MayDay 2007, Part 5: Asia & Oceania

Well, I’ve painted myself into a corner here. MayDay is now upon us. we’re well into the 30th in precisely the part of the world that I haven’t covered yet. Not too bright there, Mr. Lauritz the Agitator. Try to remember where the international dateline is in the future, you Yankee dolt! But, I have managed to collect some links so I have put together some notes and will beat the clock!

Listen up bloggers, your first baby step onto the stage of world politics and revolution is at hand!. MayDay in FIJI this year is, as is all too often the case in altogether too many places, a direct challenge by civil society to the military junta that took power in yet another coup last year. What makes Fiji Mayday 2007 so unique, almost certainly a first, is that it is in large part being led, organized and driven by bloggers. Bloggers? Yes, bloggers! The military regime is deeply unpopular at all levels of Fijian society, but civil society and public organization has been shattered and left in fear by the repeated military coups and social turmoil of the past 20 years. Thus, no organized force has come forward to initiate a challenge to the latest junta. Fijian bloggers are hoping to encourage and energize the remaining social forces, such as the nurses union and other public sector workers to take a more open and actively oppositional stan. The idea is that if the national sickout organized by the bloggers is seen to have been effective, the nurses union and others will be able to act with confidence of broad social support. Forward to the Blog Revolution, comrades, The Agitator salutes you!

Meanwhile in Iran, this MayDay sees the Islamic republic convulsed by a teachers’ strike now over two months old, and which may now be triggering the impeachment of the Education Minister consequent to the arrest of the General Secretary of the Teachers Union, Mr. Ali Akhbar Baghani, who was literally arrested in his classroom while conducting an exam. Also arrested earlier this month was reknowned labor activist Mahmood Salehi. Salehi is probably best known for his work organizing MayDay events on behalf of the unions and the communist parties in Iran, so the political timing of his arrest is obvoius on multiple counts.

On the other end of the labor activist incarceration spectrum, Filipino workers, unionists and socialists are planning to make one of the key demands of their Manila MayDay Rally the release of ailing legendary labor leader and politician Crispin “Ka Bel” Beltran. While some hold out hope that the government of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo will release the 74-year-old Beltran on or before MayDay as a gesture of social peace, it has to be noted that the regime was humiliated by Ka Bel’s ability to get a wage increase law passed through the Filipino House of Representatives from his prison hospital bed in December of 2006.

In the merry old land of Oz, some Australian Labour Party politicians show signs of backing away from what had been their rhetorical adamant opposition to PM Howard’s precarity-creating “Work Choices” program. To heap insult onto injury, a new study by the Evatt Foundation indicates that the new labor law introduced in the Peoples Republic of China this year over the objection of western corporate interests actually provides Chinese workers with more rights and protections than Australian workers have under “Work Choices”. So B&S, g’day to flexploitation, because the ALP is tossing you under the motorcoach. Meanwhile the genteel and sophisticated Aussie press is shrieking that Rudd’s plan for maternity benefits would create (horror of horrors!) a “safety net.” Well we certainly can’t have that!

Other Asia/Oceania MayDay Rallies

Tokyo

Ankara

Istanbul

Auckland

Wellington

Jakarta

Lampung