permaculture

[gil@landmark.iinet.net.au (Gil Hardwick)]

>> It took less than one generation for the founder of Permaculture to
>> be rejected as one of the planet's great ogres, even among those who
>> have since adopted what they believe to be his philosophy. At every
>> point the minor faults on his personality are exposed in an attempt
>> to show that since he is not a saint, then he must be the very devil
>> himself.
>> At every point we find his arguments being turned upside down and used
>> against him.....
>> I am being told to unsubscribe from this Permaculture list.
>
>Gil, last year i was a guest at Bill's house at Tyalgum for several days. I
>interviewed him extensivelky, and part of the conversation was about how he
>felt Pemaculture could best be propagated after his death -- and he certainly
>never mentioned that he felt he is or was being "rejected" by anyone in the
>Permaculture movement or that anyone was trying to damage his reputation. (In
>fact, he contrasted himself with Masanobe Fukuoka, whom he felt to be a
>"bitter old man.") Meanwhile, here in the U.S. Bill Mollison is a very
>respected personage, and i have seen no evidence of anyone considering him an
>"ogre," nor have i have heard any instances of his "arguments being turned
>upside down and used against him." 

Well, I am certainly very pleased to read this statement. Believe me,
I feel very much the same way myself, about becoming a "bitter old
man", with the unrelenting crap we have had to put up with here over
such a long period.

There has never been a time during my association with Permaculture
here in Western Australia that I have not had to face this lowlife,
crud, abusive criticism of Bill Mollison as a "selfish wanker" at
best, and that he has just plain "got it wrong" at the worst. To
such an extent that I have been thinking very seriously about going
over there to see him myself. 

In the end it is we are the ones cast as "negative", and I will
tell you the reason why. Because our knowledge and expertise is so
widely recognised, but we refuse to go off having all of our time
wasted doing all these freebies for the rich city folks buying up
our own farmland, and who lack even the most basic farming skills
themselves. 

In the meantime, it is the "rural poor" and dispossessed who don't
want to have to go live in the city, but who want to have their own
communities reconstituted and their own land made productive again,
who are the targets of the most appalling propaganda campaigns and
vilification as "dole bludgers" by the corporate vested interests
here. 

>Please don't unsubscribe -- but please do tell us what you are talking about,
>if indeed your remarks are based on facts and not on your fears and
>negativity. 
>

I am no ranting, fearful paranoid. Please do excuse me, but I am a
professional anthropologist specialising in this very field of both
indigenous and traditionalist landuse systems, since coming in from a
long-standing rural background of my own to mature-age University
study. In fact my heritage is itself from people known to have been
farming continuously from as far back as 1550 in Cornwall, and my own
early career was in establishing planning and management facilities on
properties too far out back to allow economic dependence on the towns,
as well as Aboriginal community programs, 

I have been actively involved as a professional consultant to The
Greenhouse Village Project here, which was infiltrated and destroyed
by a few people now known to be political party hacks representing
commercial interests, although the remnants of our group keep in
regular contact waiting for the coast to clear and the opportunity to
get the project started once again. 

Further to that, I have also conducted workshops on community building
here for a local Housing Collective, which this year finally received
its grant of $930,000, as well as being guest speaker on this same
topic at other Permaculture group meetings.

Because I actively encourage feminist values, and speak openly on the
urgent need to recognise women as the hub of every community, and the
first requirement for any Permaculture design to allow for the needs
of children and the elderly; that is the most economically dependent
first, I am targeted as a hopeless paranoid radical. Whatever that is
supposed to mean. 

I have myself been up in the desert working with Aboriginal people
there; one community in particular of 79 individuals who had saved
up about $20,000 from their own dole money to allow for training. Up
jumps this big shot Permaculture Consultant naming me as his employee
behind my back, and wanting $32,500 for a mere two week "permaculture
course" up there. Including $5,000 for a couple of wheelbarrows and a
few garden tools (in fact retailing in the same town for no more than
about $400), and $4,500 to come my way so long as I "cooperate".

When I query such an outrage, I am warned in no uncertain terms that I
am breaching something called "commercial confidentiality".

Since then I have been placed in a similarly compromising position by
people at one of the Universities here, wanting government funding to
"develop" an old cattle station as "Permaculture". but lacking any
experience of their own whatever in outback Australia, in the pastoral
industry itself, in remote Aboriginal communities, or indeed in fact
in anything even remotely resembling broad-acre Permaculture.

So long as it is they who get the bucks while we do all the work, no
worries eh?

I have even had a judgement made against me in my absence, in the
State Supreme Court, for "defamation" on the pretext of statements
merely "interpreted" as being "anti-Gay Rights" when the issue had
obviously nothing whatever to do with male homosexuality in the first
place, without my being advised when hearings are to take place, and
without my being allowed any right to legal representation or even to
defend myself. As I seek to find out who or what may be behind this
awful business I have had the most egregious vilification campaigns
against me spread amongst Permaculture people which finally destroyed
my marriage and left me a sole parent with two small children in my
care. 

So what is going on? Somebody tell me. Somebody come out openly and
honestly for once; have the guts and not least the human decency to
come and speak to me plainly to my face about what this unrelenting
crud garbage might be all about. 

I have been screamed at by "leading lights" in "Permaculture" here
for finding cause to remind people that it is basically an ethical
system we are pursuing here. Isn't it? Goodness me, do I need to be
repeating that here too? Earth Care; People Care; Surplus Share.

Living and working together in community on permanently productive
land. Isn't that what it is all about?

I tell you, I go and sit with Aboriginal elders as one who had long
ago been taken through the ceremonies and given an Aboriginal name. 
Nearly twenty years ago, in fact. We all speak of the same things, but
we are all routinely ostracised equally by the white society here as
"too violent". The only violence any of us has ever engaged is our
continuing protest at the most blatant ripoffs, the flogging of our
land, and the crass money-oriented greed of all these Permie Power
Brokers and the rest of them we have to negotiate merely to seek the
company of others with similar priorities and interests to our own. 
    
It is the Big Buck$ crowd here causing all this trouble, not us. It
is the querying of all this money orientation, the power broking and
the crooked, underhand dealings of the political activists and party
hacks, which gets us into all this trouble.

So what can we do finally? As always, to run the risk of even more of
these bizarre "defamation" show-trials designed to achieve nothing
more than to "teach us a lesson" in our absence, by remaining out here
in the open so that everything we do is already public as it happens,
by calling witness to anyone anywhere at all who will keep a watching
brief with us as these events unfold. 



That's it,

Gil







~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
   "I consider the class of artificers as the panders of vice, and the 
instruments by which the liberty of a country are generally overturned.
. . . the long succession of years of stunted crops, of reduced prices, 
the general prostration of the farming business under levies to support
the manufacturers, etc., with calamatous fluctuations of value in our 
paper medium, have kept agriculture in a state of abject depression."
                                                 Thomas Jefferson, 1826