LL:PR: New WTO 'product' - GATS washes away democracy
Friends of the Earth Melbourne Media Release New WTO 'Product': GATS Washing Away Democracy action: Victorian State Parliament Steps when: 12.30pm Sunday 22nd September photo opportunity On the steps of the Victorian State Parliament, Friends of the Earth trade activists will launch the WTO's new product: Corporate Strength GATS. Dressed as the faceless bureaucrats from the WTO, and assisted by the colourful GATS dancing boxes, the activists will 'scrub away democracy'. Sunday's action is a lead up to the massive 'S11' type protests expected in Sydney when the World Trade Organisation (WTO) meets from November 14-15. Sundays action also coincides with Friends of the Earth Australia's postcard campaign to raise awareness of WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). FoE Spokesperson Domenica Settle, outlined the importance of the campaign." GATS will have crucial implications for the daily lives and living environment of people all over the world. The provision of water, public health and education are just a few of the essential public services threatened by GATS." "GATS is very similar to the ill-fated Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), which was defeated by global community opposition in 1998. Like the MAI, GATS is being negotiated secretly by national governments, and is largely irreversible. Further, big business who are lobbying for GATS will be the prime beneficiaries." Sarah Kenny, FoE Spokesperson, went on, "The MAI taught us that people won't put up with government's negotiating away their rights and that of the environment, for the benefit of big business." To contact a FoE spokesperson regarding the protest on Sunday, call: Domenica Settle: 0421 874 838 Sarah Kenny : 0438 599 192 - help keep FoE active - give a tax-free donation - Friends of the Earth Melbourne (Australia) PO Box 222 Fitzroy 3065 312 Smith St Collingwood Phone: (03) 9419 8700 Fax: (03) 9416 2081 (International: tel. +61 (3) 9419 8700; fax +61 (3) 9416 2081) www.melbourne.foe.org.au --=_12820404==_-- .. -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
LL:DDN: Demand Aust govt intervention for Lesley McCulloch
Protest Indonesian military detention of Australian academic Demand Australian govt intervention Protest vigil, Thursday, Sept 26, 4.30-6.00pm Sydney Town Hall Organised by Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific Please circulate the sign-on statement below. If you wish to sign on, please email <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. Australian government must assist Australian academic arrested in Aceh We, the undersigned, request the Australian government step in to protect an Australian permanent resident who has been unlawfully arrested in Indonesia and facing serious charges. Under Indonesian law she can be detained for another 20 days. Lesley McCulloch, a Melbourne-based academic who has written extensively on Aceh, is currently being held in the Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam Police Headquarters in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital. She is facing draconian charges related to her alleged breach of visa conditions (five years jail or a fine of 25 million Rupiah or approximately $4000). McCulloch and a US nurse, Joy-Lee Sadler were detained in south Aceh on September 10. McCulloch told international media that she and Sadler were mistreated by the military and the two women were denied access to consular officials and lawyers for some days. Under Indonesian law, charges must be laid within 24 hours. In a note smuggled out, McCulloch said the pair were held for seven nights denied right of contact with embassy, abused by army, knife held at my throat ... sleep deprivation, denied medical assistance, intimidation, sexual harassment. On September 18, Acehnese authorities charged Lesley McCulloch and Joy-Lee Sadler, a United States nurse, for allegedly abusing their visa conditions under Article 40 of the immigration law. Indonesian authorities claim the women were on tourist visas and therefore misused them to conduct research about the conflict in Aceh. This is untrue. Westerners generally are given short visit passes, not tourist visas. Under the law, this type of visa allows for a wide range of activities. More worryingly, however, it seems that the Indonesian authorities are considering charging Lesley McCulloch for alleged espionage. The military alleges that the three women had information about the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), the organisation the Indonesian government has been fighting for some decades. In fact, McCulloch told ABC-JJJ that all the authorities found were some dated pictures and some interviews with Acehnese villagers on her laptop. A dangerous precedent will be set if the Indonesian authorities succeed in bringing charges against Lesley McCulloch. Already Jakarta has ruled Aceh off limits to international human rights organisations such as the Red Cross and Amnesty International and, as a result, the world knows little about Aceh. If concerned individuals are prevented from going there, the Indonesian government will have successfully thrown a blanket of silence over its war there. Jakarta made similar - but unsuccessful - attempts to prevent news of their war on the East Timor people. It took the brave actions of some individuals, including researchers, media and human rights advocates, to focus the international spotlight back on the legitimate struggle for a referendum by the East Timorese people. Indonesian authorities have made it clear that they want to make an example of the two foreigners. Police Commissioner Taufiq, Vice-Commander of the Security Restoration Operation Task-Force, was quoted in the press as saying: We will process them both in accordance with prevailing legal procedures so as there can be no impression that foreign citizens can freely carry out activities which violate the law. The Chairman of the Peoples Consultative Assembly, Amien Rais, has also spoken out in favor of making the charges stick (Antara news agency). The latest phase of the Acehnese peoples struggle for freedom dates from the 1980s when the former president General Suharto declared Aceh a Military Operations Zone (DOM). The militarisation of Aceh resulted in an explosion of support for the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) which had been founded in 1976 but until then had received little support. In 1998, Acehnese students joined the anti-Suharto movement. Later, frustrated at the lack of de-militarisation in the region, they launched the movement for a self-determination referendum. The Megawati Sukarnoputri government has taken an increasingly hard line against the movement for independence in Aceh. Some 60,000 police and military are stationed in Aceh. Human rights organisations estimate that some 2000 people died last year in the conflict, and the death toll this year is already around 1000. We, the undersigned, call on the Australian government to send an envoy to negotiate on Lesley McCullochs behalf and pressure Jakarta to immediately release her and Sadler unharmed. Further, we call on the Howard government to support the movement for democratic rights across Indonesia by ending milit
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
This week's stories: Private Trams Efficient At Collecting Corporate Welfare...Wealth Gap Not Too Bad On Paper...WEF Blockade Violence Never Happened...Support For War Decreases...Ruddock's Daughter Leaves Australia Over Immigration Policy...Free Market Drives People To Suicide... Yarra Trams, the private company that took over part of Melbourne's public transport system, was recently given $2.4 million of public money for improving reliablity and punctuality. On the same day, passengers on a tram were told to get off and get on the tram behind, allegedly to improve the company's statistics for punctuality. The Public Transport Users Group and the tram drivers' union both say that trams routinely refuse to stop for passengers or force passengers to get off so that they can get to depots on time, allowing the company to collect their bonus from the government. (Melbourne Times). The richest 20 percent of Australians have over half the wealth. This figure would be higher but for the fact that the figures count superannuation, even though people often can't access it and may lose it if, for example, the stock market crashes. (MX). Of the many protestors arrested at the Crown Casino blockade in 2000 and charged, only one has ended up being convicted of anything. Before, during and long after the protests, TV stations and newspapers ran many stories accusing protestors of engaging in large-scale violence. Protestors were accused of throwing metal bolts and bags of urine at police, spitting, of training to attack police, and so on. No one in the media has corrected any of these stories or apologised. (Herald Sun). A poll carried out for SBS has found that support for war with Iraq has dropped dramatically over the last few weeks. Approximately three out of ten people in Australia now favour war with Iraq. 'Hidden taxes' are becoming more common. They are often used as 'corporate welfare', to raise money to bail out companies. Examples are a tax on every packet of sugar (to rescue the sugar industry), one on milk (for the dairy industry), and a tax to raise money to insure doctors. The taxes are usually called levies, tarrifs, duties, or surcharges, rather than taxes. (the Age). The daughter of Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock says she is so against her father's policy on immigration that she has left Australia to do volunteer aid work. Kirsty Ruddock says that the government's immigration policies go against the values that Mr Ruddock taught her as a child. She said that balancing budgets does not give you an excuse not to treat people as human beings. She also said that Mr Ruddock should stop wearing his Amnesty International pin when he's talking about immigration. Mr Ruddock's wife Heather supported her daughter. She said that while Mr Ruddock was not a racist, some people support him "for what I see as the wrong reasons". Journalist Miranda Devine, who supports the government's policy on asylum seekers, wrote in her column that Ms Ruddock did not really oppose her father, but "appears to be suffering an ailment similar to Stockholm Syndrome" - a condition where people captured by terrorists come to identify with their captors. (ABC news website, the Australian, Herald Sun). The suicide rates in Britain and Australia surged whenever conservative governments were in power, according to medical research. University of Sydney researchers analysed suicide figures for New South Wales between 1901 and 1998, and compared them with the prevailing political regime. When conservatives ruled both the local state and national federal governments, men were 17 percent likelier to commit suicide, while women were 40 percent likelier to kill themselves. Middle-aged and older people were most at risk. The study is published in the Journal of Epidemiolgy and Community Health (JECH) -- a politically neutral research organ that is part of the British Medical Association (BMA) publishing stable. It took into account periods of drought, during which suicide rates were high among suffering rural families, and World War II, in which the rates fell. In an accompanying editorial, a team led by Mary Shaw, a doctor of social medicine at Bristol University in western England, said the Australian trend was reflected by government figures for England and Wales between 1901 and 2000. British suicide rates soared under Margaret Thatcher, who was prime minister from 1979-90, reaching 121 self-inflicted deaths per million, a tally only surpassed in the worst years of the 1930s Great Depression, when it was 135 deaths per million. The Australian authors, led by Richard Taylor, professor at the university's School of Public Health, say that conservatives traditionally have a less interventionist and more pro-market policy than Labor, which could cause alienation and a sense of exclusion. Both sides of politics have moved more and more towards pro-market policies,
LL:INFO: What's happening in and around the VWT
Female participants wanted for research project If you are a woman over 18 years old you are invited to take part in a La Trobe University study into the women's self-conceptions. The study is being conducted by Ms Maree Daly, Dr Helen Lindner and Dr Michael Halloran of the School of Psychological Science. The purpose of this study is to identify the terms most frequently used by women to describe themselves. The information provided by participants will be used to develop a more comprehensive questionnaire, designed to measure the characteristics of the self-concept. If you volunteer to participate, you will be asked to list up the 15 self-descriptive terms or phrases and to judge the extent to which you view each term/phrase as positive or negative. You will also be requested to provide some demographic information, including your age, and the ages of any children you have. Your participation in this study would be completely anonymous - no identifying information will be requested. If you'd like to participate in this study, just click the link below - you can complete the form online. http://www.latrobe.edu.au/psy/social/current/self.html Thanks for your help! Project Officer required at the VWT The Victorian Women's Trust is a philanthropic and advocacy body working to advance the staus of women in Victoria. The Trust seeks a project officer to manage its granting activity; conduct fundraising apperals; write edit and coordinate publications; and work on special projects as required. Highly developed writing ability, excellent organisational skills, computer literacy, people skills and a commitment to feminism are essential requirements for this position. For a position description call (03) 9642 0422 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] Applications close 04/10/02. -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
