But as usual, if you get stuck, you can the answers waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down below, but please NO cheating!
Enjoy and good luck.
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Q. 1: Who has been a private investigator in Hawaii, an American cowboy in Australia and the police commissioner in New York city?
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Q. 2: What do you call a group of bears?
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Q. 3: Which Eastern European city is known as the ‘City of a Hundred Spires’ ?
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Q. 4: Which country’s flag includes a cedar tree?
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Q. 5: In which book does an alien invasion commence in Woking?
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Q. 6: Which subatomic particles are found in the nucleus of an atom?
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Q. 7: Which sugar is found in milk?
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Q. 8: This one is the name of the largest species of big cat to be found in South America and a make of automobile?
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Q. 9: What is the name given to the part of the Earth that lies between the outer core and the crust?
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Q. 10: You see it on your cereal packet all the time, but Riboflavin is an alternative name for which vitamin of the B Group?
a) Vitamin B1 b) Vitamin B2 c) Vitamin B3 d) Vitamin B12
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Q. 11: Not part of the UK, but still known as British Crown Dependencies, the Channel Islands are situated in the English Channel just off the coast of France. You get a point for each of the four main islands in this group you can name correctly.
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Q. 12: Which is the world’s tallest mammal?
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Q. 13: ‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen,’ is the first line from which book?
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Q. 14: What is the approximate diameter of Earth?
a) 4,000 miles b) 6,000 miles c) 8,000 miles d) 10,000 miles
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Q. 15: What gifted actress played the part of an FBI trainee in the movie ‘Silence Of The Lambs’ and what was the name of the character she played? (A point for each correct answer.)
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Q. 16: What is the world’s smallest flightless bird?
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Q. 17: In the publishing industry what does the acronym ‘POD’ mean?
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Q. 18: What color is a Himalayan poppy?
a) Red b) Yellow c) Green d) Blue
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Q. 19: What flavor is Cointreau?
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Q. 20: On which multi-million selling album would you find the Nasal Choir, Moribund Chorus and Girlie Chorus?
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ANSWERS
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Q. 1: Who has been a private investigator in Hawaii, an American cowboy in Australia and the police commissioner in New York city?
A. 1: Tom Selleck. He played Magnum PI set in Hawaii, Quigley in the movie Quigley Down Under and currently Frank Reagan the NYC Police Commissioner in the TV series Blue Bloods.
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Q. 2: What do you call a group of bears?
A. 2: A ‘Sloth’.
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Q. 3: Which Eastern European city is known as the ‘City of a Hundred Spires’ ?
A. 3: Prague, the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic.
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Q. 4: Which country’s flag includes a cedar tree?
A. 4: Lebanon.
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Q. 5: In which book does an alien invasion commence in Woking?
A. 5: The War of the Worlds by H G Wells.
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Q. 6: Which subatomic particles are found in the nucleus of an atom?
A. 6: Protons and Neutrons.
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Q. 7: Which sugar is found in milk?
A. 7: Lactose.
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Q. 8: This one is the name of the largest species of big cat to be found in South America and a make of automobile?
A. 8: Jaguar.
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Q. 9: What is the name given to the part of the Earth that lies between the outer core and the crust?
A. 9: It is known as the ‘Mantle’.
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Q. 10: You see it on your cereal packet all the time, but Riboflavin is an alternative name for which vitamin of the B Group?
a) Vitamin B1 b) Vitamin B2 c) Vitamin B3 d) Vitamin B12
A. 10: The correct answer is b) Vitamin B2.
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Q. 11: Not part of the UK, but still known as British Crown Dependencies, the Channel Islands are situated in the English Channel just off the coast of France. You get a point for each of the four main islands in this group you can name correctly.
A. 11: The four main islands in the Channel Islands group are: Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney and Sark.
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Q. 12: Which is the world’s tallest mammal?
A. 12: The Giraffe. (By a neck!)
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Q. 13: ‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen,’ is the first line from which book?
A. 13: 1984 by George Orwell.
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Q. 14: What is the approximate diameter of Earth?
a) 4,000 miles b) 6,000 miles c) 8,000 miles d) 10,000 miles
A. 14: The correct answer is c) 8,000 miles.
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Q. 15: What gifted actress played the part of an FBI trainee in the movie ‘Silence Of The Lambs’ and what was the name of the character she played? (A point for each correct answer.)
A. 15: She is Jodie Foster and in The Silence Of The Lambs she played the part of Clarice Starling.
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Q. 16: What is the world’s smallest flightless bird?
A. 16: The Kiwi.
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Q. 17: In the publishing industry what does the acronym ‘POD’ mean?
A. 17: It means ‘Print on demand’.
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Q. 18: What color is a Himalayan poppy?
a) Red b) Yellow c) Green d) Blue
A. 18: The correct answer is d) Blue.
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Q. 19: What flavour is Cointreau?
A. 19: Orange.
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Q. 20: On which multi-million selling album would you find the Nasal Choir, Moribund Chorus and Girlie Chorus?
The first day of May, or ‘May Day’ as it is also known, is a curious mixture of superstition, social protest (Labor Day) and celebration.
May Day is also the 121st day of the year and marks the midpoint between spring and summer, occurring exactly half a year from November 1st.
Like most of the occasions we have now (Easter, Christmas, etc.), May Day started out as a pagan celebration. Its origins go back thousands of years to the Celtic period, where towns and villages would come together to celebrate springtime fertility, and rejoice in the beauty of spring and optimism of life. The energy of these gatherings was supposed to help inspire procreation.
During the 1600s, May Day festivities were prohibited and in 1640 the Church in England ruled against the debauchery and the British Parliament banned the traditions as immoral. A much tamer version was brought back in 1644 under the rule of Charles II.
Maypoles were devised as (phallic) symbols of fertility, but were also symbolic of the “world tree,” which was supposed to bridge the gap between heaven and earth. There are also rumors that this was the last chance for fairies to travel to the earth.
Today, May Day is probably best known in most countries for the tradition of ‘dancing round the maypole’ and the crowning of a ‘May Queen’.
Flowers also play an important part in May Day celebrations. Native Americans even called May the month of the flower moon, believing that flowers would dance under the full moon. And ancient Romans dedicated May Day to Flora, the goddess of flowers.
In Italy, May Day is still regarded by some as the happiest day of the year.
Since 1928, May Day in Hawaii has been known as ‘Lei Day’, a spring celebration that embraces Hawaiian culture and in particular, the lei. The holiday song, “May Day is Lei Day in Hawai’i,” was originally a fox trot, but was later rearranged as a Hawaiian hula.
Listed below are some of the historical events that happened on May Day that I found interesting. Hope you do too.
But just before you start those, a word about something that has nothing whatever to do with May Day although many people believe that it has. The international distress signal is often referred to s a “mayday” signal but this is not a reference to the first day of May. The name derives from the French “venez m’aider”, meaning “come help me.”
Now you know.
And now for the real facts.
Enjoy.
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Historical Events that happened on various May 1st’s
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1006 – A Supernova was observed by Chinese & Egyptians astronomers in the constellation Lupus.
1328 – The Wars of Scottish Independence ended with the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton by which the Kingdom of England recognized the Kingdom of Scotland as an independent state.
1544 – Turkish troops occupied Hungary.
1682 – Louis XIV and his court inaugurated the Paris Observatory.
1703 – At the Battle at Rultusk the Swedish army defeated the Russians.
1704 – The Boston Newsletter published the first ever newspaper advertisement.
1707 – England, Wales & Scotland form the United Kingdom of Great Britain.
1751 – The first American cricket match is played.
1753 – May Day this year saw Publication of Species Plantarum by Linnaeus, and the formal start date of plant taxonomy adopted by the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature.
1759 – Josiah Wedgwood founded the Wedgwood pottery company in Great Britain.
1759 – The British fleet occupied Guadeloupe, West Indies, capturing it from France.
1776 – The secret society of the Illuminati was established in Ingolstadt (Upper Bavaria), by Jesuit-taught Adam Weishaupt.
1777 – RB Sheridan’s “School for Scandal” premiered in London.
1778 – The American Revolutionary War Battle of Crooked Billet began in Hatboro, Pennsylvania.
1786 – Mozart’s opera “Marriage of Figaro” premiered in Wien (Vienna)
1822 – John Phillips became the first mayor of Boston.
1840 – The first adhesive postage stamps, known as the “Penny Blacks”, were issued in the UK.
1841 – The first emigrant wagon train left Independence, Missouri, for California.
1844 – Samuel Morse sent his first telegraphic message.
1844 – The Hong Kong Police Force, the world’s second modern police force and Asia’s first, was established.
1850 – John Geary became the first mayor of San Francisco.
1851 – The ‘Great Exhibition’ opened in the Crystal Palace, London.
1852 – The Philippine peso is introduced into circulation.
1857 – William Walker, conqueror of Nicaragua, surrendered to the U.S. Navy.
1861 – In the American Civil War, General Lee ordered Confederate troops under T J Jackson to Harper’s Ferry.
1862 – Also in the American Civil War, Major General Benjamin Butler’s Union forces occupied New Orleans.
1863 – The Confederate ‘National Flag’ replaced the ‘Stars & Bars’.
1866 – The Memphis Race Riots began. In three days time, 46 blacks and two whites were killed. Reports of the atrocities influenced passage of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
1866 – The American Equal Rights Association formed.
1869 – The Folies Bergère opens in Paris.
1873 – The first US postal card is issued.
1873 – Emperor Franz Jozef opened the 5th World’s Exposition in Vienna.
1875 – 238 members of the “Whiskey Ring” are accused of anti-US activities.
1883 – “Buffalo Bill” Cody put on his first Wild West Show.
1884 – Construction began on Chicago’s first skyscraper (10 stories).
1884 – May Day this year also saw the Proclamation of the demand for eight-hour workday in the United States.
1884 – Moses Walker became the first African American player in major league baseball in the US.
1885 – The original Chicago Board of Trade Building opened for business.
1886 – A general strike began in the US for an 8-hour working day.
1889 – German ompany Bayer introduced aspirin in powder form.
1900 – The Scofield Mine disaster killed over 200 men in Scofield, Utah in what was the fifth-worst mining accident in United States history.
1901 – Herb McFarland hit the first grand slam in the American League.
1908 – The world’s most intense shower (2.47″ in 3 minutes) occurred at Portobelo, Panama.
1912 – The Beverly Hills Hotel opened.
1915 – The RMS Lusitania departed from New York City, bound for Liverpool, on her two hundred and second, and final, crossing of the North Atlantic. Six days later, the ship was torpedoed off the coast of Ireland with the loss of 1,198 lives.
1920 – Babe Ruth made his first Yankee home run and the 50th of career.
1922 – Charlie Robertson of Chicago pitched a perfect no-hit, no-run game.
1925 – Cyprus became a British Crown Colony.
1927 – The first cooked meals on an airplane were introduced on on an Imperial Airways scheduled flight from London to Paris.
1930 – The dwarf planet Pluto was officially named.
1931 – The Empire State Building opened in New York City.
1935 – Boulder Dam was completed.
1935 – Canada’s first silver dollar was circulated.
1937 – FDR signed the act of neutrality.
1939 – Batman comics hit street.
1940 – The 1940 Olympics were cancelled because of WWII.
1941 – ‘Citizen Kane’, directed & starring Orson Welles, premiered in New York.
1941 – General Mills introduced Cheerios.
1944 – The world’s first operational jet-powered fighter aircraft, the Messerschmitt Me 262 Sturmvogel, makes 1st flight
1945 – A German newsreader officially announced that Adolf Hitler has “fallen at his command post in the Reich Chancellery fighting to the last breath against Bolshevism and for Germany”. The Soviet flag is raised over the Reich Chancellery, by order of Stalin.
1945 – Admiral Karl Doenitz formed the new German government.
1946 – Field Marshal Montgomery was appointed British supreme commander.
1946 – The three-year Pilbara strike of Indigenous Australians began.
1947 – Radar for commercial & private planes was first demonstrated.
1948 – North Korea proclaims itself the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea.
1952 – US Marines take part in an atomic explosion training exercise in Nevada.
1952 – Mr Potato Head was introduced.
1952 – TWA introduced tourist class.
1956 – The polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk was made available to the public.
1956 – A doctor in Japan reported an “epidemic of an unknown disease of the central nervous system”, marking the official discovery of Minamata disease.
1957 – Larry King made his first radio broadcast.
1959 – Floyd Patterson KO’d Brian London in the 11th round for the heavyweight boxing title.
1960 – Russia shot down Francis Gary Powers’ Lockheed U-2 spy plane over Sverdlovsk in the Soviet Union, sparking a diplomatic crisis.
1961 – May Day 1961 was the date of the first US airplane being hijacked to Cuba.
1962 – The first French underground nuclear experiment took place in the Sahara, at Ecker Algeria.
1963 – James Whittaker became the first American to conquer Mount Everest.
1964 – The first BASIC program ws run on a computer at Dartmouth.
1965 – The U.S.S.R. launched its Luna 5 spacecraft which later impacted on the Moon.
1966 – Last British concert by the Beatles took place at the Empire Pool in Wembley.
1967 – Elvis Presley married Pricilla Beaulieu.
1969 – James Chichester-Clark was elected leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, and Northern Ireland Prime Minister, after succeededing Terence O’Neill.
1971 – Amtrak Railroad began operations.
1971 – The Rolling Stones released their mega-hit single “Brown Sugar”.
1978 – Ernest Morial, the first black mayor of New Orleans is inaugurated.
1978 – Japan’s Naomi Uemura, travelling by dog sled, became the first person to reach the North Pole alone.
1979 – Elton John became the first pop star to perform in Israel.
1981 – Tennis player Billie Jean King acknowledged a lesbian relationship with Marilyn Barnett – becoming first prominent sportswoman to ‘come out’.
1984 – Great Britain performed a nuclear test at a Nevada Test Site.
1985 – US President Ronald Reagan ended the embargo against Nicaragua.
1986 – Russian news agency Tass reported the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster.
1989 – The 135 acre Disney MGM studio officially opened to the public.
1991 – The Angolan civil war ended.
1993 – There was a bomb attack on the Sri Lankan president in which 26 people died.
1994 – Three-time Formula One world champion Ayrton Senna was killed in an accident during the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola.
1997 – Howard Stern Radio Show premiered in San Diego, CA, on KIOZ 105.3 FM.
1997 – Tony Blair was elected Prime Minister of UK.
1999 – The body of British climber George Mallory was found on Mount Everest, 75 years after his disappearance in 1924.
2003 – In what became known as the “Mission Accomplished” speech, U.S. President George W. Bush declared on board the USS Abraham Lincoln off the coast of California, that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended”.
2009 – Same-sex marriage was legalized in Sweden.
2011 – U.S. President Barack Obama announced that Osama bin Laden, founder of the militant Islamist group Al-Quaeda and the suspected mastermind behind the September 11 attackshad been killed by United States special forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Due to the time difference between the United States and Pakistan, bin Laden was actually killed on May 2.
2012 – Guggenheim Partners made the largest ever purchase of a sports franchise after buying the Los Angeles Dodgers for $2.1 billion.
2013 – A digital camera was created that could mimic insect compound eyes.
People you might have heard of who were born on May 1st include,
1594 – John Haynes, English-American politician, 1st Governor of the Colony of Connecticut (d. 1653)
1769 – Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, Irish-English field marshal and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1852)
1852 – Calamity Jane, American scout (d. 1903)
1916 – Glenn Ford, Canadian-American actor (d. 2006)
1919 – Lewis Hill, American broadcaster, co-founded Pacifica Radio (d. 1957)
1923 – Joseph Heller, American author and playwright (d. 1999)
1925 – Scott Carpenter, American commander, pilot, and astronaut (d. 2013)
1937 – Una Stubbs, English actress and dancer
1939 – Judy Collins, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1945 – Rita Coolidge, American singer-songwriter
1946 – Joanna Lumley, English actress
1946 – John Woo, Hong Kong director, producer, and screenwriter
1954 – Ray Parker, Jr., American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (Raydio)
1967 – Scott Coffey, American actor, director, producer and screenwriter
People you might have heard of who died on May 1st include,
1731 – Johann Ludwig Bach, German violinist and composer (b. 1677)
1873 – David Livingstone, Scottish missionary (b. 1813)
1945 – Joseph Goebbels, German politician, Chancellor of Germany (b. 1897)
1985 – Denise Robins, English journalist and author (b. 1897)
2006 – Rob Lacey, English actor and author (b. 1962)
2011 – Ted Lowe, English sportscaster (b. 1920)
2011 – Henry Cooper, English boxer (b. 1934)
2014 – Howard Smith, American journalist, director, and producer (b. 1936)
Yes it’s fact day at the fasab blog, and that means another totally random selection of facts that – not only you never knew – but facts that you never knew you never knew.
Here they are.
Enjoy
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Saturn’s rings are only between
30 and 300 feet thick.
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Napoleon was once attacked by rabbits. (I bet they were English!)
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The Constitution of the Confederate States
of America banned the slave trade.
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When the American Civil War started,
Confederate Robert E. Lee owned no slaves,
but Union general U.S. Grant did.
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The Siberian rift lake, Lake Baikal,
is not only the deepest lake on Earth
but it also has the largest volume containing
roughly 20% of the Earth’s surface fresh water.
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Officially, the longest war in history was between
the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly.
It lasted from 1651 to 1986.
There were no casualties.
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Neil Armstrong went through U.S. customs
in Honolulu, Hawaii,
on the way back from the moon.
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The original Tron movie did not win an Academy Award
for best special effects because the judges said
they cheated by using computers.
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70% of murders in Detroit go unsolved.
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Sorry guys, but Trojan Magnum condoms
are designed for most men to fit into
so that most purchases include an ego boost.
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Karl Marx was once a correspondent
for the New York Daily Tribune.
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The straw was probably invented by Egyptian brewers
to taste in-process beer without removing the fermenting ingredients
which floated on the top of the container.
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The name for fungal remains found in coal is sclerotinite.
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The forward pass was created by the football
team at Saint Louis University.
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During his Presidency Bill Clinton sent a total of two emails.
So, if pride goes before a fall, what goes before a CRASH?
Well, in terms of the pathetic Obamacare web site, the usual form of words from the Obama Administration is
“…the site was fully-functioning for a “vast majority” of users.”
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CRASH!
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It happened again last week, early Friday afternoon in fact, as millions of Americans tried to get insurance coverage before the deadline.
I don’t know where they got the information that the site was functioning for the “vast majority of users”.
Well, I do actually. It was a lie. Another one.
In fact the healthcare.gov is not fully-functioning for anyone. On the positive side I suppose you could say that everyone has an equal chance of not being able to use the web site, but that is small comfort to those trying to do so.
And this is just the latest CRASH of many. Last November there was another major one. They “fixed” it, except of course they didn’t, they just got it working for a while, until it toppled over again.
Left in the hands of idiot bureaucrats who clearly have no idea what they are doing, no system can work efficiently. They choose bad designers, who use bad code, produce a bad product, and then are amazed and surprised when it doesn’t work.
There are tens of thousands of commercial web sites, like Google, Amazon, Ebay, Microsoft, even Wikipedia, that take much higher traffic every day without crashing – and they’ve been doing it for years.
Yet the bureaucratic bunglers can’t get their web site working for more than a few weeks at a time.
About all they got right was the timing of the CRASH.
No, wait, they even got that wrong, because the whole debacle happened less than two hours before President Obama had a scheduled press conference, helping to push his approval rating more and more in the negative direction.
But fear not, as millions of his citizens now find themselves stressed and worrying because they have no insurance – due to no fault of their own – their leader will have a solution.
I don’t know what it is, but the odds are in favor of another vacation, possibly in Hawaii – but definitely fully insured!
It was either a title with a pun in it or just call today’s post “The Sunday Sermon”, but as you can see the pun got the better of me as usual.
If you hadn’t guessed, this one is my take on the goings on in North Korea.
Here we go….
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Before the sermon starts I should preface it by saying we are in the current mess because politicians faffed about instead of stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons when they had the opportunity. It’s their mess, but unfortunately we are all in it with them.
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JFK had Cuba and now BHO has North Korea, both countries run by dictators and both in their time posing a nuclear threat.
Why do the Democrats always get the best crises? Poor old Dubya and his greedy and power hungry ally in Britain, Tony Blair (often deliberately spelled Bliar for good reason), had to make up an excuse to start a war with Saddam Hussein. Remember the Weapons Of Mass Destruction that never actually existed?
Of course, when JFK was doing his statesman like thing, during his brief breaks between his girlfriends, I was far too young to know or care about nuclear threats or more world wars.I had other more important things to be getting on with like battling invaders from Mars or trying to pluck up the courage to explore that eerie wood just a short distance from the bottom of our garden.
So what I know about the Cuban crisis of the early 1960s is all gleaned from books and reports from that period which are now a matter of history. (We’ll leave the debate about just how accurate and reliable that is for another time.)
The truth seems to be that the Cuban nuclear crisis had very little to do with Cuba or Castro. It was a posturing competition between the United States of America and the Soviet Union, and to a lesser degree a pissing contest between Kennedy and Khrushchev.
Khrushchev-Kennedy
In both Washington and the Kremlin, although there were the warmongers, there were more people who were sensible enough to realize that devastating each other’s countries would leave them both weaker and achieve very little.They were able to reach that conclusion simply because they were people who were not completely insane or delusional.
It probably seemed difficult at the time, but for JFK it was a relatively easy crisis to manage.
The ‘nuclear crisis’ facing Obama, if indeed it is that, is a different kettle of fish because Kim Jong-un shows all the signs of being both delusional and ever so slightly insane.
He can’t be held entirely to blame for this. He is the son of a long time dictator, who himself suffered from multiple delusions. And he was brought up in a militaristic and jingoistic regime, which is what dictators like to create for themselves simply because it makes their own people easier to control. North Korean propaganda has taught the public that military goals and economic goals are intertwined and therefore that Kim Jong-un’s actions are for the good of his people.
Kim Jong Un, flanked by Ri Yong Ho, Kim Yong Chun
In the latest moves to up the ante, the North Koreans have told Britain and Russia that they should consider the evacuation of their embassies in Pyongyang. They have also moved another missile to their east coast as a further threat to US Pacific bases.
This in itself is just the latest response to UN sanctions and South Korea-US military drills, both of which have done nothing to ease tensions and in fact have annoyed the North Koreans immensely.
Now the North Korean army is saying that it has received final approval for military action, possibly involving nuclear weapons, against the threat posed by US B-52 and B-2 stealth bombers taking part in the joint drills.And all this has been accompanied by a series of apocalyptic threats of nuclear war in recent weeks.
The trouble with all this posturing is that Washington, which always gets a ‘F’ for ‘FAIL’ in Foreign Policy, very seldom, if ever, gets it right at the right time.
Washington doesn’t seem to understand that the macho culture in many other countries makes it extremely difficult for them to be seen by their own people as the one who blinked first. Losing face has a terrible stigma for them.
Further military ‘exercises’ and posturing will probably have the result of leaving the Jong-un regime with little alternative (in their eyes) but to act aggressively.
How that aggression will manifest itself is anybody’s guess. Least likely would be an attack on America – it’s too far away for the type of missiles North Korea currently has.
An attack of some kind on the US base at Guam is possible, as is an attack on neighboring South Korea. The latter, depending on the scale and the number of casualties, could spark of retaliatory strikes by the US-backed South Koreans and from there it is a short step into a conventional and probably very bloody war.
And we should remember that the Korean war during the 1950s was a spectacular waste of human lives. Generals sacrificed their men for years and ended back at the 38th parallel, more or less the same place they started.
military-trucks-crossing-38th-parallel
Admittedly things might be a lot different this time if China decides that the North Korean regime is too out of control to support militarily.I doubt very much if it is in China’s long term interest to have a whacky dictatorship armed with nuclear weapons on their doorstep. After all it’s only 1,000Km to Beijing and more than 5,000Km to Hawaii, the closest state of the US to North Korea. At the same time would China want an economically united and strong US dominated state on its borders?
The jury is still out on that one.
Another thing that Washington gets badly wrong is that it thinks that because it is the most powerful military nation on earth – and it is by a long way – that therefore other countries will be afraid to take it on.
Rather than a comparison with the Cuban Crisis that everyone is concentrating on, I see parallels between North Korea today and Imperial Japan in the 1930s.Both are/were jingoistic regimes with an ’emperor’ having complete control, and both created a military style regime more as a way to suppress and control their own people, and therefore to cling to power, than to attack another nation.
But things being what they are, and people being so bloody stupid it’s unbelievable at times, there comes a time when those in power in such regimes lose their sense of reality and get carried away believing their own propaganda.
Hence Pearl Harbor when Imperial Japan forgot that when something big and powerful is asleep you should never poke it with a sharp stick, coz when it wakens up it will kick the crap right out of you!
And hence, the North Koreans are not afraid of taking on America. They should be, but they aren’t, which again makes some kind of attack more possible the more they are backed into a corner.
Thankfully there are some signs that Washington might be getting the message and preparing to step back from the rapidly approaching brink.American officials have reportedly decided to “pause” the recent show of US force in Korea because
– wait for it, it’s a good one –
they are surprised at the intensity of the North’s response.
I mean who could have seen that coming? Well the answer is just about everyone except for the cretins in Washington!
What is surprising, however, is that the most sense talked about the whole affair recently has been from the world’s number one cigar salesman, Fidel Castro. In fact, make that doubly surprising, in that he has said some things that I am in agreement with and that he is still around to say it!
Fidel Castro and cigar
He said “If a war breaks out there, there would be a terrible slaughter of people” in both North and South Korea “with no benefit for either of them.” And also that the “duty” to avoid the conflict is in the hands of Washington “and of the people of the United States.”
Castro hasn’t quite figured out that once elected US Presidents do whatever THEY want, not whatever the PEOPLE want.
But what he must have figured out is that politicians like to be liked because he also warns President Obama that his second term, “would be buried in a deluge of images that would portray him as the most sinister personality in the history of the United States.”
Ouch!
Equally, he cautions the North Koreans that now they have, demonstrated their “technical and scientific advances, we remind them of their duties with those countries that have been their great friends.” And he urged them to remember that “such a war would affect … more than 70 per cent of the planet’s population,” and decried “the gravity of such an incredible and absurd event” in such a densely populated region.
Do you think he is hankering after one of those Nobel Peace Prizes, like the one Obama got for not being George W Bush?
Who knows.
And who knows what is going to happen in the Koreas?
fasab 