Davos Quotes

Foes and false friends are all around me, Lord Davos. They infest my city like roaches, and at night I feel them crawling over me.” The fat man’s fingers coiled into a fist, and all his chins trembled. “My son Wendel came to the Twins a guest. He ate Lord Walder’s bread and salt, and hung his sword upon the wall to feast with his friends. And they murdered him. Murdered, I say, and may the Freys choke upon their fables. I drink with Jared, jape with Symond, promise Rhaegar the hand of my own beloved granddaughter…but never think that means I have forgotten. The north remembers, Lord Davos. The north remembers, and the mummer’s farce is almost done. My son is home.

An admiral without ships, a hand without fingers, in service of a king without a throne. Is this a knight who comes before us, or the answer to a child's riddle?

What would a Frey know of honor? - Sir Davos Seaworth

The north remembers, Lord Davos. The north remembers, and the mummer’s farce is almost done. My son is home.

One voyage to the East and a man could live as rich as a lord until the end of his days. When he'd been younger, Davos had dreamed of making such voyages himself. But the years went dancing by like moths around a flame, and somehow the time had never been quite right.

Surprisingly, Stannis smiled at that. “You’re bold enough to be a Stark. Yes, I should have come sooner. If not for my Hand, I might not have come at all. Lord Seaworth is a man of humble birth, but he reminded me of my duty, when all I could think of was my rights. I had the cart before the horse, Davos said. I was trying to win the throne to save the kingdom, when I should have been trying to save the kingdom to win the throne.

Our maester chuckled at me and told us that Prince Rhaegar was certain to defeat this rebel. That was when Stark said, 'In this world only winter is certain. We may lose our heads, it's true . . . but what if we should prevail?' My father sent him on his way with his head still on his shoulders. 'If you lose,' he told Lord Eddard, 'you were never here.'" "No more than I was," said Davos Seaworth.

In the Mirror World, conspiracy theories detract attention from the billionaires who fund the networks of misinformation and away from the economic policies—deregulation, privatization, austerity—that have stratified wealth so cataclysmically in the neoliberal era. They rile up anger about the Davos elites, at Big Tech and Big Pharma—but the rage never seems to reach those targets. Instead it gets diverted into culture wars about anti-racist education, all-gender bathrooms, and Great Replacement panic directed at Black people, nonwhite immigrants, and Jews. Meanwhile, the billionaires who bankroll the whole charade are safe in the knowledge that the fury coursing through our culture isn’t coming for them.

These transnationalists 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

I am a hollow shell, the crab's died, there's nothing left inside. Don't they know that?

A grey man,” she said. “Neither white nor black, but partaking of both. Is that what you are, Ser Davos?” “What if I am? It seems to me that most men are grey.” “If half of an onion is black with rot, it is a rotten onion. A man is good, or he is evil.

It is night in your Seven Kingdoms now,' the red woman went on, 'but soon the sun will rise again. The war continues, Davos Seaworth, and some will soon learn that even an ember in the ashes can still ignite a great blaze. The old maester looked at Stannis and saw only a man. You see a king. You are both wrong. He is the Lord's chosen, the warrior of fire. I have seen him leading the fight against the dark, I have seen it in the flames. The flames do not lie, else you would not be here. It is written in prophecy as well. When the red star bleeds and the darkness gathers, Azor Ahai shall be born again amidst smoke and salt to wake dragons out of stone.

Davos is where billionaires tell millionaires what the middle class feels.

Shadow?” Davos felt his flesh prickling. “A shadow is a thing of darkness.” “You are more ignorant than a child, ser knight. There are no shadows in the dark. Shadows are the servants of light, the children of fire. The brightest flame casts the darkest shadows.

Melisandre laughed again. “You are lost in darkness and confusion, Ser Davos.” “And a good thing.” Davos gestured at the distant lights flickering along the walls of Storm’s End. “Feel how cold the wind is? The guards will huddle close to those torches. A little warmth, a little light, they’re a comfort on a night like this. Yet that will blind them, so they will not see us pass.” I hope. “The god of darkness protect us now, my lady, Even you.

Davos said. I was trying to win the throne to save the kingdom, when I should have been trying to save the kingdom to win the throne.

...what is the life of one bastard boy against a kingdom?" "Everything." said Davos, softly.

After the brightness of the morning, the interior of the pavilion seemed cool and dim. Stannis seated himself on a plain wooden camp stool and waved Davos to another. “One day I may make you a lord, smuggler. If only to irk Celtigar and Florent. You will not thank me, though. It will mean you must suffer through these councils, and feign interest in the braying of mules.” “Why do you have them, if they serve no purpose?” “The mules love the sound of their own braying, why else? And I need them to haul my cart.

The galleys...had been dirven onto the rocks of Skagos, the isle of unicorns and cannibals where even the Blind Bastard had feared to land.

In his smuggling days, Davos had often jested that he knew the waterfront at King’s Landing a deal better than the back of his hand, since he had not spent a good part of his life sneaking in and out of the back of his hand.

China’s import of chips—$260 billion in 2017, the year of Xi’s Davos debut—was far larger than Saudi Arabia’s export of oil or Germany’s export of cars. China spends more money buying chips each year than the entire global trade in aircraft. No product is more central to international trade than semiconductors.

Surely the Gods did not bring me safe through fire and sea only to kill me with a flux.

And I know that a king protects his people, or he is no king at all.

Davos had often heard it said that the wizards of Valyria did not cut and chisel as common masons did, but worked stone with fire and magic as a potter might work clay.

The red woman could see the future in the fire, but all that Davos Seaworth ever saw were the shadows of the past:

Davos: "you go on. You fight for as long as you can. You clean up as much shit as you can". Snow: "I don't know how to do that. I thought I did, but...I failed". Davos: "good. Now go fail again".

Renly offered me a peach. At our parley. Mocked me, defied me, threatened me, and offered me a peach. I thought he was drawing a blade and went for mine own. Was that his purpose, to make me show fear? Or was it one of his pointless jests? When he spoke of how sweet the peach was, did his words have some hidden meaning?" The king gave a shake of his head, like a dog shaking a rabbit to snap its neck. "Only Renly could vex me so with a piece of fruit. He brought his doom on himself with his treason, but I did love him, Davos. I know that now. I swear, I will go to my grave thinking of my brother's peach.

How to build and fund a fair and just world isn’t only a question for the key men and key women who work in business and finance and dine with prime ministers in Davos. Most important, it’s a question for you.

—Hay muchas cosas que no comprendo —reconoció Davos—. Nunca he dicho lo contrario. Sé de ríos y de mares, de la forma de las costas y dónde acechan las rocas en los bajíos. Sé de calas secretas en las que un barco puede atracar sin que nadie lo vea. Y sé que un rey protege a su pueblo, de lo contrario no es un rey.

I drink with Jared, jape with Symond, promise Rhaegar the hand of my own beloved granddaughter … but never think that means I have forgotten. The north remembers, Lord Davos. The north remembers, and the mummer’s farce is almost done.

Nothing fucks you harder than time

But such people (Moderate Conservatives) aren't liberal. What they are is corporate. Their habits and opinions owe far more to the standards of courtesy and taste that prevail within the white-collar world than they do to Franklin Roosevelt and the United Mine Workers. We live in a time, after all, when hard-nosed bosses compose awestruck disquisitions on the nature of 'change,' punk rockers dispense leadership secrets, shallow profundities about authenticity sell luxury cars, tech billionaires build rock'n'roll musuems, management theorists ponder the nature of coolness, and a former lyricist fro the Grateful Dead hail the dawn of New Economy capitalism from the heights of Davos. Coversvatives may not understand why, but business culture had melded with counterculture for reasons having a great deal to do with business culture's usual priority - profit.

While in the past people of rank or status were those and only those who took risks, who had the downside for their actions, and heroes were those who did so for the sake of others, today the exact reverse is taking place. We are witnessing the rise of a new class of inverse heroes, that is, bureaucrats, bankers, Davos-attending members of the I.A.N.D. (International Association of Name Droppers), and academics with too much power and no real downside and/or accountability. They game the system while citizens pay the price.

You esteem this Penrose more than you do my lords bannermen. Why?” “He keeps faith.” “A misplaced faith in a dead usurper.” “Yes,” Davos admitted, “but still, he keeps faith.” “As those behind us do not?” Davos had come too far with Stannis to play coy now. “Last year they were Robert’s men. A moon ago they were Renly’s. This morning they are yours. Whose will they be on the morrow?” And Stannis laughed. A sudden gust, rough and full of scorn. “I told you, Melisandre,” he said to the red woman, “my Onion Knight tells me the truth.” “I see you know him well, Your Grace,” the red woman said. “Davos, I have missed you sorely,” the king said. “Aye, I have a tail of traitors, your nose does not deceive you. My lords bannermen are inconstant even in their treasons. I need them, but you should know how it sickens me to pardon such as these when I have punished better men for lesser crimes. You have every right to reproach me, Ser Davos.” “You reproach yourself more than I ever could, Your Grace. You must have these great lords to win your throne—” “Fingers and all, it seems.” Stannis smiled grimly.

His hand reached for his throat, fumbling for the small leather pouch he always wore about his neck. Inside he kept the bones of the four fingers his king had shortened for him, on the day he made Davos a knight. My luck. His shortened fingers patted at his chest, groping, finding nothing. The pouch was gone, and the fingerbones with them. Stannis could never understand why he’d kept the bones. “To remind me of my king’s justice,” he whispered through cracked lips. But now they were gone.

And a good thing." Davos gestured at the distant lights flickering along the walls of Storm's End. "Feel how cold the wind is? The guards will huddle close to those torches. A little warmth, a little light, they're a comfort on a night like this. Yet that will blind them, so they will not see us pass... The god of darkness protects us now, my lady. Even you.

Davos has become the emblem of a global elite that has lost its ability to listen.

So tell me, Ser Davos Seaworth, and tell me truly—does your heart burn with the shining light of R’hllor? Or is it black and cold and full of worms?

The issues the Panthers organized around fifty years ago are still with us. Our justice system is unjust. Police conduct in nonwhite neighborhoods generates systematic abuses. The middle class is shrinking. Our education system not only continues to fail poor children, it often propels them to prison. In addition to these continuing issues, there are new wrinkles. The spectacular rise in economic inequality—“99 percent of all new income today goes to the wealthiest 1 percent”12—has caused the barons at Davos, Switzerland, to note that the immense political power the 1 percent wield because of their control of resources is skewing society and creating instability. Scientists warn us our planet is in jeopardy due to global warming. The future is uncertain.

They killed Lord Eddard and Lady Catelyn and King Robb," she said. "He was our king! He was brave and good, and the Freys murdered him. If Lord Stannis will avenge him, we should join Lord Stannis.

The Father protects his children, the septons taught, but Davos had led his boys into the fire. Dale would never give his wife the child they had prayed for, and Allard, with his girl in Oldtown and his girl in Kings Landing, and his girl in Braavos, they would all be weeping soon. Matthos would never captain his own ship, as he dreamed. Maric would never have his knighthood. 'How can I live when they are dead? So many brave knights and mighty lords have died, better men than me, and highborn. Crawl inside your cave, Davos. Crawl inside and shrink up small and the ship will go away, and no one will trouble you ever again. Sleep on your stone pillow and let the gulls peck out your eyes while the crabs feast on your flesh. You've feasted on enough of them, you owe them. Hide, smuggler. Hide, and be quiet, and die.

I would say my parts are mixed, m'lady. Good and bad." "A grey man," she said. "Neither white nor black, but partaking in both. is that what you are, Ser Davos?" "What if I am? It seems to me that most men are grey

Quando insegnavo, e davo ai miei piccoli allievi nozioni elementari sul mondo, la vita e la lingua, era come se attraverso gli occhi e le coscienze di quei bambini io ripetessi quelle nozioni elementari anche a me stesso.

Seaworth had a lordly ring to it, but down deep he was still Davos of Flea Bottom, coming home to his city on its three high hills. He knew as much of ships and sails and shores as any man in the Seven Kingdoms, and had fought his share of desperate fights sword to sword on a wet deck. But to this sort of battle he came a maiden, nervous and afraid. Smugglers do not sound warhorns and raise banners. When they smell danger, they raise sail and run before the wind.

Stamattina ho avuto un'illuminazione: è tutta colpa mia. Il mio errore pià grave è stato di non capire che il tempo passa. Il tempo passava e io ero fissa nell'atteggiamento della sposa ideale di un marito ideale. Invece di rianimare la nostra vita sessuale m'incantavo nel ricordo delle nostre notti di una volta. Mi immaginavo di aver conservato il mio viso e il mio corpo di trent'anni invece di curare il mio fisico. Ho lasciato atrofizzare la mia intelligenza; non mi coltivavo più; mi dicevo: 'più tardi, quando le bambine mi avranno lasciata'. Si, la giovane studentessa che Maurice sposò, che si appassionava agli avvenimenti, alle idee, ai libri, era ben diversa dalla donna di oggi, il cui universo è tutto in queste quattro mura. Ed è vero che avevo la tendenza a imprigionarvi Maurice. credevo che la sua famiglia dovesse bastargli, credevo di averlo tutto per me. In generale davo tutto per scontato, e questo deve averlo seccato, lui che cambia, che mette sempre in questione tutte le cose. La noia non perdona" -Una donna spezzata-

Davos enjoyed a good story as well as any man, but Stannis had not named him Hand for his enjoyment, he felt. His first duty was to help his king rule, and for that he must needs understand the words the ravens brought. The best way to learn a thing was to do it, he had found; sails or scrolls, it made no matter.

Wylla." Lord Wyman smiled. "Did you see how brave she was? Even when I threatened to have her tongue out, she reminded me of the debt White Harbor owes to the Starks of Winterfell, a debt that can never be repaid. Wylla spoke from the heart, as did Lady Leona. Forgive her if you can, my lord. She is a foolish, frightened woman, and Wylis is her life. Not every man has it in him to be Prince Aemon the Dragonknight or Symeon Star-Eyes, and not every woman can be as brave as my Wylla.

But while you may find yourself interested in the attack of free speech, or surveillance of your carbon footprint, you might be saying to yourself, I wonder what George Soros is doing these days? Well, even though he’s ninety-one years old, he decided to show up at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2022 to give his thoughts:

Tyrion, Jon, Dany, Stannis and Melisandre, Davos Seaworth, and all the rest of the characters you love or love to hate will be along next year (I devoutly hope) in A Dance with Dragons, which will focus on events along the Wall and across the sea, just as the present book focused on King’s Landing. —George R. R. Martin June 2005

Lord Stannis had rewarded Davos with choice lands on Cape Wrath, a small keep, and a knight’s honors … but he had also decreed that he lose a joint of each finger on his left hand, to pay for all his years of smuggling. Davos had submitted, on the condition that Stannis wield the knife himself; he would accept no punishment from lesser hands. The lord had used a butcher’s cleaver, the better to cut clean and true. Afterwards, Davos had chosen the name Seaworth for his new-made house, and he took for his banner a black ship on a pale grey field—with an onion on its sails. The one-time smuggler was fond of saying that Lord Stannis had done him a boon, by giving him four less fingernails to clean and trim.

Stannis Baratheon turned away from the window, and the ghosts who moved upon the southern sea.

Is this a knight who comes before us, or the answer to a child’s riddle?

a person who is free to make a $20,000 purchase of a car as a customer, might not be free to buy an office chair for $500 as an employee. Little wonder that big companies grow more slowly than small ones (firms whose chief executives attend the annual World Economic Forum schmooze-fest in Davos tend to underperform the stock market), and big public bodies have worse reputations than small ones.

In its 2013 annual report on “Global Risks,” the World Economic Forum (host of the annual superelite gathering in Davos), stated plainly, “Although the Alaskan village of Kivalina—which faces being ‘wiped out’ by the changing climate—was unsuccessful in its attempts to file a US$ 400 million lawsuit against oil and coal companies, future plaintiffs may be more successful. Five decades ago, the U.S. tobacco industry would not have suspected that in 1997 it would agree to pay $368 billion in health-related damages.

Ned Stark was here?” “At the dawn of Robert’s Rebellion. The Mad King had sent to the Eerie for Stark’s head, but Jon Arryn sent him back defiance. Gulltown stayed loyal to the throne, though. To get home and call his banners, Stark had to cross the mountains to the Fingers and find a fisherman to carry him across the Bite. A storm caught them on the way. The fisherman drowned, but his daughter got Stark to the Sisters before the boat went down. They say he left her with a bag of silver and a bastard in her belly. Jon Snow, she named him, after Arryn.

But when the economic tide went out in 2008, it suddenly became clear how many people had been swimming naked. The left-behinds looked rather more numerous than the cosmopolitans had supposed. The difference was that they no longer had a party to speak for them. It was not just the economy that had left them stranded – the Clintons and the Blairs had moved along too. Having built their political careers on the aspirational vote, the Third Way leaders were unable to find the vocabulary to engage the losers. The new left had long since become fluent in McKinsey-speak – the lingua franca of Davos.

The red woman walked round the fire three times, praying once in the speech of Asshai, once in High Valyrian, and once in the Common Tongue. Davos understood only the last. “R’hllor, come to us in our darkness,” she called. “Lord of Light, we offer you these false gods, these seven who are one, and him the enemy. Take them and cast your light upon us, for the night is dark and full of terrors.” Queen Selyse echoed the words. Beside her, Stannis watched impassively, his jaw hard as stone under the blue-black shadow of his tight-cropped beard. He had dressed more richly than was his wont, as if for the sept.

Your uncle is in parking garages because they fund his more important work.... Which is to seek out, fund and create the sort of technologies and services that bring disruptive change to existing industrial and social paradigms, and offer them, on a confidential basis, to interested businesses an d governments. That's a great mission statement... but it doesn't say what he actually DID. HE WAS A VILLIAN, Hera typed. I stared at what she had written and looked back at Morrison. We don't use that word in public, and also, yes, she said. And this meeting that the stabber had the invite for, I asked. Villain conference, Morrison said. Think of Davos, except they don't pretend they're helping people. And I'd be going there. Yes, after we visit the volcano lair.

Ho esitato un po' prima di scrivere che "avrei dato volentieri la vita per un amico", ma anche ora, a trent' anni di distanza, sono convinto che non si trattasse di un'esagerazione e che non solo sarei stato pronto a morire per un amico, ma l'avrei fatto quasi con gioia. Così come davo per scontato che fosse dulce et decorum pro Germania mori, non avevo dubbi sul fatto che morire pro amico sarebbe stato lo stesso. I giovani tra i sedici e i diciotto anni uniscono in sé un'innocenza soffusa di ingenuità, una radiosa purezza di corpo e di spirito e il bisogno appassionato di una devozione totale e disinteressata. Si tratta di una fase di breve durata che, tuttavia, per la sua stessa intensità e unicità, costituisce una delle esperienze più preziose della vita.

Nor are languages any respecters of frontiers. If you drew a map of Europe based on languages it would bear scant resemblance to a conventional map. Switzerland would disappear, becoming part of the surrounding dominions of French, Italian, and German but for a few tiny pockets for Romansh (or Rumantsch or Rhaeto-Romanic as it is variously called), which is spoken as a native language by about half the people in the Graubünden district (or Grisons district—almost everything has two names in Switzerland) at the country’s eastern edge. This steep and beautiful area, which takes in the ski resorts of St. Moritz, Davos, and Klosters, was once effectively isolated from the rest of the world by its harsh winters and forbidding geography. Indeed, the isolation was such that even people in neighboring valleys began to speak different versions of the language, so that Romansh is not so much one language as five fragmented and not always mutually intelligible dialects. A person from the valley around Sutselva will say, “Vagned nà qua” for “Come here,” while in the next valley he will say, “Vegni neu cheu” [cited in The Economist, February 27, 1988]. In other places people will speak the language in the same way but spell it differently depending on whether they are Catholic or Protestant.

The extreme consolidation in the corporate world over the past three decades has produced a playing field so rigged against consumers that pursuing the basics of life can feel like navigating a never-ending series of scams. It’s as if everyone is trying to trick us in the fine print of pages and pages of terms of service agreements they know we will never read. The black box is not just the algorithms running our communication networks—almost everything is a black box, an opaque system hiding something else. The housing market isn’t about homes; it’s about hedge funds and speculators. Universities aren’t about education; they’re about turning young people into lifelong debtors. Long-term care facilities aren’t about care; they’re about draining our elders in the last years of life and real estate plays. Many news sites aren’t about news; they’re about tricking us into clicking on autoplaying ads and advertorials that eat up the bottom half of nearly every site. Nothing is as it seems. This kind of predatory, extractive capitalism necessarily breeds mistrust and paranoia. In this context, it’s not surprising that QAnon, a conspiracy theory that tells of elites harvesting the young for their lifeblood (adrenochrome), has gone viral. Elites are sucking us dry—our money, our labor, our time, our data. So dry that large parts of our planet are beginning to spontaneously combust. The Davos elite aren’t eating our children, but they are eating our children’s futures, and that is plenty bad. QAnon believers imagine secret tunnels underneath pizza parlors and Central Park, the better to traffic children. This is fantasy, but there are tunnels—literal Shadow Lands—under some major cities, and they do house and hide the poor, the sick, the drug-dependent, the discarded. Under the flashing lights of Las Vegas, hundreds or even thousands of people really do live in a sprawling network of storm tunnels.

The country built on the virtue and the character and the strength of the American workingman circa 1955–65 was the ideal he meant to defend and restore: trade agreements, or trade wars, that supported American manufacturing; immigration policies that protected American workers (and, hence, American culture, or at least America’s identity from 1955 to 1965); and an international isolation that would conserve American resources and choke off the ruling class’s Davos sensibility (and also save working-class military lives). This was, in the view of almost everyone but Donald Trump and the alt-right, a crazy bit of voodoo economic and political nonsense. But it was, for Bannon, a revolutionary and religious idea.

1. State the situation. “You go right in and hit them with how you see it in the cold light of day, without being too inflammatory or dramatic,” says Rosenberg. She made it clear to the A.M.A. that (a) having no women speakers was wrong, and (b) hiring her would be a step in the right direction. It makes sense that before you can speak persuasively—that is, before you speak from a position of passion and personal knowledge—you need to know where you stand. 2. Communicate your feelings. We downplay the influence of emotions in our day-to-day contacts, especially in the business world. We’re told that vulnerability is a bad thing and we should be wary of revealing our feelings. But as we gain comfort using “I feel” with others, our encounters take on depth and sincerity. Your emotions are a gift of respect and caring to your listeners. 3. Deliver the bottom line. This is the moment of truth when you state, with utter clarity, what it is you want. If you’re going to put your neck on the line, you’d better know why. The truth is the fastest route to a solution, but be realistic. While I knew Phil Knight of Nike wasn’t going to buy anything based on one five-minute conversation on a bus in Davos, Switzerland, I did make sure to get his e-mail and tell him that I’d like to follow up with him again sometime. Then I did so. 4. Use an open-ended question. A request that is expressed as a question—one that cannot be answered by a yes or no—is less threatening. How do you feel about this? How can we solve this problem? The issue has been raised, your feelings expressed, your desires articulated. With an open-ended suggestion or question, you invite the other person to work toward a solution with you. I didn’t insist on a specific lunch date at a specific time with Phil. I left it open and didn’t allow our first exchange to be weighted down by unnecessary obligations

Nessuno si è mai complimentato con me per come mi destreggiavo tra i vari impegni, né l'ho mai preteso. Io stessa, come tutti gli altri, davo per scontata la mia bravura. Se mi sono lasciata prendere da te, e se ho fatto quello che ho fatto, non era perché avevo smesso di amare Guy. Ero solo stanca, avevo smesso di amare tutto ciò che aveva a che fare con la mia bravura. Avevo smesso di amare me stessa.

Hard truths cut both ways, Sir Davos.

In combination, these political and economic forces suggest that globalization, at least of the post-Columbus kind, is simply not inevitable. In this book – a deliberate mixture of economics, history, geography and political philosophy – I make six key claims: •First, economic progress that reaches beyond borders is not, in any way, an inescapable truth. Globalization can all too easily go into reverse. •Second, technology can both enable globalization and destroy it. •Third, economic development that reduces inequality between nation states but appears to increase it within those states inevitably creates a tension between a desire for overall gains in global living standards and a yearning for economic and social stability at home. •Fourth, the desire for domestic stability may be undermined by huge twenty-first-century migration flows. •Fifth, the international institutions that have helped govern globalization’s advance are losing their credibility: rightly or wrongly, globalization is increasingly seen to work for the few, not the many. Creating new twenty-first-century institutions to combat this perception will not be easy, however, particularly given the potential clash in values between what might be described as Western democracies and Eastern autocracies. •Sixth (and as the Western powers are belatedly beginning to recognize), there is more than one version of globalization. As US relative economic power declines, so other nascent superpowers will be looking to reshape the world around them in ways that serve their own interests and reflect their own histories. If the Cold War was ultimately a binary rivalry, the twenty-first century is likely to see multiple rivalries, closer in nature to the imperial disputes of the nineteenth century. Indeed, President Xi’s speech in Davos in January 2017 only served to reinforce the sense that globalization is up for grabs.

In 2008, Kalin was invited to lecture the Masters of the Universe at Davos. In April 2015, Etsy debuted an IPO; it was only the second Brooklyn company to go public.

areas that were once the preserve of national sovereignty are now ring-fenced by international law and global regulation. The instinct in Davos is to push even more policy-making out of the range of nation states. The answer to Europe’s problems is always more Europe. The answer to the global trade backlash is always to sell trade deals more effectively. It should come as no surprise that democracies are now loath to ratify such agreements. The last time any serious world trade talks were held in a Western city was in Seattle in 1999. It was shut down by protesters. The next time global leaders made the attempt was in 2002, from the safe space of the Arabian Gulf where no dissenters could be heard. The Doha Round died a few years later. Now Donald Trump has killed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the deal that was launched by George W. Bush and completed by Barack Obama. Trump is also picking apart the Clinton-era North American Free Trade Agreement and has buried hopes of a transatlantic agreement. Britain, meanwhile, is abandoning the European single market. The

Dans son rapport inaugural, le Forum, à propos de la mondialisation qu'il a symbolisée sous ses formes les plus conquérantes et sûres d'elles-mêmes, évoque avec un sens exquis de l'euphémisme "un risque de désillusion". Mais dans les conversations, c'est autre chose. Désillusion ? Crise ? Inégalités ? D'accord, si vous y tenez, mais enfin, comme nous le dit le très cordial et chaleureux PDG de la banque américaine Western Union, soyons clairs : si on ne paie pas les leaders comme ils le méritent, ils s'en iront voir ailleurs. Et puis, capitalisme, ça veut dire quoi ? Si vous avez 100 dollars d'économies et que vous les mettez à la banque en espérant en avoir bientôt 105, vous êtes un capitaliste, ni plus ni moins que moi. Et plus ces capitalistes comme vous et moi (il a réellement dit "comme vous et moi", et même si nous gagnons fort décemment notre vie, même si nous ne connaissons pas le salaire exact du PDG de la Western Union, pour ne rien dire de ses stock-options, ce "comme vous et moi" mérite à notre sens le pompon de la "brève de comptoir" version Davos), plus ces capitalistes comme vous et moi, donc, gagneront d'argent, plus ils en auront à donner, pardon à redistribuer, aux pauvres. L'idée ne semble pas effleurer cet homme enthousiaste, et à sa façon, généreux, que ce ne serait pas plus mal si les pauvres étaient en mesure d'en gagner eux-mêms et ne dépendaient pas des bonnes dispositions des riches. Faire le maximum d'argent, et ensuite le maximum de bien, ou pour les plus sophistiqués faire le maximum de bien en faisant le maximum d'argent, c'est le mantra du Forum, où on n'est pas grand-chose si on n'a pas sa fondation caritative, et c'est mieux que rien, sans doute "(vous voudriez quoi ? Le communisme ?"). Ce qui est moins bien que rien, en revanche, beaucoup moins bien, c'est l'effarante langue de bois dans laquelle ce mantra se décline. Ces mots dont tout le monde se gargarise : préoccupation sociétale, dimension humaine, conscience globale, changement de paradigme… De même que l'imagerie marxiste se représentait autrefois les capitalistes ventrus, en chapeau haut de forme et suçant avec volupté le sang du prolétariat, on a tendance à se représenter les super-riches et super-puissants réunis à Davos comme des cyniques, à l'image de ces traders de Chicago qui, en réponse à Occupy Wall Street, ont déployé au dernier étage de leur tour une banderole proclamant : "Nous sommes les 1%". Mais ces petits cyniques-là étaient des naïfs, alors que les grands fauves qu'on côtoie à Davos ne semblent, eux, pas cyniques du tout. Ils semblent sincèrement convaincus des bienfaits qu'ils apportent au monde, sincèrement convaincus que leur ingénierie financière et philanthropique (à les entendre, c'est pareil) est la seule façon de négocier en douceur le fameux changement de paradigme qui est l'autre nom de l'entrée dans l'âge d'or. Ça nous a étonnés dès le premier jour, le parfum de new age qui baigne ce jamboree de mâles dominants en costumes gris. Au second, il devient entêtant, et au troisième on n'en peut plus, on suffoque dans ce nuage de discours et de slogans tout droit sortis de manuels de développement personnel et de positive thinking. Alors, bien sûr, on n'avait pas besoin de venir jusqu'ici pour se douter que l'optimisme est d'une pratique plus aisée aux heureux du monde qu'à ses gueux, mais son inflation, sa déconnexion de toute expérience ordinaire sont ici tels que l'observateur le plus modéré se retrouve à osciller entre, sur le versant idéaliste, une indignation révolutionnaire, et, sur le versant misanthrope, le sarcasme le plus noir. (p. 439-441)

Although Davos has a reputation as an exclusive resort, I was surprised to discover that it wasn’t fancy at all. The town has an almost industrial and utilitarian feel. It’s one of the most populated towns in the Swiss Alps and is lined with large, functional apartment blocks that look more like public housing than something you’d expect in a quaint Swiss ski resort.

companies are responding – or at least are appearing to. Stakeholder capitalism – the idea that business should serve wider society – has become the corporate buzzword of the day. It was the theme of the 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos. In August 2019, the Business Roundtable, a group of influential US CEOs, radically redefined its statement of the ‘purpose of a corporation’ to include stakeholders, rather than just shareholders.

It’s so much better than any food you can get at 3:00am. You need to feed the soul too.

Schwarzman and his fellow Davos Men were not satisfied with mere wealth. They demanded that society ratify their privilege as morally sound.

Makes perfect sense. This place is old. Millions of years. We are but a speck of dust in the time of this place.

Privatization was sold as the means of injecting greater efficiency into the health care system as it contended with declining levels of financial support.

Part of why individuals like Benioff could crow about giving back was because of how comprehensively they had taken to begin with. They had benefited from public goods financed by taxpayers—the schools that educated their employees; the internet, developed by publicly funded research; the roads, the bridges, and the rest of modern infrastructure, which enabled commerce—and then deployed their lobbyists, accountants, and lawyers to master legal forms of tax evasion that starved the system.

Tax policies written by Davos Man for his own benefit had enhanced the divide. A pair of University of California at Berkeley economists2, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, tallied up all the taxes that Americans paid, from federal, state, and local income taxes to sales taxes and capital gains on investments. They had concluded that the richest four hundred Americans, whose average wealth was $6.7 billion, had seen their effective tax rate cut by more than half since 1962—from 54 percent to 23 percent. Over the same period, those in the bottom half, who earned about $18,500 a year, had seen their tax burden increase, from 22.5 percent to 24 percent.

La via vegn pli taissa e sa transfurma en in trutg. Ella suonda ils fastizs ch'in pèr mountainbikes han smatgà en it terratsch. Tuttenina stat ella salda. Sin il trutg stat in chavriel, mo 20 meters avant ella. El guarda ad ella gist a dretg en. Bufatg per betg spaventar l'animal tanscha ella en sac per prender il telefonin e far ina fotografia. Lura la vegni endament ch'ella ha laschà quel a chasa. Il chavriel stat mureri e l'observa. Hallo, di ella. Il chavriel guarda. Ella fa in pèr pass. Il chavriel scurlatta il chau. Tge? Na dastg jau betg ir vinavant? Anc ina giada scurlatta il chavriel il chau sco sch'el vuless spaventar ina mustga. Ella ri. Stun mal, ma jau hai er il dretg dad esser qua, ed jau less uss finir mia tura. Ils pleds na paran betg da persvader. Jau vom simplamain, pensa ella, il chavriel va lura schon ord via. Ella sa metta plaunsieu a currer. Uss èsi mo anc diesch meters, il chavriel na sa mova betg. Jau na ma ferm betg. Anc tschintg meters. Il chavriel na va betg ord via. Uss va insacura! Anc dus meters. Schhhhhh!, fa ella e smaina la bratscha. Il davos mument fa il chavriel in sigl e svanescha en il bostgam. Il cor batta. Ses pass èn irregulars. Ella emprova da fladar ruassaivlamain.

Not for the first time, Davos Man sought to preserve his ability to take advantage of customers by provoking fear of the very mischief he was engaged in, while spinning the proposed regulatory fix as the source of the treachery.

By the time the pandemic arrived, the United States had 924,000 hospital beds15, down from nearly 1.5 million in the mid-1970s. In the twenty-five metropolitan areas16 that had absorbed the greatest consolidation, the price of a hospital stay had increased by as much as half.

In some places, especially Scandinavian countries, those harmed by trade saw the damage limited and repaired by government programs. The state trained workers for new careers when they lost jobs while helping them with their bills while they were out of work. But in the United States, spending on social safety net programs had been gutted as Davos Man shrunk his tax bill.

the future of geopolitics might not be the benign multilateral ethos of Davos Man but a rather more dark and dystopian world of resource scarcity, infrastructure collapse, mercantilism and default.

We are witnessing the rise of a new class of inverse heroes, that is, bureaucrats, bankers, Davos-attending members of the I.A.N.D. (International Association of Name Droppers), and academics with too much power and no real downside and/or accountability.

Consider how many conservatives are motivated by hatred of the wealthy or elites. They do not know who these elites are, and have never met them, which is why they cannot comprehend that these elites are simply getting wealthy by following the trend cascade. Such “conservatives” talk about guillotines and revolutions as if these would solve the situation, forgetting that what got us into this situation was overthrowing our natural leaders and replacing them with the temporary favorites of the mob. The people who succeed in this society do so by taking advantage of trends. If a lot of people believe something, there is money and power in it. Therefore, if you want to succeed, you repeat the dogma and intensify it without considering that it is true. Nothing else explains why you suddenly have circus freaks walking the streets, working in government, and dominating what is left of your arts and culture. The elites, Freemasons, Jews, Bilderbergers, Davos, and Illuminati did not do this to you; you did it to yourselves.

I don’t think it would help the growth of the U.S. economy,” Dell said. “Name a country where that’s worked. Ever.” This was clearly intended as a rhetorical question, but the panelist seated to his left, the economist Erik Brynjolffson, immediately blurted out an answer. “The United States,” he said. “From about the 1930s through about the 1960s,

staggering. China’s import of chips—$260 billion in 2017, the year of Xi’s Davos debut—was far larger than Saudi Arabia’s export of oil or Germany’s export of cars. China spends more money buying chips each year than the entire global trade in aircraft. No product is more central to international trade than semiconductors.

The companions might dress in Persian fashion, and Alexander himself might don the tiara and offer up a Davos-like prayer that all peoples and races under his new-world regime would be equal subjects.

The Davos elite aren’t eating our children, but they are eating our children’s futures, and that is plenty bad.

My son Wendel came to the Twins a guest. He ate Lord Walder’s bread and salt, and hung his sword upon the wall to feast with his friends. And they murdered him. Murdered, I say, and may the Freys choke upon their fables. I drink with Jared, jape with Symond, promise Rhaegar the hand of my own beloved granddaughter…but never think that means I have forgotten. The north remembers, Lord Davos. The north remembers, and the mummer’s farce is almost done. My son is home.

Oxfam Davos released a report entitled Economy for the 1%. It states:  “62 people own the same as half the world.

It’s no coincidence that Africa’s resurgence has come since 2000, a period in which we have moved from less aid to more trade. I sit on the Global Agenda Council for Africa for the World Economic Forum, and we try to set the tone for Africa. In 1996 at Davos, the theme for Africa was how to increase aid going into Africa. From 2000 it was how to increase trade coming into Africa. The theme we are setting now is, What does Africa want and how do we want it? We are now setting the terms.

At the turn of the twentieth into the twenty-first century, Almack’s like clubs exist in forums such as Davos[8], Cannes[9] and the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference[10]. Of course, gatherings in the twenty-first century such as the Davos one are meant for the rich and powerful to collectively strategize on how the world growth engine can be kept going full throttle so that their personal fortunes and status can keep increasing. But attend one and it is obvious that rules of etiquette and protocol have to be observed to fit in and be accepted. God help you if you don’t know how to swirl your cognac, delicately sniff at the goblet and pretend you know the vintage. A worse gaffe would be picking up the wrong fork at a sit-down dinner.

Yet they require me to make them true, he thought. It had been a long time since Davos Seaworth felt so sad.

Savaş devam ediyor Davos Seaworth ve bazıları kısa zaman sonra öğrenecek ki, küllerin arasında kalmış bir köz bile muazzam bir ateş tutuşturabilir. - Sayfa 374

The north remembers, Lord Davos. The north remembers, and the mummer’s farce is almost done.

In 2014, when Oxfam arrived in Davos, it came bearing the (then) shocking news that just 85 individuals controlled as much wealth as half of the world’s population combined. This January, that number went down to 80 individuals.

El sacrificio nunca es fácil, Davos. De lo contrario no seria un verdadero sacrificio - Tormenta de Espadas.

This shift away from patriotism is masked by Americans’ sense that, since our country dominates the world, to be an American citizen is to be a global citizen. But we should not be deceived. As we continue “coming apart,” the most powerful and successful Americans increasingly see that their interests lie with a global future, not a national one. A Fortune 500 CEO has more in common with other Davos worthies than with the son of an unemployed steel worker in Youngstown, Ohio. Educated at institutions steeped in multicultural ideology, the elite rise above local loyalties, serving as richly rewarded functionaries in a global empire that has no place for patriotism because it has no patria.

The Davos agenda emphasizes emerging markets, but the U.S. economy may dominate the conversation.

Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg agreed. “We reward men every step of the way—for being leaders, for being assertive, for taking risks, for being competitive,” she said in 2012 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “And we teach women as young as four—lay back, be communal. Until we change that at a personal level, we need to say there’s an ambition gap. We need our boys to be as ambitious to contribute in the home and we need our girls to be as ambitious to achieve in the workforce.