Khushwant Toor writes from Toronto

MICHAEL Jackson – black turned white “King of Pop” who once married Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of King of Rock ‘n’ Roll - Elvis Presley, and who pushed American pop music beyond rock and roll ruling the hearts of this fans for years around the world died on June 26, 2009 at the age of 50 in his Holmby Hills estate in Los Angeles, California.

Not only known for his musical contributions, he will also be remembered for his influences on pop-culture and fashion. Michael Jackson reached out to fans across the globe and brought together many cultures & generations through his music and his influences. He held the title for the best-selling record of all time for his famous album ‘Thriller,’

A severe cardiac arrest is believed to the be initial cause which took down the pop superstar, however the exact cause will be determined only after the autopsy results are finalized. Los Angeles Coroner confirmed the performer was using prescription drugs and detectives were questioning his personal doctor- Dr. Conrad Murray the last person to see him conscious. Dr Murray’s car has been impounded for forensic testing.

There are reports the star received his routine injection of Demerol, a powerful painkiller, just before he collapsed. However, there is no suggestion of foul play as such. A close friend and spiritual guru for Jackson, Deepak Chopra said Jackson suffered from an addiction to prescription drugs which he was not able to confront. "I think it was responsible for his death, not just contributed," said Mr. Chopra.

Jackson had become reliant on painkillers as he prepared for an exhausting round of 50 performances at London's Wembley stadium in a bid to ease his crippling financial debts. Although people speculated that Michal Jackson would have left a legacy of richness behind him, some reports suggest that he left behind a debt of over $500 million.

His planned concert in London was being termed as Jackson's sell-out comeback tour, which was due to kick off next month. Promoters of the show AEG Live could loose as much as $40 million if its insurance is insufficient to cover what has already been spent on arranging the show. That's assuming they have to give refunds to the 750,000 fans who have paid big money for tickets. And that doesn't count the cost of hotel reservations and flights from across the world.

With Michal Jackson no more, a custody war is about to erupt for the custody of his three children and the division of his copy rights of his songs which is estimated to be over 1 billon. During his 50 years of life, for the first thirty years of his life, Michael Jackson didn't stop moving. For the last 20, he hardly moved at all and his glory was engulfed in claims about sexually abusing children.

Lisa Marie, Michal Jackson’s former wife said the pop star was a tortured soul and Michal had predicted that he would die like father of Lisa one day. Elvis Presley also died of heart attack due to excessive use of drugs. Lisa said they separated because she could not save him from self-destructive behavior.

Death of the Pop legend has led to sky rocketing sales of his music and videos. Amazon.com reported that 60% of the CD’s ordered on last Thursday were for Michael Jackson.

Here is a brief look at his life:

Born on Aug. 29, 1958, in Gary, Indiana, Michael Jackson was born the seventh of nine children in a large family of performers.

At the age of 6 for the first time Michal performed with five of his brothers in a talent show competition and won the first prize. The Jackson boys later became The Jackson 5. Michael’s first solo album came in 1972.

In 1982 his mega hit “Thriller” album was released. It earned him seven Top Ten singles and sold 21 million copies in the United States and at least 27 million worldwide.

Jackson remains one of the most successful entertainers of all time. His lifetime record sales tally is estimated to be about 750 million. He’s also won 13 prestigious Grammy Awards.

In 1993, police raided Jackson’s “Neverland” ranch after he was accused of sexually abusing a 13-year-old boy. In 1994, Jackson reached a settlement with the family of the boy he was accused of abusing for $23 million.

In 1994, Jackson married Elvis Presley’s only daughter, Lisa Marie. But the pair divorced two years later in 1996. Jackson married Debbie Rowe the same year and had two children, before splitting in 1999. The couple never lived together.

Jackson has three children named Prince Michael I, Paris Michael and Prince Michael II. The latter is known for a brief public appearance when his father held him over the railing of a hotel balcony, causing widespread criticism.

A television documentary "Living with Michael Jackson" was aired in 2003, saying that Jackson still had sleepovers with young boys and had his third child with a surrogate mother.

Jackson went on trial in 2005 on charges of molesting a 13-year-old boy in 2003, as well as conspiring to abduct the boy. The singer faced nearly 20 years in prison if convicted.

The four-month trial ended in June 2005 with his being acquitted of all charges. Jackson has spent time in Bahrain, Ireland and France since the child molestation case ended.

Jackson had been schedule to start a series of comeback concerts on July 13 in London, reportedly complete with a brand new dance move promised to top his “moonwalk.”

Meanwhile, the leaked autopsy details of Michael Jackson show that the pop icon was a virtual skeleton as he was barely eating and only had pills in his stomach when he died, according to a new report.

According to the detailed autopsy reported by The Sun, Jackson was bald, bruised and had broken ribs. The pop singer’s hips, thighs and shoulders were riddled with needle wounds which are said to be the result of injections of narcotic painkillers, given three times a day for years.

The examination showed that Jackson had been eating just one meagre meal a day. His stomach only had partially-dissolved pills which he took before the painkiller injection which stopped his heart.

The report also claimed that the pop star was wearing a wig when he died and a little more than “peach fuzz” covered his scalp.

A scarred section of skin above his left ear was entirely bald which is said to be the result of a 1984 accident when his hair caught fire while shooting an ad for Pepsi.

According to the newspaper, Jackson also suffered several broken ribs as rescuers pumped his chest after he collapsed in cardiac arrest. Four injection wounds were found above or near to Jackson’s heart. All appeared to have resulted from attempts to pump adrenaline directly into the organ in a failed bid to restart it.

The autopsy also found unexplained bruises on Jackson’s knees and on the fronts of both shins. There are also said to be cuts on his back, indicating a recent fall.

The King of Pop’s face bore many plastic surgery scars, while the bridge to his nose had vanished and its right side had partially collapsed.

A source close to the Jackson entourage said, “Michael’s family and fans will be horrified when they realise the appalling state he was in. Injection marks all over his body and the disfigurement caused by years of plastic surgery show he’d been in terminal decline for years. His doctors and hangers-on stood by as he self-destructed. Somebody is going to have to pay.”

However, the probe also found that Jackson was recovering well from skin cancer with an operation to shave cells from his chest.

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Mystery of Air India bombing in Canada

25 years later there are still more questions than answers in the mysteriously bundled case of Flight 182

Gurpreet Singh writes from Vancouver

AS the 25th anniversary of the Air India bombing approaches, the Canada government should do more to assuage the wounds of the victims’ families. It took years for the Canadian government to recognize the bombing as its own tragedy, while it remained the most horrific incident in the history of aviation terrorism before 9/11.

Not only does Canada owe an apology to the victims, it should also offer compensation for its failure to deter the crime and for mishandling the investigation. Ultimately too, Ottawa should bring the ongoing criminal investigation in the bombing to its logical end by charging other potential suspects, who have not been arrested or tried so far.

The interim report of the inquiry launched by John Major has so far found that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian spy agency CSIS were aware of the potential threat of the bombing, yet they did not act to prevent it.

The delay in the investigation and the arrests of potential suspects and their subsequent acquittals due to a lack of credible evidence has only left the victims’ families with the feeling they have been treated as second-class citizens by the government.

Even as the full inquiry report is awaited, the government should acknowledge its own shortcomings that led to the tragedy.

After all, months before the June 23, 1985 bombing that killed 329 people aboard the Air India Kanishka jet, the Canadian government was getting signals of the impending threat.

The bombing was blamed on Sikh separatists who were seeking revenge for the political events of 1984. Operation Bluestar of June, 1984 and the massacre of Sikhs in different parts of India that same year generated an atmosphere of anger and hate among Sikh immigrants.

The Indian Army launched the operation to flush out religious extremists who had fortified the Golden Temple Complex, the holiest shrine of the Sikhs in Amritsar, India. As a result of the operation, the Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, was assassinated by her two Sikh bodyguards, following which thousands of Sikhs were murdered by goons led by her Congress party.

The Sikh militants in Canada were also seeking revenge. Talwinder Singh Parmar, the leader of the Babbar Khalsa, a banned militant organization, had reportedly told a congregation that Air India planes would fall from the sky, while another Babbar Khalsa leader, Ajaib Singh Bagri, was separately quoted as saying that until we kill 50,000 Hindus we won’t rest in peace.

Both men were the potential suspects in the Air India bombing. While Parmar died in the custody of the Indian police in 1992, Bagri was acquitted by the B.C. Supreme Court.

The Babbar Khalsa was believed to be involved in the crime. However, the organization was banned only after 9/11 and not immediately after the Air India bombing.

Sikh separatists even boycotted Air India flights, whereas an Air India travel agent was attacked in Vancouver.

While Canadian authorities were warned by the Indian government about a terrorist threat to Air India, the Canadian police also received a tip about a plot to bomb an Air India jet locally.

CSIS also mistook the explosive test carried out by Parmar and Inderjit Singh Reyat, the only convict in the bombing, several days before the crime as gunfire. They followed the suspects to a Duncan forest, where the testing was done. Thus another opportunity to prevent the crime was missed.

In November 1985, the RCMP raided the homes of the main suspects, including Parmar and Reyat, as well as Surjan Singh Gill and Hardial Singh Johal. Subsequently, Parmar and Reyat were arrested. However, charges against Parmar were dropped due to lack of evidence. The prosecution could not establish any link to the Air India bombing.

Reyat was fined $2,000 and released. In 1988, the UK Police charged him for making the Narita airport bomb that killed two baggage handlers about one hour before the mid-air bombing of the Kanishka jet.

In 1989 he was extradited to Canada. His trial began in September 1990. The prosecution believed that the Narita suitcase bomb was also meant to explode in mid air enroute to Mumbai, India. Subsequently, Reyat was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in jail for manslaughter in 1991.

Parmar, who had shifted to Pakistan and later returned to India, died in  police custody in 1992. Even though the Indian police claimed that he died in a gun battle, the circumstances indicated that he was eliminated in a staged encounter.

How he gave the slip to Canadian authorities and died by the hand of a foreign state is another reasonable question. His death destroyed an important link in the investigation.

Reyat later pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the Kanishka bombing and served another five-years term in jail. But he never revealed the identity of another mysterious man, who had accompanied them to the bomb-testing site.

He now faces perjury charges. The other suspects, Bagri and Ripudaman Singh Malik, were acquitted making Reyat the only convict in the Air India case.

Another potential suspect, Hardial Singh Johal who was never charged, has died. His phone number was used for booking the tickets while he was seen at the Vancouver Airport the day the suitcase bomb was checked in.

Johal had some proximity with a Vancouver-based official of RAW, an Indian spy agency. Surjan Singh Gill, who has shifted to the UK, was reportedly a CSIS mole.

All these holes in this sorry saga suggest that the Canadian establishment was either not taking the threat seriously, or giving separatists of another country a free run on its soil.

The Indian government was at the time complaining that Canada wasn’t doing anything to stop the activities of Sikh separatists. Indeed, both the Canadian and the American governments were soft on them.

It may be because they were supported by the Pakistan spy agency ISI, which was then helping the American spy agency, CIA, in creating troubles for Russia in Afghanistan by training Islamic militants.

The Sikh militants were also trained in Pakistan, which was accused of creating disturbances in India. Thus this cozy arrangement may have been the reason why the problem was ignored at the political level.

The involvement of more than one spy agency may also have contributed to the crisis. If the Canadian government was really determined to stop this madness, why did it never charge people like Bagri with a hate speech?

Why was the Babbar Khalsa not banned immediately after the bombing in 1985, rather being banned after 9/11 when the Sikh militancy had lost its ground?

Why did the Canadian government let Parmar leave the country, despite having him under surveillance?

Canada should truly acknowledge its mistakes and uncover everything by even going beyond the conspiracy theories and bringing the remaining suspects to book.

It was indeed a Canadian tragedy as the conspiracy was hatched here and most of the victims were Canadian citizens.

The only thing that separated them from the Canadian mainstream was that they were people of Indian decent.

If racism was not the excuse this plot was never studied, understood, or acted upon then Canada should come out with more convincing reason for this mess.

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A day [June 19 2009] in the life of a crooked West

Billionaire Stanford

IN Richmond , Virginia the Texas billionaire Allen Stanford, three associates and a top Caribbean regulator were indicted on fraud, conspiracy and obstruction charges in an elaborate $7 billion pyramid scheme to bilk investors, U.S. Justice Department officials said. This is just one case; New York and Washington are full of such fraudulents.

A federal judge in Virginia ordered Stanford, a flamboyant 59-year-old financier; to be transferred to Houston for a hearing on whether he should be granted bail on charges he orchestrated the fraud through his bank on the Caribbean island of Antigua. This island is a state created heaven for   economic offenders worldwide. They could evade taxes, park their fraudulent money and make merry.
Stanford, who surrendered to FBI agents outside his girlfriend's house in Virginia late on Thursday, entered a Richmond federal courtroom in ankle shackles and sat straight with his chin in his hands during a brief hearing before U.S. Magistrate Hannah Lauck. He could face life in prison if convicted on all of the charges brought by a grand jury in Texas, assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer.

Stanford and executive Laura Pendergest-Holt, accountants Gilberto Lopez and Mark Kuhrt and Antigua's top regulator, Leroy King, were hit with 21 charges alleging they concocted a broad ruse to deceive investors, fabricate financial statements and hide their fraud."This scheme was carefully orchestrated to make sure the true information never saw the light of day," said Robert Khuzami, head of the Securities and Exchange Commission's enforcement unit.

Stanford, who lived lavishly and whose passion for cricket translated into generous backing for the sport in the cricket-loving West Indies, has denied any wrongdoing. His lawyer said on Friday the financier would fight the allegations.
- Stanford, others, also accused of diverting $1.6 billion in undisclosed personal loans to Stanford.
- Stanford and other accused charged with falsely claiming Stanford's bank assets grew from $1.2 billion in 2001 to $8.5 billion in December 2008.
- Indictment alleges that about $5 billion on Stanford bank's reported assets consisted of notes on loan to Stanford and grossly overstated interest in island properties.
- More than $2 billion was allegedly added to the bank's books in 2008 from artificial real estate deals
 
Chief executives of major banks used jets for private

Chief executives of some banks that received federal money, including Bank of America Corp, Morgan Stanley and Regions Financial Corp, used company jets for their personal use, the Wall Street Journal has reported. Flight records showed many occasions when banks receiving ... Chief executives of some banks that received federal money, including Bank of America Corp, Morgan Stanley and Regions Financial Corp, used company jets for their personal use, the Wall Street Journal reported on its website.
Flight records showed many occasions when banks receiving federal money flew their planes to destinations near resorts or executives' vacation homes in Europe, Mexico, the Caribbean, south Florida and Aspen, according to the paper.
 
Seven Mexico majors charged with drug smuggling

Mexico levied organized crime and drug charges Thursday against seven mayors, the former state attorney general and 19 other officials in the western state of Michoacan for allegedly aiding a drug cartel.
 
Three other mayors detained in raids across the state May 26 have not been charged, but will continue to be held pending investigations, officials said.
 
The seven mayors are the largest group of Mexican elected officials arrested on drug charges in recent memory. They and the other suspects charged will be taken to a federal prison in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit to await trial.
 
Federal Attorney General Eduardo Medina-Mora alleged the officials charged Thursday helped the La Familia drug cartel."These 27 people took advantage of and misused their public office to carry out acts that favoured and helped the drug trafficking activities of the criminal organization known as La Familia," Medina-Mora said.
 
Goldman Sachs Group to return $ 10 billion

On the eve of Goldman Sachs Group Inc paying back $10 billion of government bailout money, Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein expressed "regret" his bank took part in the "market euphoria" that led to the collapse of the financial sector last year.

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are expected to be in the first wave of major banks that will begin repaying the money taken from the Treasury Department's Troubled Asset Relief Program, known as TARP. Morgan Stanley also took $10 billion.

On June 29 2009, the disgraced financier Bernard Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison on Monday for perpetrating Wall Street's biggest and most brazen investment fraud, the maximum punishment allowed for what the judge called "extraordinarily evil" crimes.

Cheers and applause came from the courtroom -- filled with his fleeced investors -- as the judge handed down the penalty, apparently unconvinced that Madoff had cooperated with investigators or told the full story.

Madoff, 71, stood passively with his hands clasped at his waist, showing no reaction when he heard the sentence that will send him to prison for the rest of his life.

The former nonexecutive chairman of the Nasdaq stock market has been jailed in a Manhattan cell since he pleaded guilty to 11 charges including securities fraud, money laundering and perjury in March.

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Freedom fighters remembered

Gurpreet Singh writes from Vancouver

THE annual community fair dedicated to the freedom fighters of India ended successfully at the Langley’s Millennium Park on June 20. Organized by the Indo Canadian Workers’ Association and Shaheed Bhagat Singh Foudation, every year, this year’s fair was in remembrance of Late Comrade Harkishan Singh Surjeet, a towering Communist leader of India, who passed away last year.

Surjeet was the former secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and had participated in the freedom struggle. He was a member of Bhagat Singh’s party, Naujawan Sabha. Bhagat Singh was one of the most revered martyrs of India who was hanged along with two other revolutionaries in 1931. Surjeet had frequently visited BC and had attended the fair on several occasions. 

The organizers passed a condolence resolution in recognition of his contributions. Besides, a portrait of Surjeet was also displayed along side the pictures of other revolutionaries inside the make shift exhibition tent. Among those whose pictures were displayed were the freedom fighters that had traveled back to India from US and Canada to wage a war against the British. They included Uttam Singh Hans, Beer Singh Bahowal, Ishar Singh Dhudike and Ranga Singh from Vancouver, who were hanged on June 18, 1916. 

The Indo Canadian Workers’ Association President, Surinder Sangha who was a brain behind the exhibition was honoured for his ``sustained efforts to keep the history of India’s freedom struggle alive’’.

``In fact Comrade Surjeet was our source of inspiration. He wanted us to organize such events annually to encourage patriotism and nationalism among the immigrants’’, Sangha said. He got the portrait of Surjeet made by a local painter, Sheetal Anmol last year.

Besides, condolences were also read out for Bhagat Singh Bilga and Vimla Dang, the two leftist freedom fighters, who died this year.

Local Punjabi singer Gill Hardeep who has penned a song challenging the astrologers and those spreading superstition was a source of attraction for many. The song goes on to warn people against the lies being spread of these soothsayers, astrologers and other thugs.

A special exhibition of Punjabi books was also organized by the Chetna Parkashan, a prominent publishing house in Punjab, India whose owner Satish Gulati had also displayed the books about the lives and philosophy of the revolutionaries.

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