Boycott Call Creates Fracas at Davos Forum
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 26 — A magazine article calling on nations to boycott Israel because of its treatment of Palestinians has provoked a tempest at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting here, prompting the organizers to pull the magazines from the forum’s shelves here and issue an apology.
The article, which appeared in Global Agenda, a magazine published by the forum and distributed to participants, carried the headline “Boycott Israel.” The author, Mazin Qumsiyeh, equated Israel’s policies toward Palestinians with apartheid and said that countries should withdraw their investments and boycott Israel.
After a member raised questions about the article, the organizers removed the magazines from shelves at the conference center in this Alpine resort. The forum’s executive director, Klaus Schwab, said the article should not have been published and had slipped through the editing process.
nytimes.com
aw too bad. How dare they try to harsh the mellow of this politico-Euro-trash feelgood fest? Shame. It’s ok though, they have their police-state tactics to fall back on.
Merkel Makes Waves at Davos
In astonishingly short time, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has emerged as the most dynamic leader in Europe. That at least seemed to be the verdict of the applause meter at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Jan. 25. “You have given us hope for the first time in a long time,” Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, chairman and chief executive of Swiss food giant Nestle (nsrgy.pk.PK), told Merkel after she delivered the keynote address to a packed auditorium.
Merkel called for a massive reduction in bureaucracy in both Europe and Germany, and an increase in the retirement age, among other measures. “We have to be more flexible. We’re holding back enormous potential,” she said.
SHOW OF STATESMANSHIP. Merkel’s Davos performance was only the latest in a series of coups for the Chancellor. Since she was chosen in November to lead a coalition government of her Christian Democrats and the center-left Social Democrats, Merkel has repaired relations with the U.S., strained by the Iraq war. She also has displayed a new toughness toward Russia by visiting human-rights groups during a trip in January to see Russian President Vladimir Putin.
These and other shows of statesmanship have made her Germany’s most popular leader in years, banishing memories of last year’s national election campaign, when she squandered a commanding lead to barely achieve a plurality against the Social Democrats. Immediately after her speech, Merkel showed she’s comfortable in the world of business as well as politics, bantering on stage with members of a panel that included Michael Dell, chairman of computer retailer Dell (NasdaqNM:DELL – News), and Henry McKinnell, chairman and CEO of drugmaker Pfizer (NYSE:PFE – News). Dell advised Merkel to cut jobless benefits to remove the incentive not to work. “Good advice,” replied Merkel in English.
Merkel delivered the rest of her remarks in German, even though she speaks English well — a sign she was aiming at a domestic audience and setting the tone for policy moves to come. In a Continent dominated by the likes of such battle-scarred political warhorses as France’s Jacques Chirac and Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, Merkel is a badly needed fresh face. It’s not just image. As the chancellor reminded her listeners, she grew up in Communist East Germany and has no emotional stake in the social-welfare state that holds down economic growth.
She’s gonna fit right in…
From Chennai with Love: Chennai Hosts 3rd Asia Pacific Regional Cuba Solidarity Conference
…Chennai’s link with Cuba is not new. On June 12, 1960, C. M. Annadurai, a legendary leader of the Dravidian movement, wrote to his cadres of America’s atom bomb and its ability to “destroy the whole world.” Meanwhile, Cuba has none of these arms, and yet because of the wide support to the Revolution, “if America attacks not even a nail will remain in the US after the attack.” It is this tradition that provoked the Dravidian movement’s M. Karunanidhi to write an ode to Castro, which he read out at the Solidarity Conference’s last day. Cuba is a honeycomb, Tamil Nadu’s senior mass leader exclaimed, for “whenever America touches it in an unguarded moment, the people of Cuba, like honey bees, will sting.” This was all good rhetoric, even as it typically came without a program of action toward solidarity. (Contrast this political situation with that of the US, where even within the Left there is an allergic reaction against Cuba, and a hasty attempt to appear “reasonable” by making all sorts of anti-Cuban gestures. The record on this is nicely laid out by the Harvard scientist Richard Levins in “Progressive Cuba Bashing,” Socialism and Democracy, vol. 19, no. 1, March 2005).