Ordinarily we are an arts collective that focuses on what can be done within our homes and communities to be less reliant on what we call, hypertechnocivility. That is, how can we support ourselves and others to transition to non-war economies and lifeways that honour life, land and people. But this post isn’t so much about living the new story, at least not in a local, humus-enriching sense. Rather it’s about marking the next stage in the descent of morality in the west, and the next stage in the diminishment of free speech, especially in relation to Israel’s genocide of Palestinian people.
So here’s the thing. A nation state commits a genocide, murders international journalists, doctors and aid workers, purposely starves home-destroyed peoples by freezing supply lines, ignores international condemnation, meddles in the affairs of other countries by misleadingly collapsing Zionism as the same thing as Judaism, and pressures other nations to adopt harsh new laws that give powers to incarcerate critics of its genocide.
How is this happening? Well, let’s hear from a victim of this state violence.
All terrorism committed by empires are the result of big geopolitical and financial forces, playing to win with little care for the rule of law or international agreements. If you apply first principles to the why and how of the current moment you may also arrive where we have: It is Israel and the US wanting to control the middle east to capitalise on all the lucrative resources in the region. This is about empire domination, and most western countries support it and some get perks for doing so.
Iran is the last significant sovereign state in the middle east standing in the way of total American-Israeli hegemony there. Iranians don’t want an American-Israeli regime change in their country; this is just what western governments and the western corporate media are massaging western peoples on the path to war with Iran.
If you are interested to hear a voice from inside Iran, here’s an academic speaking a few days ago on what he is seeing on the ground in his country. Seyed M Marandi takes us through why recent protests began in Iran, who caused them, who escalated them into terrorism, and what counter protests took place in opposition to the terrorists.
It sounds a little more complex than the ‘Iranians want regime change’ routine we get fed in the west, doesn’t it? Marandi said today about the American-Israeli preparation for war with his country, that “Iran’s sin is that it, alone with its allies, actively supports Palestine and opposes genocide in Gaza.”
This week the Albanese government caved in to the Netanyahu government and to anti-Palestinian hard liners in Australia to bring about a royal commission concerning the Bondi massacre, while at the same time pushing through its ‘Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill 2026’ on January 20. Here is a copy of that draft bill and the memorandum.
The draft states, it’s “immaterial,” whether “the conduct actually results in hatred” or whether anyone “actually” feels intimidated or fears harassment. There is a view (or a political strategy) that criticism of Israel is making people in the Jewish diaspora unsafe, but as Antony Loewenstein, a Jewish Australian journalist argues, this is just a foil for stamping out dissent against genocide and other Israeli atrocities, such as decades of land grabbing in Palestine.
We are a part Jewish household, and proud of it. So please stand with us and millions of others around the world who speak up against the violence imposed by the extremist Israeli regime and its war partner, America.
So what can you can do to help arrest this slide into ever greater authoritarianism and moral decline by western governments using ‘hate’ and ‘safety’ as weapons against peoples’ rights to protest and critique? Send a submission to the Australian Government to reject the draft bill via this page by 4pm tomorrow (15 January, 2026). Share this post because it includes Palestinian, Iranian and Jewish perspectives that are not aligned to the empire. Stay informed using first principles (not team sports) inquiry. And last but not least, steer clear of state-corporate propaganda as the American-Israeli terror alliance escalates its hatred in 2026.
Hello dear Readers. A heartfelt Happy New Year to each of you!
This end of year/new year season is often marked with big events. Bushfires, higher road fatalities, work stresses, greater financial pressures, family arguments, and major global events. Over this holiday period, the horror of the Bondi massacre and a brazen US kidnapping – presumably part of a plan to steal Venezuela’s oil and gold, needed to help lubricate the US war machine.
For summer solstice we gathered, celebrated and feasted at Melliodora with friends and kindred spirits, and the FireChoir men performed two of their original songs.
On Christmas day Artist as Family gathered for a simple BBQ and later in the afternoon Woody, Zeph and Patrick went fishing at nearby Cairn Curran,
each catching a large carp,
which Meg transformed into her famous carp mousse (click for recipe).
Patrick and Meg met on New Years Eve in Daylesford twenty years ago, and since then we have been regulars in the town’s NYE parade. Here’s a pic from around 2016. Yep, that’s Woody on the right in the purple dress and green shoes blowing his whistle.
This year none of us really felt the spark of creativity to organise a float, until late in the day an idea crackled in Patrick. He got tinkering in the workshop, and an hour later popped out all zombie-like with heavy sign in hands.
We sent the above image to some friends inviting them to join PJ in his pjs and sleepwalk down the main drag with him. Meg documented the stellar performance that Su Dennett and Dave Holmgren joined.
We are paying close attention to the growing tech feudalism unfolding, which western governments are helping to usher in under the guise of safety. A few weeks back we were locked out of Substack for refusing to comply to demands for facial recognition data on that site, due to the Australian Government’s new and overreaching digital ID laws, supposedly aimed at protecting children. Know any kids on Substack? We don’t either.
We’ve been listening to a brilliant Sydney criminal lawyer raising awareness concerning an Israeli phone hacking company called Cellebrite, whose products are currently being used by numerous Australian institutions. We’ve tuned into a British journo-comedian uncovering the surveillance enhancing deeds of tech company, Oracle, and how that company is significantly infiltrating the UK government. And we’ve been learning about the long-standing collusion of The Rise of the Thielverse & the Surveillance State.
But what does the western corporate media really want us to pay attention to? Chinese and Russian infiltration and hacking tech, right? All three links above have helped us understand further what is being prepared for western populations by western corporatism, and we highly recommend them.
On NYE Patrick, Su and Dave were spontaneously joined by Jean-Marc and a blow-in called Rachel. Both have been active in highlighting the genocide of Palestinians over the past two years. An article appeared in the Green Left telling how Rachel was stopped by police on the night she joined our float, and asked to put away her Palestinian flag.
As far as we’re aware, not since c1975 – when cartoonist and national treasure Michael Leunig (with friends) entered ‘Fun in the Forest‘ in the Daylesford NYE parade, where their float featured “real trees on the back of [a] truck and Mr Curly chased [a naked] female around the trees… greeted with hoots of laughter…” – have the police intervened in the free self-expression at this grass roots community event in our town. Many people cheered and clapped our Sleepwalker foot float. Apparently one person complained about the Palestinian flag. That’s democracy for you.
However, not all is solidarity. In our backwards and forwards with Rachel assisting her with her Green Left (GL) article, Patrick also expressed to her the loss of trust many of us felt in the GL’s capitulation to Big Pharma and Big Health during the great pandemic exaggeration years. Most of the GL mob back then refused to see the captured narrative and revolving door health officials, such as the head regulator of the TGA during Covid. Here’s Professor Skerritt revolving his door just 8 months after retirement from the TGA to become an ‘independent director’ of the largest pharmaceuticals lobby group in Australia. Go John!
‘Medicines Australia’… sounds so helpful and righteous, doesn’t it?
Patrick was also wishing to let Rachel know of the loss of human rights that resulted in the Green Left’s naivety. If anyone needs a recap of that pitiful time you can revisit Patrick’s long-form piece, The Left got Covid almost entirely Wrong, and why it matters.
Unity among diverse groups is what’s required now. To form a unifying stance of mistrust against any form of the state-corporate nexus. To trust any large industry that has enthusiastic state backing is a straightforward recipe for serving up more divide and rule colonialism. Globally, large industries and governments pay billions to nudge units (behavioural science companies) to sucker people into believing ‘we are doing this for your safety’. Our prediction for this year is Israel and the US will create a false flag operation to justify a major war with Iran. This will elicit a world war and thus greater crackdowns on free speech will ensue and bring in a general state of info-confusion and possibly even civil war in some western countries. Ever more sophisticated fake news delivered by AI tech will intensify greater justification for governments to erode our rights and mandate digital IDs for everyone. We will see political gulags emerge, further political assassinations, more journalists sacked and muzzled, and a further shadowing of independent websites like our own.
In the face of all this, one lecture series that has been important to us in expanding our understanding of the historical contexts for what is occurring today geopolitically, is the 28 part Secret History series, delivered by Professor Jiang, beginning here.
Professor Jiang’s work is wonderfully informative and provocative, though at times a tad shorthand. Gratefully, however, he says to his students, ‘don’t take my word as truth’, and states he’s ‘presenting theories, which are there to be challenged’ – the mark of a proper teacher. Western universities used to have such engaged teaching, and in part of this lecture series Prof Jiang speaks of his time at Yale University and gives a good summary as to why the western neoliberal academies are in decline in step with the broader empire. We’ve witnessed this too and spoke about it often over the past several years. Funding and research is often dependent on one’s compliance with neoliberal agendas. True scholarship, therefore, is sidelined to the margins. Our response has been to leave the neoliberal academies as potential places of knowledge and wisdom, and to immerse ourselves in more expansive intelligences.
Honey is filling the hives in the garden as we write this post, goats are converting gorse and blackberries into divine subsistence protein, Meg and other women are fasting in the forest and listening in Mother Country, sunflowers are on point of flowering, strawberries are setting a new flush of fruit, and each morning before dawn a young fox returns to our chicken forest to figure out a way in.
Life is rich and beautiful. It offers us an invitation to participate, an invitation to connect with what Professor Jiang calls the ‘divine spark’, and be part of it. There is much suffering around us, and in us. Much evil and hatred and censorship and authoritarianism on the horizon. Our political leaders will once again sell our human rights for bullshit wars and for ‘our safety’ and billionaire greed mongers will continue to enslave the material world to fill the great void in their beings where their souls once resided. The potential for such darkness is in all of us, and can usefully serve as a feedback for when we are not connected to the divine.
In 2026, western hegemony will edge closer to a great unravelling, so we will continue to be in service to the divine spark, access it in both ceremony and in subsistence, while we drink a toast to this precious life and all who are part of its eternal flourishing.
Here’s a recipe for a simple cider we might well toast such life with: Catch nine precious litres of water from the heavens and place in a ten litre brewer, add two cups of honey from the labour of garden bees, and ten sprigs of elderflower growing in the common. Let it brew for a week. Strain the flowers from the brew and let it brew another week. Enjoy this wild fermented, low alcoholic drink while listening to the cricket on the ABC – about the only thing we can trust on the ABC these days is sport. You can also make a non-alcoholic version by using whey as a starter.
So cheers and solidarity, dear friends! Let’s stay connected as hypertechnocivility descends deeper into collapse, and let’s dream together and renew the light out of the lessons from the dark.
