Arena Magazine articles from December 2002

Arena Magazine archives from December 2002

The mirror of wars.(modern militarism)(Editorial)
December 1, 2002... Sixty years ago, the era of weapons of mass destruction began, with the inauguration of the Manhattan Project and the preparation of the A-bomb. Their development and spread has taken us into a qualitatively different period from that which had...

Before the deluge.(Editorial)
December 1, 2002... Reflection upon the era preceding World War II--and a demythologisation of such--is useful not only for strategy, but also for a consideration of long-term goals. The world has entered a period leading up to war, whether that be war avoided or...

On the modesty of Australia: the Bali bombing propelled Australia to the forefront of global terrorism issues and heralded a transformation in national identity.
December 1, 2002... Far from Australia, Remembrance Sunday was a feared ordeal of childhood. One was dressed up to the sound of hymns, and escorted by ashen-faced elders to stand for hours at the town war memorial. Wreaths were deposed in sub-zero temperatures,...

WMD proliferation and the deadly connection: the world's smaller nations continue to obtain weapons of mass destruction, but are they being used to counter the extending arm of us military superiority or sending us down the path of self-extinction?
December 1, 2002... There exist two types of terrorism; the type we like and the type we don't like. The type we like is the type that we (the West) and our various clients and, proxies commit. The type we don't like is committed by official enemies, against the...

Taking care of the country: the Irati Wanti campaign is working hard to protect the Australian `desert' from its new enemy, the remote dumping of radioactive waste.
December 1, 2002... In 1998 a group of senior traditional Aboriginal women sat down together in the outback opal mining town of Coober Pedy to pen a letter. `Dear Greenies', they began, `we want help'. The group are called the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta and comprises...

Document: the Tasmania Statement.(refugee rights)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2002... We, the undersigned, fear that we live in a country that pivots on a cusp: that it can as easily go backwards, as it has for the last few decades gone forwards. We, the undersigned, fear that the lies and betrayals of our government, the...

Lemons Are Heavy.(Poem)
December 1, 2002... Lemons Are Heavy Lemons weigh down my tree. It bows in wind gusts, Swings its recovery. Next door a dark rose Overloads its cane. Twists wildly in its circle. The wind does as all winds: Catches...

Dishonoured in the breach: the privatisation of unemployment assistance, and the rise and rise of unfair breaching by centrelink.
December 1, 2002... Recent questions in the Senate to the Minister for Social Security, Amanda Vanstone, have rought to light a widespread practice of unjust penalisation of social welfare recipients for alleged `breaches' of their conditions for receiving...

Sanap Wantaim: Melanesia West Papua Australians need to reassess their understanding of West Papuans and their chosen path to freedom.
December 1, 2002... Last month in Melbourne a pig was sacrificed, and the intersection of Dandenong Road and Chapel Street was named `Morning Star Corner'. A Catholic bishop, some monks, and a bevy of Anglican priests joined the priests of culture from Melanesia...

Serbian Octobers: frustration and disillusionment in the post-Milosevic government have bred a generation of young Serbians who just want to live like their Western neighbours.
December 1, 2002... With a positive outcome in the Irish referendum over the Nice treaty on European Union (EU) enlargement, the former Yugoslav republic of Slovenia is now guaranteed entry into the EU in 2004. A vote in another former Yugoslav republic,...

John Carroll: evaluating the response to terrorism. (letters and debate).(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2002... I respond to Simon Cooper's thoughtful and measured review of my recent book, Terror--a Meditation on the Meaning of September 11. There are four points I wish to make. Simon Cooper implies that my genre of cultural analysis fails to take...

Peter McMahon: reinventing the ALP. (letters and debate).(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2002... The need for change in Australian politics is becoming increasingly urgent. We have in the past been lucky, but those fortunate conditions are changing. To flourish, Australia must engage with the looming environmental crisis, in terms of...

Scott Poynting: weapons of mass deception. (letters and debate).
December 1, 2002... If truth is the first casualty of war, then the weapons that wound it are wielded long before the first shot is fired, the first blow is struck. They are words. Take `terrorism', for example. `We' are engaged, yapping like a terrier at the...

Whatever happened to alienation? The push to shorten the working week has led many in the labour movement and on the left to disregard questions of fulfilment and meaning at work. Now that new modes of production are changing the miseries and splendours of wage labour, a re-assessment of its meaning in our lives is long overdue. (features).
December 1, 2002... Flexibility became the watchword among job designers in the 1990s. Skills were to be made flexible to increase the operative's satisfactions and to enhance the employer's competitiveness. Similarly, hours were to break from standard patterns to...

The democratic ideal--or the new democrats: the Australian democrats must look to their UK counterparts for inspiration if they wish to appeal to small-l liberals. (letters and debate).
December 1, 2002... The Economist Magazine is not usually a friend of centre-left parties such as Britain's Liberal Democrats. But recently, this venerable magazine's `Bagehot' column (28/9/02) opined that the Liberab Democrats' policy proposals on delivery of...

Treaty talk 2002: notes on three conferences: indigenous demands for equity can be partly based on citizenship rights; but citizenship rights can be addressed through distinct notions of indigenous rights.
December 1, 2002... In Arena Magazine and elsewhere, a number of indigenous intellectuals have been advancing a `rights-based' approach to a treaty in Australia. Against a Howard Government that insists that only `practical reconciliation' matters (and which...

From wise counsel good works shall come: works councils are often represented as Trojan horses for de-unionisation. But they can be turned to a more progressive role in transforming the workplace.
December 1, 2002... There are a number of reasons why unions should be encouraging a debate about Works Councils. In an Australian context it is a debate about the right of employees to be informed and consulted about the decisions that affect their lives....

Pink paradoxes on Nevsky prospect: representing Russia's social divides: Barbie embodies a world many dream of, but few see.
December 1, 2002... Trudging through snow on St Petersburg's Nevsky Prospect last March, a familiar pink splendour caugh my eye: a `Barbie Shop'. Through its brightly lit and welcoming windows, around 200 different versions of Barbie beckoned. I entered and was...

From the archive: when anarchy came to the great south land--the bizarre history of utopias, dystopias, and political penny dreadfuls in nineteenth century Melbourne.
December 1, 2002... Sometimes the slow pace of change in the world's most liveable city leaves even the most optimistic activist sympathising with Ava Gardner's quip about the suitability of Melbourne for a movie about the death of civilisation. It's rather a...

The Melbourne Riots and how Harry Holdfast and his friends liberated the workers.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... by Mr David Andrade. Andrade's Booksellers and Conjuring Paraphernalia Melbourne, 1982. THE BEGINNING `Harry, if you take my advice you'll not go to that meeting.' `But I don't intend to take your advice, John. I know what I'm...

Kate Cregan on transplant ethics.(Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death)(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... Margaret Lock Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death Berkeley, University of California Press, 2002 At a time when governments and international bodies around the world are sorting out where they will draw the line on...

Christopher Hawkes on aerosol artists.(The Graffiti Subculture: Youth Masculinity and Idenitity in London and New York)(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... Nancy Macdonald The Graffiti Subculture: Youth Masculinity and Idenitity in London and New York Palgrave Macmillan, 2002 Standing staring at the white tiles above a pub urinal some weeks ago, a burly man next to me nodded towards some...

Elizabeth McCarthy on the provocation defence.(Just Another Little Murder )(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... Phil Cleary Just Another Little Murder Allen and Unwin, 2002 According to recent judgements in our courts, sometimes when a man kills his daughter, wife or ex-partner, he is doing so at a time of loss of self-control, no matter how...

Morgan Smith on red dust and violence.(Seven Versions of an Australian Badland)(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... Ross Gibson Seven Versions of an Australian Badland University of Queensland Press, 2002 The country around Central Queensland, and in particular, the `horror' stretch of road that passes through the Tropic of Capricorn and up to Mackay,...

Warm Morning.(Poem)
December 1, 2002... Warm Morning Day rises effortlessly to its own, occasion. Wood planks and grass edges and sand bars lead my feet effortlessly into surf that has never knocked me over yet. Sun is already hard on the shoulders ...

Rossetti's wombat. (An Arena Christmas Cracker).(Dante Gabriel Rossetti)
December 1, 2002... In September 1869, the Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti bought the first of his two famous pet wombats. For Rossetti this was the culmination of well over twelve years' enthusiasm for the exotic marsupial. In 1857 he had...