It's a patchwork, Richard. Australia is a backwater, so what does that make Adelaide? Plenty of reasons, there, for the mainstream to be uninterested in the goings-on at Rundle Mall. Ergo, just the place to run certain lines of business, without the downtown hazards of Jo'burg or Rio.

So, the alert person on the ground is able to see and hear things that would otherwise go unnoticed. People use positions and privileges to obscure their motives, but public calls for accountability and disclosure generally fall on deaf ears.

Be careful, though, to build on facts. If, then, things do not add up and you don't yell about the craziness, you may go crazy, yourself (that's a paraphrase of a saying about one of the Tzadikkim, and I can't find the reference).

And, get more sleep! :)

Borrowed from New York Times, for my own personal use:

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May 4, 2006 Op-Ed Columnist When Warriors Come Home By BOB HERBERT

The list of names on the Department of Defense Web site is ever-expanding: Sakoda, Davis, Mills, Gomez ...

Like a disease for which there is no vaccine and no cure, the war in Iraq drags on. American deaths have now passed 2,400. Tens of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children have died.

The suffering continues to spread like a fire sprayed with gasoline. Yesterday we heard the tragic story of Jose Gomez, a sergeant in the Army Reserve whose 21-year-old fiancée, Analaura Esparza-Gutierrez, a private, was killed by a roadside bomb in Tikrit in 2003. Last summer Sergeant Gomez, who had served in Iraq himself, was ordered to go back for a second tour. Last Friday he was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad.

The extent of the suffering caused by the war seldom penetrates the consciousness of most Americans. For the public at large, the dead and the wounded are little more than statistics. They're out of sight, and thus mostly out of mind.

The media are much more focused on the trendy problem of steroids in baseball than, say, the agony of the once healthy young men and women who are now struggling to resurrect their lives after being paralyzed, or losing their eyesight, or shedding one or two or three or even four limbs in Iraq.

The truth is that the suffering comes in myriad forms. I spoke by phone this week with Stefanie Pelkey, a former Army captain who lives in Spring, Tex., with her 3-year-old son, Benjamin. Her husband, Michael, a captain with the First Armored Division, was sent to Iraq just a few weeks after Benjamin was born. Michael was a big man, 6 feet 4½ inches tall, who loved to play golf and, like President Bush, ride his bicycle.

When Captain Pelkey left Iraq and rejoined his family in the summer of 2003, he seemed "really agitated," Ms. Pelkey recalled. He was hyper-vigilant, she said, and insisted on keeping a loaded 9 mm pistol by the bed in their home in Lawton, Okla.

In testimony last year before a presidential commission examining the nation's mental health system, Ms. Pelkey said, "If only the military community had reached out to family members in some manner to prepare them for, and make them aware of, the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, my family's tragedy could have been averted."

Captain Pelkey's distress intensified over a period of several months. He became unusually forgetful. He developed high blood pressure and chest pains. Eventually he began to experience nightmares. He sought medical help, but it was a long time before anyone discussed the possibility of depression, or explored a possible link between the captain's symptoms and his experiences in Iraq.

A civilian family therapist eventually told Captain Pelkey that he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and recommended that he be put on medication. Ms. Pelkey said her husband seemed hopeful after receiving the diagnosis, but just a week later he shot himself to death in their living room.

Ms. Pelkey told me that her husband had been reluctant to discuss his time in Iraq, but she knew that he had seen soldiers die, and that he had been affected by the sight of civilian casualties and the suffering of children.

In Ms. Pelkey's view, her husband was as much a casualty of the war as a soldier killed in combat. "Just as some soldiers perish from bullet wounds or other trauma of war," she said, "Michael perished from the psychic wounds of war."

A report published in March in The Journal of the American Medical Association found that more than a third of the troops who served in Iraq sought help for mental health problems within a year of returning home. That high percentage is deceptive, however. The report said it is likely that "there are still considerable barriers to care." It referred to a prior study that showed that more than 60 percent of the Iraq veterans who screened positively for generalized anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder had not sought treatment.

War brutalizes bodies and it brutalizes minds, but our culture is programmed to keep the savagery below the level of our national consciousness as much as possible. Most of the suffering is done in silence.

I asked Ms. Pelkey, who is trying hard to spread the word about the mental distress inflicted by this war, how she herself was doing. "It affected me," she said. "I'm on medication for depression and anxiety. I probably will be for a while."

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May 4, 2006 Op-Ed Columnist The Paranoid Style By DAVID BROOKS

There's always been a strain of paranoia running through American politics. Back in the mid-1960's, when the right felt powerless, the John Birch Society thrived. Today, when the left feels disinherited, liberals seize upon the conspiracy fantasies of Kevin Phillips, whose book "American Theocracy" is in its fifth week on The Times's best-seller list.

Phillips's method is pretty conventional for conspiracists — he takes a single issue or set of data points and constructs an all-explaining story line to show how hidden cabals are controlling America.

In the first part of "American Theocracy," he describes the rise of the "fossil-fuels political alliance." Dwight Eisenhower was "born in oil country" and in 1952 became the first Republican to sweep the Southern oil centers. Nixon too "had an oil-state childhood" and deepened oil's influence.

Pretty soon, Republicans could count not only on energy and automobile producers but also on "secondary cadres" including "racing fans, hobbyists, collectors, and dedicated readers of automotive magazines, as well as the tens of millions of automobile commuters from suburbs and distant exurbs."

By 1997, reasons were mounting to take over Iraq's oil, Phillips asserts. "A near-final decision to invade seems to have been made in early 2001," he adds, months before 9/11. The Iraq war was born.

The oil alliance melded with another hidden army, the "end-times electorate," Phillips continues. Relying on the fact that millions of people read the "Left Behind" apocalyptic fantasy novels, Phillips asserts that 50 to 60 percent of Republicans believe in Armageddon and are influenced by the argument that the "destruction of the new Babylon" in Iraq will hasten the coming of the messiah.

Phillips says that the Bush White House sends messages to these Americans through "double-coding" in his speeches — phrases that mean one thing to secular America but contain hidden meanings to people with the "biblical worldview." Phillips cites research showing President Bush used the phrase "I believe" 12 times in his 2004 G.O.P. convention speech — code for religious zealots.

Needless to say, Phillips's book is rife with bizarre assertions. He writes that "many Orthodox Jewish females cannot even study the Torah," that the Rev. Sun Myung Moon "has been close to the Bush family," that the American Revolution was "in many ways a religious war."

But his method is pretty standard. First, he takes advantage of the record of his liberal readers' ignorance of evangelical communities to make ludicrous assertions. Second, as Jacob Weisberg noted in Slate, Phillips will begin a chapter making some grand accusation. Then he will depart on what Weisberg accurately calls "a pompous, pedantic history tour" of medieval mineralogy or 16th-century politics. Then, without presenting any evidence or answering any objections, he will repeat his accusation in stronger language.

Third, Phillips is a master of slicing reality so that it conforms to predetermined conclusions. To take one example among many, in 2002 the evangelist Franklin Graham organized a meeting to address the AIDS crisis. Graham said evangelicals should be ashamed of how slowly they've responded to the crisis, "I have to point the finger at myself and say, 'I'm late.' " AIDS is not about homosexuality, he continued, "the danger is to all of us." He praised Colin Powell's efforts, even though Powell is a strong advocate of condoms. He accelerated what has become a strong evangelical mobilization against AIDS.

Philips writes about that meeting, but ignores all of this. Instead Phillips lumps the conference in with gay-bashing and writes, "Only Jesus Christ can bring about the societal change needed to stop AIDS, preacher Franklin Graham told a 2002 Washington conference."

This is intellectual dishonesty on stilts. Nonetheless, Phillips's books fly off bookstore shelves, and he's given respectable platforms in the major media and at universities.

We're at a moment when crude conspiracy mongering — whether it is academic papers on the Israel lobby or George Clooney's "Syriana" — is emerging from the belly of the American establishment.

And while many informed critics have picked apart Phillips's fantasies, other Americans, at once cynical and naïve, are willing to believe any whacked-out theory, so long as it focuses hatred on Bush.

It's a funny way to run a theocracy.

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You were warned! 

 

Conspiracy (civil)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In the law of tort, the legal elements necessary to establish a civil conspiracy are substantially the same as for establishing a criminal conspiracy, i.e. there is an agreement between two or more natural persons to break the law at some time in the future or to achieve a lawful aim by unlawful means. The criminal law often requires one of the conspirators to take an overt step to accomplish the illegal act to demonstrate the reality of their intention to break the law, whereas in a civil conspiracy, an overt act towards accomplishing the wrongful goal may not be required. Etymologically, the term comes from Latin con- "with, together", and spirare "to breathe".

Conspiracy (crime)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In the criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more natural persons to break the law at some time in the future, so a natural person identified with the mind of a legal entity cannot conspire with the company alone. There is no limit on the number participating in the conspiracy and, in most countries, no requirement that any steps have been taken to put the plan into effect (compare attempts which require proximity to the full offence). For the purposes of concurrence, the actus reus is a continuing one and parties may join "the plot" later and incur joint liability and conspiracy can be charged where the co-conspirators have been acquitted and/or cannot be traced. Finally, repentance by one or more parties does not affect liability but may reduce their sentence.

Conspiracy theory

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A conspiracy theory attempts to explain the cause of an event as a secret, and often deceptive, plot by a covert alliance rather than as an overt activity or as natural occurrence.

The term "conspiracy theory" is used by scholars and in popular culture to identify a type of folklore similar to an urban legend, having certain regular features, especially an explanatory narrative which is constructed with certain naive methodological flaws. The term is also used pejoratively to dismiss allegedly misconceived, paranoid or outlandish rumors.

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Gus editorializes...

From these three major definitions we can construct a picture of what can happen, but beyond action being a conspiracy there is a very sound question:

Q: How do we discover if actions of some kind can be labeled as a conspiracy or not?

A: With great difficulty because the tracks are secret or well hidden or accepted by the majority...

So how do we discover or "decree" a conspiracy...?

Who was involved?

How was it set up?

What was the aim?

Was it "legal"... ?

Was it "accepted"?

What are the benefits for the general population versus the benefits for privateers (usually the conspirators but not exclusively)?

For instance there is not a doubt that the war on Iraq WAS a MASSIVE conspiracy. Who was involved? The US administration... How was it set up? Via lies from the white house... What was the aim? Vengeance and (re)conquest (oil, oil price parity)... Was it "legal"... ? No. Was it accepted? Yes. Most people bought the concept for the "tooted" value (WMDs, "freedom", etc) not for the reality of deaths and what it was. Hype of the mob was encouraged via "coconspirator" — the media, eager for biffo. The lies were very well constructed, yet so full of holes (there were some unavoidable contrary leaks — many of these were contained) but as long as the majority of people "believed" the hoax, the hoax was on. What were the benefits for the general population versus benefits to privateers? General population lost cred and its humanity versus the profiteering few.

"WAS IT LEGAL?"

This is one of the most difficult question to answer on most "conspiracy" theory, because as soon as someone with the help of a mate is trying to make you do something or make you buy something there is some strong — or powerfully subtle — pressure applied for a particular gain. Some of that gain is "legislated", some is not, and this is where semantics can ruin a good conspiracy theory.

Advertising is a form of conspiracy to make us buy stuff or do things but it is legal. So it is enticement yet it is strongly conspiratorial. Advertising is very powerful. Extremely powerful despite what some people say.

Religion is a form of conspiracy to make us believe. Christianly for example was hijacked by men who reformatted the beliefs into a structure dogma from which to "profit" and "rule" via a structure stack of officers. A similar thing is happening with Islamic fundamentalism, with less of a desire to create a structured stack.

But beyond some of the most obvious pressures which we face every day, call them legal conspiracies of the lesser kind, there are secret legalized "conspiracies" that do exist. For example some people may not see it that way but the Cross Sydney Tunnel is borderline on the realm of conspiracy since contracts ARE secret and did contained road closures which were kept secret to the last minute. The public was kept in the dark but the whole thing was "legal" because the laws we, as the public, have accepted do allow this sort of secret happenings. And this is not a question of Labor or Liberal... they both do it... within the allowance of what they can "legally" get away with.

As mentioned before, secrecy is the bane of democracy...

In the case of Halliburton in South Australia, if these is a conspiracy, there would be mutual benefit for the "conspirators" and like other legalese agreements that could be deemed as "conspiracies", these are smart ways to legalese the beneficial agreements so that they would not "break the law". They might break the spirit of what we intended the law to be, but no laws are broken since most legal teams are very clever about never using some words in contracts, and running an argument that can circumvent a point of law. The intent is definitely a conspiracy, the process is not. The beneficiaries are not the users but the agreement parties. The tooting of course is that the consumers ARE the beneficiaries. Often this is only an illusion...

In some cases, even governments will rewrite or promote new laws to allow for something that should not be happening. The blatant example is that of "torture" used by the US. New euphemisms crop up: rendition, abuse, etc...

There has been a worldwide pressure on government to sell their assets such as utilities, insurances, banks, etc, all under the banner of rationalization. Is rationalization a "conspiracy" by rich powerful organization to corner the market of NECESSITY? Until now necessities, apart from food (heavily regulated by government), most of our necessities were under the control of the social entity called the government. This is due to historical events as well as communal choices which would benefit EVERYONE. Now the privatization of our utilities, under the banner of being the "only way towards improvement", the primary beneficiaries are the shareholders, not the users who on some services see their costs increase really fast. The government does it with taxes, including land taxes... It will also exclude certain section of the community in a very clever "legal" way not to be seen doing discrimination.

Conspiracy? The federal government would have liked to get rid of Telstra a long time ago... Many mixed signals were put out to prepare the ground. Like being a cash cow for the government, and that dividends were good and... etc. But one would have had to be a fool not to see that the telecommunication business was going through upheavals. It takes a long time and money to develop new technologies, and new players on the market were investing heavily in developing new products that would undercut Telstra's providence. The deregulation, the straight jacket on Telstra, all this was devised to allow "competition" but in fact "competition is another grey area. For example governments can decide to release bandwidth or not for "privateer to use or not and at what price... One could see Our Prime Minister getting more and more agitated as the sale of Telstra was being delayed... The government knew (unless they were idiots there) that despite the value in the books, the real value on the market was deteriorating at a rate of knots... Country area were going to suffer because equivalent services in the bush would loose money compared to the lucrative services in cities. Why did the government not stipulate when deregulation came in that the bush had to be serviced by all the players who wanted a slice of the telecommunication in Australia...? But the government had to bite the cloth and let mums and dads wear the beanie for that one, as the shares went down the drain. In trying to sell Telstra recently the government lost nearly half of its value. By reinvesting in a public telecommunication system with innovation, Telstra would have increased in value... Now, we're up to (re)arguing the real cost of landline on which no one can agree. Another nail in the suffering of telstra.

Conspiracy? Lets apply our criteria and see the result... Let's do it for halliburton... We might surprise ourselves.

Not making the news in most of the Western World media outlets:

From Al Jazeera
Thursday 04 May 2006, 18:01 Makka Time, 15:01 GMT

Many Iraqis killed in US air attack

At least 13 people have died in an air assault by US forces in the Iraqi city of Ramadi just an hour after a bomber killed nine people outside a Baghdad court.

Ali al-Ubaidi, a medic at the Ramadi hospital said: "US planes bombed a house in the Aziziya area of Ramadi city centre, killing 13 civilians."

Four others were wounded, he added.

The US military confirmed it had conducted the assault, but did not immediately give further information.

Ramadi, populated by Sunni Arabs, is considered the most dangerous city in Iraq for US forces.

US ommanders say there are more attacks there than anywhere else in the country, with armed fighters and American troops exchanging fire several times a day - at least.

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And was Gus thinking that the situation in Iraq was calming down ssince our media was only reporting dancing in the street... And this also mentioned another suicide bomber, killing 9 people outside a court house, who did not make it to the news here either...

‘The question puzzles and enrages a city: how is it that
the Americans cannot keep the electricity running in Baghdad for more than a
couple of hours a day, yet still manage to build themselves the biggest embassy
on Earth? 

Irritation
grows as residents deprived of air-conditioning and running water three years
after the US-led invasion watch the massive US Embassy they call “George W’s
palace” rising from the banks of the Tigris.

In the
pavement cafés, people moan that the structure is bigger than anything Saddam
Hussein built. They are not impressed by the architects’ claims that the
diplomatic outpost will be visible from space and cover an area that is larger
than the Vatican city and big enough to accommodate four Millennium Domes. They
are more interested in knowing whether the US State Department paid for the
prime real estate or simply took it.’  

In The Chaos
Of Iraq, One Project Is On Target

I used to see US "Embassies" and US "hospitals" in Europe... They are full of soldiers... and stay full of soldiers for 25 years until they get kicked out — or there is no more sugar to pump out...

Castro still attracts a crowd...
Although Fidel is still hospitalised, his powers to command attention led him to be nominated as the president of a group of 118 non-aligned countries in the world. This was not unexpected but he was applauded by no less than 55 country leaders and many other representatives, during a conference held in Havana — (a lot more than Bush-the-Twerp in his piddle coalition of the willing). This group of countries, let up to now by Malaysia for the last three years, thus acknowledging for the second time the importance that Cuba has in the world. Fidel was also president of this non-aligned group of countries from 1979 to 1983.
This conference of 118 countries will severely condemn Israel for its war against Lebanon, and will offer support to Iran in its fight to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes...

Just wanting to let you know