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The ABC reports that anti-World Trade Organisation activists say they have been vindicated by an official investigation into two protest web sites.

The Australian Broadcasting Authority has given the Melbourne Indymedia and S11 sites the all-clear after complaints they were inciting violence against police.

Firstly, the NSW police minister asked the federal government to censor the site (and two others; noWTO and s11 , neither of which host any violent content) under the existing Australian internet censorship legislation. However, the Australian Broadcast Authority did not find anything illegal with the sites, and did not censor them. So the government has decided this is not good enough and wants tougher legislation to block dissent.

As for melbourne indymedia, the main post in question was one which does suggest to people different ways of dealing with police at protests. Being open publishing, the comment is the persons own view. Whether or not one agrees with the comment, it is important to have a discussion about it, and that is exactly what happened; a heated discussion follows the original post.

People always flail their arms about `protest being OK as long as it is within the law.' But what if the law is unjust? Are people not entitled to defend themselves against a fascist police force?

What I find particularly ironic is that the Australian Labor Party, founded on the ideals of civil disobedience (unions et al) are now the ones who are trying to quell any dissent whatsoever.

The (corporate owned) goverment is afraid of revolution. They already tried to ban this and this and this at the state level, which failed, now they are trying at federal level.

someone said something about a group called s11 that are against the global economy or something similar, i have to make a notice that their website is up again for those who are interested.

s11

One of the first things that struck me as a I watched the CNN coverage was the date - September 11th.

In Australia there was a very large protest in Melbourne called S11 on September 11th, 2000.

It was one of the global anti-WTO protests -- this one coincided with the Global Economic Forum, and it's stated aim was to disrupt the meeting (mission accomplished, AFAIK). I'm not sure whether S11 took place in other places in the world.

The "official" site is here.

Frankly I think it's probably just a co-incidence. The chief target (World Trade Center) suits the politics, but taking the lives of two planeloads of innocent people (condolences where appropriate -- I can't think of anything more horrible) does not.

grib.

When I went to S11, one of the speakers at the Sunday protest was Dr Vandana Shiva who spoke about this "new" Golden Rice. (She an Indian Eco-Feminist.) The amount of Vitamin A is delivers to the body is much, much smaller then what other forms of food can provide.

In short, it was a con by the company who developed the product to use the WTO and health reasons to take over the market of locally grown rice for a profit.

You can read all about it here.

What I find funny is that on S11's site they actually thank Nike for the extra traffic. This is what is says...


NIKE DISCLAIMER: This site's administrators have no idea how or why the nike.com page was redirected to s11.org and do not condone this action, however we do thank nike for the extra hits.