I have seen the conspirital mind close up in somebody who was close to me.
For many years I believed those quite sad , bad stories i was told of the misdemeanors or worse of others in our community although I had some reservations but as that person was quite close I had to believe them. Then a couple of quite personal incidents occurred and suddenly the scales fell from my eyes and I for the first time saw a pattern that went back for decades of people being accused of things they never did or actions that were blown out of all proportion usually with the accusation that an a bad intent was intended. And when I looked back I saw that a lot of quite innocent people in our community had been badly hurt by that person with their constant conspirital view on anything and everything that others did.

It sickened me both because of the closeness that had endured for many years and that so many of my other friends and acquaintances had suffered un-needingly and totally unneccessarily.
And all because of a mental state where others were always seen to be out to do harm or take advantage or were up to no good and were intent on causing grief to that person

And in knowing whats gone on before, it will be no surprise to me if conspiracies like the AIDS virus being deliberately released into Africa and the San francisco gay scene are soon proven correct.

If someone told you that the military were spraying a defoliant like agent orange somewhere in Africa, because the natives were in the way of a border dispute, can you simply dismiss it knowing that 500,000 children were born deformed from the effects of agent orange.

Mate, I'm left shaking my head at this comment. You must have been screwed over pretty badly at some point in your past to have lost so much faith in humanity. If your definition of having an open mind means being open to BS like this, then I'm happy to stick more to the straight and narrow.

A secret AEC document, dated 17 April 1947, reveals that physicians were aware of these radiation hazards but simply ignored them. Under the title “Medical Experiments in Humans,” the memorandum read: “It is desired that no document be released which refers to experiments with humans that might have an adverse effect on public opinion or result in legal suits. Documents covering such field work should be classified ‘Secret’.”

Mate, I'm left shaking my head at this comment. You must have been screwed over pretty badly at some point in your past to have lost so much faith in humanity. If your definition of having an open mind means being open to BS like this, then I'm happy to stick more to the straight and narrow.

You say there are plenty of proven conspiracy theories, thereby the subtext of your assertion is that they all must be plausible. Let me tell you (can't believe I used a Julia-ism), one swallow doesn't make a summer! There are always going to be instances in the past and into the future that will always lend credibility to conspiracy theories. The US is no shrinking violet in this regard as they have have obviously meddled in plenty of places under the veil of secrecy or for some greater good. Sometimes this has probably worked out well for us and at other times the outcome has been very poor indeed.



What if someone told you that a similar number of children could have died from malaria because enviromeddlers decided that one of the most effective ways of preventing it's transmission is suspected, ie. NOT definitively proven to raise cancer rates (and certainly not to anywhere near the same numbers as those who are saved). A conspiracy theorist could even go as far as saying that environmentalists have reached a level of elitism so extreme that they wish to cement their position in society by deciding who lives and who dies based purely upon access to wealth and where they live in the world Bob Brown even states that a one world government is needed so that a precious few can make the right decisions for everyone else... What exactly is the right decision?! But I digress. Commonsense dictates that in the instance of Malaria there are a number of different ways to prevent the infection of malaria with new safer options being developed all of the time. I'm certainly not advocating the explicit use of a particular insecticide because blind Freddy knows resistances due to genetic variation are an inherent part of nature and if we are to attempt to nearly totally eradicate a particular carrier, then a variety of approaches are needed, this will mean a variety of insecticides with different actives to cover as much as the variation as possible.

Now I know ROM's feelings correlate closely to what I've written above, so for you to grant yourself some sort of moral superiority based on a very emotional argument about people being born with deformities is a very low blow, especially when you link it to something as superficial as territorial dispute. I guess one should be thankful as usually it is something to do with an oil pipeline for the 'capitalist pigs' in America...

I guess according to your logic, the farmers up north are feigning horror, disgust and sorrow at seeing any of their cattle slaughtered in quite distressing circumstances overseas. The irony of this is of course that cattle up there are slaughtered that way to appease the more rigid / staid / dated religious elements that the Greens argue we should be allowing more of into this country. Perhaps someone could fill me in as to the wisdom of a logic in that even after 20 years of training and persuasion in killing our livestock, we still have someone holding a knife to the throat of a very concious beast because it is the religious way, and yet, these very same people will immigrate to our country and somehow embrace our beliefs and morals and turn their back to these fundamental underpinnings of their religious backgrounds? The conspiracy theorist in me thinks otherwise

If someone told you that the military were spraying a defoliant like agent orange somewhere in Africa, because the natives were in the way of a border dispute, can you simply dismiss it knowing that 500,000 children were born deformed from the effects of agent orange.

JOE Ludwig was warned in his first departmental briefing as Agriculture Minister that the long-term viability of livestock industries would be threatened if the sector failed to properly address concerns about animal welfare.
...
The warnings, contained in the "Red Book" prepared for incoming ministers, were handed to Senator Ludwig eight months before ABC's Four Corners screened footage of animal cruelty at Indonesian abattoirs, sparking the live cattle export crisis. The Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Department told the minister that if animal welfare was not "appropriately handled" by both the domestic and export livestock industries, there was a "real risk" they would lose public support.

Hi all - back after another little health fright - not doing much work these days, but gee the crops r looking good over here in W.A. apart from a few pockets needing a bit of rain, a lot of the wheat belt is looking real good.
i've been fooling around with fish - we put rainbow trout in for a trial last October (little chaps were 40mm long) we have just started fishing these out - huge growth 800grams to 1.2kgs in 10 months - amazing.... not bad eating but not as good as a King George whiting. cheers FE

In summary, well-distributed rains due to prevailing La Niña and favorable IOD has helped produce record grain, fruit and vegetable yield for India for 2011/12. The IPCC science has not adequately analyzed impact of well-distributed (summer and winter) rains on grain fruit and vegetable yield, especially in the monsoonal climate of south Asia.

So that global food shortage, and one will occur sooner or later, will be of very short duration which has been the case in the past when shortages of some Ag product developed, the shortage was of short duration as every farmer rushed to cash in on the high prices created by that temporary shortage.