They Got Away With It AGAIN!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Last week several of the ‘BIG’ banks – you remember, the ones that are too big to let go bust – were fined in the region of $5.7 billion for illegal manipulation of the currency markets.

The usual suspects were included, J P Morgan, Citibank, Barclays  and RBS all pleading guilty – but only after they were sure what the medicine they would be getting would be.

It’s a huge amount of money, there’s no denying that. And losing it will make the banksters hurt a bit. But only a bit.

And that’s the problem.

Yet again the United States government has failed to bring these criminals to justice after more of their deliberate fraud and theft.

In other words, they let them get away with it AGAIN!

Now, if I walk into a branch of, for example, Citibank and try to steal the money that their customers have deposited with them for safe-keeping, I would be videoed, photographed, and if I was lucky enough to get out of the premises, pursued by the police and even the FBI for as long as it took to capture me.

And I couldn’t have any complaints because that’s the way it should be. Thieves should be sought out, captured and after due process thrown into jail.

However, if I am a bankster, have good government contacts, and ply money and favors to those in government, then I am treated very differently.

I can embark on insider trading (which is essentially what the banksters were doing when they were illegally manipulating the currency markets), I can sell loans to people that clearly can’t afford them, then take their houses away or sell on their debt wrapped up in a ‘AAA’ bundle to my richer customers, and after all that steal even more of the money my customers have entrusted to me by awarding myself and my collaborators big bonuses that none of us have earned or are entitled to.

In this scenario am I pursued by the police and FBI?

Nope.

Am I thrown in jail to be the bitch of Skull-cracker Jones or Scarface Smith?

Nope.

Will I have to personally pay back the money I stole?

Nope, again.

So what will happen to me if I am a bankster?

At worst I will get a slap on the wrist and told not to do it again. Even though recent history has proved that this is no deterrent and I will do it again at the first opportunity I get.

And, of course, I don’t have to personally pay the government’s fine no matter how big it may be. Instead my company has to cough up on my behalf.

Not that the company is much bothered either because when it runs out of money it goes back to the government which hands it back at least the value of the fine and usually much, much more.

Think this system is fair?

Neither do I.

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Ants In Your Pants? There’s Plenty Of ‘Em!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Hi and welcome to fact day which does, as the title suggests, include an amazing fact about the number of ants ib the world. They may not be in your pants, but keep a look out just in case!

And now for the facts.

Enjoy.

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Halloween, which we’ve all just endured another year,

is thought to have originated around 4000 B.C.,

which means Halloween has been around for over 6,000 years

and is one of the oldest celebrations in the world.

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Most vegetables and almost all fruits contain

a small amount of alcohol in them.

Cheers!

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Some scientific studies suggest there are about

10,000,000,000,000,000 individual ants

alive on Earth at any given time.

Ants are estimated to represent about 15–20%

of the total terrestrial animal biomass,

which exceeds that of the vertebrates.

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When Pluto was discovered it was initially

believed to be larger than Earth.

Now astronomers know that it’s about

1,455 miles (2,352 kilometers) across,

less than 20 percent as big as the Earth.

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Thomas Stewart Armistead was a Confederate officer

who fought bravely in the American Civil War.

After being wounded at the Battle of the Wilderness he

was captured and placed in a camp near Morris Island

where the Union authorities used him as a human

shield to prevent fire from nearby Confederate artillery batteries.

Thomas Stewart Armistead and 599 other Confederate officers

who had also been captured became known as “The Immortal 600.”

When, on November 16, 1922, Armistead died at the age of 80 he

was the last survivor and member of “The Immortal 600.”

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The American football team the Baltimore Ravens are named

in honor of Edgar Allan Poe’s classic poem ‘The Raven’.

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The construction of the Great Wall of China took over 2 thousands years,

the very first parts being built as early as in the 8th century BC.

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Table for one, sir?

Amsterdam´s restaurant At Eenmaal,

founded by social designer Marina van Goor,

has become famous because the only type of table

that you can find in the restaurant is a table for one.

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The largest thermometer in the world is 134-feet-tall (40.843m)

and was built by businessman Willis Herron in Baker, California.

The thermometer is supposed to serve as a memento of

the highest recorded temperature in the U.S.

measured in nearby Death Valley

– 134 degrees Fahrenheit (56.6 Celsius) in 1913.

The thermometer is no longer in operation,

and was put up for sale in January 2013.

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In 410 A.D. Alaric the Visigoth demanded that Rome give

him three thousand pounds of pepper as ransom,

an amount not to be sneezed at.

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Abu Nasr Isma’il ibn Hammad al-Jawhari was an author of

a notable Arabic dictionary containing about 40,000 entries.

He is also remembered in Arabic history for

his attempt to fly with wooden wings.

He leapt from the roof of a mosque in the old town of Nishapur,

whereupon gravity took control and

he promptly hit the ground and was killed.

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If you spray an antiseptic spray on a polar bear,

its fur will turn purple.

I wonder who got close enough to find that one out?

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The Japanese Empire was the largest maritime empire in history,

spanning more than 7 million square kilometers and gained such

notoriety that it took atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki

plus plenty of other battles to defeat it.

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The movie that grossed the most money that was

adapted from a T.V. cartoon is Scooby-Doo

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Quite often when a book is made into a movie a lot of things get changed.

Sometimes this spoils the story for those who have read the book,

other times it can improve it.

In Robert Bloch’s novel  the main character ‘Norman Bates’

was short, fat, older, and very dislikable.

In Alfred Hitchcock’s movie version, however,

he was young, handsome, and sympathetic, and one

of the most well-known characters in film history.

Here are a couple of clips….

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Jeremiah Denton.

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Jeremiah Denton died today.

He was 89 years old.

He was also a Senator for Alabama, but that’s not why he is the subject of this post, after all we don’t hold politicians in very high regard here.

No, Jeremiah Denton is being remembered for his time in service in the Navy, and mostly because of the period he spent as a Prisoner Of War courtesy of the North Vietnamese.

In all he spent almost eight years as a POW in North Vietnam (four of them in solitary confinement). He later wrote a book about his experiences, which in turn became a movie.

At the time Denton was US Naval Aviator and was the Commanding Officer of Attack Squadron Seventy-Five aboard the aircraft carrier USS Independence.

On 18 July 1965, while he and Lieutenant Bill Tschudy, his navigator/bombardier, were leading twenty-eight planes on a bombing mission, their jet was hit by enemy fire and the two men ejected over the city of Thanh Hoa in North Vietnam, where they were captured and taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese.

Denton is best known for a 1966 televised press conference in which he was forced to participate as an American POW by his North Vietnamese captors.

During the press conference Denton had the presence of mind to use the opportunity to send a coded message confirming for the first time to the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence and Americans that American POWs were being tortured in North Vietnam.

To send his message Denton repeatedly blinked his eyes in Morse code during the interview, spelling out the word, “T-O-R-T-U-R-E”.

He was also questioned about his support for the U.S. war in Vietnam, to which he replied: “I don’t know what is happening, but whatever the position of my government is, I support it fully. Whatever the position of my government, I believe in it, yes sir. I am a member of that government, and it is my job to support it, and I will as long as I live.”

While a prisoner, he was promoted to the rank of Captain. Denton was later awarded the Navy Cross and several other decorations, mostly for heroism while a prisoner of war.

These days loyalty and initiative are not as valued as they once were, or as they should be. Anyone who had such values during their lifetime is worth remembering.

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For those interested you can read more on Wikipedia or do a search on Google.

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More Random Samples From The Fasab Fact File

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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If its facts you want we have them!

So here is another selection.

If you can’t find something you don’t know in here then you know far too much.

Enjoy.

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“Kemo Sabe”, the name Tonto called The Lone Ranger

means “Soggy Shrub” in Navajo Indian.

The Tonto in Spanish means “a fool”.

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Ketchup was sold in the 1830’s as medicine.

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Killer whales have such a good sense of touch

that if you dropped a pill into a bucket

and feed it to the orca

it would eat the fish and spit out the pill.

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Kleenex tissues were originally used as filters in gas masks.

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Knitted socks discovered in Ancient Egyptian tombs

have been dated back as far as the 3rd century AD.

Oh mummy!

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Larry Lewis ran the 100 yard dash in 17.9 seconds in 1969,

there by setting a new world’s record

for runners in the 100 years or older class.

He was 101.

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5% of Canadians don’t know the first 7 words of the Canadian anthem,

but know the first 9 of the American anthem.

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7% of Americans don’t know the first 9 words of the American anthem,

but know the first 7 of the Canadian anthem.

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85,000,000 tons of paper are used each year in the U.S.

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99% of the solar system’s mass is concentrated in the sun.

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There is a company in Taiwan makes dinnerware

out of wheat, so you can eat your plate.

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About 70% of Americans who go to college

do it just to make more money.

(The rest are just avoiding reality for four more years.)

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America once issued a 5-cent bill.

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The Aztec emperor Montezuma had a nephew named Cuitlahuac,

whose name meant “plenty of excrement.”

Now there’s revenge for you!

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Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of

their unwanted people without killing them

used to burn their houses down

– hence the expression “to get fired.”

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Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland

because he doesn’t wear pants

– the little pecker!

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Marijuana is not as chemically addictive

as is nicotine, alcohol, or caffeine.

One of the reasons marijuana is illegal today

is because in the 1930’s cotton growers lobbied against

hemp farmers whom they saw it as competition.

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Special playing cards were issued to British pilots in WWII.

If captured, they could be soaked in water

and unfolded to reveal a map for escape.

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The three best-known western names in China are

Jesus Christ, Richard Nixon, and Elvis Presley.

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Lady Astor once told Winston Churchill,

‘If you were my husband, I would poison your coffee’.

To which Churchill replied,

‘If you were my wife, I would drink it’.

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