Culture

Easy Virtue
Directed by Stephan Eliot
Written by Stephan Eliot and Sheridan Jobbins
With Jessica Biel, Ben Barnes, Kristin Scott Thomas & Colin Firth
In cinemas

Tinariwen, who are touring Australia in April, first became known abroad at the initial Festival of the Desert in Mali in 2001, now an annual event. This was also the year it started travelling to Europe. Until then its music was for Tuaregs across the Sahara, an outlet during their resistance struggle, when forced by drought into exile in Libya or south-eastern Algeria in the 1970s.

As Counterpunch and Rock and Rap Confidential disclosed in September, last May U2’s Bono confronted Irish journalist Gavin Martin and myself in the lobby of Dublin’s Merion Hotel.

With the world food crisis shading into the world financial crisis, food prices seemed to settle down. Some financial analysts said the food crisis was over: all the basic food prices had come down — except rice and sugar.

Revolucion: Five Visions — A breathtaking visual exploration of Cuba reveals five decades of revolution though the lenses of five Cuban photographers. SBS, Saturday, March 28, 3.25pm. The Atheists — As best-selling books rail against religion,

The glory of being “the other”. The pride and punishment of not being “like them …” Not being white, being Indian and being half cast … That is the harsh but ultimately glorious destiny of the Bolivian.

What misshapen forms perish for a flag? Charge, lips pressed, shooter readied, eyes a moon Final hoarse scraping breaths before the fall for standard or pennant or rampant rag Tis ever a murderous myth A fabric sewn and crafted by hands with

Critique of Intelligent Design: Materialism versus Creationism from Antiquity to the Present
By John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark & Richard York
Monthly Review Press, 2008
240 pages, $33.95

Guerrilla Girl – Isabel is an educated young woman from a wealthy family in Colombia who has decided to leave behind everything she knows to join the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). SBS, Sunday March 22, 11.10pm. Living Black –

Madame Sata – Joao Francisco dos Santos, better known as Madame Sata, was also a notorious gay performer in Brazil who pushed social boundaries in a volatile time. SBS, Saturday, March 14, 12.55am. Outsourced – Outsourcing is the new frontier

The decision by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to ban Israeli tennis star Shahar Pe’er from playing in the US$2 million Dubai tennis tournament on February 16 — sent shockwaves around the world. However, in reporting this decision, many mainstream outlets have missed the point.

The most eye-catching placard on a 120,000-strong march in Dublin on February 21 against the Irish government’s austerity response to the tottering of the capitalist system was held aloft by a scrawny teenager with the look of a music-lover about him, reading “Make Bono Pay Tax”.