Culture

US progressive journalist and author Joe Bageant died on March 26. Bageant is best known for his 2007 book Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War, in which he writes about his home town of Winchester, Virginia. In the book, Bageant investigated how the betrayal of poor whites by the Democrats led to many supporting the Republican Party, despite it being against their interests. He also wrote many articles and essays. His last book, published in September 2010, was Rainbows: A Redneck memoir.

Good politicians are few and far between, but British health secretary Andrew Lansley is among the worst. In 2008, he was forced to apologise after saying recessions brought "good things" such as people being able to spend more time with their families.

See the activist calendar for details of screenings in your city. John Pilger’s latest film, The War You Don’t See, looks at the power wielded by journalists reporting conflict. It examines the responsibility of the media in justifying and supporting the wars our governments wage. Pilger asks: “What is the role of the media in rapacious wars like Iraq and Afghanistan and how are the crimes of war reported and justified? “Those whose job it is to keep the record straight ought to be the voice of people, not power.”

AC4 are a hardcore punk band from Sweden who are touring Australia in April with US punk group Star Fucking Hipsters. Green Left Weekly’s Chris Peterson spoke to AC4 lead singer , also of The (International) Noise Conspiracy, who toured Australia last year.

The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Politics & Power Marie-Monique Robin Spinifex Press, 2010. 373 pages, $44.95 (pb) “What counts for us is making money,” said a Monsanto vice-president to a new employee at an induction session in 1998, reminding the idealistic novice that there is a simple, and crude, capitalist philosophy at the heart of the US chemical and biotechnology giant.

This poem, by Afrodity Giannakis, is translated from Greek, It was published in a book also entitled Stowaway. * * * A stowaway in your life, a refugee in your land, an exile in your country, a foreigner in your homeland, of your history — you’d think — an invisible viewer. Forever inside waiting rooms. A patience test. An endurance test in the age of abstention. The only power they have left you: Gossiping life. Talking about life behind her back.

Aboriginal man Mulrunji Doomadgee died in custody at Palm Island police station on November 19, 2004. His liver had been cleaved almost in two. Nearly three years later, senior police sergeant Chris Hurley told Townsville Supreme Court he had come to terms with the fact that he caused the death.

Star Fucking Hipsters are a New York-based punk band. It was formed in 2005 by members from other punk acts, including Leftover Crack, Ensign and The Ergs! The band’s third album, From the Dumpster to the Grave, is due for release this year.

Wilhelm Furtwaengler — The Great EMI Recordings 21 CD set, EMI Furtwaengler the Legend Three CD set, EMI George Whitbread, a long-deceased left identity in Perth who once led a printer’s strike at The West Australian, was reputedly fond of saying that “Beethoven gives you strength”. Nor was “Whitty” (as he was called) alone in his sentiments. After World War II, many on the left — builders, grocers, teachers, homemakers — took an active interest in classical music.

I’ve never really bought the idea that 17-year-old Canadian-born pop star Justin Bieber is just some harmless, happy-go-lucky teen heart-throb. Anyone who saw the near-riot he inspired in Liverpool can attest to this. His most recent comments about abortion in an interview published by Rolling Stone on February 16, however, crosses a whole new line. “I really don’t believe in abortion,” Bieber told the music magazine. “It's like killing a baby?”

Roger Waters, best known as a member of British band Pink Floyd, released the statement below on February 25 — explaining his decision to support the international “boycott, divestment and sanctions” campaign targeting Israel. It is reprinted from Alternativenews.org. * * * In 1980, a song I wrote, “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2”, was banned by the government of South Africa because it was being used by Black South African children to advocate their right to equal education. That apartheid government imposed a cultural blockade, so to speak, on certain songs — including mine.

Sequences to freedom is a book of short poems written in February by Iranian poet Ali Abdolrezaei that has been translated into English by Abol Froushan. Abdolrezaei, from Gilan province, is now a refugee living in London. Abdolrezaei said: “I never thought that one day I would write purely political poetry, but the inhuman atrocity dealt by the Iranian regime nowadays is so beyond proportion that it is politics that is writing these poems.” Below are two of the translated poems published in Sequences to Freedom. * * *