Camp Freedom – I Long to See You (sung to the tune Shenandoah)

Freedom Camp plants a flag for the Truth.

By Dr. Matt Shelton

This has been a very hard post to write, but now a few tears have been shed and I can type again. Who knew a non-writer could suffer a creative block? Maybe that makes one a writer after all.

On reflecting (hard) I realise this difficulty was only partly due to a passing case of delta or omicron that visited many of us in the latter stages of the protest camp. Beautifully mild in most, and managed with calm and confidence by the camp and it’s carers alike, it hit harder for me and some of my friends and colleagues who had gone into it with the tanks already empty. Some of us are integrative health workers, and had ignored our own advice on adequate sleep for the many months we have been working all hours on behalf of everyone, including the  vaccinated (if they but knew it!). Well, the c-word sure made me catch up on some rest, and I don’t mind admitting, as an unvaccinated person and now with durable and broad-based immunity (yay!) the bone aching fatigue lasted over a week, so our NZDSOS and teachers challenge of the mandates in the High Court and my own appeal against my suspension in the District Court largely passed me by. Perhaps no bad thing.

No, there has been another almost constant but dark friend staying with me, and with many others with whom we shared a proudly joyous experience unlike any in our lives.

Grief.

How may I grieve ye? Let me count the ways…

For almost three weeks, my home from home was Parliament’s grounds, legally mine and yours on which to demonstrate against the government’s cruel and unusual jab mandates, and the machete it has taken to Godzone in the names of collectivism and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Agenda 2023 blah blah blah. (2023? What about 2030 that Ardern signed us up to? Well, the unanticipated harm from the warped sped-up jab seems to have forced an accelerated timetable. Don’t Look Up, to Elon’s satellite trains and the funky street-lights glaring down on us all).

For many people, Camp Freedom was their entire home, canvassed out under the Southern Cross sky (and the professionally-confirmed punishing EMFs) of the Parliament Quarter, united in their need to midwife the rebirth of a nation. Special memories? Children, occupied and entertained, overseen and protected; chanting with the Hare Krishnas, at the one tent where the EMF meters would always fall limp; the chiropractors, osteopaths, herbalists, and masseurs down at Woo Woo Alley; the stage, where magic could happen – and what a microcosm that place could be, of wisdom, roots and reggae, genius and inspiration, bravery and revelation, humour and pathos, way-out-there-ness, and a sometime visible struggle for control of the mic,  often comical and sometimes near life-and-death!

As I (un)famously kept remarking to anyone who wouldn’t listen- up until the final Police betrayal- you can’t expect a natural childbirth without some blood and screaming. I regret my choice of words now, as accidentally prescient as they may have been, but the protest’s violent ending, like the overarching tyrannical trajectory that inspired it, was always baked in the cake.

The government, and it’s overlords, enablers and lackeys, seem to be so far in to the cynical planned destruction of humanity’s rights, freedoms and even it’s very genome, that they were never going to just pop out for a chat to be shown their disordered thinking. One or two still serving MPs did, whatever their motivations, and a minor coalition party almost braved the whips but fell at the last fence.

But Ardern’s lot ignored the reminders from senior lawyers and business people, from an ex-PM and ex-deputy PM (thank you Mr Peters for acknowledging your hitherto ignorance of the extent of vaccine harm at the Health Forum tent)  about who they represent and answer to, and the consent they must obtain for how they govern.  Consent. Funny word that. Like gender, and freedom of speech, it is suddenly a fluid and disposable inconvenience in this mad, bad, sad world.

Back to grief. We shared many losses, readers and I, especially…

… of innocence, that love should just conquer all (it will in the end), and birth a country just because we wish it; of ideas that we can be heard if we get close enough to where our elected make rules about us; that people who tell us to be kind can actually be cruel and heartless; of  the tremendous new friendships, with people who are all immediately on the same page – we just ‘get’ each other, and share the same detector settings for BS; of the responsible, loving, peaceful, sovereign and clean people – and, in the final clincher that the press are utterly lost, so at odds with the daily lies and hate-speak spewed forth by Ardern’s Der Stuermer press batallion (look it up, Charlie, Hamish et al).

Oh, you think that is too long a bow to draw, you specious propagandists, to allude to Hitler’s antisemitic newspaper? Well, how did he first corral and tarnish the Jews in the minds of the “good German” public? He made them a public health threat, blamed them for cholera and syphilis, named them “the filthy Jews”. Don’t you see, Shayne, Anna and co? Demonise an entire section of society as a health threat to everyone else – with a lie – and the rest is history, as they say. You infotainers are being played, set up, because surely you cannot be willingly taking the money with eyes wide shut to the certain knowledge of how you are being used to dull the people for future atrocities? This is the basis for racism by the way, children of the press, which is a successful and primal survival response, aeons in the making. Called the behavioural immune system, it makes us instinctively repel from people who may have germs we are not immune to. We think we hate them as they look and sound funny. Actually, it’s because their microbes might kill us. We owe instinctive allegiance to our tribe, it’s microbiome and our inherited immune memory. From the primal jungles to the death camps, how far we haven’t come. But once you know the tune that is playing, you can chose not to dance to it. Self reflection, personal development, call it what you like. Adapt or die, media mavens. 

Another grief then – of losing our Police as protectors of the public good. Perhaps they haven’t felt a top down allegiance to us unwashed for a long time, but we believed they had our backs. And they stole our showers and toilets didn’t they? We all know that power corrupts, but the extent of salacious bully boy delight at finally sticking it to the human filth that some of our ‘finest’ showed, was beyond the ken. A couple of guys they knuckle-dusted out were old, man! And social media has well and truly revealed which police-controlled groups provoked the riot and set fires; the masked men who appeared mysteriously only on that final day. Expect an avalanche of proof as the social media is sifted.

And talking of sifting, no surprise that Foster and Coster ( Wellington mayor Andy and Police Commissioner Andrew for our international readers) consigned everyone’s trampled possessions to the Porirua landfill. Car keys, laptops, tents, clothes were summarily stripped from their owners, as if they were somehow there illegally. Yes, there may have been some food too but a group of camp volunteers could have been organized to quickly sort, catalogue, warehouse and upload items for ID and return. Most long termers were still in the area, maybe too dazed and destabilized to really think of it but the Police might have grabbed the opportunity to return to their community roots and help genuinely. But we were lawless filth, Ducky Mallard told us so, so deserved nothing better. So how ironic that the legal rights we have to protest at parliament are from caselaw established by him and none other than Covid Response Minister Chris Hipkins, who had both got themselves arrested on the lawns in a past life, in filthily lawless fashion.

As I mentioned earlier, we shouldn’t have been too disappointed with the Police. The signs were there from the start, and the protest was under constant attack by authorities on many levels. There were agent provocateurs, fake freedom groups, fake body fluids, Keystone cops squirting each other in the eye and blaming protestors, aggressive and sly reporters, constant chess game skirmishes with the Police who chose the small hours to wake children, bully and scare with their traffic management tactics, their blocking and stealing of facilities and general loutishness. And generally the free people stepping into their power  coped with it all, showing  cool and resolute responses, smart leadership and great strategic thinking that often played the Police for the fools that people are when they occupy the moral low ground.

And right to the end, when literally at the 11^th hour apparently good faith negotiations were taking place between Police and the Wakameninga Maori Government to hui over the weekend, the cops were actually putting the final touches to their secret week-long plans to bust us out of there the next day, creating a pyrrhic victory for them, but a PR disaster and a  legacy of mistrust and failed engagement that will be hard work to come back from.

Some Police though were rightly alarmed at the plans, including to use very young inexperienced Police, and prison officers used to a bit of biffo, and we received some useful warnings regarding tear gas grenades that were relayed to campers the night before, and some young families thankfully cleared out that evening.

The Police promised, too, all the way through that they would never use Directed Energy Weapons or Long Range Acoustic Devices, but such nasty crowd control machines did seem to make an appearance, at the final showdown at least. The medic and first aid tents (manned, by the way, literally 24/7 by fantastic and dedicated health care professionals who were supplied with an amazing array of donated gear and supplements) did see plenty of people with mouth ulcers, lip burns and other symptoms that were suspicious, to say the least.

However, it is good to close with positives, and some standout memories I will carry forever.

The stream of thanks and gratitude from people to us for doing the simplest, hardest thing – to stand up and tell the truth.

My friends and colleagues from NZDSOS, and our supporters, who came to say hi and be hugged in the flesh, often for the first time. Zoom can only take a relationship so far! Speaking out onstage flanked by Alison, Bill and Pavel was a very proud moment. The Police behind us, guarding MPs against democracy, didn’t seem so pleased to hear what is in their vaccines though. Who can blame them? Will they protect the vaccinated and investigate our concerns?

The energy, enthusiasm and efficiency with which the camp managed, sustained, nourished, housed, cleaned and cared for it’s residents. A truly organic, self-assembling, self-policing (look and learn Mr Coster) community of purpose and warmth. My God, I miss it. 

The oh too many vaccine-injured who could tell their stories to us and Lynda and her team –  many thanks to them for allowing us a decent corner of their marquis  –  and be directed to their database and our helpline, where staff are gaining experience and some success helping the incredible plethora of symptoms, which they tell me all make sense from how the injection ‘works’ by the way. Novel treatments can have novel mechanisms of injury.

The ordinary Wellingtonians who sneaked in for a brave look, liked what they felt and came back for more. More than once a person said “They are lying to us!” So go get Stuffed, you dishonest deceivers.  But to the genuine independent media only interested in the truth – thank you for your considered questions and even-handed portrayals.

How to finish this piece? Well, we started something on the Parliament lawns, ( actually we all did in town squares months ago ), and we need to see it through. People have seen what can be created, and are taking their experience, inspiration and leadership back to their homes, albeit bruised, battered and, yes, traumatised for now. But we all agree on one thing. This situation cannot be allowed to continue. After grief, comes righteous anger, and if it is focused, determined and resolute we just might save ourselves, and especially our youngest who are now in line for track and trace. Yes, the microtech stuff is absolutely real; now four separate teams in NZ have found it down their microscopes. It is with the Police since no-one in Government seems allowed to touch it, so let’s see if the cops paid attention and learnt anything from Camp Freedom. I know I did.

I learnt that the way forward is with Te Whakaputanga and Te Tiriti O Aotearoa as a genuine foundational document, and as strong a Bill Of Rights as needed. No need to tear down the Beehive. Let’s just go round it and create what we need. Get reading and learning folks, and see you the next time. I can’t wait. So please, strong and determined people, let’s not sing:

” ‘Tis seven years, since I’ve last seen you”