Arena Magazine articles from August 2000

Arena Magazine archives from August 2000

PRAGUE AUTUMN.
August 1, 2000... POLLYANNA POLITICS AND GLOBAL SOCIAL MOVEMENTS In September the eyes of the world will turn to Prague, where the G8 nations are meeting -- and where a global network of protestors hope to exact the same sort of civil disobedience and...

DISLOCATIONS -- SALMAN RUSHDIE AND FIJI.
August 1, 2000... JOHN HINKSON POINTS OUT THAT GLIB SOLUTIONS HAVE A POLITICS TOO Salman Rushdie (Age, 10 June 2000) has shown us how to cut through all the political dross and painful dilemmas of the situation in Fiji by offering a clear-cut policy for the...

GROUND CONTROL.
August 1, 2000... Crouching in Victorian gloom for over a hundred and fifty years, Her Majesty's Prison Pentridge in Coburg is soon to become comfortable medium density housing. Grandview Square Developments, the owners of the site, have commenced work on a...

WORKING IT OUT.
August 1, 2000... FRANCE AND THE 35-HOUR WEEK Socialist hangover or brave new world? On 1 February 2000 a new law came into effect in France which reduces the working week from 39 to 35 hours. With this law, the socialist government led by Lionel Jospin...

KNEADING IDENTITY.
August 1, 2000... Speaking in Melbourne recently at the `After 2000' conference organised by Overland, the Australian labour historian Verity Burgmann spoke of the relevance of Raymond Williams' ideas on culture, class and identity to the renewal of class...

THE NEXT CRUSADE.
August 1, 2000... THE UNITED STATES IN THE COLOMBIAN LABYRINTH Colombia is poorly understood abroad. It is a tragedy that this commodity-exporting nation is scarcely remembered for emeralds or coffee, much less its impressive cultural life. Colombia is...

AFTER THE CORROBOREE.
August 1, 2000... HOW FAR HAVE WE COME ON THE JOURNEY OF RECONCILIATION? Last month at Myall Creek, near Inverell in northern New South Wales, a dark event in Australia's past was publicly acknowledged and laid to rest. On 10 June 1838, 28 men, women and...

ENOUGH ROPE.(Brief Article)
August 1, 2000... Where important people hang themselves with their own words... TIME IS NOT MONEY IN THE `NEW-SPEAK ORGANISATION' `Pay systems will move away from the base of hours worked, position and job content. "Best-practice companies...

PEOPLE WITHOUT PAPERS.
August 1, 2000... Voglio girare tutte le strade del mondo... senza frontieri, senza barrieri (I want to travel all the roads of the world... without borders, without barriers) Last year, the Melbourne Age hosted a regular website on the `flood' of...

ALL MY FRIENDS ARE GETTING DISILLUSIONED.(Monash University professors)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2000... I remember it clearly. Nine years ago, I was driving to Monash University with Peter, a colleague and friend. We began to add up the number of years that we had spent, or misspent, as students in various educational institutions. Not counting...

TREATY, YEAH, TREATY NOW!
August 1, 2000... The real question of an Aboriginal treaty is not `if', but `when', `how', and `in what form'. The emerging consensus within Aboriginal political circles is natural, predictable, and non-threatening. A treaty would strengthen the country,...

SCOTLAND, THE BLAIR PROJECT AND THE ZOMBIE FACTION.(self-rule in Scotland)(Column)
August 1, 2000... ASSESSING THE SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT, ONE YEAR ON Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the...

SUCH IS MYTH.(play portrays Edward 'Ned' Kelly)
August 1, 2000... NED KELLY REPORTS FROM THE DOCK On the nights of 19 and 20 of May 2000, the Supreme Court of Victoria was host to the Victorian Bar Theatre Company's production The Queen v. Edward `Ned' Kelly. It consisted of a re-enactment of the...

CONFLICT IN THE PACIFIC.(political instability in South Pacific and analysis of Australia's role)
August 1, 2000... ARC OF INSTABILITY OR VICTIMS OF GLOBALISATION? For observers of the Fiji political scene following the election of Mahendra Chaudhry's Labour Party a year ago, the news that a coup had taken place on 19 May in some ways was not a surprise....

SHARING THE LAND.(Deen Maar Indigenous Protected Area, and land and marine claims of Australian indigenous peoples)
August 1, 2000... THE DEEN MAAR INDIGENOUS PROTECTED AREA Culturally, Deen Maar means a lot to the Fram people because Deen Maar Island is very significant in the story of Bunjil the creator-being. Bunjil left from along this beach area to go to Deen Maar...

MOTHERHOOD AND THE MARKET.(author discusses perceptions of motherhood and work in light of recent media coverage)(Editorial)
August 1, 2000... PARENTING, WORK AND MICHAEL LEUNIG Nothing has better demonstrated the force of our widespread cultural anxieties about motherhood than the discussion which has taken place in Melbourne's Age newspaper over the last few months. At first,...

GREENING THE CITY.
August 1, 2000... WASTE NOT, WANT NOT According to the United Nations, 50 per cent of the world's people now live in cities; and by 2025 the percentage of city dwellers is likely to rise to 80 per cent. The problem with this is that most of today's...

A FAUX FASCIST?(fascist policies in Austria)
August 1, 2000... RADICAL POPULISM IN AUSTRIA In 1988, on the fiftieth anniversary of Germany's annexation of Austria, protesters filled the streets of Vienna. Chancellor Vranitsky claimed that balance was needed: Austria has a special duty to occupy...

TALKING ART.(Nicholas Nedelkopoulos interview)(Interview)
August 1, 2000... INTERVIEW WITH NICHOLAS NEDELKOPOULOS Nicholas Nedelkopoulos is a Melbourne artist, working in a variety of media -- pen and ink, watercolour, oils, photography and print-making. Alison Caddick attended the opening of his most recent...

POETRY.(Poem)
August 1, 2000... Sketch Some of these streets give an entirely new meaning to the picturesque. Here the beggars strike poses which make them look like donors in a gothic altarpiece, here the pavement cafes all seem to spill...

Why Universities Matter.(Review)
August 1, 2000... Tony Coady (ed.), Why Universities Matter, St Leonards, Allen & Unwin, 2000. A recent edition of Campus Review, with a front page article titled `That's News: Universitas 21 Set to Link with Murdoch Empire', caught my attention. In a...

Burning Down the House.(Review)
August 1, 2000... Paul James (ed.), Burning Down the House, Melbourne, APU with Arena Publications, 2000. A recent edition of Campus Review, with a front page article titled `That's News: Universitas 21 Set to Link with Murdoch Empire', caught my attention....

To Resist is to Win: The Autobiography of Xanana Gusmao.(Review)
August 1, 2000... Sarah Niner (ed.), To Resist is to Win: The Autobiography of Xanana Gusmao, Melbourne, Aurora Books/David Lovell Publishing, 2000. The essence of the spirit inherent in our struggle was resist in order to win and the act of resistence meant...

Peter Costello: A Biography.(Review)
August 1, 2000... Tracey Aubin, Peter Costello: A Biography, HarperCollins, 1999. Holding that biographies should be written only about the dead, Peter Costello tried very hard to dissuade Tracey Aubin from writing this book. His reluctance to co-operate...

A DISTURBING DREAM.
August 1, 2000... A Midsummer Night's Dream, Bell Shakespeare Company Directed by Elke Neidhardt. What kind of grim pessimism drives designers these days into drab colour schemes of grey and silver? Whatever the answer, the Bell Shakespeare Company's new...

FROM THE CROCODILE'S NEST.(Review)
August 1, 2000... Saltwater: Yirrkala Bark Paintings of Sea Country Recognising Indigenous Sea Rights, Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre in association with Jennifer Isaacs Publishing, Sydney, 1999 Saltwater is the work of forty-seven Yolngu artists of Yirrkala in...

REDEEMING AMERICAN BEAUTY.(Review)
August 1, 2000... Earlier this year, a rash of articles and letters appeared in the Melbourne Age as a debate arose after the release in this country of American Beauty. The debate bounced between conservative and liberal conceptions of the nature of cinema...

I'M AUTHENTIC, YOU'RE AUTHENTIC, OKAY?(Australians abandon European decor for natural Australian look)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2000... My friend is glum. I'm commiserating with him over coffee, lamely exploring strategies for his future. After a decade of sluggish sales there seem few options. Change of career? Antiques are in his blood, he says; the aroma of beeswax and...