Critical Times

Ruth Ratcliffe

Save Our Gulf Coalition (SOGC), Adelaide Hills Climate Action Group, Eco-socialist Convergence, the 3D Environment Show, the Young Greens, the Socialist Alliance, the Wilderness Society and the Conservation Council were just some of the groups represented at the inaugural meeting of the Climate Emergency Action Network (CLEAN) in Adelaide on October 23.

Inspired by the success of the recent Climate Emergency conference in Adelaide, 35 people heard Jenny Bain, one of the conference organisers, present a comprehensive list of possible actions, suggested by participants in the conference. The ideas ranged from mass community education campaigns about feasible alternatives, to a “climate bus” (similar to the Freedom Bus of the 1970s), to direct action against the coal industry, and many others.

Capitalism is an inherently unstable system based on exploitation and inequality. It suffers periodic crises which bring insecurity and mass unemployment for working people. The current economic crisis once again confirms this fact.

Source: Serve The People

Notice is hereby given that the Annual General Meeting of the Shareholders of Marathon
Resources Limited will be held at the Mercure Grosvenor Hotel Adelaide, 125 North Terrace,
Adelaide South Australia on Friday, 28 November 2008 at 9:30am (Adelaide time).

(Watch this space for invitations to the footpath outside the Grosvenor!)

Despite taking SA Premier Mike Rann to China a couple of weeks ago, Chris Schacht has seen the value of Marathon Resources shares nose-dive in the last day or so to 22 cents per share!

Just like the pilots in that Qantas jet that recently plummeted thousands of feet over the briny blue sea, the Marathon Directors are trying to manually control the fall with any lever that comes to hand.

Hence this morning’s gravity-defying announcement that the company “will start more non-drilling exploration in the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary from today” (ABC Radio news).

An undercover Victorian policeman infiltrated community groups opposed to a controversial arms fair in Adelaide, it has been revealed.

The covert policeman attended meetings and took part in planning against the Asia Pacific Defence and Security Exhibition, which was to be held on Remembrance Day next month.

The fair was cancelled as the then Acting Premier, Kevin Foley, warned “feral anarchists would be descending on Adelaide” to protest against the weapons bazaar.

Ruth Ratcliffe

Following the announcement by South Australian Treasurer Kevin Foley that the Asia Pacific Defence and Security Exhibition has been cancelled, peace activists who had been planning anti-APDSE protests had reason to celebrate.

Slandered by Foley as “feral low-life” and accused of planning “violent” protests against the multi-million dollar killing technology exhibition, the activists are in fact delighted that APDSE is not going ahead. At meetings of the Stop the War Fair Committee, however, they resolved to proceed with both a peace festival and a protest action outside Defence SA.

Source: Movement for Rights and Liberties
October 2008

This article was originally a leaflet given out at the “Save the Cheltenham Race Course” meeting, held at the Woodvile Town Hall recently.

A promotion against doing business with SA Progressive Business!

SA Progressive Business is the funding arm of the Australian Labor Party in South Australia. Demonstrating once again, that Labor really is for hire!

This crowd must be the circus of all cabarets.

TConsumption of resources is rising rapidly, biodiversity is plummeting and just about every measure shows humans affecting Earth on a vast scale. Most of us accept the need for a more sustainable way to live, by reducing carbon emissions, developing renewable technology and increasing energy efficiency.

Corey Oakley

We were told that free market capitalism was the solution to all the world’s problems. Well, after 30 years of letting the market rip, we are now in the early stages of an economic disaster without precedent in living memory.

The world financial system is on the edge of total collapse.

All interested are invited to attend a Public Lecture given by

Professor Graham Priest
“A Prolegomenon to Any Planning for the Future”

5.00 – 6.30pm, Wednesday 22nd October, 2008
North Lecture Theatre 3
Flinders University, Adelaide

“Marx predicted a time at which the capitalist economic system would collapse.

Source: Serve the People

The current financial crisis had its origins in the sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2007, and has seen both a major melt-down or devalorisation of huge amounts of fictitious capital born of speculation, and a loss of liquidity as financial institutions lose confidence in the extension of credit to customers who might be industrial capitalists, merchants, other banks and financial institutions, and the working class.

In respect of the latter, some pundits are predicting that the financial crisis will soon move onto forms of personal credit other than residential mortgages and in particular, onto the world of credit cards.

Credit is an arrangement whereby the purchase time of a commodity is separated from the payment time.

Source: Serve the People

Marathon Resources Director and former ALP Senator Chris Schacht is currently in China with Premier Mike Rann and business leaders talking up trade ties between South Australia and the People’s Republic.

Schacht, who chairs a little-known consultancy called the Australia China Development Company, was due to be co-leader of the group with Central Market identity and Australian Asian Chamber of Commerce and Industry President Irena Zhang before the pair scored a coup by enlisting the prestige and the presence of the office and person of the State Premier.

The business mission intends to visit Beijing, SA’s sister state/province Shandong, and Zhejiang Province.

Source: Serve the People

Just ask Con Makris, the rags-to-riches billionaire Adelaide developer.

The South Australian Labor government has just announced approval for Makris’ plan to build a new shopping and residential complex on a large vacant site at North Adelaide (below).

The site has been vacant site 1989, with various development proposals running foul of the Adelaide City Council’s planning regulations.

Issued by the Commission on Socio-Economic Development and Social Equity of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle, September 20, 2008

Prepared for the Commission by the IBON Foundation

The deep problems of the imperialist-dominated world capitalist systemare in very sharp focus today. The majority of humanity has long suffered unremitting poverty and exploitation – but the people are being pushed into even greater difficulties by the current episode of intense economic and financial crisis which is feared to be the worst since theGreat Depression of the 1930s. The current descent into greater socioeconomic turmoil doesn’t just underscore the inevitability of crisis under capitalism.

Is this the end of capitalism?