More news at www.news24.com

Read the story online:

http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,,2-7-1442_2310442,00.html

READ this Crap ‘Too ugly’ to be South African Apr 22 2008 04:37:41:977PM

Siphiwe Nyathi & Tshwarelo eseng Mogakane A 68-year-old woman from Mpumalanga has been told that she can’t get an ID because she is too ugly to be a South African citizen. Acornhoek - A 68-year-old woman has been told that she can’t get an ID because she is too ugly to be a South African citizen. Clara Sibuyi from Bodlambongolo in Acornhoek, Mpumalanga, has struggled for 10 years to get an ID book and has been forced to beg for hand-outs because she can’t receive her pension grant without one.

“I have tried everything I can in my power, but now it seems the ugliness has beaten me,” said Sibuyi. She says she has spent ten years going back and forth to the department of home affairs and trying to convince them she is South African.

“I have lost hope and just wish God would take me because my life is hard. I don’t have money to travel to offices anymore. I am stuck,” said Sibuyi. She says the last time she went to home affairs’ Thulamahashe offices on March 3, an official told her that she was too ugly to be a South African citizen. Her surname was even misspelt on the copy of the department’s acknowledgement of receipt.

They wrote a Mozambican surname, Xiburi, instead of Sibuyi. “I was told that I look ugly, like a Maputo woman, and that’s the reason my ID cannot be issued,” says Sibuyi, sadly. She says all four of her sisters have their IDs, while she is being treated like a foreigner. “I am now a burden to everyone because I always ask for this or that, whereas I should be getting my old age grant and taking care of my grandchildren,” she says.

Home affairs’ manager for the Ehlanzeni region, Joana Molekwa, invited Sibuyi to her office to get help. “It is very sad to see old people still struggling to get IDs,” says Molekwa.

I cant imagine this to be true - if it is I think we have become a joke of a nation.

Popularity: 23% [?]

ShareThis

(Sponsor Link: assetant.co.za)

To whom it may concern : I am infuriated at what has just happened to me with my cellphone upgrade.
 
I went for my upgrade yesterday 07/04 at the Vodacom shop in  Canal Walk. After waiting for 4 weeks for my Nokia 6500c I was told that they did not have any phones as yet. I dealt with a gentleman called Matthew. He referred me to the Cellucity shop in Canal Walk and confirmed that they have a phone ready for me. I signed the upgrade took my phone home and when I wanted to put my sim card in the phone it did not read my sim card. The sim silver plate where you need to insert your sim into was loose. Within 18 hours of my upgrade I rushed through to them to replace the phone for me. They took the phone to the back of their shop with my sim card and Nazmy their employee came out and told me that the phone was faulty. The Manager was also called and she refused to replace their fautly phone.
 
He said that they are not allowed to give me a new phone. They made me fill in an out of the box failure claim form and said they had to send the phone back to vodacom and within 7 working days they would replace my phone. I was infuirated as they told me it was company policy.
 
I am sitting without a phone, after upgrading ! I was given a faulty phone and it is just my bad luck.
 
I do not understand how I must be inconvenienced because a branch of yours gave me a faulty phone. I was told by your customer care department that the Cellucity is to replace my phone immediately. They however refuse !!!!!
 
IF I WAS TOLD THAT THEY HAD A DIFFERENT POLICY I WOULD NEVER HAVE RESIGNED MY CONTRACT WITH THEM
WHY WAS I REFERRED TO THEM BY A VODACOM EMPLOYEE IF THEY DO NOT CARRY THE SAME POLICY TO VODACOM.
 
THE PHONE WAS FAULTY AND DID NOT WORK, THE SIM WAS NOT CHECKED IN STORE ON THE DAY OF MY UPGRADE. AND WHEN IT WAS CHECKED UPON MY RETURN THEY ACKNOWLEDGED THAT IT WAS BROKEN.
 
I DEMAND THAT THEY GIVE ME A NEW PHONE, OR VODACOM STEPS UP AND GET THEM TO ACTION.
I WAS REFERRED TO THEM BY YOUR COMPANY EMPLOYEES AND NOW I HAVE TO SUFFER BECAUSE I WAS GIVEN A BROKEN PHONE AND NOT MADE AWARE OF THE DIFFERENT POLICIES.
 
SOMEONE NEEDS TO CONTACT ME SOON I AM FURIOUS AND EITHER WANT TO CANCEL MY CONTRACT WITH VODACOM OR GET A NEW PHONE IMMEDIATELY.

Popularity: 24% [?]

ShareThis

(Sponsor Link: assetant.co.za)

Date of Birth

6 February 1945, Nine Miles, St. Ann, Jamaica

Date of Death

11 May 1981, Miami, Florida, USA (brain cancer)

Birth Name

Robert Nesta Marley

Height

5′ 7¾” (1.72 m)

Mini Biography

Bob Marley was born on February 6, 1949, in Nine Miles, Saint Ann, Jamaica, to Norval Marley and Cedella Booker. His father was a Jamaican of English descent. His mother was a black teenager. The couple planned to get married but before the marriage Norval told Cedella that he had to leave Kingston due to illness. He died in 1955, seeing his son only once(it was later suspected that Norval passed on a certain hereditary form of cancer to Bob, which eventually killed him). Bob Marley started his career with the Wailers, a group he formed with Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston in 1963. He married Rita Marley in February 1966, and it was she who introduced him to Rastafarianism. In 1969 Bob, Tosh and Livingston fully embraced Rastafarianism, which would have a great influence on Marley’s music in particular and on reggae music in general. The Wailers collaborated with Lee Scratch Perry, resulting in some of the Wailers’ finest tracks including “Soul Rebel”, “Duppy Conquerer”, “400 Years” and “Small Axe”. This collaboration ended bitterly, however. The Wailers found out that Perry, thinking the records were his, sold them in England without their consent. This, however, brought the Wailers’ music to the attention of Chris Blackwell, the owner of Island Records. Blackwell immediately signed the Wailers and produced their first album, “Catch a Fire”. This was followed by “Burnin’”, featuring tracks as “Get Up Stand Up” and “I Shot the Sheriff” (Eric Clapton’s cover of that song reached #1 in the US). In 1974 Tosh and Livingston left the Wailers to start solo careers. Marley later formed the band “Bob Marley and the Wailers”, with his wife Rita as one of three backup singers called the I-trees. This period saw the release of some groundbreaking albums, such as “Natty Dread”, “Rastaman Vibration”. In 1976, during a period of spiraling political violence in Jamaica, an attempt was made on Marley’s life, and he left for England, and lived in self-exile for around two years. In England “Exodus” was produced, and it remained on the British charts for 56 straight weeks. This was followed by another successful album, “Kaya”. These successes introduced reggae music to the western world for the first time, and established the beginning of Marley’s international status.

In 1977 Marley had himself checked by a doctor when a wound in his big toe would not heal completely, and more tests revealed that he has a form of skin cancer called malignant melanoma. This is usually contracted by Europeans and can be hereditary. It is widely believed, therefore, that Bob inherited the disease from his father, who also apparently suffered from it. He refused to have his toe amputated as his doctors recommended, claiming it contradicted his Rastafarian beliefs, although some claim that the main reason behind his refusal was the possible negative impact on his dancing skills. The cancer was kept secret from the general public, and Bob continued working. Returning to Jamaica in 1978, he continued work and released “Survival” in 1979, followed by a successful European tour. In 1980 he participated at the independence ceremony of Zimbabwe, being the only foreign artist invited. It was a time for great success for Marley, and he started an American tour to reach blacks in the US. He played two shows at Madison Square Garden, but collapsed while jogging in NYC’s Central Park on September 21, 1980. The cancer he ignored earlier had finally caught up with him, and it had spread to his brain, lungs and stomach. Bob Marley died in a Miami hospital on May 11, 1981. He was only 36 years old.

IMDb Mini Biography By: A. Nonymous

Spouse

Trade MarkAlways had his hair in dreadlocks.

Started every performance by proclaiming the divinity of Jah Rastafari.

TriviaMarley was awarded the International Peace Medal by the African delegation to the United Nations in 1978. He was also an official guest at Zimbabwe’s independence celebration two years later, an honor Marley was quoted as saying was the highest he’d ever received.

Is father, with his wife Rita of Sharon Marley Prendergast (adopted), Cedella Marley, Ziggy Marley, Stephen Marley, and Stephanie (possibly adopted). He also had seven illegitimate children Rohan (b. 1972) (with Janet Dunn/Hunt), Robbie (b. 1972) (with Pat/Lucille Williams), Karen (b. 1973) (with Janet Bowen), Julian Marley (with Lucy Pounder), Damian Marley (with Cindy Tavares-Finson), Ky-Mani Marley (with Anita Belnavis) and Makeda Jahnesta who was born to Yvette Anderson/Crichton 11 days after he died in 1981.

Survived an assassination attempt, receiving minor injuries in the chest and arm (December 1976).

His albums are in the process of digital remastering and are being re-released with additional material such as alternate versions and unused demos.

His posthumously released anthology collection “Legend” is one of the highest selling “greatest hits” recordings by a solo artist.

A vegetarian.

His grandson Zion David was born on 3 August 1997.

His granddaughter Selah Louise was born on 18 November 1998.

He is buried in a crypt at Nine Miles, near his birthplace, with his Gibson Les Paul Guitar, a soccer ball, a cannabis bud, and a Bible.

Born to Norval Sinclair Marley (1895-1955), a Jamaican Marine officer and captain of Welsh descent, who later became a plantation overseer, and his wife Cedella Booker.

Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

His song “One Love” has been used extensively for Jamaican tourism commercials.

He was voted the 11th Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Artist of all time by Entertainment Weekly.

Son of Cedella Booker.

His album ‘Exodus’ was chosen by Time magazine as the greatest album of the 20th century.

Was arrested in England for possession of a joint of a marijuana.

Was voted the third greatest lyricist of all time by BBC News Online users, following Bob Dylan and John Lennon (May 2001).

Considered by many to be the first superstar from the Third World.

His song ‘Rasta Man Chant’ is a traditional Rastafarian chant, known to every adherent of the faith.

Following the attempt on his life, he left Jamaica and lived in England between 1976 and 1978. In England he did not live with his wife Rita, but with Jamaican beauty queen Cindy Tavares-Finson. In fact, the song “Turn Your Lights Down Low” was written for her. They had a son together, Damian Marley.

It was announced that his wife plans to have his remains exhumed and moved to Ethiopia (January 2005).

Lived in the United States shortly in 1966.

Refused amputation of his cancer-affected toe due to his religious beliefs.

Suffered from a form of skin cancer called malignant melanoma, which is not common among black people. It’s widely believed that Marley got this form of skin cancer because his father was white.

Was given a state funeral in Jamaica.

The lyrics of his song “War” is a speech given in the United Nations by the late Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie.

Was a Rastafarian.

Was an avid and passionate footballer.

Was named by his father Nesta Robert Marley after his brother who, when Bob was just born, wanted to adopt him.

During the last months of his life, he suffered from very serious seizures.

His youngest child, a daughter named Makeda, was born to Yvette Anderson 11 days after he died.

Lived in Germany for a few months in 1981 for treatment for his cancer.

Tuff Gong was his nickname, given to him due to his reputed physical strength. Later, Marley started his own music production company and named it Tuff Gong.

Inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame for his outstanding contribution to British music and integral part of British music culture (11 November 2004).

One of the personalities mentioned in the song “Genius of Love” by Tom Tom Club. The others mentioned were James Brown, Smokey Robinson, Hamilton Bohannon, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Kurtis Blow, Lowell ‘Sly’ Dunbar (as Sly and Robbie) and Robbie Shakespeare (as Sly and Robbie).

Was taught to play the guitar by Peter Tosh.

The City of New York renamed a portion of Church Avenue from Remsen Avenue to 98th Street in Brooklyn Bob Marley Boulevard (2006).

Was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (2001).

Personal Quotes

My music will go on forever. Maybe it’s a fool say that, but when me know facts me can say facts. My music will go on forever.

I have a BMW. But only because BMW stands for Bob Marley and The Wailers, and not because I need an expensive car.

Bob Marley isn’t my name. I don’t even know my name yet.

I no have education. I have inspiration. If I was educated I would be a damn fool.

[on politics] Well, everything is political. I will never be a politician or even think political. Me just deal with life and nature. That is the greatest thing to me.

[on marijuana] Herb? Herb is a plant. Herb is so good for everything. Why these people who want to do so much good for everyone, who call themselves government and this and that, why them say you must not use the herb? You see, them say you must not use the herb because it makes you a rebel. Against what?

My music fights against the system that teaches to live and die.

Popularity: 23% [?]

ShareThis

(Sponsor Link: assetant.co.za)

Mbeki’s Ex-Deputy Gains In ANC Leadership Race

By Craig Timberg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, November 27, 2007; Page A13

JOHANNESBURG, Nov. 26 — President Thabo Mbeki’s bid to win a third term as head of the ruling African National Congress suffered a serious setback over the weekend as party activists meeting across South Africa showed a strong preference for his charismatic former deputy, Jacob Zuma.

Political analysts said weeks of heavy lobbying could still tilt support toward Mbeki, or some compromise candidate, by next month’s ANC national convention. But Zuma’s show of strength made clear that Mbeki’s support among the party faithful had waned dramatically.

“The presidency of the ANC is Zuma’s to lose,” political commentator Aubrey Matshiqi said.

Last weekend’s provincial meetings selected nominees for party president, but more importantly they measured the support that candidates have among loyalists who will attend the decisive national convention Dec. 16-20 in the northern city of Polokwane.

The winner would become the presumptive next president of South Africa because of the ANC’s dominant position in national politics. The exception would be Mbeki, who says he does not seek a third term as the country’s president and is barred by the constitution from doing so. Elections are scheduled for 2009.

In last weekend’s nominating contests, Zuma won five of South Africa’s nine provinces, while Mbeki won four. The margins of victory were far wider for Zuma, who won 2,270 votes nationwide compared to 1,396 for Mbeki, according to news reports.

A victory next month would represent a remarkable political comeback for Zuma, a charismatic former anti-apartheid guerrilla whom Mbeki fired in June 2005, after Zuma’s financial adviser was convicted of having a corrupt relationship with him. Several months later, Zuma was charged with raping a family friend.

A court acquitted Zuma on the rape charges in May 2006 and graft charges were subsequently dismissed, but corruption allegations linger. Despite repeated setbacks for prosecutors, the possibility remains that he could be charged before December’s convention, complicating his possible rise to the party presidency.

The political fortunes of Mbeki and Zuma have headed in opposite directions since his firing. Many South Africans viewed the move as abrupt and the rape allegations as the product of a conspiracy to destroy him.

Zuma, whose supporters serenade him with the song “Bring Me My Machine Gun” at nearly every public appearance, also has support among South Africa’s powerful labor unions and Communists, who criticize Mbeki for not doing enough for the nation’s many poor people.

But Zuma’s populist instincts and scant formal education deeply worry many business leaders. Many of Mbeki’s allies portray Zuma as a threat to the president’s legacy of cool-headed, competent governance.

The overt hostility between the two camps has prompted a search for possible compromise candidates with broad appeal and little of the baggage of Mbeki and Zuma. Among them are businessmen Cyril Ramaphosa and Tokyo Sexwale, Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and party Secretary General Kgalema Motlanthe.

Popularity: 10% [?]

ShareThis

(Sponsor Link: assetant.co.za)

Also known as “The Great Hunger”

Monday is St. Patrick’s Day–a day on which, they say, the whole world is Irish. If so, then the whole world ought to know the story of the tragic times that changed the course of Irish history: the 19th-century Irish potato blight.

In the mid-1800s, after centuries of hardship, Ireland suffered a famine that killed more than a million people and drove a million more away. Few people were lucky enough to go untouched. Here’s the story of how politics, poverty, and potatoes combined to change Ireland forever.

Let Them Eat Spuds

The English practice of making life difficult for the Irish began in earnest in the early 16th century, when Henry VIII started kicking Irish Catholic gentry off their estates and handing the keys to his English Protestant friends. Few English lords warmed to the idea of living in Ireland, though. Many simply stayed in England and charged their new Irish tenants rent.

Later, laws designed to move more property to Protestant hands allowed any son who became a Protestant to inherit Dad’s whole estate, while Catholic sons had to divvy the land up. By 1801, the year Ireland became part of Great Britain, Protestants owned all but 5 percent of the Emerald Isle.

While England built factories and modernized its cities, Ireland remained rural, green, and shockingly poor. At least half of Ireland’s 8 million people lived in one-room mud huts, scraping out a bleak existence from the soil. Life was nasty, brutish, and short–not to mention potatocentric. Cheap to cultivate, simple to prepare, and rich with vitamins, the potato was Ireland’s salvation. Millions ate little else.

The Blight Begins

In 1845, September’s seemingly healthy potato crop rotted within days, causing a stink that could be smelled for miles. A deadly airborne fungus, the potato blight, claimed half the harvest. Britain’s Tory prime minister, Sir Robert Peel, tried to avoid a crisis by shipping cheap corn from America. But that ended by the summer of 1846, when England’s new Whig government decided the Irish were better off left alone.

Treasury secretary Charles Trevelyan, now in charge of Ireland’s economy, closed Peel’s corn supply depots and announced that England would not interfere in the “rights of private enterprise.” Instead, Trevelyan proposed a plan for Ireland’s self-sufficiency. Local taxes would fund public works projects, which would provide jobs for workers, who would in turn buy food from local merchants.

The plan was a disaster. When the potato crop failed again–this time completely–panic spread. A Catholic priest wrote to Trevelyan of passing people “seated on the fences of their decaying gardens, wringing their hands and wailing bitterly.” Public works wages were too low to afford both food and rent. And local merchants exported goods, including food, rather than lower prices.

Soup and Sympathy

Though English Quakers and other groups were moved to action by the Irish plight, many English lawmakers felt the Irish should reap what they had sown, even if that meant starvation. For these hardliners, Ireland was a backward place full of lazy, superstitious, Gaelic-speaking rabble-rousers who would surely bite any hand that fed them.

Meanwhile, food riots broke out as starving men and women watched ships loaded with local grain leave for foreign shores. English soldiers, sent to police the Irish mobs, were punished for giving out food to half-dead children. London newspapers published countless sketches of emaciated children scratching in the dirt for edible roots, old women waiting to die, and dead babies in their mothers’ arms. Typhus and cholera spread, and people died in droves.

More American corn, bought by private charities, arrived in early 1847, but the afflicted Irish had no money to buy it. Food was piled high in warehouses while people continued to starve. Finally, the British government approved free soup kitchens run by religious groups and local relief committees. Three million people showed up for a daily ration of soup.

The Great Hunger

Blaming Ireland’s landlords for the whole predicament, Parliament passed the Irish Poor Law Extension Act in June 1847, a proposal to collect £10 million in taxes from property owners to help support relief funds. But people hadn’t paid rent for months. Faced with ruin, landlords were forced to evict tenants. One English landlord was murdered by two Irishmen after he evicted 3,000 people, including 84 widows.

By late summer, the soup kitchens–intended as a temporary measure–were shut down. Homeless and starving, people died on the roadsides, with no one to bury the bodies. Ironically, 1847’s potato crop was healthy, but too small to do any good, because people had eaten the seedling potatoes in desperation.

An insurrection in early 1848 provoked the London Times to complain of the people’s “monstrous ingratitude.” When the potato crop failed again that fall, English compassion had slackened considerably. Another plan to tax property owners only drove people overseas, following the hundreds of thousands who had already fled. For those who couldn’t afford the passage, the horrors mounted. Nearly naked, and without shelter, men, women, and children wandered the countryside until they dropped dead.

Road to Republic

Eventually, after more than a million people had died, and another million had fled, the blight subsided. The horror, and the loss of some 25 percent of the population, dramatically altered the political landscape. Gradually, money from Irish nationalists in America helped fund Charles Stewart Parnell’s Land League, which forced the British government to recognize tenant rights in 1881. Dormant nationalists awoke. The fight for Irish independence had begun.

–Claire Vail

Popularity: 9% [?]

ShareThis

(Sponsor Link: assetant.co.za)

The Atrocity Exhibition: A War Fuelled by

Charles Paul Freund

In 1993, a photographer named Kevin Carter went to Sudan to capture images of that nation’s dismal and unending civil war.  One of the pictures he took was of a starving little girl: she had collapsed in the bush, and a vulture nearby seemed to be waiting for her to die.  The photo was reproduced all over the world, touching many thousands of people, becoming an icon of African misery, winning a Pulitzer Prize, and, a year later, apparently contributing to Carter’s own suicide.

Carter, a white South African, spent only a couple of days in Sudan.  According to Susan D Moeller, who tells Carter’s story in Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death, he had gone into the bush seeking relief from the terrible starvation and suffering he was documenting, when he encountered the emaciated girl.  When he saw the vulture land, Carter waited quietly, hoping the bird would spread its wings and give him an even more dramatic image.  It didn’t, and he eventually chased the bird away.  The girl gathered her strength and resumed her journey toward a feeding centre.  Afterward, writes Moeller, Carter “sat by a tree, talked to God, cried, and thought about his own daughter, Megan.”

When the image of the prostrate girl and the patient vulture appeared, many people demanded to know what had happened to her.  The New York Times explained in an editors’ note that while she resumed her trek, the photographer didn’t know if she had survived.  Carter stood accused; callers in the middle of the night denounced him.  The girl began to haunt the photographer.  In June 1994, Carter, beset by difficulties, killed himself.  His suicide note speaks of the ghosts he could not escape, the “vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain,” and the “starving and wounded children” ever before his eyes.

This death of a messenger is a cautionary tale for an age of atrocity imagery.  Terrible pictures of agony and murder have come to America from Lebanon, from Somalia, from Haiti, from Rwanda, and now from Kosovo, and they have unleashed the most powerful of emotions.  Yet these emotions emerge from pictures that tell inevitably distorted versions of their awful realities.  Their concrete representations suggest a moral imperative to act, to intervene with force against evil.  Yet the resulting interventions have, one after the other, revealed the illusions of mercy: there is no such thing as military humanitarianism.  Such action, despite its moral incentive, is always political, and always results in political consequences and responsibilities.  When these assert themselves, the atrocity imagery changes: it often features Americans.

In Carter’s case, Western newspaper readers saw a little girl.  Carter, in the Sudanese village where he landed, was watching 20 people starve to death each hour.  Perhaps he might have laid aside his camera to give the victims what succor he could (and thus never have encountered the girl in the bush); perhaps his photographs could have led to greater help than he could personally give.  Should he have carried one girl to safety?  Carter was surrounded by hundreds of starving children.  When he sat by the tree and wept, it was beneath a burden of futility.  But his was not a photo of futility, nor of mass starvation, nor of religious factionalism, nor of civil war.  Readers saw a little girl.  In part, at least, Carter died for that.

Popularity: 8% [?]

ShareThis

(Sponsor Link: assetant.co.za)

The Life and Death of Kevin Carter by Scott MacLeod As Time’s Johannesburg bureau chief for the past five years, Scott MacLeod has seen more than his share of tragedy.

But nothing prepared him for the devastating news in July that a colleague, 33-year-old South African photojournalist Kevin Carter, had killed himself. Carter was famous in South Africa for his fearless coverage of deadly township violence, and he had become internationally known for his Pulitzer prizewinning photo of a vulture coolly eyeing an emaciated Sudanese child struggling toward a feeding station.

“Few journalists saw as much violence and trauma as he did,” says MacLeod. Shocked by Carter’s suicide, MacLeod determined “to understand as best I could the complexities behind his tragic end.” The result is this week’s unusual tale of a troubled man’s life and death. In any given issue of Time, we include, of course, many stories that are driven by news headlines.

Occasionally we go back to a seemingly small event of months ago, briefly noted at the time, that strikes us as ripe with human drama and moral implications, worthy of detailed digging and sober reflection. The suicide of Kevin Carter was such an event. In researching the article, MacLeod interviewed Carter’s family, close friends and colleagues, as well as experts on suicide; in the process he encountered several other journalists in pursuit of the mystery of Carter’s self-destruction. But the subject eluded easy conclusions and assumptions.

MacLeod sees Carter’s story as representative of a darker side of middle-class white South Africa and as a warning about the lingering effects of apartheid on all of that country’s people.

“The lives of some whites too were disrupted and even destroyed by the social experiment,” he notes. “I wanted to show that side of the apartheid story as well.”

Elizabeth Valk Long President, Time Domestic

Popularity: 6% [?]

ShareThis

(Sponsor Link: assetant.co.za)

This is just my 5 minutes and my opinion on some of the reviews I have read on the movie. I think most of us are missing the point. 

Ever since I watched the movie on SABC 3 I have read up on the subject and I have read so many reviews. And I get that people are reviewing the movie. I see that they take every single detail and they rip the directors off. But let me tell you what I think.

The movie I assume and hope was written and directed to create awareness. And that is exactly what it did to me. I was made aware of this subject through the movie and it struck a cord in me that I never thought possible.

I took from the movie exactly what it set out to achieve. Awareness of the issue. And I was moved, up to a point where I would actually dedicate a lot of my time to blog about it, copy reviews for people to see that traffic through my blog space and write my own poems about it.

So who cares if Angelina didnt suite the role, let her be IT IS HER AWARENESS. Just like BONO does AIDS AWARENESS ect. Who cares about the love story, most people dont watch documentries, or at least dont enjoy them and maybe this was a way to keep people watching.

Come on people get the message and forget the detail. It was pretty easy for me, an ordinary South African, who was ignorant to the news and politics. I was totally engulfed in the issues that the kids and their parents and the aid workers faced in the movie. The message was so load and clear and heartbreaking.

So thanks Angie and her team I appreciate the movie and it totally changed my life.

And I hope the critical others will soon see the light.

Popularity: 5% [?]

ShareThis

(Sponsor Link: assetant.co.za)

Review: Jolie terrific in brilliant ‘Borders’

Film a great love story, and more

By Paul Clinton
CNN
“Beyond Borders” is a powerful, deeply moving film that takes you on a stirring journey straight to your heart.

The film works on two levels — as an emotional love story, and as a thoughtful work that shines light on the dramatic, and often appalling, situations that have faced relief workers and millions of displaced people around the world. Angelina Jolie and Clive Owen heat up the screen with major sexual chemistry and give terrific performances.

The story begins in 1984. Jolie plays Sarah Jordan, a pampered, naive American woman married to a wealthy Englishman. She lives a life of ease and privilege, but her sheltered calm is shattered when a renegade doctor, Nick Callahan (Owen), crashes a fancy charity dinner in London, dragging along a starving young boy from his refugee camp in North Africa.

In an extremely powerful scene, the doctor lectures the startled crowd on what really needs to be done in terms of housing and feeding millions of refugees. His passionate plea makes the point that their feeble efforts hardly scratch the surface.

Sarah experiences what can only be called an epiphany. Soon she’s heading off — at her own expense — to Ethiopia with medicine and food.

At first, Nick dismisses Sarah as a misguided Girl Scout, but her true desire to help — and sincere efforts to make a difference — finally force him to accept her. Slowly, the two form a deep bond. At the front Beyond Borders Clive Owen plays an idealistic doctor in “Beyond Borders.”

All too soon, Sarah has to return to the real world, but she is changed forever by her experiences in the refugee camp. She now has a deep commitment to humanitarian relief efforts, and begins a career in London working for the United Nations. As her marriage freezes into a state of indifference, she maintains contact with Nick through intimate letters.

When Nick seeks help from the U.N. for wartorn Cambodia, she not only sends relief, she once again joins him on the front lines — risking her life for the man she now knows she loves.

Alongside him, Sarah battles with the Khmer Rouge, who are destroying Cambodia and blocking relief efforts. The two finally declare their love for each other, but amid the danger and disease, admit that being together is impossible.

She returns to her son and husband in England. Soon she has a daughter, and reluctantly buries her feelings for Nick.

Years later — it is now 1995 — she learns that Nick is in danger in Chechnya, where he is now heading relief efforts. She rushes to the area, only to learn that Nick has been kidnapped and is being held for ransom. She bribes her way to his side. Yes, love conquers all, but the conclusion is thrilling nonetheless.
Raising real issues

This film is an epic love story, but it is also much, much more. “Beyond Borders” offers a stunning portrait of the desperation experienced by people on both sides of the relief equation — those in need, and those trying to help them. It’s a movie about real issues, and it doesn’t shirk from presenting them honestly.

In some ways, “Beyond Borders” is three different films, set in three different locations, but with the same underlying themes — love is universal, humans are vulnerable creatures, and people need other people to survive.

The famines and wars in Ethiopia, Cambodia and Chechnya made headlines for years, but this film takes you into the hearts and souls of the real people — the real hunger, the real pain, the real danger behind the news stories. “Beyond Borders” humanizes the refugees and the relief workers in a way that hasn’t been done before.

Jolie is brilliant. She gives another Oscar-worthy performance as Sarah, a character who slowly changes from an innocent young woman into a strong, centered adult with a great sense of purpose. Owen is also extremely good in the role of Nick. His barely restrained anger and frustration at the system — and his growing love for Sarah — is beautifully portrayed.

Directed by Martin Campbell (1998’s “The Mask of Zorro”) and written by Caspian Tredwell-Owen, “Beyond Borders” left me breathless and deeply moved. Sure, in one way it’s just a very good love story — but it’s also an amazing journey into some of the most complex issues of our times.

“Beyond Borders” opens nationwide on Friday, October 24, and is rated R.

Popularity: 5% [?]

ShareThis

(Sponsor Link: assetant.co.za)

David Ignatius
‘Rendition’ Realities

By David Ignatius
Wednesday, March 9, 2005; Page A21

Torture is immoral and illegal, and the refusal to allow cruel interrogation techniques is one measure of a civilized society. But this ironclad moral argument doesn’t necessarily apply to the practice known as “extraordinary rendition.”

Rendition is the CIA’s antiseptic term for its practice of sending captured terrorist suspects to other countries for interrogation. Because some of those countries torture prisoners — and because some of the suspected terrorists “rendered” by the CIA say they were in fact tortured — the debate has tended to lump rendition and torture together. The implication is that the CIA is sending people to Egypt, Jordan or other Middle Eastern countries because they can be tortured there and coerced into providing information they wouldn’t give up otherwise.

The problem with this argument is that it assumes that the CIA believes that torture works. But in 30 years of writing about intelligence, I’ve never encountered a spook who didn’t realize that torture is usually counterproductive. Professional intelligence officers know that prisoners will confess to anything under intense pain. Information obtained through torture thus tends to be unreliable, in addition to being immoral.

The unreliability of torture as an interrogation technique was conveyed powerfully by Jane Mayer in an article in the New Yorker last month. She cited the case of a Syrian-born terrorist suspect named Maher Arar, who was seized at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport in September 2002 as he was traveling back to his home in Canada. He was then sent to Syria under the CIA’s program of “extraordinary rendition” and, by his account, whipped repeatedly on the hands with two-inch-thick electrical cables.

“Although he initially tried to assert his innocence, he eventually confessed to anything his tormentors wanted him to say,” wrote Mayer. She quoted Arar as explaining his false confession this way: “You just give up. You become like an animal.” The Syrians eventually concluded that Arar was innocent. He was released without charges.

Such stories rightly shock the conscience, and they make you wonder how anyone could ever advocate rendition. But in conversations over the past several years with senior CIA officials and the heads of several Arab intelligence services, I’ve heard explanations for why the practice is used. These arguments for rendition at least ought to be understood as Congress and the public struggle with the moral issues involved.

What’s gained by transferring a prisoner to his home country for interrogation is emotional leverage, according to Arab and American intelligence chiefs. A hardened al Qaeda member often can’t be physically coerced into giving up information, no matter how nasty the interrogator. But he may do so if confronted by, say, his mother, father, brother or sister. That family contact is possible if he’s near home; it’s impossible if he’s in an orange jump suit and warehoused at Guantanamo Bay.

I asked the head of an Arab intelligence service once about the widespread belief in his country that prisoners were tortured. People sometimes referred to his headquarters as the “fingernail factory,” I said, because they assumed that vicious methods were used, such as ripping out prisoners’ nails. This official insisted that torture didn’t work. He cited cases in which prisoners had been broken through softer and more clever measures — applying family pressure or, in one remarkable case, ignoring a defiant, self-important prisoner until he all but demanded to be questioned.

The head of another major Arab intelligence service explained how his men cracked an al Qaeda suspect who had refused to talk to the Americans; their main “weapon,” he said, was that they prayed five times a day in the man’s presence.

These “nice” interrogation stories don’t change the fact that hideous methods have been used in rendition cases. And in some instances, the CIA should have known that torture was likely — and stopped it. That’s wrong; no agency of the U.S. government should ever turn a blind eye to torture. But I think you can oppose torture and still find circumstances where rendition might be appropriate.

Before you make an easy judgment about rendition, you have to answer the disturbing question put to me by a former CIA official: Suppose the FBI had captured Mohamed Atta before Sept. 11, 2001. Under U.S. legal rules at the time, the man who plotted the airplane suicide attacks probably could not have been held or interrogated in the United States. Would it have made sense to “render” Atta to a place where he could have been interrogated in a way that might have prevented Sept. 11? That’s not a simple question for me to answer, even as I share the conviction that torture is always and everywhere wrong.

 davidignatius at washpost.com

Popularity: 8% [?]

ShareThis

(Sponsor Link: assetant.co.za)