Green Left Weeklys Graham Matthews asked a number of protesters at the Stop Bush rally in Sydney what motivated them to take part.
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During the last week of August, more than 3000 workers at the state-controlled Chengdu Power company went on strike at their diesel engines producing plant in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, and protested at the city government offices. The action was a bid to pressure the factory management to honour the original agreement under which working conditions would be changed while the company is restructured for privatisation.
Mission accomplished!, boasted NSW Premier Morris Iemma at the end of one of the most aggressive policing operations in Australia for many years. The last public official to use that phrase was US President George Bush, who had just invaded Iraq. Did Iemma mean to link the thousands of protesters in Sydney with the enemy population of Iraq?
US President George Bush will add Sydney to the long list of cities that have greeted him with mass demonstrations demanding an end to the war on Iraq. PM John Howard will remember APEC as the summit that failed to bolster his domestic support.
Alex Bainbridge, chairing the Stop Bush/Make Howard History anti-APEC rally told the massing crowd that there were at least 10,000 people gathered at 11am at Sydney’s Town Hall. Despite an intensive campaign aimed at keeping people away, and provocative policing on the day, up to 15,000 people come out on September 8, asserting their right to protest against US President George Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard.
For Bolivia’s indigenous majority there is no going back. The election in 2005 of Bolivia’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales, marked a watershed — a before and after in Bolivia’s history — after more than 500 years of struggle against imperialism and colonialism. It marked a conscious step forward by Bolivia’s indigenous majority in its struggle for justice and equality.
The innovative offer by the government of Ecuador to refrain from exploiting its largest oil reserve, in exchange for international compensation for nature conservation, is attracting increasing support, according to an August 23 IPS article. The initiative relates to the untapped Ishpingo-Tiputini-Tambococha (ITT) oil reserve, which is located in Yasuni National Park in the Amazon. According IPS, the park is one of the worlds most biodiverse regions. It was created in 1979 and covers 982,000 hectares.
Saturday September 8 was another red banner day for people’s power.
US combat deaths in Iraq have dropped by half in the two months since the buildup of 28,000 additional troops reached full strength, Associated Press reported on August 31. In the days following, most of the US corporate media repeated this claim. But what they didnt report was that the number of US combat deaths in June-August a total of 264 made it the deadliest summer for US occupation troops since the war began in March 2003. Last summer, 169 US soldiers were killed in Iraq.
The Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP), a Marxist tendency in the Socialist Alliance, is now calling for the immediate withdrawal of the Australian troops from East Timor. A meeting of the DSP National Committee resolved to investigate the prospects for building a public campaign around this demand. Peter Boyle, the DSPs national secretary, explained the reasons for this decision to Green Left Weekly
On August 30, western Sydney charged US President George Bush with war crimes committed during the immoral and illegal occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. Bush was also charged with the crimes of assault on the environment, crimes against civil liberties and against workers. A People’s Tribunal was held at the Parramatta Town Hall, and prosecuting witnesses included former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib, Dennis Doherty (from the Anti-Bases Coalition and the Communist Party of Australia), Kamala Emanuel (environment spokesperson for the Socialist Alliance) and Ninos Tooma (Iraqi activist).
I'd like to thank the students from the schools,
For getting off their stools,
And coming out to protest against these tools.
The old, the young,
The weak, the strong.
No more pain,
Stop their reign.
Confront – get out there!
Walk
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