Big Smartphone is watching you
By Edward Fitzgibbon | TCW Defending Freedom | July 18, 2022
YOU may have noticed that it’s impossible to walk down a city street and not see smartphones everywhere. The interminable fiddling, the addictive near-impossibility for most people of not taking them everywhere they go. While recognising the dazzling technological ingenuity of these slimline contraptions, I’ve come to see them for what I truly believe them to be: an increasing threat to our freedom.
This claim is not made lightly, and I’ve never been a Luddite about modern technology.
It’s not what they are that is the danger, but what they will become, and what they will be used for.
You’ll probably recall the harrowing, nightmarish scenes in Shanghai, with the hazmat-suited, violent, robot-like police. And what’s the other thing you’ll notice? Almost every protester is waving a smartphone, apparently impotently, at the utterly indifferent zombies of the CCP.
The Chinese authorities clearly feel that they have nothing to fear from having their ghastly activities filmed by their unfortunate citizens, or for those terrible scenes to be broadcast to the world. And how are the people of Shanghai (and other places) controlled, in a manner unpleasantly reminiscent of social insects? Smartphones.
The unconcealed intention of the WEF globalist totalitarians is to impose a digital ID surveillance state which no one can evade and from which no one can escape.
The obvious addictiveness of smartphones, and their ubiquity, makes them the ideal tool for control and oppression.
The so-called ‘Vaccine Passport’ is a euphemism for what will be, and is intended to be, a Slave’s Passport on the Chinese model. If you have difficulty believing that this might be true, peruse the list of information about you that a ‘passport’ (supposedly containing a record of your jabs and boosters) will contain: all manner of personal details, including your political views, who you associate with, your criminal record and your private medical details. It’s precisely the same list the CCP use to control their citizens’ lives down to the last detail. Simply put, if you don’t comply to the last jot and tittle with the government, you are excluded from society, shunned, shamed and increasingly unable to buy essential supplies, even food. Like the people in Shanghai.
Is this all too far-fetched for you? Slightly older readers might like to try a thought experiment: recall that life continued well enough before smartphones came into all-too-common use. It really did.
Don’t make the dangerously naive assumption that ‘this is Britain and Shanghai could never happen here’. Your addiction to your smartphone could end up trapping you and, through your compliance, all of us, in the nightmare vision of a totalitarian world that Schwab, Gates, the WEF and the WHO have long planned and are assiduously cultivating, step by step.
Your smartphone is nothing less than the shackle that will imprison you, irrevocably, in the Great Reset. Have the courage to dump it.
Beijing citizens criticize Covid surveillance devices
By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | July 17, 2022
Some residents of Beijing are pushing back against a Covid tracking device they are required to wear on their wristbands. Anyone returning to Tiantongyuan, a residential district in northern Beijing, is required to wear the device all day for seven days.
The device records someone’s temperature every five minutes. According to China Daily, the device’s corresponding app has access to the phone’s microphone, location, and camera.
Those forced to wear the device have raised concerns about how it monitors the location and what is done with the data collected. The development of the device was a collaboration between the government and Beijing Microchip Sensing Technology, which is backed by China’s tech giant Tencent.
One of the people that received the wristband was Dahongmao, a tech blogger who shared his experience with the device on social media.
“If this bracelet can connect to the internet, it definitely can record my movements and it’s almost like wearing electronic handcuffs. I don’t want to wear it,” he said.
“The issuer said it’s a requirement from higher up and that I shouldn’t make it difficult for her. I said I would not want to make it difficult for her but she could tell those above her that I won’t wear it. If you insist that I wear it, you’ll have to come up with the documents that prove that it’s a Beijing government requirement and that this is not some unlicensed company trying to make a profit.”
China Daily and South China Morning Post were separately told by a Beijing COVID-19 hotline that the use of the devices was at the discretion of the residential community.
Earlier this week, Hong Kong announced it would roll out tracking bracelets to enforce its mandatory one-week home isolation.
Eighty Times More Excess Deaths Associated With Cold Each Year than Heat
BY TOBY YOUNG | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | JULY 17, 2022
Amid all the hysteria about next week’s extreme temperatures – which could climb to 41°, according to the Met Office – it’s worth bearing in mind that many, many more excess deaths in England and Wales are associated with cold each year than with heat. According to a recent study in the Lancet Planetary Health, between 2000 and 2019, there were an average of 65,000 excess deaths per year in England and Wales associated with cold, but fewer than 800 a year associated with heat. In other words, roughly 80 times more deaths per year are associated with cold than heat.
Needless to say, the report’s authors blame these excess deaths on ‘climate change’ in general and have nothing to say about the likelihood of the 65,000 figure increasing next winter as a result of rising energy bills.
The researchers analysed 10.7 million deaths that occurred in England and Wales between 2000 and 2019 across over 37,473 small areas that include around 1,600 residents, also known as lower super output areas (LSOAs). They then linked these data with high-resolution gridded temperature maps and potential drivers of vulnerability to heat and cold, including demographic and socio-economic factors, health and disability, housing and neighbourhood, landscape, and climatological characteristics. This allowed the researchers to characterise differences across small areas and map variation in temperature-related mortality risks across the two countries.
Dr Pierre Masselot, Research Fellow in in Environmental Epidemiology and Statistics at LSHTM and co-author of the study, said: “The results come at a critical time as countries and communities face increasing health impacts due to climate change and need to find effective ways to adapt to changing temperatures. The analytical framework also provides a flexible tool that can be adapted for future studies which aim to model temperature-related risks and impacts at small-area level under different climate change scenarios.”
The authors emphasised that, while the research showed that excess mortality attributed to cold was significantly higher than that attributed to heat, these results should be interpreted with caution as more cold than hot days were recorded throughout the year. Despite this, they highlighted that cold-related mortality is evidently a considerable health burden, particularly in deprived areas, and should be addressed with targeted public health interventions.
Nevertheless, any un-biased person reading this report cannot help but conclude that the rising cost of utility bills caused, in part, by the Government’s pursuit of ‘net zero’ will result in far more deaths than next week’s heat wave.
If you really care about reducing deaths due to extreme temperatures, shouldn’t you focus your energies on getting the Government to scrap its ‘net zero’ target, lift the ban on Fracking and start investing billions in nuclear[?], instead of disrupting traffic and sporting events?
You can read the Lancet Planetary Health study here.
Russia-Iran relations take a quantum leap
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | JULY 17, 2022
When US National Security Advisor Jack Sullivan first spoke about a potential Iran-Russian drone deal, Moscow kept quiet and Tehran issued a pro forma rebuttal, which suggested that it is still a work in progress. Sullivan’s disclosure appeared at the end of a White Course briefing for President Biden’s West Asia tour to Israel and Saudi Arabia, and seemed to have an element of grandstanding aimed at fuelling the latent anti-Iran sentiments in the Gulf region that could in turn impart momentum to POTUS’ project to put together an Israeli-Arab military front in the region.
In the event, the ploy didn’t work. After Biden’s visit ended, the Saudi Arabian foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan told CNN, amongst other things, that talks are going on between Iran and the GCC states for improvement of relations and the focus should be on changing Iran’s behaviour.
But Sullivan has repeated his charge and has since added that an official Russian delegation “recently received a showcase of Iranian attack-capable UAVs,” the last time being as recently as on July 5. CNN has cited White House officials as saying that Iran is expected to supply Russia with hundreds of drones for use in the war in Ukraine, “with Iran preparing to begin training Russian forces on how to operate them as early as late July.”
Iran is known to have a varied drone ecosystem and is reportedly showcasing to Russia the Shahed-191 and Shahed-129 “killer” drones. According to published information, Shahed-129 has a wingspan of 50 feet with a cruising speed of about 160 km per hour, an endurance of 24 hours with a range of 1,700 km and a ceiling of 24,000 feet. The 129 can carry 8 Sadid-345 miniaturized precision-guided bombs capable of hitting moving targets. The bomb’s small size with a range of 6 km, reduces collateral damage and would allow the Shahed to achieve more kills or attack strikes per mission.
The Shahed 191 carries two Sadid-1 missiles internally, has a cruising speed of 300 km/h, an endurance of 4.5 hours, a range of 450 km, and a payload of 50kg. The ceiling is 25,000 ft. Iran’s Fars News Agency says the Shahed 191 has been used in combat in Syria.
Both are stealth drones, harder for air defences to detect. Russia is, reportedly, short of such armed drones, which have the capability to undertake long-range missions to find and destroy, for example, the US-supplied HIMARS mobile rocket launchers which are currently deployed in Ukraine as well as knocking out Ukrainian air defences. Besides, drones are relatively cheap and expendable, unlike crewed aircraft.
If the drone deal indeed goes through, as seems likely, it will mark a quantum leap in Russia-Iran relations. For, Iran will be doing something that only China is capable of doing but won’t out of fear of US reprisal. That makes Iran a very special partner country indeed. Ironically, Russia is yet to upgrade its relationship with Iran as “strategic.”
On its part, Iran is literally sticking out its neck in an act of defiance of the West’s “rules-based order”, as Russia will be deploying its weapon systems on a European battlefield against the air defence systems supplied to Ukraine by the US and NATO countries. There cannot be many parallels of an emerging middle power rendering such critical help to a superpower in high-tech warfare in real conditions on the frontline. Of course, it enhances Iran’s standing regionally and internationally.
In geopolitical terms, however, the most important salience lies in the certainty that the door is closing on the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the US via European mediators. Tehran would have drawn the conclusion already that President Joe Biden is virtually co-opting his predecessor’s [Israel Lobby dictated] Iran policy and the US has reverted to its decades-old strategy of promoting an Israeli-Arab front against Tehran. Put differently, Tehran is moving on to a trajectory that is predicated on unremitting American hostility.
This will mean that Tehran will double down on its efforts to improve relations with its Aran neighbours and explore all possible avenues in that direction, seizing the window of opportunity in the new Saudi thinking to reduce its dependence on the US and explore its strategic autonomy. It is possible to say that Tehran is a beneficiary if the Saudi-Russian and Saudi-Chinese relationships strengthen. Arguably, Saudi Arabia’s quest for BRICS membership brings the Kingdom tantalisingly close to Iran’s world view which places primacy on a democratised, multipolar world order where every country is free to choose its developmental path.
To be sure, against this backdrop, President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Tehran on Tuesday is invested with great importance. Iran is becoming one of the most consequential relationships for Russia. What began as a limited alliance in Syria is taking on a global character.
US sponsored Kurdish SDF calls on Russia and Iran to prevent planned Turkish military operation
MEMO | July 17, 2022
The head of the Kurdish-led militant group Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has called on Russia and Iran to help prevent Turkiye from launching a military offensive against its positions in northern Syria, as the threat of a new Turkish operation continues to loom.
According to the AFP news agency, the SDF’s chief commander Mazloum Abdi urged the involvement of Moscow and Tehran against Ankara’s aims in the region this week, accusing the US-led global coalition to defeat Daesh – also known as Operation Inherent Resolve – of taking a “weak” position that is “insufficient to end the threats.”
In May, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced plans to launch a new military operation into the areas controlled by the Kurdish militias, which would be Turkey’s fourth such offensive in northern Syria. The operation is meant as an effort to clear the 30-kilometre-deep ‘safe zone’ in northern Syria from remaining Kurdish militant elements, in order to settle at least a million Syrian refugees there.
Abdi also reiterated that after negotiating with Russia, Kurdish militant forces allowed the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad to reinforce their troops in Kurdish-controlled areas, particularly in cities such as Kobane and Manbij in the north of the country. The threat of a renewed Turkish offensive had seemingly forced the SDF to strengthen ties with Assad, Russia, and now Iranian forces in an effort to repel Ankara’s planned operation.
Abdi’s call for Russian and Iranian assistance is likely more diplomatic than military, as it comes only days before a summit that is to be held in Iran from Tuesday, in which Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi will host Erdogan and their Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in a renewed set of negotiations on Syria and the ongoing 11-year-long conflict.
If Moscow and Tehran heed the SDF’s call, they may be expected to attempt to discourage Ankara from its planned military operation.
‘NATO Weapons Double Civilian Casualties in DPR’
Samizdat – 17.07.2022
DONETSK – The number of civilian casualties in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) more than doubled after Ukraine was equipped with NATO’s long-range rocket systems and Tochka-U tactical missile systems, a military expert told Sputnik on Sunday.
“Since the start of the special operation, the DPR’s territory has been shelled over 30 times with Tochka-U missiles, there were more than 400 cases of shelling with 155mm NATO munitions, and the enemy used HIMARS MLRS more than five times. We should note that once the [Ukrainian forces] started using NATO weapons, there has been a 2.5-fold increase in civilian casualties and destruction of civilian infrastructure,” a military expert to the Joint Center on Control and Coordination of the ceasefire regime (JCCC) Sergey Pereverzev said.
On February 24, Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine after the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk appealed for help in defending themselves against Ukrainian forces. Moscow and Kiev have made several attempts to negotiate a ceasefire, with a couple of meetings taking place in Turkey, and both exchanged several dozens of war prisoners. However, no agreement has been reached so far and the talks have been paused on Kiev’s initiative.
The West’s Duplicity in the Food Crisis Caused by the Shortage of Grain
By Vladimir Danilov – New Eastern Outlook – 17.07.2022
Governments of many countries have recently been talking more and more about a possible food crisis in the near future, actively involving representatives from the UN and other international organizations, and numerous media platforms in this information campaign.
Yet, in addition to drawing everyone’s attention to the issue of combating hunger, which is especially threatening to the world’s poorest countries, the US and its Western allies are actively trying to use this situation to fuel their latest Russophobic campaign. Such provocative actions very quickly become understandable when, amidst the so-called “threats” of the global food crisis, the West places the blame on Russia alone because of its special operation against the neo-fascist regime in Kiev, sponsored by the USA and its allies. In doing so, the West is making unfounded accusations of Russia allegedly preventing the export of grain from Ukraine by sea, while keeping suspiciously silent about it not being Russia, but the regime in Kiev who has mined not only all Ukrainian ports, but even the distant shores of the Black Sea, and these mines have already left their anchors, which requires Ukraine to clear the mines from sea transport lanes and routes.
Today it has become clear to everyone that, in terms of the energy crisis and global economic collapse, and even more so in food problems, the United States itself and its Western allies are primarily to blame. It is their treacherous sanctions policy that has destroyed the international order and brought chaos to logistics and transport chains. Accusations by the West against Russia over the food crisis can only be considered as evidence of American efforts to redistribute the global agro-industrial market, which implies ousting Russia from the field of food trade, according to the Telegram channel of the Russian diplomatic mission in Washington.
The recent statements by member countries of the G7 about the shortage of wheat and the food crisis allegedly caused by Russia being a political provocation is pointed out by Hu Bingchuan, a researcher at the Institute of Rural Development of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in an article for the Chinese newspaper Huanqiu Shibao. As follows from his explanations, based on an objective assessment of the processes on the world food market, the absence of wheat from Ukraine will quickly be ironed out due to offers from other countries that supply grain growing – this is primarily Russia, Canada, and several European countries. It is already known that this year the total volume of grain production in the Russian Federation could reach 130 million tons, of which 87 million tons will be wheat, which is an absolute record. Wheat exports in 2022-2023 from Canada will also increase by 8.5 million tons, and by five million tons from the EU. The purpose of Western statements about Russia’s alleged “wheat war” is to create new restrictions against Moscow. The expert emphasizes that such statements have a clear political Russophobic orientation, and the current rise in wheat prices is not provoked by the lack of grain, but “its inconsistent global distribution among those who want it.”
Due to the recent policy pursued by Western countries, food prices in European nations and a number of other countries have already risen sharply, with many goods being sold in limited quantities. At the same time, if for rich countries the current situation simply portends a looming crisis, then for poor nations it threatens a real famine, which, in turn, could provoke an even greater crisis in the world, as it will lead to uprisings, revolutions, and wars.
Against the backdrop of the food crisis, the demand for Russian agricultural products around the world (which was quite high before), has increased several times. According to results from last year, Russian agro-industrial and fishery complex products were sent abroad to the tune of more than $37 billion. Under these conditions, and in order to avoid anti-Russian sanctions and the influence of Western food speculators regarding price, the Russian authorities will now only sell domestic grain and other agricultural products on the National Commodity Exchange and only for rubles.
As for the story artificially inflated by the United States about the amount of Ukrainian grain ready for export, it’s no secret to anyone that this is simply informational hype provoked by Washington to denigrate Russia. And this confirms the complete inconsistency with the truth of the story about 20 million tons of Ukrainian grain allegedly being blocked by Russia, previously disclosed by US President Biden. Even with a superficial analysis by experts, it turns out that at best there are 5 million tons of grain today in Ukraine. But it is constantly being exported in the direction of the states of the EU, immediately being poured into their storage facilities, and not sent somewhere south to those African countries suffering from hunger, which European politicians and experts constantly talk about. The German Ministry of Agriculture stated that in May alone Europe received 1.7 million tons of grain from Ukraine. Additionally, don’t forget that Ukraine’s share of world grain production is only 1.5%.
Russia has repeatedly stated its readiness to facilitate the export of even this remaining amount of grain from Ukraine, guaranteeing the unimpeded passage of ships with grain through the Black Sea. This is confirmed by the recent meeting in Istanbul of delegations from Turkey, Russia, Ukraine, and the UN to discuss the grain issue.
Meanwhile, what the West deliberately remains silent about, thereby demonstrating its frank duplicity, is all the obstacles created by the regime in Kiev over the “grain issue.” Per an official statement by the deputy head of the military-civilian administration of the Kherson Region, Kirill Stremousov, Ukraine is deliberately setting fire to wheat fields on the border of the Kherson Region. “Helicopters flew and set fire to wheat fields on the demarcation line. This is a Nazi regime and they don’t care,” Stremousov said.
The attempts to set fire to wheat fields in the Kherson Region by Ukrainian helicopters will be suppressed by air defense systems, said the head of the regional administration Volodymyr Saldo. He also stressed that “they stoop so low so as to destroy the labor of rural workers who have put their heart and soul into it.” The head of the administration called the Ukrainian military’s actions malicious and inhumane, describing them as an attempt to scare the local population.
Yet, no reports on this issue in the Western media, and even more so the censure of the authorities in Kiev for such crimes, can be expected from the West…