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My daily trawl for blog fodder always presents something interesting, but often some of it at least consists of the make-my-teeth-hurt grating variety. That seems to be the flavor of the day on the international adoption front. Oh, goodie.
Starting out with some very iffy celebrity adoption-related stories circulating around the fringes of what might be called news, this story claiming that Angelina Jolie’s daughter Zahara has a birth mother in Ethiopia wanting her child returned.
Anyone else want to admit they were expecting something like this at some time? It’s been a while since there’s been any good dirt thrown at the Jolie-Pitt family, so it was just a matter of time before somebody decided to trash the family from yet another angle.
Of course, clamor will come as some jump to the conclusion that there was something rotten in Denmark … okay, Ethiopia … that the adoption was without proper ethics or legal process or something, that a birth mother was tricked and a child was hijacked.
Others will assume that these allegations are horse hockey based in greed and manipulation.
Pick one.
Speaking of hijacking and manipulation, Sudan’s President Omar Bashir has now gone on record as saying that the Zoe’s Ark train wreck of a fiasco is nothing less than, “part of a Western plot to spread Christianity in Sudan.”
I am happy to have another rope tied around the neck of this mess, one that doesn’t read ‘adoption’ in big, hairy letters of media blitz making, but this is more than a bit over the top.
The president reportedly stated that the motivation for taking the children was to have them “return back to Sudan as missionaries” because: The West pushes its nose into our belief and calls for changing our educational curriculum and our garments.
And because we’re all itchy and scratchy already with the prickly nettle the news is today, I’ll finish up with the UN, which unfortunately does not mean I’ll finish the UN, but rather that this story will be the end of the post.
Heaving a heavy sigh, I’ll begin with the headline: UN envoy praises changes in Burma.
According to the UN’s beautifully dressed special envoy to Burma, one Mr. Ibrahim Gambari, the situation in that brutal, beaten country has “changed for the better in the past few weeks,” and added that “the Burmese government could be responsive to international pressure.”
The progress? Well, Aung San Suu Kyi has been allowed to issue a statement, and this is the first time in four years she’s had this sort of wild freedom. That’s about it.
The leadership has snubbed the guy, meeting with him once, then refusing to do that again, and rejected a proposal of a “three-way meeting with the leaders and Ms Suu Kyi”, saying that would be “premature”.
That’s it, and for so much nothing the junta gets UN praise, and on the BBC, yet. What are these people thinking? Or was this all about Mr. Gambari getting some press for himself.
He does look very nice in his really pricey suit, and this might go some way toward justifying his First Class airfare … or private jet, I don’t know which in this instance … for himself avec entourage, the compulsory SUV convoy, and whatever else his trips involve. I’d love to see the tab.
Can someone please explain to Mr. Gambari and his superiors that the rulers of Burma are murdering brutes who could care less what the rest of the world thinks as long as China keeps buying stuff and everyone else does nothing more than send well-groomed gents for tea occasionally?
How many children do you suppose are suffering in Burma?
Huh? Praising changes in BURMA?
I think I’ve seen enough BBC to know how WRONG that is!
Yep, the Angelina Jolie story isn’t even remotely surprising, sadly enough. I really was expecting something like this. I’m only surprised that the article didn’t suggest that Jolie adopted the child as an “accessory”.