Arena Magazine articles from August 1998

Arena Magazine archives from August 1998

Two nations. (Australia)
August 1, 1998... GEOFF SHARP ARGUES THAT A NEW CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE IS REQUIRED TO COUNTER A DIVIDED AUSTRALIA. Across the whole political spectrum no one is yet ready to face up to the basic reasons for the upheaval now affecting Australian politics and...

No end to uncertainty: political compromise and betrayal after Wik.
August 1, 1998... POLITICAL COMPROMISE AND BETRAYAL AFTER WIK It should have come as no surprise that indigenous leaders were locked out of the negotiations which finally clinched the passing of the Native Title amendment legislation on 8 July. Through all the...

Croker Island: marks in the sea.
August 1, 1998... On 6 July the Federal Court of Australia recognised native title rights to seas around Croker Island, northeast of Darwin, where five Aboriginal clans of the region had claimed marine areas within and beyond the Northern Territory...

Rubbery figures: tax, welfare and leisure and the slow death of casino economies.
August 1, 1998... TAX, WELFARE AND LEISURE AND THE SLOW DEATH OF CASINO ECONOMIES The Costello 1998-9 Budget has not been passed. Yet already the errors of its forecasts and the slipperiness of its assumptions are documented in media financial commentaries. Its...

The explicit and the illicit.
August 1, 1998... That it should have been the police -- that representative body of moral order, regulation and containment -- who copied and pirated the stolen `intimate' video of Deborah Byrne confirms with almost classical precision the Foucauldian precept...

Peter Singer - the best we can do?: Darwin has a dubious future. (Charles Darwin)
August 1, 1998... As he heads for the United States, Peter Singer leaves us with the advice that the Left ought: to abandon Marx for Darwin (Australian, 17 June). In terms of intellectual fashion this is no doubt a sensible choice. While bookshops carry a range of...

Avuncular and fascist too: operation whitewash, Indian politics and the BJP. (Bharatiya Janata Party)
August 1, 1998... In commenting on the outcome of the Indian election earlier this year, the foreign editor of the Australian, Greg Sheridan, pointed out that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would not be the disaster that some feared (Australian, 6 March)....

What I want to know is. (poem)
August 1, 1998... How are you meant to keep track of all this stuff? With a file-o-fax like the junkie who rang after midnight to show me hers full of lists for word-association games? Or a knot in the corner of your unwashed handkerchief?...

Nunavut or none of it?
August 1, 1998... Pauline Hanson's `Queensland election speech' in Federal Parliament, 2 June, attacked the United Nations Draft Declaration on Indigenous Rights. It Would `take power and choice from the majority of our own people and place that power and freedom...

Postcard from Australia. (poem)
August 1, 1998... Scribbling on the smooth surface of this seductive postcard with its naked kangaroos and cockatoos a message to an island country: that I've discovered a place quite like ours give and take a few galahs and subtract...

East Timorese asylum seekers: close to home but no justice in sight.
August 1, 1998... It is often cited that East Timor is Australia's closest neighbour, being only 450 kilometres from Darwin. The history of successive Australian governments' complicity in the genocide and repression of the East Timorese people is now a matter of...

A chance to speak: comrades after the 'New Order.' (Suharto)
August 1, 1998... Soeharto's `New Order' was founded on anti-communism. Its generals presided over massacres of genocidal proportions that wiped out the Indonesian Communist Party, the PKI. The regime's survival hinged on a rewriting of history that rubbed out the...

Faces of evil: a reflection on the death of Pol Pot.
August 1, 1998... The old man looked distressed. No, more than distressed -- bereft, abandoned. Stylishly dressed, in a blue leisure suit and a rather louche scarf, his grey hair swept across in a fashionable clip. He could have been taking in the sun outside a...

Barefoot exploitation: working conditions in Vietnam.
August 1, 1998... Smoking appeared to be de rigeur for almost all of the male health professionals with whom I came into contact, and the males in the group were no exception. One Jet brand cigarette smoker enjoyed learning the words from me of the old West Side...

Cold August in Burma: political action and political symbolism.
August 1, 1998... August 1998 marks an important anniversary for Burma's democracy movement. Ten years ago the movement saw nation-wide public expression for political change. In towns and cities across Burma, people joined street marches calling for the end to...

A sorry nation? (Australia)
August 1, 1998... One evening in December last year, it was standing room only in the local parish hall in a small, affluent town in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. The local community had invited Mick Dodson, the then Aboriginal and Torres Strait...

Colonising the seed: global corporations are engineering the way our food is produced.
August 1, 1998... Genetic engineering will deliver `designer' food crops capable of greatly improving contemporary agricultural systems... or so the story goes. The biotechnology industry and its supporters are holding out the promise of plants that can be...

The World Cup: stereotypes and multiculturalism in television commentary.
August 1, 1998... Paris, where teams representing thirty-two nations competed for Football's Holy Grail, the World Cup, was the world's focal point during June and July. Didier Deschamps, the host country's captain lifted the trophy on 12 July after France's 3-0...

Improving the spin: while losing the plot.
August 1, 1998... Pauline Hanson had appeared to deal herself out of the mainstream last year when she allowed Channel Seven to set her up with the infamous `beyond the grave' message. The sense that she was on an ever downward spiral was best summarised by Noel...

Civilising Global Capital.
August 1, 1998... Mark Latham, Civilising Global Capital, Allen & Unwin, 1998. What is striking about these three books is that they constitute another excellent example of the broad consensus among key policy makers and opinion leaders in Australia -- a...

Australia at the Crossroads.
August 1, 1998... Fred Argy, Australia at the Crossroads, Allen & Unwin, 1998. What is striking about these three books is that they constitute another excellent example of the broad consensus among key policy makers and opinion leaders in Australia -- a...

Australian Politics.
August 1, 1998... Owen E. Hughes, Australian Politics 3rd edn, Macmillan, 1998. What is striking about these three books is that they constitute another excellent example of the broad consensus among key policy makers and opinion leaders in Australia -- a...