Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

Richard Tonkin often contributes to Webdiary, as well as Your Democracy. Here's one for the books. Richard's last piece on Webdiary was, Under oath Prime Minister.

by Richard Tonkin

I'm having an ethical crisis. Over the last couple of years I've been looking in shadows for details, and now I'm wondering if it's a current-affairs equivalent of a meerschacht test.. you know, when a pychologist shows a patient ink-blobs and analyses their interpretation.

I'd read, seen and heard things and added them to pieces of information I knew, and become convinced that the answer I came up with was correct. In blind faith I've looked for proof of my "deductions" and broadcast my fears to the best of my abilities.

When I started looking at Halliburton I became pretty lonely. I'd been shocked to learn, at the time of the Adelaide-Darwin railway that the same company doing so much work in Australia was also involved in such a global levels of U.S. military support, from troop support in Iraq to global provision of support and provision for American bases. I couldn't understand why I felt like the only person in the world to be worried. I concluded that Australia had undergone it's own invasion and regime change by corporate means in order to propagate U.S. necessities.

I started to collect an overview to prove that I was right. That was a year ago. I invite you to skim the glossary I've gathered under the heading of "Halliburton Down Under, Above And Beyond."

When the U.S. gave as one of its prime motives for invading Iraq the fact that Saddam was creating Weapons Of Mass Destruction to use against the West, I assumed that this was propaganda to support the philosophies of the neocon think-tank Project For A New American Century.

When the London transport bombings violated a city population's sense of safety, the combination of UK Foregn Secretary Jack Straw repeating the phrase that the attack bore "all the hallmarks of Al Qaeda" first used by Tony Blair in the wake the Twin Towers Attack I assumed it was a hoax, along the lines of Operation Northwood (the US military's plan to entice American support of an invasion of Cuba by using American snipers to kill Cuban nationals in Florida and blame Castro) that had been instigated by the "West" to fuel a war with the military objective of creating profit for US corporations.

Then President Bush, in response to a question on whether the rise in terrorism and the war in Iraq where signs of the oncoming of the Apocalypes, launched into a speech on how he would "use military might to protect our ally, Israel" from Iran. I automatically assumed that Bush, on behalf of Western society, was planning to "damage control" Armageddon by precipitating a controlled version of the prophecies.

More recently, after an Australian-resident University Of Baghdad Professor Of Agriculture was gunned down while attempting to re-enter the Green Zone, I suggested that his death might be the silencing of someone with the potential capacity to considerably damage the Australian Government. I had as my "precedent" the death of Adelaide-based journalist/operative Paul Moran.

Yesterday an explosion ripped apart a building in Adelaide, and I naturally assumed that being so close to the Mark Of The Beast date of 6/6/06 (which FOX is using to launch a remake of "The Omen") it was the bomb that heralded Adelaide's engagement in the Apocalypse. As the day wore on and the truth of the matter evolved, I realised I was totally and utterly wrong.

I'm sitting here today wondering if I've spent the last three years in a state of paranoid delusion. Is everything I've believed and "deduced" based on self-fabricated trains of thoughts? Am I the "conspiracy theorist" that oh-so-many people believe me to be?

What if something I've written spurs someone else to find the evidence that I can't? That has always been my hope, and it now seems a wild one, yet it's been a major source of self-vindication while I've justified a gathering sense of foreboding about the situation the world finds itself in. This cornerstone of self-belief is also far from as strong as it once was.

I'd like to believe that I've been right, and seem to keep on encountering situations that "feel wrong". I know that there have been details of evidence that support my hypotheses, but these are far from any chain of proof. Does that mean that I should wait for a supportive "defence case" before I spout my beliefs and convictions?

I couldn't win a high school debate with the number of proven "givens" that I've gathered, so what right do I have to attempt to convince "society-at-large" to believe me?

Would anybody care to be my "Agony Aunt"?