Arena Magazine articles from June 2000

Arena Magazine archives from June 2000

THE EYE'S HAD IT.(reasons for closure of Australian periodical "The Eye")
June 1, 2000... THE CLOSING OF THE EYE WAS AS INEVITABLE AS IT WAS UNFORTUNATE ARGUES GUY RUNDLE The closing of the Eye -- geddit? geddit? -- is another blow to attempts to establish an independent presence in the mainstream Australian media, but it was...

JOURNEYING HOME.(aboriginal children forcibly removed from their homes find themselves culturally alienated)
June 1, 2000... THE STORY OF ONE OF A STOLEN GENERATION Recently, it was revealed that a confidential submission to a parliamentary committee by Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Herron asserted that the `stolen generation' was a myth. According to the...

THE STOLEN GENERATIONS.(Australian aboriginal children forcibly removed from their families and placed with white families)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... PLAYING WITH WORDS, DESTROYING LIVES In one sense, John Herron is right. The word `generation' is inappropriate. It should be plural: `generations'. Yes, `generations', because the first Aboriginal children were brought to the Native...

A CAUTIONARY TALE.(analysis of Russian Parliamentary elections and their social impact)
June 1, 2000... EVALUATING THE RUSSION DUMA ELECTIONS OF DECEMBER 1999 December 1999 will be remembered in Russia for two major political events, the surprisingly strong showing of the nascent `Unity' party in the Duma elections, and the unexpected New...

A BAND OF ROBBERS.(assessment of Al Gore, George W. Bush, and John C. McClain)
June 1, 2000... BLOOD AND MONEY IN THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION This year is obviously a US presidential election year, although in practice the presidential electoral cycle never really ends, the long day never wanes. Curiously, the 2000 presidential...

HARD TIMES IN THE MIDST OF PLENTY.(state of Australian economy assessed)
June 1, 2000... THE TAX REVOLUTION TURNS SOUR These are confusing and disturbing times for those who follow the twists and turns of the economy and related investment markets. And tomorrow may be disturbing for us all. Whatever the strengths and...

BEEN THERE DONE THAT.(ethics of medical experimentation using foetal tissue)
June 1, 2000... THERE ARE VARIOUS WAYS TO DO MEDICAL HISTORY Deborah Zion recently wrote a brief rebuttal of an earlier piece in the Melbourne Age which worried about the ethics of the use of foetal tissue in medical experimentation. While this earlier...

ENOUGH ROPE.(Australian opinion and current events)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... Where important people hang themselves with their own words... TWO STUBBIES SHORT OF A SIX-PACK: THE DENIS BURKE STORY `I reckon that anyone -- anyone that could even think for a moment that the human rights record in Australia today...

OUR RACIST GOVERNMENT.(Australian laws governing aboriginal children criticised)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... In a submission to a senate committee, the Australian government has officially claimed that there was no stolen generation of Aboriginal children in Australia. All those personal testimonies given in the 1990s to the Human Rights and Equal...

HUMAN SOULS OR RESOURCES?(socially aware companies attitudes must be reflected in their treatment of employees)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... There is a small New Zealand company that produces breakfast cereals. Having been introduced to cereals in Christchurch in 1999, I now find myself unable to pass the cereal aisle at the local monstrous supermarket without picking up yet another...

RECONCILIATION -- OR NOT?(reconciliation between whites and aborigines is debated)
June 1, 2000... Reconciliation is in the air, it being Easter Sunday today, and Anzac Day to follow in forty-eight hours. The high points of religious and secular traditions in Australia have come together this year. Yet rarely has public consensus on the...

FROM COLONY TO GLOBAL PRIZE.(Australian businesses find opportunities in East Timor as a result of recent civil unrest)
June 1, 2000... TIMOR LORO SA'E UNDER A WAVE OF ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION The destruction of Timor Loro Sa'e (East Timor) and the consequent forced deportation of a quarter of its population have ironically created a bonanza for Australian businesses and a...

MANDATORY SENTENCING.(mandatory sentencing laws in Australia criticised after youth dies in custody)
June 1, 2000... CREATING AN INCARCERATED GENERATION The death in custody of a fifteen-year-old boy from Groote Eylandt at Don Dale Correctional Centre, Darwin in February while detained under the Northern Territory's mandatory sentencing regime, captured...

RECONCILIATION -- WHAT DOES IT MEAN?(issue of reconciliation between aboriginals and whites in Australia is debated; report critiqued)
June 1, 2000... A CULTURE OF DENIAL LIVES ON Reconciliation: what does it mean? This is the question that Gary Johns, former Federal Minister, and Ron Brunton, cultural anthropologist, set out to answer in a backgrounder booklet released by the Institute...

BROKEN PROMISES.(Israel-Palestine peace negotiations discussed)
June 1, 2000... DOWN TO BEDROCK IN THE MIDDLE EAST After years of obfuscation, bluff and bullying, the bedrock of the Middle East `peace process' has finally been reached. What lies ahead of Yasser Arafat now is the final capitulation, the signature he...

DISSENTING VOICE.(Sanctions against Iraq criticized)
June 1, 2000... AN INTERVIEW WITH DENIS HALLIDAY, FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY-GENERAL OF THE UNITED NATIONS At the end of 1998 Denis Halliday resigned from the United Nations as Assistant Secretary-General, after a thirty-four year career. His departure...

CAPITAL'S FIRST INTERNATIONAL?(World Economic Forum to be held in Melbourne, Australia)
June 1, 2000... THE WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM IS COMING TO TOWN In September 2000 the World Economic Forum (WEF) is holding its `Asia-Pacific Summit' in Melbourne. Alexander Downer, who attended the 1998 summit, describes the summit as the world's `Business...

LA RESISTENCIA.(Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) meeting held in Australia)
June 1, 2000... RESISTANCE AS A STRATEGY FOR SUSTAINABILITY `The price of struggle is blood, death, tears, incarceration and pain. But for the poor, the humble, we have no other choice. Lorenzo Muelas, Indigenous ex-Senator from Colombia The poor,...

Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures.(Review)
June 1, 2000... Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis (eds) Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures, Melbourne, Macmillan, 2000. The thinkers of the Left have a strong sense of social justice -- except when it comes to communicating...

CAESAR TALKS, CROWD WALKS.(Review)
June 1, 2000... As a post-graduate design student in Set and Costume, my focus during the Telstra Adelaide Festival 2000 was on how design supports the directing artist's intentions. Nine days into the festival, after seeing an average of two performances and...

CULTURE ON THE SITE OF BARBARISM?(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... `No poetry after Auschwitz', Theodor Adorno famously wrote. One can only wonder what he would have made of the performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony from the site of the former Matthausen concentration camp in Austria and broadcast to the...

CONFESSIONS OF A REPUBLICAN MOLE.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2000... Unhappily for its visiting patron, the Duke of Edinburgh, the only road into the Sandringham Yacht Club winds through dense tea-tree scrub which provides excellent cover for assassins. This explains the police gauntlet that lines it as the bush...