Angelina Jolie is not far behind, although she is [perhaps] better looking and younger, but I digress.

How many kids do we have in this country here who have lived their whole fecking lives in shitty foster care, yet these two rich white, pampered-ass bitches have to travel with bloated retinue over to Africa to steal kids from other people in order to make a big fecking production out of how supposedly magnanimous and unprejudiced they are, how very 'One World' they are and how fecking maternal --AS IF they actually raised and cared for these children on a day to day, hour by hour basis and not just when they were on a shopping junket being filmed by 'Entertainment Tonight'.

This kind of child exploitation should be outlawed.



Madonna in a rare photo with her clothes ON




Aww...who gets the 20 kids when she and Brad split?

By Laura Isensee in Los Angeles
Independent.ie
Thursday July 02 2009

Actor Ryan O'Neal led friends and family in a private funeral service for actress Farrah Fawcett, who died last week aged 62 after a long and public battle with cancer.

O'Neal, the long-time companion of the 'Charlie's Angels' star, was one of the pall-bearers and gave a reading at the service at Los Angeles Roman Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.

Redmond O'Neal, the 'Love Story' actor's 24-year-old son with Fawcett, was allowed briefly out of jail where he is being held on drugs possession charges to attend the funeral service. Redmond also gave a bible reading, according to a programme made available to the media.

Fellow 'Charlie's Angels' star Kate Jackson, former model Cheryl Tiegs and rocker Rod Stewart's ex-wife Alana Stewart were also among the mourners. Fawcett's Los Angeles cancer doctor, Dr Lawrence Piro, delivered the eulogy with Stewart.

Fawcett's coffin was taken into the church as a quartet of musicians played 'Amazing Grace' and Irving Berlin's love song 'Always', according to the programme.

Outside, a few dozen fans watched as Fawcett's casket was taken inside, covered with sprays of bright yellow flowers that seemed to reflect the sunny smile and golden hair that made Fawcett a worldwide star 30 years ago.

Fawcett died in a Los Angeles hospital on Thursday with O'Neal and Stewart at her side after a long struggle to beat anal and then liver cancer. A personal video diary chronicling her cancer treatments was broadcast on US television in May.

Watching from the street, Karla Dishon (47) said she had come to pay tribute to Fawcett -- a star whose hairstyle she had copied as a teenager like millions of others around the world.

"All the girls did -- wavy, pretty, surfer, California girl hair," Dishon said. "She is an icon and she is a very beautiful woman, and I think it's too bad that we lost her so young."

_____

This poem was printed in Farrah's funeral programme:

At That Hour
--by James Joyce



At that hour when all things have repose,
O lonely watcher of the skies,
Do you hear the night wind and the sighs
Of harps playing unto Love to unclose
The pale gates of sunrise?

When all things repose, do you alone
Awake to hear the sweet harps play
To Love before him on his way,
And the night wind answering in antiphon
Till night is overgone?

Play on, invisible harps, unto Love,
Whose way in heaven is aglow
At that hour when soft lights come and go,
Soft sweet music in the air above
And in the earth below.


Image

Over the years the peace line has become higher, but in the last year murals have softened its appearance

By Arthur Strain and Peter Hamill
BBC
02 July 2009


Over the years the peace line has become higher, but in the last year murals have softened its appearance

The first one went up eight years after construction started on the Berlin Wall, but 20 years after that wall went down, Northern Ireland still has its so-called peace lines.

For people living in the shadow of a concrete wall topped with fencing the peace they bring can help cement divisions rather than heal communities.

Wall number one, which divides the Falls and Shankill roads at Cupar Street, went up in 1969 following rioting and house burnings in west Belfast. Over the years it has risen to more than six metres.

The last one went up last year in the grounds of a north Belfast integrated primary school following a period of local tension.

There are 53 Northern Ireland Office maintained peace lines in four towns and cities in the region - 42 in Belfast, five in Derry, five in Portadown and one in Lurgan.

However, community relations groups say these are not the only peace lines, with other structures and land being used to keep communities apart.

In a survey for the Community Relations Council the Institute for Conflict Research listed a total of 88 peace lines as well as 44 police CCTV cameras.

Some are listed as wasteland being used by housing authorities as buffer zones, others include derelict houses as well as walls and vegetation to the rear of homes in interface areas.

They still make some people feel safe, but others want more work on taking them down.

Tony Macauley used to live under the Shankill peace line and last year he produced a consultancy paper on a process to remove them.

He said that while they initially made him feel safe he quickly realised that they did not stop people crossing over to carry out killings.

He now lives in a seaside town and said that for younger people in interface areas the peace lines have become part of the fabric of their area, as accepted as the murals that adorn gable walls.

"I can remember when the peace walls went up, but there is an entire generation who have known nothing else," he said.

"People who grew up in some of those areas and are under 40 have no idea what it was like before them.

"But they used to be mixed areas, the communities used to live side by side."

The CRC lists some of the peace lines as fences around enclaves and swathes of scrub used as buffers in interface areas.

Others cannot be mapped, as Mr Macauley explained.

"It happens in urban areas, but also in rural ones, where people know they should avoid a certain route to get somewhere or there would be some park they would not go to," he said.

He said that until communities could agree to live without them the walls would have to stay, but his hope is that talking about removing them will eventually lead to them going.

It takes an outsider to be shocked by the sight of the a peace wall and what it is - a means to stop people living in a western democracy at the start of the 21st century attacking each other.

But even on the walls change can be seen. Murals and graffiti art expressing hopes for peace and a brighter future feature on the Belfast wall now.

Photographer Les McLean is a regular visitor to Belfast and has been capturing its people for years.

He said that the peace murals and messages that have been appearing on the walls have helped soften their harsh look, but there is no disguising what they are.

"I like what they are saying now - the message that's coming out of there," he said.

"I've been photographing them for the last two or three years and I have always felt I couldn't understand why they were called a peace line, I've always thought they were more about division," he said.