STOP MAI

MEDIA RELEASE -for immediate release, 4 May, 2000 Authorised by the STOP-MAI Campaign Coalition (WA) Website http://members.iinet.net.au/~jenks/fair.html Affiliated with the Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network (AFTInet) and with the World Social Forum (WSF)

 

May Day to raise awareness of the downside of global corporate control

Australia's growing army of anti-globalisation campaigners has been steeled into increased determination by media reports emphasising clashes with police in Seattle, Washington, London, Melbourne and Sydney--reports which downplayed the world movement's intolerance of violence, and which ignored the valid objects of protest.

This year's May Day rally and March in Fremantle on Sunday (7 May) will therefore be the biggest for many years, and will have an international flavour. Some of the protest messages will recall the Seattle failures of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and will foreshadow a major Australia-wide attack on the September meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) at the Crown Casino in Melbourne.

Serious problems with the 'New World Order' of corporate dominance include:

• exposure of weak and developing economies to speculative investment
• support for undemocratic and dictatorial governments, for "stability"
• strengthening of transnational capital at the expense of low income earners
• erosion of social and environmental regulation to encourage investment
• disappearance of public-sector utilities, health services and education
• ongoing job losses coupled with rising costs and falling standards of living
• gross inequity, evidenced by the fact that the world's 200 richest people have more than the combined income of 41% of the world's population

The StopMAI coalition supports the popular international goal of closing down the International Monetary Fund (IMF) September meeting in Prague, as well as showing the WEF's Melbourne delegates that Australians are totally fed up with neoliberalism.

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PHONE CONTACTS: Brian Jenkins +61 8 9528 1864; Dion Giles 0411 745 538