Davos
Well, maybe next year. We'll be waiting for the post person to hand over the embossed 2008 invitation that's sure to come any day now. Meanwhile, there is the consolation of reading Jeff Jarvis, he of the Forbes Web Celeb 25 (No. 6! Well done, Jeff!) who is blogging an absolute storm from Switzerland.
Along with breaking hot media news (YouTube moving towards paying producers!), Buzzmachine has been down in the trenches with the political heavyweights: read his posts on David Cameron (impressive on terrorism) and Gordon Brown (impressive on blogs).
Excellent was the live-blogging on the future of Iraq. Here Jeff quotes Adnan Pachachi, former president of Iraq, on whether Iraqis see themselves as Iraqi. "We have inherited from the previous regime a really terrible legacy: the culture of violence, the culture of corruption, and also the culture of dependence on the government…. When I went back to Baghdad in 2003 everyone is telling me we want a government that will tell us what to do."
Worth noting, especially for those who strove to keep Saddam in power, is that Pachachi said, "…the years of sanctions destroyed the middle class and the social fabric of the country." Tragically, the same sanctions that destroyed a society, enriched an entire class of international thieves and gangsters, er, bureaucrats and politicians.
