Protests planned for Forbes conference

Kerry Smith, Sydney

On August 30, at a cocktail party in the Sydney Opera House, Prime Minister John Howard will open the fifth Forbes Global CEO Conference — a corporate scumbag festival of the highest proportions.

More than 300 CEOs — war profiteers, environmental vandals, corporate tax evaders, union busters and miscellaneous other corporate crooks — will gather together to plot the advancement of their profits-first agenda at the expense of working people all around the world.

The August 30-September 1 conference, to be hosted by NSW Labor Premier Bob Carr and US billionaire and Forbes magazine owner Steve Forbes, will cost $5000 a head.

If you're not a top executive and can't manage the five grand, the 30A Network is organising a convergence on the Opera House to protest against the conference.

The network's website gives seven reasons why people should join the protests:

• Because the occupation of Iraq is illegal, and it benefits US and Australian corporations, not the people of Iraq.

• Because Howard's industrial relations plans are a payoff to his big-business patrons.

• Because it's time to unite for our common human rights, and not be conned by Howard's divide-and-rule tactics.

• Because our global wealth should be shared, not controlled by a tiny minority.

• Because it's past time to get real about global warming.

• Because policy ought to be for public need not corporate greed.

• Because Indigenous Australians demand truth and justice.

[For more information, visit <http://www.30a.org>.]

From Green Left Weekly, July 6, 2005.

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From GLW issue 632