Arena Magazine articles from February 2005

Arena Magazine archives from February 2005

When the Din of self-congratulation fades.(Editorial)
February 1, 2005... It's taken a tsunami and hundreds of thousands of dead or displaced, but minds now seem firmly trained on the questions of aid and Third World debt. In the days following the shock of the disaster, the Australian Government's response set the...

Consuming childhood.(trafficking and target marketing of children)
February 1, 2005... In the list of horrors that emerged from the Indian Ocean tsunami the reports of child stealing held a particular repulsion. Unlike a giant wave, which can be understood through a common human vulnerability in the face of nature, this act is...

Back to the future: the shift back to failed policies of 'mainstreaming' Indigenous affairs is irresponsible, argues Larissa Behrendt.(Against the Current)(abolition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission)(establishment of the National Indigenous Council)
February 1, 2005... The resounding election victory of the Howard government will ensure that their current direction in Indigenous affairs will continue. No longer having to worry about checks in the Senate, they will be free to reintroduce legislation to abolish...

One man's patriarchy is another man's inconvenience: Muslim women have a proud tradition of activism. Why, then, are they so often misrepresented.
February 1, 2005... The shedding of crocodile tears over Muslim women has come to characterise the rhetoric of many feminists, journalists and government departments. The plight of Muslim women has become a paradigm of victimhood. Australian commentary on Muslim...

After affluenza: diagnosing 'affluenza' has become the 'stock-in-trade' of critics of consumerism. Kim Humphery asks for a second opinion.
February 1, 2005... The diagnosis is apparently simple, the symptoms often all too clear. If you are a manic shopper, hooked on credit card debt and have a house (and perhaps even a self-storage bay) full of things, then you've probably got it. If you are driven...

In search of a just peace: opposing Israeli Policies towards Palestinians is not Anti-Semitic.(Australian Labor Party)
February 1, 2005... Barry Cohen's emotional article and the subsequent responses printed in the Age by Richard Hurford and Kevin Rudd (25/10/04, 3/11/04 and 10/12/04), have raised a number of issues relating to the Palestine-Israel conflict, the ALP's policies and...

Normalising Pauline.(Pauline Hanson, media coverage)
February 1, 2005... A recent change in media attention has landed Pauline Hanson in the fold of a warm public embrace. Having already secured a further season on Channel Seven's Dancing With the Stars, a glossy spread in January's Women's Weekly and a celebrity...

Sontag's passing.(Bites: brief notes on news and views from around the world)(Susan Sontag)(Obituary)
February 1, 2005... Fitting perhaps that the re-election of George W Bush should be followed in such short order by the death of Susan Sontag a few weeks later. If anything represented an old world passing--or at least for the moment moving into eclipse--it was...

Misreading Kinsey.(Bites: brief notes on news and views from around the world)(Alfred Kinsley, human sexual behavior in the 40s and 50s; and today, social and religious aspects)
February 1, 2005... When the film Kinsey premiered in the US last year, serendipitously close to an election said to have been decided on 'moral issues', the wowsers came out in full force. Alfred Kinsey, the 40s and 50s US social researcher, again became public...

Abortion won't go away.(Bites: brief notes on news and views from around the world)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... John Howard declared the abortion debate over last year, with as much success as George W Bush declaring peace in Iraq from that aircraft carrier. With Labor out for the count for between six and twelve years, the real fight is now occurring...

Untitled.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
February 1, 2005... Untitled Every day, every night, four walls, four windows. The locks, the keys, the bars, the guards. I've broken the law, but I didn't intend to. Yes boss, no boss, what boss, dunno boss. I'm just wandering around...

We make a desert and call it reconciliation: all the hard work in Indigenous policy remains to be done, whatever the Howard Government thinks.
February 1, 2005... The Romans make a desert and call it peace, said Tacitus, speaking for peoples who suffered his empire's impositions or invasions. Something similar has happened metaphorically in Indigenous-white dialogue in Australia. In June 2001 the...

Labor's lament.(responses to blue book number nine)(political party management)
February 1, 2005... I have just been reading the Blue Book Number Nine: 'After the Deluge?' as a part of my Arena Magazineand, it being the time for reflection on the election and the commencement of another year, I have been doing some of my own thinking about...

Contending Judith Brett's class: an argument about labor's past, present ... and future.(Comment: responses to blue book number nine)(Column)
February 1, 2005... That Labor's performance at the 2004 Federal election constituted a debacle would seem to be an understatement. In particular, the Tasmanian forests policy release may go down as one of the more unbelievable events of Australian electoral...

Not all votes are equal: different responses from the west to elections in Ukraine, Macedonia and Kosovo suggest support only when people do as they're told.(Http://trawlings: the best of the web)
February 1, 2005... During the recent political crisis in Ukraine, Western politicians and commentators celebrated opposition demonstrations in Kiev's main square as symbols of the brave people of Ukraine standing up for democracy. Around the same time, a largely...

Notable publications.(The Little Green Handbook: A Guide to Critical Global Trends; Griffith Review 7 : Lure of Fundmentalism; Tree; The Best Australian Essays 2004; Word Map; The Power of Speech: Australian Prime Ministers Defining the National Image; The Boyer Lectures: Tales of Two Hemispheres; The Enduring Rip: A History of Queenscliffe; Violent Democracy)(Book Review)
February 1, 2005... Ron Nielsen, The Little Green Handbook: A Guide to Critical Global Trends (Scribe, 2005) A comprehensive source of up-to-date data surrounding the climate change debate, such as global freshwater resources and distribution of military...

Warring societies: in the west today, a transformation is occurring. That which was formerly unthinkable--torture and indefinite detention, for example--have become part of the mainstream defence of the 'good' society.(Critical Essay)
February 1, 2005... I think it was the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman who once observed that if in modernity the First World showed the Third World an image of its future, in post-modernity this situation is reversed. Now, it is the Third World that shows the First...

The discoveries of Australia: if there is any one story about the discovery of Australia, it is the opposite of the one that's usually told.(Australian History)(the Spanish connection)
February 1, 2005... Australia is a European idea. A 'southern land' named Terra Australis in Latin existed at the clouded edges of the European imagination from as early as the sixteenth century. The idea of Australia became clearer as the centuries passed and a...

Naked in Alice: Rod Moss' paintings frame the life and death of a community.(Art)
February 1, 2005... No artist's work is reducible to the independent truth John Berger, Courbet and the Jura As soon as you arrive in Alice Springs you are instantly aware of two things. There is the light that strips things naked. It's a light that both...

Some like it hot: Making sense of the Howard Government's climate policy.(Climate Change)(Kyoto Protocol on Climate)(National Greenhouse Response Strategy)
February 1, 2005... On 22 October last year, after many months of fence sitting, Russia ratified the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change and formally brought the Protocol into being. In response, Australia's Environment Minister, Ian Campbell, quickly reiterated the...

Taking 'Life 101' in Mumbai's Slums: Akanksha began as an idea to give Mumbai's children a space to play. It has evolved into a unique learning environment.(India)
February 1, 2005... A steady stream of children in bright blue, yellow and orange t-shirts, pulled over dresses and paired with dusty pants, file into the small hall. It has a concrete floor, ceiling fans and a blackboard. The only furniture is a desk and three...

The democratisation of compassion? A culture of fleeting information and images, evident in the response to the tsunami, threatens to undermine more consistent ethical behaviour.(Cooper's Last)
February 1, 2005... The 21st century has had its share of apocalyptic scenarios, including the Y2K bug, the spectre of global terrorism, and a plethora of disaster films to name only a few. Despite this, despite even the general acceptance of global warming as a...

Matthew Lamb on Australia and East Timor.(Reluctant Saviour)(Book Review)
February 1, 2005... Reluctant Saviour Clinton Fernandes Scribe, 2004 In August 1999, the people of East Timor held a long awaited referendum on the question of their independence from Indonesia. They overwhelmingly voted in its favour. Shortly afterwards,...

Leanne Reinke on native title and the clash of cultures.(Crossing Boundaries: Cultural, Legal, Historical and Practice Issues in Native Title)(Native Title in Australia: An Ethnographic Perspective)(Book Review)
February 1, 2005... Crossing Boundaries: Cultural, Legal, Historical and Practice Issues in Native Title Edited by Sandy Toussaint Melbourne University Press, 2004 Native Title in Australia: An Ethnographic Perspective By Peter Sutton Cambridge University...

Sandra Newman on McSweeney's Quarterly.(Periodical Review)
February 1, 2005... McSweeney's Quarterly, brainchild of best-selling memoirist Dave Eggers, was instantly hailed as a revolution in publishing. It was only distributed through independent book stores. The editors made a point of reading, and sometimes publishing,...

A Little Shelter.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
February 1, 2005... A Little Shelter for JS Harry Everything eventually finds some resting place the shabby ibis with its overcrowded nest of enormous ugly darlings jostling in the cocos palm rain working its way ...

Andy Blunden on undermining welfare.(Australia's Welfare Habit and How to Kick It)(Book Review)
February 1, 2005... Peter Saunders, Australia's Welfare Habit and How to Kick It Duffy & Snellgrove, 2004 Thank goodness that at a time when academics still think that they can insulate themselves from the demands of the market there is an institution that...

Eureka Street.(Mag Watch)(Brief Article)(Periodical Review)
February 1, 2005... In the Jan-Feb '05 edition of Eureka Street, Andrew Hamilton considers Archbishop George Pell's recent comments about democracy, dignity and Islam.This first edition of 2005 also carries a look at the demise of English fox hunting, an...

Overland no. 177.(Mag Watch)(Brief Article)(Periodical Review)
February 1, 2005... Subtitled "The Consolation of Literature", Overland no. 177 (Summer '05) looks, post-election, to literature and literary politics for consolation and inspiration. Novelist and academic Andrew McCann argues that there has been no decline in...

In other Australian magazines, the quarterly Social Alternatives has an issue devoted to the discussion of 'Globalisation, Environment & Social Justice', while the Summer '04-'05 edition of Dissent Magazine looks, in part, at the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement.(Mag Watch)(Brief Article)(Periodical Review)
February 1, 2005... In other Australian magazines, the quarterly Social Alternatives has an issue devoted to the discussion of 'Globalisation, Environment & Social Justice', while the Summer '04-'05 edition of Dissent Magazine looks, in part, at the Australia-US...

Monthly Review.(Mag Watch)(Brief Article)(Periodical Review)
February 1, 2005... Internationally, American magazine Monthly Review (Jan '05) includes a timely and pertinent article on the corporatisation of health-care in the US. Such shifts, the article's co-authors claim, are partly legible in terminology changes: clinics...

Pacific Affairs.(Mag Watch)(Brief Article)(Periodical Review)
February 1, 2005... The Canada-based journal Pacific Affairs (Summer '04), has lengthy essays on socio-political topics of interest in the Pacific as well as scores of book reviews critiquing the latest scholarship on national cultures in Asia (including...

Theory, Culture & Society.(Mag Watch)(Brief Article)(Periodical Review)
February 1, 2005... In the Theory, Culture & Society (Dec '04) journal, three Australia authors co-write an interesting article on the burgeoning field of 'cosmopolitanism studies'--a sort of study of non-fixed ethnicity for the globalised era. Compiled by Ben...

Memorandum: maximum security--read and eat.(Endnote)(media management of ministerial negotiation)
February 1, 2005... MEMORANDUM MAXIMUM SECURITY--READ AND EAT TO: All ministerial spokespeople DATE: February 2005 RE: 'Flap Your Gums But Give 'Em Nothing': A practical guide to Media Management of Ministerial Negotiation with Indigenous Communities...