The Mysterious Death Of A UN Secretary General

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Not quite up there with the Kennedy assassination conspiracy, but still a mystery, is the death of UN General Secretary Dag Hammarskjold who was killed in an airplane crash – some say assassinated – on September 17, 1961.

On that fateful day, a Douglas DC-6 transport aircraft with Hammarskjöld on board crashed in the British-administered territory of Northern Rhodesia (now called Zambia). Not only Hammarskjold, but everyone on board was killed in the crash.

Three investigations into the crash were held, conducted by the Rhodesian Board of Investigation, the Rhodesian Commission of Inquiry, and the United Nations Commission of Investigation.

As usual in these non-investigation investigations, “pilot error” was noted as the most likely cause of the tragedy.

But the UN Commission of Investigation held in 1962 said that deliberate sabotage could not be ruled out as a likely cause of the tragedy, which of course set the conspiracy theorists on over drive.

Since then many academics and independent investigators, such as Swedish development expert Göran Björkdahl and British academic Susan Williams, have raised the possibility that the plane carrying Secretary General Hammarskjöld may have been “shot down by an unidentified second plane”.

Just after the tragedy the eagerness shown by British colonial administrators in Northern Rhodesia to obscure the details of the incident has also been highlighted and has provided further impetus for those pointing to foul play.

Like many others who have met similar fates, Hammarskjöld probably contributed to his own downfall because he was an independent thinker, not content to remain in the pockets of the powers that be. He was, for example, a fierce supporter of anti-colonial movements that were sweeping the African continent, many of which were not in the interests of their colonial masters at the time.

This is borne out by the fact that on the day of his death, Hammarskjöld was flying to the Congo’s mineral-rich Katanga region to meet European-supported chieftains who in 1960 had seceded from the Marxist government of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba.

Lumumba had been assassinated in a Western-backed coup exactly eight months before Hammarskjöld’s own death. The person said to have arranged his assassination was Daphne Park, one of MI6’s top female intelligence agents and known by some as the “Queen of Spies”.

Moving on in time to three years ago, in 2012, the independently funded Hammarskjöld Inquiry Trust appointed an international team of jurists, called the Hammarskjöld Commission, to study all available evidence on the plane crash. The team was composed of a diplomat and three judges from the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Sweden.

The Commission reported in 2013 that “significant new evidence” had emerged, which suggested that American intelligence agencies, notably the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, had “crucial evidence” that could help clarify the causes of the crash.

This led to the current UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, appointing a UN-sponsored panel of experts to examine the new evidence and present it before the UN General Assembly. The three-member panel traveled to several countries, including Zambia, the US, Britain and Belgium, to access government, as well as private archives.

That ‘new evidence’ is said to include written testimony by a Belgian pilot who says he shot down the plane carrying Hammarskjöld by error while trying to divert it on orders by a government entity, and a statement by a former intelligence officer with the US National Security Agency, admitting he listened to a recording of a pilot who said he shot down the UN Secretary General’s plane.

Damning stuff – if true.

Is it really possible that more than half a century later the truth about  “one of the enduring mysteries of the 20th century” is finally going to be heard?

Don’t hold your breath on that one. It all depends if those who ordered the assassination think they can get away with it after all these years.

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So who really did kill JKF, more importantly, why, and how long are we going to have to wait to find out?

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Do Not Reboot …. Ugh! Too Late!!!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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I am a supporter of the World Wildlife Fund. They gave me a nice little gold lapel badge as a thank you. It’s in the shape of a panda which is their logo. This is a (not very good) picture of it.

That has got very little to do with this post, other than the name of the animal the WWF uses as its logo, but by way of introduction I thought I’d give them a shout-out anyway. Send them some money if you can.

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What the post is really about is stupidity, a regular theme here at the fasab blog where I like to highlight and make fun of some of the idiotic things I come across.

All else may fail, but stupidity will always find a way to mess things up.

And strangely there are few stupider people than the really intelligent ones, you know, academically brilliant but who haven’t the common sense of a gnat. No offense to gnats.

It happened recently when a Spanish internet security company sent out an update for an antivirus program called – wait for it – Panda.

Yes, last Wednesday the company released an update for its Panda antivirus software, as it periodically does. All companies providing similar software do likewise.

The only thing is when other companies do it (with the possible exception of Microsoft now and again), the updates work.

When this Panda update arrived it found a major threat on the computers that were running it.

And the major threat it found was …

…. itself.

Sadly true. The nerds at the Panda company managed to identify components of their own program as a security threat. It’s a bit like playing hide-and-seek – with YOURSELF!

Can you believe it?

Of course you can.

Not only that, but that no one seems to have checked the update before the catastrophe was released upon the rest of the unsuspecting world.

The consequences were almost instant. PCs running the Panda update were more than a little confused. Chips had mini mental breakdowns. And some systems were left either unstable or unable to access the internet.

As soon as the problem was discovered – too late, in other words – the Panda company scrambled to send out a notice to subscribers recommending that they NOT reboot their systems. How they thought that would work remains a mystery because most people just reboot their systems when the update has finished, without reading their new emails first.

And if you didn’t get the message and did let Panda attempt to kill itself with a reboot of your system, then after the reboot you would find that you had no network access.

The Twittersphere was full of Tweets made by unhappy Pandettes – presumably using their cell phones or tablets since their PC were in a state of confusion.

Messages like

“Any of you with Panda Anti Virus – DO NOT REBOOT YOUR COMPUTER!!!! – I’ve just lost 20 computers”

and,

“Worst antivirus every. Panda has today wiped files from system32 leaving rebooted computers bricked. Do not reboot, update Panda.”

I don’t know how many customers Panda lost, but I would guess they lost a lot. Another on the endangered species list perhaps?

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It’s A Funny Old World

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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It definitely is a funny old world, especially when it comes to global warming and particularly the reasons for it happening – even though it isn’t.

It has also been funny watching all the pseudo-scientist and political upstarts trying to jump on this bandwagon to try to promote themselves in the public eye. Al Gore managed to bag himself a discredited Nobel Peace Prize and millions of dollars with his well timed trip on this gravy train. Although I still don’t know what global warming had to do with a prize for peace because as far as I know they hold wars in all temperatures!

I say “global warming” because that was what they called it. Scientists even falsified data to “prove” that the planet was getting hotter and hotter because of the increased emissions of carbon dioxide generated by us, people. We may well be in the midst of a climate cycle, but the reliable evidence does not show that it’s our fault. Nor is it the fault of too many cows letting too many farts, which was another one of the not so scientific theories that was doing the rounds a few years ago.

Then there was the theory that the Polar ice caps were all going to melt, raising the sea level so much most of us would drown. Technically I suppose if you were keen enough you could drown in a couple of inches of water, but I think personally I would just pull on my gumboots and walk casually toward some higher ground.

Unfortunately for it’s supporters, the REAL evidence has been showing little or no change in average temperatures, certainly not the apocalyptic amounts forecast by the flawed models of the global warming scientists.

On that very subject, some of these scientists are currently “baffled” by the fact that, rather than the Polar ice caps melting, there now seems to be an all-time record area of sea covered by ice around the Antarctic’s coasts.

The beautifully named lead scientist at the US National Snow and Ice Data Center, Ted Scambos, admitted “What we’re learning is, we have more to learn,” as he announced the latest annual sea ice maximum for the austral continent.

The sea ice surrounding the Antarctic continent reached its maximum extent on September 22, 2014, at 20.11 million square kilometers (7.76 million square miles). This is 1.54 million square kilometers (595,000 square miles) ABOVE the 1981 to 2010 average extent, which is nearly four standard deviations above average.

This new record follows consecutive record winter maximum extents in 2012 and 2013. The reasons for this recent rapid growth are not clear. Climate scientists have been puzzled by the behavior of the southern ice for many years.

You have to laugh as you watch the pro-global warming scientists squirm as they try to fight off reality by proclaiming that their forecasts should be correct and what is actually happening should be wrong!

Suck it up guys, whoever created the model to show that the icecaps would melt was wrong, not the ice caps!

In fact, air temperatures have been steady for the last fifteen years and more, and deep ocean temperatures are not increasing either. They call it a mystery. The real mystery is why anyone still takes them seriously!

But, remarkably, a lot of gullible people still do. When it became too obvious that there was no global warming, rather than giving up their lucrative money and publicity maker, it’s proponents simply changed the name from “global warming” to the more generalized “climate change”.

And as recently as the last weekend of September, hundreds of thousands of these idiots turned out in the ‘People’s Climate March’ in New York City calling for governments to address the so-called “crisis” surrounding climate change. The demonstration was timed to coincide with a meeting at the United Nations to discuss how countries can come together to combat temperature fluctuations, hurricanes, tornadoes, drought, blizzards and other forces of nature.

So, if the evidence does not back up the theory of global warming (er, I mean… climate change) being the fault of mankind, why do governments persist in wasting time on the subject with wide-ranging plans and conferences in a host of different countries?

There are various reasons.

Politicians like Obama used it to get himself elected and has had to stick with the lie ever since or back down and publicly admit he was a fool. Other politicians in other countries are similarly caught.

Also a false crisis like global warming is a welcome distraction from some of the real crises we are facing due to continued government incompetence.

And the manufacturing of a global warming crisis leaves the way open for the imposition of “carbon taxes” and other spurious ways for governments to try to steal our money. Watch so-called “carbon taxes” being levied on corporations who will no doubt pass on the cost to the people who buy their products.

Yes, that’s you and me, folks. We’re going to have to pay to fix something that isn’t even broken!

It’s painful to have to watch this going on. Even more so when there seems to be nothing that we can do to bring stupid people to their senses. All you can do is have a rant now again.

Oh, look, I just did!

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The Weirdest Of Coincidences

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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The hospital was just like any other.

It had accident and emergency, medical, surgical and all the other usual departments and wards. It also had an Intensive Care Unit, well staffed and managed, just like any other.

Except that this Intensive Care Unit wasn’t just like any other. Patients kept dying in this unit.

Not only that, but they always died in the same bed, and at the same time, on Sunday mornings at about 11:00 am, regardless of their medical condition. 

It had been that way for a while and doctors, nurses and the hospital management were not only puzzled, but rather nervous too.

What could possibly be the reason? The laws of probability made this occurrence way more than one in a million.

Some even thought it had to have something to do with the super natural.

Had something terrible happened in that ward sometime in the past?

Was the hospital built on the site of some awful tragedy that had taken place years ago?

Was there some kind of portal to another dimension where evil entities could enter and leave?

There were many more questions than answers, but no one could solve the mystery as to why the deaths always occurred in the same bed and around the same time, 11:00 am Sunday.

Eventually a worldwide team of experts was assembled to investigate the cause of the incidents. It included scientists, medical experts, a crew with electronic detection equipment, several clergymen  and even a medium. 

They were prepared for anything and everything.

Or so they thought.

The next Sunday morning, a few minutes before 11:00 am all of the doctors and nurses nervously waited with the team of experts outside the ward to see for themselves what the terrible phenomenon was all about. 

Some were holding wooden crosses, others prayer books and other holy objects to ward off the evil spirits. 

Then, just when the clock struck 11:00 am, the ward door suddenly burst open.

The crowd of watchers gasped.

Pookie Johnson, the part-time Sunday sweeper, entered the ward.

He walked over to the wall beside the offending bed, unplugged the life support system and plugged in his vacuum cleaner.

Turns out the culprit was Pookie and not a spookie after all.

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Just How Good Are You At Maths?

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

Just how good are you at maths?

I’m not talking about algebra, or trigonometry, or calculus, or anything complicated. I’m just talking about simple addition, subtraction and multiplication.

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For example,

1  +  1  =  2  so far so good.

6  +  4  =  10  okay

6  +  5  =  11  yes

64  +  65  =  129  right

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Let’s try some simple multiplication, for example,

8  times  8  =  64  yes, correct

5  times  13  =  65  yes, also correct

therefore

(8  x  8)  =  (5  x  13)   or    64  –  65  =  0    or    64  =  65

WHAT!!!  No that’s wrong, 64 cannot equal 65.

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Really?  So how does this work then?

(if this graphic does not load on this page just click on it and it will open in a new page, then when you have viewed it click the back arrow to return to this page)

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And while you are at it, please explain where the hole comes from in this

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