TOUR2008
-
Posts
564 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by TOUR2008
-
-
http://perezhilton.com/2009-07-05-madonnas...michael-jackson
Madonna's Tribute To Michael Jackson!
-
On Madgestic form.. By Dean Piper 5/07/2009
Queen of Pop Madonna kicked off the second leg of her European tour last night not only with a blistering performance, but also with a message for the King of Pop Michael Jackson.
Madonna danced to Wacko's song Got To Be Starting Something while a dancer imitated Michael behind her.
She told the 14,000 sell-out crowd at the O2 Arena: "Long live the king!" She then continued a perfectly choreographed set to Michael's song Man in the Mirror mashed together with her chart hit Holiday.
It's believed her four children and her ex-husband Guy Ritchie were all there to watch her at her best.
It really was a sight to behold as Madonna showed everybody in London that if Michael Jackson was the King of Pop, she was still very much the Queen!
-
Was "Get Stupid" in there still? Was the footage changed if so?
-
-
Madonna to pay tribute to Jackson in concert
1 hour ago
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Madonna is paying tribute to Michael Jackson in the same arena where he was to stage his great comeback.
The superstar is preparing a special part of her concert Saturday at O2 arena. Madonna publicist Liz Rosenberg says she is going to unveil a special song, along with a choreographed dance in honor of Jackson.
Michael Jackson was to perform his comeback concerts at O2 starting July 13. He died last week at 50. He had been rehearsing for those shows in his final days.
-
Madonna is set to pay tribute to her late friend, Michael Jackson, at her concert in London on Saturday.
Madonna will debut a special song and dance in tribute to the late singer, her rep, Liz Rosenberg, told the Associated Press
-
-
Madonna, Mercy and Malawi: her fight to adopt a second African childThree years ago a storm of protest blew up when Madonna adopted David Banda from a Malawian orphanage. Today the country's highest court is due to decide whether she can now adopt four-year-old Mercy James. Jacques Peretti tracks down the girl's family and asks: what's best for Mercy?
Buzz up!
Digg it
Jacques Peretti
The Guardian, Friday 12 June 2009
Article history
Pop star Madonna holds the child named Mercy, whom she hopes to adopt, in an undated sepia publicity photo taken in Malawi. Photograph: Publicity handout/Reuters
Outside the dusty court in Blantyre, southern Malawi, there is a piece of paper pinned to the noticeboard with a list of the day's cases. This is Malawi's highest court, and on the list is a dispute over a boundary fence, the theft of a moped and, halfway down, in Court 2, an appeal to adopt a four-year-old girl called Chifundo "Mercy" James by an unnamed 50-year-old single mother from New York.
Across Malawi, Madonna is described as "the rich white woman". Her name, totally unknown to people here before this case, has been passed by word of mouth from market to market, and village to village, and, in the process, has mutated into "Ma Donor": the Giver.
I am in Malawi to make a documentary for Channel 4 about the real story behind Madonna's plans to adopt a second child from Malawi. I arrive in May, just after the rains, and within a mile of the airport see coffins being made on the side of the road. This is Malawi's only growth industry. There are up to a million Aids orphans here in this tiny country - I see some by the side of the road, playing under the coffins. Life expectancy here is 40; half the population are under 14. In the first village I visit - a place where Madonna is planning to invest in a new school and orphanage - the chief tells me that a child dies every three days. They bury them in a big pit.
Is it any surprise that people here tell me it is God's will that Madonna chose Malawi, one of the poorest countries on Earth, to save from poverty? It is not Mercy she is adopting, they say, it is the whole of Malawi. Blantyre owes its name to the small South Lanarkshire town that the 19th-century Scottish missionary David Livingstone came from. Crosses greet you everywhere you go, and in this predominantly Christian country Madonna is nothing short of a holy figure. Mercy is their conduit to salvation. When I use Madonna's name out loud in one village, I am told to hush. Using Madonna's name in vain could frighten her (and her cash) away forever. Given all of the above, how could anyone in the west disagree with what Madonna's doing?
The fact is that we do. Madonna is portrayed as a baby-grabbing gorgon, lambasted by everyone from Saturday Night Live to Graham Norton. I never bought this Madonna bashing.
I thought the issue was simple: she adopts orphan, child better off, end of story. But is this really the deal with Mercy, the little girl she is now fighting to adopt despite the controversy over her adoption of another Malawian child, David?
Well, firstly, Mercy is not an orphan without a family, just as David was not an orphan. Mercy has a family, and they live in a village called Zaone - a collection of huts about an hour's drive off the main (and only) asphalt road in the country. The track to Zaone winds down through high reeds and across river beds. My translator, Vitima Ndovi, tells me, as we are lurching about, that we are in the same jeep Madonna hired when she came to Malawi. Eventually the track opens out to reveal Mercy's village in a clearing, a view stretching out across a vast plain. It is beautiful. Idyllic, even. We are greeted by the chief, and his brothers, and their friends, and their brothers, and then taken to meet Lucy Chekechiwa, Mercy's grandmother, who is sitting on some earth outside her hut, waiting for me. She is as still as a rock, and for the hour or so I talk to her, does not move or stop staring far off into the distance as she recounts Mercy's story.
Lucy brought Mercy into this world. She delivered the baby yards from where we sit. Days later, Mercy's mother Mwandida Maunde, Lucy's daughter, died, bleeding out from complications after the birth. The villagers believed it was proof of what they already knew: Mwandida was cursed. She had been bewitched, falling pregnant with Mercy when just 14. This was not what they had hoped for; the village had clubbed together to pay for Mwandida to go to school; she was very bright and the great hope of Zaone. One day, she would return as a doctor, Lucy told me. But she didn't. She returned pregnant. She returned bewitched. Mwandida, they tell me, had met an 18-year-old student called James Kambewa. They met secretly at his sister's flat. Mwandida's friends at school warned her it would end terribly, but she ignored them. She was in love. And so of course it ended with Mwandida dying in childbirth. The baby was called Mercy, as if asking forgiveness from God for the shame Mercy's mother had brought on the village.
I sit with Lucy and the villagers into the night, with a vast wood fire the only light for 20 miles. They ask me if I have spoken to Mercy's father. Kambewa had disappeared after Mwandida's death, and was told that Mercy had died too. But I have no idea where Kambewa is.
However, later in my trip to Malawi, Kambewa suddenly appears out of nowhere (well, not exactly - he has been tracked down working as a night guard in Blantyre by a British tabloid). He is now in hiding in a shanty town. But Ndovi promises to help me track him down. The following night, we are standing beside a tin hut in the poorest part of a very poor town. Kambewa appears out of the dark and takes us into the hut to talk. He tells me that he opposes Madonna's adoption. He has a little English: "She is my daughter, my blood," he says. Why did he disappear? "I was frightened. I was just 18 and my family disowned me." So why has he appeared now? "The newspapers found me, I didn't find them. I thought Mercy was dead. Mwandida was my only love. I have not been with a woman since Mwandida." So does he have a chance of keeping Mercy in the country? Madonna is very powerful. "I will win somehow," he says. The dogs outside start howling and Kambewa lapses into silence.
What I do not understand is that if everyone loves Mercy so much, how did Mercy ever come to be up for adoption by Madonna? I drive back north to Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, to meet Mabvuto Banda, a Reuters journalist who has been following Madonna's Malawian journey since 2006. Banda says that in order to understand the adoption, you need to understand what an orphan in Malawi is. "When children like Mercy are left in orphanages by families, it is often because the families simply can't cope for a period of time. The understanding of the families is that they will take the kids back into the family, usually after six years." Whether they can manage to do that is another matter, but the hope is always there. So it all depends on what you mean by orphan. There are plenty of HIV babies left by the side of the road who go into orphanages, Banda says. These are pure orphans. Babies who have no traceable family whatsoever. But Mercy was not one of these kids. Madonna has gone for a child with legal complications.
So how did this all start? Spool backwards three years, Banda tells me, and Guy Ritchie, Madonna's husband, is on a tight schedule, videoing the most doe-eyed children he can find in seven orphanages across Malawi. The tape is being made for his wife, Madonna, who has decided she wants to adopt from Africa (the baby markets in Vietnam and China having closed down). From the video, she chooses one. It's a girl, and her name is Mercy. Then Madonna flies to Malawi on a "humanitarian mission". Prior to the visit, there is no mention of adoption, but, at least according to Banda, the fact is that she has already chosen a child from Ritchie's line-up and is now here to collect. Banda is scathing. "It's like slavery - 'I like this one, no maybe this one,'" he says. "But the fact is, they all need a home." Seventeen days later, a child leaves the country on a private jet bound for Madonna's home in London. But there is a twist. It is not Mercy on board; it is a boy called David.
So what happened? The story locally is that Lucy, the grandmother who sits as still as a rock in the dust of Zaone, refused to let Mercy be adopted by Madonna. And for three years - from that day in 2006 until about four weeks ago - Lucy remained implacable, resisting approaches from priests, people from the orphanage and other people she had never seen before, to persuade her to let Mercy go.
So what about David, the boy who did leave on the private jet to a new life with Madonna? Like Mercy, he had a family too. But unlike Mercy's grandmother, David's father Yohane agreed to a fast adoption, believing - according to Banda - that the arrangement was temporary; that it was the same as leaving him in an orphanage. Yohane has now gone on record saying he regrets the adoption because he did not know what he was getting into. Banda says he had to explain the adoption papers to Yohane because he couldn't read them. Madonna was interviewed on Newsnight by Kirsty Wark at the time, and said she was never told that David had a father, and I am inclined to believe her. After all, these were more complications that she didn't need.
So it was David who got the golden ticket and jetted out of the country. There followed controversy inside and outside of Malawi, but in the end the adoption was allowed to happen. Sensitive to the world's low opinion of this first adoption, however, Madonna recently brought David back for a reunion with his father. But it was reported that David did not recognise his father any more. When I ask Lucy about this, she says she knows nothing of David's story, nor the fact that Yohane, his father, has already been down the road she is about to embark on. However tough Lucy has been in resisting Madonna, Madonna has been tougher. She never gave up on adopting Mercy - not least because no one tells Madonna she cannot have what she wants. And now, after years of being told that adoption was the right thing for Mercy, Lucy caved in. In Malawi, she is an old woman and she had had enough.
Once the Mercy adoption was back on the cards, Esme Chombo, a provincial judge, ruled that the adoption was unlawful because Madonna was not a resident of Malawi.
Chombo was scornful of western attitudes towards Malawian poverty, talking in her summing up about "the so-called poor children of Malawi" and even quoting GK Chesterton in defence of the existing law, protecting these children from trafficking: "Don't take a fence down until you know why it was put up in the first place."
David's adoption had been rushed through because a court had granted an interim order. Judge Chombo said that it had been over-hasty and the same thing would not happen with Mercy. Due process needed to be followed. Now the adoption has reached Malawi's highest court, however, and Chombo may be overturned. A final decision on whether Madonna will get Mercy could be made as early as this morning.
I decide to interview the spokesman for the ministry responsible for adoptions so that he can explain to me exactly how, if Malawian law states that you must be resident in Malawi for 18 months before adopting, Madonna managed it with David in less than 18 days. And why she now seems able to do it again.
Silas Jeke, a huge man wearing a suit on a very warm day, sits before me in a plush garden in Blantyre and laughs. That's not really my area, he says. That's one for the judiciary. Perhaps he can explain how Madonna came to be assessed as a prospective parent by flying (at Madonna's expense) a social worker to London to view her home and interview her? Jeke laughs again. "I believe the appropriate procedures were followed." Talking - or not talking - with Jeke, I get the impression the government are as much bystanders in the Mercy story as the child's family. Or David's father was in David's story. There is a juggernaut at work here, it seems, and that is Madonna.
In spite of everything I had been told, however, I still cannot decide if this juggernaut is a good or a bad thing, or, indeed, where it is really heading. One thing is for sure - the woman is putting a hell of a lot of time and money into the country. She has a charity here called Raising Malawi. It is investing in orphanages and even has an educational and moral programme called Spirituality For Kids (SFK) that it wants to roll out across Malawi. Banda tells me that SFK is a Kabbalah programme.
Madonna explains in her own promotional film about her work in Malawi that SFK is about karma and getting back from God from what you put out there in the world. I wonder, however, how karma will play to a million children, orphaned by Aids? Was that God's will too? Another interpretation of this - widely held by many of the educated, urban Malawians I speak to, but certainly not by rural people who revere Madonna - is that Raising Malawi, even the Mercy adoption, is a Trojan horse for the Kabbalah takeover of a poor African state. And that if she doesn't get Mercy, she will simply move on to a more pliant poor country. Surely this a conspiracy too far?
There are certainly battle lines already drawn between the urban and the rural populations over Madonna and her plans. Mercy's uncle, Peter, who agreed to and signed the papers on the Mercy adoption on behalf of Lucy, tells me that the townspeople who are against Madonna are not going to benefit from her investment, so they can afford to criticise it. They treat villagers as stupid, and he makes a gesture grinding his thumb in the dirt. "This is where they want us to stay," he says. I wonder if this aspiration for escape - the aspiration that drove them to send Mwandida to school - has now propelled Mercy into Madonna's arms. People in the poor rural markets say again and again to me that Mercy could be like Barack Obama - she could leave a poor African state and end up president of the United States.
As for the Kabbalah movement, if it is planning a takeover of the Malawian orphanages, is that really such a bad thing? The Kabbalah-sponsored Raising Malawi charity is run by Philippe Van Den Bossche. Very little is known about him and he does not seem to like interviews. On his Facebook site, it mentions only that one of his best friends is Philip Berg, the founder of Kabbalah in the US. When I spy Van Der Bossche hanging around in sunglasses looking slightly shifty outside the court in Blantyre on the day of a hearing into Mercy's case, I am intrigued by what he is doing, and sidle up to him in an apologetic British way. "Excuse me, are you Mr Van Der Bossche? I wonder if you would mind telling me what you are doing here?" I ask. "I was just admiring what a beautiful sunny day it is here in Malawi." "It is indeed. But I'd like to talk to you about what Raising Malawi is really up to here." "And I'd rather talk about what a beautiful sunny day it is." As I sit down next to him, Van Der Bossche is besieged by other journalists from CBS, the Daily Mail and various South African papers. He smiles benignly throughout, repeating again and again what a sunny day it is.
The next day, I decide to go to Mercy's orphanage, to see for myself what Madonna's money is doing here. (The orphanage is run by Christians, but Madonna's charity is a donor.) Down a long dusty road, the Kondanani Children's Village appears out of nowhere. There is an electric fence round the collection of brightly painted Nissen huts to keep out wild dogs and journalists. But weirdly, instead of being turned away, I am allowed in by an Australian missionary called Cherie.
As far as I know, since the Madonna story blew up, no western journalist has ever been allowed in Mercy's orphanage; I guess I am lucky (or they don't want to be accused of secrecy any more). Inside, I am taken to Mercy's large communal nursery room, freshly painted and hanging with kids' pictures and messages about God's love. Children run hysterically up to the white westerner, and I find myself subconsciously deciding which would be cutest to adopt. The kids are instinctively aware that this whole process is Darwinian - it is a show - and it is survival of the cutest. I am directed round the immaculate dormitories and play areas and dining hall and creche, walking down pristine paths bordered with stones and flowers and intermittently nodding to enthusiastic, sandal-wearing volunteers.
It is all absolutely and undeniably fantastic. It looks like a 19th-century public school in a British colony in Africa - which is pretty much what it is. Everywhere across Malawi, children sit quietly by the roadside, waiting for life to do something terrible to them. Here, they run up to you speaking perfect English, each more impossibly charming and clever and funny and take-home-able than the last. It has an air of John Wyndham about it - there is something a little unnerving about the manic positivity and the mindbending contrast between this and the utter desolation of life the other side of the electric fence. It is too much. I ask a group of children a little older than Mercy where she is. "She's gone," a little boy in glasses says. "We are sad, because she was our friend." (I later hear that Mercy has been taken by a nanny to a secret location in the north, ready for the adoption.) Would these children also like to be adopted? "We would like to leave and come back as a nurse," they say (sounding a little rehearsed, perhaps). One girl says she would like to be TV presenter "on God TV".
I leave the orphanage thinking that if Madonna could roll this out across Africa, even if it involved lots of people signing up to Kabbalah, how could that not be a good thing? David Livingstone came to this country with a Bible in his hand; Madonna comes wearing Kabbalah wristbands. What is for sure is that colonialism is not a thing of the past. In Malawi, it's still alive and well, and it's just got a whole lot more showbiz.
• Jacques Peretti's documentary Madonna and Child will be on Channel 4 later this month.
-
Results 1 - 10 of about 15,700 for Jacques Peretti liar
-
The documentary - on Madonna / Mercy - by the controversial journalist (liar?), Jacques Peretti, is on tonight: Channel 4 8pm
-
Madonna and Mercy: What Really Happened - C4, 8pm By Jane Simon 29/06/2009
If ever two people were less destined to meet, it’s Madonna and Mercy James.
So says reporter Jacques Peretti as he attempts to unravel the tangle of secrecy and red Kabbalah string surrounding Mercy’s adoption by (as he puts it) this “50-year-old single mother”.
Travelling to Africa four weeks before the Supreme Court of Malawi finally rubber-stamped the adoption earlier this month, Jacques arrives with a suitcase full of good questions.
For starters, is taking a young girl away from her family, culture and a country where the life expectancy is 48, and subjecting her to a life of extraordinary wealth, privilege and media scrutiny a superb act of generosity, or merely the height of celebrity selfishness?
Mercy’s grandmother and real father both briefly attempted to stand in the way of the unstoppable juggernaut that is Madonna, and Jacques meets both of them.
Advertisement - article continues below »
But he’s also worried that Madonna and her Kabbalah cronies with their Spirituality For Kids organisation are secretly hijacking the whole country for their “loony religion” by chucking money at schools and orphanages.
Does this make them any better or worse than the Christian missionaries who turned up, brandishing bibles, 150 years ago?
An attempt to talk to Spirituality For Kids’ director Philippe van den Bossche is met with a force-field of cotton-wool non-answers and Malawi’s government spokesman for adoption chuckles his way through an interview.
Happily, unlike just about everyone else involved, Jacques doesn’t seem to have a hidden agenda, making his film entertaining as well as illuminating.
-
Madonna's adopted daughter Mercy was to be returned to family, grandmother claims
Mercy, the Malawian child adopted by Madonna, was to be returned to her family from the orphanage she was living in, her grandmother has claimed.
By Ben Leach
Published: 8:10AM BST 28 Jun 2009
Madonna adopted Mercy after a court in Malawi ruled she could adopt the four year old Photo: REUTERS
Lucy Chekechiwa, the maternal grandmother of Chifundo "Mercy" James, said that the family never agreed to put the four-year-old up for adoption on a permanent basis.
She said she had long fought to keep Mercy, whom the southern African country's highest court ruled that Madonna could adopt earlier this month, and that she had only recently given up her long battle to keep her.
Related Articles
Madonna starts life with new daughter Mercy
Madonna adoption: singer 'donated £12m to Malawi'
Madonna's plans to adopt a second Malawi orphan blocked by angry grandmother
Madonna allowed to adopt Mercy by Malawi court
Madonna allowed to adopt second child Mercy from Malawi
Madonna keeps fighting for MercyShe said: "The initial agreement was that Mercy was to be kept in the orphanage for six years. After six years Mercy was supposed to be brought back here and then I would have taken care of her.
"At first I didn't want her to go but as a family we had to sit down and reach an agreement and we agreed that Mercy should go.
"The men insisted that Mercy be adopted and I won't resist anymore. I still love Mercy. She is my dearest."
Speaking in a Channel 4 documentary – Madonna and Mercy: What Really Happened – to be broadcast on Monday, Miss Chekechiwa added that she had fought against the adoption for three years but had finally agreed to let Mercy go.
She said that Madonna came across Mercy at an orphanage during her first visit to Malawi in 2006 with her then husband, Guy Ritchie, and decided that Mercy was "the one".
However, Miss Chekechiwa refused to let the little girl go at that stage, so Madonna instead returned home with David Banda, whose family had not raised such strong objections.
Miss Chekechiwa's daughter, Mwandida, was Mercy's mother. She fell pregnant aged 14 to an older student at school, but died from complications of childbirth days after Mercy was born.
Mercy's father, James Kambewa, claims he was told that Mercy too had died and only learned the truth after being tracked down by journalists in April. He now says he wants his daughter back.
He told Channel 4: "I am not supporting the adoption because I am still alive. I don't see any justification why the girl should be adopted.
"But on the other hand when I learnt that my daughter is still alive I was very happy and I think I still need to raise her.
"It's true that a child needs both parents but that doesn't stop me from taking care of Mercy. I know I'm capable. I can do that."
The programme also investigates the links between the adoption and the Kabbalah-sponsored Raising Malawi charity, whose co-founder is Michael Berg, the co-director of the Kabbalah Centre.
-
Madonna's adopted daughter Mercy was to be returned to family, grandmother claims
Mercy, the Malawian child adopted by Madonna, was to be returned to her family from the orphanage she was living in, her grandmother has claimed.
By Ben Leach
Published: 8:10AM BST 28 Jun 2009
Madonna adopted Mercy after a court in Malawi ruled she could adopt the four year old Photo: REUTERS
Lucy Chekechiwa, the maternal grandmother of Chifundo "Mercy" James, said that the family never agreed to put the four-year-old up for adoption on a permanent basis.
She said she had long fought to keep Mercy, whom the southern African country's highest court ruled that Madonna could adopt earlier this month, and that she had only recently given up her long battle to keep her.
Related Articles
Madonna starts life with new daughter Mercy
Madonna adoption: singer 'donated £12m to Malawi'
Madonna's plans to adopt a second Malawi orphan blocked by angry grandmother
Madonna allowed to adopt Mercy by Malawi court
Madonna allowed to adopt second child Mercy from Malawi
Madonna keeps fighting for MercyShe said: "The initial agreement was that Mercy was to be kept in the orphanage for six years. After six years Mercy was supposed to be brought back here and then I would have taken care of her.
"At first I didn't want her to go but as a family we had to sit down and reach an agreement and we agreed that Mercy should go.
"The men insisted that Mercy be adopted and I won't resist anymore. I still love Mercy. She is my dearest."
Speaking in a Channel 4 documentary – Madonna and Mercy: What Really Happened – to be broadcast on Monday, Miss Chekechiwa added that she had fought against the adoption for three years but had finally agreed to let Mercy go.
She said that Madonna came across Mercy at an orphanage during her first visit to Malawi in 2006 with her then husband, Guy Ritchie, and decided that Mercy was "the one".
However, Miss Chekechiwa refused to let the little girl go at that stage, so Madonna instead returned home with David Banda, whose family had not raised such strong objections.
Miss Chekechiwa's daughter, Mwandida, was Mercy's mother. She fell pregnant aged 14 to an older student at school, but died from complications of childbirth days after Mercy was born.
Mercy's father, James Kambewa, claims he was told that Mercy too had died and only learned the truth after being tracked down by journalists in April. He now says he wants his daughter back.
He told Channel 4: "I am not supporting the adoption because I am still alive. I don't see any justification why the girl should be adopted.
"But on the other hand when I learnt that my daughter is still alive I was very happy and I think I still need to raise her.
"It's true that a child needs both parents but that doesn't stop me from taking care of Mercy. I know I'm capable. I can do that."
The programme also investigates the links between the adoption and the Kabbalah-sponsored Raising Malawi charity, whose co-founder is Michael Berg, the co-director of the Kabbalah Centre.
-
Coming soon - Madonna in Louis Vuitton's new campaign
MadonnaTribe has just received some fresh info about the upcoming Louis Vuitton campaign featuring Madonna who was photographed by Steven Meisel for their Autumn/Winter 2009 collection in New York on April 29 under the artistic direction of Marc Jacobs.
We've been told that the result of this new collaboration is once again simply stunning but most importantly for those who were worried about this "Part Deux" it looks very different from the Spring campaign and has a completely original feel.
Madonna's look in the new images will be basically the one you're all familiar with thanks to the MET gala: long boots, a few variations of dresses mainly in blue and magenta, and this year's Vuitton's signature bunny ears.
Madonna is always wearing gloves and in every image she holds a different bag from the new collection of the French maison. She's portraied leaning on a sofa and seated on an armchair, with a heavy, plain curtain in the background. This time there is no set location at all - the atmosphere is a bit dark and definetly intimate.
One interesting part is that each image is digitally enhanced with colorizing effects that somehow recall the high-dynamic range photography, giving to the new campaign an absolutely contemporary yet timeless vibe.
From what we understand up to seven different images - spanning from close-ups to american-shot compositions - will be released in the August 2009 issue of fashion magazines worldwide coming out next month
-
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showb...in-London1.html
WIDE-eyed Malawian orphan Mercy James gazes at the hustle and bustle of London yesterday — just 48 hours after arriving in Britain as Madonna’s new daughter.
In the first photograph of the four-year-old since she was whisked from her African homeland, she appears transfixed as she is held by her nanny.
New home ... Mercy, held by nanny, at door of London pad
Ray Collins
Close pals of MADONNA say the 50-year-old singer will “cocoon” Mercy at her Marylebone townhouse for a week as she adjusts to her new life.
To guarantee a little peace and quiet she has sent her three-year-old adopted Malawian son David Banda and son Rocco, eight, to their director dad GUY RITCHIE’s home.
Mercy is said to have “slept throughout” the 6,000-mile flight on a private jet from Malawian capital Lilongwe to Heathrow on Friday.
Guy ... with pals
EROTEME.CO.UK
Then, as she was reunited with Madge at her luxury London home, she reduced her to tears by saying: “Moni, moni Mummy” — “Hello, hello Mummy” in her native Chichewa tongue.
Her new brothers and sister Lourdes, 12, threw Mercy a short tea party before Madonna, known to pals as Em, took her to a special blessing at a Kabbalah centre.
The family friend said: “Em has been waiting for this moment for years, but realises that she shouldn’t over-stimulate Mercy by immediately smothering her with attention and things to do.
“After all, she has been in this before when she brought David home from Malawi so she understands how confusing it must be.
Advertisement
“The next few days are all about cocooning Mercy from the world and getting her used to being around her new family.
“Em had hoped to have all the children together for the next few days.
“But David couldn’t contain his excitement and was tearing round the house like a runaway horse. He kept shouting, ‘I want to see my sister,” and endlessly hugging and tugging at her.
“In the end it was best to pack him off with Rocco to Guy’s place in Wiltshire. Guy has been here to meet Mercy too.
Early days ... Madonna with Mercy in Malawi
Reuters
“Em has a gentle few days planned ahead, with lots of singing and reading to her new daughter.
“Mercy has already fallen in love with the £2,000 rocking horse Em has placed in her bedroom. She can’t take her eyes off it.”
Madonna had originally planned to fly out to Malawi to collect Mercy herself, but experts advised her to stay in London and let the little girl “acclimatise” before jetting on to her New York home.
Mercy was flown out of Malawi in a Cessna jet with her nanny, nurse and Phillip van den Bossche — head of Madonna’s Raising Malawi charity.
She was taken through Heathrow flanked by ex-Israeli special forces bodyguards.
The Sun revealed back in 2007 that Madonna wanted to adopt Mercy James.
We also told exclusively how the singer would win her controversial adoption appeal — with judges officially giving full custody two weeks ago.
-
Madonna's star power in Malawi
By Felix Mponda – 40 minutes ago
ZOMBA, Malawi (AFP) — Eliza Manyoza, a banana vendor in Malawi's colonial-era capital Zomba, says she has never heard a Madonna song. She only knows the American pop icon as an "adopter" of orphaned children.
"I am told she is a nice woman who wants to help our children," Manyoza, 39, told AFP, with her nine-month-old baby strapped at her back and balancing a basket of bananas on her head.
She knew that Madonna had adopted David Banda, a toddler the star met at an orphanage three years ago, but had just learned of the Malawi Supreme Court of Appeal's decision to grant her a second adoption of a girl named Chifundo "Mercy" James, who let Malawi Friday to join the singer in London.
"That's great news and very nice of her," Manyoza said. "But how many children can she take out of Malawi? Where are the rich Malawians who should be adopting their own children and not leave it to Madonna?"
Her sentiments echo those heard around the country, where Madonna has sparked a global debate about the merits of international adoption.
Malawi is a particularly grim case study in the plight of orphans.
One of the poorest nations in the world, the government says 1.5 million children have been orphaned by AIDS -- a figure that represents nearly 10 percent of the total population.
Manyoza lives in the slums of Chikanda, a shantytown on the edge of this British colonial town, where 12 orphanages have opened -- many in just the last two years.
Hundreds more are spread across Malawi, a country the size of New York state.
"We have reached a crisis point and Malawi does not have the resources to deal with the problem," said Cyrus Jeke, an official at the ministry of women and child development.
Madonna has established her own charity Raising Malawi, which has built a state-of-the-art hostel at Home of Hope in Mchinji -- the orphanage where she first saw her adopted son David among the 500 children cared for there.
She has also built a day-care centre at Consol Home, a charity which looks after 10,000 orphans in scores of villages outside the administrative capital Lilongwe.
Rights activist Undule Mwakasungura laments the fact that a foreign celebrity had to step in to raise awareness about orphans.
"It's the primary responsibility of the state to provide for orphaned children," he said.
Government should use tax revenue to "care for these children instead of abandoning them to the wishes and devises of celebrities," said Mwakasungura, who chairs the Human Rights Consultative Committee -- a network of 85 local rights groups.
Boniface Mandere, an official of the nation's leading child rights body Eye of the Child, said Malawi has financial resources to help vulnerable children.
"What we lack is wisdom of how to use those resources. It's about commitment. We need to pump more resources to social services," he said.
Plan Malawi, an international charity focussing on children, applauded Madonna's good intentions, but urged her to do more to lobby governments and businesses to strengthen community structures on the ground, Plan adds.
"The challenges facing our orphans and other vulnerable children can be handled with a strong social protection structure," said Mcdonald Mumba, Plan's children's rights advisor.
Such questions about why the government has not done more to care for the nation's children reverberate through the country, casting a particularly harsh light on the political classes and the wealthy.
"It all shows Madonna saw that the question of orphans is a serious issue which needs addressing," Manyoza said.
"But where are the rich Malawians? Where are the rich politicians? Where is the government? Madonna will not manage alone even though she has a lot of money."
-
http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/-/440...884/-/4la98b/-/
Malawi cheers as court bends law to give Madonna a child
Share Bookmark Print Email Email this article to a friend
Friend's Email Address
Your Email
Message
Submit Cancel
Rating
By PETER MWAURA, gigirimwaura@yahoo.com Posted Friday, June 19 2009 at 19:30
The lesson that has emerged from Malawi recently is that it’s possible for a court to bend the law, with the public cheering, to suit the white, the famous and the wealthy. The lesson is not new to many African societies, but it’s worth recounting because the Malawian version is novel.
The lesson is also worth recounting because it suggests that when people are happy with the bending of the law, there is no manifest sense of injustice. In fact, what we learn from the successful attempt by the American pop superstar Madonna to adopt a four-year-old Malawian girl, Chifondo James, in the face of the country’s law that forbids such adoptions, is that poverty influences how we enforce our laws.
IN MALAWI POVERTY IS APPALLING. About 8 million Malawians, or almost 70 per cent of the population, live below the national poverty line, according UN figures. The country is heavily dependent on foreign aid.
Poverty weighs heavily particularly on children. According to the country’s ministry of women and child welfare development, there are close to 2 million orphans. Indeed, what happened this week, when the Supreme Court of Malawi bent the law to allow Madonna to adopt Chifondo is directly related to poverty. It was the second time the law was fudged to accommodate the wealthy celebrity.
In 2006, Madonna was allowed to adopt David Banda, then 13 months old, again breaking the country’s adoption law that requires that adoptive parents be residents of Malawi for at least 18 months. No other foreigner has been allowed to adopt any of Malawi’s orphans without satisfying the residency requirements.
But practically no Malawian is complaining. Even the voices of those who had opposed Banda’s adoption have been muffled. Malawians have praised the Supreme Court and condemned in abusive terms the High Court judge who had originally rejected Madonna’s adoption application.
Virtually the whole country, right from President Bingu wa Mutharika, was in favour of the adoption. After High Court judge Esmie Chombo threw out Madonna’s adoption application in April on the ground that she had not lived in Malawi for 18 months and that allowing the adoption could open the door to trafficking in children.
President Mutharika said Chifondo was being offered a chance to have a good education and a better future. He wished 10,000 orphans in Malawi would get access to good education and a chance to life through adoption. Chief Justice Lovemore Munlo listened and agreed. He used the power of judges to interpret the law to squash the High Court ruling.
He said the argument that Madonna was not resident in Malawi did not arise because the definition of the term “is at large”. Judges, he said, need to apply the term while putting globalisation into their minds.
He said the High Court had failed to take into account modern realities. “In this global village, a man can have more than one place at which he resides,” he added. “In our view the appellant was resident in Malawi when she applied to the court to have CJ (Chifondo James).”
He went on to say that Madonna has long-term plans to assist the underprivileged children in Malawi, that she is stable financially and has a home in Beverley Hills in America and a home in UK, “where CJ can live happily.”
Justice Munlo, who sat with two other appeal court judges, said the High Court should have taken into account Madonna’s commitment to disadvantaged children — she funds the Raising Malawi charity serving 25,000 orphaned children. The Material Girl was reported to have donated $19 million to help Malawian children before the ruling by the Supreme Court.
-
wheres MERCY now?
-
News is just in that the tour crew is now ready to leave the US and head to the UK where the Sticky & Sweet Tour starts in just two weeks.
The Madonna dancers will leave tomorrow - behold, she's coming soon.
-
wheres madonna???
-
Madge’s Sky deal
SKY1 has landed an exclusive deal to broadcast the latest tours by Madonna and Girls Aloud.
Madge’s Sticky and Sweet tour, recorded in Buenos Aires in December, will air on July 4, along with a 15-minute behind-the-scenes film.
It will go out on the day the star, who has just succeeded in adopting Malawian girl Mercy, arrives in the UK to perform at the 02 Arena.
Girls Aloud’s sellout Out of Control tour, filmed at London’s 02 last month, will be shown in August.
The gigs will air on Sky1 as well as Sky HD.
-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8098719.stm
Malawi welcomes Madonna adoption
By Raphael Tenthani, in Blantyre
Madonna previously adopted Malawian boy David Banda
The decision to grant pop star Madonna the right to adopt a second Malawian child has been warmly received by many in the southern African state.
The singer's victory at Malawi's Supreme Court of Appeal led the news on local radio stations and prompted a positive response on phone-in shows.
But James Kambewa, who is claiming paternity of the four-year-old girl, remains opposed to the adoption.
"I won't give up the fight," he said, adding that the court disregarded him.
"I wrote to the court challenging the adoption because I am ready and willing to take care of my child," said Mr Kambewa.
"How can they continue referring to her as an orphan when I told them I am there for her?"
Madonna's charity Raising Malawi helps to look after orphans in the country
However, Mr Kambewa was a lone voice of opposition, with most Malawians welcoming the court's decision to allow Madonna to adopt Chifundo "Mercy" James.
"She is taking Mercy out of a life of destitution; she could have lived in the orphanage until she was old enough to start prostitution," said Michael Jonas, a curio seller in Blantyre, Malawi's second-largest city.
"I am happy for her and the world should ignore the so-called father. We have lots of fathers but very few parents."
"I am happy for Mercy," said Martha Banda, a university student in Blantyre.
"Those who are against the adoption are just plain selfish. How can one say she is better off in an orphanage?"
Anxious wait
Chifundo's uncle, Peter Baneti, said her family were "very happy".
"We, as a family, have been anxiously awaiting this ruling. We are very happy for Chifundo," he said.
He added that Mr Kembewa could "jump into Lake Malawi" for all he cared.
"We don't know this James boy. He was not there when my sister was pregnant; he didn't attend her funeral. How can he just come out to claim the baby? Does he want to steal my niece?"
Mercy's teenage mother died of child-birth complications a few days after giving birth.
Mr Kambewa admitted he had denied responsibility for his girlfriend's pregnancy. He met the 14-year-old Mwandida Mwaunde in secondary school, but deserted her when she fell pregnant in 2006.
"I was young then, but now I am old and responsible," he said.
Madonna's lawyer on adoption verdict
Yet even those in Malawi initially opposed to the adoption appear to have had a change of heart.
"We are happy today's ruling has clarified issues of inter-country adoptions," said Maxwell Matewere, Executive director of Eye of the Child - a child rights organisation which previously expressed reservations about the adoption
Frank Phiri, a resident in Bvumbwe - where the Mercy orphanage is situated - said Malawi has millions of orphans and one orphan less must be viewed as good news.
"I wish other rich people would come here to adopt orphans like Madonna has done," he said.
"Governments should encourage people to adopt children because living in an orphanage is tough."
'Extremely grateful'
According to the Ministry of Women and Child Welfare Development, there are close to 2 million orphans in Malawi, a quarter of whom have lost their parents as a direct result of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
Madonna, one of the most successful stars in pop history, first met Mercy in October 2006 at Kondanani Children's Village, just outside Blantyre, the same year she began the process of adopting David Banda.
Immediately after the ruling on Friday, Madonna's Malawian lawyer called up the singer in New York.
"My client was ecstatic; although it was still early in the States she was up to wait for the ruling," he said.
The singer herself responded: "I am extremely grateful for the Supreme Court's ruling on my application to adopt Mercy James."
"I am ecstatic... My family and I look forward to sharing our lives with her," Madonna said in a statement.
The pop star also has two biological children - Lourdes, 12, and Rocco, aged eight.
-
What I do not understand is that if everyone loves Mercy so much, how did Mercy ever come to be up for adoption by Madonna?
In Lilongwe, the capital, I meet Mabvuto Banda, a Reuters journalist who has been following Madonna's Malawian journey since 2006.
Banda says that in order to understand the adoption, you need to understand what an orphan in Malawi is. "When children like Mercy are left in orphanages by families, it is often because the families simply can't cope for a period of time. The understanding of the families is that they will take the kids back into the family, usually after six years." So it all depends on what you mean by orphan?
There are plenty of HIV babies left by the side of the road who go into orphanages, Banda says. These are pure orphans. Babies who have no traceable family. But Mercy was not one of these kids. Madonna has gone for a child with legal complications.
So how did this all start? Spool backwards three years, Banda tells me, and Guy Ritchie, Madonna's husband, is on a tight schedule videoing the most doe-eyed children he can find in seven orphanages across Malawi. The tape is being made for his wife, Madonna, who has decided she wants to adopt from Africa. From the video, she chooses one. It's a girl, Mercy. Then Madonna flies to Malawi on a "humanitarian mission". According to Banda, she has already chosen a child from Ritchie's line-up and is here to collect.
Banda is scathing. "It's like slavery — 'I like this one, no, maybe this one'," he says. "But the fact is, they all need a home." Seventeen days later, a child leaves on a private jet bound for Madonna's home in London. But there is a twist. It is not Mercy on board; it is a boy called David.
So what happened? The story locally is that Lucy, the grandmother, refused to let Mercy be adopted by Madonna. And for three years — from that day in 2006 until about four weeks ago — Lucy remained implacable.
So what about David, the boy who did leave on the private jet? Like Mercy, he had a family, too. But unlike Mercy's grandmother, David's father, Yohane, agreed to a fast adoption, believing — according to Banda — that the arrangement was temporary; that it was the same as leaving him in an orphanage.
Yohane has now gone on record saying he regrets the adoption because he did not know what he was getting into. Madonna was interviewed on the BBC at the time and said she was never told David had a father. I am inclined to believe her. In the end the adoption was allowed to happen.
Meanwhile, Madonna never gave up on adopting Mercy — not least because no one tells Madonna she cannot have what she wants.
So, after years of being told that adoption was the right thing for Mercy, Lucy caved in.
Once the Mercy adoption was back on the cards, Esme Chombo, a provincial judge, ruled that the adoption was unlawful because Madonna was not a resident of Malawi. Chombo was scornful of Western attitudes towards Malawian poverty, talking in her summing up about "the so-called poor children of Malawi" and even quoting G. K. Chesterton in defence of the existing law, protecting these children from trafficking: "Don't take a fence down until you know why it was put up in the first place."
But the case then went to Malawi's highest court on Friday, and Chombo was overturned.
There is a juggernaut at work here, it seems, and that is Madonna. I still cannot decide if this juggernaut is a good or a bad thing or where it is really heading. One thing is for sure, the woman is putting a lot of money into the country.
And there are battle lines already drawn between the urban and the rural populations over Madonna and her plans. Mercy's uncle, Peter, who signed the papers on the Mercy adoption, tells me the townspeople who are against Madonna are not going to benefit from her investment, so they can afford to criticise it.
They treat villagers as stupid, and he makes a gesture grinding his thumb in the dirt. "This is where they want us to stay," he says.
David Livingstone came to this country with a Bible in his hand; Madonna comes wearing Kabbalah wristbands. What is for sure is that colonialism is not a thing of the past.
In Malawi, it's just begining again and it's just got a whole lot more showbiz.
-
http://www.theage.com.au/world/madonna-giv...6r8.html?page=1
Madonna gives and takes on a mission to MalawiJacques Peretti
June 14, 2009 Page 1 of 2 Single page view
Madonna and children Lourdes, son Rocco and adopted Malawian son David. Photo: AP
OUTSIDE the dusty court in Blantyre, southern Malawi, there is a piece of paper pinned to the noticeboard with a list of the day's cases. This is Malawi's highest court and on the list is a dispute over a boundary fence, the theft of a moped and, in Court 2, an appeal to adopt a girl named Chifundo "Mercy" James, 4, by an unnamed 50-year-old single mother from New York.
Across Malawi, Madonna is described as "the rich white woman". Her name, unknown before this case, has been passed by word of mouth from village to village and mutated into "Ma Donor": the Giver.
I am in Malawi to make a TV documentary about the real story behind Madonna's plans to adopt a second child from Malawi. I arrive in May and within a kilometre of the airport see coffins being made on the side of the road. This is Malawi's only growth industry.
There are up to a million AIDS orphans in this tiny country. Life expectancy is 40; half the population is under 14. In the first village I visit, the chief tells me a child dies every three days. They bury them in a big pit.
Is it any surprise people tell me it is God's will Madonna chose Malawi, one of the poorest countries on earth, to save from poverty? It is not Mercy she is adopting, they say, it is the whole of Malawi.
Blantyre owes its name to the small Scottish town that the 19th-century missionary David Livingstone came from and in this predominantly Christian country Madonna is nothing short of a holy figure.
Mercy is their conduit to salvation. When I use Madonna's name out loud in one village, I am told to hush. Using Madonna's name in vain could frighten her (and her cash) away forever. Given all that, how could anyone in the West disagree with what Madonna's doing?
The fact is we do. Madonna is portrayed as a baby-grabbing gorgon, lambasted by everyone from Saturday Night Live to Graham Norton. I never bought this Madonna-bashing.
I thought the issue was simple: she adopts orphan, child better off, end of story. But is this really the deal with Mercy, the little girl she fought to adopt despite the controversy over her adoption of another Malawian child, David?
Well, first, Mercy is not an orphan without a family, just as David was not an orphan. Mercy has a family and they live in a village called Zaone where I meet Lucy Chekechiwa, Mercy's grandmother.
Lucy brought Mercy into this world. Days later, Mercy's mother, Mwandida Maunde, Lucy's daughter, died from complications after the birth. The villagers believed it was proof of what they already knew: Mwandida was cursed. She had been bewitched, falling pregnant with Mercy when just 14.
Mwandida, the villagers tell me, had met an 18-year-old student, James Kambewa. Mwandida's friends warned her it would end terribly, but she ignored them. She was in love. And so, of course, it ended with Mwandida dying in childbirth.
The baby was called Mercy, as if asking forgiveness from God for the shame Mercy's mother had brought on the village.
Lucy and the villagers ask me if I have spoken to Mercy's father, Kambewa, who disappeared after Mwandida's death, and was told that Mercy had died, too.
Later in my trip, I meet Kambewa, living in a shanty town. He tells me he opposes Madonna's adoption. "She is my daughter, my blood," he says. Why did he disappear? "I was frightened. I was just 18 and my family disowned me." So why has he appeared now? "The newspapers found me … I thought Mercy was dead. Mwandida was my only love. I have not been with a woman since Mwandida." So does he have a chance of keeping Mercy in the country? Madonna is very powerful. "I will win somehow." Continued…
Madonna adds Michael Jackson tribute to her tour
in ARCHIVE - Madonna
Posted
EONLINE DELETED A POST OF TRIBUTE FOOTAGE.
WHY??
IS WARNER DELETEING DIS VIDEO ON YOUTUBE??