Cultural Dissent

"Look, the people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep. Do not... fuck with us.”

The board members of HMV Group might be now wishing they hadn’t stocked so many Fight Club DVDs now. The massive UK entertainment retailer -- specializing in music, film, video games and other entertainment -- rang in the new year by running aground, with its British stores going into administration and its Irish locations shuttering entirely on January 15th.

Whackademia: An Insider’s Account of the Troubled University
Richard Hil
NewSouth Publishing, 2012
239 pages, $34.99 (pb)

Universities were better in the olden days, says Dr Richard Hil in Whackademia.

As an Essex University student in the 1970s, Hil joined the British Socialist Workers Party (which expanded his political horizons) and the Campaign for Real Ale (which expanded his waistline), while his lecturers stimulated his intellectual growth.

That Richard Hinds needs a few lessons in sports journalism.

“Such has been the atmosphere created by the Western Sydney Wanderers' fans, usually dispassionate critics have left Parramatta Stadium raving the experience makes the Camp Nou [in Barcelona] seem like a winter night at the Wentworth Park dogs,” the chief sports columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald had the sheer gall to write on February 18.

A selection of this week's celebrity news...

Mug Shot of the Day: WCBS Anchor Rob Morrison Flashes Bloody Face After Domestic Violence Arrest http://eonli.ne/12KEkeB

Mindy McCready: Why the Late Singer Shot Her Dog http://eonli.ne/12KBhTy

Pamela Anderson Selling Malibu Home for $7.75 Million—Take a Look Inside! http://eonli.ne/12Kyiuh

Justin Bieber Murder Plot Details Emerge: Inmate Wanted Singer Castrated With Hedge Clippers and Suffocated http://eonli.ne/WOevF7

Searching for Sugarman
Directed by Malik Bendjelloul
Starring Rodriguez, Malik Bendjelloul
Music by Rodriguez
Now showing at selected cinemas

Director Mike Malik Bendjelloul’s film Searching for Sugarman, which has been nominated for best documentary film at this year’s Oscars and the British Film and Television Awards, traces the efforts of two South African fans to find out what happened to the mysterious Mexican-American folksinger known as Rodriguez.

Watch Me
Sam Khan
www.bsomebody.co.uk

At the age of 23, British Muslim rapper Sam Khan was the CEO of his own company, a clothing range, website and a record label called Be Somebody. Three years on, he has launched The B Somebody Project to raise funds for orphans in Gaza. The project follows in the fundraising footsteps of previous music he has done for Pakistani flood victims. Green Left's Mat Ward spoke to him.

*******

According to a report by Europol, hundreds of football matches across Europe have been fixed by betting syndicates, which must surely leave all genuine supporters of the game delighted.

Because this is so much fairer than the current method of fixing matches, in which three clubs owned by trillionaires buy all the top players, making it impossible for anyone else to finish even close to them.

Bribing a referee and a goalkeeper is much more democratic, as it can be done for a few grand, a fraction of the sum Manchester City spent on buying the Premier League.

Lionel Bopage, 68, was jailed twice and tortured for his roll as a former leader of a mass liberation movement in Sri Lanka in the 1970s and 1980s, called the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (People's Liberation Front). He rose to the position of general secretary of the JVP but resigned from the group in 1984 over a number of differences, including his principled support for the right of national self-determination for the Tamil people. He was eventually forced into political exile together with his wife, Chitra.

Verbal Reality Volume One
Provocalz
Native Sun / Hustle Hard, 2012
$15
www.provocalz.bigcartel.com

"Every time you see in the media someone's been killed by police it always just happens to be an Aboriginal," says radical rapper Provocalz.

It's 9.30 on a Saturday morning and the south-west Sydney spitter is telling Green Left why he made his hard-hitting horrorcore track, "Cop Shot".

Idle No More (Invasion Day) The Mixtape
Featuring K-Otic 1, Darah, Felon, Mr Forge, Toombs, Provocalz, Teila, Unda Dwella, Lorna Munro, Kaiyu, Boe Knows, Big Luke, Dubbzone
www.datpiff.com