Friday, September 30, 2011

Jackson's bodyguard told court that Dr Murray stopped CPR to tell him to collect vials before calling 911

Is this the saline bag which killed Michael Jackson? How doctor tried to hide vials and drip containing 'milky white substance'

Alberto Alvarez also described how daughter Paris screamed 'Daddy!' at the sight of her unresponsive father
He said it was the first time Murray had performed mouth-to-mouth in his life
Personal chef took to stands and admitted she went back to work after a panic-stricken Murray had asked her to call security

Last updated at 2:59 AM on 30th September 2011

Conrad Murray broke off from trying to resuscitate Michael Jackson to order a bodyguard to hide bottles of drugs, jurors heard today.

The star's doctor allegedly told Alberto Alvarez to stash away drug vials and a surgical drip bag containing what appeared to be propofol, an anaesthetic meant only to be used in hospitals.

Murray, 58, is charged with causing Jackson’s death by accidentally administering a fatal dose of the anaesthetic while trying to help the singer combat his chronic insomnia.

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Evidence: Deputy District Attorney David Walgren holds a bag of sodium chloride as Jacskon's bodyguard Alberto Alvarez is questioned during day three of the trial

Jackson's bodyguard Alberto Alvarez has said that he was told to hide medicines before calling 911

Paris Jackson, pictured left at the memorial service for their father, was standing in her father's bedroom as attempts were made to resuscitate him

Mr Alvarez explained how he went into Jackson's bedroom on June 25, 2009, to find Murray carrying out CPR on the prone star.

It was the first time Murray had performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in his life.

Mr Alvarez also told how Jackson's terrified daughter Paris screamed out 'Daddy' as she came face to face with her father's dead body.

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The 11-year-old cried out in horror as she stood close to his bed with Jackson's lifeless face pointed in her direction, the singer's bodyguard told the court at Dr Conrad Murray's manslaughter trial today.

Mr Alvarez was the first person to reach Jackson's bedroom after his doctor urgently called for help. He said the doctor instructed him to help hide medicines before calling 911.

He said he was sat in his security trailer when he got a call from Jackson's assistant asking him to rush to the singer's bedroom without creating a 'commotion'.

Trusted aide: Alvarez, the longtime bodyguard of Jackson seen with him in 2009, made the 911 call when the popstar stopped breathing

Jackson's bodyguard Alberto Alvarez was shown a picture of an IV drip and saline bag that were said to contain a 'white milky substance'

Conrad Murray heard the prosecution call witnesses in the third day of his trial

Prosecutor David Walgren holds a bag of sodium chloride while questioning Alberto Alvarez, one of Michael Jackson's security guards

Deputy District Attorney David Walgren holds a bottle of propofol during questioning

When the bodyguard got to the room on the second floor of the LA mansion, he said Murray called to him 'Come, come quick'.

He said that Murray was giving chest compressions with his left hand to Jackson who was lying on his bed.

The singer was lying on his back with his hands to his side with his palms up, and his mouth and eyes open, the bodyguard told the court.

He said that as Murray told him that they needed to get Jackson to hospital he noticed Paris Jackson crying inside the room.

Murray shouted: 'Don't let them see their dad that way', before Mr Alvarez ushered her from the room, reassuring her that 'everything will be OK'.

Mr Alvarez said when he asked Murray what had happened he said that Jackson had 'had a bad reaction'.

He said that he was told by the doctor to gather medicine vials before calling emergency services.

Alberto Alvarez said Dr. Conrad Murray grabbed the vials form a night stand next to Jackson, who was still in his bed. 'He said "here, put these in a bag".' said Mr Alvarez.

The full transcript of Mr Alvarez's 911 call

The court was shown a picture of the space next to Jackson's bed where Murray tried to revive the star

A photo of Michael Jackson's bedroom where he was found unconscious was shown in court

Chef: Kai Chase, personal chef for Jackson, admitted she went back to work after a panic-stricken Murray told her to call security

The bodyguard said at first he thought he was bagging the items in preparation for a trip to the hospital. He said he trusted Murray because he was a doctor.

He said the doctor passed him a 'handful' of vials and told him to bag them in a plastic bag. He then ask him to put the plastic bag in a brown paper bag and then to place that bag inside a blue bag.

The doctor also asked him to remove one of the saline bags that had a 'milky white substance' in it from an IV stand and put it in the blue bag.

Mr Walgren played Mr Alvarez's 911 call for jurors. 'He's pumping the chest, but he's not responding to anything, sir,' Mr Alvarez told the dispatcher, urging them to send an ambulance quickly.

The burly Alvarez became emotional as the 911 call was played for jurors. Jackson's mother, Katherine, appeared distraught and her son, Randy, huddled next to her and put his arm around her.

'Was that difficult to hear?' Mr Walgren asked. 'It is,' Mr Alvarez replied.

Mr Alvarez said, after hanging up with dispatchers, he performed chest compressions on Jackson while Murray gave the singer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation efforts. The doctor remarked it was his first time performing the procedure.

Jackson went into cardiac arrest at this rented house in LA

LaToya Jackson, sister of the late pop star Michael Jackson, arrives for the third day of the trial

'I recalled that after a few breaths that he [Conrad Murray] breathed into Mr Jackson, he came up and he said this is the first time that I do mouth to mouth, but I have to, he's my friend,' said Mr Alvarez.

Mr Alvarez recalled seeing Murray at the hospital where Jackson was taken and sitting next to the emergency room.

'I wanted him to make it,' Mr Alvarez quoted Murray as saying. 'I wanted him to make it.'

Mr Alvarez said he's been approached numerous times by media outlets that have offered him hundreds of thousands of dollars to tell his story. He's refused every time, even though he's struggled financially since Jackson's death.

'I don't have steady work,' he said. 'I went from a great salary to hardly anything.'

Prosecutors have been calling witnesses who were with Jackson and Murray the day the singer died.

Jackson's personal chef, Kai Chase, testified about seeing a panicked Murray come into the kitchen the day of Jackson's death and telling her to summon security and send up Jackson's eldest son Prince.

The chef, who was in the kitchen preparing lunch for Michael and his kids, said she sent the boy upstairs, but didn't call security - a point highlighted by defence attorney J. Michael Flanagan.

Five to 10 minutes after Chase said she saw Murray in the kitchen, the doctor called the popstar's assistant Michael Amir Williams, who dispatched security to Jackson's bedroom.

Katherine Jackson, the singer's mother, arrives today at the Los Angeles courthouse

Randy and Janet Jackson arrive for the third day of the trial today

The court heard about the scenes in hospital after Michael Jackson was pronounced dead

Authorities accuse Murray of giving Jackson a lethal dose of the anesthetic propofol in the bedroom.

The jury has already gotten a glimpse into the entertainer's inner sanctum through photos and testimony.

Mr Alvarez's account of what occurred on the day of Jackson's death was challenged by Murray's defence attorneys.

Ed Chernoff began to attack Mr Alvarez's recollection of when Murray asked the bodyguard to gather the medicine vials.

Mr Chernoff suggested Mr Alvarez may have placed the vials in the bag after paramedics arrived. Mr Alvarez maintained Murray gave his instructions prior to the 911 call.

Mr Chernoff questioned Mr Alvarez's timeline, noting that the bodyguard had spoken to Jackson's personal assistant on a cell phone two minutes before he called 911.

The call, according to records, lasted 88 seconds.

Mr Chernoff then began to tick off the number of things Mr Alvarez said he did, including ushering two of Jackson's kids out of the bedroom, before Murray asked the bodyguard to grab the vials.

Prosecutors contend Murray did not tell any of the bodyguards or emergency personnel that he had been giving Jackson propofol and other sedatives to help him sleep.

Mr Chernoff claimed in opening statements that Jackson gave himself the lethal dose.

Much of the trial in later sessions will focus on the science of what killed Jackson, and duelling theories of Murray's role.

For at least another day, jurors will hear from witnesses who knew him when he was alive.

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Russell Simmons: 'Every Single One' Of My Employees Pays More Taxes Than Me

First Posted: 9/29/11 07:39 PM ET Updated: 9/29/11 07:48 PM ET

Famed investor Warren Buffett and Def Jam co-founder Russell Simmons have at least one thing in common: They both want the U.S. government to raise their taxes.

"All my employees -- every single one -- paid more taxes than I did," Simmons told MSNBC's Martin Bashir on Thursday in a segment highlighted by Think Progress. "We need to make the rich pay their fair share."

This is the second time in as many days that Simmons, whose estimated net worth is $340 million, has called for the federal government to raise taxes on America's wealthiest citizens. By doing so, he stands alongside Warren Buffett, the third-richest man in the world, who in August similarly called for raising taxes on the rich in aNew York Times Op-Ed.

Simmons also issued the request in a blog post on Wednesday.

“I believe in a nation where everyone gets a fair share of the fruits of our labor and where everyone pays a fair share for what they receive,” he wrote on his site. “I am asking the United States government to raise my taxes and not allow the Republicans to use this economic recession as an opportunity to strip the basic programs that protect our most vulnerable.”

Asked by MSNBC's Bashir whether raising taxes on the wealthy would threaten an already weak recovery, Simmons was unfazed. "I hired based on pre-tax profit, not post-tax," said Simmons, author of Super Rich: A Guide to Having it All.

He continued: "We need to organize all the working class and underserved communities to go to work to fight off this money grab... that a great number of the [rich] corporations and individuals to undermine opportunities to give opportunity and resources to the poor."

Simmons has used multiple platforms to get across his message. On Wednesday, he joined the Occupy Wall Street protests in downtown Manhattan, according to Mogulite.

And most of the country would seem to agree with the drive to raise taxes on the rich. In a recent survey, nearly three-quarters of all respondents -- and two-thirds of Republicans -- said they would support President Obama's proposal to tax millionaire households at the same rate as the middle class.

The rule was unveiled in early September as part of a larger package including other tax increases and spending cuts. If enacted, it would apply to roughly 60,000 people, according to The New York Times.

It’s President Obama Who Needs to ‘Stop Complaining’ and Get to Work

by Kai Wright

President Obama’s speech to the Congressional Black Caucus’ annual meeting this past weekend shouldn’t have even been news. As a whole, it was unremarkable. He offered up his now-standard talking points for his belated jobs bill—Republicans are hypocrites on taxes, we’ve gotta have shared sacrifice, pass this dead-on-arrival bill now, and so on. He peppered it with his usual code-switching for black audiences, prominently dropping his g’s and letting his old campaign-trail swagger shine. But all in all, it was nothing special—except for two things that tell us a great deal about this president and his relationship to our community.

The first thing is a bit of lecturing Obama couldn’t resist tacking onto the end of his address. “Take off your bedroom slippers,” he bizarrely ordered, “put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying. We are going to press on. We’ve got work to do, CBC.” That remark transformed the speech from a weekend news bite into a week-long discussion about the president’s relationship to a community that remains his strongest supporter.

The remark was largely understood as a jab at Rep. Maxine Waters and others in the Black Caucus who have grumbled recently that the White House is ignoring the growing gap between black unemployment and that of the rest of the country. Waters responded by calling the president’s comment “curious” and suggesting he “got off script and got a little bit beside himself.” Tavis Smiley, another routine Obama critic, was more blunt. In a conversation with Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee after the speech, Smiley argued the president would never say such things to other allied communities that have complained far more vocally about the White House’s policies on gay rights, Israel or immigration.

But President Obama has always enjoyed lecturing black people. Absent his much discussed campaign speech on Jeremiah Wright and his fumbling “beer summit,” the only time he’s been willing to touch race has been to show up at black events and tell us to take more responsibility for ourselves—as fathers, as home owners and now as laggard troops in his war for reelection. The president has also long been dismissive of black criticism, and maintained that posture during a BET interview Monday night, in which he shrugged off the fact that “a handful of African American leaders” have complaints. “They were critical when I was running for president. There’s always going to be someone who is critical of the president of the United States,” he said. “That’s my job.”

Many would define his job differently, but more on that later. The president’s reaction to black criticism mirrors the way he responds to criticism from the left overall: he invites conversation about it, then minimizes his base as irrelevant. That’s in keeping with his image of himself as a vessel for American reconciliation, rather than the nation’s chief executive. If people who are supposed to like him are mad, he must be on the right path, he must be offering just the sort of split-the-difference leadership that a fractured nation needs to heal, right? Waters’ point, however, is that black America is less in need of healing than it is of jobs and homes and food security.

Which is the second thing about Obama’s CBC speech that was unique—he actually publicly acknowledged the fact that this recession hasn’t been the same for all Americans. From jobs to poverty to hunger, the hard numbers reveal that black neighborhoods all over the country are living in a depression. Even among recent college graduates, black unemployment is twice that of their white peers. The racial wealth gap has exploded to the point that the median white family has 44.5 times more wealth than the median black family. More stark is the absolute measure: the median black family held $2,200 in wealth as of 2009, a number that has surely plummeted further as the foreclosure and jobs crises have worsened in the past two years—under Obama’s watch. You can’t profess to care about the middle class and not consider this disparity a critical threat to the nation’s future.

We’ve pointed out these trends many times, but I’m thrilled to finally be able to quote the president himself on them:

“The unemployment rate for black folks went up to nearly 17 percent—the highest it’s been in almost three decades. Forty percent, almost, of African-American children are living in poverty; fewer than half convinced that they can achieve Dr. King’s dream. You’ve got to be a little crazy to have faith during such hard times. It’s heartbreaking, and it’s frustrating. And I ran for president, and the members of the CBC ran for Congress, to help more Americans reach that dream.”

Not for nothing, if Obama had stopped there the CBC speech would today be a rallying point for his rapidly shrinking approval rating among black voters; he’s fallen from 83 percent to 58 percent of black voters being “strongly favorable” in the past five months, according to the Washington Post’s polling. But the president couldn’t stop there, he had to go on to suggest that black folks are themselves responsible for this pain, because we’re so busy sitting around in our bedroom slippers and complaining rather than fighting. We’re probably letting our kids watch too much TV while we’re at it. And eating fatty foods.

The reality, of course, is that some black people are complaining precisely because the president has not yet done the work that he’s happy lecture everyone else about doing. Three years after millions of black, young and working people of all colors did the impossible by putting him in office, he has finally turned his attention from Wall Street’s well-being and the quest for bipartisan harmony to picking a fight on jobs. He’s now found the pluck, he says, to do battle with Republicans over taxes to pay for a jobs bill. Time will tell if he’s just selling woof tickets. Either way, let’s hope the rising chorus of black criticism keeps building—and demanding the same accountability from the president that he is so fond of demanding from us.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities Are Worth Saving

Matthew Lynch, Ed.D.

Assistant Professor of Education, Widener University

If you haven't been paying much attention to the debate concerning the relevance and effectiveness of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), now is the time to sit up and take notice. If you don't, there is a chance it could soon be too late. Over the last two decades, we have seen the number of HBCUs in the United States sharply decline and this greatly concerns me. Those who believe in the benefits of HBCUs need to stand up and let their voices be heard, before these important institutions are gone forever.

HBCUs are coming under fire for everything from not improving their failing infrastructures to producinglower graduation rates, and more. But we need to take a moment to look at why people should pull together, rally around them, and help them make it through turbulent economic times. HBCUs have helped to educate some of the most prominent African-American figures in this country's history, including Jesse Jackson, Samuel L. Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr., Spike Lee, and Thurgood Marshall, among many others.

HBCUs provide cultural benefits, as well as providing an affordable education. This cultural foundation has been important to the African American community for over a century. Our HBCUs were there, supporting the community and educating our people, long before other colleges would even let them through the door. So are we saying that, just because mainstream American colleges will now let black students in, we should abandon the institutions that supported us and helped us get to where we are today?

HBCUs are a part of African-American tradition, going back generations. They were not only there during the struggle; they helped our people get through it! We owe them our support and respect. They were there for us, and it is time, right now, for us to be there for them.

The biggest reason that HBCUs are fading is because they are often lack sufficient funding, which makes it difficult for them to survive. Without adequate funding, they will end up deteriorating and are apt to become a thing of the past. The low completion rate at HBCUs has also been a contributing factor to their demise. But I believe that it is the other way around: the lack of funding has contributed to the lower graduation rates. HBCUs have to deal with the fact that many of their academically eligible students drop out of college each year because their financial needs cannot be met with Pell Grants and other aid. A large portion of HBCUs have small endowments, so there isn't a huge rainy day fund to tap into when financial challenges arise.

I received my Masters and Doctoral level training from Jackson State University. Recently, Washington Monthly magazine ranked Jackson State University number 9 among 258 colleges and universities across the country in terms of social mobility, research and service ratings. This attests to the fact that many of our HBCUs are achieving astounding results, against all odds. In my home state of Mississippi, I grew up attending athletic and cultural functions at Tougaloo College, Alcorn State University, Mississippi Valley State University and of course, the aforementioned Jackson State University. These universities are sources of great pride and a part of the African-American intellectual tradition.

Now is the time when people who support HBUCs, including advocates, organizations, faculty, students and alumni, need to rally together to help save this historical piece of African-American history. If these groups come together and make their voices heard, we will be able to save these institutions. But make no mistake, if there is no rally, if there is no coming together to let the powers-that-be know that we want them saved, then I predict that they will be gone in 50 or so years. And they will not return. Nobody is going to turn back the hands of time and open another historically black college or university, because it wouldn't be historic. Right now, they are historic, and they need our support and rescue!

Many people are currently asking whether HBCUs are worth saving in the first place. I ask, how can these historical institutions, which represent African-American culture, tradition and struggle for educational equality, not be considered worth saving? If they are not worth saving, then it makes it very difficult to find any other piece of African-American heritage that is worth saving. These educational institutions are symbols of our people that must not be ignored.

I urge those who care about these institutions to speak out, show your support, and demand that adequate funding be provided to them, so that they can make it through these turbulent economic times. It's not just about saving a college or university. This is a metaphor for saving ourselves! With proper funding, these schools will thrive, carrying on our culture and traditions as they were meant to do.

In the words of the great Eldridge Cleaver, "You're either part of the solution or part of the problem." Which will you be?