Culture

The Solidarity Choir in Sydney is celebrating its 25th anniversary on March 31. The event will take place from 7.30pm upstairs at the Gaelic Club, 10 Devonshire St, Surry Hills, near Central Station.

This is an abridged version of an article that first appeared on February 24 in the Occupied Chicago Tribune, the newspaper backing Occupy Chicago. Despite brutal forced evictions of Occupy camps across the United States late last year, the movement for the interests of the 99% against the 1% is still going strong.

Sydney's inner-west community is set to take over Newtown’s nooks and crannies for the fourth time with the roving laneway festival Reclaim the Lanes. On Saturday, March 17, the forgotten and underutilised urban spaces of the inner-west will be transformed by the one-day festival. Pockets of artistic experimentation, live music and community participation are expected to bring 500 locals, friends and families out and about to enjoy the colourful spectacle.

Green Washed: Why We Can’t Buy Our Way to a Green Planet Kendra Pierre-Louis IG Publishing, 216 pages Radical German poet Hans Magnus Enzenberger once compared mainstream environmentalism to a Sunday sermon that terrifies parishioners with dire warnings of eternal damnation, but concludes weakly by promising salvation to any sinner who performs a simple act of penance. “The horror of the predicted catastrophe,” he wrote, “contrasts sharply with the mildness of the admonition with which we are allowed to escape.”

Colectivo Mujer and the Addison Road Gallery in Marrickville, Sydney invite you to “Latinas: Our Origins, Our Voices”. This cultural event will celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD) on March 8. Colectivo Mujer is a group of women from Latin America and elsewhere who strongly identify with our cultures that recognise the contribution of women and men to ever-evolving feminisms.

The Egyptian revolution has mobilised millions of people. It brought down the United States-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak. The struggle for democracy and equality continues. Countless songs dedicated to the uprising rocketed around the internet.

Vultures’ Picnic Greg Palast 416 pages, 2011 Penguin www.gregpalast.com Investigative reporter Greg Palast is back ― and this time, it’s personal. The former United States corporate crime investigator, who exposed the 2000 and 2004 elections of George W Bush as frauds, has gone for a more intimate feel in his latest book, Vultures’ Picnic.

Politically progressive post-hardcore band Enter Shikari say they only have to look at their fans to get a sense that the world can change for the better. “The past few years we've seen a huge increase in people that come up and thank us for singing about the things we do,” Rou Reynolds, frontman of the British band, tells Green Left Weekly.

Panic By David Marr Black Inc., 2011 262 pages, $29.95 (pb) Panic. “It’s so Australian,” says the dejected journalist, David Marr in his book of essays on the rise, decline and rise again of political panics in Australia. Panic over the Chinese was the “midwife of Federation”, and subsequent alarms about German spies in World War I, Wobblies and Reds in the 1920s, Communists in the Depression, and the Red Menace all over again after World War II have kept the scares coming.

By Barry Healy Which Side Are You On? is Veteran United States indie folk artist Ani DiFranco’s first CD release in years and her legion of fans will be pleased to hear that she has lost none of her edge.

Dirty Money: The True Cost of Australia’s Mineral Boom By Matthew Benns William Heinemann, 2011, 296 pages, $34.95 (pb) Australian mining companies hand over $10 million a year in political donations to state and federal political parties. They don’t expect to be bitten on the hand by those they are feeding, as the Rudd Labor government did with its proposed mining super profits tax. Time for the big stick of a fear-mongering $22 million campaign to remind the government who really rules in Australia.

Why Marx Was Right By Terry Eagleton Yale University Press, 2011 272 pp., $32.95 In August, the Wall Street Journal website ran a video of an interview with Nouriel Roubini as its top story under the headline, "Roubini: Marx was Right." Roubini is a mainstream economist who achieved fame by predicting the 2008 financial collapse, earning himself the nickname "Dr. Doom" among the Wall Street speculators.