Culture

There is something incredibly frustrating about the fact that the Red Hot Chili Peppers played a concert in Israel, ignoring international pleas for them to cancel and observe the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS). Admittedly, I wasn’t even quite aware of just how much their decision stung until the day after their appearance at the Pic.Nic festival in Tel Aviv.

Love & Capital: Karl & Jenny Marx & the Birth of a Revolution By Mary Gabriel, Little, Brown & Company 2011 707 pages, $39.99 The spectre of Karl Marx still haunts the capitalist world. Only 11 people attended his funeral in 1883 and the corporate press still loves to dance on his grave, constantly declaring that his ideas are irrelevant. Yet with every economic crisis all eyes return to Marx's masterpiece, Capital, to understand what is really going on in our economic system.

Islamophobia and the Politics Of Empire Deepa Kumar Haymarket Books 238 pages September 2012 Author Deepa Kumar says Liberal Senator Brett Mason is “so wrong” for moving a motion in the Australian Senate to condemn Green Left Weekly for its criticism of the NSW police.

By Light Alone By Adam Roberts 2011 www.adamroberts.com Progress under capitalism, Karl Marx wrote, resembles “that hideous, pagan idol, who would not drink the nectar but from the skulls of the slain”. Changes that ought to make life better often produce new social, economic and environmental disasters.

Dial M for Murdoch: News Corporation & the Corruption of Britain Tom Watson & Martin Hickman Penguin Books 2012, 360 pages, ￡20.00 This book provides much needed background information to the Levenson inquiry, which investigated the phone hacking scandal of Rupert Murdoch-owned newspapers and its cast of characters.

Phil Monsour sings a pro-Palestine version of "Which side are you on" at the Adelaide Seacret protest prior to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions national workshop weekend on September 21.

The Statue Of Liberty: A Transatlantic Story By Edward Berenson Yale University Press, 2012, 229 pages , $35.95 (hb) “We are the keepers of the flame of liberty,” said then-US president Ronald Reagan, opening the centennial celebration in 1986 of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbour. Reagan claimed the statue as an American beacon of freedom to the world. As Edward Berenson shows, however, the statue’s political virtue had been compromised long before Reagan’s neo-conservative hypocrisy.

Toward the United Front, Proceedings of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, 1922 Edited & translated by John Riddell, Brill, 2012, 1310 pp. Many leftists have spent dreary evenings meeting in draughty community halls where the reading of the minutes of previous gatherings seems to drag on interminably. Refreshingly, for a variety of reasons, this 1200-page compendium of 90-year-old proceedings makes for revitalising and pertinent reading.

University professor Andy Smokescreen answers every question you could possibly want to know about Muslim protesters.

Tamil Nation in Sri Lanka By Ron Ridenour New Century Book House Chennai, India Available in Australia via www.resistancebooks.com Ron Ridenour's Tamil nation in Sri Lanka is a history of the struggle of Tamils on the island of Sri Lanka for self-determination. Ridenour explains the reasons why many Tamils took up arms to fight for an independent Tamil state. He shows the history of racism in Sri Lanka and the violent repression carried out by successive governments against peaceful Tamil protests.

SNSD/Girls’ Generation, 2NE1, 4Minute, Shinee, BigBang — just a few South Korean band names with global hip cachet to burn. Their cult-like following has led some forecasters to predict that the centres of cultural power may well be shifting eastward, challenging the traditional dominance of US-based music companies.

If you really want to understand the forthcoming US presidential election, read this book. Former corporate fraud investigator Greg Palast previously showed how the 2000 US election was rigged through "purging" black voters off the electoral rolls.