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Davos Dispatch

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from: Robert Wright

Posted Sunday, Jan. 28, 2001, at 7:45 PM ET

Robert Wright, a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of The Moral Animal and Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny.

Violence Erupts

Since Day 1 of the World Economic Forum, the specter of violence has loomed over this Swiss ski resort, as well-armed police braced for an onslaught by anarchic protesters. Then it happened—I was personally involved in a violent encounter. I was going for my morning swim in the hotel's beautiful indoor pool. I decided to begin my swim by traveling the length of the pool underwater. After all, it was a short pool. Too short, it turned out. I wasn't wearing my contact lenses, and I rammed my head directly into the wall at full throttle.

This left me with a glaring scrape on the bridge of my nose—two horizontal red bars, visible from across a room—and a small cut on my forehead. I'm not especially vain, but this hideous disfiguration bothered me. It diminished my already slim prospects for doing valuable networking here in Davos. I now look even less like a member of the global elite than before and a bit more like an anarchic protester.

As for the protesters themselves: Their long-awaited appearance yesterday was a bit of a letdown. About 200 made it through the security web surrounding Davos, but they got nowhere near the conference center. After a few of them threw snowballs at the police who were blocking their path, the police pulled out the water cannons. It wasn't the force of the water that dispersed the crowd so much as the wetness. Being drenched in the Swiss Alps in January gives you an escalating incentive to head indoors. The protesters brought vindication, by the way, for Slate's exclusive report on Friday that they might ski in to avoid police checkpoints: Some of them were indeed carrying skis. (According to CNN, there were somewhat wilder protests in Zurich—presumably by protesters who hadn't been able to get to Davos.)

How did I gather these colorful details about the protest in Davos? With a research methodology honed over two decades in journalism: going to the pressroom and parasitizing journalists who were actually there. (For once I had a good excuse: I was part of a panel discussion during the protest.)

Also in the pressroom, some of the conference's few far-leftists held a press conference about the police action, denouncing the suppression of free speech. Jeremy Rifkin—who, incidentally, has a much better tan than a far-leftist should have in January—was threatening to walk out of the conference in protest. When pressed by reporters for a firm commitment, he said he would think about it overnight and then announce his decision. I'm on the edge of my seat.

In search of some non-showboat leftists, I went to a dinner heavily populated by people from international non-governmental organizations and officials from the United Nations. Kofi Annan was the big draw, but the wily little rascal snuck out after making a token appearance during cocktails. Somebody suggested that maybe he had gone to mediate between Yasser Arafat, who is said to be here and is slated to speak tonight, and Shimon Peres, who is definitely here. Sorry, Kofi—it's going to take more than peace in the Middle East to win my forgiveness. I paid 50 bucks to attend that dinner!

Just about everyone else from the United Nations stayed for dinner: U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, the head of the U.N. Environmental Program, and on and on. I spent the meal talking to George Moose, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva (where lots of U.N. agencies are based) and learned a lot about things ranging from international intellectual property law to the current state of Zimbabwe. One nice thing about Davos is the high density of genuine expertise: If you start talking to just about anyone, you can learn something. Of course, it's harder to get them to talk to you when you're horribly disfigured.

I have to head over to the conference center now. Arafat and Peres are scheduled to engage in a dialogue. And Kofi Annan is slated to give a speech. In light of last night's experience, I think I'll show up early.

dispatches
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from: Robert Wright

Posted Sunday, Jan. 28, 2001, at 7:45 PM ET
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Robert Wright, a visiting fellow at Princeton University's Center for Human Values and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, runs the Web site meaningoflife.tv and is the author of The Moral Animal and Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny.
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CEOs to the cameras for phony Q&As, everyone knows the Swiss thing is cheesy old PR. Not one Davos attendee last year told us that the technology stock market was a fraud: not one told us that bankruptcy was a vital contemporary financial tool. Tell us about the hookers, the champagne parties, the guys who get stoned, the pr phonies from the American media who hype the thing. The Swiss tourist crowd sells a few thousand hotel rooms in the worst month of the year--what else is there?



--Nannygoat



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