Gray And White Matters.

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”
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Yes, apparently gray and white matters as you will find out in one of today’s selection of unusual facts.
Hope you enjoy the others as well.
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During the production of the video game Deus Ex,

one of the artists forgot to add

the Twin Towers to New York City.

His mistake was explained by

way of a terrorist attack.

The year was 2000.

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Switzerland has

208 mountains over 3,000 meters high

and 24 over 4,000 meters.

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The male brain contains more gray matter

whereas the female brain contains more white matter.

White matter basically increases the speed

of transmission of all nerve signals,

which ultimately allows women to process thoughts

more rapidly than their male counterparts.

Don’t fret guys, you’ll get this

in another nano second or two.

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Genghis Kahn wanted the location

of his grave to be unknown

(somewhere in present day Mongolia)

so his funeral escort killed everyone they met

along the way and he even demanded that

a river be diverted to run across his grave

so it could never be disturbed.

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Although their civilization has declined and been conquered,

in many rural parts of Mexico and Guatemala

Mayan language and culture perseveres.

In fact, there are an estimated 7 million Maya

still living in and around the Yucatan Peninsula.

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The modern chainsaw was invented  by Scottish

doctors to help with Symphysiotomy.

This is a surgical procedure that widens the

pelvis in order to assist in childbirth.

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China is among the countries with

the highest air pollution in the world.

Breathing air in Beijing, the country´s capital,

increases the risk of lung cancer in the same way

as smoking 21 cigarettes a day.

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In 1883 Sir Hiram Maxim created the Maxim gun.

The world’s first machine gun would go on to

revolutionize warfare and was used in both World Wars.

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Some rich people in Moscow buy

ambulances and use them to drive around

because the traffic is so bad.

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Operation Mockingbird was a secret campaign

begun in the 1950s by the

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)

to influence media.

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After being frustrated by the service

he was receiving at Bank of America,

Dalton Chiscolm sued them

for $1.7 billion trillion.

During the trial a professor of mathematics

was even called in to testify about

how big the number was.

To give you an idea,

Earth’s total combined GDP was $60 trillion that year.

That is still over 28 million times smaller

than what he was asking for.

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Sean Connery turned down the role of Gandalf

in the Lord of the Rings trilogy,

a decision that cost him $300 million

(he was offered 15% of the film’s profit).

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Forget The Cold War, The Summer Is Here

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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The world breathed a great sigh of relief when the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991, but somehow we’re in the middle of another cold war that nobody wants or needs.

How did that happen?

As most things do, it all started with a huge mistake. That mistake was the West, particularly America, treating Russia like a defeated country after 1991, instead of the formidable nation that it still was despite the breakup of the USSR. Mikhail Gorbachev has acknowledged that fact.

Unfortunately Americans have no clue about foreign affairs and never have had. That, plus a ton of arrogance, led us to the Ukraine which America thought it could more or less capture as an ally to be slotted into NATO. They wanted a fully armed NATO nuclear arsenal on the Russian’s doorstep.

The Americans quite rightly didn’t like it when the Russians tried to do it to them in Cuba way back in the early 1960s, so what idiot thought that the Russians would like it when they did it to them?

Whoever formulated the plan, it was heavily influenced by Zbigniew Brzezinski, former US National Security Advisor during President Carter’s administration. His theory was that the only way to prevent Russia becoming a great power again was to remove the Ukraine from its sphere of influence.

Thus America initiated an eastward expansion of NATO, using the EU to present the Ukraine with a choice between Russia and Europe. Some Ukrainians, like those in the Crimea favored Russia and others in other parts wanted closer ties with the EU.

Like many other countries, the prospect of joining the EU is attractive to a significant proportion of Ukrainians. But the way America tried to bring it about was just a step too far. The Ukrainian President, who had been duly elected, was removed in what would have been called a “coup d’etat” had it happened elsewhere, or had Russia been the culprit.

That is why a lot of the tensions between the West and Russia is centered on the internal troubles within the Ukraine.

If one looks into the history of the Ukraine another significant part of the puzzle presents itself.

In much the same way as stupid English bureaucrats redrew borders in the Middle East without any consideration for the people who lived there, (for example, the Kurds), which resulted in wars and upheaval ever since, when the Soviet Union broke apart somewhere in the region of 25 million Russians were left outside the borders of Russia. A lot of them were in the Crimea in the Ukraine.

But the Ukraine had only been independent for three years in its history (1917-20), after the collapse of the tsarist armies.

The post-December 1991 Ukraine was thus a composite entity, its western regions had belonged to Poland between WWI and WWII; its eastern regions were Orthodox and Russian-speaking; and its Black Sea coast had been Ottoman.

The Crimea had never been Ukrainian until Nikita Khrushchev decreed it should be in 1954.

Thus, for anyone with any degree of understanding of foreign affairs, the troubles now being suffered by the various peoples in the Ukraine were both predictable and avoidable.

But the stupid bureaucrats in power were not able to predict it and thus the mess became inevitable.

Sadly the situation has now deteriorated into what amounts to a civil war in the Ukraine. On one side there is the Ukrainian army plus “volunteer battalions”, supported by the US and its allies, and on the other the “separatist” militias who draw their support mainly from Russian-speakers in the east, and who are supported by Russia.

Outside of what is happening in the Ukraine itself, the US and EU implemented severe sanctions against Russia which have hurt, but not nearly as much as they were supposed to. In turn Russia announced counter-sanctions on food and looked to emerging markets, particularly China, to diversify its foreign trade and industrial cooperation.

And so the Cold War part two has begun and shows little sign of ending just yet.

In fact it looks like the Ukraine will remain in a mess until it gets its act together and decides whether it wants to remain on friendly economic terms with its huge neighbor Russia, or whether it will settle for becoming subservient to the whims of the US, via some kind of economic agreement with the EU.

It has a third option, though, perhaps its best option, and that is not taking sides, but rather remaining on friendly terms with both East and West.

However, they may never get the chance to choose option three. In plain language, I don’t think that the people who arrange assassinations and coup d’etats will let them do that.

Meantime, summer or not, the chill continues.

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Black Hawk Seems To Be Up Again!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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The Sunday Sermon

You may remember, more because of the movie than anything else probably, an incident in 1993 called ‘Black Hawk Down’ which caused American troops to leave Somalia.

At that time they had been stationed there as part of a United Nations ‘stabilization’ operation – whatever that is.

President Clinton abandoned that effort after the ‘Battle of Mogadishu’ in which nearly 20 American soldiers were killed and horrific images of their bodies being dragged through the streets by Somalia militiamen had been seen all over the world on television.

Since then American military and intelligence efforts have been in the form of funding the Somalia military and using remotely controlled drones to keep an eye on what is happening on the ground and perhaps more.

Or so we thought. After all, the last thing we want to do is get bogged down again on the ground in such an inhospitable place.

Cue the Obama administration and guess what? Yep, the US Army has once again secretly stationed a group of regular troops in Somalia. Since October last year a “military coordination cell” has been established in Somalia that, to quote the officer in charge, “is now fully operational”.

I’m not sure even Obama knows what they are there to do. There isn’t an American embassy to protect and they would hardly be there to draw unwanted attention to the people from charlie india alpha, would they?

Official sources say the army unit has been tasked with “advising and coordinating” operations by African troops against al-Shabaab, the al-Qaeda-linked group that controls large parts of Somalia.

Okay, so let’s say US forces have been deployed in Africa as part of the war against terror.

So perhaps that establishes what US Foreign Policy strategy is, i.e. to fight the war against terror.

Doesn’t it?

Well, no.

Let’s move a bit further north-east. To Syria in fact.

For the past while the US has been covertly backing the anti-Assad forces in the Syrian conflict. Seemed to make sense since Assad is friends with the likes of Iran and Russia. Except for the fact that the anti-Assad forces were in fact made up of the same type of al-Qaeda-linked groups that the US is against in Somalia.

Confused? You should be.

If there was any principle involved they would have been better not backing either side. But of course principle and politics rarely mix.

And just to add to the confusion it was confirmed last week that secret meetings have been held between ‘Western intelligence officials’ and senior members of the Syrian government, aimed at “combating radical Islamist groups” in Syria.

But wait!

Maybe it IS all beginning to make sense. At least we can detect a consistent pattern emerging, and it seems to be this:

• ignore the long term dangers, and fund and supply terrorist groups just because they happen to be at odds with people you don’t like; and then when you realize what a mess you’ve made, send in American troops to correct the mistake, never mind that they are going to get killed and maimed by weapons paid for by America.

American foreign policy has been a shambles for decades. It doesn’t get better by repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

America has the strength and the military power to police the world, of that there is no doubt. But does that mean it really has to? Especially when the policy to direct such a strategy is made by incompetent politicians who clearly do not understand the world they are trying to police.

Confusion and failure has been and will be the result. That and the needless sacrifice of the brave souls whose job it is to clear up the mess.

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