Covid has been a mirror, revealing to us all much about ourselves and the culture in which we live, while disclosing those in our communities who continue to work against discrimination and division. For us, it has been a time to witness who the true elders are in our midsts and how they respond in a time of crisis. Meet such a warm and full-hearted elder, Nikki Marshall…
Thank you Nikki for welcoming us into your home and sharing a few of your moving stories relating to Covid, your family and the various communities you serve.
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The book Nikki mentions towards the end of this video is From What Is to What If by Rob Hopkins. We also highly recommend it.
thanks for such a heartfelt interview with Nikki
It was our pleasure too, Laurel.
The questions were beautifully addressed.
At the core of this process of healing it is helpful if one considers the limits of democracy. It is not perfect. It cannot serve all parts of society at once. Sometimes it is actively working against different groups interests, as we are seeing with the transmission line project. There are no easy answers to these challenges.
Where it is made hugely difficult though is where we have seen the introduction of doubts and suspicions about what is really going on.
Personally I see little grounds for these suspicions; whereas it is proposed there are some evil geniuses at work, my lived experience of government and business is one of bungling and chaos. And as I have noted before, for all the talk of ‘big pharma’, Bitcoin, Tesla and Amazon have done far better in the same period by many factors.
In practice, I can report as a member of one of the large two political parties, there is very little engagement in democracy at the level of party membership. In the region where I am based we struggle to field a quorum each meeting, despite the fact that membership of a local branch gives you direct access to the local state members and even a direct line to the local federal mp.
We certainly need to be talking to each other more and understanding the complexity of human emotions and needs when we do so. It’s a great dilemma then that many are taking to alternative bunkers in which their views are being reinforced rather than challenged (perhaps too strong a word) or at least heard.
By excluding oneself from mainstream settings it is then not surprising that the direction of the mainstream starts to depart from your views which have not been expressed.
Your persistence is admirable, Patrick. It is also quaint that you try to pull us back from a perceived brink into some ‘normal’ fold of the dominant culture. For us, a culture that closes down debate and cancels out nuanced or marginal perspectives won’t make it. Your gallant “mainstream” has rebranded dissenting views as ‘misinformation’ instead of encouraging debate and broad-ranging discussion. Open debate is the lifeblood of a true democracy. This closing down of debate will, of course, lead to many more “bunkers” just as it will lead to the necessary rebuilding of diverse cultures out of the ruins of the oversized monocultural one that is so big and clutsy it must necessarily fail. But that’s diversity for you, that’s life labouring more life into more beautiful life.
We wish you all the best in sticking to mainstream ideology. Let’s check in about that feeling in a year. You should have had about 7 jabs by then to be ‘fully up to date’. What a business model, eh – leaky, disease-producing and ineffective injections (required every six weeks to maintain ‘protection’), leaky injections which people can’t question because the scientists who have questioned them have been disappeared, censored, ridiculed and, despite their pre-Covid reputations, have been made fringe. In Australia it looks like the science is ‘in’, but that’s just the mainstream barking ever more loudly over the numerous songbirds of the greater social forest.
Fair play I guess but lapsing into name-calling (kidults) is at odds with your desire for nuance and sensitivity to other views (that’s okay, I stumble occasionally myself too).
I found the account of the lady in aged care particularly touching, and of course the statement “she would rather be dead than not see her children” highlighted acutely what was at stake.
Please forgive my persistence 🙂 You did say you welcomed comments and as most of those who do so are acclaiming your views I thought my counter position might be valuable.
By the way, at this stage due to the lower fatalities associated with Omicron, there is only a very slim chance that a third dose will be mandated (I haven’t had one) and in fact in a sign of progress South Australia announced on Wednesday the lifting of vaccine mandates this week.
Hope this is a help 🙂
Thanks PH, it’s good you’ve toned down your rhetoric and we can engage more fully now. Past comments on this site by you give context for our no-nonsense responses, but it does feel things are shifting and perhaps we can start trusting each other and being less positional.
Sadly, in the most vaccinated countries, with the immune-wrecking nature of the gene-altering jabs, omicron is increasingly causing issues, as vaxxed Australians will no doubt see this coming winter. In England and Israel – the earliest mass-vaccinated countries in the world, where 4th shots are turning into 5th shots – things are looking increasingly dire for vaccinated people.
This article by Christina Pagel, director of UCL’s Clinical Operational Research Unit, states why the UK are seeing near-record Covid cases.
https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/30/uk-near-record-covid-cases-three-myths-omicron-pandemic
She even goes as far as saying, “Unfortunately, immunity from vaccines wanes over a matter of months – mostly against infection, but also against severe disease and death.” Pagel is also raising an alarm about the myth of Omicron being mild and being the last of the variants. But, instead of challenging the great lie of 2021 – that the jabs are “safe and effective” – she goes on to recommend more boosters. Instead of stating that a protocol of zinc, quercetin, vitamins D (sunlight) and C, fermented garlic, manuka honey and a mostly plant-based/animal fats diet with little processed sugar or carbs, is significantly more effective in early treatment and cause no harm, she wants to keep her job and, by extension, line Pfizer and co’s pockets with more government debt.
And, instead of the global pro-vaccine lobby being held to account for not calling for trial transparency ahead of the rollouts, not insisting on collecting proper data on vaccine injury and death, and for generally being more ideological (fighting vaccine hesitancy) than being scientific (independent longitudinal studies), we will see a global saving-face exercise like we’ve never seen before.
The response to Covid by officials has caused tremendous harm, especially to our elders, from lockdowns to vaccines. But more than that, those who rolled over and let the state-pharma nexus overreach into all our lives have shown those who control the strings just how easy it is to get people to conform. The terrifying thing about this is what now lies in store for us.
i cannot help but stand in awe of your (nikki) ability to express the joys and sorrows of the subjects you were provided with during the interview. the clarity with which you addressed the various questions. it made an everyday experience so special. special because the way you presented us with the issues was so real, starting with your story about your mother, which for me set the tone and you made me feel that with your tears, the emotion of the situation was felt by this audience member. besides hearing your story as a result of your presentation i also felt your story, which made the presentation so potent. well done to the team, i couldn’t help but noticing the gradual close up of the subject and no one will forget the closing shot of the interview. thank you
Thanks Petrus, Nikki is certainly one of the fine story tellers in our midst. We’re so glad you enjoyed this as much as we have producing it.
Both Israel and the UK cite ‘full’ vaccination rates at only around 70% (just 66% in Israel) and only a little over half have had boosters.
what an awesome yarn… Nikki was so clear and wise… much gratitude for continuing to speak and question when so many are blindly “back to usual”…
Yes, we are grateful to have Nikki as one of our community elders, Trace. She certainly sets a high bar. X