Arena Magazine articles from April 2005

Arena Magazine archives from April 2005

Freedom's war.(Editorial)
April 1, 2005... When will the war end? In Arena Magazine No. 75, Ghassan Hage described 'warring societies' as those 'permanently geared towards war'. Such a society ceases to be structured around the distribution of, or aspiration towards the 'good life':...

Heinrich Hinze.(Lead Graphic)(Cartoon)
April 1, 2005... WE MAY LOOK MORE FAVOURABLY UPON YOUR REFUGEE APPLICATION IF YOU COVERT TO OUR RELIGION.... IS THERE NO END TO THESE HUMILIATIONS?? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Has the tide turned for Bush? We need to be liberated from the freedom on offer by Iraq's 'liberators'--and fast.
April 1, 2005... It is hardly novel or controversial to describe the situation in the Middle East as volatile. And volatility indicates fragile relations that can erupt in unpredictable directions at any moment. Such relations are not going to transform...

Season change.(War Sonnets)(Poem)
April 1, 2005... Season Change We were saying: how splendid this is when, like an old lover, The light changes softly to keen presence, and the hand In summer's glove is withdrawn, shifting the current. And there is some swimming left, the...

Who profits, who pays? Andrew Lowenthal unravels corporate Australia's dealings in Iraq.(Against the Current)
April 1, 2005... 'What floor are you going to?' a woman asks as a group of twenty activists cram their way into the lift. 'Seventeen.' 'Oh no you're not!' she shouts and attempts to block the buttons. The activists scramble to another lift and she...

New Labour's anti-socialism: New Labour's attempt to synthesise progressive politics with the global market is collapsing into new experiments in social authoritarianism.(Against the Current)(social policy of Labour Party)
April 1, 2005... If a liberal is a conservative who's never been mugged, then at some point during the past decade or so New Labour was done over. Launching a five-year government law and order strategy in July 2004--no doubt with an eye on the 5 May General...

'My Helpless Sight'.(War Sonnets)(Poem)
April 1, 2005... 'My Helpless Sight' As under a green sea, I saw his drowning. Wilfred Owen Then walking on With one-eyed night-lens Like some new crustacea Unto the clumsiness of death The intestinal greens hissing lustre...

Immigration? No thanks. I'll take fertility--and make that a double! Priya Saratchandran warns against population policy that repeats past mistakes.(declining population and shortage of labor in Australia)
April 1, 2005... ... one for your husband, one for your wife and one for your country. Peter Costello, 11 May 2004 Apocalyptic headlines scream 'Nation's Fertility Crisis' and 'Populate or Perish'. If you're an Australian woman in your thirties, you'd...

Island Magazine #99.(Mag Watch)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... This is the last edition of Island for 2004 and it engages with that year as the bicentenary of European settlement in its home state of Tasmania. The articles here focus largely on the interaction of art and society, including community art...

Monthly Review, March 2005.(Mag Watch)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... John Bellamy Foster writes on the 'end of rational capitalism,' arguing that by following the course of market-based capitalism, 'the fundamental problems dividing and endangering human society and the planet are bound to worsen.' Richard York...

New Internationalist, March 2005.(Mag Watch)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... This edition of NI is headed 'State of Fear' and looks at the 'Global Attack on Rights'. Richard Swift analyses what he calls the 'occupation mentality' and its role in undermining rights and 'fragile freedoms... in virtually every corner of...

Social Alternatives, vol. 23, no.4, 2004.(Mag Watch)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... Social Alternatives, out of Queensland, dedicates this issue to the Big Three: 'Globalisation, Environment and Social Justice'. Co-guest-edited by new president of the Australian Conservation Foundation, Ian Lowe, the theme seeks to include...

Antipodean electoral dictatorship: Simon Booth looks across the Tasman to contemplate Australia's electoral future.(Against the Current)
April 1, 2005... When contemplating the unexpected Howard Government majority in the Senate and what it might bring, discussion has unsurprisingly been focused on the relationship between the Commonwealth Government and the six states, and how federalism might...

Taming the Banana Republic: USAID money is being used to rein in East Timor's fledgling civil society.(Against the Current)
April 1, 2005... In March this year, a USAID-funded children's book released in East Timor provoked outrage. Faty and Noi's Adventure to Parliament was produced by the International Republican Institute (IRI) to teach Timorese kids about democracy. All the...

World Social Forum 2005: 'nation shall speak unto nation': Damian Grenfell argues that the nation was the unmentioned presence at this year's World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil.(Against the Current)
April 1, 2005... The grand finale of this year's World Social Forum (WSF), which returned to Porto Alegre, Brazil in January, was a speech by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at the Gigantinho--a huge indoor concrete cauldron of a stadium packed with the...

Hooked.(War Sonnets)(Poem)
April 1, 2005... Hooked That moving picture of their shawls, streaming in hospital corridors. The little pack, with claws and yelps, tearing at the supply truck. A scowling ten year old, limping around the lens, then gone. The flock, a...

Time/Location.(War Sonnets)(Poem)
April 1, 2005... Time/Location No TV today, no watching the war at all. Just lie down under sea grass to listen to lice. Be as good as dead and rot and no one know. Let there be beneath that bedding no flies on you. And at night when...

Being between life and death: the Schicavo case.(//bites: BRIEF NOTES ON NEWS AND VIEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD)
April 1, 2005... The grotesque struggle over Terri Schiavo has now concluded with her death--followed by an autopsy both literal and figurative. Any number of reflections could be drawn from its awful endgame. Pointless to point out the number of Americans who...

The physiognomy of civilisation.(//bites: BRIEF NOTES ON NEWS AND VIEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD)
April 1, 2005... Until recently, Sydney University was to hold a conference called 'Physiognomy of Origin'. Keynote speakers were Adrianna Cavarero and Antonio Negri, discussing the resurgent questions of embodiment, origin and potentiality--questions that are...

What can't be exchanged?(//bites: BRIEF NOTES ON NEWS AND VIEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD)(adoption versus procreation and abortion)
April 1, 2005... Letter-writers to the papers have called the Tony Abbott-Daniel O'Connor reunion imbroglio something out of a movie. Sitcom is more like it, with canned laughter and cued audience applause. Yet the events--a rare case of history proceeding to...

Shining a light on detention.(//bites: BRIEF NOTES ON NEWS AND VIEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD)
April 1, 2005... Walking the two kilometres from our campsite to the Baxter Detention Centre I noticed over the desert skyline a blaze of lights on Good Friday night and I thought how close Port Augusta must be. I was only to discover these city lights were in...

Sign of the times.(BRIEF NOTES ON NEWS AND VIEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD)(Obituary of Gordon Barton, socialy liberal Australia Party)(Brief Article)(Obituary)
April 1, 2005... That Gordon Barton's death could pass all but unnoticed in the mainstream Australian media is a rather melancholy testimony to the distance we have travelled from the more optimistic 1970s. Barton, founder of the Nation Reviewand one of the...

Howard washes whiter! Coded and loaded language does little to better Indigenous living standards.
April 1, 2005... The over-simplification--or trivialisation --of Indigenous policy discussion in Australia is no less a problem than supposedly 'practical' or 'concrete' matters. The sheer illogic of many calls for 'practical' betterment belies their supposed...

Reply to Ali Kazac.(Comment)(Arab-Israeli foreign relations)
April 1, 2005... Palestinian Authority representative Ali Kazak argues that opposition to Israel and Zionism is not anti- Semitic ('In Search of A Just Peace', Arena Magazineno. 75). But the debate about anti-Jewish prejudice vis-a-vis hostility to the Jewish...

Some are unaware the heat is on.(Comment)(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... Peter Christoff's article on the Howard Government's stance on Climate Change (Arena Magazine No. 75) diagnoses a dangerous case of policy autism. It's a first class analysis of the policy development process. An inability to read and process...

Solving labor's malaise.(Comment)(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... Tony London (Arena Magazine No.75) is right. Keeping the ALP on course and effective has never been easy. The battle to preserve its social democratic identity and integrity has had to be fought and fought again. The problem in the past has...

Women helping each other: a reply to Joumanah El-Matrah.(Comment)(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... Joumanah El-Matrah (Arena MagazineNo. 75) naturally resents non-Muslims telling Muslim women what they should be doing, their ignorance about what activist Muslim women are doing, and their ignorance about the great differences between...

Basra.(War Sonnets)(Poem)
April 1, 2005... Basra Today we did a splendid thing. We bought That water urn, the large creamy ceramic one. Now it sits on the bench, against the white wall Where, for a decade or more, Vermeer's woman Poured her milk. It's slightly...

Copy and Copy.(War Sonnets)(Poem)
April 1, 2005... Copy and Copy After one video too much You're driven outside to try your luck With your own writing Even on to a dumb shed door Soldiers who wish to be a hero Are practically zero But those who want to be...

Untitled.(War Sonnets)(Poem)
April 1, 2005... Untitled Why should I wash? Would I be better off than I am? Primo Levi In the white bowl, two hands wide, On the homecoming table this morning, My beloved floated the first winter camellia As pink and...

Mistakes.(War Sonnets)(Poem)
April 1, 2005... Mistakes We have to ask ourselves, would we have done it? Inga Clendinnen 1 My love said don't kill it in the kitchen. I almost thought, a kitchen is where things happen Kitchens are hot, like some prisons....

Speaking to Myself as a Retired Official in a High Pavilion.(War Sonnets)(Poem)
April 1, 2005... Speaking to Myself as a Retired Official in a High Pavilion. From whose house is it a clear flute? Li Po 'Implicate', that sticky mesh: You sweat for a way out, and then... Its web again. As a boy you loved the...

Building a democratic, humanist socialism.(http://trawlings: the best of the web)(Reprint)
April 1, 2005... We have to invent the new socialism for the 21st century. Capitalism is not a sustainable model of development. Hugo Chavez, 4 March 2005. In recent months, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has begun to explicitly advocate for...

Dry Lake.(War Sonnets)(Poem)
April 1, 2005... Dry Lake Old, I prefer peace: Affairs don't fret me. I have ambition Only for these woods. Wang Wei (701-762) As things are, I live out of town Where the lake is silting up The neighbours are...

Bamboo.(War Sonnets)(Poem)
April 1, 2005... Bamboo At such a time, who dares to set himself up as a judge in his own cause? Sigmund Freud, 1915 You ask me what I'm doing here. Nothing. At a time like this, with the war still raging? Nothing. When...

Primal fears, primal ambitions: policy debates around security issues have become personalised, exaggerated, militarised and moralised, making sound policy difficult to formulate.(Essay)
April 1, 2005... In Australia today, security has acquired a prominence in public policy debate that is unprecedented in most of our adult lifetimes. We would probably have to go back to the 1950s or perhaps the early 1960s to find a period in which security...

And might the bell toll--for thee? The fourth article in a series by Nonie Sharp on place, environment and their defence.(The Environment)
April 1, 2005... I It's 26 December 2004; the earth has begun to tremble. Nature, it turns out, is re-writing a story. Thick blue seismic lines appear on faraway monitoring stations. Above the moving plates the ocean changes from green to dark black....

Social capital and the business of the middle class: Rebecca Marsh and Daniel Reidpath hear echoes of nineteenth-century etiquette in social capital rhetoric.(Social Capital)
April 1, 2005... Social capital has been taken up with fervour by local, state, commonwealth and international governments. It has found favour among the 'neo-' politicians: neo-liberals, neo-conservatives and New Labour, and within international institutions...

In defence of social capital: Eva Cox offers a different understanding of the potential value of social capital.(social capital)
April 1, 2005... The following article is in the tradition of offering points of view that attempt to explore new ideas and create discussion... It continues the concept of 'it's the society, stupid', headlined in Arena Magazine no. 69, and suggests the...

The rise of surplus culture: Guy Rundle considers how consumption's 'soft boom' will meet its limits.(Cultural Currents)(Editorial)
April 1, 2005... American sports stars now routinely have the name of their sponsor tattooed on their arm or back... McDonald's and other corporations are now paying rap and R&B groups to mention their products in the middle of songs... parents are naming...

The sum of all fears: commodification of social relations leaves individuals vulnerable and isolated.(Cultural Currents)
April 1, 2005... A teenager is killed by an express train after forcing her way through a closed safety gate (the pedestrian underpass was closed due to crime fears) and her parents demand an end to express trains through the Bentleigh crossing. When a young...

Too late.(rope)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Filed under: General--Andrew Norton @ 7:32 pm In the late 1990s, when I had a life-threatening illness, I made it clear to my parents that if ended up in a 'persistent vegetative state'--to use the description of Terri Schiavo, subject of a...

Downloading the siren's song: the technological management of otherness.(Cooper's Last)(Silence in contempoary music, politics and society)(Editorial)
April 1, 2005... Despite our occasional longing for it, the fact remains that for a human being there can be no such thing as genuine silence. This is what composer John Cage discovered when he entered a sealed chamber at Harvard University in 1951. Instead of...

Notable publications.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... With All Our Strength Anne E. Brodsky (Routledge, 2005) Writer and academic Anne Brodsky is the first to have been given in-depth access to the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). She visited and interviewed their...

Melinda Hinkson on Papunya's place in history.(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... Papunya, A Place Made After the Story: The Beginnings of the Western Desert Painting Movement Geoffrey Bardon and James Bardon, The Miegunyah Press, 2004. When Geoffrey Bardon arrived at Papunya in January 1971 to take up a teaching...

Clive Hamilton on radical slowness.(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... In Praise of Slow by Carl Honore Orion Trade $49.95 In Indonesia it's called jam karet, 'rubber time', and in South America they say manana, meaning 'later', or at some indeterminate time. It is infuriating for Westerners when they come up...

Matthew Lamb on political language.(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate George Lakoff Scribe, 2005 During the Seattle protests against the World Trade Organisation in 1999, I was sitting with a group of well-meaning young people here in...

My fellow Americans ... Those who love the US have a responsibility to criticise it.(Red Herrick)(Editorial)
April 1, 2005... I almost woke up American this morning. The metamorphosis has been threatening for decades. Call me anti- American, but I feel lucky to have resisted so long. Lying on American sheets, listening to American pop on the clock radio, I unavoidably...