::Homework Crapbox:: (version 2013 & 2014 & 2015 & 2016)

last SG · 2013-03-29T04:53:00+00:00

Check out the hundreds of visitor comments : https://sg.news.yahoo.com/singapore-s-pink-dot-gay-rights-rally-draws-thousands-of-people-amid--unprecedented--d...

UltimaOnline SG

Originally Posted by james1

UltimaOnline SG

Originally Posted by james1

Two things : first of all, whether the karma is completely balanced out in this lifetime, depends on many factors, primarily opportunity. Cases of trival karma are readily balanced anytime, and often settled within this same lifetime. For more severe karmic cases, eg. serial murder, torture, wartime atrocities, or very good karma of large magnitudes involving saving or improving hundreds or thousands of lives, obviously one lifetime will not be enough to completely work or balance it out. Opportunity to completely work out or balance or evolve karma, often then proceeds over several (or even many) lifetimes. So summary answer : depends on complexity of karma, and opportunity to work it out completely.

Next, on mental insanity. Note that there are no coincidences of a major type, certainly being psychopathic is a major trait that leaves no room for random chance. As such, the soul has chosen (some more willingly, some more reluctantly) to experience a lifetime of psychopathy, including (in the karmic contract) agreeing (again, some more willingly, some more relunctantly) to accept and take on any and all karma that results, directly or indirectly, from the psychopathy, including the karma from violence, brutality, abuse of others, even murder, etc.

To some extent, all of us who chose (happily or otherwise) to incarnate into physicality (again, some less evolved souls incarnate more reluctantly, while the more evolved souls incarnate more willingly), have implicitly accepted (don't like also bo pian, got to accept) that being physical inadvertantly and invariably involves a lot of pain, suffering, and incurring more karma of all sorts. It's a business decision, all businesses involve investment, and the returns may or may not result in profit, commonly enough significant loss, or even bankruptcy. Its the rules of the game, whether it's a business venture or physical incarnation.

To get ahead in business including spiritual business, live your life wisely, and you get to grow and progress (twin goals of physical incarnation : evolution and assistantiality; after each person dies, he/she/you will be asked in your Life Review, along the lines of : "In this lifetime just over, what have you learnt, and who have you helped?"), and generate more helpful, ethical, positive karma, than destructive, unethical, negative karma. More profits than losses in your spiritual business.

Why would a soul want to kena or incarnate into, a diseased body and/or mind? For karmic reasons of course. The soul may have negative karma in this area, and reluctantly require (ie. advised by the teachers, guides & helpers, evolutionary orientor, etc) the experience of such a problematic lifetime. It could be that the soul is undergoing a test, to see if it can, trapped in a psychotic mind, exercise the inner strength to overcome the sadistic, violent and murderous tendencies that the diseased mind, including DNA genetics and/or planned events that cause psychotic trauma, brings to the consciousness, as a karmic test (this is just one of many possibilities; karma is complex and there are always multiple possibilities to consider : two persons in similar situations or circumstances may have completely different underlying karma, one very good karma, one very bad karma; so do not judge others, but empathize, sympathize and assist as best you can).

Another two points at this juncture :
Karma is complex, and there are many levels and aspects of what humans call Karma. One aspect is what you would consider Consequences alone (regardless of intentions). The other aspect, is what you would consider Intentions alone (regardless of consequences). In actuality from a higher viewpoint, both aspects apply simultaneously, automatically and non-judgementally. That is to say, no 'god' or beings of external authority (including your guides & helpers, your Council of Elders, Evolutionary Orientor, etc) judges you or decrees that you deserve such-and-such a karma. Karma is automatic, a natural reflex action of the universe, therefore whatever your actions & intentions and their consequences are, they are collectively called work or "karma", and is your soul's personal contribution to the universe. So karma is not punishment pinned or forced artificially onto anyone, karma is simply the work of whatever you do, the consequence unto yourself, others and the universe.

So, in the case of a psychotic individual, and the kind of karma incurred; we've already considered some of the underlying possibilities, of why any soul would want to incarnate into a psychotic mind or diseased body, ie. it's a karmic arrangement, and not a coincidence or accident. Putting the underlying motivations aside then; it is accurate to say that whether the individual is of sound mind or disturbed mind when commiting those actions (either helpful or harmful, ethical or unethical, 'good' or 'bad', etc), it does not matter, in the sense that the karma is automatic, and automatically and simultaneously considers both factors (of Consequence and Intention) :

Consequences :
If the consequences are ethical, helpful, positive, then by definition of Karma (ie. work), the consequence-karma is accordingly ethical, helpful, positive.
If the consequences are unethical, harmful, negative, then by definition of Karma (ie. work), the consequence-karma is accordingly unethical, harmful, negative.

Intentions :
If the intentions are ethical, helpful, positive, then by definition of Karma (ie. work), the intention-karma is accordingly ethical, helpful, positive.
If the intentions are unethical, harmful, negative, then by definition of Karma (ie. work), the intention-karma is accordingly unethical, harmful, negative.

Karma is highly complex and multi-layered, and it's not simply about Consequence and Intention as humans understand this; but in the context of this discussion, these two are the most relevant factors that will suffice for us to consider.

UltimaOnline SG

Gary V. Deutschmann, Sr.

"Any REAL magician or mentalist could do it. Can you?"

Considering there must be 1/2 million or more different glass designs
in peoples possession, I sure would hate to stock that many in order
to make a switch for a borrowed one.

I do a great bent wine glass or a platform bent champagne glass using
the methods I outlined in one of my posts. And the effect occurs
right in front of the spectators eyes with no switches of glasses
being made.

Just in case you missed the post or it was censored.

HERE ARE THE SECRETS OF MY BENT GLASS TRICKS!

The bent champagne glass uses crystallized Caustic Soda in the Stem of
a Polystryene Plastic Champagne Glass. About 5cc of water is injected
into the glass covertly or blatantly as part of the routine which
activates the Lye to generate heat, the heat in turn melts (softens)
the plastic enough so that it bends over until the rim of the glass is
resting on the table.

The bent wine glass uses a heating coil in the base of the plastic
wine glass, two small batteries also in the base supply the current to
heat the coil soften the plastic and the glass bends until the rim
touches the table. The heating element and battery unit was made by
Galton Industries for those curious around 1975 I guess.

For those who are unaware that plastic glassware, in wine glasses the
hollow portion of the stem is from the bottom and the stems are
usually colored, mine were black stemmed and on champagne glasses the
hollow stem is from the top and is usually clear. The plastic can be
stained to make it appear that it has liquid in it and hide the lye or
you can glue a small tube in the center of the glass and fill the
glass almost to the tip of the tube with colored liquid. Then when
your ready to activate the device, just add more liquid to the glass,
causing it to overflow into the center tube that you glued in place.

My other post elaborated greatly on setting up the effects.

While I'm giving away Secrets to appease Ray's curiosity, I might as
well publicly explain how my bent spoon, fork, key and letter opener
worked.

It all started with my obtaining a key designed so that it visually it
emulated a Schlage Lock key. You set the straight key in the middle
of a table, step way back from it so that no one can accuse you of
touching it. Within under a minute, the key will bend approximately
15 degrees right in the middle about 1/4 inch in front of the handle
portion of the key.

It, the spoon, the fork and the letter opener all consist of the same
unique tri-metallic construction.

They are laminated metals, similar to bi-metallic strips, except they
use three different metals in their construction. The area where the
bend is the sharpest is filled with some type of black carbonatious
material.

I don't claim to understand the metalurgy enough to know what types of
metals they are, or the real purpose of the carbonatious area. I know
the carbon area exists because I broke one of the spoons once.

In any case, the props at rest or in storage are in their bent
position, this is their normal position.
Prior to performing the illusion, the particular item I am going to
use, while it is in my case out of sight, has a small cylinder placed
around it, that is also connected to 2 size C batteries. The cylinder
heats and the prop straightens actually overbends slightly.

I remove it from the cylinder immediately before the performance, and
as long as I am holding the prop in my hand, or a spectator is looking
at it, it stays just warm enough that it does not bend.

When it is placed on a table by the spectator, I know that I have X
number of seconds before the cooler table will cause the prop to begin
to bend, usually this is around 30 seconds unless the table is wet or
covered with a tablecloth. A wet table decreases the time before
bending and a tablecloth greatly lengthens the time before bending.

The key that I had was probably similar to the key Uri Geller used
when he performed the same trick and the other props are made using
the same materials and type of construction.

I also owned several other props, the likes of which are never found
in common magic shops and most are custom made and distributed only to
a very few select performers.

TTUL
Gary

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/alt.magic.secrets/ZeettQd-m2o/DBLuKbYT7MoJ

UltimaOnline SG

Poor girl! Hope she gets all the (medical, financial and emotional) support she needs.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/girl-s-hand-crushed-in/931614.html

SINGAPORE: A 14-year-old girl's hand was crushed in a sugar cane machine on Sunday evening.

Eyewitnesses said the incident happened when the girl was helping her father out at his sugar cane stall at a hawker centre in Toa Payoh Lorong 8.

The Singapore Civil Defence Force said they received a call about the incident around 8.40pm.

They said the girl's right hand was stuck in the machine when they arrived.

Rescuers had to use tools to release her hand.

She was then sent conscious to Tan Tock Seng Hospital.

Channel NewsAsia understands the injuries sustained were from her fingers to wrist area and her bones were crushed.

UltimaOnline SG

How one woman's tweet made her world infamous within 24 hours.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/alisonvingiano/this-is-how-a-womans-offensive-tweet-became-the-worlds-top-s

UltimaOnline SG

Good skills, good choreography, and good effort. But if Donnie Yen can get "amazed" by it, it's only because Donnie is thinking, "I'm amazed how anyone can be buay hiao bai enough to think that any martial arts video can possibly impress me. Even I can't impress me, and I'm already the best in the world."

Video :
http://singaporeseen.stomp.com.sg/singaporeseen/this-urban-jungle/watch-this-donnie-yen-let-these-spore-youths-show-you-their-nifty-kung-fu-moves

UltimaOnline SG

[Relationships] - "I chanced upon my hubby's other family"

http://singaporeseen.stomp.com.sg/singaporeseen/confession-of-the-day/confession-i-chanced-upon-my-hubby-and-his-other-family-while-on-holiday

"It started out like any other holiday. My husband Fred* and I had been to this hotel many times before.

"In fact, it had become a ritual for us to visit every year, staying about ﬁve days each time - Fred had found the place and I liked the delicious food and wonderful spa treatments they offered.

"Some years, we went alone, and other years, our two young children would come along.

"Fred had many friends and business associates there, and he would occasionally leave me to my own devices while he went to meet them, coming back in time for dinner.

"On this holiday, Fred, as usual, told me he was going to meet his buddies. Innocently, I asked to tag along - in all the 10 years we had been holidaying there, I'd never met his friends.

"Fred refused, saying I'd be bored with their mundane chatter. He asked me to enjoy the hotel facilities and wait for his return later that evening. I reluctantly agreed.

"However, two hours later, I decided to go shopping in town. I spent a fair bit of time walking around, working up an appetite. Feeling famished, I headed to a nearby cafe for some snacks and a cup of tea.

"As I crossed the road to the cafe, I saw Fred sitting at one of the tables, feeding three young children.

"They must be his friends' kids, I thought. Eager for my husband's company, I hurried over to him, only to stop short when I noticed a petite woman carrying a tray of food making her way towards Fred.

"I watched as she sat next to Fred and leaned in for a kiss. My eyes widened in disbelief as my husband kissed her back on the lips. My heart sank as I watched them gaze lovingly into each other's eyes.

"Not knowing what to do after catching my husband sharing an intimate moment with another woman, I quickly looked for a place to hide.

"I stepped behind a big tree, trying not to hyperventilate as I tried to work out what I had just seen.

"Was the woman one of Fred's many friends, I wondered? But no matter how much I tried to rationalise what I'd seen, it came back to one thing - judging from the intimate way Fred and the woman were behaving, they must be lovers.

"I should know - I'd been married to Fred for 12 years and that look he gave the woman was the same one he used to give me in our 'honeymoon' years.

"My eyes started to burn - I didn't realise I had been crying. At a loss as to what to do, I contemplated packing my bags and ﬂying home.

"Then I felt indignant. Why should I beat a hasty retreat? It was bad enough that I was cowering behind a tree as if I was the one with something to hide.

"After about half an hour, I decided I needed to ﬁnd out what was going on.

"Taking a deep breath, I marched across the road into the cafe and over to Fred's table. He turned pale when he saw me.

"I'd wanted to stay calm but my anger got the better of me - I slapped him and demanded to know who the woman was.

"Rubbing his cheek, Fred pulled me aside and asked me to return to the hotel.

"He said it was all a big misunderstanding and that he would explain everything later.

"I became hysterical and demanded that he tell me everything there and then, or I would kick up an even bigger fuss for all to see.

"Seeing that his efforts to placate me had failed, Fred brought me back to the table. The woman had remained seated the whole time, hugging the children close to her while watching my little drama with Fred unfold.

"Meet Jane*, Fred said, and her kids.

"Jane gave me a meek smile but I just stared at her.

"Fred explained that he had met Jane four years ago during a work trip there. Jane was the waitress at the restaurant that he and his business associates were having dinner at.

"They'd connected emotionally and Fred had decided to pursue the friendship.

"When he found out that Jane and her children had been abandoned by her ex-husband, Fred took pity on her and helped her out ﬁnancially - he tried to make as many business trips to the place as he could, so that he could look in on her more often.

"'So you repay my husband's kindness by having an affair with him?' I asked Jane. She kept quiet and looked to Fred for help. She seemed genuinely distressed. I watched in dismay as Fred reached for her hand and squeezed it.

"Then he turned to me and dropped a bombshell: 'We're not having an affair, Kim. We got married two years ago.'

"I was stunned. My husband had married another woman?

"He had been juggling two families for the past two years and leading a double life?

"My children and I had been sharing a father and husband all this while? Was their marriage even recognised? How was he supporting dual families - did he skimp on us so he could splurge on them?

"No wonder he loved going back time and again to the same hotel for a holiday - it was so convenient for him to sneak out and spend time with his other family!

"I was in shock and seething with rage, but I was also disappointed and heartbroken.

"I ran out of the cafe and caught a cab back to the hotel. Fred didn't chase after me - I wasn't sure if I felt relieved or upset at that.

"Fred didn't return to the hotel until late that night. By then, my eyes were swollen from crying and I'd packed my bags. I told him I was going home the next morning.

"Fred tried to persuade me to stay, saying we needed to work things out.

"I refused and told him that if he still loved me, he would leave with me. He took a moment to consider, then told me to go ahead.

"'I need to tie up some loose ends. I will be home in two days,' he said.

"So I went home alone, rejected by the man I'd thought was my soulmate - we had been together since college and hardly ever argued throughout our relationship - and mulling over myriad questions.

"Was my marriage a sham? Was it worth saving? How would I tell the kids that their father has another family overseas? By the time Fred returned home two days later, I still didn't have the answers.

"For a month after that, Fred and I crept around each other, not saying much and keeping up a semblance of a marriage before we attempted to communicate again.

"Fred reached out ﬁrst, saying we needed to discuss things. He took me to dinner at our favourite restaurant and was an absolute gentleman that night, reminding me of how he used to be when we'd ﬁrst started dating.

"He apologised for upsetting me and told me that he hadn't planned on falling in love with Jane. 'It just happened,' he said earnestly.

"He said he was waiting for the right time to tell me. Sobbing, he asked for my forgiveness.

"He'd missed me terribly and wanted to make things better between us. 'Can't we just go back to the way we were?' he begged. He promised that he would fairly divide his time between Jane and me.

"At that moment, it all became clear to me - I knew what I needed to do. We'd never go back to the way we were if Fred wasn't willing to let go of his other wife. I certainly wasn't going to share, so I asked Fred for a divorce.

"He was taken aback. 'We've been married for so long. You can't just give up on us now. Think of our children,' he implored.

"But I remained ﬁrm. I told him he had made a mockery of our marriage and I couldn't accept another woman in his life.

"I couldn't understand how my husband could give his heart to someone else and sneak around while doing so.

"That was two years ago. It took me about a year to ﬁnally move on with my life.

"I have a steady job now and have moved back in with my parents, who have been so supportive, even helping me care for my kids while I'm at work.

"It was difﬁcult at ﬁrst, having to survive on a single income - I realised how 'pampered' we had been when Fred was around and bringing home a big salary - but we have managed to adjust to our new, humble lifestyle.

"I never bothered to ﬁnd out what the legal status of Fred's second marriage was.

"But I explained to my children what their father did and why we divorced - I don't want to hide anything from them. I don't know if they fully grasped the situation - all they did was to cry and hug me, and ask for Daddy to make them breakfast the day after - but I hope they will understand when they get older.

"They still see their father once in a while, but they are no longer as close to him as before.

"I have started dating again. I'm not yet ready to walk down the aisle once more, but I'm willing to take a second chance with another man.

"I hope that I'll be able to ﬁnd someone better than Fred, someone who will not only embrace my young ones as his own, but also love me - and only me."

(*Names have been changed, obviously)

UltimaOnline SG

http://singaporeseen.stomp.com.sg/singaporeseen/this-urban-jungle/rescuers-save-injured-dog-and-receives-unexpected-surprise

UltimaOnline SG

A 14-year-old girl was helping her father at his drinks stall in a hawker centre at Toa Payoh Lorong 8 when her hand got caught in a sugarcane juicer.

According to a report in The New Paper, the machine exerted so much pressure on Tan Li Xuan's hand that it crushed three fingers and tore off the skin on the wrist.

Shin Min Daily News reports that the incident took place at around 8.40pm on Sunday (Dec 22).

Li Xuan's father, Mr Tan Ah Guan, said he was packing some things when he suddenly heard his daughter shouting.

When he turned over, he saw her right hand stuck in the machine.

He immediately cut off the power to stop the machine and called the police and the SCDF.

The machine was dismantled before Li Xuan's hand was freed. She was sent to Tan Tock Seng hospital.

UltimaOnline SG

Be careful when carying long, bulky stuff (like the stuff in the video) up an escalator. And if a job is meant to be a two-man job, wait for someone to help you, instead of risking your life to do it solo.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bc5_1312420246

UltimaOnline SG

[Movie] - The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp_cxxqOaPM

UltimaOnline SG

Like it or not, it's genetically predetermined : Whites (both males and females) are perceived as more masculine, while EastAsians (both males and females) are perceived as more feminine. Hence, it's no wonder most men (both Whites and EastAsians) prefer EastAsian girls, while most girls (both Whites and EastAsians) prefer White men.

----------------------------------------------------------------

http://singaporeseen.stomp.com.sg/singaporeseen/confession-of-the-day/confession-spore-girls-hit-on-me-all-the-time-because-im-an-exchange-student

Confession pages are all the rage. Here is STOMP's choice of confession of the day.

Today's confession was penned by a NUS exchange student who wants to share about the amount of attention girls in Singapore gave him just because he is a foreigner.

Here is the confession in full:

"Compared to my girlfriend I am average looking. In fact, all my friends can't believe why she fell for me and they tease me all the time.

"When I went on exchange to Singapore, she was very worried that I'd cheat. I assured her and believed that the thought would never cross my mind.

"However I was not prepared for the amount of attention females in Singapore would give to a white guy.

"Its not just the clubs that my exchange friends pulled me into; girls will get my number and follow up with "dates" even after a simple chat after class.

"With so much attention showered on me, the temptation to cheat became very strong.

"It culminated to the point when one of my female friends made a move on me and I seriously considered going ahead with the physical intimacy. For some reason I pulled myself away.

"I realize that this must be something my girlfriend faces all the time, and yet she still stays faithful to me.

"I didn't cheat in the end, but I'd like to say that changes in one's desirability can really change our views.

"The same situation probably happens when an Singaporean girl goes to the West for an exchange as well.

"Singaporean guys will probably never experience this, and sadly will never understand."

http://singaporeseen.stomp.com.sg/singaporeseen/confession-of-the-day/confession-spore-girls-hit-on-me-all-the-time-because-im-an-exchange-student

UltimaOnline SG

This is a tale of three money pits. It’s also a tale of monetary regress — of the strange determination of many people to turn the clock back on centuries of progress.

Paul Krugman

The first money pit is an actual pit — the Porgera open-pit gold mine in Papua New Guinea, one of the world’s top producers. The mine has a terrible reputation for both human rights abuses (rapes, beatings and killings by security personnel) and environmental damage (vast quantities of potentially toxic tailings dumped into a nearby river). But gold prices, while down from their recent peak, are still three times what they were a decade ago, so dig they must.

The second money pit is a lot stranger: the Bitcoin mine in Reykjanesbaer, Iceland. Bitcoin is a digital currency that has value because ... well, it’s hard to say exactly why, but for the time being at least people are willing to buy it because they believe other people will be willing to buy it. It is, by design, a kind of virtual gold. And like gold, it can be mined: you can create new bitcoins, but only by solving very complex mathematical problems that require both a lot of computing power and a lot of electricity to run the computers.

Hence the location in Iceland, which has cheap electricity from hydropower and an abundance of cold air to cool those furiously churning machines. Even so, a lot of real resources are being used to create virtual objects with no clear use.

The third money pit is hypothetical. Back in 1936 the economist John Maynard Keynes argued that increased government spending was needed to restore full employment. But then, as now, there was strong political resistance to any such proposal. So Keynes whimsically suggested an alternative: have the government bury bottles full of cash in disused coal mines, and let the private sector spend its own money to dig the cash back up. It would be better, he agreed, to have the government build roads, ports and other useful things — but even perfectly useless spending would give the economy a much-needed boost.

Clever stuff — but Keynes wasn’t finished. He went on to point out that the real-life activity of gold mining was a lot like his thought experiment. Gold miners were, after all, going to great lengths to dig cash out of the ground, even though unlimited amounts of cash could be created at essentially no cost with the printing press. And no sooner was gold dug up than much of it was buried again, in places like the gold vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where hundreds of thousands of gold bars sit, doing nothing in particular.

Keynes would, I think, have been sardonically amused to learn how little has changed in the past three generations. Public spending to fight unemployment is still anathema; miners are still spoiling the landscape to add to idle hoards of gold. (Keynes dubbed the gold standard a “barbarous relic.”) Bitcoin just adds to the joke. Gold, after all, has at least some real uses, e.g., to fill cavities; but now we’re burning up resources to create “virtual gold” that consists of nothing but strings of digits.

I suspect, however, that Adam Smith would have been dismayed.

Smith is often treated as a conservative patron saint, and he did indeed make the original case for free markets. It’s less often mentioned, however, that he also argued strongly for bank regulation — and that he offered a classic paean to the virtues of paper currency. Money, he understood, was a way to facilitate commerce, not a source of national prosperity — and paper money, he argued, allowed commerce to proceed without tying up much of a nation’s wealth in a “dead stock” of silver and gold.

So why are we tearing up the highlands of Papua New Guinea to add to our dead stock of gold and, even more bizarrely, running powerful computers 24/7 to add to a dead stock of digits?

Talk to gold bugs and they’ll tell you that paper money comes from governments, which can’t be trusted not to debase their currencies. The odd thing, however, is that for all the talk of currency debasement, such debasement is getting very hard to find. It’s not just that after years of dire warnings about runaway inflation, inflation in advanced countries is clearly too low, not too high. Even if you take a global perspective, episodes of really high inflation have become rare. Still, hyperinflation hype springs eternal.

Bitcoin seems to derive its appeal from more or less the same sources, plus the added sense that it’s high-tech and algorithmic, so it must be the wave of the future.

But don’t let the fancy trappings fool you: What’s really happening is a determined march to the days when money meant stuff you could jingle in your purse. In tropics and tundra alike, we are for some reason digging our way back to the 17th century.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/23/opinion/krugman-bits-and-barbarism.html

hiphop2009 SG

Merry Christmas everybody! =D

UltimaOnline SG

Merry Christmas everybody! =D

Merry Christmas, HipHop!

UltimaOnline SG

http://singaporeseen.stomp.com.sg/singaporeseen/this-urban-jungle/yes-that-really-is-a-grizzly-bear-at-the-table-find-out-how-it-got-there

UltimaOnline SG

[Short Film] - Bus 44 (chinese dialogue english subtitles)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CK4TUP0VKLY

UltimaOnline SG

[Music] - Jason Chen's "Still In Love" comes with a beautiful piano accompaniment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=NRHHNPuEn5Y

UltimaOnline SG

Excerpt from this excellent article :
http://majorityrights.com/weblog/comments/the_evolution_of_gang_violence_in_australia

But even more frustrating for operational police were the activities of this ethnic crime group, activities that set it apart from almost all others bar the Cabramatta 5T. The Lebanese groups were ruthless, extremely violent, and they intimidated not only innocent witnesses, but even the police that attempted to arrest them. As these crime groups encountered less resistance in terms of police operations and enforcement, their power grew not only within their own communities, but also all around Sydney — except in Cabramatta, where their fear of the South-East Asian crime groups limited their forays. But the rest of Sydney became easy pickings.

AN EXAMPLE of the confrontations police nearly always experienced in Muslim-dominated areas when confronting even the most minor of crimes is an incident that occurred in 2001 in Auburn. Two uniformed officers stopped a motor vehicle containing three well known male offenders of Middle Eastern origin, on credible information via the police radio that indicated that the occupants of the vehicle had been involved in a series of break-and-enters. What occurred during the next few hours can only be described as frightening.

When searching the vehicle and finding stolen property from the break-and-enter, the police were physically threatened by the three occupants of the car, including references to tracking down where the officers lived, killing them and “fucking your girlfriends”. The two officers were intimidated to the point of retreating to their police car and calling for urgent assistance. When police back-up arrived, the three occupants called their associates via their mobile phones, which incidentally is the Middle Eastern radio network used to communicate amongst gangs. Within minutes as many as twenty associates arrived as well as another forty or so from the street where they had been stopped. As further police cars arrived, the Middle Eastern males became even more aggressive, throwing punches at police, pushing police over onto the ground, threatening them with violence and damaging police vehicles.

When the duty officer arrived, he immediately ordered all police back into their vehicles and they retreated from the scene. The stolen property was not recovered. No offender was arrested for assaulting police or damaging police vehicles.

But the humiliation did not end there. The group of Middle Eastern males then drove to the police station, where they intimidated the station staff, damaged property and virtually held a suburban police station hostage. The police were powerless. The duty officer ordered police not to confront the offenders but to call for back-up from nearby stations. Eventually the offenders left of their own volition. No action was taken against them.

In the minds of the local population, the police were cowards and the message was, Lebs rule the streets. For a number of days, nothing was done to rectify this total breakdown of law and order. To the senior police in the area, it was more important to give the impression that local ethnic relations were never better. It was also important to Peter Ryan that no bad news stories appeared that may have given the impression that crime in any area was out of control. Had these hoodlums been arrested they would have filed Internal Affairs complaints immediately via their Legal Aid lawyers and community leaders.

SO WITH a police force on the verge of bankruptcy, the Middle Eastern crime problem was an explosion waiting to go off. I had observed the beginnings of Asian organised crime whilst at the Drug Squad and later at the National Crime Authority where I worked on two task forces, one of which was on Chinese organised crime. When I look back on the influence of Chinese organised crime in Australia, I see a gradual but sustained trend, not one of high peaks in terms of activity or incidents, but one of a well planned criminal enterprise that attracts little attention. It’s there but you can’t always see it.

It probably took twenty years for the Chinese to become a dominant force in crime in this city. But Middle Eastern crime has taken less than ten years. So pervasive is their influence on organised crime that rival ethnic groups, with the exception of the Asian gangs, have been squeezed out or made extinct. The only other crime group to have survived intact are the bikies, although the bikies these days have legitimised many of their operations and now make as much money from legal means as they do illegally. In many ways they have adopted US Mafia methods of legitimate businesses shrouding their illegal operations.

With no organised crime function, no gang unit except for the "South-East Asian Gangs Strike Force", the New South Wales Police turned against every convention known to Western policing in dealing with organised crime groups. In effect the Lebanese crime gangs were handed the keys to Sydney.

Full article :
http://majorityrights.com/weblog/comments/the_evolution_of_gang_violence_in_australia

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