Posts Tagged ‘Mia Farrow’
Finally, it’s happening. The waking up on what is Israel and Zionism
Posted by: adonis49 on: July 31, 2014
Finally, it’s happening. The waking up of what is Israel and Zionism
Zeina Saab posted on FB this July 31, 2014
“The world is waking up. Slowly. But it’s happening.
Magic Johnson and other NBA players have cancelled their trip to Israel.
Disney heiress has just divested from an Israeli company.
Several Latin American countries, including Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, and El Salvador have recalled the Israeli ambassadors or severed trade ties with Israel.
Major celebrities are speaking out.
Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem have written an open letter condemning Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.
Many others, including John Legend, Madonna, Mia Farrow, and Russell Brand are also clearly voicing their disgust with Israel’s policies.
Millions are protesting around the world.
None of these protests have stopped the widespread destruction of Gaza, not yet.
And it won’t bring back all the 1,300+ dead.
But if enough pressure is applied on Israel, eventually we may be able to hope that one day it will be held accountable for its crimes against humanity, so that “Never Again” really will mean “Never Again” for all.”
Tonnie Choueiri shared this
From 1978 to 1994, Rabbi Henry Siegman served as executive director of the American Jewish Congress, long described as one of the US “big three” Jewish organizations along with the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League:
Rabbi Henry Siegman – a German-Jewish refugee who fled Nazi occupation to later become a leading American Jewish voice and now vocal critic of Israel’s policies in the Occupied Territories – says the following on Gaza:
“When one thinks that this is what is necessary for Israel to survive, that the Zionist dream is based on the repeated slaughter of innocents on a scale that we’re watching these days on television, that is really a profound, profound crisis.
It should be a profound crisis in the thinking of all of us who were committed to the establishment of the state and to its success.”
Responding to Israel’s U.S.-backed claim that its assault on Gaza is necessary because no country would tolerate the rocket fire from militants in Gaza, Siegman says:
“What undermines this principle is that no country and no people would live the way that Gazans have been made to live. …
The question of the morality of Israel’s action depends, in the first instance, on the question, couldn’t Israel be doing something [to prevent] this disaster that is playing out now, in terms of the destruction of human life?
Couldn’t Israel have done something that did not require that cost?
And the answer is, sure, they could have ended the occupation.”
HENRY SIEGMAN resumed:
” It’s disastrous. It’s disastrous, both in political terms, which is to say the situation cannot conceivably, certainly in the short run, lead to any positive results, to an improvement in the lives of either Israelis or Palestinians, and of course it’s disastrous in humanitarian terms, the kind of slaughter that’s taking place there.
It leads one virtually to a whole rethinking of this (Zionism) historical phenomenon
Andrew Bossone posted:
Does an entity “release” a statement if it gave the same exact statement two years earlier?
The Pentagon, 2014 on Israel accessing $1.2 billion ammunition stockpile:
“The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to US national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defense capability.”
The Pentagon, 2012, on selling $647 million precision bomb kits and munitions to Israel:
“The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to U.S. national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defense capability.”
http://cynicalidealism.tumblr.com/post/93392109742/does-an-entity-release-a-statement-if-it-gave-the
Note: Evo Morales, Bolivia President lambasted Israel and the US as terrorist States.
Woody Allen Speaks Out: On the molestation of one of his daughters
Posted by: adonis49 on: February 11, 2014
Woody Allen Speaks Out on the Sunday Review (nyt) this Feb 7, 2014
If you need an introduction read https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/sexual-abuse-woody-allen-allegations-facts-adoptive-kids/
Last Sunday, Nicholas Kristof wrote a column about Dylan Farrow, the adopted daughter of Woody Allen and Mia Farrow. Mr. Allen has written the following response to the column and Dylan’s account.
TWENTY-ONE years ago, when I first heard Mia Farrow had accused me of child molestation, I found the idea so ludicrous I didn’t give it a second thought.
We were involved in a terribly acrimonious breakup, with great enmity between us and a custody battle slowly gathering energy.
The self-serving transparency of her malevolence seemed so obvious I didn’t even hire a lawyer to defend myself. It was my show business attorney who told me she was bringing the accusation to the police and I would need a criminal lawyer.
I naïvely thought the accusation would be dismissed out of hand because of course, I hadn’t molested Dylan and any rational person would see the ploy for what it was. Common sense would prevail.
After all, I was a 56-year-old man who had never before (or after) been accused of child molestation. I had been going out with Mia for 12 years and never in that time did she ever suggest to me anything resembling misconduct.
Now, suddenly, when I had driven up to her house in Connecticut one afternoon to visit the kids for a few hours, when I would be on my raging adversary’s home turf, with half a dozen people present, when I was in the blissful early stages of a happy new relationship with the woman I’d go on to marry (his other adoptive kid Soon-Yi?)— that I would pick this moment in time to embark on a career as a child molester should seem to the most skeptical mind highly unlikely. The sheer illogic of such a crazy scenario seemed to me dispositive.
Notwithstanding, Mia insisted that I had abused Dylan and took her immediately to a doctor to be examined. Dylan told the doctor she had not been molested. Mia then took Dylan out for ice cream, and when she came back with her the child had changed her story.
The police began their investigation; a possible indictment hung in the balance. I very willingly took a lie-detector test and of course passed because I had nothing to hide. I asked Mia to take one and she wouldn’t.
Last week a woman named Stacey Nelkin, whom I had dated many years ago, came forward to the press to tell them that when Mia and I first had our custody battle 21 years ago, Mia had wanted her to testify that she had been underage when I was dating her, despite the fact this was untrue. Stacey refused.
I include this anecdote so we all know what kind of character we are dealing with here. One can imagine in learning this why she wouldn’t take a lie-detector test.
Meanwhile the Connecticut police turned for help to a special investigative unit they relied on in such cases, the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic of the Yale-New Haven Hospital. This group of impartial, experienced men and women whom the district attorney looked to for guidance as to whether to prosecute, spent months doing a meticulous investigation, interviewing everyone concerned, and checking every piece of evidence.
Finally they wrote their conclusion which I quote here:
“It is our expert opinion that Dylan was not sexually abused by Mr. Allen. Further, we believe that Dylan’s statements on videotape and her statements to us during our evaluation do not refer to actual events that occurred to her on August 4th, 1992… In developing our opinion we considered 3 hypotheses to explain Dylan’s statements.
First, that Dylan’s statements were true and that Mr. Allen had sexually abused her;
Second, that Dylan’s statements were not true but were made up by an emotionally vulnerable child who was caught up in a disturbed family and who was responding to the stresses in the family; and
Third, that Dylan was coached or influenced by her mother, Ms. Farrow.
While we can conclude that Dylan was not sexually abused, we can not be definite about whether the second formulation by itself or the third formulation by itself is true. We believe that it is more likely that a combination of these two formulations best explains Dylan’s allegations of sexual abuse.”
Could it be any clearer? Mr. Allen did not abuse Dylan; most likely a vulnerable, stressed-out 7-year-old was coached by Mia Farrow. This conclusion disappointed a number of people.
The district attorney was champing at the bit to prosecute a celebrity case, and Justice Elliott Wilk, the custody judge, wrote a very irresponsible opinion saying when it came to the molestation, “we will probably never know what occurred.”
But we did know because it had been determined and there was no equivocation about the fact that no abuse had taken place. Justice Wilk was quite rough on me and never approved of my relationship with Soon-Yi, Mia’s adopted daughter, who was then in her early 20s.
Wilk thought of me as an older man exploiting a much younger woman, which outraged Mia as improper despite the fact she had dated a much older Frank Sinatra when she was 19.
In fairness to Justice Wilk, the public felt the same dismay over Soon-Yi and myself, but despite what it looked like our feelings were authentic and we’ve been happily married for 16 years with two great kids, both adopted. (Incidentally, coming on the heels of the media circus and false accusations, Soon-Yi and I were extra carefully scrutinized by both the adoption agency and adoption courts, and everyone blessed our adoptions.)
Mia took custody of the children and we went our separate ways.
I was heartbroken. Moses was angry with me. Ronan I didn’t know well because Mia would never let me get close to him from the moment he was born and Dylan, whom I adored and was very close to and about whom Mia called my sister in a rage and said, “He took my daughter, now I’ll take his.”
I never saw her again nor was I able to speak with her no matter how hard I tried. I still loved her deeply, and felt guilty that by falling in love with Soon-Yi I had put her in the position of being used as a pawn for revenge.
Soon-Yi and I made countless attempts to see Dylan but Mia blocked them all, spitefully knowing how much we both loved her but totally indifferent to the pain and damage she was causing the little girl merely to appease her own vindictiveness.
Here I quote Moses Farrow, 14 at the time: “My mother drummed it into me to hate my father for tearing apart the family and sexually molesting my sister.” Moses is now 36 years old and a family therapist by profession.
“Of course Woody did not molest my sister,” he said. “She loved him and looked forward to seeing him when he would visit. She never hid from him until our mother succeeded in creating the atmosphere of fear and hate towards him.” Dylan was 7, Ronan 4, and this was, according to Moses, the steady narrative year after year.
Not that I doubt Dylan hasn’t come to believe she’s been molested, but if from the age of 7 a vulnerable child is taught by a strong mother to hate her father because he is a monster who abused her, is it so inconceivable that after many years of this indoctrination the image of me Mia wanted to establish had taken root?
Is it any wonder the experts at Yale had picked up the maternal coaching aspect 21 years ago?
Even the venue where the fabricated molestation was supposed to have taken place was poorly chosen but interesting. Mia chose the attic of her country house, a place she should have realized I’d never go to because it is a tiny, cramped, enclosed spot where one can hardly stand up and I’m a major claustrophobe.
The one or two times she asked me to come in there to look at something, I did, but quickly had to run out. Undoubtedly the attic idea came to her from the Dory Previn song, “With My Daddy in the Attic.”
It was on the same record as the song Dory Previn had written about Mia’s betraying their friendship by insidiously stealing her husband, André, “Beware of Young Girls.”
One must ask, did Dylan even write the letter or was it at least guided by her mother? Does the letter really benefit Dylan or does it simply advance her mother’s shabby agenda? That is to hurt me with a smear.
There is even a lame attempt to do professional damage by trying to involve movie stars, which smells a lot more like Mia than Dylan.
After all, if speaking out was really a necessity for Dylan, she had already spoken out months earlier in Vanity Fair. Here I quote Moses Farrow again:
“Knowing that my mother often used us as pawns, I cannot trust anything that is said or written from anyone in the family.”
Finally, does Mia herself really even believe I molested her daughter? Common sense must ask: Would a mother who thought her 7-year-old daughter was sexually abused by a molester (a pretty horrific crime), give consent for a film clip of her to be used to honor the molester at the Golden Globes?
Of course, I did not molest Dylan. I loved her and hope one day she will grasp how she has been cheated out of having a loving father and exploited by a mother more interested in her own festering anger than her daughter’s well-being.
Being taught to hate your father and made to believe he molested you has already taken a psychological toll on this lovely young woman, and Soon-Yi and I are both hoping that one day she will understand who has really made her a victim and reconnect with us, as Moses has, in a loving, productive way.
No one wants to discourage abuse victims from speaking out, but one must bear in mind that sometimes there are people who are falsely accused and that is also a terribly destructive thing.
This piece will be my final word on this entire matter and no one will be responding on my behalf to any further comments on it by any party. Enough people have been hurt.
Sexual-Abuse: Woody Allen , allegations, facts, adoptive kids
Posted by: adonis49 on: February 10, 2014
Sexual-Abuse: Woody Allen , allegations, facts, adoptive kids
This week, a number of commentators have published articles containing incorrect and irresponsible claims regarding the allegation of Woody Allen’s having sexually abused his adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow.
Too many claims and cases of sexual abuses and most the times the verdict rendered is “We might never know the truth“. What truth are the victims and defendants are expected to know?
Unless they are very mentally sick, they know exactly what happened and not many people care to know how they are going about their life.
It is about time that these “sexual abuses” allegations be defined operationally, every term of the dozens of innuendos related to sexual abuses, harassment, molestation and their various synonyms.
The general public must have a clear idea what the charges are, simply by reading the definition and description of the charge, complete with the consequences and damages (physical, mental and legal) understood to carry with.
I’m working on a follow up article that expand on this pragmatic notion of operationally defining and describing sexual abuse cases.
10 Undeniable Facts About the Woody Allen Sexual-Abuse Allegation
As the author of two lengthy, heavily researched and thoroughly fact-checked articles that deal with that allegation—the first published in 1992, when Dylan was seven, and the second last fall, when she was 28—I feel obliged to set the record straight.
As such, I have compiled the following list of undeniable facts:
1. Mia never went to the police about the allegation of sexual abuse. Her lawyer told her on August 5, 1992, to take the 7-year-old Dylan to a pediatrician, who was bound by law to report Dylan’s story of sexual violation to law enforcement and did so on August 6.
2. Allen had been in therapy for alleged inappropriate behavior toward Dylan with a child psychologist before the abuse allegation was presented to the authorities or made public. Mia Farrow had instructed her babysitters that Allen was never to be left alone with Dylan.
3. Allen refused to take a polygraph administered by the Connecticut state police.Instead, he took one from someone hired by his legal team. The Connecticut state police refused to accept the test as evidence. The state attorney, Frank Maco, says that Mia was never asked to take a lie-detector test during the investigation.
4. Allen subsequently lost 4 exhaustive court battles—a lawsuit, a disciplinary charge against the prosecutor, and two appeals—and was made to pay more than $1 million in Mia’s legal fees. Judge Elliott Wilk, the presiding judge in Allen’s custody suit against Farrow, concluded that there is “no credible evidence to support Mr. Allen’s contention that Ms. Farrow coached Dylan or that Ms. Farrow acted upon a desire for revenge against him for seducing Soon-Yi.”
5. In his 33-page decision, Judge Wilk found that Mr. Allen’s behavior toward Dylan was “grossly inappropriate and that measures must be taken to protect her.” The judge also recounts Farrow’s misgivings regarding Allen’s behavior toward Dylan from the time she was between two and three years old. According to the judge’s decision, Farrow told Allen, “You look at her [Dylan] in a sexual way. You fondled her . . . You don’t give her any breathing room. You look at her when she’s naked.” (Should Mia marry a blind man?)
6. Dylan’s claim of abuse was consistent with the testimony of 3 adults who were present that day. On the day of the alleged assault, a babysitter of a friend told police and gave sworn testimony that Allen and Dylan went missing for 15 or 20 minutes, while she was at the house. Another babysitter told police and also swore in court that on that same day, she saw Allen with his head on Dylan’s lap facing her body, while Dylan sat on a couch “staring vacantly in the direction of a television set.” A French tutor for the family told police and testified that that day she found Dylan was not wearing underpants under her sundress. The first babysitter also testified she did not tell Farrow that Allen and Dylan had gone missing until after Dylan made her statements. These sworn accounts contradict Moses Farrow’s recollection of that day in People magazine.
7. The Yale-New Haven Hospital Child Sex Abuse Clinic’s finding that Dylan had not been sexually molested, cited repeatedly by Allen’s attorneys, was not accepted as reliable by Judge Wilk, or by the Connecticut state prosecutor who originally commissioned them. The state prosecutor, Frank Maco, engaged the Yale-New Haven team to determine whether Dylan would be able to perceive facts correctly and be able to repeat her story on the witness stand. The panel consisted of two social workers and a pediatrician, Dr. John Leventhal, who signed off on the report but who never saw Dylan or Mia Farrow. No psychologists or psychiatrists were on the panel. The social workers never testified; the hospital team only presented a sworn deposition by Dr. Leventhal, who did not examine Dylan.
All the notes from the report were destroyed. Her confidentiality was then violated, and Allen held a news conference on the steps of Yale University to announce the results of the case.
The report concluded Dylan had trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. (For example, she had told them there were “dead heads” in the attic and called sunset “the magic hour.” (What’s wrong with a poetic spirit?)
In fact, Mia kept wigs from her movies on Styrofoam blocks in a trunk in the attic. The doctor subsequently backed down from his contention.
The Connecticut state police, the state attorney, and Judge Wilk all had serious reservations about the report’s reliability.
8. Allen changed his story about the attic where the abuse allegedly took place.
First, Allen told investigators he had never been in the attic where the alleged abuse took place.
After his hair was found on a painting in the attic, he admitted that he might have stuck his head in once or twice. A top investigator concluded that his account was not credible.
9. The state attorney, Maco, said publicly he did have probable cause to press charges against Allen but declined, due to the fragility of the “child victim.” Maco told me that he refused to put Dylan through an exhausting trial, and without her on the stand, he could not prosecute Allen. (Good idea not to put kids on trial too)
10. I am not a longtime friend of Mia Farrow’s, and I did not make any deal with her. I have been personally accused of helping my “long-time friend” Mia Farrow place the story that ran in Vanity Fair’s November 2013 issue as part of an effort to help launch Ronan Farrow’s media career.
I have also been accused of agreeing to some type of deal with Mia Farrow guaranteeing that the sexual-abuse allegation against Woody Allen would be revisited.
For the record, I met Mia Farrow for the first time in 2003, more than 10 years after the first piece was published, at a nonfiction play she appeared in for a benefit in Washington, D.C. I saw her and Dylan again the next day.
That is the last time I saw her until I approached her in April 2013 to do a story about her family and how they had fared over the years. I talked to 8 of her children, including Dylan and a reluctant Ronan. There was no deal of any kind. Moses Farrow declined to be interviewed for the 2013 piece.
Adonis Diaries 