She's never far from my thoughts, the Evil Baroness, but reports today have my eyes welling up with tears and my temper fuming ... The UK's Sunday Times is reporting on two letters sent from groups of Romanian orphans to the European parliament in a bid to get some attention focused on their plight as the EU debates entry for Romania.

It is absolutely heartbreaking to think about how long these kids have suffered.

The... more

Yesterday I reiterated George Clooney's question in regard to the impending disaster in Darfur:

If not the UN, who? Today, I ask a different one.

If not the UN, why?

The first 'why' is really a 'why not'?

Why wouldn't the UN step up to the plate it was ostensibly created for?

We've heard some ... more

Continued from here ...

By the summer of 2004, 50,000 to 80,000 people had been killed and at least a million had been driven from their homes, causing a major humanitarian crisis in Darfur. On the 18th of September 2004, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1564, which called for a Commission of Inquiry on Darfur to assess the Sudanese conflict.

On the 31st of January 2005, the UN released a... more

Darfur ...

The facts:

Darfur (Arabic, meaning "home of the Fur") is a region of far western Sudan, bordering the Central African Republic, Libya, and Chad. ... Darfur covers an area of some (196,555 miles²)—about three-quarters the size of Texas, more than half the size of Kenya or slightly smaller than France. It is largely an arid plateau with the Marrah Mountains (Jebel Marra), a range of volcanic peaks rising up to 10,100 ft, in the center of... more

I've had about enough of this nonsense.

If Jan Baker ... opinionated and obstreperous birth mom that she is .. and I ... a confrontational and dogmatic adoptive mom ... can duke it out, then come to a position of mutual respect through the process, anyone can. So, what's the deal... more

I had tomorrow morning's blog half together in my mind, but the news has shifted my perception just enough to make what was going to be a "isn't my kid just adorable" post into something else ... something I want to get out of my system before I go to bed.

Earlier today, before the birthday gift saga posted earlier, my assistant and I were standing in my kitchen, having a cup of tea and chatting. We're taking her to Singapore with us in a couple of weeks ... I'll go into this more at a later date ... and we were talking about... more

Anyone looking for yet another positive aspect of international adoption need look not further than this report from India:

Security agencies in Jammu and Kashmir have been startled by revelations that a large number of people arrested on suspicion of being terrorists are not actually so, but are unemployed youths, orphans and petty criminals ready to carry out attacks for a price.

Investigations in the recent terrorist strikes in the state revealed that unemployed... more

A couple of things have come in in response to previous posts about Baroness Emma Nicholson.

First was a question about UNICEF's stance on international adoptions, or at least my take on their stance.

Let me bracket my interpretation between the following structures:

1) No matter how much UNICEF (or the Baroness) would like it to be, the world is NOT a perfect place. Bad things happen here all the time and nothing has ever changed that reality.

and

2)... more

Emma Nicholson, a life peer Member of the House of Lords, Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, Member of the European Parliament and self-confessed opponent of international adoption is at it again. The UK's Daily News follows the story:

Following the publication in Monday's edition of British daily Financial Times of a full-page advertisement entitled "Romania's concealed childcare crisis" completed by 33 NGOs which denounced the child protection system in Romania... more

In the second part of Gita Ramaswamy's interview quoted in yesterday's post, she continues to denounce international adoption.

Seeing her world for how she'd like it to be, rather than how it is, she sets up a very dangerous situation ...

... Q ... By putting a complete ban on international adoption, do you think that one might be hindering the life of an orphan child getting... more