To my "Alternative" Healing Community:
RECALL HOW OUR LOCAL THOUGHT LEADERS LAUDED TRUMP FOR HIS PROMISE TO "DRAIN THE SWAMP" AND JAIL THE PEDOPHILES, by which he actually meant removing all the people with expertise that he refers to as the "Deep State" and using the narratives of Q Anon child sexual exploitation to whip up a distracting frenzy while he and his appointed unelected leaders evade accountability for their sex crimes.
This is a time of reckoning for us. We must examine our beliefs, our judgements of others, and our individual and collective actions toward the Greater Good. We must examine the purpose of our health seeking, of what movement we are alternative to. I myself have sought alternatives to greed over the greater good, an anarchist feminist position that opposes corporate greed and end-stage capitalism. But maybe you just want reliable nutraceuticals and effective smoothie powder - and still, we have a cause in common. Please read on to see what I mean.
DO NOT OBEY IN ADVANCE. We should not stand by and let fascism roll over us, no matter how privileged we are, the Blob of tyranny will eventually roll over us.
DEFEND INSTITUTIONS. We've spent decades dissing every governing agency, ignoring every civil institution as permanent and unassailable. And now we need to protect libraries from bigots. We need to stop the defunding of civil institutions like public health, and local news.
As an anarchist, I am now facing the bizarre prospect of protecting Health Canada - because the only thing worse than the Health Canada that Harper transformed into a seller of corporation-priced licenses, is no health oversight at all. A return to the age of free market health - babies dying from tampered milk, corporate snake oil abusing herbalism and serving toxic concoctions, and cruel promises. With the destruction of health regulatory agencies in the US under the Far Right agenda, we can expect the equivalent of mid-air collisions when it comes to the safety of foods, medicines, and yes, even herbs and natural remedies.
I don't know who is going to read this, but I hope you care. As my mission statement concludes: "Wholistic health to me does not mean merely the health of our individual minds, bodies, and spirits, but also the health of the Earth and all its Beings." I will continue to teach soap making, and all forms of body care making, in the spirit of the wellness of ALL of us - to #Occupy our own lives and public spaces again, the care of our bodies, minds and spirits and to #Decolonize our approach to the natural gifts of land, water and sky.
Please look up this expose published in Al Jazeera by Mark Hay Published On 2 Feb 2025 Soap to supremacy: The rise of white wellness
"...Alternative medical, spiritual and utopian movements in 19th-century Europe and the United States laid the groundwork for wellness as a broad concept, the GWI explains on its website. But modern ideals of wellness developed in the 1950s with the rise of self-help literature, alternative medicine advocacy groups, and fitness clubs and programmes and coalesced into a dedicated industry around the 2000s. The field promises health and fulfilment that will counteract the stress and alienation of an industrialised world.
The idea of seeking purity by returning to nature and ancient wisdom especially resonates with white nationalists, explains Catherine Tebaldi, a researcher at the University of Luxembourg. ..."