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A link to the WEF would help a lot. They published it, after all.

Their FAQ says:
"Our members represent the 1,000 leading companies and 200 smaller businesses - many from the developing world - that play a potent role in their industry or region. Our members are influential, talented and powerful people. Many are also innovative and inspiring individuals who challenge conventional thinking and are committed to making the world a better place. We also work closely with communities of leaders from academia, government, religion, the media, non-governmental organizations and the arts."
But I heard today someone from Cisco saying that they were sponsoring them/this report(was not clear). ...ah found a list here before I hit submit.: http://www.weforum.org/en/events/AnnualMeeting2007 /Partners/index.htm

"The Report uses the Networked Readiness Index (NRI) to measure the degree of preparation of a nation or community to participate in and benefit from ICT developments. The NRI is composed of three component indexes which assess:

- environment for ICT offered by a country or community
- readiness of the community's key stakeholders (individuals, business and governments)
- usage of ICT among these stakeholders."

http://www.weforum.org/en/media/Latest%20Press%20R eleases/gitr_2007_press_release
http://www.weforum.org/en/initiatives/gcp/Global%2 0Information%20Technology%20Report/index.htm

Gosh even after pouring over their press materials, just a simple general idea of how their three proprietary parameters of "ICT" are actually calculated is suspiciously elusive. Are these Europeans being intentionally discreet?

Pfffft. The fact is, the per capita 'ICT' output and gross 'ICT' GDP of United States of America is stunningly far ahead of even her runner up, the aggregate of all of Europe, "EU" as they call themselves now....

Ask yourself what their motives are before believing a byte of it.

"The Report uses the Networked Readiness Index (NRI) to measure the degree of preparation of a nation or community to participate in and benefit from ICT developments. The NRI is composed of three component indexes which assess:

- environment for ICT offered by a country or community
- readiness of the community's key stakeholders (individuals, business and governments)
- usage of ICT among these stakeholders."

http://www.weforum.org/en/media/Latest%20Press%20R eleases/gitr_2007_press_release
http://www.weforum.org/en/initiatives/gcp/Global%2 0Information%20Technology%20Report/index.htm

Gosh even after pouring over their press materials, just a simple general idea of how their three proprietary parameters of "ICT" are actually calculated is suspiciously elusive. Are these Europeans being intentionally discreet?

Pfffft. The fact is, the per capita 'ICT' output and gross 'ICT' GDP of United States of America is stunningly far ahead of even her runner up, the aggregate of all of Europe, "EU" as they call themselves now....

Ask yourself what their motives are before believing a byte of it.

here

Sure, we've all had the roommate who can't pay rent or bills on time, but always manages to find money for a sack of weed. But the people I'm talking about who are in debt or bankrupt are people who were doing everything right, living within their means, who had a sudden emergency, such as a firing, lay-off, or health situation, who have nothing to rely on.

Check out this article on how a job loss. Read this one on how sudden illnesses are bankrupting Americans. I understand that half of the bankruptcies occurring in the US are due to medical bills. There are some 40-50 million working Americans who have no health insurance.

These scapegoats such as welfare queens and people buying PSPs over paying rent do exist, but they are in the small minority. I'm not swallowing the bullshit anymore. Corporate greed is destroying the middle class. Corporations are reporting record profits, the economy is growing, and the stock market is doing well. Why isn't this rising tide lifting all boats? It's becoming clearer and clearer to me that it's because the people who decide where the money goes aren't sharing it with the rest of us.

I know the libertarian ideal is to keep downsizing your life until you don't have any debt. Move from a house to a condo, to an apartment, to a trailer home, to a cabin in the woods, to a mud hut. Hey, if everybody keeps downsizing in response to being paid less and getting laid off from their jobs, we will all be living in tent cities. How about we instead demand our fair share from corporations.

Some people can't just downsize their life at the snap of a finger. If you have three kids, you can't just get rid of one. If you have a house, you can't immediately sell it for what it's worth. If you have a car you owe a lot of money on, you still need it to find a new job while you might be trying to sell it and line up a new car at the same time. If you have a sick child who runs up a bunch of medical bills that you can't afford, I'll bet the libertarian answer is that he was too sick for his parents to take care of, and he should have died. Well, after you've already treated him and run up the bills, you can't just kill him and ask for a refund for all of the treatments that were performed.

It's a question of what kind of country do we want to have. Do we want to pay some taxes to support single mothers and children, or hopeless alcoholics, like they do in Europe? Or do we want to have homeless families living in the streets, with ghettos, shanty towns, and poor villages like they do in South America? I think most libertarians are comfortable with ghettos and shanty towns. I'm not.

There are so many social programs that have built America, such as rural electrification, the GI bill, the national highway system. We are a nation of entrepreneurial self-starters, but to pretend that this alone built the nation and that social programs only make people lazy is in direct contradiction of the facts. Take the example of Finland, Switzerland, and Sweden. They have socialized health care, education, and retirement, yet the World Economic Forum says those countries have the most competitive economies in the world.

I thought technology, industry, and education were supposed to make our lives better. We might be the first generation of Americans to have a lesser standard of living than our parents. Why should this be? Our parents and granparents were the first generation to have 40-hour work weeks with overtime, a retirement, and health insurance, all provided by unions. Before then, people worked 60 to 80 hour weeks in factories and on farms. When they were injured or became unhealthy, they were simply fired. No retirement. Some were even slaves! Are our parents and grandparents lazier than their predecessors? No, they

Police and Secret Service never found the culprit. However, to most, it is obvious that they are not really trying.

20 years after (i.e. now), one TV and radio station is doing a retrospective of the events back then. And, lo and behold, "new" witnesses crawl out of the woodwork, testifying on air how they saw the suspect the day before one of the bombings, near the place of attack, in a car full of appropriate equipment. And testifying also how they were pressured by police and secret service into silence.

Government and police act scandalized and feign to be interested in the testimony. They even set up an e-mail address to which the public may submit other testimonies, if there are.

Predictably, the email address gets hax0red.

And now suddenly, police and secret service are all up in arms, and want to find the culprit. Non, not the bomber. The hax0r who had the gall to humiliate the police and secret service by typing in the obvious password for that account, and succeed! Major ISPs were raided. They took that new investigation much more seriously than the investigation into the bombings 20 years ago.

A couple of weeks later, some boy-scouts and ex-boyscouts took it upon themselves to moon their boyscout chieftain (... who also happens to be an investigator of the Luxembourgish spying agency ...). You can't imagine the flurry of activity that followed that heinous threat against national security!

Conclusion: terrorize the country during an entire year with your bombs => walk free!
moon an spy-service agent => go to jail!

"No form of protectionism has ever been good, labor or otherwise."

Oh really? How is it, then, that Finland, which has had cradle-to-grave socialism for around 100 years has the most competitive economy? The United States is second, but Canada ranks 3rd, Australia 5th, and Norway 6th -- each of which have extensive social program.

Of those four industrialized, western nations with extensive social services and labor protections, three rank above the US in the Economist's Quality of Life ranking -- and the Economist is a pro-free-trade, pro-gloablisation magazine. The US ranks 13th, and Canada ranks right below at 14th.

No, and that is kind of the point. No, the US does not want two nations famous for their censorship of the Internet to have any more control then they already do.

The problem is that whole attitude you've just displayed of "we are righteous, fair and unblemished, and everybody should just do as we say, because we're so right", when in fact, it's all just alienation, lack of self-critique, and cultural isolation. Because, looking at the US from the outside, and looking at things like the Patriot Act, and Guantanamo, I'm not so sure China is so terrible by comparison. Sure, you don't have a single party regime. You have a two party regime! :-) Wow :-) Oh, and you're brain washed by a bad educational system and by violent video-games and movies that have portrayed large groups of brown-skinned individuals as hate-mongers and evil-doers, to be terminated by Soldier Hero. That, my friend, is called Indoctrination. And you had it in China. And you have it in the US. Face it. Look at it. Admit it.

The argument that the US invented the internet is riculous, and therefore, it has "more rights over it" is ridiculous. It is like saying all doctors can't use the scalpel because some guy, from some country, invented it.

Consider that neither do the peoples of the world want a crucial technology like the internet to be in the hands of a nation that arrests journalists that don't kneel to the government, that schemes against and slanders the UN on a periodic basis, and does that as a policy, that promotes pre-emptive wars based on lies, disrespects basic human rights (including kidnapping people abroad, turning them to torture, and abusing prsioners), and that creates some ill-begotten evil thing like the Patriot Act, etc. The fact the Bush administration is worried about this issue already shows which side to choose.

The US is widely mistrusted, for all the right reasons. For instance, if you read the 2002 World Bank World Survey on Trust, conducted with 36,000 people around the world, you'll find that people trust leaders of the U.N. much more than they trust the leaders of the U.S.
Also, in 2003, Time Magazine conducted a poll with more than 700,000 responses with the question: "who poses the greatest threat to world peace?" Options were: 1) North Korea; 2) Iraq; 3) The United States. The US was the answer chosen by 86%. (See here).
In another international poll, in 2003, the BBC found that 60% of the people "had a very unfavourable, or fairly unfavourable attitude towards the American President."
And more up to date, two new world polls from 2005 show the same phenomenom: A poll from here and here show thats the U.S. is "broadly disliked." The last poll, (see here and here), with 23 countries and 23,000 interviewed during 2004, shows that the U.S. comes out last in "positive contribution". And we're not even talking about countries that nest the majority of terrorists. Can you imagine what those feelings are in, say, the Middle East?

The US has a bad reputation, image, and track record. And North-Americans wonder "why"? How about playing along with others, respecting global decisions, promoting health and education (instead of war) and promoting democracy through peace and social change, the only everlasting change. The internet is a crucial asset to the 21st century, and like the printing machines, it's a technology that belongs to mankind. Sorry. Live with it.

http://www.weforum.org/site/homepublic.nsf/Content /Growth+Competitiveness+Index+rankings+2005+and+20 04+comparisons

THE GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS REPORT PUBLISHED AGAIN! FINLAND RANKS AS #1 NOW 5 YEARS IN A ROW!

http://www.weforum.org/site/homepublic.nsf/Content /Global+Competitiveness+Programme%5CGlobal+Competi tiveness+Report

Country Rankings 2005-2006

1. Finland
2. USA
3. Sweden
4. Denmark
5. Taiwan
6. Singapore
7. Iceland
8. Switzerland
9.Norway
10.Australia
11.Netherlands
12.Japan
13.United Kingdom
14.Canada
15.Germany
16. New Zealand

Once.

The place runs like clockwork, everybody has huge vacations, there are no bums on the street. If that's "socialism", I'll take it baby!

The World Social Forum (WSF) (choose your language on the site), which ends today in Porto Alegre, Brazil, has less money to spend on computing than the World Economic Forum (WEF) held in Davos, Switzerland. But at both events, many different languages were spoken, meaning that simultaneous translations were an absolute necessity. If the WEF can afford professional translators and costly computers, in Porto Alegre, translators are volunteers, and the software to distribute the translations is open-source. The NIFT (Nomad Interpretation Free Tool) was already used for the 4th WSF held last year in Mumbai, India. The free software, which runs on a simple PC, collects and digitizes the translations from the interpreters before broadcasting them to a variety of devices. In fact, the technically-advanced NIFT allows for real-time streaming over the Internet of speeches in several different languages. Read more...

First, here is a short description from Babels , the international network of volunteer interpreters and translators, as told in this article from the January 2005 issue of Red Pepper (scroll towards the middle of the article).

Babels, the network of volunteer interpreters and translators, is another good example of prefigurative politics. From its birth in a squatted medieval tower in Florence to its difficult coming of age in London, Babels offers a non-market alternative to professional translation services -- relying on solidarity and a massive collective effort of voluntary labour to make the Forum a space in which language diversity (and, through that, political and cultural diversity) can flourish. As such, it is a political actor within the space of the Forum and not simply a 'service provider.'

Babels was also involved in the creation of NOMAD , an international network of people, committed to putting the essential technologies into the public domain.

The aim of Nomad is to extend the GNU perspective to other technological issues, including the re-appropriation of the knowledge and the control of the technologies by the users in their digital, electronical and analogical forms. The Nomad's sphere of activities at present ranges from communication to renewable energy.

This issue of re-appropriation of knowledge is closely linked to the political perspective of developing local production in an economy based on solidarity. The Nomad network is not a technical service provider but a political network run on a voluntary basis.

Now, let's return to Red Pepper for a brief description of NIFT.

The Nomad Interpretation Free Tool (NIFT) combines a piece of free-software to record and transmit different translated versions of speeches, with various forms of audio transmission (such as FM radios or magnetic hearing-aid loops). To fully appreciate NIFT, it is worth thinking of it in terms of the existing professional interpretation equipment. NIFT is technically more advanced than these systems in several respects because it is fully computerised. This has positive side effects in terms of the number of different languages that can be offered simultaneously or, even more innovatively, in allowing for the real-time streaming over the internet of speeches in several different languages.

The diagram below shows the network infrastructure used at Porto Alegre (Credit: NOMAD). You can find a larger version of this image on

Oh fuck it feels great to be a Finnish person! We are supreme beings!

Global Competitiveness Report 2004-2005

Country Rankings 2004-2005

1. Finland
2. USA
3. Sweden
4. Taiwan
5. Denmark
6. Norway
7. Singapore
8. Switzerland
9.Japan
10.Iceland
11.United Kingdom
12.Netherlands
13.Germany
14.Australia
15.Canada

16. UAE

Full chart here.

I did not mean to sound overly patriotic, just to point out that there is many ways to organize the labor markerts successfully

Where theres a skill, theres a way. Now there are indians who are farmilliar with technology, who know how to use a computer at the very least. They can now put this to work for native companies that will inevitably spring up. The United states as little as 100 years ago was just as much a third world country as any out there today. American workers got paid pennies per hour (even adjusting for inflation) There were no unions, there was no health care, there was no 40 hour work week, there were no child labor laws. The united states was essentially a third world country. And like many third world countries we got exploited by nations like france, and germany, and england. But in that exploitation we got currency and skills from europe, americans also woke up and realized that we were being exploited and demanded all the things we have today. We couldnt have woken up without the jobs to feed out children, so that we could afford to demand more rights and benefits and pay. Yes, the europeans turned elsewhere for labor, africa, china, south america, but we had already learned the skills to manufacture our own goods and provide our own services. Using homebrewed goods we weaned ourselves off of european goods and services. Just like india and china are doing today. Look at the growth rate of india, its been above 4% for 9 of the last 10 years back to 1979. Its Real GDP has essentially doubled since 1979. I hardly think that this is a "victim" of globalization.

If this is the right home page: www.weforum.org it shows that the main focus of the event was "Building Trust". Sort of ironic given what happened to her email.

On their website, they've got video/audio, and transcripts of the more important speakers. The C. Powell one is pretty decent.

"Journalists do not pay participation fees and the Annual Meeting is one of the only international meetings to integrate media participants as full stakeholders in its debates. The media represent twenty percent of all participants and participate in all the activities of the Annual Meeting."

Anything man has ever done to hinder the invisible hand of the free market has always backfired. -- If you give me a hand-out when I'm laid off and make it easier on me, you stifle my innovation and rob the world of the ideas I would think up when it's sink or swim and I've got to swim if I want to feed my kids.

Interesting. Your description of aid that "stifles innovation and robs the world of my ideas" fits the Finnish social security system quite well. Interestingly enough, the World Economic Forum ranked Finland ahead of the US in competitiveness last year. Similarily, the IMD ranks Finland this year second in competitiveness (after the US), having moved up one rank each year since at least 1998.

Granted, there is unemployment (long-term unemployment has become a major problem in Finland), but still those studies should show that the idea of an extensive social security system isn't all bad.

Anything man has ever done to hinder the invisible hand of the free market has always backfired. -- If you give me a hand-out when I'm laid off and make it easier on me, you stifle my innovation and rob the world of the ideas I would think up when it's sink or swim and I've got to swim if I want to feed my kids.

Interesting. Your description of aid that "stifles innovation and robs the world of my ideas" fits the Finnish social security system quite well. Interestingly enough, the World Economic Forum ranked Finland ahead of the US in competitiveness last year. Similarily, the IMD ranks Finland this year second in competitiveness (after the US), having moved up one rank each year since at least 1998.

Granted, there is unemployment (long-term unemployment has become a major problem in Finland), but still those studies should show that the idea of an extensive social security system isn't all bad.