Juno News - Davos Day 2： The elites are hiding from their records

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:01:16.960 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:01:20.760 Hello and welcome to you all.

00:01:28.680 This is Canada's most irreverent talk show here coming to you live from almost Switzerland.

00:01:34.980 As I mentioned at the beginning of yesterday's show, and I spoke to you about, I believe, last week or a couple of weeks ago,

00:01:42.160 We are covering the World Economic Forum live, the annual meeting, which is taking place in the Swiss Alpine village of Davos.

00:01:51.280 But because the WEF likes to just buy up all of the hotels and Airbnbs within a rather sizable radius,

00:01:59.220 we were forced not just a couple of counties over, but we're even staying across the border in Österreich, as they say in, well, as they say in Österreich, as they say in Austria, where we are.

00:02:10.620 And we had Cosby and Georgia in the studio yesterday.

00:02:14.420 And by studio, I mean the hotel room.

00:02:16.540 We got a little creative today because we found there was like a button that turns on this like weird fake fireplace type thing,

00:02:24.440 which I hope is fake because I'm sitting right beside it and I might just melt by the time the show is done.

00:02:29.840 But nevertheless, this is going to be, I hope, an interesting show.

00:02:33.600 It's day two officially of the WEF's annual meeting 2024.

00:02:38.100 and we're already getting a bit of a glimpse of why it is that the elites don't like people

00:02:45.700 penetrating their safe space. Penetrating, that is the word that Klaus Schwab used to describe

00:02:51.500 his relationship with the government of Canada. As I mentioned yesterday, the theme for this

00:02:57.500 year's conference is rebuilding trust. And there was a clip I had shared from an interview Klaus

00:03:03.660 Schwab did, in which I learned that he doesn't really view the trust crisis as being one of

00:03:09.540 institutions making. He doesn't think it's the WEF's fault or the media's fault or government's

00:03:15.120 fault or experts fault that there's no trust in them. He thinks that it's the fault of so-called

00:03:19.700 egotistical people. He elaborated a little bit more in his opening remarks today. This was the

00:03:25.340 second day of the conference, but it was the first main day of programming. And in his opening

00:03:30.540 remarks, he talked about exactly what it is that rebuilding trust means. And what I found

00:03:36.400 interesting, it wasn't quite as menacing as the introduction he gave last year, I think it was,

00:03:42.700 the future is built by us, but still certainly some shades of that.

00:03:47.840 As trustees of the future, we are responsible for advancing a world which is richer in

00:03:56.560 in possibilities, more equitable in opportunities, and more secure in its foundations.

00:04:05.560 Moreover, as leaders in government, business and society, we bear a particular responsibility

00:04:17.560 to rebuild trust in how we assume our own role as trustees.

00:04:24.560 The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum is not a collective decision-making body,

00:04:31.560 but its impact stems from the new insights gained through dialogue and interaction,

00:04:40.560 and more importantly, from the commitments made by each participant to contribute more significantly

00:04:50.560 in the respective areas of responsibility to solving our most pressing issues

00:05:01.920 you can tell they're trying to preempt the conspiracy theories or what they denounce

00:05:07.360 and write off as conspiracy theories talking about how oh it's not a collective decision

00:05:12.000 making body we're not all just getting behind closed doors and deciding things no we're just

00:05:18.080 eliciting commitments for things from the people who are here behind closed doors yes and my

00:05:24.320 friends that's what i have said in the past that's what i said yesterday is why this is important to

00:05:29.280 cover because we have world leaders that are going here that are making these commitments

00:05:34.000 as claushoi puts them and their citizens are the ones left paying the price both literally

00:05:40.160 and figuratively now i wanted to just before we get into some of the newer things that have

00:05:44.400 happened today share a bit of context with you so yesterday i noted that this was an incredibly

00:05:50.000 untransparent organization doing a very untransparent conference and and by that i mean

00:05:56.240 that they have not released the guest list the 2800 delegates who are here in davos they're not

00:06:02.480 sharing anything about who they are yeah well except for like a few dozen world leaders they'll

00:06:09.440 mentioned that, oh, you know, Antony Blinken is there and the premier of China is there, but

00:06:14.260 not really the real member list or guest list here. So when we've been out and about on the

00:06:21.020 streets of Davos, what we've been doing is basically just, this will sound very low tech

00:06:25.580 because it is, you kind of just squint and everyone's wearing their name tag and you look

00:06:29.720 at the name and you look at the title or the organization and you decide if it's someone that

00:06:35.400 you should be grabbing, or sometimes you just recognize people outright. Now, why I share that

00:06:41.160 is because it's gotten a little bit difficult this year compared to years past. When we've done this

00:06:46.340 previously, this has just been like this billionaire Disneyland, where people are feeling

00:06:51.460 unthreatened, they're just walking about in their own little world, because they're not actually

00:06:55.160 used to anyone entering what I have termed the billionaire elite's safe space. They've never

00:07:02.260 really had any prying eyes here. One of the pervasive themes of this conference is that

00:07:07.180 much of the media who's in attendance is here not with the intent of reporting on the conference,

00:07:13.320 but they're actually here as the invited guests of the World Economic Forum. They're here with

00:07:17.760 the coveted white badges. So as to indicate, they are among the elites being feted and venerated.

00:07:25.500 Okay, so what does that mean about independent media here? Well, look, we can only do the work

00:07:31.040 we're doing from the street we aren't in the congress center we aren't inside but we can still

00:07:35.120 see a lot of the comings and goings now well this is true to some extent one thing i've noticed and

00:07:41.040 again this is early days still there seems to be a lot less coming and going than there was

00:07:46.960 even last year which is an apples to apples comparison because last year was generally

00:07:51.680 speaking a post-covid winter summit well this year it's harder to find people people seem to

00:08:00.160 to be in hiding. They are hiding their name tags. And what I found interesting is that even when you

00:08:05.040 get to the point where you can talk to people, they do not want to talk about their records.

00:08:11.020 Again, they're not comfortable with the idea of people paying attention and covering it. Dare I

00:08:15.920 say it, but the World Economic Forum has been put on notice and many of the people here,

00:08:21.280 certainly not Klaus Schwab, but many of the people that are outside that inner sanctum

00:08:26.180 of the organization seem to be running just a little bit scared. Now, I want to do a bit of

00:08:31.880 a history lesson here because two years ago, not long history, don't worry, there was a clip that

00:08:36.860 I shared that jumped out to me from one of the panels that ended up, I think it was like my most

00:08:42.080 viewed tweet ever. It got like millions. I can't remember the exact number, but millions of views

00:08:47.420 for this little clip of a guy named J. Michael Evans, who is the president of Alibaba Group,

00:08:53.740 which is a big Chinese merchandising sales distribution network, whatever you want to call

00:08:59.000 it. He's Canadian, but he has decided that he wants to go and legitimize this Chinese,

00:09:04.820 in many ways, state affiliated enterprise. Now, he was talking about one innovation, which if you

00:09:10.260 hear it just on its own merits will sound creepy, but all the more so if you think of it in the

00:09:15.260 context of China and its social credit system. We're developing through technology an ability

00:09:22.220 for consumers to measure their own carbon footprint what does that mean that's where are

00:09:28.980 they traveling how are they traveling what are they eating what are they consuming on the platform

00:09:34.200 so individual carbon footprint tracker stay tuned we don't have it operational yet but this is

00:09:41.800 something that we're working on a few little caveats there and i i don't want to do the

00:09:50.700 semantics thing. And I'm going to play this clip again for you in a few moments after another one

00:09:56.160 because he uses words developing yet. Stay tuned. He's talking about this. He's very excited about

00:10:04.780 this. An individual carbon footprint tracker. Now the most charitable defense that people would give

00:10:11.080 to that as well. He's not saying it's mandatory. No, it's just it's voluntary. It's a thing you

00:10:15.860 can do. If you want to track your carbon footprint, you can. Well, I brought up China because this is

00:10:22.400 a social credit score by another name. We're just measuring social credit, not in terms of

00:10:27.680 your diligence in upholding what the state wants in all areas. You're just doing it on the climate

00:10:33.440 front. Now, what was interesting when I shared this clip, it actually got a lot of criticism

00:10:37.160 from environmentalists who said, well, hold on. How come it's on individual people to make sure

00:10:42.120 that they're getting the low methane beef and not on people like J. Michael Evans to not take their

00:10:47.920 private jets to Davos. Now, to be clear, I don't know if he was one of the private jetters this

00:10:53.280 year at the World Economic Forum, but the point stands that it was a very creepy thing. And that

00:10:59.360 clip went around the world. The clip that we pulled, that we shared, was picked up by Legacy

00:11:04.060 Media. Now, lo and behold, I was out on the streets of Davos today, and don't I see Mr. J. Michael

00:11:10.740 evans now you may think i am trying to settle old scores by bringing up a two-year-old clip but

00:11:16.440 he was saying this was something he was moving ahead with and we should all stay tuned for so

00:11:20.860 i wanted to ask about that here's the exchange mr evans andrew lawton with the true north in

00:11:26.880 canada a couple years ago you were talking about a carbon footprint tracker that alibaba was

00:11:31.800 developing and i was curious if you think that's the way of the future don't know something to be

00:11:36.380 considered for sure do you think that everyone should have their carbon footprint tracked on

00:11:40.320 everything down to what they eat and where they go and what they buy? No, of course not. Then why

00:11:44.820 were you promoting it with such enthusiasm? I wasn't promoting it, just discussing it as an

00:11:48.380 idea. It's a product you're offering, is it not? No, it's not. Then why, you literally said you

00:11:52.980 were developing it. Lots of things get, you know, are in development that don't get used. Gotta go.

00:12:02.440 I love that. Oh no, we were just discussing the idea. Lots of things get developed. That doesn't

00:12:07.820 mean they happen. It's no biggie. And I love the little bit at the end, those three words,

00:12:13.000 gotta go. He just like bolted in, basically he did, what was the Looney Tunes character? It

00:12:18.880 wasn't, it was a roadrunner. Yeah, he just kind of did like a roadrunner there. He might as well

00:12:22.360 just said, well, maybe we'll do a dub online and we'll just do like meet meep and that'll be like

00:12:26.300 what he says. And then he just zooms off into the distance. But I want you to contrast what he said

00:12:31.380 there, this nonchalance of, oh yeah, no, just something to consider. It was just an idea. Who

00:12:35.820 knows we're not offering this, to the way he spoke about it. I'm going to play it again in 2022.

00:12:42.880 We're developing through technology an ability for consumers to measure their own carbon footprint.

00:12:50.640 What does that mean? That's where are they traveling? How are they traveling? What are

00:12:56.140 they eating? What are they consuming on the platform? So individual carbon footprint tracker.

00:13:03.400 Stay tuned.

00:13:04.340 We don't have it operational yet,

00:13:05.920 but this is something that we're working on.

00:13:11.320 Now, maybe this was just an example

00:13:14.340 of them getting some blowback

00:13:16.560 and realizing, okay, we shouldn't go down this road.

00:13:18.860 Maybe it was just that he was playing coy

00:13:20.680 because he didn't want to talk about the fact

00:13:22.160 that they still believe this is in fact the future.

00:13:25.220 I don't know.

00:13:25.960 But what it strikes me as is a guy

00:13:28.060 that when he's speaking to his elite friends

00:13:30.320 in the boardrooms and conference rooms of Davos

00:13:33.720 is all too willing to gloat about this stuff

00:13:36.320 that is very anti-individual

00:13:38.580 and very anti-science, I would say.

00:13:40.780 But when he's out and he realizes

00:13:42.260 he's talking to real people,

00:13:43.760 he is singing from a different songbook.

00:13:46.260 It's much like the interview I did

00:13:48.020 at that same World Economic Forum, by the way.

00:13:50.340 No, sorry, that was a different one.

00:13:51.760 With the minister of gas and petroleum in India,

00:13:54.720 Hardeep Singh Puri,

00:13:55.900 where he had inside the room

00:13:58.640 talked about the importance of just transition. And outside on the streets, he's saying,

00:14:02.840 well, yeah, no, that's not what real people think. These are elites that want to be members of the

00:14:09.440 club. But the problem is because they want to be members of the club, they end up giving what

00:14:14.200 Klaus Schwab termed in that clip I played earlier, those commitments. And who is it that pays the

00:14:20.340 price? People like you and me who can't really vote these people out. There's no way to vote

00:14:26.740 out, Klaus Schwab, there's no way to vote against the World Economic Forum's policy agenda unless

00:14:32.060 you have a government that is at least forthright enough to put it forward as their own national

00:14:37.520 agenda, which by the way, in Canadian context, some politicians have. There are some little

00:14:43.140 bits of candor on this, but not nearly as much as there should be. So J. Michael Evans was just

00:14:48.900 one example. I also caught up with John Kerry, who you may recall, he was once a big shot American

00:14:54.900 politician. He was a United States Senator. He ran for president in 2004, but lost to George W. Bush.

00:15:02.660 And he later found success as Joe Biden's climate envoy. So John Kerry is the guy they send to fly

00:15:08.920 around the world to tell you all that you shouldn't fly around the world. Not that you can afford to

00:15:14.020 anyway, because you're not John Kerry. Well, John Kerry has a private jet infatuation. Maybe that's

00:15:22.120 the right word. I don't know. Now, I'm not just saying he enjoys living high on the hog and that

00:15:26.740 sometimes his work lets him take a private jet. I'm saying in his personal life, his family

00:15:30.660 owns a private jet. His wife, Teresa Hines Carey, I believe still owns a private jet and he has

00:15:35.960 traveled on this regularly in the course of his life. I wasn't even going to do the private jet

00:15:41.560 thing because it's like the low hanging fruit with John Carey. But when I ran into him, the question

00:15:46.100 I wanted to ask him, I wasn't really getting any traction with, which was whether he views China

00:15:51.940 as being a partner in the fight against climate change now i i you may think i'm accepting the

00:15:56.660 premise there what i was trying to do if i i let you uh you know inside what's here which

00:16:01.540 not usually anything but just bear with me for a moment uh what i was saying is that uh there

00:16:06.420 needs to be an ideal ideally there needs to be a reckoning with the fact that china is

00:16:11.700 industrializing it's building more coal it doesn't really care about its emissions it's

00:16:15.860 uh dominant if you measure emissions and accept those measurements at face value

00:16:20.580 Well, countries like Canada are, what, one and a half percent.

00:16:24.540 So why, this would have been the second part of the question,

00:16:27.320 should people in Canada pay the price when China is not prepared to?

00:16:31.700 And John Kerry loves kissing the ring.

00:16:33.940 He loves shaking Xi Jinping's hand.

00:16:35.840 He loves talking about how great China is.

00:16:37.820 But he didn't want to talk about it when I ran into him earlier today.

00:16:42.100 Mr. Kerry, do you believe China is a good partner in the fight against climate change?

00:16:46.140 I'm not doing an interview right now because I'm late.

00:16:49.260 Well, I'm walking alongside you.

00:16:50.400 I won't make you miss your meeting.

00:16:51.820 We can walk and talk.

00:16:52.680 Do you believe China's a good partner in the fight against climate change?

00:16:55.180 I'm doing an interview right now.

00:16:56.300 Did you fly private, sir?

00:16:57.860 No, I did not.

00:16:59.320 Nope, I did not.

00:17:00.740 Are you saying he's never flown private?

00:17:02.780 Not us in this job, no.

00:17:04.320 Not in this job.

00:17:05.520 Do you believe your colleagues here should not take private jets here?

00:17:08.080 He can't grab me.

00:17:09.700 He can't grab us.

00:17:10.600 He's a nice society.

00:17:13.720 So there's a little bit you don't see there, and we don't normally edit footage.

00:17:18.440 The reason we edited there is, as you saw, Avi Amini from Rebel News was also horning in on my

00:17:24.820 opportunity with John Kerry there, and I didn't want to steal their thunder. So I'll let Avi put

00:17:29.900 out his questions, and I put out my questions, and Avi can put out my questions too. I don't

00:17:34.560 really care too, too much. And there was a bit of a physical altercation that he got into, which

00:17:38.500 fortunately I was spared from. But at one point I asked, look, do you fly private? And it was the

00:17:44.420 woman in front of him, who I don't know, presumably is an aide in some way, she got very indignant

00:17:49.500 about it and said, you know, no, never or something like that. And then I just got like baffled to

00:17:54.560 them. Like, hang on, are we just like totally, they call this gaslighting. Are we just like

00:17:59.100 totally rewriting history here? So then I got kind of indignant on my part. And I said, are you

00:18:03.980 saying he's never flown private? And then he, then you hear the other shoe drop as well. Well, not in

00:18:08.920 this job. Yeah. Okay. So your carbon footprint is job dependent. So you can fly in a private jet

00:18:15.160 when you're on your own time, but not when you are doing the climate work that Joe Biden has

00:18:20.840 asked you to do. So again, here's a guy that does not want to talk about his record, a guy that

00:18:25.960 doesn't want to talk about the things that matter to real people, the real people that are going to

00:18:31.480 have to pay the price for whatever commitments he and his colleagues make around the table

00:18:36.360 at Davos. Now, what I have said in the past on this is that people need to realize there is a

00:18:43.560 product being sold at Davos and it is access to politicians. Business leaders pay in some cases

00:18:50.100 tens of thousands of dollars to be at the World Economic Forum annual meeting. Some companies

00:18:55.500 pay basically hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to be members, which gives them the right

00:19:00.740 to buy tickets for tens of thousands of dollars. So the WEF is a big, giant money-making operation.

00:19:07.440 If you are Accenture, say, which is one of the so-called strategic partners of the WEF, or

00:19:12.680 Microsoft, or Salesforce, all of these people that are mainstays here, what do they get out of it?

00:19:19.540 Surely they have the ability to pick up the phone and call their colleagues. Surely the president

00:19:23.540 of Microsoft doesn't have difficulty getting most other people in the tech world and even other

00:19:28.900 world's on the phone. Why does he need to be here and spend so much money doing it? Because what

00:19:33.760 the WEF does is puts them in the same room as politicians. Politicians where it's not always

00:19:40.860 easy to just call them up. And more importantly, there are all these like pesky things like

00:19:45.140 lobbying registries that you need to contend with if you do. So when you're in Davos, these things

00:19:50.740 don't apply. The president of Microsoft, just to give one example, because I saw him today,

00:19:54.860 can end up behind closed doors with, I don't know, Ukraine's energy minister. I don't know

00:19:59.600 if those two have any conversations. I don't care. I'm using them purely as examples of people that

00:20:04.700 I've seen in the last four hours. People like Chrystia Freeland can end up behind closed doors

00:20:09.980 with Klaus Schwab without it being something that is registered or tracked or even announced or

00:20:14.300 disclosed anywhere on any official agenda. So the politicians get to come for free.

00:20:22.580 And there's an old saying, I don't know who coined it, I don't know the exact wording,

00:20:25.780 but the paraphrase of it, which I'll share with you now, is something I very much believe,

00:20:29.460 that if you are not paying for a product, you are the product.

00:20:32.460 This is why you don't pay to use social media, because you are the product being sold to

00:20:36.320 advertisers.

00:20:37.500 Politicians don't pay to be in attendance at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting,

00:20:41.500 because they are the product being sold to businesses.

00:20:45.420 So keep that in mind as you hear European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen

00:20:49.700 in her opening remarks this morning at the beginning of this conference.

00:20:54.520 Many of the solutions lie not only in countries working together,

00:21:00.000 but crucially on businesses and governments, business and democracies working together.

00:21:07.780 It has never been more important for the public and private sector

00:21:12.180 to create new connective tissue,

00:21:16.780 because none of these challenges respects borders. They each require collaboration

00:21:25.020 to manage risks and to forge a path forward. And this is what I want to talk today about.

00:21:35.100 While governments hold many of the levers to deal with the great challenges of our time,

00:21:39.900 business have the innovation, the technology, the talents to deliver the solutions we need

00:21:49.660 to fight threats like climate change or industrial-scale disinformation.

00:21:58.800 Industrial-scale disinformation. This is like the only industrial, like, oh, no, actually,

00:22:03.680 no, they don't like any industrialization. So yeah, industrial production, manufacturing,

00:22:07.820 and disinformation all going the way of the dodo bird. But that was her saying, yeah, we need to

00:22:14.240 bring more of an alliance between governments and corporations. These are the kinds of things that

00:22:19.840 many people on the left take great issue with traditionally. And I think people on the right

00:22:23.840 have started to, as the makeup of what the right looks like has changed, raise alarms with as well.

00:22:30.920 And I mean, when they use disinformation, again, I go back to what the theme of this conference is,

00:22:35.520 rebuilding trust but they don't view the institutions that have seen trust in decline

00:22:42.000 as sharing any blame in that they point elsewhere and say oh well yes it's industrial disinformation

00:22:47.840 that's the problem and what do we do we get commitments from private corporations to do

00:22:52.480 the government's dirty work and reign this in and again i mean i've said in the canadian context

00:22:57.440 when we're talking about speech regulations that the worst thing we could see is not government

00:23:03.840 censorship, but government deputized private corporate censorship, where you still have

00:23:09.240 government fiat behind it, but you don't even have the last ditch effort of like a judge that

00:23:16.180 you can go to, to review the decision. If Facebook is censoring you on the government's behalf,

00:23:21.160 who's your grievance with? Is it with Facebook or is it with the government? And this one,

00:23:25.920 actually, I haven't even seen the clip. I just saw a blurb that was shared by one of my colleagues,

00:23:30.340 Zartem in one of our group chats here. This is Alexandra Reeve-Gibbons, who is the president

00:23:37.040 and CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology, talking about one of those very commitments that

00:23:42.440 we could see that she would like to see evidently from private tech corporations. Take a look.

00:23:48.380 So we're in this bizarre environment where right as the threats are ticking up,

00:23:52.320 the investments in actually doing the day-to-day work of online trust and safety for our information

00:23:58.180 environment is being scaled back and is under attack. And those are all things we need to

00:24:02.420 recalibrate right now to try and address the threats. And just quickly, how?

00:24:08.020 Yeah, so we have to have the social media companies keep up the work. There are really

00:24:12.100 important lessons. Is there a way to force them to do that, push them to do that?

00:24:15.940 You get them to places like Davos and you have them talk about the work.

00:24:19.780 You know, right now, because a lot of it sadly is in the staffing and decisions of companies,

00:24:25.380 making sure they're putting in those investments, making sure that they're sharing information,

00:24:29.660 that they're doing it not just for the U.S. election, but for the other elections around the

00:24:33.240 world. You know, that has to stay a key focus, even if there is political pressure. There are

00:24:39.960 important lessons that we learned after 2016, right? Social media companies learned about

00:24:45.720 how you track mis- and disinformation campaigns, what coordinated inauthentic activity looks like

00:24:50.760 on a network, how you put breaks in, how when, you know, a rumor is flying, you get people

00:24:56.220 to check whether or not, you know, have you read this article before you forward it, fact

00:25:01.040 checking programs.

00:25:02.620 That architecture, it hasn't been a silver bullet by a long shot, but at least that architecture

00:25:06.960 has been in place.

00:25:08.560 And there's an entire academic field now that studies this and analyzes what interventions

00:25:12.360 might look like.

00:25:13.560 We have to make sure that those interventions are still in place this year as a bare minimum

00:25:18.180 for us to be able to navigate this landscape.

00:25:21.760 Now, just for context, when she talks about this year, there is in 2024, not just an American

00:25:28.180 election, but apparently someone said this and I haven't verified it myself, but it makes sense

00:25:32.240 enough sense that there are just going to be a ton of elections in 2024. For whatever reason,

00:25:36.440 this is just a global election year. So that's why, or at least part of the reason why mis and

00:25:40.640 disinformation are ostensibly so high on their radar. But isn't her solution so nice? How do

00:25:46.240 you force the tech companies to do what you want? Well, you just get them to Davos.

00:25:50.440 She says it with a bit of a chuckle. Maybe we don't read too much into it, but there does seem

00:25:54.780 to be this thinking that, oh, well, you just bring them there. And when they all get in the

00:25:58.740 same room, they magically make those commitments. Oh, well, it might be working. It might not be.

00:26:04.860 Who knows? I haven't seen much in the way of big tech executives running around. And if I do,

00:26:09.760 I may ask. I did, I'm just going to confess, I did take hot chocolate from Meta, which is the

00:26:16.940 parent company of Facebook. But in my defense, it was incredibly delicious. Hot chocolate,

00:26:20.860 you'll learn more about it when I bring back tomorrow the famous Davos hot chocolate ranking,

00:26:25.760 because as I will probably say in that video, you come for the world domination, you stay for

00:26:30.020 the delightful chocolatey beverages. But again, apart from the Meta hot chocolate, I haven't seen

00:26:34.700 much from Facebook on this. So it's entirely possible that they are all too willing to go

00:26:39.760 along with this. Maybe they're not. But why? Why is this the discussion that's being had?

00:26:45.940 Why is this the pressing issue facing society? Ursula von der Leyen, who I played that clip

00:26:51.640 from before, she had acknowledged in the beginning of her remarks that mis and disinformation are the

00:26:57.340 greatest global threat. She says more than war, it's mis and disinformation. And then a close

00:27:04.040 second behind that was polarization. Now, again, I can agree that polarization is the problem or is

00:27:11.700 a problem. I think that misinformation is a problem, believe it or not. I actually don't like

00:27:16.900 that there are a lot of people in society that do not seem to have the ability to discern. And I know

00:27:21.420 this when I get emails from people saying, did you hear X? And I just know that that's not in fact

00:27:26.060 the case. But the problem is, is that I know what misinformation is. Misinformation is people

00:27:31.340 believing something that is not true. There are a lot of people that think that if I say, oh,

00:27:36.420 well, the World Economic Forum is wielding disproportionate influence on political figures

00:27:40.900 in Canada, they will say that is misinformation, that is disinformation, that is far right,

00:27:45.640 it is dishonest, it is a conspiracy theory when it is literally from the very words of the founding

00:27:52.760 chairman of the organization. So the problem I have is that these people view misinformation

00:27:59.640 as information they do not want to be disseminated

00:28:03.320 instead of what misinformation actually is,

00:28:05.920 which is information that is untrue.

00:28:08.040 So no, I don't support them

00:28:10.760 when they want to summon the tech companies to Davos

00:28:14.240 and just make them take this seriously.

00:28:16.720 And I don't support them when that fails,

00:28:19.000 they decide they're going to proceed

00:28:20.540 with their own regulations instead,

00:28:23.200 which is what we're seeing in Canada.

00:28:24.520 Canada has failed to get social media companies

00:28:26.480 to do its bidding.

00:28:27.460 so now they are regulating them into compliance. And Facebook, a company with whom I have many,

00:28:32.900 many grievances, by the way, but I support them on this, said, look, we're just going to not play

00:28:37.940 ball with this. We're just not going to play this game. And as a result, True North is not accessible

00:28:42.100 in Facebook. Now, interestingly, we were driving, my colleague Cosman Dirja, Sean Thompson,

00:28:47.780 my producer, videographer, and I, and Sean was, no, sorry, Cosman was trying to pull up an article.

00:28:53.700 and the link that he found on Google was directing him to Facebook and he you know clicked the link

00:28:59.520 and even in Switzerland on his computer driving through the mountains he could not open this

00:29:04.840 article to a publication that had nothing to do with Canada because Facebook knew he was Canadian

00:29:11.520 this is literally Facebook knew he was a Canadian and said oh no you're not allowed to read the news

00:29:18.440 on Facebook and yeah it's easy to look at Facebook and say oh come on that's ridiculous but but

00:29:23.140 Facebook is playing the hand that it was dealt by the federal government. And I share that story

00:29:28.500 because this is precisely what happens when that malign alliance of government and private

00:29:33.700 entities, of government and tech companies in particular, are pushed into this place where

00:29:38.980 they are working together. And I said at the beginning, and I think the theme of this show

00:29:43.680 has been how the elites are in hiding. The ones that do come out don't want to really talk about

00:29:48.580 the record. Many of them don't want to come out at all. There have been some locals that have

00:29:53.800 taken issue with this. Now, this was just kind of a fun thing. I don't often do protest interviews

00:29:59.140 because I find a lot of protesters are just going out of their way to get attention. But

00:30:02.980 nevertheless, this was one that I felt succeeded in doing so because I was just out there waiting.

00:30:09.600 I can't remember if this was before or after I had met up with John Kerry, but very, very cold

00:30:15.680 outside was just hanging out on the street and i just heard this noise this indescript or a

00:30:21.680 nondescript noise that was getting louder and louder and i could not make out what it was

00:30:26.080 And eventually, I saw it was this.

00:30:29.820 Now, that was, I mean, that actually is not doing justice to just how loud that was.

00:30:58.760 it was just like echoing and thundering and what was weird is that those folks had this really

00:31:04.520 really insane police escort like they were being brought down the road by dozens of heavily armed

00:31:11.960 police officers and i figured okay i'll bite what what's the deal with this i was glad i did because

00:31:17.400 those bells were actually meant to be the sound of freedom according to one of the organizers

00:31:23.000 Why are you here and what's the name of your group?

00:31:27.000 It's called Freiheitsrichter, that means Freedom Bell Swingers.

00:31:33.440 So we send positive energy.

00:31:35.820 The origin is to send evil ghosts away, to get ghosts with beautiful energy here.

00:31:51.520 So the World Economic Forum are the evil ghosts to you, right?

00:31:54.400 They're the ones you're trying to get rid of?

00:31:57.580 I know only that this is a village of Switzerland.

00:32:01.860 This is a Swiss village.

00:32:04.460 And I know now it's locked.

00:32:07.120 And you can take a picture of there.

00:32:10.280 Is this dark or is this light energy?

00:32:13.440 We don't know.

00:32:14.200 It's dark.

00:32:14.820 They have dark uniforms.

00:32:17.380 We don't know people who are there inside.

00:32:19.960 how are they minded do they want to earn money with weapons do they want to earn money with

00:32:27.500 climate hoax we don't know that but we send light and we hope that you will do the best for this

00:32:38.800 planet stop bloodshedding so your issue is the secrecy secrecy you don't like that they're not

00:32:46.740 telling you what they're talking about i don't like this is a sweet uh a swiss village and here

00:32:52.980 you see some bricks you see a barrier you see a black people i mean uh people in black uniform

00:33:01.140 and they stop us this is our country we don't know why there are people that mighty

00:33:08.980 and that have so much fear that must block a road and that must block our swiss tradition

00:33:16.180 this is a swiss tradition this road is blocked we don't want that swiss traditions are blocked

00:33:23.780 by mr schwab we don't like that thank you very much you know it was weird at the beginning i

00:33:30.500 i didn't quite know where it was gonna go when we were talking about you know dark spirits and

00:33:35.380 light spirits and angels and evil ghosts and all of that i mean i still don't entirely know if he

00:33:40.020 was doing that to be poetic or if he genuinely views there is something uh more untoward there

00:33:45.620 But at the end, I actually found it quite moving, what he's saying.

00:33:48.960 Here were a group of just normal, ordinary Swiss people.

00:33:53.340 Many of them were farmers, I was told.

00:33:55.720 I spoke to a few of them.

00:33:56.840 Not all of them spoke English.

00:33:58.060 They were, I think, in many respects, working class Swiss people.

00:34:01.780 And they took issue with the fact that their country and this village is taken over once a year by people that really want nothing to do with them and won't even let them walk down the street.

00:34:12.580 And I mean, I can complain as an indignant Canadian journalist, I should be able to walk down the street and report on this.

00:34:17.660 But for them, they really they have more of a claim than I do to being able to walk down that street.

00:34:23.320 So it was a nice little point and proof that even through the personal carbon footprint trackers and the tech regulation and all of that,

00:34:31.440 there are real people in this country who are affected just by the World Economic Forum's existence to say nothing of the policies that are being prescribed there.

00:34:40.300 So we are going to get back at it tomorrow.

00:34:44.220 And I just want to say, I mean, it's been so nice to hear all of your messages and comments.

00:34:48.780 I even got some question suggestions for Mark Carney.

00:34:51.600 I did run into Mark Carney already, I will say.

00:34:53.900 Mark Carney is like the most frequent flyer of Davos.

00:34:56.540 You see him like on the streets, you know, multiple times today.

00:34:59.280 I saw him twice today.

00:35:00.300 I got like, I think, five seconds with him, which maybe I'll share tomorrow.

00:35:03.800 I haven't had a chance to see the clip yet.

00:35:05.440 But now it's a little bit different because now he's been like rumored as a replacement for Justin Trudeau.

00:35:10.640 So we'll try to get something more substantive from him later on on that.

00:35:15.360 But more coverage here.

00:35:16.800 And if you do want to support what we're doing, please do head on over to donate.tnc.news.

00:35:22.160 Donate.tnc.news.

00:35:23.760 My colleague Cosman did some of the dirty work.

00:35:27.200 Literally, he was like calling up escort agencies, not to, you know, to bill to the company.

00:35:31.380 But he was trying to get, not that I know of anyway.

00:35:33.560 I haven't seen the expense claims.

00:35:34.720 But he was trying to get a little bit of information about, you know, what some what some of the services being offered to.

00:35:42.880 So who's calling? I mentioned escorts on the show and someone calls me immediately.

00:35:46.100 So bear with me there. It's Klaus Schwab, actually.

00:35:50.300 And yeah, so he was doing that. Apparently they're all booked.

00:35:52.980 So take from that what you will. And I think there's another story that he has coming out very shortly about how some of the locals are being evicted.

00:36:01.520 while the WEF elite are living high on the hog

00:36:05.120 and in some cases getting like golden coat hangers

00:36:08.280 or something like that.

00:36:09.200 So do check out tnc.news for that.

00:36:11.620 And if you want to support our coverage here,

00:36:13.320 please do by heading over to donate.tnc.news.

00:36:17.000 That does it for us for today.

00:36:18.380 We will talk to you tomorrow live from overseas once again.

00:36:22.060 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

00:36:24.560 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:36:26.640 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:36:56.640 We'll be right back.

Juno News - January 16, 2024

Davos Day 2： The elites are hiding from their records

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