Juno News - February 03, 2024


Is the WEF growing in power? (ft. Ezra Levant & Avi Yemini)


Episode Stats

Length

11 minutes

Words per Minute

204.26529

Word Count

2,353

Sentence Count

3

Misogynist Sentences

3

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 you're tuned in to the andrew lawton show
00:00:05.900 i i wanted to share this interview i was going to last week and then everything got kind of
00:00:12.540 sidelined when the federal court decision came in that found the emergencies act to be
00:00:16.920 unconstitutional and it is a bit of a holdover a leftover i should say from my time in davos
00:00:23.280 covering the world economic forum annual meeting which i believe we are going to go back and do
00:00:28.860 the next one of so i've had some people asking already i think we're still trying to figure out
00:00:32.660 the accommodation situation which as you know is always the most annoying part of that process but
00:00:37.860 i think we can make it work without having to do some like cross-country commute every day that will
00:00:42.340 you know have us in the cars on the mountain roads but anyway i've complained about the commute too
00:00:45.980 much already i wanted to go back to the basics here go back to first principles and talk about the why
00:00:51.920 and why we started covering the world economic forum in 2022 why we went back in 2023 and again
00:00:58.840 this year and are likely doing so next year as well and it's simply put because no one else is doing
00:01:06.840 it well and i know there's a bit of arrogance inherent in that to say oh well you know we're
00:01:11.220 doing something that no one else in the world is able to do i would say it's that no one else in the
00:01:16.060 world is willing to do there have been considerably few players that have decided to go up and you know
00:01:22.860 talk to the global elites to put a microphone in the face of the queen of the netherlands or the
00:01:27.000 cfo of google or mark carney or whatever and ask these questions that matter to people but often
00:01:33.160 are never asked because no one who's ever in the room with them wants to ask because they want to
00:01:37.680 just keep getting invited back into the room so there's something rather blissful in not being in
00:01:42.460 the room in the first place because you don't have anything to protect you have nothing to lose
00:01:46.600 except your integrity which is only going to be lost if you don't go and do the work that people
00:01:51.920 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
00:01:57.040 been joined by some other independent journalists there was a lovely japanese youtuber last year
00:02:01.680 masaka ganaha that i met and actually appeared on her show talking about davos and also rebel news has
00:02:08.940 sent i think increasingly large crews every year so i caught up with abhi amini and ezra levant on the
00:02:15.320 streets of davos to talk about why it is they're there as well take a look well as i've been saying
00:02:20.880 throughout all of my content this week you never know who you were going to run into on the streets
00:02:24.840 of davos i've spent a great deal of time chasing after some of the big elites people from all walks
00:02:30.760 of life here including steve sedgwick from cnbz although he's been he's been friendly to us riff
00:02:34.900 rap out here on the streets uh but look at it look at rebel chumming around with the mainstream media
00:02:40.740 there well uh two of the guys that we've been in some foot races two of the guys that we have been
00:02:46.580 uh in foot races with chasing after some of these figures are right here with me abhi yamini from
00:02:51.140 rebel news and the rebel commander himself ezra levant this is i mean abhi and i you and i were here
00:02:56.860 in 2022 working for for different outlets but we had kind of a good uh camaraderie going on here
00:03:02.620 what's your read on kind of the experience then versus two years later i reckon uh it's a lot busier
00:03:09.740 i don't know if there's more vips but there's definitely a lot more people and that you can see that
00:03:14.520 on the street as well as in the car parks for example you just can't get parking so that's that's
00:03:19.300 the main difference uh the focus is is pretty similar uh maybe not on the signs you see the ai is
00:03:25.300 is is really dominating the the discussion on i guess the featuring on all the signs but the
00:03:30.860 discussions are still uh climate change and um sustainability is the buzzword in town which
00:03:37.160 always feels fun because it's a second word it's a second sentence it's a second word in every second
00:03:42.860 sentence here uh when they just don't get the irony of it do you think ezra that the influence
00:03:47.780 of the organization has gotten greater or lesser in the last couple of years and do you feel their
00:03:53.680 security the security they feel about their position has changed in that time well i think
00:03:59.420 the best thing that ever happened to the folks who come here was covet it gave a huge boost to
00:04:06.240 international companies which are the bread and butter here there's no small businesses here
00:04:10.320 this is transnational corporations this is amazon jeffrey bezos personal wealth doubled during the
00:04:16.680 lockdowns because everyone was at home they had to we interacted with each other through tech and a
00:04:23.820 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
00:04:28.740 because there's a lot of censorship here too i mean i can tell you twitter is not here but meta and google
00:04:35.200 are and so i would say that the wef has been strengthened enormously in real measurable terms
00:04:43.420 financially they had enormous success in terms of political power i mean there are there's royalty
00:04:49.440 here there's prime ministers and presidents here this year president zelensky of ukraine
00:04:55.460 the israeli president the argentine president
00:04:58.400 in terms of public perception yes there's been more criticism in the world economic forum too
00:05:06.340 but what do they care avi scrummed and you were in that same scrum what am i saying the two years
00:05:11.820 scrummed dr tedros adenem uh the head of the world health organization really the globe's anthony fauci
00:05:20.220 and you guys landed a few punches on him verbally but what does he care he can't be fired he can't be
00:05:27.380 voted out to you it was like ants at a picnic i mean he looked down and you said oh ants i mean he
00:05:33.400 what does he care most of the people here are democratically immune they're a permanent class of
00:05:41.900 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
00:05:47.000 into as i said at the top and we took a moment because uh we thought uh well no we thought you
00:05:52.200 guys saw someone that you wanted to do a bit of a reprise on so you had to scurry away but we're
00:05:56.980 back we're as standing as close to original positions as possible but we're honest media
00:06:01.220 we wanted to acknowledge the cut and not fool you by throwing some b-roll over it not that we've ever
00:06:04.960 done that uh so before we broke away avi i was going to ask you about uh your sense here because
00:06:10.160 one thing that i found a little bit interesting is that a lot of these folks are not used to being
00:06:14.720 questioned here but this year they seem to be a lot more skeptical i'm seeing people hiding their
00:06:19.080 name tags i'm seeing people cross the street i don't want to say it's because of you and i i think
00:06:23.660 we may be contributing though do you agree i certainly am yeah you are and it's funny because
00:06:29.020 we have different styles which is fun you're polite i think if i wasn't here you'd probably get away with
00:06:33.860 it yeah because i like i think ted ross would have like spoken to me but then you like go in there
00:06:39.000 and like go for the jugular right away and he just shuts down but that's part of it and and these
00:06:44.200 people are not used to being surrounded by critical media are they no no and and you're
00:06:50.080 right like i think there is that you know i've seen even other people and and it should be mentioned
00:06:55.220 there's a lot of people that come in here that come up on the side and go oh amazing work we love
00:06:58.960 what you're doing good on you you know they're probably just opportunistic and using the the event
00:07:04.200 as a networking but you know people have seen us running up and down scrumming um political figures
00:07:11.220 or business figures or any any of these so i think the word certainly got out there and i think it
00:07:16.020 also got out there in past years wasn't it last year when you actually got accredited it had suddenly
00:07:21.100 listed the second year to um to actually hide your identification when you came out here and i think
00:07:26.660 that was from our first year of being here you and i yeah so ezra i'll ask you where you think the
00:07:32.020 future of this is because there are a lot of people that really i've not been able to get to answer
00:07:37.080 the question that has really been burning on my mind which is what do you get out of it i want to
00:07:41.020 hear some of the business figures say what is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to be here
00:07:45.880 and i want to hear the politicians say what it is now i have my own suspicions but i've yet to get an
00:07:50.580 answer from that i suspect whatever they've gotten out of it in the past they're still getting out of
00:07:54.620 it and in that sense it'll probably continue all of this won't it you know as you walk up and down
00:07:58.540 the streets you overhear a snippet of a conversation just a second or two let me give you two snippets that i
00:08:05.380 heard today hand to god we made 400 million off that 300 million dollar loan like just little snippets
00:08:15.700 i don't know who they were what they were talking about that's what i overheard you probably heard
00:08:20.180 similar things now some of the talk is just puffery and bs and people trying to climb up the greasy pole
00:08:27.840 but there is no denying that the net worth and the amount of assets controlled by the people here
00:08:35.060 is in the tens of trillions blackrock itself controls 10 trillion just one company that's
00:08:41.280 larry fink and like i say there's presidents and there's royalty so what do they get out of it
00:08:47.120 they have an elite gathering much of it hidden there's no transcript there's no hand service we call it
00:08:55.280 there's no question period there's no official opposition
00:08:57.960 um the media is tightly controlled what do they get out of it it's a private playground where they
00:09:03.960 can frolic and do their dirty deals in canada christia freeland came here met with mckinsey
00:09:09.040 ta-da they got a nine-figure contract from the canadian government that's what they do here and so i think
00:09:16.060 they would like to ban citizen journalists now i don't know if switzerland will go along with that
00:09:21.740 let me give you a quick anecdote um i scrummed someone from the rockefeller foundation which i
00:09:27.660 think is a very legitimate thing she's a public person who has been spending tens of millions of
00:09:32.020 dollars in canada to disrupt our oil and gas economy so she ducked into a pavilion and a security guard
00:09:37.820 came out say you out you go now move well i know a little bit about the law in switzerland not a lot
00:09:43.420 and i said no i said you go get the cop and he walked over to the cop across the street
00:09:47.880 i could see them talking talking talking talking talking and nothing just because some security
00:09:54.860 guard doesn't want me talking to a vvip the swiss police couldn't give a damn as long as and i and
00:10:01.460 i later walked over to the cop and say hey i just want to tell you my intentions he said as long as you
00:10:05.580 don't touch people actually he said it slightly differently but um i think that you might see the
00:10:13.840 world economic forum try to uh keep citizen journalists out i don't know how successful
00:10:20.140 they'll be all right well i think we're going to continue covering it because no one else is and
00:10:24.220 clearly the audience loves it i know that we are from different outlets but i think the more
00:10:28.180 independent journalists doing this the better so avi amini ezra levant thank you so much and
00:10:32.200 ofiderson that was avi and ezra on the streets of davos well it was also me on the streets of davos now
00:10:39.480 i'm on the streets of dc so another uh actually that's there's a weird question i wonder where the
00:10:44.380 people uh where who you'd rather spend time with the people of davos or the people of dc i would say
00:10:48.880 the people of dc because uh dc you can find some normal real people here davos there are very few of
00:10:55.740 those now i shouldn't say none i mean the the people that live that work in davos are are good but
00:10:59.980 they're not the ones who live in davos and they would never call themselves davos people like uh christopher
00:11:05.180 freeland and mark carney and all of them well but anyway uh that is it for today we'll be back
00:11:09.380 tomorrow with more of the andrew lawton show and another update from the great climate free speech
00:11:13.780 trial of the century here on true north thank you god bless and good day to you all thanks for
00:11:19.080 listening to the andrew lawton show support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news
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