A-hole Of The Year Nominee: The World Economic Forum For Wanting Less Facial Recognition Regulation
MassPrivateI | December 8, 2020
The World Economic Forum (WEF) gets my vote for A-hole Of The Year for publishing a report that advocates for less adversarial regulations to help spread facial recognition usage world-wide.
The 67 page report titled “Global Technology Governance Report 2021: Harnessing Fourth Industrial Revolution Technologies in a COVID-19 World” is all about spreading the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” (biometrics) across the globe.
“The Fourth Industrial Revolution – for instance, artificial intelligence (AI), mobility (including autonomous vehicles), blockchain, drones and the internet of things (IoT) – have been at the center of these innovations and are likely to play a dominant role in what emerges post-pandemic.”
The WEF thinks governments should relax regulations on biometric collection devices.
“Governing these new technologies (facial recognition) will require new principles, rules and protocols that promote innovation while mitigating social costs. Public-private collaboration will be crucial to making the right choices for future generations. A faster, more agile approach to governance is needed to effectively respond and adapt to the ways these technologies are changing business models and social interaction structures.”
The WEF claims consumers and governments should be encouraged to share private data.
“Regulators and lawmakers should protect privacy while also encouraging data sharing to ensure that technologies meet their potential. Consumers, public authorities and private companies can all share key data in order to fully benefit from these new technologies.” (page 11)
The WEF also thinks that restricting data sharing would inhibit the growth of facial recognition, drones and the internet of things.
“Many countries have restrictions on data sharing, especially related to finance and healthcare. However, data is a vital ingredient for technologies such as AI autonomous vehicles and blockchain, and restricting its flow can inhibit the growth of data-dependent fields.”
“For innovation to thrive, agile and responsive regulation will be crucial in the post-pandemic world. Business models are changing rapidly, and regulators will need to keep pace with these changes without stifling innovation.” (page 16)
On Page 18, the WEF compares sharing personal facial recognition data with governments and law enforcement to sharing cancer treatment data which is appalling. The so-called deep pools of quality data that facial recognition produces are in fact the intimate details of people’s lives.
“Rapid advances in facial recognition software show what deep pools of quality data can produce and shed light on the kinds of revolutionary outcomes that sharing data on cancer treatments or carbon emissions could produce.”
The WEF’s “Agile Regulation for the Fourth Industrial Revolution” is all about making biometric companies rich at the expense of everyone’s privacy.
“Around the world, governments have been forced to fast-track changes to regulation to enable innovations from telemedicine to drone delivery to help their economies adapt to disruption. A more agile, flexible approach to regulation is needed in order to unlock the potential of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.”
“The Agile Regulation for the Fourth Industrial Revolution project seeks to promote adoption of these practices and make it easier for innovations to be introduced and scaled across the world, while mitigating the risks. If we get this right, we can unlock innovation that will help power our prosperity.”
‘If we get this right, we can unlock the innovation that will help power our prosperity’? Really?
If governments fail to regulate or ‘agilely” regulate personal facial recognition/drone surveillance data around the world, then no one will be safe from Big Brother.
The WEF also wants biometric companies to set an international standard framework to encourage governments to approve biometric surveillance devices.
Letting biometric companies or special interest groups like the WEF decide how best to surveil 7 billion plus people is a mistake of epic proportions. Not only will it [not] make everyone rich like the WEF and biometric companies but privacy as we know it will become almost non-existent.
And that is why I nominate the World Economic Forum for my first-ever “A-hole Of The Year” award.
Now Comes the Davos ‘Great Reset’
By F. William Engdahl – New Eastern Outlook – 09.06.2020
For those wondering what will come after the Covid-19 pandemic has successfully all but shut down the entire world economy, spreading the worst depression since the 1930s, the leaders of the premier globalization NGO, Davos World Economic Forum, have just unveiled the outlines of what we can expect next. These people have decided to use this crisis as an opportunity.
On June 3 via their website, the Davos World Economic Forum (WEF) unveiled the outlines of their upcoming January 2021 forum. They call it “The Great Reset.” It entails taking advantage of the staggering impact of the coronavirus to advance a very specific agenda. Notably enough, that agenda dovetails perfectly with another specific agenda, namely the 2015 UN Agenda 2030. The irony of the world’s leading big business forum, the one that has advanced the corporate globalization agenda since the 1990s, now embracing what they call sustainable development, is huge. That gives us a hint that this agenda is not quite about what WEF and partners claim.
The Great Reset
On June 3 WEF chairman Klaus Schwab released a video announcing the annual theme for 2021, The Great Reset. It seems to be nothing less than promoting a global agenda of restructuring the world economy along very specific lines, not surprisingly much like that advocated by the IPCC, by Greta from Sweden and her corporate friends such as Al Gore or Blackwater’s Larry Fink.
Interesting is that WEF spokespeople frame the “reset” of the world economy in the context of the coronavirus and the ensuing collapse of the world industrial economy. The WEF website states, “There are many reasons to pursue a Great Reset, but the most urgent is COVID-19.” So the Great Reset of the global economy flows from covid19 and the “opportunity” it presents.
In announcing the 2021 theme, WEF founder Schwab then said, cleverly shifting the agenda: “We only have one planet and we know that climate change could be the next global disaster with even more dramatic consequences for humankind.” The implication is that climate change is the underlying reason for the coronavirus pandemic catastrophe.
To underscore their green “sustainable” agenda, WEF then has an appearance by the would-be King of England, Prince Charles. Referring to the global covid19 catastrophe, the Prince of Wales says, “If there is one critical lesson to learn from this crisis, it is that we need to put nature at the heart of how we operate. We simply can’t waste more time.” On board with Schwab and the Prince is the Secretary-General of the UN, Antonio Guterres. He states, “We must build more equal, inclusive and sustainable economies and societies that are more resilient in the face of pandemics, climate change and the many other global changes we face.” Note his talk of “sustainable economies and societies”—more on that later. The new head of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, also endorsed The Great Reset. Other WEF resetters included Ma Jun, the chairman of the Green Finance Committee at the China Society for Finance and Banking and a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the People’s Bank of China; Bernard Looney, CEO of BP; Ajay Banga, CEO of Mastercard; Bradford Smith, president of Microsoft.
Make no mistake, the Great Reset is no spur-of-the moment idea of Schwab and friends. The WEF website states, “COVID-19 lockdowns may be gradually easing, but anxiety about the world’s social and economic prospects is only intensifying. There is good reason to worry: a sharp economic downturn has already begun, and we could be facing the worst depression since the 1930s. But, while this outcome is likely, it is not unavoidable.” The WEF sponsors have big plans: ”… the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a “Great Reset” of capitalism.” This is big stuff.
Radical changes
Schwab reveals more of the coming agenda: “… one silver lining of the pandemic is that it has shown how quickly we can make radical changes to our lifestyles. Almost instantly, the crisis forced businesses and individuals to abandon practices long claimed to be essential, from frequent air travel to working in an office.” These are supposed to be silver linings?
He suggests that those radical changes be extended: “The Great Reset agenda would have three main components. The first would steer the market toward fairer outcomes. To this end, governments should improve coordination… and create the conditions for a “stakeholder economy…” It would include “changes to wealth taxes, the withdrawal of fossil-fuel subsidies, and new rules governing intellectual property, trade, and competition.”
The second component of the Great Reset agenda would ensure that, “investments advance shared goals, such as equality and sustainability.” Here the WEF head states that the recent huge economic stimulus budgets from the EU, USA, China and elsewhere be used to create a new economy, “more resilient, equitable, and sustainable in the long run. This means, for example, building ‘green’ urban infrastructure and creating incentives for industries to improve their track record on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics.”
Finally the third leg of this Great Reset will be implementing one of Schwab’s pet projects, the Fourth Industrial Revolution: “The third and final priority of a Great Reset agenda is to harness the innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to support the public good, especially by addressing health and social challenges. During the COVID-19 crisis, companies, universities, and others have joined forces to develop diagnostics, therapeutics, and possible vaccines; establish testing centers; create mechanisms for tracing infections; and deliver telemedicine. Imagine what could be possible if similar concerted efforts were made in every sector.” The Fourth Industrial Revolution includes gene-editing biotech, 5G telecommunications, Artificial Intelligence and the like.
UN Agenda 2030 and the Great Reset
If we compare the details of the 2015 UN Agenda 2030 with the WEF Great Reset we find both dovetail very neatly. The theme of Agenda 2030 is a “sustainable world” which is defined as one with income equality, gender equality, vaccines for all under the WHO and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) which was launched in 2017 by the WEF along with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
In 2015 the UN issued a document, “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.” The Obama Administration never submitted it to the Senate for ratification knowing it would fail. Yet it is being advanced globally. It includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals, extending an earlier Agenda 21. The 17 include “to end poverty and hunger, in all their forms and dimensions… to protect the planet from degradation, including through sustainable consumption and production, sustainably managing its natural resources and taking urgent action on climate change…“ It calls for sustainable economic growth, sustainable agriculture (GMO), sustainable and modern energy (wind, solar), sustainable cities, sustainable industrialization… The word sustainable is the key word. If we dig deeper it is clear it is code-word for a reorganization of world wealth via means such as punitive carbon taxes that will dramatically reduce air and vehicle travel. The less-developed world will not rise to the developed, rather the other way, the advanced civilizations must go down in their living standards to become “sustainable.”
Maurice Strong
To understand the double-speak use of sustainable, we need to go back to Maurice Strong, a billionaire Canadian oilman and close friend of David Rockefeller, the man who played a central role back in the 1970s for the idea that man-made CO2 emissions were making the world unsustainable. Strong created the UN Environment Program, and in 1988, the UN Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) to exclusively study manmade CO2.
In 1992 Strong stated, “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” At the Rio Earth Summit Strong that same year he added, “Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable.”
The decision to demonize CO2, one of the most essential compounds to sustain all life, human and plant, is not random. As Prof. Richard Lindzen an MIT atmospheric physicist puts it, “CO2 for different people has different attractions. After all, what is it? – it’s not a pollutant, it’s a product of every living creature’s breathing, it’s the product of all plant respiration, it is essential for plant life and photosynthesis, it’s a product of all industrial burning, it’s a product of driving – I mean, if you ever wanted a leverage point to control everything from exhalation to driving, this would be a dream. So it has a kind of fundamental attractiveness to bureaucratic mentality.”
Lest we forget, the curiously well-timed New York pandemic exercise, Event 201 on October 18, 2019 was co-sponsored by the World Economic Forum and the Gates Foundation. It was based on the idea that, ”it is only a matter of time before one of these epidemics becomes global—a pandemic with potentially catastrophic consequences. A severe pandemic, which becomes “Event 201,” would require reliable cooperation among several industries, national governments, and key international institutions.” The Event 201 Scenario posited, “outbreak of a novel zoonotic coronavirus transmitted from bats to pigs to people that eventually becomes efficiently transmissible from person to person, leading to a severe pandemic. The pathogen and the disease it causes are modeled largely on SARS, but it is more transmissible in the community setting by people with mild symptoms.”
The declaration by the World Economic Forum to make a Great Reset is to all indications a thinly-veiled attempt to advance the Agenda 2030 “sustainable” dystopian model, a global “Green New Deal” in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic measures. Their close ties with Gates Foundation projects, with the WHO, and with the UN suggest we may soon face a far more sinister world after the Covid19 pandemic fades.
F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University.
Oil majors eager to enter Iran market: Zangeneh
Press TV – January 25, 2014
Iran’s oil minister says major world oil companies have voiced readiness to set up shop in the country.
Oil giants attending the World Economic Forum (WEF) in the Swiss city of Davos announced that they were interested to enter the Iranian market, said Bijan Namdar Zangeneh in Tehran after returning from Davos where he attended the conference.
“Iran’s presence at the Davos meeting was very positive and the reaction of prominent international corporations attests to that,” he said.
Zangeneh touched upon his meetings with high-ranking officials of oil companies at the WEF, and said, “These companies were interested in working in Iran and many of them arranged plans for talks.”
He also referred to the Oil Ministry’s plans to develop a new model for oil contracts, and noted that a committee was set up four months ago to examine the existing contracts and pinpoint the merits and demerits of the structure of buy-back deals.
“We are holding talks with oil companies to have their viewpoints as well,” Zangeneh pointed out.
The new model of contracts should fulfill the expectations of the government and, at the same time, attract oil firms, the Iranian minister said.
A draft of the model will be ready by next month and it will be discussed at a meeting of experts in Tehran, Zangeneh projected.
On the sidelines of the OPEC ministerial meeting in Vienna in early December 2013, Zangeneh said Tehran would like to see seven oil giants – namely Total, Royal Dutch Shell, Norway’s Statoil, Eni and British Petroleum, as well as the US Exxon and Conoco – make investment in the Islamic Republic’s energy sector once US-led sanctions are lifted.
On January 20, the Council of the European Union suspended part of the sanctions it had imposed against Iran following the Geneva nuclear deal between Tehran and the Sextet of powers – the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany.
The new measure incorporates suspension of a 2012 ban on insuring and transporting Iran’s crude oil and the sanctions on trade in gold, precious metals and petrochemical products.

