We're all adjusted to the corp. media's distortions by now,
Yours below is classic.
wcm
>
> for comparison, here is the story running on cnn.com
> http://www.cnn.com/2000/ASIANOW/australasia/09/13/australia.riots.ap/index.html
>
> The tone is quite different, describing the "ragtag" demonstrators
> whose numbers "briefly swelled" to 8000.  The suggestion is that by
> the end of the conference the demonstrations had clearly "failed."
>
> This is my favorite part:
>
> """
> Organizer Stephen Jolly claimed the protest had been a success, despite
> the violence and the failure of the group to stop delegates from entering
> the conference.
> """
>
> -Lyn
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) -- Two days of protests at the Asia-Pacific
> Economic Summit wound down Wednesday, as helmeted police carrying
> batons and shields outnumbered demonstrators objecting to the
> globalization of the world's economy.
>
> Demonstrator numbers, which had climbed as high as 8,000 at one point
> this week, dwindled after it became clear that they were unable to
> stop most delegates from entering the conference.
>
> On Monday, the conference's first day, the protesters had managed to
> stop about 200 of the nearly 900 delegates from entering Melbourne's
> Crown Casino. Police took stronger action early Tuesday, charging with
> batons waving through blockades to allow buses carrying delegates into
> the complex.
>
> By Wednesday, the meeting's last day, police in riot gear easily
> cleared a path through the blockade and formed a three-deep
> cordon. There were some minor scuffles, but no repeat of violent
> scenes from the first two days of the conference.
>
> In those skirmishes, at least 25 police and 30 protesters suffered
> various injuries, including cuts, bruises and broken bones, police
> said.
>
> A dozen protesters were arrested over the three days and charged with
> offenses from assaulting and hindering police to criminal damage.
>
> Inside the summit, delegates including Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill
> Gates discussed the recovery of Asia from its debilitating economic
> crises. Outside was a ragtag army of about 3,000 protesters, a group
> that briefly swelled Tuesday with the addition of about 5,000 labor
> unionists. The protesters have condemned corporations, saying they
> exploit workers in developing nations and have poor environmental
> standards.
>
> The conference, hosted by the privately funded, Switzerland-based
> World Economic Forum, was due to wrap up later Wednesday.
>
> The protests formally ended with thousands of demonstrators marching
> through downtown Melbourne, carrying signs and shouting
> anti-globalization slogans. Hundreds of police watched the march,
> which blocked traffic downtown but was peaceful -- even as it passed
> several McDonald's restaurants. The fast-food chain has been targeted
> by anti-globalization protests overseas.
>
> "We are hoping to ... take our message into the city and to emphasize
> that we are here standing up for the majority of the world's people while
> the people in the WEF represent the minority," Jackie Lynch said.
>
> Organizer Stephen Jolly claimed the protest had been a success, despite
> the violence and the failure of the group to stop delegates from entering
> the conference.
>
> "Most importantly we've turned the WEF meeting here in Melbourne
> over the last three days into a sideshow," Jolly said. "It's been what's
> happening outside the forum that's been on everybody's agenda."
>
> Busloads of protesters were planning to head to Sydney to lend support
> to Aboriginal protests at the Olympic Games. Aboriginal activists say
> they will stage demonstrations to highlight their plight as the most
> disadvantaged section of Australian society.
>
>
> >>>>> "Tony" == Tony Abdo <[log in to unmask]> writes:
>
>     Tony> S11 BLOCKADE A HUGE SUCCESS WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM PARTIALLY
>     Tony> SHUT DOWN A NEW GENERATION OF STRUGGLE By John Tully
>
>     Tony> MELBOURNE: The three-day blockade of the Asia-Pacific wing
>     Tony> of the World Economic Forum (WEF) here on September 11, 12
>     Tony> and 13 has been a stunning success. The blockade was
>     Tony> organised under the general slogans of "From Seattle to
>     Tony> Melbourne, fight corporate greed!" and "Stand up for global
>     Tony> justice and the environment!" The S11 Alliance, the umbrella
>     Tony> organisation behind the protest, largely kept its promise to
>     Tony> "Shut down the World Economic Forum".
>
>     Tony> As one tired, but elated, picket said in a spirit of
>     Tony> friendly internationalist rivalry: "Hey, Seattle!
>     Tony> Melbourne's right up there with you!"
>
>     Tony> It rained, on and off, throughout the three days, sometimes
>     Tony> torrentially, and a cold wind blew off Port Phillip Bay, but
>     Tony> neither that, nor the brutality of 2000 police and a small
>     Tony> army of security guards, could dampen the enthusiasm of the
>     Tony> tens of thousands of protestors. The Forum was effectively
>     Tony> blocked off for the duration, and its gatherings sparsely
>     Tony> attended. Small wonder that Australia's right-wing Prime
>     Tony> Minister, John Howard, looked more than usually petulant,
>     Tony> and Microsoft's Bill Gates looked glum. For their part, the
>     Tony> protestors enjoyed a huge range of bands, performers, giant
>     Tony> puppets and other entertainment that compensated to some
>     Tony> degree for the weather and police violence.
>
>     Tony> The Forum was held, most appropriately, in the ugly
>     Tony> skyscraper tower of the Crown Casino on the Yarra bank: an
>     Tony> apt symbol of the corporate cowboys and bribed intellectuals
>     Tony> who make up the WEF.
>
>     Tony> Crown's owners include Australia's richest man, Kerry
>     Tony> Packer, who recently lost US$34 million in a single weekend
>     Tony> at Las Vegas. Packer will be even further out of pocket
>     Tony> after S11. Crown was forced to suspend operations for the
>     Tony> duration of the conference, and admits to having lost $10
>     Tony> million in takings. But more than Crown's profits have taken
>     Tony> a hammering. Rumour has it that the WEF organisers are so
>     Tony> demoralised that they are considering holding future events
>     Tony> by teleconference rather than brave the wrath of a new
>     Tony> generation of anti-capitalist campaigners.
>
>     Tony> The success of the S11 blockade shows that the world-wide
>     Tony> upsurge of revulsion against capitalist globalisation that
>     Tony> began last year at Seattle is set to continue. Tens of
>     Tony> thousands of demonstrators sealed off the conference and
>     Tony> effectively disrupted its proceedings. All the entrances to
>     Tony> the conference venue were blocked by pickets. Ironically, a
>     Tony> four-metre high chain mesh fence erected by the police to
>     Tony> keep out protestors also served to keep out WEF guests and
>     Tony> personnel, and its metre-high concrete base was convenient
>     Tony> for the spray painted slogans of the demonstrators. A number
>     Tony> of high-ranking conservative political figures tried to run
>     Tony> the gauntlet but turned back.
>
>     Tony> The premier of West Australia, Charles Court, a virulent
>     Tony> opponent of Aboriginal land rights, was trapped for an hour
>     Tony> in his car by a group of Aborigines. "This is the way you've
>     Tony> had us for 200 years," jeered one burly Aborigine at the
>     Tony> clearly discomfited politician. "Now you know how it feels."
>
>     Tony> The S11 blockade culminated in a "victory march" around the
>     Tony> central business district, with around 15,000 protesters in
>     Tony> a jubilant mood. The blockaders had maintained the pickets
>     Tony> around the clock for more than three days, despite massive
>     Tony> police brutality and uncertain weather.
>
>     Tony> The march was a gigantic anti-capitalist carnival, with
>     Tony> drums, whistles and ear-splitting rap music. However, the
>     Tony> shouts of "shame!" from thousands of throats whenever the
>     Tony> police were spotted underlined the serious purpose of the
>     Tony> marchers and their determination not to be intimidated
>
>     Tony> A feature of the march was a gigantic banner inscribed with
>     Tony> messages of solidarity from individuals and groups
>     Tony> (including supporters of the Fourth International) who took
>     Tony> part in the blockade. The banner will go to Prague for the
>     Tony> S26 protests against the World Trade Organisation there: a
>     Tony> symbol of the anti-capitalist internationalism that has
>     Tony> taken root around the world since Seattle.
>
>     Tony> The march wound through the city streets past the offices
>     Tony> and shops of such transnational icons as Nike (closed for
>     Tony> the duration of S11), McDonalds, the banks, and the
>     Tony> Melbourne Stock Exchange; all heavily guarded by riot
>     Tony> police. True to his form as an unmitigated liar, deputy
>     Tony> police commissioner Neil O'Loughlin insisted that the
>     Tony> marchers would "ransack" the city. Like all of his other
>     Tony> ridiculous allegations, it proved baseless.
>
>     Tony> The blockade was organised by a loose coalition of forces,
>     Tony> including socialists, anarchists, trade unionists,
>     Tony> environmentalists, indigenous people, church groups and
>     Tony> campaigners against Third World debt. The umbrella group,
>     Tony> the S11 Alliance, was responsible for the coordination of
>     Tony> events, but members of a bewildering number of "affinity
>     Tony> groups" essentially did their own organising and came
>     Tony> together with others on the days of the protest. One of the
>     Tony> most inspiring aspects of the whole struggle was the
>     Tony> relative youth of many of the blockaders.
>
>     Tony> Many thousand high school students attended some or all of
>     Tony> the protests, giving fresh hope to older generations of
>     Tony> activists that the struggle for a better world will
>     Tony> continue. Although reactionary media and political figures
>     Tony> attacked S11 for "involving children", these young people
>     Tony> refused to be patronised and made it clear that they knew
>     Tony> what they were fighting for.
>
>     Tony> Government and media hypocrisy was shown when many of these
>     Tony> young people were bashed by the police – we hear no cries
>     Tony> of "child abuse" from moralising newspaper editors and
>     Tony> shyster politicians. Dozens were hospitalised after
>     Tony> unprovoked attacks by the notorious "Swat Squad", the
>     Tony> paramilitary tactical response unit. The police rode their
>     Tony> horses into crowds, savagely batoned passive demonstrators,
>     Tony> and even stamped on heads in a rampage of violence. In one
>     Tony> of the worst instances, the police bashed pickets early in
>     Tony> the morning when other gates were unattended. Several
>     Tony> hundred police suddenly erupted through the gates, catching
>     Tony> a much smaller number of pickets by surprise from the rear,
>     Tony> and flailing indiscriminately with their fists, boots and
>     Tony> three-foot-long batons. All in all, several hundred
>     Tony> demonstrators were injured, compared with a handful of
>     Tony> police. The attack followed demands by WEF officials the day
>     Tony> before that the police get tough with the pickets. In
>     Tony> another incident, the!    police turned fire hoses on
>     Tony> demonstrators around 3am, with temperatures around 4 degrees
>     Tony> Celsius, presumably in order to amuse themselves, as the
>     Tony> pickets were sitting down with their backs to the police.
>
>     Tony> There were also reports that police used capsicum gas spray
>     Tony> and many police officers removed their identification badges
>     Tony> before assaulting demonstrators.  In fact, the police were
>     Tony> sometimes so hyped up that they assaulted journalists and
>     Tony> damaged their cameras. There is also evidence of
>     Tony> plainclothes police acting as provocateurs. The writer's
>     Tony> son, a 15-year-old high school student witnessed the arrival
>     Tony> of a vanload of provocateurs at one picket. These
>     Tony> individuals threw tin cans and other objects at security
>     Tony> guards before being warned off by S11 organisers, luckily
>     Tony> before the police could arrive to "restore order".
>
>     Tony> It is to their credit that despite police violence, the
>     Tony> discipline of the protestors held. S11 had promised that the
>     Tony> protest would be non-violent, and the promise was
>     Tony> kept. Pickets would link arms or sit down in front of the
>     Tony> gates to prevent the so-called "delegates" from entering
>     Tony> Crown Casino, but they would not fight back.
>
>     Tony> Injured pickets were thus particularly incensed by the
>     Tony> attitude of the Victorian state premier, Steve Bracks, who
>     Tony> praised police for their conduct whilst condemning the
>     Tony> alleged violence of the pickets. Bracks is a member of the
>     Tony> Australian Labor Party, but his claims to have any
>     Tony> meaningful links with organised labour are extremely
>     Tony> tenuous. He attended the WEF conference at Davos in
>     Tony> Switzerland early this year, and flew back to break a strike
>     Tony> of electricity workers. He brought enormous pressure to bear
>     Tony> on the leadership of the trade unions to boycott the S11
>     Tony> blockade, but was only partially successful. One of the
>     Tony> highlights of the three days was a series of !  marches on
>     Tony> the Casino by thousands of construction and metal workers.
>
>     Tony> Predictably, the bourgeois media attempted to whip up
>     Tony> hysteria in the weeks leading up to S11. They told and
>     Tony> retold the big lie that demonstrators had been responsible
>     Tony> for the violence last year's demonstrations against the
>     Tony> World Trade Organisation in Seattle. The implication was
>     Tony> that the same would happen in Melbourne. Rupert Murdoch's
>     Tony> local rag, the Herald-Sun, carried screaming headlines just
>     Tony> prior to S11, announcing: "POLICE: WE'RE READY FOR S11
>     Tony> VIOLENCE".  Several hundred S11 supporters retaliated by
>     Tony> briefly occupying the newspaper offices. The media also
>     Tony> played up government threats to re-open old asylums and
>     Tony> dickensian police cells to ensure that there was sufficient
>     Tony> space to house arrested demonstrators.
>
>     Tony> Yet, for all of this hysterical hype, the demonstrators
>     Tony> remained uncooperatively non-violent and the police were
>     Tony> able to arrest only 12 people. The non-violent tactics were
>     Tony> very successful, however.  Hundreds of the so-called
>     Tony> "delegates" were unable to get into the conference. Many
>     Tony> others, who had arrived earlier, were unable to leave the
>     Tony> premises except by helicopter and attendance at meetings was
>     Tony> well-down, with TV coverage showing dispirited clumps of
>     Tony> suits in echoing halls.
>
>     Tony> One news clip showed dejected groups of well-heeled
>     Tony> individuals trudging through a waterlogged field to their
>     Tony> limousines after being evacuated from the Crown Tower by
>     Tony> helicopter. It must have rankled for these rich and powerful
>     Tony> individuals to have to creep about under massive police
>     Tony> protection, bleating about being "held to ransom by
>     Tony> unrepresentative minorities".
>
>     Tony> In fact, it is organisations such as the WEF which are the
>     Tony> real minorities, and which act against the interests of the
>     Tony> overwhelming majority of people on the planet. Although
>     Tony> Forum bigwig Claude Smadja claimed that the WEF has no real
>     Tony> power, it is in fact it is an immensely powerful rich man's
>     Tony> club. The WEF is made up of representatives of the richest
>     Tony> and most powerful groups in the world. Its members include
>     Tony> the CEOs of the top 1000 transnational corporations, besides
>     Tony> influential political leaders, tame academics and gurus of
>     Tony> neoliberalism, along with representatives of the World Bank,
>     Tony> the World Trade Organisation, the Asian Development Bank,
>     Tony> and the IMF. It was founded in 1971 by Klaus Schwab as the
>     Tony> European Management Forum, but was renamed in 1987 "to
>     Tony> reflect its increasingly global outlook", according to WEF
>     Tony> literature.  The WEF's members are divided into a number of
>     Tony> areas: media, mining, textiles, pulp and paper, and so
>     Tony> on. They include corporations such as Exxon, Chase M!
>     Tony> anhattan Corp, De Beers Mining, Rio Tinto, Toyota, Western
>     Tony> Mining Corporation, Turner International, Royal Dutch Shell,
>     Tony> Microsoft, McDonalds, Monsanto, Boeing and Nike. Readers
>     Tony> will be aware of the anti-social, even criminal activities
>     Tony> of many of these corporations.
>
>     Tony> The WEF meets annually at the Swiss alpine resort town of
>     Tony> Davos. There, amidst the kind of luxury that would seem like
>     Tony> science fiction to the huge mass of the dispossessed and the
>     Tony> hungry of the world, the WEF makes decisions which affect
>     Tony> every citizen of the planet: and without being elected by,
>     Tony> or accountable to, anyone save the shareholders, the
>     Tony> corporations and the mega-rich. Contrary to the disingenuous
>     Tony> claims of Claude Smadja, the WEF admits that its annual
>     Tony> Davos meeting is "now considered the global summit which
>     Tony> defines the political, economic and business agenda for the
>     Tony> year." WEF literature also admits that the organisation
>     Tony> spurred the launch of the Uruguay Round which led to the
>     Tony> replacement of GATT by the World Trade Organisation in
>     Tony> 1995. It is also unquestionable that the WEF is instrumental
>     Tony> in setting the agenda of the WTO Millennium Round. This
>     Tony> latter round of talks aims to renegotiate the General
>     Tony> Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) "with a view to
>     Tony> achieving a p!  rogressively higher level of liberalisation"
>     Tony> of the burgeoning service sector.  The WEF's agenda, as the
>     Tony> S11 Alliance has pointed out, is: "massive global poverty;
>     Tony> ever-increasing inequalities between rich and poor; attacks
>     Tony> on workers' wages, conditions, occupational health and
>     Tony> safety standards; and widespread environmental and human
>     Tony> rights abuses." It is an agenda of unchecked corporate power
>     Tony> that quite literally means death for the poorest people on
>     Tony> the planet. It means the plundering of the assets of whole
>     Tony> peoples in the name of privatisation and deregulation.  It
>     Tony> means a winding back of human progress in education and
>     Tony> health care for billions of people.
>
>     Tony> Far from capitalist globalisation being a "rising tide that
>     Tony> will lift all boats", it will sink those of the poor and
>     Tony> fill those of the rich with more booty than the pirate and
>     Tony> slave ships of old. Yet, as the protests in Seattle, Davos,
>     Tony> Washington DC, and now Melbourne show, they face stiffening
>     Tony> resistance from workers, students, farmers,
>     Tony> environmentalists and many others. This movement is broad,
>     Tony> pluralist, democratic, anti-capitalist and internationalist
>     Tony> in inspiration. It will prove wrong those bourgeois
>     Tony> ideologues such as Francis Fukuyama who proclaimed
>     Tony> free-market capitalism as "the end of history". The new
>     Tony> generation coming into struggle will not settle for such
>     Tony> hollow clichés, but will fight for a better world.
>
>     Tony> Margaret Thatcher be warned: there is an alternative!
>