Arena Magazine articles from February 2004

Arena Magazine archives from February 2004

A wilderness of mirrors.(editorial)(Editorial)
February 1, 2004... In the wake of the release of the Hutton Report, few seem to have observed that its findings were not a crucial arbiter of the conduct of the Blair government; or of Colin Powell, who relied on British intelligence reports for his UN speech...

OurDoom.(editorial)(Editorial)
February 1, 2004... It has been good to see that the world is capable of acting collectively in the face of a threat from a virus capable of causing unprecedented harm and misery. Unfortunately, the virus in question is the MyDoom computer virus, a string of 1s...

To infinity, and beyond! ...
February 1, 2004... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ... AND WE ARE FULLY COMMITMENTED TO BRINGING PEACE AND DEMOCRACY TO THE LONG-SUFFERING PEOPLES OF THE MOON!... ACTUALLY, GEORGE... I THINK THIS IS IRAQ...

A moment, not a movement: the World Social Forum 2004.(against the current)
February 1, 2004... The air resonated with the sounds of bells, drums, chants and songs; throats were lined by dust; hands were crammed with pamphlet upon pamphlet; and vision was filled with posters, flags, banners and placards as thousands of activists converged...

Many worlds against one world: the World Social Forum now stands at the centre of the movement for global democracy.(against the current)
February 1, 2004... A new mode of democracy stalks the globe. Born from the counter-globalist social movements, this form of participatory democracy is drawing together niches of involvement and engagement. The World Social Forum stands at the centre of this...

Life after Mars.(Bites: brief notes on news & views from around the world)
February 1, 2004... We will send a manned mission to Mars'--Dubya's State of the Union announcement, in his best Texas drawl, has been greeted with an underwhelming lack of enthusiasm. Editorials, articles, leaders have questioned the wisdom of the decision, while...

Germaine's ideology.(Bites: brief notes on news & views from around the world)(Germaine Greer)
February 1, 2004... Ah Germaine, brilliant one day, bonkers the next, wrote the Melbourne commentator Leslie Cannold in one of her few recorded examples of wit. Those sympathetic to Greer's writings and her revolutionary, liberatory role in the lives of millions...

A modern marriage of convenience.(Bites: brief notes on news & views from around the world)
February 1, 2004... For more than a century women have fought for access to education, equal pay, affordable childcare... sorry, did we get that wrong? Apparently, contemporary women don't 'want it all' after all. According to Susan Shapiro Barash, professor of...

Parkinson's lore.(Bites: brief notes on news & views from around the world)
February 1, 2004... What is the responsibility of a newspaper to its readers, as regards its own point of view? Undoubtedly it is a commitment to pluralism, but of varying degrees. No-one wants a publication without any character of its own or coming from no point...

Intelligence failure.(Bites: brief notes on news & views from around the world)
February 1, 2004... In the eight months since George Bush declared an end to the Iraq war, not one of the factual claims made by allied administrations about Iraq's WMD has been confirmed. Bush, Blair and now John Howard, aided by Lord Hutton's inquiry in Britain...

Australian solutions for a PNG problem.(Bites: brief notes on news & views from around the world)(Papua New Guinea )
February 1, 2004... Although it's our closest neighbour and the largest recipient of our aid money, Papua New Guinea remains a mystery to most Australians. A country of over 5 million people, it is one of the most culturally and biologically diverse regions on the...

Watching the directives: a confidential CIA memo has been leaked to Scott Burchill. Here is the full text ...
February 1, 2004... Central Intelligence Agency, Langley Virginia Department of Wayward Clients and Unsavoury Friends Status Report: January, 2004 To: George J. Tenet, Director of Central Intelligence From: Head, Office of Villains and Nefarious Crimes ...

Mad human disease: sheer incompetency and a dangerous lack of planning characterises America's botched post-war 'reconstruction' in Iraq.
February 1, 2004... The US attack and occupation of Iraq must surely rank as one of the most incompetent foreign adventures in modern history. Forget for a moment the serial lying on both sides of the Atlantic, and the glib acceptance of those lies by Aznar,...

Life's good? Education as a consumer product.(Australia's education system)
February 1, 2004... You may have seen a recent advertisement for LG electrical appliances, where a child can watch herself spun around by her dad on an internet-compatible television located on a fridge. The art of advertising is the art of selling a product no...

As an added bonus primo Levi got his letter published in Penthouse.(rope)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2004... "In the same way that gays reclaimed as a symbol of unity and pride the pink triangle that the Nazis used to brand and oppress them, young [Playboy] Bunny-wearing women are boldly proclaiming their faith in a world where girl power reigns, and...

Pop psychology.(rope)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2004... "The public knows when someone is being honest. The people know what's real. This might sound like a weird analogy, but it's like watching Friends. You just get what the people are talking about." Britney Spears quoted in Chuck Klosterman,...

Andy Scerri: Choc Chicks II--a response to Wendy Varney.(criticising ice creame advertisement)(Column)
February 1, 2004... While disagreeing entirely with Wendy Varney's assessment of the images of a young woman immersed in a huge 'Heaven' ice cream in the Peters' 'Heaven' ice-cream billboards as clever (see 'Choc Chicks', Arena Magazine No. 68), I agree with her...

What's wrong with social capital?
February 1, 2004... Christopher Scanlon is a co-editor of Arena Magazine and a researcher at RMIT University's Globalism Institute. He has written on the changing nature of social integration under current conditions of globalisation, focusing specifically on the...

Peter McMahon: global society.(cultural politics)
February 1, 2004... Recently, I've had to do a lot of travel between America, Europe, and Australia. Every time I enter a new country, I'm made aware of the anxieties of quarantine efficiency. With foot and mouth still prevalent in Britain--despite the propaganda...

Touching hopes and cruel realities; the commonwealth of nations indigenous project.(indigenous policy research project)
February 1, 2004... The fifty-four member countries of the Commonwealth of Nations--formerly the British Empire--include some of the world's best and worst indigenous circumstances and related public policies. While world organisations have been increasingly...

The light on the hill, the lamp on the desk & the fist in the glove: Mark Latham has taken the fight to the coalition, but Labor's enthusiasm for authoritarian social policy cannot go unchallenged.
February 1, 2004... It would take the most doctrinaire socialist not to feel a surge of joy at the recent transformation of Australian politics created by the election of Mark Latham to the leadership of the ALP. In a matter of weeks the polarities of power have...

Latham's ladder: Latham's twenty-first century vision pulls out a tired old metaphor historically associated with 1950s British conservatism.(Mark Latham)
February 1, 2004... There's going to be a lot of talk about Mark Latham's 'ladder of opportunity, predicted Susan Mitchell in the Weekend Australian a few days after Latham became Leader of the Australian Labor Party. Latham had announced his vision for...

Kata Tjuta.(Poem)
February 1, 2004... Many heads ringed together: a field of burgeoning mushrooms stained red and golden in the spilling light. Looming above, they are red scavengers; birds with folded wings blocking out the blue loophole of sky. Shadowed clefts bud with...

Is there such a thing as welfare dependency? While, everyone agrees that increasing numbers of Australians are reliant on welfare, they differ vastly on the causes and potential solutions.
February 1, 2004... In recent years, the notion of welfare dependency has loomed large in Australian welfare policy discourse. The 1999-2000 McClure Welfare Reform Review, for example, was driven by a concern that too many Australians of workforce age were...

That ol' malfunctioning bodice excuse.(rope)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2004... "I am sorry that anyone was offended by the wardrobe malfunction during the halftime performance of the Super Bowl. It was not intentional and is regrettable." Justin Timberlake, apologising for tearing off part of Janet Jackson's costume...

Thanks, arsehole.(rope)(Andrew Gilligan to join "Spectator")(Brief Article)
February 1, 2004... Andrew Gilligan, the Today reporter whose story about the 'sexed-up' Iraq dossier triggered a cataclysmic fallout with Downing Street, has been offered a new job on the Spectator. He has been asked to join as its defence and diplomatic editor...

A celebration and lament for nature: ways of thinking and writing about nature are changing with our relationship to it.
February 1, 2004... The waves stoop with the shoulders of sea eagles, and the gull-white feathers burst. And you notice how the wind-paths, beyond the breakers, run out across the waters sinuously and spreading like the arras of the open eucalypts. Robert...

Donald Horne reflects on John Anderson & Australian civilisation.
February 1, 2004... Mark Weblin (ed.), A Perilous and Fighting Life: From Communist to Conservative--The Political Writings of Professor John Anderson Pluto Press, 2003 Where is the key to this selection of political pieces by John Anderson (now seen as...

Charles Richardson on the Liberal Party & the 'moral middle class'.(Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class: From Alfred Deakin to John Howard)(Book Review)
February 1, 2004... Judith Brett, Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class: From Alfred Deakin to John Howard, Cambridge University Press, 2003 Not surprisingly, most attention to this book has focused on Brett's treatment of the Liberal Party's recent...

Susan Hawthorne on myths of 'free' trade.(Book Review)
February 1, 2004... Mike Moore, A World Without Walls: Freedom, Development, Free Trade and Global Governance, Cambridge University Press, 2003 Mike Moore, former Director General of the World Trade Organisation, and Michael Moore, host of 'The Awful Truth'...

Notable publications.
February 1, 2004... George Megalogenis, Faultlines: Race, Work and the Politics of Changing Australia (Scribe, 2003) An investigative approach to issues currently dividing Australia, identifying a 'wobbly bridge' generation between old and new. Jeffrey M....