Culture

  • The Mighty Mighty Bosstones: 'Get involved; be anti-racist'

    The Mighty Mighty Bosstones toured Australia in July with their ska music combined with hard-core punk rock — "ska-core" — and a single reaching for the top of the mainstream charts. Green Left Weekly's LIAM MITCHELL spoke to the Bosstones'

  • US life as we're not meant to see it

    Public HousingProduced and directed by Frederick WisemanSydney International Film Festival Review by Becky Ellis Public Housing is a documentary about the life of residents of one of the poorest housing complexes in the United States: the Ida B.

  • Poem: Growth industry

    Growth industry “Uranium is a growth industry”, Says the Mining Maggot, always smilin' — You're sure to get a growth out of it, you idiot! Just look at the people from the Marshall Islands! Denis Kevans

  • Pauline Isn't There!

    Pauline Isn't There! Ms Hanson is a clever cove, more cunning than you thinkFor she's the master trickster who, quicker than a blink,can escape the reach of logic and defy cool reason's stare —When you think you've spied the racist — why,

  • Interview: John Pilger

    In News of a Kidnapping, Colombian novelist and journalist Gabriel García Márquez described journalism as "fortunately, power without the throne". Such a view presents a myriad of problems, not the least of which is

  • 'Expertise' in anti-environmental film

    'Expertise' The following were some of the main on-camera "experts" in Against Nature: Professor Wilfred Beckerman, identified as "a former member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution" (in 1970-73). Nowhere was it indicated that

  • Mighty anti-racist tones

    Mighty anti-racist tonesBRISBANE — On July 18, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones played at the Arena, heading a line-up of ska- and rockabilly-influenced bands, including US band the Amazing Royal Crowns. With the revival of ska, the

  • Rom struggle in their own words

    WastelandDirected by Andrei SchwaetzGadjo DiloDirected by Tony GatlifSydney International Film Festival Reviewed by Becky Ellis Two films screened at the Sydney International Film Festival in June focused on experiences faced by the Romany (or

  • Sorry business

    A short story by Craig Cormick Port Phillip — 1842 "You sorry fellows", says George Augustus Robinson, staring down at the empty graves. Waiting patiently for the bodies to arrive. He is glad he has not attended the hanging. He has seen too

  • What Phil Ochs heard

    What's That I Hear?: The Songs of Phil OchsVarious artistsSliced Bread RecordsPO Box 606, Blue Bell, PA 19422, USA Review by Barry Healy This two-CD compilation of tracks by a bevy of performers, including Billy Bragg, Arlo Guthrie, Peter Yarrow,

  • ABC screens anti-environmental fantasy

    Anybody inclined to believe the federal government's complaints about the ABC being "left wing" would have been quickly brought back to reality by tuning in to the first part of the Against Nature series, screened on July 21. The

  • The writer who believed what he was told

    Alexander Solzhenitsyn: A Century in His LifeBy D.M. ThomasLittle, Brown and Company, 1998. 583 pp., $45.00 (hb) Review by Phil Shannon February 9, 1945, was the turning point in the life of Captain Alexander Solzhenitsyn. An officer in the Red