One of the more memorable jokes in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was the one about the supercomputer which, on being asked the meaning of life, supplied the answer ‘42’. One of capitalism’s most profound illogicalities is its constant need to render unquantifiable things – like knowledge – in monetary terms so that its beancounters can do their sums properly. It’s the same joke, only accountants don’t get the laughs. NASA is pulling out of its agreement with the European Space Agency over the planned ExoMars Rover programme, citing lack of funds. It has already ceased supplying...
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A new documentary film on the life and music of Phil Ochs, “There But For Fortune,” is being shown in a several US cities now. It hasn’t come too soon, certainly, because Ochs today is largely unknown outside the circle of lefty baby-boomers. Often Ochs is dismissed as a “topical” songwriter whose music, for that reason, hasn’t stood the test of time. “He’s no Bob Dylan,” his critics sometimes say. Dylan himself famously told Ochs he was “just a journalist” (as he threw him out of his limousine). This image of Ochs owes much to his own statements, for...
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Utah Phillips once said that IWWs used hymns as the basis of their famous labor songs because the tunes were pretty and every one knew them. All the IWW would have to do was change the lyrics so they made sense. Now some folks make more sense of Katy Perry’s “I kissed a girl”…
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“Get up in the morning, slaving for bread, sir,/So that every mouth can be fed./Poor me, the Israelite. Aah.”
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Demo trailer for the movie musical "Strike!" now in pre-production. O'Reilly (Carson Nattrass) convinces his army mate McDougall (Jon Ted Wynne) that they have more in common with their former WW1 enemies than their rulers. ... "Strike!" is based on the actual events of the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike.
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“Off the breaking backs of others/Where you got all your bucks/Till we make the revolution I just hope your life sucks” Street Sweeper Social Club is an American rap rock supergroup, formed in Los Angeles, California in 2006. The band primarily consists of guitarist Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and vocalist/emcee Boots Riley of The Coup
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A classic subversion of “We are the world” by the Houston band Culturcide. As Utah Phillips said, “Change the words so they make more sense.”
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From Michael Franti and the Disposable Heroes:
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Twenty-two years ago today Bob Geldof asked “..why do people starve on one side of the world while on the other people are paid not to produce food, or “surpluses” are allowed to rot? He said that no-one had yet answered that question for him satisfactorily..” Well, in an article titled ‘Politics of Live Aid (Socialist Standard, September 1985) we let him know that “famine is not a temporary upset in an otherwise harmonious world order which can be put right by a quick injection of money and sacks of grain: it is an endemic feature of a world...
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You must have heard the song by Woody Guthrie: “This land is your land, This land is my land, … “ It should be, but in fact it isn’t. Many millions of working people own no land at all. Those who are a bit better off own the small plot on which their house stands — a fraction of an acre. So who does own the land? Over 95 percent of the privately held land in the United States is owned by just 3 percent of the population. (1) These are the people who own the land, the industry,...
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