Coalition MPs met on Monday in Canberra and failed to come up with any worthwhile policy to control the spiralling petrol prices. There was a lot of talk about various alternatives such as ethanol and converting vehicles to LPG but nothing is to be done to control prices, stopping the obvious collusion between the oil companies or lowering GST and excise on petrol. More radical policies such as nationalising the oil companies or looking for alternative sources of supply outside of those controlled by British and American oil companies will not have crossed the minds of Coalition MPs. Nor is there any emphasis on the development of public transport.

Hiroshima Day will be observed on August 6 throughout the world by the peace loving people expressing anguish, sympathy and concern for those lakhs of victims of US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 61 years ago.

The 2006 World Conference will be held under a situation in which the world stands at a major crossroads with regards to nuclear weapons. We live in an era in which nuclear weapons can be eliminated by the solidarity of people of the world.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) maintains it has the right to develop, manufacture and test weapons as a means of defending itself in the face of heightened US aggression around the globe.

From the earliest days of its formation in 2002 as an independent state with a government led by Fretilin, the Australian government has been seeking ways to undermine the elected government of East Timor.

The criminal barbarity of the US aggression against Viet Nam has its parallel in the history of our own country. The Philippines is known as the "First Viet Nam" because our country was the first Asian country to suffer the inhumanity of the US invasion which started in 1898.

The democratically elected government of East Timor continues in their attempts to find a peaceful and negotiated outcome to settle the present disturbances.

When the coup attempt by some dissident military and police forces failed the Australian Government sent in a powerful contingent of military forces to help create a situation in which regime change could be brought about.

A multi-sectoral forum held at the Balay Kalinaw (House of Peace) of the University of the Philippines in Quezon City, Metropolitan Manila, on 04 June 2006, pledged to expose and oppose the deceptive and sinister campaign of the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo regime to change the Philippine Constitution.

Twenty six out of the 37 U.S. meat packing facilities that have been given licenses to export to Japan repeatedly violated in 2004 and 2005 the U.S. BSE regulations such as the removal of risk material and determining the months-old age of cattle.

Three years ago, I wrote a piece talking about attempts to oust Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri in East Timor, then a new struggling independent nation.

Most assembly members of a local town in Fukuoka Prefecture marched in demonstration against allowing U.S. forces to use the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force Tsuiki Base in the town for training. They were warmly welcomed by the townspeople.

The Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) expresses its agreement regarding the deployment of Portuguese Republican National Guard (GNR) forces in East Timor, as requested by the democratic institutions of that country.

Gangs of youths looting and burning the homes of other residents of Dili are a direct consequence of the precipitate and ill-thought out action of the Australian Government in sending about 1,500 Australian troops to Dili.

THE story of subversion of the UNCTAD itself by GATT that later morphed into WTO, enveloping within itself subjects like investments, intellectual property rights and a plethora of non-trade issues, is the story of continuing poverty of nations and backwardness of their development.

The Australian Government seems to have lost out, at least for the time being, in its attempts to destablilise East Timor and impose a government more to the liking of Howard, Downer and their allies.

We said goodbye to our chairman, and rode further on to Mankyungdai Agricultural Cooperative which was the birth-place of Kim Il Sung. The cottage in which he was born and the grounds around it had been preserved by the government, and we stopped off to visit it.

We jolted our way over the dusty roads to a collective farm some hour’s drive outside of Pyongyang. Along the way groups of boys and girls would draw up stiffly, when they saw us coming, their hands straight along their sides and bow their heads.

If I had been impressed with China, I would be, in quite another sense, more impressed by Korea. At the end I would say that I was a heroic country, unbelievably heroic: and to witness such mass heroism left an indelible mark upon me an inextinguishable responsibility.

Anyone who has a kind word to say about North Korea today takes his political, not to speak of literary, life in his hands. So thoroughly has that small country been demonized that it takes on a measure of heroism simply to try to strike a balance, assert a few obvious facts, and bring the subject back into the realm of reason where reasonable people may consider it.