Culture

  • Dubious alliances in the 'war on terror'

    Murder in Samarkand: A British Ambassadors Controversial Defiance of Tyranny in the War on Terror
    By Craig Murray
    Mainstream Publishing 2006
    400 pages $59.95 hardback.

  • Lebanon (2006)

    Two soldiers had been captured They'd crossed to the other side Two soldiers taken prisoner Several others died This is how it started So said the Jewish state Forget about 96, 82 67, 48 Two soldiers taken hostage And by the Sea of

  • Mao's rise

    Mao: A Life
    SBS TV
    Parts 1 & 2 of 4, Friday December 8 and 15, 8.30pm

  • Soldier's Joy

    (For Specialist Mike Moriarty, Rahim Al Haj and all the Joes and Jills and all the Hadjis. This poem is inspired in part by the documentary film The War Tapes, which everyone should see.)

  • On the Box

    Riot or Revolution: The Eureka Stockade 1854 — The Eureka stockade told through re-enacted monologues by the characters of Hotham, Huyghue and Carboni. ABC, Sunday, December 3, 5pm. Compass: The Other Zionists — A group of older Jewish women

  • Comin' to America

    Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
    Directed by Larry Charles
    With Sascha Baron Cohen and Kevin Davitian.

  • Don't mention the war

    10 Excellent Reasons not to Join the Military
    Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg (ed)
    The New Press, 2006
    157 pages, $24 (pb)

  • Alan Jones: The power of the parrot

    Almost anyone else found to have been cheating, lying and secretly on the take would have been the subject of a frothing rant over the airwaves by Sydney shock jock Alan Jones, but when Jones was caught being paid millions in commercial sponsorships over the past decade to present advertising as news, there was no public self-flagellation. As Chris Masters’ biography of Jones argues, the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) hearings showed that “Jones was for sale”, despite Jones’s proclamations that his opinions are his alone.