Culture

Insidious war civil war worldwide to the accompaniment of patriotic grandiose really unrelenting drumming honourable members of society in paranoid march socialisation savagely civilising national hypnosis general narcosis lest we feel the mines secretly scattered around by wretched powerful creatures who with vacant gaze and tight jaws injure the truth in guileless eyes unsettled in broad limelight they carry around their deaf dead bodies smartly disguised with immaculate clothes flashing spouses palace-like houses their filthiest linen in grand pits they flush

In Australia, Treasurer Wayne Swan made headlines by saying he was a huge fan of Bruce Springsteen ― despite implementing neoliberal economic policies of the sort Springsteen rails against. Mining billionaire and wannabe Liberal politician Clive Palmer jumped up to respond that his favourite band was Redgum ― despite the famously left-wing folk band, active in the 1970s and '80s, representing politics that are the exact opposite politics to Palmer's.

The spectacle of the 2012 London Olympics should be subtitled “The Bashing of the Chinese Athlete”. On August 8, Andrew Jacobs of the New York Times published a much-discussed piece called “Heavy burden on athletes takes joy away from China's Olympic success”. All kinds of “concerns” were raised about the toll “the nation's draconian sports system” is taking on the country's athletes.

Secrecy: The Key to Independence Laura S. Abrantes & Beba Sequeira Asia Pacific Support Collective Timor-Leste, Dili 2012, 102 pp. This is a book you should turn to whenever you think activism is too hard. Twelve women from the remote areas of Timor-Leste (East Timor) tell how they fought for their nation's independence. In the 24-year war from 1975 to 1999, official estimates are that 18,600 people were killed by conflict and 84,200 died of hunger and disease.

People are raising their voices in Sydney over August 24-26 to raise awareness among activists of songs, old and new, that further movements for social change. There was a time when protest songs attracted positive media attention; now the media tends to complain about the lack of contemporary “protest” songs while they simultaneously ignore or rubbish them.

The ferries that ply the river west of Sydney Harbour bear the names of Australia's world champion sportswomen. They include the Olympic swimming gold-medalists Dawn Fraser and Shane Gould, and runners Betty Cuthbert and Marjorie Jackson.

What's in a name? Everything, for Aboriginal rapper Eskatology. His music has his name written all over it. Eskatology, also known as 26-year-old South Australian Jonathan Stier, first came across the term "eschatology" through studying religion. "Religion does play a part in my life, and I was doing a bit of religious studying and came across this word and it intrigued me," he tells Green Left Weekly.

The left lost United States' writer Alexander Cockburn, one of its most powerful essayists and diarists, on July 21. He was an ironist who, unlike Christopher Hitchens, did not tend to confuse irony with supercilious chauvinism and leaden sarcasm (see The Long Short War for examples of these traits).

Dedicated to “the workers and peasants of Colombia”, Cocaine, Death Squads and the War on Terror is a serious and rigorous study of Colombian society.

As a child, David Cromwell got an invaluable insight into the way the corporate media skews the news. Scattered around his family's Scottish home were "mainstream" newspapers like the Daily Record and Glasgow Herald.

When you are in a hole, you stop digging. Even if this were not a cliche by now, it would still be common sense. Does this mean, then, that Russian President Vladimir Putin and the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church lack basic reasoning skills? The decision to extend the stay in prison of three members of feminist punk band Pussy Riot certainly seems to prove so.

It rarely takes very long into an Olympics for the myth that the games are above politics to be shattered. For the London 2012 games, the myth was smashed well before the games begun. A series of incidents involving Australian athletes have shown that politics are at the heart of the games. Despite winning the Olympic trial earlier this year, athlete John Steffensen was not selected to represent Australia in the individual 400 metres sprint, replaced by 19 year old Steve Solomon.