. He was 'like a young boy, angry at the world', one of her friends noted, and his self-pity became a strain on the relationship. 'She had no patience at all with the lost childhood routine. "Who hasn't had a miserable childhood?" she would say.' His moods and habits became infuriating. She clocked up the hours her husband spent in the bathroom, applying and removing cosmetics. Throughout their marriage, she never saw him without his make-up. When they slept together, in the morning she'd find his pillow smeared with it. 'Lisa would try to surprise him by waking early and tapping him on the shoulder,' a friend recalled. 'He would shriek "No, don't look!" and scamper to the bathroom.'

Oh, I see you're the only survivor of a plane crash, even your mom died. Never mind, we'll just put you on another plane so you can see your dad

The other 151 people on the plane, including Bakari's mother, are presumed dead.

When found hanging on to a piece of the plane, Bakari was suffering from hypothermia, a broken collarbone and bruises.

SHOOT: I experienced something slightly similar. Was in a car accident, and a few hours after gashing open my knee, was hitching-hiking to the airport. I was picked up by a drunk driver...

clipped from news.yahoo.com LE BOURGET, France – A French government plane carrying the young girl believed to be the only survivor of an Indian Ocean plane crash arrived Thursday at a Paris airport from Comoros. Bahia Bakari, 14, was brought back to France on the plane carrying a government minister and other French officials. The Falcon-900 jet with medical facilities aboard arrived at Le Bourget airport just north of Paris shortly after 8 a.m. An emergency ambulance drove up to the aircraft, and she was expected to be taken immediately to a hospital. At the foot of the aircraft was her father, Kassim, as well as several other members of her family. Bakari, the eldest of four children, had boarded a plane in Paris with her mother, Aziza, on Monday morning for the long journey via Marseille and San'a, Yemen, to Comoros where they planned to spend part of the summer school holidays with relatives. Her three siblings had stayed behind with her father.

Did Jackson's attempts to be good turn him 'Bad'

SHOOT: Repressing emotions is never healthy, and Michael's exposure at a too young age to sex and infidelity probably left a lasting impression. His mother's religious attitude to 'sins of the flesh' were unlikely to have helped when it was time to grow up and be a man.

clipped from www.dailymail.co.uk Mostly, where Michael's personal life was concerned, people felt a sense of sadness. He was an enigma: perplexing and eccentric, but essentially asexual. From an early age he had been exposed to sex, and his whole experience of life was shaped by it. But in such a way that it would not be surprising if his take on the subject was strange. Aged four, he was singing with his elder brothers as the Jackson Five, egged on by their hugely ambitious father, Joseph. In their early years, the brothers were booked into dives and strip joints. Nine-year-old Michael watched from the wings as voluptuous women - and the occasional transvestite - stripped naked on stage. Then he would go home to his mother Katherine, a devout Jehovah's Witness, who imprinted on her sons the belief that lust in thought or deed was sinful. When they were touring, Marlon recalled his father going off to bed with shapely beauties on both arms and then hearing laughter coming from his room.

Michael Jackson: All eyes peered at him to see if he was circumcised, as Jordie had claimed (he wasn't)

Staring at a picture of Elizabeth Taylor on the wall, Jackson removed the dressing gown, to reveal a bathing suit. 'You'll have to take that off, too, sir,' said the detective. Michael slipped off the bathing suit . . . under which he was wearing boxers. 'Sir, please,' the detective said.

Crying softly, Michael took off the boxers and stood, stripped not only of his clothes, but of all his dignity. All eyes peered at him to see if he was circumcised, as Jordie had claimed (he wasn't). 'Oh my God,' Michael whimpered. He looked as if he was about to faint.

The police circled him slowly, making notes about his body, the colour of his buttocks and private parts. A photographer took pictures before Jackson jumped off the platform. 'That's enough,' he said, before fleeing the room.

clipped from www.dailymail.co.uk For a man so obsessed about his body, there was nothing more humiliating for Michael Jackson than when police strip-searched him while investigating the allegations that he had molested 13-year-old Jordie Chandler. The boy had given a detailed description of the star's body and the detectives needed to check if it was true. Jackson was warned that if he refused to cooperate, he'd be arrested and taken away in handcuffs. After the police arrived at Neverland, it took lawyers an hour to persuade him to leave his bedroom. Finally, he came into the living room clearly agitated, wearing a brown dressing gown. He blocked his face with his hands, as if thwarting the paparazzi. He was told to stand on a platform in the middle of the room. 'Please don't make me do this,' he pleaded. 'Sir, we have no choice,' said one of the detectives. Jackson removed the dressing gown, to reveal a bathing suit. 'You'll have to take that off, too, sir,' said the detective.

Jackson: Obsessed with catching germs,or simply wanting to hide the scars.

He had also begun using a skinbleaching cream, which he bought by the crate.

Escaping his childhood demons had led Michael to recreate himself. Gone was the brown-skinned, broad-nosed youth with an Afro whose natural charisma charmed an audience.

In his place was a fragile, doll-like man it was impossible not to stare at in sheer disbelief.

By the end of 1990, some in his camp calculated he'd undergone ten nose operations.

One procedure to add cartilage to the tip did not work, eventually causing the structure of his nose to collapse, leaving the nasal cavity nearly flush with his face.

After that, in public and often in private, he wore a prosthetic nose tip, disguised with thick stage make-up.

He had achieved his goal of transforming himself, but at a barely imaginable price.

SHOOT: There's a pirce to pay for such high levels of self-obsession.

clipped from www.dailymail.co.uk In some ways, Jackson's desire for physical perfection was not hard to understand, given how much time he spent studying pictures of himself, dancing in front of mirrors and watching videos, deciding which were his best features and which were not. But his quest became an obsession. His friend Jane Fonda tried to coax him out of it. 'I want you to stop,' she told him. 'No more surgery. Love yourself the way you are, for who you are.' 'I'll try,' Michael promised but, even with a new nose, he was still desperately unhappy. The surgery went on. He denied his almond- shaped eyes and strikingly pronounced cheekbones were not natural, but definitely had an operation to create a cleft in his chin. It was after this procedure that he was first seen wearing a surgical mask. The Press speculated that, like the famous recluse Howard Hughes, he was obsessed with catching germs, but it was more likely that he simply wanted to hide the scars.

Jackson's insensitive father and brothers called him 'Big Nose'.

'He thought he was ugly.'

Most of his unhappiness was focused on his nose. For a long time he talked of having cosmetic surgery. His motive was not, as many people surmised, to look more like his idol, Diana Ross.

It was so that he would look less like his father, the man who had so mistreated him and whose strong, broad-nosed face he saw looking back at him from the mirror.

Jackson was too afraid to go ahead with surgery until 1979, when, aged 21, the decision was made for him. He tripped during a dance routine and broke his nose. When he looked in the mirror after the operation to repair it, he liked what he saw.

Two years later, he had a second operation. A dangerous pattern was starting to emerge. Three years later, he had another and, in 1986, a fourth nose job.

He told an associate that the 'greatest joy I ever had was in knowing I had a choice about my face'.

SHOOT: Jackson lacked an inner parent who could discern right from wrong, practical from impractical, appropriate from inappropriate. It's not his fault though, his family taught him to sing and dance, rather than to be a functional human being.

clipped from www.dailymail.co.uk For a while, this strategy of selfpromotion was brilliantly successful as Jackson convinced himself that he could manipulate his image and control how he was portrayed. Throughout the Eighties, he dreamt up bizarre stunts and stories that were leaked to the Press. One favourite ploy was to use outlandish disguises on conspicuously extravagant shopping trips. Once, he popped into a Los Angeles chemist's in an Afro wig and dark glasses, and asked to buy a sex toy. It was hardly a surprise when the story made all the newspapers. He also told the world that he slept in an oxygen chamber that would enable him to live to be 150. It was a complete fiction, but word of Michael's latest wacky exploit spread round the globe, helping to sell more records on the way. But the danger of this drive for self-promotion was that it became open season for any invented story. Reports appeared that he had seen John Lennon's ghost and was speaking chimp language to his pet ape Bubbles.

Michael Jackson: How much of the wacko part was on purpose? Some, certainly. [Plus Pepsi Commercial Inicident]

Aides covered his blazing hair with a blanket and ice, and prepared to hustle him out of the back door to an ambulance. But for once Jackson insisted on using the front door, in full view of fans and photographers. He sensed an opportunity.

That night, footage was shown across the world of the stricken star, bandaged and in agony, being rushed to hospital - but managing to raise a sequin-gloved hand in a weak salute. In publicity terms, its value was beyond measure.

SHOOT: Not sure if I agree with this assessment. Seems a trifle too convenient and insensitive to Michael's situation. I doubt whether Michael was considering the publicity potential while he was suffering burn wounds. Probably he wanted to get to the hospital as soon as possible, and all other possibilities were secondary.

clipped from www.dailymail.co.uk 'He became a loner,' said his mother Katherine. 'I was worried about him, but I hoped he would grow out of it.' He never did. As an adult, he once said in a weary voice: 'People don't know what it's like for me. No one should judge me, not unless they've been in my shoes every horrible day and every sleepless night.' But for all his apparent paranoia about protecting his privacy, Jackson was as much of a show-off as he was a recluse. As for the whole Wacko Jacko image, that was less an invention of the media than of his own - until it spiralled beyond a joke and beyond his control. To begin with, though, it was carefully nurtured to boost his career. He understood that to sell records he needed to stay in the public eye. He was an instinctive showman when it came to self-promotion. When filming a commercial for Pepsi-Cola surrounded by smoke and pyrotechnics, a magnesium flash bomb exploded close to his head.

Michael was terrified of the world. Are you?

He recalled having to run through crowds of screaming girls with his eyes covered by his hands for fear that they would scratch him, and hid in broom cupboards, hoping the throng would rush by and miss him.

SHOOT: Jackson seems to have suffered from acute agoraphobia, and paranoia. It has to be said that rationally speaking, the world can't realistically be called a safe place. There's pandemic flu out there, to name one rational concern. Paranoia is a normal response to the world, in a sense, but how much is the qestion. How much paranoia is healthy?

WIKI: anxiety disorder, often precipitated by the fear of having a panic attack in a setting from which there is no easy means of escape. As a result, sufferers of agoraphobia may avoid public and/or unfamiliar places. In severe cases, the sufferer may become confined to his or her home, experiencing difficulty traveling from this "safe place."
'They grab your hair and pull hard and it hurts like fire,' he recalled. 'You feel as if you're going to suffocate or be dismembered.'

clipped from www.dailymail.co.uk Two years after their divorce, Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis's daughter, and Michael Jackson held hands as they had lunch at a restaurant. Michael wore a black hat and matching silk surgical mask, which he refused to take off, even to eat. He slipped crab cakes and fried chicken under it and into his mouth. 'I want you to know that if you ever need a friend, I'm here for you. You have such a good heart, Michael,' Lisa told him. Then she asked the question that had foxed the world for years. 'But tell me this - why do you have to be so strange?'Shortly after they had married, she had seen for herself how flimsy was his take on the real world. He instructed her that the bodyguards would whisk her down the back stairs to a waiting car with blacked- out windows. He would travel separately and join her later.As they were preparing to leave their suite in Trump Tower in New York, Michael put on his mask, sunglasses and make-up. Jackson went berserk. 'Lisa! No!' he screamed. 'It's dangerous out there! They'll eat you alive!' 'Screw this,' she said and walked to the main lift. Jackson went berserk. 'Lisa! No!' he screamed. 'It's dangerous out there! They'll eat you alive!' An aide was sent after her, but she had disappeared. Jackson freaked out. 'My poor wife's been kidnapped. How will I live with myself? Call the police. Call the FBI. Call the CIA.' Lisa was discovered in a bar down the street, quietly sipping a martini.

Violent crime in Britain is worse than in South Africa

The U.S. has a violence rate of 466 crimes per 100,000 residents, Canada 935, Australia 92 and South Africa 1,609.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said: 'This is a damning indictment of this government's comprehensive failure over more than a decade to tackle the deep rooted social problems in our society, and the knock on effect on crime and anti-social behaviour.

SHOOT: How do you change anti-social behaviour? Examples include drug abuse, playiong computer games, internet addiction. You can only change this by getting a community to care about itself, and that begins by getting individuals to think of themselves as a community. We have a hyperindividualistic society which is highly divorced from the community concept. We need a cultural shift.

clipped from www.dailymail.co.uk Britain's violent crime record is worse than any other country in the European union, it is revealed today. Official crime figures show the UK also has a worse rate for all types of violence than the U.S. and even South Africa - widely considered one of the world's most dangerous countries. The figures comes on the day new Home Secretary Alan Johnson makes his first major speech on crime, promising to be tough on loutish behaviour.  The figures, compiled from reports released by the European Commission and United Nations, also show: The UK has the second highest overall crime rate in the EU. It has a higher homicide rate than most of our western European neighbours, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain. The UK has the fifth highest robbery rate in the EU. It has the fourth highest burglary rate and the highest absolute number of burglaries in the EU, with double the number of offences than recorded in Germany and France.

|Pandemic Flu Update: 83 490 Infections, 415 deaths, Argentina flaring up

WIKI: The outbreak began in Mexico, and there is evidence that Mexico was already in the midst of an epidemic for months before the outbreak was recognized.

SHOOT: Argentina have the greatest number of deaths outside of Mexico and the USA, at 45, with 1624 infections. Some believe the true number of infections in America are no 29,430 as officially reported, but already well over 1 million. Swine flu is estimated to be 10 times more deadly than ordinary seasonal flu.

clipped from en.wikipedia.org The 2009 flu pandemic is an A(H1N1) pandemic and a global outbreak of a new strain of influenza A virus subtype H1N1, identified in April 2009, commonly referred to as "swine flu", which is transmitted between humans. It is thought to be a mutation—more specifically, a reassortment—of four known strains of influenza A virus subtype H1N1: one endemic in humans, one endemic in birds, and two endemic in pigs (swine). Experts now assume that the virus "most likely" emerged from pigs in Asia, and the virus was carried to North America by infected people. There is further evidence that the new strain has been circulating among pigs, possibly among multiple continents, for many years prior to its transmission to humans. Virtually all transmission is from human to human; cooked pork products are safe for humans and the virus cannot be transmitted from foods.

How can a world that is so addicted, so distracted, so stung by the past and occupied by the novelties of the present, have any idea of what's coming?

The answer is, we don't have any idea. Almost every person is addicted to either coffee, or cigarettes, or drugs (medicinal or recreational) or to computer games, or porn, or soap operas, or shopping, or some other person, or to alcohol, or fast food. None of these things are good for us. How can fat people go beyond being depressed and feeling sorry for themselves, and coming up with the discipline firstly to get themselves into shape, and then, by implication, to look beyond themselves, at the world, a world that is unravelling. The odds of fat people being able to lift themselves towards turning our troubles around are very very slim. The short answer is that we can't, that we won't. That failure, systemic collapse (total collapse) is a certainty.

Our economics was always based on a schism between the haves and the have nots, and the have nots always outnumbered the haves, and now we are all about to become have nots. Economics based on infinite growth is based on the Now, and has absolutely no notions of the future. Even the simple habit of drinking coffee borrows energy from the future. So does driving a car, and eating fast food. Smoking merely accelerates everything. Including death. And now, the future is upon us, and the now is going up in cigarette smoke and burning car tyres. The idea of order is becoming pure fantasy as systems disintegrate. It is already well underway.

What can we do? is there any solution? As Nate Hagens said, an ancient antelope with oversized antlers went extinct recently. We have the ability to trim our own antlers. To, with the help of media and advertisers, make a cultural shift in terms of what we consider 'normal' behaviour. Normal consumption. Thrift is about to be thrust upon us, thrift is the new shift, thrift is the new vogue. Or death, starvation, die off and disease. It's your choice, and mine, together, even if we don't choose.

Argentina swine flu epidemic portentous for entire Southern Hemisphere

SHOOT: 1500 sickened, 26 dead, Argentina is the country with the highest rates of infections outside of Mexico and the USA. Argentina presents a scenario that is certain to be repeated throughout other Souythern Hemisphere countries - in Australia, the rest of South America and Southern Africa with its highly vulnerable rural poor, Aids and TB infected populations, particularly susceptible. Of course South African authorities, while doctors strike, continue to advise citizens to remain calm. Of course, in today's culture we have only two modes: complacency and panic. We're now in Complacency Mode. But not for much longer.

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk Argentina has confirmed more than 1,500 cases of swine flu, which is spreading during the southern hemisphere winter. They also said that school classes in the capital and three other regions would be cancelled from Monday, bringing forward winter holidays that had been due to start on 20 July. He also appealed for calm, saying that officials were doing everything possible to control the epidemic. Officials said that restaurants, cinemas and other public buildings would remain open. There has been much criticism that the government may have responded too late to stop the epidemic, our correspondent says. Argentina has had the third largest number of swine flu deaths in the world after Mexico and the United States.