Arena Magazine articles from February 2007

Arena Magazine archives from February 2007

Correction.(Correction notice)
February 1, 2007... In Arena issue 86, December--January 2006--07, Peter Christoff wrote that the increase in atmospheric CO2 was occurring at the rate of 2-3ppm per decade. This should have read either 20-30ppm per decade or 2-3ppm per year. Arena Magazine...

Neo-conservatism's implosion.(Editorial)(Editorial)
February 1, 2007... In his speech to the National Press Club on Australia Day eve last year, Prime Minister John Howard reflected on what he called the 'irony' of people wanting to become Australians in citizenship ceremonies when there is no agreed-upon...

Lead graphic.(Comic)(Cartoon)
February 1, 2007... Are we there yet? Yes. END OF POLITICS [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Elemental blindness: John Hinkson argues the predictable failure of the new strategy in Iraq.(Against the Current)
February 1, 2007... There is little doubt that the war in Iraq has moved into a new phase out of which any possible 'victory' will require an inversion of the meaning of the word. The underlying facts tell the story. None could be more important than the...

Dealing in Green: Christopher Scanlon defends the Tasmanian Green's election strategy.(against the current)
February 1, 2007... The biggest non-issue in last year's Victorian state election was the Green-Liberal preference deal that wasn't. While the fight provided momentary respite from what was otherwise a remorselessly dull election, it cast light on a strain within...

Letter from America: prelude to a miss: everything you've been wondering but were too scared to ask. Mark Wagner explains the mystery of US elections.(against the current)
February 1, 2007... Dear Explainer, Last week, the main news item shuttled around from computer to computer and mouth to mouth was the statistic that, in America, more than half of women are now living without men. In that same week, Hillary 'quietly' announced...

Places to be.(Calendar)
February 1, 2007... CREATIVE Envirocraft at the Melbourne Moomba Water Festival EnviroCraft conduct workshops in creative ways for reducing and re-using waste. Where: Enviro Craft will be at the Melbourne Moomba Water Festival on the banks of the...

Downfall.(//bites: BRIEF NOTES ON NEWS AND VIEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD)(Saddam Hussein)
February 1, 2007... It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners. Albert Camus On 5 November 2006, a trial that had held the nation of Iraq in its grip like a macabre soap opera since October 2005 came to its predictable...

Osama Bin Laden is dead, again.(//bites: BRIEF NOTES ON NEWS AND VIEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD)
February 1, 2007... This time it's for real. On December 17, 2006, officials announced that 'Laden', as he was known, was killed by sharpshooters in the north-eastern state of Assam, India. 'Laden', a 10-foot tall killer bull elephant named after Osama bin Laden...

No place like home.(//bites: BRIEF NOTES ON NEWS AND VIEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD)
February 1, 2007... Because most intellectually disabled people cannot speak for themselves, and many of their parents are overwhelmed by the disaster that has befallen them, overburdened with their care responsibilities, the formulation of policy for...

Join the Navy and see a collaborative work environment.(//bites: BRIEF NOTES ON NEWS AND VIEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD)
February 1, 2007... In the first episode of the classic comedy series The Young Ones, Rik Mayall silences the loungeroom so he can watch a brand new TV show 'for young adults, by young adults' called 'Nosin' Around'. Hosted by Baz, played by an almost adolescent...

Beaching.
February 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Originally published (without caption) in Going Down Swinging, issue 24, 2006

Overcoming our humanity: what lies behind utopian projections of a post-biological society?(Cooper's Last)
February 1, 2007... The capacity for humanity to overcome its seemingly innate limits has long been a source of fascination. The historical record is full of tests and trials designed for the human body--from ancient athletic games to contemporary extreme sports....

Even as we speak.(Artwork Feature)(Excerpt)
February 1, 2007... A linguist at the Institute for Aboriginal Development (IAAD), Jenny Green, was working with some Arrernte women recording their healing songs. Jenny had lived in the Centre since the early 70s and enjoyed enduring relationships with Alyawarr...

Ordinary academics standing behind ordinary people: Boris Frankel responds to Rob Watts.(Comment)(Ordinary People's Politics)
February 1, 2007... Rob Watts describes Judith Brett and Anthony Moran's Ordinary People's Politics (Pluto Press, 2006) as a marvelous book (see Arena Magazine, no.86). He waxes lyrical about how politics is much more than constitutions, parties, parliaments and...

Christian values and Kevin Rudd's wedge: Kevin Rudd has placed ethical concern at the heart of his politics. Can Rudd's ethics survive the day-to-day demands of politics?(Essay)
February 1, 2007... In a manner that is a little unusual in politics, Kevin Rudd has accented the ethical quality with which he intends to define his leadership by stressing the way Christian values will lend purpose and direction to his proposed tactics. In...

The Buddah.(Poetry)(Poem)
February 1, 2007... The Buddah I'm not really the Buddah I was made in a factory by a woman who lives in a squat in Shenzhen now I sit on a laminex table in a sun-filled room where people eat slow breakfasts and...

Trial by prejudice: Julian Burnside reports on the charges being laid against David Hicks and his ever-fading prospects for a fair trial.(David Hicks)
February 1, 2007... David Hicks has been held in Guantanamo Bay for five years. He is held by the USA, our ally. Draft charges have just been announced. He has been denied the protections offered to criminal suspects in the American and Australian legal systems....

Losing your right to fill the 'G': Joanne Knight draws the links between unfair dismissal, WorkChoices legislation and democracy.(Workplace Rights)(Melbourne Cricket Ground)
February 1, 2007... In the weeks leading up to last year's national day of action on 30 November 2006, workers were intimidated and refused time off work to attend the 'Fill the G' protest at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Greg McCarron, an employee with the...

The foreign legion at home: as George Bush gears up to send more troops to Iraq, Adam Elkus reports on the state of the US Army.(America)
February 1, 2007... With the release of journalist Robert Young Pelton's book Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror and the documentary 'Shadow Company', public scrutiny has intensified on private military corporations and other defence contractors....

New Matilda Magazine, Issue 128, http://www.newmatilda.com.(Magwatch)
February 1, 2007... Peter Garret responds to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. Emma Dawson and Sophie Redmond look at the debate around Australian values and citizenship. Joanna Mendelssohn looks at the current state of Australian...

New Internationalist Magazine, January 2007, Issue No. 397.(Magwatch)(Brief article)
February 1, 2007... The latest edition of NI Magazine reports on the state of the world's oceans. David Ransom discovers there's just one Ocean, and it's not looking good. Dorrick Stow explains why the Ocean is like a giant thermostat and sponge. Sara Holden...

Eureka Street, 7 February 2007, Volume 17, No.2 http://www.eurekastreet.com.au.(Magwatch)(Brief article)
February 1, 2007... Paul Collins looks at the Australian debate around population, writing that: 'One of the unmentionable and politically incorrect questions is how many people the continent can sustain while retaining some respect for the integrity of the...

Blackfella beats and new flows: powerful to Aboriginal youth, yet virtually invisible to mainstream white Australia, a new and distinctly Aboriginal form of hip-hop is gaining momentum.(Hip Hop)(Lyrics)
February 1, 2007... A quote from indigenous man, Ross Watson, included in Kevin Gilbert's 1988 book, Living Black, powerfully describes the ambiguity surrounding Aboriginal identity: What is Aboriginality? Is it being tribal? Who is an Aboriginal?... Is...

Denis Altman, 51st State (Scribe, 2006).(Notable Publications)(Brief article)
February 1, 2007... John Howard has initiated economic and military policies that bind Australia to the United States more tightly than ever before. As a result, many Australians believe we are fast becoming America's 51st state. According to Altman, the story is...

Nicolas Rothwell, Another Country (Black Inc, 2007).(Notable Publications)(Brief article)(Book review)
February 1, 2007... For several years, Nicolas Rothwell has travelled the length and breadth of Northern and Central Australia. This book tells the story of desert journeys and encounters with mystics and artists, explorers and healers. It also gathers together...

Russell Skelton, King Brown Country: The Betrayal of Papunya (Scribe, 2007).(Notable Publications)(Brief article)(Book review)
February 1, 2007... What has gone wrong with indigenous policy in Australia over the past 30 years? In the 1970s our country's oldest inhabitants were given equal pay, access to the nation's welfare net, and greater freedom than ever before to run their own...

Jeff Sparrow, Communism: A Love Story (MUP, 2007).(Notable Publications)(Brief article)(Book review)
February 1, 2007... This is the story of Guido Baracchi, the playboy and dilettante whose love affair with Marxism took him from his father's astronomical observatory to Weimar Germany, from Stalin's Russia to Melbourne's Pentridge Gaol. Baracchi entwined...

Tim Flannery, Mungo MacCallum, David Malouf and Guy Rundle, Four Classic Quarterly Essays on the Australian Story (Black Inc, 2006).(Notable Publications)(Brief article)(Book review)
February 1, 2007... Quarterly Essay has released a collection of some of its best essays by celebrated Australian writers. Each one offers an intriguing angle on the Australian story. There is David Malouf's elegant and truthful account of the British inheritance...

In the most high and Palmy State of Queensland: Peter Beattie's effort to improve the lives of Indigenous Australians needs support.
February 1, 2007... Palm Island, the deceptively paradisal island off Townsville, has been rarely out of the news through the Christmas-New Year and summer holiday period. The national tragedy of Mulrunji Doomadgee's death in police custody on 19 November 2004,...

Happiness.(Poetry)(Poem)
February 1, 2007... Happiness Saboteurs, we argued about the war, caulking the afternoon with the abject as manhouts alternately grizzled and cooed outside like so many schizoid babies. But narratives are not monographs; our toying...

Nonie Sharp on finding a language that speaks to ourselves.
February 1, 2007... I New Year 2007. Fires rage through mountain forests and delicate undergrowth; burning in Jamieson, Licola, Gaffney's Creek, happy places of my youth. At Walhalla, brief home of my grandfather in the tragic bushfire of 1886. And there's a...

The climate is changing.(Cartoon)
February 1, 2007... The climate is changing; [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] is becoming more unreliable; [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] is becoming wilder, more dramatic and capricious; [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] is becoming more dangerous; more harmful;...

Martin Mulligan on learning from Indigenous Australians.
February 1, 2007... Karl-Erik Sveiby and Tex Skuthorpe, Treading Lightly: The Hidden Wisdom of the World's Oldest People (Allen & Unwin, 2006) In several well-publicised speeches during 2005, Senator Amanda Vanstone mounted the argument that Aboriginal people...

Anna Trembath on independence.(Book review)
February 1, 2007... David Scott, Last Flight out of Dili: Memoirs of an Accidental Activist in the Triumph of East Timor (Pluto Press Australia, 2005) David Scott's Last Flight out of Dili: Memoirs of an Accidental Activist in the Triumph of East Timor...

Anthony Moran on the decline of democratic participation.(Book review)
February 1, 2007... Gerry Stoker, Why Politics Matters: Making Democracy Work, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006 Gerry Stoker's new book, Why Politics Matters: Making Democracy Work, makes a lively and provocative contribution to recent commentary about the declining...