Michael Jackson-Does Celebrity Worship Trump The Truth?

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Shed No Tears For This Twisted Sicko
by Linda Stasi

YOU'D have thought by the media lovefest that the pope had died a tragic death after a lifetime of caring for lepers.

But, no, it was the death of Michael Jackson, a drug-addled, creepy-beyond-words, accused pedophile who literally bought his children with the help of two brood mares and, apparently, his dermatologist -- a group of amoral savages who had no problem giving their kids to a man who looked like the Phantom of the Opera and who behaved like a depraved worm.

You can call it "adoption," but I call it child-trafficking.

OK, I said it -- and it's about time somebody had the nerve to say what millions of people must feel and believe about the once-talented black man who turned himself into a white woman before turning himself into a monster.

But you'd never know any of that if you'd listened for the past week to the endless prattle from the sickening, fawning media and all those Hollywood music phonies who were crying crocodile tears over someone they'd mostly avoided like, well, a pedophile.

Even the president of the United States felt compelled to issue a statement. Are you kidding me?

I say all this not just as some casual bystander to the Michael Jackson freak show -- though I was a Jacko freak back in 1993, when I was as in awe of him as the rest of the world. But then one day, a friend came to see me at my office at another newspaper and everything changed.

"My cousin's boy's been hijacked by Michael Jackson," he said. He pulled out two photos of the boy, Jordie Chandler, with Jackson. They were dressed alike -- in fedoras, little black suits, each wearing one freaking glove. They were on a roller-coaster -- in Europe.

Jordie's mother had remarried, and his stepfather had introduced her to Jackson. Within weeks, the sleepovers among Jackson and her gorgeous 13-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter began. The boy broke down and told his father that he'd been molested at Jackson's playground, Neverland Ranch, and in Europe.

The dad, a dentist-to-the-stars and screenwriter, contacted authorities, and shortly thereafter was jumped and beaten bloody in a garage. His home was broken into, and thugs menaced patients in his waiting room. The authorities told him it might be best if he and his son disappeared for a while. They settled for more than $20 million. The father took the boy underground, and he had plastic surgery and disguised himself for safety. Dental practice destroyed, screenwriting career over, family in tatters.

Jackson walked free -- or as free as a tortured soul can be -- to repeat over and over again his hideous tricks with children at Neverland, a place straight out of "Hansel and Gretel."

It is in this very spot where his family wanted to put on their grotesque public display of his sadly emaciated, needle-marked body, reportedly to be dressed "like a prince," as though he has become one of the garish statues upon which he loved to drop millions in Las Vegas hotel tchotchke shops. Another circus of the macabre to add to the horror that became Michael Jackson's life.

This is the kind of madness that's followed Jackson's death -- everyone is acting as though the world has lost one of its greatest men.

The King of Pop was a great entertainer -- innovative beyond anyone the world had ever seen -- but he turned into a disgustingly depraved man who hung an infant off a balcony and forced his kids to walk around with masks, veils, towels and even nets over their faces.

Great men don't pretend to be childlike to disguise their depravities. Shameful.

The king is dead, and I for one am not crying

NY Post, 7/2/09

The Myth of Obama Transparency? More Watch Dogs Fired

WATCHDOGS are an en dangered species in the Obama Age. The latest government ombudsman to get the muzzle: Amtrak Inspector General Fred Weiderhold.

The veteran employee was abruptly "retired" this month -- just as the government-subsidized rail service faces mounting complaints about its meddling in financial audits and probes.

Question the timing? Hell, yes.

On June 18, Weiderhold met with Amtrak officials to discuss the results of an independent report by the Washington law firm Willkie, Farr and Gallagher. The 94-page report has been made publicly available through the office of whistleblower-advocate Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). It concluded that the "independence and effectiveness" of the Amtrak inspector-general's office "are being substantially impaired" by the agency's Law Department.

Amtrak bosses have effectively gagged their budgetary watchdogs from communicating with Congress without pre-approval; required that all Amtrak documents be "pre-screened" (and in some cases redacted) before being turned over to the IG's office; and taken control of the IG's $5 million portion of federal stimulus spending.

Moreover, the report disclosed, Amtrak regularly retained outside law firms shielded from IG reach. In another case, Amtrak's Law Department appeared to meddle in an IG probe of an outside financial adviser suspected of inflating fees. The consultant ran to the Law Department when the IG demanded documents, and the Law Department repudiated the IG's instructions on complying with a subpoena.

These interventions (ongoing since 2007) have "systematically violated the letter and spirit of the Inspector General Act," according to Grassley. IG staffers now fear retaliation -- and with good reason. Their boss, Weiderhold, lost his job on the day Amtrak received the Willkie, Farr and Gallagher report. It may be hot and humid inside the Beltway, but every IG's office is feeling an Arctic chill.

The transparent sacking comes just as Amtrak is awash in more than $1.3 billion in federal stimulus money. It comes on the heels of the unceremonious dismissal of Gerald Walpin, the AmeriCorps IG who dared to probe financial shenanigans by Obama cronies. (See "Shoot the Watchdog -- A Coverup at AmeriCorps?," June 17.)

And it comes on the heels of the stifling of veteran Environmental Protection Agency employee Alan Carlin, the researcher who dared to question the administration's conventional wisdom on global warming. (See "Stifling Science To 'Fight Warming,' " June 26.)

Question the timing? Sure.

So, who is behind the railroading of the Amtrak inspector general? As with the story of the AmeriCorps firing, the Amtrak case smells like cronyism. Investigative journalist Robert Stacy McCain, who has watchdogged the watchdog stories, noted last week that Amtrak's vice president and general counsel is Eleanor Acheson.

Acheson, an old friend of Hillary Clinton, also has close ties to Vice President Joe "Mr. Amtrak" Biden. She hired Biden's nominations counsel Jonathan Meyer to serve as her deputy general counsel. The two had also worked together in the Clinton Justice Department.

Meyer called his hiring at Amtrak by Acheson a "happy coincidence," according to Legal Times. (In another "happy coincidence," Biden's lobbyist son, Hunter, sits on Amtrak's board.) Acheson oversees the Law Department accused of interfering repeatedly with the taxpayer advocates in the IG's office.

Grassley has requested that Amtrak supply information on Weiderhold's unexpected retirement, as well as internal and personal materials related to his departure and the report on Amtrak managers' meddling. On the House side, Reps. Edolphus Towns (D-NY) and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) announced a probe Monday into Amtrak's actions. They zeroed in on Amtrak's choice of Lorraine Green to replace the "retired" Weiderhold.

Who's Green? She's a former Amtrak human-resources executive and faithful Democrat donor with no experience in the IG business. Her expertise? Managing "diversity initiatives" for the agency.

Watchdog out. Lapdog in.

Michelle Malkin, NY Post, 7/1/09

Pakistan Nuclear Weapons At Risk

Taliban terrorists know where some of Pakistan's nuclear weapons are stored based on information from allies inside the country's national security forces.

A military source tells HUMAN EVENTS the Taliban and al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan's western frontier have ties to elements of the Pakistan army and Inter-Services Intelligence. The ISI helped put the Taliban in power in Afghanistan in 1996s. Its agents have helped it carry out attacks, including the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul.

It is through these contacts that the Taliban and its extremist allies know the locations of some nuclear warheads. Pakistan is believed to have about 60 atomic bomb and missile warheads. They are mostly kept around the capital of Islamabad, in districts where army control is at its tightest. Some missiles are mobile and are periodically moved to different locations.

A U.S. official downplayed the chances that Taliban or al Qaeda can steal nukes, saying Pakistan has effective controls. Any knowledge the terrorists have on the arsenal is not sufficient to allow them to gain access, the official asserted to HUMAN EVENTS.

But the military source said extremists have sources within Pakistan's nuclear security units. The real problem, the source said, is that if nuclear-armed India believes terrorists have access to those weapons, it could spark a new conflict between the two countries.

"Short-term our greatest threat is the Taliban gaining access to those weapons," the source said.

Alarm over the prospect of Islamic terrorists seizing nukes heighten this spring, as Taliban forces briefly controlled territory close to the Pakistan capital. Some experts saw the beginning of an Iran-style revolution, in which the government collapses under the weight of extremists outside and inside the army and intelligence service.

Since then, government forces have mounted a concerted counter-insurgency operation in the so-called ungoverned areas of Pakistan. Fears of a nuclear takeover waned for a while. And Obama administration officials have gone out of their way to assure the nation that Pakistan's nukes will not fall into the hands of Osama bin Laden.

But last week, Rep. John Murtha, a powerful force on national security issues in his role as chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense, said he did not share the administration's confidence.

In terms of international threats, the prospect of the Taliban-al Qaeda axis taking over Pakistan's nuclear arsenal "is absolutely what I look at and worry about the most," he told defense reporters, according to the Global Security Newswire.

Murtha said he has discussed the issue with Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and Adm. Michael Mullen, Joint Chiefs chairman, as well as Dennis Blair, director of national intelligence, and CIA Director Leon Panetta.

"We think we know where the weapons are," Murtha said. "I don't know that we know, but they think they know."

"One thing for sure, we've got to be prepared if it goes the wrong way, to [secure] those sites," Global Security quoted him as saying. "And we have contingency plans, obviously, to do that."

At a budget hearing on Capitol Hill, a lawmaker asked Mullen about contingency plans to secure Pakistan's nukes. He declined to answer.

At a May 19 Pentagon briefing, Gates' press secretary, Geoff Morrell, said, "We are comfortable with their security measures, and I'm sure that our planners take whatever requisite action is required to ensure that that the arsenal in a country that is obviously in the midst of a great deal -- that finds itself with a great deal of challenges right now that they have some visibility on where such weapons are located."

Three days before Murtha spoke, al Qaeda's No. 3, Mustafa Abul-Yazeed, told the al Jazeera news network his group would use Pakistan's nuclear weapons against the United States.

"By God's will, the Americans will not seize the Muslims nuclear weapons and we pray that Muslims will have these weapons and they will be used against the Americans," he told al Jazeera.

In his memoir, "At the Center of the Storm," former CIA Director George Tenet said al Qaeda has an intense interest in obtaining and using weapons of mass destruction.

"Our intelligence confirmed that the most senior leaders of al Qaeda are still singularly focused on acquiring WMD," he wrote. "Bin Laden may have provided the spiritual guidance to develop WMD, but the program was personally managed at the top by his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Moreover, we established beyond any reasonable doubt that al Qaeda had a clear intent to acquire chemical, biological and radiological/nuclear weapons, to possess not as a deterrent but to cause mass casualties in the United States."

How would the Taliban-al Qaeda alliance know the location of some Pakistan nukes?

For one, A. Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, was exporting the technology through an illicit network to help some of the world's worst dictators build such weapons. His operatives surely have some knowledge of the military arsenal and have contacts with extremists themselves.

What's more, HUMAN EVENTS reported last August that elements of Pakistan's army aide the extremists by providing them with weapons and training. Rogue army officers surely have some knowledge of their country's nuclear arms.

"Pakistani government and the military in particular are not monolithic," said a senior U.S. official told Human Events. "In some areas, there's very good counter-terrorism cooperation with us. In other areas, there is plenty of room for improvement. There are elements within the government and military that might have some links to militant groups in the region. That is a matter of concern."

The New York Times reported that members of Pakistan's spy agency helped militants who bombed the India embassy in Afghanistan. The Times said there are intercepts of Pakistani ISI agents speaking directly to the terrorists.

Rowan Scarborough, Human Events, 7/1/09