Mountain Spirit's Blog

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.”

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!

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.