Guest Post by
The Guardian’s Oliver Wainwright recently discussed a new “international socialist conspiracy” that has taken the world by storm. “Fringe forces of the far left,” he noted, “are plotting to take away our freedom to be stuck in traffic jams, to crawl along clogged ring roads and trawl the streets in search of a parking spot.” The name of this “chilling global movement?” he asked, sarcastically and somewhat contemptuously: The “15-minute city.” Wainwright believes these cities are simply part of a “mundane planning theory.” He’s wrong.
A few days after Wainwright’s piece was published, three academics called 15-minute cities (FMCs) “the hottest conspiracy theory of 2023.” In a truly elitist manner, they poked fun at those who dared to question the motive behind FMCs.
One needn’t be a card-carrying QAnon member to have fears over these Trojan-like creations. Before going any further, it’s important to get our definitions in order. As the political scientist Kelly M. Greenhill has noted, not all conspiracy theories are wacky, and not all conspiracy theories are wrong. Take the Watergate conspiracy theory, for instance, or the fact that Edith Wilson made most of the executive decisions after her husband, President Woodrow Wilson, suffered a stroke. Quite often conspiracy theories turn out to be accurate.
Also known as smart cities, FMCs are places where everything imaginable, from your place of work to your favorite pizzeria, is accessible either by foot or bike (not by car, though; they will be verboten) in 15 minutes or less. What’s so bad about this?
On first inspection, very little. We are, after all, creatures of comfort. We live in a world where the mantra “Too Long, Didn’t Read (TL;DR)” now reigns supreme. We crave convenience; we crave expediency. However, expediency isn’t always a good thing; sometimes it’s downright dangerous. This is especially true when people, either consciously or otherwise, trade their freedom for ease of access to certain services. FMCs may make it easier for citizens to get from A to B, but these creations will also make it easier for those in power to spy on us, to harvest our data, and enable Big Brother to become Bigger Brother.
As I write this, FMCs are being actively championed by the World Economic Forum (WEF), the group behind the “Great Reset” and the idea of owning nothing, having absolutely no privacy, and being very happy. This fact alone should concern all readers.
Want to discuss the WEF?
To many, I’m sure FMCs sound incredibly cool. But don’t be fooled by the name. FMCs are actually “smart cities.” As I have noted elsewhere, the word “smart” is really just a synonym for surveillance. These ultra-modern, tech-saturated monstrosities use hundreds of thousands of sensors to vacuum up copious amounts of personal data.
FMC policies are currently being rolled out in cities such as Barcelona, Bogotá, Melbourne, Paris, and the dystopian wasteland known as Portland. What do these cities have in common? Surveillance technology. Between now and 2040, cities right across the United States (and beyond) are predicted to spend trillions of dollars on the installation of additional cameras and biometric sensors. Sure, surveillance is bad now. But, as Randy Bachman famously hollered, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
By 2050, more than two-thirds of the world’s population will live in closely surveilled urban centers, like glorified rats in cramped cages. Contrary to popular belief, we no longer live in a panoptic society. When Jeremy Bentham, the English philosopher and social theorist, put forward the idea of this prison system, there was no internet. In truth, there weren’t even cars. We now live in a post-panoptic world—a digital panopticon, if you will—with huge social media platforms collecting personal user data before selling it to the highest bidder.
The companies running these platforms often work closely with government officials, identifying supposed sinners and punishing them in the swiftest of manners. As the writer Kylie Lynch has noted, these companies know absolutely everything about you; they have instant access to your browser history, your activity online, and now, rather worryingly, even your biometrics. Not surprisingly, these Big Tech companies will have a big impact on the FMCs of the future, by providing the underlying digital infrastructure needed to monitor us and ensure mass compliance.
FMC are wolves in sheep’s clothing. Don’t believe the countless stories telling you otherwise. It has become common for elitist, mainstream outlets to poke fun at those who dare to question the “we have your best interests at heart” narratives. We have been burned too many times before.
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
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Your time will be Their time and all you get is fifteen fucking minutes. Time’s up, comrades.
The ghettos the Nazis created were 15 minute cities as well, where you were monitored 24/7 and needed permission to travel. Eventually leaving was a punishment of death.
ghettos the Nazis created
Were created to prevent the spread of diseases.
Do you know what terrified pretty much everyone in that era?
Diseases like typhus.
The Germans were terrified of germs and passed all manner of hygienic laws.
[Today all people have a balanced view of diseases and are always rational]
Certain groups of people simpy refused to do things like, take a bath once a week, or not crap in holes in the yard.
These people were eventually separated from the general population as a protection against the spread of disease via poor sanitation and hygiene.
Eventually, many ended up in labor camps where the option to take a shower became a regimented daily requirement.
Its easy to monday morning cornerback history,
Who ever asks, what steps would any of us have taken in the pursuit of living in a sanitary world in that era?
And if people broke the sanitation laws, what should be done with them?
[Notice any similarities with current events?]
The ghettos were already there.
Only 6 dvs?
I was shooting for double digits with those facts.
Re: camps.
Certain topics are so deeply ingrained, that people will reliably respond exactly as if they were one of Pavlov’s salivating canines.
And it’s always the same topics;
•Holocaust? “Any who dare question the tenth of the dill In Holocaustianity shall be driven from the garden of society.”
•Jesus? “Any who question MY interpretation of jesus/Bible, are going to hell.”
•Politics? “Eveyone on “The Left” is evil and needs to be killed.”
Consumption? “Tastes great! As opposed to Less Filling”
Reese’s “You got peanut butter on my chocolate ”
_______
I suggested previously an exercise of putting down one’s banners, and giving oneself a rest.
Seriously, asking ourselves if the banners we were asked (or picked up and carried voluntarily) to hold for the duration are actually worth the burdens they represent?
Are they really worth fighting and dying for?
Are they really worth anything?
Do they divide us against your family?
Do they divide against friends?
_____________
Jesus’ path, is the path of truth.
they divide us against our family?
“… All soldiers belong to the same profession, no matter what country
they serve, and it makes them
different from everybody else.
They have to be different, for their job is ultimately about killing and dying, and those things are not a natural vocation
for any human being.
Yet all soldiers are born civilians. The method for turning young men into soldiers-people who kill other people and expose themselves to death-is basic training.
It’s essentially the same all over the world, and it always has been, because young men everywhere are pretty much alike.
Human beings are fairly malleable, especially when they are young, and in every young man there are attitudes for any army to work with: the inherited values and postures, more or less dimly recalled, of the tribal warriors who were once the model for every young boy to emulate.
Civilization did not involve a sudden
clean break in the way people behave,
but merely the progressive distortion
and redirection of all the ways in which people in the old tribal societies used to behave, and modern definitions of maleness still contain a great deal of the old warrior ethic. The anarchic machismo of the primitive warrior is not what modern armies really need in their soldiers, but it does provide them with
promising raw material for the transformation they must work in their recruits.
Just how this transformation is wrought varies from time to time and from country to country. In totally militarized societies-ancient Sparta, the samurai class of medieval Japan, the areas controlled by
organizations like the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front today1- it begins at puberty or before, when the young boy is immersed in a disciplined society in which only the military values are allowed to
penetrate. In more sophisticated modern societies, the process is briefer and more concentrated, and the way it works is much more visible. It is, essentially, a conversion process in an almost religious sense-and as in all conversion phenomena, the emotions are far more important than the specific ideas….
Source:
http://introsoc.com/documents/anybody.pdf
Just for clarity, I’m not saying the holocaust did not happen, I’m mildy suggesting that the path there including health and hygiene laws.
I can totally see people enthusiastically rounding up the “others” through this lens.
I prefer 15 minute small towns in the mountains.Some people refer to such towns as Whitopias.
If your in a city over 250K leave while there is still time.
“you’re”
criminy
“you’re”
Crektin utherz Spelleen is raycizt!
The good new is, 15 minute cities will be easier to shut down. The question I have is what part of the 15 minute city is going to be the ghetto? Will it be the 1 minute mark, the 5 minute mark, maybe the 14 minute mark. Gives whole new meaning to the phrase “There goes the neighborhood”
Demolition Man. But with an AI Robotic police force that isn’t afraid to go into the tunnels. So no ghettos. To the elites, the FMCs are the Ghetto.
The bad news is that 15 minutes might be all the time you are allowed outside, before the daily radiation exposure limit is reached.
It’ll be your last 15 with all the niggers robbing ,and killing.
Having lived in NC & SC since 1976, we have a name for such edifices..
Mill Towns. Hello, company store & 16 Tons.
Way back when I was a Rotary Club Prez in a mill town (1983), a Chapel Hill idiot espoused at our meeting about a community where everyone would walk to buy evverything you’d need.
Bert Huffman (Mayor, Granite Falls, NC) said, “So, you’re describing my mill town, right?”
Look him and his son’s Al’s car collection up. OH…Shuford Mills started there too in 1895. Bert didn’t like golf. Harley, Sr. did. Great story about his duct tape, McGyver, and a round of gofg in August. Per John Sullivan, who married Faye Herr from Philly. Drugstore merges with cheesy poos.
So … out of curiosity, just where will all of this data be stored and processed? How will it be powered? How will its infrastructure demands be met?
Asking for a friend …
And just then, two active boys, tooled
through the town, each with a 5 watt laser.
They made up a game called Laser Camera Tag.
And rode their bikes throughout the town pointing their lasers into the lens of every camera they could spot.
As Manfred Mann plays in the background.
Wonder what all the ‘upgrades’ going on in ooootaawaaa are for? I’m stymied
Whenever corporate media resort to framing things as ‘conspiracy theory’, they are up to something.
By imply that objections to a proposal are ‘crazy conspiracy talk’, the majority are inhibited from voicing objection out of fear of been ridiculed and shamed. Compliance by fear shame and riddicle.
It is typical of the manipulative Marxist mindf***ery, produced by UK govs ‘Behavioral Insights Team’.
The only saving grace is that they have overused this particular technique to the point of being painfully transparent.
Cities are just prisons without fences. I would rather die than live in one.