At the World Economic Forum’s conference in Davos this week, elites will try to address problems from climate change to the threat of worldwide recession. But these elites’ endless thirst for profit created these problems — and will doom their efforts to fail.

Donald Trump expressed his belief in the power of the U.S. propaganda machine by infamously claiming that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” without losing a single voter. In our perverse and decadent society of the spectacle within the imperialist core, much the same applies to the poster child for the global theory industry. Žižek could take the most reactionary political positions imaginable, have them broadcast around the world by the capitalist cultural apparatus, and still be presented as a towering intellectual of the Left. As a matter of fact, he has done precisely that.

This week, the jamboree of the rich global elite of the World Economic Forum (WEF) has started again after the COVID interregnum. Top political and business leaders have flown in on their private jets to discuss climate change and global warming, as well as the impending global economic slump, the cost of living crisis and the Ukraine war. Their mood is apparently downbeat.

The military and its private sector offshoots desperately want to portray themselves as good guys fighting against dark forces. To accomplish that, they’re increasingly leaning into nerd fantasy like Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings.

In a major escalation of the ongoing anti-trade union witch-hunt in South Korea, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) was raided by the National Intelligence Service on charges of violating a Cold War-era national security law 

According to the Jeju Today newspaper, the Yoon government is claiming that screening the North Korean film "The Story of Our Home", shown in South Korea in February 2019 as part of a national reunification festival, violated SK National Security Law. It is now investigating the organizers of the film screening three years later.

We cannot view the Ukraine conflict in isolation, writes University of Manitoba professor Henry Heller. It is negatively impacting the global economy as well as international relations across the board. At a time when the world urgently requires more international cooperation and integration it has once again become divided into antagonistic camps.

Ford endlessly claims that all services will be paid for through OHIP, but research conducted by the Ontario Health Coalition clearly shows that for years private clinics took public funding and extra-billed patients. The Ford government has done nothing to stop this—although it is contrary to the Canada Health Act and limits access to care, particularly for lower income families and elders.

The left's response to the OPSEU scandal must counter the big business narrative that unions and union leaders are inevitably corrupt. We have to aim to build the confidence and capacity of rank and file members to not only assert themselves in their unions, but to take on the bosses. The best way to prevent union corruption is to build class struggle unionism from below.