Juno News - January 17, 2024


Davos Day 3 ｜ Javier Milei warns WEF about dangers of socialism

Topics
collectivism energy transition in India boycotting the World Economic Forum lockdowns and Vaccine Mandates pandemic agreement
Mentioned
Javier Malay Andrew Lawton Show Hardeep Singh Puri Chrystia Freeland Ricky Gervais Klaus Schwab Elisa Angel J. Michael Evans Antonio Guterres Jeffrey Epstein Cosman Georgia Greta Thunberg Justin Trudeau Javier Millet Boris Johnson Callum Smiles Prince Andrew Donald Trump Brad Smith Avi Yamini and 8 more
John Kerry still doesn’t want to talk about China Davos Day 4 ｜ Online censorship finds a home at WEF

Episode Stats


Length

34 minutes

Words per minute

168.74

Word count

5,873

Sentence count

325

Harmful content

Misogyny

6

sentences flagged

Toxicity

7

sentences flagged

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Andrew Lawton is in Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum, and there's a lot to be said about the lack of people willing to speak to the media, and the silence that surrounds them. Today's guest is Javier Malay, an Argentine economist who has been a regular at Davos before, and who is now the president of Argentina.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
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.
00:01:16.980 This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
00:01:30.800 Hello, and we're most ready to hear the Martin Show on True North on this Wednesday, January 17th,
00:01:38.020 day three of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, where I am, well, not quite.
00:01:45.040 I know I've told the story every day this week. Bear with me. I'll do it in like 15 seconds or less now.
00:01:50.240 We've had to stay in the neighboring country of Austria, specifically the little ski town of Donburn,
00:01:56.600 because the World Economic Forum snatches up like every hotel and Airbnb within a rather sizable
00:02:02.080 radius. So here we are, but we're still going live and we are still getting in many hours of every
00:02:12.360 day to Canadians. In fact, I say most things. Some of the questions we've been chatting about
00:02:23.840 with people, involve what they've said and done in Davos. In other cases, we meet someone who is
00:02:28.920 a bit of a subject matter expert. We want to ask them about that. I'm trying to kind of get a sense
00:02:34.720 and I can't recall every interview I did when I was in Davos last year, but people seem to be less
00:02:41.020 eager to speak this time around. And in fact, as you'll learn on the show today, we've got a bunch
00:02:48.020 of these clips that I've done where, you know, you look and you'll say, oh, wow, I spoke to so-and-so
00:02:52.800 and then you find that, oh, that interview was like, you know, four seconds because I asked a
00:02:57.420 question and they didn't give an answer. So that is effectively the problem that we're dealing with.
00:03:03.120 A lot of people do not want to speak. A lot of people are not willing to speak. And I think
00:03:07.800 yesterday was an interesting example of probably why that is. I spoke to J. Michael Evans, who was
00:03:13.480 the guy a couple of years back promoting the individual carbon footprint tracker.
00:03:17.640 and now he is left to just effectively pretending that he never said what he did last time he was
00:03:25.480 here. So that is I think why it's important to ask these questions and I'll say that silence
00:03:30.260 is deafening. A lot of the times these world leaders and business leaders giving me
00:03:35.300 non-answers and giving you non-answers because I'm here asking questions on your behalf
00:03:40.440 is far more revealing and I would say probably far more honest than anything they would have
00:03:46.040 said had they decided to open their mouths. So we got a few of those today, but the big story
00:03:51.380 is Javier Malay bringing what I would say rhetorical blame to this gathering of self-styled
00:04:00.740 elites in the Swiss Alps. Now, Javier Malay has been to the World Economic Forum before. He is
00:04:05.540 an economist. He's a bit of a renegade and a rebel. He's spoken at the WEF, and he has always
00:04:11.060 been a libertarian. And I know there were some people that were a little bit skeptical of this.
00:04:14.920 Was he just going to be some globalist shill now that he has become the Argentine president?
00:04:20.480 Now, when Javier Malay was added to the speakers list at the World Economic Forum this year,
00:04:25.840 I reported it and I had a number of people think, oh my goodness, this is not something
00:04:30.120 that we should be celebrating.
00:04:32.420 And then Javier Malay showed up.
00:04:35.080 And I'll say a couple of things about this.
00:04:37.300 One thing that was very important is that he did not change his tune at all from what
00:04:42.820 he talks about when he is campaigning and what he talks about in the media. This was
00:04:46.920 him making a rather significant and I would say cogent defense of capitalism.
00:04:52.260 If free enterprise capitalism and economic freedom have proven to be extraordinary instruments to
00:04:58.740 end poverty in the world, and we are now at the best time in the history of humanity,
00:05:03.440 it is worth asking why I say that the West is in danger. And I say this precisely because
00:05:12.360 In those of our countries that should defend the values of the free market, private property and the other institutions of libertarianism, sectors of the political and economic establishment, some due to mistakes in their theoretical framework and others due to a greed for power are undermining the foundations of libertarianism, opening up the doors to socialism and potentially condemning us to poverty, misery and stagnation.
00:05:37.900 And it should never be forgotten that socialism is always and everywhere an impoverishing phenomenon that has failed in all countries where it's been tried out.
00:05:46.620 It's been a failure economically, socially, culturally, and it also murdered over 100 million human beings.
00:05:58.660 That was, you may think, okay, fine.
00:06:01.400 You know, he talks about capitalism.
00:06:02.740 Big whoop.
00:06:03.240 Most of the people in that room are capitalists, at least the business magnates to whom he's speaking.
00:06:07.900 But it was important nonetheless.
00:06:10.060 I mean, the World Economic Forum is, yes, nominally a capitalist free market organization.
00:06:15.020 But I say nominally because it doesn't really work out that way.
00:06:18.120 It's the same group that fets Antonio Guterres, the Secretary General of the United Nations,
00:06:22.820 and quite literally a socialist.
00:06:25.160 That's not just me saying, oh, he's a socialist.
00:06:27.160 He is actually a socialist.
00:06:28.580 He represents a socialist party.
00:06:30.320 You also have Klaus Schwab talking about his grand vision of remaking capitalism,
00:06:36.480 a capitalism that looks at government and industry and society as partners and co-owners
00:06:44.100 of companies instead of shareholders, which is, you know, the actual definition of capitalism.
00:06:50.080 And one thing that's interesting is that Javier Malay was kind of preempting the concerns that
00:06:55.100 people give when he talks about socialism. And why this is so important is because he was
00:07:00.400 really saying right from the outset, I'm not going to let you string me up on semantics
00:07:05.060 when I reject socialism.
00:07:07.420 He described perfectly what socialism is to him.
00:07:12.680 ...produced by collectivism is no fantasy,
00:07:16.500 nor is it an inescapable fate.
00:07:18.900 But it's a reality that we are...
00:07:20.900 Sorry, we're going to build up to that clip.
00:07:23.740 I think that's more of a dessert here.
00:07:25.660 This was on me.
00:07:26.820 This is the one I'm talking about
00:07:28.020 when he's talking about the West
00:07:28.920 being under threat from socialism.
00:07:31.840 Unfortunately, already started to go along this far.
00:07:34.120 I know to many it may sound ridiculous to suggest that the West has turned to socialism, but it's only ridiculous if you only limit yourself to the traditional economic definition of socialism, which says that it's an economic system where the state owns the means of production.
00:07:52.120 This definition, in my view, should be updated in the light of current circumstances.
00:08:00.120 Today, states don't need to directly control the means of production to control every aspect of the lives of individuals.
00:08:09.820 What he's done there is quite important, and it's a lead up to the point that he ended on,
00:08:16.700 which I think is important here and really speaks to what has kind of emerged as the theme of the day.
00:08:21.860 And it was kind of where I was going anyway, before Javier Malay took the stage.
00:08:26.380 Now, I'll say two things on this before I get there.
00:08:28.700 Number one, this is what world leaders should be doing when they come to Davos, if they come to Davos.
00:08:34.020 And I'm sympathetic to the argument that speaking here and being here is not itself an example of someone being a sellout.
00:08:43.040 It depends what you do here.
00:08:45.100 And most leaders, when they come here, do sell out.
00:08:47.680 They do decide to kiss Klaus Schwab's ring.
00:08:50.200 They go along with what I'll say is just basically the globalist songbook.
00:08:54.300 They all sing the same chorus and they don't really leave much room for individuality.
00:08:58.560 So what Javier Malay did here is incredibly important in that vein.
00:09:01.900 Now, he was a little bit flattering with some of the business leaders in attendance.
00:09:06.960 Now, I would say maybe too much, but I understand the point he's trying to make here because
00:09:11.280 these are people who are creating wealth by virtue of what they're doing.
00:09:16.560 Now, largely, the business leaders in Davos are creating wealth for themselves.
00:09:20.560 But if you are a capitalist, you believe that large corporations, large businesses that bring in money are making opportunities for people.
00:09:29.440 They're stimulating the economy.
00:09:30.780 Now, we can haggle over inequality and equality.
00:09:33.720 We can haggle over trickle down economics and all of that.
00:09:36.660 But I think he was making a very clever point here in how he ended his remarks, even if it did sound a bit deferential on the surface.
00:09:45.140 Take a look.
00:09:45.560 The impoverishment produced by collectivism is no fantasy, nor is it an inescapable fate.
00:09:52.540 But it's a reality that we Argentines know very well. 0.87
00:09:55.180 Do not be intimidated either by the political castes or by parasites who live off the state. 0.94
00:10:01.380 Do not surrender to a political class that only wants to stay in power and retain its privileges. 0.70
00:10:06.700 You are social benefactors. You're heroes. You're the creators of the most extraordinary period of prosperity we've ever seen. Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral. If you make money, it's because you offer a better product at a better price, thereby contributing to general well-being.
00:10:27.320 do not surrender to the advance of the state. The state is not the solution. The state is the
00:10:33.680 problem itself. You are the true protagonists of this story. And rest assured that as from today,
00:10:40.200 Argentina is your staunch, unconditional ally. Thank you very much and long live freedom. Damn it.
00:10:49.340 Long live freedom. Damn it. Now, this is like a Javier Malay catchphrase, 1.00
00:10:55.000 which I don't believe the interpreter did justice to.
00:10:58.120 I think that you had to hear it in Javier Millet's original tone and cadence to appreciate it.
00:11:04.000 But nevertheless, that was what he said.
00:11:06.320 That was how he ended.
00:11:07.220 And it was probably not something that had ever been said before. 0.98
00:11:09.740 I'm not talking about the dammit. 0.95
00:11:10.620 I'm talking about the freedom part. 0.94
00:11:12.480 That was not something that world leaders at Davos have ever heard other world leaders at Davos say, I suspect.
00:11:19.160 Now, Javier Millet did what a lot of his supporters thought and hoped he would do when he got there.
00:11:24.320 He took a flamethrower to the sacred cows and said, I'm going to stand up for liberty.
00:11:28.380 I'm going to stand up for markets.
00:11:29.600 And yeah, we are not going to say that making money is immoral.
00:11:33.520 Good on him for doing that.
00:11:35.140 Now, just as a bit of an aside here, Javier Malay did the opposite of what many of those
00:11:40.560 attending Davos did by taking their private jets to then get on the private helicopter
00:11:45.240 and then get in the limo.
00:11:46.660 He flew commercial, which heads of government will oftentimes claim they are not able to
00:11:51.580 do or aren't allowed to do for security reasons.
00:11:53.680 But, you know, the UK prime minister, the Australian prime minister, they've all flown commercial.
00:11:57.800 The Canadian prime minister does not.
00:11:59.700 And that's true.
00:12:00.280 Conservative, liberal, doesn't matter.
00:12:02.400 Javier Malay flew Lufthansa from Buenos Aires to Frankfurt.
00:12:06.360 And then he got on a connecting flight in Frankfurt to get to Zurich, where, you know, it's a couple hours from Davos.
00:12:13.580 But it was interesting to see how much support he had on that plane.
00:12:18.320 And this was just a little snippet of one of the videos, many, many videos and photos
00:12:22.520 that were uploaded of his commercial flight.
00:12:25.300 imagine just like looking up and seeing in you know three seats ahead of you a weird hairdo and
00:12:49.280 a leather coat and you're like oh that's kind of odd that guy looks like a an aging 80s rocker or
00:12:53.460 the president of Argentina. And you say, oh, it must be the 80s rocker. And then you realize, oh,
00:12:57.160 no, that is the president of Argentina right there. Flying commercial. Now, my colleague is
00:13:02.680 flying back home Lufthansa. So he's like wondering now, Cosman Georgia is wondering if he's going to
00:13:08.020 be on the same plane as Javier Malay. So if so, we'll probably have that interview that a lot of
00:13:13.560 you have been asking for. But that was what he did. Now, someone asked in the comments here,
00:13:18.160 angry Canadian, perhaps not her legal name, why did WEF let him speak? That's weird. I have two
00:13:25.160 answers for that. Number one, because they think that he's going to go along with it. Maybe they
00:13:32.100 think that like everyone else, he's going to go there and he's going to be absorbed in to the
00:13:36.540 international community and start saying exactly what everyone wants him to say. The other
00:13:41.440 alternative, which I'm leaning towards, is that they've become very nervous about a lot of the
00:13:49.540 criticism that they've been facing. And they wanted to be able to say, no, we don't all sound
00:13:54.580 the same and talk the same. Look, we had to have your Malay here, the same reason they had Donald 0.99
00:13:57.900 Trump here a few years back. And they love to be able to hold that up as an example of saying,
00:14:02.120 no, no, no, we let people in that we don't necessarily disagree with. So I think it's
00:14:06.200 because they're so secure in what they are and who they are that they do not feel threatened by
00:14:12.440 someone like him coming in. But I also would think there's a little bit of option A bleeding into it
00:14:17.780 and that they don't think he's going to behave the way he did. They don't think he's going to
00:14:21.960 embarrass them as much as I think he did. And really, as I was watching and listening to that,
00:14:26.860 it reminded me of Ricky Gervais, the actor and comedian hosting the Golden Globes a few years
00:14:34.620 back. Like literally, I realized the implications of them are a bit different, but this is the clip
00:14:39.640 that it reminded me of. Spoiler alert. Season two is on the way. So in the end, he obviously
00:14:45.480 didn't kill himself. Just like Jeffrey Epstein. Shut up. I know he's your friend, but I don't care.
00:14:56.300 You had to make your own way here in your own plane, didn't you? Right. Well, you say you won't,
00:15:00.500 But the companies you work for, I mean, unbelievable.
00:15:03.020 Apple, Amazon, Disney.
00:15:05.140 If ISIS started a streaming service, you'd call your agent, wouldn't you?
00:15:09.120 So if you do win an award tonight, don't use it as a platform to make a political speech, right?
00:15:15.640 You're in no position to lecture the public about anything.
00:15:18.740 You know nothing about the real world.
00:15:20.660 Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg.
00:15:23.580 So if you win, right, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent and your God.
00:15:30.500 Javier Malay at World Economic Forum, Ricky Gervais at the Oscars.
00:15:40.240 Maybe we put a poll up in the comments on who you think wore that level of snark and disdain for the status quo better.
00:15:47.860 But that was the big takeaway for today.
00:15:50.560 Now, when I said that a theme had emerged, I think that what I mentioned earlier is important here,
00:15:55.960 is that world leaders, oftentimes, whether they are liberal, conservative, green, socialist,
00:16:00.420 right-wing, left-wing in their home countries, when they get onto the international stage,
00:16:04.960 they all kind of converge and coalesce into this amorphous blob. I mean, Mark Ruta, who is the
00:16:10.860 nominally conservative prime minister of the Netherlands, I would say a lot of people would
00:16:14.960 dispute that, when he's at Davos, sounds the same as a Justin Trudeau does. Boris Johnson,
00:16:20.320 when he was the, again, supposedly conservative prime minister of the UK, when he's chairing the
00:16:25.520 COP climate summit in Glasgow, he sounds exactly like, you know, maybe not exactly like Al Gore,
00:16:31.800 but he sounds exactly like all of these other pro net zero anti oil and gas people.
00:16:37.080 So you need someone that's going to at least be consistent. And one of the big models of
00:16:41.340 inconsistency, and I've mentioned him on the show in the past, is a gentleman by the name of
00:16:45.880 Hardeep Singh Puri. Now he is the minister of natural gas and petroleum in India. Now,
00:16:51.740 this is a guy whose cabinet position is not shying away from the fact that India is a country that
00:16:58.360 relies on fossil fuels. It has the largest population in the world. I didn't realize it
00:17:02.800 had surpassed China, but that was what Hardeep Singh Puri said today. Not only do you have that,
00:17:09.340 but it's a country that needs energy and the energy is coming from oil and gas. Now, Hardeep
00:17:15.300 Singh Puri knows full well that you cannot just flip a switch and transition away from
00:17:22.680 oil and gas to renewables, to solar and wind and all of that.
00:17:26.360 And even if you could, it would be incredibly expensive.
00:17:28.500 But you cannot sustain a population of a billion people by doing that.
00:17:32.820 Yet.
00:17:38.020 It was him in 2022.
00:17:41.740 You were on a panel about oil and gas and energy this morning.
00:17:44.380 Do you think phasing out of fossil fuels is actually a realistic goal?
00:17:48.300 Look, I said what I had to, but you know, if you were to do that survey in different parts
00:17:55.340 of the world, if you were to do it for instance in South Asia or Africa or in Latin America,
00:18:01.660 you'd get results that might be a little different from the kind of results you're getting here.
00:18:07.260 So that was when I ran into him on the streets of Davos after he had said this.
00:18:14.380 Mr. Moderator, if the global crises that we are facing has taught us anything, we need to accelerate on the transition.
00:18:24.940 And we are doing it in a large number of ways.
00:18:27.380 But let me also share with you the perspective that we are a country where 60 million people go to the petrol bank every morning to fill up.
00:18:35.980 60 million. One of the things that we need to ensure is to make sure that there is no
00:18:43.740 energy shortage in any form in a large country which has a population of 1.34 billion. See
00:18:50.920 what's happening to countries around India. I don't want to be, I'm not, I'm nearly stating
00:18:55.860 a fact. Four or five countries around India are in severe, dire straits. It's happening
00:19:03.040 in countries all over the world. So we need to be able to navigate our way out of this
00:19:08.220 current energy crisis and into an accelerated transition to green energy.
00:19:14.880 So on stage, when he's talking to his Davos chums, he's saying we need to accelerate the
00:19:20.160 transition. We need to get away from fossil fuels faster. And then you run into him on the streets
00:19:24.760 and he's saying, oh, well, yes, in the developing world, no one buys into any of that. Well,
00:19:28.720 I thought when I saw him today that a follow-up on that was in order.
00:19:33.560 Take a look.
00:19:35.020 Minister Andrew Lawton, True North, I'm wondering how countries like yours are supposed to power themselves after this so-called energy transition.
00:19:44.460 Doesn't want to answer a question.
00:19:45.860 He's advocating for the energy transition on stage, but won't explain the very fundamental question of how India is supposed to power itself if that transition happens.
00:19:54.040 you can tell my frustration with these people is growing and my tolerance is waning when like
00:20:01.560 after the questions I just start to do like a little bit of a monologue when they walk away
00:20:05.460 from me but this is I think an example of what the problem is here and it's why it's so important
00:20:10.840 when someone is going to go and tell them no so that's kind of where I am on this whole thing
00:20:17.380 right now is that if you want someone to push back against this I do think there is some
00:20:22.080 significance to the idea that maybe you have to have a little bit of disruption from within the
00:20:28.000 institution. I think boycotting it is ultimately going to be more important because when you boycott
00:20:32.220 it, it loses its influence. None of the big money guys are going to spend money just to hang around
00:20:37.740 with each other. They need access to politicians for this to be worthwhile. Now, earlier in the
00:20:42.640 day, that was actually a bit of a theme that I was trying to get out of some of the conversations I
00:20:46.920 had with people. I wanted to really get them to acknowledge what it is that they see in all of
00:20:52.500 this. And just to give you some of the raw numbers here, well, Microsoft, Accenture, Salesforce,
00:20:58.760 all of these strategic partners of the World Economic Forum, they pay hundreds of thousands
00:21:03.880 of US dollars a year to be members of the World Economic Forum. They get then the opportunity
00:21:11.540 to spend tens of thousands of dollars a year to buy tickets for the World Economic Forum Annual
00:21:17.560 Meeting. It's invitation only, but the invitation is an invitation to pony up, I don't know,
00:21:22.160 like $20,000 to buy a ticket here. We get here for free, but we don't get to go inside and enjoy
00:21:27.740 their fancy bug sandwiches and whatnot. So that's effectively the racket here. And why are these
00:21:34.280 businesses ponying up the cash? My theory on this is that they're getting access to politicians
00:21:38.420 behind the prying eyes of the media.
00:21:40.720 Well, the president of Microsoft, Brad Smith,
00:21:42.800 happened to be walking by, and I thought maybe,
00:21:45.220 just maybe, he would be able to shed some light
00:21:47.480 on why Microsoft sees this as such a worthwhile investment.
00:21:52.320 What is it Microsoft gets out of its association
00:21:54.620 with the World Economic Forum?
00:21:57.500 It must be something.
00:21:58.500 You're spending enough money on it.
00:21:59.540 What do you get out of it?
00:22:01.720 Well, that's a softball, too, that one. 0.97
00:22:04.540 I'm getting body checked by your security for an easy one.
00:22:08.420 it was the it was the shorter woman that uh bought i don't know if it was on camera when
00:22:15.000 it happened but sean says iffy yeah she kind of body checked me out of the way but then when i
00:22:19.140 commented on the body check the other security guy and brad both chuckled so uh that was that
00:22:23.780 i mean i i'm a big boy i could hey i didn't get like the full david menzies takedown which maybe
00:22:28.000 i'll get if i if i run into christopher freeland later uh but he didn't want to answer what it is
00:22:32.760 that he gets out of being at the world economic forum neither did the prime minister of bulgaria
00:22:38.180 to whom I asked the same question.
00:22:44.260 Prime Minister, what's the value in world leaders being here?
00:22:47.120 I have to go.
00:22:50.420 Oh, I'm sorry. That's the only clip.
00:22:52.620 That's it. That's all we have. I have to go.
00:22:55.220 It's funny that the time it takes them to say whatever they say to ignore you
00:22:59.720 is no different than the time it's going to take them to answer the question.
00:23:02.900 Now, I did get a little bit of an answer from the Prime Minister of Belgium,
00:23:07.060 alexander decrew although as you'll see in a moment on the follow-up question man that limo
00:23:12.500 door shuts quickly minister i'm from canada i'm just wondering what the value is of world leaders
00:23:17.820 like you being here well people need to talk to each other and people need to listen this event
00:23:22.680 is much more about listening than about talking but aren't you being sold access by having business
00:23:27.360 leaders paying to be in your presence sir i guess not yeah there's the again the little sass at the
00:23:36.520 my apologies. I lower the veil of professionalism ever so slightly. But there you go. You have
00:23:42.820 really not an eagerness for any of these people to explain what it is that's so important that
00:23:49.920 they get here that they could not get in any other way. Now, Chrystia Freeland, I mentioned
00:23:56.620 a moment ago obliquely, I should probably make this a little bit more clear. She is in Davos
00:24:01.940 right now. Now, I suspected she would turn up, but there was never any public announcement of it.
00:24:07.200 And the World Economic Forum had not released its list of attendees. And I will say up until
00:24:13.040 this morning, again, the third of five days for this conference, Chrystia Freeland did not appear
00:24:19.860 on the speaking agenda. So she was added in at the last minute to this morning for a speech
00:24:27.740 she's giving or a panel she's doing tomorrow. Now, maybe she just had to clear her schedule to find 0.99
00:24:34.040 a way to make it work. Maybe they were trying to, you know, hide the fact that she was coming. I
00:24:39.260 don't know what it was. I don't really care. But the point is, Chrystia Freeland, who is the Deputy
00:24:43.340 Prime Minister of Canada, while also serving as a member of the Board of Governors for Board of
00:24:48.280 Trustees for the WAF, is in the city. She had, according to her itinerary, a bunch of private
00:24:53.300 meetings today and tomorrow she's going to be speaking on a panel. So this is I think fascinating
00:24:59.060 to me that we have politicians and she's an example not of a Javier Malay that's going to 1.00
00:25:03.840 come here and represent Canadian interest but she's an example of the one that wants to come 1.00
00:25:08.060 and kiss Klaus Schwab's ring and talk about how Canada and the World Economic Forum have so much
00:25:14.240 in common and that I think is why it's so important as I've said time and time again this week for
00:25:20.440 journalists to be here and ask these questions because even if they don't get answered, there's
00:25:25.780 still a value in putting questions to these people and exposing their unwillingness to answer,
00:25:31.660 their unwillingness to tackle what are very real concerns for people around the world. I think the
00:25:36.720 big get of the day was definitely the World Health Organization Director General, Dr. Tedra, well
00:25:42.620 doctor, I mean he's a PhD, I don't want to dismiss it, but he's not a medical doctor, Tedros Adhanom
00:25:48.040 Ghebreyes. Now, this is a man who has had extraordinary power over the last few years
00:25:54.560 because of the role the World Health Organization took in leading Canada and the world through the
00:25:59.820 pandemic, supposedly. This is the guy who's now pushing countries to adopt a pandemic treaty in
00:26:05.140 March, and he was actually touting that in one of his panels on stage today. But he cannot answer
00:26:11.720 or will not answer fundamentally simple questions about the public health interventions that have
00:26:17.220 proven catastrophic for the world.
00:26:21.140 Dr. Adnan, do you believe that lockdown should always be rejected as a public health measure?
00:26:26.140 Can we talk later?
00:26:27.780 What time? I'm happy to arrange a meeting with you, sir.
00:26:30.220 Do you believe lockdown should be rejected as a public health measure?
00:26:33.560 Sir, it's a simple question.
00:26:34.580 Do you condemn public health interventions like lockdowns and vaccine mandates?
00:26:38.580 The slogan for the WEF agenda this year is rebuilding trust.
00:26:43.580 Do you believe China should be held accountable for its role in COVID? 0.87
00:26:52.240 Sir, our lockdown's bad.
00:26:54.860 Our lockdown's a bad thing.
00:27:02.080 I mean, you can't say I didn't try.
00:27:04.880 That was an example.
00:27:06.260 You saw Avi Yamini from Rebel News, Callum Smiles,
00:27:09.160 who is an independent journalist from the United Kingdom.
00:27:11.420 We're all trying to get it there.
00:27:13.100 And again, the simple question, will you condemn lockdowns?
00:27:17.420 No answer.
00:27:18.120 Will you condemn vaccine mandates?
00:27:19.480 No answer.
00:27:20.020 Now, maybe he didn't hear me.
00:27:21.740 I was pretty close to him, though.
00:27:22.960 Silence, again, is deafening, I will say.
00:27:25.520 And here's a man that, I reiterate, wants to get countries on board with this pandemic
00:27:31.360 treaty by May.
00:27:33.680 Now, this is where we go back from the streets into the Davos Congress Center for a moment,
00:27:38.060 because I want you to hear what he articulates as being one of the chief impediments
00:27:42.960 to his ideal vision for how the world should respond to health crises.
00:27:49.020 The key in order to have better prepared and to address the disease X is the pandemic agreement.
00:27:55.340 The pandemic agreement can bring all the experience,
00:27:59.540 all the challenges that we have faced, and all the solutions into one.
00:28:03.040 and that agreement can help us to prepare for the future in in a better way because
00:28:11.380 this is about a common enemy and without a shared response starting from the preparedness
00:28:18.100 you know we will face the same problem as as as covid and deadline for the pandemic agreement
00:28:26.320 is may 2024 and member states are negotiating this is between countries and i hope they will
00:28:34.080 deliver this pandemic agreement by that time by on the deadline because if this generation cannot
00:28:42.680 do it we're the lived community we have the first-hand experience i don't think incoming
00:28:49.020 generation the next generation will do it so for our children and grandchildren's sake i think we
00:28:55.080 have to convert all the lessons we have learned into this pandemic and prepare the world for
00:29:01.640 for for the future because this is a common global interest and national interest very
00:29:07.880 narrow national interest should not come into into the way of course national interest is natural
00:29:13.640 but it's the narrow national interest that could be difficult and affecting the negotiations even
00:29:20.360 as we speak.
00:29:25.300 Ooh, Tedros is a lot more chatty
00:29:28.760 when he's among friends, isn't he?
00:29:30.780 I would have taken even just, you know,
00:29:32.580 seven or eight of those words
00:29:33.700 that he had for his Davos chums
00:29:35.740 when I was chatting with him on the streets.
00:29:37.500 Again, I was asking yes or no questions.
00:29:39.120 You can't argue that it's because
00:29:40.520 you have to get to a meeting
00:29:41.460 when I'm walking alongside you.
00:29:43.300 I like how, by the way,
00:29:44.420 he was like, let's do this later.
00:29:45.920 Okay, name a time, sir.
00:29:47.280 Name a time and a place
00:29:48.260 and I will be there.
00:29:50.280 That happened to me last year, actually, where I wanted to ask the president of Serbia a question.
00:29:54.540 And he said, can we do this tomorrow?
00:29:56.080 As though I can just be guaranteed to run into the president of Serbia tomorrow.
00:29:59.760 So one day I told him it was a sports question.
00:30:01.760 He was all fine with it.
00:30:04.220 One Elisa Angel just has a lovely comment here, which I may use tomorrow.
00:30:08.600 She says, ask them if their silence is acquiescence to the premise of the question.
00:30:13.520 If they don't respond, we'll simply assume it is.
00:30:16.980 I'll actually do you one better than that, Elisa.
00:30:18.760 So I think what I might do tomorrow is say, if you don't answer, I'm going to report it as a yes
00:30:23.300 or something like that. Or if you don't answer, I'll report it as a no, depending on the idea.
00:30:28.560 We'll play around with ideas. But yeah, I should tell them that by being silent, they are saying
00:30:33.680 X, they're saying something, whatever the context of the discussion is. And in his case,
00:30:39.400 his refusal to condemn lockdown, because again, if I were to say to him, take the exact same
00:30:43.700 circumstances, the guy walking down the street doesn't want to be questioned, but he's getting
00:30:46.880 question. If I were to say, do you think the world should know that vaccines are good? He's going to
00:30:52.120 break stride and say absolutely, because he wants to say it. He wants to brag about that. He wants
00:30:56.660 to promote that. If I said, hey, do you think the pandemic treaty is good? He's going to say yes.
00:31:01.780 But it's only when you ask questions that they, for whatever reason, do not wish to answer,
00:31:06.400 that they clam up and get silent, as was the case with John Kerry yesterday talking about China
00:31:11.640 and private jet travel. Although the private jet one oddly seemed to like get him riled. I should
00:31:16.000 led with private jet, because he actually seemed to want to answer that one, because he believes
00:31:20.300 the technicality of, I don't personally own a private jet, is exonerating enough for him.
00:31:25.860 But nevertheless, that is what happened today on the streets of Davos. Now, it wasn't all heavy.
00:31:32.580 It wasn't all heavy. I will point out that there's a bit of an oddity in Davos, and that it's just
00:31:37.400 like a big major conference in a lot of ways. You just see people walking around. Today, it was a
00:31:42.480 weird one because we saw the Queen of the Belgians. I believe, is it Marguerite? Margret? I forget her
00:31:48.100 name. I apologize to the Belgians. Belgians probably don't tune in, but we saw the Queen of 1.00
00:31:52.720 the Belgians and I was like, oh wow, that's the Queen of the Belgians. I didn't have any questions
00:31:55.940 for her. I'd already spoken to the Prime Minister. And then like five minutes later, I wish that I
00:32:00.720 had thought of a question because the King of the Belgians came. So I guess they were traveling in
00:32:04.260 separate motorcades. So we had two monarchs, two princesses also. We got Princess Beatrice
00:32:09.860 and Princess Eugenie of York, who were passing by today.
00:32:14.100 I have no grievances with either of their royal highnesses.
00:32:19.120 I'm not particularly fond of their father, Prince Andrew,
00:32:22.100 but I don't believe that daughters should pay for the sins of the father.
00:32:25.660 So I thought I'd have like a softball for her royal highness, Princess Beatrice,
00:32:29.680 when she walked by, but she seemed to have to work way too hard 0.75
00:32:32.640 to come up with an answer to this one.
00:32:36.000 Minus, any message to Canadians?
00:32:37.440 uh oh gosh so many wonderful things good
00:32:42.820 oh at least she was lovely she had a she had a lovely accent and by the way if you saw uh sean
00:32:51.380 thompson my producer on the show a couple of weeks back uh you'll know that his hair uh is
00:32:56.640 like identical in color to princess beatrice's hair uh but his is a lot smoother but she has
00:33:01.940 a nicer accent so it's a tough one if her royal highness needs a new gig we uh we might be able
00:33:06.140 to just like do a ginger swap every couple of days.
00:33:08.240 It's like a work study program or something,
00:33:10.520 but the Royals, you know, they're real people just like us.
00:33:13.280 All right, well, in any case, that does it for today here.
00:33:16.860 I will bid you adieu, but we will be back tomorrow
00:33:19.780 and hopefully have some more hard-hitting questions,
00:33:22.940 maybe some non-answers, maybe some answers
00:33:24.600 from those assembled in Davos
00:33:27.120 for the World Economic Forum annual meeting.
00:33:29.280 But again, a big thank you to all of your support
00:33:30.920 and encouragement as we brave the cold
00:33:33.600 and try to at least have some truth to power here.
00:33:36.980 It is important work and I'm honored to be doing it.
00:33:39.660 We'll talk to you tomorrow.
00:33:40.520 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.
00:33:43.240 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:33:45.300 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.
00:34:03.600 We'll be right back.
00:34:33.600 We'll be right back.