Issue 423

BY JON SINGER The Australia Institute released a report on September 25 that shows nearly half of the federal government's $2.3 billion private health insurance rebate went to the top third of income earners, while the bottom third received just

BY GEORGINA DAVIES & SUE BOLAND MELBOURNE — Just as Melbourne service stations were beginning to run out of petrol on September 26, Labor Premier Steve Bracks' state government stepped in and persuaded truck drivers to end their 48-hour blockade

BY TIM STEWART & SUE BOLAND BRISBANE — While the Transport Workers Union was restricted from officially endorsing the blockades of oil refineries here and in Melbourne for fear of legal action, the union's national president and Queensland state

BY ROBERTO JORQUERA FREMANTLE — "This ceremony of remembrance was for all peoples who have died in police and prison custody and police pursuits", WA Deaths in Custody Watch Committee chairperson Murray Jones told the 60 people who gathered for

Brownbuilt workers locked out MELBOURNE — Australian Manufacturing Workers Union members employed by Brownbuilt, which makes filing cabinets and other furniture, are picketing the company's plant in Oakleigh South after being locked out on

BY DANIEL KELLY SYDNEY — Dave Hauser was sacked from his job as a wharfie with P&O here in March, for allegedly reading a newspaper on the job. A delegate for the Maritime Union of Australia, Hauser was one of several to be sacked in the past

The Central Intelligence Agency admitted for the first time on September 20 that a high-ranking Nazi general placed his spy ring at the disposal of the US government during the early days of the Cold War. A press release by the US National Archives

PHNOM PENH — The ancestor holiday (Ph'chum Benn) is coming near, and with it, the former Khmer Rouge leaders, Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith, and their associate, Long Norin, will likely be visiting the Svay Por Pe monastery in Phnom Penh, which they

Nothing can highlight more the failure of the Indonesian government to rein in the pro-Jakarta militias operating in West Timor than the sham weapons handover that began on September 22. The first three-day "persuasive" phase of the handover has been

UNITED STATES: Too much corporate power? SAN FRANCISCO — Working people — workers, small farmers and those called "middle-income families" — know in their guts corporations have too much power. The September 11 Business Week confirmed it.

PRAGUE — This city was deliberately chosen as the venue for the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to showcase what IMF managing director Horst Kohler triumphantly called "the new Prague", the jewel of a capitalist

It was the movement which finally toppled the dictator Suharto in 1998 which made Romawaty Sinaga realise that workers and students had to unite to achieve any lasting fundamental change. IN that year, she left her position as an assistant lecturer

Heavily armed gunmen, suspected of belonging to a paramilitary group, murdered four leaders from the Embera-Kateo indigenous communities in Colombia's Upper Sinu River Basin on September 19. Twenty other Embera-Kateo people were abducted by the

BY SUSAN PRICE Unionists Against Corporate Tyranny has launched a new web site which, according to site editor Melanie Sjoberg, will help broaden the campaign against corporate-led globalisation. "The site has only been up for a week", said

BY ARUN PRADHAN MELBOURNE — The furore caused by police brutality against S11 protesters, and the explicit backing given to it by Premier Steve Bracks, has not died down. Community lawyers assembling the case against police are confident that an