China is massively expanding its weather-control project, and is aiming to be able to cover half the country in artificial rain and snow by 2025, the government said Tuesday.
Dozens of other countries — including the US — also have such programs, but Beijing has the world’s largest, employing around 35,000 people, The Guardian reported.
In a statement, China’s State Council said that the country’s cloud seeing project will expand fivefold to cover an area of 2.1 million square miles and be completed by 2025. (China encompasses 3.7 million square miles, meaning the project could cover 56% of the country’s surface area.)
The project will be at a “worldwide advanced level” by 2035, the State Council said, and will help alleviate “disasters such as drought and hail” and facilitate emergency responses “to forest or grassland fires.”
People visit the Forbidden City during a blue sky summer day on August 29, 2019 in Beijing, China.
Generating artificial rain and snow is fairly simple in principle. Spraying chemicals like silver iodide or liquid nitrogen into clouds can make water droplets condense, and fall as rain or snow.
In June 2016, China allocated $30 million to its cloud seeding project, and started firing bullets filled with salt and minerals into the sky.https://95d92e9bdb1674adb87250a2d5b1195d.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
A year later, China spent $168 million on a huge supply of equipment to facilitate the project, including four aircraft and “897 rocket launchers,” The Guardian said.
US life expectancy drops a year in pandemic, most since WWII
Life expectancy in the United States dropped a staggering one year during the first half of 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic caused its first wave of deaths, health officials are reporting.
Minorities suffered the biggest impact, with Black Americans losing nearly three years and Hispanics, nearly two years, according to preliminary estimates Thursday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“This is a huge decline,” said Robert Anderson, who oversees the numbers for the CDC. “You have to go back to World War II, the 1940s, to find a decline like this.”
Other health experts say it shows the profound impact of COVID-19, not just on deaths directly due to infection but also from heart disease, cancer and other conditions.
“What is really quite striking in these numbers is that they only reflect the first half of the year … I would expect that these numbers would only get worse,” said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, a health equity researcher and dean at the University of California, San Francisco.
This is the first time the CDC has reported on life expectancy from early, partial records; more death certificates from that period may yet come in. It’s already known that 2020 was the deadliest year in U.S. history, with deaths topping 3 million for the first time.
Life expectancy is how long a baby born today can expect to live, on average. In the first half of last year, that was 77.8 years for Americans overall, down one year from 78.8 in 2019. For males it was 75.1 years and for females, 80.5 years.
As a group, Hispanics in the U.S. have had the most longevity and still do. Black people now lag white people by six years in life expectancy, reversing a trend that had been bringing their numbers closer since 1993.
Between 2019 and the first half of 2020, life expectancy decreased 2.7 years for Black people, to 72. It dropped 1.9 years for Hispanics, to 79.9, and 0.8 years for white people, to 78. The preliminary report did not analyze trends for Asian or Native Americans.
“Black and Hispanic communities throughout the United States have borne the brunt of this pandemic,” Bibbins-Domingo said.
They’re more likely to be in frontline, low-wage jobs and living in crowded environments where it’s easier for the virus to spread, and “there are stark, pre-existing health disparities in other conditions” that raise their risk of dying of COVID-19, she said.
More needs to be done to distribute vaccines equitably, to improve working conditions and better protect minorities from infection, and to include them in economic relief measures, she said.
Dr. Otis Brawley, a cancer specialist and public health professor at Johns Hopkins University, agreed.
“The focus really needs to be broad spread of getting every American adequate care. And health care needs to be defined as prevention as well as treatment,” he said.
Overall, the drop in life expectancy is more evidence of “our mishandling of the pandemic,” Brawley said.
“We have been devastated by the coronavirus more so than any other country. We are 4% of the world’s population, more than 20% of the world’s coronavirus deaths,” he said.
Not enough use of masks, early reliance on drugs such as hydroxychloroquine, “which turned out to be worthless,” and other missteps meant many Americans died needlessly, Brawley said.
“Going forward, we need to practice the very basics” such as hand-washing, physical distancing and vaccinating as soon as possible to get prevention back on track, he said.
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Marilynn Marchione can be followed on Twitter: @MMarchioneAP
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Record-setting cold and snowfall in Texas has in turn caused dramatic power outages and rolling blackouts across the state. Texans stuck in powered-off apartments with no way to warm themselves have fled to “warming centers.” A few have died from carbon monoxide poisoning trying to warm themselves with a car.
The mess with the Texas power grid is only the beginning. In the years to come, American infrastructure will fail more and more often, as America becomes less capable of maintaining the core elements of a First World country.
Why would America become less First World? That’s a simple question to answer: Because America is making itself less First World.
Conservatives have been eager to blame Texas’s problems on increased use of wind power. It certainly played a role. Turbines froze in the cold and the focus on expanding renewable energy sources over conventional gas and oil left the state less able to expand energy production in response to a surge.
But solar energy is far from the only culprit. Another factor was simply that Texas infrastructure could not handle an outlier weather event.
While ice has forced some turbines to shut down just as a brutal cold wave drives record electricity demand, that’s been the least significant factor in the blackouts, according to Dan Woodfin, a senior director for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the state’s power grid.
The main factors: Frozen instruments at natural gas, coal and even nuclear facilities, as well as limited supplies of natural gas, he said. “Natural gas pressure” in particular is one reason power is coming back slower than expected Tuesday, added Woodfin.
“We’ve had some issues with pretty much every kind of generating capacity in the course of this multi-day event,” he said. [Bloomberg]
In other words, faced with a black swan event, Texas’s power generation system imploded. It faced a major challenge, and wasn’t up to it. The cost is several lives and billions of dollars in economic damage.
Texas’s struggles are only a standout example of a problem that has been building up for years. Last summer, California suffered rolling blackouts because electrical providers were unprepared for a surge in demand during a heat wave. But the problem is greater than that. America’s electrical reliability has been declining, almost everywhere, for decades. The United States of America now trails competing nations, often dramatically.
In Japan, the average home sees only 4 minutes of power outages per year. In the American Midwest, the figure is 92 minutes per year. In the Northeast, it’s 214 minutes; all those figures cover only regular outages and not those caused by extreme weather or fires.
A 2012 report from the Congressional Research Service compared average annual minutes lost to power outages in the U.S. with seven industrialized European countries. The U.S. finished a distant last (on the chart, SAIDI measures minutes lost to power outages per year):
Sometimes, when America trails in an important measure of productivity or effectiveness, it has simply failed to keep up with the advances of other countries. But power supply is different. Forty years ago, America had no trouble keeping the lights on. It has steadily gotten worse at this basic function. A recent Popular Science article laid out the problem:
According to an analysis by Climate Central, major outages (affecting more than 50,000 homes or businesses) grew ten times more common from the mid-1980s to 2012. From 2003 to 2012, weather-related outages doubled. In a 2017 report, the American Society of Civil Engineers reported that there were 3,571 total outages in 2015, lasting 49 minutes on average. The U.S. Energy Administration reports that in 2016, the average utility customer had 1.3 power interruptions, and their total blackout time averaged four hours. [Popular Science]
What causes this? One popular answer is simply aging infrastructure. America was one of the first countries to build a modern power grid, so infrastructure in many areas is very old and now fails with increasing frequency.
Of course, that naturally raises the question. If infrastructure is aging, why isn’t it being updated or replaced?
That is a political question, with many answers. One reason is that maintaining existing infrastructure may be the single least-sexy use of public money, and thus is one of the first things cut back during budget crunches. Another factor, though, is America’s warped public spending. For decades, politicians have found it easy to build up a political base by upping the pay of public employees. The result is that, while enjoying rock-solid job security, public employees at all levels outearn private sector workers. Millions of current and former workers are also the beneficiaries of ridiculously generous pension plans which are routinely underfunded as well. When these pensions clash with basic infrastructure maintenance, the pensions win:
In real dollars, state governments’ investments in infrastructure dropped by 3.2 percent from 2007 to 2017, with ups and downs along the way. But infrastructure spending relative to gross domestic product (GDP) dropped almost every year between a 2009 peak and 2017, following more than two decades of stability. In fact, 2017 marked the lowest level of funding as a share of the economy in more than half a century. States’ declining infrastructure investment relative to GDP is a sign that spending on fixed assets has not kept pace with economic growth. [Pew Trusts]
But infrastructure isn’t just about allocating enough funding. It’s about people. The quality of a country’s broad-based infrastructure is heavily linked to the skills of its common blue-collar workers and local bureaucrats. When these groups are more capable, everything works a little bit better in a country. They cut fewer corners when building new infrastructure, and are more diligent in maintaining it. They work more diligently and efficiently. They are more likely to use the right materials. They avoid preventable errors.
For an example of a completely avoidable infrastructure calamity, look at Flint, Michigan. The city’s famous water crisis occurred when the city switched from Detroit’s water system to drawing water from the Flint River. The river water was perfectly safe to drink, but left untreated it corroded the protective lining of the city’s pipes, eventually allowing lead to leech into the water. And tragically, avoiding that problem was easy.
Cities such as Detroit add orthophosphate to their water as part of their corrosion control plans because the compound encourages the formation of lead phosphates, which are largely insoluble and can add to the pipes’ passivation layer. By press time, C&EN was unable to get a comment from Flint city officials about why a corrosion inhibitor wasn’t added to the river water. The entire Flint water crisis could have been avoided if the city had just added orthophosphate, Edwards says. [Chemical and Engineering News]
Adding orthophosphate would have cost Flint only a few thousand dollars a year. Instead, a $600 million calamity happened.
Another red flag for America’s infrastructure future is the Washington, D.C. Metro. The Metro has been known for years as one of the world’s worst, plagued with delays, safety issues, cost overruns, and poor maintenance.
By the early 2000s, workers began to notice a growing disregard for safety throughout Metro. “We’d report [safety violations] and then nothing would be done,” says Sherman Johnson, a WMATA mechanic from 1983 to 2010. “The [work order] would be closed, indicating that the problem had been corrected, but then you’d go and check and most times no one had even been there, let alone fixed anything.” Meanwhile, management focused on making sure employees wore their uniforms correctly and used Metro-issued microwaves to cook food instead of their own.
…
This wasn’t the only troubling thing the feds found in Metro’s plumbing. The FTA discovered that train drivers regularly relieved themselves on the tracks because supervisors, due to inadequate training, weren’t comfortable taking the wheel to give them bathroom breaks. [Washingtonian]
How did the Metro get so horrid? In large part, because of wretched hiring. A 2012 report in The Washington Times revealed that Metro hiring was starkly racialized, with applicants clearly being hired or rejected based on skin color rather than demonstrated job aptitude:
Ninety-seven percent of the bus and train operators at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority are black, with only six white women out of more than 3,000 drivers … It is a culture in which a white male engineer near completion of a Ph.D. was passed over for a management position in favor of a black man who was barely literate, multiple staffers said. … Dozens said white workers, especially women, were openly subject to racist and sexist remarks without repercussion — behavior that drove many targets to seek transfers or leave the agency. All said they have been inexplicably passed over hundreds of times for promotions to positions such as station manager while others with less seniority passed them by. [Washington Times]
Why do Metro’s particular failures matter? Because its rotten ethos is spreading across the country. While Metro is an outlier case, where a major public agency became a racial racket, countless agencies are adopting “diversity” guidelines that encourage choosing employees and contractors based on skin color rather than competence alone. When ability and effectiveness ceases to be the sole consideration for jobs, effectiveness suffers. That may not matter much for writers at The New York Times, where the only victims of affirmative action (besides whose passed over for jobs) are the paper’s readers. But for the basic buildings blocks of civilized life, the consequences can be severe.
There are other reasons to be worried about America’s future supply of builders, technicians, and repairmen.
For decades, America’s ruling elite have deliberately cultivated an underclass via low-skill immigration, both legal and illegal. While they were brought here as workers, these immigrants are people as well: Their children are the future human capital stock of the United States. When America admits an immigrant with fewer skills than the average American, they are admitting a person whose children will, on average, grow up to have fewer skills than most American workers. They will certainly have fewer skills than the children of the highly-skilled immigrants America has chosen not to prioritize.
The Trump Administration sought to change this, promoting a plan to focus immigration on highly-skilled workers who would have more highly-skilled children. Congress refused to pass that plan. Now, the Biden administration is mulling amnesty for low-skilled illegal immigrants, and is pledging to octuple arrivals of (mostly low-skill) refugees. If Biden succeeds, he will create an America where the population is less skilled, and less able to maintain the basic trappings of modern life. And that may mean a country where the lights go out a lot more often.
Digital Identification and Finance Initiative in Africa (DigiFI Africa)
The Digital Identification and Finance Initiative in Africa (DigiFI) aims to generate rigorous evidence on how African governments, private companies, and NGOs can leverage digital payments and identification systems to improve lives through better public service delivery, governance, and financial inclusion. To achieve this vision, DigiFI plans to support governments and other implementers to monitor and evaluate relevant reforms.
DigiFI Announcements
[NEW] DigiFI Scholarships for J-PAL online courses [starts 9 Feb 2021] Apply here.
[NEW] General DigiFI Rolling Funding
DigiFI is accepting off-cycle proposals. Applications are open on a rolling basis and will be reviewed every few weeks. Find further details on our Request for Proposals page.
A growing number of African governments have begun pursuing the digitization of payment systems, while others are switching to biometrically-authenticated national IDs which integrate access and delivery of key public services. Early research suggests there is opportunity across Africa for digital technologies to help reduce leakage in the delivery of public goods and services, to increase fiscal capacity, to reduce corruption, and, to boost the welfare of citizens, particularly marginalized groups. Yet, there remains a glaring lack of rigorous, peer-reviewed evidence on the overall impacts of these digital payments and ID systems.
DigiFI Africa aims to fill this evidence gap by funding cutting edge research projects focused on the study of innovative government payment systems, and ID reforms. We expect the evidence produced by this initiative will inform governments on how best to design and implement reforms to maximize benefits to citizens and mitigate risks.
The scope of funding aims to include projects across a range of possible interventions, including but not limited to:
How can digital ID systems assist with targeting and efficiency in public programs? Do digital ID systems assist or hinder in reaching marginalized populations?
How do digital IDs affect voter participation, the fairness of elections and electoral outcomes? Does increased enfranchisement affect policy decisions?
How can digital ID systems and digital payments assist in building incentive systems to motivate public servants?
Can expanding the formal economy increase the tax base through incentives and simplified processes introduced by digital payments and digital IDs?
What is the impact of digital ID and digital payment systems on market-level general equilibrium effects? What are their impacts on wages and employment? Are there impacts on occupational choice or migration?
Can digital ID systems encourage businesses to enter the formal sector? Do these reforms reduce entry costs to entrepreneurship and enable productive investment?
How do different privacy measures impact take-up of digital IDs?
Recognizing the importance of prompt and reliable information on the performance and impact of reforms, the initiative will take a two-pronged approach, funding:
Formative research that includes pilot and high-frequency monitoring systems to assess the status and health of payments and ID programs at various stages of reforms, and
Rigorous randomized evaluations to assess the impact of roll-outs of promising payment and ID reforms.
DigiFI Africa accepts proposals for the following categories: Proposal Development grants (up to $10,000), Pilot studies (up to $75,000), and Full-Scale RCTs (up to $400,000). DigiFI aims to run a call for proposals approximately every 6 months. We are currently accepting off-cycle proposals. ApplyOPPORTUNITIES
African Scholars
DigiFI provides research funding opportunities to resident and non-resident African Scholars.Learn more
Democratic Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan delivered his state-of-the-county address earlier this week. He spoke with WAMC’s Hudson Valley Bureau Chief Allison Dunne about the start of a basic income pilot program as well as initiatives under his Green New Deal.
Ryan’s THE address included two main themes.
“The first is building on all the resilience work that we did in the county with food delivery, childcare support, rent support, small business support, to add a new and really pretty innovative addition to that, which is a pilot program of universal basic income, essentially providing direct cash relief to families in Ulster County, as they try to get, you know, work their way out of the economic stress and challenges of the pandemic. So we’re really excited about that one,” Ryan says. “And I think, not only will it have a direct impact for the 100 families that will participate in, in the program, but it will also add to this growing body of research and work nationally in terms of figuring out the potential for universal basic income to help potentially millions of people around the country.”
“Is there the potential to expand this after the year is over?” asks Dunne.
“I hope that, one, I hope that our theory is right that this is a great and effective model. And, if it is, the idea would be how can we at the county level expand it. Ultimately, to do something at scale like this, it would, I think, need to be a state and/or a federal program. But our hope is as, as now the first county in the country to do this at the county level, we can add to the research and the proof points there,” says Ryan. “And I hope that in the coming years, this is something that that grows and continues to help people.”
“And correct me if I’m wrong, this is based on the community donations, just like project resilience, right? This is not going to be taxpayer funded,” says Dunne.
“Exactly. That’s an important part. I mean, given all the economic challenges, we were excited to be able to do this in a way that doesn’t add to the taxpayer burden, but still provides this relief, and it reinvest all these generous community donations right back into our community here, which is very cool,” Ryan says. “I’ve already heard from, from several folks. One, one woman actually live-watching the state of the county address commented, I’m a single mother, this $500 a month would be life-changing for my family and I, and the hope is that that can be replicated for, for many others both in this program and, eventually, hopefully for more.”
Residents who want to participate in the program and receive direct relief payments of $500 a month for one year must have an annual income of $46,900 or below.
“So we’ve been really thoughtful about doing this in the right ways, both in terms of fairness, but also in terms of academic rigor. We’re partnering with the nation-leading research institution on this, that’s the University of Pennsylvania, the Center for Guaranteed Income. So they’ve done this in 20-plus cities around the country already, and they will actually be doing a random selection of all those that apply to ensure that it’s really a totally fair and impartial process,” Ryan says. “And, and that also will help, again, feed what we learn on the ground here in Ulster County into the broader national dialogue about how to do this and how to do it in the right ways.”
Community Foundations of the Hudson Valley and Ulster Savings Bank are also partners in the program. In Columbia County, former presidential candidate and now New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang joined with Hudson Mayor Kamal Johnson to launch a Universal Basic Income pilot program in the city last year.
Ryan’s second theme during his pre-recorded Facebook address Tuesday was expanding a Green New Deal for Ulster County. During his first week in office in 2019, Ryan signed an Executive Order committing to transitioning county operations to 100 percent renewable energy by 2030. Since, he launched a Green Careers Academy in partnership with SUNY Ulster. This year, the county will expand the Academy by bringing on new partners including Ulster BOCES, Bard College, Cornell Cooperative Extension, Central Hudson, Citizens for Local Power, Habitat for Humanity, the Climate Reality Project and several local labor unions to help train residents and put them on a path to good-paying green jobs. And he announced this week the Ulster County Green Business Champions program, a public-private partnership to more aggressively reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“Twenty percent of our greenhouse gas emissions come from the private sector. And the idea here is to both reward and recognize those that are already doing this work and to provide financial support and other support to businesses that want to make these investments,” Ryan says. “So for example, rooftop solar on your business, we can help finance that and actually save your business money and help protect the environment. And there are a whole menu of those sorts of things that we’re excited to help our businesses with.”
On Wednesday, Ryan and the county comptroller released 2020 sales-tax revenue figures.
“I’d say, in a relative sense, pretty good news,” says Ryan. “We were, we came in a little over $1 million under our forecasted sales-tax revenue but much better than we sort of expected at the worst of the pandemic when we were seeing 20, 30 percent drop-offs in economic activity and sales tax.”
He says it appears economic recovery efforts worked on the local level, as did putting federal stimulus checks into the hands of residents.
“And, by the way, that’s exactly ties back to the thinking on universal basic income that getting money into people’s pockets, especially in a time of crisis, not only helps them but it, but it helps our broader economy,” Ryan says,
Through September 2020, the county’s sales tax numbers were down 7.8 percent, or $5.8 million. However, the county regained ground from October 2020 through February 2021, with an increase of 11.37 percent or $5.9 million.
San Antonio is the latest city to adopt the innovation zone model as it seeks to test new civic technology, joining Denver, Kansas City, Las Vegas and others.
Phil Goldstein is the web editor for FedTech and StateTech. Besides keeping up with the latest in technology trends, he is also an avid lover of the New York Yankees, poetry, photography, traveling and escaping humidity.
San Antonio may not have the size and clout of its fellow Texas cities Dallas and Houston, but it is still the 24th-largest metropolitan area in the country. And when it comes to civic technology deployments, it is making moves.
In June 2018, the San Antonio City Council was briefed on plans to create three “innovation zones,” as part of its Smart SA initiative, the San Antonio Express-News reports. Although the city has not formally moved forward on the innovation zone deployments, the proposed zones indicate that Alamo City is getting more serious about ramping up its smart city efforts.
Innovation zones are areas within cities that municipalities use as proving grounds for smart city technology deployments, small areas to test everything from smart streetlights to IP-connected surveillance cameras and environmental sensors. Once the technologies are provenat a small scale, cities can then make a case to expand them on a wider basis. Other cities, including Denver, Las Vegas and Kansas City, Mo., have undertaken similar efforts in recent years.
“We see the innovation zones as a real-world proving ground for the pilot smart city technology that we’re testing,” Jose De La Cruz, chief innovation officer of San Antonio, said at the council meeting, according to StateScoop. “The zones are really the next phase in our overall smart city strategy.”
San Antonio Plans Innovation Zones as Part of Smart City Strategy
In April, the City Council’s Innovation and Technology Committee recommended placing innovation zones in two areas: South Texas Medical Center and Brooks, a 1,308-acre mixed-use community in the city’s southeast quadrant. In June, De La Cruz added in downtown San Antonio as a third area.
The three areas were selected because the city hopes to use innovative technologies to address challenges in each. Additionally, De La Cruz said that the three areas were chosen because they have existing fiber-optic cables, which can serve as backhaul to the internet for wireless and Internet of Things technologies, according to the Express-News.
Brooks is a former U.S. Air Force base slated for “live-work-play” development, according to the Rivard Report, and the city listed public Wi-Fi, innovative drainage systems, logistics and public transportation as opportunities that technology could address.
Meanwhile, according to the Rivard Report, the medical center “would serve as a laboratory for new transportation projects aimed at combating traffic congestion, parking issues, and pedestrian accidents, among others.”
De La Cruz said that the downtown area will test innovative lighting solutions and IoT solutions to parking accessibility and enforcement.
What comes next? The Express-News reports:
As the innovation zones ramp up, the city will hold a vendor summit where officials will lay out local challenges and invite companies to propose smart solutions. Eventually, the city will seek sealed proposals and then best-and-final offers from shortlisted groups over the course of the next several months.
Cities Promote Innovation Districts to Improve City Infrastructure
Other cities have adopted the innovation zone model.
“The Innovation District is meant to be the home of new transportation infrastructure and mobility technologies, allowing for the creation of partnerships with autonomous vehicle/mobility companies and with smart city technology firms,” the city says on its website.
Las Vegas has partnered with Cisco Systems to get access to its analytics tools to collect data about traffic movement, water use, pedestrian activity, waste, lighting and other environmental factors, according to a press release.
Since November 2017, Las Vegas has operated an all-electric minibus, billed as the first autonomous public transportation to be launched on U.S. roads, thanks to the collaboration between the City of Las Vegas, the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada and the Keolis transportation management company. As of May, the shuttle has transported more than 25,000 riders, Christopher Barker, vice president of new mobility, communications and marketing at Keolis tells the website Skift, a number he says is “ahead of what we forecasted.”
In Denver, about a 20-minute light-rail trip northeast from downtown and sitting on the edge of Denver International Airport, the city is developing a mixed-used area known as Peña Station Next, with hotels, commercial and residential development.
The city envisions that the area will include 1.5 million square feet of office space, 500,000 square feet of retail space and 2,500 residences, while also serving as a test bed for smart city technology. One of the development’s buildings has been completed: the gleaming, solar-powered, 112,500-square-foot edifice that houses Panasonic Enterprise Solutions’ operations and technology center.
In the streets, workers are installing wirelessly controlled LED streetlights, which the complex’s backers say in a press release will deliver 70 percent energy savings over conventional lampposts.
And in Kansas City, the city is moving forward with its Smart City Initiative, and also plans to expand its KC Streetcar, a 2-year-old transit system that wends its way through parts of downtown Kansas City.
The KC Streetcar has served as “a laboratory” of sorts deploying smart city, Kansas City CIO Bob Bennett told StateTech in a previous interview. The city has partnered with Cisco as a strategic partner on the project.
And as StateTech reported:
Kansas City’s Smart City corridor is a $15.7 million public-private partnership offering free public Wi-Fi, smart streetlights and sensors along the KC Streetcar’s 2-mile-long route. The city embedded technology supporting these capabilities along the streetcar route, often mounting cameras, sensors and Wi-Fi hubs on lampposts and elsewhere.
Here is my latest paper that may be of interest to you. I’ve combed the scientific & medical literature and brought together the evidence for a link between wireless radiation & COVID-19. My paper is posted on a pre-print server here, where you can read it online or download it:
I am not saying that COVID is merely wireless radiation exposure effects. I do think that there is also a virus. My view is that exposure to wireless causes adverse health effects that are similar to COVID and exacerbates the disease. Wireless is an environmental hazard & co-factor in COVID. There should be a global moratorium on 5G infrastructure at this time!
What innocent citizens can do if their killing permits become legal under an international agreement to use humans as a renewable resource for the production of nuclear energy
· It is targeting individuals and converting them to semi-mechanical men through implanted psychotronic microchips, which open channels directly between the human brain and external electronic devices and target the electromagnetic energy of humans using high radiation like gamma radiation, ionic and electronic accelerators for radioisotopes enrichment production of uranium, thorium, radium, radon, plutonium, etc. Human waste containing radioactive isotopes is “mined” from sewage for nuclear energy production.
· This program has been applied to billions of people around the world since 1974, all of whom are RNM (remote neural monitoring) monitored and controlled by satellite, mobile, computer, Internet, TV, even to changing their behavior to violence through electronic chips to increase energy production.
Nuclear Program methods for communicating with implanted
psychotronic microchips
1. Air condition magnetic fields spread the smart dust and radioactive contamination such as uranium, radon and polonium for human body infection and enrichment process
2. Radio frequency signals, electrical conduction & modulated sound signals created by the Internet, mobile, computer & TV
3. Water taps and food
4.Drugs that use electronic microchips
5. Addiction to social media, especially Facebook, video games & TV to force people to use the Internet & TV as long as possible while human electronic energy is being mined, which covers 10% of the electricity consumption in the world
6. Geoengineered nuclear energy changes natural phenomena to artificial rain, snow & storms to convert methane gas to carbon gas, then to graphite and DIAMOND
7. Psychotronic microchips for artificial telepathy, brain manipulation & RNM and DNA reprogramming since the DNA is responsible for building the human body, data storage & communications
8. Smart Dust: MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems) such as sensors, robots or other devices that can detect, for example, light, temperature, vibration, magnetism, chemicals, etc. They are released in space as well as the vicinity of a target and are run on a computer network
9. Chemical and physical parameters of water that implanted in toilets for radioactive waste measurement
Damage and Symptoms of Nuclear Program-Targeted Individuals
THE FIRST PHASE
1. Peripheral nerve inflammation, red, black or red spots, scabies, body aches, exhaustion or lack of desire, chest tightness, choking cry, irregular monthly period for women, lack of desire for life or feeling suicidal, spoil your relationship with your family, friends & work, leaving your religion, tiredness in the joints, forgetfulness, frequent headaches, hair loss, lack of compatibility with life.
2. Addiction to social media, video games & TV to ensure that people interact with the program for the longest period
3. Mind control via satellite, computer, mobile, Internet and TV
4. Eyes may be used as a camera to photograph and monitor daily life without the target’s knowledge
5. Autism, stuttering, artificial tinnitus “ringing in the ear,” microwave hearing, ringing fence issued from the lamp, TV or other electronic devices in the presence of the target at home as a result of the target’s mind interaction with electronic devices, to ensure the target’s attention and interaction and produce electronic energy as well as symptoms of injury: sudden shock, electric shock, and memory impairment.
6. Artificial telepathy
THE SECOND PHASE
1. The stress increase due to exposure to high radiation like gamma, ionic and electronic accelerators 24 hours a day, inability to sleep, isolation, etc. Most targets try to commit suicide, especially when they have no awareness of the technology virtual apps “hypnosis, sense of vibration, touching and forced waking visions” subjecting the target to mental illness and losing the right to defend themselves.
2. Headaches, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, leukemia and hair loss. Radiation has a significant effect on the bone marrow and so causes white blood cell deficiency. It also causes cataracts, which damage the eye and cause blindness, leading to shortness of life. Radiation has a significant effect on the sex glands of men and women, and the exposure of pregnant women may cause fetal death or deformed birth
3. Forced manipulation of the respiratory tract, inhalation of strange odors, rapid heart rate, sensation of skin injection effect, constriction of ribs, dryness and decomposition of the skin due to exposure to microwave radiation
4. General effects: sudden overheating, whole body pain, sleep prevention, irresistible “go here go there commands”, microwaves burns, electric shock sensations, as the goal of the program is to subject the target to isolation, frustration and body pain to ensure their interaction with the program so as to produce more electronic energy
5. Chronic diseases: cancer, tinnitus, pneumonia, autism, joint and back pain, peripheral neuropathies, severe depression, suicide or criminal acts, harassment, chronic headache, impaired sexual ability, OCD, deviation of tendencies, Alzheimer’s. Note that the human will show these symptoms but not all, based on their immunity and psychological disposition.
The most effective tactics that heal & free targets
1. You must believe that you are stronger than any external forces that want to take control of your life and your health and violate your human rights in order to produce energy and obtain world hegemony and billions dollars from these illegal investments, Therefore, the following methods of resistance should be followed to prevent ourselves from becoming sources of energy production. Many people have been released when the electronic stalking failed to steal their energy. Keep in mind that when there is NO RETURN ON INVESTMENT—the lack of access to energy from the human—the nuclear energy establishment & telecommunications corporations are obligated to pay fines of $1 million for each one of the people that have been hurt by this program. They will then be forced to terminate their illegal investment.
2. This program is automated and based on simulation apps that derive energy from your reactions, so IGNORE all the negative ideas fed by their computer to your mind. DON’T REACT. Maintain your life of normalcy as much as possible so as to stop feeding their computer with your energy. Their money investment is based on your energy. Reduce your use of electronic devices (computer, mobile, TV). Shut them off during your sleeping time. Add to your internet browsers the following apps: Adblock, Pop up adblock, Nocoin – Coin hiver blocker.
3. Obligate the nuclear establishment to apply the integrated programs to eliminate radiation pollution of internal and external radiation (of individuals, residences, workplaces, etc.).
4. Doses of less than 200 rem (radiation equivalent Man) can be given a medicine like cortisone to prevent vomiting, but in the case of 200-1000 rem, hope for recovery is possible only with antibiotics and intensive care. If the number of white blood cells less than 1000 per cubic millimeter, it is desirable to transfer blood cells, treat diarrhea, and transplant bone marrow.
5. When the body is exposed to certain radioactive elements such as cesium and thallium, the treatment is the Prussian blue medicine, which is associated with these radioactive elements and eliminated through the stool. This treatment quickly eliminates radioactive particles and reduces the amount of radioactive cells that may absorb them.
6. For treatment of radiation syndrome when the body is exposed to radioactive elements like plutonium, amerium and chlorium, the treatment is diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid (DTPA), again linked to these radioactive elements and passing through the body in urine, which reduces the amount of absorbed radiation.
7. In order to determine the type of radiation exposure to make decisions for the treatment of patients, you have to do blood tests and know the changes in blood cells, especially white blood cells, measuring the dose of radiation absorbed through the dosimeter, with the radiation scan determining the location of the radioactive particles in the body.
8. Laboratory blood tests for periodic verification of the rate of decrease in the number of white blood cells to detect the extent of bone marrow damage and for treatment of bone marrow damage is accomplished by injecting the patient with proteins that stimulate the production of white blood cells—for example, the promoter filgrastim (Neupogen), sargramostim (Leukine) and pegfilgrastim (Neulasta).
9. Irradiation of iodine can inhibit thyroid absorption of radioactive iodine. When potassium iodide tablets are taken before or shortly after radiation exposure, the thyroid gland is saturated with iodine to reduce the amount of radioactive iodine absorbed and the risk of thyroid cancer. However, potassium iodide tablets do not protect against external exposure to radiation or any radioactive element other than radioactive iodine.
10. Clean your energy and physical body using Senna (a laxative prepared from the dried pods of the cassia tree, Wakame sea vegetables, camphor & cedar as they have the power to pull radiation out of your body. Include fasting 10 to 16 hours to increase immunity. Add exposure to the Sun daily for at least half an hour. Reduce sugar as it is the main energy source for infected cells.
11. Remove contaminated clothes and shoes. Wash gently with soap and water to remove additional radiation particles from the skin to prevent further dispersal of radioactive materials and reduce the risk from inhalation, ingestion or open wounds.
12. Clean the body with Dettol antiseptic to oxygenate and disable the implanted microchip. You can use white camphor oil (follow medical guidelines).
13. Cross your legs “X” and hands to close the body energy cores.
14. Radioactive contamination does not interact with alkaline. Eat alkaline foods containing iron, magnesium, potassium, vitamin E, vitamin D and vitamin B12, especially miso soup with wakame sea vegetable three times a day. Eat other alkaline foods like lentil soup, watercress, pickles, bananas, pomegranates, lemons, salmon or sardines. Take supplements containing these minerals, such as KELP tablets or kombu sea vegetable powder, Chlorella tablets (500 mg), potassium iodide pills, boron tablets, or magnesium-plus tablets.
15. Clean your clothes and bed sheets with Dettol or vinegar or sodium salt, plus the seating area. Vacuum to remove the smart dust and radioactive contamination (uranium, radon, polonium). Cover your food and drinks. Add sea salt or compost to human waste at the bathroom to reduce radon emissions from sewage and interaction of radioactive materials to prevent the attackers from taking advantage of the radioactive materials in the sewage. The main reason for deliberately polluting the air, water and food is to obtain nuclear fuel enriched by humans.
16. Check the ear canal for a silver radio chip (Psychotronics Microchips) with a microphone embedded in the bottom of the ear canal, one in each ear operating on the VHF frequency. It can play video so that the target can see forced waking visions and hear artificial sounds. Cover the ear with a plug until you can extract this chip. Add English salt (Epsom salt) or lemon in your ear to eliminate the artificial tinnitus “ringing in the ear.”
17. Use radio frequency jammers, frequency range: 200 – 840 MHz, GPS, UHF, VHF, GSM, 3G, 4G, 5.8G, LOJACK, CDMA to protect yourself from satellite and GPS tracking. A frequency counter should be used to measure the radio frequency at your home. You can use electronic bug detector apps like EMF Sensor Free and Electronic Bug Detector to detect the electronic energy weapons at your home or work.
18. Use the N52 Neodymium magnet on the implanted biochips to isolate the electromagnetic waves from the body as well as cover the head and infected body with aluminum foil, or wear Iron Hat. You can also disable biochips by using the electromagnetic pulse device “EMP.”
19. The most effective method is to try to detect biochip locations. Unfortunately, these micro-simulators are difficult to detect by CT or MRI. They may show their location by an increase of small white or black dots on your skin. Laser can remove these infected skin dots so you can analyze them at Material Characterization Lab through “EDS – Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy”—proof that skin samples contain silicon, tin, titanium and platinum while biochips are made of the same materials. You will find a high percentage of radioactive contamination like Thorium, Radon, Uranium, Polonium, Plutonium and Radium, and in regards to the electronic chips, radiation injection Radiotherapy is one of the interventional radiological processes, or use intensive ultrasound HIFU (high-energy sound waves aimed directly at an area of abnormal cells or tissue to create heat that kills cells).
20. Submit a lawsuit against this program, telecommunication companies & nuclear establishment obligating them to pay a fine of at least $1 million for each person hurt by this program, giving all medical reports like the EDS report or other evidence from samples of the electronic bug audiovisual that looks like black carbon Smart Dust as they spread it over the bed or sitting area, as well as the chemical and physical parameters of water in toilets for the purpose of radioactive waste measurement
21. Raise awareness of the general public and legal system around the world about the serious human rights abuse utilizing remote influencing technologies of the Nuclear Energy Program and share the healing tactics for freedom through social media, press and television so that civilian populations do not fall victim. Stop the production of biochips and boycott their use in medical purposes.
Soon our only food buying option will be Amazon drone delivery! In store shopping will be an experience of the past.
We have learned from the World Economic Forum Website calories will be distributed based on what will be allocated for survival and vital needs. Keeping populations on the verge of starvation makes the slaves/prisoners more controllable.
Just think if you are fat in this coming new world you will be punished for obvious food theft and hoarding. Hum? Preppers
Another obstacle coming our way is the Postmaster GENERAL will announce significant increased postage rates and eliminate “first class and AIR”. The mail will be greatly slowed down – no longer next day. Think about HOW this move will slow our economy further.
DeJoy’s plan also prevents first-class mail from being shipped by airplane, instead relying on trucks and a relay of distribution depots, the sources said.
Insider Comment: Electric trucks will further slow down all delivery systems. Our transportation infrastructure is intentionally crumbling – adding to high maintenance and vehicle repairs. Bridge collapses (due to climate warfare) will disconnect us from deliveries and travel which is being phased out. The 5-minute life style WILL be our future. Communication is being severed – so why not expect the Postmaster GENERAL to reduce mail delivery times for a higher cost? Soon you will only live in a world that is digitized and we will become A.I. Cyborgs. These plans will not pertain to everyone – as many will be killed.
The changes would coincide with a significant hike in postage rates, which DeJoy has already said is ‘imminent’.
U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is set to implement a new strategic plan that includes higher postage rates and the elimination of first-class tier of mail.
The plan to eliminate first-class mail, which includes letters, magazines, catalogs, among others, would slow down mail that typically arrives within two days and make it more costly to deliver for both consumers and businesses.
Top postal officials are scheduled to testify before a U.S. congressional panel on February 24, 2021
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy ‘plans to eliminate two-day delivery for first-class mail and hike postage rates’ as USPS struggles with billions in losses
