Universal Medicine gutter shenanigans & gossip mid 2018

Customers lined up through the night for the Girl to Woman Festival Melbourne 2018

25 June 2018 *Click for Sydney Morning Herald report on court’s discovery orders

22 June 2018 *Supreme Court orders plaintiff’s further discovery

16 June 2018 *UM’s latest panic censorship *Girl to Woman Festival flops in Melbourne & dodgy photography waivers *Feral hypocrisy Unimed style *UM political candidates’ consistent failures

9 June 2018 *Legal update – approaching trial *Accountability pending

25 June Sydney Morning Herald

Veteran investigative reporter Kate McClymont reports on the court orders for the plaintiff to hand over financial documents and images of hands on Esoteric Healing practices. Click this link for the Sydney Morning Herald article. 

22 June 2018 NSW Supreme court ruling

Further to my post below from 9 June, Justice McCallum made some orders for the plaintiff’s further discovery but turned down some of my requests. Details on the Universal Medicine Accountability blog with a link to the full judgment.

We have another hearing on 29 June. Plaintiff is seeking to avoid a jury trial, and motioning for a few other bits and bobs. I will oppose.

16 June 2018 More panic censorship by Universal Medicine and The Co-Creative

None of you will be surprised to learn that Episode 5 of Unpacking Universal Medicine on influence and commitment has been taken down temporarily from YouTube in  response to a fourth unlawful copyright infringement complaint from Serge’s butt kissing contractors, The Co-Creative (Jonathan Baldwin, Clayton Lloyd of Flawless Imaging, Lismore, Rebecca and Simon Asquith).

I guaranteed they made no copyright complaints to ABC news.

It’s an offence under section 202 of the Commonwealth Copyright Act to make groundless legal threats in relation to copyright. The federal government made it an offence because it’s well known that copyright law is frequently abused by ratbags of UM’s ilk to unlawfully censor public interest material.

Of course they want it taken down. The film shows UM’s upper rung of Benhayon worshippers, including zealot barrister Charles Wilson, UM company director and lawyer Serryn O’Regan, washed up law academic Alison Greig, and UM’s idiot doctors and dentists pressuring followers to humiliate themselves and sign up for more unpaid labour to profit the firm.

At the hearing on 1 February, Team UM put forward a half-arsed argument that the Way of the Livingness films are somehow ‘private’ and weren’t meant to be seen by the general public. Which is a strange assertion to make when Serge made the films commercially available.

Needless to say, UM can keep making these unlawful complaints, but they’re merely delaying the inevitable. The material will be back online before long. There is much more exposure to come and with a far larger audience than my YouTube channel could ever get. Soon a hell of a lot more people will know exactly what kind of bastards these people are.

Esoteric Women’s Health’s Girl to Woman Festival epic fail in Melbourne

29 April, UM ran its skeevy Girl to Woman Festival in Prahran. It’s the thing where UM tries to reel in unsuspecting families while studiously avoiding disclosure that it’s run by the occult religious scam behind Esoteric Breast Massage. Management packs it full of touchy-feely volunteers who put make-up on pre-schoolers, put the little girls up on stage to sing and dance, and invite a bunch of creepy old blokes to take photos.

Oh look, it’s Alan. Alan dropped by once to let me know he knows where I live.

The Melbourne public rejected it. The publicity pics show that just about the only folk who showed up were UM frequent flyers dragging along a few unfortunate kids. As usual there were more adults than children, with a contingent of hands-on Esoteric busy bodies bussed in from Goonellabah.

The lousy turnout was in spite of months of the love-bombers grooming parents and kids at Melbourne’s weekend markets. Stall hire and props were likely paid for by the Esoteric volunteers. Perhaps we should be grateful that their marketing is so pathetically terrible and frightened a lot of folk away.

And perhaps some parents baulked at the nasty legal waiver on the online booking form. UM doesn’t disclose who or what is behind the Festival. Yet they fill the event with their photographers and expect parents to sign over permission for management to use photos of their children.

Girl to Woman Festival waiver

‘These images may be used for a variety of promotional and or internal purposes in relation to the event.’

Internal purposes??

What in hell does that mean?

Esotericism at its most feral

Some readers have been freshly gobsmacked by UM’s onslaught of irrationality since the latest media coverage. As far as I’m concerned UM’s army of propaganda halfwits – led by the indomitable fool Alison Greig and her spouse, UM’s scarecrow barrister Charles Wilson, plateaued four years ago. They’ve merely sustained the same level of aggressive histrionics since.

Like most extremists, they peaked too soon. I knew in 2012 it wouldn’t matter what I said or how I said it, the tone of UM’s reactions would be the same. They can’t get more demented.

Remember when David Millikan had a poke at them 2012 and they compared the Glorious leader with Christ on the cross? In 2014 we were criminals or something, and last year, the Professional Standards Committee of the Medical Council of NSW was the Inquisition. Dr Sam Kim, who admitted to misconduct and was also found to be an unreliable witness, was an Esoteric martyr tortured on the rack of his ethical obligations under the law.

Don’t ask me when the comparisons to Nazi Germany crept in. Last year my blogging was the equivalent of ‘genocide’ and a ‘pogrom’ according to St Alison the Stupid. With rhetoric like that and a hell of a lot more scrutiny and strong criticism to come, where is there left to go?

It is difficult to get used to UM’s staggering level of sustained brainlessness though.  Eg.  the inanity below from Liane Mandalis – the guru’s ‘oracle’ du jour (until she gets cut down a peg a la Rowena Stewart when her nonsense became serious competition for prophecies from The One). We saw Liane in Episode 5 selling  ‘God’s light’. She’s now spilling into Unimed Living with a bitchfest about her precious ‘privacy’ which was somehow jeopardized when she ventured out of the UM clinic to film an ABC film crew. That was the time ABC News showed up to ask The World Renowned Philosopher for an interview and he promptly dived under the nearest treatment table, speed dialled the Audi convoy and sent the Brides out to film the invaders.

Special snowflake Liane made a complaint to the ABC.

Interestingly, my letters of complaint to the ABC were met with the usual response that assured me that my experience with the ABC and being filmed without my consent fell well within the parameters of what they have outlined in their Code of Practice to be reasonable and fair.

I was directed to Standard 6.1 that states:

Intrusion into a person’s private life without consent must be justified in the public interest and the extent of the intrusion must be limited to what is proportionate in the circumstances.

The justification for such an intrusion here being that:

“The focus of the report was the newsworthy fact that Dr Sam Kim had stood aside from his role with the Australian Medical Association’s Queensland Council after having secretly shared a patient’s medical history with Universal Medicine’s (UM) leader Serge Benhayon. The report noted that this was the second misconduct finding in a year involving the Brisbane doctor’s ties with UM. In terms of the footage that has caused you concern, ABC News management advise that there was no intention to cause distress to individuals; those who may have attended the UM centre on that day were not the focus of the report, however some vision of the clinic was necessary in telling the story. ABC News further advise that anyone filmed in the course of gathering material was de-identified by blurring of the vision that was used. As you note, your face was obscured by the way in which you were holding your mobile phone. It is relevant for us to further note that your connection with UM is in the public domain. Given this, and the fact that the faces of those outside the clinic that day were adequately obscured in this brief footage, Audience and Consumer Affairs are satisfied that the footage as broadcast could not reasonably be regarded as an intrusion into your private life. In the circumstances, we are satisfied that no consent was required for the filming and broadcast of this footage.” Unimed Living

Without irony, Liane had whinged about a report on UM’s gutter diving ‘FACTS Team’s unjustifiable intrusion into a former customer’s private life. Alison et al had outed his schizophrenia diagnosis online.

Liane and the rest of the subscription ‘Sons of God’ are acutely aware of how much UM  pisses people off. Every UM subscriber tries to sell their ‘Livingness’, and every one has duly encountered resistance, if not overt disdain. What I’ve reported is the tip of the iceberg. They’re still being turfed out of community organizations to this day.

But nothing UM have done so far has provoked the level of outrage I saw in the response to UM publishing that medical diagnosis. Without that person’s permission, Liane. In breach of privacy laws in pretty much every country on earth. I have never had such high blog stats, or seen the quite the level of anger in readers.

If you choose, Liane, to align yourself in such an embarrassingly disgusting way with such a thoroughly detestable group of people – who would do something like that as (a) malicious payback, and (b) to protect UM’s profits – you’ve forfeited any basis to complain.

In 2015, that arrogant UM clown Neil Ringe encouraged you and your colleagues to humiliate yourselves for your religion.

Congratulations.

You’ve outdone yourselves.

UM’s political fails

Some more gratifying news is that all of UM’s latest batch of political aspirants failed at the ballot box. None were elected to local councils. So far Gail Fuller in Byron Bay, Terri-Anne Connors in Hawdon, Melbourne, Sally Green in Perth, Jane Keep in Richmond, London, and Ray Karam in Ballina have failed to win seats. Ray failed again in National Party preselection to contest the state seat of Lismore, and Samantha England in Norfolk lost her council seat.

There are all sorts of reasons why people lose elections, but we can safely say that whingeing about questions and criticisms and characterizing  questions as ‘abuse’ is a lousy political platform. Voters, fellow party members and opponents won’t wear it.

Medical journal JMIR published an interesting side note about Jane Keep, by the way. And it wasn’t about her talking cervix. When the journal got the UM researchers to correct their conflict of interest statements, Jane jettisoned her University of Birmingham affiliation.

Or maybe they jettisoned her.

Huge thank you

I don’t get around to thanking all of my supporters anywhere near enough. I am so grateful for all your encouragement and support. A lot of you have chipped in to help me cover my bills and helped me with kind words and gestures. I really do appreciate it and thanks to you we are on the way to getting my defence evidence heard – where it matters most.

9 June 2018 Legal update

We go to trial for three weeks from 3 September at the Supreme Court of NSW Sydney. I’ll be blogging light from here on and only the essentials. We are amid trial prep and I’m busy.

A warning to all of you, do not publish any commentary on the trial from here on and certainly nothing disparaging identifying the plaintiff. At all. If you do you risk a contempt of court charge plus UM using it as an excuse to disrupt proceedings.

Just. Do. Not. Do. It.

Not anonymously, pseudonymously, not nothing.

Please don’t waste my time by posting any such comments on my blogs. They’ll be deleted.

You are free to comment on UM and UMers, as always, provided your comments are justified.

I won’t be publishing anything about the trial until it’s concluded, except for some details about the calendar and other housekeeping. Please be patient and wait. Don’t contact me about the trial or UM unless you have some earth shattering documents or testimony to bring to court and you’re willing to go on the stand. I don’t have time for trivia from here on.  If you have UM gossip, don’t send it to me. Put it in the comments.

Someone was talking about setting up a blog and a Facebook page to post all the news reports as they come to hand. I don’t know if they’re still going to do that. I won’t be doing it. I’ll be busy and unable to comment on the trial. If you want to help out with blogging the news reports or as admins on a Facebook page, please get in touch soon and I’ll put you in touch with other helpers.

I will provide a link to the third party blog and FB page at the top of my blogs so that you can find it during the trial.

Comments will be closed on all my blogs through the trial. I’ll give advance warning.

Interlocutories

I’ll be going to a day of hearing in Queensland end of next month to seek orders for disclosure of documents by Ray Karam and Caroline Raphael. It’s a repeat of issues we’ve had in NSW with the same legal team.

Caroline and Ray were supposed to disclose all their documents in November last year, when I did. I’ve had to chase them. It means that I have to seek orders to resolve what I believe to be outstanding, in the same way I had to seek orders against their sixth dimensional ascended guru.

Anyway, in the past month I had to put up with more ludicrous back and forth correspondence for the Queensland proceedings. Team UM had the gall to list a directions hearing on 8 June to try and rush me through seeking orders against Ray and Caroline. Unfortunately it requires a lot of preparatory work and legal advice to successfully get court orders, which of course Team UM doesn’t understand because they’re so rarely successful at doing so. They’ve had no cause to seek the same remedies against me.

They tried to get orders for the court to set a timetable requiring me to attend 3 hearings in Brisbane within the next four weeks. At the same time they were seeking to list a hearing in Sydney for some order or other, no one’s sure what – and late in the proceedings. So they were trying on four needless hearings in four weeks in two cities, weeks out from a trial that will run at least three weeks, while I’m broke, working from friends’ couches in Sydney, and when they knew two out of three of my retained barristers are not available. One being at a very lengthy trial in Brisbane and one on leave, and for all UM knew, I had no solicitors either.

Can anyone smell panic?

And bad blood?

In short, Team UM and the Queensland plaintiffs had the hide to try and bully me into rushing through seeking remedies for their non-compliance, at a time when they knew I had minimal legal assistance available.

But their cunning esoteric plan didn’t work. Last week my QC and his chambers in Brisbane found me another barrister to help out there. She was in court for me yesterday and helped with the negotiations. I’m pretty sure she’ll be appearing for me late next month.

Also, I now have solicitors representing me in the NSW proceedings. They came on the record last month amid Team UM’s genius litigious offensive against the unrepresented ‘troll’. My new solicitors are a small but high profile Sydney firm who’ve done a lot of successful work with my Sydney barristers, and have a special interest in human rights justice.

In short, after weeks of Esoteric histrionics and angst, Team UM ended up abandoning their proposed timetable and agreeing to mine. Three hearings got whittled down to one plus a five minute appearance for orders by consent. They might still call a short hearing in Sydney yet, but, in my unlearned opinion, the orders they’re seeking are, shall we say, singular.

With about as much chance of success as a modern day Cathar uprising.

Whatever happens, you’ll hear about the outcomes.

Time, space and accountability – the temporal limitations of the Astral plane

On 1 February Team UM and I went to hearing to argue for orders to remedy Serge’s sixth dimensional Atmic resistance to discovery of documents. No, we don’t have a ruling on that, but you will know about it when we do. I know UM are spreading rumours I have omniscient super powers, but I’d like to assure all of you that pestering me with messages and emails won’t make it happen any quicker.

I haven’t heard any word on the University Queensland’s decision regarding the UM researchers’ failure to declare conflicts of interest when they were trying to game peer reviewed journals into publishing ‘research’ papers that make out that UM Esoteric health claims are legit.

Some of you will remember that Lismore’s Northern Star published an appallingly fact free ‘report’ on the controversy. UM researcher and Northern Star advertorialist, Christoph Schnelle described UQ’s investigation as ‘at best complete nonsense’. Which is an unusual way to endear yourself to UQ and its School of Public Health when you’re yet to complete your PhD.

JMIR lets rip

However, one of the journals that published the UM papers, JMIR, isn’t mucking around waiting for UQ. They moved to retract the paper, but Team Schnelle refused to cooperate, and are esoterically insisting they declared their competing interests. JMIR robustly disagreed, taking the invested ‘Sons of God’ to task on a number of fronts. It’s a very good read. For example:

Our concerns with the COI of the lead author (and his spouse) go beyond financial COIs, as in his blog the lead author describes how meeting the UM founder “changed our lives profoundly”, and his spouse is describing “seemingly miraculous changes” as a result of UM. This level of “passion” for UM and their involvement may affect the authors’ scientific judgement.

As for Schnelle’s claim to the Northern Star that no one is challenging the validity of the data, JMIR disagreed with that too. The paper’s peer reviewers say they would not have accepted the manuscript if they’d been aware of the researchers’ ‘extensive COIs’. JMIR’s editorial director iced the cake with:

Finally, we are very concerned that the original results paper contained large statistical errors inflating the effect sizes (now corrected, see data correction below), which the authors themselves corrected (see below). We are giving the authors the benefit of the doubt in assuming that these were honest mistakes and not intentional errors, but it casts further doubts on the level of oversight as well as vetting of the data by an independent person.

While authors never claim otherwise, we should stress that the proposed and executed research does not provide any evidence that any Universal Medicine modalities are effective in making people healthier. Journal of Medical Internet Research JMIR

And as we know from Unpacking UM episode 2, the message from UM’s own management is that their modalities are not about improving health at all.

An important note about funding my work: I’m defending two large defamation claims brought by UM in two states. I am bankrupt. I now have a solicitor representing me in NSW but the workload and expense hasn’t changed. The amount of work required makes it impossible for me to earn income. I’m not eligible for benefits. I am now homeless and reliant on friends and family for accommodation. I still need to eat and afford the costs of travel between two states, stationery (masses of printing, folders etc.) and subpoenas. I am no longer crowdfunding. I cannot accept monetary donations or gifts. Any payments marked as gifts or donations will be confiscated by the bankruptcy trustee. You can, however, support me by paying me for investigating and publishing my long term exposé of Universal Medicine and my work in defending my public interest publications. If you value what I’m doing and want to help me get by and get my defences to trial, you can pay me for my work. Mark your payment as payment or services. Click here to pay for my work via PayPal  Or direct deposit to BSB 734 063 Acc. 654 143 Contact me if you would like a tax invoice.

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