"The Portlandian" - November 12, 2013 edition

[Terry Hall]

TTTTT H H EEEEE
T H H E
T HHHHH EEEEE
T H H E
T H H EEEEE

PPPP OOOO RRRR TTTTT L A N N DDDD I A N N TM
P P O O R R T L A A NN N D D I A A NN N
PPPP O O RRRR T L AAAAA N N N D D I AAAAA N N N
P O O R R T L A A N NN D D I A A N NN
P OOOO R R T LLLLL A A N N DDDD I A A N N

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The Portlandian, the Internet's premier source of Tonya News

November 12, 2013 Edition - ANNUAL TONYA BIRTHDAY EDITION
(C) 2013 Portland Ice Skating Society
http://www.pdxiss.org
*****************************************************************

What can you say? It's Tonya's birthday - she's celebrating 43
years on the planet today. All's been quiet on the Tonya front
this year, but a source within the Tonya camp tells us that news-
wise "the dam will open in the not so far future". And with the
20th anniversary of the Whacking and the Lillehammer Olympics
just around the corner that's bound to change, with all the
regulars like Christine Brennan, Inside Edition and the
Oralgroanian doubtlessly jumping at the chance to cash in yet
again on Tonya's misfortune. We can hardly wait.


MOVE OVER, LORD BYRON

And speaking of Portland's biggest-selling fish-wrapper, since
it's Tonya's birthday, sure as shooting, regular as clockwork,
here they come with a predictable poke at our favorite skater, in
this case a little ditty about a whale that was blown up with
dynamite the same day that Tonya was born:

http://blog.oregonlive.com/edge/2013/11/the_ice_skater_and_the_whale.html

The first verse gives a taste of the rest of it:

Happy Birthday to our ice-skating hick
A triple axel, you one time did stick
But then your life got unruly
Thanks, in part, to Gillooly
You were born the same day they blew up Moby Dick?

And it goes downhill from there. Geez, and we thought our Tonya
poetry was bad. Still, blowing up a whale is a great way to
celebrate the birth of someone who would go on to be the first
American woman to land a triple Axel. That's one honor a certain
skater from the Boston area is never likely to have.


ESPN TONYA DOCUMENTARY TO AIR NEXT YEAR

We were hoping that today we would be bringing you a review of
ESPN's long-awaited Tonya documentary, which was supposed to
screen on November 5th. Announced in July, it's part of ESPN's
highly acclaimed "30 for 30" series, but it has been postponed -
latest word is that it will probably now go out sometime in
January. The reason for this change is not known, though it's
likely that ESPN wants to align it more closely with either the
20th anniversary of the Whacking or the Sochi Winter Olympics
(which start in February) in order to get maximum publicity and
milk it for all it's worth - a wise move as November always
seemed a strange choice anyway.

Details of the "30 for 30" schedule can be found at ESPN's
official page for the series:

http://espn.go.com/30for30/

So no fireworks this Guy Fawkes Day for Tonyaphiles after all.
We just had to watch "V for Vendetta" instead - particularly
the scene where the comedian guy (played by Stephen Fry) gets
clubbed with a telescopic baton that looks awfully like the one
used for another famous clubbing...


"SKATER" RECALLS BIRTHDAYS PAST

To celebrate Tonya's birthday, we've also uploaded another issue
of "The Skater", the fanzine produced by the original Tonya
Harding fan club that operated in Portland briefly back in the
mid-90's:

http://www.pdxiss.org/Skater_Vol1_No08.pdf

This issue recalls that on November 13th 1993, the day after her
23rd birthday, Tonya skated in a special exhibition for her fans.
Unfortunately the circumstances surrounding the exhibition
weren't anything to celebrate - Tonya had several days earlier
been forced to withdraw from the Pacific Northwest Skating
Championships after receiving a death threat. It was part of a
run of bad luck that seemed to plague Tonya in that period,
including wardrobe malfunctions, equipment breakages and the
theft of her pickup truck.

And yet, when Tonya was on, she was really on! This issue also
reports that Tonya had recently skated two programs for an
upcoming TV extravaganza called "Champions on Ice" for CBS in
Charlotte, NC. This may be one of them here:

Often performances by skaters in these things are composites
fabricated out of several takes, so everybody appears to skate
flawlessly no matter how big a shambles they made of things. But
unlike several other big-name skaters at the event, Tonya was
able to do each of her programs in one take. So much for a skater
who has been widely depicted as disaster-prone and incapable of
completing a performance without drama.

Can you help us? We're trying to build up a complete collection
of issues of "The Skater" to put on line, but we're missing
several editions and some are sourced from relatively poor-
quality photocopies that have required extensive restoration
work. If so, you can contact us by e-mail or using the form at
our site:

http://www.pdxiss.org/feedback.htm


LILLEHAMMER - SLIGHT RETURN

Recently a long-standing Tonyaphile from North Carolina traveled
to Norway along with her husband. Amongst the places they visited
while they were there were some of the Olympic venues from both
the 1952 Oslo Winter Games and the 1994 Lillehammer Games. She
has kindly sent us a picture of her husband standing outside the
back of the Lillehammer figure skating hall, the site of the
climactic showdown between Tonya and that other skater:

Loading Image...

As you can see, the combination of time, vandals and the harsh
Nordic winters have not been kind to it, with it now looking
distinctly tatty after a period of only 20 years, a not uncommon
problem for Olympic venues that often can't justify expensive
upkeep after the event they were built for is over.

Unfortunately they were not able to go inside and couldn't see
much through the windows. However, for a Tonyaphile, this is
like being at Woodstock - it doesn't matter if you're so far
away from the stage that Jimi Hendrix looks like an ant, just
being able to say you were THERE is what counts. We'd like to
thank her for generously sharing this with us.


SON OF SAMMY? - BACK TO THE FUTURE FOR THE IOC

What a difference 20 years makes in other ways, too. In 1994, the
Winter Olympics were being held in Norway, one of the world's
most socially progressive countries. In 2014, the Olympics will
be held in Russia, one of the world's least socially progressive
countries. In 1994, the Soviet empire had just collapsed and
hopes were high that Russia would eventually become a westernized
democratic nation. Today, those hopes are dashed as under
Vladimir Putin it now sinks back towards reverting to an
oppressive dictatorship, where opponents are harassed and put in
jail on trumped-up charges by kangaroo courts (think Pussy Riot).

Perhaps nowhere is this better illustrated than in the area of
gay rights. While other countries (including Norway) legalize
same-sex marriage, and even the Pope is calling for tolerance for
gays, in Russia they are increasingly persecuted in the same way
that Jews were in another European country a few decades earlier.

And what's going to be the centerpiece sport of the 2014 Winter
Olympics? Why, it's figure skating, an activity which everybody
knows is the gayest sport in the universe. And it's being held in
Russia, one of the most homophobic countries in the world. It's
yet another insult, another slap in the face to the figure
skating and gay communities by the IOC, an outfit that just six
years after Beijing is holding the Olympics in another oppressive
state, yet again demonstrating their total insensitivity and
backwardness on human rights and freedom.

But perhaps this should be no surprise given the recent results
of the IOC's leadership election. You might have heard that the
IOC has appointed Thomas Bach of Germany as its new President to
replace the outgoing Jacque Rogge. Here's a few facts that you
might like to know about him that probably aren't in his official
IOC bio.

This article alleges that Bach, a former Olympic fencer, was a
cheat, using a wet glove to short out the sensors on his fencing
jacket so that legitimate hits by his opponent would not
register:

http://www.wdr.de/tv/sport_inside//sendungsbeitraege/2013/0902/skript_eng_bach.jsp

Our IOC table also shows that he's a stooge of the Dasslers, the
German shoe magnates who were the leading figures in "pimping
out" the Olympics. There are also claims in Stasi files that he
organized supplies of hookers in order to win a sports election,
so it sounds like he may be a pimp in the literal sense too:

http://www.pdxiss.org/ioc.htm

It's an appalling choice - Rogge wasn't fantastic but he was
still light years ahead of Samaranch. This guy sounds like a
return to the bad old days of Sammy and shows that as The Who
once said, "meet the new boss, same as the old boss".

And what are the media doing to expose this? With the exception
of a handful of people like Andrew Jennings, not much. They'd
much rather rehash a two-decade old scandal than do investigative
journalism about the REAL crooks in sport - and they ain't short
blonde figure skaters from Portland!


Well, as they say in the Loony Tunes cartoons, that's all folks.
We hope that Tonya has a "whale" of a time (get it? "whale" of
a,... oh never mind, we thought it was funny anyway) on her
birthday. And that there are many more of them to come. Before we
go, here's an interesting factoid: Tonya shares her birthday with
several other famous people, including rocker Neil Young (1945),
actress Grace Kelly (1929), gymnast and fellow Olympian Nadia
Comaneci (1961), sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840), and last but
certainly not least, serial killer Charles Manson (1934).

But not Herman Melville, the guy who wrote Moby Dick.

*****************************************************************
VISIT THESE GREAT TONYA WEB SITES:

PortIce - http://www.pdxiss.org
David House - http://www.tonyaharding.org
Charlie Main - http://www.charliesweb.com/tonya/tonya.html
Puppetboy - http://www.usapaul.net/tonya/
Valerie Smith - http://www.olywa.net/radu/valerie/LilHam.html
Swan Lake - http://members.tripod.com/~TonyaHarding/index.html
Blades of Gold - http://members.tripod.com/tmhfan/index.html
*****************************************************************

[Willy Beano]

Post by Terry Hall
SON OF SAMMY? - BACK TO THE FUTURE FOR THE IOC
What a difference 20 years makes in other ways, too. In 1994, the
Winter Olympics were being held in Norway, one of the world's
most socially progressive countries. In 2014, the Olympics will
be held in Russia, one of the world's least socially progressive
countries. In 1994, the Soviet empire had just collapsed and
hopes were high that Russia would eventually become a westernized
democratic nation. Today, those hopes are dashed as under
Vladimir Putin it now sinks back towards reverting to an
oppressive dictatorship, where opponents are harassed and put in
jail on trumped-up charges by kangaroo courts (think Pussy Riot).

It was not the protest itself that got them in trouble, it is where
they did it. Because they did it inside a church, religious
conservatives, who can be just as bad as religious nuts in
America, wanted them prosecuted under "blasphemy laws"/

What is happening now in Russia is what the Christian Right
tried to do in America in the 1990s. And America could have
had a hard-line fundamenalist Christian government, much like
what is happening in Russia now, in 1996. It is just fortunate
that the American people had the good sense NOT to elect
Bob Dole as president. The "United Russia" party is very
much like the Republican party was in 1996. In the years
I have done Internet radio, there was nothing more frightening
that the 1996 Republican National Convetion, where people
were waving banners with the Emblems of the Christian
Coalition, Family Research Council, and American
Family Association. I think that scared the American
people when they saw that on TV, and that caused
Clinton to get re-elected.

I even had a professor, in 1995, when I was at CSUS,
that said "dammit this country is beginning to look like
Germany just before the second world war". He likened
the Christian Right to the Nazis of 1930s Germany.

Russia has not gone quite that far. At least when they
made their own verions of SOPA and CDA, they did
not make foreign websites subject to prosecution in
Russia.

However, no matter what country the Christian Right
is in, it is wrong. Such groups that now exist in Russia,
Canada, Australia, and the USA are WRONG for
their respective countries and WRONG for the WORLD.

And the Christian Right had all gambling outlwed in
Russia a few years ago, whereas it had been legalised
since the fall of the USSR in 1992.

And I don't think that was lost on Kim Jong Un
when he allowed a major gambling casino in the
northeastern part of North Korea, near
Chonjin, to open. It is just as convenient
for people in Russia, as it is for people in
China, and I would imagine quite a few
gamblers from Russia come over the border
gamble, since Russia outlawed gambling.

Post by Terry Hall
Perhaps nowhere is this better illustrated than in the area of
gay rights. While other countries (including Norway) legalize
same-sex marriage, and even the Pope is calling for tolerance for
gays, in Russia they are increasingly persecuted in the same way
that Jews were in another European country a few decades earlier.

When it comes to persecution, one alternate history scenario,
that is also part prophecy says that something like that will
happen in the US later on in the decade, when a megalomaniac
leader will get elected, and become a 21st century version of
Hitler, using Christianity as an excuse for his evil. Jews, Muslims,
Gays, Atheists, Communsts, Socialists, and just about anyone
not straight, white, and Christian, will be persecuted. This
megalomaniac will bring the rest of the world to having to
do the unthinkable, the rest of the world having to go to war
with an America gone rogue. This is right, there will be a WWIII,
which will result in America brekaing into several new countries,
and a three-way Cold War starting.

This new, and terrible world war, while it will not
go to total worldwide nuclear, will. when the "Christian
Republic Of America" attacks Britan, will result
in the deaths of enough of the Royal Family, where
Prince William will become the next King Of England.
He will be the closest survivor in the line to the throne,
and will be crowned as William V.

There will be the "Moscow Pact", "Beijing Pact" and
"Ljubliana Pact". If you are currently living in Califonia,
Arizona, Utah, or Nevada, you might want to consider
going somewhere else, because the part of the world,
after this coming WWIII, will be a dictatorship that
will be an ally of a "Unified Chinese State" that will
overthrow the Communists, sometime in this decade,
and become a superpower after the coming WWIII.

In addition to the Unified Repubhlic of America,
the otther new nations on the continent, all Ljunliana
Pact members would have been Cascadia, Florida,
the CSA, the Unified Republic Of America, and a
much smaller United States Of America, consider
of the Mid-Atlantic states, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois
and Indiana. as well as a truncated Confederate
States (the original CSA, minus Texas, Oklahoma,
Kemtucky, Florida, and Virginia).

After the coming WWIII, that is prophecised,
I think Michelle Kwan would ultimately end
up the head of the figure skating federation in
an independent Florida.

I could see a this forthcoming break up of the
USA as an opportunity for Tonya to be a
coach. The Cascadian federation could permit
Tonya to be a coach, and there is NOTHING
that the figure skating association in what will be
left of the USA will be able to DO or SAY about
it. The current USFSA ban prevents her from becoming
anyone's "coach of record", but an indepdendent
Cascadia could allow her to be a coach, and the
"rump" American state that will be left after this
coming war will not be able to do anything
about it.

If the Republic Of Florida existed now, I think
the Cristina Gao would certianly be skating for
that country in the upcoming Olympics.

I can say that if the "Unified Republic Of America"
existed now, it would only have ONE slot in the
Ladies event for the upcoming Olympics". I figure
this, because that country's World ladies team, this
past season, wouild have been Gracie Gold and
Rachael Flatt. With Gracie finsihing 6th, and Rachael
likely finshing 20th, the URA would have only had
ONE lady for the Olympics, and this season's
Worlds, based on what the finishes of both Gracie
and Rachael would have been. Some detractors
of ours may say otherwise, but the Unified Republic
Of America would have only been allowed ONE
lady, based on a 6th place finish for Gracie and a
20th place finish for Rachael.

Post by Terry Hall
And what's going to be the centerpiece sport of the 2014 Winter
Olympics? Why, it's figure skating, an activity which everybody
knows is the gayest sport in the universe. And it's being held in
Russia, one of the most homophobic countries in the world.

I think Uganda would beat Russia. Uganda has attempted
to impose the death penalty for certain "gay" acts, but
whenever the issue comes up, Anonymous launches
DdOS attacks on government systems and downs them.
Since the law in Uganda has not caught up with cyberspace,
Anonymous members will likely not be attacked for those
attacks. The computers tey attacked are in Uganda, so
they are only subject to prosecution under Ugandan law
for that.

Post by Terry Hall
It's
yet another insult, another slap in the face to the figure
skating and gay communities by the IOC, an outfit that just six
years after Beijing is holding the Olympics in another oppressive
state, yet again demonstrating their total insensitivity and
backwardness on human rights and freedom.

And Beijing could get a winter Olympics. Beijing intends
to bid for the Winter Olympics, as early as 2022. And
as far as oppressive regimes go, one of the six original
countries on George W Bush's "Axix Of Evil" has the
2018 Olympics, that being the DPRK.

And oppressive regimes have had succesful bids long
before even Moscow 1980. The 1936 Berlin Olympics,
when Hitler was in charge, is an example. And before
WWII, Cortina D'Ampezzo was going to host the
1944 Winter Games, and Mussolini was in charge
at the time the IOC had awarded Italy the 1944 Games.

So the IOC granting the games to authorotarian
counties is nothing new. Heck, even Saddam
Hussein was planning, at one time, on bidding
for the Olympcis to be held in Iraq, and I think
the IOC just might have been crazy enough to
give a Saddam-ruled Iraq the Games. They
have given the games to the then Communist
Soviet Union, to Communist China, and
Communist North Korea, so having given
the games to a Saddam-ruled Iraq would not
have been that much of a step up from that.
Saddam had wanted the Games to be in
either Baghdad or Basra.

Prior to WWI, Berlin was scheduled to have the
1916 Games, and it was ruled by the Kaiser, who
was, as Germany's king, was the absolute ruler
of Germany, and Germany was very much
an oppressive authoritarian regume under the Kaiser,
the only differnce between Hitler and Kaiser Wilhelm,
is that Kaiser Wilhelm did not presecute Jews, gypsies,
and others, based on their race or religion. Otther than that, there
was virtually no difference between Hitler, and Kaiser
Wilhelm. Yet despite all this, the IOC had originally
awarded the 1916 Games.

An oppressive Kaiser was the main driver of the large
wave of German immigration to Mexico and the U.S.
in the late 19th century, and many Germans fled the
oppresive regime of the Kaiser.

Post by Terry Hall
But perhaps this should be no surprise given the recent results
of the IOC's leadership election. You might have heard that the
IOC has appointed Thomas Bach of Germany as its new President to
replace the outgoing Jacque Rogge. Here's a few facts that you
might like to know about him that probably aren't in his official
IOC bio.
This article alleges that Bach, a former Olympic fencer, was a
cheat, using a wet glove to short out the sensors on his fencing
jacket so that legitimate hits by his opponent would not
http://www.wdr.de/tv/sport_inside//sendungsbeitraege/2013/0902/skript_eng_bach.jsp
Our IOC table also shows that he's a stooge of the Dasslers, the
German shoe magnates who were the leading figures in "pimping
out" the Olympics. There are also claims in Stasi files that he
organized supplies of hookers in order to win a sports election,
http://www.pdxiss.org/ioc.htm
It's an appalling choice - Rogge wasn't fantastic but he was
still light years ahead of Samaranch. This guy sounds like a
return to the bad old days of Sammy and shows that as The Who
once said, "meet the new boss, same as the old boss".
And what are the media doing to expose this? With the exception
of a handful of people like Andrew Jennings, not much. They'd
much rather rehash a two-decade old scandal than do investigative
journalism about the REAL crooks in sport - and they ain't short
blonde figure skaters from Portland!
Well, as they say in the Loony Tunes cartoons, that's all folks.
We hope that Tonya has a "whale" of a time (get it? "whale" of
a,... oh never mind, we thought it was funny anyway) on her
birthday. And that there are many more of them to come. Before we
go, here's an interesting factoid: Tonya shares her birthday with
several other famous people, including rocker Neil Young (1945),
actress Grace Kelly (1929), gymnast and fellow Olympian Nadia
Comaneci (1961)

Her birthday was November 8. Nadia Guevara
Comeneche was born November 8, 1961 in
Moa, Cuba.

,

[Jeanne Douglas]

In article <528349c7$0$8105$c3e8da3$***@news.astraweb.com>,
"Willy Beano" <***@alphacrucisradio.org> wrote:


nothing but garbage

[Willy Beano]

Post by Jeanne Douglas
nothing but garbage

America came a lot closer, than you think, to
becoming a fundamentalist Chrsistian state, in
the 1990s.

America could have gone in much the same direction
that Russia is now, a totalitarian fundemenalist
Christian state.

[Jeanne Douglas]

Post by Jeanne Douglas
nothing but garbage

<snippage of more garbage>