The Truth and Lies event held recently in Wanaka, NZ, was a part of the Aspiring Conversation series, under of the greater Festival of Colour event. A number of my free-thinking friends and I attended, and although recording and filming the event was not approved, a good audio copy was captured, and we’ll let you decide for yourself how on-target the speakers were on major issues facing us such as freedom of speech, the internet – platforms such as Telegram, and… Fear. Yes you read that correctly: Fear was a dominent theme we picked up in both presenters and the audience. Barry Young once mentioned that he’d love to be inside their (the panelist’s) head to see what makes them say and think what they do.
Alistair Harding eloguently stated this morning when he was interviewing Roy Chantaloup and me, that the panelests are making a last gasp effort of stating their revelence when it’s clear the OFM, Old Fashioned Media, and the lies it pumps out, are fading into oblivion. It’s not happening fast enough, but it is happening.
Anyway, here’s the audio of that “dialogue” where no Q&A were allowed, nor opposing views.
Another conclusion Alistair, Roy and I came to, was when the day comes that our community hosts a Truth event here in Wanaka, we will certainly invite Kate Hannah, Souixsie Wiles, Kathy Ferguson and Bryon C. Clarke to to have a civil discussion. We are not racists, nor “alt-right” nor conspiracy theororists. We are humans, as they are, seeking a dialogue. We will seek to fulfull the vision statement of which the Festival of Colour, and Aspiring Conversations attempt woefully fell short. This event was a lost opportunity, but there will be more ahead here in Wanaka. Our community will see to it. Please attend when you see the announcement.
Author’s Note: There will be a transcript of this audio track published here soon. Stay tuned.
By Randall Richards Below is an audio interview done with Paul Brennan of Reality Check Radio here in New Zealand on the shenanigans going on with an event from the Aspiring Conversations part of Festival of Colour. The event was called “Truth and Lies”, a provocative title. My open-minded friends and I are thinking of creating another festival called Festival or Truth, or something like that, to “take a jab” at the organisers.
It seems we could improve on implementing their vision statement which in part, states: to engage our community and captivate individuals from all walks of life. We’ll do the whole thing, stage, lights, couches, moderator, glasses of water, but we’ll take questions from the audience (no need to email in ahead of time), cameras and recorders will be allowed, and no bag or phones required to checked in at the gate. No barf bags required for this event. Stay tuned.
One thing I didn’t mention is my previous article, which I thought I’d add here, is the need to compassionately, but firmly, hold people responsible for their actions with consequences, legal, social etc.
Barry Young, our wonderful whistleblower on the data of excess deaths (related to the vaccine here in NZ), told me he’d love to “get into the head of these people and see what makes them tick. Why do they think the way they do?” Coincidently, our speaker at NZ Rising tonight was covering just that topic. David Charalambous, founder of Reaching People, He covered a lot of ground on cognitive dissonance, labels, and adaptive unconsciousness. But more on that in another piece.
Author’s Note: Reality Check Radio is currently off-air. They need more of us to donate to keep operations running. We’ll be posting a shortly on this, but for now, see RCR’s video on the situation.
By Randall Richards Yesterday, I attended an “Aspiring Conversations” event called “Truth and Lies*” which is part of Wanaka, “Festival of Colour” held periodically in this small but growing town on New Zealand’s South Island. I, and about twenty-five friends who are concerned about threats to free speech and government overreach, had bought the $25 ticket to hear four people on stage discuss what their webpage describes as follows “How do we know what is true and how do we deal with the misinformation and disinformation that plagues not just social media, but public life.”
Truth and Lies speakers lineup, clockwise from upper left: Susie Ferguson, Kate Hannah (no show), Byron Clarke and Siouxsie Wiles.
The webpage gave the speakers’ backgrounds: “Susie Ferguson has recently produced a podcast series called Undercurrents. Kate Hannah (no-show) is the director of the Disinformation Project. Byron C Clarke is an expert on the far right and has just written Fear: New Zealand’s Hostile World of Extremists. Siouxsie Wiles is a science communicator who has been targeted by the alt right.” The event was hosted by Radio New Zealand host Kathryn Ryan
I was dreading going to the event. I was tempted to bring a barf bag in protest but decided at the last minute to nix that idea. I felt as if I were going into the den of lions. The thought of attending this talk brought a mild feeling of nausea. When I found a seat in the audience, I grew a bit anxious, as what looked like a largely retired, but woke population, started to fill the auditorium. As a group, my friends and I agreed we’d be respectful of their guidelines, (besides we discovered when Kathryn Ryan was reading the ground rules, that “Any disruptions from the audience would result in being escorted out by security personnel.” A friend from Arrowtown, NZ, who didn’t get our memo, did speak out loudly once, when Siouxsie Wiles stated on stage that there were minimal adverse effects of the Covid19 “vaccine”. He spoke up loudly, saying, “What about the skyrocketing excess deaths reported?” He was rewarded by a security guard coming to the end of his row and glowering at him with a threatening look of, “Don’t do that again, or you’re out of here.”
A last minute email sent out to ticket-holders the day before the event stated, that if we’d like to submit questions to be considered, they’d have to be emailed in prior. So that evening we, as a group, decided to submit the following questions:
1. What are the panel’s views on Dr. Michael Kelly’s recent article that calculated it would cost New Zealand $500 BILLION to implement the climate change actions being proposed by our Government?
2. Does the panel regard it to be “true” that the Covid vaccine was “safe and effective?”
3. What is the panel’s opinion of NZ’s Bill of Rights which states that: “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form.”
4. What level of C02 is acceptable to members of this panel when ice samples show that the planet currently has its lowest ever levels of CO2 levels in the last 70 million years?
5. What is the panel’s opinion regarding the refusal of our ministry of Health to release the true data on the vaccination injury statistics and all-cause mortality figures over the last 4 years?
6. Why does the panel think advertisers are withdrawing from mainstream media in their droves, causing their collapse?
7. Can members of the panel please confirm, in public that you do not receive any funding from third parties like the UN, WHO or Governmental or university bodies – either directly or indirectly?
There was no Q&A section of the presentation. Knowing, this might be the case, we printed out copies of the questions to hand out to the audience as they exited the building with the following additional background printed on the front:
Questions for the Truth & Lies Panel Discussion Some concerned people in the Otago region are planning to ask these 7 questions at the Truth and Lies discussion event on the 6th of April, which is slated to be part of Wanaka’s Aspiring Conversations, at The Festival of Colour. We, as individuals, will request these questions be answered during the Q&A portion of the event, if there is such a portion. If not, we will ask the panel if they will answer the questions in the room, immediately after the event. If the panel will not address the questions after the event, we will present these questions to them with a request to respond via email, and will also hand out copies of this document to the attendees as they exit the event. We’re hopeful the discussion panel will hear our concerns, and we look forward to hearing their answers.
We also included their mission of the event:
From the Festival of Colour Website:
“Our vision is to create an extraordinary platform that inspires, entertains, and challenges, fostering community well-being. Through diverse performances, thought-provoking discussions, and interactive events, we aim to engage our community and captivate individuals from all walks of life. Our dynamic programme showcases both established and emerging artists, representing Aotearoa’s artistic and cultural landscape alongside international acts.
We believe in the transformative power of the arts to spark conversations, challenge perceptions, and connect people. Alongside showcasing incredible performances that move our audiences, our festivals stimulate dialogue on critical issues, encouraging reflection and exploration of new ideas, encouraging personal growth, cultural understanding, and social cohesion.“(emphasis added by author)
I’m sorry to say the event fell far short of ticking any of the boxes I highlight above. On the contrary, the event encouraged conformative non-critical thinking by oversimplifying major issues of the day such as the use of the internet and the Telegram platform in particular. At one point, Susie Ferguson stated she was “given a tour of Telegrams groups” as if it were some sort of foreign dark web element of our society. It is not. Byron Clarke stated “Be skeptical and stick to broadcasting standards.” I say, keep an open mind, and follow your nose. Someone recently is quoted as saying, people know the truth when they see it, they can smell it.” Another quote oft attributed to Mark Twain, “A lie gets half way around the world before truth gets a chance to put its pants on.” Maintaining an open, curious mind today is mandatory to stay healthy and at peace.
My twelve year son, who attended the event, picked up on the overall feeling of fear from the panel members, and he was right. Clarke earlier stated, “We’re in worrying times when our landscape of news media is changing with fake news, fake info, on the internet which is considered the truth”. The audience then sighed or gasped. I had the distinct feeling I was in a paddock of sheep. Clarke added the example of “The protest of the mandates in Wellington are signs of worrying times, when they could have been protesting for a more worthy cause”. He continued, “While reputable newscasts are behind some sort of paywalls, (TV subscriptions, advertising, etc) the internet is free, such as New Zealand’s own Counterspin Media, Reality Check Radio, Voice Media, my own blog and Infowars and TCN the U.S. to name a few. (For the record, the above excluding my own and Counterspin, have paid elements of their services. Voice Media is virtually a full paid subscription service and TCN has much of its content behind a paywall). The mainstream military industrial media globalist complex gets paid to lie and create the mess, we have to volunteer or scrounge for donations to clean up the mess. I, and others in truth* media, can speak from experience that countering the narrative doesn’t pay well. Without corporate sponsors, even the “founding father” of truth media, Alex Jones, has to promote his health line of supplements to stay on air. He doesn’t receive government grants as does RNZ and other “Old Fashioned Media, OFM” here in New Zealand.
The moderator brought up our Bill of Rights in NZ, and the right to free speech. That was a curious exchange, with Souixsie Wiles stating in effect, that free speech is not an absolute, that when someone says something which could end up killing someone with misinformation (regarding the pandemic), this is not a right. This sparked a few comments from the audience. Rightfully so.
Byron incorrectly stated that “people who are online too much are susceptible , That’s why the pandemic blew things up for a certain percentage of the population. My feeling is that what they’re reading online justifies violence, and the material appeals to those that don’t trust authority.” Firstly, violence is never justified, and yes, there surely must be a small percentage of unbalanced individuals who advocate violence on the internet. But to the bigger picture, correct me if I’m wrong, is it not only our right, but our responsibility to have a healthy distrust our government? The founding fathers of the U.S. Declaration of Independence certainly accounted for that when they constructed the constitution.
Going back to what my 12-yr old picked up, that the panelists seemed fearful, and “not in a good way” as he put it. “They weren’t healthy and happy looking like our friends” he stated. “They seemed like they had low energy.” My read on the situation confirms his perceptions.
I had a cathartic experience at the event. I had never seen any of these people in person before. Once I saw them on stage, I felt empathy for them. All I wanted to do was somehow reach out to them, either on or off the record. It was helpful hearing their story to understand where they are coming from. It’s clear they are troubled and don’t have the full picture. As I’ve written in previous articles, and stated on stage, I was brought up in an extended family who had a healthy distrust (but also respect) of the U.S. government and military. My uncle was a 4-star general in the army and worked in the Pentagon as an aide to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He told me about the reality of Washington DC and the power structures. It’s mainly what got me interested in being a United Press International photojournalists in my late teens and early ’20’s. It’s also what got me interested in finding out the back-story of how things work, by making my own investigative phone calls, and receiving answers I didn’t want to hear by our state-owned media and institutions.
Last night, all I could do was feel compassion for these ill-informed panelists who know not what they do. Well, maybe they do. The saying, “they’re either being played or being paid” holds true here. Despite that, all I saw were humans on stage, who were mirroring in statements, (to a much greater degree than my friends and I feel), some of the same issues we felt when being mandated out of public places or fired from our jobs. The people on stage made comments such as, “I feel afraid to speak out for fear of reprisals, for losing my job, for losing friendships.” All I saw was a mirror of myself, in an exaggerated form. As a caveat, I would say, I’m not really fearful, and at this point, I don’t care what people think of my opinions. That’s one of the advantages of getting older. This cast of characters on stage might even be “in on the take”. So what? It is what it is. It doesn’t mean we don’t stand outside the venue with posters showing photographs of vaccine injured individuals who have suffered greatly, to help open people’s eyes. But it does mean we have compassion for those that haven’t yet seen the whole truth. It’s like being upset at someone for having a cold or illness. How can you? It seems on the surface, they have a choice in the matter, but they don’t have a choice until they break free of the conditioning. It’s not their fault. It’s a condition of the times. An exciting time to be a journalist and a writer. I can tell you that much!
Reactions from a friend about the “Truth and Lies” event in Wanaka, NZ, and others with posters of “vaccine” injured victims who have either died or now have serious side effects.
Author’s Note: *I was tempted to include in this article, that the title should have been called “Lies and More Lies” which I think is funny, but it implies the panel members know that they’re lying, and I can at least tell, with certainty, they’re not seeing the whole picture. Whether it’s intentional or not, at least at this level I’m not sure. Look up “Hegelian Dialectic.” This just in: Just received this text from a friend who was not able to attend the event: “Hi Randall, Looks like you all made a bit of an impact with the pants on fire crowd.” Oh good, I look forward to hearing more!
Update: I’ve been hearing some really good comments from my community here in Wanaka, and encourage you, and those beyond the area, to comment in section below or on my Farcebook page as well to stir the pot.
By Randall Richards If you don’t listen to anything else but these two people speak this week, and also share, you’re doing a good thing. Listen to the ad-free the audio file below: Tom Renz is a prominent U.S. attorney, political commentator, educator and businessman. He has gained national attention for his work challenging the pandemic related policies and mandates as well as advocation for individual liberties, medical freedom and informed choice.
Tom Renz on Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson speaking recently. Both are incredibly powerful deliveries which are on audio file below.
Tucker Carlson who was recently fired from Fox News as a news-show host, because his views didn’t fit the narrative, now has a feed on Twitter/X. Renz was a recent guest on the Alex Jones Show. On that same episode, Jones also played the audio version of Carlson’s recent speech. These are two audio files you might want to share with anyone awake, to help them with a sense of perspective, to semi-awake people to help them over the fence, and even to those asleep as a Red Pill.
James O’Keefe, founder of Project Veritas, a 501-c-3 non-profit org in the U.S., broke the biggest story of his career on January 25th 2023 when he released an undercover video of Jordon Trishton Walker, Pfizer Director of Research and Development, Strategic Operations – mRNA Scientific Planner, with the long headline: Pfizer Executive: ‘Mutate’ COVID via ‘Directed Evolution’ for Company to Continue Profiting Off of Vaccines,‘COVID is Going to be a Cash Cow for Us’, ‘That is Not What We Say to the Public’, ‘People Won’t Like That’, ‘Don’t Tell Anyone’
The video went viral, and evidently someone didn’t like his effective journalism and got to his board of directors, who promptly fired the O’Keefe from his lead position at Project Veritas. O’Keefe mentioned that when he started Project Veritas, he didn’t realize how important his choice of board members would be. There are numerous accounts of founders being fired from the organization they started. When I started Mountain Spirit Institute in the U.S., I had taken some pointers on the importance of not only a board composition you could trust, but crafting the founding documents and by-laws to protect you down the road. After the ship sails, you have little control of your security in the organization. So it does happen. I just wouldn’t want be the three board members who ousted him.. With a nagging conscious, they’ll clearly be on the wrong side of history.
Not one to take things sitting down, O’Keefe is fired up and ready for the good fight in the arena. It appears that those in power have messed with the wrong fellow. O’Keefe has launched a new website his for-profit business called Okeefe Media Group with the tagline: “Empowering and equipping a movement of thousands of people like you to report things that are wrong, with the support of an in-house team of elite journalists to bring factual, unbiased stories to light/” Although the website is live, the full program will launch, appropriately, on July 4 ’23.
I’ve been a fan of O’Keefe for years and watched him grow in confidence and delivery. It’s becoming obvious, that each of us, who are active and have a particular calling in these times to curb government overreach, run by a ship of fools, have arrived in this time with certain skills that brought us to this point in history. It’s clear that O’Keefe is the right person for the job at the right time, and boy, is he pissed. Listen below to this recent interview about his plans to exponentially grow the concept of undercover whistle blowing by putting little cameras in the hands of qualified journalists.
His motto on the old Project Veritas site, before he was kicked off, was “Be Brave – Do Something” I look forward to helping him in some way here in New Zealand, by letting our collective of real media journalists know about this, and seeing what kind of “interesting discussions” we can unearthed by encouraging key persons in power in the land of the sheep to stand apart from the herd. As a side note, don’t expect much more from Project Veritas. The board of directors did what they thought they had to do. Who knows how they were pressured – what threats they received. Notice, I’m not bothering to put their hyperlink in this piece.
James’ catchy video below features a black car and a sandwich which were, according to O’keefe, the flimsy reasons for his firing at Project Veritas.
By the way, his new tagline is “Truth. Justice. Impact.” He’s a smart guy. But it doesn’t take rocket science to see we need to be organized, and do something. He’s looking for an army of journalists to go undercover. Who’s up for it?
One year ago today: I shot these videos and images when the police started getting pushy against peaceful protestors who only asked for their government to listen to their grievances. That never happened. What I and other citizen media providers reported and what we saw on the evening news were of two different worlds. One was what really happened, the other was what the corporate media wanted people to think. The NZ Police lost my respect that day, and the NZ/Globalist government behaved as expected, without regard for the citizenry. We were not few, we are many.
Is this a way to treat peaceful protestors? I think not. I later used this image as a banner icon on a Telegram channel.
The video interviews and images I posted on the Telegram channel I created to cover the protest, was later “remotely data wiped” by the New Zealand government minutes before I caught the ferry for the South Island. They also had the courtesy to remotely kill the charging ability of the phone, and then encrypted all of the images and videos. The only way to de-crypt the data was to re-charge the broken phone. Fortunately Fixit in Wanaka New Zealand, found and ordered used Samsung batteries with enough charger to resuscitate the phone enough to retrieve all my images and videos, three of which you see here.
Hats off to both Kelvyn Alp and Hannah Spierer for sharing New Zealand’s year in review on the worldwide broadcast of the Alex Jones Show. The couple hosted the fourth hour of the show today, highlighting some of the more important events of the past year. This is important because Jones’ show reaches millions, and by sharing the antics here in NZ during the past year, the word gets out, and the NZ government, and Jacinda Adhern in particular, hate that.
I’ve been listening to Mr. Jones for years, on shortwave radio, before he was streaming on the internet. So it’s a full circle having our own Kelvyn and Hannah on the show, surreal in fact. The truth is getting harder to suppress – we’re living in interesting times! I’m fond of saying, often attributed to Mark Twain, “A lie gets half way around the world before truth has time to put its pants on.” But we’re catching up.
You can listen here on this ad-free audio file. And don’t forget to share.
I recently sat down with publisher and owner of Tross Publishing from Wellington, New Zealand, to talk about the recent release of “A Jab in the Dark” by Ron Asher. Here’s the interview in full. Mr. McLean recently spoke in Wanaka, New Zealand to a full house.
An Interview with John McLean of Tross Publishing, Wellington, NZ
Mountain Spirit's Blog 