Society's ChildS


People

Obama protesters rally near hospital treating Mandela

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© Peroshni Govender
South Africa's ailing anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela is doing much better in hospital, his ex-wife Winnie said on Friday before a visit by U.S. President Barack Obama that will include a personal homage to the globally admired statesman.

The faltering health of the first black president of South Africa, a revered symbol of racial reconciliation, has drawn world attention since the 94-year-old was rushed to hospital with a recurring lung infection nearly three weeks ago.

Earlier this week, the government reported Mandela's frail condition had turned critical, but since Thursday President Jacob Zuma has reported that his health is improving.

"I'm not a doctor, but I can say that from what he was a few days ago, there is great improvement," Mandela's ex-wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, told reporters outside Mandela's former home in the Johannesburg township of Soweto.

But, she added, he remained "clinically unwell".

Magnet

Famed rock star opens up about his faith, career: "I believe that Jesus was... the son of God."

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© Getty ImagesThe Edge and Bono attend the Spider-Man Turn Off The Dark celebration of its 1,000 performance on Broadway at Foxwoods Theatre on May 29, 2013 in New York City.
Bono, U2′s lead singer, made headlines this week after excerpts were released from his fascinating radio interview with Focus on the Family (FOF), a Christian organization. Today, the group made available the entire exchange, offering it on the FOF website. From discussing his passion for helping the poor to detailing an intense faith in Jesus Christ, the famed musician offered up a candid - and surprising - interview.

Speaking on-air with FOF President Jim Daly, Bono offered a lens into both his personal and professional lives. Perhaps the most interesting tidbits were his statements about Jesus Christ and the gospel - favorable comments that are rarely uttered by A-list entertainers.

"So often those that struggle with accepting Jesus Christ as their savior ... it's the idea that he's the Messiah. ... how did you respond to that?," Daly asked the singer.

Che Guevara

No, I'm not going to the World Cup

This video was recorded right before the recent protests started, but with all of this going on, it becomes even more evident that the World Cup and the Olympics should not be our priority. The world has to know about what's really going on. Please share.

I know this is a brief overview, so if you want to know more about the problems discussed in the video, please check the links below:


A Nova Democracia
Domínio Público
Copa pra quem?
Comitê Popular do Rio
conectas.org
theworld.org
Marcelo Lacerda

Black Cat

Celebrity philanthropist Bono revealed to be a crony of bankers and neocons in new book, The Frontman

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© Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty ImagesBono arriving for a visit to 10 Downing Street in March 2013.
Bono the philanthropist is nothing but a crony of bankers and neocons, argues Terry Eagleton

It is no surprise that Bono and Bob Geldof, the two leading celebrity philanthropists of our time, are both Irish. The Ireland into which they were born in the 1960s was caught between third and first worlds, and so was more likely to sympathise with the wretched of the earth than were the natives of Hampstead. As a devoutly Christian nation, it also had a long missionary tradition. Black babies were a familiar object of charity in Ireland long before Hollywood movie stars began snapping them up. Bono himself was a member of a prayer group in the 1970s, before he stumbled on leather trousers and wrap-around shades. Scattered across the globe by hunger and turmoil at home, the Irish have long been a cosmopolitan people, far less parochial than their former proprietors. Small nations cannot afford the insularity of the great.

Besides, if you were born into this remote margin of Europe and yearned for the limelight, it helped to have an eye-catching cause and a mania for self-promotion. Rather as the Irish in general were forced by internal circumstance to become an international people, so men like Bono and Geldof could use their nationality to leap on to the world stage.

Bono belongs to the new, cool, post-political Ireland; but by turning back to the old, hungry, strife-torn nation, now rebaptised as Africa, he could bridge the gap between the two. Even so, he has not been greatly honoured in his own notoriously begrudging country, or elsewhere. Harry Browne recounts the (perhaps apocryphal) tale of the singer standing on stage clapping while declaring: "Every time I clap my hands, a child dies." "Then stop fucking doing it!" yelled a voice from the crowd.

Comment: For more background information on Bono's character read:
U2, Bono? Celeb Partners with Monsanto, G8, to Biowreck African Farms with GMOs
Bono and Bill Gates-Backed Global Health Charity Exposed as a Fraud


Che Guevara

Goodyear must "respect our social rules": French town holds out against multinational giant

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For years tyre giant Goodyear has been trying to stem losses at a plant in northern France, but has failed to persuade unions to agree to its plans. Now it wants to close the factory, and the battle has moved to the courts. How much longer can the struggle continue?

The burly man stands in front of me with folded arms like a bouncer at a night club. "No way," he says. "You can't go in. The lawyer is talking and that's secret."

Through the glass doors I can see rows of workers from the American-owned Goodyear tyre factory, sitting and listening intently. Many wear red T shirts which say Patrons Voyous - the Bosses Are Thugs. They all belong to the CGT (Confederation Generale du Travail) the country's largest trade union.

Eventually I am allowed into the hall to hear a rousing speech from Mickael Wamen, the union's representative at the Goodyear plant. There are loud cheers and fists in the air as he announces the latest tactic - blocking the factory entrance from 4am on Monday morning.

He is in a defiant mood as he tells me about a string of legal victories which have so far prevented the US company from closing the factory with the loss of 1,173 jobs.

Last week, for the first time, a judge ruled in Goodyear's favour. A court in Nanterre rejected the union's case that the tyre manufacturer had violated the correct procedures when informing the union about the closure plan. But Wamen and his union are undaunted, and will appeal.

Employees have also filed a complaint in the state court in Akron, Ohio where Goodyear is based. Seeking $4m in damages and class-action status for their case, they claim the company has violated laws on both sides of the Atlantic.

"Goodyear must certainly be the only multinational in the world where workers have resisted so much," Wamen says. "First of all they wanted to sack 400 of us then it was 800 then they said they wanted to close the factory altogether. But we have resisted every step of the way."

Attention

Riots break out in China's Xinjiang region

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A policeman patrols the road leading into the riot-affected town of Lukqun, Xinjiang province on Thursday
Riots in the restive western Chinese region of Xinjiang have killed 27 people, state media reported, but overseas Uyghur groups questioned the official version of events.

Frequent outbreaks of violence have hit Xinjiang, where the arrival of waves of Han Chinese people over the decades has fueled tensions with the Uyghurs, a Turkic-speaking, predominantly Muslim ethnic group.

The latest bout of unrest took place early Wednesday in the remote township of Lukqun, about 250 kilometers southeast of the regional capital of Urumqi, Chinese state-run media reported.

"Knife-wielding mobs attacked the township's police stations, the local government building and a construction site, stabbing people and setting fire to police cars," state-run newspaper China Daily reported, attributing the information to officials with Xinjiang's regional committee of the ruling Communist Party.

The official broadcaster CCTV posted pictures of burnt out cars in front of a police station whose facade was singed black in places.

Amid the violence, officials told China Daily, eight civilians, nine police officers and security guards, and 10 rioters died.

People 2

Trivial anger a 'result of modern life'

Brits today will fly into a rage at the slightest inconvenience because the comforts of modern life have raised our expectations to the level of irrational toddlers, a psychologist has claimed.
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© AlamyBrits today will fly into a rage at the slightest inconvenience because the comforts of modern life have raised our expectations to the level of irrational toddlers, a psychologist has claimed.
Whereas people's energies were once focused on keeping a roof over their head and food on their plate, most 21st century Westerners have no concerns about their basic needs.

Our comfortable lifestyles may have spoiled us and boosted our expectations to the point where anything short of perfect causes us to act like petulant children, Dr Sandi Mann said.

Consciously challenging ourselves by questioning whether things that make our blood boil are actually threatening our survival could help "rein the anger in" and take a more relaxed attitude, she claimed.

In an opinion article in July's issue of Reader's Digest Dr Mann, a senior lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire's school of psychology, wrote that anger was once key to our survival but has now become targeted at trivial annoyances.

Humans evolved to become angry in certain situations because the emotion motivates us to want things. For example, hunger makes us angry by raising our serotonin levels, prompting us to look for food.

Alarm Clock

Sodomy hazing leaves 13-year-old victim outcast in Colorado town

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© Barry Bortnick/Bloomberg News
At the state high-school wrestling tournament in Denver last year, three upperclassmen cornered a 13-year-old boy on an empty school bus, bound him with duct tape and sodomized him with a pencil.

For the boy and his family, that was only the beginning.

The students were from Norwood, Colo., a ranching town of about 500 people near the Telluride ski resort. Two of the attackers were sons of Robert Harris, the wrestling coach, who was president of the school board. The victim's father was the K-12 principal.

After the principal reported the incident to police, townspeople forced him to resign. Students protested against the victim at school, put "Go to Hell" stickers on his locker and wore T-shirts that supported the perpetrators. The attackers later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges, according to the Denver district attorney's office.

Eye 1

Remorselss psychopathic child killer Ian Brady: 'I killed for the existential experience'

75-year-old breaks 47-year silence as he tells mental health tribunal of mixing with criminals from Krays to Great Train Robbers and IRA terrorists

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Court artist sketch by Elizabeth Cook of moors murderer Ian Brady appearing via video link at Manchester Civil Justice Centre
Moors murderer Ian Brady denied he was insane as he recalled cooking steaks with Ronnie Kray whilst mingling with some of Britain's most notorious criminals during his half century of incarceration.

In an extraordinary four-hour display which veered between vaunting self-aggrandisement and breath-taking callousness towards his victims and their relatives who were watching via video-link, the child killer failed to express any remorse for his crimes.

Throughout the long-awaited appearance at the mental health tribunal, which must decide whether the 75-year-old - now the UK's longest serving prisoner - be returned to a normal jail from the secure hospital where he is held, Brady repeatedly stonewalled at suggestions he had a personality disorder or that his five murders were evidence that he was "abnormal".

Speaking in a quiet, controlled voice, his Glaswegian accent still pronounced, he hit out at "media fascination" with his past complaining he was demonised and romanticised like Jack the Ripper and comparing reports of the shocking moorland killings to the Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles and the Gothic romance Wuthering Heights.

He passed judgment on politicians that had considered his case over the years - praising Labour's Roy Jenkins as the "greatest Home Secretary ever" and claimed to have once discussed Russian literature with James Callaghan.

Brady was particular scornful of Tony Blair who he accused of getting rich off his "war crimes" in Iraq whilst claiming he was effectively a political prisoner after Margaret Thatcher had intervened in his case. He said Britain was a "psychopathic country" that had been invading other nations for 300 years.

Comment: For the the full horrific story about the notorious Moors murders in 1960's Britain, see this documentary


Palette

Charles Saatchi: art supremo with an image problem

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© Olivia Harris/ReutersCharles Saatchi: 'He's like a kid in a sweet shop – he just wants it now.'
The enormously powerful collector has worked hard to guard his privacy. But last week's disturbing photographs of his 'playful tiff' with his wife, Nigella Lawson, have made him the object of relentless speculation and scrutiny

When the art collector Charles Saatchi wants something, he knows how to set about getting it. Gallerists and curators are full of stories about the way he walks into an exhibition, fixes on the single best work of art on show and rushes towards it - in the words of one acquaintance, "like a heat-seeking missile". Those who have seen him in action say that when he likes a piece of art, he will do everything he can to have it for himself. For Saatchi, worth a rumoured £135m, the price is irrelevant.

"He doesn't care whether it's worth £100 or £100m," says a friend. "It's all about the impact of the work when it is in front of him. When he wants something, he will pay on the day for it. More than that, he will have a truck waiting outside the door. It's a kid in a sweet shop and he just wants it now."

But what happens when he doesn't get what he wants? It's a question that many were asking after photographs emerged last weekend of Saatchi, 70, sitting at an outside table of his favourite restaurant, Scott's in Mayfair, with a hand around the throat of his 53-year-old wife, the television chef and former Observer columnist, Nigella Lawson.

In some respects, it was difficult to know what to make of the pictures: there was no context for them and no sense, either, of what might go on within their relationship. The next day, Saatchi dismissed the incident as "a playful tiff" and later accepted a police caution because, in his words: "I thought it was better than the alternative of this hanging over all of us for months."

Comment: Charles and his brother Maurice Saatchi were instrumental in selling Margaret 'The Witch' Thatcher to the people of Britain in 1979.

The toxic influence of such nasty people really does permeate everything:

The Plot Against Art

Spitting Mad Jews and Angry Artists