Oona =^..^=

I see that since I posted about something very close to my heart and very stressful to me, I have received no comments. I was coming here to make another post, but I dun think it will matter. I can be ignored at Livejournal or Deadjournal, and it is enough. I dun need to come here to have that happen.

Slan go fóill.

In my mail, I received the story of a woman named Irena Sendler. It was so remarkable that, as I usually do, I checked the veracity of the article. I found that it was true.

Irena Sendlerowa made many trips into and out of the Warsaw Ghetto during the bleak days of the German occupation of Poland during WWII. She was responsible for smuggling out and saving the lives of 2,500 Jews, most of whom were children.

The Nazis eventually discovered her mission and tortured her. This did not deter Irena, however. And even after the war, Irena tried valiantly to reunite the children with their parents.

For further reading about this heroic woman, please visit the following links:




http://www.irenasendler.org/
http://www.auschwitz.dk/Sendler.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irena_Sendler
http://www.hmd.org.uk/
http://fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/gallery/p126.htm
http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Poland/WarsawGhetto/Introduction.html

Very first entry: August-9-1938

Explanation and introduction from: Orwell Diaries

‘When one reads any strongly individual piece of writing, one has the impression of seeing a face somewhere behind the page’, wrote George Orwell, in his 1939 essay on Charles Dickens.

From 9th August 2008, you will be able to gather your own impression of Orwell’s face from reading his most strongly individual piece of writing: his diaries. The Orwell Prize is delighted to announce that, to mark the 70th anniversary of the diaries, each diary entry will be published on this blog exactly seventy years after it was written, allowing you to follow Orwell’s recuperation in Morocco, his return to the UK, and his opinions on the descent of Europe into war in real time. The diaries end in 1942, three years into the conflict.

What impression of Orwell will emerge? From his domestic diaries (which start on 9th August), it may be a largely unknown Orwell, whose great curiosity is focused on plants, animals, woodwork, and – above all – how many eggs his chickens have laid. From his political diaries (from 7th September), it may be the Orwell whose political observations and critical thinking have enthralled and inspired generations since his death in 1950. Whether writing about the Spanish Civil War or sloe gin, geraniums or Germany, Orwell’s perceptive eye and rebellion against the ‘gramophone mind’ he so despised are obvious.

Orwell wrote of what he saw in Dickens: ‘He is laughing, with a touch of anger in his laughter, but no triumph, no malignity. It is the face of a man who is always fighting against something, but who fights in the open and is not frightened, the face of a man who is generously angry — in other words, of a nineteenth-century liberal, a free intelligence, a type hated with equal hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls.’

What will you see in the Orwell diaries?

Today I got something in my email purporting to be from CNN and pretending to be a CNN news alert, not that I could remember signing up for one. The story it wanted to give me was this:

Christina Aguilera in sex change operation

--and who wouldn't want to read about that, right?

Then it gave me a link for the full story. The link was this:

http://gambeatru.117.com1.ru/cnncurrent.html

The addy of the sender is this: ycips0@swigercoil.com. Does that look like CNN to you? Not hardly.

Okay, so the moral of the story is be careful what you click on and delete everything you dun recognise because there are a lot of asshats out there.

Indymedia.ie
8 August 2008

Kobra Najjar, an Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery has lost her final appeal for amnesty. Iranian women’s rights activists working on her case saythat Kobra has exhausted all domestic legal remedies and that her execution by stoning could happen any time. Kobra is a victim of domestic violence who was forced into prostitution by her abusive husband in order to support his heroin addiction. He was murdered by one of Kobra’s “clients” who sympathized with her plight. Kobra has already served 8 years in prison as an accessory to her husband’s murder. The man who murdered her husband also served 8 years in prison and was free after paying blood money and undergoing 100 lashes, while Kobra faces imminent stoning to death for adultery - the prostitution her husband forced upon her. Yet another example of Iranian justice.

But things are getting worse. The regime's Islamic Assembly is set to ratify a bill that will further increase the number of crimes punishable by death to incude 'crimes' deemed to 'disrupt public security' and to 'intensify the scheme of punishment for disrupting the mental security of society.'

The bill establishes that 'weblogs and sites promoting corruption and apostasy are deserving of capital punishment.'

You can help Kobra:

Write to the Iranian officials below, calling for Kobra’s immediate release, the commutation of all sentences of death by stoning and the prohibition by law of all cruel, inhuman and degrading punishments .

President
His Excellency Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
The Presidency, Palestine Avenue, Azerbaijan Intersection, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran
Email: dr-ahmadinejad@president.ir
via website: http://www.president.ir/en/president/email/index.php

His Excellency Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi
Head of the Judiciary
c/o Ministry of Justice
Park-e Shahr
Teheran
Islamic Republic of Iran
Email: iripr@iranjudiciary.org, irjpr@iranjudiciary.com and info@dadgostary-tehran.ir
Phone: +98 21 22741002, +98 21 22741003, +98 21 22741004, +98 21 22741005

Two similar and detailed e-fits of suspects in the Madeleine McCann case composed three days after the disappearance have been made public for the first time – 15 months after she vanished.

By Caroline Gammell in Portimao
Telegraph
05 Aug 2008

The image of a young, white man with dark and deep set eyes was put together from sightings by British holidaymaker Derek Flack and British expat Lance Purser.


Portuguese police resisted releasing the efits because of secrecy laws and the fear of prejudicing any further investigation (Photo: PA)

Mr Flack saw a man acting suspiciously around Kate and Gerry McCann's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz just before their three-year-old daughter went missing.

Mr Purser said he had seen a similar man in the weeks running up to Madeleine's disappearance.

( >>Continued )

Sunday Life
3 August 2008

It is estimated that there are up to 20,000 victims each year. Some estimates put the number of children kidnapped or sold on the black market closer to 70,000

Behind the glitz of the Beijing Olympics which begins this week China hides a shameful secret — up to 20,000 children are being sold on the black market each year.

The secret trade is booming due to China's controversial one-baby rule introduced in 1979 to curb a population explosion.

Chen Jie's parents

Parents must have a birth permit to have a child. If they don't and they are discovered, they are fined. If couples have a second child, they have to pay a fine.

Many poor families can't afford to raise a child, pay the fees and feed themselves, so they feel selling their child is the only way to survive, but even more children are kidnapped.

While China tries to focus the world’s attention on the Olympics, thousands of families are still desperately trying to trace their children who have been sold to strangers.

The Chen family’s son, five-year-old Chen Jie, disappeared after helping his grandmother on her vegetable stall. He was being taken home by a neighbour, Zhang, who is believed to have sold him. The going price for a boy on the black market is around £650 — six months' wages for an average Chinese worker. ( >>Continued )

Tags: news

the fan blows cool air
my mind has hamsters running
on wheels in my head

By Veloopity at Flickr