"I think that is a very demagogic, simplified and polarizing way to describe people. You assume that all these people are the same. You make a caricature. If you look at the decision-makers who are here, there are certainly some who fit this description, but it is not a homogeneous group. Not every CEO is just into making money, is greedy and so on."--World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab, responding to critics. (New York Times, Thursday, January 31, 2002)

...

Quite piqued at not receiving an invitation to this year's must-attend costume ball, the 31st World Economic Forum. This year's theme? "Leadership in Fragile Times: A Vision for a Shared Future." Enticing panels include "connecting to the consumer in uncertain times," "the politics of apology," and "understanding global anger," on which McDonalds chairman Jack Greenberg will serve.

Anyways I don't think I could have coughed up the twenty-five grand in annual fees paid by CEOs of creme de la creme companies. Where's a fairy godmother when you need one?

...

Yet despite the alluring vision of rubbing princely elbows at a soiree hosted by Coca Cola, no substantial loss; I probably would have felt out-of-place surrounded by economic and political leaders whose vision for these conveniently fragile times involves sharing the profits made from the shared exploitation of the neocolonial world. (Yay for oligarchy!)

So, instead of tending the ashes at home, this Cinderella will be at "Practicing Transgression: Radical Women of Color for the 21st Century," attending panels on "decolonizing/ colonizing," "state/corporate terror," "practices of the academy," "women of color as political force," and "women of color in publishing." Neat-o.

Here, undoubtedly, I'll ponder the post-colonial trajectory from the Third World, like how a refugee from a country--Vietnam or Cambodia, for example--torn apart by US-made politics and weapons can, decades later, find financial security crafting weapons for the military industrial complex.

...

Can't help but think of why, when I called last Wednesday, my father seemed the only person in the world to understand my sudden and great anxiety in being jobless and without money for the first time in years. It's that history we share; I know, finally, where he has been and why my parents are happy in suburbia; they had finally arrived. But I also know where I might go, the difference, I suppose, between post-colonial and anti-colonial.

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