“The Business 9 Women Kept A Secret For Three Decades”

A heartwarming article about several incredible women who secretly touched the lives of countless people though pound cakes and sincere kindness :)

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Taken from: http://www.dailygood.org/view.php?sid=264

June 29, 2012

Somewhere in West Tennessee, not far from Graceland, nine women — or “The 9 Nanas,” as they prefer to be called — gather in the darkness of night. At 4am they begin their daily routine — a ritual that no one, not even their husbands, knew about for 30 years. They have one mission and one mission only: to create happiness. And it all begins with baked goods.

“One of us starts sifting the flour and another washing the eggs,” explained Nana Mary Ellen, the appointed spokesperson for their secret society. “And someone else makes sure the pans are all ready. We switch off, depending on what we feel like doing that day. “But you make sure to say Nana Pearl is in charge, because she’s the oldest!” she added with a wink and a smile.

Over the next three hours, The 9 Nanas (who all consider themselves sisters, despite what some of their birth certificates say) will whip up hundreds of pound cakes, as part of a grand scheme to help those in need. And then, before anyone gets as much as a glimpse of them, they’ll disappear back into their daily lives. The only hint that may remain is the heavenly scent of vanilla, lemon and lime, lingering in the air.

Even the UPS driver, who picks up hundreds of packages at a time, has no clue what these women, who range in age from 54 to 72, are doing. He’s just happy to get a hug and a bag filled with special treats. What he doesn’t know is that he’s part of their master plan. A plan that began 35 years ago — when the “sisters” got together for their weekly card game — something their husbands referred to as “Broads and Bridge.”

“Pearl says it was all her idea,” Mary Ellen teased, “but as I remember it, we were sitting around reminiscing about MaMaw and PaPaw and all the different ways they would lend a hand in the community.” MaMaw and PaPaw are the grandparents who raised four of the women, Mary Ellen included, when their mother passed away; and they took in Pearl as their own, when her parents needed some help.

“MaMaw Ruth would read in the paper that someone had died,” Mary Ellen remembered, “and she’d send off one of her special pound cakes. She didn’t have to know the family. She just wanted to put a little smile on their faces. And we started thinking about what we could do to make a difference like that. What if we had a million dollars? How would we spend it?

So the ladies began brainstorming.

“One of the sisters suggested that we should all start doing our own laundry and put the money we saved to good use. I admit, I protested at first. There’s just something about laundering that I don’t like. But I was outnumbered! So among the nine of us, we’d put aside about $400 a month and our husbands never noticed a thing. Their shirts looked just fine.”

And then the women started listening. They’d eavesdrop — all with good intentions, of course — at the local beauty shop or when they were picking up groceries. And when they heard about a widow or a single mom who needed a little help, they’d step in and anonymously pay a utility bill or buy some new clothes for the children.

“We wanted to help as much as we could,” Mary Ellen said, “without taking away from our own families, so we became coupon clippers. And we’d use green stamps. Remember those? We’d use green stamps and we’d make sure to go to Goldsmith’s department store on Wednesdays. Every week they’d have a big sale and you could spend $100 and walk away with $700 worth of merchandise.”

The Nanas would find out where the person lived and send a package with a note that simply said, “Somebody loves you” — and they’d be sure to include one of MaMaw Ruth’s special pound cakes.

The more people they helped, the bolder they became.

“We gave new meaning to the term drive-by,” Mary Ellen said with delight. “We’d drive through low-income neighborhoods and look for homes that had fans in the window. That told us that the people who lived there didn’t have air-conditioning. Or we’d see that there were no lights on at night, which meant there was a good chance their utilities had been turned off. Then we’d return before the sun came up, like cat burglars, and drop off a little care package.”

For three decades, the ladies’ good deeds went undetected — that is, until five years ago, when Mary Ellen’s husband, whom she lovingly calls “Southern Charmer,” started noticing extra mileage on the car and large amounts of cash being withdrawn from their savings account. “He brought out bank statements and they were highlighted!” Mary Ellen said, recalling the horror she felt. “I tried to explain that I had bought some things, but he had this look on his face that I’d never seen before — and I realized what he must have been thinking. I called the sisters and said, ‘You all need to get over here right away.’”

So 30 years into their secret mission, the 9 Nanas and their husbands gathered in Mary Ellen’s living room and the sisters came clean. They told the husbands about the laundry and the eavesdropping — even the drive-bys. And that’s where their story gets even better — because the husbands offered to help.

“They were amazed that we were doing this and even more amazed that they never knew. We can keep a good secret! All but three of them are retired now, so sometimes they come with us on our drive-bys. In our area, all you need is an address to pay someone’s utility bill, so we keep the men busy jotting down numbers.”

It wasn’t long before the couples decided it was also time to tell their grown children. And that’s when happiness began to happen in an even bigger way. The children encouraged their mothers to start selling MaMaw Ruth’s pound cakes online, so they could raise money to help even more people. And it wasn’t long before they were receiving more than 100 orders in a day. “The first time we saw those orders roll in, we were jumping up and down,” Mary Ellen said with a laugh. “We were so excited that we did a ring-around-the-rosie! Then we called all the children and said, ‘What do we do next?’”

That’s when the 9 Nanas moved their covert baking operation out of their homes and into the commercial kitchen of a restaurant owned by one of their sons, where they can sneak in before sunrise and sneak out before the staff comes in. They even hired a “happiness coordinator” (whose code name is “Sunny,” of course). Her identity needs to be a secret, too, so she can help out with the eavesdropping. “We swore her to secrecy — her parents think she works in marketing. And, really, if you think about it, she is doing public relations and spends a lot of time looking for people to help at the supermarket!”

These days, The 9 Nanas are able to take on even bigger projects, given their online success. Recently they donated more than $5,000 of pillows and linens and personal care products to a shelter for survivors of domestic violence. And this August, they’ll celebrate their second consecutive “Happiness Happens Month” by sending tokens of their appreciation to one person in every state who has made a difference in their own community.

And that million dollars they once wished for? They’re almost there. In the last 35 years, the 9 Nanas have contributed nearly $900,000 of happiness to their local community. But that doesn’t mean they’re too busy to continue doing the little things that make life a bit happier. Sometimes they just pull out the phone book and send off pound cakes to complete strangers. And if the Nanas spot someone at the grocery store who appears to need a little help, it’s not unusual for them to start filling a stranger’s cart. “Not everyone is as lucky as we were to have MaMaw and PaPaw to take care of them, to fix all those things that are wrong. “So this is our way of giving back,” Mary Ellen said. “We want people to know that someone out there cares enough to do something. We want to make sure that happiness happens.”

“‘Help me,’ homeless man begs as cops fatally beat him in videotaped incident”

Taken from: http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/08/us/california-police-beating/index.html?hpt=ju_c2

May 8, 2012

A graphic video played at a hearing Monday to determine whether two California police officers should stand trial in the beating death of a homeless man showed them kicking and punching the mentally ill man as he lay on the ground — screaming in pain and begging for help.

The victim, Kelly Thomas, died five days after the beating on July 5.

Manuel Ramos, a 10-year veteran of the Fullerton, California, police department, is charged with second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter, while Cpl. Jay Patrick Cicinelli faces charges of involuntary manslaughter and felony use of excessive force in the same case.

Both have pleaded not guilty.

The black-and-white video was played during a preliminary hearing for the two officers.

It begins with Thomas — a 37-year-old homeless man with schizophrenia — sitting and being told by Ramos to put his feet out and hands on his knees.

The officers were responding to a call about a homeless man looking into car windows and pulling on handles of parked cars.

In the video, Thomas is slow to cooperate.

Ramos then tells him: “You see my fists? They’re getting ready to f— you up.”

Thomas, who is unarmed and shirtless, stands and another officer walks over. They hit him with their batons and hold him on the ground as he begs for help. ”Ok, I’m sorry, dude. I’m sorry!” he screams. At one point, Thomas says he can’t breathe. The officers tell him to lie on his stomach, put his hands behind his back and relax. ”Ok, here, here, dude, please!” he says.

Other officers arrive.

At times, trees block the view of the camera and it’s not always clear who is doing what as officers pile on top of Thomas. One uses a Taser stun gun.

Thomas cries out for help and. toward the end of the beating, for his father: “Dad! Help me. Help me. Help me, dad.” His voice gets softer and trails off.

By the end of the video, he is lying in a pool of blood as the officers wonder out loud what to do next. One can be heard saying: “We ran out of options so I got to the end of my Taser and I … smashed his face to hell.”

Thomas suffered brain injuries, facial fractures, rib fractures, and extensive bruising and abrasions, according to prosecutors.

The Orange County coroner listed his manner of death as a homicide and said he died after having his chest compressed, leaving him unable to breathe.

The FBI is investigating possible civil rights violations in his case.

Six Fullerton officers, including Ramos and Cicinelli, were put on paid leave after his death. The case drew widespread attention to the police department of Fullerton, located about 25 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles.

“My Lai revisited? Obama says Afghanistan massacre is ‘not comparable’”

Thought-provoking article… what do you think? One thing is for sure, reprisals from the Afghanistan massacre are not a distant possibility. 

Taken from: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/upshot/lai-revisited-obama-says-afghanistan-massacre-not-comparable-181907736.html

March 13, 2012

This Friday will mark the 44th anniversary of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, when an American platoon killed some 300 Vietnamese civilians, including children. And with the anniversary date rapidly approaching, the recent mass killing spree by an American soldier in Afghanistan has brought up several direct comparisons between the two incidents.

“The United States takes this as seriously as if it was our own citizens and our own children who were murdered,” President Barack Obama said to reporters at the White House today. In his remarks, the president announced that he has ordered the Pentagon to “spare no effort” in its investigation of the incident, which resulted in the death of at least 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children, three women and four men this past Sunday.

Both events were horrific, but as we try to process the news coming out of Afghanistan, there are some distinct differences between the two.

First, the responsible parties aren’t quite the same. In My Lai, the men of the 11th Brigade of Charlie Company were reportedly told, “This is what you’ve been waiting for—search and destroy—and you’ve got it,” and were unleashed upon the local populace. While not all men in the brigade participated in the killing (and some actively tried to stop it), as many as 26 soldiers were initially charged in the incident. And seven commanders were indicted for possibly giving orders, although there’s always been a debate as to whether the commanders gave official orders to the soldiers to actively kill.

But in the recent Afghanistan tragedy, the killing of 16 civilians was carried out by one, lone soldier, acting without orders and reportedly suffering from a traumatic brain injury received in an earlier combat incident. To be clear, military officials have not said if the soldier’s prior injuries contributed to his actions.

“It’s not comparable,” Obama said in an interview with ABC Orlando affiliate WFTV. “It appeared you had a lone gunman who acted on his own. In no way is this representative of the enormous sacrifices that our men and women have made in Afghanistan.”

Still, it’s impossible to ignore some direct similarities between the two incidents as well.

As Henry Blodget wrote in a Business Insider op-ed, both events occurred at a time when the public and politicians were split over the future of the war. And even if our military is better trained and equipped than any fighting force in history, service members are still facing the very real threat of death on a daily basis.

Part of that can be blamed on the stress soldiers face in an unconventional battlefield. While anti-terror training measures are being instituted across the military, most soldiers were trained to fight wars, not engage in local diplomacy with individuals who share neither a common language nor culture.

In an op-ed with the Scotsman, former Special Air Service (SAS) Deputy Commander Clive Fairweather writes that even if the Afghanistan massacre was the work of one “crazed individual,” advances in media technology could result in the same sort of response that occurred after My Lai: ”[I]ncreases in the speed and reach of world communications means that the murder of 16 Afghan civilians could have equally far-reaching consequences in the region, in U.S. domestic opposition circles and on world opinion. Coming on top of the bloody reprisals following the accidental burning of the Koran by American servicemen, and in a week when six British soldiers were killed, the overall impression for many will be that we have “lost it”—and it is high time either to get out now, or to accelerate the pace of withdrawal.”

At least for now, the most common binding trait between the two tragic events is their role as a potential catalyst for ending the war. ”It makes me more determined to make sure we’re getting our troops home,” Obama said in another interview, this time with CBS Pittsburgh affiliate KDKA. “It’s time. It’s been a decade, and, frankly, now that we’ve gotten (Osama) bin Laden, now that we’ve weakened al-Qaida, we’re in a stronger position to transition than we would have been two or three years ago.”

“Funeral for Powell boys draws 1,000-plus in Tacoma, Wash.”

Taken from: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2012/02/funeral-powell-boys-tacoma-washington.html

February 11, 2012

At a Saturday memorial service attended by more than 1,000 people, family and teachers remembered Charlie and Braden Powell, the two young brothers killed last week by their father, as “clever” and “curious” boys.

At the public funeral, their grandfather, Chuck Cox, thanked people for praying for them, saying “it helps us to know that there are good people in the world,” the Associated Press reported.

The boys’ remains were placed in a single coffin adorned with flowers. The service at the Life Center Church in Tacoma, about 20 miles north of where the boys were killed, drew people from as far away as Utah, where the boys once lived.

The boys died in a gasoline-fueled fire set by their father, Josh Powell, when they went to visit him last Sunday at his home in Graham, Wash. Powell was a person of interest in the disappearance of his wife, Susan Powell, in December 2009.

Many of the boys’ teachers shared memories during the memorial service. The Salt Lake Tribune, which was covering the event live, said Charlie’s kindergarten teacher told those at the service that the boy “was an amazing young man. He had an appreciation of nature I had never seen in someone so young,” she said. Many remembered the 7-year-old as a child fascinated with science and insects, often trying to sneak worms or caterpillars into the classroom. Charlie was about to get glasses and loved to write, dreaming up plans to market his book, according the Associated Press. ”He is safe in his mother’s arms,” said Tammy Ougheon, Charlie’s kindergarten teacher in Utah, the wire service quoted her as saying.

The younger brother, Braden, was also remembered fondly by his teachers, who said he enjoyed playing with cars and trains. The 5-year-old had “a sharp mind and big imagination” and was a “budding puzzle master … with contagious, joyful energy.” ”His little spirit lives on in the hearts of all who knew him,” said Kristie King, an instructor at a YMCA that Braden attended.

The family will have a private interment Monday.

“Paterno legacy damaged by scandal, but not erased”

Taken from: http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news?slug=dw-wetzel_joe_paterno_obituary_012212

January 22, 2012

Truly great leaders are measured by the lives they reached, the people they motivated and the legacy of their lesson that can extend for years to come, like ripples from a skipped stone across an endless lake.

For Joe Paterno, the impact is incalculable, the people he connected with extending far beyond the players he coached for 62 years at Penn State, the last 46 as head football coach. Paterno always tried to be the giant who walked among the everyman both in the school’s greatest moments and, it turns out, in its worst.

Paterno died Sunday at a State College, Pa., hospital, suffering in his final days from lung cancer, broken bones and the fallout of a horrific scandal that not only cost him his job, but also his trademark vigor and a portion of his good name. He was 85 years old.

This is a complicated passing. What was once the most consistent and basic of messages – honor, ethics and education – seemingly lived out as close to its ideal as possible was rocked Nov. 5, 2011, when a grand jury indicted Paterno’s former defensive coordinator, Jerry Sandusky, of multiple counts of sexual abuse of children. Many, including Penn State’s Board of Trustees, believed Paterno could have and should have done more to stop Sandusky, especially after allegations of misconduct arose in 2002. Within days Paterno was fired from the program and school to which he’d become synonymous.

Now, a little more than two months later, he’s gone for good, a bitter, brutal ending for an American original. He was the winningest college football coach of all time, compiling a 409-136-3 record. He won national titles in 1982 and 1986 and recorded four other undefeated seasons, including consecutively in 1968 and 1969. He was a bridge from a simpler time to the cutthroat business college football has become, somehow serving as both a progressive force (he believed in players’ rights, a playoff system and welcomed advancements in television) and a stubborn traditionalist (the Penn State uniforms remained basic, he never learned how to send a text message and he still used old-school discipline).

In 2007, when a group of his players got into a fight at a party, Paterno determined it would best if the entire team had to clean Beaver Stadium after home games. “I think that we need to prove to people that we’re not a bunch of hoodlums,” he said at the time.

That was Paterno at his best, this singular figure offering simple lessons. He was the rock. He was the constant. He was the conscience. He was JoePa, his nickname suggesting a fatherly quality to not just his players, not just Penn State students who could still find his number listed in the local phone book and not just Nittany Lions football fans. He was a larger-than-life figure in the small, bucolic town of State College, and if you wanted to draw something good and decent from college football, well, here’s where you always could. Don’t worry, he’d still be there, as unchanged as ever.

He gave millions of dollars back to the school – the library is named after him and his wife, Sue. He raised millions more at speaking engagements across the country. He encouraged vibrant alumni to take incredible pride in their university, unusual for many state schools in the east. Yet he was still this guy out of Brooklyn, with a thick accent and even thicker glasses. He was humble. He was approachable.

It seemed, for anyone who wanted to believe, that he provided perspective amid the circus.

“We’re trying to win football games, don’t misunderstand that,” Paterno told Sports Illustrated’s Dan Jenkins in 1968, when he was just 41. “But I don’t want it to ruin our lives if we lose. I don’t want us ever to become the kind of place where an 8-2 season is a tragedy. Look at that day outside. It’s clear, it’s beautiful, the leaves are turning, the land is pretty and it’s quiet. If losing a game made me miserable, I couldn’t enjoy such a day. “I tell the kids who come here to play, enjoy yourselves. There’s so much besides football. Art, history, literature, politics.” That this attitude would come from the guy who would win the most games ever was part of the charm, as if Paterno was running a ruse on everyone chasing him all those crisp autumns. He was playing chess, they were getting check-mated.

No, the full truth never squares with these kinds of narratives. No, he wasn’t perfect, he wasn’t without fault or selfishness or vanity or difficult moods. He was close enough though. Sometimes, having someone to believe in is enough. “You know what happens when you’re No. 1?” Paterno said more than 40 years ago to Jenkins. “Nobody is happy until you’re No. 1 again and that might never happen again.” It would happen again and again and again, actually.

In his final days, that wide-eyed optimist and aw-shucks success story was gone. The Sandusky scandal had sapped what no opponent ever could. He sat earlier this month at his kitchen table with, not coincidentally, Sally Jenkins, the Washington Post columnist and Dan Jenkins’ daughter, for his last public words. He’d lost his hair from chemotherapy. His breath was heavy. He sipped on a soda. “His voice sounded like wind blowing across a field of winter stalks, rattling the husks,” Sally Jenkins wrote.

He tried to explain how he hadn’t done more to stop Sandusky, how he hadn’t followed up thoroughly, how he hadn’t pressed university administrators for answers. “I didn’t exactly know how to handle it … I backed away and turned it over to some other people, people I thought would have a little more expertise than I did. It didn’t work out that way.”

Some saw no need for him to explain himself again: He’d said much the same thing in a 2011 grand jury appearance. For others, there is no suitable explanation, boys were abused, the mistake too grave for excuses.

This will be forever the battle over Joe Paterno’s legacy. A life of soaring impact, of bedrock values, of generations and generations as a symbol of how to live life to its fullest. The Sandusky case cracked that for some. Ended it. Not for all, though. Paterno reached too many, taught too many, inspired too many. And for years and seasons, for decades and generations to come, those that drew from his wisdom will pass it on and on. That will be his most lasting legacy.

No, his worst day can’t be forgotten. Neither can all the beautiful ones that surrounded it.

“12-year-old girl who blogged cancer fight has died”

Taken from: http://news.yahoo.com/12-old-girl-blogged-cancer-fight-died-233503455.html

January 6, 2012

A Southern California girl who became a nationally recognized face of child cancer with a blog that chronicled her fight against brain tumors has died. Jessica Joy Rees was 12 years old.

Jessica’s family announced her death on her Facebook page, stating that her 10-month battle with brain cancer ended Thursday. Tens of thousands of people responded by posting updates to the page in a show of support that includes “likes” and prayers. By Friday afternoon the outpouring surpassed Jessica’s goal to get one “like” for each of the estimated 50,000 American children with cancer.

The Orange County seventh-grader, called “Jessie” by family and friends, began her blog and Facebook page after being diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor in March. A second tumor was discovered in September.

While some of her posts discussed her struggles as she underwent radiation and chemotherapy treatments, others urged readers in dozens of countries to support pediatric cancer research and to pray for other children with the illness. She always signed her posts with the acronym “NEGU” (NEE’-goo), short for “never ever give up.”

Also, she and her parents started The NEGU Foundation, a nonprofit organization to raise awareness of pediatric cancer, support sufferers and raise money for research. The foundation sold and provided thousands of “JoyJars” stuffed with candy and toys to sick children. More than 3,000 were sold and distributed in 27 states last year, according to the NEGU website.

After her diagnosis, Rancho Santa Margarita youngster received tickets to “American Idol” and arrived with signs that read “NEGU Casey” to support contestant Casey Abrams, the Orange County Register (http://bit.ly/yJwyF3) reported. Co-host Ryan Seacrest also allowed her to announce country singer, and eventual winner, Scott McCreery.

Jessica wrote on Facebook that her mission was “to encourage kids fighting cancer to Never Ever Give Up by spreading hope, joy and love. A cheerful heart is great medicine.”

A celebration service was scheduled for Wednesday at the Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, where her father, Erik Rees, is a pastor.

Ben Breedlove

A reminder that death is always lurking, and so we must cherish what moments we do have.

Ben Breedlove, 18. RIP.

 

“North Korea’s longtime leader Kim Jong Il dead at 69″

Taken from: http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/18/world/asia/kim-jong-il-obit/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

December 19, 2011

North Korea’s longtime leader Kim Jong Il, the embodiment of the reclusive state where his cult of personality is deeply entrenched, has died. He was believed to be 69. Regarded as one of the world’s most-repressive leaders, Kim Jong Il always cut a slightly bizarre figure. His diminutive stature and characteristically bouffant hair have been parodied by some in the West. ”He’s a mysterious person — I think by design,” said Han S. Park, director of the Center for the Study of Global Issues at the University of Georgia and a frequent visitor to North Korea. “Mystery is a source of leverage and power. It’s maintaining uncertainty.”

But for the citizens of his Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Kim was well regarded. His father, Kim Il Sung, founded North Korea with Soviet backing after World War II. Kim Jong Il was just a little boy when the Communist North invaded the American-backed South, sparking the Korean War in 1950. After the fighting ended, Kim became steeped in his father’s philosophy of “juche” or self-reliance — the basis of North Korea’s reclusive nature.

North and South Korea never formally signed a peace treaty and remain technically at war — separated by a tense demilitarized zone.

North Korea gives Kim’s official birthplace as sacred Mount Paektu. The peak, on the northern border with Chinese Manchuria, is the highest on the peninsula and the site where Korean legend says the nation came into existence 5,000 years ago. Researchers who are more objective place Kim’s birth in the Far Eastern region of the Soviet Union on February 16, 1942. His father had fled to the Soviet Union when the Japanese put a price on his head for guerrilla activities in occupied Korea. The family returned to the northern part of the peninsula after the Japanese surrender in World War II, and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin anointed Kim Il Sung as the leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Kim Jong Il’s younger brother drowned as a child and his mother died when he was 7 years old. Shortly after, when the Korean War broke out , he was sent to Manchuria, returning three years later when it ended. Despite these hardships, Kim Jong Il was presumably surrounded by luxury and privilege for most of his upbringing. As the first-born son of an iron-fisted dictator, “the doors were likely opening for him from a very young age,” according to Dae-sook Suh, a professor of political science at the University of Hawaii who specializes in the Pyongyang government. Gradually Kim Jong Il was groomed for the top position, making public appearances in front of cheering crowds.

In 1980, Kim Il Sung formally designated his son as his successor. Kim Jong Il was given senior posts in the Politburo, the Military Commission and the Party Secretariat. He took on the title “Dear Leader” and the government began spinning a personality cult around him patterned after that of his father, the “Great Leader.” In 1991, Kim Jong Il became commander-in-chief of North Korea’s powerful armed forces, the final step in the long grooming process. Three years later, when Kim Il Sung died suddenly from a heart attack at 82, most outsiders predicted the imminent collapse of North Korea. The nation had lost its venerated founding father.

Just a few years earlier, its powerful alliances had evaporated with the fall of the Soviet bloc and China’s move toward a market-based system. The economy was on the rocks and energy and food were in short supply. A series of weather disasters, combined with an inefficient state-run agricultural system, further eroded the food supply, leading to mass starvation. The timing could not have been worse for replacing the only leader North Korea had known. ”Heaven didn’t smile on Kim Jong Il,” said the University of Hawaii’s Dae-sook Suh. After his father’s elaborate public funeral, Kim Jong Il dropped out of sight, fueling rumors, but he soon managed to consolidate power.

Under his newly organized government, his father’s presidential post was left vacant and Kim took the titles of general secretary of the Workers Party and chairman of the National Defense Commission — a group of 10 men that includes the heads of the air force, army and navy, who are now considered the most powerful in the country. ”It’s a peculiar government to say the least,” Dae-sook Suh said. “He honors the legacy of his father, but the new government is a Kim Jong Il government. It’s quite different from his father’s.”

Kim Il Sung’s unique style of Stalinism was subordinated to the more militant theme of Kim Jong Il’s “Red Banner” policy, introduced in 1996. The changes afoot were dramatically illustrated in 1997 by the defection of Hwang Jang Yop — the architect of the juche philosophy and the first high-level official to seek asylum in South Korea. In a news conference after his defection, Hwang warned of a growing possibility that his homeland might launch an attack. “The preparation for war exceeds your imagination,” he said. Many outsiders viewed the flight of Hwang as another sign that the North Korean regime was on its last legs, but once again it weathered the storm, perhaps even benefiting from the fears of war heightened by Hwang’s warning.

Despite sending a test missile over Japan in June 1999 and other such incidents, North Korea under Kim Jong Il also sent signals that it is open to new alliances after decades of isolation. Billions of dollars in international aid poured into North Korea during the 1990s, which did little in return.

Many analysts conclude that Kim Jong Il has played a poor hand of cards skillfully. ”I tend to disregard rumors that he’s irrational, a man that nobody can do business with,” said Alexander Mansourov, a longtime Korea scholar and a former Russian diplomat who was posted in Pyongyang in the late 1980s. “I believe that he is smart. He’s pragmatic. And I think he can be ruthless. He’s a man who will not loosen his grip in any way on the people around him.”

His obsession for movies led to one of the strangest incidents associated with him: The 1978 kidnappings of South Korean actress Choi En-hui and her director husband Shin Sang-ok. The couple’s account of their ordeal, given after they escaped North Korea in 1986, sounds like a B-movie script.

They said Kim Jong Il held Choi under house arrest and imprisoned Shin for four years for a failed escape attempt. Kim then forced them to work in the North Korean film industry, paying them handsomely while keeping them in the gilded cage of his artistic and social circles. Although the country was having problems paying its debts, Kim lived extravagantly and spent tens of millions of dollars on their film productions, according to Choi and Shin.

The couple told Washington Post reporter Don Oberdorfer that Kim was a “micro-manager” who made all the major decisions in North Korea because of his father’s ailing condition. Shin described Kim as “very bright,” but said that he had no sense of guilt about his misdeeds “due to his background and upbringing.”

While the Dear Leader is said to have indulged his appetite for the finer things, his people were literally starving to death. The collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s hit North Korea hard when guaranteed trade deals with Moscow came to an end. And then devastating floods compounded the famine. The North Korean regime admitted almost 250,000 people perished between 1995 and 1998, but some outside groups believe it was more like ten times that figure.

Nevertheless, an artifice of a successful state was maintained in the capital, Pyongyang, including an opulent subway — proof that Kim would say reflected North Korea’s progress under his and his father’s leadership. In 2000, there appeared to be a thaw in North-South relations leading to the first-ever summit meeting between Kim Jong Il and his then counterpart from the South President Kim Dae Jung. South Korea’s so-called “sunshine policy” of engagement seemed to be bearing fruit.

But Kim Jong Il pressed ahead with his nuclear weapons program and then-U.S. President George W. Bush labeled North Korea as part of the “axis of evil” in his 2002 State of the Union address. A year later, North Korea withdrew from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. In 2006, the North conducted a nuclear test and test fired missiles adding extra urgency to the six-party talks designed to deal with North Korea’s nuclear program. A breakthrough came in 2007, when Kim Jong il finally agreed to disable the nuclear reactor at Yongbyon in return for fuel and better relations with the U.S. But despite dramatically blowing up Yongbyon’s cooling tower, North Korea seemed to backtrack afterwards and the deal appeared to be jeopardy. In August 2008, Pyongyang halted the disabling of the plutonium-producing plants in after a stalemate over verification measures. Months later — as Bush wrapped up his final term in office — the U.S. government agreed to take North Korea off its list of countries that sponsor terrorism. The move was a turnaround from the Bush administration’s previous refusal to drop North Korea from the list until Pyongyang agreed to set up an internationally recognizable mechanism to verify it was revealing all its nuclear secrets.

Analysts say it is easy for outsiders to demonize Kim Jong Il, a dictator who spent an estimated 25% or more of his country’s gross national product on the military while many in his country went hungry. But in North Korea, closed off from outside influences, fearful of threats from its neighbors, and subjected to decades of political socialization on top of a long tradition of a strict hierarchical system, Kim Jong Il is viewed positively by most people, said Han Park of the Center for Study of Global Issues. ”The level of reverence for Kim Jong Il in North Korea is quite underestimated by the outside,” Park said. “He is regarded by many as not only a superior leader but a decent person, a man of high morality. Whether that’s accurate is not important if you want to deal with North Korea. You have to understand their belief system. Perception is reality.”

But to the outside world, Kim Jong Il will be remembered as one of the worst despots in history, according to Andre Lankov, an author on Korea’s history. ”He will be remembered as a person who was responsible for awful things: for the existence of one of the worst dictatorships in not only Korean history but the world history at least in the 20th and 21st centuries,” Lankov said. ”Yet he did not create this dictatorship — it was his father’s but he took responsibility, and he made sure it continued for many more years.”

“Pastor’s corporal punishment advice scrutinized after child deaths”

Taken from: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/pastor-corporal-punishment-advice-scrutinized-child-deaths-160004793.html

November 7, 2011

In recent years, several children have died after enduring extreme forms of corporal punishment from parents who had absorbed the controversial child-rearing advice of Tennessee pastor Michael Pearl. Now, the New York Times reports, Pearl himself is under fire.

In their self-published book, To Train Up a Child, Pearl, 66, and his wife Debi, 60, recommend the systematic use of “the rod” to teach young children to submit to authority. They offer instructions on how to use a switch for hitting children as young as six months, and describe how to use other implements, including a quarter-inch flexible plumbing line. Older children, the Pearls say, should be hit with a belt, wooden spoon or willow switch, hard enough to sting. Michael Pearl has said the methods are based on “the same principles the Amish use to train their stubborn mules.”

There are 670,000 copies of the book in circulation, and it’s especially popular among Christian home-schoolers such as Larry and Carri Williams of Sedro-Woolley, Wash. In September, local prosecutors charged them with homicide by abuse after their adopted daughter Hana, 11, was found naked and emaciated in the backyard, having died of hypothermia and malnutrition. She had been deprived of food for days at a time, and made to sleep in an unheated barn. Hana, originally from Ethiopia, also had been beaten with a plastic tube, as recommended by Michael Pearl. Carri Williams had praised the book–which advises that “a little fasting is good training”–and had given a copy to a friend, local authorities  say. The Pearls aren’t being charged. But Dr. Frances Chalmers, a state pediatrician who examined Hana’s death, suggested to the Times that their teachings may have played a role in Hana’s death. “My fear is that this book, while perhaps well intended, could easily be misinterpreted and could lead to what I consider significant abuse,” she said.

That may also have happened in the case of Lydia Schatz, who was adopted from Liberia at the age of 4 by Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz of Paradise, Calif. She died last year, age 7, after her parents had whipped her for hours, with pauses for prayer. The Schatzes are both serving long prison terms, after Kevin Schatz pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and torture, and Elizabeth Schatz pleaded to voluntary manslaughter and unlawful corporal punishment. Like the Williamses, the Schatzes owned a copy of To Train Up a Child, and the local district attorney criticized it as a dangerous influence.

There was also Sean Paddock, of Johnson County, N.C., who died from suffocation in 2006, age 4, after he’d been wrapped tightly in a blanket. His mother Lynn Paddock, who said she had come across the Pearls’ website, was charged with first-degree murder. Sean’s siblings testified that they were beaten each day with a plumbing tube that the Pearls recommend.

The Pearls, along with many conservative Christians, say the Bible calls for corporal punishment. “To give up the use of the rod is to give up our views of human nature, God, eternity,” they write in the book. And Michael Pearl rejects the notion that his teachings bear any responsibility for the childrens’ deaths. “If you find a 12-step book in an alcoholic’s house, you wouldn’t blame the book,” he told the Times.

But other Christians appear to disagree. Crystal Lutton, who runs a Christian blog that opposes corporal punishment, told the Times that the Pearl’s methods carry a big risk. “If you don’t get results, the only thing to do is to punish harder and harder,” she said.

Some Christian groups are working to pressure booksellers such as Amazon not to carry the Pearls’ book.

The issue of corporal punishment had already been making headlines recently. Last week, a Texas woman posted online a video from 2004 that showed her father, a judge, whipping her with a belt when she was 16.

“Player honors mother with 46-point game two days after her death”

An oldie, but a goodie. Happy Sunday :)

Taken from: http://rivals.yahoo.com/highschool/blog/prep_rally/post/Player-honors-mother-with-46-point-game-two-days?urn=highschool-332320

March 10, 2011

On Sunday, Feb. 26, Pembroke (N.H.) Academy freshman Brad Rhoades lost his mother Kristin in a snowmobile accident. On March 1, he completed a nearly unthinkable, Chris Paul-like tribute: Scoring one point for every year of his mother’s life.

According to the New Hampshire Union Leader, Rhoades, whose pictures here were shared by New Hampshire photographer Bruce Klink, was left with just one junior varsity basketball game in his freshman season to accomplish his 46-point feat. That game, against Bishop Brady (N.H.) High, was scheduled for just two days after his mother’s death. While coaches told Rhoades he could sit out the season finale, the teen insisted on playing.

Of course, Rhoades didn’t just play, he attacked the basket with aggression, racking up 27 points in the game’s first half. Completely emotionally taxed, he spent much of the halftime break on the team’s bench, holding his sister and crying. That’s when his sister, Brittany, gave Rhoades the lift he needed. ”She kept telling me ‘You can do it, you can do it. Mom is here with you,’” Brad Rhoades told the Union Leader.

Reinvigorated, Rhoades told his teammates and coaches of his plan to score 46 points just before they returned to the court. With plenty of supporting assists, he began launching up threes, hitting a hot streak and scoring his 46th point with two minutes remaining.

As soon as he hit the milestone, Rhoades ran to his father, who stood besides the stands at all of his son’s games. Leaping into his arms in a cathartic release, the Rhoades turned to realize that the entire gym, with fans of both Pembroke and Bishop Brady, were giving the family a standing ovation.

“He almost knocked me into the wall,” [Brad's father] Frank Rhoades said. “And then this place exploded. It was pretty special.”

Rhoades’ inspiring tribute did more than just leave a lasting memorial for his mother, it also inspired one family acquaintance to start a unique college fund for the two Rhoades children. John Clarke, the athletic director at Plymouth State University, is asking those who come across the story to donate $46 — $1 for each year of Kristin Rhoades’ life — to the Rhoades Family College Fund, which he set up following her passing last week. Contributions can be sent to Anheuser-Busch Employee Credit Union, 3 Mound Court, Suite 3A, Merrimack, NH, 03054-4412.

While Brad Rhoades might not have another 46-point game in 2011, donations to the fund will help ensure that he does have a bright future, one that will include cameos during the Pembroke Academy varsity team’s playoff run. For as long as that team is alive in the postseason, Rhoades is confident that his mother will be there, too.

“She was definitely right there beside me, all the way,” Rhoades told the Union Leader.

“Civil Rights Leader Shuttleworth Dies”

Taken from: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44788700/ns/us_news-life/#

October 5, 2011

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — The Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, who was bombed, beaten and repeatedly arrested in the fight for civil rights and hailed by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. for his courage and tenacity, has died. He was 89.

Relatives and hospital officials said Shuttlesworth died Wednesday at a Birmingham hospital. A former truck driver who studied religion at night, Shuttlesworth became pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1953 and soon emerged as an outspoken leader in the struggle for racial equality. ”My church was a beehive,” Shuttlesworth once said. “I made the movement. I made the challenge. Birmingham was the citadel of segregation, and the people wanted to march. In his 1963 book “Why We Can’t Wait,” King called Shuttlesworth “one of the nation’s most courageous freedom fighters … a wiry, energetic and indomitable man.”

Mayor William Bell ordered city flags lowered to half-staff until after Shuttleworth’s funeral. Bell, who is black, said he would not be mayor if not for leaders like Shuttlesworth. ”Dr. Shuttlesworth means so much to this city and his legacy will continue for generations,” he said.

Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth right,  escorts Dwight Armstrong, 9, and his brother Floyd, 11, from the Graymont Elementary School in Birmingham, Ala, Sept. 9, 1963. State troopers, on order from the governor, opened the school but turned the African Americans away.

Shuttlesworth survived a 1956 bombing, an assault during a 1957 demonstration, chest injuries when Birmingham authorities turned fire hoses on demonstrators in 1963, and countless arrests. ”I went to jail 30 or 40 times, not for fighting or stealing or drugs,” Shuttlesworth told grade school students in 1997. “I went to jail for a good thing, trying to make a difference.” Alabama’s first black federal judge, U.W. Clemon, said Shuttlesworth flung himself at injustice well knowing he could be killed at any moment. “He was the first black man I knew who was totally unafraid of white folks,” said Clemon, who retired from the bench and is now an attorney in private practice. Shuttlesworth remained active in the movement in Alabama even after moving in 1961 to Cincinnati, where he was a pastor for most of the next 47 years. He moved back to Birmingham in February 2008 for rehabilitation after a mild stroke. That summer, the once-segregated city honored him with a four-day tribute and named its airport after him. His statue also stands outside the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.

In November 2008, Shuttlesworth watched from a hospital bed as Sen. Barack Obama was elected the nation’s first African-American president. The year before, Obama had pushed Shuttlesworth’s wheelchair across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma during a commemoration of the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march — a moment Obama recalled Wednesday. In Washington, Obama released a statement lauding Shuttlesworth as a “testament to the strength of the human spirit” and said America owes him a “debt of gratitude” for his fight for equality.

“As one of the founders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Reverend Shuttlesworth dedicated his life to advancing the cause of justice for all Americans,” Obama said. In the early 1960s, Shuttlesworth had invited King back to Birmingham. Televised scenes of police dogs and fire hoses being turned on black marchers, including children, in the spring of 1963 helped the rest of the nation grasp the depth of racial animosity in the Deep South. ”He marched into the jaws of death every day in Birmingham before we got there,” said Andrew Young, the former Atlanta mayor and U.N. ambassador who served as an aide to King.

Young said it was Shuttlesworth’s fearlessness that persuaded King to take the struggle to Birmingham. ”We shouldn’t have been strong enough to take on Birmingham … But God had a plan that was far better than our plan,” Young said. “Fred didn’t invite us to come to Birmingham. He told us we had to come.” Referring to the city’s notoriously racist safety commissioner, Shuttlesworth would tell followers, “We’re telling ol’ ‘Bull’ Connor right here tonight that we’re on the march and we’re not going to stop marching until we get our rights.” According to a May 1963 New York Times profile of Shuttlesworth, Connor responded to the word Shuttlesworth had been injured by the spray of fire hoses by saying: “I’m sorry I missed it. … I wish they’d carried him away in a hearse.” Fellow civil rights pioneer the Rev. Joseph Lowery said Shuttlesworth was determined. ”When God made Bull Connor, one of the real negative forces in this country, He was sure to make Fred Shuttlesworth.” Lowery said.

While King won international fame, Shuttlesworth was relatively little known outside Alabama. But he was a key figure in Spike Lee’s 1997 documentary, “4 Little Girls,” about the September 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four black children.

Shuttlesworth was born March 18, 1922, near Montgomery and grew up in Birmingham. As a child, he knew he would either be a minister or a doctor and by 1943, he decided to enter the ministry. He began his theological courses at night while working as a truck driver and cement worker by day. He was licensed to preach in 1944 and ordained in 1948. It was 1954 when King, then a pastor in Montgomery, came to Birmingham to give a speech and asked to stop by Bethel Baptist and meet Shuttlesworth. Then in late 1955 in Montgomery, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus, prompting the boycott led by King that gave new impetus to the civil rights movement. In January 1956, King’s Montgomery home was bombed while he attended a rally. Eleven months later, on Christmas night 1956, 16 sticks of dynamite were detonated outside Shuttlesworth’s bedroom as he slept at the Bethel Baptist parsonage. No one was injured in either bombing, although shards of glass and wood pierced Shuttleworth’s coat and hat left hanging on a hook. The next day, Shuttlesworth led 250 people in a protest of segregation on buses in Birmingham.