Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Why we're in Davos to report on what's really happening at the World Economic Forum

00:00:00.000 tonight so why are we in davos switzerland after all what's the big deal

00:00:19.680 about the world economic forum it's january 18th and this is the ezra levant show

00:00:24.960 i'm standing outside the main train station in davos switzerland i just got off the train

00:00:45.920 and it was packed like rush hour there were a few swiss on it but it was mainly delegates

00:00:52.160 hangers-on staff and bureaucrats associated with the world economic forum that's been meeting here

00:00:58.400 this week and you know i was watching them on the train as you do when you have nothing else to do

00:01:02.600 and it reminded me of my time working in ottawa for a couple years or even that summer when i

00:01:08.440 interned in washington dc there are some masters of the universe here at davos billionaires and

00:01:15.160 oligarchs i've named some of them in previous shows the bill gates of the world the soroses of the 0.99

00:01:20.720 world but for every one of those there's got to be a hundred busy bees buzzing away just doing the

00:01:28.200 paperwork and the red tape and the hanging on of any large bureaucracy was sort of interesting

00:01:34.560 and of course there's people trying to make a mark on the train i overheard one fella say he's coming

00:01:41.820 in from zurich but he's got because he's got this great new website for investors and he wants to meet

00:01:47.020 some investor here and hopefully he'll make some money so there's there are some entrepreneurs

00:01:52.200 embedded in this place there's a lot of bureaucrats who are not particularly ideologically motivated but

00:01:58.740 the people who make the decisions the people who are truly powerful here or perhaps more accurately

00:02:04.240 truly influential are ideologues on a mission and i want to take a minute today before we show you

00:02:11.040 some of our other journalism to explain why we're here and i was saying to my colleagues as we were

00:02:17.560 driving around the swiss alps uh looking for private jet landing strips the other day i was saying the

00:02:24.000 first time i ever heard of the world economic forum was reading the canadian columnist and editor

00:02:29.540 terry corcoran who used to write about it every year in the pages of the financial post

00:02:35.080 and he was railing against it probably 20 years ago and i love terry very much i had the pleasure of working

00:02:40.980 with him when i joined the national post in the 90s but i would always read these and say terry what are you

00:02:46.380 banging on about world economic forum those three words are so generic and so boring you're almost asleep

00:02:53.080 by the time you say the third one world economic forum okay so it's a bunch of economists who have a forum

00:02:59.660 i'm sleepy already and i think maybe that's part of the point of it is who could possibly be against

00:03:07.020 the world economic forum it's like i remember when i first investigated the canadian human rights

00:03:13.360 commission some 20 years ago or so when i was being investigated for publishing the danish cartoons of

00:03:19.280 mohammed who could possibly be against the canadian human rights commission i mean you'd be nuts to be 1.00

00:03:27.520 against those things every one of those things is wonderful well that's part of their camouflage

00:03:31.800 isn't it the world economic forum is not just a group of economists meeting to air their views in a

00:03:38.240 forum if it was there'd be nothing wrong with that and i'm reminded of this clip of peter keel the most

00:03:45.060 libertarian man in silicon valley um one of the creators of paypal and and other tech wonders when he

00:03:52.580 was accosted outside the builder burger meeting and um he stopped to give an answer he was clearly

00:04:00.180 irritated that he was being scrummed by paparazzi and they were saying what are you talking about what

00:04:05.320 are you doing in there and here's peter teal giving what i thought was actually a fairly reasonable answer

00:04:10.560 take a look hey peter how are you are you having a good day how's everything at uh bilderberg

00:04:17.100 uh can you tell us about um your libertarian values and beliefs i was really curious if it's

00:04:25.640 able to be somehow conjoined with some of the people you're meeting with because there seems to

00:04:30.620 kind of be a conflict with that i was wondering what you think about the philosophy and obviously

00:04:35.640 you know the the meeting taking place we're just curious about what's happening

00:04:39.620 i'll leave it at let me just leave it at one statement and then that's it okay okay yeah yeah

00:04:51.660 uh i believe that it's always important to exchange views with people uh no matter what their perspectives

00:04:58.140 are uh i believe that uh i'm you know i i i think that uh i think that we have a lot of problems in

00:05:05.980 our society and we need to be uh finding ways to talk to people we need to find ways to talk to

00:05:11.440 people uh where not everything is completely transparent libertarianism is not synonymous with

00:05:17.640 radical transparency that's often an argument that the stasi would make in east germany where uh

00:05:23.880 everything had to be monitored by uh by society and i think often you have the best conversations

00:05:29.440 uh in smaller groups where not everything is being monitored and that's how you can have very

00:05:34.240 honest conversations and how you can think better about the future i think peter teal besides being

00:05:39.160 an entrepreneur and investor is a genuine thinker he's a kind of public intellectual and he would say

00:05:46.520 i want to meet with the world's most interesting people i want to meet with tycoons but also political

00:05:54.300 leaders but also ngos and philanthropists i want to meet them i want to bounce ideas around i truly want

00:06:01.620 to go to a world's economic forum i don't think peter teal goes to the world economic forum but that's

00:06:06.660 there's an argument for why anyone should be able to meet and talk with anyone and who should say you

00:06:13.640 can't and if they want to have a private conversation because they could be more candid

00:06:17.820 well that makes sense too except except if it's not really a world economic forum just a talk shop

00:06:26.260 except if it's actually a kind of second government a secret government a shadow government

00:06:35.100 and i know those words right there sound a little bit conspiratorial but what else do you call it

00:06:40.300 when klaus schwab an unelected billionaire who's been running the world economic forum since the beginning

00:06:47.180 unfireable i presume he literally owns it what do you do when he says he wants to master

00:06:53.260 the future and he wants to penetrate the cabinets of the world here's clips of him saying both of

00:06:59.640 those things what does it need to master the future i think to have a platform where all stakeholders

00:07:10.400 of global society are engaged governments business civil societies young generation and i could go on

00:07:20.200 so i think is the first step to meet all the challenges but what is even more important

00:07:31.960 is that we approach the future with a positive spirit when i mention our names like mrs merkel

00:07:41.420 even vladimir putin and so on they all have been young global leaders of the world economic forum

00:07:48.860 but um what we are very proud of now is the young generation like prime minister trudeau

00:07:57.660 um president of president of argentina and so on that we penetrate the cabinets

00:08:04.620 so yesterday i was at a reception for prime minister trudeau

00:08:10.300 and i would know that half of this cabinet or even more half of uh half of this cabinet

00:08:19.980 are for our actually young global leaders of the world economic forum sorry if you really were the

00:08:27.040 world economic forum economists sitting around talking and banding about ideas you wouldn't be

00:08:33.100 talking about penetrating the cabinets you wouldn't be talking about mastering the world that's that sounds a

00:08:39.800 little bit like master and slave uh and it the world economic forum that sounds good i'd like

00:08:46.840 economists to talk about things like how can we get inflation under control how can we increase

00:08:52.640 prosperity canadians are falling in the rankings we're now so much poorer than americans i heard this

00:08:58.600 statistic the other day and it was shocking to me because of the way it was phrased did you know

00:09:02.680 that the average african american is wealthier than the average canadian that's a shocking way of

00:09:10.900 comparing it isn't it because we're told that american blacks are so economically um depressed which is

00:09:16.860 true compared to other americans and it's a national challenge and a crisis at the same time

00:09:22.460 but the average canadian is as poor as the average american black family the average

00:09:27.080 canadian is as poor as an american from mississippi and so yes i would like a world economic forum where

00:09:34.200 economists sit around and talk about solving problems but that is not what's going on here

00:09:38.100 in davos what they're talking about here is creating an unaccountable undeelectable

00:09:47.520 non-transparent non-appealable world government i've always been against world governments for

00:09:55.040 one obvious reason where do you go if you're a refugee from it if you're a refugee from north

00:09:59.560 korea you could go to south korea during the cold war if you were in east germany you could go to

00:10:04.380 west germany in general terms if you're from the soviet bloc you could free to the west and a few

00:10:10.280 strange souls went the other direction there were some people who went from the west to the soviet union

00:10:17.100 and i suppose that's their right and that's my point if you have 200 countries in the world

00:10:21.960 if things really hit the fan you could leave i think of the jews fleeing nazi germany imagine if

00:10:28.000 there was one world empire where could you go to get away from the tyrant well what do you do when

00:10:33.880 klaus schwab says he wants to master the future and control and regulate every aspect of life

00:10:41.760 and what do you do when it's not just some madman giving a speech into you know his bathroom mirror

00:10:51.160 you know holding a toothbrush as a microphone what if that madman actually has billionaire friends

00:10:57.940 like george sorrows and bill gates and has an army of politicians coming up through the ranks in every

00:11:04.000 country in the world my problem with the world economic forum is that they are not the world

00:11:09.740 economic forum they are the word world is accurate uh they do seek to dominate the world and they have

00:11:15.940 chosen their designated successor to america as the hyperpower they have chosen china so clearly

00:11:23.480 as their role model again klaus schwab says it take a listen to him praising china as the innovative way

00:11:31.080 i respect china's achievements which are tremendous over the last uh over 40 years since the opening up

00:11:42.700 and uh policy and reform policy came into action i think it's um a role model for many countries

00:11:51.180 that i think also uh we should leave it to each country uh to make its own decision what system it

00:12:01.100 wants to adapt and i think we should be very careful in imposing systems but the chinese model is 0.83

00:12:09.220 certainly a very attractive model for quite a number of countries so the world the word world is a fit for

00:12:16.380 the world economic forum economic well that could mean so much but they want to do so much more than

00:12:21.000 economics when they say they want to replace meat with synthetic food or even bugs that's not really an

00:12:28.940 economic argument they they claim it is about sustainability it's about power and control and

00:12:34.320 depopulation which is pretty gross if you doubt me here's that old clip of bill gates i think this

00:12:39.820 was not at the world economic forum i think this was at a ted talk explaining that there are

00:12:46.320 billions too many people in the world take a listen it's an average about five tons for everyone

00:12:52.420 on the planet and somehow we have to make changes that will bring that down to zero it's been constantly

00:13:00.560 going up it's only various economic changes that have even flattened it at all so we have to go from

00:13:06.840 rapidly rising to falling and falling all the way to zero this equation has four factors a little bit of

00:13:14.560 multiplication so you've got a thing on the left co2 that you want to get to zero and that's going to be 0.80

00:13:20.360 based on the number of people the services each person's using on average the energy on average for each

00:13:28.420 service and the co2 being put out a per unit of energy so let's look at each one of these and see how

00:13:36.560 we can get this down to zero probably one of these numbers is going to have to get pretty near to zero

00:13:41.980 now that's back from high school algebra but let's let's take a look first we've got population

00:13:49.180 now the world today has 6.8 billion people that's headed up to about 9 billion now if we do a really

00:13:55.920 great job on new vaccines health care reproductive health services we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15

00:14:03.580 percent it's terrifying to me that someone who thinks there are billions too many people in the

00:14:08.440 world has put himself in charge of the world vaccine system i find that creepy and dangerous

00:14:14.460 world economic forum now the word forum again is a very large and general world word our parliaments

00:14:21.180 are a forum aren't they are the u.s congress is a forum even in its own way the united nations is a

00:14:27.620 forum and when i think of the canadian parliament i think for example everything's on the record

00:14:32.140 uh it's extremely rare that parliament has secret or what they call in-camera hearings extremely rare

00:14:39.560 typically only in committees dealing with very sensitive matters such as national security the

00:14:45.020 whole point of parliament you can see it's rooted in the word parlay to talk is that they're talking

00:14:51.120 for us and we can listen and we can read the transcript called the hansard or in the u.s it's called the

00:14:56.340 congressional record you can make a presentation to your parliament or congress either in the form

00:15:02.200 of a petition or you can appear before a committee or you can even meet with your elected official

00:15:07.300 and they have a motivation to meet with you because if they tick off enough of their constituents they

00:15:12.040 could get tossed out what the government does is a process we don't just enact laws although of course

00:15:18.960 during the pandemic we gave up our uh legislative process but typically a bill is proposed it's debated

00:15:26.140 it goes through three votes it's changed between each stage there's committee hearings then it has to

00:15:32.680 be approved by the senate and proclaimed that same path is similar but tweaked a little bit differently

00:15:39.080 in the uk and the u.s and france and other countries but the democratic process is by nature

00:15:44.800 slower slower more deliberative and allows for change it's our democratic system is built on the

00:15:52.000 understanding that any legislation or policy is likely flawed from the start and thus needs to be

00:15:58.640 improved and remember what justin trudeau said when he was running for office at first remember why he

00:16:05.860 said he admired china's basic dictatorship remember that crazy statement he made it wasn't just that he was

00:16:13.440 enamored with authoritarianism which he clearly is it's a psychological thing with him he specifically

00:16:19.180 said it was so he china didn't have to bother with you know laws or or getting permission or or the

00:16:27.480 legislative process listen to the full answer he gave justin trudeau loves and admires communist china

00:16:34.260 because the basic dictatorship allows them to move at the speed of tyranny take a listen

00:16:41.020 there's a level of admiration i actually have for china um because their you know basic dictatorship 0.98

00:16:50.800 is allowing them uh to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say we need to go green as

00:16:56.480 fastest we need to start you know investing in solar i mean there is a flexibility that i know stephen

00:17:02.100 harper must dream about of having a dictatorship that he could do everything he wanted and that's the

00:17:06.820 difference between klaus schwab's world economic forum which is a misnomer and a rail a regular

00:17:12.980 democracy we can't vote out klaus schwab we can't see transcripts of all their secret meetings we can't

00:17:21.300 petition the world economic forum we can't say i'm a journalist i have the right to appear in the press

00:17:26.940 gallery there is no court of appeal if a constitution is violated by a world economic forum idea and which

00:17:34.980 constitution would use they are transnational they're trans global if you would try and sue

00:17:41.400 them under the u.s law in a u.s court they would say haha try and find us in this country or that country

00:17:47.260 they're rootless by definition so that's why we're here it's not just a talk shop or a think tank

00:17:55.580 it's a think tank that has grown into a proto-government but not a government that any of us would want to

00:18:03.240 live under other than perhaps justin trudeau would want to live in it as a sort of ruler

00:18:08.200 the future promised by klaus schwab and his oligarch cronies and we have to bring that word

00:18:15.620 oligarch into our vocabulary why should only billionaire thugs in russia and ukraine be called

00:18:22.020 oligarchs do you doubt that jeffrey bezos and bill gates are oligarchs by every meaning of the word

00:18:27.660 of course they are we're here at the world economic forum because my old friend terry corcoran

00:18:33.200 was right 20 years ago and 10 years ago even though i said oh terry there you go bang it on again about

00:18:38.880 the world economic forum terry corcoran was right the world economic forum started with a stew of bad

00:18:48.000 ideas but those bad ideas didn't just fester they took root and they are now planted in governments

00:18:58.000 around the world and they serve this group of this shadowy group there is one silver lining and i'll

00:19:05.960 close my impromptu monologue this way the world economic forum is run by klaus schwab who's an

00:19:14.060 incredibly powerful man by every measure he probably knows more important people in the world

00:19:19.820 than almost anyone else certainly more than joe biden who forgets what he had for breakfast that

00:19:24.760 morning uh he is a hub in a hub and spoke system you could say that the secretary general of the

00:19:32.360 united nations knows more people of power than anyone else i'd say that might be true in terms of

00:19:37.940 getting a head of state on the phone for a minute but in terms of actually dealing with the

00:19:43.900 masters of the universe with the titans out there klaus schwab has been doing it for

00:19:49.440 half a century almost and as opposed to secretaries general who are replaced every few years

00:19:56.360 and who can be replaced they can be voted out i think klaus schwab is one of the most powerful and

00:20:03.700 influential people in the world but for some reason that's not enough for him it's not enough that

00:20:10.460 he knows he's powerful and that he is powerful he needs you to know it too there's something very

00:20:18.860 strange about someone so rich and powerful and connected and influential that he feels some sort

00:20:25.520 of desire to boast about it let me play that penetrates the cabinets clip just one more time

00:20:32.340 take a listen when i mention our names like mrs merkel even vladimir putin and so on they all have

00:20:41.460 been young global leaders of the world economic forum but what we are very proud of now the young

00:20:50.240 generation like prime minister trudeau president of president of argentina and so on that we penetrates

00:20:59.400 the cabinets so yesterday i was at a reception for prime minister trudeau and i would know that

00:21:10.540 half of this cabinet or even more half of uh half of this cabinet are for our actually young global

00:21:19.240 leaders of the world economic forum one of our teammates the other day said that would be like

00:21:23.600 a mafia boss bragging about how powerful he is or how many people he's had you know assassinated if you

00:21:33.340 are powerful you don't need to tell people you're powerful they'll just find out or maybe it's better

00:21:39.320 that they never do find out it's like someone who's very rich constantly telling you just how rich they

00:21:46.780 are brother if you were rich we would know if you were respected we would know if you were beautiful we

00:21:52.500 would know there are certain things if you're classy we would know there's certain things that you have

00:21:57.740 them and everyone knows and in fact if you start to talk about them people know you don't have them

00:22:02.760 klaus schwab just can't shut up about how plugged in he is and how much more powerful he is than any

00:22:10.600 given world leader i think it's true i think klaus schwab is probably more powerful than at least a hundred

00:22:18.340 different heads of state he's probably more powerful than many ceos of fortune 500 companies

00:22:25.360 but because he just can't stop boasting about it he can't stop pumping out his plans to make you

00:22:34.300 eat bugs to make you own nothing and be happy that in the end may be his downfall when enough of the

00:22:43.000 little people stand up maybe we can topple some of these big people the ones that my old friend terry

00:22:49.460 corcoran warned us about for so long that's my opening monologue on the streets of davos outside

00:22:56.420 their train station i'll be spending the day trying to buttonhole some of these oligarchs 1.00

00:23:01.000 like my friend avi amini does so well all right here's the rest of today's show

00:23:05.520 ezra levant here as you can see we're not staying in a fancy hotel in davos those are all booked up a

00:23:20.700 year in advance by the world economic forum if you're not a delegate you can't get in to those

00:23:25.860 hotels we're not staying in a hotel at all in fact we're at a kind of large rustic cabin a couple of

00:23:33.060 towns over in the in a small village called sass and we're a little bit sassy it's an airbnb but

00:23:39.560 we sort of like in fact there's a kitchen we cook dinner together this is the big dinner table where

00:23:44.780 we eat and we do our video editing it's a little cozy and frankly we're not here that much we are on

00:23:51.140 the streets of davos during the day and we sort of hang out in a there's a supermarket in davos that

00:23:57.620 has a restaurant floor and they invite people including us to sit there in the warmth uh work

00:24:03.880 on their laptops they have free wi-fi it's actually a pretty handy way to have a base camp in davos

00:24:10.660 while we've got our affordable airbnb out here in the village of sass anyways um it's pretty cheek

00:24:16.560 by jowl here but we don't mind it because we're trying to be more economical than the billionaires and

00:24:21.000 the oligarchs who move in for the week but i just wanted to make a quick introduction we've talked to

00:24:25.200 him before um but we have three official talent everyone's talented but talent is the tv word for

00:24:31.940 someone who appears on screen of course avi amini our chief australia correspondent he went to davos

00:24:37.680 last may and really set the template for us i'm here on the canadian side and representing our uk team

00:24:44.520 is one of the newest reports of rebel reporters of rebel news callum smiles calum how you doing i'm very

00:24:49.760 well how are you good now the first thing i want to tell our viewers is that you go outside

00:24:54.880 dressed even more poorly than me in fact you were wearing shorts the other day and it is

00:25:01.200 snowing it is minus 10 now this is part of your approach to health and being chilly am i right

00:25:08.720 i i am partial to a cold shower or two i i do enjoy a cold shower but you're also going outside and the

00:25:15.420 winner in i mean today you put on a shirt but you i won't linger on it but it's it's i mean i'm the

00:25:21.560 canadian i'm supposed to be going out with very little on in the winter let's move on to substantive

00:25:26.240 things you were on the streets of davos like we were and i recognize canadians avi recognizes

00:25:33.100 australians we all recognize international figures like for example the ceo of pfizer that we caught on

00:25:38.800 the street but you would recognize brits in the way that obviously a canuck would never do tell me a

00:25:45.040 little bit about the lord mayor of the city of london that's different than sadek khan tell me

00:25:51.740 who he is and then we'll throw the clip of your interview so the city of london is a very interesting

00:25:55.840 place it's almost like the vatican in italy many people think the vatican is just a city in italy

00:26:02.420 it's not it's its own country and the same goes for the city of london it's not actually part of the

00:26:07.120 united kingdom or even europe so it makes you wonder why does the lord mayor of the city of london

00:26:14.760 a country that is much smaller than greater london the county why is he here in davos

00:26:23.080 as a a member or contributes to the world economic forum why does someone of a country so small have

00:26:31.140 such a large say on global policy yeah i didn't even know uh he was a person i mean i always thought

00:26:37.720 it was sadly kind well here let's watch your interview with him take a look and speaking of

00:26:41.960 the re-emergence of china is this a speaking about them in terms of are they a growing threat are they 0.99

00:26:47.800 potential partner what's the sort of relationship you're discussing well we were just really listening

00:26:53.000 to to to others talking about the re-emergence um and the extraordinary speed with which that's

00:26:59.500 happening after covid there was been there's you know as we know there's been a huge incidence of

00:27:03.980 covid but also a significant recovery so there's been a sort of a herd um uh process in china and

00:27:12.620 everybody's emerging from that and we're seeing now very strong growth coming out of china that's

00:27:17.180 important from a global economic point of view because it'll stimulate the asian region but it'll also

00:27:22.400 help prompt a recovery in our economies which are struggling at the moment with recession in the west

00:27:28.760 but putting like economics to one side because obviously everyone wants to see a strong economy

00:27:32.940 in every single nation state but does the human rights issue bother the leaders here at the world

00:27:40.420 account form because as we've seen in china we saw them go for that zero covid policy they were even

00:27:46.120 locking people in their own homes like does that not concern the leaders here human rights issues

00:27:53.340 are always a concern for leaders and businesses around the world but also you have to understand

00:27:59.880 the biggest challenge facing the world is climate change of course he thinks global warming is the

00:28:06.220 most important crisis in the world but of course he doesn't really believe that if he did he wouldn't

00:28:11.380 come to davos by jet and helicopter and suv and other fossil fuel burning ways i mean he's obviously a liar

00:28:19.440 a hypocrite uh i understand that you bumped into tony blair on the street today i actually did too he 0.76

00:28:26.600 would not say one word to me not one syllable not even hello i i you know it just didn't even seem

00:28:34.180 normal i mean he doesn't have to answer my question by the way my questions were very gentle with him

00:28:37.560 um did you have any better luck with him no i i had just as much luck where i got absolutely nothing

00:28:43.980 from i had more more conversations with his entourage than him but it's it's interesting isn't it when

00:28:48.960 when it comes to being on sky news or discussing whether to take the entire country into iraq or

00:28:54.840 telling people they are stupid if they don't get a vaccine he's more than happy to talk

00:28:59.440 but as soon as he's proven wrong about something and you know i like to stress the point there's

00:29:04.560 nothing wrong with being wrong about something providing when you're proven wrong you just hold

00:29:09.100 your hands up and say i got it wrong i offered him the opportunity not once but twice to just

00:29:14.420 admit he was wrong and even apologize for it and he didn't even look me in the eye once he just

00:29:21.080 kept his eyes to the floor and had his entourage leading the way you know it's interesting there's

00:29:25.680 a lot of people at davos who truly have become i mean some of them are loved there's no doubt about

00:29:30.420 it but many of them are hated and frankly to be fair you can't be the prime minister or president of

00:29:35.720 any country for years and years and years without amassing a big enemies list i mean there's an old

00:29:40.900 saying friends come and go in politics but enemies accumulate and and tony blair i think has had a

00:29:46.560 particularly uh like a lot of people hate him people accuse him of being a war criminal they accuse him

00:29:52.760 of so many things and there's a lot of people like that at the world economic forum and when they're

00:29:58.380 behind their security cordon they can all let their hair down and relax but as soon as they step out

00:30:03.720 then they're subject to real questions by accountability journalists as opposed to the puffball questions

00:30:08.720 from the official accredited journalist callum great work out there on the streets i'm sure

00:30:12.920 in the days ahead you'll be able to get a few other big shot brits all right that's it for now

Rebel News Podcast - January 19, 2023

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Why we're in Davos to report on what's really happening at the World Economic Forum

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