Juno News - February 03, 2024
Is the WEF growing in power? (ft. Ezra Levant & Avi Yemini)
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Summary
In this episode of the Andrey Lawton Show, I catch up with three journalists who have been covering the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos for the past two years to talk about why they're there, what it's like covering the event, and why they chose to stay.
Transcript
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i i wanted to share this interview i was going to last week and then everything got kind of
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sidelined when the federal court decision came in that found the emergencies act to be
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unconstitutional and it is a bit of a holdover a leftover i should say from my time in davos
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covering the world economic forum annual meeting which i believe we are going to go back and do
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the next one of so i've had some people asking already i think we're still trying to figure out
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the accommodation situation which as you know is always the most annoying part of that process but
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i think we can make it work without having to do some like cross-country commute every day that will
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you know have us in the cars on the mountain roads but anyway i've complained about the commute too
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much already i wanted to go back to the basics here go back to first principles and talk about the why
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and why we started covering the world economic forum in 2022 why we went back in 2023 and again
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this year and are likely doing so next year as well and it's simply put because no one else is doing
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it well and i know there's a bit of arrogance inherent in that to say oh well you know we're
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doing something that no one else in the world is able to do i would say it's that no one else in the
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world is willing to do there have been considerably few players that have decided to go up and you know
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talk to the global elites to put a microphone in the face of the queen of the netherlands or the
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cfo of google or mark carney or whatever and ask these questions that matter to people but often
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are never asked because no one who's ever in the room with them wants to ask because they want to
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just keep getting invited back into the room so there's something rather blissful in not being in
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the room in the first place because you don't have anything to protect you have nothing to lose
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except your integrity which is only going to be lost if you don't go and do the work that people
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around the world i think need you to do so that's a bit of a wind up to why we went there and we have
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been joined by some other independent journalists there was a lovely japanese youtuber last year
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masaka ganaha that i met and actually appeared on her show talking about davos and also rebel news has
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sent i think increasingly large crews every year so i caught up with abhi amini and ezra levant on the
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streets of davos to talk about why it is they're there as well take a look well as i've been saying
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throughout all of my content this week you never know who you were going to run into on the streets
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of davos i've spent a great deal of time chasing after some of the big elites people from all walks
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of life here including steve sedgwick from cnbz although he's been he's been friendly to us riff
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rap out here on the streets uh but look at it look at rebel chumming around with the mainstream media
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there well uh two of the guys that we've been in some foot races two of the guys that we have been
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uh in foot races with chasing after some of these figures are right here with me abhi yamini from
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rebel news and the rebel commander himself ezra levant this is i mean abhi and i you and i were here
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in 2022 working for for different outlets but we had kind of a good uh camaraderie going on here
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what's your read on kind of the experience then versus two years later i reckon uh it's a lot busier
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i don't know if there's more vips but there's definitely a lot more people and that you can see that
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on the street as well as in the car parks for example you just can't get parking so that's that's
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the main difference uh the focus is is pretty similar uh maybe not on the signs you see the ai is
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is is really dominating the the discussion on i guess the featuring on all the signs but the
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discussions are still uh climate change and um sustainability is the buzzword in town which
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always feels fun because it's a second word it's a second sentence it's a second word in every second
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sentence here uh when they just don't get the irony of it do you think ezra that the influence
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of the organization has gotten greater or lesser in the last couple of years and do you feel their
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security the security they feel about their position has changed in that time well i think
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the best thing that ever happened to the folks who come here was covet it gave a huge boost to
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international companies which are the bread and butter here there's no small businesses here
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this is transnational corporations this is amazon jeffrey bezos personal wealth doubled during the
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lockdowns because everyone was at home they had to we interacted with each other through tech and a
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lot there's a lot of tech here there's a lot of pharma here now there's a lot of ai which worries me
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because there's a lot of censorship here too i mean i can tell you twitter is not here but meta and google
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are and so i would say that the wef has been strengthened enormously in real measurable terms
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financially they had enormous success in terms of political power i mean there are there's royalty
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here there's prime ministers and presidents here this year president zelensky of ukraine
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in terms of public perception yes there's been more criticism in the world economic forum too
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but what do they care avi scrummed and you were in that same scrum what am i saying the two years
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scrummed dr tedros adenem uh the head of the world health organization really the globe's anthony fauci
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and you guys landed a few punches on him verbally but what does he care he can't be fired he can't be
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voted out to you it was like ants at a picnic i mean he looked down and you said oh ants i mean he
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what does he care most of the people here are democratically immune they're a permanent class of
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ruler that's how it is we are back part of the fun of davos that you never know who you're going to run
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into as i said at the top and we took a moment because uh we thought uh well no we thought you
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guys saw someone that you wanted to do a bit of a reprise on so you had to scurry away but we're
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back we're as standing as close to original positions as possible but we're honest media
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we wanted to acknowledge the cut and not fool you by throwing some b-roll over it not that we've ever
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done that uh so before we broke away avi i was going to ask you about uh your sense here because
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one thing that i found a little bit interesting is that a lot of these folks are not used to being
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questioned here but this year they seem to be a lot more skeptical i'm seeing people hiding their
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name tags i'm seeing people cross the street i don't want to say it's because of you and i i think
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we may be contributing though do you agree i certainly am yeah you are and it's funny because
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we have different styles which is fun you're polite i think if i wasn't here you'd probably get away with
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it yeah because i like i think ted ross would have like spoken to me but then you like go in there
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and like go for the jugular right away and he just shuts down but that's part of it and and these
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people are not used to being surrounded by critical media are they no no and and you're
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right like i think there is that you know i've seen even other people and and it should be mentioned
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there's a lot of people that come in here that come up on the side and go oh amazing work we love
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what you're doing good on you you know they're probably just opportunistic and using the the event
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as a networking but you know people have seen us running up and down scrumming um political figures
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or business figures or any any of these so i think the word certainly got out there and i think it
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also got out there in past years wasn't it last year when you actually got accredited it had suddenly
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listed the second year to um to actually hide your identification when you came out here and i think
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that was from our first year of being here you and i yeah so ezra i'll ask you where you think the
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future of this is because there are a lot of people that really i've not been able to get to answer
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the question that has really been burning on my mind which is what do you get out of it i want to
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hear some of the business figures say what is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to be here
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and i want to hear the politicians say what it is now i have my own suspicions but i've yet to get an
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answer from that i suspect whatever they've gotten out of it in the past they're still getting out of
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it and in that sense it'll probably continue all of this won't it you know as you walk up and down
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the streets you overhear a snippet of a conversation just a second or two let me give you two snippets that i
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heard today hand to god we made 400 million off that 300 million dollar loan like just little snippets
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i don't know who they were what they were talking about that's what i overheard you probably heard
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similar things now some of the talk is just puffery and bs and people trying to climb up the greasy pole
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but there is no denying that the net worth and the amount of assets controlled by the people here
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is in the tens of trillions blackrock itself controls 10 trillion just one company that's
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larry fink and like i say there's presidents and there's royalty so what do they get out of it
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they have an elite gathering much of it hidden there's no transcript there's no hand service we call it
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there's no question period there's no official opposition
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um the media is tightly controlled what do they get out of it it's a private playground where they
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can frolic and do their dirty deals in canada christia freeland came here met with mckinsey
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ta-da they got a nine-figure contract from the canadian government that's what they do here and so i think
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they would like to ban citizen journalists now i don't know if switzerland will go along with that
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let me give you a quick anecdote um i scrummed someone from the rockefeller foundation which i
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think is a very legitimate thing she's a public person who has been spending tens of millions of
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dollars in canada to disrupt our oil and gas economy so she ducked into a pavilion and a security guard
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came out say you out you go now move well i know a little bit about the law in switzerland not a lot
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and i said no i said you go get the cop and he walked over to the cop across the street
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i could see them talking talking talking talking talking and nothing just because some security
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guard doesn't want me talking to a vvip the swiss police couldn't give a damn as long as and i and
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i later walked over to the cop and say hey i just want to tell you my intentions he said as long as you
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don't touch people actually he said it slightly differently but um i think that you might see the
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world economic forum try to uh keep citizen journalists out i don't know how successful
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they'll be all right well i think we're going to continue covering it because no one else is and
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clearly the audience loves it i know that we are from different outlets but i think the more
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independent journalists doing this the better so avi amini ezra levant thank you so much and
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ofiderson that was avi and ezra on the streets of davos well it was also me on the streets of davos now
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i'm on the streets of dc so another uh actually that's there's a weird question i wonder where the
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people uh where who you'd rather spend time with the people of davos or the people of dc i would say
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the people of dc because uh dc you can find some normal real people here davos there are very few of
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those now i shouldn't say none i mean the the people that live that work in davos are are good but
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they're not the ones who live in davos and they would never call themselves davos people like uh christopher
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freeland and mark carney and all of them well but anyway uh that is it for today we'll be back
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tomorrow with more of the andrew lawton show and another update from the great climate free speech
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trial of the century here on true north thank you god bless and good day to you all thanks for
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listening to the andrew lawton show support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news