The annual ‘World Economic Forum’ recently wrapped up in the picturesque Alpine resort of Davos.
Every year, the billionaires send their best and brightest – business leaders, politicians, monarchs, academics, and other enlightened individuals – to discuss the pressing issues of the day, and set the world to rights.
Items on the agenda this year included: ‘achieving security and cooperation in a fractured world’; ‘creating growth and jobs for a new era’; and ‘a long-term strategy for climate, nature, and energy’.
Well, with the world fracturing, growth stagnating, and the climate collapsing, these ladies and gentlemen have their work cut out!
Back down in the real world, meanwhile, a recent Oxfam report entitled Inequality Inc. has revealed that the world’s five richest men have doubled their fortunes since 2020. At the same time, the five billion poorest have gotten poorer.
With current trends, Oxfam claims, it would take 229 years for poverty to be eradicated. So, while you’re toiling away, rest assured that your great-great-grandchildren will be living in relative comfort – if they’re not underwater, that is.
Maybe they can add that onto the agenda at Davos? We won’t hold our breath.
Maurie Dumigan
The prince and the paedo
“He doesn’t have the emotional bandwidth to deal with this. He has locked himself away in a room and has no idea how to respond. He’s devastated.”
The above words from a source close to the royal family paint a sorry picture of the disgraced Prince Andrew, in the aftermath of the latest bombshell allegations in the ‘Epstein files’.
It’s no secret by now that the Duke of York – best pal of billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein – has been accused of sexually abusing the then 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre in 2001.
However, the latest tranche of unsealed documents from the trial of Epstein’s partner – British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell – add more sordid details to this depraved affair.
It has now been revealed that Andrew is accused of groping another 17-year-old, and of participating in an “underage orgy” on Epstein’s private island.
While Andrew maintains his innocence, the mountain of evidence is only growing. Each fresh court document weighs like a millstone around the neck of the British monarchy.
And it’s not just Andrew who’s in hot water. Other names implicated include former US president Bill Clinton (who “likes them young”, according to one testimony) and former state governor Bill Richardson, alongside a rogue’s gallery of CEOs and hedge fund managers.
That the rich and powerful indulge in such sick abuse should come as no surprise.
Capitalism – a system based upon exploitation and oppression – has always rewarded the cutthroats and knaves, and given them a sense of impunity. The scum rises to the top.
L Tyler
On the rocks
A recent Guardian article on a start-up company in Greenland demonstrates the forward-thinking innovation that capitalism encourages: If life gives you climate collapse, sell melting glacier ice to swanky cocktail bars in Dubai!
Rather than using society’s immense expertise and resources to benefit humanity and save the environment, the capitalists instead choose profiteering, while indulging their own hedonistic follies at the majority’s expense – one frozen daiquiri at a time!
But fear not! The company’s CEO reminds us that the 19-day, 9,000-nautical mile trip from the Arctic Circle to the Arabian Sea has minimal environmental impact. “Helping Greenland in its green transition is actually what I believe I was brought into this world to do,” he assures us.
We can’t trust these greenwashing hypocrites to deal with the climate crisis. We must drown the capitalist system, before it drowns us!
Hugh, Oxford Communists
