The Princess Spy

Noor Inayat Khan

Alias Nora Baker, and codenamed Madeleine, was a beautiful and talented princess. 

Before the war, she had bagged a degree in Child Psychology, had written a lot of poetry, as well as many children's stories. 

Her stories appeared in Paris newspapers and on French radio. 

By the time she was twenty five years old, her book, Twenty Jataka Tales, had been published in France, Britain and the United States. 

Noor was also an accomplished musician. 

Her greatest love was music and she was said to have played the harp beautifully.

WW2 began the same year her book was published, and during 1940, Germany invaded France. 

Noor and her family became refugees and just managed to get on the last boat leaving the French coast for Britain.

She joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force and trained to become a wireless operator.

Her excellent radio skills and fluent French brought her to the attention of SOE (The Special Operations Executive) and they came calling to recruit her.

Unknown to the SOE at that time was the fact that the individual Henri Dericourt, who met her plane when it landed in France, was a double agent who worked for both the British and the Germans.

Within days of her arrival, all the British agents that worked for the Prosper network she was assigned to work with, had been arrested by the Germans. 

All of them, except Noor.

Because of this development, SOE ordered her to return to England but Noor refused, insisting that she would rebuild the network on her own.

She stayed at her post, and probably because SOE didn't insist hard enough, she ended up doing the work of six radio operators while the Germans hunted for her.

Her transmissions became the only link between the agents around the Paris area and London. Her work had become crucial to the war effort, as she helped airmen to escape and also in facilitating important deliveries to come in.

She moved constantly and evaded arrest many times, until...

The sister of the leader of one of the cells she worked with betrayed and informed on her. For money.

After her capture, the Germans asked her to send a message to London, a standard ploy that gives the erroneous impression that she was still operating successfully behind the line.

Princess Noor obliged, but deliberately omitted her "Bluff Security Check" which should have alerted London that she was in the hands of the enemy. 

Amazingly, SOE for some reason missed this clue. 

And so, when the Germans got control of her radio and used their own wireless operators to send messages to London, SOE sent in more agents. 

Predictably, all of them got captured because the Germans were waiting for them.

Promised inducements at first by the Germans if she would cooperate, Princess Noor refused to talk. 

They tried other tactics that had successfully been used on other captured agents, and still they got nothing out of her.

Exasperated and frustrated by her strong will, she was sent off to prison in Germany to receive the harshest treatment possible. 

Kept under inhumane conditions and beaten every day, she remained resolute and unswerving.

Finally, she was shipped to the Dachau concentration camp in Dachau to be tortured and executed.

The final word out of her mouth before she was shot in the back of the head was Liberty!

She died because she believed that all people must be free.

Read More Here...Overlooked No More: Noor Inayat Khan, Indian Princess and British Spy

Noor Inayat Khan was recently suggested to be the new face of the £50 note. 

This created further awareness of her war time efforts. 

The Bank of England however decided that the subject would be a scientist.

In France, a primary school in Suresness has been named after her.


"Without sacrifice there is no resurrection.
Nothing grows and blooms save by giving.
All you try to save in yourself wastes and perishes."
~ Andre Gide (The Fruits of the Earth)

Peace

Christine Granville

Britain's Finest Female Spy

This lady risked her life so many times, solved problems by creating solutions, and many times acted as a catalyst to bring about, and in many cases, brilliant solutions to the problem of the Nazis during the second world war.

She died after the war in June 1952, murdered by someone she thought was her friend, it was totally unexpected. 

To be murdered by a friend during the peace. A feat her professional enemies, crack troops, double agents and the Gestapo tried to achieve and failed to do, every single time. 

She was at one time, at the top of the Gestapo most wanted list during World War 2.

Christine Granville O.B.E.,  George Medal and the Croix de Guerre, was the daughter of a Polish Count, Jerzy Skarbek. Her real name was Maria Krystyna Skarbek.

The amazing exploits of Prime Minister Winston Churchill's favourite spy is recounted by the British documentary series, Secret War, below.

It's not a stretch to speculate that Christine Granville would have survived the peace, as she survived the war, if her unique skills, courage and resilience had been harnessed and redirected after the conflict.

Most of those who worked for the Special Operations Executive, the group set up by Prime Minister Churchill to "set Europe ablaze," returned to what they were doing before the war. 

But not Christine.


Read More About Winston Churchill's Favourite Spy Christine Granville Here

She was in Ethiopia with her husband of just one year when the German army occupied her native Poland.

A truly liberated woman, who was well ahead of her time, she acquitted herself admirably on behalf of the British state by fighting the evil fascistic tyranny of Nazi Germany within the  major war theatres of Europe. 

She fought in Poland, escaped treachery in Hungary, and was one of the key operatives that worked behind enemy lines with the French resistance (the Maquis) to eventually liberate France from Hitler's goons.

Laurence Binyon

Christine Granville, I salute you. You fought for peace. Rest well.


Derek Soyemi


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Cold War Spy

KGB Agent Aldrich Ames

Is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole at a Federal Correctional Institution in the United States of America for a most egregious crime, espionage.

Rick had CIA in his blood. His father had worked for the company as an analyst in Turkey. 

Rick joined up in 1962...

The job took him places. Mexico City, New York, Paris, Rome. 

His Russian was better than good, so he could hang out, mingle and hobnob with the Soviets assigned to the UN.

As Chief of Soviet Branch of the Counter-Intelligence Division for the CIA, his hobnobbing with Soviets wouldn't have seemed suspicious to colleagues.

Sometime in 1985, CIA officer Aldrich (Rick) Ames walked into a Soviet embassy with a massive amount of classified CIA documents under his coat for the KGB. 

A present, to show his good faith. 

He knew the documents would convince of his good intentions, trustworthiness and loyalty to the KGB, after they had been examined.

The reason?

Money, Greed and Vanity.

"I needed the money." He was becoming knee-deep in debt, he said. He also had a personal grouse that he wasn't being promoted fast enough. The one thing everyone agrees on though, and Rick has never denied, was Maria...

Ames met his second wife Maria del Rosario Casa, a Colombian, in Mexico City when he worked there.

Read More Here, Aldrich Ames, American Spy

Some people spy for ideology, patriotism, a cause, or just out of pure bloody-mindedness. Others for personal, psychological, economical and political reasons. 

Ames sold mens lives for his own convenience. "The men I sold... What happened to them also happened to me." He said, talking about the 'living death' of spending the rest of his life in prison.

IN CASE OF ED SHEERAN

Short Stories, Music News, Humour and anything else that comes to mind...

THE ABNORMAL BEAUTY COMPANY

What has one got to do with the other? Nothing. I'm just messing with you!

It's holiday season. Put away your handset and say hello to anyone within polite speaking distance.

Just try it. Dare yourself.

Now, let's eat.

Happy Holidays!

(The original intent was to post in MusicArtinDesign, tossed a coin and here we are)

The 40th President

Of Uruguay

Jose Alberto "Pepe" Mujica Cordano was no ordinary president. 

When he was president, he didn't only talk the talk, he walked it as well. 

In a world that's full of frivolities, egotism and superficiality, this is one man humanity should be proud to look up to and emulate.

We are living at a time when people are inspired and even encouraged to chase wealth and power in what I read somewhere described as; "an almost sociopathic way." 

It should rather be a time to encourage each other to be rich in mind, body and spirit. A time when the needs of everyone should supersede the wants of the few.

Reggae legend Bob Marley's quote that "Some people are so poor all they have is money" puts former president Mujica's perspective and words into sharper focus.

Jose Mujica says the following...

"The way we live and our values are the expression of the society we live in. And we cling to that. It doesn't matter if I'm president (of Uruguay). I've thought about all this a lot.

I spent over ten years in a solitary confinement cell. I had the time. I spent seven years without opening a book. It left me time to think. This is what I discovered:

Either you're happy with very little, without overburdening yourself, because you have happiness inside, or you'll get nowhere.

I am not advocating poverty. I am advocating sobriety.

But we invented a consumer society which is continually seeking growth. When there's no growth, it's tragic. We invented a mountain of superfluous needs. You have to keep buying, (and) throwing away... It's our lives we are squandering. When I buy something, or when you buy it, we're not paying with money. We're paying with the time from our lives we had to spend to earn that money.

The difference is that you can't buy life... Life just goes by. And it's terrible to waste your life, losing your freedom."

(Taken from the documentary HUMAN)

 Jose Mujica: The Global Interview - BBC News  

If there were more leaders like this man on the planet, we would all have very little to worry about.

José Mujica, nicknamed Pepe Mujica, was President of Uruguay from 2010 to 2015. 

A former Tupamaros freedom fighter in the 60s and the 70s, he was detained, like a hostage by the dictatorship between 1973 and 1985.

 He advocates a philosophy of life focused on sobriety: learn to live with what is necessary and fairest.

Jose Mujica: 'I earn more than I need'

'I earn more than I need' Jose Mujica (Talk to Al Jazeera)

Adios Amigos.

Better Than Einstein

Short Stories, Music News, Humour and anything else that comes to mind...

Unknown Author

At the conclusion of the sermon, the worshipers filed out of the sanctuary to greet the minister.

As one of them left, he shook the minister's hand, thanked him for the sermon and said, "Thanks for the message, Reverend. You know, you must be smarter than Einstein."

Beaming with pride, the minister said, "Why, thank you, brother!"

As the week went by, the minister began to think about the man's compliment. 

The more he thought, the more he became baffled as to why anyone would deem him smarter than Einstein. 

So he decided to ask the man the following Sunday.

The next Sunday he asked the parishioner if he remembered the previous Sunday's comment about the sermon. The parishioner replied that he did.

The minister asked: "Exactly what did you mean that I must be smarter than Einstein?"

The man replied, "Well, Reverend, they say that Einstein was so smart that only ten people in the entire world could understand him."

"But Reverend, no one can understand you."

MusicArtinDesign

The Dogon Tribe

And The Ancestors From Space


The Dogon people of Mali in West Africa have a Space history, and it's quite a compelling one too.

Located in the middle of the desert on the South East corner of Mali; "they seem to know things about astronomy which they shouldn't have been able to know," says Laird Scranton, an author.

Artist's View of sirius A and Sirius B

Scranton has authored a number of books two of which are; The Science of the Dogon (Decoding The African Mystery Tradition) and Sacred Symbols of the Dogon (The Key to Advanced Science in the Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs).

 Nobody knows where the Dogon got this incredible ancient knowledge from, except the Dogon themselves who have done a wonderful job of preserving their traditions for centuries. Since they have no written language, they put a high priority on the purity of the spoken language. 

They know facts about the Sirius star system without having access to modern telescopes and other equipment and speak about the second star which cannot be seen by the naked eye. The Dogon have called it the dark star for centuries long before it was discovered by astronomers in the middle of the 20th Century. 

They know the correct orbital period of the two stars, Sirius A and Sirius B.

Dogon priests say their cosmology describes how a tribal god Amma created matter. Their knowledge is so amazing in that they have linguistic definitions for the scientific concepts of the Atom, Proton/Electron Neutron, Fundamental Particles and the Four Spin Categories of Particles. They also know that Matter forms Membranes, the Calabi-Yau space, how Matter begins as waves and that it vibrates. They describe how matter is woven from threads, a modern scientific concept that describes matter as woven from strings.

Read also: The Museum of Unnatural History's post about "The Dogon, the Nommos and the Mystery of Sirius B"

MORE SOFIA

Talking... About now and the future!

No more jokes Sofia, tell us what you really think.

So far every clip I've seen, Sofia has been bestowed and largely presented in or at a human level. People's perception cannot but be affected by this.

Sofia is not flesh and blood. That, she can never be... Notice how easy it was to assign this computer a gender identity. It's a sophisticated machine, a tool with it's bits of information stored in a cloud somewhere, while ours is stored in our heads.

Anyhow, enjoy the video...

The Laziest Writer

On The Planet

Is sitting up in his bed. His mind is in a turmoil, whirring in a hundred different directions all at once. He wants to start writing again... what can he post today that will bring some satisfaction that he is at least beginning to write again?

Maybe he'll write about the twat that loves to post crap on Twitter. It's an obvious truth that he doesn't like twats who post crap on Twitter.com. He suddenly gets a flash from the past. It's funny how the mind works that he can remember a time period thirty years before with absolute clarity. A time when things were so real while at the same time, things weren't exactly what they seemed. Hindsight isn't twenty twenty, hindsight is a bitch!

He needs an angle to be able to tell just one story from those days. In years, it was such a long time ago but in his head, those things seem like it was just yesterday. Should he do a first person narrative? Goodness No! It wouldn't work, the reader wouldn't understand. Who would understand those days anyway? Idea dismissed.

His mind returns, this time to another twit on twitter. The writer is most definitely stumped.

His mind cruises into auto roam and random musings. Why do the spoils always end up with the wrongest, dumbest and least qualified? What is it about losers who see themselves as winners who consequently end up dumbing the rest of us down? Why do we the public, the media and good old nice uncle Joe end up holding these characters in such high esteem? Twits buying from twats that end up dazzling the rest of us with other people's money.

Time to forget about the collective delusion and concentrate on some real shit. There are a diverse range of subjects and topics he could actually write about. He's sure that there are at least five good books he could churn out within a relatively short time frame. Who needs research? Decades of living on the edge trumps any research he could do.

He really believes in the book project, but what he needs right now is stronger than the urge to write. He knows deep down that once he starts, he cannot stop until it's finished. That's a problem because he happens to be the laziest writer on the planet.

So his mind wanders back to the twat on twitter: The least serious leading a society of serious minded people. God help us all. 

Reflecting on current trends, he might just find a serious topic to think about, reflect on and possibly write a post on. But what are the chances that that too hasn't been covered by someone else. Not much can be expected from a lazy writer anyway. He's off the hook.

His mind strays back to the twat that tweets non-stop on Twitter.

Hoaxes

And Fake News

Are trending. So, "what is the difference between a hoax and fake news?" They both seemed very similar to me. There's a difference

According to Wikipedia:

"A hoax is a falsehood deliberately fabricated to masquerade as the truth. It is distinguishable from errors in observation or judgement, rumours, urban legends, pseudosciences, and April Fools Day events that are passed along in good faith by believers or as jokes."

"Fake news is a type of yellow journalism or propaganda that consists of deliberate misinformation or hoaxes spread via traditional print and broadcast news media or online social media. Fake news is written and published with the intent to mislead in order to damage an agency, entity, or person, and/or gain financially or politically, often using sensationalist, dishonest, or outright fabricated headlines to increase readership, online sharing, and internet click revenue."

Similar eh?

Okay, below is one such hoax...

Hamza Bendelladj was never executed. It was a hoax many swallowed hook, line and sinker. The real story is at the bottom of this post.

Surprisingly, many people are still being hoodwinked according to comments I've read on some platforms recently.

GMA News Online actually punctured the hoax in March, 2013. It didn't seem to make a difference.

The facts were eventually reported by BBC News online on 21 April, 2016 after sentencing as follows:

"Computer hackers who created malware that stole about $100m (£70m) have been given long jail sentences in the US.
Russian Aleksandr Andreevich Panin has been sentenced to nine-and-a-half years in jail. His accomplice, Algerian Hamza Bendelladj will serve 15 years.
They created the SpyEye virus package that is believed to have infected more than 50 million computers.
The sophisticated malware could steal sensitive data or let hackers use infectedmachines to send spam"....Full Story here... US bank hackers get long jail term

Remember that lying liars always get found out, and...

☺



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