Davos. Whom do you serve?

[Hangarshuffle]

I watched the UKs Channel 4 Evening News tonight. The report (which lasts for about 1 hour if you don't watch it), opened up a bit of a special report about the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum at Davos, a resort in Switzerland (I've never been).
World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2014 (http://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2014)


Its a power meeting, an awful lot of whom are the real shakers and movers of the world>apparently.


C4 tried to link Davos meeting to how it may help and affect ordinary British people in real terms - it did this by going to a street in the Staffordshire area (Davos Way) - an area that has fallen on a bit of a hard time, meeting ordinary Britains, what affected them, what did they need?


Watching it (the report), it struck me forcibly how far reaching decisions about the world, how it is ran, how it is divided up, who will be rich and who will be poor, who will be at war and who will not, will be decided upon by people who we will have not direct or indirect influence upon, ever.


One of the Davos mighty spoke on the programme - this man.


Martin Sorrell - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Sorrell)


Incredibly clever, cold, arrogant and focused would be my first impression of him. Him, and a few thousand others (including of course the creature Blair) are among the invited attendees.


C4 estimated that Davos power people types represent 0.01% of the globes population.


Did any one else see the clip? Their thoughts upon it?


My question. Who now, are you people of the military really serving? Do you feel a sense of serving the people of your country? Are you still loyal to them?
Or simply, are you slowly getting the feeling you are serving and helping, most of all, the people at the meeting in Davos?


Or are you now somehow, becoming a tool of the very rich, the Davos types who really seem to running and shaping the modern world - the super rich, the super industrialists, the super media moguls, the unelected. Do you feel manipulated, used?


I'll start of then. I never took any sort of oath of allegiance to the crown or the UK people as a rating. In the RN, even the national anthem is never sung, ever. Its hard to feel any sort of real loyalty, in some ways other than to your own branch, shipmates or indeed the RN at times. Yet we were constantly used to represent GB, and do her bidding.
So no - I never felt as sense of allegiance to the UK, and yes, I think things have moved on to the extent in the world that control seems to be slipping away from sovereign nations own making.


Best regards, HS.

[dead_pan]

Dangerous talk - looking forward to the replies...

[Rhino power]

What a load of rambling nonsense...

-RP

[flipflopman RB199]

What a load of rambling nonsense...

What *ANOTHER* load of rambling nonsense...


...Fixed that for you RP. :ok:

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

There seems to have been a significant increase in thread originators who are reluctant to declare anything about themselves except a general location.

May I suggest they go fishing somewhere else.

[Bastardeux]

I thought a lot of the problems presented were irrelevant to Davos. The world's rich and powerful aren't the reason there's a housing shortage blocking young and low-income earners from buying a house in this country, neither are they the reason nobody wants to buy skull ceramics for that matter.

I think the primary focus of the summit at the moment will probably be the continued restructuring of neo-liberal financial markets and the future distribution of world aggregate demand. Many of our problems are unique to us or Europe, like high youth unemployment owing to crap education and a culture of entitlement; so no, I don't think it's some sort of conspiracy. You have to remember that everybody has gotten richer over the past 3 decades, it's just the rich have gotten richer quicker than the average punter.

I do fret at the influence some heads of multinationals, that are richer than most countries have over elected leaders, however.

[Rhino power]

...Fixed that for you RP

Very gracious sir, thankyou! ;)

-RP

[parabellum]

PM of Australia, Tony Abbott, spoke at Davos. From the Australian point of view it is all about developing good trade relations with the major players down here in South East Asia, including China.

[defizr]

There seems to have been a significant increase in thread originators who are reluctant to declare anything about themselves except a general location.

Such as Canada?

[gr4techie]

The world's rich and powerful aren't the reason there's a housing shortage blocking young and low-income earners from buying a house in this country,
So, if artificially inflating house prices is not the reason for a housing shortage. What do you reckon is?

high youth unemployment owing to crap education and a culture of entitlement
I reckon a lack of customer demand is the cause of unemployment. How can you employ someone when there's no customers?
You could pay for everyone to have a phd in rocket science, but if nobody wants to buy any rockets, you will need to lay people off.
The culture of entitlement probably stems from the lack of job vacancies and very low wages due to corporate greed or a poor performing economy... Some people want to work but can't find any work, while others have no incentive if they only get paid a few £'s more than their benefits payment.

[Sun Who]

Other than a tenuous link to the potential loyalties and motivations of those in the military, what's the connection to military aviation?:confused:

Sun.

[Tourist]

"Incredibly clever, cold, arrogant and focused"


We don't want any of that sort running the world!!
We want stupid warm self-effacing and scatterbrained!! they are far more suitable!


http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/open_letter.png

[Load Toad]

We all work for major corporations & financial institutions...

George said it better:
George Carlin The Best 3 Minutes of His Career "The American Dream" - YouTube

[Martin the Martian]

The Swiss Air Force have deployed F-18s and helicopters to help provide security cover for the WEF. There, that provides a link to military aviation.

Otherwise, as others have intimated, what a load of old tosh.

[Fat Magpie]

I cant seem to post a pic but

https://twitter.com/ZedTrafficker/status/426065778979639296/photo/1

[Wensleydale]

Relevance? I always thought that Davos was the leader of the greatest military force ever assembled, but the Daleks were eventually defeated in the time wars.....

[teeteringhead]

Who now, are you people of the military really serving?

http://files.qrz.com/d/mq6wad/2835734_queen6_534_447.jpg

Gawd Bless 'Er!

[Lonewolf_50]

Once again, the Muslim terrorists in Russia and elsewhere are utterly missing the point. Their real targets, the people who are the movers and shakers for change and a more, not less, global economy and whose vision leads to how uncomfortable change is becoming for old fashioned people like Muslim Fundamentalists, are all at Davos. (Sorry, I think I did some comma splicing there .. )

So, what do Muslim terrorists do?

They blow up a bus in Volgograd.
They blow up a restaurant in Kabul
They blow up a police station in Egypt
They blow up a market in Iraq

They are shooting at the wrong targets. The people who are changing the world in ways they do not care for are all somewhere else. A bunch of them are at Davos.

OBL and a few of his compadres believed that if they went after a symbol of the Western global financial preeminence, they'd have an impact. They did, but maybe not quite the one they were was hoping for. They did screw up air travel forever, at least in my country, but the financial and economic system was resilient enough to deal with a single point being damaged.

At the strategic level, if one is running a fourth generation warfare effort, one first has to understand where the actual centers of power and centers of gravity are, and where key vunlerabilities are. Then a campaign has to be undertaken to hit those, on a continual and sustained basis. (See how cyberwarfare has been on the rise in the past ten years for an idea on how to try and get it right).

The various groups who are roughly in accord on "we don't like how the world is changing, we are fighting back" seem to sufer a real deficiency in strategic thinking. (Some are also at each other's throats for ideological reasons).

You want to win a war? First off, ally with people you may not like. (See US and USSR versus Nazis for an example).
Hit the right targets on the enemy side, and keep on hitting, and the enemy may lose the means or will to fight.

Blowing up stuff in Russia to gain the benefit of the media coverage of the Olympics is perhaps tactically useful, but it is strategically bass ackwards.

May these sorts remain strategically stupid for the foreseeable future. *raises glass*

If they ever get smart, a whole lot of wrong is going to happen real fast, and most of what uniformed personnel are able to do (particularly pilots and aircrew) won't matter in terms of dealing with that change to the battlefield.

The strategic imperative for those NOT aligned with these "we are fighting the changing world" is to make every effort to keep them fighting each other, and to vigorously encourage them to do so. They'll think they are making a difference, and in so doing will apply their efforts and resources to a campaign that will not achieve their political aim.

[Bevo]

Load:

It is notable that George Carlin lived in a country, supposedly run and controlled by a group of wealthy non-politicians, which obviously tolerated his brand of criticism. It not only tolerated his criticism but allowed him to become fairly wealthy himself.

[Stendec5]

It has always struck me how weedy and pasty-faced those in positions of power really are compared to real people that actually work for a living. So much so that they almost constitute a distinct biological strain (or should that be "stain").
As if to prove this theory, I would wager that if you put 12 of these "powerful" creatures in a room along with 12 people that live in the real world, most people would spot which was which with the most rudimentary glance.
PS. Davros didn't lose the Time Wars. The Daleks LIVE.

[gr4techie]

It is notable that George Carlin lived in a country, supposedly run and controlled by a group of wealthy non-politicians, which obviously tolerated his brand of criticism.

Snowden and Assange?

[rjtjrt]

Well, I have some sympathy with Hangarshuffles ideas about Davos/WEF.
John
Melbourne
Australia

[gijoe]

Bonio...well-known singer of Ireland pop group from Belfast.

[Martin the Martian]

Stendec5

The Daleks LIVE...

Indeed they do. Until some weirdo accompanied by a popsie arrives in a blue box, then it's game over.

Seriously, I agree with Lonewolf, that until the assorted terrorist organisations start making an effort to hit the people at the very top, they will not be seen to be a serious threat. So a bus is blown up in Volgograd, but will it really make Putin tremble and rethink? Not likely.

Ram a bus into the front of the Kremlin and then blow it up while Putin is in residence; that might give him a little more to think about.

The psychological effect of the IRA's bombing in Brighton was as effective as the physical damage and the casualties they caused. Let's face it, they came pretty damn close to killing the PM, and that one attack made a much bigger impression on the government than any number of car bombs and gun attacks in Northern Ireland.

[gijoe]

I suggest that getting not one, but two, devices into the HQ of UK forces in NI in 1997 was pretty special.

Maybe not as headline grabbing as Brighton but still pretty clever.

[Stendec5]

Of course, if the terrorists start hitting real targets instead of taking out any number of men/women/children who just happened to be passing by at the time it would concentrate the tiny minds of those in power in no uncertain terms.
For example, you've no idea how easy it would be to take out the oil refineries in my neck of the woods. The "security" is a standing joke. If the rascals got several oil refineries/tank farms in one go the price at the pumps would rocket with the subsequent knock-on effect on inflation and the wider economy rippling through the country like a shock wave.
The ungreat and ungood would sit up and take notice THAT day.

[Heathrow Harry]

this weeks "Economist" notes that companies who attend three Davos Forums in a row underperform those who don't