Security costs for the conference are shared by the organizers and the Swiss canton of Graubünden, plus the Swiss federal government. Some in Switzerland criticized the cost of this, but then again, if the annual meeting of the rulers of the world wants to be in Switzerland, this probably helps Switzerland hold on to its weird position as one of the wealthiest countries on Earth despite having nothing at all to base that on. Maybe the beauty of the Alps and the brains of its people, but I’m dubious about both. Call me Doubtful in Davos.
There used to be protests at Davos, but not now. For one thing, the town is hard to get to and easy to defend. For another, the conference is more and more regarded as irrelevant, just a bunch of rich guys partying; which is true, as I said. So protests had mostly gone away. This perhaps represented an opportunity, or so people said afterward.
At this particular meeting, we had just gathered and gotten down to the serious business of eating and drinking and talking, when the power went off and we were left in the dark. Generators! we shouted merrily. Turn on the fucking generators!
But not. And the security people were suddenly seen to be not the same security people, these new ones were in masks guarding us in a different sense than we had been guarded before. We all said what the fuck and they ignored us, we all tried to get outside and see what was happening; no luck. Doors all locked. The whole town was physically closed. After a couple of hours, word spread that the Swiss road stoppers, installed the century before to foil Nazi or Soviet tank invasions, had popped up out of the pavement like giant shark’s teeth, all over the valley and up in the few road passes in and out of the valley. And the airport and heliports in the area were all dark and similarly studded with shark’s teeth. Even the Alpine mountain trails into the valley were said to be foamed with some kind of instant concrete that made the trails temporarily impassable. And the security on hand was there to guard us in this new way. They would not respond to us. We could hear the airspace over the town humming with circling drones, and people said they had clustered on a few approaching helicopters and forced them away, including a couple of crashes.
This thing is finally getting interesting, someone said. But most of us thought it was getting too interesting.
Announcements over loudspeakers were made to the effect that we would not be harmed, and would be released to the world at the end of the week. Only the schedule of events was being hijacked, we were told, not we ourselves, although obviously this was not true, as we were all quick to point out. But to no one, as all the guards on hand were helmeted with visors down, and not responding to us in any way, unless someone assaulted one, in which case the response was decisive and unpleasant, in the usual fashion seen on news clips. Clubs, pepper spray, dragged off to small rooms to chill; people stopped trying that. And the loudspeakers were not replying to our objections.
Then the services starting breaking down. In particular the plumbing stopped working, and we had to improvise a system for relieving ourselves. Shit! Poor Davos! There was no recourse but to head out into the woods and do it. So a fair amount of shit was distributed around the town, but quickly we created a system of impromptu sort-of latrines, and made do as best we could.
Then the taps stopped running, which to tell the truth was kind of scary. You can always shit in the woods, but you can’t live on whisky, much as some people try. Some were pleased to stay hydrated entirely on four-thousand-dollar bottles of wine, of which there were many on hand. But turned out there were also two Alpine streams crashing down through the town in stone-walled channels, sometimes tunnels under streets but often just deep stone-walled channels, so we made use of some buckets someone found, and drank from these streams, either boiling the water or not. It looked clean to me. Snow just hours before.
Food was provided in boxes, and we were allowed into the town’s various kitchens to cook for ourselves. We coped with that and were proud of ourselves for doing so. It beat just sitting around. Some of us were excellent cooks.
On the third day we found the town square filled with pallets of chemical toilets, which we assembled and placed in the bathrooms, now re-opened for use, even though there was still no running water. That was a relief, so to speak, as we could go back to relieving ourselves in more or less the usual manner, although it was nasty. It was like being trapped at Woodstock but with no music.
Water came back on the fourth day, and the boxes of food were never deficient. When we weren’t cooking or cleaning up for ourselves, we were asked to attend what we called the reeducation camp. We figured we must have been captured by Maoists, that only Maoists would have such a naïve faith in propaganda lectures. These bounced right off us, and in fact were a considerable source of mirth, as we were already educated and knew what was what. Still, it was either attend or get locked in rooms where nothing at all happened. So most of us were willing to listen to the propaganda of our captors rather than spend the day stuck in an empty room.
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