BRISBANE — "On September 11 in Melbourne the big show is coming to town", Griffith University academic Richard Sanders told students at an August 1 forum here, which discussed the penetration of multinational corporations into almost every sphere of life.
The forum, entitled "What is the World Economic Forum and why should we shut it down?", was organised by the Griffith University branch of SCAM, Students Campaigning Against Multinationals. It discussed plans to protest against the September 11 summit of the WEF, a body to which 1000 multinational corporations belong.
Sanders explained how the big companies evade environmental laws by appealing to the World Trade Organisation to rule against such laws as "restraints" on trade, while Lynda Hansen from the Committee in Solidarity with Latin America and the Caribbean (CISLAC) spoke of the feminisation of poverty, especially in the Third World.
Student Representative Council general secretary Camille Barbagallo addressed the corporatisation of education, telling her audience that engineering students at the University of Queensland have their lecture notes "brought to them by BHP".
Resistance's Justin Randell spoke of the need for international solidarity in the movement against neo-liberal globalisation, quoting Cuba's President Fidel Castro, who told the Havana summit of the G77 grouping of Third World nations that 20% of the world's population might enjoy the fruits of globalisation, but 80% did not.
Randell also pointed to the lead being shown by the people of Indonesia; they are taking on the International Monetary Fund by confronting their own government, which is willingly carrying out IMF dictates.
The speakers were unanimous in their condemnation of the World Economic Forum and stressed the importance of the Melbourne demonstrations that are being organised by the S11 Alliance. SCAM plans to organise against multinationals even after the Melbourne demonstrations.