Iain Davis Transcripts

Read Transcript TO 91MIN MP3 Sustainable Slavery with Iain Davis - Unlimted Hangout Whitney Webb

Hey. You're listening to Unlimited Hangout. I'm your host, Whitney Webb. This past week in the US, we saw the return of the Clinton Global Initiative, the Mike Bloomberg backed UN Climate Action Race to Zero Resilience Forum, and the Prince William sponsored Earthshot Prize Innovation Summit. All of these events focus considerable attention on solutions to climate change and can be seen as part of the preparations for COP twenty seven, the UN's upcoming climate confab set to be held in Egypt this November.

Central to these conferences and the discussions therein is the twenty thirty agenda for sustainable develop development. The core of that agenda are seventeen sustainable development goals or SDGs. While the SDGs are often brought up in the context of climate change, examination of the goals make it clear that climate is a relatively small focus of this agenda and is only expressly addressed by just one of the seventeen goals. The goals touch every aspect of our lives from the macro Another thing that becomes quickly apparent when examining the SDGs is that their most ardent supporters are those who ostensibly have the largest carbon footprints in the world and who also represent the most predatory institutions in private finance in the corporate world. Do these figures now care deeply about the state of our planet, or is there a professed concern a cover for business as usual?

With me today to discuss this and more is Ian Davis. Ian is no stranger to this podcast, and he is also the coauthor of the unlimited hangout sustainable slavery series Which he and I where he and I are examining the deeper realities behind agenda two thousand and thirty and its seventeen SDGs Ian is a regular contributor to UK column as well as unlimited hangout, and he is regularly republished by Off Guardian, The Corbett Report, and many other outlets. You can follow and support his work at ian davis dot com. That's I a I n davis dot com. Thanks for joining me today, Ian.

How are you? I'm very well. Thank you, Whitney. Thanks very much for having me. Absolutely.

My pleasure. And who else would I have since we're writing a series on this very topic together? It makes the most logical sense. Good point. Good point.

Right. So as I mentioned earlier, our our series on this is called sustainable slavery. We currently have two installments out. One is called sustainable debt slavery, and the most recent one is, Ian's piece, on UHC twenty thirty, the United Nations global public private partnership for health care, which is focused around sustainable development goal three. And I'll be having an upcoming one on, the SDG.

I think it's number eleven or no. I I have it written down somewhere. I think it's let me find it. It's fourteen. Sorry.

There's seventeen of them. So I've got first dibs on seven. Oh, okay. Alright. Well, we'll work we'll we'll work that out when we're not recording a podcast on it.

But, anyway, we have two installments up now. We have more, upcoming in the future, obviously, and there is a lot to cover here, since there's seventeen of these things. So, climate starting, you know, really from this past week and, through the next coming months in the lead up to COP twenty seven, we can expect a lot of bombardment about the necessity and urgency with which the world must, implement the sustainable development goals. As I mentioned in the intro, these goals are basically about transforming, all aspects of our lives, and they sound like very nice things if you just read the, you know, one sentence or, you know, phrase descriptor for each of them, you know, things like no poverty, zero hunger, good health and well-being. These are all things that people can get behind, but the thing is when you actually, for example, go to the UN website, you they will, you know, have graphics of of each goal and you mouse over, and it it tells you a little more about what the goals are.

So, you know, sustainable development goal three, which you wrote about recently, Ian, you mouse over. It says, ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages. And below it, it says, thirteen targets, eighteen events, thirty five publications, and nine hundred and seventy eight actions. And so, basically, you know, we're having these, you know, phrases that everyone can get behind that really are written so that no one can, you know, really oppose the idea that they're promoting, but there's specific actions going on behind those phrases that a lot of people are not looking at. Ostensibly because it sounds nice, so why would you oppose it?

And in the case of SDG three, which we'll talk about in a little bit, the organization that's really lurking behind that is called UHC twenty thirty, and it really doesn't have very much to do with promoting well-being for all at all ages unless the all you're talking about there is all massive multinational pharmaceutical corporations. But, you know, we'll get to that, in a little bit, but more or less, that's essentially how these, SDGs operate when you start to look behind them. So the first installment of our series, sustainable debt slavery, I guess, Ian, we're basically focusing there on sustainable development goal seventeen, which is basically they call it partnerships for the goals. And if you, you know, mouse over and read the slightly longer descriptor, it says strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development. And, of course, as we know in this article, that global partnership is a global public private partnership.

So this is definitely something right out of the playbook of stakeholder capitalism, and it has a lot of implications for monetary policy. And our friends at GFANS, the Glasgow Financial Alliance for net zero. So, I I've kind of gone off a bit here, so I it's probably best I I hand it over to you, Ian, to basically explain what, SDG seventeen is about, what is going what does this global public private partnership really mean here, and why does it matter? Yeah. Thanks, Britney.

Yeah. I mean, I agree with you. You're quite right. I mean, the opening sort of part of or perhaps one of the key parts to understand SDG seventeen, is that it's it's it says that the the the focus of it is to enhance, and this is a quote, to enhance the global partnership for sustainable development complemented by multi stakeholder partnerships. So the idea of the multi stakeholder partnership is key to and I think it's important to understand SDG seventeen because it more or less sets out the framework for how the other sixteen sustainable development goals, SDGs, will be implemented.

Right. So they're all implemented using or based upon that same that notion of the multi stakeholder partnership. But therefore, it's important to understand what the multi stakeholder partnership is. Well, the multi stakeholder partnership goes back to, as you said, the idea of, you know, first well, not first, but but first popularized, certainly, and first pushed by, Klaus Schwab, head of, the World Economic Forum way back in the way back in the nineteen seventies, but also in his book, which I think it was published much later, I think, in the ninety. Yeah.

So, so he yeah. I mean, he enunciated it fully in his book, Stakehold Capitalism. And he the idea of the stakeholder on the face of it, again, as much as the same with the SDGs is it is and sustainable development is that when you read the headline, and that's something that I would encourage people to consider when they look at SDGs. Because if you go to the UN's website and look at their their primary pages for the sustainable development, I think it's important to remember that what you are being shown there is the head line. You're not being it's it's unless you dig deeper into them, you're not gonna understand what they're about because that's tantamount to reading the headline of an article and not reading the content.

Yeah. Or terminology. You know, the it's it's, it you nearly really need to understand this stuff to know where it's heading. And as I said, this idea of stakeholder capitalism is at the center of it. So initially, it was presented by Klaus Schwab and others as the idea of a more responsible form of corporate governance and governance within the corporation, that is.

So the idea is that corporations could, quote, add value by being more responsible partners in society. And, you know, there was there was a kind of, an admission to a certain extent within it that, you know, corporate activity is very influential and even some kind of acceptance of, you know, a minimum amount of culpability for some of the damages that corporations, of course, with their business activities over the years. So on the face of it, it sounded quite cuddly. But the but the problem is is what they are suggesting is the core cent the center of stakeholder capitalism, which is that they are proposing that and this is again coming from Klaus Schwab, that the world would be a better place if multinational corporations are the trustees of society. Well, what does that mean?

Well, a trustee has got a very specific meaning. In in in law, it has a specific meaning. So it's a person appointed, and this is the legal definition from Black's Law Dictionary, a person appointed or required by law to execute a trust, one in whom an estate, interest, or power is vested. So they are, I think the key thing to bear in mind from the corporate perspective is that they are suggesting that they should be trustees of society. Now that means that they are suggesting that they should be entrusted by us and have should have power vested in them by us to exercise control and act in our best interests.

So that is Basically be the stewards of everything. Yeah. Yeah. To be the stewards. Now, if that is part of sustainable development, which is a global plan for transformation, and they are the key stakeholders in the, quote, unquote, multi stakeholder partnership, what they're claiming is that they should be responsible custodians of this transformation.

Well, as we all know, the transformation sustainable development is global. So what they are saying is that they should be the key custodians of the earth. So that is a problem. That's mental. I mean yeah.

That's the whole podcast, everyone. No. I'm kidding. But, I mean, you basically could end it there because, I mean, who in their right mind would support that? You know, it's it's totally mental, especially when you consider, you know, that a lot of this is ostensibly around public private partnerships.

And so you're having you know, if you talk about, like, corporate capture of the public sector, you're basically having the private running everything and being like, yes. Now entrust us to be stewards of your global estate and the global commons and all of this stuff, you know the people that have as I mentioned earlier, you know a lot of the people that are the public faces of this are people like bill gates who build a mono predatory monopoly at Microsoft or people like Larry Fink of BlackRock, you know, a predatory asset manager and stuff like that. I mean, it's just, mental, the idea that these guys would be responsible stewards of anything, to be honest. Yeah. And I think that's that's a key thing to for people to to try and sort of you know, why would any of us, given the way that that you know?

Most people, I think, who believe in what sustainability, sustainable development is supposed to be, probably consider, I mean, we see it all the time with the protests, Consider the quote, unquote, big polluters like the like companies like BP and ExxonMobil and PetroChina and companies like that, consider them to be the world's big polluters. Well, these are the companies who through this network of something that we could call the global public private partnership are the ones who are assuming stewardship of the planet for sustainable development. So we so the so people need to be to make that connection. They need to understand that the companies that they're protesting against, if you happen to be involved in those kind of protests, are the companies who are running sustainable development programs globally. So you're protesting for them.

Yeah. So a a lot of the stuff you have here, you know, you have, UN backed entities that are supporting things like carbon markets and and carbon trading and carbon allowances and all of this stuff. And it's even been reported in mainstream media outlets like The Guardian, The Intercept that oil companies overwhelmingly support those policies. They like them. Why do they like them?

You know, I I I just I'm kind of puzzled why people on the left haven't really dug, or haven't really seemed very interested in digging, any deeper into this because you hear all the time, or at least we're you know, a lot of people think that the left is ostensibly supposed to be more concerned about, holding corporations to account and predatory behavior by corporations and regulating corporations and all of this stuff. But this is basically handing corporations, including the ones that a lot of them recognize as being the quote, unquote bad guys. It's handing them the the keys to the castle, essentially. Yeah. I mean, it's it's it's pretty crazy stuff, really.

I mean, I I think one of the problems is and and I think another another important thing is to bear in mind is personally, I I don't accept the the idea that, you know, that carbon dioxide is is a great pollution pollutant and anthropogenic global warming is a thing. That's personally my view. But I understand the vast majority of people would disagree with that. It doesn't matter. It doesn't make any difference.

Even if you even if you think that that, you know, there isn't that we are faced with a climate emergency and that there is some need to do something about it in terms of in terms of, you know, to save the planet and to save, obviously, life on Earth and so forth. This isn't the solution. Sustainable development is not the solution. The sustainable development has got nothing to do with reducing carbon dioxide. Yeah.

It's it's sustainable development is about creating carbon markets in a in a great to a great extent, creating carbon markets to enable the same global corporations that have always the big polluters, quote unquote big polluters, to change their business model so that they can carry on being global corporate leaders as multi stakeholder partners, but with a new business model based upon carbon trading, which means not that they will reduce their carbon output, but that they will offset it or trade it, therefore making more money. Yeah. So, basically, like you said, it doesn't really matter how you feel about climate change, whether you believe the, you know, about a climate emergency or you don't. It's really irrelevant when looking at the sustainable development goals as it's pitched. Because I think one of the reasons too, which you sort of alluded to this, I think, a lot of people like the conceive of sustainable development, the term differently than the way the UN and the people implementing the SDGs think about what sustainable development means.

And we can get into that in a little bit because on the first installment of, our series, we we note that considerably when especially when it comes to economics and the idea of sustainable debt in in things of of that nature. But, you know, it's even more than just making carbon markets. You could say that sustainable development goals in general as as written and as they're being implemented are about specifically making new markets, period. It's not just I mean, obviously, making a new carbon market is the key part of it, but you're having, at the same time, basically, transformation of everything, including the natural world, natural resources into financial commodities, and and basically allowing those to become a a new market and a new asset class and all of this stuff, with the ultimate goal of keeping the casino going and allowing the same predatory behavior by these actors to grow and expand in a way that that they are very excited about. When I wrote about natural asset corporations, last year, the group that developed that called the intrinsic exchange group, they're backed by the Rockefeller Foundation.

They're basically gloating over the opportunity and how this new asset class will allow them to extend exhibit the existing amount of assets in the economy by, like, trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars. And when they say the opportunity, it's very clear. They say it's that that they see as the opportunity, not an opportunity to, I don't know, protect those natural resources like they ostensibly claim. That's not the opportunity to them. The opportunity to them is to open a new casino for, specifically in the developing world.

It's all about emerging markets and moving capital flow to emerging markets and, you know, all sorts of financial games are going on here. And that's not sustainable development like most people think of it. Most people, I think, if you were to ask them what sustainable development is, they'd say things like, okay. Returning to small scale subsistence organic farming, putting a solar panel on your roof, recycling, all types of stuff like that. And that's not really you know, maybe some of those things pop up in, you know, in in some degree in these sustainable development goals, but that's not the focus of this agenda twenty thirty for sustainable development by any means at all.

And if you're looking at governments like in the US, where you have the Biden administration talking about the need to implement these goals relatively often, there's been numerous cases and, you know, my colleague Jeremy Lofredo has been covering one story on this, but there's many stories like this across the country where organic farms are being actually shut down or threatened with fines, you know, for basically, not meeting certain goals that are sort of tied into the same agenda, but they're, you know, farming organically. In this particular case that Jeremy is covering, it's like an Amish family. You know, they're not using chemicals or any of that stuff, and it's, it's getting nasty pretty quickly. And, you you know, this is something, that's going on while there's very big concerns about food security globally, and it's not just that one case. Right?

So, you know, there's a lot going on, behind what these people are calling sustainable development, and there's a, like, a huge rift, I would say, between how people conceive of sustainable development and what that means and what these people are saying it means. Yeah. No. Absolutely. I mean, if we were actually gonna tackle let's let's just put aside the, you know, whatever you might think about anthropogenic global warming and just think about what we would do if we were facing a real climate catastrophe.

Well, obviously, the first thing that you would start thinking about is localizing energy supplies, localizing food supplies, localizing, you know, mitigations against environmental damage, that kind of thing. That makes sense. Because if the problem is that as a species, we are running wild around the planet and causing untold devastation, We're doing that through our mass industrial activity. So they're obviously the the the logical thing to do if we were gonna tackle the climate emergency is to localize those things and perhaps reduce our carbon footprints by, by living, you know, more sustainable lives in the general, in, you know, in, in the, the the normally accepted meaning of the word of sustainable, I. E.

Being self sufficient. I mean, that that would be that would reduce our carbon footprints that would that would actually tackle the climate emergency. But as you quite rightly said with me that this is almost the total opposite of that. It's about globalization. And more importantly, I would suggest it is about introducing global financial governance into pretty much every corner of our lives.

So global financial governance will be the the driving impetus for decision making and policy making right down to the local level. Because because the the idea that these people are presenting, you know, like you said, like Bloomberg and Kearney and Fink and people like that, is that this is so crucial. They they they are saying that the climate emergency is so dire that therefore, the the oft quoted euphemism, isn't it, is global problems require global solutions. So therefore, economic development needs to be sustainable. So they want to introduce the idea of sustainability into financial and economic development, which means transforming the international monetary and financial system in order to reflect that claimed necessity.

But what what what they're actually doing, if you can you because because you can flip the switch on that and and look at it from the other end of that equation, is cascading global financial governance down to everywhere across the entire planet, into everything we do, into growing our food, you know, the way that we you know, the transport that we use, the energy that we consume, our consumption in general, everywhere. And so so under the guise of claiming necessity for fighting the alleged climate disaster, What they're actually creating is a global control system that will enable them to shape every aspect of our lives. And that that is a big part of it. And you, you know and I think there are a lot of figures that have been banded about. And I know that, you know, some people, the, IEE, I can't remember the the the name of now, but the first when they were talking about launching natural asset companies spoke about a potential global market of four quadrillion dollars.

Yeah. Yeah. That's in intrinsic exchange group. Yeah. The intrinsic ex yeah.

IAG, the intrinsic in intrinsic exchange group talked about a potential global market of four quadrillion dollars. And I think sometimes they make these claims as they did with Gfans that that when you look at the numbers, you kinda wonder whether those things actually add up. But, nonetheless, they're ambitious. This is their right case. Care if they add up to me.

Yeah. No. No. They're just ambitious, and they want everyone to buy into it. So if they put out these big numbers, people are gonna buy into it.

Well, the the investors are gonna buy into it. But the point is, as you quite rightly said, the carbon trading market at the moment is is projected to be about a hundred and own only only a hundred and twenty trillion dollars globally. So so that's just small potatoes compared to the rest of it if if if we are if we are gonna believe what they claim. But the the whole thing and I think, you know, it's another thing to consider is it's all based on claims and projections. It's all it's all claimed on it's all based on Jamtomorrow.

And not just not just the financial projections that they are that they're putting out all over the world to try and entice investors to believe in it. Also, in terms of the claimed disasters that we're going to face, which is the, you know, the basis of their of their claim necessity, is that is that, you know, these disasters are gonna that are likely to befall us unless we accept, basically, global financial governance. Yeah. So one of the things going on here before we get into the financial stuff is this, the idea and we saw this sort of with COVID nineteen too. Yeah?

The idea we have to act now. It's so urgent. We don't have time to think about it. But here are these solutions. Let's implement them immediately or disaster awaits us, basically.

And we're seeing that sort of also not just in COVID nineteen, but the the preparations for the quote, unquote next pandemic, whenever that is to befall the world. So, you know, in in doing that, you're basically using fear to get people to get onto a predesigned agenda that goes back, well, nominally to twenty fifteen, but, obviously, agenda twenty thirty and all of that, you know, is its roots are in nineteen ninety two and arguably even before that. So, you know, there's a lot more, going on than just, you know, oh, there's this climate emergency and we have to solve it immediately. They act like there's this sort of grass root involvement. That's the civil society component that you might wanna explain, Ian, for people that haven't read your article on that, where they sort of say they're bringing in they that this agenda isn't just corporations and governments.

They brought in the little people through civil society partnerships and stuff like that, but that itself is also pretty, illusory. Yeah. So so communitarianism is an idea that was that is a kind of amalgam of two of stakeholder capitalism, the thing that we've just discussed and communitarianism as envisaged by people like Amitai Etzioni, who who put forward this this idea that the individuals are develop their identity really as a consequence of their of their of the community that they're in. So we are, as as as he put it, the product of our community. So therefore, the community, what's good for the community is good for the individual.

So the idea of communitarianism is that of, of, putting these two things together into something called civil society where representatives of the community negotiate in effect with, representatives of the public and the private sector. So they would be negotiating with representatives from the local government or the government, And the private sector would be the stakeholders, the private stakeholders that are the stakeholder capitalists. So these three groups come together and this is supposed to enable within civil society what we might used to call democratic representation. Whereas rather than an individual, rather than individuals voting or being directly involved in discussions with with these, the public and the private sector, we would be represented by the community, whoever that group might be. So we might be talking about NGOs, or we might be talking about nongovernmental organizations, or we might be talking about, local community groups or whatever.

So but the and that comes obviously, what comes with that is a whole set of questions based on assumptions about who the community is, who do they represent? How do individuals raise their voices within the community? If the community is gonna present them, what is a community and so forth. But nonetheless, the idea is is that the problem with the civil society equation is that of those three groups, the public, the private, and the community, The public sector has got all the authority and all the power. They can compel people to act.

The private sector has got all the resources and all the money at its disposal. And the third party in that group, the community has got no power and no resources. So basically, and even more so as through stakeholder capitalism, the public and the private sector are actually partners. So they are the group that is facing the community who are who through their partnership arrangement have got all the authority and all the resources. So the community's got no chance, basically.

So the idea that that that civil and that is the model of civil society. So the idea that civil society can represent our interest, which is the way that it is envisaged to work within sustainable development and the the United Nations sustainable development goals is nonsense, really. Basically, it's just a way of disenfranchising the population. And, also, you have to say completely overriding any idea of representative democracy. Yeah.

So, I mean, if you look into any SDG, really, you're gonna find the civil society. I would really just call it a buzzword because in practice, like you just pointed out, it's pretty meaningless. It's really the public private partnership running the show and civil society sort of tossed in there as, you know, a token representation of the quote, unquote community, and that's kind of when these people are throwing it around a very nebulous term, and they can define it any number of ways, and it could just end up being an an an NGO that claims to represent, a particular group but is, you know, funded by the same billionaires, you know, behind a lot of this stuff. You know, it it's pretty or their foundations, quote, unquote philanthropic foundations. It's, definitely a complicated ruse going on, I guess, I would say.

So, returning to is sustainable development goal seventeen, which is what this this first piece, sustainable debt slavery, is about. So there's a very specific reason we talk about debt slavery here, and that has to do with some of the the wording within, sustainable, or SDG seventeen that refers to basically how the multi stakeholder partnerships, which you just explained, Ian, are going to create global, what they call, macroeconomic stability and that this is a prerequisite for the implementation, really, of all the SDGs. So you pointed out in the article on the part you, contributed that the meaning of macroeconomic stability has essentially been transformed by the UN and its specialized agencies. So could you get into that a little bit? Yeah.

I mean, they've literally transformed it. I mean, the the UN say themselves that macroeconomic stability doesn't mean what it used to mean. So it's it's it's literally been transformed. But the idea of macroeconomic stability is that it it it and what it used to mean is that you would have you would have good growth. You would have full employment or maximum employment, and that you would have kind of stable economic conditions.

But as we were discussing earlier, in order for sustainable development to work, because the climate disaster is so dangerous, apparently, No. There's no point in having any kind of growth unless it also incorporates what they're calling fiscal space for, for sustainable development. So so no development is actually sustainable unless it has got this fiscal space in it to enable commitments to sustainable development goals, which is circular reasoning. It's a bit of a catch twenty two situation, but that is how they are redefining global finances, basically. Yeah.

So like you point out in the article, I mean, this is basically completely dissociating how most people think of macroeconomic stability from actual economic activity. And so when we talk about how the SDGs are basically in the UN says that about transforming our world, and they're transforming all of these definitions, including sustainable development and macroeconomic stability to justify that transformation. I mean, this should really be ringing alarm bells in in people's heads regardless of what, you think about, you know, climate change and all of that stuff. I mean, because this is really something that's a lot more far reaching. And the people ultimately involved in designing a lot of this are predatory bankers, and we'll get into that, in a second.

So, you know, like like you basically just pointed out, macroeconomic stability is basically having now includes countries having the well, there's terms they use for it. I guess it's like fiscal balance, I think, is is the term that that you noted, that they have to incorporate this space in their, in their finances for the implementation of the SDGs. Otherwise, it's not macro. They they don't have macroeconomic stability anymore. Right?

Yeah. I mean, I I think one of the thing that stands out with with when you start looking at, the way that the UN have gone about this and the way that the that we might call that the UN global public private partnership because it's got this multi stakeholder model right at the heart of it, is that often their own research and their own reports, which question a lot of this stuff, they seem to push that to one side. So in terms of macroeconomic stability with this notion of fiscal space being introduced into it. The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs have struggled to define what that means. What does fiscal space mean?

So the closest that they can define it is, and this is their definition, this is a quote, the difference between a country's current debt level and its estimated sustainable debt level. Now, bearing in mind that sustainable means that there's sufficient space to pay for this new global economic activity, this new sustainable development. So that's what sustainable means. It doesn't mean what we used to think it meant, which was sustainable levels of growth, employment and economic activity. It now means this addition of additional expenditure to pay for sustainable development.

But the problem is, if you think about what they're saying is the difference between a country's current debt level and its estimated sustainable debt level. Well, how do you know what the estimated sustainable debt level is? Because It's arbitrary. It's arbitrary. It's arbitrary.

You've got no idea because you you don't know what what what growth that you're gonna have in the future. Another war could come along, and we could go into recession. Nobody knows. It's it's a total stab in the dark. So this, again, what this stuff seems to boil down to really is wishful thinking, but also it's it's almost like divorcing real economic activity from this new model based on projections and sort of arbitrary arbitrary guesswork.

You know, this this is purely and simply to enable the whole thing to proceed forward so that this, you know, the the financialization of nature can take place and carbon markets can take place. So it's a commitment. Right. It it's a commitment. And so, basically, what you're having there is that well, what they basically admit here, that the world that the World Bank admitted is that, debt is a critical form of financing for the sustainable development goals, and that's a direct quote from them.

So, like, we've been talking about, basically, the idea of having a sustainable economy, sustainable economic growth as these people define it, includes having the amount of capital freed up to implement the SDGs as, you know, the UN is defining them or, you know, the private public private partnerships that are behind the SDGs that are basically designing how these, goals are being implemented. And if the and and a lot of countries don't have that money, and the UN and and these entities know that. And so, basically, they're required through their commitment to agenda twenty thirty to take on a considerable amount of debt, in order to implement these goals. And and and by doing so, that's basically deemed sustainable economic growth. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's crazy stuff. Which is just madness, because, basically, you know, you're having the same debt imperialism that has characterized the post World War two era ever since these entities like the IMF and and these other, you know, global financial institutions and development banks, you know, since they've really been on the scene. You know, they've basically been wielded, by the United States and their and their allies, even admitted by the US military, as I point out in the article, as financial weapons to force particularly, countries in the developing world to adopt policies they otherwise wanted to, wanted to adopt.

And this includes, you know, in the past, what what we saw, you know, the IMF is probably the best known example. In places like Argentina, in places like Greece, you know, all over the world, really, that they have to implement austerity. They have to privatize their public, assets. They have to and and they have to, you know, basically, almost always sell it up to, multinational foreign multinational corporations or they, you know, or or things of of that nature that are obviously not in their national interest to do. And, so, basically, what you're seeing here is the call to do the same, but dress it up as something different.

You know? And it's basically being framed as something that's as a policies that are coming from the left, when it's really been, you know, the left that in the past has criticized the use of these institutions. And, also, people on the right, I mean, it's not necessarily a left right thing. But more often than not, you know, at least in my experience living in in Latin America, no one really likes the IMF down here, but it tends to be the people that are most vocal about it or or people on on the left more often than not. So, it's just interesting again that, you know, the role of debt slavery is very major when it comes to the SDGs.

And particularly disturbing about all of this is the the plans of GFANS, which we've mentioned a couple of times, which is the the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero. This was launched, by John Kerry and Janet Yellen, both US officials, as well as Mark Carney, who is the former, chair of the Bank of England and Bank of Canada. I believe he's also I'm I forget what Wall Street bank he's from of. Originally, it might be Goldman Sachs, but I'm not a hundred percent on that. And he used to I think he's also, yeah, the UK prime minister's finance adviser for the COP twenty six conference last year.

He'll probably play that role again at COP twenty seven. It's certainly when it surprised me. But, basically, you have the US and UK governments behind GFANS. And so those are the governments, as I mentioned earlier, that have historically wielded, you know, the IMF and the World Bank and the the multilateral development banks as as financial weapons. And this is openly again admitted in in US military documents.

Yeah. As a as a weapon of unconventional warfare. And so it's, you know, the new iteration of those governments is basically looking to reimagine the World Bank and the IMF for this particular purpose, ostensibly, for net zero. And, GFANS is co chaired not just by Mark Carney, but by Mike Bloomberg, you know, the former near new of New York, formerly Solomon Brothers, I believe, and, you know, a a banking billionaire, basically, and media billionaire. So these are the people, that are in the, you know, in the race to net zero.

And, if, you know, I wrote about them last year, and you basically have, I I quoted Boris Johnson, who was then UK prime minister. He described GFANS as, quote, uniting the world's banks and financial institutions behind the global transition to net zero. And then you had John Kerry say, quote, the largest financial players in the world recognize energy transition represents a vast commercial opportunity. So if you take those two comments together, GFAN's unites the world's most powerful banks of financial institutions behind what it sees first and foremost as a vast commercial opportunity, the exploitation of which it is marketing as a planetary imperative. And, you know, that's pretty much how this whole thing, is operating at the end of the day.

But GFANS, I guess it was in, yeah, November of last year in time for COP twenty six, and I'm sure they'll have a new progress report, by this November. But in there, they basically, pitch the idea of changing the World Bank and the IMF changing their charters to basically merge them with, private financial institutions, specifically the financial institutions that compose g fans. And so Gfans, you know, it's led by Mark Carney and and Mike Bloomberg, but it's actually a lot more than that. So it's, and you've mentioned this in some of your interviews about this, Ian. I I believe too that it's composed of several, like, sub alliances, I guess.

So gFANS includes, for example, the net zero asset owner alliance, the net zero banking alliance, and the net zero asset managers initiative, and all of these come together. And if you look at the the people who dominate Gfans' executive board aside from the co chairs, right, you have Larry Fink of BlackRock, Citigroup, Bank of America, Santander Bank, HSBC, CEO of the London Stock Exchange Group and chair of the investment committee of the David Rockefeller Fund. So, you know, these are really the the people planning, you know, this out. They're part of this race to net zero stuff. They're also, you know, what we mentioned earlier, the whole financial financialization of nature and then the natural asset corporations, you have a lot of linkages there as well.

But what's particularly concerning is that these institutions I've just named that compose GFANS are promoting the idea backed by the UN ostensibly, because the GFANS is UN supported, that they're the institutions it represents essentially merge with, the World Bank, the multilateral development banks that are around the World Bank and the IMF. And that's madness. I don't have any other words for that. Yeah. Yeah.

It's it's you you you know, as you mentioned earlier, you've got the most undoubtedly the most predatory capitalist organizations on the planet, directly involved with, through GFANs, through basically rolling out debt obligations to developing nations and and developed nations as well. But it's particularly hard upon developing nations because one thing is for sure, for developing nations, sustainable development doesn't mean development. You know, developing nations have been, you know, the if if anything, the promise of modern technology enables development for theoretically, it could enable development on a much larger scale because it reduces the cost of that development significantly. So countries across the global south could be looking forward to a brighter economic future because and a a bright a brighter future in in in every sense because they could enjoy the fruits of what what the the the transition that we went through in the in the Northern Hemisphere and in the west through through the industrial revolution, they could they could effectively achieve that with with possibly with less resources needed in order to achieve a similar level of development, which would be fantastic. But, of course, the whole point of, it seems, of sustainable development is to stop their development.

So they don't they don't get to enjoy the development that the rest of the world has enjoyed because now we're faced with this dire climate crisis and they're gonna, you know, they all of us can no longer afford to, to, to plow ahead with normal economic activity as we have been doing over the last two hundred years. And that comes particularly at the expense of developing nations who aren't gonna get the same opportunities. And this is being done by, as you quite rightly said, second some of the most predatory financial institutions on earth. So, I mean, why just it just makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. So, again, it's this urgency marketing.

Don't think about it. We just have to do it. And you see that with a lot of the the the most elevated of the climate activists. You know, obviously, everyone knows about Greta Thunberg, but there's other examples too. And they're just saying, take action now.

Do this now. Implement solutions now, but they don't necessarily say, you know, what those solutions are point per point. And if you're gonna, you know, outsource the responsibility for developing solutions to the UN, the UN's handed it to the bankers. That's what they've done. And so, you you know, is is it really sustainable development, to basically get let bankers be in charge of transforming the state of the world?

It's that's madness. But, apparently, people are are content to not look any deeper and, like the marketing very much, and so they'll just leave it at that. But it's, it's definitely very distressing for those of us that that are paying attention to this type of stuff. Because, you know, if if you're against US empire or the Anglo American empire, whatever you wanna call it, and against their use of debt imperialism in the post World War two era to, basically entrap, the developing world in debt slavery. Why would giving those financial weapons to the fucking bankers be any better?

Excuse my language, but it's just Yeah. It's just so insane. I don't know how to get it through to people. Like, literally the worst people to give anything to. And they're basically about to get away with this.

I mean, at COP twenty six, I noted in my article on it that Larry Fink of BlackRock. BlackRock owns practically everything at this point, and black BlackRock and Vanguard are are poised, according to recent reports, to basically own everything by twenty twenty eight. Yeah? And he's saying we have to reimagine, the the charter of the World Bank and the IMF. And this past week at the Clinton Global Initiative, which unfortunately is now happening again after a several year absence.

Wasn't that nice, but now it's back. And Larry Fink, again, repeated the stuff about we need to reimagine the charters of the World Bank and the IMF if we wanna get serious about climate change and everyone at the Clinton Global Initiative, or Clinton Ghoul Initiative, it should probably be called. You know, we're we're, you know, thunderous applause was was met with Larry Fink's statement. Yeah. And, I mean, I think that you also very important thing that you said that it is, as you rightly said, it's the it's the left that are predominantly throwing their weight behind this because, you know, it appeals obviously to the to and it's a really clever trick, you think, when you think about it, what they've pulled.

Because they have managed to put rampant rampant crony capitalism at the heart of what sounds like, you know, a social a socially progressive agenda. So that that's clever stuff. So they have managed to pitch exactly that the hardest form of predatory capitalism. They've managed to pitch that as a socially responsible way forward, which is genius. Yeah.

Well, it's even it's even worse than you think. So a lot of the pilot programs for a lot of this predatory stuff in the emerging world, it's happening in Latin America. Africa. And so what you're seeing are the so called return of the pink tide, as it's sometimes called, to Latin America at the same time. You're having these quote unquote, they're described they're described in the media as socialist leaders coming to power in Latin America, and it's being widely prayed by by leftist in, the English speaking world.

You know, but I wanna call someone like, you know, Argentina's current government with Christina Kirchner leftist, especially if you look at, you know, how that family has operated, you know, over the past several decades. You know, it's not really fair. And then you have someone like Gabrielle Borik coming to power in Chile. You have, Gustavo Petro coming to power in Colombia. Colombia is a very tightly controlled country specifically by the Anglo American empire.

That's why they've been forced to have right wing governments non stop for a very long time. It's very important in the narco trade, very important to intelligence agencies and national security states of the US empire. They you know, this guy's, in my opinion, has been allowed to come to power for a particular reason. And it's no coincidence that he pops up and is basically, like, you know, I mean, he's going to all these climate functions. As I noted, on Twitter the other day, Mike Bloomberg was really singing his praises after this most recent, UN climate summit that that Petro was participating in.

And if these are really, you know, upstart democratic socialist in the model of Salvador Allende and these other people that were deposed in in coups, CIA backed coups around South America in decades past if they're really, you know, the successors to those types of people. Historically, people like Mike Bloomberg would have been like, you know, get rid of this guy. They wouldn't be, like, applauding them. You know what I mean? So I think, especially now that we're on the eve of, Brazil's election, you know, you're probably most likely gonna have Lula replace Bolsonaro.

Bolson Bolsonaro is very not liked by this particular group we're talking about. And, you know, it's it's very likely that this pink tide, you know, they're gonna be framing it as, you know basically, I see it as what they're doing with Boric in Chile. You know, they're marketing it as hopium, sort of like Obama was in the US. Hope and change is here, but then they don't really deliver on anything. And Boric's disapproval rate is very high.

The new constitution that was going to be approved was overwhelmingly rejected by people in Chile. But if you look at who drafted that constitution, it's a lot of these same groups that are involved with the SDGs, and it was likened to a big extent to, basically, you know, a constitution for implementing agenda twenty thirty. You know, sure, there's problems with the existing constitution that was drafted during the era, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the one that was being voted on this time was the best one. And, you know, people like Gustavo Petro in Colombia, when that was rejected, he was like, Pinochet has risen again. And it wasn't a referendum on is the Pinochet era constitution good.

It was a referendum on is this current constitution good, and it was directly partnered with the UN. And and a lot of these actors and, you know, billionaire funded NGOs were involved in drafting key parts of it, and it wasn't popular with most Chileans. And, you know, the referendum was on that constitution, not the existing constitution. Right? So So it's not really fair in my opinion of Petra to say it's the resurrection of Pinochet because you're basically, you know, if sixty two percent of Chileans voted against it, people that voted for Boric voted against this constitution.

Yeah. And there's I wanna definite I definitely would not call those people Pinochet supporters. So, you know, it's definitely complicated what's going on in Latin America right now, and I think it's very important to point out that natural asset corporations, this is being the pilot programs for these are all in Latin America. The pilot programs for, the stuff I'm gonna be writing about with SDG fourteen and the blue economy and the oceans. That's that's being partnered in central, piloted in Central America.

And it a lot of the focus is here. It's also going in in India as well. There's there's some ones that are specifically packed, backed by Mike Bloomberg. But there's a lot of interest in getting Latin America on board, and I would argue that's because of the mineral wealth of Latin America, which they need to power a lot of this net zero stuff. And, of course, the the mining is very predatory that is needed to, you know, that is needed to implement a lot of these goals.

You know, the lithium for example, there's a lithium triangle that's Chile, Bolivia, and I guess, to a lesser extent, Argentina. It's, you know, that's obviously front and center at a lot of the stuff going on here, but it's it's it's very extensive what's happening here. The mining you know, I live in the Andes, and I've lived here for a long time. It it was predatory when I first came here, and it's getting it's getting worse, and it's expanding a lot. And I think a lot of that has to do, you know, with the fact that people are sort of the people that would normally be protesting to protect the environment here think that Vorek is gonna change everything, and they're sort of asleep at the wheel not realizing that what's what's going on here.

And they think, oh, the SDG sustainable development, all of that sounds nice, and they're not digging deeper into it. Like, a lot of other people, in other country I mean, it's not really exclusive to Chile at all in that sense, like, we've been talking about. But it seems like, you know, they want the developing world on board in in debt slavery for this stuff, and they're just gonna ransack it for resources. That's that's my view. I think it's I think that's spot on.

I think that's what it's about. I mean, when you got we were talking about earlier about Mark Carney and about his his many hats. I mean, he's also the UN special envoy for climate change, which is which is pretty crazy. And and Mike Bloomberg is the UN secretary general special envoy for climate ambition and solutions. So Climate ambition?

That's the Climate ambition and solutions. That is so when you think about it, who is the UN Secretary General for Special Envoy for climate ambition and solutions? Well, of course, it's Mike Bloomberg. I mean, it's, you know, I mean and and interesting, I I got I had a look at that Larry Fink that Larry Fink, quote, and what he said. And he said, if if you don't mind, he says, if we are quote, and this is his quote, if we're going to change the world, so there we go.

We're gonna change the world. There's not just there's just not enough money that is going into the emerging market, into the emerging world. We must change the charters of the IMF and the World Bank if we're going to get there. There and and here we go. There's huge pools of capital, but the capital is not equipped.

So that's what we're talking about earlier when we're talking about this idea of fiscal space. What they want to create and something else that we spoke about in the article and something that is everywhere in the UN sustainable developments spiel is this idea about governments providing the enabling environment, which it relates to this idea of fiscal space. So the enabling environment will legislate sustainable development into policy in governments all over the world. So governments will be legislatively committed to it, and that will create the environment, the regulatory environment that will ensure the creation of this fiscal space, which Fink is calling here capital that is not equipped. The whole point of what they're doing is to equip that capital so that they can, well, basically create a slush fund for their market acquisition programs.

And that is essentially what they're at. That's what they're playing at. But interestingly, he said it's up to the equity owners, basically, the g twenty, that they have to have a desire for doing this. So we're talking again that relates to something that people have said that that is hope a hopeful, change in the future is this idea of the the multipolar world order will somehow, you know, steal away the power of people like Mike Bloomberg and Carney and the people that are behind him, like the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds and people like that. The multipolar world is going to steal that away.

Well, it isn't because what Fink was saying about the change of the IMF, was also in a brick statement from, November twenty twenty one. Well, they said more or less said exactly the same thing. And they They stated the priorities for reform were innovative and this is another quote, innovative and inclusive solutions, including digital and technological tools to promote sustainable development. And they further said that the twenty thirty sustainable development agenda is a comprehensive, indivisible, far reaching, and people centered set of universal transformative targets and that it is essential that the world move forward with this UN agenda twenty thirty for sustainable development to, quote, improve the system of global governance. Well, they're talking about reforming the IMF and the World Bank in order to be able to achieve exactly what Fink was talking about at Clinton's soiree.

So that's that's that I think the idea that that the whole when when they talk about when people like Bloomberg talks about transforming transforming the whole world, they really I think people need to get their heads around this as well. They mean the whole world. They mean everything. They mean that the the an entire global economic transformation. Everything's going up for sale.

Everything is going up for sale. Everything is going up for sale. Yeah. You'll own nothing, and you will be happy. Yeah.

I mean, that's the I mean, a lot of people focus on that phrase specifically, but I think people also need to realize that literally everything's gonna be up for sale. Yeah. Or you're gonna be charged for literally everything, basically. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, and they mean it. They may I mean, I I think, you know, you're quite right. That's but, I mean, I personally, I think there's probably too much focus as well on the World Economic Forum. I don't consider them to be particularly Yeah. I agree.

Mhmm. Leading anything. They're just, I mean, I I kinda see them as the sales team, really. Yeah. Well or or, you know, they're the the they develop some policies, but they're not the only ones.

You know, there's other think tanks in that in that category, in that tier that they occupy. But I think the the overfocus on Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum, allows people that would otherwise see problems with this agenda from really looking into it because they sort of see it as, oh, look. These people think that these guys out in the open are plotting control of the world, and there's no way that's possible. Or they say Klaus Schwab is the guy behind all of this. I mean, you know, there's obviously truth to the concerns, I think, about the World Economic Forum in Schwab, obviously.

There are concerns there. But, you know, is is this the the guy behind, you know, the curtain, you know, of Wizard of Oz style type stuff? You know? I mean, I don't think that's, a fair analogy, and I think I I know people personally who would normally be all over this stuff that, are really turned off by these claims or claims that it's, you know, a a global communist plot between the WEF and the Chicons and, you know, sort of the the the talking points of, you know, some circles on on the right, particularly. And I don't I don't know what you wanna call it.

Conspiracy land as some people like to call it, but, you know, it's it's more complicated than that, obviously. And, yeah, I mean, China's on board with this stuff. I mean, you just talked about that with the multipolarity stuff. But reducing it down to that level when it's actually a lot more complex turns people away. Yeah.

No. No. I think I think you're probably right. And I think that's why it's important to challenge this stuff because I think we need to see the broader picture in terms of the way that this is a global initiative intended for global, you know, delivering on a global scale. And it doesn't really matter where you I mean, obviously, it matters to you as an individual where you live because you're gonna be affected from by by it locally.

I mean, we can see that already with, for example, net zero policy. Or any wherever you live wherever you live now, if you go to your local authority website and put in sustainable development plan, they'll have one. They'll they'll they'll help. They it might not be specifically called sustainable development plan, but it will be something along those lines. It'll be, you know, our sustainable initiative or sustainable whatever.

So we're more or less wherever you live in the world. So this this notion of of introducing global financial governance into into is already at the community level. It's already, you know, as you were saying earlier, it's already happening. It is happening now. So people need to grasp that because the the the driving agenda behind it is not set at the local level.

We are not part of deciding about the way that the impetus behind these policies. It's not us that's controlling it. It is people like, you know, Mike Bloomberg and Mark Carney. Not necessarily them. It's the people behind them as well.

But, I mean, it it's not being controlled by it's not even being controlled, I would argue. It's not even being controlled by national governments, And I would include even I would include to a certain extent, China and Russia and the US and, you know, the powerful developed nations. I would I would suggest that it's not being led by them either. This is about collaboration between a global capitalist network. Yeah.

That's transnational. And I don't think they have any national allegiance, and their allegiance is to protecting the piece, the giant piece of the pie they have and expanding it and keeping it forever. I think that's what it's about. Yeah. And, I mean, and if you look at the what what's happened currently with, you know, what we could see looking, you know, the the the US, for example, I mean, debt to GDP ratio in the US is a hundred and plus one hundred and thirty seven percent.

So that I mean, we've already seen people like Jerome Powell already has already said that, you know, the US economy is unsustainable. I mean, these kind of comments are unheard of. So they're already admitting basically that the the the economic model as far as it has gone as, you know, forgive me for saying so has reached the limits of growth. So so that so they are they know that they know that it's reached a limit. But, I mean, I also would suggest that it's it's they've always known that.

It's not, you know, the idea that you can just create money out of nothing and just could continually pile up never ending levels of debt and that that is that you can do that forever. Allow organized crime and intelligence agencies to just loot the economy over and over and over again. I mean, obviously, that's not the system. Yeah. So that's not that's not gonna work.

But, I mean, that also shows that you're not planning for it to work either in the long run. That you know that at some point, you're gonna have to develop some new model that's gonna enable you, as you said, to maintain your power and to and to continue, you know, playing at the casino table. Yeah. And that's and that's and that's a big part of what this is. It's it's to enable the game to continue so that they can retain their control and authority.

Yeah. I agree with that for sure. So moving on then from the first installment of of the series to the second installment, which you which we published just a couple of days ago, and that that was all you in. This is on UHC twenty thirty. This is about SDG three, ostensibly about health care.

So UHC two thousand and thirty is called the two thousand and thirty Agenda for Universal Health Coverage, but it's not SDG three itself. It's the public private partnership behind SDG three. So why don't you walk us, through your article a little bit, Ian? Tell us about UHC twenty thirty, what it really is, and, the case study you did of it with, Uganda. Yeah.

So, UHC twenty thirty, as you quite rightly said, is the the UN kind of, mechanism for delivering SDG three, which is SD the point of SDG is to deliver what they're calling universal health care coverage or universal health coverage. So the so again, on the front of the packet, it says, you know, this will enable countries all over the world to improve standards of health care. You know, they're looking to improve longevity. They're looking to, reduce health inequality, all things which are which most people would agree are actually quite important targets that we should we should be thinking about doing that kind of thing. But what it also says that so as UHC two thousand and thirty is gonna be the mechanism by which this is going to be able to achieved, which is, quote, a global platform and space for multi stakeholders to connect, work together, and influence national and international commitments.

So we've got this idea of this multi stakeholder partnership influencing national and international commitments. So, again, it's this centralized centralized control headed by a network of undoubtedly what we that that we could call crony capitalists or predatory capitalists who are gonna influence health care markets in countries across the world. That that is the nuts and bolts of it. So what we might you know, I mean, I've I've used the phrase the phrase global public private partnership, but but this organization, the UN itself issued a report where it noted that that in order for global public private partnerships to work, there were a number of things that needed to be put in place to enable them to work because experience has shown and all the research has shown up until this, the launch of of, in twenty sixteen of SDGs, all all the evidence showed that they were more expensive, that the private stakeholders didn't shoulder the risk to the level that they said they would shoulder the risk, that that risk in terms of in both financial liability and so forth and, in terms of, you know, the actual risk of of causing harm, unusually usually fell on the shoulders of the of the nation that was that was running the project and the and the population so that the the public, the private part, the private sector part were not shouldering the risk as claimed in the model.

And also that these they tended to be less efficient and inexpensive. And what, what the UN report suggested was that, you know, they might be kind of suited to some sort of limited infrastructure projects, but they weren't in their current form suitable for particularly, sustainable sustainable development as as they saw it and health care projects because you're introducing forces into the health care market, which which cause immense conflicts of financial interest and that is and commercial interest. So that isn't necessarily useful. As the UN itself acknowledged, that isn't necessarily useful in health care. Health care, you know, health care does have to have some kind of, you know, social broader social benefit.

Profit is not the bottom line. But if you introduce it, you know, these these private corporations into it, then profit does invariably cut become the bottom line as they reported in their own report. So but the UN has decided to ignore that completely. So this it's it's its own recommendations. It's ignoring that, And it is plowing ahead with this global partnership that is going to deliver health care.

It says universal health coverage. But in order to do that, once again, it has said that countries will have to spend more either the lever have to spend fifteen percent of their income or five percent of their GDP, whichever is higher, on health care. Well, for for for developed nations, that's okay. That's doable because most countries around the world that developed nations are already spending more than five percent of GDP on health care. But it's a completely different situation in most developing countries.

You know, Sri Lanka, Yemen, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and then many other nations are not at that level. So how are they gonna pay for this? Because they're either gonna have to to create the fiscal space to enable them to pay for the EUHC two thousand and thirty sustainable going into debt. Yeah. Yeah.

How are they gonna pay for it? They've either got to slash spending elsewhere or which they can't afford or go into debt just as the World Bank, said. So in Uganda, during so I this is the thing. I mean, I thought I would choose a country to look at. Just just I thought I'll start looking at some some countries in the that have been subject to this UHC twenty thirty and just see what see what's going on.

And I I picked Uganda. Uganda was the first country that I picked to look at. So I and and then what I found in in Uganda was appalling what had happened, and this is especially, relating to the COVID nineteen pandemic because UHC twenty thirty and the World Bank, the stakeholders in that partnership convinced Uganda to invest heavily in COVID measures or COVID countermeasures when Uganda didn't have a pandemic. Not by any stretch of the imagination could you say that Uganda had a pandemic. They didn't have a health emergency, a COVID nineteen health emergency.

I think the the total was seventy four deaths per million in Uganda compared to nearly three thousand two hundred in the US. So it's not even in the same ballpark. It's it's just and and and in Uganda as well, malaria regularly kills at least four times more people than that. But what UHC two thousand and thirty partners did was they convinced Uganda to restructure their debt in order to pay for COVID countermeasures. And that ultimately resulted in projects like their anti malaria projects and their and other aspects of their health service and their their health capacity being ripped apart, basically.

I think Or defunded. Or defunded. Yeah. And and what what happened was that Uganda actually didn't have had a pretty good it was a mixed health care economy, but it was in in terms of developing nations, it was pretty good. It was it was not a bad health care system that they had, but the the effect of this on on Uganda was just terrible.

Not only did their debt spike from twenty two percent to forty one percent of GDP in a single year. So, I mean, it's nearly doubled. Yeah. They ended up having to pay nine percent. So bearing in mind that UHC two thousand and thirty is saying they've got to spend five percent of GDP on on health care.

Well, because of that spike in debt, they ended up spending nine percent of Uganda GDP just on servicing the debt, so paying the basically, the minimum repayment on the debt. And the report there was a report that was released from the Center for Global Development that looked at what had actually happened in Uganda as a result of the quote, unquote, COVID measures. So I'll just this is a quote taken from that report. So it was the deterioration in essential health services, reduced case findings for HIV, AIDS, and malaria. Patients with chronic conditions who continuously relied on drugs for their survival were unable to get their refills, while others could not afford medication due to the lack of income.

Patients who had been newly diagnosed with cancer were not able to initiate into treatment. A majority of patients with these conditions faced an increased risk of complications and death due to the inability to access health care. These delayed initiations and interruptions of treatment cycles resulted in increased stress, anxiety, disease progression, recurrence, and premature death. So that that is what what the that is what sustainable development goal three, the pursuit of sustainable development goal three delivered to Uganda in twenty twenty twenty to twenty twenty two. Yeah.

So, basically, you have to do what the alliance says even if it is not it divorced from the reality of the country we're talking about. Right? So, like, with Uganda, you pointed out malaria causing significantly more deaths than COVID did in the country, and they basically have to, under the pressure of this alliance, ostensibly under the auspices of SDG three, ignore their malaria programs in favor of treating or measures targeting a disease that kills significantly less people. Yeah? Yeah.

Yeah. And and, also, I mean, it was the global economic impact as well of of doubling their debt to do that. Yeah. Doubling So, obviously, not good, at the end of the day, and that's saying it putting it pretty lightly. So, another interesting thing you pointed out in the article as it relates to Uganda is the role of AstraZeneca.

AstraZeneca is one of the private sector members of UHC twenty thirty. Along with AstraZeneca, we have GalaxoSmithKline. We have Johnson and Johnson. We have Medtronic Labs. We have Merck.

We have Novartis, Novo Nordisk. We have Pfizer, Royal Philips, Sanofi, Sumitomo Chemical Company in Japan, which is alleged to have actually been the cause of the birth defects in Brazil that were later attributed to the Zika virus. And, oddly, the Zika virus was claimed to, produce these these, congenital birth defects, but those were only observed in this particular area in Brazil that used Sumitomo larvicide. And the Zika virus was all over other places as well. And, again, those birth defects were only observed in this Brazilian era.

Sumitomo, by the way, is a has some sort of strategic alliance with Monsanto, if I'm not mistaken. Well, Bayer Monsanto now. So, yeah, these are the kinds of companies that are, you know, the private sector component of UHC twenty thirty. And, as the AstraZeneca case study here, that that you, discussed in your article, I found, pretty stunning, actually. I didn't even realize, how much they've gotten away with, in Uganda's case, and I'm sure it's not exclusive to them either.

No. Yeah. I mean, I think that's the thing. I mean, I as I said, I just picked one country, and this was the first one I looked at. And, I mean, I I pre you know, it I think it is safe to assume.

I mean, I also looked at Ghana as well, but, obviously, it's just one article. So, yeah, what they did in to in Uganda, First, it's very difficult to ascertain what the actual unit cost of the COVID vaccines are for, What the cost of developing means? Yeah. The the develop the development cost is because it was paid for basically by public funds in in Britain and through, you know, voluntary com contributions. A lot of that came from, charitable contributions again from from various members of the public and other people as well.

But, also, I mean, there's the private funding element that you've written about as well in terms of Oxford AstraZeneca, you know, the the development and their private equity arm and private development arm. But, nonetheless, they they managed to whittle the or we say whittle, but they managed to produce, a vaccine for sale to the European Union. This is the the AstraZeneca jab. I hesitate to call it a vaccine, but the the AstraZeneca jab, unit cost of two dollars eighteen to the European Union. They then sold it to Uganda at seven dollars per unit.

So that's a three hundred percent markup on the price that they were charging to the European Union. Now as it turned out, it didn't the reason that the AstraZeneca jab was was, preferable in a lot of developing countries was because of the transportation and storage costs. It doesn't have to be hyper cooled, like the mRNA jabs. So it's, you know, easy to store and transport. So it was the the kind of go to go to jab.

Not that they needed the jab. I mean, I think that's the point. They didn't need the jab. They didn't have a pandemic, but but they were kinda cajoled through and you you know, I haven't looked into the kind of potential corruption issues, but I would imagine there are some there. You know, that that they would cajole through their debt obligations into taking these COVID measures and were then ripped off.

But it would seem, in terms of paying for things like vaccines, which AstraZeneca appears to basically profiteered from Uganda's debt obligations. Now, a very kind of interesting thing about it is that that they agreed a deal with UNICEF supported a deal with the partnership, but but with Gavi. So AstraZeneca had this deal with Gavi to to, export and the COVAX Alliance and CEPI to export their vaccines to developing nations. But UNICEF had already warned that an over commitment this this intense focus on COVID on COVID measures would be extremely deleterious to developing nations because, a, they didn't particularly have a need in terms of in terms of, COVID not being a pressing priority for them. But, also, the effects of that would have on their economy would lead, in UNICEF's estimation, to six point seven million children facing famine and nutritional problems as a result of economic breakdown, breakdown of supply chains, food insecurity, water insecurity, and so forth as a result of the global policy response to COVID nineteen.

But then UNICEF supported, basically, AstraZeneca to in this deal with the Global Vaccine to developing nations. There was one hundredth, to developing nations. It was one point three billion dollars deal to do that. So having said that these countries have knowingly, the UN knows that these, that that doing this is gonna cause harm to developing nations and to the populations, the people that live there, but then supports a deal with AstraZeneca, which which exploits that precise thing that they have said is gonna be harmful. Yeah.

Doesn't make a lot of sense, does it? Well, it does if, you know, this is about, protecting their their private sector stakeholders and their interest more than the other interests they're supposed to be, or that they claim to be supporting. You know? But if this is the type of universal health coverage that they're promising to countries, you know, there is obvious cause for concern, and that's putting it lightly. I'm looking at how UHC twenty thirty has been implementing.

And the whole I you know, with the UN here that they're obviously ignoring their own advice on this stuff is really, unsettling. And it's also worth pointing out, you know, you mentioned Gabi a couple times, and that's like a Bill Gates back thing. But it's basically you you know, they basically sit on their website. Their mission isn't about promoting public health or global public health. It's about the health of vaccine markets.

That's what they say. So they care more about the health of vaccine markets, and you can see this with the the case, you know, that you just mentioned. They care more about making the market for the vaccine and maintaining the health of that market than necessarily the country they're, you know, selling or promoting that particular vaccine in. Yeah. I mean, I, I think one of the comments that I made in the article is that, you know, presumably selling superfluous drugs to a country that that, you know, like Uganda that doesn't need them is what Gavin would call a healthy market.

Yeah. But this is all about markets. Right? The SDGs is all about making new markets and maintaining markets, and it's not it's they act like it's all about building up the public and all of this stuff, and it's really just, I don't know. Lipstick on a pig, I guess, is how we'd say it in in the south where I'm from.

Been a while since I've used that since I, you know, pretty much speak Spanish all day when I'm not doing work. So, but, I mean, that's bay that's basically what it is. So, well, Ian, I think we've we've dug in pretty well to, you know, the first couple SDGs that we've covered, which is SDG seventeen and SDG three with more in the works. So, with that being said, where can people find and support your work? Yeah.

I write at my blog, which is Ian davis dot com. Ian spelled with an I, so it's I a I n davis dot com. I fortunately, I write for your good self occasionally, and I also write for, the UK column. And a lot of my work is kind of shared, with Off Guardian and Lou Rockwell and people like that. And, yeah, so if you wanna find my work and come to Ian Davies dot com in the first instance.

Great. And for people listening that are interested in following our series on Unlimited Hangout, I would encourage you to sign up for the newsletter, unlimited hangout dot com slash newsletter, to get updates about everything Unlimited Hangout produces, including, the series and other things, and also updates about my book with a volume one of which is already out and people have been receiving. Very exciting. So any updates on on the series and and the book and anything else you can find there, including this podcast. As always, this podcast is made possible by the amazing subscribers that support it and unlimited hangout in general.

So thank you to everyone that does that, and you get early access, of course, to this podcast. But it always becomes publicly available a few days later. So, you know, at that point, please share, as widely as possible, especially if these stories, and issues we're addressing matter to you. Because as I said to Ian, when we started the series, not a lot of people, unfortunately, really digging into the nuts and bolts of the SDGs, and this is something that has trillions at this point of dollars behind it. Some of the most powerful people in the world, the most powerful financial interests in the world, going full speed ahead on having this being implemented on a global scale, it's it's high time that more people start paying attention to this.

So this is our effort, to do just that. So, with that being said, thanks a lot, Ian, for joining me today, and thank you to everyone listening. Get you on the next episode.