“Conspiracy theories” about 15-minute cities are “false”, “unhinged”, “dangerous” and “not to be believed”, declare mainstream media in unified chorus.
“In recent years, conspiracy theories that were once almost unheard of have spread like wildfire, with a growing number of Australians now sceptical of things like vaccines, 5G and election results,” News.com.au reports in one such article, titled, ‘Inside the 15-minute city conspiracy theory sucking in gullible Australians’.
The article explains that 15-minutes cities (also called Smart Cities) are a commonsense way of attempting to boost liveability for residents. City dwellers in proposed Smart Cities – including Melbourne, Paris, London, Edmonton and Oxford – will have access to everything they need within a 15 to 20-minute walk, cycle or public transport trip, and that’s really all there is to it.
“Anyone who has ever faced a long and painful commute will immediately see the appeal of having the daily essentials at their fingertips,” the article assures readers.
However, “gullible Australians” who cannot appreciate commonsense or convenience have been “sucked in” to a “dangerous conspiracy”. These “unhinged” conspiracy theorists actually believe that Smart Cities are “part of a secret plan by global elites to restrict people’s freedom and movements” – a form of lockdown justified by climate action.
Never mind that Western governments have just spent the past three years abusing their powers with gross overreach and wanton disregard for their citizens’ will or wellbeing, which might make some people nervous about giving government more control over movement, commerce, energy consumption and the like. The article notes that conspiracies about 15-minute cities have been flagged as “false information” on Facebook, so that really settles it, they’re definitely false.
The Victorian Government claims that Smart Cities are a benefits-only proposition, as depicted in the nice pastel coloured infographic on the official Government page detailing plans for Melbourne’s transformation into a Smart City. These plans extend to regional Victoria also. Residents in the Yarra Ranges (just under an hour’s drive from Melbourne) report that their council is already implementing a Smart City Urban Development Framework.
Smart City conspiracy theory reporting comes as the latest micro-meme in the larger meme of ‘cooker watch’ reporting, whereby media outlets clutch pearls and catastrophise over the proliferation of online ‘cookers’ expressing distrust in the government and big corporations.
At the same time as raising the alarm about ‘conspiracy theorists’, the media have relentlessly and without a hint of self-awareness published the most scientifically dubious theories themselves. Some of these false theories include: natural immunity is not effective, when studies have consistently demonstrated otherwise; your vaccine keeps others safe, long after the high level of ‘breakthrough’ infections was plain; Covid vaccines do not affect reproductive health, when the evidence of adverse events points in the other direction; masks reduce the spread of Covid, when no high quality study has found a significant effect; and, there are no safe or effective early treatments of Covid, when numerous studies have identified benefits from repurposed drugs.
In rare edge cases, such as the tragic shooting of Queensland police officers by Nathaniel, Gareth and Stacey Train, most media have been quick to blame conspiracy theorist communities for the violence, hinting at the need for increased regulation of online ‘wrongthink’ in order to prevent further violence. In reality, these things are always complex.
Mainstream media reporting rarely, if at all, addresses the role of the Government in seeding distrust, or of the media’s own role in facilitating the marginalisation and even radicalisation of mentally unstable people like gunman Nathaniel Train. Train lost his job due to his vaccination status, and endured years of social and economic deprivation and isolation imposed by his government, reinforced by a relentless media campaign in which people of his ilk were portrayed as morally bankrupt idiots unworthy of a place in society. Did anyone pause to consider the effects of such policies and campaigns on those who were already mentally vulnerable? Effects like pushing the already marginalised further out to the fringes of society and discourse?
It looks as though the ‘cooker’ contingent in Western populations is not insignificant. The Edelman Trust Barometer Global Report of 2023 found that of 32,000 respondents surveyed across 28 countries, nearly half considered the Government and the media to be sources of ‘false’ or ‘misleading’ information. A quarter of Canadians believe in online ‘conspiracy theories’, according to a large poll conducted in 2021. A Rasmussen Report found that more than a quarter of Americans think that they know someone who died from Covid vaccines, and almost half of Americans believe it is likely that Covid vaccines are driving unexplained deaths. A 2023 peer-reviewed paper titled ‘The role of social circle COVID-19 illness and vaccination experiences in COVID-19 vaccination decisions’ found that almost a quarter of respondents reported that they knew someone who had experienced a severe health problem after Covid vaccination, and that this was a driver of vaccine hesitancy.
The media’s response to the distrust of this fairly significant swathe of the population is typically to belittle, insult and defame them, ad infinitum. Which makes one wonder – who is the media’s ‘news’ aimed at, and what is the goal of such inflammatory content?
So here we go, full steam ahead. Smart Cities are coming whether the people want it or not. The Yarra Ranges council in Victoria has put out a statement warning residents to be, “wary of incorrect information circulating in their communities” about Smart City development in the region, which seems to be advancing despite pushback from the local community. In Oxford, U.K., Heritage Party leader David Kurten says that the majority of the residents do not want the implementation of the Smart City framework, which thus far has focused heavily on surveillance cameras and limitations on free movement. That the Council intends to go ahead with plans regardless of the will of the people, “makes a mockery of democracy”, says Kurten.
What will be interesting to observe as Smart City planning progresses is, what gets implemented first? Better infrastructure and support for small businesses, childcare and playgrounds within local hubs? Or systems and technology to facilitate control of movement, commerce and energy? The Oxford experience hints at the latter.
For the time being, the media’s great obsession with 15-minute city conspiracy theories gives a tell. Anyone raising questions about the great plans being imposed on us is stupid and dangerous, say the mainstream media, delegitimising and shutting down debate. This is how we know that powerful interests are very much invested in Smart Cities moving forward, unopposed.
Rebekah Barnett reports from Western Australia. She holds a BA (Hons First Class) in Communications. Find her work at Dystopian Down Under.
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I wonder what the Californian weather stations have recorded recently. I assume the LA data will be fed into the record and anytime soon the BBC will produce the data to show it was warming after all that started the fires – just look at the weather station figures moments before combustion.
It seems liberal democracies do not respect the tradition of elections. The elite’s subversion of the Brexit vote was a disgrace, and the cancellation of council elections is shocking, with Labour and Conservatives conspiring to make it happen. In case any readers are not up to speed, the local authority areas are to be changed to create new, larger units. No specific boundaries have yet been published and we can only guess what statutory powers they will have. Despite that, no elections will be held until the new units are in place (anticipating Parliamentary approval) in about two years time.
We will get no say on these new councils, which will be a stitch up between existing Councillors and the Government.
No doubt the they’ll quote temps from the ground based stations that were burned. Highest ever temperature of 950°F ‘proves’ deniers wrong.
In “O” level social and economic history over 50 years ago, we were taught that not for nothing did the might of King Coal supersede capricious wind to kick start the world’s first industrial revolution in Britain some three hundred years ago.
I also vaguely recollect our physics teacher taught us the superiority of hydrocarbons over windmills and waterwheels is reflective of energy density, gradient and continuity of provision.
Seems over the last 50 years green goonery and windbaggery has somehow prevailed over the facts of energy life well understood by the industrial pioneers of the past.
Go figure, Minister of Energy Insecurity. Net Zero isn’t about saving the planet, it’s about control by a flawed centralist view of the way the world operates.
Either we’re stuffed or they’re stuffed, but we have physics on our side and all they have is wishful thinking. No contest. Just a matter of when.
A very good summary of two nonexistent problems conjured out of nowhere to make us all afraid. Radical action needed! Climate change demands you lose your job and forego consumption! The deadly virus means you must curtail your freedom!
But what happens when there is a real, genuine emergency? The only example I can think of is Autumn 1940 when Nazis could conceivably have invaded. What are the instructions then?
”Keep calm and carry on.”
Excellent point.
I think it also means we can tell when it’s a real emergency. If the advice is not ‘keep calm and carry on’ then it’s just whipped up hysteria.
Yes I don’t think Nudge Units were necessary in 1939 for people to be weary of a Nazi invasion. All the old tank traps like the ones at Story Arms were erected in haste with people who knew what they were defending.
9-Minute clip of physicist Denis Rancourt, nowadays researching independently under auspice of Ontario Civil Liberties Association, declaring, “There was no pandemic, it was the State that killed granny”:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/video-denis-rancourt-there-was-no-pandemic-it-was-the-state-that-killed-granny/5876206
Trump should watch this video. As Rancourt says:
“This was a mega-campaign, … it was planned by the CIA, the military, it was executed, they were going to do it no matter what, and it killed people by how they treated people, and then the vaccines themselves are toxic.
“So the experiment’s been done globally, we know this now, we know that death [from the ‘vaccines’] increases exponentially with age, many elderly people died, it’s hard to complain because they were elderly but, still, they died.
“So just to give you one quantitative figure to leave you with, in most countries, [for] people over 80, the risk of dying per injection is one death in between 5 and 20 injections, depending on the country. That’s the level of toxicity of the vaccines for elderly people. And this is not to mention all the serious harms that are done to young people and young adults, including myocarditis, heart conditions, you name it.”
Indeed and who has been and are still behind, so many of these Hobgoblins….Schwab, Soros and Gates, aided by their far too willing dupes.
Intertwined with various deep states. NATO was one of the culprits as a Danish MP admitted recently.
Could David Shipley of The Spectator please reason this article. He could learn from it.
It does seem that society is hysterical at certain periods in time. Perhaps we are emerging from its latest manifestation and will only succumb to it again in the not too distant future. Such is life!
A great example of mass hysteria is Tulipmania, it’s well worth looking up on YouTube for those who are unaware of how devastating it can be.
My daughter practically accused me of wanting her to die, when I refused to have the covid vaccine (in case I passed covid onto her). My view was that if she’s vaccinated, what does it matter if I am not. In the end, I gave way to pressure, and had two Astra Zeneca shots. But I refused point blank to have any boosters.
Hysteria is a powerful force.
It’s mad. I had the two shots but only because I was due to leave the country and it was mandated in my destination country. I didn’t have the booster either.
ironically I’m in a high risk group because of a lung complaint and we were in the early batch of people who contracted Covid. I suffered the least and was the first to recover.
Fortunately I’m in an ex commie country so there seems to be less hysteria at the moment. They are catching up fast, it seems that as their wealth increases, hysteria accelerates at what seems to be an equal rate. This is not condoning any political doctrine.
People were able to travel without the shots, eg Leo Biddle, Dolores Cahill, etc (look them up), plus an American cousin of mine. You just needed to be firm, know your facts, etc.
it seems that as their wealth increases, hysteria accelerates at what seems to be an equal rate
Interesting observation Bill. We humans are funny creatures.
” claimed objectives of helping citizens, but they have often proved to be malicious in intent: the “help” offered has been a cover to stay in power.”
yup and also to justify its existence. A prime example of a Trojan Horse by government is the Online “Safety” Bill. Censorship be the back door because the buggers don’t like it up them!
If we hire lots of bureaucrats, naturally they’ll do what bureaucrats do, which is to create and sustain ever larger bureaucracies, therefore the simple answer should be to reduce the number, just below the threshold of how many you need to manage the necessary work (such as defence, tax, healthcare, social care etc) – at this level, in theory, they won’t have any spare capacity to get involved in anything else. Keep them out of trouble in other words…
And it would also help if Civil Servants didn’t come straight out of Common purpose.
The conclusion A particular mechanism for selecting governments we’re wedded doesn’t work very well => government is per se bad makes no sense. Government by permanent hysteria is – in effect – nothing but a pretty successful method to get the necessary short-term acclamation from the otherwise disenfranchised electorate. People in government using well-known behavioural tricks to stay in government is obviously a travesty of the so-called democratic process as we have it. The solution to this is not abolish the evil government but fix the dysfunctional process to keep the evil people out if it.
Easier said than done, scum always floats to the surface – who vets them?
An easy and obvious suggestion would be ban the use of commercial marketing methods by governments to generate support for their own policies. Ban their use during election campaigns as well. Most politics are – in reality – rather dull stuff and it could help to force them to be presented as dull as they are. Eg, force Miliband to state that this goal is to have X% energy generation capacity via windmills by year …. because of $reason instead of spouting absurd phrases like clean enegry superpower while hiding what this will mean in practice.
A more radical idea would to split executive and legislature again. Prohibit party members, especially, party members who are also MPs from taking up governments posts until some years after they have stopped being MPs/ party members. Turn the king¹ from a nominal head of government back into an actual head of government² who appoints ministers and other government officials as he sees fit with the goal of having a government which stands above party strife which has to come to terms with a parliament representing the people (with all their factionalism) on a case-by-case basis.
NB: These are obviously just two ideas out of my head which might not actually be particularly wise choices. But they should at least serve to demonstrate that other options exist and have been employed successfully in the past.
¹ The Germanic concept of monarchy ultimately rests on the notion that the gods like some people better than other people and are thus more likely to grant luck do them and that this trait generally runs in the family, with reigning families being replaced with other families if their streak of god-granted luck has obviously run out. That’s obviously a bit of an archaic concept but IMHO, that’s as good a method for selecting a head of government than any other, especially if combined with a suitable tradition and education for future heads of government.
² AFAIK, the office of prime minister came into being because the English of one Hanover kings was so poor that he couldn’t effectively preside over cabinet meetings and didn’t particularly want to do that, either. This king should have been declared unfit to govern and a more suitable candidate selected as king instead.
Climate Change Derangement Syndrome. COVID Pandemic Derangement Syndrome. Trump Derangement Syndrome. Perhaps even Farage Derangement Syndrome.
I detect a theme.
former Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumption denounced the country’s “hysterical slide into a police state. … An irrational overreaction driven by fear”
Sumption is a formidable advocate. I’ve been impressed with quite a lot of what he has said and written over the past few years.
Caught an interview with the reform Chairman yesterday on GBN…..All well and good stopping the boats etc, but then he goes on to say…..Replace the ECHR with a modern Bill of Rights. Has he not heard of the 1689 Charter of rights, an upgrade to the Great charter against King John. It is not up to politicians to decide what “rights” we have, they were carved up in blood.
10 out of 10
I think common sense should be a prerequisite for anyone in public office or influence over the lives of the public at large.
if a Q&A was given to all these lemmings you would find common sense is not that common!
Plus they should set up a Department for the Law of Unintended Consequences – that should reduce nonsensical declarations of “world leading” [insert whichever insane idea comes to mind first].
If only Ed and his band of brothers would read this. But maybe they would all need to go back to school first.
Ed has the right education to understand it. But his towering ego, his jealousy of his brother, the bacon sarnie episode, the Edstone episode, and many other behavioural ‘issues’ hold sway in his life. He can never be wrong…and we are paying the price for that. He will have to be removed….. Would we prefer further mass government stupidity and hysteria, followed by a coup and Reform, or a gradual toning down of the zealotry and incompetence under the adenoidal liar lawyer? The Brit’s are not good at rebellion….
I don’t think Donald Trump is going to be the dragon (or should I say hobgoblin?) slayer people seem to hope he’ll be. He seems to want to abolish the First Amendment and he’s unlikely to be able to achieve any meaningful peace in Russia/Ukraine or the Middle East!
Much of the populace is, indeed, alarmed – but I, for one, am not looking to Labour to lead us to safety.
Excellent article as ever but CO2 is not mainly emitted by humans, it is mainly (by a vast majority) emitted by natural processes and called the carbon cycle by anyone who did o level biology.
I have no strong opinions either way, so I should not have stated that uncritically. Thank you for pointing out natural processes contributing to CO2 emissions. Here is one reference: https://co2coalition.org/publications/human-contribution-to-atmospheric-co2-how-human-emissions-are-restoring-vital-atmospheric-co2/
It’s not just Sweden that was an exception to the COVID hysteria. Even Sweden had limited mostly voluntary anti COVID measures.
Belarus, despite massive international pressure, did literally nothing. And yet life expectancy there seems to have been completely unaffected.
https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/belarus-demographics/#life-exp
But we’re not allowed to talk about Belarus, because it is an “evil lackey of Putin” or something.
Good article only one problem my family with few exceptions are still well ensconced into the climate nonsense and I suspect many families of Sceptics here are in the same boat. As for the scamdemic I again suspect many would baton down the hatches if and when told especially with the new hobgoblin of bird flu they’re trying to foist upon us. Sad but true.
“Fool me once shame on me, fool me twice shame on you”
A very well written article. The sad thing is that there are none so blind that those who will not see and choose the mainstream media and government advisors over their own eyes and research