Thursday, February 14, 2008



Mia Farrow is actually, despite her elfin, wispy and delicate appearance, a force to be reckoned with apparently. Last year she wrote an editorial in the Wall Street Journal calling for Stephen Spielberg to call on the Chinese Government to stop underwriting the genocide in Darfur by threatening to halt his involvement with the Beijing Olympics. She wrote:

But equally disappointing is the decision of artists like director Steven Spielberg -- who quietly visited China this month as he prepares to help stage the Olympic ceremonies -- to sanitize Beijing's image. Is Mr. Spielberg, who in 1994 founded the Shoah Foundation to record the testimony of survivors of the holocaust, aware that China is bankrolling Darfur's genocide?

And then later:

Does Mr. Spielberg really want to go down in history as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games? Do the various television sponsors around the world want to share in that shame? Because they will. Unless, of course, all of them add their singularly well-positioned voices to the growing calls for Chinese action to end the slaughter in Darfur.

And so this week, Stephen Spielberg pulled out of acting as the Artistic Director for the Beijing Olympics. He was quoted as saying:

After careful consideration, I have decided to formally announce the end of my involvement as one of the overseas artistic advisers to the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympic Games.
In anticipation that this day might one day come, I left unsigned the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games contract presented to me nearly a year ago. Since that time, I have made repeated efforts to encourage the Chinese government to use its unique influence to bring safety and stability to the Darfur region of Sudan. Although some progress has been made along the way, most notably, the passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1769, the situation in Darfur continues to worsen and the violence continues to accelerate.
With this in mind, I find that my conscience will not allow me to continue with business as usual.


Mia Farrow is hardcore even if she comes across as mildly hysterical. This isn’t the first time she has laid it out on the line for the people of Darfur either. In April last year she offered to exchange her freedom and go to jail in place of Suleiman Jamous, a humanitarian worker for the Sudan Liberation Army. Jamous was considered a crucial diplomatic figure in Darfur and he needed to leave the UN hospital he was confined to in order to get surgery elsewhere but if he left he would have been arrested. So Mia Farrow wrote a letter to Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the Sudanese president, offering to take his place.

The interesting thing about Mia Farrow is that she looks so small and feeble and yet she’s this powerhouse of fearless force. In fact, if you glued Mia Farrow, Angelina Jolie, Al Gore and Leonardo di Caprio together you would basically have a super weapon. Glue them together, get them each a laptop and within hours, people like Dick Cheney, Michael Lucas, Ann Coulter, Spencer Pratt, Paris Hilton and Bill O’Reilly would melt into ash. Probably. [source] [source] [source]

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