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This is what he meant when he said…
“I’m starting with the man in the mirror
I’m asking him to change his ways…”
“Who am I to be blind
pretending not to see their need?”
The world can come to an end if you step up to help it die.
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Teach Your Children Well
Their Father’s Hell will Slowly go By….
~ Crosby Stills and Nash
“Why do Mr. Khrushchev and the Russian people hate me so much; they don’t even know me?”
What kind of a world does that to a youngster? A toxic one. If that’s not child abuse, I don’t know what is. It also fits the definition of global “bullying.” The world bullied a whole generation of children and they later fought back by demanding some kind of sanity
“Why are kids committing suicide?” in culture and social order. That same irony is encountered when adults ask:
“Why are these kids bullying each other?” “
Where do they get these ideas?”
Where? Look around you.
Every time you take your child to the supermarket, you expose him to a gauntlet of bullying—a display placed perfectly at child’s eyelevel that showcases and demonstrates effectively how to bully people by publicly, and with enthusiasm and glee, making fun of their vulnerabilities and imperfections. You demonstrate to her that the world demands impossible standards and perfection while at the same time ridiculing those who don’t measure up. You sanction capitalizing on morbid curiosity, envy, and feeding the shadow side of human nature—all with your silence. Silence in the face of bullying in words and images, and particularly publishing it in the public domain, and promoting it to a wide audience is… well… permission.
Can you count how many times have you escorted your child through this gauntlet that hardens the heart, bypasses values and distorts any humanity or compassion in the mind of its observers? If you shop for groceries once a week, by the time your child is ten, he will have negotiated this passageway of bullying more than 500 times. How many trips through this tunnel of human of horror do you think it takes to condition a young mind to verbal and literary violence? Your silence sanctions bullying and instills values that find bulling is permissible and even acceptable. And profitable because it’s OK to gain from or make money off the missteps or misfortune of others”—some of those ‘others’ include the world’s most prolific artists.
Yet we wonder how young people can be so cruel as to bully other students by posting publicly humiliating materials on Facebook and Twitter? We condemn and penalize them for uploading YouTub
e videos that humiliate their peers? We condone it so why shouldn’t they? Often that is what Facebook becomes—a platform for cruelty. That is what Twitter can do in real time. And cutting and heartless comments can be found on articles, websites and YouTube.
Take a close look at the adult world. What bullying do you see adults engaging in? What do you see them role-modeling to youth who are watching and assimilating this whole ecosystem? The toxic list is long: the abysmal lack of environmental stewardship; exploitation of the Indigenous; mismanagement of land, oceans, water, air; the greedy hoarding of earth’s resources that principally belong to all by those who wish to exploit them as commodities and commerce; the skewed, manipulated and exploited economy; climate change; artificial agriculture and food production; political indifference; the abuse of power and influence; the mistreatment of animals—domestic and agricultural; land grabs and mismanagement; the collective psychic disconnection and denial of responsibility; the moral vacuum in business and commerce; racism; double standards; the widening spiritual vacuum; the abuse from authority figures and law enforcement; the trampling of human and civil rights; slavery; conflict; gentrification; genocide; war…
Look at the most popular Western Culture television shows. Prime Time TV is filled with reality shows that promote separation and survival accompanied by some kind of verbal or physical violence that exploits people for “entertainment” value. Even the popular shows that are supposed to be about law and justice, reciprocity and teach responsibility for one’s actions, feature judges who ridicule and bully the litigants in their filmed courtroom dramas. Consider the “tribal” shows that foster divisiveness and applaud conspiracy and cunning in the marginalization and banishment of someone from the “tribe.”
The real tribal elders encouraged community and cooperation and used banishment only as a last resort because it was a sure death sentence to expel someone from the tribe. It’s become a post-modern epidemic and is now standard fare.
Children perceive that adults are “in charge of the world” and those adults are their role models. They look to adults to learn from.
Children don’t emulate what you say; they mirror what you do.
‘The tribe has spoken’ and the children are watching.
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(Reprinted from the 4th Edition of “Words and Violence”)
– See more at: http://voiceseducation.org/node/7869#sthash.dXn0906X.dpuf
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What do you think can be done about this? Your comments are welcome.
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Original Article: http://voiceseducation.org/node/7894
The words “Silent Spring” conjure up an abysmal image—after the dark and cold months of winter, a pseudo spring erupts with a silent wind carrying no sound of songbirds, no chorus of frogs, no chirping of crickets, no bees to pollinate flowers and so no flowers or food… and no… life.
The Seventies
In the seventies David Suzuki hosts a television series titled “The Nature of Things,” which examines the relationship of humans to the natural world; Earth Day is founded, the U.S. institutes the Environmental Protection Agency, Aldo Leopold publishes the Sand County Almanac; Greenpeace is organized; the Club of Rome, the United Nations and other agencies start holding environmental conferences all over the world beginning with Stockholm, Sweden; clean air and water and endangered species acts take form; three mile island nuclear plant has an accident spilling radiation into the atmosphere; and several major oil spills occur. These events are grouped under the heading “Conservation.” The most significant message about the vulnerability of the environment comes in a surprising package from an unlikely source: NASA releases photo AS 17-148-22727 nicknamed the “Blue Marble.” For the first time humanity views the whole of Earth as a beautiful and breathtaking island when it is looked back upon from space. The iconic photo drives home the idea that this is a self-contained and finite planet we are inhabiting with no dividing lines that separate one form of humanity from any other. The crack in consciousness gets wider.
The Eighties
The environmental movement heats up in the 1980s and the war of the woods begins in earnest: Greenpeace’s flagship Rainbow Warrior is destroyed in a French black ops mission as she is leaving port to protest France’s nuclear test; the ozone hole is discovered; there are chemical leaks and oil disasters including Exon Valdez and Bhopal, and Chernobyl—the largest nuclear meltdown disaster in history; environmental protection networks begin to spring up to guard the Rainforests, Oceans, Wetlands, and Rivers; world reports on the environmental state of affairs begin emerging including the first report cautioning about climate change. But in 1988 something truly remarkable happens- Time Magazine features, instead of their traditional person of the year, the “Planet of the Year” with a drop-line and feature article asking: “What in the World Are We Doing?
”The Nineties
The 90s marked a decade of research, education and accords, summits, conferences, congresses, protocols and the world begins instituting measures to clean up its act just as the planet’s population reaches 6 billion—having doubled since the first alarm sounded in the sixties.
The Twenty First Century
The first decade of the 21st century begins with the U.S. President George W. Bush rejecting the Koyoto Protocols and boycotting the United Nations Earth Summit in Johannesburg; the decade is marked by hurricanes including Hurricane Katrina in the U.S., earthquakes, floods, and tsunamis; in the United States, the FBI initiates “Operation Backfire” which begins surveillance and collects a list of animal activists and environmentalists whose activism is considered domestic terrorism and labels them “eco-terrorists;” Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore releases the film “An Inconvenient Truth,” a documentary about climate change and the damage done to earth’s environment which stuns a population and becomes one of the largest grossing documentaries in the world with tens of thousands of activists worldwide volunteer to show the film to audiences. It wins numerous film awards and results in a Nobel Prize for Gore.We all know what has happened to the climate surrounding climate change since the film “An Inconvenient Truth” arrived along with other films about the environmental concerns from reckless enterprise and uncontrolled consumption without regard to the planetary consequences.
http://voiceseducation.org/content/gossip-instrument-power
Well-funded corporate interests work to turn the public sentiment cynical, making scientific research and scientists the enemy. Some illustrious scientists are now saying the tipping point has either passed or is imminent because of damage done by past reckless behavior and indifference to the Earth, the Indigenous and the scientific community, that has brought us to the point of no return where our very existence is threatened.
When well-known and recognized environmentalists are listed, the list includes luminaries like Rachael Carson, Aldo Leopold, Jane Goodall, Julia Hill (who lived in a tree for 2 years,) Thoreau, Roosevelt, Chico Mendes, Gaylord Nelson (founder of Earth Day,) David Brower (Sierra Club,) John Muir, Joanna Macy, James Lovelock, Ansell Adams, Aldo Leopold, John Audubon, Al Gore and David Suzuki top the list.
But nobody ever mentions Michael Jackson.
Yes, that Michael Jackson.
The world’s most famous man and musical superstar was an environmentalist and viewed the whole planet as a village. He knew about ecosystems—both micro and macro. He understood the impact of environment on all forms of life—from the cellular to the stellar.
Jackson was a scholar and avid reader; Neverland’s library held ten thousand books, many with his personal notes in the margins. His interests included everything from Thoreau to Tagore, and music to medicine; he was particularly interested in metaphysics and healing. He read Patch Adams and Norman Cousins and understood that laughter is the best medicine. He played and he encouraged play to bring out the inner child in everyone—from kids to adults; he opened his ranch to friends, and busloads of inner city, sick and disadvantaged kids—even throughout the time he was absent or on tour. He understood brain chemicals and hormones and how they impacted the process of healing. He meditated, used affirmations and visualization and taught them to others.
An empath from childhood, Michael Jackson felt pain of the world as excruciatingly as he felt its beauty. He deeply experienced the ache and dichotomy of awe and sorrow. He was in awe of nature, loved animals, appreciated beauty and embraced all cultures of the world while at the same time brooding in the grips of despair of loss, fear, hunger, fear and war. His mother, Katherine, tells the story of how when he was just a tyke watching the public service announcements for childrens’ charities for hunger and famine relief, he cried at the sight of flies buzzing around the mouths of children with swollen bellies. He emphatically pronounced to his mother: “Someday I will do something to change that.” She relates how he said it with such startling conviction that she believed him. And indeed he dedicated much of his life to “making that change.” He sang it and role modeled it visiting orphanages in all the countries on his scheduled tour and he donated a large piece of medical equipment to a hospital in every city on that tour.
A childhood as a Jehovah Witness gave him great respect for God and Creation; as he got older, his worldview expanded as his beliefs met the definition of pantheist and cosmologist. He truly saw humanity as one. As early as his youth with the Jackson Five, he wrote lyrics that were a call for humanity to come together in unity. “Can You Feel It,” written by Michael and brother Jackie calls for an end to racism, war and indifference to “your brother”—one of his many biblical references.
“We Are the World,” written in that same spirit of humanity born of compassion, was an anthem for 1985 that came out of an idea by singer and activist Harry Belafonte, another champion of the downtrodden. Belafonte was disturbed by the famine in Africa that had claimed a million lives. Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie were called to write the song that was to be recorded by some of the most well known musicians on the planet: Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Bono, Tina Turner, Bruce Springsteen Billy Joel, Willie Nelson, Kenny Loggins, Kenny Rogers, Diana Ross, Bob Dylan and others besides Richie and Jackson. Richie, Jackson and company remind us that “we are the world/we are the children” and we can make choices that make the world brighter and make a better life for all peoples of the Earth.
“Heal the World” is another of Jackson’s songs about harnessing the power of the human heart and promotes love for the whole of humanity in service to humankind’s glaring social failures. He asks that the world come together to make this a better place—a place without fear or sorrow. He reminds that “people are dying/if you care enough for the living/make a little space/to make a better place.”
In “Cry” Jackson begins with a reminder about empathy: “Somebody shakes when the wind blows/somebody’s missing a friend/somebody’s lacking a hero…” and he foretells of a day when there will be no more war. His short films (music videos) showcase people from every background, age, ethnicity and color holding hands—as in “Hands Across America,” an event in 1986 which Jackson also participated in, that stretched across the continental U.S. and raised $34 million for poverty and homelessness.
In “Black or White” Jackson unites the races with something considered at the time, cutting edge technology—with the magic of film, he makes a montage of faces that morph from one ethnicity into another demonstrating every kind of race, heritage and feature in the human face. The irony of that classic for Jackson himself, lies in his own inherited illness of Vitiligo, a disease which destroys the pigmentation cells of the skin and his contraction of Lupus, another auto-immune disease which causes joint problems and destroys cartilage. He would himself, turn from black to white and change his appearance with surgery, diet and treatment for his illnesses after his epic and best-selling album of all time “Thriller” catapulted him to super-stardom. While many mocked him and accused him of bleaching his skin and changing his appearance in betrayal to his race, he was a proud black man who made his living on stage and in the public eye; nothing could have been more devastating to a public figure and performer than white splotches appearing on chocolate colored skin or losing cartilage holding bones and joints together on one’s face and body.
A study of Jackson’s lyrics and particularly of his music videos, which he referred to as “short films” is revealing and loyal to its repetitive themes—humanity, love and unity. Every single short film is filled with metaphor, message and compassion—and the more-than-occasional double entendre. An exemplary and coy storyteller, Jackson’s message sneaks up on you and before you know it, you find yourself submerged in the pathos of whatever subject he tackles or showcases. Within the myriad themes of Jackson’s films–change agents ensconced in art, were human failings, contemporary issues, or social problems with subtle, sometimes imperceptibly subliminal yet powerful references to other iconic works, archetypes and planetary and humanity-wide motifs.
But Jackson’s crowning jewel in the vault and the one he felt was his most significant achievement, is his opus “Earth Song” with its unusual fusion of opera, rock, pop, blues and gospel complete with choir and orchestra. His inspiration came from Time Magazine when in 1988, the publisher released its iconic annual issue that usually featured an influential figure making a significant impact on the world who would appear as “person of the year” on the cover. But that year, instead of an individual on the cover, Time featured the “Planet Of The Year” with a graphic depicting a hostaged world tied in chains with a drop line and feature story titled: “What on Earth Are We Doing?”
A believer in humanity’s potential to collectively solve its own social problems, a nature lover and advocate of husbandry and the human-animal bond, Jackson internalized the endangerment of all species and everything he loved and held dear as well as the planet itself. Friends close to him cite how while many people think in terms of times and places, Michael Jackson thought in terms of epochs and planets.
Not one to shrink from themes of personal responsibility (“Man In the Mirror,”) and conscripting the power of the collective, Jackson set about writing an ode to the planet set to music that echoed his own poem written in a genre mimicking a Rumi love poem—“Earth my home my place/a capricious anomaly in the sea of space…”
He brooded over and coddled the anthem for seven years, the chords first arriving in a hotel room in Vienna, home to Mozart: A-flat minor to C-sharp triad; A- flat minor seventh to C-sharp triad; then modulating up B-flat minor to E-flat triad. Simple, elegant and powerful, the chords sounded plaintiff in their wailing for earth-justice. Written in Kirtan form with a call and response, Jackson performed the piece precisely that way from a sweeping platform on a cherry-picker crane high above his live audiences: “What about the crying man/what about Abraham/what about the Holy Land?”
He wails questions about bloodshed and war and children dying; about animals and nature and the oceans and the quality of air: “I can’t even breathe!” He wants to know what will happen to sunshine and rain and the skies; he asks where we went wrong and he addresses rampant apathy and screams an incredulous question: “do we give a damn?” Do we understand the death and destruction humans bring to the planet and her kin?
Jackson used orchestra and the Andre Crouch Choir to build his epic and dramatic opus and ode to Earth. The chorus, consisting of only sounds echoes his artistic flair of vocalization instead of words to paint pain in feeling rather than confining it to words. The first hint of how pain is vocalized without definition can be seen in his “Smooth Criminal” short film. It’s a sound that says an encyclopedia of human experience in one long mournful vocalization. Jackson manages to wring despair from a few simple but powerful musical chords. It’s soul-speak. Human grief expressed in deep guttural sound has to be the most forlorn sound in existence—Jackson’s “Earth Song” wail is reminiscent of a mother who has just learned of the senseless the death of her only child.
Those at the control console certainly heard it that way while Jackson was in the booth recording it. He was, as was his custom, alone in the dark—he habitually sang, lights out. His engineers tell of the hairs standing up on their arms and the back of their necks as the vocals came roaring from that deep dark place– far deeper and far beyond the walls of the booth. It was as if Jackson’s painful lamentation came roaring from the lungs of Mother Earth herself; as if he was channeling the very soul and breath of the planet.
His short film music video that was made to accompany his message conveys that same ethos in images that the music evokes in the mastery of composition. It begins with innocence and a child in a lush ecosystem reminiscent of the Garden of Eden and goes on to examine in pictures, most featuring children, experiencing famine, animal poaching, oceanic destruction, deforestation and war. It features Jackson walking through a burnt forest and withstanding a battering oracular wind that portends destruction, while later all the damage reverses itself as the planet’s ecosystem is re-birthed and restored.
“Earth Song” was the one performance at his live concerts where the whole drama unfolded for an audience complete with supersized screen featuring a spinning beautiful earth to the spectacle of a tank roaring onstage with soldiers, automatic weapons drawn, to depict war and man’s inhumanity to man. Costumed in torn and tattered clothes, Jackson’s live performance would literally wring his audiences. Hundreds fainted at Jackson’s concerts and none forgot the images and emotions invoked and evoked during a live performance that some have described as being immersed in a kind of baptismal sea of community, solidarity and a unique communal reality. His audiences describe leaving his venues feeling exhilarated and united in an unnamable spirit. That is the power people describe of being in his presence—he “was a Force.”
He knew his earth’s song message had to be profound and epic and had to reach millions of people around the world in order to create the momentum for change, particularly for the next generation—taught ultimately by the youth who would hear and internalize the message: “What about us“ translating the question: Where is our stewardship for spaceship Earth; who is steering our home?” “Now I don’t know where we are/ I only know we’ve drifted far.” “Earth Song” became number one all over the Europe, was Jackson’s largest selling album in the U.K., and was heard by Michael Jackson fans who number 250 million worldwide.
Those who knew Jackson closely and worked with him for decades learned that he often heard music in his head that would just drop in from somewhere in the ethers. He always gave credit to the Creator for his music, saying it was first created in space, came from God, and he simply plucked it from its’ Source, downloaded it and worked to bring the final iteration close as he could to the original sound– heard only by him and an inner ear. He was a perfectionist by all accounts; it took him 7 years to be satisfied that “Earth Song” was finished.
Few recognize Michael Jackson as a champion of humanity and its loudest and most prolific cheerleader and humanitarian. And many more do not recognize a staunch advocate for the planet and the environment. One of the reasons he wanted to include the performance of “Earth Song” in his last concert series “This is It” in London was because, as he told his cast during his customary prayer and gratitude circle at rehearsals and live performances, “We only have a couple years to get it right or it will all be gone. We have to do it; it’s up to us!”
And the crack of consciousness widens to swallow 250 million minds while the highest-grossing documentary of all time “This Is It” expands it to engulf a few more million and yet another generation…
Those who know the true Jackson story and not the tabloid caricature scripted by the media to depict and exploit his life for profit, know that he cared very deeply for life–all life, humanity and the Earth. It was the reason for most of his work with a few “pop” pieces thrown in to stay relevant in the world of pop culture and music. It was his life’s mission, however to leave a legacy for children and for the future and “Earth Song” was, in his own eyes, his greatest musical achievement.
“I’m committed to my art. I believe that all art has as its ultimate goal the union between the material and the spiritual, the human and the divine. And I believe that that is the very reason for the existence of art and what I do.
And I feel fortunate in being that instrument through which music flows…
Deep inside I feel that this world we live in is really a big, huge, monumental symphonic orchestra. I believe that in its primordial form all of creation is sound and that it’s not just random sound, that it’s music. You’ve heard the expression, music of the spheres? Well, that’s a very literal phrase. In the Gospels, we read, “And the Lord God made man from the dust of the earth and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul.” That ‘breath of life’ to me is the music of life and it permeates every fiber of creation. ~Michael Jackson
“Earth Song” was in fact, the last song Michael Jackson sang on his last night of rehearsal in the last hours of his life.
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Original Article at Voices Education Project 4th Edition- “Bullying the Planet:” http://voiceseducation.org/node/7894
Bullying the Planet 4th Edition Intro and features: http://voiceseducation.org/node/7866
Front Page Feature 4th Edition: www.voiceseducation.org
© 2014 B. Kaufmann, Words and Violence Founder, Writer/Editor, Voices Education Project
Sources
Bruce Swedien, In The Studio with Michael Jackson, Hal*Leonard Books, New York, 2009.
Joe Vogel, Man In the Music: The Creative Life and Work of Michael Jackson, Sterling, New York, 2011.
Chris Cadman & Craig Halstead, Michael Jackson for the Record, Bright Pen, England, 2009
Lynton Guest, The Trials of Michael Jackson, Aureus Publishing, United Kingdom, 2006
Michael
Jackson, Dancing the Dream, Doubleday/Transworld, London, 1992.
Interview: David Nordahl, Santa Fe, MN U.S.A.; “Jackson: Artist, Collaborator, Friend.”
Brad Sundberg, “In the Studio with MJ” Symposium, New York, 2013; Jackson: Sound Engineer and Collaborator- studio and Neverland.
Interviews and letters, Anonymous: Fans, biographers, guests.
Neverland today.This is what’s going on right now at Neverland Valley Ranch.
No matter who owns this property, it will never be Colony Capital, Sycamore Valley Ranch or anything other than Michael Jackson’s Neverland.
Seems the fans have spoken.
What is it about this place, this property, the man who owned it, cherished it and built it? Yes, it’s that Michael Jackson is part of it. It’s also what “Neverland” means.
“Neverland” can be defiled by someone who is evil, who is looking for notoriety and a legacy of taking down someone innocent and beloved because as a devout Christian, one is offended by someone believed “gay” and therefore must be molesting children. Not to mention that he’s a silly and lowly “pop star” and a “white n…….. ” at that who doesn’t know his place not just in culture but in swanky Santa Barbara, having come from poor roots in a Midwest steel-town city.
This uppity man must be put in his place and that is best accomplished through humiliation.
There is something very wrong with a man being driven from his home and advised by an attorney that a human behaving every bit like a mad rabid dog is going to come after him until his dying day. That subhuman mind has no business being in a position of authority. There is more than overwhelming evidence that minorities were treated badly in Santa Barbara while Jackson occupied Neverland. A look at the arrest records and the course cases filed against the city will reveal that.
So while Neverland can be defiled, it can never be sullied. The evil belongs to the one who carries it in his heart, not to those he spills the vile stuff onto. Innocence wins. Always. It may appear evil wins, but the Universe has a unique way of evening the score. If not in this life, then in the hereafter.
Neverland has been featured and discussed before at Inner Michael. It’s worth revisiting.
What does “Neverland” mean to you?
Today is another kind of “Earth Day”
In honor of one who came to change the world and issued a call to humanity to save its planet and therefore save itself, we announce:
The release of the 4th edition of “Words and Violence”
The project is dedicated to Lady Diana Spencer and Mr. Michael Jackson.
Words and Violence’ mission is to examine bullying in all its incarnations…
and to find the antidote so we can cure this widespread human failing.
The project holds more than 600 pages of resources about bullying and how we can heal ourselves of this affliction.
The program is hosted by Voices Education Project – the educational arm for the:
Charter for Compassion
“Words and Violence” is a vast resource about bullying in all its forms – from the playground to the grave and everything in between.
It is downloadable and free for the taking.
The announcement for the 4th edition contents may be found featured on the front page of Voices Compassionate Education:
(Scroll halfway down)
You’ll want to pay close attention to the last entry in the new edition:
“Someone Was Singing Earth’s Song Before It Was Fashionable to Become Her Voice”:
http://voiceseducation.org/node/7894
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Today is the anniversary of the birth of a being whose Dharma *(“way of being and life path”) was to serve others and the planet to enhance the quality of existence. There are those people, occasionally, who come to the planet destined to serve humanity and have a big impact on the world. To be destined for greatness is a burden to the soul. Lives of greatness and accomplishment are not easy. Being a public figure is not simple. When one enters the world with special gifts that are cutting edge and serve evolution, those people are often ostracized from their own communities.
Genius is often thought to be “strange” and many times those with genius or with life missions designed to “wake up” people and the planet are marginalized, ridiculed, and unappreciated. The are just too “different” and they pay the price for their brilliance and creativity. The world does not always welcome them and treat them kindly and often their contributions and worth are not recognized until after they are gone. History discovers them, not their peers.
Daring to challenge cultural norms; questioning the status quo; calling for change; introducing new concepts; inventing something startling; calling out humanity on its apathy, inertia, desertion of one’s fellow human, irresponsibility, lack of compassion, indifference, laziness, lack of empathy, pointing out flaws, demonstrating human failure, calling for action in the face of immobility, asking people to change habits,, calling for participation in a new way or wave of being, and especially trying to engage the momentum to change a paradigm, will not make someone welcome– particularly if there is a payoff in staying static and keeping things the same no matter how painful that is.
Change is difficult for people and releases brain chemicals that are akin to those that flood the brain during torture. There will be resistance.
For the one attempting to shift the paradigm and bring everyone with them, the need for change seems obvious, natural and reasoned. They can’t understand why everybody can’t see their same vision. They are the ones who always see the bigger picture. They understand the nature of things and of being. They live with a sense of urgency that is lifelong. They care sometimes to the point of imbalance in their own lives. Sometimes they give until they are… completely… empty.
Sometimes we forget that they are global treasures and their lives are a gift to the rest of us.
This “Dharma” explains Lady Diana and Michael Jackson. They came to change the world. They came to wake us up. But especially– they came to open our hearts.
* A very loose translation. Dharma is a complex concept.
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I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities. ~Dr. Seuss
Rabbi Simon Jacobsen says this about the natural joy of the child:
“A child is our most natural and quintessential state. The child’s innate cheer comes from an inner peace and contentment which results from a lack of dichotomy in the child’s life.
Seamlessness is the operative world. A child’s consciousness is not split into parts. A child is not torn between its needs and its behavior. We adults are constantly torn between demands upon us and our own needs, between what we truly want and what we must do to survive, between who we essentially are and what we do. Between the needs of our bodies and the needs of or souls. Who among us can say that our daily work and activities reflect our deepest inner aspirations? Is there a person that has no conflict of interest between a personal life and a professional one, between the demands of your job and those of your home and family? Has anyone not compromised some of their idealism and values due to the pressures of the struggle for survival?
When there is a split there is tension. And where there is tension there is sadness. A measure of angst is always healthy – to keep us reaching and growing. But when the angst spills over into anxiety, despondence and depression are not far behind.
Children are the most perfect model of seamlessness: A smooth flow between the inner and the outer; where identity meets expression. Imagine that your outer expressions were always reflecting your inner needs, and your deepest aspirations always had an outlet of expression.
It is only from adults that children learn to be sad. Yes, we adult project our feelings on our children and as they develop and enter maturity where they too learn the world of envy and greed, of selfishness and instant gratification, of struggling between what we know to be true and what we indulge in for our own pleasure.
You may then say, that all this is fine and good as long as we are children. But now that we have grown into adults, our childhoods lost, we no longer can access that inner contentment and happiness that is the domain of the child.”
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Michael Jackson loved magic.
Magic is the domain of the child.
When Michael Jackson hosted people at Neverland, he took them back to magic, back to their childhoods, to that carefree place of play and safety and a world without angst or fear or worry. He knew how to heal people from the insults of the “real world” upon their psyche. For the duration of their visit, he made them leave their seriousness behind. From the moment they entered Neverland, they were reminded of their inner child, their whole and healthy inner joy, their magic.
There’s a story about Michael going to the kitchen at Neverland to request something from his staff and finding that they had the television on and were watching a news program. He insisted they turn off the TV. He explained that as long as his guests were at Neverland, they were to be on vacation from the harsh realities of the world they must return to.
The state of the world today reflects the loss of that buoyancy and joy, the free spirit that is a child’s heart, a child’s mind. We are in a trance. We’ve forgotten who we were and especially, who we are inside. The joy has dried up; The world is a desert. People feel that and they thirst.
Michael Jackson understood this thirst for joy, freedom, and the carefree nature of the child within. He understood how important it was to the salvation of the world. He lived his life “with a child’s heart and because he did, children intuited that he was their benefactor, their champion. The world had little tolerance for this man-child who kept his child’s heart intact– not losing it to the artificial dreams of the world but staying true to his inner dreams.
Society had little understanding of the genius of this gentle artist who embraced both his masculine and feminine natures who sought to teach the world cooperation instead of competition, love instead of fear, inclusion instead of exclusion and who encouraged retention of the spirit of child. He believed children were the answer to the world’s indifference to pain– that it was to become “as a little child” that bestowed the keys to the kingdom.
Neverland is a state of mind. But it’s also a symbol. Neverland remembers. It breathes. It represents something so essential to human beings that is akin to breath. The defiling and losing of Neverland too, is essential. It’s an important lesson. For evolution. For humanity. Not losing Neverland is more important than anyone can measure now.
When it’s gone, the loss then discovered, will be immeasurable.
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“Children are the worlds foremost idealists and optimists.” ~Michael Jackson
Have you ever seen a baby that doesn’t laugh with abandonment and joy? Joy is our natural state. Joy is hardwired into our existence when we come into the world. Joy is what the world is before the corruption begins.
Children are not immediately exposed to the harsh reality of the cruelness the world can deliver and they are not aware of how people can change when they leave that zone of childhood joy. People can and do hurt other people. That realization when it comes to a child, causes an earthquake in the psyche and creates an incomparable grief called “the loss of innocence.”
As the child grows, the awareness of disappointment, duplicity and corruption informs the picture of their “real” world and the ideal world fades into the background and maybe even into the unconscious, never to be heard from again. The delight, the sparkling newness, the wide-eyed adventure of exploring this new existence– the innocent entry into the world fades with it. The place that the child came from, the place before time, before birth, before corruption– the place that holds the essence of the divine beginning, is forever gone. And that is a grief that cannot be described nor fathomed. It can hardly be remembered because we can’t bear to remember it.
“Neverland” is not just a physical location or as self-indulgent manifestation of a pop-star’s dream as it was portrayed; it is a state of mind, a state of existence. “Neverland” is a place where the precious innocence of a child is revered. It’s a place where imagination without limitation takes one to fanciful heights and giant dreams that when respected, are retained throughout life and realized in adulthood.
When a child’s wonder and imagination is not interfered with and indoctrination of what’s “real,” and “practical,” and “socially acceptable” does not destroy the child’s spirit, imagination become invention soars and innate talent allowed to blossom and mature examines all things from untainted, unrestricted and unlimited human brilliance and expression. It is t
he indoctrinations that come with growing up that begin to limit, create boundaries and stifle the mind of a child.
Innocent childlike unrestricted imagination and magic has a beauty unequaled anywhere else and a fierce determination untampered with by adult admonitions about what is culturally acceptable changes the world. The messages, spoken or unspoken are clear: “Don’t be too full of yourself; defer to the adults around you; censor your true thoughts feelings; doubt your own abilities; don’t do it your way, do it ours. And the creation of a miniature adult “act your age;” “don’t be silly;” “that’s all in your imagination (as if the imagination is something bad);”tone it down;”be quiet;” “don’t talk back;” “don’t concern yourself with that;” “where do you get these crazy ideas?”
Steven Spielberg tells the story of wondering out loud to his mother what would happen if the pressure cooker blew up and she allowed him to rig it to explode. No adult lid on that singular magnificent imagination has brought us some of the most beautiful films of all time.
Given the impulse of adults to limit, indoctrinate, insure conforming, and discount the mind of children, is it any wonder that children gravitate to the Neverland state of being? In Neverland there is happiness, adventure, joy, exploration, peace, uncorrected conversation and one never has to grow up into the “real world” which is, if we admit the truth– painful. In Neverland the child does not have to enter that passage to adulthood where disappointment and duplicity are an initiation of a developing human into the “real world.”
We get angry with children who resist growing up. I think it’s caused by unconscious envy of that free state of being. And we don’t tolerate adults who try to hang on to their youth or innocence. At the same time we try everything to avoid looking old or being perceived as beyond our prime. What a mixed message. What a double standard. What a mess!
Some who left Neverland behind or had it ripped from them spend a whole lifetime trying to figure out who they are because they were told who not to be. Is it any wonder that children resist leaving Neverland? Is it any wonder we ridicule adults who try to go back? The truth is too painful: we all mourn the exile from Neverland and we all secretly want to go back there.
Do you remember the harsh moment when you realized you had been expelled from the garden? When you learned about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy? The Easter Bunny? Do you remember the feeling you had when you discovered the world was not the logical outgrowth of idealists and optimists? Do you remember the sadness, the tearing apart of Self and the rending turbulent emotions? Do you remember the disappointment? The grief? Do you recall the searing yearning and the acute helplessness of the discovery that the world was not a perpetual “playground” and it– oh horrors– was not safe? Do you remember how you felt when you discovered that people did not always follow that inner voice of love and compassion? Or maybe your world was never safe right from the beginning, depending on the circumstances you were born into. Maybe you longed for a place that you never knew. Don’t we all?
You might assert that children are naturally happy because they are naïve, have no concept of duplicity and have not yet witnessed how harsh and cruel the world is and haven’t felt the hardships and challenges life presents to us. They haven’t discovered yet that people hurt other people and that it sometimes is not an accident. The world of “maturity” is far removed from the magical world seen through the eyes of a child.
We’ve got it backwards.
Michael Jackson knew that. He built Neverland because he knew.
Neverland is not just a cultural treasure; it’s a demonstration and physical manifestation of how to love unconditionally.
It’s a different way to become human.
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There was a time long ago when someone who committed a crime could get away with it. There was no technology to process the evidence of misdeeds. There was no science to analyze a crime scene. There were no footprints because shoes were yet to be invented; there were no tire tracks, no forensic lab, and no way to catch a perpetrator.
You could literally “get away with murder.”
Then along came the accidental discovery that everyone has a unique pattern on the tips of their fingers! Everyone’s fingers have particular characteristics of whorls and loops making no two fingers, or their prints, the same.
Then DNA was discovered, a biological fingerprint in which no two human biological samples have the same genetic “blueprint.”
Lie detection too has advanced from simple gut feeling and observation to the polygraph and now to the blooming science of body language. It’s not hard science yet, but as time passes, discoveries are yet to be made.
In point of fact, it gets harder and harder to hide crime and it’s no longer easy to “get away with murder.”
Evolution and the advancement of civilization, science and technology continues like a perpetual wheel in motion– with no end in sight. This wheel will continue to turn as long as humans inhabit the planet and the human mind is curious and alert. And that innate curiosity is not going away. Human curiosity, ingenuity and exploration is what powers life and evolution. With the introduction and progression of technology, the phenomenon of “exposure” has grown exponentially on the planet. It is harder to hide treachery on this earth because there are so many ways to expose it. Enter the online community and particularly social media. The Internet and social media has changed the way we do things and makes hiding from scrutiny or perpetrating a treachery, harder.
The truth is on its way and is coming closer.
Detection sciences will continue to evolve. And new ways to detect the truth will allow us to look back and find where it lay in the past. Just as DNA was always there long before we discovered it, other ways of detecting truth hidden from us now, will emerge. It will be read in the way a polygraph reads deception now. The science will catch up.
The past too, and the truth of it will be revealed. Promotion through manipulation and subliminals is a science just as is advertising. Propaganda is a science that also will be detectable in the future. We will scan for truth then the way we scan for illness now. Because truth is becoming more and more a valuable commodity. People are tired of being lied to or jerked around by their emotions. The cynicism of the times and the culture demands discernment and questioning motives and motivations behind messages. Manipulating the human mind, convincing people how to think, how to spend their money and conduct their lives is based on consumerism and keeping a completely unsustainable lifestyle perpetuating itself with less than truthful practices.
The planet is in real danger because of the exploitive mindset of business and commerce. The exploiters won’t stop until they come to the last tree standing, the last drop of fresh water, the last bit of minerals extracted from the ground now turned desert. The realization and the visceral cry ‘What have we done?’ won’t come until it’s far too late. Why? Because it’s all about profit. It’s all about amassing fortunes. Making money is the only god of commerce. The truth of the mess we’ve made of things won’t be recognized until the last tree, the last drop of fresh water, the last life sustaining resource is gone.”Buy, buy, buy, consume, consume, consume. Look only at the bottom line; decide the next immediate move based on the balance sheet. The future and future generations have no bearing and no place in decisions about profit and finances.
Except, not everything is about money.
You have observed how “devices” have replaced real human heart-to-heart interaction? There are those who walk around with eyes glued to their “devices” so closely that they walk into walls or fall into fountains. That digital world is not real; it’s an invention. The real world is out here where human suffering and beauty and pain and joy live in real time. Where people are not a blip on the screen but flesh and blood bodies that reproduce and bleed, weep and survive, create messes and design elegance; where they fall and flee and hurt and soar. People feel. Michael Jackson was able to reach people. He moved them. He understood the human, its mind, its heart and its complexities. He understood the hidden treasures of the self; he tried over decades to excavate them. He was a cultural treasure. Not a marketable commodity– a cultural treasure.
Like the digital junkies, the commerce junkies will walk blindly with their heads down gazing at the bottom line until one day they look up to see a barren landscape. Only then will the reality of what they have done and didn’t do hit them. And then it will be too late. It will already be over. When the resources of the planet are stripped bare and extinction is inevitable, where then, will the rich spend their massive mounds of money?
It wasn’t always known, but evolution has signatures. Evolution has left telling trails and cautionary tales. Some of those signatures are visible, some are invisible. Not everything can be glimpsed with the naked eye and everything that exists has not been identified. We can’t see germs with the naked eye but Louis Pasteur intuited their existence. Now we know of their existence. Science can now measure heartbeat, bones, body functions and science of the mind– psychology and psychiatry also evolves as time passes and new measurements and machines are discovered. At one point in time, people died from head injury because it couldn’t be seen. Now a CT Scan or MRI shows us exactly where the problem is so that treatment can progress.
There is another world that has been discovered that always existed but few knew except maybe for ancient medicine men and women or shamans of history and that is the unseen world that today is called the quantum world. Some luminaries call 
the quantum world the world of infinite possibilities.
The quantum world is strange and the usual laws of reality and science don’t fit that world. It is as foreign and unfamiliar as the world of science and technology once was to researchers and inventors, poets and dreamers. Some things that come out of the quantum world don’t make sense. Some things that emerge from those otherworldly places could never be imagined a thousand years ago. Everything that is, emerged from the quantum soup of creation.
And some things are in plain sight but hidden from view. For example, it was recently discovered that the famous heads of Easter Island, it turns out– have bodies. Nobody thought to look or to dig below the surface… until now.
So we never know what new discovery or “weird” science lives right under our noses or right around the corner. The unimaginable is unimaginable because no one has thought of it yet. And we never know what may be hidden under the surface.
The day will come when the whole truth of the Michael Jackson story will emerge. The world will finally know for certain about his life and the truth of what happened to him. As biographers examine him and those who actually knew him speak out, an entirely different story will emerge. The history will be chronicled and the truth set free.
Ja
ckson is a cultural icon. He was a cultural treasure. Too many people saw the “pop star” and completely missed the “artist.” His soft voice, gentle demeanor and ethos took people by surprise. His ever-changing appearance became fodder for ridicule, his integrated masculinity and his race made him an easy and visible target, his fame made him a commodity and the human being got lost in the shuffle.
Civilization and evolution moves ever forward and new discoveries will be as radical as the ancients conceiving of an individual blueprint like DNA. The time will come when some science as yet unthinkable, will reveal other kinds of blueprints.
Michael Jackson will be one of those future discoveries. His life, work, ethic and ethos will be exposed for what is was. His Neverland Ranch was the physical manifestation of the “it takes a village” philosophy to grow a new kind of human being. It will then be recognized that his possessions, his clothing, his books, his gifts, his writings, his philanthropy and humanitarianism are part of the cultural treasure that he was.
Neverland is part of that cultural treasure. In the real estate business, empty land is not an asset. It makes no money. The ranch is not readily accessible and the locals do not want the area groomed for a deluge of tourists into their quiet and pristine neighborhood. No money can be made from Neverland. Because there is no ROI (return on investment) from this inaccessible part of the Jackson legacy, it will be auctioned off just as his other things have been, it’s value and cultural relevance unrecognized.
Until evolution catches up, the value of that loss will remain undiscovered until it’s too late and already gone. Just like the man himself. Another cultural treasure unappreciated and unrecognized in its own time will slip away because of a society that reveres money more than beauty; that does business devoid of responsibility to the future; exploits and trades resources without compassion or vision; that acts from a place of tightness, limitation and greed instead of freedom and abundance; that lacks the maturity to think beyond the here and now; that thinks it’s all for money instead of “it’s all for love.”
It’s another kind of murder altogether.
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You may remember the explosive phone hacking scandal in Britain that began in 2011 and captured the world’s interest and condemnation. The tabloids owned by Rupert Murdoch and particularly his now defunct News Of The World,– by far the most salacious of the collection of tabloids, were accused of hacking into the phones of celebrities, the royal family and even the cell phone of a dead teenager intercepting her voice mail messages, and obstructing the police investigation into her disappearance, leading her family to believe that she was still alive, giving them false hope. In a move to assuage his complicity and appease the public and their outcry of “foul!” closed the doors of News of the World. It was a cynical move to divest one newspaper in order to save his empire.
Hacking is a well known and understood practice in the industry– as is hunting, hounding, stalking and exploiting public figures for profit.
Right now the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) in the U. S. is considering supporting a number of proposals:
1. A bid to divined up Internet to large corporations who will then divide the Internet up and sell its parts. The Internet should continue to be a free public utility.
2. They are actually entertaining the idea of Murdoch’s bid to purchase Time Warner and merge News Corp and Time Warner.
Can you imagine what kind of news and information you will be spoon fed from someone who came up in the tabloid industry, made his billions from the tabloid industry exploiting other people (including peddling Michael Jackson as Wacko Jacko”) without their consent, invading their privacy, harassing them and their children and providing no compensation for using people to sell newsprint and further his dark agenda– and it’s not to make the world a better place.
To protest this really, really bad and unimaginably destructive idea go and make your voice heard here:
http://www.freepress.net/rupert-murdoch-scandal
Because News of The World was one of the first tabloids to use “Wacko Jacko” in the headlines. (Some testify that it actually invented and coined the name) As was Murdoch’s The Sun. Once published, the name stuck and tabloids and mainstream media picked it up and used the moniker which Jackson hated.
Several books by those in the tabloid industry have confirmed that Murdoch, who moved his empire from where he began in Australia to Fleet Street in the U.K. to gobble up the media real estate in Britain– specifically ordered his tabloid reporters to go after stories about Madonna and Michael Jackson because they were so popular and the public was fascinated and sometimes obsessed, with them. Murdoch realized that his demographics were middle aged readers and was missing the youth demographic. In order to recruit and gain the young audience in addition to the ‘average Joe’ reader stopping off for a brew in the pub after work, he deliberately targeted the two most well known celebrities on the planet and the British royal family.
Citing “free speech” as his ‘sword of justice’, he deliberately capitalized on ‘Schadenfreude” which is defined as being gleeful and amused by someone else’s misfortune. When taken over by Rebekah Brooks, the News of the World immediately began using “”naming and shaming” to create public interest, targeting those with mental illness and accused or suspected sex offenders. The tabloid deliberately inflamed public opinion that escalated into a frenzy, resulting in angry mobs going after people who were not convicted and in many cases, harmed people through mistaken identity including a “pediatrician” which to the readers and their mentality was synonymous with “paedophile.” She was called out for her irresponsible journalism but the hunt for the salacious continued targeting celebrities, politicians and royals and included phone hacking very early in her tenure. Many entities accurately making accusations of phone hacking were paid in exchange for their silence– which delayed for years the exposure of this “bastard child” of journalism.
They also paid for tips from police and for story leads, which created the climate for and fostered the practice of “checkbook journalism.”
The media, watching the readership and circulation increase along with the profits, began to produce journalism and “must-see TV” which used cash to pay for stories and which bred journalist with “flexible” scruples. There was money to be made off denigrating and mocking real flesh and blood people because it was profitable. Some cultures would call feeding off the flesh of a human cannibalism. But that scheme combined with America’s racist agenda let to a feeding frenzy on Madonna and Jackson both with Jackson taking most of the blunt force. Decades of the abuse reduced the artist to a caricature and objectified him making him an easy target. Those steps of dehumanizing are purposeful. Making someone into an object instead of a human gives license to bully for a public unawares of the systematic and sequential nature of a tabloid takedown.
Murdoch’s competitors, not to be outdone, also seized on Jackson’s popularity, the wide audience he commanded and the public’s fascination with Jackson, and the race was on. They reported that he slept in an oxygen chamber to keep from aging (actually Jackson purchased chamber for a children’s hospital and laid in it to see how it would work); that he “bleached” his skin to appear white and deny his African American heritage (Jackson actually had 2 diseases which affect the skin and connective tissue including cartilage– Lupus and Vitiligo); that he dangerously ‘dangled’ his child unsafely from a balcony (the “balcony” jutted out underneath Jackson who held a tight grip on his child excited to show his firstborn to fans who beneath the hotel chanted “show us the baby” and he complied, probably not the best public relations move on his part given his incessant stalking by tabloids. The media played the clip over and over from an angle that made it look dangerous and “wacko” behavior of an ‘eccentric star’; that he married Lisa Marie Presley to distract and dispute the media that labeled him “homosexual” or “asexual” and eventually picked up on the story of molestation brought in a case where evidence of extortion was caught on tape. The resulting payout to make the annoyance go away was, to a salivating media, an admission of guilt. The payout was to avoid a grueling and damaging trial with an accusation made by a man with an unstable mental illness. His innocence was always understood as the legal documents included a statement specifically stating there was no acknowledgment of guilt and leaving the door open to a legal prosecution by the accusing family. They took the payout and never filed charges.
Tabloids are of the opinion that scandal and sex sells, thereby increasing readership and circulation of a publication. “If it leads, it bleeds” is the motto of the daily news. That is why the majority of the news is negative. The tabloids use standard tools and practices to further their agenda and profits– using rhyme and alliteration, large headlines and purchasing photos by paparazzi who deliberately bait the celebrity or public figure to get the “best” negative photo– again degrading the targeted individual to a beneath human status that makes it more OK to bully.
When you are hunting for the dark side of anything, rest assured you will find it. It’s the same phenomenon that when you buy a red car, suddenly red cars appear everywhere. This persecution of the “guilty” in order to assuage one’s own guilt and complicity in the inhumane treatment of another is an old trick in human nature that is supposed to provide relief. But the relief is at the expense of the soul.
PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder applies to those who experience the trauma, those who participate in causing the trauma and those who witness the trauma. To stand by and witness the guerilla decontextualization (twisting content to strip a human being of dignity and further a dark and purposeful agenda) is a soulless activity with hidden consequences.
Think of it this way: The media is a giant and is the most powerful means to shape and manipulate public opinion. Used in an unethical, un-soulful and dark way, it is a weapon of mass destruction. the media has evolved into a bully with the biggest bully pulpit and the misuse of power. That weapon is wielded irresponsibly all too often and hypnotizes and indoctrinates us to “come to the dark side.” It is a bully pulpit that is big and powerful and when it bullies, is capable of unimaginable and irreversible damage.
Some news about the scandal and its litigation reported by an Inner Michael reader following the story:
“At last I have something to tell you. Andy Coulson, former editor of the now closed News of the World tabloid newspaper, is starting an 18 month prison sentence tonight at Belmarsh Prison, in London!
After an 8 month trial at the Old Bailey, he was found guilty of conspiracy to hack the telephones and intercepting voice mails of thousands of people – royalty, celebrities, including pop stars, politicians and ordinary people – between 2000 and 2006.
Rebekah Brookes was found not guilty last week due to lack of evidence (?) The police are to question Rupert Murdoch again.
Former news editor, Greg Miskiw was sentenced to six months. Two other former senior reporters, Glen Mulcaire and James Wetherup, got four to six months suspended, and 200 hours of community service within 12 months.About the Tabloid Newspapers: They still wield a lot of power in this country but it’s a waning power. Recent figures by the National Readership Survey reveal that the Sun is still read by just under six million people a day but those figures are falling rapidly. It has lost around a million readers over the last 12 months.
This figure assumes that one newspaper is then read by several different people. Sales of the newspaper have fallen by more than 250,000 over the last year to just over two million a day. Only the Independent showed a bigger percentage drop. Secondly, the creation of an online paywall has seen its online readership drop from more than 750,000 a day to under 100,000. Compare that with the Daily Mail’s two million online readers in the UK. The Sun is no longer Britain’s most read newspaper brand.
Source: National Readership Survey
Resources:
The News of the World Hacking Scandal:
New York Times:
If you’re interested in the Timeline of the Scandal:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/8634176/Phone-hacking-timeline-of-a-scandal.html
What does Murdoch own?
Billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s Empire:
News Corp. holdings including three national newspapers in the U.K.; almost 150 publications in Australia; the New York Post and Community Newspaper Group in the United States; The Wall Street Journal and related publications in the U.S., Europe and Asia; Dow Jones information services;
HarperCollins book publishers Including:
Daily Telegraph; Dow Jones; Harper Collins Publishers; Herald Sun; Inside Out; New York Post; News International; NT News; Post-Courier; Sunday Herald Sun; Sunday Mail; Sunday Times; The Advertiser; The Australian; The Courier-Mail; The Daily; The Mercury; The Sunday Mail; The Sunday Telegraph; The Sun; The Sunday Times; The Times; Times Literary Supplement; The Wall Street Journal; The Wall Street Journal Digital Network; Weekly Times; Zondervan.
Broadcasting
Businesses include the FOX Broadcasting Company; the 27 stations in the Fox Television Stations group and various television operations throughout the world. Cable properties produce and license programming for cable and satellite platforms in the U.S and Asia, including the FOX News Channel and FOX Business Network, FX and STAR. News Corporation wholly owns Italy’s most popular pay-TV company, SKY Italia. The company also has significant holdings in British Sky Broadcasting, Germany’s Sky Deutschland; Asia’s TATA SKY and FOXTEL in Australia and New Zealand.
FOX Broadcasting Company; FOX Sports; FOX Sports Australia; FOX Television Stations; MyNetworkTV; Big Ten Network; FOX Business Network; FOX Movie Channel; FOX News Channel; FOX College Sports; FOX Sports Enterprises; FOX Deportes; FOX Sports Net; FOX Soccer Channel; Fuel TV; FX; Nat Geo Wild; National Geographic Channel United States; National Geographic Channel Worldwide; Speed; STAR; Stats, Inc.; BSkyB; FOXTEL; Sky Deutschland; SKY Italia.
Movie and television production and distribution
Move production and distribution through Fox Filmed Entertainment and Twentieth Century Fox Film. Television production includes 20th Century Fox Television and other TV studios including 20th Century Fox; 20th Century Fox Espanol; 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment; 20th Century Fox International; 20th Century Fox Television; Fox Searchlight Pictures; Fox Studios Australia; Fox Studios LA; Fox Television Studios; Blue Sky Studios; Shine Group.
Other assets
“Next generation” media properties including Hulu, an online video joint venture with NBC Universal and Disney; and News Outdoor, an outdoor advertising company.
The list includes:
American Idol.com; AskMen; careerone.com.au; CARSguide.com.au; Fox.com; FoxSports.com; FoxSports.com.au; hulu.com; IGN Entertainment; Milkround; National Rugby League; NDS; News.com.au; News Digital Media; News Outdoor; Scout; Spring Widgets; truelocal.com.au; WhatIfSport.
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In that twilight space, in early morning just before waking, in a reverie of dreams, an image and a few words emerged. “Light a candle,” it said with an urgency, and tell them to all light one too. What? Whom? Who is speaking?
Silence.
I stumbled to the coffee pot. I always pour the water and fill the coffee the night before so it’s hair trigger ready. I gulp a few mouthfuls, shake the cobwebs and try to go back to pick up the dream memory. Actually, it wasn’t a dream. It sounded more like a command in real time; no– a prescription. Something I was commissioned to hear. To do. To say. What was it? Too late; it’s gone. It was something about all the tragedy and an invocation and a very clear message: “Light a candle!”
How many candles should I light? How many will it take? More than 200 Nigerian school girls were kidnapped and are still missing; a Malaysian Flight 370 aircraft with 239 passengers and crew disappeared into thin air in March: another Malaysian flight– Flight 17 with 298 souls on board was, it seems, shot down by a missile “by mistake” and lies in pieces on the Ukraine countryside.
Should I light candles for the Israeli teens or the four boys were killed in Gaza? For the war brewing there now? For the wildfires in the western U.S.? For the orphaned immigrant children in Arizona? For the Russian train derailment? For China in the path of a typhoon? For the folk in the Philippines hit by that same storm?
If I light all those candles, I’ll burn the place down. Oh wait, maybe I only need to light one candle… this one for humanity.
“It’s a turf war… on a global scale. I’d rather hear both sides of the tale…”
(Get Together; The Youngbloods (c) 1967.) Seems like we’ve been at this *sigh* a long time.
Michael Jackson didn’t like turf wars.
LIFE IS THE SCHOOL; LOVE IS THE LESSON.
