Arena Magazine articles from December 2000

Arena Magazine archives from December 2000

THE AUTO-VIVISECTORS.
December 1, 2000... LIVING ORGAN DONATION Every week now we get a new miracle story from the world of biotechnology and medicine. Whether it's the capacity to make partial organ donations, so that sections of an adult's liver can be implanted in a dying...

SMOOTH SCHOOLING.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2000... ASPIRATIONAL CLASS SIZES Left-wing governments used to lose power by politicising hitherto dormant areas of public life; now that there are no left-wing governments that process has become the hallmark of the right. It has been one of the...

CAUGHT IN THE CROSS-FIRE?(media coverage of the Israeli-Arab conflict)
December 1, 2000... SOME SAY THE WESTERN MEDIA'S ANTI-PALESTINIAN BIAS HAS LESSENED. NOT BY MUCH, ARGUES JEREMY SALT If there is an iconic image of the recent Middle East conflict, it is surely Muhammad al Durra, 12, huddled terrified with his father against...

TWO STATES OF CRISIS.(the Israeli-Palestinian conflict)(Brief Article)(Column)
December 1, 2000... SERVING ISRAELI SECURITY AND PALESTINIAN ASPIRATIONS MAY BE IMPOSSIBLE Recent events in the Middle East have been distressing and depressing. Distressing because of the enormous bloodshed and loss of life. Depressing because they...

STEVE BRACKS'S DILEMMA.(globalization)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2000... DECENCY IS NOT ENOUGH WHEN DEALING WITH THE CONTRADICTIONS OF GLOBALISATION Only those who allow politics to rule their assessment of people could doubt that Steve Bracks is a personable, trustworthy and decent person. He is a rare find in...

GLOBALISING VIOLENCE.
December 1, 2000... CIVIL PROTEST IS BEING USED AS A PRETEXT FOR PARAMILITARY POLICING The use of violent tactics by police against S11 protesters during the World Economic Forum meeting held at Melbourne's Crown Casino raises questions about the role of the...

CAMP HUMOUR OR SUBLIME HORROR?(Train of Life )
December 1, 2000... HOW MANY HOLOCAUST COMEDIES DO WE REALLY NEED? In 1972 the comedian Jerry Lewis made a film entitled The Day the Clown Cried in which a face-painted clown led Jewish children into the gas chambers. That film never got a release -- probably...

KOSOVO AFTERMATH.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2000... NEW CASUALTY FIGURES CAUSE FURTHER COLLATERAL DAMAGE TO THE PRO-WAR CASE Eighteen months after NATO's campaign in Kosovo, the official picture of an uncomplicated humanitarian triumph has been all but demolished, even on its own terms....

ORTHODOX MISBEHAVIOUR.(religious freedom in Russia)
December 1, 2000... RUSSIA'S NEW LAWS WILL FOSTER PERSECUTION OF SMALL RELIGIONS Vladimir Putin was an unknown quantity at his election to President on 26 March 2000. His rise from political obscurity to the apex of power on a campaign of a tough stance on...

RED HEADBAND HISTORY.
December 1, 2000... THE COMPLEXITIES OF PERFORMANCE AND PRESENCE AT THE OLYMPICS CLOSING CEREMONY Yothu Yindi were asked by Olympics organisers to sing `Treaty'. Midnight Oil chose to sing `Beds are Burning' and to wear `sorry' outfits months ago when they...

ENOUGH ROPE.(quotations)
December 1, 2000... Where important people hang themselves with their own words... THE CASE AGAINST THE TWO-PARTY SYSTEM: ARGUMENT NUMBER ONE -- Al Gore * `During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.'...

LETTER FROM PRAGUE.
December 1, 2000... I am writing this in a field as dusk settles on the Czech countryside. I'm trying to relax and shake the last four days in Prague out of my mind. On the Tuesday, S26, a colourful crowd of 10,000 people from across Europe met in the city...

YA BASTA!
December 1, 2000... With its origins in the `autonomist' Italian movement of self-managed social centres, the Ya Basta network is fast becoming known across the global anti-capitalist movement. From its decision a few years back to stand for municipal elections on...

GETTING RID OF LEFT LUGGAGE.
December 1, 2000... When the sponsors of the Ben Chifley Memorial Lecture invited Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson to deliver the `Light on the Hill' address in Bathurst, they probably didn't expect him to attack social welfare and `progressive thinking'. Pearson...

FUNDING INEQUALITY.(non-government schools )(Brief Article)
December 1, 2000... Education Minister David Kemp has presented the new funding arrangements for secondary schools as one of enhanced choice, and recognition of the right of those who choose to educate their children in non-government schools to an equal level of...

JABILUKA UPDATE.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2000... Three years after the Federal Government approved the Jabiluka uranium development in Kakadu, the mine is still not operational. In September 1999 mining proponent Energy Resources of Australia (ERA) failed to gain the approval required from...

BURMA CHARADES.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2000... In October, Canberra concluded a series of workshops on human rights in Burma, as part of a policy of limited engagement with that country's military dictatorship. At the start of the program, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs said...

CENTRING THE CENTENARY.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2000... A century of shared nationhood by six former Australian colonies arrives with midnight on New Year's Eve. The foolishness of the White Man's constitution-making is obvious in the straight lines and right angles which divide Australian states...

A TREATY BETWEEN OUR NATIONS?
December 1, 2000... At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the public culture of Australia remains riven by disputes over the status of indigenous people in Australia. This continuing dispute is a loose hanging thread in the web of our civil society. I...

WHY JOHN HOWARD CAN'T SAY SORRY.
December 1, 2000... THE LEGACY OF SETTLER LIBERALISM AND THE NATURE OF THE PRIME MINISTER HAVE CREATED A CULTURAL BATTLE OVER THE MEANING OF MOURNING AND LOSS When I was in Ireland recently I visited the Church of Ireland rectory at a little place called...

UNCHAINING AUNTY.(Australian Broadcasting Corp.)
December 1, 2000... SAVING THE ABC MAY MEAN SAVING THE ABC FROM ITS FRIENDS Thinking about our public institutions has a fine lineage on the Left. A century ago during the height of the industrial age, pioneers of public service and the welfare state like...

BACK INTO THE WOODS.(backwoods farming in Tasmania converted to forests)
December 1, 2000... ACROSS THE CENTURY, A FARMING DISTRICT GOES FULL CIRCLE It is the natural function of an old person -- after all I have gone past four-score years -- to recall the old ways, to dredge from them the silt and the mud. I remember the natural...

BRINGING IT ALL HOME.(Review)
December 1, 2000... Michelle Grattan (ed.), Essays on Australian Reconciliation, Melbourne, Black Inc., 2000. While recently in Camooweal, a frontier town on the border of Queensland and Western Australia, I met an 85-year-old Aboriginal stockman. A...

TONI NEGRI'S EMPIRE.(Review)
December 1, 2000... Michael Hardt and Toni Negri, Empire, Cambridge Mass., Harvard University Press, 2000. Over the past twenty years, Toni Negri has been at the centre of an important intellectual movement to recuperate and redevelop communist ideas, in the...

IMMORAL CONGRESS.(Review)
December 1, 2000... Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, London, Granta Books, 1999. As the United States of America and the Soviet Union invested money into the so-called Cold War (as though a shot was never fired),...

BOYS AND CLASS IN BILLY ELLIOT.(Review)
December 1, 2000... It is hardly surprising that a film like Billy Elliot should appear at a time when the parenting and education of boys is increasingly defined as a new social problem. This intensely and self-consciously emotional film tells a story of...

A FAT BASTARD'S PLACE IN HISTORY.(Review)
December 1, 2000... Alexei Sayle, Barcelona Plates, London, Sceptre, 2000. Name a recent book that mentions Albanian border guards, North Korean ideological orthodoxy, the economic theory underpinning China's Five-Year Plans, Cambodian atrocities, and the...

Eating Durian.(Poem)
December 1, 2000... We stopped round midnight at a hawker's stall of durian mobiles and braided mangosteen -- haute coiffure with mini-bombs -- garotted echidnas in army green The Chinese vendor aimed his cleaver twice Thunk! then...