Economy

  • Ireland: Gov't thrashed in by-elections as huge march protests water charges

    Huge crowds demonstrated against water charges on the streets of Dublin's city centre on October 12 as voters delivered a stunning message of “no confidence” to the Fine Gael-Labour coalition government in two by-elections. Traffic in Dublin’s city centre came to a standstill due to the unprecedented scale of the anti-austerity march. About 100,000 people took part in the march, which took one hour and twenty minutes to pass the Spire in O’Connell Street.

  • The G20 Act won’t deter protests

    The Queensland capital is getting ready to lock down for a two-day meeting of world leaders in mid-November. More than $171 million has been allocated to “city improvement works” in an effort by the government “to help Brisbane shine” in time for the G20 summit. Homeless people will be offered hotel rooms, bins will be sealed to prevent bomb concealment, public transport will be affected and roads will be closed. The G20 “red zone” will encompass the central business district and Spring Hill along with much of Kangaroo Point, Fortitude Valley and South Brisbane.

  • There is no such thing as “Team Australia”

    Woolworths was caught out this month selling T-shirts with the slogan “If you don’t love it, leave” emblazoned over an Australian flag. After George Craig posted a photo of the shirt on Twitter with the caption: “@woolworths cairns, selling racist singlets for everyday low prices! #racist”, the T-shirt was quickly and widely condemned. Woolworths immediately pulled the stock from its shelves and apologised.

  • The poverty of neoliberal economics

    Paul Verhaeghe, senior professor of clinical psychology and psychoanalysis at Ghent University in Belgium, has argued in a recently published essay that neoliberal economics brings out the worst in human beings. He finds that thirty years of neoliberalism, and the privatisation and free-market misery that comes with it, have taken their toll on people’s values and even their personalities.

  • Patients to lose out from Medibank Private sale

    "We are now in the world of 'big insurance,' with health funds squarely in the business of providing financial returns to shareholders ... Private health insurers serve their shareholders, meaning they don't necessarily seek to actively protect or advance models of care that result in the best health outcomes for members," chief executive of St Vincents Health Australia Toby Hall, Australia’s largest not-for-profit health-care organisation, wrote in the October 10 Sydney Morning Herald.

  • Marrickville Council supports campaign to cancel CSG licence covering Sydney basin

    Media statement by Sydney Stop CSG Stop CSG Sydney President Pip Hinman has welcomed Marrickville Council's decision at its meeting tonight to support the campaign to extinguish the CSG licence covering the whole of the Sydney basin. The unanimous council decision came on the same day as the Minister for Energy and Resources Anthony Roberts announced he had cancelled three PELs in NSW.

  • India: Students declare 'let there be uproar!'

    About 100,000 people marched in Kolkata on September 20 against police violence and for gender justice. I have known the city all my life and have not known of a demonstration of that size since the 1960s. The march was in response to a huge police crackdown on a peaceful student protest on Jadavpur University campus, one of the leading universities in the state.

  • El Salvador: 100 days of FMLN's Sanchez Ceron administration

    The administration of Salvadoran President Salvador Sanchez Ceren celebrated its 100th day in office last month, taking the chance to report on actions taken to advance towards equality. Among the achievements of the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) administration is the opening of 43 new community health clinics, along with the first specialised pharmacy for patients with chronic illnesses.

  • Bolivia: Morales wins crushing victory in poll

    "This win is a triumph for anti-imperialists and anti-colonialists," Bolivia's left-wing President Evo Morales told thousands of supporters from the balcony of the presidential palace on the evening of October 12 after a crushing win in that's day's presidential poll, Reuters said.