Arena Magazine articles from December 2003

Arena Magazine archives from December 2003

Arena at 40.(editorial)
December 1, 2003... In the seventeenth century, a magazine was a store of ammunition, a journal, the record of an individual's travels, perceptions or memories in situ. By the nineteenth, these original definitions had been added to. The journal was now a record...

Arena 'toons from over the years.
December 1, 2003... JUSTICE IS BLIND... ... I SAID, "I'D LIKE TO APPLY FOR LEGAL AID!" (SHE DOESN'T HEAR TOO GOOD NOW, EITHER) for every one you kill ten will mourn if two seek revenge, and you kill them twenty will mourn and so on...

War and peace: has the distinction between the two collapsed? The globalised policing of dissent, opposition and difference, as well as terrorism, is creating a culture of perpetual war.(against the current)
December 1, 2003... We are moving towards a state where the distinction between war and peace is collapsing. On the one hand, we have the actions of the US government and its allies operating according to a framework geared towards perpetual war. On the other,...

Taxing families: families are finding they have no real options as 'flexible' tax policies keep women and men firmly entrenched in their traditional roles.(against the current)
December 1, 2003... The question of whether a 'balance' between work and family is achievable has dominated the heated debate around motherhood, feminism and the so-called fertility crisis in recent years. Sadly, the words 'conflict' and 'struggle' are far more...

Trading on the usual illusions: women will bear the brunt of the Australia--US Free Trade Agreement.(against the current)
December 1, 2003... At the end of 2002, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade called for submissions on the proposed Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA). The call was put out on 11 December 2002 with a deadline of 15 January 2003. As this...

Choc-chicks: is the new 'post- political correctness' advertising biting off more than it can chew?(against the current)
December 1, 2003... Tantalising. Exciting. Scrumptious. Seductive. Are we talking food or sex here? I can't be sure, as the two posters before me--advertisements for Peters' 'Heaven' ice-creams--are a cogent promotion of both. The problem with these two...

Editorial meeting minutes 7 September 2003.(The Age)
December 1, 2003... Articles received Virginia Haussinger "Why didn't our feminist mothers tell me my bum looks big in this?" Gerard Henderson "Gardening Australia silent on Stalin's crimes" Pamela Bone "The anti-war Left owes me an...

A gathering storm: climate change and environmental refugees.(against the current)
December 1, 2003... Imagine this: in less than one human generation, 150 million people are forced to move from their homes because of rising sea levels and other manifestations of climate change. Towns are lost and rural areas depopulated, and a slow trickle of...

Green gains, labor pains: the greens will need to develop new campaign methods as they make further inroads into labor's traditional support base.(against the current)
December 1, 2003... After 113 years of political life, the Australian Labor Party is very adept at running election campaigns. However, although Labor has now contested hundreds of elections, its MPs have never been seriously tested at the ballot box from the left...

Decolonisation, from the sea-grass roots.(against the current)
December 1, 2003... A series of full-page open letters on Torres Strait autonomy signed by Kevin Savage, Thursday Island, has been appearing in the regional newspaper since mid-2003. These quietly thoughtful essays ask the Torres Strait public to think carefully...

A spectre haunting the refugee movement?(comment)
December 1, 2003... At the close of the Baxter protests, we stood at the dusty campsite overlooking the detention centre and wondered about the direction forward for the refugee movement in Australia. There were many questions to ask. In writing 'No Horizons'...

On-line engineering or grass-roots struggle?(comment)
December 1, 2003... Howard Dean, the populist Democrat governor of Vermont who's gunning for his party's presidential nomination, has created a small stir in Australia In a recent column in the Australian (30/10/03), Peter Botsman suggested that Dean had...

In all those Arenas: reflecting on forty years of Arena publications makes visible the fundamental transformations of the era, and what is possible for the future.(essay)
December 1, 2003... Small magazines come and go, but Arena has come and stayed for forty years. When it was launched, in 1963, the whole of the Left was in the depths of a moral crisis, the Cold War offered the prospect of nuclear devastation, while every person...

Editorial meeting minutes 3 August 2003.(The Australian: Australian national daily newspaper)
December 1, 2003... Articles received Janet Albrechtson "How the Global Left has been defeated and is of no consequence" Greg Sheridan "The defeat of the Global Left leaves them of no consequence" Dennis Shanahan "Globally, the Left, no longer of any...

Gagged: proposed mining activity by BHP Billiton, backed by the Australian government, threatens both West Papua's environment and Indonesia's fragile democracy.
December 1, 2003... Abdul Teng is in his element. Mr Teng is from the North Malukus and is the head of Gambir Village, the only settlement on Gag Island, a diminutive and isolated 56-square-kilometre coral atoll located 150km north-west of Sorong, in the Raja...

Blue armies, khaki police, and the cavalry on the new American frontier: the police--military distinction is in danger of collapsing as security becomes the sole source of political legitimacy.
December 1, 2003... Nine days after the 9/11 attacks on New York Washington, President Bush announced the 'war on terror'. The declaration of war and its pursuit through Afghanistan, Iraq and in the 'homeland' mark a decisive moment in the history of the world....

Ethical politics at ground zero: an ethical politics concerned with redistributive justice and the struggle for recognition offers an alternative to the poverty of instrumental politics.
December 1, 2003... The dominant form of radical subjectivity today is alliance politics. However, internal contradictions within alliance politics point to the emergence of a new form of radical subjectivity, ethical politics. Whether or not this prognosis is...

Writing for Sado-Masochism's sake.
December 1, 2003... When I attended Keon Park State School in the early 50s, my best book was the sacred-to-me School Reader whose gorgeous pen and ink illustrations made me wish to draw. and whose poems by Henry Lawson and Dorothea McKellar and Alfred Noyes,...

Opportunities for growth: can the historical left be reinvented to move to the other shore?
December 1, 2003... Be realistic, demand the impossible Situationist slogan, May 1968 In the last two decades, the effective implementation of neo-liberal economic and political policies by successive Labour and Liberal governments has contributed to the...

Mahzar *.
December 1, 2003... Mahzar * outside the glass we wake to days of sun and comfort birds spanning the early light and a choir of espresso machines shaking at the edge of enjoyment beyond the sporting headlines the sigh of your breath and a...

John Hinkson on the curse of the market.
December 1, 2003... Clive Hamilton, Growth Fetish Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2003 Michael Pusey, The Experience of Middle Australia: The Dark Side of Economic Reform Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2003 It is now a quarter of a century since...

Ned Curthoys on the mechanics of terrorism.(Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... Alan M. Dershowitz, Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge Scribe Publications, Melbourne, 2002 It is the metier of the terrorism expert, the courtiers of our time, to explain to the public that the...

Kate Sands on atrocity exhibitions.
December 1, 2003... Art and Human Rights Abuses, Australian National University Drill Hall Exhibition, 2003. The Drill Hall exhibition comprises a range of work from international and Australian artists employing, as one would expect, a variety of media,...

Christopher Scanlon on reality TV.
December 1, 2003... Sam Brenton and Reuben Cohen, Shooting People: Adventures in Reality TV, Verso, London, 2003 No underwear!' That's the pitch for the latest series of Survivor, the reality game show in which contestants are 'marooned' in an exotic location...

Notable publications.
December 1, 2003... Raimond Gaita (ed.), Why the War Was Wrong (Text Publishing, 2003) Leading Australian writers--arguing from legal, political, historical, philosophical and humanitarian standpoints--argue against the invasion of Iraq and for the primacy of...

Our future is brite.
December 1, 2003... 'I think we have it', said chief programmer Da Silva, beaming. Treasury economist Michael Blake watched transfixed as an aerial view of Melbourne, Blake's home town, appeared on the LCD screen on his desk. The astonishing detail of this...

He's also up on all the important issues: carbo-loading, free weights vs machines, and whether to take creatine with juice or not.(rope)
December 1, 2003... 'While FLEX has studiously avoided advocating one political candidate or party over another, the campaign of Arnold Schwarzenegger is the exception that proves the rule. As the October 7th California gubernatorial recall election draws near,...

Get huge like Arnold with Flex's comprehensive guide to muscle development'.(rope)
December 1, 2003... 'A Governor Schwarzenegger would boost bodybuilding' http://www.flexonline.com/news/13

The metaphysics of underpants.(rope)(Advertisement)
December 1, 2003... 'Our philosophy Tradition or even now, people still claim that undergarment is essentially an apparel not to be freely exposed or merely serve as a function of covering our private part. Do you have the courage to change? 'The present...

Rule one: avoid using 'merger 'or 'acquisition' in your pick-up line.(rope)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... 'It surprises me that women say they can't find any men, and men say they can't find any women. So really it is a marketing challenge of how to connect these two entities.' Rachel Greenwald, author of Find a Husband After 35 Using What I...

Next time he should conside phoning a friend before answering.(rope)
December 1, 2003... 'You know it wasn't a question of whether they had the weapons, it was a question of whether and how they might use them.' Defence Minister Senator Robert Hill, on the need to equip Australian forces against Iraq's WMD's. Mark Forbes and...