Black Swans and Swan Songs

Have you notice an increase in unexpected events in the past month or two? Can you list any?

A black swan event is a rare, unpredictable occurrence that has a significant impact on the world. It's often characterized by its unexpected nature, the severe consequences it brings, and the tendency for people to rationalize it in hindsight as if it could have been predicted. The term "black swan" originates from the ancient belief that all swans were white, a belief that was proven false when black swans were discovered in Australia. This serves as a metaphor for the idea that just because something hasn't happened before doesn't mean it's impossible.

“There will certainly be Black Swan Surprises coming our way…” -WEF’s Klaus Schwab.

How does he know this?

I guess that was last year.

But Klaus Schwab has reportedly sung his swan song now, in an email to staff in May.

Arch-globalist and head of the World Economic Forum Klaus Schwab has reportedly informed staff that he will be stepping down as WEF executive chairman.

The 86-year-old self-appointed Sultan of Davos sent an email to staff on Tuesday announcing that he will no longer run the world’s most prominent globalist advocacy group although he will likely stay on in some non-executive role, the website Semafor claimed.

A WEF spokesman told the website that the Forum will be changing its governance structure and that as a result, Schwab “will transition from Executive Chairman to Chairman of the Board of Trustees” by the start of next year.

Last year, the POLITICO website reported that, according to 29 WEF insiders, Schwab is treating the organisation like a “family heirloom”, indicating that Schwab may have sought to appoint one of his two children, Nicole and Olivier — both of whom already serve in high-ranking positions within the WEF — as a next executive.

The final decision will reportedly need to be cleared by the government of Switzerland, which hosts the group’s annual Davos meeting. The reported move by Schwab to step down from his leadership role in the group comes despite his previous claims that he wanted to stay in power and run the WEF for decades to come.

A German-born economist, Schwab started the World Economic Forum in 1971 with $6,000 in startup funds. Now a $390 million per year business, the Forum sees world leaders, top-flight businessmen, and alleged thought leaders descend — often by private jet, ironically, given the frequent focus on climate change — to the Swiss ski resort town of Davos where they bend the metaphorical knee to Schwab every year.

More at the link.

I am wondering if the globalists who meet at Davos have the same idea of which world events are Black Swans as we do?

Flashback, March 2022:

Ed Driscoll quotes Roger Simon:

The Road to Serfdom - - We’re Almost There.

How did it come to pass that what could have been an unpleasant, even severe, but containable health problem evolved into a civilization-destroying pandemic?

Even now, at this early stage, we must ask the age-old question, cui bono—who benefits?

For those who might still be confused, in a well-wrought article for The Epoch Times, Australians Gabriel Moens and Augusto Zimmerman clarify:

“The ‘Great Reset’ may be described as a radical international-socialist plan designed to ‘reset’ the world economy. The goal is to install a highly centralised, heavily regulated, totalitarian system akin to that of China’s Social Credit System.”

Ground Zero of this reset is the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that glorious alpine redoubt cum airport for private jets miraculously powered by solar energy.

The leading progenitor of the “reset” is Klaus Schwab—co-author of the 2020 tome “COVID-19: The Great Reset.” He is joined by various tech billionaires, captains of industry, state leaders, and royals, all of whom, needless to say, have the interest of the common man at heart—at least they say they do. (Remember: “You will be happy.”)

Those that espouse the Great Reset did not create COVID-19. For the moment we can assume that came from human error at the Wuhan Virology Lab. I hope we can anyway, since the deliberate release of the pathogen would be too horrifying to contemplate.

But they—the Great Resetters—seized upon the virus as an unprecedented opportunity to hasten their goals of global control. The CDC, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the World Health Organization (WHO) became in essence their agents with U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases head Anthony Fauci as their spokesperson. The rest is the dark history we have all been living through.

Despite some insisting otherwise, this devotion to, or more precisely exploitation of, COVID-19 is not stopping

But is the WEF still in a position of power? Where does power lie now?

A Tour of Davos

Here at AoSHQ, we have our own Swiss Guide Dog. It is off-season for the WEF at Davos, and normal Swiss people and dogs are visiting. It's just a regular Swiss resort town most of the year.

Let's follow Gioia:

Cows in the hills near Davos:

Real people setting a real fire in the hills near Davos:

Approach to Davos if you don't have a private jet:

Approach on foot:

Flowers along the path. Recognize any?

The lake seems to be a big draw for ordinary folk:

No vehicles in the city park:

Hard Rock Hotel

I don't know if they let Gioia in the hotel. She has returned home now, and has another friend today in the Pet Thread. She is one of the most hospitable dogs in the world, I think.

Weekend Musings

You can't wait for the world to not be jacked up for you to be happy. The world is always jacked up. But you can find peace and joy within it.

Zuby

Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future.

C.S. Lewis

We need an intimate knowledge of the past not because the past has anything magic about it, but to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion. A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village: the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.

C.S. Lewis

Why you fool, it's the educated reader who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they're all propaganda and skips the leading articles....He's our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the high-brow weeklies, don't need reconditioning. They're all right already. They'll believe anything.

C. S. Lewis

One of the most dangerous errors is that civilization is automatically bound to increase and spread. The lesson of history is the opposite; civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost. The normal state of humanity is barbarism, just as the normal surface of the planet is salt water. Land looms large in our imagination and civilization in history books, only because sea and savagery are to us less interesting.

C. S. Lewis

Those of us that are concerned about what ends we are being marched towards must not be distracted. We must stop looking at the shiny objects held before us that are meant to blur our focus on the larger picture.

What is the larger picture our gaze is being pulled from? The same picture that social planners have been painting for millennia. A picture that you have no input into the design; a picture that you are placed in.

No motive of the social planners will be assigned here. Some have benevolent intentions, some do not. The warning, for those who value individualism and liberty, is that the direction the planners are pushing our society towards is collective in nature. The planners wish to steer lives and plot the course that must be followed.

Some planners want immediate results, while other are patient. The planners that want to accomplish their goal with the least resistance will seek to nudge individuals. A method used to nudge is to change people's feelings about things. . .

Music

Rossini's William Tell Overture

Gioachino Rossini's overture for Guillaume Tell. Of the many operas well known by name but seldom ever seen, this is one of the most famous due to its ubiquitous overture. Ironically, the overture did not even originate with this opera, and decidedly, its composer had no intention of it ever becoming the theme song of the masked avenger of the Wild West. Instead, he was setting an adaptation of German playwright Friedrich Schiller’s 1804 drama inspired by 14th century Swiss patriot William Tell. Finding himself pressed for time as the premiere approached, Rossini borrowed a pre-existing overture from one of his many earlier operas, Elizabeth, Queen of England, composed 14 years and 24 operas before William Tell. So its melodies are not drawn from William Tell itself, and if one were to listen through the opera seeking that famed Lone Ranger music, one would listen in vain.

The overture falls into four parts. It begins with principal cello mournfully singing quite alone, though orchestral strings join in support. Gradually, the theme that had been introduced by the cello builds and expands, ultimately bridging to new thematic material, restless and anxious in nature, suggestive of an oncoming storm. Soon torrents of brass and woodwinds, surging string phrases, and thunderous percussion imply that the storm is raging. Next is a pastoral countryside scene with woodwinds, particularly English horn and flute, suggesting a pair of shepherds calling to one another across an Alpine valley, though that is not what it represented when the overture was used for Elizabethan England. It is a gentle interlude that comes to a sudden halt with bold solo trumpet, quickly joined by horns, introducing a determined galloping energy—indeed, Rossini said that in the context of William Tell it represented a cavalry charge by mounted Swiss rebels—that radio producers in the 1930s were sure was exactly right for their Western hero. This section of the overture has been used to the point of being something of a musical cliché . .

Berlioz comments:

… the piece as a whole is treated with incontestable superiority, a verve such as Rossini had perhaps never shown before in such alluring fashion… the overture to William Tell is a work of an immense talent which resembles genius so closely as to be mistaken for it.

He gets more effusive from there.

Improv:

Hope you have something nice planned for this weekend.

This is the Thread before the Gardening Thread.

Last week's thread, August 3, The Perfect Candidate

Comments are closed so you won't ban yourself by trying to comment on a week-old thread. But don't try it anyway.

posted by K.T. at 11:10 AM

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