'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
HUBO, a multifunctional walking humanoid robot lifts a piece of wood in front of the logo on the opening day of the Annual Meeting 2016 of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Switzerland, Tuesday (January 19). [World Economic Forum/swiss-image.ch] | Source: EurActiv
28 January 2016 (WSWS) – At a meeting in Amsterdam this week, European interior and justice ministers sought to outdo each other with suggestions as to how the influx of desperate refugees from the Middle East could be stopped. No measure was too brutal for consideration.
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© UNHCR/I. Pavicevic | Kids playing around on train tracks near Presevo, Serbia on January 20, 2016.
Proposals ranged from the hermetic sealing off of borders to the stationing of Frontex troops, even against the will of national governments, as well as the erection of concentration camps for hundreds of thousands of refugees.
– The rich and the powerful, who meet every year at the World Economic Forum (WEF), were in a gloomy mood this time. Not only because the day they met close to eight trillion dollars has been wiped off global equity markets by a “correction”. But because no leader could be in a buoyant mood.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is losing ground because of the way she handled the refugee crisis. French President Francois Hollande is facing decline in the polls that are favoring Marine Le Pen. Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy practically lost the elections. Italian President Matteo Renzi is facing a very serious crisis in the Italian banking system, which could shatter the third economy of Europe.
And the leaders from China, Brazil, India, Nigeria and other economies from the emerging countries (as they are called in economic jargon), are all going through a serious economic slowdown, which is affecting also the economies of the North. The absence of the presidents of Brazil and China was a telling sign.
However the last Davos (20-23 January) will remain in the history of the WEF, as the best example of the growing disconnection between the elites and the citizens.
An industrial sugar and ethanol plant in Sertãozinho, in the southern Brazilian state of São Paulo. The sugar cane industry in Brazil has shrunk under the government of Dilma Rousseff, due to the gasoline subsidy, which dealt a blow to its competitor, ethanol. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS
Brazil’s energy mix is made up of 42 percent renewable sources, three times the global average.
