“There’s Anger Building Out There” – One Man’s Message To Davos Elites

This article was originally published by Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge

One man went to Davos and dared to say what Pepe Escobar thought no one would – that “it’s the inequality, stupid.”

Amid all the back-slapping exuberance of record high global stock markets and record high global net worth, John McDonnell, the U.K. opposition Labour Party’s spokesman on finance, came to the World Economic Forum in Davos with an uncomfortable message for the global elite…

“I just warn the Davos establishment: There’s an anger building out there that you need to recognize and deal with,”

As Bloomberg reports, most delegates in Davos have adopted an upbeat tone this week — reflected in the optimism of top bankers at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Deutsche Bank AG who told Bloomberg they see a continuation in a global boom in dealmaking.

But as McDonnell warns, there’s an “avalanche of discontent” out there among the masses.

But in the Swiss resort, “there’s almost a sense of euphoria, it is extraordinary, and I think there’s a sense of complacency.”

McDonnell’s warning carries weight because he would be chancellor of the exchequer if Labour came to power — something investors are preparing for.

“Out there, beyond the Davos compound, many people — we saw it in the Oxfam report — feel the markets have been rigged against them, not for them,” McDonnell said.

“When they’re told we’re coming out of that recession, growth is returning and they don’t feel they’re participating in the benefits of that growth, that’s when people become really alienated and angry.”

Bloomberg reports that McDonnell then laid out a recipe for regaining the trust of the masses, including:

• Paying workers a “real living wage” and allowing them to share in the profits of the companies they work for.


• Recognizing trade unions and appointing workers to company boards.


• A new “Hippocratic oath” for accountancy firms to tackle tax avoidance rather than encourage it.


• The rich and those in power should publish their income tax returns.


• A “Robin Hood” tax on financial transactions that would be used to fund public services and international development programs.

With the support of the far left fringes of Labour, both McDonnell and Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn have firmed up their grip over the party, appointing allies to the party’s National Executive Committee in recent months after fending of an attempted coup by moderate lawmakers in 2016.

“There has to be a radical new agenda where people share in the growth, share in the wealth, share in the benefits as the economic cycle turns,” McDonnell said. “I think there’s an avalanche out there of discontent and resentment and alienation if we don’t address these issues.”

Still, as Pepe Escobar previously noted, this year’s Davos theme was “Resilient Dynamism.” As a definition of the current woes of turbo-capitalism, a five-year-old in a favela, or slum, in Rio could come up with something more meaningful. 

But then, Davos is a one-trick pony. “Resilience” remains a euphemism for the ever-expanding markets and low pay for workers syndrome. In a nutshell, globalization driven by huge multinational corporations.

We should scrap “Resilience” as the name of their game is “Inequality.” Davos, of course, does not do “inequality.” 

In a study released by UC Berkeley, the wealth of the top 1% of Americans accrued by 11.6% in 2010, while for the other 99% it was a mere 0.2%. This is what is at the heart of hardcore neoliberalism and capitalist.

Davos should be discussing how a key segment of elites concocted the Wall Street-provoked financial crash. That was only ‘virtual’ business, but it was not ‘virtual’ national governments that had to intervene afterward to pick up the bill and bail out the banks.

No, I am afraid “Resilient Dynamism” will not do for Davos. But it is a good definition of China. While European and American elites accrue their capital to contain Beijing’s advance in Africa and Asia, China’s interventionism is of the business kind. It is a case of building roads, not wars.

Still, the question Davos refuses to ask remains: Why is it easier to imagine the total destruction of mankind, from nuclear war to a climate catastrophe, than to work on changing the system of relations spawned by capitalism? 

Stay tuned for that one.

Top Geopolitical Expert Issues Dire Warning: ‘Beware of False Flag’ Blamed on North Korea

After years of threatening to carry out a nuclear attack on the United States, North Korea is finally closer than it has ever been to fulfilling its notorious threat—according to politicians and mainstream media outlets across the country. But according to one geopolitical analyst, Americans should be more concerned about the possibility of a false flag attack.

In a report for Asia Times, analyst Pepe Escobar noted that the same people who are now saying that North Korea has created a miniaturized nuclear warhead capable of fitting its recently tested ICBM are the people who sold the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

“Western corporate media would hardly refrain from metastasizing pure speculation into a ‘North Korea has miniaturized nuclear weapons’ frenzy consuming the cable news cycle/ newspaper headlines,” Escobar wrote, noting that the latest rumors about North Korea’s nuclear capabilities stem from a recent report from Japan’s Defense Ministry that is based entirely on speculation. 

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“So let’s look at the agendas in play. The War Party in the US, with its myriad connections in the industrial-military-media complex, obviously wants/needs war to keep the machinery oiled. Tokyo, for its part, would much appreciate a pre-emptive US military attack—and damn the inevitable, massive South Korean casualties that would result from Pyongyang’s counterpunch. 

It’s quite enlightening that Tokyo, for all practical purposes, considers China as a ‘threat’ as serious as North Korea; Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera went straight to the point when he said, ‘North Korea’s missiles represent a deepening threat. That, along with China’s continued threatening behavior in the East China Sea and South China Sea, is a major concern for Japan.’ Beijing’s response was swift.”

One of the most important points Escobar makes is that “The War Party,” or the U.S. military industrial complex, “wants/needs war to keep the machinery oiled.” Because of this, Escobar warned that Americans should “Beware of an engineered false flag, to be blamed on Pyongyang; that would be the perfect pretext for war.”

Indeed, the war drums are already having a steroid-like effect on the bottom lines of weapons companies with Lockheed Martin breaking all time stock market records.

READ MORE:  Trump Flip-Flops on 5 Key Campaign Promises in a Day — War Spending Now Priority

In addition to being a large opium producer, Escobar also noted that North Korea ”holds trillions of US dollars in unexplored mineral wealth.” He warned that Americans should “Watch the shadow play by candidates bound to profit from such juicy loot.”

Hogwash! If N. Korea is Trump"s defining moment, then the banksters that want into that country will be happy!… https://t.co/r8PzqRUUru

— Cynthia McKinney PhD (@cynthiamckinney) August 9, 2017

As The Free Thought Project reported, another important aspect to note is that while North Korea has been threatening to show the world its true nuclear power for more than a decade, the U.S. has enabled and funded the nation’s actions for more than half a century. As a result, “if North Korea does ever launch a nuke, it will be because the U.S. government and its assets helped to put it in their hands.”

 The fact that the U.S. government and the mainstream media have come together to promote the “imminent threat” of North Korea carrying out a nuclear attack on the U.S., serves a reminder of another time when the two entities united to push a propaganda campaign that got the U.S. into a war it is still fighting 14 years later.

Despite dire warnings from both politicians and MSM pundits that Hussein had weapons of mass destructions in Iraq, a classified report that was leaked in January 2016 confirmed that there was absolutely no evidence of WMDs. It also served as a reminder of the “utter deception carried out on the American people to support the invasion.”  

At the end of the day, if the U.S. was truly concerned about North Korea launching a nuclear attack, then it would not have been funding the nation’s actions in the first place, and the supposed imminent threats would be based on more than just speculative reports. If there are reports of such an attack, it is important to remember how well false flags—such as Iraq’s WMDs—have worked for the U.S. War Machine in the past.