Davos....Everybody is Watching

The World Economic Forum (the same gathering that brought us the image of Carlos Salinas in a night shirt begging Jaime Serra Puche to contact Carla Hills and get NAFTA rolling) is underway in Switzerland. I see that YouTube has developed a sight with the WEF for people to vote on issues facing the world.

My initial reaction after seeing "Pablo," a goatee-sporting 20 something with messy euro-hair reporting on human rights in Gaza was a sense of excitement. We can see the technology of the world bringing us together on issues that matter, and not just using it to see pictures of the Nude Gay Mexican on the Mexfiles blog (thanks, Richard). ;-) Then the part of me that tells students to evaluate sources all day kicked in.



The internet, which has been an engine of guerilla resistance to dominant culture for so many people - from things as heavy as the anarchist bible to the light and pithy like Ask a Chola - is a great chain of "people power" around the globe. The World Economic Forum, a gathering that all should consider with some suspicion (hi, we're rich guys that meet now and again to carve up the world) is putting on a face of concern. I wonder if this grave economic crisis has them thinking that we could be seeing some grave political crises ahead. Putting a kinder and gentler face on the world economic forum, it seems, as the Times of London calls it, a "beanfeast of pomp and platitude." Now, mind you, I'm not lining up for a world revolution. I would, however, like to see real change in many of the areas that the meeting of Davos is supposed to be debating, but it seems to me that this celebrity show is more a smoke and mirrors trick to keep us looking away while the real economics is decided by others. Granted, real economists SHOULD make those decisions, but I like the idea that they might really be looking for solutions that jive with economic health. I think it can work together - are they really game for it?

And hey, despite the euro-hair comment I already know that Pablo is from Colombia.