Arena Magazine articles from February 2006

Arena Magazine archives from February 2006

Hanson, Howard and the exhaustion of politics.(Editorial)
February 1, 2006... This September will mark ten years since Pauline Hanson took her seat in Federal Parliament to deliver the speech that would extend her fifteen minutes of fame as a dis-endorsed Liberal Party candidate to a political movement. At the time, it...

Israel and Iran: the call of the Abyss: how can the West resolve the stand-off over nuclear power while preserving its own ways of living and promoting liberty.(Against the Current)
February 1, 2006... There is no stronger indication of the seriousness of the world situation than the rapid shifts of political perspective and strategy that typify the last four years. The war on terror, drawing strongly on the critique of 'failed' states and...

Protection in Action Humanitarian Reponse in Armed Conflict.(CONFERENCE)
February 1, 2006... Wednesday 22 February 2006 at 12.00 pm to Thursday 23 February 2006 at 12.00 pm. SAGES, 221 Bouverie Street, Carlton, Melbourne. Hosted jointly by SAGES Development Studies and Oxfam. For enquires and registration forms go to...

Climate Refugee Forum (presented by Friends of the Earth).(PUBLIC FORUM)(Brief article)(Calendar)
February 1, 2006... Saturday 18 February 2006, 3pm to 5pm, BMW Edge, Federation Square, Sustainable Living Festival. Climate change threatens to displace at least 150 million people in the next half decade. Various speakers address the issue of where these...

Exposure: Australian Photography from the 1930s to the 1950s.(ART)(Brief article)
February 1, 2006... Until April 2006, Gallery 15, Queensland Art Gallery. Lecture: 'Body Culture: Max Dupain, Photography and Australian Culture 1919-1939. Wednesday 1 February at 10.30am in the Lecture Theatre. As part of this exhibition, photography expert Dr...

Flickerfest International Short Film Festival.(FESTIVAL)(Brief article)(Calendar)
February 1, 2006... From January to March Flickerfest hosts its national tour of short films, screening Academy Award-nominated shorts plus many other internationally acclaimed films. The national tour visits many metropolitan and regional areas that rarely have...

Get Rich or Die Tryin (MA 15+).(FILM)(Movie review)(Brief article)
February 1, 2006... Jim Sheridan's (In the Name of the Father, Bloody Sunday, In America) biopic about hip hop star Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson tells the true tale of an orphaned kid who makes his mark in the drug trade, enduring a living hell until a tragic event...

Three Furies: Scenes from the Life of Francis Bacon.(THEATRE)(Brief article)
February 1, 2006... A bold and visceral cabaret of the celebrated and controversial life of Francis Bacon, written by one of Australia's most provocative dramatists, Stephen Sewell. Winner of the National Helpmann Award for Best Director, this visionary portrait...

Respec': New Labour's 'Respect' campaign is about filling the gap created by its withdrawal from the democratic socialist impetus of the post-war years.
February 1, 2006... He's a ridiculous character, forever on TV, a white man who wants to be black, with a ridiculous catchphrase of 'respect' and a repertoire of annoying hand gestures. If he wasn't the prime minister of the UK, Ali G could sue him for plagiarism....

The red river Yarra: a genuine socialist politics to the left of the Greens is the only way that poor inner-city communities will be properly represented.
February 1, 2006... Some people think of local councils as dumping grounds for the dregs of the major parties, or as modern day Tammany Halls. That is often the case. However, they also make decisions that affect the lives of ordinary people in important ways....

Stifling the poverty debate: the government should not be allowed to silence not-for-profit organisations.(St Vincent de Paul Society)
February 1, 2006... For a vibrant democracy, between elections, the general mandate that a government obtains needs to be tempered by open debate on important issues that may not even have been raised in election campaigns, or that arose after an election. In this...

Linking global trade justice to local trade sovereignty: campaigns against the WTO agreements on trade in services and agriculture are agitating for global trade justice.
February 1, 2006... We have much to celebrate in the anti-WTO campaigns of the last decade. The most important achievement is the stalling of the World Trade Organisation's 'market access' agenda. The 1999 'Millennium Round', effectively a permanent global...

More than 10 years on, reason for popularity of Baywatch still eludes show's creator.(rope)
February 1, 2006... 'Knight Rider and Baywatch have always been synonymous with heroes and are about love, and about action, and humour, and I think that's what the world is about.' US actor David Hasselhoff quoted in Jane Holroyd, 'Hackers no Hassle: Hoff',...

Vincent's lessons to us.(bites: BRIEF NOTES ON NEWS AND VIEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD)
February 1, 2006... Many have been touched by Vincent's deep humanity and passion. Many artists and thinkers--and many of us ordinary human beings--found their identity through Vincent and found a soul mate in their lonely struggles. Vincent van Gogh, painter,...

The science of morality.(bites: BRIEF NOTES ON NEWS AND VIEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD)
February 1, 2006... The recent upper house ruling on RU486 (a drug that induces a 'medical abortion') follows a period of intense public debate in which many people seemed to interpret the bill as determining whether Australian women should be allowed access to...

Imagining the post-human: recent books by Kazuo Ishiguro and Michel Houellebecq offer guides of sorts to the post-human.(Cooper's Last)(Critical essay)
February 1, 2006... The promise of a biotechnological future driven by practices such as cloning and organ transplantation increasingly forms part of our cultural landscape. Outside the realm of science, these practices supply new themes for genre fiction (SF and...

A world gone MaD: marketisation and deregulation of electricity: the goal of affordable, accessible, clean and reliable electricity has been trampled in the rush to market.(Market Failure: Market Failure is an occasional series exploding the myths of the almighty market)
February 1, 2006... Many governments around the world have deregulated and privatised their electricity systems since the mid-1980s. The principal beneficiaries of privatisation have been the consultants, banks, building societies, insurance companies, pension...

Response to Les Rosenblatt.(Comment)(Letter to the editor)
February 1, 2006... In his review of Christos Tsiolkas's Dead Europe ('A Place Where Wolves Fuck', Arena Magazine No. 79), Les Rosenblatt has no right to attribute to me comments signed by someone else. Ian Syson can speak for himself but, for the record, I...

Response to Michael Cook.(Comment)(Letter to the editor)
February 1, 2006... Michael Cook's diatribe against Philip Nitschke, (Arena Magazine No. 80), apparently intended as a serious critique of the issue of voluntary euthanasia (VE), is a classic example of 'playing the man' rather than 'playing the ball'. Bad sport....

The new Furies: Tariq Ali's newest book calls for Britain to re-examine its role as one of the real sources of insecurity in the globalised world order. In this review essay, Tom Nairn examines how Britain may put Blairism and moth-eaten greatness behind it.(Essay)(Rough Music: Blair/Bombs/Baghdad/London/Terror)(Book review)
February 1, 2006... Rough Music: Blair/Bombs/Baghdad/London/Terror is a series of reflections on 'a watershed in British political culture', provoked by the war in Iraq and then, even more acutely, by the London bomb attacks on 7 July 2005. Though written quickly...

Mad as a ...(rope)
February 1, 2006... 'Why do men behave so badly nowadays? I know that the question has been asked for more than 2,500 years, but it just so happens that, this time, it is entirely apposite... The explanation came to me a few months ago in a blinding flash of...

Who cares?(rope)
February 1, 2006... 'We have heard from users that they love the serendipitous discovery part of voice-powered search. They find shows they never knew existed on channels they never even knew they had. For example, I recently did a search for Bob Denver, who plays...

The rationality of war: in 1992, then-intelligence officer Scott Ritter announced that the disarmament of Iraq was complete. Here, Ritter tells why that wasn't what US defence analysts wanted to hear.(Iraq)
February 1, 2006... It's a common view that what happened before we got to Iraq is now irrelevant. The proponents of this view hold that the whole issue of weapons of mass destruction and the reasons for war are irrelevant, that debating it is a bore. Their view...

Iran in the crosshairs: with idealogues in power in both Teheran and Washington, a peaceful solution to the nuclear energy standoff seems remote.(Nuclear Proliferation)
February 1, 2006... After the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Iran, a member of the 'axis of evil,' was in fear of becoming America's next target. But the chaos and the insurgency that have since engulfed Iraq have dissipated that fear. Iranians are now confident...

Empire's fate: catchy, patchy and, in places, plain wrong, Niall Ferguson's writings on empire are cold comfort to apologists of imperial adventure.(Imperialism)
February 1, 2006... Invited by this magazine to check out Niall Ferguson's views on empire, I anticipated an encounter with a sensational academic conman. As an established historian of the British Empire, I also tried to steel myself against onslaughts of...

Living from the land: rural Chinese are under pressure as never before, with threats coming from all sides.(China)
February 1, 2006... Over the past eighteen months, at least three fierce clashes between Chinese farmers and police were officially disclosed by the Chinese public media. This included a mighty protest on 27 October 2004 (Hong Kong Wenweipo, 1 November 2004),...

Meanjin, March 2006.(Magwatch)(Brief article)
February 1, 2006... This edition of Meanjin dedicates itself to publishing a diversity of Indigenous Australian writers. Curated by Peter Minter, Marcia Langton and Tony Birch, the edition features short stories by Melissa Lucashenko, Jared Thomas and Barry...

Monthly Review, February 2006.(Magwatch)(Brief article)
February 1, 2006... The February issue of Monthly Review carries a cover story on the use of scientific reasoning for the left. This comes in the form of a reflection on Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man as the book reaches its twenty-fifth anniversary....

Australian Book Review, February 2006.(Magwatch)(Brief article)
February 1, 2006... The February cover of Australian Book Review is emblazoned with an uncharacteristically death-metal style font that screams 'Against Religion'. This is the title of the edition's central essay, written by University of Melbourne philosopher...

Mother Jones, January/February 2006.(Magwatch)(Republican Walter B. Jones one of the most vocal critics of war in Iraq)(Brief article)
February 1, 2006... American magazine Mother Jones' first cover story for 2006 tackles the role of anti-war conservatives like southern Republican Walter B. Jones. The same man who asked for 'French fries' to be renamed 'freedom fries' is now one of the most vocal...

Just keep walking: shame has become passe, a victim of a culture that views it as an impediment to achieving one's own ends. But at what cost to how we treat others.(The "Me" Revolution)
February 1, 2006... As well as sharing the distinction of being among the twentieth century s more established pariahs, Romania's Nicolae Ceausescu, Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Zaire's Moboto Seko had a common Washington-based lobbyist throughout the 1980s. These...

Gideon Haigh, Asbestos House: The Secret History of James Hardie Industries (Scribe, 2006).(Notable Publications)(Brief article)(Book review)
February 1, 2006... Founded in 1888, James Hardie Industries is one of Australia's oldest, richest and proudest companies; its fortunes based on what proved to be one of the worst industrial poisons of the twentieth century. Set against the history of industrial...

Gwynne Dyer, Future: Tense: The Coming World Order (Scribe, 2006).(Notable Publications)(Brief article)(Book review)
February 1, 2006... One of the world's most widely published political commentators, Gwynne Dyer now offers this well-informed historical perspective on the shape of things to come in international politics. Future: Tense analyses the motives and strategies of the...

John Hirst, Sense and Nonsense in Australian History (Black Inc., 2006).(Notable Publications)(Brief article)(Book review)
February 1, 2006... Representing a lifetime's original reflection by Australia's most ground-breaking historians, this book showcases Hirst's classic essays on the pioneer legend, Australian egalitarianism and colonial culture. There are also celebrated critiques...

en Marks, In off the Red: An Autobiograpy (Black Inc., 2006).(Notable Publications)(Brief article)(Book review)
February 1, 2006... This is the remarkable story of a boy with a finely honed sense of justice who became a Lancaster bomber pilot in the Second World War, then a card-carrying Communist and eventually a Judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria. In Off the Red is an...

Ann Curthoys and John Docker, Is History Fiction? (UNSW Press, 2005).(Notable Publications)(Brief article)(Book review)
February 1, 2006... A book that explores in fresh and innovative ways the perennial question: what is history? How can we in the present know the past? In a wonderful journey that starts with the classical Greeks and travels through the centuries to more recent...

The semiotics of martyrdom: from Rosa Parks to Cindy Sheehan, martyrdom has always been a potent political weapon. Andy Blunden looks at the conditions under which a victim becomes a martyr.(Subjectivity)
February 1, 2006... People risk their lives to get to Australia, but is there anything in our way of life that's worth dying for? Well John Howard is putting this to the test by taking away those social and political freedoms won at the Eureka Stockade, in the...

Indigenous unhappenings at the top: Warren Mundine's National Indigenous Council.
February 1, 2006... "The old round of unhappenings', to borrow a remark from Samuel Beckett, shows no sign of abating in Australian indigenous policy. The Australian (29 December 2005) informed us that Aboriginal activist Warren Mundine was quitting the Prime...

Annie Davis: on a government policy of social exclusion.(Following Them Home: The Fate of the Returned Asylum-Seekers)(Book review)
February 1, 2006... David Corlett, Following Them Home: The Fate of the Returned Asylum-Seekers Black Inc. Books, 2005 Just as the Palmer Inquiry was beginning to fade from public consciousness, the plight of the stateless and penniless Robert Jovicic...

Damian Grenfell: on knowledge, agency and activism in Australia.(Activist Wisdom: Practical Knowledge and Creative Tension in Social Movements)(Book review)
February 1, 2006... Sarah Maddison and Sean Scalmer, Activist Wisdom: Practical Knowledge and Creative Tension in Social Movements, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2006 The ivory tower image of academia is a difficult cliche to break. In 2002 while still recovering from...

Organic Basis to ADHD? The chemicals that get between us.
February 1, 2006... It is accepted wisdom that ADHD is a social phenomenon. The stigma of drugging one's child is stressed, while drug companies are represented as villains profiting from the quick-fix ethos of a chemical-dependent Western society. But the current...