Culture

The title of Adam Hochschild’s marvellous book on the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War is taken from French author Albert Camus’s requiem for that doomed struggle: “Men of my generation have had Spain in our hearts … It was there that they learned … that one can be right and yet be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, and there are times when courage is not rewarded”.

Visionary physicist Stephen Hawking, a leading explorer of the cosmos and champion of progressive causes, died early on March 14 at the age of 76.

Climate and Capitalism editor Ian Angus looks at five important new books on famines, deadly epidemics and the pesticide poisons in our food.

Filmed over one year in 23 countries, Ai Weiwei’s Human Flow is at the same time beautiful and heartbreaking.

This year is the 50th anniversary of 1968, the year when revolutionary upsurges occurred all across the globe.

Growing up in northern Queensland in a family of unionists, I learnt the bare facts of the region’s radical history as part of the local folklore — Townsville had elected Communists to the local council, and Bowen twice sent a Communist, Fred Paterson, to state parliament.

More than halfway through this endless seven-round season, the 2018 AFL Women’s season has been catastrophe after catastrophe for the AFL.

Sir Alex Ferguson was deeply affronted by the Manchester United Football Club supporters who got stroppy about the proposed takeover of the huge English Premier League club he then managed by the US corporate raider, Malcolm Glazer, in 2004.

“They carried on to the degree where they actually thought they should have a say in the running of the football club,” exclaimed the outraged manager.

Ferguson got to the core of things by starkly asking just whose club it is.

Before touching down on the planet of Canto Bight, Rose looks down forebodingly to tell us that it’s full of the “worst people in the galaxy”. Cut to champagne glasses clinking and a casino full of galactic 1-percenters.

“Only one business in the galaxy can get you this rich,” Rose — a new character in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, a mechanic on the Rebel flagship — explains to returning hero Finn as they look around the beachfront resort planet, “selling weapons to the First Order.” She goes on to tell her family’s history: forced to work on a First Order mining colony before it was bled out and blitzed for weapons testing.

At first it's all smiles and love,

Honeymoon is over now it's push ’n shove,

You stay because they say sorry,

It won't happen again please don't worry,

Then suddenly something triggers the tick,

BOOM slapped with your first backhand hit.

Left in shock you think how can this be?

Living in the denial of they do love me.

This time they beg please no divorce,

Saying "If you only listened I wouldn't use force"

Now the blame game sets in along with rules,

You hide the truth not to look the fool.

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