Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Mini Show #38: World Economic Forum, Gun Debate, Demographics, Climate Lawsuit, Dem Primaries, & More!

Episode Date: June 4, 2022

Krystal and Saagar talk about demographics is destiny, UFO skepticism, gun debate, pride month, dem primaries, Piers Morgan, and More!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/James Li: https://www.youtube.com/c/5149withJamesLiFunky Academic: https://www.youtube.com/user/IOFrimpong Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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for the midterms and the upcoming presidential election so we can provide unparalleled coverage of what is sure to be one of the most pivotal moments in American history. So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com to help us out. All right, guys, it is time for our weekly partnership segment with The Lever. And joining us to discuss her latest reporting is Julia Rock, a reporter with That Outfit. Great to see you, Julia. Great to see you. Thanks for having me. Of course. So before we get into this, you guys have announced a new podcast. Let's go ahead and

put this up on the screen so people know what it is and where to find it. It's called Lever Time, and it is hosted by David Sirota. Julie, just give us a little bit of a taste of what the podcast will include. Yeah, I mean, everything from politics to culture, we've sort of framed it as the oppositional podcast to Pod Save America. So if you listen to that, it'll be basically covering the same issues, but in sort of an opposite direction. Gotcha. So if you hate the Pod Save Bros, watch this podcast instead. All right, let's get to your reporting. This is the reason why we are so supportive of what you guys do there, because you're always breaking important stories that are getting undercover or completely ignored by the media. This latest one is a perfect example. Go ahead

and put it up on the screen there, guys. You report Biden is preparing to crush a historic climate change lawsuit. A vital effort to establish a legal right to a living planet could soon move forward, but the Biden administration is trying to stop us. Give us the back story here, Julia. Yeah, so this is a lawsuit that was filed back in 2015 when Obama was president. And the lawsuit is really ambitious. It's seeking to establish a constitutional right to a livable planet. And, you know, the Obama administration and then especially the Trump administration fought tooth and nail to make sure this lawsuit

never got a trial. What the plaintiffs want is a trial. So there's sort of a big public discussion of whether there should be a constitutional right to a livable planet. And now that Biden's in office, I think the youth plaintiffs who had filed the suit initially really hoped that there would be sort of a different approach from the Trump administration. And that has not been the case. Biden didn't really come to the table in settlement talks. And now his Justice Department is threatening that if the case gets a ruling to move ahead to a trial, they'll do everything they can to block it. This seems like kind of a long shot approach, the idea of grounding in the

constitutional right to a livable planet. But they have actually gotten some traction in the court system thus far. Can you speak to that? Yeah, so it certainly is a long shot approach. I don't want to downplay that. But the lawsuit, I think, has seen more success maybe than initially expected and sort of more than legal observers would have expected. So one of the really big moments for the lawsuit was back in 2016 when a federal judge in Oregon declared, yeah, I have no question that there is a constitutional right to a livable planet. The case was then dismissed in 2020 by a federal circuit court. But even sort of in discussions about the case, you know, the judges didn't question the merits of the claim. They dismissed it on standing grounds.

And they sort of made comments to the effect of, well, yes, you know, burning fossil fuels is heating up the planet. And yes, you know, there are sort of questions about whether you could exercise other rights if you aren't living in a livable climate. So I think it has been sort of surprising to observers the extent to which judges have been even open to the types of claims the lawsuit is making. But yeah, especially, you know, that declaration back in 2016 from a federal judge was really the first time any federal judge had even acknowledged that this is a right that might exist. And so what is the plaintiff's argument specifically about how a right to a livable planet might be derived from our Constitution? Yeah, so the main part of the argument is rooted in what's known as the public trust doctrine, which dates back to Roman law. It's sort of this old conservative legal principle that sort of the government or the sovereign holds the natural resources of the country in the public trust. And so, you know, it can't destroy those resources because those resources

sort of belong to the citizens. And what the plaintiff's lawyers will say is, yes, this is an old conservative legal argument we're making and we're sort of appealing to a conservative bench. The other part of the argument is one that people might be more familiar with, which is this argument that, you know, has come up a lot in big constitutional case law, which is that you can't exercise other rights that the Constitution guarantees if you don't first have this thing. And this thing is a livable planet. Hmm. And so what would the Biden administration say about why they are opposed to this case moving forward? And what ways would

this sort of tie the hands of the administration? Yeah. So one thing I've seen in a number of cases I've actually reported on where, you know, the Justice Department is opposing something that would be good for a lot of people is they're saying basically we can't do this. Like this is sort of untenable for us. And in this case, if the plaintiffs were successful, you know, in the Supreme Court in declaring that this is a constitutional right that does exist, it would it would allow every new federal law or government policy to be measured, you know, to face the legal test of is this going to threaten the future of a livable planet? And that would be a really sweeping change in how federal laws are made, because, you know, many laws right now and many things the federal government does, of course, expand fossil fuel

infrastructure and are contributing to the warming of the planet. Yeah, well, it's a very novel and interesting approach, approach to say the least, and also very revealing the way the Biden administration has decided to fight tooth and nail against it. Julia, thank you so much for your analysis and reporting on this. Yeah. Thanks for having me on. Our pleasure. And thank you guys so much for watching. We'll have more for you later. A very bizarre moment at a Trump rally over the weekend where Representative Lauren Boebert, in one of the most cringe-worthy displays of fealty to Donald Trump, revealed something really weird about Trump, herself, and her relationship with her child. Let's take a listen.

I want to tell you a story about his generosity, about how kind he is, about how welcoming he is. The things that these folks right here in the back never let anyone see. Fake media is the virus. My family and I were with President Trump. And even not liking germs, President Trump shared a bowl of popcorn with my 14-year-old son. Now listen, Wyoming. I know where he's been. I don't share food with my son. But President Trump welcomed him and engaged with him and showed him love and respect,

just like I've seen him do with hundreds and thousands of other people all throughout America, because he's not a politician. He's a family man. He's a businessman. And he loves you. He loves America. And he will be back again. Okay. So I have a lot of questions. Number one, you don't share food with your son. Number two, if it's true that your 14-year-old son is a grubby and filthy that's actually an indictment of you as a mother and two why would you let him then share popcorn with the let's just say unhealthy obese former president of the united states so on all levels this is a major indictment and also just a i don't know my major question is is this a real person or is this like a performance project?

Because, I mean, even the whole thing, the like, those people in the back row won't tell you the truth about President Trump sharing popcorn. I mean, it's just so. There's a lot going on there. There is a lot going on. It's funny because, you know, the like, what did you say? Fake news is the virus. Yeah, that was funny. Oh my God.

Yeah. They just take these sort of hashtags and slogans from the past. I mean, this has been a long time now since 2016. It's just kind of like replaying, recycling the same hits from the early days. And it's got that vibe of like, you know, trotting out the old faithful hits for the crowd. Yeah. Also, your bar is super low if this is what you consider to be like-

That's all you got? The real tell of like a great, oh my God, he shared a bowl of popcorn. Don't you have something about like him in a veteran or something? It reminded me of, Kaylee McEnany told this story about after she'd had surgery and that he called her. Oh, that's right.

And this was like so incredibly moving to her that someone who she's supposedly close to, who she spends like all her time with, bothered to call her. Like that's nice. That's a very low bar in terms of holding this up as like this is the extraordinary character of this man that the fake news won't tell you about it's all weird it's also weird to just be like you know with any politician the way that we treat these people like

they're supposed to be our our daddy figure or something is also very strange to me completely agree yeah i just I saw that. I could not get over it, just in terms of what it says about her, what it says about him. It's like, that's all you got. The fact that the crowd loved it, there's just, I don't know, man.

I just bear for this country sometimes. Indeed. Okay. All right, guys, we have yet another big money pack that is coming in from establishment Democrats to go to war with the left of the party. Let's go ahead and put this tear sheet up on the screen. This is a really weird one. So this is from Politico.

It says, Scoop, PAC to spend a million raise the funds to take on Rashida Tlaib. He was pushed on a podcast as to why they were targeting Tlaib in particular. And he didn't really have much of an answer. He was like, oh, it's nothing personal about her. But we just want, this is the stated mission of this PAC, which is called the Urban Empowerment Action PAC. They will support pragmatic solutions-oriented congressional candidates dedicated to the educational empowerment and economic uplift of Black communities. They say the PAC supporters

include a broad coalition of Black and Jewish business, political and civic leaders. So he struggles. Obviously, that's a very amorphous, like squishy definition. Educational empowerment and economic uplift of black communities. I think Rashida Tlaib would very much argue that she has supported any number of priorities that would accomplish and support that goal as anyone on the left of the party would. The thing that Tlaib stands out for, though, is her consistent willingness to stand up for the human rights of Palestinians, which has led a lot of people to think, okay, here's yet another PAC that has been created to go after anyone who sort of bucks the consensus and is willing to question Israel whatsoever. And we've seen big money come in against Nina Turner, Summer Lee, a pair of progressive

congressional candidates down in North Carolina. There is a huge effort to make sure that there is no dissent from what has long been a sort of bipartisan consensus, the left of the party has started to buck that. And this looks to be yet another effort to make sure that that, you know, lockstep position is ultimately enforced here. So it is pretty extraordinary. I mean, I've long said like, you know, questioning the, you know, just lockstep can never criticize Israel direction of and posture of the United States is like the number one thing that will get you canceled. Yeah, it's definitely weird. Because I'm looking here at his past.

He's super into AIPAC, you know, has been for like over a decade. I was trying to think back, because I thought it might have been him who had been, who had said something that got him canceled from CNN, but it was Markle Mounthill, actually, who I'm recalling. Now, anyway, yeah, it is very odd. And I think that what is very odd about this, too, is how much of it is de facto just, like, allowed by the mainstream Democratic establishment. Right.

Because when you go after one of them, and look, I mean, even on the Republican side, they don't fight nearly as hard. Like, there is such a visceral reaction when, if you try and primary somebody from the left, you know, where they go all out in order to defend them. But then whenever more establishment figures go after them with very much the same tactics and with money, like millions and millions of dollars, they don't say a word. Right. That's right. Especially because she's an incumbent now. Sometimes they'll argue like with Cuellar. Right. This district,

it's changing. Republicans are doing well. We might need Cuellar here. So we can't have Jessica Cisneros. So we got to stick with Cuellar, even though he's, you know, not where we are in guns, not where we are in abortion. He's the only one to vote against the pro act, but we got to stick with him because that's the one who can win. Well, you can't make that case in this district. This is as blue a district as it could possibly be. Rashida Tlaib will have no trouble defeating whatever Republican they put up in the fall, if they even put up a Republican against her in the fall. So this is all an ideological attack. And to your point, yeah, when it comes from the right of the party, not a word, not a problem, no issue whatsoever, they won't say anything to defend this particular

incumbent. But when it comes to these like corporate backed types who will lockstep on the leadership votes, which is what they really ultimately care about and will be a reliable source of continuing their personal establishment grift, those ones they go to the mat for. And it is funny because obviously those of us who are on the left have been disappointed many times with the squad not really standing up to leadership and not really taking the sort of combative posture that they were sent there by the base to do. But it doesn't matter. Like, it doesn't matter how nice you are to Nancy Pelosi. It doesn't matter how much you try to play ball

and work nicely behind the scenes or whatever. They are at war with you. Like, this is just one more sign. They are at all out war with you. They are trying to completely destroy and annihilate your movement. And if you don't see that, I don't know what to say. It's pretty fascinating.

It is. There's been a lot of UFO talk in the news, obviously ahead on Jeremy Corbell. But we thought it's important after some criticism that was aired in order to bring on somebody who can give us the other side here in terms of the debate, in terms of what's happening. So we're joined now by professional skeptic and writer Mick West. Mick, welcome to the show. I appreciate you joining us. Thank you very much for having me. Absolutely. So one of the things that you talked about, this was on Twitter and kind of reaction to this video, was some claims, not just about Jeremy, but generally within the UFO community around some of the videos that had been aired in the hearing. Mick, just give us your general

reaction, not only to that video, but your general overview of the UFO phenomena and of people who discuss it online in a way that you don't feel abides by scientific standards. Sure. I think the problem we have here is one of people focusing on advocacy rather than on investigation. People are trying to push a certain narrative and try to make things be a certain way. And a lot of this is very genuine. People are trying to push a certain narrative and try to make things be a certain way. And a lot of this is very genuine. People are trying to push forward disclosure. They think the government is hiding things about UFOs and they want to reveal it.

But in doing that, I think some people are perhaps losing touch with the actual truth of the matter. A good example here is this green triangle video. This was shown during the Congressional hearing, and it shows what looks like a flying green triangle go along. And they explain this in the hearing, what it actually was, that the triangle shape is just an artifact of the camera. And this is something that I and others have investigated over a year ago, and we've come

to the same conclusion and proved conclusively what it actually was. But Jeremy Corbell, who was actually mentioned by name in the hearing, he's someone who is actually very much in the mix of this issue, has been consistently promoting the idea that this triangle shape wasn't from the camera and this was the actual shape of the object itself. And I think this is a big problem. If the people can't actually get along with the actual evidence and the actual analysis that people have done and the evidence is staring you straight in the face, we're losing track. We're not on an honest trajectory.

So that's one video that you obviously, you know, the explanation for is the camera. There are multiple videos. What is your overall assessment of what the most likely explanation for these repeatedly reported phenomena actually are? I think it's what the government has said. I think it's what they reported in the UAP report that UAPs, UFOs, represent multiple different phenomena, lots of different things. And they listed five things. And the first thing they listed was airborne clutter, which is simply stuff like birds and balloons and drones. And then they listed some other things like atmospheric effects, possible black projects within the U.S., and possible foreign interference. And then a catch-all other thing, which of course people say that within the UFO community, and a lot of this has been driven by the UFO community, there's kind of what I call a big lie. And it's a lie that people repeat as if it's true, because a lot of people believe it to be true, because it's been told over and over again. So a lot of the people who are saying this are not actually lying. And the big lie in the UFO

community is that the government has admitted that there are flying craft in our airspace that are doing things that basically defy the laws of physics. And then they repeat things like, you know, this object dropped from 80,000 feet to sea level in less than a second. And this is something that we can't do. So it must be, you know, perhaps aliens. And this isn't something that the government has admitted. The government has not admitted that there are craft doing amazing things. They have said that sometimes they see things on their sensors and via eyewitness reports that appear to be doing these things. But, and they said this explicitly in the UAP report, these could be the result of sensor errors or misperception or spoofing, whether somebody

is pretending to do this with radar signals. So I think we need to recognize that we don't actually have this government admission. The government's looking into UAPs because UAPs represent real issues. They represent things like possible airspace incursions. They represent possible equipment malfunction and possible things like airspace clutter and possible things like pilot misperception. So we're getting off the real issues onto these kind of esoteric aspects of it, which I think is really missing the point. See, it's interesting, though, because I mean, you're right. The government has admitted anything, right? But Commander David Fravor,

Ryan Graves, many of the pilots involved are adamant that this isn't – I mean, look, obviously, it's difficult in order to parse. But given that they were the pilots in the cockpit out of the situation, I think we should give some credence exactly to what they say. So I guess I just want to understand your position here. I mean, you're against – because I think one of the main things in the community rapport transparency is let it all come out. I mean, I think it's undeniable that there has been a tremendous amount of secrecy and a stigma associated with over the last, what, 30, 40 something odd years. And then more information generally is better because if it is a secret government black program, then the more information that is going to be probed into, or Russia or

China or any of these things, frankly, I mean, I think the public probably still has a right to know regardless of what's happening here. Well, there's a big issue there. If it is a secret government program, why would we want the public to know about it? Because if the public knows about it, then that means the Russians know about it and the Chinese know about it. So it's a national security issue if that's actually what's behind it. But even if it's something as simple as the radar glitching, you know, perhaps Mylar balloons are triggering the radar too many times, this isn't something we would want the enemy to know about because it's a vulnerability in our radar system. And yeah, I'm all for government openness. I'd love it if they would

tell us everything they know about UFOs, but naturally it's going to butt up against national security concerns. So it's kind of something that, in a way, the UFO community has a free card to ask over and over again, tell us everything you know, but the government can't do that because of these national security concerns. Do you rule out the possibility that it could be aliens? Is there any evidence here that says to you, this is very unlikely or it's an impossible explanation? I think it's a very unlikely explanation. We don't have any good evidence of aliens. And I've done a lot of analysis of UFO videos. I've looked at literally hundreds and hundreds of UFO videos. I've done some very deep

analysis on some of them. And supposedly the ones that are the very best UFO videos, there's the one called Gimbal, where the flying saucer appears to rotate. And then there's the one from the Nimitz incident. And then there's the GoFast video. And when you actually dig in there and really do some detailed analysis, which I think a lot of people who talk about these videos haven't actually done when you actually get in there and do the work that the magic falls away they're not as amazing as they seem they're not making certain moves they're not actually rotating uh and it's the evidence just isn't there for something like aliens and you've got to ask yourself if it was there if we did actually have evidence

of these amazing craft flying around and defying the laws of physics, even if they're not aliens, even if they're just something that can travel at 70 or 100 or 1,000 G-forces, then that would be a massive disruption. It would be a paradigm-changing thing, the likes of which we've never seen before. All of our conventional technology for transportation and military operations would be redundant, and everybody would be having to move over to this new type of craft. So the lack of any real investment in that, I think, is very, very telling as to the degree of evidence behind the curtain, because it would warrant not $22 million like a few years ago, which was the old program. It would warrant billions and billions and billions, hundreds of billions of dollars. You look at, say, the F-35 program.

That's a trillion-dollar program over its lifetime. But it would be completely irrelevant and redundant. But nothing's going on. Nothing is actually going on. The amount of money they've spent on it, the amount of effort they've put into it is very, very small. Well, nobody can let it be said that we don't air dissenting viewpoints. And Mick, we'll be happy to welcome you back on the show should this ever come back. And we're going to continue to try and air all sides of this thing. So thank you so much for joining us and explaining it. I thought you did a great job. Thank you very much. Absolutely.

Joining us now to enlighten us with his latest wisdom is the funky academic himself, Arme Osei from Pong. Always great to see you, Arme. Good to see you, man. Thanks. Thanks for inviting me on. So I'm going to go through four points. They're going to be very short. What do we got? Go ahead. And you're going to like a few of them, and you're going to really hate a lot of them. And that's just how life is.

That's why we have you on, Iremi. Hold on. Before you jump into your four points, though, guys, go subscribe to Iremi on YouTube, Funky Academic. Yes. Because, listen, like he just said, you may love some of what he says, you may hate some of what he says,

but he is always going to make you think. Army, go ahead. Makes me laugh, too. What you got for us? Go ahead. Well, so there's a theme in both the El Paso manifesto and this latest manifesto from the guy in Buffalo. And there's this idea that, like, they're trying to take our way of life. And the knee-jerk reaction is like, no, no, no, democratic politics is not trying to take your way of life. And the knee-jerk reaction is like, no, no, no, democratic politics

is not trying to take your way of life. And I have to say, if you think that you get to pick up a gun and shoot people if your side doesn't win, and that's part of your way of life, I am definitely trying to take away your way of life. So like the idea, like, yes, I am trying to invade that quality of entitlement. And so we need to think of politics as invasive, but there are proper ways to invade and improper ways to invade. And there are a lot of cons and con artists who are out there making a job out of telling people that you can do good politics without being institutionally or personally invasive. And I'm saying we need to just be invasive in smarter ways and wiser ways. So there's this idea of the great replacement,

this notion that non-political forces will change America's way of life by changing the content of the electorate. It has been a bipartisan political rhetoric for at least 20 years, except when Democrats say it, they smile and say, well, you know, demographics is destiny. And that somehow magically, like, democratic majorities will emerge based on a force of nature. Not political will, skill, or risk, but just magically democratic majorities will emerge, and that's fine. That's a form of lazy politics. And you can go ahead and put up the element that- Go ahead and put that on the screen, guys, please. About- Oh, apparently we don't. We'll add it in post-production. Don't worry. Go ahead.

All right. That's good. So yeah, and there's a book that's just saying like, don't worry about doing politics. Demographics will take care of you. And politics doesn't matter as in like talking to people and convincing them about the role of government in their lives and what that means. And you have to understand that if you're a conservative who appreciates the American way of life as is, or at least who thinks it should be changed by political means, not merely demographic shifts, then you have to bring the guns out. Because this idea that demographics is destiny, they're telling you that politics doesn't matter. And so terrorism becomes the only way to keep your way of life and form of life.

Now, that's all- Hold on, let me challenge you and make sure I understand what you're saying. Because we do, in theory, live in a country that has some responsiveness to the populace. Some ability to make changes without resorting to arms and violence and guns and terrorism. So why then is, if you want to maintain things the way that they are, why don't you do it the way that, frankly, you know, the conservative business community has been very effective at through their own sort of like big money organizing, direct lobbying of politicians? Why don't you do it through that way, which has also been extremely damaging but didn't involve direct violence versus you saying like, well, then your only option is terrorism. Right.

Well, so if the thesis that demographics is destiny is true, if that actually held up, then your only option is terror. But that thesis doesn't hold up because demographics don't make political people. American institutions do. And we need to understand that demographics isn't make political people. American institutions do. And we need to understand that demographics isn't destiny, nor should it be. Right. And so, I mean, that's why-

So that means everybody's wrong, which is the lazy argument's wrong. And obviously the armed violence, I mean, that's always wrong, but yeah, go ahead. Right. So yeah, the democratic argument's lazy and wrong. But if it were right, then I could imagine like, yeah, so we're not a political nation, we're a demographic nation, like full of parochial ideology. So yeah, so violence is going to be the only way. But demographics isn't destiny because people actually change their minds. And that's not how political visions are shaped, not through mere kind of tribal loyalties in that way, in that obvious way. So demographics doesn't make Americans. Institutions do, like social and political institutions do.

But institutions don't die like people do. So as long as the traditional control of cultural institutions holds, and antecedent property rights hold, and all of that stuff, it's not as if like the browning of America will lead to a political shift. We'll just get browner conservatives, right? Or we'll call them swarthy. That's sort of what's happening right now. Right. Right. But like it makes sense. And I think that's, I mean, it's a problem, but it's a political problem. And it's one that could be met through political organizing and thinking through in responsible ways, more responsible ways than just the guns.

So how do we change that? Funny you should ask, right? So we need to call that anti-politics. We need to just name that whole idea that demographics is destiny, that's anti-politics. And the panic that emerged out of that variety of anti-politics, the terrorist panic, that's also anti-politics, but just in an obvious way. But there are other forms of anti-politics, and we need to get rid of them all.

Now, in one form of anti-politics, which if you don't watch out that you too might engage in, is this idea that we could have all of these very popular programs and these universal programs that are popular, but everybody believes in the program for different reasons and to different ends. And the result is that you have a coalition where nobody really can or should talk to each other about why they believe in what they believe in, because it's ultimately kind of vacuous and the coalition can't stand scrutiny because it's not held together by any sort of like actual political holistic logic. And so you have a coalition of political enemies who on some level are kind of ignoring the fact that they're enemies. And there's a good example

of this, a few examples of this, but one is I think the UBI, right? You can say, well, you know, UBI is very popular. Both the leftists think it'll democratize power, and the landlords love it, and the tech oligarchs love it. But they don't like it for the same reason. The landlords and the tech oligarchs like it because they don't think it'll democratize power. They think it'll fatten up the lambs that then allow them to extract resources. So each side is betting on the other side ultimately being too stupid to understand what the policy means. And so that's why these kind of coalitions around very superficial but universal programs that seem to be universally popular aren't particularly strong. Can't the programs themselves, though, change the institutions and the cultural values? So, for example, with universal health care, obviously you have people like me on the left

who just say health care should be a human right. Everyone should have access to it. No ifs, ands, or buts. You might also have, and I saw Brianna talking about this recently, you might also have a case of the business community, which is very logical, which says, listen, if you're a small business, you know, taking healthcare off the table makes it a lot easier for you to compete with larger businesses because now you don't have to worry about competing with this benefits package, which is very difficult in owners if you're a small business versus if you're a gigantic corporation. So they may support it for a different reason. And that, let's say, you know, in my fantasy world, that ends up getting universal health care through. Doesn't that then

fundamentally invest American people in the idea that, in fact, everyone does deserve these basic human rights and that that's a sort of bedrock foundation of society in the same way that, you know, once we had Social Security, there was kind of an inevitability to, even though it was, you know, it was more narrowly, you know, basically didn't help a lot of people to start with, it continues to expand to more completely encompass the American populace because we buy into this idea that old people shouldn't be starving and dying in their senior years. So the business community is going to come back and say, there might be a problem when we give everyone health care,

but we have a hard time getting employees because now they don't have to work for us because of the benefits. So it's going to be qualified. It's going to be universal healthcare, but qualified. And you're betting against the business community being able to do that, right? So the business community is betting, well, this will be good for our business because we'll be able to hire more people and it'll be cheaper to hire them and it'll be good for our business. But as soon as it turns bad for our business, we can turn off the spigot.

And you're betting that they won't be able to turn off the spigot and they're betting that they will be able to turn off the spigot. And so this is one of those cases where both people, they have mutually exclusive visions about what this good means. And they're betting on each other being wrong and who's going to ultimately control the consequences of it. Yeah, but ultimately, at least you got universal health care and you're in a stronger position to continue to fight for it. Right, right, right. And yeah, so we just can't talk about how I think that the business community is actually wrong about its ability to massage it to hold over employees' head. So that's how these coalitions are held together. And that might be a problem.

But, and that there's a contrasting case. For example, the stock and congressional stock trading. Everyone who believes that congressional stock trading should not be a thing pretty much believes it for the same reason. It's a relatively small potatoes issue, but at least there's a real political unity to what's going on. And so we have to take that seriously and see that as the virtue of actual doing really politics where people actually believe not just in the top level good, but the reason that the good should be supported. And so you could actually build a strong coalition around that that could sustain some scrutiny. So two points right there.

So what the anti-politics of depending on demographic or superficial university policy takes us from is the project of actually thinking through the conditions of democratic self-governance, right? So if like just going after what's popular or just going after or just assuming that demographics will do the work for

you as a substitute for actually doing politics allows you to not actually think about what we need to do politics, as in what kind of access do congressional candidates need to actually vie for office, right? So it's going to be kind of institutionally invasive from the top down insofar as if we're serious about having a democracy or some sort of representative governance structure, politicians need to have access to the people. I know you ran for Congress a few years ago. It would have been a lot easier had you had some sort of guaranteed media time and also attention, right? So if we're serious about self-government more than we're serious about other aspects of our society, then we need to prioritize what it takes

to get candidates in front of people and at each other in front of people. And it's going to feel invasive, both for the political candidates in a way, but also for the people who now have to, you know, not watch their favorite show because it's going to be interrupted by a local commission debate, a commission candidate debate, right? So we need to be comfortable with that quality of invasiveness for the sake of self-governance. Okay, I'm good with that one. You're good with that one? All right, so this is the one that's a little bit, I got to prepare your audience for it because you're not going to be so good with that one. You're good with that one? All right, so this is the one that's a little bit,

I got to prepare your audience for it because you're not going to be so good with this one. So also, if you're serious about realizing the politics of self-governance, you have to consider how social institutions uphold political projects, right? So we like to think of politics as something you do and then your family is something you do over here and then your job is something you you do, and then your family is something you do over here, and then your job is something you do over here, and then your school is something you do over here, and your media is something you do over there. And you could add them all together to get who you are in the same way you could add kind of grains of sand, and all of a sudden you get a beach.

But that's not how this works. And that's not, rather, in each one of these activities, the whole of you is realized. And that means that each activity itself has to cohere with the other activity. Right. So you need matching jobs and and churches and family life and media. They can't be just things that are distinct from each other. They have to cohere if you're going to have a sense of yourself. So instead of thinking of these different activities like grains of sand or even organs in the body where they mutually support each other

but are ultimately different from each other, you have to think of like family, society, politics, and media as different forms of a triangle where one of them is equilateral, the other one is isosceles, the other one is scalene, but they're all whole triangles, right? And they have to make sense as different forms of the same kind of thing. And this is important when we talk about issues like, say, pro-choice and pro-life, right? There's this idea that we could fix the choice discourse by just passing laws. But that's not the problem with the political problem with choice politics right now is the Catholic Church. Not just the Catholic Church, but you know, a lot of Protestants and just any

sort of religious identity that sees that as the priority of their faith, right? So that's the ultimate political problem with choice legislation. We have to figure out a way to massage the Catholic church or the evangelical church in a way that supports choice politics. And you could do that because, you know, so do my, oh, as a Catholic, so there are different ways to be Catholic and you can't just banish churches for a few reasons. You shouldn't just banish churches. But we do have to be honest about, like, there's some ways of doing faith that are inconsistent with democratic principles.

And what do you think is the way that change happens within a church? Well, you need to actually, you go after the seminaries. You got to go after the reproduction mechanism, right? So it can't come from outside necessarily, but you have to start seeding the seminaries. The right gets all of this, which is very frustrating. You start seeding the seminaries of liberation theology. I think in a well-ordered world,

every DSA chapter and every locality should also seed a liberation theology church. Because, you know, there's liberation Islam, there's liberation Judaism. So you should also see the liberation theology church and also come up with like an equivalent to focus on the family about like what we do with nuclear families from a left perspective and how should the government like support them and not support them and how do we support them as like a political project.

Because you need a political, you need social institutions that uphold your political project, right? So, and once again, the GOP kind of knows this where they don't have to really get out the vote as a political project. What they have is social institutions. And then the votes will kind of bubble up from those social institutions and they take the social institutions seriously. The liberals don't believe in social institutions and that's a problem. But you also see how this works out in American history in terms of the doctrine of discovery, right? So the doctrine of discovery was, it started out Catholic, but it kind of went around.

And it pretty much said that you could discover any land that's not inhabited by Christians, right? So it's okay to take over land that's not inhabited by Christians, right? So it's okay to take over land that's not inhabited by Christians. And so what that ends up doing is legitimizing all forms of political terrorism. And then it ends up in Supreme Court documents, right? So there are 1823, there's verdicts and judicial opinions that quote and and rely on the doctrine of discovery as like a for a way of being right and in order to get rid of that and if you're actually going to go at colonialism you have to actually investigate and transform

like any sort of doctrine that's built on the doctrine of discovery. And that, so that you can acknowledge that the claims of non-Christians to their land and their way of life are actually legitimate because as long as they're delegitimized in the church, they can be delegitimized politically because it all has to cohere at the realization of a whole person. Iron Man, unfortunately we're out of time, man. Uh, but I know you're going to have more videos on your channel. Always something to think about. I've got a lot to say. I think some longer things.

But we don't have time to get into it, unfortunately. Appreciate you joining us. As always, The Funky Academic. Go and subscribe. Thanks, dude. Thanks, Jeremy. Good to see you. In times of chaos, we can always count on the one and only Bill Burr

to sound off the reasonable take for everybody involved. This time he's tackling guns. Let's take a listen. Oh, I'm going in. I'm going out. I'm fucking, uh,

I'm going to be controversial on this one. Um, I'm going to solve the gun problem in the United States of America right now. Uh, why don't you, why don't you just do it like a pilot's license? You know what I mean? Like when you get a gun, like when you get like a pilot's license, you know, you're flying Cessnas or whatever.

You can't just go fucking fly an American Airlines jet. You got to work your way up. You got to get rated. You know, I don't think if you get like a fucking gun license, I think the first thing you should get, regardless of your fucking age, is you get a little six shooter. It's all they give you. Or maybe one of those little Saturday night specials. You get a little one shot thing. That's all the fuck you get. right? And then as you work your way up to more and more powerful guns that could potentially do way more fucking damage, you have to pass major, major psychological evaluation. And if you do, the world is your oyster and you can have whatever fucking weapon you want.

How about that? Does that work out for everybody? I wasn't saying take guns away. I wasn't saying this. I wasn't saying that. I wasn't talking about fucking gender, gender neutral glocks. Just say it, you know, fucking lunatics, fucking lunatics. At some point, can you not make it easy for a fucking lunatic?

I don't want to talk about because it's just it's so fucking overwhelmed. I can't fucking imagine. All of those people, what they what they what they're going through, it's just and it just. I don't know. I don't know. There's people still I don't know. I don't know. There's people still, I don't know. And I think the left is fucking stupid because then they start yelling at people on the right. Not saying everybody on the right has a gun.

Not saying everybody on the left doesn't like guns. I'm just saying. Like this fucking thing where you just start yelling at the other side. How about you just go, hey, what if we do this? What if we, you know, try to weed out the bad apples by doing this? As long as you're not, hey, hey, hey, as long as you're not fucking crazy, we'll give you a fucking bazooka, right? And you can take it outside of your backyard and go fucking shoot at something.

I don't give a fuck. Someone would have a problem with that. Oh, that's a way to control people. That's a fucking... All right, so I know how I feel about that. I'm good with it. I'm curious how you feel about it. I mean, look, I appreciate what Bill's saying.

I just think that we should obviously balance... Look, the slippery slope is very real, like I pointed to with Canada. But look, I also acknowledge that I'm not in the majority here. Like, I know that. But what's the slippery slope is very real, like I pointed to with Canada. But look, I also acknowledge that I'm not in the majority here. Like, I know that. But what's the slippery slope? The slippery slope is we've been, we had an assault weapons ban and we don't have it anymore. That's the slope that we're sliding on.

Well, I mean, I talked about it on the Red Flag. Less and less and less and less gun regulations. I think the Red Flag one is a good example, which is that, look, you know, the spirit of the Red Flag law, definitely support anything. We stopped Nicholas Cruz. Sounds great. But it's been used 2,200 times. Is who stopped Nicholas Cruz, sounds great, but it's been used 2,200 times. Is it always going to be used correctly? I mean, I don't know. And there's

the thing. We don't actually have very well adjudicated case law. You know, we were talking about red flag has survived some challenges, but has not been directly reviewed yet by the Supreme Court. Yeah, but we also know, like, the Supreme Court is going to do whatever their ideological predisposition is. So I get sort of frustrated with this whole like, let's go and analyze what the Constitution is and what the... We know that it's ultimately a political project at the Supreme Court. So let's talk about what would actually be good, and then we can see what the ideologues of the Supreme Court ultimately do with it. To me, it's not crazy what Bill is saying there of like, these are serious weapons. If you,

you know, are able to pass a test of both like technical competence and mental competence, go get whatever you want. AR-15, that's not going to be a problem typically in the hands of someone who's like responsible, capable, and mentally sound, but it's a massive, you know, 19 kids dead problem in the hands of this 18 year old who bought it on his, you know, basically his 18th birthday, who clearly was deranged and had been issuing threats online. And in Texas, even if someone had wanted to do something about it, there was nothing they could do about it. Actually, I'm much more in favor of the training and the safety requirements. Because actually, so DC, for example, you want to conceal carry here,

you actually have to go get a certification. Right. And I was like, you know, I don't think that's a bad thing. Yeah. Now, price is a problem, right? Which is that then it also, and I do think this is an issue, it basically makes it so that the only people who can get guns in DC or New York City are rich people.

And I don't think that's right. I mean, you can get one illegally, but then as we talked about, who are those gun charges always hit? It's poor black guys, mostly. And a lot of them are frankly, the people who need it in order to defend themselves. So you consider that, but then you have to look at it as I would balance the training, the safety element, as long as those are not the barriers to entry, because I do think that it's obvious that you should have some basic level of training, especially if you're going to be carrying a concealed carry on your person. Texas, the laws, they're very permissive whenever it comes to that. So I think leaning in that direction and not infringing on that and not even have,

like red flag, obviously, we could talk about specifics. I still think that it's important to balance the civil liberty. I mean, just anything to prevent government overreach from in the future is where I'm looking at. And I don't think the training and safety do that. I actually think they have the opposite. I think, I think if, and just from, like, a public appetite perspective, I think if you pulled what he suggested there, I think. Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure of you. I think you'd get a majority of Republicans and an overwhelming majority of Democrats and independents. So, you know, I mean, some of these things have sort of been positive before, but I did kind of like the way that he laid it. It was kind of an overarching framework that also says, like, oh, listen, if you get to that level, you, like, ascend the ranks and have the requisite level of training and mental competence, get whatever you want. It's just, you know, you kind of got to prove yourself and have some level of basic mental sanity and capability with what you are purchasing in order to be able to acquire it.

I'm good with that. At the very least, you made me laugh. At this point, you probably know it's Pride Month. It's not like you can't go anywhere and not get bombarded by corporate propaganda. And that includes, apparently, our very own United States Marine Corps. Let's put this up there on the screen. U.S. Marines say throughout the month of June, the USMC takes pride in recognizing and honoring the contributions of our LGBTQ service members.

We remain committed to fostering an environment free from discrimination, defend all values. And in this image, for those who are just listening, they have here a helmet which says, Proud to serve, written on it, five bullets on the back, and the bullets themselves are rainbows. Now, this is the physical embodiment, the manifestation of the rainbow bombs meme, which everybody knows online, where it's like a female pilot dropping rainbow. And the Syrians or other people are looking up and they're like, oh, well, thank God they're inclusive bombs. And here's another one. Do you think they're trolling?

No, I think it's real. I do. Like you don't think, they don't have any self-awareness that this is a whole thing online. I think the top brass over there is so delusional and so desperate. This is their all-in on identity politics. And unfortunately, I think that this has become like a brain worm that's taken over the very, very top echelons of the military. I mean, did they not see? If you asked the actual Marines, they would make, they would just laugh at folks.

Did they not see what happened with the CIA and their whole, like, ads that they put out? Yeah, but here of the military. I mean, if you ask the actual Marines, they would make, they would just laugh at folks. Did they not see what happened with the CIA and their whole like, ads that they put out? Yeah, but here's the thing. I'm a, whatever, what did the,

I was like, I'm, it's like I'm a cis, Latino, yeah, and I'm the CIA. And I work in CIA. It's like,

oh. Yeah, well the other one, maybe, I don't know if this is what you were going to, but Pinkerton, famous, brutal, union other one, maybe, I don't know if this is what you were going to, but Pinkerton, famous, brutal union busters, one of the most, like, nefarious, storied nefarious companies in American history.

They had to get in on the game, too. First of all, they changed their logo on Twitter to be rainbow flag. Oh, my God. And they say Pinkerton is proud to support and actively recruit and hire from within the LGBTQIA plus community, including but not limited to actively seeking full and part time candidates through national and international hiring forums that connect employers with LGBTQ plus talent. So famous union busters. like the this is a tradition now uh in terms of pride but it's just finding the worst examples of total like you know the most soulless corporate or government institutions wrapping themselves in the rainbow flag to make it like what they do isn't completely evil and atrocious you know what's interesting too is uh somebody pointed this out which is that that image is uh famous because it is the image of the helmet with something written on it and the five bullets. That's an homage to Full Metal Jacket,

which if you consider it, Full Metal Jacket was an anti-Vietnam War movie about how the military establishment had lost its mind. It's like a crazy, weird thing in order to, first of all, it's like, you know, that movie, of course, I mean, glorified the Marine Corps in some sense, but really just give you a horrific view into like the institutional insanity of Vietnam and what exactly that meant for the people who had to serve and just how horrific it was for so many of these guys to have to even get thrown into this mess in the first place. And it's like to have an homage of that, which at the time talked about the insanity of the military establishment and what they're throwing people into, you can't

think of anything better. And you know, we talk about this. There's no zero self-awareness. No self-awareness. And then we consider it in the context of right after Memorial Day. And what did we just play in our last show? It was about Jon Stewart and the fact that he and other activists, many U.S. Marines, had to sleep next to burning piles of trash, excrement of waste, of stuff that— Lit on fire by jet fuel. Lit on fire by jet fuel. It puts Ground Zero to shame, some of the stuff that these guys were inhaling. And just like the victims of Ground Zero had to suffer and fight for every scrap of dollars in order to help them. It's like, that is the stuff that they should be putting out there. And anyway, look, this is an easy way not

to get criticized, or I guess at least you will be maybe by us, but the mainstream establishment or whatever looks at this and is like, what, you have a problem with that? It's like, this isn't about gay rights or whatever. It's about the actual embodiment of you can do this to belay criticism against stuff that also really matters and that you should care about. Yeah. It's about hiding your evil doing, cloaking it in progressive values when there is nothing progressive or noble about your mission here, Pinkerton. Yes. New report of yet another expensive big media failure. Let's go ahead and put this one up on the screen.

This is a report from Mediaite. They say, Rupert Murdoch paying Piers Morgan $63 million to reach only 62,000 nightly viewers in Britain, according to reports. Let me give you, Sagar, a few more of these details. He has apparently shed more than 80% of his audience since launching on April 25th. That late April debut of Piers Morgan Uncensored averaged 317,000 viewers.

Still not amazing, but solid enough on its 8 p.m. debut in the U.K. Unfortunately for Morgan, that number dipped to 62,000 by May 4th and an abysmal 24,000 viewers on May 18th. Now, their spin is this is a global show, and just looking at these linear TV ratings in one market doesn't capture the whole influence. And they wanted to point to their digital footprint. They wanted to try to play in our waters over here.

Yes. But if you go and look at his YouTube presence, the show gets like 10,000 viewers, 10,000 streams on their YouTube channel. I hate to say it, you know, I love Piers. I always have, but he was best at where he was. He was the heel on Good Morning Britain. He was great at that job. You was like the flagship show, and there was always sparks flying, and he was always

able. He was like the conservative heel or whatever. Look, he failed for a reason over at CNN. You remember that show? What a disaster. Here, I think it just misses the magic of, obviously, the debate show. I actually think he was great as like the curmudgeon on morning television. This puts him more within prime time. But also, look, I mean, I don't 100% understand this exact venture, but I know that there's some licensing problems in terms of the type of eyeballs. The markets in the UK are much more highly regulated to like the top three news channels and all. So it was pretty hard in order to break in, start something new already from scratch. And like I said, I mean, Piers, look, like you want to play with the, if you want to play with us out here in the independent internet sphere, don't be dropping

lines like total eyeball potential for a global show like this for younger viewers who don't watch TV anymore when you're only putting up 10K views on a single YouTube video. Yeah, you're going to. Because that's the thing is we can see what you're doing over here on YouTube. Well, we also understand the economics of that. And it's like, dude, 10,000 views on YouTube. Do you want to know how much money a 10,000-view video on YouTube makes? Like, I don't know, less than $100.

And I'm sure his salary alone. Right, exactly. I mean, you're not going to come close to $63 million. Forget it. I mean, it's like. Look at the balance sheet here, folks. Right, exactly. I mean, you're not even going to come close to $63 million. Forget it. I mean, it's like... Look at the balance sheet here, folks. Not working out. I mean, I do think it's sort of like another CNN Plus kind of thing where you've got a media mogul thinks he knows

what's going to sell and what's worth investing tens of millions of dollars into, and the market just rejects it. I mean, he's across multiple platforms. It's not just in the UK. He's also on, what is Fox's thing? Fox Nation? Is that what their thing is called? He's also on there, which you'll never know what those streaming numbers are, but from what we can see publicly available. And his channel on YouTube too, I spent some time

taking a look at it. It's really irritating to me because most of his videos will get like 5,000 views 8,000 maybe 20,000 views and then he'll have one video That'll get like hundreds of thousands of views and you know That's all just the YouTube algorithm whenever you see these channels That most of the videos are like getting next to nothing and then one thing that goes super viral That's all just YouTube basically like forcing people to watch the content so he's apparently

benefiting from that well remember what was that guy's name Carlos something the Ozy man I should go back what was his name I don't even remember

I don't want to miss I don't want to say the wrong thing I keep wanting to say Carlos Slim but I'm pretty sure that's a Mexican that's definitely not it

that's a Mexican billionaire hold on hold on you keep talking I'll look it up okay alright Watson Carlos Watson there he. Carlos Watson. There he is, Carlos Watson from Ozzy,

who would pay all these people fake click farms to give him videos with over a million views on YouTube, but then you would look and it would have like 100 comments or like 50 comments. Right. And you're like, you and I, we know. When you get a video that gets a million, it's going to have a ton of comments,

a lot of engagement, upvotes, all this stuff. Missing all of that completely. I was like, yeah, this is completely fake. That's so true. And the other thing that Pierce had going for him is— Remember, he had—I don't remember if we covered it here or not, the interview he did with Trump. Oh, yeah, that's right. And apparently he mis-edited that, too, to make it look like— And he basically admitted to misleading people into making them think that Trump stormed down in the interview to try to gin up ratings and interest in this interview with the former president.

So he's had other very high-level, prominent politicians and guests, but it hasn't worked out so far. Hey guys, we're excited to partner with upcoming YouTuber James Lee of 5149. He's going to explain culture, politics, anything else that needs explaining, and we're really excited about it. Yep, here is his latest effort. Let's get to it. Hey there, my name is James Lee. Welcome to another segment of 5149 on Breaking Points. And today, I want to talk about Klaus Schwab and the world economic forum. Not the conspiracies and such, although I do think we all love a good conspiracy from time to time. But in many cases, I find the truth to be much more frightening

than the conspiracy because it's unfolding more or less in plain sight right before our very eyes. If you go back 50 years to the time when the forum was conceived the whole idea was to make the multi-stakeholder concept come alive so what is this multi-stakeholder concept that the world economic forum and its chairman klaus schwab have been championing for decades well the term is derived from stakeholder capitalism a form of capitalism in which companies do not only optimize short-term profits for shareholders, but seek long-term value creation by taking into account the needs of all their stakeholders, such as customers, suppliers, employees, communities, and society at large.

Now, the idea of stakeholder capitalism might sound incredibly appealing given the devastating results stemming from corporate commitment to maximizing shareholder value over the last half century. Analysis from Forbes magazine, quote, While MSV, maximization of shareholder value, delivered a gargantuan transfer of assets to the existing owners of shares, it didn't deliver for the rest of society. The best analysts could see that MSV was a toxic mix of soaring short-term corporate profits, astronomic executive pay that led to stagnant median incomes, growing inequality, periodic massive financial crashes, declining corporate life expectancy, slowing productivity, declining rates of return on assets, and overall, a widening distrust in business. So to sum it up, capitalism is badly

in need of a PR overhaul, and Klaus Schwab's world economic form is equal to the task. We have the means to improve the states of the world. But two conditions are necessary. The first one is that we act all as stakeholders of larger communities, that we serve not our only self-interests, but we serve the community. That's what we call stakeholder responsibility. And second, that we collaborate. And this is the reason why you find many opportunities here during the meeting to engage into very action and impact-oriented initiatives. That was a clip of Klaus Schwab's opening remarks at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos just a couple weeks ago, once again, laying out publicly his stakeholder capitalist agenda for everyone to see. bringing together the private sector, aka for-profit businesses, government, and civil

society across the international community for the betterment of the planet and the people who live on the planet. Now, once again, that sounds warm and fuzzy, doesn't it? The idea of multi-stakeholder capitalism, the public and the private sector coming together to, quote, improve the state of the world, which just so happens to be the motto of the World Economic Forum. But something to think about here is, are these stakeholders created equal? Business leaders wanting to participate in WEF pay between $60,000 and $600,000, while everyone else, including heads of state, media, celebrities, and civil society leaders get free entry.

So let's not beat around the bush here. We have an annual meeting bringing together prominent stakeholders from both the public and private sectors, but only one group is funding the entire event. Wouldn't that not create an obtuse incentive structure akin to lobbying, right? One group of stakeholders is entirely profit-driven, beholden to no country or community in particular, paying for access to another group of stakeholders who happen to be responsible for drafting and passing legislation within their respective countries. Ian Weck writes in Open Democracy, an online independent journal, quote,

instead of corporations serving many stakeholders in the multi-stakeholder model of global governance, corporations are promoted to being official stakeholders in global decision making, while governments are relegated to being one of many stakeholders. In practice, corporations become the main stakeholders, while governments take a backseat role and civil society is mainly window dressing. A little frightening, but not a conspiracy. It's an idea openly discussed by the participants of the World Economic Forum. Weck continues, the plan from which the Great Reset originated was called the Global Redesign Initiative. Drafted by the World Economic Forum after the 2008 economic crisis, the initiative contains a 600-page report on transforming global governance. In the World Economic Forum's vision, Now that's the reset, a reframing of global capitalism to convince us that corporations and other privately funded special interest groups and foundations have the answers for all of the world's problems and thus should play a huge

role in dictating the direction of global society and that we should trust them to fix everything that's wrong with the world, whether it be inequality, geopolitical turmoil, the pandemic, or climate change. A noble-sounding effort, never mind the obvious that the World Economic Forum's vision of multi-stakeholder governance, by definition, must give corporations more power by putting unelected stakeholders in positions of power to make decisions that greatly impact global society while diminishing the role of democratically elected governments. Even putting that aside, there is little to no

evidence that public-private partnerships have any positive effect on society. In fact, the contrary. Citing an Oxfam report from 2019, recent academic studies and reviews have found mixed evidence on learning outcomes in education PPPs, that's public-private partnerships, and no evidence that they consistently perform better than public schools. Studies have also raised strong and consistent concerns about the impact of education PPPs on inequality and socioeconomic segregation. One study of 17 countries found that in the majority of countries, PPP schools are reinforcing social disparities by disproportionately serving students in upper income quintiles. Not all that surprising given the fundamental reason why a for-profit institution exists in the first place. Quote, PPPs are used to conceal public borrowing while providing long-term state guarantees for profits to private companies. Private sector corporations must maximize profits

if they are to survive. This is fundamentally incompatible with protecting the environment and ensuring universal access to quality public services. And this is the scary part. Year after year, billionaires like Bill Gates will use the World Economic Forum as a platform to preach altruism

without any kind of pushback and pretend to fight inequality through multi-stakeholder capitalism and public-private partnerships while continuing to enrich themselves? Well, the primary focus of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is to improve health equity. That's what Melinda and I picked back in the year 2000, where we first got going. And partnerships with companies like Pfizer have been key to the progress we've made. And for example, Gavi got started, actually announced here at Davos. Yes, let's talk about Gavi for a second. The Public-Private Global Vaccine Alliance

co-leading COVAX, which is supposed to be this kind of groundbreaking global collaboration to accelerate the development, production, and equitable access to COVID-19 test treatments and vaccines. And just to be fair to them, the COVID-19 vaccine distribution was obviously a very challenging environment with the entire world needing vaccines at the same time. But the truth is, as put by Sophie Harmon, professor of international politics at the Queen Mary University of London, quote, if your problem is you want to have affordable vaccines around the world to cover the majority of the world, then the solution would be free licensing or compulsory licensing. COVAX doesn't do that, she explained. It feels like it's the kind of excuse saying, yes,

we're doing equitable vaccines. We got COVAX. Look at it rolling out in Ghana. Isn't this a great success? Unfortunately, not complicated nor opaque. The former, an intellectual property waiver, would once again necessarily impact the bottom line profits of the major vaccine manufacturers like Pfizer and Moderna, while the latter gives the illusion that COVAX is part of the solution when it's actually part of the problem. Once again, not claiming that COVAX did nothing. It certainly did something, but not much. According to Doctors Without Borders, today, only 10% of people in low income countries have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose compared to 77% in high income countries. And they can't do much because public-private partnerships like COVAX must operate within the confines of a predefined set of parameters that cannot be breached, meaning that

the partnership cannot encroach or infringe on the interests of the sponsoring corporation or private interests. The same goes for ESG, which stands for Environment, Social, and Governance, another pillar of stakeholder capitalism promulgated by the World Economic Forum as the private sector's solution to addressing climate change. Except that it's a huge scam. Citing a CNBC article, BlackRock's former sustainable investing chief now thinks ESG is a dangerous placebo. Tariq Fancy, BlackRock's first global chief investment officer for sustainable investing argued that financial institutions have an obvious motivation to push for ESG products given these have higher fees, which then improves their profits. But there are other issues with ESG investing, according to Fancy, including the subjectivity and the unreliability of data and ratings that are

constantly changing. For example, Elon Musk's electric vehicle company, Tesla, being booted from the S&P 500 ESG index, while defense contractors like Lockheed Martin use their ESG placement to launder the branding of profiting off war. And my point here is, no matter how socially sensitive a large multinational business like BlackRock may publicly project themselves to be, they can't actually deviate much from what they were built to do, which is wealth accumulation above all else. And thus, there cannot be any other outcome other than exploitation and oppression. Perhaps most frightening of all, the forum's leaders have made it a top priority to ensure that Davos maintains its status as the perennial get-together of the 1%

to cosplay as fixers of inequality and to pontificate about the problems of the world, which, by the way, they have a big part in causing and also benefiting from without any scrutiny from the mainstream media whatsoever. When I mention our names like Merkel, even Vladimir Putin and so on, they all have been young global leaders of the World Economic Forum. But what we are very proud of now is the young generation like Prime Minister Trudeau, President of Argentina and so on, so that we penetrate the cabinets. Penetrating governments to adopt your agenda. It doesn't sound all too altruistic or democratic, but it's all about the art of the sale, right? Getting people to adopt a tyrannical ideology masquerading around as multi-stakeholder capitalism.

And if we think about this a little deeper, the word salad that is Davos year after year, a regurgitation of amorphic words and nebulous ideas that mean nothing at all, like this year's theme of working together to regain trust, is nothing more than a gradual, sustained, and most importantly, an effective encroachment that has shifted policymaking from democratically elected leaders and governments into the hands of an unelected global cadre of corporate executives and billionaires. And that future is truly terrifying. That's all from me this time. I hope you enjoyed today's discussion about Klaus Schwab and the sinister motives behind Davos and the World Economic Forum.

If you'd like to know more about this topic and many others, please check out my channel, 5149 with James Lee, where I release weekly videos relating to the intersection of business and politics and society. The link will be in the description below. And of course, subscribe to Breaking Points. Thank you so much for your time today.

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