BY ALISON DELLIT
"So why should I be here protesting, when the nuclear bomb was dropped on Hiroshima 41 years before I was born?", Duncun Meerding asked the 130 protesters gathered in Hobart on August 9. "I may not have lived through that war, but the wars I know are unjust and greedy. These are the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Like hundreds of other Australians — 500 in Melbourne, 4-500 in Sydney, 200 in Brisbane (on August 8), 100 in Perth and 50 in Canberra — Meerding protested on the anniversary of the 1945 nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US government, pointing out how little had changed in a world still marked by Washington's military aggression.
Protesters condemned the US-British occupation of Iraq. "[The occupation] is about privatising the Middle East and providing a springboard for further military action", anti-bases activist Denis Doherty told the Sydney rally.
The use of depleted uranium, and the spread of nuclear weapons, was also a focus of activists around the country, as was Israel's war on Palestine. Sydney Palestinian activist Rihab Charida reminded the crowd that "we cannot accept war and occupation dressed up as peace. Real peace requires justice."
A key concern was summed up the Brisbane leaflet: "How do we prevent the Australian government from being involved in an open-ended series of pre-emptive military actions and confrontations?"
"We need to keep taking to the streets", David Glanz from the Cancun Solidarity Committee told the Melbourne protest. In Perth, the Socialist Alliance's Max Lane also argued that it was possible to stop the US. "We can only win a safe, just world by acting in solidarity with the Third World", he emphasised.
From Green Left Weekly, August 13, 2003.
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