The World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, opened on Wednesday with the theme “Resilient Dynamism” and an agenda that is the polar opposite. That theme, promoted by the WEF’s founder, Klaus Schwab (pictured), began with an accurate assessment of how the push for global government is increasingly being resisted, and what he thinks the WEF should do about it:
As the world enters 2013, talk of participation in a “global community” is running high. But we continue to see signs — and, more important, behavior — that run counter to such claims.
There is a lengthy list of problems in the way of getting to a global government that, according to Schwab, must be resolved first:
[These] include the unresolved debt problems in the United States and Europe, the troubling global economic outlook, the turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa, and the bulge in youth unemployment.
If global leaders, including the 2,500 or so attending the forum (each having paid $70,000 just to get in, and twice that to attend private meetings with the real movers and shakers), can just overcome the building resistance to their plans, all will be well. Said Schwab:
The economic crisis has created a more defensive, more self-centered, and at the level of states — more protectionist attitude.
Grand unifying visions are missing, and the pressure for separation, not union, continues to increase. This has stalled progress on many of the issues — including reducing carbon emissions, establishing global financial regulatory measures, and concluding the Doha Round of global trade talks, to name a few — that require global attention.
As the head cheerleader for globalism, Schwab encouraged his attendees to redouble their efforts to collectivize to solve these problems:
We must each take responsibility within our own sphere of action … acting as true global trustees.… This is the world we live in; we each have a role to play.
Schwab is just the man to lead them, too. When he founded the forum in 1971, his purposes were much more benign. He called it the European Management Forum with the purpose of discovering, exploring, and adopting the tactics and strategies of successful American entrepreneurs to the rest of the world.
But within three years his modest agenda was co-opted and expanded greatly so that by 1974, according to the New York Times, “its focus [moved] from management to economic and social issues, and political leaders were invited [to attend].” The takeover was complete by 1987 when its name was changed to the World Economic Forum and “its ambitions grew to include [the] resolution of international conflicts.”
Schwab was rewarded for his cooperation and support of the expanded vision with positions on the United Nations High-Level Advisory Board on Sustainable Development and then vice-chairman of the UN Committee for Development Planning.
So successful have his forums been in promoting globalism and the gradual surrender of national sovereignty that Samuel Huntington, the far-left Harvard professor, coined the term “Davos Man” as people who
have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite’s global operations.
But that’s a good thing, if one agrees with that agenda and worldview, as does Don Tapscott, a professor at the elite Rotman School of Management in Toronto. He managed to wrangle an invitation to this year’s forum, and he is excited:
The Forum is the ultimate networking event, and that’s why I’m here. New thinking about networks is critical to our planet’s future success. The institutions and mechanisms responsible for global co-operation at the international level are having increasing difficulty solving global problems.
Perhaps these problems are just too hard to solve, but I think not. Rather, our aging global institutions need a rethink. Today’s challenges demand solutions that transcend the traditional boundaries of the nation-state. [Emphasis added.]
Once he has attended a few of the daily sessions, Tapscott’s enthusiasm might just be tempered. Here are some snippets from worthies holding forth in Davos. From Christina Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, come these pithy remarks:
Europe faces issues, but its destiny shines through the smoke and fog. I’m optimistic about Europe’s future.
And,
Unless we take action on climate change, future generations will be roasted, toasted, fried and grilled.
Equally enthralling with his total lack of understanding about how economies really work, Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s prime minister, no doubt engaged his audience with this:
We’re not interested in excessively high commodity prices because they hinder the development of the global economy and the development of the Russian economy alike.
But, should prices be too low, that would lead us to another extreme lack of resources to sustain economic growth. I believe that the current oil prices are, well, more or less optimal — or close to that — both for consumers and producers.
Corruptocrats and thugs also soiled the podiums of these sessions, such as convicted criminal Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s president, who used his communist revolutionary language to describe what he sees happening in Africa:
There is evidence that Africa is growing. There is also evidence that African leaders have collectively come together to do the things that will make Africa move forward. [Emphasis added.]
A rational observer of the scene in Davos, Aditya Chakrabortty, writing in The Guardian, explained what’s really happening in Davos:
[The WEF] is the most perfect case study of how the practitioners of free-market, globalized capitalism give the public one explanation for what they are doing and why, while privately pursuing the complete opposite.
In sum, Davos is another collectivist effort aimed at promoting global government, giving totalitarians of every stripe air time to promote that agenda to the super rich who intend to profit from it.
A graduate of Cornell University and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American and blogs frequently at www.LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
