To get back on the forum subject - MJ in Court - I've been reading over the alleged evidence/rumours going around & I'm beginning to think he is not guilty.
I have my opinion on what type of person he is & some of the stories just don't ring true.
2 items in particular:
JESUS JUICE
I can't buy this. He is a very religous person & to call wine Jesus Juice just doesn't seem right. I can believe he might come up with some goofy name for wine but not jesus juice. He sounds like something made up to look bad but doesn't quite ring true. And why put it in a soda can? Why not a plastic cup & say its grape juice? Seems like a lotta work
PARADING AROUND NUDE & AROUSED
MJ doesn't strike me as the nudist type - he doesn't give the impression of being happy with his appearance enough to be comfortable doing this in front of children. This is a man with skin discolouration.

Of course I could be wrong & of course all this could be evidence that doesn't exist but it just smells hinky.

thedoorkeeper said:

Talk about smelling Hinky I wrote this a few days ago.

I said:

The Mother saw Michael Lick her sons head and did nothing. They were on a private plane with Chris Tucker, his girlfriend and others including the family. She continued to stay with him for months. He's charged with administering the juice on the plane. Is this believable? The entire famliy claims they saw this, the others on the plane didn't. All the people (who are calif.) who didn't see it are being called for the jackson defense.
[Edited 2/8/05 17:49pm]

When I look at the case I look at what the alleged victims claim.
The mother is a loose cannon who will probably not come across too great in court. A lot will rest on what the kids say. How credible they are.

thedoorkeeper said:

Do you know anything about the kids character? Everyone has said the kid was/is streetwise. He cursed out the dirctor Brett Ratner (Rush Hour 2) when the director asked him to get out of his chair. No matter what, this kid has been through hell and I pray that his life hasn't been permanantly damaged by his mother, michael, the police, the media or any money hungry lawyers.

In the interest of self-promotion...

http://www.popmatters.com...kson.shtml

IN DEFENSE OF MICHAEL
[9 February 2005]




by Josephine Zohny


I am a Michael Jackson fan. I have no qualms about it. I love his music, I love his dancing. Hell, I even love those gold, glittery shin guards he's so taken with wearing for special occasions. But I am a young fan -- by the time I knew who Michael Jackson was, it was the late eighties. He'd already been pegged as bizarre by the world press so virtually nothing that's gone on with him since then has shocked me. A lot of people born in the '80s grew up embracing that Michael Jackson, the one who has come to be synonymous with virtually everything stigmatizing and lurid. However strange, even that Michael Jackson was acceptable -- at least until the child-molestation accusations started coming out.

When the first scandal broke, it gave people a legitimate reason to dislike Michael Jackson, one a little meatier than weirdness. It gave an excuse to question his once unquestionable talent, though it's somewhat ludicrous to think that an immense talent like his would conveniently cease to exist exactly when public opinion shifted. The case in 1993 where he was sued for -- but never charged with -- sexually abusing a 13-year-old boy apparently gave the public permission to view him less as a human being and more like a lemming they delighted in watching hurl itself off a cliff. Michael Jackson's detractors say he has brought this derision on himself, but it was the media who chose to let the allegations define Michael Jackson, not his work. Michael Jackson didn't suddenly become irrelevant musically when accused.

Despite the fact his postThriller albums were large sellers and met with general critical acclaim at the time, received opinion today tends to extol the virtues of only Off the Wall and Thriller, crediting Quincy Jones's magic for their appeal. (Never mind that Jones was also involved in 1987's Bad.) What may have been the real catalyst for Jackson's "downfall" began to take shape in 1986, when Jackson acquired the ATV catalog, including the publishing rights to more than 150 Beatles songs, for a reported $47.5 million. Later he merged ATV with Sony's publishing catalog, creating a music-publishing business worth close to $1 billion. With these moves, Jackson became more than just a simple song-and-dance man. He became one of the most powerful men in the music industry.

Criticism was immediate. He "stole" the catalog from Paul McCartney. He desecrated the Beatles' precious songs by licensing them for commercials. Around this time, the epithet "Wacko Jacko" emerged. Were those same critics all over Sir Paul when he purchased the music-publishing rights of other artists? No, he was praised for his business acumen. But Michael Jackson's purchase of the ATV catalog marked one of the first times a black person (since Jackson's own mentor, Motown's Berry Gordy) became a force to be reckoned with in the music industry and, consequently, the business world.

And indeed, the catalog remains the crux of much speculation, with hopeful detractors constructing elaborate stories with Jackson teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, the loss of the precious catalog imminent: He borrowed $200 million from a Saudi prince to pay off his debts. He's going to lose the catalog. No, wait, he borrowed the $200 million from Sony. Wait -- they're denying it? Well, then, he borrowed it from Bank of America. Any day now, I swear to you, he'll lose the catalog. Sources? Of course I have my sources. Jackson's maid's former neighbor's uncle's cousin's second husband told me so.

Well, it's been eighteen years and Jackson still owns the catalog and yet this unfounded speculation persists. Does McCartney face the same speculation, even though the catalogs he owns include the work of many black artists? Of course not. McCartney lives lavishly without a raised eyebrow or a snicker about his financial savvy. But because Michael Jackson bought the Beatles, he has all the snickering Sams in their efficiency apartments eager for his financial ruin.

Why such different treatment of the two artists? Arguably, race comes into play. Jackson has been accused of playing the race card during this current situation, as well as during his very public falling out with former Sony Music chair, Tommy Mottola. It could be argued that those who scrutinize Jackson's business practices more exactingly than those of comparable whites, feel the need to undermine this particular defense. Media pundits and commentators -- everybody from the ladies of The View to Bill O'Reilly to Rolling Stone's resident "voice of all things black", Toure, tried to strip him of his professional accomplishments, and now they're attempting to strip him of his race. (though admittedly "Black Man" is now written prominently on his now famous mug shot).

If the media derision Jackson faces had no racial component, one would expect him to still earn his critical due from the mainstream, much the way other alleged pedophile Roman Polanski has been able to do. If it wasn't about race, Jackson's bail wouldn't have been set at $3 million while accused murderer Phil Spector's was set at a comparably paltry $1 million. Apologists for Santa Barbara County argue that bail was set in accordance to Jackson's wealth, to ensure that a significant proportion of his money would be at risk if he skipped town. But, wait -- isn't he supposed to be going broke? Make up your minds, already!

The fact is Michael Jackson's persona will always be inextricably connected to America's feelings about race: at best, color-blind transcendence, at worst, self-loathing. Because Jackson has been a star since childhood, society seems to believe that they own him, and when he overstepped the bounds of what society thought he should be in terms of power, they felt it was their duty to cut him back to size. The man who integrated MTV was loved when he merely sang and danced as society wanted him to, when he posed no threat, when he looked the way any non-threatening black man "should" look. In 1993, Michael Jackson was arguably the biggest international star in the world, reaching people of every color and creed, crushing sales records on a global level left and right with his hugely successful Dangerous tour and his internationally televised record-breaking interview with Oprah Winfrey and his philanthropic effort, the Heal the World foundation. But he was also markedly different looking than he was when the beloved Thriller album came out, and he was coming off the heels of signing his near-billion-dollar deal with Sony.

And then the first molestation allegations came out. But is the eerie loneliness demonstrated in "Stranger in Moscow" (from 1995's HIStory album) any less beautiful because it came after the first allegations? Are the intricately orchestrated minor-key strings and driving rhythm line in "Who Is It" (from 1991's Dangerous) not compelling and gut-wrenching because the song was recorded after Jackson's "descent into madness?" Is the funky deliciousness of "You Rock My World" (on 2001's Invincible) lost because the Michael who sang it bore only a slight physical resemblance to the man on the cover of Thriller? I, for one, can't buy that, but most of the public apparently has, since all of Jackson's musical efforts seem to be derided and ridiculed regardless of merit.

It may be that the idea of a black man, especially one who refuses to conform to virtually any societal norms and expectations, having such a profound effect is profoundly scary to some. In his 1997 song, "Is It Scary" Jackson promises "If you want to see eccentric oddities, I'll be grotesque before your eyes" and indeed, in that simple line Jackson made an important social comment -- in terms of public perception, he is whatever people want him to be. Perhaps subconsciously, Jackson's eccentricities were a way of saying "f--- you" to those he felt were boxing him into what the polite society deemed acceptable for a black man. But in destroying the restraints put upon him, these deviations from the norm -- his business ventures, his plastic-surgery transformations, his marriages to famous daughters of deceased pop icons -- also made the atmosphere ripe for anyone to believe just about anything about him. This in turn allowed the child molestation allegations (both past and present) to serve so readily as ammunition to destroy the dynasty that he began creating back when he was just a little boy in Gary, Indiana.

Now, following a grand jury indictment, Michael Jackson readies himself to stand trial on several counts of child molestation, administering an intoxicating agent, and conspiracy. It begins a process in which the whole world will find out more about Michael Jackson than it ever thought it would, and it will be very surprised, I suspect, regardless of its current opinions of him. If our system of jurisprudence is effective, then and only then will any of us know this particular truth about Michael Jackson. But iother truths will remain untouched. In the meantime, I'm not going to put away my copies of Dangerous and HIStory, and I'm not going to forget all that Michael Jackson has meant to so many people, not only in terms of his enormous talent, but also his ability to give of himself to help others with his equally enormous wealth and to break down racial barriers in the entertainment and business worlds. No matter the outcome of his journey through the judicial system -- and despite what many would have us believe -- he has always been and will always be more than just these charges.

When he bought the ATV catalog he gave little richard back his songs....race is completly involved in this whole matter...from the case to jackson himself. You can write well, self promote anytime.
[Edited 2/9/05 7:46am]

lilgish said:

Nope not really.
I know the mother is being painted as untrustworthy but the mother is not the one claiming she was molested.
Like I said before I find the story not ringing true.
I'm just tired of people tearing the mother apart & saying theres the proofthat MJ is innocent.
Don't tell me the mother hired a lawyer before going to the police therefore MJ is innocent.
Or the kid was rude to a director therefore MJ is innocent.
Or saying all this is because MJ bought the Beatles songbook.
At this point I believe the kids family is attempting to screw MJ & found a willing partner in the DA's department.
It will unltimately come down to will the jury believe the kid or MJ.
The attention needs to be focused on what the kid claims & I don't think a jury will fall for his testimony.

Pepina said:

A+

.
[Edited 2/9/05 10:34am]

Pepina said:

What really scares me is some people will read this
& accept every word of it as totally factual.

thedoorkeeper said:

Some, Probably other MJ fans

But i doubt anybody is going to believe its totally factual, because what fan would not defend their Idol,

Fans think he's a holy man...

but be honest this doesn't scare you, cause you don't care
you can admit it, i don't either...




Perjury can be easily made...
but your correct the whole case resides on what the child testifies...
that can make or break the case...

but you do understand, its hard to defend yourself by just saying the child is a liar

Since we do not wan't to harm the child...
we have to focus on the parent, who should've been aware of the goings on...
and if she is the mastermind, than you have to have her testify as well...
see its the family... not just the child...

Luv4oneanotha said:

What scares me is some peoples blind acceptance when reading something on the internet as factual. And I'm not talking exclusively MJ - its when rumours & gossip that evolve into facts on the internet that scare me particularly. This misinformation that is accepted so readily because it's on the internet. I read it on the internet therefore it must be true.
That does scare me.
Alright maybe scare is too strong - how about it alarms me.

Aww, I scare you. That's so cute.

DOORKEEPER

Please point out the untruths and inaccurate information in that opinion piece. I await your response.

Good stuff, Pepina

Alot of the information some MJ fans (including myself) have provided did not come from thin air, and it's definitely not new. If t.v. programs and newspapers decide not 2 report it, who will? There r 2 sides 2 every story, and the story's been one-sided 4 years.People still think the man sleeps in a hyperbaric chamber, so what does that tell anybody?

both
fingerprints
are
on
the
porn
DVDisc???

papaa said:

The whole MJ bought the Beatles songbook & that was a slap in the face to the white man & therefore MJ has be brought down & put in his place. Show me the evidence that this is true.
Give me a legitimate quote.
Prove this conspiracy with evidence.
Because if you believe that whole piece that is what is being said.

JC said:

it was a magazine, the evidence might be corrupted. not a mj site http://celebrityjustice.w...2/01b.html

Pepina said:

Oh its incredibly cute.- you should see it.
I get this ridge up my back & my tail stands straight up!

What The Fuck?

thedoorkeeper said:

Exactly it's the usual paranoiac BS that MJ's fans have been spreading for years , I'm sure that the "white man" doesn't give a f*** about the Beatles catalogue.
and that's not true?

Anybody else think Corey Feldman is a punk?

'Kidnapped' by Michael Jackson
Thursday, February 10, 2005
By Roger Friedman
Jacko 'Kidnap' Victims Lived It Up

Yesterday there were reports that Michael Jackson's band of "kidnappers" had held a mother and her three kids (two sons and a daughter) "hostage" at the Country Inn and Suites in Calabasas, Calif., in Feb. 2003.

Calabasas is a beautiful, verdant suburb of Los Angeles, replete with million-dollar homes and gated communities. It's not exactly a back alley in South Central.

Several weeks after their expulsion from Neverland and Jackson's world, the family (the one at the heart of the current Jackson child-molestation case) told a lawyer that the elder son, 13, had been molested by Jackson and that he had also held the family hostage.

Prosecutors may have trouble with this episode if they ask the mother or kids exactly what they did during their "hostage" ordeal.

I have seen receipts that show that the family had a telephone in their hotel room and used it constantly during their five-night stay.


They also went to at least one movie at the Calabasas Edwards Cineplex 6, ate ice cream at a Cold Stone Creamery and had several meals at an Outback Steak House.

They walked to all these places, during which time any of the four family members could have asked for help if they were in trouble.

"The mother loved Outback and wanted to eat there all the time," my source says.

She also patronized Anchor Blue (a chain store) and shopped almost continuously at stores such as Robinson-May, Banana Republic, Wilson's Leather and Pacific Sunwear.

She may have also scored a hostage-drama first when she got a manicure and pedicure for herself and her teenage daughter (total cost: $51) before dining at Panda Express.

The Calabasas Country Inn adventure took place between Feb. 25 and March 2, 2003, far from Neverland and Michael Jackson.

This would certainly cut almost a week out of District Attorney Tom Sneddon's timeline, which has Jackson allegedly molesting the then-13-year-old boy between Feb. 20 and March 10 of that year.

Why did the family go to Calabasas in the first place?

After the boys were featured in the Martin Bashir documentary "Living With Michael Jackson," the family experienced a firestorm of bad publicity.

For two weeks the foursome stayed with Jackson behind the gates of Neverland, safely away from prying eyes. During that time, the mother evidently quarreled with Jackson's then-manager Dieter Wiesner.

She was incensed that her kids were featured in the Bashir piece without her signing a release, and angry that they were never paid for it. She wanted some kind of remuneration.

She told Jackson she wanted him to buy her an apartment in Solvang, which is near Neverland and far from the grubby East Los Angeles flat the family had abandoned.

But Jackson had a different idea.

My source says that he preferred to have the whole family leave, and asked his videographer Marc Schaffel to take the mother hunting for apartments closer to L.A.

Schaffel, who still has never met the mother or the children, assigned Frank Tyson and Vincent Amen, two slightly built and amiable 22-year-olds, to chauffeur them around and buy them whatever they needed.

(As far as anyone knows, no complaint or accusation has been filed alleging that either of these men carried a weapon of any kind — just a charge card.)

According to the meticulous receipts kept during the adventure, most of the week was spent outside the hotel.

The receipts show the group moved constantly during the day, and that real-estate hunting was mixed with eating and shopping, activities not generally associated with kidnapping.

But even confinement wouldn't have been so bad. Room 300 of the Country Inn, where the family stayed, is a duplex with two bedrooms, a loft and a kitchen. It also had a big-screen TV, on which family members watched three pay-for-view movies.

While there, the mother made more than a dozen calls to her children's school, five to her parents and others to her boyfriend (a U.S. Army major who worked in Westwood, about 30 minutes away).

They were not short calls, either. Several of them — all to the L.A. area — cost $24 or more, with one hitting the $46 mark.

Presumably, if the mother had mentioned that she and the children were being held hostage or against their will, someone might have alerted the authorities.

The family's schedule was a tight one during their "kidnapping."

On the afternoon of March 1, for example, the day consisted of a meal at 4 p.m. at Johnny Rockets ($33), followed by a 5:14 p.m. stop at Anchor Blue to buy knit tops (two for $24).

Later, a 5:55 p.m. snack stop at the Topanga Canyon Mall (coffee, water, Snapple) was followed by a 6:40 p.m. appearance at Baskin-Robbins ($9).

And at 7 p.m., the mother and her kids took in the movie "Old School" at the theater across from the hotel, racking up $32 in concessions. They topped the night off with another visit to Johnny Rockets ($26).

Jackson’s lawyers will try to portray him as trying to relocate the family to be rid of them, paying through the nose all the way. How else to explain a $415 charge at Banana Republic on Feb. 26, the same day the mother also spent $454 on Jockey underwear and $450 at the Jeans Outlet?

On that night, the family also managed to dine for $175 at the Black Angus Restaurant in Woodland Hills, before they were "forced" in a "conspiracy" to return to their plush digs.

The family — which at the time had made no allegations against Jackson and considered him their friend and "daddy" — was brought to Calabasas for a few days to do errands in Los Angeles.

The charges were made to a credit card belonging to Schaffel, and are clearly evidenced on credit-card bills, which may be significant.

"It's not like they used cash for a stealth mission," my source continued.

The family had two missions during its stay in the Los Angeles area. One was apartment hunting. The other was procuring passports for a trip to Brazil.

The prosecution will probably claim in its case that Schaffel and his team were going to spirit the family to Brazil to keep them there against their will.

But my sources say the family was keen to go on a short vacation out of the country, where the mother would be far from journalists' questions about the Bashir documentary, and that the mother could have easily vetoed the trip by simply saying no.

And her boyfriend (who is now her husband) could have called the police if he thought something was wrong. He did not.

Apparently, once they got to the passport office, the mother cut a long line, declaring, "Don't you know who we are? We're friends of Michael Jackson!"
http://www.foxnews.com/st...48,00.html

SpcMs said:

So, Is this book in question legal or illegal?

Wasn't the book shot during the 1963 shooting of "Lord of the Flies."?

I can't even look at photos like that, something just "screams creepy" to me
[Edited 2/10/05 12:12pm]
[Edited 2/10/05 12:17pm]

Roger Friedman is one of Jackson's biggest skeptic...
Before the investigation he use to call Jackson a Child Molester every chance he got?

And now he's siding with him????
F*ck he must have a hell of a list of sources!!!!

but beside that major point

wtf I WANNA BE KIDKNAPPED BY MICHAEL JACKSON!!!!
shyt thats a vacation for me!

makes a lot of sense now?

Jackson kicks you out of Neverland than you come up with the allegations...
Christ...

TheOrgerFormerlyKnownAs said:

He sure looks like one.

Yeah, right, that's only why the media has been preoccupied with his ownership of the catalog since he purchased it.

Pepina said:

Please please please tell us who it is that has been conspiring all these years to bring MJ down so they can get their hands on the Beatles songbook.
Is it the Sony Corp.???
If we are to believe the media reports than it is Sony that is itching to get its hands on that hot property.
But Sony is a japanese corp. & I thought it was the evil faceless white powers-that-be in the USA financial world that have been plotting against MJ?
I thought this was all about Paul McCartney?
You mean its really all about Yoko???
So whats going on is the evil white fininacial American kingpins have aligned with the greedy Japanese warlords and are using the DA's department like a puppet to do their bidding & bring about the destruction of MJ.
Its so clear to me now.

slm4m said:

The book is perfectly legal - it contains less nudity then your average day at the beach - or renaissance painting - , and any 'eroticism' is purely in the eye of the beholder.
Since the book was the biggest 'smoking gun' they got from raiding Neverland in '93 (which wasn't very much to begin with), the judge in the present case didn't allow any of the evidence seized in the '93 raids, including this book.

Oh shut the fuck up. Nobody is saying that it's an evil conspiracy to take the catalog from MJ perpetrated by "the man." Inherent in my argument, and what you seem to miss because you're so fucking jaded, is that the fact of the matter is that the people who control the media, by and large...for whatever reason...have focused on MJ owning the catalog as one of the major ways to discredit him. In the 80s, it was to say that he had no respect for the great Beatles and since he merged it with Sony in 1995, they've used speculation surrounding it to downplay his success (at least fiscally). I suggested that there was a racial motive and provided evidence as to why I thought that was the case. I never asked anybody to accept it as the gospel - it is an op/ed piece and doesn't pretend to be anything else, so instead of unleashing such venom at me, your sentiment would probably be better served attacking those in the so-called objective media who are anything but that.