Lessons from Lawrence of Arabia

or, How to Stop the Medical Council's Witch Hunt in New Zealand

It was a dark and stormy night …

Excuse me for the cliched beginning, but in fact it was indeed such a night that I, in a mood for some distraction from the horribly wet Wellington weather some weeks ago, lit upon a high-definition video of David Lean’s cinematic masterpiece, Lawrence of Arabia. What began as a casual quest for a few moments of diversion ended, some four hours later, with an immensely satisfying and moving artistic experience.

The film is neither hagiography nor propaganda. Although it is not accurate in every historical detail about the Arabian revolt during the First World War and the role of Thomas Edward Lawrence in that revolt, it depicts the heroism, tragedy, irony and duplicity of wartime battles and politics in the Middle East of that era with essential honesty. I thank my lucky stars for the whim to watch a film that ranks among the greatest I have had the privilege to see. Watching it led then to my vain endeavor to retrieve a copy of Lawrence’s famous memoir, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, from my bookshelves: I was certain I possessed it, and certain that I gave it but a passing glance over the decades. Frustrated at its absence I eventually obtained a pristine copy from a local Wellington bookstore and immersed myself into what surely must be one of the strangest and most brilliantly written books in modern English. Whatever one might say about Lawrence as an ‘uncrowned King of Arabia’, his extraordinary gift for language can hardly be denied.

How a young British intelligence officer became an intrepid, wily and courageous desert strategist and fighter is surely the stuff of legend, and this very stuff turned Lawrence into a celebrity of superlative notoriety in his day and beyond. It is the story of a brilliantly educated man caught between the intrigues of colonial powers and the denizens of the desert terrain that became a battlefield against Ottoman occupation, denizens whom he legitimately wished to unify in the teeth of seething feuds and animosities among themselves.

Lawrence conducted an innovative guerrilla campaign against the Turks, achieved an astonishing conquest of Akaba, and helped to lead Prince Feisal and his allies into Damascus before the colonial powers assumed control. Along the way Lawrence was himself taken captive in Deraa and gang-raped by the garrison Turks, endured the indescribable physical challenges of desert travel, blew up trains and railroad lines, participated in a massacre of Turkish soldiers and administered desert justice by pistol within his own camp. For those interested, I highly recommend two superb books about his exploits and the densely devious politics of the times: Michael Korda’s Hero, and Scott Anderson’s Lawrence in Arabia.

All of this is by way of preface to the kind of battle we, since covid, have found ourselves in, a battle waged by overwhelming and superior powers against the people, much of which I have already written about to the point of weariness: the bioweapons, the lockdowns, the control, the fostering of division, the clever recruitment of health practitioners to participate in the onslaught against us, and on and on.

We have of course fought back and stood our ground, and in some places good sense is now on the offensive. MAHA is making inroads and altering the institutional landscape in America, despite what naysayers intone because everything has not proceeded with instantaneous speed. I can’t count how many times that I have urged patience, knowing well how institutions and politics realistically work — which is another reason that Lawrence’s story has piqued my interest. A self-ruling and unified Arabia may have been the dream, but it has taken many decades even to approximate such a vision.

Whatever progress is being made in America, its ripples have not had much effect here in New Zealand. Our disgraced Prime Minister has recently published a memoir marked principally by self-aggrandizement: her role in foisting upon our population the senseless and harmful measures of containment and experimental ‘medicine’ is nowhere admitted as the grievous criminal one which it is. But what did we expect from this Globalist pawn?

Perhaps more ominously disappointing, however, is the blithe cruelty of the Medical Council of New Zealand as it continues the very real Witch Hunt against doctors who dared to remain faithful to the principles of their profession.

Just the other day I learned of yet another colleague summoned to a Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal — a kangaroo proceeding, a show trial in essence — principally because this person prescribed Ivermectin in an attempt to help patients, not just with covid, incidentally. I will spare the reader the details of the preposterous charges, and I will note that so far none of the doctors summoned to such Tribunals has been able to claim a victory. My friend Peter Canaday, whom I have interviewed several times, composed a rebuttal brief that was a model of rationality and should have earned him complete exoneration: instead, his brief was never taken seriously.

Somehow the Witch Hunt goes on and is allowed to go on, and in the face of patently rigged Tribunals it is incumbent upon us to do something different than succumb.

I have urged those who are in the Tribunal crosshairs to fight smart: not to expect that their lawyers can win cases on merit, simply because merit is not a consideration for our enemies. It is quixotic at best to believe, given all the evidence so far, that we can beat them at their own game in their own courts by following their own rules.

So what in fact can we do?

1. let the public know how you are being harassed and persecuted and in general treated with gross unfairness by the Medical Council, via all of the alternative media outlets we have at our disposal, and ALSO via those international allies who reach large audiences.

2. tell your patients about the Tribunal, those very patients who know you to be a good and decent doctor. Ask them to write letters to political representatives.

3. when the Tribunal proceedings are due ask your patients to show up with placards and to fill the Tribunal halls. Enlist the support of friends and colleagues to do the same.

4. use your social media, via video, for example, to tell the world what is happening to you. A nice five minute spot might work wonders, and is perfectly within your rights.

I further recommend that NZDSOS, our stalwart group of resisters, use whatever organizational resources it has to support these individual doctors in their opposition to the Medical Council, to spread the news as far and widely as possible, to ensure that the streets on which the Tribunals take place are lined with protesters. I have repeatedly urged the leadership to launch a “Stop the Witch Hunt” campaign. It’s high time.

Like it or not, we are in a guerrilla war, and relying upon justice and fairness, and lamenting injustice and unfairness will get us absolutely nowhere.

To see that in mid-2025 the corrupt Medical Council of New Zealand persists in its Witch Hunt makes my blood boil — almost as much as it makes my blood boil to think that we may miss an opportunity to fight back with the creativity and efficacy and unconventionality this war demands if we are to win. Otherwise they with their deep pockets and malevolence will be happily content to pick us off one by one …

Emanuel E. Garcia, M.D.

July 2025