Culture

  • Strong lyric style

    Strong lyric style Yes Sir, No Sir3 Bags FullOracle Records, 1996 Review by Stuart Martin Having heard the band live at the Invasion Day rally at the Aboriginal tent embassy on the lawns of Old Parliament House in Canberra, I looked forward to

  • Poem: The Woman I'll Be &&

    The Woman I'll Be puts her hair up with a comb of absolute zero, fastens it with a pack of hounds until it forms a straight peak, utters words like a species of pepper, and has a blemish on her tongue, is certain she is not asleep,

  • The transformation of South Africa's communists

    Raising the Red Flag: The International Socialist League and the Communist Party of South Africa 1914-1932By Sheridan JohnsMayibuye Books, Bellville, South Africa1995, 309pp. Review by Norm Dixon Mayibuye Books specialise in publishing works

  • Witch-hunts across the centuries

    Arthur Miller's play about the 1692 witch-trials in Salem, Massachusetts, written in 1953 at the height of the McCarthyite anti-communist crusade, has come to the big screen.

  • Complex history of insurgency in Burma

    Burma: insurgency and the politics of ethnicityBy Martin SmithZed Books, 1991. 492 pp., $59.95. Review by Eva Cheng Though Burma: insurgency and the politics of ethnicity was published six years ago, it remains one of the richest and most

  • And thanks for the skew

    Life's Grandeur: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to DarwinBy Stephen Jay GouldJonathon Cape, 1996. 244 pp., $39.95 (hb) Review by Phil Shannon It pays to know your maths. In 1982, Stephen Jay Gould was diagnosed as suffering from abdominal

  • Poem: BHP — A Share Prospectus

    BHP — A Share Prospectus There is a company called BHP drilling for oil in the Timor Sea, that's why we can't set Timor free we've all got shares in BHP. Don't talk to me about democracy human rights or humanity, 'cause we're drilling

  • Ennui and muffed kicks

    Off SideBy Manuel Vazquez MontalbanSerpent's Tail, 1996. 275 pp. Review by Phil Shannon In the hands of a writer of critical social awareness, the detective novel can be an effective window on the greed, hypocrisy, violence and related vices of

  • Balance, objectivity and money

    News values: Ideas for an information ageBy Jack FullerUniversity of Chicago Press, 1996. 251 pp. $41 (hb)Reviewed by Dot Tumney This is probably where Mediawatch would like to spend more of its time if there wasn't so much tabloid crap requiring

  • As tasty as three-day-old bread

    Capitalism, Socialism, EcologyBy Andre GorzVerso, 1994. 147 pp., $34.95Reviewed by Phil Shannon To say, as the blurb on this book does, that Andre Gorz offers "a vital, fresh perspective for the left" is like a baker selling three-day-old bread as

  • Re-evaluating Lenin

    Long after the toppling likenesses of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov personified the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, Lenin keeps cropping up in the unlikeliest of places. Towards the end of his highly readably memoir, Palimpsest, a

  • Radical feminists rally their defence

    Radically Speaking: Feminism ReclaimedEdited by Diane Bell and Renate KleinSpinifex Press, 1966. 624 pp., $34.95 (pb) Review by Pat Brewer This book is a defensive project, criticism driven, by a strand of feminism which feels itself under siege.