G'day mates!

Checking in from Hayman Island, an amazingly gorgeous and relatively remote island off Queensland, Australia.

Flew from Wednesday at 4pm (Dulles) til I arrived here local time at 6pm (LA to Sydney to Hamilton Island and then large yacht to Hayman) on the charter and gave my keynote to the World Economic Forum/Australian Leadership Retreat about 30 minutes after arriving. One of the best performances of my life. Based on feedback from WEF people, it went over like gangbusters. Hour later I'm sitting with Martin Wolf and Minxin Pei at dinner. Way cool.

Meeting tons of people and getting contacts like crazy. As always, you meet some biggies and they're amazingly cool and others and they're complete assholes. But enjoy myself anymore--impossible!

Thanks to Jenn for talking me into this (I said no last year) and Vonne for letting me go (she covers me at an all-day alt rock concert with eldest daughter--but Martin Wolf is "My Chemical Romance"! I try to explain to Em, who stares at me uncomprehendingly ...).

All for now. The talks and panels are all stunningly good. Can't miss any.

Comments

[BWJones]

Uhhhh...... What?

Seriously though, I've done it and that LAX to SYD to XXX is a tough stretch to have to perform after. Throw in a gin and tonic or two after performing and you've got.... what?

[IJ]

The theme of the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos this year was “The Shifting Power Equation”.

There are certainly signs of a shift in the UK. Devolution here means Scotland is taking a political view of its place in the world, instead of only the UK. In fact a couple of weeks ago the new Scottish government published 'Choosing Scotland's Future - a national conversation', which asks people to become involved in the detail of policy making.

[Czechbikr]

Iraq will never become a stable independant country with a representative form of govermnent until they take ownership. Despite the many months granted for them to do so, they have yet to grapple with the main issue. While most persons throughout the world who study this believe that the disparate forms of race and religion are the continuing cause of division, they disregard the underlying cause for these "symptoms". The primary motivator in my opinion is a pervasive fear that a group(s) will be left behind when the economic pie is divided. The oil revenue potential is vast and any single entity which controls it will control the entire population. This also engages interests outside of Iraq ie Sunni Arabia and Shia Jordan/Hezbollah as any control by either faction within Iraq would be able to funnel monies beyond the borders. What the current government's primary failing has been is ignoring this influence. They should have immediately incorporated their oil industry and hired an international management firm to administer all aspects of that business, reporting to the parliament quarterly. The shares of the corporation would then be divided in proportion to a census of the population ratios. This approach would have accomplished much in the last 36 months in terms of assurance to each group that their economic interests were represented and transparent and also resulted in a greatly increased productivity regarding drilling and transporation of oil through outside investment and technical knowledge. I have attempted to communicate these thoughts a few times to the State Department and the Iraqi government and have yet to see any movement toward these necessary changes.