Thoughts on Liberland and sharing Liberpulco highlights

A brief note and short video with Rise Above!

You may remember me setting off to speak at Liberpulco Festival in Serbia earlier on this month. The location of the event was just on the Serbian border with Croatia, separated by a newly declared nation called Liberland. I found Liberpulco very interesting, meeting some familiar and many new contacts with fascinating revelations to share.

Whilst I never got to set foot on the land of Liberland itself, it was not what I expected, especially after speaking with the Liberland Minister of Justice, Michal Ptáčník, at the Liberpulco event. Responsible for writing the libertarian constitution for Liberland, Michal Ptáčník expressed his opinion to me that governments are entitled to mandate vaccines and use propaganda for what they think is the greater good. He said that the government of Liberland would not do this, however. Hmmm…

From local Serbians, I heard that the Liberland life is a tough life currently, with international settlers bearing the brunt of regular raids by Croatian police, where they repeatedly lose everything including the new infrastructure that they are working hard to build.

To me, it sounded like far too much conflict and not enough liberty in the present form to stand up to its name, Free Land. Upon my return I have pondered further the wisdom of fragmenting a divided region by yet more lines drawn in the sand - more artificial boundaries– when unity of people (unique and united) is what is called for at these times. Do we need more borders and fences?

Let’s Rise Above

Today I would like to share a short video conversation I had with Lance and Andy of the Rise Above podcast at the event. Meeting these two open-minded community podcasters from the UK, their lovely women, and Elijah, the 3rd member of the Rise Above team, was a highlight of the trip!

The Rise Above presentation about reaching people through community journalism and podcasting was one of my favourites at the event too – really grassroots and reaching a most difficult audience, our young people.

Here’s the full conversation, courtesy of Rise Above podcast:

If I look amused at the start of the video it is because, in the first take, Lance introduced me as Dr Tess Flowers, and I wondered where that had come from as he knew very well that my last name was Lawrie. When I corrected him he had no idea that he had said Dr Flowers. (Very pleased to be accompanied by Bob Marley in this mini clip!)

Please do check out Rise Above’s other interviews and please consider subscribing to and supporting their independent journalism.

I’d like to thank the organisers of Liberpulco, and especially Rebecca Scott, for including me in such an interesting festival and looking after me so well!

Thank you too, for your interest and support!