Issue 746

On April 1, the Sydney May Day Committee voted unanimously to accept a Unions NSW proposal to shift the traditional May Day march and rally from the first Sunday in May to Saturday May 3.

According to media reports, the federal ALP government intends to proceed with plans to extend uranium mining. The Uranium Industry Framework (UIF), which was set up by the previous government of John Howard and has never been disbanded, has been given a new lease of life. Resources minister Martin Ferguson was quoted in the April 2 Age newspaper as saying: “Some countries see nuclear as part of their commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”.

Canterbury-Bankstown public school teachers will demonstrate outside Premier Morris Iemma’s Lakemba office on April 10 to express their outrage at the state Labor government’s refusal to re-negotiate a state-wide schools staffing agreement.

The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) campaign to secure wage rises for construction workers across the country has attracted fierce criticism from the federal government, which is demanding the union apply “restraint” in order to keep a lid on inflation.

The Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) is spreading its net further throughout the building industry in an attempt to intimidate unions from standing up for the interests of their members.

A legal challenge by environmental group Blue Wedges to the federal government’s approval of the dredging of Port Phillip Bay was defeated in the Federal Court on March 28. Blue Wedges’ case was based on the slipshod manner in which environment minister Peter Garrett approved the project on February 6, a week after the giant dredging ship the Queen of the Netherlands arrived in Melbourne on January 29. The ship was commissioned by the Victorian government to dredge a new shipping channel in the bay.

In 2007, the 90th anniversary of the New South Wales general strike was ignored by mainstream politicians and media sources — a silence that contrasted markedly with the extensive coverage allotted to the 90th anniversary of the Gallipoli landing in 2005.

Chinese authorities had detained more than 1000 Tibetans by April 3 in the wake of protests and riots calling for self-determination that started on March 10, the BBC reported on April 4.

Dave Holmes is a veteran leader of the Democratic Socialist Perspective, a Marxist tendency in the Socialist Alliance. He co-wrote the pamphlet Change the System Not the Climate (Resistance Books, 2007) and will be participating in the upcoming Climate Change — Social Change Conference. Green Left Weekly’s Peter Boyle spoke to him about the key issues the conference needs to address.

On April 2, after much dialogue with the Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner government, agricultural producers suspended for 30 days a strike that began on March 11.

As the full severity of the mortgage crisis emerged over the past year, there were still defenders of the free-market system ready to counter every criticism of sub-prime mortgage peddlers and profit-hungry banks by pinning the blame on the real culprits.

Since Kosova declared independence on February 17, it has been recognised by only 33 countries, while most are “waiting and watching”.

Venezuela will not be the same after the formation of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) — whose founding congress concluded in March. Nor will Latin America.

Human rights group Rights Action, in a March 22 statement, said it was “extremely concerned about the current violations of fundamental human rights in Peru, particularly the right to freedom of opinion and expression and the right of peaceful assembly and association”.

According to an April 2 AFP article, Amnesty International have reported that at least 40 protesters in Burma, including seven Buddhist monks, have been jailed after secret trials over last year's pro-democracy marches. Officially, more than 3000

In 1910, German revolutionary socialist Clara Zetkin put a proposal to the International Socialist Women’s Conference that the date March 8 become a day dedicated to fighting for women’s rights.

The one thing that President Thabo Mbeki has to be given credit for is his consistency. Ever since he ascended to South Africa’s political throne, the would-be king has stuck doggedly to the fundamentals of a macro-neoliberalism that has underpinned this country’s developmental path for the last decade and more. It is a consistency that has, not surprisingly, greatly benefited the elite few and cost the majority dearly.

On March 24, 20 members of the Alexandra Vukuzenzele Crisis Committee (AVCC) were arrested after having re-occupied houses in Alexandra extension seven since March 20. They were released on free bail the next day, but were rearrested on March 28 for contempt of court.