Madonna remains an educator

The first school Madonna planned to bring Kabbalah to Malawi didn't end well. In fact, it didn't start well, with £2.4million being somehow consumed without a single child being taught about magic water or magic string.

Still, when life gives Madonna lemons, Madonna puts a biopic of a lemon farmer into planning, and so she's trying again.

This time, though, she's giving some money to people who actually know what they're doing, BuildOn.

Madonna seems to think of this as her charity building schools rather than just giving a charitable donation; hopefully the work being done by BuildOn will mean the schools don't have to pretend that New York Kabbalah is an actual thing.

Madonna Kabbalah school staff call in the lawyers

More misery from the collapse of the Raising Malawi school: Madonna is being sued by eight staff who claim they were forced to accept unfair conditions as part of their termination:

The charity workers' lawyer, Mzondi Chirambo, said the singer had 14 days to respond to their concerns.

"Their employment was terminated by the trustees of Raising Malawi Academy for Girls ostensibly following the change of plan not to build the school as planned," he told Reuters news agency. "My clients are also being forced to sign a discriminatory termination agreement before they are paid their benefits."

Madonna is rumoured to be planning a counter-suit. Won't somebody think of the... oh, what were they called again? Those people they were meant to be helping. Yes, them.

Madonna's charity abandons Malawi school build

It turns out that even a combination of Madonna and Kabbalah can't build a school, as Raising Malawi has junked plans to build:

The organisation, Raising Malawi, has ousted its board of directors and replaced its members with a new set of officials that includes Madonna and her manager, the Times reported.

"A thoughtful decision has been made to discontinue plans for the Raising Malawi Academy for Girls, as it was originally conceived," Michael Berg, co-founder of Raising Malawi, said in an e-mail to members who had contributed to the project.

Perhaps we should send in Toby Young - he seems determined to open a school despite knowing bugger all about it, so he has the perfect credentials.

Raising Malawi has so far spent over two million on not building a school, and you'd have to say brining the management of the project closer to the heart of the Kabbalah Center doesn't really bode well for the future.

Madonna unhappy with Malawi

I'm often quite hard on Madonna, so fair play to her for not mincing her words about the sentences handed by Malawian courts to two gay men.

Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza have been sentenced to 14 years' hard labour for gross indecency. Of the being gay sort.

Madonna is shaking her head:

"I am shocked and saddened by the decision made by the Malawian court, which sent two innocent men to prison," Madonna said Friday in a statement posted on her web site.

"Malawi took a giant step backward," the singer continued. "The world is filled with pain and suffering; therefore, we must support out basic human right to love and be loved."

"I call upon the progressive men and women of Malawi - and around the world - to challenge this decision in the name of human dignity and equal rights for all," Madonna said.

Of course, she is a little compromised - after all, she was quite happy for the Malawian courts to ignore the basic rights of people when she swooped in to collect children. And while it's great that she's standing up for gay rights in Malawi, it sits uncomfortably with her attempts to establish the New York brand of Kabbalah in the country - a cult which is quite happy to call homosexuality a sin. Because that'll help.

Madonna explains her obsession

What, you may have wondered, led Madonna to sign up to the pretend-version of Kabbalah?

She's answered that question:

'There was something missing in my life'

Yes, yes, there was. The ability to spot a charlatan selling water and ribbons at inflated prices to the gullibly miserable.

Life no longer seemed like a series of Random events,' she writes. 'I also began to see that being Rich and Famous wasn't going to bring me lasting fulfillment and that it was not the end of the journey.'

Oddly, though, she didn't seem to worry about no longer being rich or famous. Even as unfulfilling as all that money is, she does seem to have come to terms with the emptiness.

Madonna gets what she wants

So, Mercy has got family who don't want her adopted. The African Union code on overseas adoption makes it clear Mercy should stay in Malawi unless absolutely necessary. Malawian law insists that prospective adoptive parents must spend 18 months in the country prior to any adoption.

So, why exactly is Madonna being given the child?

But the appeals court said the star's commitment to helping disadvantaged children had not been considered.

Now, it's true that Madonna does do a fair bit for Malawian children - admittedly, much related to trying to push the Kabbalahistic SFK programme, but a fair bit none the less. But unless I'm missing something about basic principles of justice, shouldn't charitable donations and such like be left unconsidered? It might be of value when deciding on somebody's character, but why does having the money to give large charitable donations have any bearing at all on if the basic rules on adoption should be set aside?

Jacques Peritti had an interesting and balanced piece in yesterday's Guardian on the story underneath the adoption, although it was so balanced it did end up suggesting that, you know, colonialism and indoctrination isn't such a bad thing:

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.

Wasn't tying relief and charity and help and hope to an enforced conversion the problem with Mother Teresa's 'get baptised, then you can eat' style of selective assistance?

Save The Children from Madonna

It's not just everyone in the world outside of her employees finding Madonna's collection of African children slightly unsettling. Save The Children have their worries, too:

Spokesman Dominic Nutt said: “What Madonna is doing verges on a puppy parade. People like her are looking for the most beautiful child. They wouldn’t choose a child with a disability or special needs.

“It doesn’t help to take one child out of an orphanage to a huge palace and buy them a pony. All these children who may only have one parent, or no parent, cannot be transported to Notting Hill by pop stars.

“Madonna’s heart may be in the right place, but other mothers will look up to her and she’s setting a terrible example.”

Talking of things being in the right place, it's interesting that the grandmother of Madonna's latest target - who up until now had vociferously decried the plans - is now being "looked after" by the Madonna-funded Kabbalah charity.

Here we go again, then.

Rav Singh: Madonna calls in the boss

While most gossip columns are happy to speculate that Madonna and Guy might be living separate lives, in different cities, different countries and even - we think this was People - that they'd built a time machine so they could each keep to a different geological eras - Rav Singh knows the real signs of marriage strain:

I hear relations in the seven-year marriage are now so frosty that they’re hardly talking at the dinner table.

We love the idea that the Ritchies might be so stressed they're still meeting for a family dinner, but just not talking. It gets worse:

A source close to Material Girl Madge, told me: “Things are in a bad way. Rather than speak to her directly, Guy will ask their son Rocco to ask Madge to pass the salt during dinner.”

We're given to understand that shortly after publication, the "source close to Material Girl Madge" rang up again to tell Rav they'd got confused - that wasn't Madonna's household at all, that was the Fourmiles in an episode of George And Mildred they were thinking of.

Madonna has asked Rabbi Philip Berg to intervene, says Rav. It's not clear what he's going to sell her to help.

Rav also claims - somewhat implausibly - that the glossy magazines aren't interested in buying Mariah Carey's wedding. Given the way magazines will sign up anyone vaguely famous to splash their wedding across the yawning, empty pages ("This week: She came third on Are You Smarter Than A Ten Year Old? - now, she's hoping to get the 'I Do' question right.") if there's any truth in the story, it's going to be a disagreement on price rather than a lack of interest in the photos.

Madonna and child

You might recall back when Jon Bovi Jon suggested that Madonna didn't actually protect her kids from the media, there was an angry reaction from the Ciccone camp denying that Madge paraded her kids for the cameras.

It's presumably a different child in the pictures from the Gucci Supports The Cults event in New York, then. But it does look a lot like a child being paraded for photographers.

Raising Malawi on the UN lawns

It's hard to know what's more unsettling about the UN getting involved in a Madonna/Kabbalah fundraiser: the presence of Gucci, launching a shop for overpriced geegaws off the back of orphans, or the UN letting Kabbalah raise funds for its indoctrination-through-aid programme.

Lest we forget, Raising Malawi includes as one of its founding aims the intention to push the 'Child spirituality' programme alongside the day-to-day work:

Create a sense of self empowerment. This is where real societal change begins. To this end we are co-creating a curriculum with local Malawian teachers (based on the principles of the Spirituality for Kids Program) that empowers children with universal life skills.

Spirituality For Kids sounds like a lovely, fluffy idea, until you start to explore its teachings a bit, and its claims that "life is fair" because the "law of the universe" is that you get back what you put out - the sort of belief that leads, for example, to the conclusion of those who died in the holocaust were responsible for their own demise.

Madonna, Gucci team up to raise funds for indoctinurseries

Madonna and Gucci are coming together to throw a massive charity fundraising bash. They're set to raise a million quid, half of which will go to UNICEF. We're sure they'll be delighted with the gift, although whoever turns up to accept the cheque might have to bite their tongue not to blurt out anything about the Convention on the Rights of the Child, article 21.

The downside is that the other half of the cash will go to Raising Malawi, the Michael Berg/Madge charity which balances its lot-of-good-work-for-orphans with hammering the Kabbalah cult's Spirituality for Kids message into their heads.

We're all going on Kabbalah holiday

How heartwarming to hear of plans for Madonna to go on a celebrity-sparkled "pilgrimage" round the holy sites of Kabbalah - the ones in Israel rather than, say, the place where they pump the ordinary water into plastic bottles to help increase the price of it. She's supposedly going with Donna Karan, Demi Moore and Ashton 'Dude, where's my cult' Kutcher.

It's notable that, rather than hire a coach, they've got a private jet - so, presumably, this is a different Madonna from the one who appealed to us to take care of the planet during Live Earth.

Madobono

There's every chance there's no close personal friend and the quote was cooked up while two of The Sun's journalists were waiting for their cup-a-soup to dissolve. But, according to a "family friend" of Madonna, she wants to be thought of as a Mrs. Bono:

She has poured her heart and soul into this movie and believes it will have the same effect on the world as the Live Aid concerts.

“Madonna wants to dedicate the rest of her life to helping children.

“She desperately wants to become the female Bono and be taken as seriously as him. Her days of being the Material Girl are gone.”

That this quote carries the byline of "VIRGINIA WHEELER in Malawi" makes it look even more suspect - this would be a close friend who Wheeler happened to bump into in Africa, was it?

And while we're not fond of Bono, at least he has the honesty to admit that much of his fundraising work is done in the context of being a businessman, not using it to try and foist some cult onto a desperate people.

If Madonna is "dedicating the rest of her life" to helping children, then what's all the work being done on prepping a hip-hop album for?

And does she really believe that a self-serving film showing her hugging African babies is going to "have the same effect on the world as the Live Aid concerts"?

God complex, eh? Congratulations, Madonna. You really are the female Bono.

David's dad: I've heard nothing

As Madonna flies to Malawi to expressly not spirit away another child, David Banda's dad says he's excited to hear that he might get a chance to see his son. Especially since he's not heard a word from the Ciccone Organisation since she took his kid off last year:

"Officially I have not heard anything. There has been no communication whatsoever but I have heard the rumours and I get the feeling that she might be coming.

"I am excited. I hope that there will be an opportunity for me to see my son."

Although Mr Banda insisted he had 'no regrets' about agreeing to the adoption, he expressed disappointment that Madonna had not kept in touch, saying he would ask for her address and phone number so that he could contact her.

He said: "I understand that she is a busy person but if there is an opportunity, I would appreciate it if she could tell me how my son is doing, which has not been the case so far."

You know what, Yohane? You might think of reversing the charges if she does give you a phone number.

Meanwhile, Madonna's insistence that there was nothing at all murky about her getting such a swift adoption despite it apparently having no similarity to normal procedures or legal obligations has taken another knock.

As if the sponsorship of an adoption official to study in the UK wasn't undue influence enough, it now turns out that there was a financial link between the Kabbalah charity fronted by Madonna and the orphanage which offered David to her:

Despite protestations that Madonna had not given funds to the orphanage, it has emerged that her charity Raising Malawi financed a refurbishment.

A source at the home, which looks after 420 children, said: "Staff salaries have gone up, everything has been repainted, there are new clothes for the orphans, new beds and mattresses, and they've started work on new, bigger dormitories. I suppose you'd call it a reward for helping with the adoption."

The home has also started running courses provided by Spirituality for Kids, a group linked to the Kabbalah religion practised by Madonna.

Oh, good. How great it must be to hear that the answer to your problems is overpriced red string and an eight quid bottle of water.

Boy George takes it online

Oh, Boy George, is this what you're reduced to? Sitting in front of a computer making tart remarks about pop celebrities?

Ouch... sorry about that, we just got a beam in our eyes. Never mind, spot of Optrex sorted it out lovely. Where were we? Yes, unable to find a record deal, George has decided to promote his music online. Of course, rather than do this by putting his music online, he's instead recorded a video which seems to be little more than a run through of his last five years of bitching. Not, of course, that he doesn't have a point:

He said: "Nobody has actually bothered to investigate the Kabbalah attitude to gay people and I can assure you that I have investigated it, and they are homophobic.

"And I do think it's shocking that somebody who has made so much money out of gay people is now part of an organisation which is clearly anti-gay. Having said that I rest my sling-backs."

You'll note, of course, his Dittoesque claim that he, and he alone, has investigated the attitude of Kabbalah to homosexuality - although that simply isn't true, as he'd have discovered during his investigations, surely?

He then rolls on through his usual stuff, as time-worn as a Ben Elton stand-up routine.

Elton John? Doubleseat

"He treats people like accessories. I was invited to dinner and during the meal all he did was try and get me to bitch about George Michael.

"Because I knew he was trying to pull my tongue I wouldn't do it. After the meal he drove off in his Rolls Royce. He had given me his number and when I called it, it had been disconnected - surplus to requirements."

David Furnish? Doubleseat, doubleseat

And David Furnish followed me into the toilet and banged on the door and said 'Why are you so horrible about my boyfriend?' and I said 'Look, let me go to the loo and I'll come out and talk to you'. The next day they fed a story to the newspapers that I was cowering from David Furnish."

And so on, and so on. Don't worry if you miss it - it's sure to come round again.