Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Michael Jackson Death Viewed as Homicide


The pertinent issue with Michael Jackson's death is, why was a drug like propofol being made available to him outside a hospital setting? Is Dr. Conrad Murray licensed to practice in the United States? Did he understand the U.S. has rules and regulations - I.E. LAWS, in regard to the use of propofol outside a clinical setting? - O.M.

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Michael Jackson Death Viewed as Homicide




Michael Jackson Death Viewed as Homicide

By Greg Flakus Houston
25 August 2009
The death of pop-singer Michael Jackson has become the focus of a murder investigation, although no charges have been filed against the main suspect, the entertainer's personal physician, Houston-based Dr. Conrad Murray. Investigators say Dr. Murray administered a lethal combination of drugs to Jackson in an attempt to overcome the performer's chronic insomnia.

A search warrant affidavit unsealed in Houston shows the mix of sedatives in Michael Jackson's body at the time of his death was a lethal dose. According to a Los Angeles coroner's investigation, none of the drugs alone would have caused death in the amounts administered, but the combination did.


Since these drugs were administered to the 50-year-old pop singer by his physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, he could be charged with involuntary manslaughter. The Los Angeles Coroner's office has not issued an official report yet, and the document containing the information about the investigation was released by error Monday in Houston.


Although he has not commented on the report, Dr. Murray has professed his innocence since he first came under suspicion. In a message posted on YouTube last week, he told friends not to worry about him.


"I have done all I could do," he said. "I told the truth and I have faith the truth will prevail."

Agents of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration raided Dr. Murray's Houston clinic and storage facility last month looking for evidence, but no charges have been filed against him.


His Houston attorney, Ed Chertoff, says some of the information in the search warrant affidavit is misleading. While he says much of the information is factual, he called other parts "police theory."

Anesthesiologists say most of the drugs and doses Dr. Murray administered to Michael Jackson over the several hour period leading up to his death were not dangerous alone, but may have been in combination. Jackson was suffering from insomnia and was begging the doctor to give him something to make him sleep.


Among the drugs Dr. Murray gave the pop star were Valium and Ativan and Versed. But Jackson remained awake and pleaded for a dose of what he called his "milk", a drug called propofol, which is often used in hospitals to induce unconsciousness.


Experts say the propofol dose reportedly given by the doctor would be considered very low, but they say it may have been too much on top of the mix of other drugs already in his system. Anesthesiologists say it is unusual to use this drug to treat insomnia.

According to the report, Dr. Murray said he had been treating Jackson with propofol on a nightly basis for some time and then stopped out of fear that the pop star was becoming addicted. He then started using the other drugs to wean Jackson off propofol and they worked well for at least two nights.


In the hours before Jackson died, Dr. Murray says he administered five separate doses of sedatives over a six-hour period and finally gave Jackson the small dose of propofol, which succeeded in putting him to sleep.


He says he monitored his patient closely for 10 minutes and all was normal when he left to go to the bathroom. When he returned he found that Jackson was no longer breathing. He says he tried unsuccessfully to revive him before paramedics arrived and took Jackson to UCLA Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead on the morning of June 25.

Monday, August 10, 2009

Prince of Pop, King of Pop

Yowza!
In the 1980's? "Pop" artist Andy Warhol was dubbed
The Prince of Pop

To experiment with make-up, wigs and cross-dressing
was considered not only an art-form in progress,
it was "kinky".
"I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They're so beautiful.
Everything's plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic." - Andy Warhol

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Then Came
The King of Pop...



A work of "art" in progress?
"I never had my cheekbones done, never had my eyes done,
never had my lips done... But, I'm never pleased with anything.
I try not to look in the mirror." - Michael Jackson, 1993

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Michael Jackson: There's Anger in Dangerous

A review of Michael Jackson's Dangerous, the Short Films, 1993
by Orandon Marie


Illustration by Mark Rydon

At first watch, this DVD is a little confusing. Packed with more of Jackson's shameless self-promotion, it made me wonder why that was needed? Because in this set of songs, Jackson is talking about being a victim, and showing victims of prejudice. Now I think Jackson took so much crap from the public and media during his career, he had to learn how to promote his own work and efforts to overcome it and continue to be the success he was, and is. (His own campaigning reminds me a little of President Obama's campaign efforts, if the truth be known.)


The flip-side of this DVD is that it shows how the videos were made, some behind the scenes fun. Some of this is self-promotion again; some of it is MJ giving you a glimpse into his world.

I was a little thrown-off by the carnivalesque imagery with Dangerous; however there is some great symbolism here, much of it corresponding to ancient Egypt... Interested?


There is a hand of stone (from the taped-up fingers we can see it belongs to MJ, however, the fingers of mummies in Egypt were taped in the same manner). The hand is paralyzed, and holding a young girl in it's palm. This represents the inner child as female, paralyzed; she is holding the skull of a crocodile. The Egyptian Crocodile God represents death.

She is standing at the gates of death and rebirth, where you see the un-evolved animal spirit entering the tunnel of the astral planes, and coming out the other side, reborn.

I had to sit with the images on the album cover for awhile before I could appreciate the imagery in the DVD. In the DVD you will see some bits that seem to be much like Alice Through the Looking Glass, only this time it's Michael Jackson chasing after the Red Queen, singing, "Why You Wanna Trip On Me?"

The Eye of Horus, rich and green, appears occasionally inside a pyramid; the Eye of Horus was used for protection and as a symbol of medicine in ancient Egyptian times.

Some of the imagery is also corresponding to the innate wisdom of being young. One has to keep in mind that even at an early age, Michael Jackson was world-traveled and someone who witnessed a lot of what was going on with our planet and us, as human beings.


Black or White opens the set. At the beginning it shows, perhaps, rebellion is a healthy way to get free of some things that keep us down... Even inviting us to look at the rebellious spirit of children, in order to understand our own pain and hopelessness (thus the dark dancing sequence of Michael's at the end). Why was this video so controversial for the media? Reporters were concerned about it's sexual and angry impact on young children.

Are we a little higher in our intelligence than animals? That might be a question to ask when watching the morphing sequences of human faces. At the end of the video, MJ states "prejudice is ignorance". What is the difference between stupidity (like a kooky Simpson's cartoon) and ignorance?

Stupidity does not have access to information and tools - like music, languages, the arts. Stupidity is like living in the dark because one doesn't know how to use a light-switch. Ignorance refuses to gain access to those tools; in it's stubbornness and need to be "right", ignorance becomes a form of prejudice. I think MJ is also asking, how much of our ignorance is projected on us by the media?


Super-Bowl Heal the World - I thought these pieces were very emotional, colorful and powerful, especially with the participation of the children (many who are in their 30's by now). Love it!

Remember the Time - just a fun song and dance number with Egyptian themes and fantasy, like a magical dream or reminiscing about the possibilities of past lives.

Will You Be There - another very powerful performance, with more footage from the Super Bowl gathering. A prayerful song for the spirit of the child, Jackson is saying many go to war and act-out with righteousness because they were wounded as children. He would be one to know!

In The Closet - erotic and frustrating; MJ comes across a sort of dancing Pinocchio when it comes to actualizing his desires in real life. Better to have a super-model do that for him?

Gone Too Soon - with an intro and montages featuring a young boy talking about discrimination, someone who died from AIDS, this one is dedicated to sick and orphaned children, and children with AIDS.

Jam - Jam is basically saying life is very confusing, like a game; we've got to learn how to take advantage of every day of our lives, because life is short. Featuring artists of the time - Kris-Kross and Heavy D, I love the beat with the jingling bells, interspersed with more kids dancing, playing and jumping rope (as if it is the children that keep life going here).

Heal The World - seeing this performed live brings tears to my eyes. It was important to Jackson to make videos, he said, because these would outlast the actual concert performances, leaving images behind which would stay with people's minds. Once you see this video, you will want to learn the song and sing it to a few people you care about (and even some you dislike).

Give In To Me - interesting rock performance piece. Jackson was multi-talented, and did some scat-singing in this video which reminded me a lot of George Benson's approach to rockin'. Give In To Me, and not to the ignorance out there; give in to the testimony of my life and what I have lived through, and learn from it. Let my life be a tool, a source of information that will help and prevent others from living in stupidity, and by their hard experiences.

Michael Jackson... His inner "world" is in turmoil, turned upside-down.
Sets are interspersed in here with a video montage of Jackson sitting at the piano, playing and singing to himself "I'll Be There", with footage of himself from childhood, harmonizing. Just lovely!

Who Is It - another romantic piece about loss and betrayal; slick filming; seems more personal and autobiographical.

Dangerous & Why You Wanna Trip On Me? - The energy of the two pieces as they blend into to one another seem to say, instead of looking for what's good and what's right, why do we tend to look for trouble?

Our natural curiosity as children are lost in hopelessness and cynicism. That's the real danger, is it not?

Monday, July 27, 2009

Michael Jackson: Buried Alive

The world has much to learn
from the life and the death of Michael Jackson..
.



I feel he was officially buried alive by Martin Bashir in 2003 (via a karmic agreement between the two). Both men went into these series of televised interviews knowingly, and both were dancing around each other trying to get at the truth. The interviews continue to be controversial because Bashir reached a point where he felt he had to become confrontational with Jackson, believing he was not getting the truth. Certainly, he was getting mixed messages from Jackson (in the same way the public was). But the end result of the interviews were that Michael became defensive and felt victimized by not being accepted at face-value. And it was how these interviews played out in public that buried Michael Jackson (and his career) alive.

Michael, like the rest of his family, was a shameless self-promoter and went to great lengths to present a certain kind of image of himself to the public. Unfortunately, over the last 20 years, Michael was also dealing with severe drug problems, which deterred his abilities to differentiate between public relations, the truth, and reality.



Michael Jackson did all he had come here to do.

He was done with this earth plane. His spiritual legacy is to teach those of us who loved him how to understand the deep oppression of what shaming and blaming does to our lives and the lives of others. Perhaps in the time of our President, Barack Obama, we will learn how to get beyond such patterns of personal blame and shame through the audacity of HOPE? That's my prayer.

Perhaps it was hope that kept Michael Jackson going for as long as he did - but he didn't find it, necessarily, in other people, and especially not in adults.



He was black, he was gifted,
he was abused and molested as a child; he was gay.

No one ever helped him to deal with this shadow, which took over his life.


Online reports say his father managed him by brutally kicking his son right where it counted - in his testicles. For this reason, some reports online are stating Michael was sterile and couldn't have kids. Michael was emasculated and oppressed by such actions by his father from an early age; he was groomed to lie to the public, especially about his sexuality. When asked as a young man by a reporter if he was gay, Michael requested that all recording machines be turned off. His answer was that he didn't want anything to go on record, that he didn't wish to say he wasn't gay, because he knew he had many gay fans. (I believe this was reported in a televised interview with Smokey Robinson.)

He was groomed to believe he was entitled to have riches, to spend money however he wanted. He began groping himself in public in his videos around the age of 27, with the BAD album. When kids came to Neverland, they wanted to dress like him and dance like him. He taught them how to Moondance, but might have also goofed around with kids and taught them it was "okay" to feel and touch themselves the way he did in videos. And who knows what went on behind closed doors? His rationale as an adult was inappropriate and questionable. For sure, Jackson's shadow-self and his acting-out against everything his father represented created repercussions in his personal life for the worst.

Certainly, if you check out the records on Michael Jackson
, the reports are out there (google "smoking gun" and "Michael Jackson" for those pages). Investigators said the two court cases were singled out of many complaints from parents who felt they could do nothing but remove their kids from Jackson's circle.

He had controversial marriages; he had babies by fertilization; he had multiple alterations done to his face and body. Some believe he began to butcher his own face out of his hatred towards his father, who he resembled from the time he was little.

Michael Jackson was not able to look at himself in a mirror during the last 10 years of his life; that's how acute the pain of his shadow had become. He was like Peter Pan in that he had no control over it, or over himself. In the interview with Bashir he said just the thought of his father was enough to make him vomit.


Michael was anorexic and had a bulemic disorder. He used drugs and lied about it; he gave alcohol to children (as per reports shown on the smoking gun pages); his every act was a cry for help! And all of this was of his own choosing, because in his adult years he refused to get the right help.

It seems, too, the public and the law holds different standards for people like him and his family, because they are money.

Perhaps the public will come to learn from his life that we all have CHOICES in how we conduct our lives and ourselves.



God Bless Him

Ignorance does terrible things to people. We live in an age where there is no excuse for it; and even in wishing for hopeful outcomes for others, it is possible to imply that still, we all live with freedom of choice. But we have to strive for it, and be proactive about not allowing the shadows and the darkness in our lives to get the best of who we are, and who we will become.

Monday, July 6, 2009

Michael Jackson Personal Memorials

These are photos of spontaneous memorials set up for Michael Jackson last week, across the planet. Out of 187 photos posted on LA Times online, I chose these for my page... I have photoshopped these pics to enhance them.




This little heart appeared on plot at UCLA Medical Center,
once fans heard of Michael's death.
The fragrance of the rose is healing to all hearts.






UCLA fan carries a poster of Michael across campus...
Michael's spirit will continue to need many prayers
as he passes through the bardos of this lifetime,
searching for God's Light - may he be there.




Personal Message to Michael, I think this is in California...
(We all know, human beings can be very cruel.
We all know we need to work on our skills
to have better relationships.)






In Pakistan, a prayer altar...
May out prayers lift and guide the spirit into light.




Newspaper collection the next day...
Should anyone be surprised?






Red Rose for Michael...






Blue Rose for Michael...








A Jackson Fan in Milan, Italy
To cleanse ourselves with tears
is to allow more room in our hearts
for love; and indeed, tears
are a signal that love has touched us.






Altar for Jackson in Lima, Peru...
The Journey into the Light is long and arduous.




A vigil altar for Michael Jackson, in India
May you be remembered and recognized
in your perfection;
for God does not make mistakes.




Mourning Fans at the Eifel Tower, France
All pain is a revolution.



Young Chinese Boys honoring Michael at a gathering...

Sunday, July 5, 2009

On Michael Jackson and Child Abuse




On Michael Jackson and Child Abuse
by Orandon Marie
This article is written by me and published for Jamie, c) 2009

Many adults in my generation have come from families where there was child abuse. And we're aware how many of our parents from the previous generation were also abused in childhood. For some, this may have come in the form of spankings and beatings; while others may have had to deal with sexual abuse, and others still have had to endure both.

People never really talked about these problems in the '60's and '70's. Yet as kids we'd witness children coming into grade school with dirty hair and clothing, nerve-ridden, and generally shaken from neglect or abuse. There are no other words for it - when someone is hurting, something is going on at a very deep level. Children are basically innocent creatures. I believe they are real victims in this world when they are not cherished and loved.

In the early '80's, a film was made based on a book by Christina Crawford, called "Mommy Dearest". Today it is considered to be a cult movie. Back then, the topic was controversial and shocking. It is a story about the famous Hollywood actress, Joan Crawford, and her relationship with her children. Christina was Joan Crawford's adopted child. She wrote about her mother's mood-swings and the severe beatings she and her brother got as kids. She opened the topic up to the general public, shocking people into the realization that we, too, had our stories... Which continue to haunt us and shape up in every-day life.

You see, the problem with child abuse is that it stays with a person's soul.



Memories from childhood can take a person back within just a few minutes... To a place where there is no time. Or things felt in childhood actually become timeless; yet because we still remember, we still tend to hold onto the pain in an effort to try to understand it and clear it. Neurology is showing how we do this physically, gripping our bodies. Being hit and slapped, punched and kicked - thrown into walls, throttled and yelled at... Called names and belittled - these things are purely done for dominance and control. There is no other real purpose, except to intimidate a child as if he or she were an animal. Or worse.

If child abuse is a consistent factor in a young person's life, chances are the abuser does not see the child as a person, but as a thing.

During the '90's and into 2000 and beyond, psychologists and social workers have been educating the public on the need for healthy boundaries. Personal boundaries begin early in childhood, with doing things like teaching kids to say "please" and "thank you".

Somehow I notice there seems to be a generation who apologizes for their very existence with a constant "sorry". Sorry...? For bumping into you; sorry for need to walk past you; sorry for tripping and getting in your way; sorry that my existence affects you? has an impact on you? I wonder if "sorry" is good enough? "Excuse" or "pardon" is sufficient. What is "sorry"? How can I make things better? How can I make difference? These are all variations of the same social skills so many people lack... Is it because of a background of wounding and pain?

Many are easy to take offense, or are thoughtless and accident-prone. It's because they are not in their bodies; they are spaced-out.

The reason for this is: a person can disown the child-self, or their inner child. Perhaps, through abuse, the inner-child energy is just "floating" around the body
but not in the body. It's "sorry".

Are we timeless? While the rest of our being is functioning in time, there are aspects of ourselves that are working to try to understand things in other dimensions. Those aspects would be our souls, or the child-self, and our Higher Power, the spirit. Indeed? Our brains are the last organism of the body to compute what's going on.

The child-self is timeless, able to remember things all from the past, including past lifetimes. The child-self has an understanding of about a 3-5 year old. Talking to the child-self out loud with affirmations is one way to bring in some healing. (A great website: vital affirmations.com) Affirmations are like prayers, helping us to bring the child-self back into our bodies, allowing us to learn how to choose, make choices, have fun. The child part of ourselves needs to feel a connection with Higher Power.

I think Michael Jackson was able to find that in music.
In this way he could keep a connection
which will sustain his spirit for many years to come.


Michael Jackson, in March of this year - 5'11", 112 lbs, in his pajamas.


I think no matter what, Michael Jackson was dying. For one thing, he had entirely lost his appetite. He was 5" 11', and weighed at 112 lbs; he was starving his heart. (Please check out my heart blog: helpourheartsjesus.blogspot.com) The heart needs sustenance in order to live. Many people who have childhood abuse issues can be anorexic or bulimic. However if a person is also addicted to opiates, this will suppress the appetite. Michael Jackson reached a point in his existence where he chose to shut down his brain. That's what these drugs do.

Michael could not seem to differentiate between his feelings and the feelings of children. His boundaries were confused. He may have been able to feel the pain of others in a sort of psychic way... However, abused people cannot separate themselves from others - they tend to take on the pain of others and make it their own. This is why people need to get professional help.

If they are not being honest with themselves about the things going on in their lives, they will have out-of-body experiences, be spaced out, act severely self-conscious and inhibited and shy.

Professional psychological help can assist a person to learn how to speak in terms of self and other, not "we", and not put things in general terms in regard to
force-teaming with others. Patients can become overtly dependent on their doctors; they may have trouble separating themselves from their need to have the doctor. Telling the truth to the doctor is one way to establish a link of trust, something very few patients of abuse have in their lives.

Telling the truth is a key, both in personal and public lives. In this process the person can begin to establish integrity in his or her life. We deserve to be with people who are calm, gentle and loving. We deserve to give that to ourselves as well.


Michael allegedly left more music behind...


Michael Jackson spent the last few years of his life doing endless self-promotion, as everything was being ripped away from him. He had turn to the Muslim community for help and financial assistance. He had to leave the U.S. Apparently he continued to write songs. He has allegedly left as part of his legacy a collection, approximately 200 songs on record in his studio.