Arena Magazine articles from February 2008

Arena Magazine archives from February 2008

Just a beginning.(Editorial)
February 1, 2008... How has the Australian nation lurched from fairly widespread support amongst white Australians and the media for a militaristic intervention into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory only months ago, to the serious, joyous occasion...

[Cartoon].(Comic)(Cartoon)
February 1, 2008... O.K.... THIS YEAR FOR SURE I'M DEFINITELY GOING TO START CUTTING BACK! [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Blood markets.(AGAINST THE CURRENT)(Essay)
February 1, 2008... The wild gyrations on global stock markets; the announcements of massive losses by the largest US banks; the significant decline in property values now taking hold in the United States and United Kingdom; the announcement of $8 billion losses...

Putting single mothers to work.(AGAINST THE CURRENT)
February 1, 2008... The phrase 'working families', so over used by Kevin Rudd in the recent federal election campaign, had a particular bite for many single mothers trying to manage the 'work-life collision' of welfare reform. Introduced on 1 July 2006, the...

Three-dimensional economics.(AGAINST THE CURRENT)
February 1, 2008... In a period where the twin crises of global warming and the wealth gap are attacking society from both sides, policy makers are continually limited in their effectiveness by a two-dimensional approach to economics. Land prices have...

Who let the dogs out?(AGAINST THE CURRENT)
February 1, 2008... Sport is a defining feature not only of how we Australians see ourselves but also how the rest of the world sees us. The fact that we even exist in the consciousness of many is due to the deeds of our sporting teams. Given this, it is...

Empowering Aboriginal communities.(AGAINST THE CURRENT)(Report)
February 1, 2008... Leaving aside the global question of climate change, the rebuilding of our relationship with Indigenous Australians into a partnership based on justice is the greatest and most urgent task facing the new Rudd government. This means achieving...

Merri Creek: a photographic series.(Brief article)
February 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] These images are part of a photographic inquiry into the significance of the Merri Creek as a site of shifting cultural histories and agendas. Where such histories and politics converge, an uncertain, transitional...

Northwest Passage rediscovered.(Report)
February 1, 2008... The Northwest Passage was one of those big ideas mingling geopolitical and economic hope with futuristic fantasy for centuries, and generating much practical European maritime exploration at the cost of many lives. Captain Cook's final voyage...

On academic Darwinism.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
February 1, 2008... Congratulations to Simon Cooper on his close reading of my National Press Club speech (Arena Magazine 90). The presentation passed without any significant commentary, and the paper launched that day vanished almost without trace. As far as I...

The appeal of Obama.(bites: BRIEF NOTES ON NEWS AND VIEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD)(Barack Obama's and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign)
February 1, 2008... The battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party's 2008 presidential nomination is much more than a duel between mega-celebrities. It's a war about the past and the future of American politics, and a fight for the...

Brazil's Australian-style 'intervention'.(bites: BRIEF NOTES ON NEWS AND VIEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD)(Report)
February 1, 2008... There's a new law being debated in Brazil that threatens to undermine the rights and livelihoods of all indigenous people in this South American nation. Through twisting the letter and intent of International Labour Organisation convention 169,...

The raw and the cooked.(Australians' localism movements)
February 1, 2008... Daylesford is a spa town in Victoria's central highlands. My dad's spinster aunts and bachelor uncles enjoyed its guesthouses between the wars, but when I started visiting in the late 1980s it was just emerging from a long period of decline....

'Merri Creek': a photographic series.
February 1, 2008... on Melbourne's northern waterways. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

A revolutionary Bible? Thomas Muntzer and Gerrard Winstanley: Roland Boer writes on the Peasants' Revolt and the True Levellers.(Essay)
February 1, 2008... My guess is that most readers of this magazine would find a 'revolutionary Bible' an oxymoron, much like Christian communism or religious secularism. Surely you cannot put that textbook of repression and conservatism in a touching embrace with...

Climate change is not the basic issue: Geoff Sharp argues that the technoscience--capitalism convergence has supercharged climate change. We need a movement to tackle that.(Essay)
February 1, 2008... No, it's not really just about climate change. Nor is it just about the way climate change can affect the viability of all living things. At least in the short term, the public inability to focus on the underlying sources of climate change is...

The Bali roadmap and beyond: Peter Christoff charts the highs and lows of the Bali climate change convention.
February 1, 2008... Halfway through the Thirteenth Conference of the Parties (COP 13) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a major earthquake shook Bali. Perhaps it was a sign of what was to come. By the close of the conference a week later,...

Driving inequality: Frank Stilwell asks should we accept the prevailing political-economic arrangements that generate inequality.(Report)
February 1, 2008... 'A rising tide lifts all boats' is an expression commonly used by economists and politicians to justify prioritising economic growth and neglecting the distribution of income and wealth. It has had particular resonance in the last decade. As...

The Gaza breakout: Jeremy Salt writes on the collective punishment of the Gazans and asks where it will lead.(Report)
February 1, 2008... The significance of the mass breakout from Gaza is still sinking in among all those affected, including the Palestinians themselves (the people, their legitimate government in Gaza and the quisling leadership in Ramallah), Israel, the United...

Commemorating the SIEV X: Julie Stephens on memory and memorial activism.(ARTS AND CULTURE)
February 1, 2008... The SIEV X memorial in Canberra's Weston Park raises crucial questions about the politics of memory. It also raises issues about how the cultural history of asylum in Australia at the beginning of the millennium will be recorded. Unique in...

Memory and atonement: Valerie Krips, on the cultural memory of Dunkirk.(ARTS AND CULTURE)(Viewpoint essay)
February 1, 2008... I grew up in a town on the Thames Estuary, one of the little places that sent boats to Dunkirk to rescue the British Expeditionary Force and, of course, Frenchmen, Dutchmen and Belgians too, in May and June 1940. I didn't know that the father...

On looking at and feeling Aboriginal art.(Critical essay)
February 1, 2008... Breasts, Bodies, Canvas: Central Desert Art as Experience (University of New South Wales Press, 2006) by Jennifer Biddle; Papunya Painting: Out of the Desert, National Museum of Australia, Canberra, 28 November 2007-3 February 2008, exhibition...

How my roof blew away.(POETRY)(Poem)
February 1, 2008... HOW MY ROOF BLEW AWAY (after Du Fu) November, and the winds of autumn shriek And roll the thatch, three deep, right off our roof Into the river and the paddy field: Some catches in high branches of the peach, Some...

Making sex work.("Making Sex Work: A Failed Experiment with Legalised Prostitution" and "Call Girls: Private Sex Workers in Australia")(Book review)
February 1, 2008... Making Sex Work: A Failed Experiment with Legalised Prostitution (Spinifex Press, 2007) by Mary Lucille Sullivan; Call Girls: Private Sex Workers in Australia (University of Western Australia Press, 2007) by Roberta Perkins and Frances Lovejoy....

The problem lies elsewhere: tales of repression in recent fiction.(COOPER'S LAST)(Critical essay)
February 1, 2008... One of Slavoj Zizek's favourite jokes tells of the village drunkard who has lost his keys and searches for them under a street lamp. When it is suggested that he might want to expand his search into other areas, the drunk replies that he is...