Culture

Where on my body are your eyes zigzagging? I die for you!! The hungry bludger gambling With the lice in my empty pocket and still hung over in the Zipper’s ducts Where have muted body parts been penetrated by the drill With shafts as thick as Imperialism Whose begging is never ending, as the “Taleban” that you are? Laughter is wounded, And Samarkand, with a skirt full of pebbles And a hole, the forbidden commodity of the black market. Hole, hole! Oh, so ruthless Fascism has had no mercy To the body, to the rectum, to the shoulder blade, Even to the damp pants

"Land rights is a load of crap," says Kaylah Truth. They are not the kind of words you'd expect to hear from a radical, politically-savvy Indigenous rapper. But Truth, of militant Murri hip-hop group Impossible Odds, says she has learnt from bitter experience to pursue sovereignty instead.

Left-wing Welsh rockers The Manic Street preachers were the first British rock band to tour Cuba and have dedicated songs to radical miners union leader Arthur Scargill.

Justice is criminally unjust in the United States. Its predatory bankers and warmongers rarely face charges, but the nation's prisons are packed with impoverished small-time crooks. If the cells were a city, it would be the largest after New York, Los Angeles and Chicago: 2.3 million Americans live behind bars.

Musical artist Stevie Wonder vowed to “never perform” in the state of Florida while the National Rifle Association-backed “stand your ground” law is in effect.

As if we needed proof that the acquittal of George Zimmerman was -- in the words of Jay Smooth -- going to create more George Zimmermans. A mere hour before that shameful verdict came down, the great Lester Chambers was assaulted, on stage, by a crazed attendee at the Hayward Russell City Blues Festival. What did she assault him for? Dedicating a song to Trayvon Martin.

Project Republic: Plans & Arguments for a New Australia Edited by Benjamin T Jones & Mark Mckenna Black Inc, 2013 251 pages, $29.99 (pb) If the Australian Republican Movement (ARM) represents those who wish to make Australia a republic, yet the ARM sends congratulations to the Queen last year on her 60th year of rule from London, what hope is there for Australia becoming a royal-free zone? Not much, must be the conclusion, after reading the ARM’s call-to-republican-arms book, Project Republic.

One has to hark back to 1968 in Mexico City, when thousands of students and workers marched against the Olympics, to find a sports-related demonstration that compares to the size and militancy of the mass anti-World Cup/Olympic protests taking place in Brazil. As in Mexico City, thousands of people in Brazil took to the streets — and outside of stadiums hosting Confederations Cup matches — raising slogans that connect the spending and austerity that surround these mega-events to a much deeper rot in the nation’s democratic institutions.

Every Parent's Nightmare By Belinda Hawkins Allen & Unwin, 2013 www.everyparentsnightmare.com Jock Palfreeman, an Australian man sentenced to 20 years in jail in Bulgaria for murder in a deeply flawed trial, had his request to be transferred to an Australian jail turned down on July 10. Belinda Hawkins' book, Every Parent's Nightmare, brings to life the tragic story of Palfreeman, whose fearless commitment to human rights led to a 20-year sentence in Bulgaria.

In February last year, the stalking and murder of Trayvon Martin affected pro athletes — particularly African-American athletes — in a way that perhaps can be best described as intimate. Players like Carmelo Anthony saw the case far more clearly than George Zimmerman’s prosecutor: it was a racist murder and Trayvon, condemned to death for Living While Black, could have been them or their children.

The Condition of the Working Class, A Documentary Film By Mike Wayne & Deirdre O’Neill Inside Film 2012 www.conditionoftheworkingclass.info In the 1840s, when Frederick Engels went to Manchester to take up his duties of administering his father’s cotton milling enterprise, he discovered the dreadful conditions in which the city’s workers lived.

It's been almost ten years since she became a fixture on the indie music scene. Since then she's been nominated for Grammys and sold hundreds of thousands of records. But music journalists still have no idea how to treat M.I.A.