Davos Man Says ‘Total Transparency’ For You

This is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 865 donors have already invested in our efforts to combat corruption and predatory conduct, particularly in the financial realm. Please join us and participate via our donation page, which shows how to give via check, credit card, debit card or PayPal or our new payment processor, Clover. Read about why we’re doing this fundraiser, what we’ve accomplished in the last year,, and our current goal, rewarding our guest bloggers.

Yves here. Many many commentators, including ones on this site, have been describing the increase of the surveillance state and how the private sector has both enabled it and does its own spying for fun and profit. Rather than say the quiet part out loud, our soi-disant elites are instead trying to pretend we are all on board with new Orwellian reversals of traditional meaning, here of the word transparency.

By Thomas Neuburger. Originally published at God’s Spies

“Lyse Doucet, Sheryl Sandberg, Melinda Gates, and Justin Trudeau at Davos 2016 addressing the session Progress towards Parity” (source)

A brief one for today, but a shocker if you haven’t heard this already.

Klaus Schwab is the founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and has been its chairman since 1971. The WEF famously (or notoriously) hosts the annual Davos conference, at which world political and thought leaders meet to discuss, well, the future of the world.

Critics of the Davos forum, for example, the Transnational Institute (TNI), say“the Forum is planning to replace a recognised democratic model with a model where a self-selected group of “stakeholders” make decisions on behalf of the people. The think tank summarises that we are increasingly entering a world where gatherings such as Davos are ‘a silent global coup d’état’ to capture governance.” (see link for footnotes)

If you’re one of those who believe that Davos, indeed, is one of the conferences in which elites “make decisions on behalf of the people,” you’ll love what the elites’ elite is saying now. Listen; the clip is short.

That Word Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means

As many have pointed out, this definition of “transparency” turns the term on its head. In Davos Man’s mouth, it means, “I get to see everything you’re doing; you get to see nothing I’m doing.” About the latter, witness the “prosecution unto death” being visited on Julian Assange for the crime of revealing American war crimes, among other secrets. Chris Hedges:

The current American Empire, damaged and humiliated by troves of internal documents published by WikiLeaks, will, for this reason, persecute Julian for the rest of his life. It does not matter who is president or which political party is in power. Imperialists speak with one despotic voice.

Julian, for this reason, is undergoing a slow-motion execution.

If you look around the country, you can see “transparency” growing as you watch. It’s been happening since September 11, 2001, the day Osama bin Laden told Bush to take our freedom, and Bush said yes.

George W. Bush, who stole your freedom

And the program’s still growing:

Total Information Awareness was what the U.S. government’s massive surveillance used to be called:

Total Information Awareness (TIA) was a mass detection program by the United States Information Awareness Office. … Admiral John Poindexter called it a “Manhattan Project for counter-terrorism”. According to Senator Ron Wyden, TIA was the “biggest surveillance program in the history of the United States”.

Later they got smart and rebranded it, but no one changed what it did.

Even Democrats Promote Mass Surveillance These Days

Democrats used to be opposed to programs like this, some of them anyway. Witness Ron Wyden’s statement above.

Today, not so much:

House Democrats scrapped a vote to reauthorize national security surveillance authorities that have been expired since March after Republicans revolted from the measure following tweets from President Donald Trump urging them to oppose it.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said Thursday morning that he was pulling the bill to renew three authorities under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act from the floor at the request of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a recognition the votes were not there to pass it.

Does this concern you at all? It does me.

Does it make Democrats harder for independents to like? I would think so.

And yet they still do it. Ever ask yourself why?

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

19 comments

  1. THEWILLMAN

    We’ve seen how this plays out. The entire world can march to the same lie (100% effective; safe and effective).

    And since this lie is “science” or “fact” or whatever else they want to call the lie – it’s within their rights to strip you of everything if you do not obey. Job, income, healthcare, education, family and friends…

    And they do that through “transparency”. Submit your vaccine card to HR. Show it before we serve you. Show it before we give healthcare services to your child. NYT articles about enforcing vaccine compliance in your family. Masks for unvaccinated only. Grandma shouldn’t be allowed in your house if she won’t get boosted. That trip to the hospital a week after her last shot was a coincidence. Even the doctor said so since it’s (safe and effective) it can’t be the vaccine. Science.

    The fact is that if you were in the wrong circle and were skeptical of the vaccine or official response to Covid – your life as you knew it was over.

    And this was for an emergency that is 10x the flu. Imagine if it was 100x. Or if the state’s existence or neoliberal elite’s existence depended on it.

    1. Arizona Slim

      One of my best friends was coerced into taking that safe and effective stuff. Her job depended on it.

      Nearly two years later, she’s still dealing with the after effects of the shot.

    2. PelhamKS

      I would join the chorus raging against Covid vaccines if so many of the chorus members weren’t also having fits against N95 mask mandates or any other helpful measures, such as adequate ventilation.

  2. Retired Carpenter

    Perhaps the outcome of the SMO in the Ukraine will determine whether the Davos man survives, or is kicked ungently into that good night. IMO the stakes could not be higher.

    1. tegnost

      A global decentralized CDBC network will break Western control over global finance.

      Or the oppoosite, which imo is much more likely

  3. Koldmilk

    SF writer David Brin has written extensively on this topic so I hopped over to his blog to see what he has to say. Sadly, he appears to have been badly afflicted by TDS and PDS.

    1. lyman alpha blob

      Yikes! I used to check his blog somewhat regularly and have read many of his books. I saw him saying “I like Schumer” and got out of there quick. This is the same Schumer who said the intelligence agencies have six ways to Sunday to go after people a few years back, and didn’t seem to have a real problem with that fact. Perhaps Brin doesn’t have a problem with surveillance either as long as it’s done by those he favors.

      1. iread

        This is becoming more and more common. I call it flipping it. It gets easier in a digital world of zeros and ones or dialectics, where real life or so called complexity gets narrowed to such a point, and I’m
        thinking this happens to psyches as well as habitats, under pressure, such that suddenly all the trees are gone, or you lose your hair, and voila…..Anyway, I had to look up a word that… dropped…”climactic”.
        And sure enough Merriam Webster offers a grammar and usage; on climatic vs climactic. It rather hits my sausage including the Ah Oh at the end re. which wire to clip.

        1. JBird4049

          It’s good old FUD, AKA Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.

          Perfectly sane people driven bonkers, lose their minds, and withdraw into fantasyland. Honestly, I have had a struggle this as well, but seeing it happening to people I knew were sane makes me more determined not to have this happen to me.

          But just how would I know if it did? It is an insidious thing. Most people do not think “I seriously wannabe delusional and wander around in fantasyland mumbling about the Tooth Fairy, the Red Queen, and the Illuminati.” And yet, many people do just that only it’s Clinton, Obama, or Trump who either is/are evil tyrant(s) in the New World Order or are lizard aliens from Epsilon Zirconium B.

  4. Neutrino

    Davos transparency for people makes me visualize mandatory blood draws to drain out serum, platelets, anything.

  5. fred

    > House Democrats scrapped a vote to reauthorize national security surveillance authorities that have
    > been expired since March after Republicans revolted from the measure following tweets from
    > President Donald Trump urging them to oppose it.

    And still today , Democrat misleadership are hapless nutsacks, now in the minority. I had to look at the clicky bit to see this was a 3 year old story; which fact should be emphasized by a bit of light editing. It doesn’t diminish the light cast by the story, but it does dimple the shadow.

  6. The Rev Kev

    This sounds like a grand experiment. The elites want to have total control over the rest of humanity by being able to watch each and every person’s moves while their own remains shrouded in secrecy. Look how annoyed they get when some kid tracks their private flights for example. But not even under the Nazi regime was there this idea that people could be watched so intensely. What will be the effect of people living in this sort of pressure cooker or as eg puts it, a panopticon which is a good description. The only time this is ever really tried are in prisons and those are places not renowned for robust mental health. This. Will. Not. End. Well.

  7. Wukchumni

    I feel certain the handlers @ Big Eavesdrop Utah are watching my every move, but similar to tv sets being a 1-way mechanism, i’ll never know, but if you were to slip in a semi-colon every now and then into my missives, i’d be hep.

    Transparency isn’t a given, please contribute.

  8. JCC

    Klaus Schwab:

    “… but if you have nothing to hide, then you shouldn’t be afraid.”

    Cardinal Richelieu:

    “Give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I will find something in them which will hang him.”

Comments are closed.