Economy

In what was an important milestone for the anti-capitalist community in Adelaide, Left Unity held its inaugural AGM on May 26. The group collected membership fees, elected an executive and established working groups. It also chose a new logo. The AGM culminates several months of careful discussion towards consolidating the organisation. Left Unity formed in May 2010. Its goal was to unite class-conscious radical left forces through common struggles against the ecological and social evils of our increasingly brutal and irrational economic and political system.

How outrageous is this story? Just days after International Monetary Fund boss Christine Lagarde lectured Greek people to pay their taxes or not expect any sympathy from the rest of the world, the British Guardian revealed that her salary of US$467,940 a year, plus US$83,760 in additional allowances, is tax-free. What a bloody hypocrite. Like top United Nations officials and the Queen of England, the IMF chief enjoys tax-free status.

Anger and concern is spreading as people become aware of the scale of the cuts to the TAFE sector. The Baillieu government said it would slash $300 million from the TAFE sector in Victoria. At a public meeting titled “TAFE Cuts, Education and the Capitalist Crisis”, the president of the National Tertiary Education Union’s University of Ballarat branch, Jeremy Smith said 57 courses were being totally axed at Ballarat TAFE.

On June 2 Justin Sane and Chris #2 from Anti-Flag dropped in to Martin Place to show their support and performed a few songs for Occupy Sydney.

Who really runs this country? The announcement by the federal government that it has struck its first Enterprise Migration Agreement with the world's richest woman Gina Rinehart reveals just how eager our governments are to serve the mining millionaires.

More than 400,000 filled the streets of Montreal this week as a protest over a 75% increase in tuition has grown into a full-blown political crisis. After three months of sustained protests and class boycotts that have come to be known around the world as the "Maple Spring," the dispute exploded when the Quebec government passed an emergency law known as Bill 78, which suspends the current academic term, requires demonstrators to inform police of any protest route involving 50 or more people, and threatens student associations with fines of up to $125,000 if they disobey.

Red carpet and champagne marked the start of the first Red-Green Alliance (RGA) congress since the party tripled its mandate at a poll in September last year. The 385 delegates representing the 8000 members packed a basketball stadium in the migrant and working class Copenhagen suburb of Norrebro to grapple with the party's new increased influence on Danish politics. Party membership has more than doubled in the past two years, with the party welcoming into its ranks many ex-members of the Social Democratic and Socialist People's party.

Quebec’s student movement, and the swelling ranks of its popular allies, staged a huge rally and march in Montreal on May 22. The march supported the students’ fight for free, quality public education and rejected government repression. Estimates by some mainstream news outlets and by many independent observers put the number of participants as high as 400,000.

Twenty years after the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992, the environmental crisis continues to worsen. The unsustainable development model that dominates the world has led to a grave loss of biodiversity, melting of polar ice caps and mountain glaciers, an alarming rise in deforestation and desertification and the looming danger of an at least 4º Celsius temperature rise. Science says we are approaching a point of no return that will change the way our planet has behaved over the past 650,000 years.

Independent journalist and author Antony Loewenstein visited Papua New Guinea in January and February as part of his research for an upcoming book and documentary about disaster capitalism and privatisation. He spoke to Green Left Weekly's Ash Pemberton about the influence of the resource industry in PNG, its links with government and private security forces, the rising influence of China and PNG's domestic politics in light of upcoming elections. * * *

Up to 30,000 protesters from across Europe took to the streets on May 19 in the financial district of Frankfurt. The rally, which lasted for seven hours, ended outside the European Central Bank (ECB). The protest, “Blockupy Frankfurt”, was part of a three-day action, organised to oppose the European debt crisis policies of the “troika” made up of the ECB, the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission. These polices include the so-called Eurozone bailout funds, which have helped push people across Europe into poverty and the dismantled democratic rights.