Arena Magazine articles from June 2005

Arena Magazine archives from June 2005

The end of this world.(Editorial)
June 1, 2005... Earlier this year, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment reported that 60 per cent of 'ecosystem services' are being degraded or used unsustainably. This means that many natural resources, such as fresh water, fisheries or soil, are being used in...

Convergence and resistance.(China politics)
June 1, 2005... There are moments in politics when it is necessary to remind yourself that matters at hand concern people's lives, and are matters of tragedy, not a cause for unclassy glee. Thus it must be borne in mind that the attempted defection of former...

Notes after the 'settlement': in a shifting global context, the coming transformation of Australia will release the best and worst of us.(The Last Days of the Settlement)
June 1, 2005... Every political writer sooner or later notices the way in which history will eventually offer bookends to eras--brief periods in which factors that determined political struggle and terrain for decades or longer come to an end in an appearance...

Curtailing worker rights: the Howard Government's industrial relations agenda could soon make the workplace resemble TV's Survivor program.(The Last Days of the Settlement)(John Howard)
June 1, 2005... From the amount of front-page publicity generated since the October 2004 election, you would think that the most pressing problem facing Australia is industrial relations 'reform'. As Professor Julius Sumner Miller used to ask, 'Why is it so?'...

Strip mining freedom: in its pursuit of friction-free capitalism, the Howard Government is poisoning the ground on which liberalism is founded.(The Last Days of the Settlement)(John Howard)
June 1, 2005... You know that a party is confident of its grip on power when it begins to try to change not only the present but also the past. Perhaps that's why Alexander Downer was so eager to overreach himself so embarrassingly in his Earle Page lecture,...

Who is accountable to whom? Attempts to graft the governance structures of for-profit organisations onto universities threaten the very form of the university.(Against the Current)
June 1, 2005... Building University Diversity, the issues paper recently released by Dr Brendan Nelson, canvasses the opening up of the higher education sector to a range of for-profit providers, both national and international. The concern that shareholders...

The Northern Ireland paradox: moves towards a more democratic Northern Ireland are being hampered by simplistic ideas about the relationship between violence and democracy.(Against the Current)
June 1, 2005... In 1998, Northern Ireland appeared to be on the precipice of a new democratic order. The Belfast (or Good Friday) Agreement, endorsed by over 70 per cent of the population in a referendum, paved the way for devolved government with a...

Signs from the Vatican: Margaret Coffey finds reasons for optimism in the election of Pope Benedict XVI.(Against the Current)
June 1, 2005... The election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger startled many Catholics, perhaps especially those who most hoped for this result and those who most feared it. They understood that he was seen as a divisive figure, a boundary rider, when, by...

Chill winds in the Hothouse.(bites: BRIEF NOTES ON NEWS AND VIEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD)(global warming)
June 1, 2005... A strange side-effect of September 11, 2001 occurred shortly afterwards, and further chilled the hearts of scientists. Over the three days the US airfleets were grounded, the global temperature rose more than one degree--a huge rise from a...

Justice and the Corby case.(bites: BRIEF NOTES ON NEWS AND VIEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD)(Schapelle Corby )
June 1, 2005... Trev Smith never had a chance. An Australian, picked up by the cops after a couple of minor burglaries in Texas, under the influence of alcohol and marijuana, he was identified by two witnesses as someone leaving the scene of a horrific...

New Britain, new comedy.(bites: BRIEF NOTES ON NEWS AND VIEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD)(politics)
June 1, 2005... A little-noted casualty of the rise of New Labour in the UK was a generation of alternative comedians who had built careers opposing the Tories. In the 1990s, the targets of alternative comics--Thatcher, student politics (The Young Ones),...

West Papua's fate.(bites: BRIEF NOTES ON NEWS AND VIEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD)(struggle for independence)
June 1, 2005... The massive underwater earthquake that caused the Indian Ocean Tsunami on Boxing Day 2004 highlighted Aceh's decades-old struggle for independence from Indonesia. At the same time, it diverted attention away from Indonesia's Western-most...

Indigenous internationalism: new adventures in indigenous governance.(United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues )
June 1, 2005... Like May flowers, the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues website springs to colourful life each year before the two-week session in New York. Now in its fourth year, the 2005 forum has new members, with Australia's former...

Reply to Philip Mendes 1.(Comment)(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2005... Arena Magazine's Zionist bias is showing. I have been reading Arena for a year now. The Magazine has carried sundry articles reflecting Jewish viewpoints, written by Jews or others, without carrying any comment or replies from readers who might...

Reply to Philip Mendes 2.(Comment)(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2005... I am amazed at the temerity of Philip Mendes in trying to lay down to Arena Magazine what is allowable comment for discussion. Just who does the mind-restricting Mendes think he is editor for, anyway? Arena is, and should remain, just that:...

Reply to Philip Mendes 3.(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2005... I read in Arena Magazine 75 the article by Palestinian representative Ali Kazak entitled In Search of a Just Peace. I thought it was well balanced and expressed the Palestinian case against Israel, Zionism and Western prejudice admirably. ...

Bolivia erupts: social movements on their feet, a President without direction and a leader out of touch.(http://trawlings: the best of the web)
June 1, 2005... At around 8am on Monday morning, massive crowds of mostly poor indigenous Bolivians gathered on the cusp of a mountainside that descends into the capital city of La Paz. They are residents of the massive shantytown of El Alto, located on the...

Globalisation and democracy after Iraq: from the chaos of Iraq to the hollowing out of Western democracy, Tariq Ali traces the outlines of a world to come.
June 1, 2005... People sometimes say to me--and not just in the United States--'Don't you think using the word "imperialism" is rather old-fashioned?' To which my response always is: 'Perhaps, but then, invading and occupying countries is also old-fashioned...

Deterritorialising the other? Towards a globally sustainable public relations.(Brief article)
June 1, 2005... Abstract Twenty-six years after its original publication, public relations struggles to come to terms with Edward Said's (1978) Orientalism. In the intervening years other disciplines have also taken the postmodernist turn to engage with...

Falluja: slaughter of a city: the magnitude of the devastation in Falluja does not penetrate the propaganda filter.
June 1, 2005... Every crime has its own secrets. Falluja has thousands of them. Six months after the city was finally shattered in an American land and air assault, it remains closed off to the outside world. A handful of people have trickled back; many leave...

The Author of this Poem Is a Number.(Poem)
June 1, 2005... The Author of this Poem Is a Number I do not know what will happen after I die. I do not want to know. But I would like the Potter to make a whistle from the clay of my throat. May this whistle fall into the hands...

The end of geography: are references to 'primal fears' and 'primal ambitions' adequate to understand contemporary security issues? Geoff Sharp argues for a different framework for understanding geopolitics.
June 1, 2005... In Arena 76, Hugh White drew attention to the heightened sense of insecurity pervading social life. He believes that it is more marked now than during the height of the Cold War. He goes on to link an exaggerated and excessively personalised...

Engineering the foodchain: Gyorgy Scrinis asks us to look the gift horse of GM wholefoods squarely in the mouth.
June 1, 2005... In the face of strong opposition from civil society groups, farmers and consumers around the world to genetically engineered (GE) foods, the biotech industry has been hoping that the development and heavy promotion of GE foods with some direct...

Unruly rules: do we fix the Gene Technology Act or opt for a moratorium.
June 1, 2005... While scientists around the globe disagree about the fundamentals of genomics and whether or not DNA can be controlled, governments have grasped the Genetic Modification (GM) industry as an engine of economic growth. But how many Australians...

China's new revolution: China's economic transformation is built on mass faith in markets and technology and a disregard for workers.
June 1, 2005... In 2005 the Australian and Chinese Governments are moving to fast-track a 'free trade agreement'. The agreement is to be negotiated just as Chinese opposition to marketisation and free trade escalates. A key confrontation looms with NGOs...

Notable publications.('Wonder Woman: The Myth of Having It All')('Free World: Why a Crisis of the West Reveals the Opportunity of Our Time')('Left Right Left: Political Essays')('Street Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the 60s')('Stem Cells: Controversy at the Frontiers of Science')('Following them home: Stories of the Asylum Seekers Australia Sent Back ')(Book review)
June 1, 2005... Virginia Haussegger, Wonder Woman: The Myth of 'Having It All' (Allen & Unwin, 2005) When Virginia Haussegger wrote her opinion piece, 'The Sins of our Feminist Mothers,' in the Age, July 2002, a furious and heated debate erupted. Women in...

Secrecy, silence and state terror: the government's 'anti-terrorist' laws promote fear and secrecy as they undermine democracy.
June 1, 2005... Since the September 11 attacks, a national 'terrorist' legal infrastructure has emerged in Australia. At the base of this infrastructure is the broad statutory definition of a 'terrorist act'; a term which, at its margins, embraces some...

Patently unfair trade: India's state-protected pharmaceuticals industry is being patented, privatised and plundered by WTO trade rules.
June 1, 2005... India's pharmaceutical industry, the world's fourth largest by volume, is a major exporter of relatively cheap generic medicines to both developed and developing countries. In 2001, the Mumbai-based firm Cipla commenced exports of a generic...

A day in the life of contemporary ideology: the reception of Ian McEwen's Saturday.(Book review)
June 1, 2005... One of the trademark qualities of Ian McEwan's work has been his ability to create anxiety out of seemingly innocuous situations. Partly this is narrative skill--McEwan is consummate in exploiting the tension between complacency and the chance...

Chris Dew on Stencil Revolution.(graffito decoration)
June 1, 2005... Melbourne has an underground tourist route not promoted on the usual itineraries. It has galleries you won't find listed in the Art Almanac or reviewed in the weekend papers. These are the stencil and graffiti art galleries in the laneways and...

Matthew Ryan on Dig! the Revolution?
June 1, 2005... We've got a full-scale revolution going on', boasts Anton Newcombe early in the rock documentary Dig! He is the film's dominant personality. By turns creative leader, petulant brat, violent bully, Newcombe heads the band the Brian Jonestown...

Under the Hammer: they're watching and waiting.
June 1, 2005... Like most people, Hooper spent days inside waiting for the chance to go out in a downpour. Clouds didn't stop them targeting the ID transmitter in the phone implanted behind your right ear, but rain was said to scatter the beam before it could...