Juno News - May 20, 2022


Andrew Lawton is heading to the WEF Annual Meeting


Episode Stats

Length

8 minutes

Words per Minute

200.72011

Word Count

1,691

Sentence Count

105

Misogynist Sentences

1


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 This week on Friday, I am off to Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum annual meeting.
00:00:08.980 Now before you tune out, I have not been invited. In fact, the World Economic Forum
00:00:13.140 has gone through painstaking lengths to prevent independent journalists like me
00:00:18.000 from going to cover what's happening at the upcoming meeting. And to be honest,
00:00:23.700 if you know me, you know I'm a little bit stubborn and that has probably made me want to go more.
00:00:29.140 So I'm going to just take a step back here and explain a little bit of why this is.
00:00:33.700 So I get messages all the time, emails non-stop about the World Economic Forum, about the WEF.
00:00:40.340 Every little while, a video from Klaus Schwab, the chairman and founder of the WEF, will circulate
00:00:46.340 saying creepy things like how he's penetrated so much of the Canadian cabinet and politicians around the world.
00:00:53.300 And then you get clips from people like Justin Trudeau explaining how it's all about the Great Reset,
00:00:59.140 or how the need to reset and all of these things. And all of the stuff that is coming out here
00:01:04.480 tends to be dismissed as conspiracy theory.
00:01:09.920 And the problem with this is that if you read the World Economic Forum's own language,
00:01:15.060 they make it abundantly clear what it is they want, what it is they want to do,
00:01:19.220 and less so how they want to get there. But to some extent, they're transparent about that.
00:01:23.600 So I think there are people that have very conspiratorial views of the World Economic Forum.
00:01:29.120 But I think that for the most part, the grievances that you can raise about them are using their own words,
00:01:34.360 the ideas that they put forward. And more importantly, all of the politicians who, by their own admission,
00:01:39.880 are hitching themselves to these things.
00:01:42.340 When I went to cover the World Economic Forum's meeting in January 2022,
00:01:46.820 I didn't actually have to go anywhere because the meeting took place online.
00:01:51.240 And what happened is some of the sessions were public, anyone could watch them,
00:01:55.720 others were behind closed doors, including one with Health Minister Patti Hajdu,
00:02:00.580 where as a Canadian taxpayer, I actually couldn't see her talking about,
00:02:04.520 I think the panel was cross-border mobility.
00:02:07.340 That seems like a bit of a problem. Maybe she wasn't talking about anything of substance,
00:02:11.440 maybe she was.
00:02:12.360 But you have politicians that go to this conference and all of a sudden are putting their thoughts and ideas
00:02:18.020 and perhaps their government's thoughts and ideas behind closed doors.
00:02:21.920 So for all that the World Economic Forum says, it's not a secretive organization.
00:02:25.940 It is an organization that prides itself on being the place where discussions happen,
00:02:30.700 the place where things happen.
00:02:32.260 And when they're having it in the mountains of Switzerland,
00:02:34.760 most people who are going to be affected by these decisions and these discussions
00:02:39.180 don't actually have the ability to be there for it.
00:02:42.900 So we decided at True North months ago that we were going to cover this.
00:02:46.440 And because of COVID, it's taken a little bit of time
00:02:48.440 for them to actually have another in-person meeting.
00:02:51.460 And the next one they have is scheduled for next week.
00:02:54.560 So I'm getting there a couple days early to get my bearings.
00:02:58.060 And again, this is not about feeding into conspiracy.
00:03:01.380 It's actually about shining a light on what it is the World Economic Forum actually wants to do
00:03:07.020 and how it will affect Canada, how it will affect the Western world.
00:03:11.260 And I just want to, to this point, explain a little bit about what they're promising for this event.
00:03:15.680 Again, in their own words.
00:03:17.840 They have a number of themes set out.
00:03:19.280 You can see it on their website here.
00:03:20.460 Climate and nature, fairer economies, tech and innovation, jobs and skills, better business,
00:03:26.420 health and health care, global cooperation, society and equity.
00:03:30.360 And again, all of these things, for the most part, sound pretty innocuous.
00:03:34.600 They sound pretty benign.
00:03:36.140 You click on one of them like, oh, I don't know, society and equity here.
00:03:39.680 And you see that all of the things they talk about, systemic oppression of people of color,
00:03:44.880 a widening gender gap, social injustice.
00:03:47.620 These are all the things that they're putting up as the backdrop.
00:03:51.060 But here's the interesting thing.
00:03:52.880 They promote these ideas along the lines of which of the United Nations
00:03:58.860 sustainable development goals they think discussions about these ideas will fulfill.
00:04:04.020 So a lot of these global institutions, they're not discrete entities that exist
00:04:08.260 without a huge amount of overlap.
00:04:10.880 So UN priorities form the backbone for the World Economic Forum,
00:04:15.260 which is technically a private sector group.
00:04:17.240 But it gets all of this fawning and adoration from governments, including from Canada.
00:04:21.900 And so far, we don't know what the Canadian delegation, if anything, is going to be.
00:04:27.060 And that's one of the reasons I want to be on the ground.
00:04:29.240 Who's there from Canada?
00:04:30.600 What are they talking about?
00:04:32.500 And I mentioned a moment ago that the World Economic Forum doesn't want us there.
00:04:36.400 Well, when they announced this date, I happened to be at my computer.
00:04:40.100 And immediately, like that second, I went and said, I got to book a hotel.
00:04:44.860 And didn't I find that every hotel for a considerable radius
00:04:47.720 had already been booked up before they even announced it?
00:04:50.720 Because anytime they announced the forum,
00:04:52.860 they, before they announced it, have all of the hotels under their control.
00:04:56.160 So you can't actually stay there unless you go through them
00:04:59.540 and you book through their accommodations platform,
00:05:01.800 which you can't do if you're not a registered attendee.
00:05:05.160 So I said, OK, great.
00:05:06.400 Let's just start and look at Airbnb.
00:05:08.760 So I looked at an Airbnb.
00:05:10.600 And Airbnb has, in a lot of cases, this process where you have to request a room.
00:05:15.640 And then they have to approve your reservation.
00:05:17.960 And I would request it.
00:05:19.180 It would be turned down.
00:05:20.280 I requested it would be turned down.
00:05:21.860 There were a couple of bookings that I actually got, secured bookings.
00:05:25.400 And then after I booked them, they got canceled by the host.
00:05:29.240 And one of them was very transparent with me because he said,
00:05:32.120 listen, the World Economic Forum, I have a contract with them
00:05:35.740 that whenever they say they want it, I have to give it over to them.
00:05:39.700 And if I don't rent them my own home, they have very steep penalties that they'll heap on me.
00:05:46.360 So I don't think the World Economic Forum was specifically saying,
00:05:49.420 oh, we heard Andrew Lawton booked an Airbnb and we don't want him there.
00:05:52.600 But I do think what the World Economic Forum does is they try to take over the whole town,
00:05:57.720 which can accommodate far more people than they bring in, as I understand it.
00:06:01.380 But they try to take over the whole town and the neighboring towns
00:06:04.220 for the sole purpose of making sure that only those they want there are there.
00:06:09.700 And they have a portal on which you can apply for accreditation as media.
00:06:14.340 But only those who are given a password, only a select invited group,
00:06:19.480 can even apply for accreditation.
00:06:22.140 And I asked a number of times over the last few months for that password.
00:06:25.920 I said, I don't even, I'm not even looking for a guarantee of accreditation.
00:06:29.400 I want you to give me the chance to seek accreditation.
00:06:32.640 I want you to let me ask you and not a single response.
00:06:37.060 So this is, I think, very important.
00:06:38.820 And so people have asked me, because we sent out an email to our subscribers yesterday,
00:06:42.740 telling them that, hey, we're going to cover this thing.
00:06:44.900 And people said, well, if you're not accredited, why are you going?
00:06:47.420 And that is a very fair question.
00:06:49.700 As you know, if you've been following me for a while,
00:06:52.100 you know I've covered things that I haven't been invited to in the past.
00:06:55.260 And you can get crafty with it.
00:06:56.720 And I'm not talking about doing anything illegal,
00:06:58.280 but you start to find other ways to figure out what's happening.
00:07:01.400 And in some cases, reporting on who's going in and coming out of a meeting is of value.
00:07:06.040 In other cases, these things are not actually all that closed off.
00:07:10.060 Once they get there, they're just trying to scare people away from doing exactly what I'm doing.
00:07:14.840 And in other cases, it's talking to the people in these communities.
00:07:17.940 What do they think about when this group comes to town?
00:07:20.340 So I don't exactly know what the coverage is going to look like,
00:07:23.940 because this is going to be a very fluid situation.
00:07:26.160 But the whole point is, is that there's a story here,
00:07:29.020 and a lot of people don't want to talk about it, and we are unafraid to talk about it.
00:07:32.920 So that's going to be what's coming up next week.
00:07:35.700 As I said, I'm going to be going up on Friday, but I'll be there by next week.
00:07:39.900 And I don't know what, again, like I said, I don't know if I'll be able to do whole shows,
00:07:43.180 or if I'll do video reports, or written content.
00:07:45.840 Again, you'll have to bear with us as we try to navigate through this.
00:07:48.700 But certainly, and maybe I'll get a one-on-one with Klaus Schwab.
00:07:51.680 You never know.
00:07:52.500 That would be absolutely wonderful.
00:07:54.300 So thanks to all of you who have supported that coverage.
00:07:56.980 And I will say, it is expensive.
00:07:59.220 And again, I know it sounds like, oh, you're sending Andrew Lawton to Europe.
00:08:02.220 This is not a vacation.
00:08:03.560 This is going to be very busy.
00:08:04.880 It always is.
00:08:05.880 If you want to chip in to support our coverage, please do.
00:08:08.880 You can do that at donate.tnc.news.
00:08:11.980 And we are trying to keep costs down.
00:08:13.600 I'm going alone.
00:08:14.220 I'm not going with a cameraman or anything like that.
00:08:16.760 I'm going alone, just me, my phone, my microphone, and my tenacity.
00:08:21.960 I don't know if you can quantify that, but we will do our best.