There is still widespread opposition to the closure and sell-off of the Powerhouse Museum, reports Jim McIlroy.
History
Phil Shannon reviews Oxford University historian Marc Mulholland's book about the 19th century French Republican and communist revolutionary Emmanuel Barthélemy.
Award-winning filmmaker and Hollywood star of more than 85 blockbuster films Kirk Douglas died on February 5 at the age of 103. Peter Frost recalls how Douglas helped break the notorious ban on writers and actors during the early years of the Cold War.
A photo exhibition in Tokyo on January 23–26 celebrated the life and advocacy of Song Sin-do, who campaigned for an apology from the Japanese government for coercing her into sexual slavery during World War II, writes Melanie Barnes.
“Not of sound mind when I committed me crime, some said. Others... I'd orchestrated the whole damm thing. On reflection, I do ask meself… Was I morally or legally responsible for what I had done? You see, I never set out to harm anyone, but simply to remind the British empire dat as an Irishman... I wasn't about to stand idle and watch as me fellow countrymen were being hanged for defending their own country.”
So wrote Henry James O'Farrell, an alleged Irish Fenian (as 19th century Irish revolutionaries were known), who made a failed assassination attempt on Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, in Sydney on March 12, 1868.
At the height of the US invasion of Vietnam, about 500,000 United States military personnel were involved in the conflict. Of those, more than 50,000 lost their lives — and the US lost the war.
Two new books illustrate the enormous breadth, depth and courage of the soldier (GI) movement against the war.
Waging Peace in Vietnam is an ideological hand grenade thrown at the war mongers. Winter Warrior, for its part, uses a graphic, comic-book style to show the terrible personal cost inflicted on at least one anti-war Vet.
Radical Perth, Militant Fremantle 2nd Ed.
Edited by Charlie Fox, Alexis Vassiley, Bobbie Oliver & Lenore Layman
Interventions Inc., 2019
462 pages, pb
Following the success of the first edition of Radical Perth, Militant Fremantle in 2017, the editors heeded calls for the anthology to publish a second, more updated edition.The editors made several very apparent changes from the first edition.
Considering the terrors that Mikhail Sholokhov lived through and nearly perished from in Stalinist Russia, it is a wonder that the Soviet novelist retained any sense of humour. Yet he did.
How to Read Donald Duck
By Ariel Dorfman & Armand Mattelart, translated by David Kunzle
Pluto Press, 2019
192 pp, $17.00
Today, as the streets of Chile burn with rebellion, it is timely to look back on this book, which was burned by the military during the 1973 overthrow of the socialist Salvador Allende presidency.
Finding Evald Ilyenkov: How a Soviet philosopher who stood up for dialectics continues to inspire
By Corinna Lotz
Lupus Books, 2019
57 pp., $8
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