Arena Magazine articles from December 2005

Arena Magazine archives from December 2005

Freedom in our time.(terrorism prevention laws)(Editorial)
December 1, 2005... The performance of the Premiers at the recent Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting to hammer out new terror laws had more than a hint of the Neville Chamberlain School of Political Negotiation about it. Going in, the Premiers were...

The era of post-politics.(coalition government in United Kingdom)(Editorial)
December 1, 2005... In the fusty British town of Blackpool, the British Conservative Party's 2005 Conference is, as we go to press, settling down to select a new leader--its fourth since the British Labour victory of 1996. When Labour was in opposition in the...

Roundabouts: after the Tampa.(Poetry)(Poem)
December 1, 2005... Roundabouts: after the Tampa We took them out. Just a gap left; a circular groove in the earth where a thousand small feet had belted round and round clinging to the creature's steel bones, paint peeling...

Howard, hegemony and values: the left and the problem of mateship: Nick Dyrenfurth argues that the Left needs to reclaim mateship from the Right.(John Howard)
December 1, 2005... John Howard's appropriations of ideals such as 'mateship' and the 'fair go' are pertinent examples of the intersection of symbolic and material politics, one the Left must seriously (re)contemplate in the struggle against contemporary hegemony....

Eureka Street.(Tim Thwaites speech on Intelligent design)
December 1, 2005... In the September-October 2005 edition of Eureka Street, Tim Thwaites addresses the debate about the merits--or lack thereof --in teaching intelligent design to school students. He suggests evolution and intelligent design should not be seen as...

Third Text.(Mag Watch)
December 1, 2005... A special guest-edited edition of Third Text (September 2005) looks at the fields of art and culture in Ireland. It 'sets out to subvert the recreational role of the arts emphasised by the Irish government in an increasingly close alignment of...

Australian Book Review.(Mag Watch)
December 1, 2005... In Australian Book Review (September 2005), Lisa Gorton's cover story considers parents and children as 'Hostages to Fortune', while Cathy Sherry argues that Anne Manne's recent book Motherhood 'makes the greatest contribution to the...

Overland.(Mag Watch)
December 1, 2005... The Spring edition of Overland seeks to draw parallels between the eras of Howard and Menzies in Australia. In doing so, it references Manning Clark's summary of the post-war Australia as the 'years of unleavened bread'. Elsewhere, Peter...

Social Alternatives.(Mag Watch)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... The most recent edition of Social Alternatives (24.2) is themed around the discussion of feminism in Australia and around the world; it tackles both where feminism has been and where it is going. Several articles look at the experiences of...

Chain Reaction.(Friends of the Earth magazine)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Friends of the Earth's national magazine, Chain Reaction (July 2005), contains a special feature on Faith & Ecology, with articles about pentecostalism, Family First, as well as Judaism and Islam, and their differing relationships to...

Beating the War Drums at Fairfax: Fairfax papers have been presented as more balanced in their war coverage.(News Ltd.'s Iraq War media coverage)
December 1, 2005... On 25 March 2003, just as the allied invasion of Iraq got underway, the Age carried a story reporting that advancing allied soldiers had discovered 'a vast chemical weapons factory' in central Iraq. The claims were quickly shown to be...

Bob Brown, Tasmania's Recherche Bay (Green Institute, September 2005).(Notable Publications)(Tasmania's Recherche Bay )(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Bob Brown presents the story of two scientific research ships, Recherche and Esperance, which in 1792 reached the Tasmanian coast.There the sailors discovered a place of botanical inspiration and developed a uniquely joyful and harmonious...

Andrew Brown-May and Shurlee Swain, The Encyclopedia of Melbourne (Cambridge University Press, September 2005).(Notable Publications)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Organised as an A to Z reference of more than 800 pages, with entries varying from the briefly specific to much longer thematic essays, this is a book worth dipping into. Some 450 historians have contributed on topics such as architecture and...

Chris Cleave, Incendiary (Knopf Publishing, August 2005).(Notable Publications)(Incendiary)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Drafted in just six weeks, the publication of Incendiary coincided with the 7 July London terrorist attack. Cleave's debut novel is geopolitical but tells of personal loss. The novel is written in the form of a letter to Osama Bin Laden by the...

Michael Gordon, Freeing Ali: The Human Face of the Pacific Solution (UNSW Press, September 2005).(Notable Publications)(Freeing Ali: The Human Face of the Pacific Solution)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... The Age national editor expands on the newspaper articles and interviews that brought an enormous reaction to conditions at the Australian Government's detention centre on the Pacific island of Nauru. Gordon was the first journalist to gain...

Ariel Levy, Female Chauvinist Pig: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture (Schwartz Publishing, October 2005).(Notable Publications)(Female Chauvinist Pig: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture )(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Female chauvinist pig: a woman who defies all traditional stereotypes of prescribed femininity. She does so by pursuing casual sex, genuflecting to the Playboy bunny talisman and generally advancing herself by self-proclaimed sexualisation....

Meg Stewart, Far From a Still Life (Random House, October 2005).(Notable Publications)(Far From a Still Life)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Margaret Olley is one of Australia's most loved living artists, whose own life is far removed from her sedate still lifes. This intimate and comprehensive biography unfolds to tell of her life-long love affair with painting, not to mention her...

War pains: US troops returning from Iraq are paying a high price in the Bush Administration's war on terror, argues Richard Hil.
December 1, 2005... As the conflict in Iraq drags on deep into its third year, there is daily news of further US troop casualties. Since the start of the war in March 2003, over 1800 American troops have been killed and up to 38,000 injured, often seriously. Over...

The power of shame.(bites: BRIEF NOTES ON NEWS AND VIEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD)(John Brogden trying to suicide and its media coverage)
December 1, 2005... When John Brogden was forced to resign amidst public humiliation, I and many around me smugly announced that he deserved it. But when the news emerged that he had made an apparent attempt to kill himself, it was like one of those clever moments...

Taking liberties.(bites: BRIEF NOTES ON NEWS AND VIEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD)(Scott Parkin was accused in foreign country)
December 1, 2005... This is not a police state; we have the right to demonstrate... or do we? This is the question we must ask ourselves following the arrest and deportation of American peace activist Scott Parkin. What happened to Parkin may be only the first of...

Postmodernism-lite: reflections on the recent VCE English debate.(english education curriculum planning)
December 1, 2005... Designing school curriculum within a culture of information overload is an unenviable task. If education has always been a contested area, the growth of technology and information creates new dilemmas. The sciences have to balance the use of...

Is poverty a linguistic concept?(tax policies help to reduce poverty)(Column)
December 1, 2005... Rob Watts, in 'The Poverty of Poverty' (Arena Magazine 78), claims moral equivalence between right-wing think-tanks like the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) and social service organisations like the Brotherhood of St Laurence, St Vincent...

Response to Rob Watts.(Comment)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2005... Rob Watts shows a cavalier disdain for basic facts ('The Poverty of Poverty' Arena Magazine 78). He says I was formerly 'professor of family studies' in the UK. I was actually a professor of sociology. He says I was 'brought to Australia by...

A tale of one suburb.(Comment)
December 1, 2005... I'd like to issue Rebecca Marsh and Daniel Reidpath with a challenge, following their recent critique of social capital ('Social Capital and the Business of the Middle Class', Arena Magazine 76). Before doing so, I want to tell a story. ...

Hubba hubba.(rope)
December 1, 2005... 'As a people Americans are easily spooked, but no enemy should ever bet against our boundless capacity for resourcefulness. We are a nation of MacGyvers.' Thomas P. M. Barnett, The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First...

Mates, multiculturalism, values: a new Oz? Beyond Howard's core beliefs.(Column)
December 1, 2005... Has any country, other than those with regimes newly overthrown, gone through such a convulsion of identity-making and re-making as Australia in recent months? The London bus and subway bombings in July have shaken loose all sorts of cobwebs...

Old for new?(Affluenza: When Too Much is Never Enough)(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Clive Hamilton and Richard Denniss, Affluenza: When Too Much is Never Enough, Allen & Unwin, 2005. Clive Hamilton has carved out a niche for himself as the prize stirrer of Australian environmental politics. He clearly revels in...