China Is Extending Its Totalitarian Controls to the Rest of the World

by Gordon G. Chang • April 27, 2021 at 5:00 am

In the Haidilao Hot Pot restaurant in... Vancouver, more than 60 surveillance cameras watch 30 tables and send feeds to China. The cameras, manager Ryan Pan explains, are there to "people track" and are "part of the social credit system in China."
In 2014, China's State Council issued guidelines for the establishment of a national "social credit system" by 2020, with the feeds from about 626 million surveillance cameras and smartphone scanners and with data from a multitude of sources ... For example, criticizing Chinese ruler Xi Jinping would result in the lowering of an individual's score. There are consequences for low-scored individuals.
Why did Beijing select Ryan Pan's restaurant for such intensive collection of information? For starters, it is near to the home rented by Huawei Technologies for staff attending to Meng Wanzhou, the firm's chief financial officer. Meng is in the middle of a multi-year struggle to avoid extradition to the U.S. for alleged bank fraud relating to sanctions evasion, and she is allowed to stay in one of her homes. Beijing, therefore, wants to know what people around her are saying and doing.
In addition to posing a crucial national security risk, the secretive transmission of video to China is a violation of British Columbia law, specifically, the province's Personal Information Protection Act.
Beijing will, at some point, be able to assign a social credit score to just about everyone on the planet.... it is just a matter of time before they succeed.
China's Communist Party wants to know everything that happens everywhere on the planet. So far, the Western democracies do not seem to be putting up much of a fight.

In the Haidilao Hot Pot restaurant in the Kitsilano district of Vancouver, Canada (pictured), more than 60 surveillance cameras watch 30 tables and send feeds to China. The cameras, manager Ryan Pan explained to Scott McGregor and Ina Mitchell, are there to "people track" and are "part of the social credit system in China." (Image source: Ina Mitchell)

China is surreptitiously collecting, for use in its domestic social credit system, video from a popular eatery in Canada.

In the Haidilao Hot Pot restaurant in the Kitsilano district of Vancouver, more than 60 surveillance cameras watch 30 tables and send feeds to China. The cameras, manager Ryan Pan explained to Scott McGregor and Ina Mitchell, are there to "people track" and are "part of the social credit system in China."

This restaurant is corporate-owned, one of two Haidilao locations in that port city in British Columbia. There are more than 935 of the chain's restaurants worldwide with over 36 million VIP members. The business started in China's Sichuan province.

Why do we care? Beijing is evidently extending its totalitarian controls to the rest of the world.

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Biden Acknowledges the Armenian Genocide; What about the Other Current Genocides?

by Raymond Ibrahim • April 27, 2021 at 4:00 am

US President Joe Biden, to his credit, has become the first sitting president formally to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide since it occurred more than century ago.
More recently, there appears underway an attempted genocide by the Communist Chinese of the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. More than a million are being held in 1,300 concentration camps. Although the Chinese State insists on calling them "re-education camps," reports are that they come complete with forced labor, torture, surveillance, forced sterilization and rape.
Companies supporting the supply chains of these crimes against humanity apparently include "at least 82 well-known global brands in the technology, clothing and automotive sectors, including Apple, BMW, Gap, Huawei, Nike, Samsung, Sony and Volkswagen."
Adding to that, Communist China's deliberate deception about the human-to-human transmissibility of the Wuhan virus has so far killed more than 3,000,000 people on the planet, it would seem imperative to move the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics to a country that really does espouse the ideals that the Olympic committee professes: " ...the educational value of good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles." Yes, it is short notice, but doubtless there are many deserving countries that would be happy to scramble. At the very least, the world should not "reward" Communist China by enriching it to commit further aggression.
What several international organizations, however, have referred to as a genocide of Christians at the hands of Muslims is currently taking place in Nigeria -- as well as in Mozambique, South Sudan, and other sub-Saharan nations -- and in dire need of being acknowledged so that efforts at rectifying the situation can begin.
As commendable as it is for Biden to have recognized the Armenian Genocide, turning his attention to those who are currently experiencing hate and genocide would be far more practical -- it would save lives -- than acknowledging history.

To his credit, U.S. President Joe Biden has become the first sitting president formally to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide since it occurred more than century ago. An even more laudable next step would be to acknowledge the current genocides and hate speech fueling them -- and to take steps against them. There appears underway an attempted genocide by the Communist Chinese of the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. More than a million are being held in 1,300 concentration camps. Pictured: The outer wall of an internment camp on the outskirts of Hotan, in China's Xinjiang region. (Photo by Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)

To his credit, U.S. President Joe Biden has become the first sitting president formally to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide since it occurred more than century ago. On Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, April 24, 2021, the American president issued a statement opening with the following words:

"Each year on this day, we remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring. Beginning on April 24, 1915, with the arrest of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople by Ottoman authorities, one and a half million Armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination."

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BRIAN GEMMELL ON BIBLE PROPHECY AND END TIME RAPTURE EVENTS

Tuesday 27 April 2021