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--:-- John Bickley: Good morning, I'm John Bickley, and this is Morning Wire.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And I'm Georgia Howe. It's Friday, December 3rd.
--:-- John Bickley: China has unveiled a new surveillance system which will identify and track journalists, foreign students, and other people of interest as they enter and move about the country. Who will be labeled threats by the communist regime? We have the details.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And New York City will be the first city in the nation to provide drug users with supervised injection sites where drug users can shoot up under medical supervision. We'll take a look at this highly controversial program.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. This show is sponsored by Dwell. The wisdom of the Bible has stood the test of centuries, and reading it is well worth everyone's time. But having the time to read anything these days is increasingly difficult. Dwell is a five-star app that makes it so easy to get into the Bible by providing a world-class listening experience. And today, you can try Dwell for free by going to dwellapp.io slash morningwire. That's dwellapp.io slash morningwire.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Concern over the safety of Chinese tennis player Peng Shui has now prompted the suspension of all Women's Tennis Association events in China, with Chairman and CEO Steve Simon making the announcement this week. Here to tell us more is Daily Wire sports reporter Joe Morgan.
--:-- Joe Morgan: Hey, John. Yeah, so as we've discussed before, on November 2nd, female tennis pro Peng Shui posted to Chinese social media that a former vice premier of the Communist Party sexually assaulted her three years ago following a round of tennis while his wife allegedly guarded the door.
--:-- John Bickley: Peng's post was deleted about 30 minutes after, and her Weibo account was blocked to searchers. From that point on, no one heard from or saw her in public, raising a lot of concern over her safety.
--:-- Joe Morgan: Multiple tennis stars posted to social media, raising the alarm over her whereabouts. On November 20th, videos of Pong were published by Chinese state media. The videos show her eating at a restaurant and attending a youth tennis tournament in Beijing.
--:-- Georgia Howe: She later had a call with Thomas Bach, head of the International Olympics Committee, in which Pong said she was, quote, safe and well, but obviously there is still a lot of concern about the situation, which leads us to Tuesday.
--:-- Joe Morgan: So tell us about this significant announcement from the WTA. Sure. So chairman and CEO of the WTA, Steve Simon, has really been the one individual who has refused to let the story go away. Even following the IOC's call with Pong, Simon refused to let up, saying the video, quote, does not change our call for a full, fair and transparent investigation without censorship into her allegation of sexual assault.
--:-- John Bickley: Simon has stated in past weeks that the WTA is willing to pull business out of China if her accusations of sexual assault are not investigated and, quote, until we have a chance to speak with her directly.
--:-- Joe Morgan: He made good on his promise Tuesday by suspending all WTA tournaments in China, including in Hong Kong, which is a huge deal because the Winter Olympics are scheduled to begin in Beijing February 4th.
--:-- Georgia Howe: If the Chinese authorities weren't going to treat these allegations seriously and we weren't able to have direct contact with Pong, we were prepared to pull our business.
--:-- Joe Morgan: So he's taken a very firm stance on this. More firm than anyone, really. Simon says that he has, quote, serious doubts that she is free, safe, and not subject to censorship, coercion, and intimidation.
--:-- John Bickley: So he's standing firm on his demands for an investigation. On Wednesday, the IOC did say they held a second call with Pong offering their support, and they reported that she was, and I am quoting here, safe and well given the difficult situation she is in.
--:-- Joe Morgan: But at this point, the WTA isn't taking anyone's word until they speak to Pong directly.
--:-- Georgia Howe: We often hear about American sports and entertainment organizations going easy on China and overlooking human rights in favor of profits like the NBA and ESPN and Hollywood. But here we have something quite different, a very strong stance.
--:-- Joe Morgan: How unprecedented is this move by women's tennis? I mean, yeah, it really hasn't happened before. American sports leagues make a lot of their money from China, so they've been extremely reluctant to stand up to the Chinese government in the past.
--:-- John Bickley: So this move from women's tennis is pretty unprecedented, but it might be part of a larger trend. For example, Boston Celtic Center Ennis Cantor Freedom, who, by the way, on Monday became a U.S. citizen and legally changed his last name to Freedom, has basically stood alone in the NBA in calling out China.
--:-- Joe Morgan: Over the past month, he has been extremely outspoken about freedom in Hong Kong, Tibet and Taiwan, so much so that Celtics games are now dropped from streaming platforms in China.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So now it seems like women's tennis is joining him and it seems like fans are standing by them. It's certainly a bold move on their part that sends a very powerful message.
--:-- Joe Morgan: Yeah, it does.
--:-- John Bickley: Joe, thanks for the reporting.
--:-- Joe Morgan: Absolutely. Daily Wire's sports reporter, Joe Morgan.
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--:-- John Bickley: Coming up, China rapidly expands its surveillance program. This show is sponsored by Birch Gold Group. Inflation is destroying the dollar. Birch Gold Group can help protect your IRA or 401k with a precious metals IRA. Text WIRE to 989898 to claim a free info kit on physical gold and silver. There's zero obligation. Text the word WIRE to 989898 to protect your savings today.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Amid continued concerns about China's repressive tactics, the communist regime is ramping up its monitoring systems. By 2022, China is projected to have one surveillance camera for every two people. Here with more on this aggressive new expansion of the surveillance program is Daily Wire's Ian Howarth.
--:-- Ian Howarth: Yeah, well, we've been talking about the slow expansion of tech-based authoritarianism in China for a while now, both on the Daily Wire website and here on Morning Wire. The latest on this front involves China's use of a traffic light system as they work to strictly monitor journalists and so-called other people of concern.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And what does the traffic light system involve exactly? Well, this is all based on documents seen by BBC News. They reported that this system isn't an actual traffic light system, but one that puts journalists in one province into one of three categories, green, yellow, and red.
--:-- Ian Howarth: And based on these documents, the people put in the red category would be, quote, dealt with accordingly. And this doesn't just apply to journalists. Foreign students and migrants are also being monitored. With this technology including facial recognition linked to thousands of cameras and also linked to multiple databases of people already being tracked.
--:-- John Bickley: That's pretty unnerving. What about people who are in the yellow or green categories? Well yellow means people of general concern and green means journalists who as they put it, are harmless.
--:-- Ian Howarth: The traffic light system would trigger alerts the moment journalists in the red or yellow category book travel in the Henan province.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Another layer here is the sheer amount of data the people designing this system want to obtain. This includes cell phone data, social media information, vehicle details, hotel stays, travel tickets, what property they own, and all photos from existing databases.
--:-- Ian Howarth: What's particularly scary about this technology is that, at least according to the uncovered documents, the system is expected to be sensitive enough to identify people even if their faces are partly covered by glasses or masks.
--:-- John Bickley: China's been deploying this technology for a little while now. Last year we heard that story about how they were using facial recognition to track Uyghur Muslims.
--:-- Ian Howarth: Yeah, that's right. Last year it was reported that the controversial Chinese company Yahweh had tested artificial intelligence software that could recognize Uyghur Muslims and alert law enforcement based solely on their racial identity.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But all of this is just one small part of a massive surveillance strategy being imposed by the Chinese government. Back in 2018, for example, state media in China reported that the country's facial recognition system was capable of scanning the faces of China's 1.4 billion citizens in just one second, which at the very least instills fear in the country's population and at the very worst expands an already tight level of control on the lives of the people living and working in China.
--:-- Ian Howarth: Another ominous report out of China.
--:-- John Bickley: Ian, thanks.
--:-- Ian Howarth: Of course. That's Daily Wire's Ian Howarth.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: New York City is set to open two supervised drug injection sites in Manhattan, the first city in the U.S. to do so. Users will be allowed to bring their own drugs into the facilities and will be provided options to treat their addictions. Here to discuss the situation is Daily Wire senior editor Ash Short.
--:-- Ash Short: So Ash, what is New York City thinking with this new initiative? Well, New York City, like other major cities in the country, think they can help drug addicts by providing clean needles and free overdose treatments.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Opponents of such moves, of course, question the legal and moral implications for what is essentially the state-sanctioned use of illegal drugs.
--:-- Ash Short: But New York City is taking a big step here by being the first city in the nation to provide these supervised injection sites rather than just handing out clean needles.
--:-- John Bickley: Other major U.S. cities like Philadelphia and San Francisco appear to be moving towards supervised injection, but haven't actually opened any sites yet.
--:-- Ash Short: And how bad is the drug overdose problem in New York City that they're going this route? Well, as you reported last week, the National Center for Health Statistics said that more than 100,000 people died from overdoses between April 2020 and April 2021, which is an increase of nearly 30% over the previous 12-month period.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Right. In New York City alone, more than 2,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2020, which was the highest number recorded in 20 years when the city first began recording overdose deaths.
--:-- Ash Short: In just the first three months of 2021, New York City had nearly 600 overdose deaths.
--:-- John Bickley: So will this be taxpayer funded? Will the government be running these drug centers?
--:-- Ash Short: Yes and no. The facilities will be run by two nonprofits, New York Harm Reduction Educators and Washington Heights Corner Project, who have merged to form On Point NYC. The city and thus taxpayers do provide funding to those nonprofits however.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And what do we know about what these centers are actually like on the inside? Reporting on how these centers operate seems to compare them to waiting at the DMV so it's not clear whether this option will actually be appealing to drug users.
--:-- Ash Short: Apparently, there are bathroom stalls for people to shoot up in, and staff will enter those bathrooms if the drug users are in there for more than 15 minutes. They're then encouraged to sit in a waiting room in case they overdose.
--:-- John Bickley: So is this actually legal and has there been legal pushback? Not from the Democrat-run state legislature or the White House.
--:-- Ash Short: Federal law states that it is illegal to operate a building that allows people to use illegal drugs, but Democrats at the local and federal level have declined to enforce federal drug laws for the past decade.
--:-- Georgia Howe: A similar proposal did get pushback from the Trump administration in 2019 when the Department of Justice sued to keep Philadelphia from opening a supervised injection facility, but there isn't any indication that President Biden will move to do the same.
--:-- Ash Short: However, one New York Republican Congresswoman, Nicole Malliotakis, is staunchly opposed to this program, and she is lobbying the Biden administration to intervene.
--:-- John Bickley: And while the Biden administration hasn't endorsed supervised injection sites, it hasn't spoken out against them either.
--:-- Ash Short: Earlier this year, President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris released a statement saying they were committed to reducing overdose deaths. They did not specifically mention supervised injection sites, but they did list evidence-based treatment and harm reduction efforts.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And going back several years, the Obama administration also took a progressive approach to marijuana laws, in some cases declining to enforce federal laws currently on the books.
--:-- Ash Short: And what do New York City residents think about these centers? There seems to be some sense that residents are fine with the injection sites as long as they're not near their own homes.
--:-- John Bickley: A community board member in East Harlem made this exact statement to The New York Times, though she added that these sites won't address the root cause of drug addiction.
--:-- Ash Short: Ash, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Ash Short: Of course. That's Daily Wire senior editor Ash Short.
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--:-- John Bickley: Other stories we're tracking this week. Early Thursday morning, Major League Baseball locked out players. The move follows the expiration of the collective bargaining agreement, and sources say negotiations don't appear to be close.
--:-- Georgia Howe: This is the first work stoppage for the league in a quarter decade.
--:-- John Bickley: And on Thursday, Germany announced a nationwide lockdown exclusively for unvaccinated people. The unvaccinated will be banned from most businesses and will only be permitted to meet with a maximum of two people from outside of their household.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel announced plans to implement a vaccine mandate as early as February. She also added that vaccinated status would only last nine months after the most recent shot, meaning citizens must get boosters to maintain their status.
--:-- John Bickley: If you like this episode and are interested in hearing more, subscribe to Morning Wire on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening, and give us a five-star review.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back tomorrow with the news you need to know.
--:-- John Bickley: If you like this podcast, subscribe to our Morning Wire newsletter available exclusively to Daily Wire members. Get the Morning Wire newsletter delivered straight to your inbox when you join at dailywire.com slash subscribe. Use code MORNINGWIRE to try a Reader's Pass membership and get your first month for only 99 cents.
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