Arena Magazine articles from February 2000

Arena Magazine archives from February 2000

ACCORDING RESPECT.
February 1, 2000... WE ARE DEEPLY SORRY. LET US PUT IT IN WRITING. Many Australians, both Indigenous and non-indigenous, perceive the current process of reconciliation as having culminated in stalemate. However, Patrick Dodson in his August 1999 Lingiari...

UNTIL THE CHAIN'S ARE BROKEN.
February 1, 2000... ABORIGINAL UNFINISHED BUSINESS Excerpts from the Fourth Annual Vincent Lingiari Memorial Lecture Northern Territory University, Darwin, 27 August 1999 Online: http://www.ntu.edu.au/cincrm/events/lectures/ lectures/dodsonht.htm ...

FROM WELFARE TO RIGHTS.
February 1, 2000... SELF-DETERMINATION IS FUNDAMENTAL The past twelve months have seen considerable discussion of the need for new policy in Indigenous affairs, new directions and new leadership. Commentators have opined that Indigenous Australians have...

THE HUMANITARIAN LEGACY.
February 1, 2000... COLONIALISM, COEXISTENCE AND RECONCILING STORIES `Reconciliation' is a potent term. Although it can mean different things to different people, it keeps our minds focused on a legacy of colonialism which is far more important than the...

The Wounds.(Poem)
February 1, 2000... Like duellists at fifteen paces two paranoids exchange a single brace of observations, some slight assessment or a question held up to the other's work -- painting, poem or sonata, public program or research...

The Documentation.(Poem)
February 1, 2000... for Joe Be-Bop Lane Two afternoons when everything came right the rhythm section loose but tight the front line -- alto, tenor, trumpet -- rifling there behind his voice another instrument again ...

GIVING IT ALL AWAY.
February 1, 2000... IS OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE A THREAT TO THE NEO-LIBERAL DREAM? Giving it away Strain your imagination to picture the following news item: TV ASSEMBLERS ROLL THEIR OWN Sets will be free, rebels say. Workers at the SuperGates...

THE DIGITAL QUEEN'S COUNSEL.
February 1, 2000... GENETIC COMMONS VS CORPORATE STATE OR THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF INTERNET BUSKING It is over twenty years now since the US legal industry found itself in a quandary when computer `programs' were first being burnt onto chips, and written programs...

KEEPING THE MILITARY IN CHECK.
February 1, 2000... LESSONS FROM EAST TIMOR Recent events in East Timor have led to calls for a cancellation of all military ties with Indonesia. The appalling human rights abuses perpetrated by the Indonesian military certainly provide good reason for such...

White Nation.(Review)
February 1, 2000... Ghassan Hage, White Nation, Annandale, Pluto, 1998. Last year, not long after my arrival in Australia from the United States, the magazine section of a Sunday newspaper featured a story titled `I'm Not a Racist But... '. It presented a...

Race Daze.(Review)
February 1, 2000... Jon Stratton, Race Daze, Annandale, Pluto, 1998. Last year, not long after my arrival in Australia from the United States, the magazine section of a Sunday newspaper featured a story titled `I'm Not a Racist But... '. It presented a quiz...

Multicultural States: Rethinking Difference and Identity.(Review)
February 1, 2000... David Bennett (ed.), Multicultural States: Rethinking Difference and Identity, London and New York, Routledge, 1998. Last year, not long after my arrival in Australia from the United States, the magazine section of a Sunday newspaper...

The Imaginary Australian: Anglo-Celts and Identity, 1788 to the Present.(Review)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2000... Miriam Dixson, The Imaginary Australian: Anglo-Celts and Identity, 1788 to the Present, Sydney, UNSW Press, 1999. Miriam Dixson's The Imaginary Australian is a post-Hanson attempt to re-examine nationalism and national identity in...

Existenz.(Review)
February 1, 2000... Existenz Back when the Internet was almost new, I overheard a conversation between two computer geek-boys. They were hunched over a table in a university campus cafe. One of them was telling the sad story of his cyber love affair which had...

Being John Malkovich.(Review)
February 1, 2000... Being John Malkovich Back when the Internet was almost new, I overheard a conversation between two computer geek-boys. They were hunched over a table in a university campus cafe. One of them was telling the sad story of his cyber love...

Fight Club.(Review)
February 1, 2000... Fight Club Back when the Internet was almost new, I overheard a conversation between two computer geek-boys. They were hunched over a table in a university campus cafe. One of them was telling the sad story of his cyber love affair which...

RESISTANCE IS USEFUL.
February 1, 2000... Really? The world's richest man convinced us to upgrade our computers and buy his latest software because if we didn't the entire planet would crash along with our computers because they contained a bug (sorry, `undocumented feature') which in...

IN MY FATHER'S HOUSE.
February 1, 2000... Suffer the Little Children My father, Joseph Croft, was born circa 1926 somewhere on Victoria River Downs (then one of the largest cattle stations in the world), in the Northern Territory, in the traditional country of the Gurindji nation....

`PEOPLE SMUGGLING', OR REFUGEE HYSTERIA.
February 1, 2000... GOVERNMENT POLICY IS CASTING REFUGEES ADRIFT The year 1999 was one in which people who fled persecution in other countries became part of `people smuggling' rackets. In the 1970s and 1980s they were `boat people', and Australians were up in...

TISSUE ART.
February 1, 2000... IS IT AVANT-GARDE TO TURN RABBIT CORNEAS INTO ART? A friend recently received a Christmas greeting from the Australia Council. She is a recipient of several grants, and so was being drawn together in the community of arts practitioners, at...

GLOBAL ECONOMY IN THE YEAR 2000.
February 1, 2000... NOT QUITE THE APOCALYPSE, BUT A BAD CASE OF THE JITTERS Once the uncertainty and years of apprehension associated with the millennium bug transmuted into a feeling of emptiness and a sense of being cheated t no apocalypse, not even a few...

TREPANG OPENING NIGHT.(The 1999 Darwin Festival)
February 1, 2000... DRAMATISING SHARED HISTORIES: YOLNGU GIRL MEETS MACASSAN SAILOR Opening night, and the laughter of the many Yolngu in the audience is infectious, causing others to laugh out loud too at jokes they cannot understand in a language they cannot...

THE FEATURE WRITER AS CELEBRANT.
February 1, 2000... JOURNALISTS TAKE CENTRE STAGE IN MEANING-MAKING PERFORMANCES. The writer of a recent glossy magazine feature on the actress Sigourney Weaver was so impressed with her subject as to sound breathless. Ms Weaver was described as so bright and...

STAKING OUT A CLAIM IN CYBERSPACE.(Brief Article)
February 1, 2000... NEW MEDIA WITH SOME TIME-OLD AMBITIONS For CNN mogul Ted Turner, it was apparently as exciting as the first time he had sex. Indeed, the coming together of two corporate bodies -- America Online and Time-Warner seemed to excite a lot of...

GOOD GOVERNANCE FOR ALL.(Australia's relations with Vietnam)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2000... Vietnam was a country in ruins when in 1973 President Nixon promised $3.25 billion in reparations as part of a ceasefire document. John Pilger quotes a Vietnamese government minister suggesting that `without that minimum capital we could never...

BOUGAINVILLE A LASTING SOLUTION.(Papua New Guinea)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2000... The Supreme Court of Papua New Guinea couldn't do anything else but find that the suspension of the provincial government status of Bougainville was a nullity. The unfortunate decision was bound by legal constraints. Mindful of the need to...

MYANMAR -- WHAT THE COLONEL MIGHT HAVE SAID.(satirical treatment of Myanmar's Minister of Information)
February 1, 2000... Transcript of Speech by Col. Thein Win, the Minister of Information in the State Peace and Development Council speaking to the Myanmar (Burma) Foreign Business Forum, Imperial Jade Hotel, Central Yangon (Rangoon), 13 September 2000. The...

ENOUGH ROPE.(Brief Article)
February 1, 2000... Nomination for the title of Mr Diplomacy You have zero privacy. Get over it. Quoted in the Sunday Age, 8 August 1999. The diplomatic skills of Scott McNealy, the chief executive of computer giant Sun Microsystems, swing into action as...

MAIMED RITES.
February 1, 2000... OTHER COUNTRIES ARE ADDRESSING QUESTIONS OF INDIGENOUS RIGHTS -- WHY CAN'T OURS? Australia's entry into a new century and millennium could have been so different. Instead of deep civic acrimony and collective failure on projects of renewal...

RIGHTING AUSTRALIA.
February 1, 2000... AT A TIME OF INCREASING INEQUITY, IS A BILL OF RIGHTS THE ANSWER? When I first left Australia, like most people leaving their country for the first time, I began to romanticise about my homeland. I had never seen so many homeless people in...