On Watchtower Information Service articles about Michael Jackson were always very popular. Especially that Michael reportedly became a Muslim was greeted with applause by visitors from the Islamic world (see the comments in previous articles on Watchtower Information Service).

Michael Jackson and the Jehovah’s Witnesses
In an interview Michael gave in the year 2000 he was speaking quite positive about his Jehovah’s Witnesses past:

“As we grew older, [visiting the Kingdom Hall] became difficult, and my remarkable and truly saintly mother would sometimes end up there on her own. When circumstances made it increasingly complex for me to attend, I was comforted by the belief that God exists in my heart, and in music and in beauty, not only in a building. But I still miss the sense of community that I felt there – I miss the friends and the people who treated me like I was simply one of them.”

But this doesn’t mean that the Watchtower Society always appreciated Michael’s music.  In 1984 the Awake! Magazine featured an article with the title “I Would Never Do It Again!”:

“In another popular video, Thriller, the performer is seen to transform first into a “cat person,” then a dancing “monster.” Evidently not wanting viewers to conclude that it promoted spiritism, the film begins with the disclaimer: “Due to my strong personal convictions, I wish to stress that this film in no way endorses a belief in the occult.—Michael Jackson.” Nevertheless, it was so realistic that some who saw it admitted that they were horrified at first. What was this short film intended to convey? And how does the performer, Michael Jackson, feel about it in looking back?

“I would never do it again!” says Jackson. “I just intended to do a good, fun short film, not to purposely bring to the screen something to scare people or to do anything bad. I want to do what’s right. I would never do anything like that again.” Why not? “Because a lot of people were offended by it,” explains Jackson. “That makes me feel bad. I don’t want them to feel that way. I realize now that it wasn’t a good idea. I’ll never do a video like that again!” He continues: “In fact, I have blocked further distribution of the film over which I have control, including its release in some other countries. There’s all kinds of promotional stuff being proposed on Thriller. But I tell them, ‘No, no, no. I don’t want to do anything on Thriller. No more Thriller.’”” (May 22, 1984 Awake! Magazine (pg. 18-20)

In the spring of 1987 Michael disassociated himself and was shunned by his former Jehovah’s Witness friends.

Michael’s music lives on…

“When I came back from Mecca I got him a lot of books and he asked me lots of things about my religion and I told him that it’s peaceful and beautiful. He read everything and he was proud of me that I found something that would give me inner strength and peace. He could do so much, just like I am trying to do. Michael and I and the word of God, we could do so much.”

Michael has been staying in Bahrain as a guest of the royal family.

Source: Associated Content

According to a report on the Jewish website ynet.com, quoting the Arab-Israeli newspaper Panorama, Michael Jackson is moving from Jehovah’s Witness to Muslim:

“The singer said he decided to convert to Islam because he is convinced it is the closest religion to his personal beliefs.

Jackson also noted he intends to soon move all his assets and his studio from the U.S. to Bahrain, and expressed his hope to be rid of various legal troubles and enjoy the kind of freedom he says he does not have in America.

Notably, if the reports are correct Jackson would not be the first member of his family to make the move to Islam. His brother, Jermaine, who moved to the Gulf nation of Dubai, is also a convert.

According to the sources, Jermaine was the one to provide his famous brother with books about Islam and encouraged him to convert. The report says the pop star read the books and even added his comments on some pages.

Jackson was the center of recent controversy after it was reported that he referred to Jews as “leeches” in a phone message to a former business partner.

Referring to Jews, Jackson was heard saying that “they’re like leeches…I’m so tired of it…They start out the most popular person in the world, make a lot of money, big house, cars and everything. End up penniless. It is a conspiracy. The Jews do it on purpose.””

His Jewish attorney, Brian Oxman, denied on eurweb.com that Michael Jackson is anti-Semitic :

“”I have been with the Jackson family for 15 years, and I’m Jewish. I have never once seen anything anti-Semitic from him or from his family.” …Oxman doesn’t deny that it’s probably Jackson’s voice on the tapes, but insists that he has never experienced any anti-Semitism from the singer or any other member of the Jackson family.

Jackson’s rep Raymone Bain is also denying that Jackson is anti-Semitic. In a press release e-mailed Wednesday, she wrote:

“Michael Jackson does not have a racist bone in his body. Never would he say anything, or do anything, that would be offensive to any ethnic group, or hurtful to any ethnic group. It is not in his character, or his being. He has spent his entire life reaching out to people throughout the world by spreading love through his music, and his philanthropic efforts. It is unfortunate that these tapes are being disseminated throughout the airways without any due diligence with regards to the authenticity.”

An Iranian website reports that Michael Jackson, who recently settled down in Bahrain has donated a huge amount of money for building a state-of-the-art mosque near his luxury palace in the Bahraini capital:

“The proposed mosque would be designated for learning the principles and teachings of Islam, as well as teaching of English language, for which high-standard teachers would be brought from United States under his personal supervision, the spokesman said.

Jackson did so as a token of appreciation to the Bahraini people, who welcomed him and treated him as if he was one of the citizens of their country.”

Sources close to Michael Jackson denied the rumours that he was planning to donate money for the building of this mosque according the Bahrain based Gulf Daily News. In the past Michael Jackson donated huge amounts of money for building Watchtower Properties.

Sources: Ynetnews
Gulf Daily News
Iranian Quran News Agency
Eurweb.com

As I reported over the weekend, Michael Jackson decamped from Neverland for a few days while he awaited the jury’s decision.

Jackson and his inner circle checked into the posh Santa Ynez Inn on Friday.

Jackson is also said to have made an appearance on Sunday with his mother, Katherine Jackson, at her local church.

This would indicate that, at least for the moment, the singer is re-embracing the values of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, even though he’s publicly separated himself from the denomination in the past.

But what Jackson mostly did over the weekend was to hide from taking responsibility for the dismissal of his publicist, Raymone K. Bain.

Over the weekend, Jackson was happy to let his younger brother Randy Jackson take the flak for putting Bain’s firing on his own Web site.

Source: Foxnews

by ROBIN YAPP and ANNETTE WITHERIDGE, Daily Mail
15th September 2003

Venus and Serena Williams are in mourning today after their eldest sister was murdered.

Yetunde Price, 31, a personal assistant to her superstar sisters, was shot dead after a confrontation with youths in the crime-ridden Los Angeles suburb of Compton, where the Williams family grew up.

A 24-year-old man has been arrested by police and jailed without bail.

Yetunde Price was with her boyfriend in a white four-wheel drive vehicle when the argument broke out in the early hours of yesterday. A neighbour said he heard about a dozen gunshots.

Miss Price was rushed to hospital but pronounced dead a short time later from wounds to the upper body. Her boyfriend was uninjured.

Police later surrounded a bungalow where three suspects, armed with an AK47 assault rifle, were thought to have barricaded themselves in.

More than 40 officers circled the property and heavily-armed SWAT teams and hostage negotiators were called in. They stormed the house just after midday – some 12 hours after the shooting – but it was empty. The suspects are now believed to have fled immediately after the shooting.

Miss Price, a divorced mother-of-three who retained her married name, was seen by British TV audiences at Wimbledon this year when she joined the family entourage to see Venus and Serena reach the Ladies’ final.

During the tournament she shared a house in the south London suburb with sisters Isha, a 29-year-old lawyer, Lyndrea, a 25-year-old actress and singer, and their mother Oracene.

Venus and Serena’s agent, Carlos Fleming, said the family was heading for Los Angeles. Serena has been in Toronto to film an appearance in a cable TV drama series.

Family lawyer Keven Davis said: “They are all devastated. It’s a fluid situation and a lot of reports out there may be inaccurate. We are asking people to respect the family’s privacy and are trying to get as much information as we can.

“I just talked to Yetunde Friday. She was great. She was upbeat, in a great mood.”

Serena’s publicist Raymone Baine said: “This is extremely devastating news. They are a very close-knit family.”

Venus and Serena’s rise to stardom from humble beginnings is one of sport’s most remarkable stories.

Under the watchful eye of their father Richard they have come to dominate women’s tennis and today they are said to be worth £200million.

While she often accompanied her sisters around the world, styling their hair for celebrity appearances, Miss Price led a far more modest existence.

She lived in a £50,000 bungalow in Corona, a suburb close to Compton, and owned her own hair salon, proudly displaying pictures of Venus and Serena on the walls.

Despite her lack of wealth, she insisted on paying her own air fare whenever she flew to see Venus and Serena.

All five sisters and their mother are Jehovah’s witnesses and Miss Price always said she had a better life than her famous siblings and that she felt no envy.

As well as a motive for the shooting, investigators were trying to determine why Miss Price and her companion were in the area. “Right now there are more questions than answers,” said a police spokesman.

Los Angeles sheriff Scott Butler said police on patrol near the shooting had raced to the scene after hearing several shots. “Yetunde and a male companion, who we believe was her boyfriend, had been in a white SUV when they became involved in a confrontation with some local residents.

“The confrontation led to gunfire. She was shot in the upper torso and was found by deputies in the street. She was later pronounced dead at a local hospital.”

He confirmed that homicide investigators were investigating. “They are at the scene, talking to witnesses, trying to determine exactly what happened,” he said.

Richard and Oracene Williams went through a messy and bitter divorce last year and Wimbledon was one of the few occasions since that the whole family has been seen together.

Venus and Serena both missed the recent US Open championship through injury.

REGINA — Shont’e Peoples was seeking a new start, looking to go somewhere else to wrestle quarterbacks and his spirituality.

The Saskatchewan Roughriders tried to trade him during the CFL offseason, at his request, but they didn’t find any serious bidders for a 30-year-old defensive end coming off an injury-riddled season in which he had posted two sacks. So Peoples was in attendance Sunday, when the Roughriders opened their 2003 training camp at Taylor Field, vowing to show his detractors he was ready to become one of the league’s top defensive players.

“I’m tired of chasing Joe Montford and Elfrid Payton,” Peoples said about the CFL’s sack leaders the past two seasons.

“I’m the rabbit now. They’re going to chase me. I’m not trying to put a hate on Joe and Swac (Payton), but I pride myself in being a complete player. If I didn’t defend against the run I’d have 30 sacks.”

Peoples has two reasons to believe he can resume being one of the league’s premier pass rushers: He’s healthy, having recovered from troublesome knee surgery and numerous hamstring pulls, plus he has reconciled an inner conflict that began with his religious conversion to Jehovah’s Witness.

Peoples now calls himself an “inactive” Jehovah’s Witness, although he continues carrying a card that forbids him to accept blood transfusions in accordance with his faith.

“I believe everything the Jehovah’s Witnesses teach, and I respect them,” Peoples said.

“This is only my opinion, but you can’t serve two masters — one God who is preaching peace and the other one, football, which is the opposite of peace. When I analyze my last two seasons, I used to have a street mentality, but for the past two years I had a sheep mentality. I wasn’t aggressive enough. My whole career, my mentality has always been my edge. When I lost that, I lost a lot on the field.”

That was evident last season, right up to the Roughriders’ 24-14 loss to the Toronto Argonauts in the Eastern Division semi-final.

In that playoff game, Peoples equalled his regular-season total with two sacks. Afterward, he wanted to sign a longer contract with the Roughriders, but general manager Roy Shivers and head coach Danny Barrett were demanding more from the eight-year CFL veteran who joined Saskatchewan as a free agent in 2001.

Their initial discussions upset Peoples and led to his trade demand, but he apparently withdrew his request during a meeting this spring, when he presented the Roughriders with his new contract proposal.

“Yes, we tried to trade (Peoples) because those were his wishes at the time,” Barrett said. “We talked to a few clubs, but we weren’t going to just give him away and we weren’t going to put him on the street.

“Time cleared up the whole situation. He realized this team was headed in the right direction and he had been a part of it for the past several years. He still has the trust factor with the team and Roy. Those things kick in. You’ll see this young man produce. If he stays healthy he’ll get the recognition he deserves. I would like to see Shont’e be up for the (CFL’s) defensive player-of-the-year. It’s his time now.”

Peoples’ troublesome season even generated criticism from within the organization, some of it public, some of it whispered. Glory-seeker. Won’t practise. Faker.

Peoples heard it.

“I used to not be a practice player,” Peoples said. “When you get older and you get responsibilities put on your shoulders, you get better. As the team goes through transformations and I get older, I can’t rely on my athleticism. Now I’ve got to work harder.

“It wasn’t right for those players to be speaking. I was in my ninth (pro) season. The guys who were talking were on the practice team or had been a two-month player. That just causes dissension and we don’t need that. Veterans are different from rookies. If I’m established and the coach tells me to take it easy for two days to get ready for the game, that’s the way it is. A rookie won’t get treated that way.”

“I’m emotional. I love playing this game. When people say I don’t want to play, that upsets me because that’s not my character. Roy told me he’ll see how I’m doing before we get around to the contract. I love that because this is my job: If they put pressure on me, I won’t pop.”

The girls seem to follow the religion of their mother: “Thanks to my god, Jehovah,” Serena exclaimed this year (2002) after winning the French and Wimbledon back to back.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. –– The parents of Venus and Serena Williams have completed their divorce.

The divorce won’t affect the advisory roles Richard and Oracene Williams play in their daughters’ tennis careers, Raymone Bain, a publicist for Oracene and Serena Williams, said Tuesday.

The settlement was a no-fault divorce, Bain said, but financial terms were kept private. The case was filed in state circuit court.

The couple married in 1980 and separated about 18 months ago, Bain said. He said the sisters and their parents will continue to live in Palm Beach Gardens.

“I was very honest with our children that a reconciliation would not happen,” Oracene Williams said in a statement. “They’ve accepted our divorce and love us, as we both love them. Richard and I will continue to work together for the good of our girls, and I truly wish him well.”

Williams, who began grooming his daughters as preschoolers to become tennis stars and is still their coach, declined to comment.

Mrs. Williams, who plans to revert to her maiden name, Price, also has been influential in her daughters’ careers.

Serena and Venus have won four Grand Slam titles apiece. Serena has won the past three majors and is ranked No. 1 in the world.

She was a prodigy who was trained by her father, but that’s where the likeness to the other focused, driven champions ends. This one likes doughnuts, admits she can be lazy and enjoys teasing interviewers.

Tim Adams
Sunday June 9, 2002

Venus Williams lounges, all arms and legs, in the corner of the bar in a Hamburg hotel. She’s telling me about her competitive debut on a tennis court. It all started, she says, in her sleepy, giggly way, back when she was three and a half years old, and her Daddy took her down to the nearest club in Los Angeles, and organised a game for her against the pro. She had a cut-down racket, and was a bit shy at first, but soon she was ’serving overarm, aces and everything, hitting forehands down the line’.
I’m leaning forward a little while she recounts the detail of this story, imagining the toddler with the corn-row hair, swinging her modified racket for all she was worth, already refusing to take a step back for anyone, her Daddy urging her on. ‘And how did you do?’ I wonder.

‘I was used to beating guys by then, so I beat this guy, too…’ she says, her eyes wide and her mouth breaking into its spectacular grin. ‘Straight sets.’

I’m near the edge of my seat by now. ‘Really?’ I say, ‘You beat him? When you were three?’

She pauses a beat, then looks at me.

‘Nahhhh!’ she says, and throws back her head, laughing hugely. ‘Course not!’

There are not too many prodigies who can make fun of the idea of their genius, but Venus Williams can’t take any of her charmed life quite seriously. When she first came on to the tennis circuit, her easy self-assurance was interpreted as arrogance; tour players who had been told all their life that tennis was a complicated grind where only those who focused, focused and focused would succeed, were unnerved by the gangly teenager in the locker room, laughing about her laziness, about how she found it hard to concentrate on practice. She was frozen out for a long time, dismissed with her younger sister, Serena, as disrespectful, uppity, but she did not care about that too much.

In retrospect, it seems that Williams, now the world’s leading player as she and her family always suggested she would be, was not so much boasting about her natural talent, rather – like a young Muhammad Ali – just excitedly letting the world in on her great secret. There was an idea that women’s tennis would, after Navratilova and her pumped-up forearms, be dominated by those who worked the hardest, started the youngest and practised the longest; but there had always been a sense in the Williams family of the importance of doing things a little differently.

Venus has inherited much of her attitude from her father and coach, Richard, though she can laugh languidly about him, too. This is a man whose pride at seeing his daughters fulfil the wild, sponsorship-friendly prophecies he made for them as juniors, has been matched only by his subsequent delight in winding up the white male tennis establishment in general, and its journalists in particular. For a while, his telephone carried the following answer machine message: ‘Hi, I’m Richard Williams. There are those who want to ask me what I think of inter-marriage. Anyone that’s marrying outside of this race that’s black should be hung by their necks until sundown. Please leave a message after the tone…’

Like many tennis dads – Mike Agassi, Stefano Capriati – Richard Williams had plotted Venus and Serena’s success ante-natally. The legend has it that while watching a satellite women’s tennis tournament in the late Seventies, Williams, the son of a sharecropper from the Deep South, was amazed at the prize money – more than he earned in a year running a security firm – and wondered how he might tap into it. He had three daughters, but he believed they were already too old to turn into champions, and his wife, Oracene (known as ‘Brandi’), was not eager to have any more. Williams’s solution, by his own account, was to sabotage her contraceptive pills and, in 1980, Venus was born. Two years later his wife gave birth to Serena.

Like all Williams’s claims, this family lore is to be taken not entirely in earnest – but if he planned Grand Slam winners from conception, it is really there that the comparisons with most of the more driven sporting parents end. Rather than sending Venus and Serena to a hothouse academy or travelling with them on the junior circuit, he put his youngest daughters on a training programme of his own devising, taking them out every day on the municipal courts in the rough and ready borough of Compton in Los Angeles.

His story goes that while the girls were perfecting their topspin, they were witnesses to drive-by gang shootings (Venus herself suggests that on one occasion she and her sister had to ‘dive for cover when bullets started flying’). Her father claims that he made a deal with the gangs in the neighbourhood to let his daughters – his ‘ghetto Cinderellas’ – practise in relative peace, because the ‘lily white world of tennis’ needed to be shaken up a bit.

In many ways the purpose of this mythology has long been served – since the Williams sisters’ Grand Slam wins the lily white world of tennis will perhaps never be quite the same again – and these days Venus seems keen to play down the tales from the ‘hood. Ask her now about the character of her growing up and she says only that ‘you just take the childhood you’re given, right? You don’t question it! We were all just so happy!’

I wonder at one point if there were drug casualties around among her friends?

‘I was 10 years old,’ she says. ‘I wasn’t in the drugs scene. I guess some kids around me had to grow up quickly, had all those problems. But I wasn’t one of those kids, or around those kids, not at all.’

Still, when I ask her if she thinks she will ever regret not having a ‘normal’ childhood (as Agassi and Capriati have done over the years) she puts her head in her hands and suddenly exclaims: ‘But our Mom was so cruel! I’m always telling her that! We were so deprived!’

In what way exactly?

Her face crumbles in mock-despair. ‘I can’t say,’ she says.

Go on…

‘Well, you know most kids in their lunch boxes have little happy juices and stuff – we didn’t get juices, we got milk! It ruined my childhood, you know. All my friends got Captain Crunch cereal or Froot Loops, and we had to have Puff Wheat…’

And she’s rocking back laughing again. ‘So cruel! No Froot Loops! Of course, when I confront her Mom makes excuses – she didn’t want us to have sugar because we were already all bouncing off the walls – but that’s no good to me now! The damage is done!’

Venus is here in Hamburg with her mother, and her dog, Bobby, a Yorkshire terrier (he travels everywhere with her, she says, ‘except England, or any of England’s old colonies. You guys really left your mark on the world…’) Her parents divide their time between their daughters’ matches, and both still spend a lot of time on court with them, advising and coaching.

When Venus first came on the tour, Brandi, like her husband and children a Jehovah’s Witness, was keen to warn her of the dangers she might face. ‘They are in the locker room talking with these older women – undressed – who are lesbians,’ she once explained. ‘The kids get caught up in something and think “Maybe that’s really me” when it’s not. So, yeah, I taught Venus and Serena about that…’

In describing the differences between her daughters, Brandi has been apt to say that Serena has always had to work hard for her success, but that everything has always come easy to Venus, whether it was at school or on the tennis court.

When I put this description to Venus she smiles at the suggestion, and says a little half-heartedly, ‘I feel I’ve always worked pretty hard. I’m no flash in the pan, you know. I think I’m demonstrating some kind of longstanding commitment…’

And then she concedes her mother maybe has a point: ‘I guess I always knew I’d be a champ. That’s what I was told, and at that age that’s what you believe…’ She smiles shyly, stretches out her legs still further, giggles some more to herself. ‘You know I was always really very, very, very good. Serena, on the other hand, wasn’t very good at all. She was small, really slim and the racket was way too big for her. Hopeless. Believe it or not she used to lob and slice. That was her game.’ She thinks of the aggressive power her little sister now possesses, shakes her head. ‘She’s moved on from there. She started playing especially good tennis at around 15, which was soon enough – I mean she won the US Open two years later – but still it was quite late compared to me. You know,’ she says, ‘I guess I was always Venus…’

Venus seems to have a very clear idea of who Venus is, and where Venus came from, and where Venus is going – so much so that she often talks about herself in the third person, or at least about that version of herself that is a product or a phenomenon. She seems amused by many of the trials this Venus has to go through, and by some of the nonsense that surrounds her role as the world’s most bankable player. Later in the day I see her on top of a crane in the city centre with the tournament organiser, a portly German gentleman, signing a billboard of herself, cheek to cheek with a gigantic image of her own backside, and unable to stop giggling. I begin to see how her irony might keep her sane.

Some of this distance comes from her religious faith. Or at least, she says, that is certainly why she’s as laid back as she is. ‘I know for sure that all this is not the only thing in life,’ she suggests. ‘I know it’s not the most important thing for me to win the most Grand Slams and be remembered in this world. I certainly don’t have to win little tournaments here, there and everywhere, I don’t have to win at all,’ she says, before remembering herself and adding: ‘Although I do want to.’

Her attitude to competition is also perhaps a product of her father’s prescient judgment in not letting his daughters really play competitively until they were late into their teens. While he had always been quick to tell anyone that would listen, and many that wouldn’t, of his girls’ great prowess, (Venus had already signed six-figure endorsement deals with Reebok when she was 10) Richard Williams did not put them up against the best of their peers as they were growing up, didn’t think it right that girls should have to experience that kind of competitive pressure. ‘Don’t get too tied up in this,’ he claims to have told Venus in an attempt to limit her time on the practice court, ‘or you’ll be like the rest of them. You’ll be a dummy and a fool.’

Some coaches told him he was throwing away their chances with this attitude, but when Venus eventually joined the circuit full time at 17, with good exam grades behind her, and ambitions to learn Chinese and play the guitar, she won the first tournament she entered. Her father, of course, sat in the stands holding a placard that read: ‘I told you so.’

Martina Hingis, who is exactly Venus’s contemporary, had already won more than 100 professional matches at the same age and the strain of that early success seems now to have caught up with her body. Hingis’s feet and ankles and knees have suffered the shocks of the relentless schedule, and she is already contemplating retirement at 22. Jennifer Capriati (Venus’s greatest rival in the last year) struggled with different demons before getting her head together, and the stories of Carling Bassett and Andrea Jaeger should be admonitory.

In contrast, Venus seems possessed of a kind of balance that perhaps comes from being allowed to grow into her extraordinary body at her own pace. She also has no sense of yet having fulfilled a fraction of her potential – she has four Grand Slam victories, two at Wimbledon, two at the US Open, and it is hard not to see her achieving many more.

Her father once suggested – and he has suggested many, many things – that he wanted her to be out of tennis by the time she was 25, (’By 26, she can graduate college and then start setting her businesses up. By 30, 31 she’ll be set, and by 35 she can give me a grandchild.’) but she does not see much prospect of that. ‘That’s just Dad,’ she says, rolling her eyes slightly. ‘No, I intend on playing for a while. It’s getting easier I think. A forehand crosscourt, backhand down the line, a couple of aces. Game. This life’s not so complicated…’

I wonder how much of her motivation she still derives from being a black player at the top of a still overwhelmingly white sport. She says that though she ‘never forgets she is a black player on court, and it would be hard to think otherwise,’ she doesn’t really believe that fact gives her extra motivation.

Over the years, she has been smart, gracious, enough to let others, notably her father, of course – address this subject for her. (When he used to sit in on her original interviews and press conferences Richard Williams would routinely preface them with the words: ‘Now, don’t be intimidated by us. We won’t hurt you.’) Her mother, too, was less circumspect. ‘They don’t even look at her,’ Brandi Williams said of Venus, when she first joined the tour. ‘I think they’re afraid of her. They want her to be their Stepin Fetchit.’

Venus says simply now that she’s never experienced any racism in tennis, and smiles brightly. The obvious comparison in this respect, and in many others, is with Tiger Woods. Is she driven by a sense of history, like Woods, a desire to take the sport to another level?

She shakes her head a little wearily at the thought, which seems to sound far too much like hard work. ‘Nah, not really,’ she says, quietly. ‘My ambition is to enjoy my life and to do exactly what I want to do…’ And then a little more determinedly: ‘And I’ll do that. I will be free.’

Some of this independence has led Venus into trouble over the past few years. In the same way that they protested against the rigours of the junior tour by not playing it, Venus and her sister have also been criticised for picking and choosing their matches, not perhaps fulfilling all their ludicrous tournament commitments.

Venus says she has no trouble getting psyched up for nothing events like the one in Hamburg, and it is where she played some of the best tennis of her life last year, but you get the sense she believes it is a necessary evil rather than something to get overly excited about. Tellingly, Serena is not here, and the sisters let their schedules ensure these days that they only meet on the biggest stages. When Venus pulled out of a semi-final against her sister in Indian Wells last year, blaming a mystery injury, Serena was booed through the final against Kim Clijsters, and there was much agonising in the press box.

She remains philosophical about this ‘problem’, saying only that they try to keep apart as much as they can in smaller events. Venus leads the series 4-1, including a crushing straight sets win in the US Open final last year. Will there be special pressures on their matches after that?

‘Well,’ she says, ‘Serena’s always real tough you know. I just hope she gives me a second serve to hit every now and then when we play.’

Do they worry if they play too often it might get in the way of their special relationship?

‘No,’ she says, ‘that would be idiotic, and just being the big sister I would never let that happen. If we argued about it once we got off court, she’d shake me or we’d have a hug or whatever. It would never get personal.’

Does she still feel she has to look out for her sister on the tour?

‘I think in the beginning she thought she was me,’ Venus says smiling, ‘But in the last couple of years – she’s 20 now! Little Serena, all grown up! – she’s realised that she’s not me. She’s pretty much an extrovert character and I’m an introvert. She likes to go out, party, make friends. Whereas me I like being at home, hanging out with Bobby, reading books,’

Venus was widely criticised, too, for missing a few events after 11 September. Her rival Lindsay Davenport suggested that Venus had ‘lied’ about an injury she had in order to miss an event. Talking about it now, it seems that Davenport perhaps had a point, though Venus will not be specific. ‘It was a difficult time,’ she says. ‘I cancelled a couple of things because I didn’t want to go, I guess. I wanted to be at home.’

How did she feel about being called a liar?

‘I must have forgotten about that, I guess,’ she says, smiling faintly.

Does any of that kind of animosity come out in the locker room?

‘No. If I had to confront someone I suppose I would. But then I’m not so bothered what anyone else thinks.’

Venus is quite aware that the tour, and perhaps the US tour in particular needs her, a little bit more than she needs it. Since the retirement of Steffi Graf and with the demise of any real challenge from the poster girl, Anna Kournikova, Williams is the one whom everyone wants to see. I wonder if the money that attends this position has come to seem absurd to a girl who grew up with a five-dollar allowance – which she blew on secret doughnuts and ice cream.

‘Not really absurd,’ she says, enjoying the idea. ‘I mean I guess there’s always going to be jobs that pay more than others, and I suppose I have one of those…’

I suggest this is perhaps a slight understatement, given that she earned $10 million last year from prize money and endorsements (even more than Kournikova).

She giggles. ‘I’m just blessed, I guess.’ And then in her best mock hand-wringing tones. ‘If I didn’t play tennis I don’t know where I’d be. I don’t know if I’d be in trouble or fighting or in college, getting thin on noodles and rice – I’d be thrilled about that – or maybe I wouldn’t have gone to college. I would be faced with so many decisions!’

Her wealth must bring its own decisions: what does she do with it all?

She says, of course, she does a lot of shopping – ‘I shop very well’ – gives some to charity and has along the way become something of a connoisseur of begging letters.

‘Though these days I don’t open my mail any more unless I’m expecting something. Still I get all these weird letters! One from a guy in South Africa recently who sent me a letter proposing that I regularly sent him a few thousand dollars and in return he would send me more letters. I’m not sure about that deal! My favourite was from a lady who wrote me saying, “My name is so and so and I have seven children to support, and what’s more I am a clown.” And she sent a picture of herself in a clown suit. I loved that letter,’ she grins. ‘I didn’t send any money. But still I loved the letter.’

In between tournaments she’s doing her correspondence course in interior design at the London Guildhall. ‘I’m going to have my diploma soon,’ she says brightly. ‘Once you take an interest, you’re eyes kind of open up to interiors you know.’

She’s fixing up her own place?

‘Of course!’

We gaze round the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel Hamburg, with its mock rococo flourishes and burnished wood fittings.

What would she change about this?

‘I think it’s beautiful just the way it is,’ she says.

Williams does not really moan too much about the price of fame. When I ask how it has been to do her growing up in public, she laughs and says she’s not grown up yet. She’s a bit wary of the British press since one tabloid reporter staked out her home before Wimbledon last year, kept trying to get into her house – and probably not, she supposes, to write an interiors piece – but mostly, she says, she can hold on to a private life of sorts.

Does she find that who she is gets in the way of relationships?

She smiles some more. ‘I suppose it might if I was looking for one, but I mean I’m not really on the market right now. I’m only 21, I wouldn’t say I was especially desperate to get that ring on my finger. When I’m 40, maybe, and it still hasn’t happened perhaps I’ll be wondering what’s going on, but I’m OK for now…’ In this, and all things, it seems, she’s still happy enough to listen to the advice of her parents.

I wonder if she had been looking forward to dancing with her fellow champion Goran Ivanisevic at last year’s Wimbledon Ball. ‘Yeah,’ she says, ‘but I didn’t have a dress. I mean I thought that I might have to go to the ball so I’d bought this dress. A shirt dress, strapless, bright red, you know, quite short. A lovely dress. But when I put it on my Mom said, all concerned, you know, “Haven’t you got anything else?” And after that of course I couldn’t wear it. So I just wore… whatever. And anyway I think that they cancelled the dancing, when it got to be my turn…’

Does she see a time when she will want to break free of that family involvement in her life, doesn’t she ever feel it stifling?

‘No!’ she says, firmly. ‘I love it! When we all get together, us five girls, Mom and Dad, we have such a jolly time, as you say in London.’

And if they clash, all these formidable forces, who tends to get the last word?

‘I guess we all do,’ she says. ‘Or at least,’ and this sounds much more like it, ‘we all have the last laugh.’

By Pam Sitt
Seattle Times staff reporter

What to expect when the artist formerly known as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince – who is now a Jehovah’s Witness – takes the stage at the Paramount Monday?

Don’t ask us. Even the Purple One can’t seem to make up his mind.

As Prince, 43, nears the end of a 29-date tour, he continues to keep fans guessing. (So what else is new?) At a sold-out show in Lakeland, Fla., three weeks ago, Prince started things off by announcing, “If you came to get your Purple Rain on, you have come to the wrong place. This is not 1984.” He later played the hit song in its entirety. But he’s shunned fans in other cities who have shouted requests for the song (and other 1980s classics).

Billed as “a stripped-down show that allows the music to speak for itself,” “One Nite Alone with Prince” abandons the backup dancers and pyrotechnics and focuses instead on Prince’s latest album, the deeply religious “The Rainbow Children.” Reports from other tour stops include sprinklings of classic hits such as “Raspberry Beret” and “When You Were Mine”; at least one city was treated to a medley of hits including “Diamonds and Pearls,” “Nothing Compares 2 U” and “How Come U Don’t Call Me,” a song covered by rising star Alicia Keys in her debut album.

Known for his variety of sounds — rock, funk, soul, blues — Prince, a recently converted Jehovah’s Witness, delves into his spirituality in the jazz-oriented “The Rainbow Children.” His 23rd album is loaded with religious imagery and has been called by critics everything from “challenging” to “rewarding” to “weird.” (Fans count at least 50 Prince songs the artist can no longer perform as a Jehovah’s Witness due to their explicit content, including hits such as “Little Red Corvette” and “Cream.”)

But don’t expect to hear any songs from the new album on the radio. Prince hasn’t charted a hit in eight years (his last was 1994’s “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World”). Not to say that his new stuff isn’t good (on the contrary, some critics laud “The Rainbow Children” as his best work in years), but Prince is in control now, and he just doesn’t seem interested in doing things the usual way.

After his well-publicized battles with record label Warner Bros. and a brief stint with Arista Records in the ’90s, Prince began his own online society, The New Power Generation Music Club (www.npgmusicclub.com), last year. As members of the NPG clan, fans pay $100 annually plus a monthly fee to download Prince’s music before anyone else, buy tickets to shows (that’ll be another $100, thank you) and get invites to pre-show sound checks. No more music videos, singles or advertising — seemingly, now, Prince is all about the music.

Expect the same for his show. “Real music by real musicians,” Prince has said of the tour, which includes appearances by veteran saxophonist Maceo Parker and drummer John Blackwell. There will be no choreography or lip syncing, and — if previous shows are any indicator — good luck searching for any method to a maddening mix of covers, jams, solos and new tunes.

© 2002 Seattle Times

Rainbow Children

I am a former Jehovah’s witness. I represent no interest, religion, sect or institution. I have no hidden agenda. I do not wish to harm anyone. I am not advocating practicing JWs to leave their organization, although apparently quite a few have and still are.

Many current JWs (according to my mail) have serious questions about their organization. Some who have contacted me were rushed into the Watchtower organization, brought up on charges by the elders when they went to these JW leaders for help with personal problems, and then rushed out the back door (disfellowshiped). One poor woman did all this—indoctrination study, baptism, 3 judicial meetings, and disfellowshipped within ten months.

My goal is to be helpful, supportive and a resource. My offer of help to people whose lives have been affected by the watchtower organization is my living amend for the things I did while involved with the JW movement.

I was involved with the watchtower organization from age 7 to about 30. I had a “crisis of conscience” that started after I encouraged my wife to follow watchtower policy and reject an organ transplant that doctors said would be required to save her life. With the transplant doctors gave her a 50% chance of recovery. Without the operation they gave her a 0% chance.

The Watchtower forbade organ transplants in 1967.

My wife, Delores L. Busselman died on January 12, 1971at 26 years of age without a chance to recover.

At the time 1975 was looked to by me and other JWs I knew as the likely date for the long-awaited Armageddon.

The expectation was launched in 1966 with Fred Franz’s book, Life Everlasting In Freedom Of The Sons Of God, that says:

“According to this trustworthy Bible chronology six thousand from man’s creation will end in 1975, and the seventh period of a thousand years of human history will begin in the fall of 1975 CE.” Page 29
“How appropriate it would be for Jehovah God to make of this coming seventh period of a thousand years a sabbath period of rest and release, a great Jubilee sabbath for the proclaiming of liberty throughout the earth to all it’s inhabitants.” Page 30

Then farther down on page 30 he said;

“Consequently there is now every reason why the human creation will yet be set free, not by men, but by Almighty God. The long awaited time for this is at hand.”

This was followed by a 5-page chronology chart showing early autumn 1975 as the:

“end of the 6th 1,000-year day of man’s existence.”

After Delores’ death I remember thinking to myself if the Watchtower organization turns out to be wrong about 1975 then they were probably wrong about the cannibalism (organ transplant) doctrine too. I decided this 1975 doctrine would be the final test of myself.

While the clock ticked off to 1975 some other things happened to make me question myself in following the practices and teachings of this organization.

A principle event for me was the realization that as a JW in good standing I could not engage in honest recruiting practices. I was instructed to go to homes of strangers and tell them I was a “Bible Student”, even though I knew their second president Joseph “Judge” Rutherford had purged the real Bible Students out of the organization in1917 or 1918 and labelled them as evil slaves. I was instructed to falsely present the Watchtower and Awake! magazines as non-denominational, and I was told to represent myself as a minister even though I knew that to be false. I was directed to deny that I was there to change householders’ religion, while I full well knew that, in fact, was my mission.

Some other events and realizations I had were:

#1 I became more and more aware that in The Watchtower and other Society publications that when a point needed to be made or a question answered in print, often points were stated in the form of a question or I was simply led in my mind to a conclusion. Too often, for my comfort level, sources that had been taught to me by the Watchtower organization to be part of Satan’s visible earthly organization were quoted to make the point or offer proof of a point of view taken by The Watchtower.

I realized that if I had been able to ask the writers of the Watchtower publications to explain their stand they could say we didn’t say that, we merely quoted Johannes Greber or whoever.

Lectures too, typically would talk all around the issue without actually saying it but when I left I took the covert message with me. If I had a problem with the message I heard spoken but that I knew wasn’t spoken I must never have heard it. Right?

#2 I began to doubt my acceptance level of the doctrine of the “theocratic war strategy” [the doctrine that it’s OK to lie when the interests of the Organization are involved].

My wife and 2 small sons were at a district assembly of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Bismarck N.D. I took most of the responsibility for my oldest son (about 2 ½ years old) so my wife could devote her attention to the little guy. At breakfast I had picked up a roll of rainbow lifesavers for my son. Early in the afternoon they ran out. There was a candy vending machine at the convention site—I was saved.

The second day I forgot to buy lifesavers in the restaurant. I told my 2 ½ year old son don’t worry we’ll get some at the assembly but when I caught up with him at the vending machine there was a roll paper banner (the paper looked an awful lot like the paper on the temporary JW cafeteria tables) covering the machine held on with scotch tape that was hand lettered with a magic marker that said “OUT OF ORDER”…..This is a crisis.

My little son looked almost panicked when I told him what the sign said. I told him that if the machine was really broke that we would go back to the store and get some candy. He watched with big eyes as I carefully pulled up the corner of the out of order sign and snuck a quarter in the vending machine that I could now see had been freshly stocked. The quarter went clunk (sounded like someone dropped a manhole cover). Carefully I pulled the lever and out rolled a rainbow lifesavers candy roll. Hmmmm…..repeat above.

Oops! Just as the second offensive rainbow lifesavers hit the tray two JW assembly security officers (called attendants) were between us and the out of order machine. They physically pushed us back and said in a rather arrogant manner, “The machine is out of order, Brother.” I said, “You are a liar brother.”

One said, “You wait right here while we get brother —-.” I indicated I would be glad to wait for brother —- and that I was anxious to hear him explain this lie. Pretty soon they rushed back and asked me my name. I told them and they trotted off, apparently to see brother —-. Pretty soon here they come brisk walking back to confront the culprit (me) without brother —-. They said, “Brother —- said you can use the machine just keep it to a minimum.”

I remembered overreading a proof text at a meeting once and being touched by the way Jesus treated the children. This incident reminded me of others similar and in my mind I questioned the principles behind the tactics and arrogant way my little son and I were treated.

#3 At the same convention, seated about 3 rows in front of us, a man was trying to quiet his small (about 3 years old) daughter after she had sat quietly for well over an hour. Her cries caught my attention but my eyes were glued on the father. He was being very rough with this cute little girl dressed up like a doll. He would pick her up and slam her body down on the chair. Finally she stood up and he started to hit her on the bottom and he wouldn’t stop. I stood up, stepped down to him and he stopped hitting her. I told him if he needed to hit somebody he could hit me or was I too big for him. (This happens during a program lecture.)

This incident also reminded me of other similar things I have witnessed in the JW organization.

#4 I reached a point where I had to mentally review the DRESS FOR SUCCESS or the theocratic-look doctrine.

I don’t like neckties. I don’t see any use for them. I don’t care if you wear one, as long as I don’t have to.

At a Sunday meeting of Jehovah’s Witnesses an elder asked me if I would mind helping out taking one of 2 microphones around to people commenting at the Watchtower study. (No tie on.) I said sure I’ll help out. I wasn’t aware at that time that there was a waiting list for this job or a dress code. I really preferred to sit with my wife and 2 small sons.

About the third week of this microphone job we arrived a little early, me without my tie, and after, as was my custom, putting my books on a chair to ensure someone else didn’t get the seat, I went back to lean on the literature counter. Up walks a young man, at that time serving the interests of the Governing Body as a special pioneer, with a big smile on his face and his hand extended. I reached out my hand to shake but instead of shaking my hand he flipped my collar up and out of my jacket and then said, “Where’s your tie brother?” Then he walked away. (I never liked being called “BROTHER” like that.)

During the meeting I left my family and delivered the microphone to anxious watchtower study participants.

After the meeting a different elder came up to me and asked if he could talk to me in private back in the library. I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. I’d been going to all 5 meetings regularly again for some time now. (I had recently changed “secular” employment so I could work day hours.) I had been reporting my spiritual behavior and literature sales on the monthly field service report-form provided every month. I felt confident he was going to praise my efforts in private so the other microphone deliverers wouldn’t get jealous. Oops!….. He showed me in a rulebook the Watchtower Society had written that in order for me to deliver the microphones to my “spiritual” brothers and sisters I had to wear a necktie. (The end LOOMS.)

#5 At a circuit assembly of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Sioux Falls S.D. in (the spring I think) 1975, a district servant giving his closing comments regarding the end time expectations surrounding 1975, said in a loud and arrogantly authoritative voice, “BROTHERS IF YOU HEARD IT, YOU DIDN’T HERE IT HERE.”

By this time I was pretty well out anyway but this denial was my answer to my fears about the cannibalism doctrine. In the March 15, 1980 Watchtower, transplants (formerly viewed as cannibalism and unscriptural) were once again allowed for Jehovah’s Witnesses. (I was so glad.)

What are the consequences for being a false prophet? Are the International Bible Students Association, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, known as Jehovah’s Witnesses calling themselves prophets? And if so are they true or false?

I have quite an extensive library on the subject and am willing to share my experience to benefit others. Please let me know what your area of concern is.

7201E Madison St.
Sioux Falls SD 57110
USA