Culture

It created a buzz well before its release date. For months, every pop music outlet speculated on its content. It provoked fervent anticipation among fans, censorship from the internet, and derision from elitist establishment journalists. When Sri Lankan-born Tamil musician M.I.A.’s Maya finally arrived in July, it predictably polarised critics.

Review by Graham Matthews Capitalism and Workers’ Struggle in China By Chris Slee Resistance Books, Sydney, 2010, $5 www.resistancebooks.com China enters the 21st century as something of an enigma.

The River: A Journey through the Murray-Darling Basin By Chris Hammer Melbourne University Publishing 2009, $34.99 pb Canberra journalist Chris Hammer has spent over a decade reporting on the crisis facing the Murray-Darling river system, and the communities that rely on it for their livelihoods. To write The River, however, Hammer actually travelled from tail to tip of the river system — from Cunnamulla to Dubbo and Echuca, from Bourke to Menindee and the Murray Mouth — and witnessed first-hand a river system in terminal decline.

Sydney’s inner-west played host to the inaugural Live Red Art event. The festival of radical art drew a crowd of more than 400 people to the Addison Road Community Centre in Marrickville on October 17.

In Tony Blair's new memoir, A Journey, the former British prime minister says one of his biggest regrets is introducing the Freedom of Information Act, because journalists have used it “as a weapon”.

US teenage pop star Justin Bieber released a book on October 12. First Step 2 Forever: My Story is supposed to be his autobiography. The notion that a 16-year-old has been through enough turmoil to merit an autobiography is bewildering, but then, I suppose only something his ghost-writer had to worry about. The book comes on the heels of Bieber releasing his own line of nail polish. Yes, nail polish. At least the marketing team behind “The Bieb” knows the target audience.

Serge Rodriguez is a Perth-based singer-song writer. Originally from Uruguay, Rodriguez formed the band Gypsy Earth last year. Below are the lyrics of one song, ‘Judas’. Visit GypsyEarth.net for more information and to buy his music. * * * Young man don’t you follow, don’t you head the call. Wars resolve nothing, only destroy. Look around you and see what it’s done to your world. What it’s done to our children before they are born. High and mighty men profess with their words. They’ll try to incite you to march off to war.

The Pacific Solution By Susan Metcalfe Australian Scholarly Publishing, North Melbourne, 2010 Review by Julian Gormly

Sound Strike is an organisation of musicians across the United States who oppose the extremely racist SB 1070 law in Arizona that targets migrants. Sound Strike artists have pledged to support the international boycott of Arizona until the law’s repeal. The organisation is planning to release “Sound Strike Songs”, a series of exclusive collections of songs that will be sold at www.thesoundstrike.net.

What’s on your iPod? Personally I have an eclectic mix — from hippyesque acoustic folk through to American “gangsta” rap and random electronic post-modern wankery you'll only hear on Triple J. Musically, we all enjoy different stuff. Most readers of Green Left Weekly would have broadly similar political beliefs, so why the difference? Why don’t people who converge politically also enjoy similar cultural tastes?

When US director Danny Schechter’s 2006 film In Debt We Trust predicted a huge financial crisis was coming, he was laughed at. It turned out he was right. His latest film, Plunder: The Crime of Our Time shows how the crisis was created by Wall Street bankers breaking the law to manipulate the markets — and suggests a bigger crisis is on the way.

What is most interesting about Newcastle’s annual This Is Not Art (TiNA) festival, is that what started 12 years ago as a community festival of independent, emerging art and culture, is still a community festival of independent, emerging art and culture. In an era when it’s not uncommon for even the most intimate art show to be sponsored by a massive alcohol company, the non-commercial nature of TiNA is remarkable. Australia is being hit by a relentless, daily gauntlet of live music and art festivals, but TiNA retains a truly artist-run schedule of events.