“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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Regarding the Times article about Apple above ( which I haven’t read as I have no time for paywalls ), I had no idea what a horrible and unethical company they were until I read this fine substack from A Midwestern Doctor, which covers many things as well as the current protests in China;
“The current protests we are facing are a result of this system being used excessively. Things in China have now reached the point that many Chinese citizens are willing to risk relocation to a concentration camp (which is not a pretty subject to discuss) to protest what is happening (similarly many Iranians have recently been imprisoned or worse for protesting against the government). China’s government is predictably responding to this instability with even more heavy-handed tactics and initiating a downhill spiral of unsuccessful propaganda (which will be revisited later). As stated before, I believe this cycle is ultimately being initiated by China’s economic instability.
China’s present situation should make the absolute futility of our preferred method for managing COVID-19 apparent. Even with an elaborate system that tracks every (vaccinated) citizen, imposes draconian lockdowns at will, and tests on an almost daily basis, nothing can be done to contain the spread of COVID-19 and when the system is dialed up as high as it possibly can go, the existing government will break before the spread is stopped.”
https://amidwesterndoctor.substack.com/p/the-current-protests-in-china-are
“China’s present situation should make the absolute futility of our preferred method for managing COVID-19 apparent”
And that’s the problem. The doctor believes in convid when the reality is that the C1984 is basically a rebranded ‘flu which was introduced in order to get Agenda 2030 up and running. Which is why I have little time for endless talking about C1984.
With ref the recent royal racism crisis; I read what was apparently a fairly complete account of the dialogue, and Lady Hussy was in my opinion racist and/or extraordinarily dumb/demented because she appeared to repeatedly refuse to accept that the local community project representative in front of her was a British citizen, a British resident, and insisted on knowing where their “people” came from. It sounded as if Lady Hussy simply couldn’t conceive of such an obviously black person being British, a British citizen and resident, and was impatiently condescending/contemptuous in her efforts to “get at the truth” of where this person “really” came from … or was being provocative/deliberately obtuse/offensive. There was definitely something wrong. I do understand why her reactions caused offence, even distress.
The person she was speaking to was very clearly not ethnically British and had apparently changed her name from a British one to Ngozi Fulani, so it was perfectly reasonable to ask about her origins.
Not after she had already answered that question and said she was from England.
PS. I also thought that it was a mountain out of a molehill when I first read about it, but reading the account of the full exchange I understood why it was upsetting.
…. people, on both the giving and receiving ends of such reactions, used to laugh about this sort of thing, laugh it off, dismiss it as just business as usual; it was normal, etc ….
.. but it can’t be very pleasant, especially in a situation where you believe that you can’t answer back, can’t say what you think about the reaction, etc.
I agree with Fulani that Lady Hussey shouldn’t have lost her post over it though. *That* is where the lack of proportion lies.
I think the big problem is that the setting/context didn’t allow or encourage Fulani to speak up, to call Lady Hussey out about it at the time. She didn’t seem to think that she could say what she thought to Lady Hussey, the occasion and the place ( and Lady Hussey’s title too ?) silenced her.
I remember a black colleague recounting the time there was National Front march along her street when she was a young girl. ‘What are they shouting?’ she asked her father. ‘Go back home’ said her father. ‘But I am home’ she replied.
It was interesting to hear what Nigel Farage said about it all, on his out-and-about programme last night, between 19:00 & 20:00. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDWB3_45yPg The gist of it being that Hussy was the ‘victim’, as it were. He was probably right by saying that this wouldn’t make the press anywhere else!
2 thoughts come to mind:
1 If she really were “racist”, she wouldn’t even have spoken to her in the first place.
2 Being from Liverpool, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been asked if I have Irish ancestry – is this any different?
Yes, what she said was thick-eared, heavy-handed and inappropriate but to say it was “racist” is, to my mind, stretching the definition.
This post suggests the trigger for the questions might have been the mismatch between the accent (West Indian) and the name (African): https://www.unz.com/isteve/ngozi-fulani-is-actually-marlene-headley/
“Switzerland, facing an unprecedented power shortage, contemplates a partial ban on the use of electric vehicles”
It’s ironic that Switzerland imports a lot from Germany & France these days. It’s long been using hydro electric generation, and of course the difficulties outside the border encouraged it’s development, along with electric traction on the railways.
They could turn CERN off, that would save a bit of electric (1.2 terrawatts in 2012, probably a lot more now).
Today’s onshore wind farm story: https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2022/12/onshore-wind-farm-ban-could-have-added-800m-to-household-bills/
Remember the original SARS virus? Neither do I, other than some vague memory of it causing panic then it seemed to disappear.
Why did that one vanish but this new one seems to be hanging around? What was different this time around?
https://off-guardian.org/2022/12/01/the-real-reason-behind-chinas-zero-covid-policy/
The brilliant Kit Knightly at Off-G providing a superb explanation of China’s role in the Scamdemic.
Truly insightful piece – thanks for posting…
This is the effect of suppressing and censoring information:
Before, we could assume most information was closer to false and pick out what we deemed to be closer to true for further debate. This worked well because those amplifying closer to false information were lost in the sea of all the other assumed closer to false information.
Now, we are to assume most information to be closer to true (because it’s been filtered) and pick out what we deem to be closer to false and remove it. Those amplifying closer to false information now have more status because most information that we see has to be assumed to be closer to true until it is verified and/or removed.
The more information is removed the more we must assume the information we see is closer to true, even if it isn’t.
Posted in error.
Another cause of death unknown:-
https://www.nme.com/news/tv/orange-is-the-new-black-actor-brad-william-henke-dies-aged-56-3359683
It was possible he was injected given he had worked on a NBCUniversal production: Law and Order: Special Victims Unit
https://screenrant.com/law-order-svu-warren-leight-unvaccinated-actors-response/
https://off-guardian.org/2022/12/01/the-real-reason-behind-chinas-zero-covid-policy/
CONCLUSION
To sum up, China’s “zero covid” approach forms a vital piece of the overall pandemic narrative, working in conjunction with Western governments as a deliberately stark contrast:
-It promotes the idea that vaccines work and helped prevent further lockdowns here.
-It shines a flattering light on Western governments, who appear less draconian by comparison.
-It serves as an argument for the effectiveness of lockdowns and other authoritarian measures.
Perhaps most importantly, the supposed difference works to corral and control public debate.
Traditionally leftwing critics of Western capitalism are forced to defend vaccines and lockdowns by their ideological loyalty to China.
Conversely, right-wingers have China’s “socialist” practices to point their fingers at, whilst praising Western capitalist pharmaceutical innovation for saving us from the need for tighter lockdowns.
Each side is controlled by their ideology, not realising their loyalties are being used to position them inside the permissible spectrum of opinion.
I posted a link to this excellent Kit Knightly article this morning.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2022/12/doug-casey/global-government-vs-the-people/
I’ll go so far as to say that Central Bank Digital Currencies and digital “health passports” are the most dangerous threats to the freedom and independence of the average human being in modern history—perhaps in world history. They will control where you can go, what you can do, and what you can own. They’re both very big deals, and they’ll be daily facts of life before 2023 is over. It’s very disturbing that we don’t hear either of them discussed anywhere. They should be taken with the utmost seriousness and stopped.