Trump in Davos

In Roman days the Emperors surrounded themselves with flatterers who fawned over every word they said while the slaves and the overly ambitious were kept in their place through fear of the legions, the lash or crucifixion. But these “rulers of the world”, who were worshipped as gods, realised that terror was not enough. The generals and the patricians with their vast estates and hordes of slaves had to spread some of it about with free food, blood-soaked ‘games’ and the ferocious races of the arena to entertain the well-to-do and keep the poor and the slaves happy. These days the “leader of the free world” simply relies on brute force and economic blackmail to get his own way and gives little or nothing back in return.
Donald Trump, who seeks to “Make America Great Again” largely at the expense of his European allies, did little to mask his contempt for  them at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week. At Davos he tried to belittle and brow-beat them into handing Greenland over to the United States. He’s now settled for some sort of deal that will give the Americans more military bases in the Arctic territory as well as exclusive rights to the mineral wealth that supposedly lies under the ice-caps of the Danish territory. 
Trump is getting on. He’s frail and may well be losing his marbles. But the hard-headed industrialists, hi-tech tycoons and the leaders of the energy corporations who stand behind him are not. They are well aware of the fact that Starmer and his friends in France and Germany are clearly hoping to stand-still all the American president’s initiatives until Trump’s final term of office ends to prolong the proxy war against Russia that the Europeans fear is going to be settled over their heads in secret talks with Putin.
These people put Trump into the White House in the first place. When Trump goes they’ll find another to do their bidding. They don’t want the Democrats or the “new world order” though we can see that they certainly want some sort of oligarchal “new order” for the United States.
Starmer and the leaders of Franco-German imperialism seem to think that they pulled one over The Donald by making him lose face over Greenland and boycotting his rubbishy “Board of Peace” which the White House wants to supervise the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. That, of course, remains to be seen.

Burnham’s call

The resignation of a Manchester MP has paved the way for a comeback for the Mayor of Greater Manchester at the by-election in a safe Labour seat which Andy Burnham needs if he is ever going to make his bid for the Labour leadership. Starmer’s gang and the ageing Blairites who surround him have already launched a whisper campaign against Burham who has done little to mask his political ambitions in recent days. But Starmer has been warned by backbenchers and union leaders that any stitch-up to prevent Burnham potentially returning to Westminster would split the party. If that happens the Greens and the Corbynistas are waiting to pick up the pieces...

A week in the Alps

Yes it's time for the so-called “World Economic Forum” (WEF) held in the Swiss Alps to allow the great and the good of the capitalist world to transform Davos into a millionaires’ playground to talk about 'Cooperation in a Fragmented World' for a few days in January. In the town demonstrators from the Swiss Socialist Youth and Greenpeace are demanding a climate tax on the super-rich while some 5,000 soldiers and police stand by to protect the 2,700 leaders from 130 countries including 52 heads of state or government taking part in a host of meetings in this Alpine ski resort.
    The World Economic Forum has grown from more modest beginnings as the European Management Forum that was set up in 1971 to bring American and European capitalists together. It has now grown, particularly following the collapse of the Soviet Union, into an annual global jamboree that some of the corporate elite would like to rival and sideline the United Nations. In recent years the forum has reached out to the people’s democracies with the attendance of Vietnam and People’s China and even an invitation to Democratic Korea in 2015 that was, however, revoked the following year over the nuclear issue.
    The world’s media pack has naturally descended on Davos to report the set-piece speeches of the leaders of the political and corporate world but nothing is ever said about what the WEF stands for or even what it actually does.
    It’s the same in the bourgeois media which generally confines “business news” to the ups and downs of the stock exchanges and investment markets along with fiscal law issues and the occasional corruption case. While the traditional rivalry amongst media tycoons has meant that the likes of the Murdochs are put under the spotlight from time to time are subject to scrutiny the political motives of the oligarchs who own the big corporations in Western Europe and the United States are rarely, if ever, questioned.
    No Western get-together can be without a Vladimir Zelensky video appeal for more guns and money to keep his war with the Russians going but he has to compete with many others for attention in Davos this week.
    Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, is in Davos posing as “Prime Minister in waiting” and re-assure the global elite that he’s not another Jeremy Corbyn. But the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, who is one of the global elite, and his Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, have decided to give it a miss. Sunak doesn’t want to be seen lording it abroad in the midst of a cost of living crisis that has triggered waves of strikes across the country. And his UK delegation – trade secretary Kemi Badenoch and business secretary Grant Shapps – have been told to keep a low profile at the world forum
    So we have to make do Boris Johnson comparing Vladimir Putin to 'the fat boy in Dickens' in an allusion probably lost to most of the delegates who were actually listening to him and Greta Thunberg, the perpetual youth protester, at a fringe meeting saying it was “absurd” listening the people at Davos talking about the climate crisis when they are, in fact, the cause of it. And, of course, she’s right.