Culture

Congratulations on the launch of Green Left TV in Sydney on July 7. With the filming of the second Green Left Report in front of a live audience, it was a night to remember. Let’s hope that this is the start of something big. Community media needs our support to make it grow.

Waltzing at the Doomsday Ball: The Best of Joe Bageant By Joe Bageant Scribe Publications, 2011 $32.95, 298 pp. Joe Bageant was a feature on many United States left-wing websites, such as Counterpunch, over the years. His writing is witty, outrageous and with a penetratingly cynical view of working-class American life. Bageant, who died last year, came from a depressed, working-class community in Winchester, Virginia, and never lost his love/hate relationship with the people he knew so well there.

Reading this former Reuters reporter's analysis of the news industry is like watching an episode of detective series Columbo unfold. Like the seemingly innocent inspector Columbo, Patrick Chalmers at first comes across as disconcertingly naive.

Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet Aric McBay, Lierre Keith & Derrick Jensen Seven Stories Press, 2011 In its March-April issue, Canadian Dimension magazine featured a very positive review of Deep Green Resistance. The reviewer said it “made me a better strategist,” and endorsed author Derrick Jenson’s assertion that “this book is about winning.”

Brisbane-based singer-songwriter Phil Monsour has just released his latest CD, Ghosts of Dier Yassin. As those familiar with the struggles of the Palestinian people may recognise from the title, many songs convey the hopes and spirit of the Palestinian people longing for freedom and security.

Newcastle punks Local Resident Failure are heavier than Clive Palmer, tighter than Gina Rinehart and have just dropped a motherlode of a debut album.

Most mainstream media journalists would kill to get one of their stories on the front page of The New York Times. But when that happened to the newspaper's Balkans correspondent in 2003, he was less than thrilled.

Fly & Be Damned: What Now For Aviation & Climate Change? By Peter Mcmanners Zed Books, 2012 182 pages, $26.95 (pb) In a future green world, will there be a place for aviation? In Fly And Be Damned, Peter McManners thinks there will be, but air transport will look quite different.

Beyond Tribal Loyalties ― Personal Stories of Jewish Peace Activists Edited by Avigail Abarbanel Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2012. Jews who come out on the side of Palestinians generally do not face terrible physical punishment, nor are they usually thrown in jail. But they often face ostracism, and this is what makes this community-creating book ― a collection of “Personal Stories of Jewish Peace Activists” ― so valuable.

The tour has been called one of the most ambitious of all time. The show has been called one of the greatest. Since The Wall tour started in late 2010, Roger Waters has awed hundreds of thousands of people with this astounding and complex show. And he’s taking it to one of the sites of of intense social struggle in July ― Quebec, in support of the huge student struggle that has broken out there.

Californian hardcore punk band Death By Stereo have long been known for their politically charged lyrics, energising the scene with their debut If Looks Could Kill, I'd Watch You Die 13 years ago.

"We wanted to do everything on this album," Tjimba Possum-Burns tells Green Left Weekly. He is talking about Standing Strong, the aptly-titled second album by Yung Warriors.