Long. Infuriating. Informative Read from Rolling Stone

[the_future_modernes]

via jhameia How the World Failed Haiti


On Pg 6:

Graham maintains that the Clinton Foundation has "extensive experience in post-crisis management and development." The foundation's role, she adds, "is to assist the Haitians, not to prescribe or implement solutions unilaterally." But on the ground in Haiti, Clinton's surrogates managed to alienate almost everyone with whom they came into contact. "When you listen to President Clinton, his rhetoric is right on point," says a prominent Haitian. "But his people were incredibly arrogant; they knew nothing about Haiti or Haitians. They acted like, because they worked for a former president, they ruled the world." In one incident, he says, Haitian ministers were shut out of an IHRC board meeting after a Clinton staffer told them their names were not on the list. "These are the ministers of Haiti — it's their country! What do you mean 'not on the list'?MORE

I cannot.

London Riots

[la_vie_noire]

Such a brilliant post. Panic on the streets of London.

Violence is rarely mindless. The politics of a burning building, a smashed-in shop or a young man shot by police may be obscured even to those who lit the rags or fired the gun, but the politics are there. Unquestionably there is far, far more to these riots than the death of Mark Duggan, whose shooting sparked off the unrest on Saturday, when two police cars were set alight after a five-hour vigil at Tottenham police station. A peaceful protest over the death of a man at police hands, in a community where locals have been given every reason to mistrust the forces of law and order, is one sort of political statement. Raiding shops for technology and trainers that cost ten times as much as the benefits you’re no longer entitled to is another. A co-ordinated, viral wave of civil unrest across the poorest boroughs of Britain, with young people coming from across the capital and the country to battle the police, is another.

Months of conjecture will follow these riots. Already, the internet is teeming with racist vitriol and wild speculation. The truth is that very few people know why this is happening. They don’t know, because they were not watching these communities. Nobody has been watching Tottenham since the television cameras drifted away after the Broadwater Farm riots of 1985. Most of the people who will be writing, speaking and pontificating about the disorder this weekend have absolutely no idea what it is like to grow up in a community where there are no jobs, no space to live or move, and the police are on the streets stopping-and-searching you as you come home from school. The people who do will be waking up this week in the sure and certain knowledge that after decades of being ignored and marginalised and harassed by the police, after months of seeing any conceivable hope of a better future confiscated, they are finally on the news. In one NBC report, a young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:

"Yes," said the young man. "You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot, would you?"

"Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you."

Eavesdropping from among the onlookers, I looked around. A dozen TV crews and newspaper reporters interviewing the young men everywhere ’’

The "White Mouse" had died. May she raise as much hell in the afterlife as she did in life.

[the_future_modernes]

Unsung Heroes: Nancy Wake

It’s 1944, you’re a member of the resistance in occupied France, and your vitally important radio codes have just been destroyed in a German raid. What do you do?

Nancy Wake c.1945

Well, if you’re Nancy Wake you cycle alone across 500km of enemy territory in order to find replacements. Who was Nancy Wake and what made her so astonishingly badass? Let’s step back to the start of World War II to find out.

A New Zealand-born nurse, Wake had travelled the world before settling in France in the 1930s. At the start of the war she was living with her new husband, industrialist Henri Fiocca, in the hills outside Marseille. Within months this would be occupied territory as Western Europe fell to the rapid advance of Nazi forces.

With a continent falling to the horrors of war, and possessing sufficient money to live comfortably anywhere in the world, many of us might say “hmm, perhaps it’s time to move to America.” Many of us might choose to keep our heads down, live the life of a wealthy socialite – a relatively safe course of action even in wartime. But not Nancy Wake. She became involved in the Resistance, delivering supplies and acting as a courier, purchasing a vehicle to serve as an ambulance for the care of refugees. Wake became more deeply involved with the Resistance as the war continued, becoming a key figure in the escape lines that helped smuggle escapees, downed airmen and Dunkirk survivors over the Pyrenees and into Spain. (And here it should be noted that Wake was far from the only woman to go to extraordinary risks to save the lives of escapees. Andrée de Jongh of the Belgian Comète Line and countless others performed acts of extraordinary heroism to do what they saw as a necessary task.)

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She could kill Nazis with her bare hands: Nancy 'the White Mouse' Wake has died

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World leaders pay tribute to war heroine Nancy Wake

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1987 Documentary:

Nancy Wake- Codename 'The White Mouse'(1987) Part 1 of 6

Nancy Wake- Codename 'The White Mouse'(1987) Part 2 of 6

Nancy Wake- Codename 'The White Mouse'(1987) Part 3 of 6

Nancy Wake- Codename 'The White Mouse'(1987) Part 4 of 6


Nancy Wake- Codename 'The White Mouse'(1987) Part 5 of 6


Nancy Wake- Codename 'The White Mouse'(1987) Part 6 of 6


Film coming up: Bruce Beresford to direct film on Nancy Wake's life: The White Mouse

Australian director Bruce Beresford has signed on to direct feature film The White Mouse, about the country’s most decorated World War II servicewoman, Nancy Wake.

Produced by Peter Glover and Sue Milliken (Farscape, Sirens), the film – which hasn't raised finance – will tell the story of Wake, who died early Monday morning (Australian time) in London, aged 98. The announcement was made by a publicist on behalf of Milliken.MORE

Director Bruce Beresford reveals wishlist for Nancy Wake leading lady

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Resistance heroine who led 7,000 men against the Nazis

Nancy Wake, "the White Mouse" and the most decorated woman of the 1939-45 war, disliked people messing around with her life story. Small wonder. It was an extraordinary story and an extraordinary life.

Ms Wake, who has died in London just before her 99th birthday, was a New Zealander brought up in Australia. She became a nurse, a journalist who interviewed Adolf Hitler, a wealthy French socialite, a British agent and a French resistance leader. She led 7,000 guerrilla fighters in battles against the Nazis in the northern Auvergne, just before the D-Day landings in 1944. On one occasion, she strangled an SS sentry with her bare hands. On another, she cycled 500 miles to replace lost codes. In June 1944, she led her fighters in an attack on the Gestapo headquarters at Montlucon in central France.

Work began earlier this month on a feature film about Nancy Wake's life. Ms Wake, one of the models for Sebastian Faulks' fictional heroine, Charlotte Gray, had mixed feelings about previous cinematic efforts to portray her wartime exploits, including a TV mini-series made in 1987.

"It was well-acted but in parts it was extremely stupid," she said. "At one stage they had me cooking eggs and bacon to feed the men. For goodness' sake, did the Allies parachute me into France to fry eggs and bacon for the men? There wasn't an egg to be had for love nor money. Even if there had been why would I be frying it? I had men to do that sort of thing."

Ms Wake was also furious the TV series suggested she had had a love affair with one of her fellow fighters. She was too busy killing Nazis for amorous entanglements, she said.MORE

Nancy Wake Wikipedia Take a look at the list of her medals!!!!