Economy

Members of the Merida communal council distributing food. Photo by Tamara Pearson. It's been three years now of food shortages, inflation, and queues in Venezuela, and the millions of people involved in community and movement organizing have been the most affected. But they've also defied right-wing and general expectations, and even perhaps the expectations of the Maduro government, and have become stronger and better organized as a result of the hardships.

General strike to protest mass layoffs under President Mauricio Macri. Buenos Aires, February 24. Photo: EFE.

The new administration of Prime Minister Theresa May marks a sharp shift in Britain's Conservative Party government towards the xenophobic right. May has had a remarkable clearout of ministers who served under ex-PM David Cameron — who resigned after leading the failed campaign to stay in the European Union — in order to shape the government in her image.

FBI raid in Miami gathering evidence on FIFA. May, 2015. The Dirty Game: Uncovering the Scandal at FIFA Andrew Jennings Arrow Books, 2016 305 pages The unravelling of the empire of Sepp Blatter, the multi-millionaire president of world football, began in 2014.

And that was how the horror came to my doorstep. To tell you the truth, like many people who live in the provinces – a somewhat disparaging term used to refer to the rest of France that exists outside of Paris and its surrounds – I thought terrorist attacks were mainly a concern for those in the capital. On July 14, this certainty was blown apart by the sad and harsh reality: 84 people of various nationality and beliefs, among them dozens of children, died due to the actions of a lunatic on the Promenade des Anglais, the “Malecon” of the city of Nice, in the south-east of France.

Washington pressed Greece on July 21 to cut public spending to the bone in return for the latest slice of bailout money, Morning Star Online said. After a meeting with Greek finance minister Euclid Tsakalotos, US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said Athens needed “to make headway on the next set of milestones due in October”.

Warehouses belonging to Kimberly-Clark Corporation — which recently had its factory seized and handed over to the workers — were found to be full of raw materials. This is despite the insistence from the factory's owners that they could not produce goods, Venezuelan industry minister Miguel Perez Abad said on July 15.

A march for jobs in Zimbabwe. A national shutdown or 'stay away' in Zimbabwe this month paralysed the country. For the first time in years the country's ruling party, ZANU-PF, and the tenure of 92 year old president Robert Mugabe, were seriously rattled. Young people, workers and traders – who survive by hawking food, cheap imported goods in cities and towns – engaged in pitch battles with the police and army, in many cases outnumbering the security forces.

Declaring "We have abolished the case for austerity", left-wing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn officially launched his campaign for re-election in London on July 21. He used the occasion to make a strong putting a case for a clearly anti-austerity Labour Party to oppose the Tories and a rise in racism.

The Australian government released its National Strategy on International Students 2025 in April. At its heart lies a strategy for exploiting international students and increasing the commercialisation of the education sector. It aims to swindle hundreds of thousands of international students and normalise the neoliberal idea that students are consumers and that education and learning are commodities.

Two Aboriginal elders were arrested at a protest against multinational mining company Rio Tinto blasting at the Mount Thorley-Warkworth coalmine in the Hunter Valley on July 18. Wonnarua elders Kevin Taggart and his sister Pat Hannson were arrested after telling police they would not move from the side of Putty Road. Residents of the village of Bulga are protesting against the expansion of the Mount Thorley-Warkworth mine, the closure of Wallaby Scrub Road and the destruction of Aboriginal and European cultural heritage.

The industrial action by Carlton & United Breweries (CUB) maintenance workers in Abbotsford has entered its seventh week. The company is refusing to back down from its decision to sack the workers and then offer to rehire them with a 65% pay cut.