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EAST TIMOR: Debate begins on transition process

BY VANYA TANAJA DILI — Public hearings held here January 14-24 to discuss the timetable for East Timor's transition to independence have revealed sharply differing views among East Timorese leaders over the political mechanisms to be used to

INDONESIA: Youth mobilise against Suharto forces

BY KERRYN WILLIAMS On January 30 more than 500 high school students and 300 urban poor youth, with the help of 15 buses, mobilised in Jakarta for the "Anti-New Order Tour". Organised by the Popular Youth Movement (GPK) and Jabotabek High School

Free traders to lure students

BY JODY BETZIEN MELBOURNE — Appearing alongside World Trade Organisation director-general Mike Moore during his February 6 visit here, federal trade minister Mark Vaile has announced a new government program to convince school students that "free

Torquay music festival threatened

BY TRISHA REIMERS GEELONG — So heated were the different opinions that police had to be stationed at a February 6 meeting of 200 people to discuss the future of the Offshore Music Festival, which has been a regular occurence in the seaside town

Gore Vidal: The failure of liberal leftism

REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON Gore Vidal: A BiographyBy Fred KaplanBloomsbury, 2000850 pp, $24.95 (pb) "Listen, you queer! Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in your goddam face and you'll stay plastered!" No, this scintillating oratory is

On the box

Actively Radical TV — Sydney community television's progressive current affairs producers tackle the hard issues from the activist's point of view. CTS Sydney (UHF 31), every Sunday, 9-11pm. Ph 9565 5522. Access News — Melbourne community TV,

Activists score a victory in the Otways

BY DAVID HARRIS BAMBRA — One of the "lungs" of Victoria, the Otway Ranges, is at a crossroads as the destructive practice of clear-fell logging is now cutting into irreplaceable bio-diverse native forests. This is at the expense of other forest

SOUTH AFRICA: 'The aunties' revolt'

BY RICHARD PITHOUSE DURBAN — Lotus Park is a ghetto with a view. The unpainted, cracked, leaking blocks of flats sit on a hill in Isipingo, south of Durban. In the valley, you can seen the houses of the rich and, along the freeway, you can

INDONESIA: Golkar blames PRD for office burnings

BY MAX LANE Golkar chairperson Akbar Tanjung has accused the People's Democratic Party and two student activist organisations, Forkot and Jarkot, of being behind the burning down of its offices throughout East Java. Jakarta's main daily, Kompas,

Should union leaders 'bridge the divide'?

BY MELANIE SJOBERG Rubbing shoulders with the 3200 corporate and political heavyweights at the World Economic Forum summit in Davos, Switzerland, was one lone Australian trade union official: ACTU president Sharan Burrow. Maybe she thought it was a

The myth of Aboriginal 'welfare dependency'

BY ALISON DELLIT In 1788, Captain James Cook justified land theft from Aborigines on the basis that they "set no value upon anything" and were incapable of "improving their lot". In 2000, Prime Minister John Howard justified further attacks on

BHP tightens the screws on workers

BY DANIEL NEWMAN & BRONWYN POWELL WOLLONGONG — At a meeting at Brandon Park on February 5, 3000 BHP Port Kembla steelworkers voted for an immediate 24-hour strike, a series of rolling stoppages and called for a national steel union