The Battle for the Blue Mountains

Against all odds, Captain Fear wins the day

“There are a hundred genders but only two political positions - MINE and NAZI”

I didn't think my admiration for Blue Mountains Mayor, Mark Greenhill, could expand any further but it has. His heroic stand at last Tuesday's Council meeting against a marauding mob of mountains malcontents was the stuff of history. I am reminded of the 1917 Russian Revolution and the stoic leader of the Provisional Russian Government, Alexander Kerensky, holding the Winter Palace against the Bolshevik onslaught.

In a further parallel, our brave Mayor escaped to the front line, after this initial skirmish, to gather troop reinforcements just as Kerensky did. In Mark's case, he headed for Sydney to rally troops at the ABC. Here, the comparison breaks down because I'm damned if I can figure out who the Bolsheviks are and who are the Tsar’s boys. Who is Left? Who is Right? And who is Correct? Our politics is now viewed through a shattered frame.

At the ABC, Mayor Mark found a compliant presenter ready to provide much needed logistical and moral support. In her opening sally, she displayed a remarkable prescience unique to ABC insiders. Without knowing any of the people involved, this mystic described the dangers presented by a local Sovereign Citizens' movement and its likely links with right wing groups “in certain places”. Top marks for specificity.

She continued by way of narrative:

“[T]hey are pretty visceral up close and personal at Council meetings and local government is the most accessible level of government. Is this affecting your Council and the way it does its job?”, she implored our battle-worn leader.

Charles Bean’s Heir and the Sovereign Citizen

After hearing these introductory comments, my wife asked me what this Charles Bean protege meant: “What is a Sovereign Citizen?” A quick explanation and it was back to our heroes.

The Mayor was then handed the mike and invited to rally the troops. He explained a group called MyPlace has been attending Council meetings. Now, the next part is not for children so please make sure none is in the room to hear your gasps of horror. Locally, our Mayor is known as Captain Fear. Hyperbole and hysteria are his weapons of choice. This master of the horrorscape asked listeners to imagine a thin, no very thin rope, at meetings, that separate vulnerable staff and Councillors from questioning and rhetoric brandishing residents.

We were then regaled with the Mayor's valiant past efforts as a union rep during the 1998 waterfront dispute where he appears to have lost that battle on his own. This was meant to show his love of “civilised” protests. He then emphasised the fragility of the democratic process and said statutory a number of times to let us know that but for him the Blue Mountains would be at great risk.

Time for Tough Talk

Three minutes in, the presenter decided it was time for some tough talking and called on the Mayor to take his turn in verballing members of our local community. He took to the task with alacrity. It is important to acknowledge the superior skills in evasion that have allowed him to elude conversation or contact with people he feels compelled and entitled to disparage. This necessitated him drawing on a renowned and fevered imagination to fill the considerable gap in his knowledge. This is truly reMarkable leadership.

We then drew welcome comfort as Mayor Greenhill explained he didn't want to deride people. Upon which he launched into a series of sentences laden with top class derision deriding people he refused to speak to or understand. “Stand down", was his imperious cry, more Captain Bligh than Captain Fear.

This radio performance was often punctuated by a war weary sigh. And performance it was. It seems that much of the hand to hand fighting that Captain Fear inferred had placed the lives of staff and Councillors in peril simply didn't happen. At least, it wasn’t picked up by the Council microphones. Don't take my word for it. Like me, you can listen to the Council audio recordings for 26^th April and 30^th May 2023. In fact, very little happened at all and much less than this practised hyperbolist would have you accept.

We'll come back to the Mayor but a little time spent on our ABC starlet won't be wasted. Her curated role as ingenue to our highly principled and knowledgeable leader deserves special praise. She has been collecting her ABC pay for close to 30 years.

“Hang on, hang on, hang on”, she said as she urged the Mayor to bury any notion that our Council could be fairly linked to extremist accusations of supporting opaque international objectives. This called forth her professional disdain levelled at anyone foolish enough to think otherwise. Important ABC presenters go to a special school for this.

You can listen to the full horror here.

Trust as a Weapon

Yet, these residents’ concerns are not extreme. Unofficially but assiduously, the ABC has been pre-emptively crafting its stance on a wide range of issues while simultaneously acting as an abattoir for unwelcome facts. This is done with the aid of the The Trusted News Initiative (TNI). Officially, ABC claims to have joined this latter body in November 2022 but close watchers know that its links with TNI go back to at least pre-Covid in July 2019.

The ABC also gets disinformation training from Google. Whether the subject is Covid-19 and its inspired injections, climate change, the transgender agenda, the Voice or Ukraine, one perspective is offered after purposeful sifting. If you are on the right side of all of these issues:

”YOU ARE A GOOD PERSON”

If not, you have some work to do before attracting the love of our government and its institutions.

All of the ABC's flagship programs reflect a clear bias on key issues which are designed to achieve this. We now know the Federal Government has been actively censoring out essential truths. Our dear presenter is just doing as she is told. Her job is to side with the current orthodoxy even when it takes a mediocre form.

This is ABC Royalty

Yet, Mark’s host must know more than she appears to. Why do I say that? Her husband must have told her. If there is such a thing as ABC royalty, you're looking at it. Jonathan Harley worked for the ABC for many years and for Channel 9, as Twitter's APAC news director and now for CANVA. Here Jonathan shares with us some of the great work being done by the Google News Initiative:

Read more about Trusted News Initiative and Google News Initiative.

Harley has even nabbed himself a gig at RightsCon 2023 coming this month.
https://twitter.com/rightscon/status/1661711299355590665

At this event he will share ideas with a broad range of grassroots organisations like Microsoft, Amazon and Apple. If it is anything like last year, Jonathan will exchange his expertise and experience with community activists such as those featured in this clip (the first of them is now Dame Jacinda Ardern). RightsCon is an organisation with links to the World Economic Forum and the United Nations.

Meanwhile, our Mayor pretends to have no idea why people are worried about Council’s growing commitment to the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals. New evidence of this commitment is added weekly to the Council website but our Mayor seems to think our concerns are best allayed by insulting us. His much celebrated Planetary Health Initiative project includes people with very close links to the Rockefeller Foundation, the World Economic Forum and the United Nations. It seems we are suddenly an ambitious little Council.

The Transgender Agenda

And finally there is the very large elephant that has left the room and is now stalking us and our families: The Transgender Agenda. As I have stated elsewhere, this is as organic as Roundup or a Bill Gates lab meat burger.

We are living in very strange times. Even a year ago, few would have predicted the inordinate space the transgender debate is taking in our lives. More strange is the lack of curiosity as to what spurred this phenomenon.

For our Council, public concern around this matter has been a spur to militancy. At our recent and much feted meeting, Councillors raised and passed a motion to promote the expansion of LGBTQI+ programs through schools, unions and NGOs. In addition, our activist Council wants 16 year olds to be able to “update their gender markers” despite the messy implications this has for our dimorphic species.

There are some mad people about who seem to be capable of believing just about anything and they want to take us with them. Let’s pull back from the abyss for a moment and talk to someone who is eminently sane; someone who can explain the source of this madness and who is driving it?

Jennifer Bilek is a long time warrior for women’s rights. She explains that the extremism that bedevils many of our institutions is the cause of a growing insanity that is now threatening family and public life. She argues that 2014 was a transgender tipping point as narratives around gender dysphoria combined with activist non-governmental organisations and large legal firms to embed transgenderism in western culture.

”This project has ... you know … is backed by Big Finance, Big Pharma, Big Tech and all the corporations, international corporations, international finance houses, international law firms. They’re all driving the same narrative. You have to ask yourself, why would this happen in the space of 10 years when human rights movements don’t act like that, they don’t come up like that? They come up against entities, corporate entities to fight oppression not to offer them, you know, more profiteering.”

We’ll leave Jennifer there but I hope you will take the time to investigate her work.

Another to write and speak extensively on this subject is Abigail Schrier. Her wonderful book: “Irreversible Damage”, which I have read, reinforces Bilek’s point that there is nothing organic about this so-called movement. She argues the mobile phone, grooming sites and the gregariousness of girls have fostered a social contagion which in combination contribute to confusion and distress. While rare but evident in males, Schrier argues that prior to 2007 gender dysphoria was effectively unheard of in young girls.

In heartbreaking stories of family torment and disintegration, the author describes the madness of affirming what is more often mental illness. She states these shrill calls for ubiquitous affirmation are from many of the same perpetrators that Bilek accuses.

Come and Talk to Us

The six Blue Mountains Councillors who recently spoke on LGBTQI+ rights, with their special emphasis on the T, engaged in some remarkably indulgent virtue signalling that was visible from Mars, even on cloudy days. Some seem to have little understanding of what they are engaging upon. Others appear to be zealots guided by stars travelling in a tight orbit inside their own heads. Their only certainty is that they have found an enemy. And it is the people of their own community.

In our Mayor’s conversation with the ABC, some Councillors may find confirmation that their hostility is justified. Once they recover from this hubristic spell, maybe they’ll come and talk to us.

Other articles in the Captain Fear Series:
Klaus Schwab, WHO and my local representative
We Must Protect the Fear

NB: I am also on Twitter @KatoombaReview1