May 4302Rein in "Plague Profiteers", demands WeinreichCommunist leader Anton Weinreich has praised "the work of the hard-working scientists who have laboured to develop vaccines and cures for the Wolfsheim Virus", but also warned that "huge businesses like
Cancon, the
Hyperion Corporation and
Burgmuller Pharmaceuticals are rubbing their hands with glee, waiting to make billions, maybe trillions, out of the vaccines and cures they are patenting". He said it was "immoral" for "the profiteers of the plague to get rich out of the suffering of the poorest people on the planet", and called for "concerted international action to ensure the appropriate cures and vaccines are distributed in the necessary volume, and at an affordable price, so that everybody who needs the medication can access it". He also cited a report from the
International Metzist Medical Society, which accused the companies supplying drugs and vaccines related to the Wolfsheim Virus of "deliberately restricting the supply of drugs on the market, unnecessarily denying them to patients, just so they can increase their prices and make more profit".
Waive your parliamentary immunity and let me sue you, Pfeiffer challenges GluckFormer Communist leader Friedrich Pfeiffer has challenged Defence Minister and National Party leader Alex Gluck to waive his parliamentary immunity from prosecution, so he can sue him over his
remarks accusing Pfeiffer of murdering his father, Hans Gluck. Pfeiffer said:
I have had all sorts of things said about me, but I have never previously sued anyone in my life, because in general, I don't really believe in that sort of thing, especially with the bourgeois courts being the way they are. However, for Alex Gluck I am prepared to make an exception. If he will volunteer to waive his parliamentary immunity, I will sue him for the abominable lies he has made about me. I never killed Hans Gluck, and I have never killed anybody else either.
Communists set for key legislative victoriesThe Communists look likely to achieve some big legislative wins in the Staatsrat, A bill
nationalising the railways is set to pass, although it seems unlikely the government will introduce Communist proposals for introducing a single class of rail travel (ie. abolishing 1st and 2nd class eats) and putting the rail industry under worker control. The party is also likely to help achieve the
introduction of universal state pensions and
voting rights for criminals released from jail.
Communist flag-burners embarrass WeinreichCommunist Party members are again
burning the Dorvish flag in protest against a bill which would outlaw performing that activity. Weinreich is known to be dismayed by this, especially as he has
tried to discourage his members from flag burning. Friedrich Pfeiffer, the one-time leader and later deputy leader, played a prominent role in the protest.
Metzist experts admit capitalism not due to self-destruct quite yetOn 7th February 4281, a group of renowned Metzist experts from all across Terra met in Haldor to form the International Committee for the Estimation of the End Date of Capitalism (ICEEDC). With the assistance of a powerful computer, they calculated that capitalism would terminate Terra-wide on 6th November 4320, and in Dorvik on April 17th 4310.
The ICEEDC has now issued a statement conceding "some errors and oversights were made during the course of our calculations" and that "although much progress has been made, we are now not expecting capitalism to be overthrown for at least another 40 years". They also admitted another claim they made, about Hosianism coming to an end in Dorvik by 4398 and in Terra by 4409, was "probably over-optimistic".
Former communist leader Friedrich Pfeiffer, who
famously supported the ICEEDC's original claims, has refused to comment on this development.
...but Sacred Banana says there will be Terra-wide revolution by 4315Ilse Sitz, champion of the "Banana Only Diet"Ilse Sitz is a controversial, self-described "health, exercise, diet and lifestyle consultant", famed for her promotion of the "Banana Only Diet", which encourages people to live only on bananas for long periods at a time in order to "thoroughly wash your body of its toxins". She is the author of a number of books, all of which have been heavily condemned by medical experts.
One of Sitz's postersSitz's latest fad is what she calls "the spirituality of the banana". She appears to have become fascinated by the
Banana Cults in Gaduridos, and is now keen to urge her followers not only to eat bananas but also, it would seem, to revere them as "gifts from the Divine".
She has become a keen enthusiast for "Banana Divination", which involves asking a banana a yes-or-no question, then slicing the banana in half and testing whether the core reveals a "Y" or a ".", with "Y" indicating "Yes" and "." indicating "No". Last night, she wrote on her popular online blog:
Looking at everything that is going on in Dorvik and in Terra today, what with the radical right, with communism, with the plague and with nuclear weapons and so on, you can't help but feel something big is going to happen. So what I did was I phoned up a farmer in Marlingantos, who is famous for having a Sacred Banana tree, with these bananas that do the most amazing things. He was really nice to me, and I told him I wanted to ask the bananas an important question. He told me to take 5 bunches of bananas from his Sacred Banana Tree, then meditate on my question carefully whilst smoking cannabis and propelling myself into a higher spiritual state of consciousness, and then pick out the banana which I feel is asking me to pick it out, then do the Banana Divination Test. So what happened was, he had the 5 bunches of bananas delivered to me all the way to Dorvik, then I did what he said, asking the banana "Will there be Terra-wide revolution by the year 4315".
And you know what? The banana said yes there would be, and I knew at that moment that the banana was telling the truth, because as I say to all of my clients, the bananas never, never lie.