MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE : Inside the World Economic Forum - Brief Article

Rosemary is a very nice witch, perhaps the nicest I've ever met. She smiled, took time to talk with me, and patiently explained why she--along with her colleagues in the Pagan Cluster--was holding a rally against the World Economic Forum on a windy, whip-you-in-the-face February evening in Manhattan's Washington Square.

"It's about the water," she confided, as we huddled by a makeshift shrine to Bridget, Goddess of the Forge. Rosemary explained how the corporate and political leaders meeting that weekend at the Waldorf-Astoria secretly wanted to privatize water worldwide. Really? Emboldened, Rosemary then explained how the World Economic Forum had created other evil institutions, including the International Monetary Fund. Somehow, I didn't have the heart to explain that the IMF was created decades before the Forum. Nor did I mention that in my pocket I carried a pass to the Forum's exclusive meetings, proof of my complicity in the vast conspiracy of corporate globalization. You never know how a witch might react.

The Pagan Cluster was hardly alone. With them were members of the Communist Youth Brigade, the British group Globalize Resistance, and countless others rallying against globalization. I spent two hours talking and listening to their chants. "People, not Profits! No to the World Exploitation Forum!" Also listening were dozens of police officers--on foot, horseback, and motorcycle--as well as several local TV crews, no doubt lured by the spell of good footage.

I had arrived in the city two days late for the Forum, but skipped out on an "official" event that Friday evening in order to walk through the city. I'm glad I did. It turned out to be my lone opportunity to meet the infamous protesters, the barbarian hordes that had made trouble and headlines in Seattle, Ottawa, Genoa, and Washington, D.C. I'd long been skeptical of their motives and knowledge of the issues, and after my brief encounter, I still am. Yet, as I discovered over the next three days, the protesters were no less outlandish, varied, or, in some cases, ill-informed than their counterparts in the august halls of the Waldorf-Astoria.

Only at the World Economic Forum can the rock star Bono, Kofi Annan, and the chief rabbi of Israel walk into the same room without representing the opening line of a bad joke. After a few hours inside the Waldorf, I realized that there was nothing strictly "economic" about this forum, despite the preponderance of businesspeople. It was in fact a big, lavish party for Global Notables of any field. Science fiction writers mingled with corporate CEOs, famed musicians chatted up dot-com tycoons, and even antiglobalization scholars (if suitably fashionable and domesticated) were invited to smile knowingly and pose predictable questions. Consider my lunchtime companions on Sunday: to my left, a Nigerian Catholic cardinal; to my right, a twentysomething Silicon Valley entrepreneur who had recently sold his tech firm for $800 million; and ten feet away, sex expert Dr. Ruth provided an interview to CNN's "Business Unusual." Come to think of it, I'm not sure what she was doing at a session billed as "Reconsidering the Role of Religion in Light of Recent Events."

Ah yes, the titles of the discussion sessions! Often, they were as banal or bizarre as the protesters' slogans. "Connecting to Consumers in Uncertain Times." "The Paradigm for the Future." "Attracting Capital in a Risk-Averse Environment." "The Diabolical Mind." Each ranged from seventy-five minutes to two hours, with presenters, challengers, and discussion leaders. Dozens of sessions seemed to be occurring simultaneously. Fortunately, we all had access to a computer-based, personalized "Knowledge Concierge" who kept track of the meetings we were attending and could deliver messages to other participants. Of course, the Concierge only included the official sessions, not the informal, off-the-record power-broker gatherings I only heard about later. (All Forum participants are elite, but some are more elite than others.) Yet, at times it seemed that the sessions were merely obligatory foreplay before the all-important fifteen-minute "contact breaks" scheduled between sessions, where pretenses were shed, business cards exchanged, and deals struck.

Perhaps the worst session I attended was called "From Business Leaders to Global Leaders" and featured U.S. Secretary of Commerce Don Evans, Microsoft honcho Bill Gates, plus the chairmen of Renault, Toshiba, and Merrill Lynch. World Bank President Jim Wolfensohn moderated the session and was officially in charge of lobbing slow-pitch softball questions to the panel, and then dutifully fielding the answers. (Bill Gates, is your generous philanthropy a moral imperative, or does it help your business? Oh, it is a moral issue first, of course!) This meeting occurred in the Waldorf's cavernous ballroom--or "Plenary Hall"--and was displayed on an enormous screen above the panelists, as if to magnify the session's uselessness.