The Freedom Bus is on the move *

Written By: - Date published: 8:42 am, December 9th, 2021 - 44 comments
Categories: covid-19, health, jacinda ardern, us politics - Tags:

When Rosa Parks battled racism and oppression by catching a bus and then refusing to move into the “coloured” section out of the “white” section after being ordered to, her protest eventually saw bus segregation being declared as unconstitutional and a breach of rights.  Her actions have since been celebrated as a significant contribution to the fight against oppression.  There is a statue of her in the US Capitol’s National Statuary Hall and she received a Presidential Medal of Freedom and a Congressional Gold Medal.  Different states celebrate her birthday and the day of her arrest.

Fast forward to now and the Anti Vaxers and the Destiny Church have their own Freeedom Bus Trip.  For the price of $60 Auckland anti vaxers can book a ticket to Wellington to make their final stand against all that is wrong with Aotearoa New Zealand, including vaccine mandates and compulsory mask wearing, even though these measures have saved us from the worst effects of the global pandemic that has inflicted every other Western nation.

But here is the kicker.  To catch the bus people have to either have a clear covid test within 72 hours or a vaccine passport.  It appears that not even a certificate from Dr Jonie Girouard will suffice.

Real protestors would walk rather than be subject to such “totalitarianism overreach” even though the reality is the measures are a necessary public health measure that have saved tens of thousands of lives.

But it is good to see that the Government’s messaging is getting through.

Expect many impassioned speeches at the protests, imagery of the treatment of Jews during the second world war and suggestions that the current steps are equivalent (they are not) and disparaging references to Ardern including multiple examples of misspelling of her name.  Then expect a group of Aucklanders getting back onto a bus for a trip home in an environment that will be safer for them because they followed the rules.

44 comments on “The Freedom Bus is on the move * ”

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  1. Maurice 1
    9 December 2021 at 11:05 am

    The wheels on the bus go 'round and 'round
    'Round and 'round, 'round and 'round
    The wheels on the bus go 'round and 'round
    All day long

    The horn on the bus goes beep-beep-beep
    Beep-beep-beep, beep-beep-beep
    The horn on the bus goes beep-beep-beep
    All day long

    The wipers on the bus go swish-swish-swish
    Swish-swish-swish, swish-swish-swish
    The wipers on the bus go swish-swish-swish
    All day long

    The babies on the bus cry, "Wah-wah-wah
    Wah-wah-wah, wah, wah, wah"
    The babies on the bus cry, "Wah, wah, wah"
    All day long

    The mommies on the bus say, "Shush, shush, shush
    Shush, shush, shush, shush, shush, shush"
    The mommies on the bus say, "Shush, shush, shush"
    All day long

  2. Ad 2
    9 December 2021 at 11:56 am

    Will the organisers be handing out free packs of cigarettes?

    Govt to ban young people ever purchasing tobacco in their lifetime (1news.co.nz)

    As a health measure it is sound timing by the government to propose making it illegal to sell cigarettes: Minister Verrall said that "People aged 14 when the law comes into effect will never be able to legally purchase tobacco."

    There would be a transitional period between 2023-2025.

    But … good old Act mixes it all together with the 'Nanny State' and stuff, so expect the marchers to march under the Long Blue Cloud.

    • Puckish Rogue 2.1
      9 December 2021 at 11:58 am

      Imagine of smoking was treated like covid

      https://www.health.govt.nz/your-health/healthy-living/addictions/quitting-smoking/health-effects-smoking#:~:text=Around%205000%20people%20die%20each,not%20too%20late%20to%20quit.

      'Half of all long-term smokers will die from a smoking-related disease.'

      'Around 5000 people die each year in New Zealand because of smoking or second-hand smoke exposure. That’s 13 people a day'

      • roblogic 2.1.1
        9 December 2021 at 12:12 pm

        So they wanna start a black market for tobacco now?! This war on drugs is going great. 🙄

        Meanwhile crappy liquor stores and pokies are popping up everywhere in poorer neighbourhoods because that's "business"

      • Tricledrown 2.1.2
        9 December 2021 at 12:12 pm

        $6 billion loss to the economy each year.

        If covid killed that many people it would be banned.

        With out vaccines that could have easily been the number of deaths .

      • McFlock 2.1.3
        9 December 2021 at 1:42 pm

        Imagine if covid had billion-dollar global corporations lobbying to sell it without restrictions.

        • Puckish Rogue 2.1.3.1
          9 December 2021 at 2:43 pm

          You mean like Pfizer?

          • McFlock 2.1.3.1.1
            9 December 2021 at 4:25 pm

            pfizer is selling covid19?

            • Puckish Rogue 2.1.3.1.1.1
              9 December 2021 at 4:26 pm

              They're certainly making money off it and the longer the panic is the more money they'll make

              • McFlock …
                9 December 2021 at 4:35 pm

                Making money off the prevention is different to actively selling the disease to as many people as possible, which is what the tobacco industry did.

                • Puckish Rogue …
                  9 December 2021 at 4:42 pm

                  And if Pfizer started pushing the disease as being worse than it is, hypothetically speaking

                  • McFlock …
                    9 December 2021 at 6:41 pm

                    Then it's pushing a conspiracy to make money by making people more healthy.

                    As opposed to big tobacco, who lobbied and lied in order to make money from a product that kills half its customers, a product they manipulated to make even more addictive than it naturally was.

                    • Puckish Rogue …
                      9 December 2021 at 6:48 pm

                      Yet the government still allows smoking

                    • McFlock …
                      9 December 2021 at 6:56 pm

                      In no small part because of the efforts the tobacco industry made over decades to addict as many people as possible. They still vote – Winston Peters knows that lol

                      As the addicts die, the tobacco voting power wanes, we see more efforts to restrict smoking.

                      Whereas pfizer will keep being allowed to make and produce medicines and vaccines, right up until it starts producing something that kills half its customers.

                      Pity about tobacco, really. I loved a good cigar when I could afford them. But that compared to a pack of 20 cigarettes is like coca leaf compared with crack cocaine.

  3. roblogic 3
    9 December 2021 at 12:01 pm

    This will end well…

  5. roblogic 5
    9 December 2021 at 6:52 pm

    While right wing idiots are waving Trump flags around, the wokest of far left churches is declaring allegiance to communist China.

    Flip side of the same deranged mindset.

    https://twitter.com/damienmgrant/status/1468808897251012620?s=20

  6. Jenny how to get there 6
    10 December 2021 at 7:52 am

    "To catch the bus people have to either have a clear covid test within 72 hours or a vaccine passport."

    Well Duh, obviously.

    The organisers of this protest would want to prevent any chance of their protest being made a mockery of, by any of their misled followers, falling ill, or even heaven forbid, being hospitalised. Condemning the organisers of this protest in tearful viral Youtube videos.

    Which leads me to conclude two things.

    1, That the organisers of this protest (unlike their followers), actually believe in the science behind the lockdowns and vaccinations.

    1. That the organisers of this protest are viciously,opposed to this government on ideological grounds, and are prepared to exploit deluded and misled anti vaxxers to push a far right anti-government agenda.

    At this protest, as well as inflamatory anti-government speeches from the front, there will be racist, sexist, signage and pro-Trump messaging in the crowd. New Zealand and United Tribes flags mixed in with Confederate flags, will show the confused nature of an insensate mob brought together by cynical manipulators and liars willing to exploit a myriad of unmet grievances for their own ends.

    Nicky Hager says it best:

    From Nicky Hager

    Dear vaccine hesitant friends,

    I know you feel worried about vaccines. I understand you feel picked on for not getting the vaccine. But I am feeling disturbed that quite a few good, principled people I know took part in the November 9 anti-vaccine march on parliament. It has impelled me to write.

    When people I know march down the road with white supremacists, Trump supporters, fundamentalist Christians, people who are pro-guns, anti-UN, anti-immigrant and anti-Jewish, people who believe a powerful “them” want to kill millions and enslave the earth, things have got totally out of hand.

    On Tuesday, this was what you were part of:

    1. Many of the prominent people on the march were espousing exactly the same extreme and confused views before the Covid pandemic began. Their current campaigning is exploiting the vaccine issue to push those prior-existing beliefs. They were using your presence at their protest to promote dangerous, marginal ideas.

    2. Another set of people in the protest came directly from the anti-1080 campaign, the sadly mistaken idea that Department of Conservation staff are recklessly poisoning human water supplies and trying to kill or mind-control the population. Notice how easily they transferred these ideas to a totally different context of a virus pandemic and vaccination. Remember that anti-1080 people have been willing to threaten other people’s lives if they disagreed with them.

    3. Then there is a whole package of Trumpian ideas about the government and news media being enemies of ordinary people. It was in pro-Trump protests in the US that resistance to and denial of Covid were first used as a rallying point for far-right ideas. That is where the political model being seen here began. Do you feel comfortable being part of this?

    4. The Trumpian politics have come with the US ideas about “freedom”, meaning freedom of the individual to do what they like and stuff everyone else. In New Zealand, the dominant values are much more about community and caring for each other. Freedom sounds good, but it’s a slogan for deeply conservative and unattractive ideas that deny or avoid the responsibility we have for others.

    5. On top of all this, I strongly suspect the Covid resistance is being actively used by some on the right of New Zealand politics to try to destabilise Jacinda Ardern and the Labour Government. Already it has familiar fingerprints all over it. Notice how the recent farmer protests (on entirely different issues of environment policy) use the same extreme anti-Jacinda and anti-Labour script about communism and lies. There are strong signs of orchestration with the rural protests as well.

    6. But the most the repellent part of the Covid protests is the constant hatred and violent, misogynist threats directed at Jacinda Ardern as a woman prime minister and at many other women in positions of authority. What on earth are liberal, enlightened people doing in the company of these violent, racist, anti-women people?

    We’ve seen these elements in New Zealand before. But the current toxic brew is strong and brings all these parts together at once.

    I hope all this will blow over. I hope that few years from now it will be hard to find any normal person who wants to admit they took part in this madness. But in the meantime, something ugly and dangerous is occurring and you should not be part of it.

    As Toby Manhire wrote on Wednesday, “reasonable New Zealanders who wish to protest the vaccine mandates have an urgent responsibility today: to actively, vocally disavow and denounce the violent cheerleaders they find themselves marching alongside.”

    This includes you, reasonable New Zealander friends: please actively, vocally disavow and denounce the violent cheerleaders. Please realise that your concerns are being exploited for other agendas. And never, ever join or support this kind of fascist protest again.

    Don’t support fascism.
    It really shouldn’t have to be said.

    • Pete 6.1
      10 December 2021 at 10:04 am

      I wonder how many of the mob Hager is appealing to. There are always malcontents, rabble-rousers, the naive and the just plain dumb.

      Fodder for those with political intent. In the past few months Brian Tamaki has said the same sort of stuff he said at the time of launching his political party before the last election. He is pissed off he is not the ruler of the land. While he can suck in the unintelligent and deluded, getting reasonable people aboard is a little more difficult.

      Gang members revving at 'Freedom and Choice' events? Yeah, that makes sense. Freedom and Choice supporters blocking roads to stop ordinary folk having freedom and choice to go about their lives. Freedom and Choice people blocking roads to protest about road blocks?

      In any society there is an extreme range of intellect. Hager can look at who took part in the Wellington event and work out who did not have the wherewithal to remove themselves from the circus.

  7. Adrian 7
    10 December 2021 at 9:53 am

    They are not even going to get off the bus, it’s going to be pissing down in Welly then, and that is weather for “ Only the Hardy….” To the tune of….thanks Big O!

  8. Obtrectator 8
    10 December 2021 at 11:21 am

    " …. people who believe a powerful “them” want to kill millions and enslave the earth …. "

    Aren't they themselves the "them"? The "millions" of course would be non-whites, women unable or unwilling to bear children, LGBTQs and anyone else considered "other".

  9. Julian Richards 9
    10 December 2021 at 1:15 pm

    Please, please, please @thestandard… Don't lower yourself and become another @stuff where 'opinion based stories' masquerade as unbiased 'news'

    🙏

    The lines between fact and fiction are already blurred enough at the moment. Please rise above, find the middle ground, be the ballast needed in these times of devision and polarity.

    Both sides of the craziness has valid points of concern that should, and need to be openly discussed. All this devision is doing is to show how immature we seem to be as a society and culture (reminds me of high-school).

    Surely after 2000+ years humanity is able to create a better story going forward to overcome the anger and fear rampant at present and rise above?

  10. Jenny How to get there 10
    10 December 2021 at 3:58 pm

    You have an opinion. Even if that opinion is based on lies, doesn't make you dishonest.

    Then there are the deliberate liars. Dishonest propagandists with an agenda, who deliberately set out to deceive who know they are lying.

    'Each booster gives you six months of freedoms': Fake Labour billboard circulates social media (msn.com)