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AAP; AFP; Reuters; AP; Ananova; MSNBC. 1 May 2002. May Day. SYDNEY, MOSCOW, MANILA, PARIS, BERLIN, LONDON, ROME, ZURICH, SEOUL, TEHRAN, TOKYO, KUALA LUMPUR, ATHENS, DAMASCUS, CALCUTTA, BARCELONA, ZAGREB, SANTIAGO, BOGOTA, HAVANA, CARACAS and BEIJING -- Police defended a mounted charge against demonstrators as a May Day protest in Sydney turned ugly today, with marbles and fireworks and "an incendiary device" thrown in the path of police horses. Wearing chequered-headscarves wrapped so that only their eyes showed, dozens of M1 protesters - including some wearing reflective vests reading 'NURSE' - showed their enmity to Israel. The Palestinian resistance and freeing the detained illegal immigrants were one and the same cause, said a masked teenage girl, who gave her name as 'Nailbomb.' "It's all about overthrowing the colonialism here and in Palestine. It's all about overthrowing the capitalism that is at the heart of it all, " she said. Victorian Trades Hall Council secretary Leigh Hubbard told 10,000 workers claims that May Day had had its day were false as workers faced the same issues now as they did when they first claimed the day as their own 120 years ago. "Things are as tough as they ever were," he said. "Bosses are still wanting to screw more and more productivity out of workers." Meanwhile, thousands of trade unionists have gathered in downtown Moscow to mark May Day. Organisers say at least 140,000 people had gathered behind St. Basil's Cathedral near Red Square by mid-morning. Another 100,000 met at a separate rally held by the Communist Party at Karl Marx Square in front of the Bolshoi Theatre, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported. Leading the communist rally, party leader Gennady Zyuganov said more young people are taking part in the May Day celebration than in recent years. The communists demanded an immediate government resignation. Elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, rallies were planned in about 500 cities and towns. In the former Communist stronghold of Voronezh, in southern Russia, demonstrators rallied in the city's central square by a statue of Lenin. They applauded as the slogans rang out, attacking the government and the "traitors to the fatherland," denouncing the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie," and joined in as the comrades shouted in unison: "down with the government." In Manila, about 500 leftists took to the streets Wednesday in protests against the government and U.S. military exercises. They focused on claims that thousands of U.S. troops currently in the Philippines are part of a plan by Washington to re-establish a permanent presence in the Southeast Asian country, which was formerly a U.S. colony and site of U.S. military bases. Leftist labor leader Elmer Labog said Wednesday's rally would be the start of a campaign to push for Arroyo's removal. "Workers are determined to launch a nationwide campaign to press for her urgent removal from Malacanang," Labog said in a statement. Labog, head of the May 1 Movement, the country's biggest leftist union, said Arroyo should be removed from office for "her sycophancy to foreign monopoly firms... through her promotion of globalization policies." Well over half a million marchers took to the streets in French cities in protest against Jean-Marie Le Pen as the extreme right presidential candidate rallied thousands of his own supporters in Paris. Chanting "N like Nazi, F like Fascist," demonstrators packed dozens of towns and cities in a massive show of peaceful opposition to Le Pen and his National Front party ahead of Sunday's runoff election against President Jacques Chirac. Trotskyists distributed tracts urging voters on Sunday to shun both Le Pen and Chirac, who is widely expected to be heading for a landslide victory. In Germany, one woman was fighting for her life after violence marking May Day erupted in two districts of Berlin. It began when a group of around 500 anarchists lit a large fire on a main street and then pelted the fire brigade with bottles and stones. Police used water cannons against the demonstrators and hundreds of riot police moved in. Dozens of people suffered facial cuts from hurled bottles after what was planned as a peaceful anti-Nazi demonstration. Whistles, whoops, and bongo beats rang out through central London on May Day as anti-capitalist protesters took to the streets. A crowd of several hundred embarked on what at times seemed more like a walking tour of the capital's tourist highlights, and although there were sporadic displays of tension, there was no sign of the feared violence by mid-afternoon. Probably the most threatening display came outside a branch of McDonalds' on Oxford St when several dozen police stood their ground in front of the restaurant as the protesters stopped to vent their spleen at the multinational. Grosvenor Square, home to the US Embassy, provided a rallying point for the marchers at lunchtime. Traffic backed up around the square as the small group fanned out across the road, playfully taunting drivers and dancing in front of their cars. In Italy, where unions are in a bitter fight with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government, half a million people rallied against proposed reforms they say will make it easier to sack workers. A sea of red flags and banners transformed a medieval piazza in Bologna, northern Italy, as some 60,000 labor union members, many clutching red carnations, attended a Labour Day rally with the slogan: "For peace, employment, the defense of rights and against terrorism." Police in the Swiss city of Zurich fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters. Protesters kept closer to the traditional spirit of the day in South Korea, where unionists vowed an "all-out struggle" for the rights of workers. In Tokyo, where almost record-high unemployment has helped undermine the popularity of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, 35,000 people demonstrated. No trouble was reported. In Tehran, some 5,000 Iranian workers took to the streets to protest against rising inflation and low salaries. The demonstrators, who included some 100 women, chanted "forget Palestine and think about us instead" and demanded pay raises and an end to temporary jobs. Among the demonstrators were clothing factory employees, who said they had not been paid in 14 months. Malaysian authorities arrested 17 people in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, after labor activists marched through the city center with banners calling for better rights for plantation workers. "May Day is an act of solidarity, recognized even by the state," organizers said. "The police action mocks fundamental rights of workers to assemble peacefully." More than 3,000 Indonesian workers were outnumbered by 7,000 police in Jakarta. At least 15 people were arrested. Hundreds rallied in the major cities of Bangladesh while things were quiet in Hanoi, where May Day was again eclipsed by the previous day's elebrations marking the communist victory in the Vietnam War. Greek protesters used May Day marches to denounce Israel's incursion into the West Bank, burning an effigy of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon outside the U.S. embassy in Athens. "Long live international solidarity to Palestine," read a red banner in Syndagma Square in central Athens, where thousands of demonstrators had gathered. In Greece and Turkey, protesters proclaimed solidarity with the Palestinians in their bloody struggle with Israel. "A thousand greetings to the Palestinian resistance," read a slogan at a rally in Istanbul, Turkey. A huge workers' rally in the Syrian capital Damascus quickly turned into a show of solidarity with the Palestinians. "Sharon you dog!" shouted some protesters. More than 2,000 sex workers stole the May Day spotlight in India's Marxist bastion of Calcutta on Wednesday, marching in a torchlight parade to demand legal status and social welfare benefits. Carrying colourful banners and flaming bamboo torches, the sex workers began their march at midnight from two separate red light areas and converged on a park near the University of Calcutta, shouting slogans for prostitution to be legalised. Radha Sardar, a spokeswoman for an non governmental organisation working in the red light districts of West Bengal state, said: "Sex workers are a part of society, and as such they are exercising their right to join the international working class in celebrating May Day." Around 75 demonstrations were held across Spain, where the centre-right government has proposed unpopular reforms to unemployment benefits. In the economically struggling former Yugoslav republic of Croatia, workers marched through the capital, Zagreb, to protest government plans to trim labor rights. Demonstrators burned a U.S. flag during a May Day rally in Santiago, Chile. Protesters dressed in paramilitary costumes protested against the US's 'Plan Colombia' in Colombia during a May Day march through the streets of Bogota. Meanwhile, President Fidel Castro told more than a million May Day demonstrators Wednesday that Latin American nations which cast a recent UN human rights vote against Cuba were "boot-lickers" of the United States. "We will not lower our flags before the hegemonic superpower that today dictates its orders to lackeys and boot-lickers" in Latin America. "This has been the largest demonstration in Cuba since the triumph of the revolution," in 1959, Castro told the crowd summoned to Havana's Revolution Square, packed with Cubans in red and white T-shirts waving red, white and blue Cuban flags. Under the gaze of a towering black-on-white image of revolutionary hero Ernesto "Che" Guevara on the facade of the interior ministry, the crowd chanted, listened and spilled out into several kilometers (miles) of side streets in the capital. Across the 14 provinces, seven million of Cuba's 11.2 million people were reported to have congregated to rail against the governments of Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay -- all of which supported the UN resolution that chided Cuba, on behalf -- say Cubans -- of the United States. Castro, clad in olive military fatigues, continued his recent tough talk against Latin American neighbors he slammed as "lackeys" and "boot-lickers" of the United States in a 45-minute speech. "They have plotted with the United States" to condemn Cuba when none of these nations "really is in any condition to criticize Cuba," Castro said. Plagued by "hunger, unemployment, corruption and social marginalization," Castro argued, "they are the political symptom of the fact the prtevailing political and economic system in Latin America is coming to an end." "They are the swan song of neoliberal society," an impassioned Castro said. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of chanting, flag-waving Venezuelans marched for President Hugo Chavez on Wednesday, the first large demonstrations since bloody street clashes last month sparked a failed coup. Chavez supporters - many wearing the red berets made fashionable by the army paratrooper-turned president - held banners labeling the president's opponents "fascist dictators." "I was in bed crying for two days when they kicked out Chavez. Then when he came back we were so happy," said Haydee Carriella, 55-year-old woman who came out to support the president. "The opposition was left like kings without crowns," she said. At the pro-Chavez march, many proudly wore red T-shirts reading "Bolivarian circles," as the neighborhood groups are known. "The only weapons we have are the lessons we give the poor - to help them fight for their rights," said Angel Yaraguin, a farmer, joining a stream of people marching toward the presidential palace. Meanwhile, Communist authorities in China, which once derided private enterprise as evil capitalism, showed just how much things had changed by canonizing entrepreneurs as "model workers," awarding special medals to successful businessmen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barry Stoller http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews Photos from around the world --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
