HOBART — Months of hard work by organisers paid off on May 1 when hundreds of people participated in the largest anti-capitalist protest this city has ever seen.
Organisers admit that even on the morning of the blockade, they
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"M1 was brilliant. It will go down one of the most significant mobilisation in Australia's history. But one of the things that we can be a bit unhappy about is that the official trade union movement has brought relatively little to it, except in
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SYDNEY — Just four weeks before the big day, M1 Sydney activists were debating the possibility of mobilising 2000 people for the May 1 blockade of the Australian Stock Exchange in Bridge Street. Despite persistent rain on the
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MELBOURNE — The joining together of 7000 unionists with 3000 stock exchange blockaders in a single unity march was a display of May Day solidarity not seen in this city for more than 60 years. Long negotiations between the M1
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Free trade Speaking at the recent Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in support of the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, George Bush said that "trade not only helps spread prosperity, but trade helps spread freedom". If this is true then it
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e-Imperialism E-commerce isn't looking too healthy in the US today. The new economy of the dot coms has shown remarkable similarities to traditional boom and bust capitalist economies. If anything the rise and fall of the high-tech
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When I was a teenager, I got a gun. My parents didn't have them lying around the house. I bought it for $25 on the street. I had it in my pants at a movie theater when I saw one of my regular tormentors... [He] wasn't in the mood to confront
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I confess I made a wrong call with the May Day "M1" protest this week. I predicted with great confidence a few days before that M1 would max out at maybe 1000 protesters. The march from Bridge Street to Martin Place at lunchtime May
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Actively Radical TV — Sydney community television's progressive current affairs producers tackle the hard issues from the activist's point of view. CTS Sydney (UHF 31), every Sunday, 9pm. Ph 9565 5522. Visit <http://www.channel31.org> for
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Early last month, family services minister Amanda Vanstone released a discussion paper calling for incentives for Australian women to have more children. The reason? At 1.75 births per woman of child-bearing age, Australia's fertility rate has fallen
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MELBOURNE — It was a dark and foggy morning, making the CBD's skyscrapers seem even more alien, but the air was filled with excitement and anticipation. By 6am, a solid number of protesters had gathered outside the
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BY JAMES CAULFIELD & STUART MUNCKTON CANBERRA — They say that this city is the place where anything can happen and usually doesn't. But, for once, on May 1, it did happen: the global anti-capitalist revolt hit Canberra. Three hundred people
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BRISBANE — At times, the scenes outside the stock exchange on 123 Eagle St on May 1 resembled one huge street party, with chanting, cheering, speech-making, dancing, and chalking up slogans on the pavement, all taking place in
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The first May Day of the new century should be remembered for a long time — possibly even as a new turning point in the centuries-long struggle for global justice. For one day, it seemed like the working people of the world rose as one: workers
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Public calls for the sacking of ABC managing director Jonathan Shier, chairperson Donald McDonald and the whole ABC board are growing. If the national broadcaster is to be saved from the oblivion the Coalition clearly wishes to
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DARWIN — Chanting and music brought the generally sleepy business district of this city to life on May 1 as anti-corporate protesters peacefully blockaded the main entrance to the Northern Territory Chamber of Commerce, before
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"We went to M1 planning a peaceful mass blockade, but the cops attacked us using pain and violence to force us off Pitt St. Getting arrested didn't faze me, because third world debt is serious, poverty is serious, capitalism is serious. So we have to
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The magnificent M1 protests and blockades of stock exchanges in eight cities around Australia had an impact even beyond the specific demands of the 20,000 activists who took to the streets. The greed of the corporations and the role
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The May 2 Sydney Morning Herald editorial ("Globalisation for All") expressed surprise that May Day "should now be transmogrified into an all-purpose protest against a range of ills for which capitalism can, against all the
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"City workers and commuters were beseiged today as hundreds of anti-globalisation protesters attempted to blockade the Australian Stock Exchange, and took to the streets to march against what they claim to be 'corporate tyranny'. "The so-called
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Well-known Aboriginal scholar and academic Marcia Langton made the headlines when she told the Australian Education Assembly that she was paying "protection money" by sending her daughter to a private school to ensure she escaped
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PERTH — May 1 will be remembered for two connected reasons: it was the first sitting of parliament under Geoff Gallop's new Labor state government, and it was the day of one of the most violent police operations against
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The mainstream media's coverage of the M1 protests outside the Australian Stock Exchange bore little resemblance to what really happened. Just as at S11 in Melbourne, most who took part would have been left wandering whether there
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"Today has been really inspiring, seeing everybody coming together to challenge the power of corporations, the very basis of capitalism. It's shown that what was launched at S11 was not just a one off demonstration but a new movement. Blockading
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"I think M1 is a big step forward in saying that the problems that we see in society are not just isolated ones but are all linked together and the heart of the problem is the corporate system, capitalism, and that is what we are fighting against
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ADELAIDE — Four hundred people participated in the five-hour blockade of the Australian Stock Exchange, located in the Santos Building, in a powerful statement of how strongly they felt about the need to fight the ravages of
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"Blockading the stock exchange today we have given renewed confidence to people suffering under globalisation, that it is not inevitable. And we can stop it. This renewed confidence will mean that the protests around CHOGM will draw in ever wider
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Just seven months after S11, the radical left has once again tapped the powerful anti-corporate globalisation sentiment in the community. The 20,000 or more activists mobilised on May 1 across eight cities in Australia were cheered
News
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Nice Cossacks "In fact, the modern use of horses, while deliberately visually intimidating, involves mainly sideways movement of the horses to jostle the crowd in the direction required." — the Sydney Morning Herald's chief right-wing crank
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MELBOURNE — While most of the M1 protests around Australia were marked by police violence, Melbourne's M1 blockade and rally was not attacked by police forces. So it came as a shock when the weekly peaceful picket of the Nike
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MELBOURNE Victoria University of Technology will play host to the inaugural meeting of a newly formed refugee rights campaign. Refugee Action Collective (West) will be based in Melbourne's western suburbs to meet the
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SYDNEY — Solidarity was still needed to help Indonesian workers organise for democracy and justice, Indonesian activist Nieke told a forum here on May 2. Nieke is a leader of the Indonesian People's Democratic Party and a researcher into the
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SYDNEY British Marxist intellectual Alex Callinicos will be a keynote speaker at the second Asia Pacific International Solidarity Conference, scheduled for Easter 2002 in Sydney. Callinicos will represent the Socialist
World
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DURBAN — About 40 kilometres outside Durban is an industrial and farming node called Hammarsdale. It appears suddenly at the end of a short rural road just off the N3 freeway and consists of a grid of streets forming 16 blocks.
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Contrary to many predictions circulating in Jakarta during the last few weeks, the Indonesian capital remained calm after the Golkar-Central Axis-led majority in the House of Representatives voted to censure President Abdurrahman Wahid
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DILI — News that Indonesia has formally agreed to set up an ad hoc tribunal to try those responsible for mass murder in East Timor around the period of the 1999 independence referendum was welcomed by Sergio de Mello, head of
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On May 1, the Socialist Workers Party in Scotland joined the Scottish Socialist Party, an historic development creating a united socialist party in Scotland for the first time in generations. Tommy Sheridan, convener of the SSP, and
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The socialist island nation of Cuba received praise from an unlikely source on May Day — from James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank, one of the chief enforcers of corporate globalisation. Wolfensohn told a news conference
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For weeks before May 1, British Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, London's mayor Ken Livingstone, the Metropolitan Police and the Britain's capitalist mass media relentlessly demonised and criminalised people intending to peacefully
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The following greetings were received by the Democratic Socialist Party to be read out to the M1 rallies across Australia. They have been slightly abridged. Socialist Workers Party, Britain We would like to extend May Day greetings to you from
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At least 50,000 workers, mostly members of the Indonesian National Front for Labour Struggles (FNPBI), joined protests in 19 cities in Sulawesi, Bali, Java and Sumatra. The largest mobilisations were in Medan and the East Java town of
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BY FAROOQ TARIQ& RIZWAN ATTA LAHORE — "If workers want to remember the martyrs of the 1886 uprising of Chicago, they should hold the meetings indoors", stated retired general Moeen Haider, federal interior minister, on April 28. "No-one,
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May 1, the international day of solidarity with the struggles of the working class and the oppressed, was marked by millions of people around the world. In some countries, young militants inspired by the wave of mass
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"One in four Americans has 'strong negative attitudes' toward Chinese Americans, would feel uncomfortable voting for an Asian American for president of the United States, and would disapprove of a family member marrying someone of Asian descent",
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BY ALLEN JENNINGS & MICHAEL KARADJIS HANOI — Vietnam will stay firmly on a socialist path as it confronts the daunting challenges of economic reform and equitable development. This was the prevailing theme of the Ninth Congress of the Communist
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Singapores People's Action Party government likes to boast that it is tough but clean. However, this is a myth. Singapore's corporate life has long being corrupt but few people dare speak out. If you do speak out about
Culture
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Undue Risk: secret state experiments on humansBy Jonathan MorenoRoutledge, 2001371 pages, $41 (pb) REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON When Ebb Cade, a black 53-year-old cement worker, had a car accident in Tennessee in March 1945, he received more than he
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Seeing with the HeartBy Judy KingAt the Galleries Primitif, Woollahra, SydneyOpens May 11 SYDNEY — A stint as a volunteer nurse in Africa was the inspiration for Judy King's exhibition Seeing with the Heart, which opens on May 11. The mixed media
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REVIEW BY RICHARD PITHOUSE Live in New YorkBruce Springsteen and the E-Street BandSony Music Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band have released a new double live album that has achieved the unusual feat of winning extraordinary critical
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BanditsBy Eric HobsbawmWeidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000226 pages, $40 (hb)Thirteenth-century peasants are rarely the objects of Hollywood's attention. The notable exception, of course, is Robin Hood. The celluloid homage paid to Robin
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JOHANNESBURG — The radical magazine, Debate: voices from the South African left, was recently relaunched at the Workers' Library and Museum in Newtown, Johannesburg. The excellent turnout on March 23 demonstrated the