Brad and Angelina Have Inquisitive Kids

Good morning to all the JP Fans.

You are right anustin, Us mag is a ****.

Angelina Jolie appeals for more Afghan returnee support after visit 24 Oct 2008 12:02:48 GMT
Source: UNHCR
Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author’s alone.
UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie yesterday (Thursday) concluded her first visit to Afghanistan, where she saw both the successes and difficulties of refugee return and reintegration.

Ms. Jolie commented that “the courage, resilience and quiet dignity of returnee families rebuilding their lives against the kind of adversity few of us can imagine shows the human spirit at its best.” She appealed for long-term commitments to Afghanistan and greater humanitarian support for the population as the harsh Afghan winter approaches.

Ms. Jolie is no stranger to UNHCR’s Afghan operation, one of our biggest worldwide. She had met with Afghan refugees in neighbouring Pakistan twice in recent years and wished to see for herself how returnees were coping on their return to Afghanistan.

Her visit, which ran from Tuesday to Thursday, was also aimed at raising awareness of the refugee issue ahead of an international conference on return and reintegration to be held in Kabul in November. Despite the huge returns to Afghanistan – over 5 million people have gone home over the past six years – approximately 3 million registered refugees remain in neighbouring Iran and Pakistan.

During her mission, Ms. Jolie travelled to Nangahar province, where almost 20 percent of all returnees have settled since 2002. She visited the Lower Sheikh Mesri and Tangi settlement sites where recent returnees from Pakistan are living on desolate, desert land in tattered tents and makeshift shelters. The returnees told her they could not return to their places of origin due to a lack of land and poor security. She also visited UNHCR income-generating projects for vulnerable women in Jalalabad city.

The goodwill ambassador witnessed similar challenges in Kabul, where she visited families who had returned from Pakistan in 2003 but have still been unable to go back to their home villages. They have been squatting in public buildings in Kabul for several years due to the lack of available land in Parwan, their province of origin. The returnees explained that landlessness and insecurity were not the only obstacles to return. Economic problems in rural areas such as a lack of employment opportunities also influenced their decision to remain in the capital despite the difficult conditions there.

Ms. Jolie ended her trip by calling for more international commitment to help returnee reintegration through supporting long-term national development programmes in Afghanistan. Next month’s international conference, co-chaired by the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and UNHCR, will address how best to ensure the sustainable return of refugees and the displaced in the years to come.

Another stupid comment. It just goes to show how self-absorbed she was prior to having children. Hopefully that has changed, but I’m going out on a limb and guessing no. A leopard can’t change their spots. Someone needs to tell her to shut up.

who gives a ****

FYI @ 10/24/2008 at 8:59 am
Just for you, Since you love BP so much.

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/78773

Brad Pitt: Balanced, Loving, Generous Father, Partner, Artist, Humanist.

Alice Aspen March
October 23, 2008
I´ve been watching Brad Pitt live his life for almost two decades now. He´s shown all of us how it is to be loving, vulnerable, productive and very human.

We all read about his courtship and opulent marriage to Jennifer Anniston and their subsequent divorce. They appeared on every conceivable magazine cover, in every newspaper and in abundant conversations on radio, television and between people. In other words, he was visible to us at all times. That seems to be the American dream: to become such an important and rich celebrity, that you´re constantly pursued by the paparazzi and almost everyone wants to know almost everything about you. Where did that dream come from?

And then that particular dream life shattered. Perhaps Brad didn´t want to be just another good looking actor with a good looking wife. Perhaps he needed more out of his life. He and Jennifer separated, as he had discovered another woman, who appeared to appeal to him more, Angelina Jolie. He seemed to be captivated by her life style as well as by her beauty and fame. Angelina had adopted a son, Maddox, from Cambodia. Soon, Brad, Angelina and Maddox became a mega topic for the media; they were seen at home and away, when they were traveling to far off places becoming involved in international world-wide aid causes, giving money away. Angelina had already become an active United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for Refugees.

Then together, Brad and Angelina, adopted another child, Zahara, a little girl from Ethiopia. And then they adopted another son, Pax, from Vietnam. Then soon, they had their own daughter, Shiloh. They were creating a multinational, family. This summer Angelina gave birth to twins, a son and a daughter, Knox-Leon and Vivienne Marcheline. All this is to say that they now have six children under the age of eight. Brad was quoted as saying, “I don´t know if I have enough attention to give all these children!” Now, that´s an honest and thoughtful bit of thinking.

Yes, Brad and Angelina have the money to finance an entire staff of helpers, nannies, cooks, cleaners, tutors, and security along with the money to fly their own planes, to live in different countries for as long a time as they want. Yes, their kids, like all others, really only need and want abundant attention from their parents. Angelina has publically admitted that when she came home after having the twins, all the other kids just wanted to climb in bed with her, to be with her. Several publications reported that this was a rough time for her. No wonder. She needed personal recovery time, time to breast feed her new-borns, time to connect with her four others, time for her relationship with Brad. There are simply not enough hours in the day to handle all those tasks thoroughly or without almost personally imploding. I hear more and more people talk about being over whelmed. Technology demands appear to be wrecking havoc with our time balancing and personal connecting in families today.

Time is the most precious commodity we have, and it seems to go by quicker and quicker. School time is fast approaching for the Pitt-Jolie family. Before kids start to school, it´s easier to live in different places. I read that Maddox now doesn´t want to go to school outside his home, that he wants to be a baby again, as his youngest siblings are getting all the attention. These are the most normal of children´s feelings, and attention must be paid to them. And Brad is paying attention. When Angelina was most overwhelmed, he pleaded with her to get some personal help, which she ultimately did. He took both sons, Maddox and Pax, on a father-son trip to Venice, while Angelina was in her most stressed-out days, working to be everything to everyone. Brad seems to be honestly and visibly enjoying his time with Angelina, his kids, his colleagues, his humanitarian fund-raising and his home building in New Orleans.

He and George Clooney recently shared partying time in Venice, while they celebrated their roles in an upcoming movie. George commented, “I couldn´t do what Brad and Angie are doing. I wouldn´t have the patience or dedication you need to take care of a family.”

Time and patience: both involve paying attention: being present, listening, looking, hugging!

Parents are role-modeling constantly; kids learn what they see. Kids who have never experienced loving and attentive parents do not know how to be loving and attentive. I am passionate, now, about all of us learning how to be parents, to be in relationships, to balance our lives – especially in these frenetic times.

When a couple has six young children, the needs for attention are never-ending and abundant. Nannies are not mommies; they can be significant-others, if they stay around long enough. Kids want their mommy and daddy to recognize them, to be present for them, to be with them. Four prominent professors from the fields of psychiatry, sociology, economics and neurobiology have concluded in a prominent research project with thirty-seven pages of references that the bottom- line is kids need quality attention and time more than they need toys!!! Raising kids is labor-intensive, to be sure. The kind of attention that we get in our childhoods lives with us forever. We all need to realize that and discover what our attention-impact is on kids and on the rest of the people in our lives.

For example, there´s considerable research about military families who must often move their families. The kids carry attachment problems with them forever, for whenever they make new friends, they soon have to move on. We know so much more today about what it takes to raise healthy families, families who connect with each other, can communicate easily and honestly, who discover how different their kids are and how different the attention each family member needs! Our lives are all about attention. What kind we get, how we get it, and how we feel about the kind we get.

Brad has called in his mother and father to extend the family attention-giving. He obviously has shown through pictures and interviews that he has a healthy and loving family to support him. Angie´s older brother, James, shows up also to participate in their family’s events. Brad has expressed his wish for both Jennifer and Angelina to heal their outages with certain family members. That is wise. The more positive and connecting experiences we can provide for each other and for our kids, the happier, healthier and competent they will grow.

As I have watched, Brad Pitt seems to be striving to exemplify a fine father role-model these days

sara @ 10/24/2008 at 9:14 am

Well Sara, OPEN your eyes and LOOK around you! Most young folks these days are very self-absorbed. One only can hope they have their maturity kicked up a gear when they have kids. I think Angelina has done an amazing job with her family and volunteer work. I realize for folks like you seven years at the volunteer work and six at raising the kids means it is just a fad and won’t last. BUT she truly seems happy and centered and I bet it lasts a lifetime. She genuinely seems to enjoy her kids which is more than you can say for a lot of people.
I suppose tho you feel girls like Bristol Palin, both Spears chickies, Ashley Simpson, Nicole Ritchie et al are better equipped to bear their young. They are all so mature and so thoughtful of others. Haha.
You rock Angie and Brad!

http://www.nj.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2008/10/24/

Changeling (R) Universal (141 min.) Directed by Clint Eastwood. With Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich. Opens Friday at theaters in New York.

Clint Eastwood knows all about powerful emotions.

The cold fire of revenge. The slow smoldering of greed. The unquenchable flames of rage.

But they’re nothing measured against a mother’s love.

That’s the power he puts onscreen in “Changeling” — one woman’s dedication to her only son. And compared to the courage this heroine shows — as she all but walks through hell itself in search of her boy when he disappears — Dirty Harry and the Man With No Name are a couple of cowards.

Eastwood’s new film as a director is based on a true, if mostly forgotten story — how one night in 1928, single mother Christine Collins came home from work to find her 9-year-old son, Walter, missing. Five months later, the Los Angeles Police Department — under increasing pressure — produced the boy and reunited mother and child.

Except, Christine said, there was a problem. This wasn’t her child.

It was clear to others, too — the boy’s teacher, the boy’s dentist. But the police stubbornly would not, could not, admit their mistake. And when Christine loudly kept denying the boy was hers — and insisting that the police were wasting valuable time by not continuing their search — they did the only logical thing.

They declared her dangerously insane and locked her away.

It’s an astonishing story, and it contains a thrilling performance by Angelina Jolie, who takes Christine from quietly capable telephone operator to impassioned advocate to furious mental patient — and beyond. It’s award-worthy work, with the same kind of “Snake Pit” melodrama that got her an Oscar for “Girl, Interrupted,” and it won’t be forgotten this year.

Eastwood, meanwhile — typically for an actor-turned-director — has paid close attention to the supporting performances as well. John Malkovich, his old nemesis from “In the Line of Fire,” gets a rare good-guy part as a crusading minister; Jason Butler Harner, in a tremendous movie debut, is a loathsome presence as a man with crucial information.

The script by J. Michael Stracyznski is less artful. It leaves out the fact that the real-life villain was abetted in his crimes by his mother, which would have provided a black shadow to the theme of maternal devotion. And true or not, several events — a nick-of-time intervention, a faint into the arms of a suddenly appearing friend — feel like pure Hollywood.

Eastwood’s direction can be formulaic, too. It’s interesting to see him — particularly after back-to-back war films — once again exploring strong female characters, a longtime interest he’s rarely given credit for. But conversely, he’s too often overpraised for being “minimalist” when actually his filmmaking can be merely flat — the compositions and editing rarely rise above the utilitarian here, and his own score is derivative.

But none of that detracts from Jolie’s work. In fact, Eastwood’s own straightforward directorial reserve ends up only complementing it. This is one movie where the star really is the star. And delivers a performance of which any actress can be truly proud, as — wearing no more armor than a felt cloche, warm coat and fresh swipe of lipstick — she goes to war for her son.

# 5 SERA @ 10/24/2008 at 8:40 am

Just a note to all Jolie Pitt fans. When you go to see Angies movies, 1/3 of your ticket purchase will go to charity. It’s how Angie rolls.

+++++++++++++++++++

Sorry to point this out, but this isn’t accurate. Angie’s salary is independent of the box office of the movie. Any profits go to the studio NOT in Angie’s pocket to give to charity.

The truth would be - Go see Angie’s movies to contribute to the success of the movie, which in turn will allow her to ask for a higher salary, which in turn leads to more money she can give to charity.

Without success at the box office Angie will become Nic Kidman - ablel to demand the highest salary in HW…but nobody goes to see her movies, she’s labelled “Box Office Poison” (a la X) and she’s no longer able to command huge paydays, which would affect the amounts she donates to charity.

SERA @ 10/24/2008 at 8:40 am
Funny JJ combo thread. . Just a note to all Jolie Pitt fans. When you go to see Angies movies, 1/3 of your ticket purchase will go to charity. It’s how Angie rolls.
—————–
You said it Sera, we fans need to rally and go see her movie. In my area, the movie will debut next week. The movie is getting mixed reviews and haters can’t wait to slam Angelina’s acting. It doesn’t affect me one bit. Next Friday can’t come here soon enough.!!!!!

Go see Changling. it was a good movie.

# 6 Still doing Good work @ 10/24/2008 at 8:46 am

Angelina Jolie appeals for more Afghan returnee support after visit 24 Oct 2008

++++++++++++++++++

I love how Angie quietly does these visits and then publicizes them afterwards.

Didn’t we have a troll a while back who said Angie would stop doing her UNHCR work after having the twins? Moron. I’d say her UNHCR work is one of the reasons she’s considering retiring from acting. Six kids, a hubby who can command an even higher salary she does, interest and participation in humanitarian work…why make movies? Certainly why make more than 1 a year?

You know the tabloid industry hoes are shaking in their Louboutins at the prospect of their all-time covergirl retreating into her private life…especically since Brad provides them with so little material for negative cover stories about her. Hehehehehehehe…GO ANGIE!!