There are scarcely words strong enough to properly condemn the brutal actions of the Victoria Police against S11 protesters, for these were acts of savagery the like of which this country has rarely seen.
There was a distinct pattern to police
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G'day Straight off I need to apologise. Regular visitors and the occasional tourist to this column have come to expect a certain sarcasm emanating from this printed space. I am what is often referred to locally as a professional knocker. That
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Thousands of activists from the mass social movements of the last three decades joined with younger activists in a massive show of strength at the S11 blockade. It was a profoundly empowering event that revitalised faith in "people's
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"... and ain't i a woman?" last week said that the National Council of Women of Australia, the YWCA and the Australian Federation of Business and Professional Women would each receive $300,000 in funding from the Office of the Status of Women. This
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If you relied on media like the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald for coverage of the S11 protests, you wouldn't have seen images like these (both papers are members of the WEF). The blockaders stood firm against assaults by police and the
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"John Howard sounded nervous when he rose to speak", Michelle Grattan began her Sydney Morning Herald commentary on the prime minister's speech to the United Nations Millennium Summit on September 7. She went on to point out that the
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On the morning of Friday, September 8, a railway carriage filled with activists left Adelaide for Melbourne to join the September 11-13 protests against the World Economic Forum. The carriage was organised by John Short, of the
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Federal employment minister Tony Abbott has come to the defence of Centacare, the Catholic Church's government-funded employment agency, arguing that it should be able to sack employees it discovers are homosexuals. Abbott's
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S11 protests I am a long-time Labor voter and a delegate of the Community and Public Sector Union at my workplace. Last weekend I travelled to Melbourne to visit my family, and to attend the non-violent protest against the World Economic Forum.
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Last week in 鶹ý Weekly, I outlined figures which indicate that the Australian public has so far lost around $13 billion to private capitalists through the privatisation of half of Telstra. This is the case even though shares in the second
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Queensland Premier Peter Beattie created a media furore on August 20 when he called for an inquiry into the impact of the GST on petrol price rises. With petrol prices having leapt to over $1 a litre in places, Beattie's comments
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MELBOURNE — World Economic Forum officials threatened to "pack up and go home" at the end of the summit's first day on September 11 if police could not ensure more delegates were brought into the conference on time on September 12,
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NSW Premier Bob Carr addressed the sustainability session at the World Economic Forum in Melbourne on September 13, calling for sustainable economic development to save the environment. Citing global warming as one of his fears, he also directed
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Big still eats small There's an internet saying, On the internet, no-one knows you're a dog. The same idea comes through in a series of IBM commercials targeted at small businesses thinking about getting on to the internet. This
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Get the message? We must stop succumbing to the rod's guileFor, like strong liquorIt quickly stupefies society's childLured and procuredWhile blindly pursuing cultural bileGrowing up insecureAs grown-up hypocrisies pileJuveniles like
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MELBOURNE — The Media, Arts and Entertainment Alliance (MEAA) announced on September 14 that it would support its members taking legal action against the Victoria Police for its use of violent tactics during the September 11-13
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For a complete record of the three-day S11 protests against the World Economic Forum in Melbourne, check out 鶹ý Weekly's Global Action web site,. The site contains not only a comprehensive daily
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MELBOURNE — The S11 protesters received messages of solidarity with their actions from the following groups and individuals: People's Democratic Party, PRD of Indonesia Labour Party Pakistan All Pakistan Para Medical Staff Federation All
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SYDNEY — One Nation NSW upper house member David Oldfield and One Nation's former national director David Ettridge (no longer a One Nation member) have given the NSW Labor and federal Coalition governments an excuse to place further
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MELBOURNE — At the end, those blockading the World Economic Forum were exhausted and euphoric, in equal measure, but with only a taste for the magnitude of what they'd achieved. At S11, the veil which separates the people from the
News
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GEELONG — A picketing worker at the Godfrey Hirst factory here had his ankle crushed when a manager reversed a forklift through a crowd of protesters on September 13. Members of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and the
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SYDNEY — The next step here in the campaign for refugee rights is the September 23 rally to be held through the streets of Parramatta. The march, organised by the Refugee Action Collective (RAC), is using the Olympic period to
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PERTH — There was so much community support for the S11 demonstration here that about 300 people joined the protest along the march route. The breadth of support was also reflected in the topics covered by speakers. Roberto
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MELBOURNE — Left-wing students have won a landslide victory in elections for control of the Melbourne University Student Union, held here September 4-8. The Left Focus ticket won all office-bearer positions and won a majority on
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SYDNEY — Seven hundred people turned out to support indigenous rights in protests coinciding with the September 15 opening ceremony of the Olympic Games — but in two seperate venues. A rift between the Aboriginal Tent Embassy
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NEWCASTLE — Sixty people staged a picket outside a McDonald's restaurant on King Street here on September 11, in solidarity with S11 protesters blockading the World Economic Forum in Melbourne. While passers-by and many
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BY SIMON BUTLER & BRONWEN BEECHEY Ten Iraqi asylum seekers, charged with inciting the desperate riots at the Woomera detention centre in August, are now being systematically denied even their most basic rights as prisoners, according to lawyers
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SYDNEY — Pressure on Nike has been stepped up by an "Alternative Opening Ceremony" organised by NikeWatch, which challenged the sportswear giant to live up to the "Olympic ideal of human dignity". The September 11 ceremony, in
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Enviable "Jodee [Rich], Bradley [Keeling] and their team have achieved enviable results in a very short time ..." One.Tel chairperson John Greaves, defending bonuses of $6.9 million each to the joint managing directors in a year in which the
Analysis
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The S11 protests against the World Economic Forum were a triumph for the Australian left, writes Susan Price. But it was a tough job to put them together and took enormous efforts of many different people from many different backgrounds.
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Nike is the world market leader in sports shoes. Its profits amounted to US$965 million in 1999. This huge figure in part flows from the sales generated from the vast volume of advertising Nike subjects the planet to. But mostly,
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The S11 blockade of the World Economic Forum meeting was an important opportunity for the parties of the left in Australia.
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Sodexho Alliance, a multinational based in France, and its Australian division, Sodexho Australia, won the contract to cater for several Olympic venues Stadium Australia, the Olympic village (for sponsors and the media) and the Sydney Opera
World
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MOSCOW — August was a fateful month for the Russian authorities. There was a terrorist explosion in Pushkin Square, then the sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk, and, on August 27, the Ostankino television tower caught fire. What happened to the
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The Republican and Democratic conventions are now over with absolutely no surprises or revelations to record. George W. Bush and Albert Gore received their party's endorsement, as predicted months ago. The two are now touring the country with their
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Prime Minister John Howard's Coalition government has released foreign affairs documents relating to the 1974-76 period in a cynical ploy to use Australian people's outrage at the 1975 invasion and occupation of East Timor to score points against the
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The United Nations Millennium Summit has been marked by the frequent expression of noble sentiments and lofty goals. Fewer have been the concrete measures proposed to reach those goals, and even fewer the leaders willing to point the finger at those
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More than 150 deaths around the world have been linked to defective Firestone tyres fitted to Ford motor vehicles. The deadly problem involves the tread separating from the tyre. According to Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, writing in their
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MANILA — "Fight for ILO 167!" was the main chant taken up by some 5000 building workers here on September 10 as they marched to the Cultural Centre near the Manila Bay foreshore. The march was to demand the immediate implementation by the
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NEW YORK — Thousands of people honoured Cuban President Fidel Castro in Harlem during a rally in solidarity with the island organised by the Committee to Welcome the Cuban Delegation to the Millennium Summit. The packed meeting, described by
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A planned hydroelectric dam project in south-eastern Turkey will displace up to 78,000 people if international lending agencies and the British government provide financial support, according to a report leaked to British media. According to the
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The environmental groups the Mineral Policy Institute, Greenpeace, Basel Action Network (BAN), Earthlife and GroundWork have learned that Australia has exported hazardous wastes to South Africa in defiance of a global ban against such exports. The
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In this excerpt from the first Frantz Fanon Memorial Lecture, delivered on August 17 at the University of Durban-Westville School of Governance, PATRICK BOND debates Pretoria's global strategies, tactics and alliances. In a formidable speech on
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A National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) spectrometer has detected an Antarctic ozone hole three times larger than the land mass of the United States, the largest such hole ever observed. The hole expanded to a record size of
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The United Nations has selected Havana, the capital of Cuba, to host next year's World Environment Day. The choice acknowledges revolutionary Cuba's outstanding achievements in the protection of the environment. The announcement was made on
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When news of the killings in West Timor of workers from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) by pro-Jakarta militia reached Prime Minister John Howard, he acted quickly to show support for the Indonesian government
Culture
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REVIEW BY SIMON BUTLER Deadly Deceits: My 25 years in the CIABy Ralph McGeheeOcean Press, Melbourne.231pp. $26.95 (pb) "My view, backed by 25 years of experience is, quite simply, that the CIA is the covert action arm of the Presidency. Most of
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SYDNEY — This exhibition of Chris Wyatt's paintings focused on the massacre of Aborigines at Myall Creek in NSW in 1838 is the artist's "contribution to the reconciliation debate and to reaching a clearer understanding of the unacceptable situation
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The article "A song for an apology" in last week's 鶹ý Weekly contains an editing error in stating that Triple J radio had excluded the previous Simon Hunt (Pauline Pantsdown) song "I Don't Like It" from its play list. It is only Simon's new
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"Quake" is a phenomenally popular shoot 'em up computer game. The designers included the capability for users to create "mods" or modified versions of the game. "Political Arena" is a satirical mod written specifically for the US
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Sam's Big RoosterThe Savoy-Doucet Cajun BandArhoolie records<; REVIEW BY BILL NEVINS Cajun music is people's music at its deepest. It is the songs and dances of survivors of colonial wars, religious and class
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There are not too many working-class heroes who are known as the "Boss". Bruce Springsteen's fans hang out everywhere from cyber-shrines and academic conferences to battered bars on the wrong side of town. And while a bikie