Cultural dissent

GLW Issue 910

Dirty Money: The True Cost of Australia’s Mineral Boom
By Matthew Benns
William Heinemann, 2011,
296 pages, $34.95 (pb)

Australian mining companies hand over $10 million a year in political donations to state and federal political parties. They don’t expect to be bitten on the hand by those they are feeding, as the Rudd Labor government did with its proposed mining super profits tax.

Time for the big stick of a fear-mongering $22 million campaign to remind the government who really rules in Australia.

Why Marx Was Right
By Terry Eagleton
Yale University Press, 2011
272 pp., $32.95

In August, the Wall Street Journal website ran a video of an interview with Nouriel Roubini as its top story under the headline, "Roubini: Marx was Right."

Roubini is a mainstream economist who achieved fame by predicting the 2008 financial collapse, earning himself the nickname "Dr. Doom" among the Wall Street speculators.

Pride Of The Underdog
Deeder Zaman
Modulor, 2011
www.deederzaman.com

When Deeder Zaman was at the height of his fame as the vocalist for British dance rock group Asian Dub Foundation (ADF), he hung up his mike to become a full-time activist.

So why did he swap such a high-profile, influential position for low-profile work with the National Civil Rights Movement, the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism, the Miscarriages Of Justice Organisation and the Children with Aids Charity?

United States' singer/songwriter Cat Power (aka Chan Marshall) was encouraged by boycott activists to cancel her gig in Tel Aviv, scheduled for February 12. It looks like the pressure worked.

On February 9, Cat Power announced her show had been cancelled, and tweeted: “Music is healing and it is not humane if all cannot have the choice, the right, to attend.”

GLW Issue 909

Stop Signs: Cars & Capitalism ― On the Road to Economic, Social & Ecological Decay
By Bianca Mugenyi & Yves Engler
RED Publishing & Fernwood Publishing
2011, 259 pages,
$27.95 (pb)

The car, say Canadian authors Bianca Mugyenyi and Yves Engler, who took a bus ride across the United States, is a doomed jalopy going nowhere. It fails, especially in the “home of the car”, on every green count.

Cars are the single largest contributor to US noise pollution and 40,000 people in the US die from car accidents each year (one million across the globe).

Childhood Under Siege: How Big Business Ruthlessly Targets Children
Joel Bakan
Random House, 2011
277 pages

Parents who read Joel Bakan's new book, Childhood Under Siege, may find themselves un-liking Facebook.

In it, the law professor ― whose previous book The Corporation was made into Canada's biggest-grossing documentary ― describes the effect of the social media giant's applications on his 13-year-old daughter.

GLW Issue 908

The Tall Man
Screening SBS ONE,
Feb 5, 8.30pm.

The director of a documentary about the death in custody of Aboriginal man Mulrunji Doomadgee says the family wanted him to use footage of the death, but he was blocked from accessing it.

"We tried and failed to get access to it," Tony Krawitz tells Green Left Weekly. "So I've never seen it — it screened in court, but can't be released."

Krawitz's multi-award winning film, The Tall Man, is based on the critically-acclaimed book of the same name by journalist Chloe Hooper.

Peruvian-born Harlem emcee Immortal Technique rocked a full house at the Metro in Sydney on January 19 as part of his debut tour of Australia and New Zealand.

The Afro-Peruvian Technique grew up alongside other poor African Americans and Latinos in New York and steered clear of offers from record labels (“offered me a deal, and a blanket full of smallpox!”, he sings in “Industrial Revolution”). Instead, he built up a substantial following as an independent artist.

GLW Issue 907

The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights
By Robin Blackburn
Verso, 2011
502 pp

Robin Blackburn has written another masterful book on the history of the slave order in the Americas and the emancipation struggle that ultimately vanquished it.

The American Crucible is described by the author as, “an overview of the entire rise and fall of the slave regimes of the Americas from the early sixteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century”.

Occupy this Invasion
Wed Feb 1, 6pm
Little Fish Gallery
22 Enmore Rd, Newtown
Submission dates: Thurs Jan 27- Sun Jan 31
Mediums: Any 
Email: littlefishgallerycrew@gmail.com
Ph: 0449 288 904

Little Fish Gallery is proud to present its latest group show inspired by the global Occupy movement and which marks Invasion Day on January 26. This exhibition transcends political “isms“ and welcomes people with an array of different views to participate in creative dialogue whilst building community through the processes of art.

See also:
RIP Ollie MC

CALL OUT TO THE NATION

Ollie MC

Out in the desert
Deserted people eyes diverted
Look away from a world gone a bad way
The dreaming tells of a different fate
Than being surrounded by hate
White collar white man white lease papers and a white police van
Blind to contrition
Third world hidden politicians
With racist ambitions
From basic cards to prohibition

Stop the intervention

Rich from the land that they promised to protect
People got good reason to suspect

Ollie MC was an activist and hip hop artist, whose wheelchair was seen from the stage, to the streets, rallies and the coffee shop. Determined and unforgettable, he bore witness to the struggle for truth and justice.

See also:
Call Out To The Nation -- Ollie MC

When you met Ollie, he made an impression. His talent with beats, rhymes and fighting and soulful lyrics stayed with you. His energy, cheekiness and ridicule of the corrupt, stayed with you.

The Iron Lady
Directed by Phyllida Lloyd, written by Abi Morgan, starring Meryl Streep
In cinemas now

Film can be a powerful ideological tool. Truth can be manipulated, tyrannies expunged and sympathy conjured for the devil. The Iron Lady, depicting the life and times of former British Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, is just such a film.

GLW Issue 906

The strategy of most people when they hear a racist or xenophobic comment is to be silent and hope that it will go away. The problem is, that strategy just tends to embolden the racists.

So it has proved with Tony Greig.

His constant derogatory remarks about Indians or “the Indians”, as he refers to them, are not only offensive, they are part of a pattern of blatant racism and xenophobia that Greig has shown through his playing and commentating career.

See also:
Australian cricket's corruption denial syndrome

Because there is a better way

A safer way to touch and cradle humanity

Because understanding starts with understanding

And understanding that is just the start.

Because caring is intellectual

Not the ineffectual nonsense demeaned by

Right-wing amoral propagandering

Meandering fiscal drivel driven by market forces

Apocalyptic horses

Pounding down and out at the worst of our fears.

I'm a socialist because there are always years

Ready for a redder dawn

Ears born to listen to wider concerns

Yearning to sort it out.

Because caring means fighting back

Cricket is on the verge of a corruption-induced implosion, yet you wouldn’t know in Australia. As far as Australian cricket administrators are concerned, it is the end of the world as they know it and they feel fine.

Despite more and more revelations coming out about corruption in cricket, it was still shocking for many to hear former Indian batsman Vinod Kambli claim that something was “amiss” in the semi-final of the 1996 World Cup.

Because Green Left Weekly is taking a break for the summer, it asked staff, contributors — or just people it likes — to name the best books published this year. Here are their suggestions.

Tim Dobson, Green Left journalist and blogger at Press Box Red
A Life Too Short: The Tragedy of Robert Enke by Ronald Reng
Yellow Jersey Press, 2011

GLW Issue 905

The Beginning of the American Fall
Stephanie McMillan
Cartoonmovement.com

The Adventures of Unemployed Man
Erich Origen and Gan Golan
Little, Brown, October 2010. 80 pp.

Action Comics
Grant Morrison
Detective Comics

The worldwide Occupy protests have inspired a lot of music over the past few months. But it has also broken into artistic circles some might not know of. One such area is comics.

"Lou Reed and Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello are among the first signatories of Occupy Musicians”, a November 22 British Guardian article said.

supports Occupy Wall Street and the global movement against inequality. The Guardian said the website aims to co-ordinate performances at Occupy sites and showcase new works by signatory artists.

It said: "Occupy Musicians is a sister site to the bookish campaign at Occupy Writers, the lensing of Occupy Filmmakers and the speech-bubbles atOccupy Comics."

Here Comes Trouble: Stories From My Life
By Michael Moore
Allen Lane, 2011
427 pages, $29.95 (pb)

In 1968, the 14-year-old Michael Moore was expelled from the seminary where he was training to become a Catholic priest. His offense had been to ask awkward questions, like why can’t women become priests.

As Moore had to be reminded by Church authorities, “you either have to accept things or not”. For Moore, accepting the status quo was not an option, so authority would always be having trouble with Moore.

More than 100 people filled Leichhardt’s Palace Cinema on November 24 for the Sydney premiere screening of Growing Change: A Journey Inside Venezuela’s Food Revolution.

The documentary, made by filmmaker and solidarity activist Simon Cunich, examines the global food crisis that leaves hundreds of millions of people in hunger and is rapidly depleting the soil fertility on which long-term food security depends.

Punks Against Apartheid officially launched its website on November 23 in support of the global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign targetting Israel.

The group says it is “is an emerging global network of musicians, artists, and activists inspired by the history and ethics of punk rock. We are opposed to all forms of oppression, exploitation and racism — particularly the Israeli apartheid regime and its colonial terror.

GLW Issue 904

Next Of Kin
The Last Kinection
Elefant Traks
www.lastkinection.com
To win a signed copy of the album, see below

When Naomi Wenitong from Aboriginal hip hop group The Last Kinection is asked how challenging it is to be a woman in the male-dominated music industry, she laughs.

"I don’t mind being one of the only buns at this Oz hip hop sausage sizzle," she jokes to Green Left Weekly.

"Everyone has challenges in this industry regardless of their sex. You can either let it be your disadvantage or make it your advantage.

Language and education specialists are concerned the federal government’s national roll-out of digital television will have a detrimental effect on the preservation and transmission of Aboriginal languages and cultures.

In 1987, the Broadcasting for Remote Aboriginal Communities Scheme (BRACS) was established to balance the introduction of mainstream TV channels (via satellite) into remote communities with some local control and ability to broadcast local content.

Year in the Rear: 2011
Wednesday, November 30, 8pm
York Theatre, Seymour Centre
$48.60. Funds go to Asylum Seekers Centre of NSW
Bookings: (02) 9351 7940
www.seymourcentre.com

This has been an extraordinary year. Our best ever bowler, Warnie, morphed into an Austin Powers leading lady, the British royal family dominated the media in a non-scandalous event, the Aussie dollar wowed Wall Street and our prime minster received a poodle for her 50th birthday.

GLW Issue 903

The Man on Devil's Island: Alfred Dreyfus & the Affair that Divided France
By Ruth Harris
Allen Lane, 2011
542 pages, $26.95 (pb)

The Dreyfus Affair in France a century ago shows how little has changed. “National security” was on the lips of politicians and military officers as an innocent man from a vilified group was framed for treason in a rigged military court and sent to rot in a prison hell-hole to serve political ends amid war hysteria.

Make the name “Alfred Dreyfus” or “David Hicks” and the template fits.

In the Crossfire: Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary
By Ngo Van
AK Press, 2011
264 pages, $43.99

Australians know of the Vietnam War from the arrival of Australian troops in 1965 through to their withdrawal in 1973. People in the United States generally date it from the arrival of US advisors through to the inglorious departure of US helicopters in 1975.

However, for the Vietnamese the struggle began long before that, from their colonisation by the French in the 19th Century.

Arlene TextaQueen
textaqueen.com

When my wife and I were in the supermarket the other day, we got chatting to a kindly white stranger. After a few seconds, the woman asked my wife, "And how long have you been here?"

GLW Issue 902

'Look At Me Now'
Sky’High
Grindin Records

Aboriginal rapper Sky’High admits she can be difficult to work with.

“I can come across a bit intimidating or ‘weird’,” she tells Green Left Weekly, laughing. “Some people can't handle that ― I’m unpredictable as fuck.”

When fist-raising 1968 Olympian Dr John Carlos and I wrote his memoir, The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World, we didn't exactly expect the publishing date to coincide with a mass national protest movement for economic and social justice.

I've now heard about 100 variations of the joke: "It was really smart of your publisher to plan this whole 'Occupy' movement with your book release." It's an obvious comment, given that Carlos and I have made sure to visit every Occupy encampment we can on our national book tour.

Ramy Essam has been featured on my Rebel Frequencies site before. The young folk-singer may best be described at "the troubadour of the Egyptian revolution".

Essam performed at the initial rallies demanding dictator Hosni Mubarak step down, and was kidnapped and tortured as a result. And yet he still writes and performs.

Furthermore, his own personal struggle to sing publicly demonstrates how much more work the revolution still has ahead of it.

Strong>The Short Goodbye: A Skewed History of the Last Boom and the Next Bust
By Elisabeth Wynhausen
Melbourne University Publishing, 2011
219 pages, $29.99 (pb)

From writing stories about workers being sacked during the 2009 global financial crisis, Elisabeth Wynhausen, a journalist at Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian, got a taste of the real thing when she was handed a pink slip of her own.

GLW Issue 901

For a lighthearted look at some of the difficulties and frustrations with the democratic process of the Occupy movement, have a look at The Meeting: A Democratic Satire, by Kahtia Lontis.

It is described as "a short satirical fiction piece based on the painful process of grassroots democracy". It is something anyone who has taken part in the movement could identify with.

Inside Pine Gap: The Spy Who Came in from the Desert
By David Rosenberg
Hardie Grant Books, 2011
216 pages, $35 (pb)

David Rosenberg found 1960s television show Mission Impossible “irresistible” with its patriotic tales of high-tech US government spies thwarting the “bad guys”.

After an 18-year career as a US National Security Agency (NSA) electronic signals analyst at the CIA’s Pine Gap spy base in Australia’s remote interior, Rosenberg’s book, Inside Pine Gap, makes it clear that he has yet to grow up.

Inside Al-Qaeda and the TalibanM
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
Pluto Press, 2011
260 pp., $39.95

Deadly Waters, The Hidden World of Somalia’s Pirates
By Jan Bahadur
Scribe, 2011
300 pp., $29.95

The Interrogator, A CIA Agent’s True Story
By Glenn Carle
Sribe, 2011
321 pp., $32.95

The Wizard of Lies, Bernie Madoff & the Death of Trust
By Diana B. Henriques
Scribe, 2011
419 pp., $35.00

Bad as Me
Tom Waits
ANTI- Records
www.tomwaits.com
Listen to the album here

Tom Waits, the 61-year-old veteran musical maverick, released his first album of entirely new music in seven years on October 25.

The 17th studio album by famously rough-voiced California-based singer, who was inducted into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame by Neil Young this year, continues his obsession with telling tales from the wrong side of the tracks.

GLW Issue 900

Sideshow: Dumbing Down Democracy
By Lindsay Tanner
Scribe, 2011
232 pages, $32.95 (pb)

Lindsay Tanner, the former finance minister in the federal Labor government, laments in his book, Sideshow, the rotting core of democracy in Australia that plumbed its most dismal depths in the lacklustre, “non-of-the-above” elections of 2010.

The commercial media, he says, have been responsible for dumbing down the quality of political debate and sapping the level of popular political engagement.

There is much in Tanner’s critique that is accurate.

Electronic Intifada (EI) brought together three stories in early October that paint a vivid picture of the need for a cultural boycott of Israel.

This certainly is no surprise, given that EI is without a doubt the best source out there on the Palestinian struggle. Still, it seems worth connecting the dots.

First is United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's threat to withhold aid from global aid programs crucial to Palestine's infrastructure and culture.

Jewish Identity & Palestinian Rights: Diaspora Jewish Opposition to Israel
By David Landy
Zed Books, 2011,
272 pp., $49.95

Just over a year ago, I attended the launch of the radically Zionist “Friends of Israel” (supporters of the state of Israel as an exclusively “Jewish” state) at the charismatic Christian Victory Life church in Perth. I did so openly as a member of Friends of Palestine.

I sat with my Palestinian scarf draped around my Jewish neck and listened nervously to more than two hours of speeches.

GLW Issue 899

“Since his death, Tupac has become an international martyr, a symbol on the level of Bob Marley or Che Guevara, whose life has inspired Tupacistas on the streets of Brazil, memorial murals in the Bronx and Spain, and bandanna-wearing youth gangs in South Africa.”

These words, penned five years ago by culture writer Eric K Arnold, are just as true today, a decade and a half after the African American rapper was shot dead on September 13, 1996 ― perhaps even more so.

Lupe Fiasco, a US hip hop artist, wrote the following poem in support of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. It was published in the second edition of The Occupied Wall Street Journal, which is published by activists in the OWS movement.

Fiasco has publicly supported the movement from its early days and donated 50 tents to those occupying Liberty Square in New York.

* * *

Hey Moneyman the crowd is outside. The past, the future and the now is outside. The teachers and cooks and the drop-outs too. Word on the street is they looking for you…

Walk With Us: Aboriginal Elders Call Out to Australian People to Walk with them in their Quest for Justice
Compiled and published by Concerned Australians
$15, 71 pages, hard cover
wwww.concernedaustralians.com.au

Walk With Us is the long awaited sequel to the highly regarded and recommended This Is What We Said — Australian Aboriginal People give their views on the Northern Territory Intervention, published in February last year.

GLW Issue 898

Entering the darkened space of the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation that held Vietnamese artist Dinh Q Le’s latest installation, Erasure, which finished on September 10, I imagined myself to be stepping into the psychological space of a disturbed memory.

The brooding political and cultural climate surrounding the issue of refugees in Australia has involved politicians exploiting the sensitive subject in a game of political football.

Natacha Atlas, the award-winning electronic-worldbeat artist, has canceled her upcoming show in Israel and will be boycotting the state until the apartheid regime is dismantled.

The Woman Who Shot Mussolini
By Frances Stonor Saunders
Faber and Faber, 2010
375 pages, $32.99 (pb)

The Honourable Violet Gibson was not like the other women of the Anglo-Irish elite when it came to Benito Mussolini, the leader of Italy's fascists.

While Lady Asquith (wife of the former prime minister) was delighted by Mussolini, and Clementine Churchill (wife of the future prime minister) was awestruck by “one of the most wonderful men of our times”, Violet Gibson aimed a revolver at the fascist dictator in Italy in April 1926 and shot him in the nose.

There’s no doubt that the explosion of social media, mobile technology and online-organising capabilities have dramatically altered the battle terrain of class struggles today in ways good, bad and ugly.

From the Arab Spring to New York’s ongoing Occupy Wall Street protests, social media and online organising are clearly transforming the way that small, isolated campaigns develop into mass movements in the streets. But how do we separate the genuinely useful aspects of social media from the “data smog” of media hype?

GLW Issue 897

Australian Made
King Brown
Sound Planet Records
www.reverbnation.com/kingbrown1

When far-right extremist Anders Behring Breivik went on a mass killing spree in Norway on July 22, he was listening on his headphones to "Lux Aeterna", a mournful piece of music by British film soundtrack composer Clint Mansell.

A more appropriate Mansell composition might have been “Ich Bin Ein Auslander”, written by the musician when he was fronting cartoonish electronic indie rockers Pop Will Eat Itself in the 1990s.

Once I ruled the Northern plains,
my clan roamed free and wild,
the lush Dakotas were my home,
the gods were on my side.

Every leafy shrub was mine,
every blade of grass,
every creature trembled when
a herd of bison passed.

My family has been slaughtered
for food, for prize, for fun,
of all the kings that roamed the earth
I’m now the only one.

Am I now a laughing stock?
The object of your pity?
A weakling of the prairies, while
you prosper in the city?

And who was it that killed my clan?
Let’s set the record straight:
that bastard son of Europe’s womb —

All Along the Watchtower: Memoir of a Sixties Revolutionary
By Michael Hyde
The Vulgar Press, 2010
272 pages, $32.95 (pb)

Red Silk: The Life of Elliott Johnston QC
By Penelope Debelle
Wakefield Press, 2011
212 pages, $32.95 (pb)

Phillip Adams: The Ideas Man — A Life Revealed
By Philip Luker
JoJo Publishing, 2011
337 pages, $34.99 (pb)

GLW Issue 896

At this year’s Deadly Awards, an annual celebration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture being held on September 27, all eyes will be on one of the fastest rising stars in Aboriginal music.

Yung Nooky doesn’t even have an album out yet, but the radical rookie rapper from country New South Wales has already been flown out to Los Angeles to record a track with emcee Taboo from hip hop heavyweights The Black Eyed Peas.

[This article, by veteran English singer-songwriter Billy Bragg, is reprinted from Rock & Rap Confidential. You can subscribe to R&RC free of charge by sending your email address to rockrap@aol.com .

* * *

How ironic that The Clash should be on the cover of the British music magazine NME in the week that London was burning, that their faces should be staring out from the shelves as newsagents were ransacked and robbed by looters intent on anarchy in Britain.

There used to be snow
On the mountain tops
Now the rivers run low
Nothing left for the crops

Where will they go
They who work the land
When all the ancestral waters
Have vanished in the sand?

Free market policies
And vanishing border lines
Replacing highland pastures
With open cut mines

No choice but to leave
A thousand years behind
City lights on the horizon
What will they find?

Billboards by the highway
Paper-thin lies
Selling progress and consumerism
As the land about them dies

Welcome to decaying sewers
And chemical smokestack plumes

Yirrkala, in north-east Arnhem land, is home to the famous 1963 “Bark Petition”. This was a protest action by the Yolngu people that led to the first native title litigation in Australia’s history.

I was there last month for the anniversary of that stage of their landmark struggle.

The petition was an attempt by the Yolngu people to force legal recognition of their land ownership rights.

GLW Issue 895

Downfall: The Tommy Sheridan Story
By Alan McCombes,
Birlinn 2011
326 pages, pb £9.99

In the elections to the Scottish parliament in May 2003, the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) polled just under a quarter of a million votes and won six seats.

By any stretch of the imagination this was a remarkable achievement for a party well to the left of Labour. It was a beacon of hope and inspiration for socialists the world over.

By 2011, the SSP’s vote had slumped to below 9000. It failed to regain any of the six seats it had lost in 2007.

You can see that western Sydney Aboriginal rapper Sesk has turned his life around when he holds his head up high.

Not only does it give him an air of self-esteem - it also reveals that the large tattoo across his neck reading "GUILTY" has another word inked above it: "NOT".

"It was actually just 'GUILTY' first," he says. "I was getting a few weird looks, so I put a 'NOT' there.

"I don’t really have regrets, but if I had the chance to rewrite my life, I would. I would focus more on my schooling and would not treat my parents and family the way I did."

GLW Issue 894

Our Way to Fight
Michael Riordon
Pluto Press, 2011

“People safely outside the situation sometimes ask ‘Why don’t more Palestinians use non-violent protest?’ says Michael Riordon is his concluding chapter to Our Way To Fight.

“The question ignores the long history of Palestinian attempts to seek justice through non-violent means, and the equally long history of official Israeli violence in suppressing these attempts.”

Black Swan
By Carolyn Landon & Eileen Harrison
238 pages
Allen & Unwin, June 2011

Bestselling author Carolyn Landon says the main revision she had to make in writing her latest book, Black Swan was editing all her anger out of it.

"I had difficulty with my own voice," she tells  Green Left Weekly about the book, a memoir of Koori artist Eileen Harrison.

"Mainly, it was getting my own angry and ashamed responses to what Eileen was telling off my chest. After I let off steam in the drafts, I eliminated most of my reactions.

Last year, the Sydney Underground Film Festival hosted the Australian premier of Oliver Stone's documentary on Latin America's revolutions South of the Border. This year, the festival is taking place this year on September 8-11 at the The Factory Theatre in Marrickville.

Festival organisers have five double passes to giveaway for the film Better This World (see below) to Green Left Weekly readers. Be one of the first to email  stefanie@suff.com.au  with the subject line “911” to win.

Let me tell you what fuck all is.
It's invisible, nada it's you don't exist or matter.
That's what fuck all is.
It's Theresa May plastic faced spouting nothing tangible
That's fuck all.
Fuck all is the offer on the table
It's the option of government
Fuck all is the Big Society
That's fuck all.
Fuck all would spit in your eye
If it recognised your eye
If it recognised your humanity.
Fuck all pisses all over the crap of you,
That's fuck all.

GLW Issue 893

Dick Smith’s Population Crisis: The Dangers of Unsustainable Growth for Australia
Allen & Unwin, Sydney
2011, 228 pages
 
Those who say today’s big social and ecological problems stem from there being too many people on the planet face a special difficulty.

As the Australian ecologist Alan Roberts once said, populationist authors need “to persuade their readers that the main thing wrong with the world was the existence of those readers themselves”.
 

Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention
Manning Marable
Penguin, 2011
596 pp. (hb), $49.95

“If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the oppressed and loving the people doing the oppressing,” African American revolutionary Malcolm X, assassinated in 1965 at the age of 39, once said in a comment on the capitalist media that applies to contemporary reporting on English riots or refugees.

Malcolm, who increasingly saw the link between capitalism and racial oppression in the last years of his life, said: “You can't have capitalism without racism.”

GLW Issue 892

With much fanfare, the AFL Peace Team (an Australian rules football team made up of Palestinian and Israeli players) has once again come to Australia to compete in the AFL International Cup running from August 12 to 27.

Indeed, what can be more appealing for those of us who are passionate about peace in Israel-Palestine than to welcome this team of Palestinian and Israeli youth who have learned to play and interact not as enemies but as teammates?

A son has just been born to me
but I am in Afghanistan,
when I was born my father fought
the Viet-Cong in Vietnam.
 
My grandpa blazed Kokoda’s trail
and stalled the ruthless Japanese,
his father fell in World War I;
a martyr in the Pyrenees.
 
His father fought the Afrikaans,
I think in 1899,
his father stopped the Chinese throngs
from claiming gold in Daylesford’s mines.
 
We first came to Van Diemen’s Land
way back in 1834,
our forebear stole a block of cheese
and thus was shipped to southern shores.
 
I’ll teach my son to hate them all:

Disconnect: The Truth About Mobile-Phone Radiation, What the Industry Has Done to Hide It & How to Protect Your Family
By Devra Davis
Scribe, 2010
274 pages, $27.95 (pb)

Meet SAM ― Standard Anthropomorphic Man.

SAM is a big man and also the silent type who spends little time using his first-generation mobile phone held a safety-conscious half an inch from the ear.

Safety standards for mobile phones have been based on SAM’s low exposure to mobile phone radio frequency radiation.

Curator Vikki Riley opened Footprints of my Heart ― an exhibition of artwork by 20 refugees in the Darwin region ― on August 11.

The exhibition ran at the Darwin Supreme Court from August 11 to 19.

Many of the artists were still in detention, at the Northern Immigration Detention Centre, the Airport Lodge or the Asti Hotel under guard.

Some of the artists were regarded as “high risk” by immigration authorities and were accompanied to the opening by three security guards each.

GLW Issue 891

Inspired by Brisbane flash mob actions in support of the “boycott, divestment and sanctions” campaign against Israel, I hunted for songs to adapt and use here in Newcastle.

I came across flash mobs action around Australia, France and the US. And then I came across a song, that rocked me way back to the early '80s. “The” song in the era of action against South Africa’s apartheid was “Free Nelson Mandela” by English ska band The Specials.

“Freedom for Palestine” by British-based collective Oneworld is the equivalent for our era of action against Israel’s apartheid practices.

Contested Territory
11- 28 August 2011
Curated by Luisa Velasco
At the Vanishing Point gallery,
565 King Street, Newtown, Sydney
www.atthevanishingpoint.com.au

Contested Territory explores ― through contemporary art ― narratives highlighting areas of dispute, particularly issues of land and human rights of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples in the Middle East.

At the same time, Contested Territory delves into the phenomenon of Islamophobia and our own historical and contemporary cultural disposition toward the fear of otherness.

Forming in New York City around 1990, The Casualties started out with an idea to return to the “Golden Age” of street punk, something they felt had been on sharp decline since the mid 1980s.

Having racked up eight full length albums, three EPs, three live albums and countless miles in the tour van, The Casualties continue to enjoy success more than 20 years after their inception.

The band is touring Australia in September. Green Left Weekly's Chris Peterson caught up with them for a bite-sized interview.

* * *

The Bob Marley songbook is bursting with eloquent social protest, exposing the poverty, oppression and injustice endured by inhabitants of the “developing” world.

“Burning and Looting”, for example: “This morning I woke up in a curfew. O my God I was a prisoner too … Could not recognise the faces standing over me, they were all dressed in uniforms of brutality.”

GLW Issue 890

The Most Dangerous Man in the World
By Andrew Fowler
Melbourne University Press, 2011
271 pages, $32.99 (pb)
Underground
By Suelette Drefus & Julian Assange
William Heinemann, 2011
479 pages, $24.95 (pb)
WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy
By David Leigh & Luke Harding
Guardianbooks, 2011
340 pages, $24.95 (pb)

I wander
in a city
with hard
games
no fun and games
no laughing matter
(we don’t play we don’t laugh)
life
Russian roulette
inside
Russian dolls
boxes
within
boxes
within –
built-up
blocks of land
building complexes
buildings
blocks of flats
flats
rooms
where
scattered
other
boxes
food
shut
in metal
plastic
so efficient
vitamins
in boxes
spell
deficient
feasts
on screens
a distant
memory
now
tinned
sofa
merry-
making
sufficient.

I take
tablets
for stimulation
for sex
and recreation
in lovely colour pink
and others
for sedation

Anima Mundi: Permaculture, Climate Change, Peak Oil & the Soul of the World
Directed by Peter Downey
Visit Animamundimovie.com
Permaculture Pioneers: Stories from the New Frontier
Edited by Kerry Dawborn & Caroline Smith
Available from www.permacultureprinciples.com
Sydney launch of Permaculture Pioneers & premier of Anima Mundi
August 25, 7pm, Chauvel Cinema, Paddington Town Hall

Special Treatment
Starring Isabelle Huppert, Bouli Lanners, Richard Debuisne, Sabila Moussadek, Valerie Dreville
Directed by Jeanne Labrune
In cinemas now

A comedy film about prostitutes and psychoanalysis? Surely only the French could do it, and so it is with this witty, not exactly hilarious, thought-provoking exploration of the overlap between the two professions.

GLW Issue 889

Mozart’s Sister
Starring Marie Feret, directed by Rene Feret
In cinemas now

Everyone has heard of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who first achieved fame as a child prodigy composer ferried around the great courts of late feudal Europe by his domineering father on a never-ending tour.

Little is known of his older sister, Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia, known by her nickname, Nannerl.

She was at least his equal as a harpsichordist and piano player ― and possibly his equal on the violin and as a composer.

A Facebook page campaigning to bring radical US-based Afro-Peruvian hip hop artist Immortal Technique to Australia has been set a target by the man himself.

Immortal Technique, real name Filipe Andres Coronel, posted on the wall of the page, We want Immortal Technique in Australia, that he would agree to tour if the page received 15,000 “likes”.

Another pop-music cliche came tragically true this past weekend: “Amy Winehouse, dead at 27.”

The same age as Joplin, Hendrix, Morrison and Cobain. Like all of these amazing artists she has gone way too young. Like all of them, she had reams of talent, skill, and most importantly, soul.

She was lucky enough in her short time to really and seriously change the way many of us view music.

A Microsoft PR twitter account came under fire for cynically exploiting the death of British soul singer Amy Winehouse, Mashable.com said on July 25.

The small PR account for Xbox tweeted: “Remember Amy Winehouse by downloading the ground-breaking ‘Back to Back’ album over at Zune ...”

Zune is Microsoft's entertainment marketplace.

Mashable.com said the tweet sparked a furore, with tweets in response such as “classy", "crass much?" and "Microsoft — failing at social media".

GLW Issue 888

The Grammy awards have long been the kind of thing that one simply has to deal with if you're going to approach music under capitalism.

It comes wrapped in all the elitism, commerce and segregation that necessarily has to accompany the music industry, but it's still something of a great salt lake for any artist — even those who are the most socially conscious — if they want to navigate the most treacherous waters of their craft.

Like any money-making venture, it can be just as susceptible to public pressure as it is to the forces of the market.

Stieg Larsson’s hard-hitting novel, titled  Man som hatar kvinnor  ("Men who hate women") in Swedish, was titled  The  Girl  With  the  Dragon  Tattoo<.em>  in English translation — possibly  a subtle indication of the publisher’s discomfort  with  the strong women’s liberation message contained in it.

The Women's World Cup proved to be a sparkling oasis amid the most arid section of the sports calendar.

The football tournament provided a series of non-stop thrills, culminating with Japan's heart-palpitating final victory against the US, winning 3-1 on penalty kicks after extra time finished with the game tied at 2-2.

Star US player Abby Wambach is no doubt hurting, but I hope the forward with the skull of steel realizes that she was absolutely correct when she said before the final: "It's gonna be awesome."

The Cage
By Gordon Weiss
Picador, 2011

The Cage tells the horrifying story of the final months of the war in Sri Lanka, which ended with the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May 2009.

Gordon Weiss, the former United Nations spokesperson in Sri Lanka, says the war ended in a "bloodbath", including the "wholesale bombardment by government forces of unarmed civilians".

GLW Issue 887

Face the Fire
Jimblah
Obese Records
Buy now on iTunes
www.myspace.com/jimblah01

If James Alberts, better known as Adelaide-based rapper Jimblah, hadn't discovered hip hop, he could well have ended up serving time in prison.

Instead, he now serves prisoners in prison, by teaching them.

"In my early teens, I just wanted a place to fit and I looked up to the older lads who were [committing crimes]," Alberts, a 27-year-old Larrakia man, tells Green Left Weekly.

Oranges & Sunshine
Written by Rona Munro, directed by Jim Loach
Starring Emily Watson, Hugo Weaving & David Wenham
Showing now in selected cinemas

Oranges and Sunshine is a film adaptation of the book Empty Cradles, written by Margaret Humphries.

Humphries was a Nottingham part-time social worker (played by Emily Watson), who investigated the forced relocation of British children to Australia from British orphanages.

Finding Santana
By Jill Jolliffe
Wakefield Press, 2010
177 pages, $24.95 (pb)

Jill Jolliffe's encounter with the Komodo Dragon, a carnivorous, aggressive, pre-historic lizard, was "hair-raising". But even more threatening were the murderous agents from the Indonesian secret police, with their de facto uniform of "cropped hair, trim moustache, Rolex watch and Ray-Ban sunglasses".

GLW Issue 886

When the multi-award-winning journalist John Pilger needed researchers for his latest film,  The War You Don’t See, he turned to David Edwards and David Cromwell. The pair run media-analysing website Media Lens, which turned 10 years old on July 9.

Here, they answer some of the “more interesting” questions posed by their readers, plus a couple from Green Left Weekly’s  Mat  Ward.

Why did you start Media Lens?

Realm of Suppression
An exhibition by Didotklasta Harimurti
Free Range Gallery
399 Wellington St Perth
July 22-26 July

Didotklasta Harimurti, an Indonesian social activist, visual artist, theatre director and writer, will hold an exhibition of his drawings at the Free Range Gallery in Perth in July.

Titled Realm of Suppression, this will be his first solo exhibition in Australia.

When the multi-award-winning journalist John Pilger needed researchers for his latest film, The War You Don’t See, he turned to David Edwards and David Cromwell. The pair run media-analysing website Media Lens, which is set to turn 10 years old on July 9.

Here, they answer some of the “more interesting” questions posed by their readers, plus a couple from Green Left Weekly’s Mat Ward.

* * *

Why did you start Media Lens?

GLW Issue 885

Wild International
Art exhibition by Sam Bullock
June 1-July 2
Andrew Baker Gallery
26 Brookes St, Bowen Hills
Brisbane
www.andrew-baker.com

Sam Bullock has a wonderful artistic talent. He is also autistic.

Indigenous rapper Caper says a backlash from his fans caused Facebook to reverse their banning of the video to his song "How Would You Like To Be Me?" (lyrics below).

The song, which addresses racism in Australia, has enjoyed extensive radio airplay, becoming one of the most requested songs on Magic FM.

The 30-year-old musician, otherwise known as Colin Darcy from Whyalla in South Australia, said in a post on the social networking website: "Whoever reported my new video 'How Would You Like To Be Me' as offensive has actually stopped it from being promoted on facebook.

The Sydney Film Festival, held over June 8-13, featured 161 films from 42 countries. Every one of the eight films I was able to see was packed out, even the beautiful State Theatre which holds more than 2000 people.

Four films I saw are a must-see if they ever get a general release in suburban cinemas.

The first was Sing Your Song, a biography of African-American singer and actor Harry Belafonte.

GLW Issue 884

Soccer is the great global game: the closest thing we have to a connective cultural tissue that binds our species across national and cultural borders.

But only in a world so upside down could “the Beautiful Game” be run by an organisation as corrupt as FIFA and by a man as rotten to the core as FIFA President Sepp Blatter.

Only Blatter, whose reputation for degeneracy approaches legend, would hire a war criminal such as former United States secretary of state Henry Kissinger to head “a committee of wise persons” aimed at “rooting out corruption” in his organisation.

They’re a part of the human race
Searching for a safe place
To rise from their despair
To be part of the world that seems fair
Without wars
Famines
Or destruction
That stops all means of production
So they begin to flee
Unwilling to live amongst the debris
Where they lost friends
Without any warnings
Where they lost family
Indefinitely…
When they arrive
Freedom is limited in order to survive
Due to a lack of understanding
With the government demanding
Brief medical attention
A lack of food and mental exhaustion
A place we like to call mandatory detention

Rapper Ozi Batla has long been known for speaking out on social issues. His band The Herd are well known for tracks such as “77%” ― which features the line “77% of Aussies are racist”, in response to an opinion poll result on the treatment of refugees during the Howard years.

The Herd's “Burn Down the Parliament” caused controversy when it was coincidentally released the same week as the 2003 Canberra bush fires.

Marcel Khalife, born in 1950 in Amchit, Lebanon, has injected new life into the music produced by the oud (the Arabic lute) ― helping revive an important part of Arabic culture.

Khalife studied the oud at the Beirut National Conservatory of Music and graduated in 1971.

From 1972 to 1975, Khalife taught at the Beirut National Conservatory of Music, public universities and local private music institutions. During that period, he toured the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and the United States giving solo performances on the oud.

GLW Issue 883

Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, who performs solo under the name The Nightwatchman, was inspired by the huge struggle in Wisconsin against a savage anti-union law to release a benefit EP of songs dedicated to workers' struggles. The Nightwatchman's Union Town EP has been released by New West Records and can be bought at iTunes. All proceeds go to the America Votes Labor Unity Fund.

Koestler: The Indispensable Intellectual
By Michael Scammell
Faber & Faber, 2011,
720 pages, $32.99 (pb)

Arthur Koestler had a taste for political drama.

As a communist, he spied against Franco's fascists in the Spanish civil war; as a Jew, he escaped from the Gestapo in France by joining the French Foreign Legion; he saw the inside of five jails; he wrote a famous novel of Stalin's show trials; he became a vociferous anti-communist; and he enjoyed a fashionable vogue for his 1970s books on parapsychology.

The Refugee Art Project (RAP) was established in 2010 by Safdar Ahmed and Dr Omid Tofighian. They run free art classes at the Villawood (NSW) and Broadmeadows (Victoria) detention centres.

Some of the artworks, created by the asylum seekers, were on display at the recent Platform Art Space as part of the Human Rights Art and Film Festival. RAP is also organising the fear + hope exhibition featuring works by detained asylum seekers at the Mori Gallery in Sydney from June 20 to July 8. Visit TheRefugeeArtProject.com for more information.

GLW Issue 882

Rebellion runs through pop music, but no performer has ever fused music and radical politics like Gil Scott-Heron, who died on May 27.

In a series of early 1970s albums, Scott-Heron, collaborating with composer/arranger Brian Jackson, made militant funk and soul that remains unmatched. It exploded any idea that art and politics don’t mix, and has been hugely influential.

Scott-Heron has become known as the godfather of rap not just because his spoken word over drumbeats prefigured the genre, but because he used the style to tell of ghetto life and urge resistance.

Secret Genocide: Voices of the Karen of Burma
Daniel Pedersen
Maverick House, 272pp

Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of Burma's national League for Democracy (NLD), might be relatively free, for now. There are many others in Burma, however, who are anything but free of the continual repression and brutality that is still being enacted by the nation’s military regime.

For the people of the country’s various ethnic minorities, such as the Shan and the Karen, life is little more than the day-to-day endurance of a seemingly endless civil war.

GLW Issue 881