Arena Magazine articles from February 1999

Arena Magazine archives from February 1999

THE CORRUPTION OF HEROISM.
February 1, 1999... CRICKET SCANDALS ARE DISTURBING NATIONAL IDOLS ARGUES DOUGLAS MCQUEEN-THOMSON. Recently there has been a growing chorus of adulation for heroic performance or achievement in Australia. In the past, Australian egalitarianism has cast...

MONEY TALKS.
February 1, 1999... CYBER-CAPITAL ESCALATES THE COSTS OF BANKING. What has happened to the world of Banking? Bankers are today widely reviled and they seem indifferent, if a little bemused, to the passions they have unleashed. Over the last fifteen years since...

JOHN RALSTON SAUL.
February 1, 1999... GLOBALISATION, DEMOCRACY AND REALITY It was good to hear John Ralston Saul speaking for the Evatt Foundation on ABC television recently. Here was an eloquent denunciation of economic rationalism as the guiding policy framework of...

FROM PEACH JAM TO SCREEN MEMORIES.
February 1, 1999... The Art Gallery currently displays the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize. The winning painting is a portrait of Steve Monaghetti, a legend around town for his running prowess. He does have great legs -- in the portrait, that is. His legs are...

A TALE OF TWO FORUMS.
February 1, 1999... PEOPLE ASSEMBLE TO CHALLENGE THE APEC LEADERS. Amid continuing economic crisis in East Asia, together with demonstrations in Kuala Lumpur for democratic reforms in Malaysia and the arrest of demonstrators, leaders of the Pacific rim...

EXPLOSIVE ALLIANCES.
February 1, 1999... NUCLEAR TESTING IN ITS OWN CATCH-22 `Clinton Administration plan proposes to fuse academia and the military into a powerful nuclear weapons brotherhood in an attempt to skirt test ban treaty' says a report by the Natural Resource Defense...

ANOTHER CLINTON COVER-UP?(Carol Moseley-Braun)
February 1, 1999... The woman that President Bill Clinton would like to install as the new United States ambassador to New Zealand could probably do with a relatively quiet assignment on this side of the world. Over six tumultuous years at the centre of a series...

ELIMINATE POVERTY, NOT THE POVERTY TRAP.
February 1, 1999... A remarkable feature of the recent tax debate has been the hand-wringing by the great and the good about the (alleged) pitiable plight of those moving from welfare to work. Not enough financial incentive you see. By the time social security...

THE WRETCHED RATCHET EFFECT.
February 1, 1999... It may be a while before we see an adequate Unified Theory of Social Economics, but John Hinkson's attempt to tie up a few loose ends is a start (Arena Magazine 37). A lack of vision of alternatives to global free marketeering at this point in...

THE NEW TYRANTS.
February 1, 1999... I am a freelance writer, and was an activist for nearly twenty years in India in the civil liberties, trade union and left movements. I was also a journalist for fourteen years in the Indian Express newspaper. I have read with great...

MY DREAM AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL.
February 1, 1999... I am a new subscriber to Arena Magazine because I am looking for an Australian journal of the Left that can bridge the great crevasse between intellectuals and ordinary people, and can be a place where social and political thinking can burst...

WAR BY OTHER MEANS.
February 1, 1999... According to a survey by UNICEF, the UN Children's Fund and the World Food Program, the US/British bombing in December destroyed or damaged twelve hospitals, a granary, a huge rice storage centre in Baghdad, the principal oil-refining factory...

RECONCILIATION AND RENEWAL.
February 1, 1999... Let us adopt a willing suspension of disbelief towards Reconciliation. Let us act and speak as if politicians and others who mouth the term really mean it, and mean what they say about wishing to make progress now. Australia has visited...

THE THIRD WAY.
February 1, 1999... LETTER FROM LONDON 4 By now it should be clear to everyone that we are heading for a world economic downturn (used in the sense `The burning 747 made a sudden downturn') the likes of which may equal or surpass the great depression, with...

PROMISES, PROMISES.
February 1, 1999... THE THIRD WAY REWRITES NEO-LIBERALISM. In his latest book, Anthony Giddens, now officially canonised as `Tony Blair's favourite intellectual', laments the present state of political ideas and leaders. `Political ideas today seem to have...

THE UGLINESS OF MISSILE DIPLOMACY.
February 1, 1999... WHY HAS THE UNITED STATES FAILED IN IRAQ? HOW MUCH DID RICHARD BUTLER KNOW OF THE `SPY' IN UNSCOM? In attempting to contain Iraq, the United States has clearly reached the end of the road it has been following since the Gulf War. It is now...

THE MAI.(Multilateral Agreement on Investment )
February 1, 1999... FROM NEOCOLONIALSM TO TRANSNATIONALISM? Classical imperialism -- empires and colonies -- allowed `First World' capital-exporting states to extend and protect their economic interests. In the twentieth century, anti-colonial movements and...

EDUCATION WITHOUT PEOPLE.(technology )
February 1, 1999... TECHNO-EDUCATION TAKES ON A LIFE OF ITS OWN? Popular accounts of the Information Revolution depict exciting technical innovations and their awesome social implications. They describe a dazzling variety of new products and uses which will...

READING STORIED LANDSCAPES.
February 1, 1999... RECOGNISING LAND RIGHTS The Mabo decision was the culmination of a thirty-year struggle for Aboriginal land fights, begun by the Gurindji and Yolngu. It represents not only an opportunity for White Australia to reconcile ourselves with our...

LOOKING THE BEAST IN THE EYE.
February 1, 1999... HOW TRUTH COMMISSIONS COME TO TERMS WITH PAIN. If you do not deal with a dark past such as ours, effectively look the beast in the eye, that beast is not going to lie down quietly; it is going, as sure as anything, to come back to haunt you...

CORRUPTING BURMA'S ECONOMY.
February 1, 1999... BRUTAL MISMANAGEMENT BY SLORC In August 1988, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) came to power in Burma after the violent suppression of a widespread popular uprising against military rule. This `new' military regime has...

Passionfruit.
February 1, 1999... Mixed memories, though the crinkled skin of the flawed globe suggests a ripeness, the embalming fluid invigorating the hard black seeds within the leathery pouch with its membranous walls, a fruit...

Uncanny Australia: Sacredness and Identity in a Postcolonial Nation.(Review)
February 1, 1999... Ken Gelder and Jane Jacobs Uncanny Australia: Sacredness and Identity in a Postcolonial Nation Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1998. The Aboriginal sacred -- or more particularly discourses engaging with indigenous cosmologies,...

Conspiracy.(Review)
February 1, 1999... Daniel Pipes Conspiracy, London and New York, The Free Press, 1997. By now, the culture of conspiracy should have made paranoids of us all. The psychiatric classification of paranoia, and its putative text in the conspiracy theory, have...

Political Paranoia.(Review)
February 1, 1999... Robert S. Robins and Jerrold M. Post Political Paranoia New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1997. By now, the culture of conspiracy should have made paranoids of us all. The psychiatric classification of paranoia, and its putative...

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL.(Review)
February 1, 1999... Life is Beautiful is a sentimental little film -- `little' because, thankfully, it has none of the histrionic self-importance of a Schindler's List. Unlike Steven Speilberg, writer/director Roberto Benigni has not set out to make the definitive...

FOREIGN AFFAIRS: SENSE AND SENSITIVITY.
February 1, 1999... Notwithstanding my dislike of the Federal Government, I must confess that I think they have a redeeming feature. Foreign policy is one area in which the Government has excelled. The Australian Government's approach to foreign policy is...