By Bill Rees: On the Virtues of Self-Delusion—or maybe not!

Surprising to me! With Xi’s new commitment to “common prosperity” most China observers were predicting the losses would be left on the developers. Which of the two is more likely: (1) the common prosperity push was never intended to deal with inequality, contrary to other recent actions such as crack-downs on celebrities, or (2) the government concluded the risks are too high to stay the course?

We’ve been having a wet cold summer where I live. Across the mountains it has been unseasonably hot (30c+) and a drought

Sunny California – Hottest Super Bowl Ever

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/12/weather/record-heat-advisory-california-super-bowl-weekend/index.html

Here is something astounding. Are these folks a “front group” manned by bots? This is utterly nonsensical. Machine-gun tweets aimed at some bizarre inversion of reality.

https://mobile.twitter.com/CdnHumanRights/status/1491141716992135169

Here is a video that literally made me weep:

The Last to Leave Ottawa – Romanian Trucker Speaks Out – Feb 6, 2022 (9:03)
(Scroll to embedded video)

https://strongandfreecanada.org/partner-video/the-last-to-leave-ottawa-romanian-trucker-speaks-out-feb-6-2022/

They killed the GoFundMe Campaign. Our democracy, “-pseudo” as it was, is fucking over. This is astoundingly depressing in what it signifies. They have succeeded in convincing the clueless and bovine majority “public opinion” that the truckers convoy protest is some kind of “terrorist” entity. And the public have swallowed it. We are beyond fucked in this country….and for that matter globally.

I seriously fear for what comes next.

https://westphaliantimes.com/gofundme-returns-donations-to-freedom-convoy-donors-due-to-law-enforcement-saying-peaceful-demonstration-has-become-an-occupation/

And for the record, I’m sick of msm here in Canada constantly admonishing us that we have no right to compare what is transpiring to any historical precedent. That is Bullshit.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-biological-state-nazi-racial-hygiene-1933-1939

I for one, am not a stupid ungulate.

Rob: with all due respect, perhaps you’re being too “rational” about this? If you keep pursuing that path, you will find no “rational” explanation for what is going on. It does not fall under the rubric of rationality. Do you not understand the nature of evil? It rises up from time to time throughout history, and leaves senseless damage in its wake. Let yourself go there. I say this sincerely and with the best of intentions.

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-propaganda-and-censorship

Dr Mel Bruchet & Dr Daniel Nagase on Using Medical Imprisonment to Silence Doctors Published January 3, 2022

https://rumble.com/vrvffz-dr-mel-bruchet-and-dr-daniel-nagase-on-using-medical-imprisonment-to-silenc.html

Listened to CBC lately? Read anything from TorStar?

From my point of view, this is definitely a possibility. But how does a country like Sweden fit into this with their much less restricted policies? Maybe they didn´t need that much bullying and coercion to get the Covid vaccines due to a high trust in the government (even though it seems that this is also eroding due to other problems in Sweden, e.g. gang warfare).

And if this is a degrowth plan, shouldn´t we be supportive, even though it seems pretty stupid?

The Great Reset
Why we should be worried of the agenda pushed by the WEF.

https://mtmalinen.substack.com/p/the-great-reset

Tuomas Malinen
Let’s be honest. A year ago, I would not have written this piece.

However, during the past year, I have come to the realization that something could be seriously wrong in the way most of us see the world. The often disproportionate corona-fighting measures, like lockdowns, c-passes and mandatory vaccinations, led me to question the “sincerity” of our political leaders.

Moreover, the wide-spread use of these measures led me to question our democratic processes. I started to wonder, whether our politicians were guided/manipulated from some central-source?

Such a scenario naturally also possesses massive and partly invisible economic and financial risks. If we are being led into a centrally-controlled economic system, it would be a major threat to the income of investors, banks and households. This led us to study the issue deeper and publish our findings in a special report late December.

To extend our analysis, I also started to give online-lectures on the Great Reset -agenda (giving lectures is the best way to learn). Lectures also made it possible for me to concentrate fully on studying the issue. Lecture material is currently available only in Finnish, but we will publish it in English during the Spring.

In this piece, I present a summary of our/my findings.

What is the ‘Great Reset’?
In the blog accompanying the report, we detail the main buildings blocks of the Great Reset. They are:

Governments would steer the market towards “fairer outcomes” using taxation, regulatory and fiscal policies, including wealth taxes and removal of fossil-fuel subsidies, and impose a new set of rules governing intellectual property, trade and competition.

Ensure that investments advance “shared goals”, like equitability and sustainability, through government led large-scale investment programs, like the Recovery Fund of the EU (and the infrastructure bill of the U.S.).

To “harness” the innovations of the so called Fourth Industrial Revolution to address health and social challenges.

These naturally sound all nice and ‘“fluffy”, but, unsurprisingly, the ‘devil’ is in the details.

On markets, intellectual property and “dystopia”
The first idea of steering the market is decades—if not centuries—old. Many think that “markets” are something we need to have control over. This view lacks the understanding that we are the markets. We, the people, set the prices and steer the allocation of capital. Governments are rarely good investors, especially when they are driven by universal agendas, like “fairness” (see below).

The GR agenda also does not clearly state what the new rules concerning intellectual property, trade or competition should be. This vagueness in action-statements, which surrounds the GR agenda, is always a big risk, as they may be filled with covert, competing, and sometimes highly destructive political agendas.

The vagueness becomes even more pressing when one considers the overall aims of the GR program. As it aims to promote the political and regulatory reach of big corporations, shouldn’t we assume that the issues concerning intellectual property and trade would be aimed towards that also? This could mean, e.g., that regulatory hurdles could be constructed to prevent SMEs from participating in global trade.With competition the issue becomes even more worrying, if laws were put in place that, for example, erode patent and/or privacy protection.

A similarly worrying picture emerges when we consider the privacy aspects. In their book (p. 68), Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret conclude that “dystopian scenarios are not a fatality”. This is a disturbing statement, as it basically opens the door for, for example, the creation of a techno-totalitarian state.

Governments steering investments? A bad idea.
The idea that governments or intra-national bodies should ensure that investments advance ‘shared goals’ (whatever they are), is a dangerous one.

It’s very well known that government investments are often wasteful and what’s even more damaging is that policians rarely can admit defeat but continue on the chose path, regardless how destructive it is, to “safe face”. Sure governments can handle simple infrastucture projects, like building railroads, but letting them to set the path to future, is like blind ideological man leading the blind.

It is well-documented that, for example, the investment programs run by the EU have been very inefficient. This applies to many ‘green revolution’ programs run across the globe (see, e.g. this, this and this)

Also, somewhat strangely, the International Monetary Fund, or “IMF”, has started to support the government-run investment agenda, against which it has argued for decades. From the very start, in 1952, the main aim of the emergency assistance programs the IMF grants to countries has been to remove inefficient government subsidies (see, e.g. this). Now they are advocating for them. I would like to know why?

“Stakeholder capitalism” or new form of fascism?
At the heart of the publicly-stated objectives of GR is something called ‘stakeholder capitalism’. The principle is that corporations would be required to balance, or to be accountable for, the costs and benefits they produce for society. Deeper analysis revealts the massive risks and the likely aim of this policy.

The breadth of the proposed co-operation, published in 2010, is breath-taking. The initiatives of the WEF would practically bring every area of human existence under global governance, which is, essentially, what we are talking about: the formation of a global government. Thus, the idea of “stakeholder” capitalism is that corporations would become bigger players in an even bigger, and more intrusive global decision-making system. Governments and customers (and stockholders) would be just ‘stakeholders’.

While some authors consider that ‘stakeholder capitalism’ would lead to world over-run by big corporations, they tend to forget the role of governments and multinational institutions in governance and regulation. While big firms can lobby governments and authorities, the latter still hold the upper hand, at least as long they have the control over legislation and the institutions upholding the rule-of-law.

Alas, the true worry here is that ‘stakeholder capitalism’ is just a fancy name for the alliance of big corporations and governments, known in the past as fascism.

Where are we heading?
The Great Reset is about extended global co-operation enacted by increasing the role of big corporations and governments. This plan, driven by the World Economic Forum, or WEF, has an extremely worrying historical context, as it has been used previously, e.g., by several highly suppressive regimes.

The influence the WEF can have on our political leaders should worry us all. For example, the Young Global Leaders -program, which includes for example Finnish PM Sanna Marin, may seriously distort the sovereign democratic decision making.

This is the true threat of Great Reset. Such initiatives can, and probably will, take decision-making to a global level into undemocratic and often opaque institutions. They are, quite simply, direct threat to democratic processes and decision-making. They threaten, or have already taken, the true power from citizens to ‘halls’ of supranational entities. So, the way we are heading, is truly worrisome.

To note. Klaus Scwab and Thierry Malleret have recently published a new book: The Great Narrative, where they argue that it shows what the way forward could be, and what the role of cooperation, innovation, morality, public policies and business can be. I have not read the book, yet, but it’s a great media move to change the title from something that has become rather ‘stained’ to something neutral. In any case, I believe that the book will, through expert interviews, lay a similar dystopian path for the world, than what Great Reset did.

In the December report, we envisaged three scenarios where the Great Reset -agenda could lead us. I’ll return to them in my next post.