Mat Ward

he 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..

Last year, software engineer LN Rajaram started Lokalex, a project aimed at “reversing globalisation” in Chennai, India. Green Left Weekly’s Mat Ward spoke to him about it. * * * What’s your background? I was born in a village in Tamil Nadu, India, in 1949, but grew up in the streets of Mumbai, the finance capital of India.

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

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.

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?"

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 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.

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.

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".

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.

Accused Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik praised four Australian conservative leaders in his 1500-page manifesto, abc.net.au reported on July 26. “In a manifesto posted online under the Anglicised pseudonym Andrew Berwick, the killer quoted [former prime minister John] Howard, former treasurer Peter Costello, Catholic Cardinal George Pell and conservative writer and historian Keith Windschuttle,” the ABC said.

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.