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Relocate the wall

Jan 28,2019 - Last updated at Jan 28,2019

Davos is a place where leaders of governments and business come together to issue their judgment on the world situation. They butter up the mundane situation with the presence of high caliber and world-renowned thinkers. The small village of Davos lies in the laps of the majestic Alps in Switzerland, and offers its guests cozy outings in the snowcapped hilltops, where they wine and dine near the blazing wood fires.

Since their meetings began a week ago, they have been confronted with a barrage of bad news. Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, descaled the expected world rates of growth, and in the Arab world in particular. China suffered the lowest quarterly growth rate in a long time, and even the bearish US economy will not be doing as well as expected.

Not only that, and as if the world needed more deadlocks to unlock, the Brexit proposal of British Prime Minister Theresa May had been voted down, and she has barely avoided a vote of no-confidence in her government. Moreover, Venezuela is now divided, and its opposition leader Juan Guaido claimed the presidency from the faltering Nicolas Maduro, the sitting president.

Not only that. US President Donald Trump, after a televised rumble with the Democrat leaders in Congress, shut the government down for 35 days before caving in. Neither he nor his Republican Party will have the stamina to allow a second shutdown in three weeks.

Environmentalists came with the loud news about the world weather situation. South Africa, Australia and some parts in Asia are suffering from a long, drawn-out drought. The Arctic glacier is thawing and threatening life as we know it. The Japanese whalers resumed whale fishing despite severe objections.

Humanitarians are shouting from the rooftops over the worsening humanitarian situation for Yemenis, the Rohingya refugees in Myanmar and Bangladesh and last but not least the Syrian refugees in Turkey and Lebanon. Of course, there are important issues raised by international NGOs over freedom of speech, imprisonment without trials, torture and election frauds.

The distribution profile of the world at the local, regional or international level is getting more skewed. The rich are getting richer, and the poor poorer. The number of famished people is over a billion, and it promises to rise.

Nothing has been said about the atrocities and the colonisation activity in the occupied Palestinian territories, and no one lifts a finger at the Israeli forces’ deliberate killing of Palestinians on a weekly basis in Gaza.

Well, the whole dismal situation can be capsulised in one or two paragraphs. The US president wants to build a very expensive wall to bar Latin Americans from illegally entering the US, yet he has failed so far in securing the necessary funds from Congress, which had approved American aid to Israel to build a segregationist wall to separate the Palestinian race from entering the lands of the pure vintage Jews.

Well, a Christian cleric came up with a solution. Dismantle the wall in Palestine, which the Israelis built at the expense of the Americans, and move it to the US-Mexico border. It will only cost $2 billion and world peace would be restored.

Davos has the Magic Mountain that Thomas Mann had made famous. Let this magic work on this wall relocation formula.

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