Culture

“Belief in Winter’s iron music turns the lands of home to Spring.” Kenneth Patchen, “Nocturne for the Heirs of Light” Even your blood seems cold slush so we come, bearing scientific warmth and clean blades Of faith and all such crude early things we moderns strive to sharpen, your mystic heart alone beats most desperate beneath our lazer aim: true tempered love at gunship point thrusts in you bleeding you clear in sha'Allah by dread hand of surgeon- drone, bootkick- blessing, your shabby portal opens upon us we ash-cross your brow:

Debt of Honour: Australia’s first commandos and East Timor Exhibition at the Western Australian Museum Until May 20. When the Japanese entered World War II after the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbour, they swept through south-east Asia and the Pacific.

Genre-bending musician Filastine says he has taken so much flak for being political in his music that these days he tries to be a little more innovative in getting his message across.

Musician and activist Phil Monsour is releasing his latest 12-song CD, Ghosts of Deir Yassin after the mobilisations for Palestinian Land Day on March 30.

In a recent interview with Hip-Hop DX, a hoodie-clad Nas exhibited an understandable amount of despair at the case of African American youth Trayvon Martin, the shot dead by George Zimmerman while walking home from the shops in Florida in February. The US hip hop artist said: “You never want to hear that kind of news. When it happens, you remember how many Trayvon incidents happen everyday all over the world... “It doesn’t seem like the race problem will ever get solved. I like to be optimistic, but it doesn’t seem like it’ll ever get solved.”

The Lorax Starring Danny Devito, Zac Efron, Taylor Swift & Ed Helms, directed by Chris Melandandri and Kyle Balda Now showing in cinemas. Adapted from the 1971 Dr Seuss book of the same name, The Lorax is a great analogy for the destructive nature of capitalism. The story is set in “Thneedville”, a walled city in which everything is made of plastic, metal and synthetic material. It is controlled by the mayor and owner of a bottled oxygen company, Aloysious O’Hare, who sells the residents their bottled water.

In a new development for progressive media, Green Left Weekly has launched GreenLeftTV, an online video resource to complement GLW's newspaper and website. It aims to provide another avenue for radical pro-people and pro-planet news and analysis.

OMG I’m Queer is a street magazine and resource produced by Minus 18. It is designed for same sex attracted and gender diverse young people living in the City of Melbourne.

Labor’s Conflict: Big Business, Workers & the Politics of Class By Tom Bramble & Rick Kuhn Cambridge University Press, 2011, 226 pp., $39.95 Trade Unionism in Australia: A History from Flood to Ebb Tide By Tom Bramble Cambridge University Press, 2008 293 pp., $49.95 Tom Bramble and Rick Kuhn, through Bramble’s Trade Unionism in Australia and their jointly-authored Labor’s Conflict, offer substantial histories of two very important elements of the workers’ movement in Australia.

More than a year after the start of the “Arab Spring”, it is possible to draw up a provisional balance sheet. Since January last year, popular rebellions have deposed a number of hated dictators across the region. It began with popular rebellions in Egypt and Tunisia, which spread to Yemen and Bahrain and through to the conflicts in Libya and Syria. All of these rebellions, to varying degrees, reflected the emergence of powerful mass movements causing concern for imperialism and its regional allies — principally Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Bruce Springsteen is back. And according to fan and detractor alike, he's angry as hell. Given the times in which we find ourselves, this should be unsurprising. What is surprising, however, is the musical method he's chosen to express this anger: a sound and structure that is at once vintage Springsteen and new territory for the Boss.

Protest singers aren't always producing angry slogans to give their audience a sense of solidarity: there are some who can make you consider an issue in a new light by using well-constructed lyrics, a tuneful melody, humour, and a gently persuasive voice. Such a catalyst is Jez Lowe, a British singer/songwriter, who is touring Australia. Lowe writes specifically about life in his native north-east England, but there is such truth and universality in his writing that it appeals to audiences across the world. He is to folk song what British screenwriter Jimmy McGovern is to television.