The week before the March 24 NSW state election, the Socialist Alliance launched an initiative for a three-month trial of free public transport. Alliance members and supporters mass leafleted bus terminals and railway stations across Sydney on March 20, calling on the incoming government to undertake the trial and weigh up the cost and the environmental health benefits.
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Around 400 people also rallied and marched in Brisbane, calling for troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan and the release of David Hicks. Margaret McPherson from the Stop the War Coalition, which organised the rally, urged support for the April 21 national day of action to free Hicks. Australian Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett and Greens member Willy Bach also addressed the rally, which was part of a global weekend of action.
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Survival International reported on March 19 that the government of Botswana has banned Bushmen in the Kalahari Game Reserve from using their own water. The government refused the Bushmens request to install, at their own expense, a pump at a borehole on their land. The government justified its decision by arguing that the land is owned by the government. In December, Botswanas High Court ruled that the 2002 eviction of the Bushmen from their land was illegal and that they had a right to live there. According to Jumanda Gakelebone of the Bushman organisation First People of the Kalahari, The court said we could go back to our land, but now we see that the government is doing everything it can to stop us. Why else would it stop us using a borehole that nobody else is using? Without water we cannot live in the Kalahari. For more information, visit <http://www.survival-international.org>.
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The University of Western Sydney decided to sell off “the Swamp” and student residences at Kingswood and Werrington South campuses. A mass of degrees were merged into the Bachelor of Business and Commerce. Half the majors for the Bachelor of Economics were axed. These are just some of the many changes that happened to UWS in the first few weeks of semester.
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On march 19, the Madhya Pradesh government agreed to meet some of the demands of the survivors of the 1984 chemical explosion and deadly gas leaks at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, which killed thousands of people and left tens of thousands with severe health problems. After hunger strikes by survivors and an international solidarity campaign, the government agreed to provide clean water, medical care and rehabilitation to victims, as well as to release information about the water and soil contamination around the abandoned factory site and to construct a wall to contain it. Pragya, a Bhopal activist, said following the decision, Thanks to all who sent their prayers and faxes and other good vibes. Bhopal remains not only ground zero of the chemical industrys global wounding, but also ground zero for the fight for peoples basic human rights to live in a poison-free environment, to drink water that is free of toxic chemicals, and receive basic medical care for their injuries. If the government fails to implement its promises, protests will take place in India and around the world during April and May. For more information visit <http://bhopal.net>.
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Activists gathered on March 22 to discuss the campaign to free David Hicks. The meeting, called by the Geelong Anti-War Coalition, was chaired by Socialist Alliance member Bronwyn Jennings and heard from Amnesty International, the Greens and Civil Rights Defence (CRD).
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The deputy commander of Fijis military has threatened public sector unions including the Fiji Public Service Association, the Fiji Teachers Union and the Fiji Nurses Association that it will intervene to stop a planned strike against a 5% pay cut and reduction in the retirement age from 60 to 55. According to Fijilive.com on March 17, Teleni said that it will enforce the Public Emergency Regulations, which restrict strikes and public gatherings. He also declared that workers would lose their jobs if they joined the strike. The March 23 Fijionline.com quoted Fiji Nurses Association general secretary Kuini Lutua as saying her union would continue to fight until the government withdraws the proposed pay cut. Currently I have 98 per cent of support from members of the association and when we plan to go on strike nothing will stop us.
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On March 22, World Water Day, more than 40 people were arrested in New Delhi while protesting against water theft by Coca-Cola and Pepsico. The India Resource Centre reports that more than 300 people marched to the planning commissions offices to demand action from the government over the soft-drink companies creation of severe water shortages and contamination of soil and groundwater. An organiser of the march and one of those detained, Nandlal Master from Lok Samiti and the National Alliance of Peoples Movements, said the protest was aimed at one of the worlds worst abusers of water, the Coca-Cola company, which has destroyed the lives of thousands of people in India as a result of its thirst for water. For more information, visit <http://www.indiaresource.org>.
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#147;In the US, we are living on borrowed time in terms of a nuclear accident, Kevin Kamps from the US-based non-government Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) told a March 21 public forum organised by The Wilderness Society.
News
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Easter has become synonymous with protests for refugees’ rights. Woomera, Baxter and Villawood detention centres have each been the target of Easter convergences that have shone the national and international spotlight on the Howard government’s blatant disregard of human rights.
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The most important elections for many years in the Victorian branch of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) are set for mid-April. This election will be a showdown between the incumbent unified Victorian branch leadership and the conservative vehicle division of the union and its supporters.
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Lawyers acting for 12 of the Melbourne 13, a group of Muslim men who have been held in Barwons Maximum Security Prison for more than a year, argued on March 20 that the possibility of a fair trial had been jeopardised and applied for a stay in proceedings.
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Nuclear fools day protests will mark Palm Sunday April 1. The protests are in response to the most significant push for expanded uranium mining in Australia since the Hawke Labor governments 1983 decision to defy public opinion and allow uranium mining to continue at Rio Tintos Ranger mine in the Northern Territory, and to be developed at Australias two other largest uranium deposits BHP Billitons Olympic Dam (Roxby Downs) mine in South Australia, opened in 1988, and Rio Tintos Beverley mine (also in SA) in 2001.
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Over the last few weeks, the family of Mamdouh Habib, former Guantanamo Bay prisoner and independent candidate for the seat of Auburn in the NSW state election, has been subjected to greater police harassment.
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Workers from across Melbourne have thrown their support behind National Union of Workers (NUW) members who are on strike at Preston Motors in Campbellfield.
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We refuse to be subtle in our outcry against this war, we refuse to do nothing and be silent while people are killed in our name for profit for the rich and we refuse to be sent overseas in a war for oil.
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If the Howard government thought that it’s battery of anti-unions laws had completely intimidated workers not to take so-called “illegal” industrial action then they must be disappointed. For the first time in more than a decade all work on the nation’s waterfront came to a halt on March 23 when more than 11,000 wharfies walked off the job. The stop work coincided with the Melbourne funeral of Bobby Cumberlidge, who died in an industrial accident at Toll’s Westernport wharf on March 16.
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An Esperance Port Authority (EPA) safety worker has been sacked for asking too many questions and a blood specialist has been dispatched to the area as WA authorities scramble to cope with a widening heavy-metal contamination crisis.
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Scenes of joy and relief erupted outside the Brisbane courts complex on March 21 after a Supreme Court jury cleared four Palm Islanders of charges of rioting causing destruction.
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On March 22, some 1500 protesters on Parliament Lawns denounced Tasmanian Labor Premier Paul Lennon’s push to fast-track the building of a $1.5 billion pulp mill in Bell Bay, in northern Tasmania’s Tamar Valley.
Analysis
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On March 21, in a speech to mark the fourth anniversary of Australian troops being dispatched to Iraq as part of an illegal US invasion responsible for the deaths of more than half a million Iraqis, Prime Minister John Howard conceded that despite the “surge” in the occupiers’ troop numbers “success is by no means assured”.
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Ten years ago, Australia led the world in voluntary euthanasia legislation. On September 22, 1996, Bob Dent became the first person in the world to receive a legal, lethal, voluntary injection. His peaceful and dignified death occurred under the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act (ROTI) of the Northern Territory.
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When former naval officer and NSW opposition leader Peter Debnam began his campaign to overthrow the NSW Labor government there were hopes in the Liberal camp that the scene was set for a repeat on March 24 of the party’s last win — Nick Greiner’s 1988 walloping of the Barrie Unsworth administration.
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Below is an abridged account by Tim Davis-Frank of the police raid on his home and his arrest in Sydney on March 14. His “crime” was to take part in the protests outside the G20 meeting in Melbourne last November. Davis-Frank is the University of Sydney student representative council’s global solidarity officer. Four G20 protesters from Sydney went to court on March 19, and will face court again in Melbourne on May 11.
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Jewish Voices I I am an activist of Jewish descent and read with interest the interview in GLW #703 with Antony Loewenstein on the setting up of Independent Australian Jewish Voices. The IAJV statement follows a similar initiative from British
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There was something very sad about the debate in federal parliament around the Labor opposition’s grand plan to bring Australia up to speed on internet broadband. Behind the noise and smoke of the furious jousting was the sobering fact that both sides of the House embrace the corrupt logic of privatisation.
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On February 14, readers of the Weekly Times, a local Ryde paper that covers Bennelong, PM John Howards electorate, couldnt believe their eyes when confronted with the headline: Global Warming? Climate Change? Bulldust! The article, written by editor John Booth, dismissed global warming as scaremonger propaganda put forward by Armageddon pedlars.
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As the ALP’s electoral fortunes lift with each new poll, unionists want to know exactly how a federal Labor government would carry out its promise to “tear up” the Coalition’s anti-worker Work Choices laws.
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Late February three wealthy business leaders with close Liberal Party connections Robert de Crespigny, Ron Walker and Hugh Morgan announced the formation of Australian Nuclear Energy to develop nuclear power generation. Prime Minister John Howard praised the initiative as a great idea.
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Palestinian community leader and activist Shaher Hussein El-Mashni (Abu Nasser) died on March 1 in Melbourne. His memorial service, on March 18, was attended by more than 200 people, including representatives of Australian Palestinian groups and the Palestinian head of delegation to Australia, Izzat Abdul Hadi, who gave condolences on behalf of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.
World
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Hanan Aruri, a Palestinian woman from Ramallah, became involved in the fight against the Israeli occupation as a teenager in the 1987 intifada. Today she is an activist in the international campaign to boycott Israel, and is also involved in campaigns for women’s rights. She is a guest at the Marxism Today conference, organised by Socialist Alternative, being held in Melbourne from March 30-April 1. Aruri spoke to Green Left Weekly’s Emma Clancy about the current dynamics in Palestinian politics and the struggle against the Israeli occupation. [This interview will be published in GLW #705.]
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On March 17, the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) approved the formation of a new Hamas-Fatah “national unity” government by 83 votes in favour and three against. The formation of the new government followed agreements reached in Mecca last month between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, of Fatah, and Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, of Hamas.
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Midnight on March 26 is the deadline for a power-sharing executive to be formed from the newly elected Northern Ireland Assembly so that devolution of power from Britain to the Belfast-based assembly can proceed. In the Stormont assembly elections, held on March 7, Ian Paisleys ultra-loyalist Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) won 36 of the assemblys 108 seats and Sinn Fein won 28. The traditionally dominant Ulster Unionist Party won only 18 seats and the Social Democratic Labour Party won 16. Voter turnout was approximately 63%, out of a total population of 1.7 million.
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Tanya Reinhart, the Israeli linguistics professor and champion of Palestinian rights, died of a stroke in her sleep on March 17 in New York at the age of 63. Palestinian organisations issued a statement from Gaza on March 19, describing Reinhart as “a great indefatigable activist against the policy of the Zionist government of apartheid Israel towards us Palestinians”.
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On March 8, Greenpeace announced that a community campaign had stopped the construction of Mighty River Powers Marsden B coal-fired power station, which would have been the first coal-fired power station to be built in New Zealand in 30 years. The campaign, launched in 2004, involved the local community, indigenous people and environmental organisations.
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The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions has declared it will go ahead with an April 3-4 “stay away” by workers despite the wave of repression suffered by opponents of President Robert Mugabe’s regime and authorities’ threats to crush the ZCTU strike. Already ZCTU members have been arrested, their offices raided and material relating to the stay away confiscated.
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On March 17, 40 lawyers and at least 10 others were injured when police attacked a gathering of lawyers at the Lahore High Court called by the Lahore High Court Bar Association to discuss a response to the governments suspension of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. On March 9, President Pervez Musharraf had declared Chaudhry as non-functional, which was viewed by many as part of an attempt to quell the judiciary. Lawyers have boycotted the courts and organised hunger strikes and other protests demanding Chaudhrys reinstatement. A nationwide lawyers strike has been called for April 3. The following are excerpts from a March 22 statement by Labour Party Pakistan general secretary Farooq Tariq.
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On the eve of the fourth anniversary of the US-British-Australian invasion of oil-rich Iraq, the American Broadcasting Corporation released the results of a survey showing that 78% of Iraqis oppose the continuing presence of US and allied foreign troops in their country.
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Like Australia, Israel was established by settlers on the myth of an empty land. However, unlike here, expulsion rather than genocide has been the preferred method of removing the previous inhabitants.
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On his Alo Presidente radio program on March 5, Venezuela’s socialist President Hugo Chavez reiterated his call for the creation of a united party of all those who support the Bolivarian revolution that his government is leading — a process that is struggling to transform Venezuela to overcome underdevelopment and poverty.
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In an effort to attract investment, the Left Front (LF) government in the state of West Bengal has tried to drive thousands of petty landowners, poor cultivators and wage labourers out of their homes and off their fields, despite this depriving many of them of any means of livelihood. When they resisted, it sent in gun-toting police, killing more than 20 people on January 7 and March 14.
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Shortly before leaving to inspect what was once viewed as the US’s backyard, US President George Bush told a March 5 event organised by the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, “I want to talk about [an] important priority for our country, and that is helping our neighbours to the south of us build a better and productive life”. Explaining that he was embarking on a trip to Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico, Bush said: “These are countries that are part of a region that has made great strides toward freedom and prosperity. They’ve raised up new democracies, They’ve enhanced and undertaken fiscal policies that bring stability.
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Deriding the likely technical efficacy of the USAs ballistic National Missile Defense (NMD) system (a key element of which is already stationed in Britain at the Fylingdales radar base), Ming Campbell, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, asked Prime Minister Tony Blair on February 28: Do you accept that the system proposed is largely untried, indeed it has been described as firing a bullet in order to hit a bullet?
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Beijings drive since the early 1990s to pursue the restoration of capitalism in China received a boost on March 16, with the introduction of the controversial Property Law. Ironically, the law will take effect on October 1 exactly 58 years since the founding of the Peoples Republic of China. The law will safeguard the property of Chinas burgeoning capitalist class, giving private property the same protection as state-owned assets. This includes the large number of formerly state-owned assets converted to private property in sleazy and underhand deals.
Culture
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Communism: A Love Story
By Jeff Sparrow
Melbourne University Press 2007
336 pages, $26.95 -
Build it Now: Socialism for the Twenty-first Century
Monthly Review Press, 2006
US$14.95, 127 pages -
Human Cargo — Looks at the world of refugees and the people who sacrifice their lives to help them, as well as those who work to exploit them. SBS, Monday, April 2, 12.30am. Message Stick: Ripples from Wave Hill — The story of Australia's
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The Mack
Written by Sam Watson
Directed by Ian Brown
Judith Wright Centre for the Performing Arts, Brisbane
Until March 31
For tickets & information phone (07) 3872 9000 -
Build it Now: Socialism for the Twenty-first Century
By Michael A Lebowitz
Monthly Review Press, 2006
US$14.95, 127 pages