Stakeholder Capitalism; the Mona Lisa; and More on Gas Prices
Peter Smith wrote about Davos and the enthusiasm for stakeholder capitalism.
Into ze Future mit Stakeholder Capitalism
I thought of the song “Tomorrow belongs to me” from the movie Cabaret when listening to Klaus Schwab’s opening remarks at last month’s extravaganza in Davos. His pronunciation of ‘the’ as ze (according to my inexpert Standard English phonetic rendering) adds to the perturbing Teutonic effect. Be perturbed.
Ze future is not just happening. Ze future is built by us. By a powerful community, as you here in this room. We have the means to improve the state of the world.
He must have seen the movie. Subliminally, the unsettling phraseology pops out. Mind you, don’t discount the possibility that he’s deliberately messing with our minds. If so, it worked on me.
Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, got a spot at Davos. Didn’t recollect that we had an eSafety Commissioner, though she’s been in the job since January 2017. Maybe most countries have something similar these days? Fine, if they are employed to track and counter child sexual exploitation. But, of course, Parkinson’s Law prevails as does its counterpart, mission creep. A new Act (2021) gives Ms Grant extended powers to regulate online content. Has this gone to her head like bubbles in a glass of champagne? Apparently. There she is at Davos telling the assembled VIPs that we need a “recalibration” of free speech.
Here's something else. In 2020, the World Economic Forum (WEF), together with Apolitical, a global organisation of government bureaucrats, whose mission is to “help build 21st century governments that work for people and the planet,” appointed Ms Grant as one of the, so-termed, #Agile50. To wit, “one of the most influential leaders revolutionising government.” Who knew?
I dare say Nina Jankowicz would have been in line for a similar honorific; if only the Disinformation Governance Board had not been wantonly sabotaged, so it's sadly said, by disinformation. Anyway, it’s all too much for me to take in. The future obviously doesn’t belong to me.
What is the future? A good question to which I seek answers from the revised Davos manifesto issued in 2020. And, for historical perspective and to get a sense of the trajectory of the WEF's "Great Reset" agenda, I compare this with the first manifesto; issued in 1973, only two years or so after the WEF was established in January 1971. The 2020 manifesto declaims on the purpose of a company in the so-called fourth industrial revolution; the 1973 manifesto, on a code of ethics for business leaders. They are similar yet subtly, and not so subtly, different. Evolution has occurred.
“Professional management” charged with serving the interests of “stakeholders” in the first manifesto, morphs into the “company” in the second. This is not incidental. Companies encompass boards and large influential institutional investors as well as professional managers. All must be engaged in order to change the nature of capitalism and the world. And it’s working. It’s hard to find a company board or large institutional investor these days which hasn’t adopted ESG as its Holy Writ. Management eagerly complies with the expensive help of supremely woke major consulting firms.
Tom Finnerty thinks that gas prices will put a crimp in your summer plans:
Seven-Dollar Gas Just Around the Corner
We've just passed Memorial Day, the unofficial start of summer, and most Americans have already begun to map out their vacation plans for this year. After two summers lost to the Wuhan coronavirus there seems to be a widespread desire to make up for lost time by packing the kids into the car and heading out for an adventure.
Unfortunately, the price of gasoline figures to take up a significantly larger chunk of the vacation budget this year. The Energy Information Administration's average gas price tracker has been helpfully demonstrating the fact that, with more-or-less every update, we set a new record for prices at the pump. That record for the week ending on May 30th is $4.727 per gallon, with prices in some places in California topping the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour according to CBS News. These are almost unimaginable sums considering the fact that the price was $2.464 when Joe Biden took office.
And it's going to get worse. Fuel price analyst Patrick De Haan predicts that the price of gas will hit $5 per gall by June 17th. JPMorgan analyst Natasha Kaneva predicts that we will be paying $6.20 nationally by August. Both of those projections came out before the announcement that the European Union would ban Russian oil and gas imports by the end of 2022, which led to a significant increase in the per-barrel price of oil. Which is to say, those might be underestimates. We could be close to $6 per gallon by the Fourth of July. Maybe by Labor Day we'll be nearing $7.
Finnerty also blogged about the inherent inhumanity of the environmentalist movement.
Killer Carbon, Poisonous Humans
Matthew Vadum provided some more intel about the World Health Organization’s proposed international pandemic treaty:
The WHO's Pandemic Power Grab
Despite a temporary setback at the recent meeting of the World Health Organization in Geneva, the Biden administration wants to give the WHO unilateral authority to declare public health emergencies in the United States regardless of the wishes of the American public.
During his administration, president Donald Trump reduced U.S. funding of WHO and gave notice the U.S. would withdraw from the organization, but Joe Biden, who apparently is fine with gutting American sovereignty, is enamored of it. Biden wants to strengthen the WHO and increase its power in world affairs by changing the language of an international pandemic treaty to promote the so-called Great Reset, which would dissolve national borders and empower radical super-elitists like Klaus Schwab.
The push to surrender America’s control over its own destiny to an unaccountable, Sinophilic U.N. agency that lied repeatedly about Covid-19 and its origin came as negotiators gathered last week to decide the fate of the world at two globalist conferences in Switzerland.
The first was at the plutocratic World Economic Forum in Davos, and the second, more relevant to this story, was a few hours’ drive away at the U.N.’s 75th World Health Assembly in Geneva. Against this idyllic alpine backdrop, monkeypox has conveniently appeared on the media’s radar, providing fodder for endless fits of pandemic paranoia as the Wuhan flu fades away.
One-worlders will be disappointed to learn that Biden’s betrayal of American interests will have to wait because he experienced a setback when thirteen proposed amendments to the treaty were unexpectedly rejected. Despite support from Australia, the U.K., and the E.U., countries such as Brazil, Brunei, India, and Russia reportedly weren’t onboard with the amendments and that was enough for the process to grind to a halt. The meeting wrapped up May 28.
The package of amendments the U.S. pushed in Geneva would “give WHO the right to take important steps to collaborate with other nations and other organizations worldwide to deal with any nation’s alleged health crisis, even against its stated wishes,” according to Peter Breggin, a psychiatrist by training, a former U.S. Public Health Service officer, and former National Institute on Mental Health consultant. He writes:
The power to declare health emergencies is a potential tool to shame, intimidate, and dominate nations. It can be used to justify ostracism and economic or financial actions against the targeted nation by other nations aligned with WHO or who wish to harm and control the accused nation.
The WHO, for example, pushed the disastrous COVID-19 lockdowns, even managing to use them to promote "global warming" pseudoscience. “Countries must set ambitious national climate commitments if they are to sustain a healthy and green recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic,” the organization claimed in October 2021, adding that “air pollution, primarily the result of burning fossil fuels, which also drives climate change, causes 13 deaths per minute worldwide.” There's more:
A WHO report from that time shrieks that “climate change is the single biggest health threat facing humanity. While no one is safe from the health impacts of climate change, they are disproportionately felt by the most vulnerable and disadvantaged.”
The WHO’s constitution advocates an internationalist version of the Marxist concept of "health equity" that declares war on free markets, asserting that unequal wealth in nations somehow imperils humanity. Its document states: “Unequal development in different countries in the promotion of health and control of diseases, especially communicable disease, is a common danger.”
On its “infodemic” webpage, the WHO warns that free speech is a threat to government control of events, lamenting that “too much information … during a disease outbreak … causes confusion and risk-taking behaviours that can harm health.” The free flow of information “also leads to mistrust in health authorities and undermines the public health response.”
Rich Trzupek looked into an episode which seemed to expose the shallowness of the Green Movement, which saw an environmentalist in France who attempted to, ahem, improve the Mona Lisa.
Let Them Eat Cake
At the Louvre in Paris the other day, a 36-year-old man who had disguised himself as a crippled old woman rolled into the famous museum in a wheelchair. His path eventually led him to view what is arguably the most famous painting on planet Earth: Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.
The old girl has had some hard times over the years, having been kidnapped, scalded by acid and, most recently, having a would-be Russian emigre fling a coffee cup at her visage charmant. She deserves better, what with being more than 500 years old. So the French did what they could to protect her, establishing a security zone with ropes and covering her visage with shatterproof glass. Neither of these measures were enough to stop our intrepid eco-warrior (designated at birth male, but apparently transitioning to an aged female), from carrying out his/her/its plan.
He rolled as close as he dared to his target, leapt out of his chair and revealed himself to be not la grand-mère but rather a wannabe sauveur de la Terre. And then he brandished the weapon he would use to attack the grand dame of the Louvre: cake.
My Polish ancestors still get mocked for sending the cavalry out to do battle with German Panzers in World War II. I’ll accept that criticism, but will also offer that charging a tank on horseback with lance in hand is a hell of a lot braver than attacking a masterpiece with baked goods. What’s next, throwing crullers at Michelangelo's David? What was the impetus for this act of craven culinary malice? The answer, in the vandal's own words:
Think of the Earth. There are people who are destroying the Earth. Think about it. Artists tell you: think of the Earth. That's why I did this.
And finally, our very own acclimatised beauty Jenny Kennedy headed home to England for Queen Elizabeth’s Jubilee.
Diary of an Acclimatised Beauty: Trooping
Thanks for reading, and keep a look out for upcoming pieces by Joan Sammon, David Solway, and Tom Finnerty. All this and more this week at The Pipeline!