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The Left got Covid almost entirely wrong – and why it matters

40 min read. Audio version here:

 

A collective-consensual grassroots approach to a systemic crisis is always desirable over narrow self-interest, but when a ‘collectivist’ approach is forced onto populations from the top down, and big money is involved, human rights abuses will inevitably follow.

Mandate critical

The discourse concerning the pandemic response for many in Left and ‘progressive’ political camps has fallen into two monocultural fields – you’re either for The Science™ or you’re a Trumpist-conspiracist. Such reductionism has not only contributed to human rights abuses, it has also helped usher in a bleak new period of authoritarianism and unprecedented surveillance.

If the Left isn’t performing its usual tasks of exposing industry capture, revolving door corruption and human rights abuse, who is going to do that work? Throughout the Covid period much of this work has been carried out by those more likely identifying politically as Centrist or on the Right. This has left the Left somewhat groundless with no other place to go than become the inadvertent fan club of aggressive medical globalisation. Rather than examine this phenomenon critically, many in Leftist circles have doubled-down and become apologists for some of the most powerful and ethically dubious corporations in the world.

An article recently written by retired academic Terry Leahy, published in Arena Quarterly #9, exposes all the typical strawman arguments the Left has promulgated about mandate critical dissidents from across the political spectrum. Leahy’s Wayward growths: Permaculture, Low Tech and the ‘Freedom Movement’ is riddled with inaccuracies, conceit and falsities, and is illustrative of a broader Left ideology concerning the pandemic response. Few Leftists have adequately critiqued the pandemic response let alone The Left’s Covid failure.

Leahy refers to an article published in Medium by Heather Jo Flores as a solid reference for his argument attacking the co-originator of permaculture, Dr David Holmgren. However, Flores’ writing was so slanderous and libellous that she deleted all records of it from the internet. Leahy not only omits the fact it was taken down by Flores shortly after it was published, but also omits to mention the backlash for it was overwhelming, regardless of what side of the mandate debate a reader was on. Leahy instead suggests Flores’ writing on this subject was widely supported and is still circulating. This is untrue on both counts.

The science isn’t in regarding masks, lockdowns and vaccines. Anyone who has followed the scientific arguments for and against these enforced measures knows this. For example, a large Danish randomised controlled trial in late 2020 showed there was 1.8 percent of those in the mask group and 2.1 percent of those in the control group became infected with SARS-CoV-2 within a month, with this 0.3-point difference not being statistically significant. So what has been the point of mandating leaky masks and ‘vaccines’?

Leftists generally, but not exclusively, have become some of the most enthusiastic users of the shame label, ‘anti-vax,’ rather than championing the rights of dissidents who have been mask, lockdown and/or vaccine mandate critical. By prioritising base-behaviour language such as ‘anti-vax’ over more nuanced language such as ‘mandate critical,’ the Left has significantly abandoned its post.

Referring to the forthcoming mandatory mask-wearing laws for those Germans who cannot show on-the-spot authorities their current ‘vaccination’ status or ‘test’ results, Berlin-based playwright and satirist, C J Hopkins writes, “What is happening is, a new official ideology is being imposed on society. It is being imposed on society by force. And now, those of us who refuse to conform to it will be ordered to walk around in public wearing visible symbols of our non-conformity. I’m sorry, but the parallels are undeniable.”

Leahy enthusiastically employs the ‘anti-vax’ shame label rather than investigate whether vaccine mandates constitute human rights abuse or are indeed legal. The pejorative use of ‘anti-vax’ is akin to how the term ‘terrorist’ was applied to any person who identified as Muslim in the Howard-Bush-Blair era. Back then this shaming tactic mostly came from the Right.

As Glen Greenwald argues, “The term “anti-vax” has expanded so widely that even vaccine advocates, such as [Jeremy] Corbyn and trade unions, are now included by virtue of defending bodily autonomy.” For anyone who champions human rights, base-behaviour language such as ‘anti-vax’ should sound alarm bells, especially if it is being promoted by government, in news media and in critical journals like Arena Quarterly.

Ministries of truth

Leahy’s views about which news medias can be trusted shines a light on who has shaped his thinking over the past few years. He suggests to his readers that in order to get to the truth about the pandemic they would be best served by taking out subscriptions with The Age, The Guardian and/or the New York Times. I have also read these medias throughout the pandemic and referenced them alongside many others, as well as hundreds of papers, opinion pieces, scientific articles and commentators from across political, scientific and social spectrums.

In Artist as Family’s video, How do we solve a problem like the unvaccinated?, we take a critical look behind the curtain of Fairfax media, and understand why The Age has been so enthusiastically bugling the same tune as the global vaccine lobby.

The Age is owned by Nine Entertainment, and the former conservative politician that is most influential on that governing board is Peter Costello, who is also Chairman of the Board of Guardians of the Australian Future Fund where he has, in recent years, invested in pharmaceutical companies to the tune of AUS$2 billion, including equity holdings in Pfizer worth AUS $188M. Costello is a managing partner of BKK Partners, a boutique corporate advisory group run by former Goldman Sachs JBWere managers, and in 2008 Costello was appointed to the World Bank’s Independent Advisory Board.

When we read any Fairfax media today we are duty bound to know who the influencers are behind the curtain. This example of conflict of interest – that the politically savvy board chair of Nine/Fairfax also invests in Pfizer – is what Leftists should ordinarily consider a revolving door between state and corporate interests, and a place of likely corruption. It’s the kind of subject Left authors and readers would have traditionally scrutinised.

It’s depressing and frightening to witness the level of capitulation among Leftists who have instead championed the paternalistic white boys of the pandemic – Gates, Fauci, Bourla, Schwab, Biden, Andrews, Trudeau, Macron, Morrison et al – and attacked the likes of Artist as Family and Holmgren who have nothing to gain or maintain – except our integrity – for signalling likely corruption and deceit.

Alex Berenson, a former New York Times journalist who reported on the pharmaceutical industry for that media outlet, has been another source we’ve followed who gives an antithesis view to his old employer. Berenson, who The Atlantic labelled The Pandemic’s Wrongest Man, has been consistently more accurate on the subject than any writer on that so-called ‘progressive’ platform. On 2 August, 2021 Berenson was removed from Twitter for posting:

“It doesn’t stop infection. Or transmission. Don’t think of it as a vaccine. Think of it – at best – as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed in advance of illness. And we want to mandate it? Insanity.”

The truth of this tweet has, arguably, become undeniable and a few weeks ago Berenson was reinstated on Twitter after that platform settled in court with him, and his tweet was reinstated. No evidence could be found to maintain this was “misleading,” though The Atlantic or any other corporate media who slandered him, haven’t as yet apologised for the misinformation they promulgated. The “safe & effective” misinformation campaign has rightly eroded the public’s trust.

Until the pandemic, in my naivety, I was unaware of any conservative like Berenson who could be bothered to expose regulatory capture or corruption in the pharmaceutical industry, which to my mind is structurally Right wing. Leftists like Western Sydney University’s Paddy Rawlinson were the ones sounding alarm bells with pieces like Immunity and Impunity: Corruption in the State-Pharma Nexus (2017).

From Artist as Family’s Covid research it has become clear the vaccine lobby has been working hard for at least two decades to silence any public debate, even concerning what should be fairly uncontroversial – overprescription and the profit motivations for that. As we investigated in our November 2021 video, Fact check: Covid vaccines work, they are safe and are stopping transmission, Pfizer and other pharmaceutical companies wine and dine doctors and nurses around Australia, paying for conferences and lunches. This is what is meant by industry capture. We argue throughout our Covid video series that industry capture is in such plain sight today that no one even sees it.

Israeli Professor Shmuel Shapira MD MPH, who received three Covid jabs before being seriously injured by his third, is now attempting to raise concerns about Pfizer’s synthetic biology. Shapira was a leading scientific champion of the Covid vaccines when he served as Director of the Israel Institute for Biological Research between 2013 and 2021.

Twitter, who has no expertise in biology let alone vaccinology, is now censoring Shapira as it has with countless antithesis doctors, medical scientists and science journalists over the past two years. Twitter recently threatened Shapira with being removed from the platform if he did not delete a post which stated: “Monkey pox cases were rare for years. During the last years a single case was documented in Israel. It is well established the mRNA vaccines affect the natural immune system. A monkey pox outbreak following massive covid vaccination: *Is not a coincidence.”

You won’t find Shapira’s perspective, or others like his, shared in The Age, The Guardian or the NYT, although we did report in one of our Covid videos an article that got through the editorial gates of the NYT back in December 2021 titled, Israel Considers 4th Vaccine Dose, but Some Experts Say It’s Premature, where the journalist reported that some senior Israeli scientists are warning too many shots might actually harm the body’s ability to fight the Covid-19 virus, leading to “immune system fatigue” and thus making the vaccinated more susceptible to Covid. We are surely seeing this unfolding now in the most vaccinated countries.

Since 2010 The Guardian has accepted at least US$13 million from vaccine investor and promoter Bill Gates, according to Gates’ own website. Money with which The Guardian was able to set up their Global Development site for the express purpose of communicating global health and development awareness and analysis. Did Leahy ask his readers to observe a possible conflict of interest between someone who profits from new vaccines being the same person who is giving significant amounts of money to a global media organisation supposedly reporting on them without bias?

So rather than promoting these three media platforms and entertainment businesses – The Age, The Guardian and the NYT – shouldn’t Leahy be inviting his readers to investigate the long demise of them as reputable places for journalism? As the ‘vaccines’ came into the public sphere, the NYT insisted they would stop people from getting Covid. President Biden, who has had four doses and contracted Covid twice, said the same, and worse, when he called it “…a pandemic of the unvaccinated”. Instead of this politically motivated rhetoric being denounced by Leahy’s ministry of truth, they parroted and amplified it.

The NYT radically exaggerated the efficacy of the Covid jabs, but instead of investigating who was behind the poor scientific modelling their journalists referred to, the fraudulent trial set-ups and data recording, and what potential corruption was occurring in the public health institutions that have so evidently lied to the public, the NYT instead double-downed on the scapegoated fringe – those of us refusing to participate in this global experiment. The Age and The Guardian followed suit, and in his Arena Quarterly piece Leahy unsurprisingly carries on with this same position.

Furthermore, the ABC has also been a grave disappointment. Emergency porn is the ABC’s specialty and for fires and floods and like-crises they have grown a dependable track record over the decades. However, their Covid analysis broke our trust. The slow demise of the ABC has occurred through increased levels of political interference, more so from the coalition but from Labor as well, in Labor’s failure to protect the ABC’s independence.

A former ABC investigative science reporter, Dr Maryanne Demasi, who was silenced for exposing the lucrative overprescription of statins from the pharmaceutical industry, namely Pfizer, has been one of many independent sources we’ve followed throughout Covid to aid our research. We refer to a little of her research in various videos though feature her work in our December 2021 video, Can we trust the ABC and the FDA? where we expose conflict of interests with senior ABC Covid spokesman Dr Norman Swan in relation to his medical advertising and his Chemist2U pharmaceutical delivery businesses.

Industrial medicine, contiguous with industrial civilisation itself, is not and can never be sustainable because it is almost completely reliant on non-renewable materials. Why would anyone invest in medicines that ultimately have no long-term future for populations, thus making us dependent on therapeutics that probably won’t be around after the short life of the next and final mining boon that is the 4th Industrial Revolution? Why would we not take an innate immunity approach to SARS-CoV-2 for the majority of people for which the disease is mild and thus develop herd protection through engagement and participation with the living of the world, rather than go along with the domination (or mass mining) approach to medicine?

The far Right strawman

In his Arena Quarterly piece Leahy attempts to bind any Covid antithesis thinking to the far Right. He uses Artist as Family and David Holmgren as examples, though doesn’t refer to a single argument or investigative video of ours, and barely quotes from Holmgren. Leahy instead amplifies a single social media post of a photo of David Holmgren, permaculture elder Su Dennett and our youngest son Blackwood attending an anti-mandate march in Melbourne, holding a large permaculture banner.

Early on in his piece Leahy himself admits, “It would take weeks of research to consider all of Holmgren’s points…” referring to Holmgren’s extensive essay, Pandemic Brooding: Can the Permaculture movement survive the first severe test of the energy descent future? (Sept 2021). So, rather, Leahy “[b]oiled” it down for his reader, removing the complexity thinking and nuance that this subject so obviously requires and deserves, and putting it in the same ideological camp as the far Right.

This is why we consider Leahy’s article a personal attack; it doesn’t want to engage with the ideas. At least this is how it appears to those of us subject to his discriminations. But before beginning to write this piece, Ulman and I wanted to be sure we were reading him correctly, so we invited Leahy to discuss his contention with us in a face to face public video. Our intention was to take the reductive argument out of it and open up to generative discussion. Regrettably, Leahy declined.

Born out of social media, cancel culture feeds on insults and attacks and abhors engagement and generative debate. The impact of this on slower forms of media is evident. In Leahy’s attempt to conflate Holmgren’s and our antithesis thinking as being somehow associated with the far Right, he radically departs from any reasonable logic.

This attack on those of us well-versed in critiquing state-corporate collusion, and more specifically the revolving door between government, Big Pharma and the medical industry, cannot be taken seriously. Rachel Goldlust is another who combines social media hubris and poor scholarship to craft hit pieces on antithesis permaculturists including Artist as Family, even before the pandemic. Like Leahy, Goldlust doesn’t bother to interview the subjects she attacks.

To sharpen his attack, Leahy draws on the anti-semitic threads of the far Right yet chooses to leave out that two of the three of us he attacks are Jewish – Holmgren and Ulman. Additionally he doesn’t want to inform his readers that we have been vilified throughout this pandemic in parallel ways to political dissidents, Roma and Jews of 1933-1935 Nazi Germany. We’ve experienced economic enclosures and social stigmatisation, and we’ve been blocked from entering public swimming pools, public libraries and our local council’s public events.

To laugh off these parallels, or worse become outraged by the association made between such similar formations of a deplorable or ‘contagion’ class without proper examination of one’s own prejudices and the historical records, is to continue the attacks, scorn and vilification those of us have experienced who have challenged the state-corporate Covid response.

Not forcing you, just removing your rights until you comply, is one of many placards we made for a small protest we held outside our town hall when we ‘unvaccinated’ residents were locked out of this year’s International Women’s Day (IWD) event. Ulman herself has served on the organising committee of the annual IWD event, and Su Dennett is an inductee on the IWD honour roll for her work locally in the community and her work globally as an environmental pioneer. Our video, Forbidden women – International Women’s Day in segregated Australia, captures some of the pain felt by we deplorables, and remains another historical marker of the medical apartheid, segregation and discrimination we’ve experienced. Another placard at that protest read, Please stop othering the control group.

Lab leak

The evidence that Covid was lab-engineered through joint US and Chinese funding and accidentally escaped the Wuhan Institute of Virology from where the research was being conducted, is greater now than for any other likely origin story. Not that you’d know it in Australia, or at least in the medias Leahy quotes as reputable.

That is, with the exception of two opinion pieces published in the Sydney Morning Herald by Professor Clive Hamilton back in May and July 2021 respectively. Hamilton states back then that the virus most likely came from the Wuhan lab, just a stone’s throw from the Wuhan wet market. In referring to the gain-of-function research that many world virologists knew was taking place at this lab, Hamilton states “[t]he ambition, ostensibly, was to develop vaccines.” In other words the objective was to make a bat coronavirus intentionally pathogenic in humans and work out how to make vaccines to counter them. Since Hamilton’s opinion pieces were published, Lab Leak theory has been essentially shut down in this country, but in almost every other continent it is still the most plausible theory.

In our provocative Covid coming out video, Jab the kids, we end with a 2016 clip of Peter Daszak, director of New York based EcoHealth Alliance, who worked closely with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to secure US government funding for the research. In this clip Daszak boasts about gain-of-function (1:17:03) research that he refers to as “sequencing” being conducted by his “colleagues in China.” He states at the conference, “…we found other coronaviruses in bats, a whole host of them, and some of them looked very similar to SARS[-CoV-1]. So we sequenced the spike protein, the protein that attaches to cells, then we…well, I didn’t do this work but my colleagues in China did the work… you create super particles, you insert the spike protein from those viruses, simply bind to human cells, and each step of this you move closer and closer to: this virus could really become pathogenic in people.”

A member of the audience then asks Daszak and the panel whether this type of research could lead to a man-made pandemic.

Four years later in 2020 the WHO put Daszak in charge of an investigative team to research whether Covid originated in the Wuhan lab. Daszak reported that there was no correlation with Covid-19 and denied gain-of-function research was being conducted there. He also put together a Lab Leak hit piece in the esteemed medical journal, The Lancet, and got a handful of virologists to sign it. The piece originally omitted Daszak’s conflicts of interest and tried to turn the heat away from Lab Leak theory, calling anyone who questioned the zoonotic origin theory a conspiracy theorist.

If Covid came from a lab, can we imagine how much better the response to the pandemic would have been if scientists had access to the gene sequencing that took place in Wuhan that Daszak was boasting about in 2016? But by acknowledging that all fingers point to Lab Leak would require an almighty admission – that science itself caused the pandemic. In a culture where science is the unspoken orthodox religion of the day, that isn’t going to happen without a whole lot of resistance, and probably explains why Lab Leak theory is still consistently attacked.

Rather than critique dubious research projects occurring in contemporary science that few of us have consented to, a scapegoat class needed to be developed to take the heat and turn peoples’ attentions away from the likely source of the pandemic.

Vandana Shiva insightfully states in the documentary The Seeds of Vandana Shiva (2021), “[w]hat we call science is a very narrow patriarchal project for a very short period of history.” For those of us reading the pandemic response as smug paternalism that has benefitted disaster corporatism, the wisdom of her quote resonates.

Breadcrumbing

Leahy utilises the twisted allegory ‘breadcrumbing’ in his attempt to describe how people are wooed by the far Right. In the actual folk story of Hansel and Gretel, where the allegory originates, the bread crumbs signal a rites of passage, a stepping into the underworld of the witch, with gifts of foresight that Hansel initiates. While the forest birds ruin his path making by eating the bread crumbs that he’s left behind, there is autonomy, and an independent child-led approach that Gretel goes on to develop in order to help them escape the incarceration of the witch.

So in the story the children are not lured by breadcrumbs but by the gingerbread house of the witch. It’s interesting to note here that Pfizer was founded by two men in 1849 – a confectionist and an entrepreneur-chemist, ushering in a new era of drug luring and profiteering. Leahy’s use of the twisted breadcrumbing allegory is akin to the same poor scholarship as his ‘anti-vax-far-Right’ polemic.

Because I don’t live in a world where medical science is free from the powerful influences of big money, and because I’m a farmer-gardener who understands that overdosing a soil ecology with any given nutrient or mineral can have disastrous effects, let alone bringing synthetics into that biome, I believe in bodily autonomy. I also believe in the rights of children to be free from the clutches of globalised corporatism and nefarious billionaires. I believe in the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship, and Do no harm as the first and foremost principle of medicine.

Leahy’s doctoral work – his gateway to a career in academia – perhaps gives more context for why our values part ways so radically. Leahy’s thesis, Negotiating Stigma: Approaches to Intergenerational Sex (1991), which is now only available on the International Pedophile and Child Emancipation (Ipce) forum site, has been removed from all records at UNSW, from where he was awarded his doctorate.

Leahy advances pedophilia emancipation and describes the taboo of pedophilia as a “social construction” that is unfairly “stigmatised,” rather we should call it “intergenerational sex.” His research posits that the social stigmatisation of pedophilia traumatises the child rather than adult sexual interests infiltrating the child or adolescent, and he exclusively interviews adults who speak of “positive experiences” of pedophilia reflecting back to when they were children or adolescents encountering “intergenerational sex.” He continues this activism in, Sex and the Age of Consent: The Ethical Issues (1996), where he finds “samples” in his personal “social network” who have had positive “child/adult” sexual experiences.

Some politics of permaculture

At a book launch in Castlemaine earlier this year for Leahy’s, The Politics of Permaculture, where David Holmgren, Su Dennett, Artist as Family and others were refused entry due to our medical choices, I asked Leahy and the associated panel (from out on the footpath), whether they thought the Left could take any responsibility for the growth in the far Right? Leahy didn’t bother to answer, however Pam Nilan, who was simultaneously launching her book Young People and the Far Right, gave it a stab though effectively didn’t answer the question either, saying, “I’m not sure I answered your question; I couldn’t really hear you.”

Artist as Family documented this event in Castlemaine in our video, Some politics of permaculture (from inside and outside the tent). It appears the Arena Quarterly piece Leahy assembled after this event is an attempt to keep us perennially out on the footpath when in actual fact, for the preservation and health of the Left, and society more broadly, folk like us need to be inside the tent alongside many other diverse thoughtsmiths from across the political and cultural spectrums, to avoid the tent becoming an echo chamber.

The more difficult project now, especially for the Left, is attending to the human rights abuses that have occurred throughout the pandemic because of the state-corporate collusion, the state overreach, and the absence of critical Left and progressive investigations. We look forward to Arena Quarterly and other Left journals and progressive medias addressing these abuses in the future with proper scholarship and commitment to human rights, especially in relation to those workers who lost their jobs due to mandates and those who have been harmed by the ‘vaccines.

The ‘collectivist’ approach to Covid, as meted from the top down, demanded we rolled up our sleeves for vulnerable people. What we’ve seen instead is Moderna, Pfizer and profiteers like Bill Gates make a lot of money while vulnerable and previously not-vulnerable people become increasingly harmed and economically shafted by this “very narrow patriarchal project,” some call The Science™.

In summary

Artist as Family, David Holmgren and Su Dennett are not right about Covid, just as we are not wrong. Many things we have been accurate about. Chiefly, not to trust long-established corporate criminals with our complex biology – biology that is not static nor remains trapped in our fields or bodies. But biology that is intimately connected to composts, to soils and rock, to nearby creeks and trees, to wattle birds and honeyeaters, to earthworms, goats and air currents, to snake, bee and microbe.

We’re very grateful we trusted our intuition not to follow the directives of nudge units as employed by governments and roll up our sleeves for Uncle Pfizer’s little prick. Our solidarity remains with those like us who resisted, those who were coerced in order to save their jobs, those who have been injured and have started to ask questions, those who got jabbed but can see the human rights abuse, and those who, although initially seduced by the propaganda, now openly admit they were foolish to trust the public health messaging.

Over the past 17 years our household has been shapeshifting from industrial mind to ecological mind. That is, from money to gifts, from car to foot, from competition to relationships, from pollution to compost. This, we figure, has been appropriate adaptation for the future we all face. We’re not working towards a future where there’s a million hectares of medical waste spread across the world’s continents, alongside every other kind of toxic waste hypertechnocivility produces. Until Covid, we were respected, even honoured for our radical degrowth-neopeasant transitioning.

Because we had changed the shape of our economic forms – living richly, well below the poverty line in walked-for relationship with the Djaara land we love and call home – when Covid hit we were empowered and resourced enough to say NO to Uncle Pfizer and co. Holmgren, Dennett and Artist as Family have not had Covid throughout this pandemic, and this is in large part attributed to how we live, what we eat, and the post-industrial health protocols we put in place.

All around us ‘vaccinated’ people have fallen ill with Covid, many contracting it twice. This is unsurprising because in Pfizer’s six month trial data, Covid itself was listed as one of the significant adverse events included in a field of thousands of adverse reactions ranging from cardiovascular, neurological and reproductive injuries, and beyond. It is no wonder Pfizer and the FDA attempted to lock up this data for 75 years, which of course went unreported in Leahy’s three ministries of truth. It took about six months before the ‘vaccines’ started to be significantly administered in Australia, imagine if people had Pfizer’s trial data then.

For those of us across the jab and non-jab spectrum who are mandate critical and continuing to resist the coercive state-Pharma nexus, the heat may well be turned up on us again shortly. If the social costs of the state-Pharma pandemic response are not thoroughly examined, and the nefarious actors not held responsible for human rights transgressions, we will find ourselves vilified again and we’ll see the escalation of state violence put onto mandate critical dissidents.

The Left has a role in guaranteeing this doesn’t occur. Individuals and small cultural groups can’t cause much harm to others on a mass scale, but governments and corporates who lie and deceive populations can, especially when they encounter little resistance from the privileged classes. When important decisions are placed in the hands of those who are not held responsible for them, we are surely living in dangerous times.

This is by no means a comprehensive breakdown of all the subjects that need to be included in exposing the corruption and misinformation of the pandemic response. A more comprehensive analysis would include the smearing of long-standing therapeutics known to work against Covid in order to greenlight emergency-use authorisation for the fast-tracked Covid jabs, and fabricating the myth of asymptomatic ‘silent’ transmission in order to justify mask, lockdown and ‘vaccine’ mandates. I hope, however, this serves as a useful document for those interested in the Left’s Covid failure and what we can all learn from it.

As always we invite your insights, questions and comments, and please share this post if you think it advances the discussion.

54 comments

  1. Peter says:

    I can no longer associate myself with the “left” – or even the progressive end of politics – the Left has become so corporate-friendly and so authoritarian (that’s the shadow side of the left). It’s been an awakening for me to realise the weaknesses of the progressive side. That doesn’t mean I have great affinity for the right, so I’m a displaced person right now. Perhaps the best “label” I can use is conservative – ie, don’t change the system until the change has been proved to be “better”. The problem is how to prove a proposed change is better? For so long our health has been based on soil, microbes and unpolluted food (esp animal sourced foods) – so why the change? It’s been demonstrably not for better (health) so it’s hard to argue it’s not all been for corporate interests and profits.

    I don’t know why we always fail to do a cost-benefit analysis (or a risk analysis) of proposed measures – but the tendency is to develop a single message for all (irrespective of risk). Can we at least allow for nuance?

    1. Monique Germon says:

      Hi Peter, I relate to your comment completely. Politically homeless. I often wonder if We were to write out bullet points of traditional Left values would any of my friends and family honestly align with any of them post covid. Sadly I don’t think Late Stage Capitalism allows for any nuance at all.

      1. Peter Brandis says:

        Thank you for your comment Monique. Late stage capitalism is so corrupted (in so many ways) that maybe a movement taking the best of both worlds (collective caring + personal responsibility – an abbreviated and truncated binary perhaps) or maybe just the removal of the worst of both sides – may lead to a better solution. One thing is for sure, we need to remove corrupted science and corporate malfeasance.

    2. That has been one of the great failures, Peter, conducting a proper harm-benefit analysis including psychological, economic, social and biological costs.

  2. Monique Germon says:

    Thank you for your work Patrick (and gorgeous Meg) and for this wonderful contribution. Here in NSW I think about half the population haven’t even had the first booster so I have faith these conversations are starting to be had, or at the very least a little head scratching. I almost have no words for the stigma created around the continued scrutinisation of corporate power…. the labels of ‘conspiracy theorist’, and ‘right wing’ whatever…. hard to not be impressed by it – especially the notion of ‘Q’ being a psyop created to upgrade the conspiracy quarter to even more giddying heights, therefore making any shared views even more dangerous to be associated with. We are judged by the company we keep, after all.

    I recently rewatched the 2021 film ‘Dopesick’ and I’m trying to promote it to Left wing culture creator mates by means of ‘the incredible acting’ and ‘production value’, because this is how vacuous and strange things have become. One can’t raise any issue unless The Guardian has raised it first. Such a class war too, always there under the surface.

    Sadly, one of my biggest realisations this past year is that being part of the in group and preserving one’s place in the status quo is the first priority of the human life in the modern world – especially parents who want their children to be conventionally successful. I truly thought that an entirely new movement would have been born in April 2020 – one that united all the Left and all the regenerative farmers, environmentalists. artists, First Nation’s Peoples…. Now I am being sent posts of leaders in the organic gardening movement publicly thanking Big Pharma for their ‘definitely more mild had it not been for……’ second or third round of isolating with Covid. I understand all of it and empathise completely yet on another level it continues to blow my fkg mind.

    1. Peter Brandis says:

      Brilliant Monique. I need to research Dopesick

    2. We felt 2020 was a year of possibility too. 2021 became the very opposite. We’re hoping 2022 will keep on with the truth telling.

      “The only real means to defy and to resist the destructiveness of the process of mass formation is by speaking out.” – Professor Mattias Desmet

  3. Con Xanthos says:

    Thank you for your insightful and well-written article. You are a beacon in a sea of darkness. Continue to shine brightly!

  4. Thank you for your clarity and courage!

  5. Oliver says:

    Oh dear god. That’s uncomfortably revealing about Leahy’s disgusting beliefs. I tried reading his critiques also but couldn’t connect with his way of thinking. Now making me feel quite sick actually…
    Thanks for your research and following your intuition to investigate prominent topics of dialogue in permaculture circles.

  6. Josh Floyd says:

    Patrick & Meg, thank you again for your remarkable contribution to making sense of this whole mess. I had missed Terry Leahy’s Arena article previously, but was staggered at its inanity and superficiality on reading just now. I’ve got to say, if this is the best that can be mustered in condemnation of you, David, Su and the rest of us, then in certain respects it is reassuring. Then again, the period over the course of covid during which I second-guessed myself for fear of having succumbed to some kind of hyper-sophisticated mind-control campaign, in sensing just how far out of line the formal institutional response had strayed, is now very long passed. So such reassurance is of little informational value at this point.
    I shared your article with friends in North America just now. A Canadian friend, Travis Smith, immediately found much value in it for illuminating matters he has experience in higher ed there. He shared with me in response this essay of his from last year: https://safs.ca/newsletters/article.php?article=1163
    With best wishes,
    Josh Floyd

    1. Hello Josh, thanks for sending us Travis’ piece. We’d like to connect with him, yourself and other academics/colleagues speaking out, and record a digital campfire session, which we’d like to facilitate. We feel that could be really worthwhile and generative right now esp in relation to preparing for what’s next, what’s coming… Please feel free to get in touch via email. Warm regards, Patrick and Meg

  7. Allan Adams says:

    Hi Artist as Family,

    I would like to leave a comment on a section of your BLOG as follows: “the parallels are undeniable”, in your reference to C J Hopkins and the association between mask wearing and mandates in 2022, with what was the escalating conditions imposed on the Jewish people of 1933 – 1935 in Nazi Germany. I am just a little lost with your position, and therefore seeking clarification.

    In making such a comparison, or drawing parallels with Nazi Germany, to my understanding, implies that Artist as Family is by your own position or reference to other authors, believe that imposing mask wearing and mandates on a segment of the population is just the first step towards loss of all assets, immediate death, or forced labour followed by death by the state.

    I would therefore like to understand your need or justification to draw reference or parallels to a very dark time in our history with the current health issues surrounding mask wearing and mandates. I understand your personal frustration with the current times, but I am questioning whether it is really beneficial to make such comparisons. Yes, I agree that for those who were and are unwilling to be vaccinated may have lost jobs, and that is very serious, but is that really in any way comparable to Nazi Germany?

    Thank you for the opportunity to leave a comment.

    Regards

    Allan

    1. Thank you Allan for your question.

      Almost immediately after Hitler took power a crisis occurred (a fire in the halls of power), a state of emergency was called and ordinary human rights were ceased in order to restore order – for the ‘common good’. It was only to be temporary. Curfews were put in place. People got used to being restricted – for the ‘common good’. Defining the enemy was the next stage in this state ’emergency’, that is those questioning the state were signalled out. Young people were recruited to usher in a new era of allegiance to the ‘common good’. They were the virtue signallers of their day. People were rewarded for their compliance to the state. Political dissidents were targeted and labelled, and a contagion class was established – Jews, Roma, homosexuals, bohemians, opponents to Hitler, et al.

      The world ignored it all, or cheered it on.

      Things were subtle at first, then economic enclosures began. Posters started to be erected saying don’t buy at shops owned by Jews. Jews were then banned from public swimming pools and posters were put up outside saying ‘No Jews’ (see image above in the post), as they were at all the pools in Victoria banning we contagion class. Travel restrictions came into force and the contagion classes were most restricted. Those Germans who complied with the state were rewarded.

      All of these things have occurred in the past two years in Australia, though some states have been more extreme than others. A state of emergency was called and then extended here in Victoria. Basic human rights were abolished – for the common good. Prisoners in Victorian gaols were locked up for days, even weeks in permanent isolation. Old people died without their loved ones around them. Children were kept from playing in parks. Peoples’ physical movements were restricted and curfews and lockdowns put in place. Non-compliers (political dissidents) were identified and shame labelled, and when they protested the state came after them with full militaristic violence. A contagion class was established and maintained by mob morality (virtue signallers), the contagion or deplorable class was banned from public swimming pools and libraries, and other social places like cafes and restaurants. Economic sanctions were put in place for the contagion class, who were not allowed to move in and out of the country or interstate.

      Hitler couldn’t have done all those things without the German peoples’ will, which was driven on by waves of clever fear campaigns created by propaganda units (today we call them nudge units). The capitulation of the corporate media to the state messaging occurred swiftly, and dissident media was rooted out and eradicated or went underground and everything that didn’t appear in the corporate media was called ‘misinformation’. Academics shut up for fear of losing their jobs or they publicly attacked dissidents and the contagion class.

      The parallels are all too clear for those of us standing in the shoes of Covid deplorables.

      People may think this is all over, but it is quite likely just the beginning. The great majority has shown the state just how easy it is to be manipulated by exaggerating the fear of a crisis. What will be the next ’emergency’ that drives a moral panic that will see the next level of capitulation to the state and the next stages of persecution of the scapegoated or contagion class?

      1. Allan Adams says:

        Thanks for the response. I felt it was necessary to check I was not misinterpreting your position. I have been studying Nazi Germany for many years so I have a reasonable understanding of the series of events as you outlined above.

        I totally agree that the lockdowns and keeping unvaccinated people out of certain venues for example was pretty extreme. I am also aware that those working in the health profession equally suffered with very stressful working conditions in hospitals etc.

        I think at this stage we will have to agree to disagree. I can see the temptation to draw such parallels but I do not think it is justified; if events do really escalate then maybe yes. I understand at certain times it may be beneficial to build the strength of ones voice by making such a powerful comparison; and yes if we are all silent governments will likely abuse its powers.

        I believe that the events that occurred in 1933-1935 Nazi Germany alone were terrible, and undertaken with a very different agenda and underlying philosophy. To say that our situation here was comparable is not appropriate or respectful. I feel it would be more appropriate to determine a specific description that best describes the particular set of conditions and government treatment of our recent times.

        Thanks for the conservation, and well done on your great Permaculture work.

        Regards,

        Allan

        1. Thanks Allan, once again we appreciate your respectful tone.

          In terms of your: “the health profession equally suffered with very stressful working conditions in hospitals…” are you also referring to all the doctors and nurses who were either sacked for not capitulating, or left in disgust, or resisted mandates and were stood down, which mostly went unreported in corporate media? Are you also referring to those pro-jab doctors who boasted how much money they made from the vaccines (at approx $35 a jab)? Australian doctors alone have taken home over $2 billion dollars for administering Covid injections. Are you referring to the ‘unvaccinated’ numbers dying of Covid or overwhelming the hospitals last year, who were actually first jab injured patients but called ‘unvaccinated’ by officials because they were still in their first 14 days of receiving their first jab?

          As long as people don’t engage with the antithesis reporting they won’t see the parallels. Perhaps somewhere between the thesis and antithesis positions lays the truth, but it certainly doesn’t preside in the corporate media.

          In your “if events escalate then maybe yes…”: Guns were held at the heads of non compliers last year. This occurred in Melbourne and Sydney and in other places. People were beaten, shot at with rubber bullets and their homes invaded. People were locked up at Howard Springs for ‘violating’ Covid rules. Howard Springs in the NT and Mickleham in Melbourne are now built and are ready for the next generation of internment camps. Yes, it is not the same regime, but history doesn’t repeat it rhymes, and currently there is a temporary pulling back, a false sense of normalcy. Then again maybe it’s worse than 1933-35 Nazi Germany because it’s a global front of continuous hot spots enforcing greater restrictions and surveillance, esp in Belgium, Germany, NZ, Australia, Canada, Ireland but across the west more broadly.

          If it does escalate, and we think it will, who is going to intervene? Denmark? They have just banned 18 year olds and under from receiving mRNA shots because they are actually doing science there, not The Science.

          After years of western medical imperialism, Africans outrightly rejected these false vaccines. They have been systematically abused by Pharma too much in the past to be such suckers now. As a result there is no Covid crisis in Africa, except perhaps in the whitefella areas where vaccine uptake is higher, which would just reflect exactly what’s going on in the west.

          So is Denmark and Africa going to muster their resources and come save us? Ha! Now, there’s a great film script. But nah!

          We hope you are right Allan, however with what’s happening right now with new biosecurity, surveillance and so-called ‘misinformation’ laws being meted out by the state-corporate nexus and pushed hard by undemocratic global structures such as the WEF, WTO and WHO, we very much doubt it, and it seems naive to think so.

          1. Allan Adams says:

            Hi again,

            Likewise, thanks for the respectful tone. It is one of the unfortunate situations we have these days that opposing thoughts are unable to be discussed and debated in a respectful manner. I think we really could discuss this long into the night.

            I should start by acknowledging that you have made some strong points.

            I am aware of the nurses and medical staff that were sacked and also resigned. I assume you are referring to protestors being beaten and shot at with rubber bullets? I am not aware of unvaccinated members of the public being beaten and shot with rubber bullets in their homes or on the street for simply going about their business? Please correct me if I am wrong.

            I am with you on the effectiveness of the vaccination versus no-vaccination, particularly when it comes to Omicron etc. And yes the conduct of some of the pharmaceutical companies is absolutely questionable and in some cases their past actions are tainted.

            With reference to my first comment on your article I still consider it more worthwhile for your cause to not make such comparisons. After reading your last post and as I said above, you have some strong points, but I fear they could be diluted, and many will simply disregard them due to what I believe to be an accurate determination. I must emphasis though, I don’t believe it weakens your argument to avoid such comparisons.

            We are dealing with a very different agenda, I think it would be more beneficial to explore the idea of protection and proliferation of the corporate and capitalist controlled state. I am exploring this thought as I am typing. What are we really discussing? A government that considers it beneficial to inject the community with a vaccine or else their movements and lifestyle will be restricted. I think we have to ask the question what is the real agenda, what is the government really seeking to achieve? At this stage I do not think it is the agenda of Hitler and the Third Reich; I am not implying that our Government and some others around the world are not pushing a hidden agenda in this matter, and the points you have raised are not to be dismissed. In this response I am advocating for a more accurately identified description.

            Thanks

            Allan

          2. Thanks again Allan for your thoughtful and generative probing. We still think the comparisons are there to be made. It is not the same thing but there are parallels. This has been influenced by our reading of history but specifically by Vera Sharav, a holocaust survivor, and the founder and president of the Alliance for Human Research Protection. Would you be willing to listen to her words on the subject in this interview? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_EDV_7s7Dc&t=0s

          3. Allan Adams says:

            Hi,

            I think we have exhausted the reply tabs so I am positing on the previous one. Yes, I will certainly watch the video link you have sent through.

            Thanks for that,

            Allan

    2. Schwab says:

      Allan I think this is typical of another feature of the standard denunciations of such comparisons. You and many others are jumping straight to 1945. Instead, teleport yourself back to 1933, and you can see that the Shoa was a spectrum and a process.

      Reading Victor Klemperer’s diaries will assist you to understand that the analogy is very much an appropriate one. This is how it began, mate, not how it ended.

      1. Thanks for the reminder to return to Victor Klemperer’s diaries, “I shall bear witness: 1933-1941”.

  8. Obergruppenfuhrer Schwab of Mann’s Magic Mountain says:

    Yep, this Leahy guy, secure in his post academic bubble, has some blinding weaknesses in his thesis, most of which you have pointed out.

    1 He doesn’t see any problem with vaccines, mandates and lockdowns, despite the obvious carnage all around him. Check out Graham Hood’s ‘ten doctors in ten days’ interview series which started yesterday with leading cardiologist, associate Professor Chris Neil

    https://www.facebook.com/grahamhoodformerpilot

    2 He derives his confidence from a one sided trust in corporate media and their anointed scientific affiliates.

    3 He thinks the people marching in these rallies are terrified, gullible fools who aren’t aware that there are far right elements lurking nearby, rather than people standing up for their families and communities against unprecedented state & corporate (GovCorp) overreach. Fascinating to see the ‘left’ marching in such terrified lockstep with GovCorp.

    4 He thinks that David Holmgren is trying to ‘rally HIS permie troops to the mythical permie banner, rather than just being a nice old guy who is generous in sharing his own thoughts, which often do not follow standard cookie cutter political packaging.

    5 He is projecting his own unconscious ‘Romper Stomper’ boogeyman onto the Freedom Movement, fearing they are about to take over Australia. (True enough they don’t like pedophiles Terry, and I can personally assure you they are now aware of you, and that creepy international org mentioned in the article). Do the terrified Covidiot left think pedophilia is ok ?

    1. Yes, we didn’t really address the right to protest and the broad cross-section of protestors, across many spectrums. It’s true David Holmgren is “a nice old guy who is generous in sharing his own thoughts, which often do not follow standard cookie cutter political packaging.”

  9. Benjamin says:

    Hooray!! another fantastically written piece based from a sound logical foundation. A light in the societal folly

    It’s such an interesting thing observing academic’s muddying rhetorics and convolutions via compartmentalising shit all buoyed on by the totalitarian state overreach that programm-Ed them to cheer it on!!

    Such is the irony it’s almost like the redefinition of what the left actually used to be is now almost far right wrapped homogeneously in rainbows all while using the scientific method to define a womens life governing pronouns as uni/corns which is soon to be mandated!! all the while “other” will be defined as “Nazi”!!

    Shit I think I mixed that up somewhere oh well you get the myocarditis!!

    The best and only way to move forward would be to reinstall the lost art of pistol dueling

    https://www.geriwalton.com/pistol-dueling-its-etiquette-and-rules/

    1. Thanks Benjamin, great idea to return to the duel. Ha!

  10. Kate Beveridge says:

    Hi Guys, Thanks once again for sharing this information. I am also grateful that we trusted our intuition. It has also been a surprise to us that people who wouldn’t use artificial chemicals etc on their gardens and farms would happily inject such a substance. I am not a scientist, just a humble farmer, gardener and adopter of simple living, but I know I don’t want that substance injected into me.

    1. Thanks Kate, when compost is the basis of one’s economic reality and you cannot unlearn what you know about GMO ag and big Pharma, refusal is the only path available.

  11. Terry Leahy says:

    Hi Patrick and Meg,

    Some interesting comments about my Arena article. I think there is a lot you have left out in representing my position in this piece. In terms of comments about not addressing your analysis of the pandemic, I do this more in other pieces and would recommend the following articles.

    https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Terry-Leahy-2

    In relation to my views on intergenerational relationships. This is all old stuff from the early nineties. I have not published anything on this since 1996. I am not sure that I would agree with everything I wrote then. It is a bit of a red herring if we are talking about the pandemic.

    1. Thanks Terry, we will take a look at those articles.

      As for the bodily autonomy/age of consent subject, we believe they are explicably linked to the pandemic. The erosion of children’s rights have occurred throughout the pandemic, and our reading of your doctoral work was an advancing of other forms of erosion of children’s rights. Your doctoral work green-lighted and advanced your academic career, and thus your privilege.

      In terms of our analysis of your three ministries of truth, we’d like to hear from you why you still trust these corporate medias.

      Thanks for commenting here.

      1. David says:

        Obviously this territory is very tricky and so I tread carefully. Patrick, I agree that children’s rights have been radically eroded throughout the pandemic, mostly by parents influenced by authorities. However I think it is the erosion of the age of consent that you correctly mention and therefore parents rights to decide on behalf of their children that is the critical problem here.

        Beyond the state manipulating adults to do something to/for their children’s well being, there is a much greater problem when the state uses direct manipulation of children to go against parental decisions. Unfortunately we have become so habituated to the state intervening on behalf of children’s welfare in the case of drug addicted and abusive parents that it is a small step to accept the state intervening in relation to novel threats. Previously I found it a bit difficult to see your point of connection in this with Terry’s past writings about inter-generational sex/paedophilia. I definitely think readers should not use their distaste/disgust from reading Terry’ past writings or even just the idea of even having such a discussion, to out of hand dismiss him as a person with bad/evil intents.

        To explain the valid connection you make between the erosion of childhood consent in relation to novel injections, I need to make one more step closer to consider some utility in Terry’s controversial doctoral work. Su and I both accept in principle, the possibility and even the reality of positive results from consensual sex between adults and children. Given the diversity of human experience how could we not. However the risks of manipulation due to the imbalance of power are so great, and are associated with so much harm that a societal taboo on all such relationships is probably best. If something is problematic enough to require a taboo then it may be best that people think about it in black and white terms to reduce the opportunity for rationalisations that can lead to breaking the taboo.

        If we accept that adult psychological manipulation to abuse children is a high risk, then it is reasonable to have greater concern about the state/corporate/media nexus using its immense powers to manipulate children against their own interests and beyond that to what we would call abuse. Your mention elsewhere of the Nazis use of the Hitler youth to implement change or Mao’s Red Guards in the Cultural Revolution against parents are relevant examples of state coercion through children. It is this issue of the state seeing the need to take over the parental role and then using that role against the parents that is so problematic.

        However the argument I have just made in your support for making a connection between Terry’s previous ideas and the “jab the kids” issue which galvanised your Covid coming out, is in essence an argument most philosophically associated with the right, emphasising bodily autonomy, and rights of parents to make decisions for better or worse for their children, and placing strong limits to the intervention by the state. On the left there has historically been a greater acceptance and even championing of the necessity for benign state interventions for both the good of the individual and for society at large. In this sense it seems to me those on the political Left were primed to accept a strong state intervention, especially one sold as essential for the common good. After 40 years of Thatcherite/Reganite neoliberalism, I believe the Left and especially those in the Green Left had a deep existential yearning for strong state action for the common good, especially in relation to the Climate Emergency. So when the “we are all in this together with one big solution” meme was pushed, it resonated with rather than repelled most on the Left.

        What is more surprising is the failure of the Left to recognise the state/corporate/media nexus as a fascist political system, the very structures that Leftists have historically fought tooth and nail. Of course I am using the term fascist in a completely neutral, rather than emotive sense, to mean strong central state power combined with corporate capacity as defined by Mussolini. In Crash on Demand: Welcome to the Brown Tech Future (2013)
        https://holmgren.com.au/writing/crash-demand/ I suggested that these forms of governance would be characteristic of the future.

        That those on the Left fell for the idea that Science and the consensus of the majority of experts was still independent from these problematic machination of the state/corporate/media nexus is tragic but for me not so surprising. What is harder to understand is Terry, coming from an anarchist/green/permaculture perspective also deciding that The Age, Guardian and NYT represented reliable journalism rather than system propaganda. That those strongly committed to organic soil and food might happily accept novel injections based on the say so of corrupt corporations and corrupted public science is perplexing. The only way I can understand this is the power of fear, especially fear of death combined with this deep yearning for an era of constraint and enforced frugality to address the evils of exploitation, overconsumption and hyper-individualism. In all this, Patrick, I am looking for steel man arguments build the point of generative connection across the divides with colleagues who think we are not just wrong but have done wrong.

        1. Dean Farago says:

          Maybe mr leahy simply believes that children are able to consent to all sorts of pricks, and there simply might not be a steel man to be found anywhere in his ambiguous claims?

          Often those who attack such foundational boundaries like consent, simply take advantage of people who are trying to steel man explain something that might just be plain old manipulation to be able to commit criminal acts with impunity.

          Personally I believe children aren’t capable of consent.

          Mr leahy in his papers advocating for paedophilia, child sex abuse and abolishing the age of consent, expects us to just take him at his word that he was writing the truth about his ‘research’?
          No references and subjects that can be verified/falsified?

          This deliberate erosion of the sane and healthy boundaries around consent is playing out in the courts around the Western world more now with the rise of such transgressions and the DARVO claims of stigma and persecution of them.

          There have been various defenses of really heinous criminal actions, and claims that those crimes were committed with the victims consent.
          Children are being claimed to have been consenting to being sexually assaulted and raped because the offender claimed that they did, and put forward proof that they orgasmed so therefore enjoyed it and therefore found it a positive experience. Should we just take them at their word? Or maybe , just maybe it’s their sick fantasy?

          There have been cases of serious domestic assaults, and the claim of victim consent because it was just some ‘kinky bdsm fun.’. And this is starting to actually be taken seriously because ‘the truth must be somewhere in the middle of those two arguments’.

          Or maybe some abusers are just bullshitting manipulating shits who use bullshitting manipulation techniques like The Rescue Game, ‘forced teaming’ etc to garner even passive enabling from the public and avoid any real scrutiny of what they are proposing and doing.

          Gavin De Becker writes/speaks about The Gift of Fear….something I highly recommend people read, and in my opinion has a place in permaculture in pattern recognition in the pathological paths some humans choose to follow.

          Fear is a good subject to discuss, and fear produces a variety of responses from some people and some of those responses can make them very vulnerable to abuse.. The four most common are fight, flight, freeze and fawn.

          Those responses to fear vary specifically from each other and are on a scale. They differ in the ability for an abuser to have more or less options and the duration of their ability to enact their intended abuse on that scale. And the inverse happens for the abused.

          Fight obviously opens up the most options for the abused, and lowers the options for the abuser. So this is one that I would recommend for them. And to observe anything or one that is trying you to go down the scale, rather than to get away completely from the abusive situation. Because the further down the scale of fear responses the more options the abuser has, and the less their target has.
          And so it is much more difficult to go back up that scale.
          Next is down is flight, though not as many options are open to the abused as fight, there are still many proactive options still there. And also the options for the abuser are still lowered as well, though no way as much as the fight response to fear.
          Freeze however is where the real danger to the fearful happens. It isn’t proactive at all, and leaves the fearful person at the mercy of the one intending to produce the fear in them. And worse still, it allows them no options that help them, but there are plenty of options open for those they are at the mercy of.
          But you can tell a real pathological situation, when even the freeze response isn’t enough for a predator without mercy. The fawn fear response allows for the greatest duration of abuse, and the least options for the abused, while the most options for the abuser. It is extremely difficult for people caught in such a response to fear. As they are at the mercy of people who have none now.

          One ”tell for me when observing people in fear and looking to assist them in a situation is whether the people around them are encouraging them up the scale towards the fight response, or to go down the scale towards the fawn. It is an effective method of acting as is called in the US “Left of Bang” (preventing the bad thing from happening). Unfortunately the hard job of police, prosecutors and the courts is they are only involved when it has gone ‘Right of Bang”.

          One of the simplest fight responses to fear that I recommend to anyone is just saying “No”. Gavin De Becker correctly says that “The word ‘No’ is a full sentence.”

          No makes the person’s position on consent quite clear. Trouble is, are we supposed to trust on his word that mr leahy is telling us the truth about even one word?
          Maybe his work advocating for paedophilia, child sex abuse and abolishing the age of consent is complete fetishistic fantasy fiction?
          Without access and the ability to verify/falsify his ‘research’ we must only go on his word that he is a man of integrity and this is without some very serious risks?

          Because the only test of his integrity so far and in observing, orientating, deciding and acting on his ideas that he’s presenting to us in his particular “humor, tone, and narrative structure” are his opinions in his writing and talks.
          Call me old fashioned, I wonder how that narrative would play out in a discussion. Something like this perhaps.

          “mr leahy is advocating and can speak at length on food security in rural Africa, Permaculture strategies in Sth African villages, Unsustainable food production and alternatives, perils of consumption, ruling class men and their money, sex and power, climate crisis, allowing the molesting and raping of children by adults in law and it being accepted in society, gift economy, landless poor, bicycles……”

          “hang on a second what was that bit near the end?”

          “The landless poor or bicycles?, oh yes mr leahy has written an article on that here in….”

          “No before those ones.”

          “Oh gift economy? Yes well, he writes and speaks a lot about that, and you can hear him…”

          “No before that gift economy stuff too”

          “Yes well his work on climate crisis really should be read, you can do so here…..”

          Now here is the difference between various people. Of course public figures have to be careful about what they say and how they say it in today’s walking on eggshells of the woke, but maybe, just maybe, there might be something in among that ‘good stuff’, hides some real pathological stuff. And maybe it is being hidden so it can be enabled like it has with every other social group establishment. Especially even when challenged, that so many are afraid to say what they really think because they’re walking on eggshells.

          I’m curious if there was a poll taken among permaculture practitioners after reading mr leahy’s years of work advocating for paedophilia, child sex abuse and abolishing the age of consent if they would like mr leahy to organise with his collegues from when he “was in a Child Care Cooperative in the early seventies.” (quote reference https://permacultureaustralia.org.au/the-politics-of-permaculture-terry-leahy/) a Permaculture Child Care Cooperative now?
          Would anyone have a problem with this? Would they voice their problems with this?

          Because there have certainly been plenty of other social group establishments and institutions where people went along with those who had a forced teaming brand of ”humor, tone, and narrative structure” that aligned with their own. How well are those social group establishments and institutions doing reputationally wise in regards to trust levels?

          The list of transgressions being advocated for is getting longer, and we’re supposed to drop sane and healthy safeguard boundaries, especially of children just because of some adults feelings about their fetish, and trust that they will not act on them….. on their vague words packaged in carefully and deliberately marketed in ”humor, tone, and narrative structure”?

          What am I missing here? Or is such a new concept to people that predators go to where there is easy prey?

          The specific definition and context of  the use of the ambiguous word “intergenerational”?
          And then “relationship”?
          Context is everything.
          He’s not talking about age differences between adults, and we all know that.
          So where are the boundaries that he finds acceptable for the age of consent?
          17? 16? 15? 14? 13? 12? 11? 10? 9? 8? 7? 6? 5? 4? 3? 2? Infant? He is not clear on this, and deliberately so.

          Above he writes “In relation to my views on intergenerational relationships. This is all old stuff from the early nineties. I have not published anything on this since 1996. I am not sure that I would agree with everything I wrote then. It is a bit of a red herring if we are talking about the pandemic.”

          There is no actual substance to any of that paragraph.

          He’s “not sure that I would agree with everything I wrote then.”
          Which parts? Which parts does he still agree with?
          He won’t give an answer to that.
          He’s relying on us to just ‘stop making a rude fuss, shut up, and give up.” and so those boundaries are eroded away under the guise of being “kind and inclusive”.

          Meg and Patrick are not putting forward a red herring at all, and he’s diminishing their accurate connection made……Consent.

          That the writers of these pieces use even common manipulation techniques and hide behind “subterranean”  ‘undermining the application of dominant discourses’ “through humor, tone, and narrative structure” and when you translate into English, just means if you act charming, harmless, persecuted and all packaged in a nicey nice tone of voice and manner…..that there is a steel man argument to be found?

          Maybe there just isn’t one to be found and you’re looking at the work of a sneaky and cowardly abusive shit?

          It’s not like any rose coloured glasses in 2022 will hide the realities of some men going to South East Asia and Africa and taking advantage of women and children there for their own sexual gratification, especially in the rural poor regions. There is a whole new ‘industry’ around this ‘trade’.

          Which parts of what mr leahy’s ‘old stuff from the early nineties’ does he still agree with? Are these appropriate part of holistic Permaculture practice there?
          What about in Glebe in the 1970’s?

          Anyone with a moral compass and an understanding of what actual objective harm to a child is, is going to have trouble finding the steel man argument.

          And there certainly isn’t going to be one found when the fog of ambiguity hides all the specifics that would allow people to make a properly informed decision on the likes of mr leahy’s ideology.
          No scrutiny allowed?
          Sounds like a cult to me, but what would I know.

          It’s just a few little pricks, according to mr leahy he claims they don’t cause harm to children. Because he says they don’t cause harm.

          There are plenty of people out there who speak and write about thuthtainable agriculture, gift economy, the problems with capitalism etc etc who still understand that children aren’t capable of consent to any pricks until they’re adults. And as adults they might at least be able to understand the consequences of having one protein or another ‘injected’ into them.

          Where is the risk analysis?

          I think it’s pretty well known scientifically that both of the pricks and proteins that mr leahy wants to have children to be able to ‘consent’ to, as of August 20th 2022 do cause significant harm to children, even though he claims otherwise.

          Maybe he would like to allow his thesis’ data to be opened up for thorough examination?

          I can even suggest a few very competent and thorough people who I know who would be very thorough with examining that data. So much so that their thorough investigation of that data would stand up to scrutiny and cross examination in a court of law.
          But, yet again, I suspect mr leahy would rather hide in the fog of ambiguity and relying on people’s good natured reactions to his “subterranean”  ‘undermining the application of dominant discourses’ “through humor, tone, and narrative structure” branded to them.

          Maybe me being a blunt bastard and not having the gift of “charismatic foundationalism,” I just don’t have the “humor, tone, and narrative structure” that fits to the idea of what is considered charming in our society today?

          Maybe I’m just old fashioned and am turning into a ‘far right’ wing conservative in my old age because I think the boundary of consent is pretty bloody important.

          If conserving even that boundary means I am now a ‘far right’ wing conservative. Then I guess I will just have to live with that label.
          And be content in doing so in some old low-melanin, male bastard way.
           
          Though I’m sure mr leahy would label me as being far more extreme. And I’m glad of it if he does.
          The word charming can mean a few things within different contexts, and I lack this in most if not all of them. But it does apply to mr leahy in one particular context, though I think he would have people believe it was in another context.

          What’s it like being “kind of…. being involved to an extent with the far right.”?
          Are the parties fun? Good food and music?
          Ms.Flores, mr leahy and the others weren’t really clear on that either.

          I don’t see the appeal myself, except with one thing.

          That ‘zeige heil’ business does appeal to me. It appeals to me a lot.

          Goats do bring salvation.

          And three of my grandparents taught me that. They all had combat experience against those that yelled it….or something like it.
          Somehow I don’t think those guys they fought were yelling about goats though. What would I know? I didn’t even finish high school and so surely a ‘dr’ would know more than me.
          My gran wasn’t a doctor though, and she loved and knew a lot about her goats. She said they were her wealth, and advised me that if we ‘can’t find them…..to look up’.

          Kind regards to Su and her goats.

          Zeige heil.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z05pttPjcxU

    2. Dean Farago says:

      There are some very accommodating comments about your ‘work’. And yes , you are right, there is a lot left out…..and rather than take up any more of our time, I would say that Billy Connolly has the perfect response that really gets to the core of your ideas about consent.

      He has a “humor, tone, and narrative structure” that I really like concerning boundaries and those intent of being sneaky shits and transgressing them.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaqsOL-Nv24

  12. Dean Farago says:

    ‘dr’ terry leahy’s smear piece on David Holmgren, Su Dennett and ArtistasFamily et al is pure manipulation and projection.

    leahy has no intention of engaging with you or anyone who criticizes him, he makes it clear in his ‘PhD’ (title referenced above), “boiling” it down so no one else has read such pathological and psychopathic fetishistic fantasy, it ‘boils’ down to how to manipulate society into accepting paedophilia, child sex abuse and abolishing the age of consent.

    He is doing exactly the same thing in his smear piece, and it doesn’t surprise me, that he supports scientifically unproven jab mandates (spike protein and immune cell fatigue etc) that are coercive and ultimately also severely dissolves our societies current ideas and laws on consent. He dedicates a whole paper on abolishing the age of consent, so adults can molest and rape children.

    The others that also wrote smear pieces about Holmgren et al, used a series of logical (not really) fallacies that amounted to as a guilt by association and a means to instantly put out a casting call for The Rescue Game/Karpmann Drama Triangle for The Victim and The Hero, but to instantly cast anyone with even questioning scrutiny as The Villain. It’s one of the most dangerous manipulation techniques, and has been used by every authoritarian criminal regime on the macro, and in every covert abusive household in the micro.

    I cherish my friends who have differing beliefs and ideas, including in politics. Our differences are not extremist, and even heated discussions, always remain that- discussions. The purpose of which is to maintain sane and healthy boundaries.
    There is always a win-win scenario to be found, even in the heated discussions.
    Extremists on both the right and the left, are not interested in a win-win scenario.
    They play zero sum games. Some overtly (at least you know where you stand and can act accordingly), but some covertly and more manipulatively. as leahy in his ‘PhD’ calls it ‘subterranean” in reference to the different methods of ‘attacking the dominant discourse’. To him as he points out in this disgusting work, the ‘dominant discourse’, is where (quite rightly) child sex abuse is considered a heinous crime and abhorrent because of the harm it does. leahy, again ‘boiling’ it down, write what amounts to some of the worst sophistry victim blaming I have read.

    leahy doesn’t understand, and is to my estimation probably incapable of ever doing so, that child sexual abuse causes significant harm. And so I would posit, like most convicted child molesters and rapists, his projection of things like ‘bread crumbing’ is something that could be put to him. Of course he wouldn’t address this and many other points either.

    Bringing this into Permaculture, I fail to see how advocating for molesting and raping children in way falls under People Care or any sane and healthy ethical framework.

    I used to be mostly on ‘the left’ (I tend to avoid identity politics like the plague and prefer addressing each subject candidly and comprehensively) but the inmates have taken over the asylum, and the left has left me. And as Patrick, rightly pointed out in Castlemaine outside leahy’s book launch, the lack of responsibility taken by the extremist and personality disordered ‘left’ in it’s role in rolling out the red carpet for the far right. And the response to Patrick’s question was typical.

    The sick irony in leahy of all people piling in on smear campaigning Holmgren as:

    “The recent actions of David Holmgren in relationship to the pandemic cause a certain kind of problems with the movement (Permaculture).
    Basically because the movement is partly based on a charismatic foundationalism, that it’s hard for the members of the movement to at the same time talk about the guiding influence of Davids books on their thinking, their Permaculture thinking. And yet to massively disagree with him on either the topic of the pandemic or the topic of …..kind of…. being involved to an extent with the far right.”, is that I would say I don’t think I could think of a means for the far right to find a more solid foundation to make the bullshit claim they always do “we’re the only ones who can bring order to the chaos of the left”. It is bullshit because their claim of order is just yet more abusive chaos.
    This is why the sane and healthy boundaried left needs to take responsibility for those in ‘our camp’ that have enabled this pathological dissolving of sane and healthy boundaries and fix this mess before it gets worse, and that rolls out the red carpet for those extreme right (who the conservative right are worried about too)
    There is a win-win scenario opportunity and Permaculture is a tool that can be used to find common ground between both sides of the political aisle. It has certainly worked well among friends of mine.

    I’ll finish up my long winded comment with a quote from a man who understood from first hand experience what zero sum game personality disordered people using extremist political manipulation, dissolving of sane and healthy boundaries and the criminal horrors that it enables.

    “Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.”
    Viktor Frankl

    1. Thanks Dean, there’s big story in your comment and we sense a lot of pain there too. Thanks for ending with the Frankl quote. Great to revisit it here.

  13. Hello everyone, a new Icelandic study shows reinfection rates increase with vaccination rates. The authors declare no conflict of Interests: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2794886
    As more independent science accumulates on these experimental, ineffective and dangerous injections, the Mandate Left will be exposed for their poor judgement. Let’s hope this lesson (blindly believing the state-corporate messaging that ‘the science is in, and you can’t question it’) means a radical reversal from Leftist-progressives, and they get to work to counter the propaganda before we head into our next phase of public health misinformation and state violence.

  14. We’re posting another link here that hears from antithesis doctors, scientists and everyday folk who have been injured or have had loved ones injured, in a documentary called, Uniformed Consent: https://librti.com/uninformed-consent#dpr

  15. Heather Jo Flores says:

    Your assumption that I deleted my critique of Holgren’s racist and horrific covid stance because it was “slanderous” is incorrect. I deleted it because his cronies were sending me death threats. Not sure about all y’all but I tend to choose the side that doesn’t use violence to silence opinions. My piece was not slanderous. It was, and is, my opinion and I stand by it. Holmgren’s position is grossly irresponsible, blatantly racist, and utterly un-permaculture.

    Your article here is, however, actual libel since it states my full name in a sentence with a lie about me. Tagging me on Twitter about it is just tacky. Go plant something. You are not building a better world with this shit. You’re just throwing hardworking folks under the bus for your own smug satisfaction. Nope.

    1. Hello Heather Jo, if you lived in the same village as David (and us), and you had to take responsibility for your words and actions, you might understand how twisted your comment is here. If you’d received such threats for writing your hit piece on David then why not make them public or take them to the police? When someone makes an attack on another and then plays the victim, it is just plain narcissism. We didn’t share anything on Twitter in relation to you. Your comment here and your hit piece on David demonstrates why Leahy’s reference to your no-longer-publicly available attack (article in Medium) on David is such poor scholarship.

    2. Dean Farago says:

      Oh wow, I assumed Ms Flores had taken it down to update it with further facts that came to light since then.

      Now verified facts like – David Holmgren ate a bunch of little puppies at the march for a snack. It was said that they were especially cute ones too, and he said the especially cute ones not only taste better but have a higher nutrient density and that you can’t be a permaculture practitioner unless you eat a puppy a day. We know this is true and really happened because someone said it did.

      There was an orphanage school for octariplegic, higher melanin leveled, 83 gendered (it is now 96 genders- pronoun…cing the g as in goose not generic. Anyone who pronoun…ces it with a g as in generic is a bigot), phnardenphnardensexuals adults who identify as children, and David Holmgren hid a 1980’s boombox with the cassette tape autoloop function (it was the latest thing back then) in the grounds and it played the Polka version of Seasame Street themesong (you know that was nazi too, because it’s initials are ss) it disturbed the most underprivileged of these orphans….the ones that also had to attend their regular Cognitive Behavioral Therapy session.
      I mean Polka music. That’s against the Geneva Convention. And those transageist really need their CBT.

      David Holmgren has no shame. He has no remorse. He laughed maniacally and said “If they heard and died of Polka music, it would be the best thing that could happen for permaculture right now”

      He shows no sign of admitting he’s just being plain wrong. He won’t apologize. He won’t make amends. I don’t know how after saying that, how he could, but he isn’t even trying to redeem himself. He doubles down, and just eats more puppies while doing so.

      Someone said that for every person who reads Ms Flores’ ‘piece’, he’ll eat another cute little puppy. I know he said that, because someone said that he did.

      I’m so glad virtuous people like Ms Flores and the other brave and stunning writers are here to educate us, and stand up to the especially cute puppy eater and polka music player David Holmgren.
      If it wasn’t for dedicated people like you all making sure that we are kept in the loop of the latest evil of David Holmgren, we might be found guilty by association. And none of us want that.

      Save the puppies from David Holmgren. Stop him from playing Polka music to the underprivileged.

      *This just in….David Holmgren was heard chanting Zeige heil, Zeige heil with his goats. What do you think that means? The goats seemed pretty happy about it.

      I have another question, because this whole guilt by association thing is new to me and I don’t know how it works properly like Ms Flores and Mr leahy do.
      I know I need education on this, and I’m trying to be better and virtuous.

      So let me ask, If someone protests about one topic, and another person who also protests about the same thing. Does that mean they must be in agreement on absolutely everything else and need to be cancelled?

      Do we need evidence that would stand up to scrutiny for this? or can we just go with it without any evidence because that they say X and that other person also says X, but that other person also says Y and Z, then the 1st person also believes in Y and Z too?

      This whole cancelling thing is changing every day and it’s hard to keep up with all the writers of pieces that educate us on the evils of the greatest puppy eater, polka music player of them all….David Holmgren.

      I’m so glad I didn’t march with him, because I don’t believe anyone should eat a puppy. They’re adorable. And everyone knows polka music is evil. Because I would hate to think if I did say or do even one thing that David Holmgren said or did, then that would mean I must be a puppy eater and polka music player too?

      Phew, thanks again Ms Flores, you and mr leahy and the others have really saved me from being cancelled and known as a puppy eater and polka music player guilt by the greatest stretch of imagination association.

      Does that mean that like mr leahy, you and the other writers also advocate for paedophilia, child sexual abuse and abolishing the age of consent too?

      Because personally, I think that would be taking guilt by association just way too far.
      Don’t you? But I don’t want to jump to any conclusions based on an assumption, because that, I do know, can lead to all sorts of turmoil.

      So until I get clarification from the writers who all wrote these pieces on the evil far right nazi puppy eater and polka music player David Holmgren and the cogent evidence that would stand up to thorough scrutiny in a court of law, I am going to assume that these other writers DO NOT advocate for paedophilia, child sexual abuse and abolishing the age of consent, just because they agree with mr leahy on the evils of puppy eating and polka music playing.

      Big Smile, Big Smile, Big Smile……and goats.

  16. Chelsey says:

    Dear Artist as Family,
    As I listened to the audio version of your latest blog post, I am feeling deeply stirred on many levels. The array of research methodologies, including your lived experience, delivered so calmly in the face of what has felt to my family like living through a particularly well-funded sci-fi film underscored by a complex web of political and other motivations is both soothing, distressing and empowering in turns.
    As a family who stood against the mandates, we have come through our ordeal by fire stronger, having tested our values, social networks and resilience (and our ‘physical health’, having experienced covid first hand and opted to use alternative and/or illegal treatments in addition to accessing mainstream medical support via phone consultations to a full recovery) and found them strong enough to sustain us whilst we were ostracised by our community and many of our family members and friends.
    The wounds of spirit and heart sustained during the height of the pandemic are apparently still sore, as I found myself crying at your description of the treatment you have received and the fall from grace you have experienced due to your inability to tow the line and continue to do and be the collective entity that you are. Ironic really, that there are those of us who did not actually change our spots during the pandemic, but were labelled as delusional – or worse – by those who made the shift to the dictated narrative – often it seems these being the most radical/ leftist humans – who then were able to somehow perceive us as having transformed into unfamiliar beings.
    What I really want to say is thanks. For being passionate and disciplined (if that is not an overly joyless way to describe the dedication it takes to delve deeply into the interdisciplinary analysis your undertake). For your courageous vulnerability, integrity and holistic strength and the ways in which you choose to an inspired life.

    1. Thanks for your warm words, Chelsey, and for your solidarity. Sadly we believe there is much more to come so we’ll need to organise and stay connected. The WEF is now pushing for microchipping the world’s children and give them ‘superpowers’. Have we not learned a thing since Gilgamesh? (In their own words): https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/08/ethics-not-technological-limits-will-be-the-guiding-factor-for-an-augmented-age/

  17. Ronnie says:

    Hi guys

    I’ve been giving a bit of thought to this meta offering – and before I actually gather those thoughts into a semi-coherent comment/post I have a fundamental question to ask:

    How do you (or perhaps the question is simply – do you) see your work in the non-dominant paradigm covid discussion relate to the ethics and principles of permaculture?

    ** asking this respectfully – its a genuine interest. I’m mindful that some of my previous comments have been very warmly received – especially in the early days of your blog …. (What was it you called me? Oh yeah a ‘first follower’….) But more recently I’ve had some rather negative experiences as well eh… I don’t want to revisit that – but I think I have some robust things to respectfully add to the conversation, in the spirit of permie principles as I understand them.

    1. For us permaculture activism has always been about transition from reliance on industrial culture and transition to rebuilding ecological cultures of place. This transition begins with composting 3 significant capitalisms – industrial medicine, industrial food and industrial energy. Because industrial culture is a colonising culture our ethics are embedded in our transition of incrementally reducing the presence of industrial corporate power in our household and community economies. We find it really strange you ask this question as you’ve followed our work for so long. We’ve been doing this for nearly 20 years. So we have a question for you Ronnie: How does Pfizer’s principles and ethics relate to permaculture? How does the state-corporate industrial-pharma nexus relate to permaculture for you?

      1. Ronnie says:

        Thank you – I ask because I am unsure if you are interested in feedback. Is feedback (more than just the usual ‘you are amazing’ that is the general fare in the comment section) something that you would find beneficial?

        Even now I’m not sure that you don’t just see me as your enemy (despite, as you note, that we’ve chatted quite bit over the years) – I’m involved in creating a new cultural entity (the Cobargo Bushfire Resilience Centre) so culture, place, community, resilience, transition – these are all things I’m really interested in and give a lot of attention to – particularly in the research and activism spheres – some of that activity may cross over with your fields of interest (some not – example – I don’t really have much research or background in Pfizer – so I don’t have a considered opinion about industrial-pharma… beyond observing that my crazy, lucky good health isn’t something everyone shares)

        But if you are still interested in some really considered and respectful feedback – I may have more interesting things to add from areas that I have more experience in.

        1. With all cause mortality up 10% since the ‘vaccines’ came in, Ronnie, we find it staggering you are sticking to the propaganda that these ‘vaccines’ are helping vulnerable people. The very opposite is true. Putting Pfizer, Moderna or AstraZeneca into your body’s biome is the same as putting Monsanto products in your garden and farm biomes. It’s the same profit-motivated death science. If you cannot see the equivalence, Ronnie, you are speaking out of ignorance. This ignorance has harmed many people who do not trust industrial shareholder science and instead of directing your attention to those who have constructed a militarised-medical state, you keep directing your frustration at people like us. This is bewildering. The ‘vaccines’ do not work, do not stop infection and it is becoming increasingly clear they are causing an increase of death. The fascistic medical orders were supposed to stop people from dying and from the disease. They have done the opposite. If these injections were administered by voluntary consent the harm would only be small as people who trusted these corporate criminals would have to admit their ignorance was at work. But as the medical industry and the state worked together to coerce and manipulate people to take these harmful products there needs to be some serious truth telling and ‘fessing up. Otherwise, we are heading towards totalitarianism.

          1. Ronnie says:

            Ok – I’ll share with you some of the things I’ve been giving some consideration to – not Pfizer etc (as this is not my research expertise) – I’ll start a separate comment as the ever-diminishing comment thread line is really hard to read isn’t it!

            Maybe what I’ll note will be considered useful – maybe not. I only ever share things with good intentions.

          2. Ronnie says:

            I spent a considerable time contemplating a reply – but chose to withdraw rather than continue – its not simply that I’m busy (I am… bushfire recovery is a full time thing) – I wanted to give time to ensure that any words I may add were true, kind, necessary – and I’m not confident that others reading would consider what I had to add was all those things.

            I DO think its necessary to point out some problems with research and methodology – I just couldn’t find a way to do that with kindness in this format.

            R

        2. Maurice says:

          Hi Ronnie, the Cobargo Bushfire Resilience Centre sounds like a wonderful project. Well done to you and your local community for getting it off the ground.

          Something you said in this comment struck a nerve with me: “I don’t really have much research or background in Pfizer – so I don’t have a considered opinion about industrial-pharma… ”

          I hadn’t done any research into Pfizer when I decided to get vaccinated either. I was just so happy to be in a position to be helping the vulnerable members in my community who were not as healthy and able bodied as me.

          Four things happened that made me take off my rose-coloured glasses and look into Pfizer’s ongoing heinous track record.

          The first was a silly meme that someone sent around saying something like “Why do people care more about the ethics of their coffee grower than they do about the ethics of who makes the pharmaceuticals they take?” I read it and I thought, wow how embarrassing, that’s certainly true in my case.

          The second thing that happened was that my wife and I got covid after we were vaccinated. We got Delta something terrible and the only thing that helped us was taking Ivermectin. No, not the horse medicine, the WHO-approved drug. It worked like a miracle for us.

          The third thing that happened was that I sent an article about Ivermectin to a colleague over FB Messenger and FB deleted it from the message before I had a chance to send it. Wait, what?? Why can’t I send an article about a legal drug that helped me out of a very dire bout of illness? Why are they silencing me? And if they are silencing me, who else are they silencing?

          The fourth thing to happen was that my vaccinated daughter had a stillborn baby at 27 weeks, and then my vaccinated daughter-in-law had a stillborn baby at 28 weeks. My daughter-in-law’s GP said she had never seen so many stillborn babies and miscarriages in her 30-year career – all to vaxxed mothers. The GP then confidentially sent this piece to my daughter-in-law:
          https://naomiwolf.substack.com/p/dear-friends-sorry-to-announce-a

          I am a huge Artist as Family fan. Their neo-peasant how-to videos have kept me grounded. For the last year of the pandemic though, I thought they had lost their marbles, and that they had fallen down too many anti-vax right-wing rabbit holes. But as soon as I started doing a little research into Pfizer, the FDA, the CDC, the TGA, the WHO, Bill Gates, the WEF, Fauci etc, I now see that Meg and Patrick are some of the most sane people I know!

          I hope my experience has been helpful to you. I too believed I was so lucky to be able to have access to the vaccine so I could help others. I still believed it even when I learnt that it didn’t stop infection or transmission! Boy was I gullible. But not any more. My eyes are open to the bullshit that the government spouts, that the media perpetuates and that academia defends.

          1. Ronnie says:

            HI Maurice – nice to meet you through this site – I appreciate your kind words regards my sweet home Cobargo – hopefully my words of thanks for sharing your sad experiences of the past while are understood as words of empathy without judgement.

            When I mention I don’t have specific research expertise/ background with Pfizer (etc) its something I’m being quite serious to note. I’m currently completing a PhD in a different discipline/ faculty – and research ethics is very clear about what I should and shouldn’t claim knowledge or expertise in. I take that responsibility to act ethically very very seriously.

            (I also take friendships and community very very seriously. That’s part of the reason why I’m here – it’s absolutely the reason why I’m working on projects like the Resilience Centre)

      2. Nick Towle says:

        The question of ethics and principles has emerged as a critical area of concern, and the way we choose to interpret them. I’m in the ‘industrial medicine’ field and confronted with the ethical challenge of who should receive medical care in the instance that our resources become over-stretched and capacity overwhelmed as is occurring with COVID-19 and compounded by successive extreme heat events. Should I reserve scarce resources for the aboriginal woman, borne into poverty, with a congenital condition leading to chronic kidney disease, or the white male, borne into privilege and thus able to sustain good general health? What I’m experiencing is permaculture isn’t offering what myself and other designers need to tackle such deeply ethical challenges. Instead COVID-19 has surfaced much ableist rhetoric, privileged people talking up ideas of herd immunity, which by implication is a willingness to consign many to being expendable. I took this ethical challenge to a group of young educated people and we arrived at a very uncomfortable place, with a widely expressed sentiment that some in society have stronger genetics and practice better lifestyle choices and these would be the ones that should be prioritised in the setting of limited resources. It’s a worldview that is likely to find fertile ground and amplified through the protest rallies you describe. Anyone being encouraged to engage in permaculture should be supported to question the ways we choose to interpret the ethics and principles, and thus appreciate how permaculture might offer a comparable critique of big pharma and right wing populist movements.

  18. Ona says:

    ♥ thank you for such wise words♥ Artist as Family

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