Resistance!

After rugby league commentator and former player Matthew Johns gave an insincere and misdirected apology on The Footy Show on May 7 — preempting the ABC Four Corners program that named Johns as part of an alleged sexual assault in 2002 — Paul “Fatty” Vautin slapped him on the back and declared: “Well said, now let’s get on with the show.”

Last week’s university staff strikes across Victoria were in response to decades of attacks on higher education.

The federal government announced in its budget that $1.3 billion will be spent over six years “aimed at tackling people-smuggling and securing Australia’s borders”, the Australian reported on May 13.

Labor delivered its budget on May 12 in the context of Australia’s slide into recession. With the economic crisis hitting hard, young people are one of the most vulnerable groups in society.

PM Kevin Rudd has announced plans for a scheme that will deny youth allowance to unemployed people under 20 years old, unless they are at school or engaged in full-time vocational training.

The following open letter is to Tasmanian federal Labor MP Duncan Kerr, from Resistance.

Business doesn’t want to rip off young workers. We have deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s word for it.

Two years ago the film Zeitgeist made its way onto the internet scene, receiving millions of views on YouTube. Last year a new film was released called Zeitgeist Addendum, which sparked the “Zeitgeist movement”.

Following the rich and inspiring World at a Crossroads conference, socialist youth organisation Resistance held its annual national conference on April 13 in Sydney.

In recent years, Australia has seen some of the biggest protests in its history, namely those against the Iraq war and Work Choices. Over the past decade increasing numbers have taken to the streets, in support of various movements such as anti-war, workers’ rights, anti-neoliberalism, climate change action and many more.

According to a 2008 report by UN agencies UNAIDS and the World Health Organisation, an estimated 1.9 million people were newly infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa in 2007, bringing the number of people living with HIV in the region to 22 million.

As capitalism sinks into a growing crisis of war and economic meltdown, people around the world are waking up to the fact that something is drastically wrong with the system that is throwing millions into poverty, wrecking our climate and turning entire countries into battlefields.