According to Anand Giridharadas, ““the global elite’s efforts to ‘change the world’ preserve the status quo and obscure their role in causing the problems they later seek to solve.” This animation by Cognitive distills his full talk at RSA down to about five minutes. You can also read his book about this.
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Serial bankrupt and reality-TV star Donald Trump will meet some real billionaires when he joins the global titans of business, finance, and economic policy in two weeks at the 48th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland. Mr. Trump, an ethnocentric isolationist who publishes his economic policy on baseball hats, will converse with Nobel laureate economists, world leaders, and international financiers on the theme “Creating a Shared Future in a Fractured World,” which “will make a case for renewed commitment to international collaboration as a way of solving critical global challenges.” Since this is the kind of elite crowd and Globalist agenda Mr. Trump campaigned against, his presence at the Forum is baffling, especially since the Davos golf season ended in October.
The 2018 Forum is co-chaired by 7 powerful women: Sharan Burrow (General Secretary, International Trade Union Confederation), Fabiola Gianotti (Director-General, European Organization for Nuclear Research – CERN), Isabelle Kocher (CEO of French multinational electric utility company ENGIE), Christine Lagarde (Managing Director, International Monetary Fund — IMF), Ginni Rometty (Chairman, President and CEO, IBM Corporation), Chetna Sinha (Founder and President, Mann Deshi Mahila Bank and Mann Deshi Foundation), and Erna Solberg (Prime Minister of Norway). Mr. Trump’s last meeting with women of so many nations involved a swimsuit competition, and didn’t have a code of conduct.
Membership has it’s privileges, especially for those who shelled out $300,000 to join the Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey.
Back in November, President elect Donald J. Trump paraded his prospective cabinet officers into the clubhouse of his Bedminster golf club for job interviews. Now it turns out he invited random club members to sit in. Politico just got the audio, recorded by someone who was in the room. Here’s a transcript:
“We’re doing a lot of interviews tomorrow — generals, dictators, we have everything. You may wanna come around. It’ll be fun. We’re really working tomorrow. We have meetings every 15, 20 minutes with different people that will form our government.”
“We’re going to be interviewing everybody — Treasury, we’re going to be interviewing Secretary of State. We have everybody coming in — if you want to come around, it’s going to be unbelievable….so you might want to come along.”
The pattern continues now that Donald Trump is President and Golf-Cheat-In-Chief. While he was entertaining Japan’s Prime Minister Abe in the public dining room of his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida ($200,000 membership fee), aides alerted him about a North Korean ballistic missile test, and they discussed the US response in full view and earshot of the club’s members. One club member even got a selfie with the serviceman who carries the “nuclear football.” House Oversight Committee Chair Jason Chaffetz was not amused.
Mr. Trump believes that only the rich should play golf, so if you have the bucks to pay and play, you can chat with him about the nation’s business as well as your own.
More:
“Leaked Trump tape: ‘You are the special people,'” Darren Samuelsohn and Anne Karni, Politico
“Trump ran a campaign based on intelligence security. That’s not how he’s governing.” Philip Bump, Washington Post
“Sun, Sand and Influence: For Mar-a-Lago Members, Proximity Is Power,” Nicholas Confessore, Maggie Haberman, and Eric Lipton, New York Times
“Trump’s Presidency ‘Enhances’ a $200,000 Mar-a-Lago Membership,” Chas Danner, New York Magazine
“Democrats demand Mar-a-Lago list of members, visitors,” Matthew Nussbaum, Politico
“Shouldn’t We Know Who Else Is at the ‘Winter White House’?” George Zornick, The Nation
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The billionaire masters of Planet Earth and their pet politicians are in Davos this week for the 46th World Economic Forum. The US is sending a high-powered team led by Joe Biden, John Kerry, Kevin Spacey, will.i.am, and Leonardo DiCaprio. You can join them for a mere $31,473 a ticket, if you’ve paid your $50,000 WEF dues. Hotel, dining, and valet parking are extra. Gatecrashers and the improperly dressed will be politely turned away by police and 5,000 Swiss soldiers.
The Forum is going to be really inconvenient this year due to security concerns. You’ll have to land your private jet at Dübendorf military airbase and get to Davos by limo, helicopter, or horse-drawn carriage.
This year’s agenda will focus on Industry 4.0, aka “The Fourth Industrial Revolution … the fusion of technologies across the physical, digital and biological worlds which is creating entirely new capabilities”and replacing laborers with robot employees. Naturally, Forum members want to speed up that process. And WEF is concerned about women, too, and that’s why this year almost 20% of Davos attendees are women. Progress!
More:
“62 People Own Half the World’s Wealth, Oxfam Says Ahead of World Economic Forum,” Pan Pylas, NBC New York
“Get a grip on inequality, leaders urged in run-up to World Economic Forum,” AP via Chicago Tribune
“The 2016 World Economic Forum Misfires With Its Fourth Industrial Revolution Theme,” Jeremy Rifkin, Huffington Post
“Davos Robot Eclipses Davos Man as Gloom Descends on World Elite,” Simon Kennedy, Matthew Campbell, The Guardian
“Industry 4.0 to be huge job killer,” Deutsche Welle
“Robots put five million jobs at risk,” SwissInfo.ch
“Report from Davos: ‘Men still run the world—and it’s not going that well,’” Jenny Anderson, Quartz
“The failure of Davos,” Felix Salmon, Fusion
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Deep thoughts at Davos this week at the 2015 World Economic Forum. 80 billionaires and many more multi-millionaires are meeting in the exclusive Swiss resort to solve the global problem of economic inequality. They flew to the alps on 1700 private jets to end Global Warming. We anxiously await the auguries and edicts of our oligarch overlords.
In 1998, a reverential Republican Congress changed the name of DC’s National Airport to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. On Monday, a grateful nation’s corporate owners unleashed a sculptural tribute to our sainted 40th President there. The nine-foot erection is convenient to one of the airport’s Pet Relief Areas (dog owners: please do not confuse the two).
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