Arena Magazine articles from June 2006

Arena Magazine archives from June 2006

A mobile slaughterhouse.(Iraq War, 2003)(Editorial)
June 1, 2006... Google Ads, the paid links that appear on many web pages offering goods and services supposedly tailored to the content of the page, often seem like the unconscious of the web--a kind of free association of idea that reveals what cannot be...

Darfur: a slow genocide.
June 1, 2006... By the time this piece has gone from processor to page, the Darfur peace deal--signed last week in Abuja--may well have fallen apart. If not, it is likely that it soon will. The Janjaweed still want to get rid of the (mostly) African...

The Manifesto club.
June 1, 2006... Spring is in the air--at least in the northern hemisphere--and so thought naturally turns to the writing of political manifestos. Over at Spiked they are gathering together people of similar mind to write a radical humanist manifesto, giving...

Fiona Katauskas.(Cartoon)
June 1, 2006... (SigH!) Looks likE THERE'S BEEN aNOTHER PLaNE CRaSH... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The state we're in: so-called 'failed states' are not just temporary anomalies but symptoms of how today's global market works.
June 1, 2006... The unrest in the Solomon Islands and now the social and political collapse in East Timor that has led to an increase in the Australian military and police presence has generated no commentary on Australian policy in the Pacific. The need to...

Mining mateship: Beaconsfield provided a channel for our collective anxieties about workplace changes and the loss of face-to-face community.(John Howard )
June 1, 2006... Following the so-called 'Great Escape' of Beaconsfield miners Brant Webb and Todd Russell from their kilometre-deep entombment, Prime Minister John Howard was quick to hail their rescue as a 'wonderful demonstration of Australian mateship'. How...

The industry of working: photographs by Grant Hobson.
June 1, 2006... I first saw Grant 's pictures of people in their workplace when I met him through the Old Ways: Disappearing Workplaces Project, which was developed by Grant and auspiced by the State Library of Victoria in 1995-96. Grant had sought to document...

Oan Kiak: women and independence in Timor-Leste: in the most isolated areas of Timor-Leste, women are providing a powerful counterpoint to the apparent failure of independence.
June 1, 2006... Men are so often identified as the dominant agents in the process of nation formation, not least through their relationship to public performances of violence in moments of war and revolt. This pattern appears to have continued in what is so...

The Croc Festival.
June 1, 2006... An innovative event held annually throughout Australia that builds partnerships while celebrating youth and culture in rural and remote communities. The festival engages young indigenous and non-indigenous Australians in education, careers...

Earth Dialogues Brisbane 2006.
June 1, 2006... Brisbane Festival 2006 is hosting a major international forum chaired by Mikhail Gorbachev and Premier Peter Beattie. Earth Dialogues Brisbane 2006 will focus on the need for the ethical and sustainable management of natural resources and its...

Democratic Republic of Congo: Forgotten War.
June 1, 2006... A powerful exhibition by world-renowned VII Photo Agency photographers Ron Haviv, Gary Knight, James Nachtwey, Antonin Kratochvil and Joachim Ladefoged. Reveals the suffering of the Congolese people as they struggle to survive a war that has...

The Humanities Conference '06 (Tunisia).
June 1, 2006... The Fourth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities will address a range of critically important themes in the humanities today. Main speakers will include some of the world's leading thinkers in the humanities. All are...

The Unquiet World.
June 1, 2006... The bizarre dementia of those caught up in the Jerusalem syndrome... The ill wind that sweeps its way through the indigenous tent city in Canberra... Messages about the perils of everyday life in Iraq... The Unquiet World is a new exhibition...

Eldorado.
June 1, 2006... Marius von Mayenburg emerged out of Berlin's Schaubuhne Theater to find himself at the forefront of a new international theatre following the success of his earlier play, Fireface. Von Mayenburg and director Benedict Andrews collaborate on...

Around the fire: Camp Sovereignty in Melbourne's King's Domain was an expression of the complexities of Aboriginal strategies of resistance.
June 1, 2006... On Sunday March 12, the Tent Embassy mob arrived in Melbourne from Canberra, with coals from the embassy's 'sacred fire for peace and justice' lit in 1998. It was a dry, total fire-ban day; the heat was thick and still. In the deserted CBD,...

The moral economy of the bush: debates about logging and forestry are typically presented as pitted wars between urban environmentalists and logging communities. In north-east Tasmania, Peter Hay finds other voices.
June 1, 2006... On 6 October 2004, in the last crucial week of the election campaign, Prime Minister Howard announced his 'rescue package' for Tasmania's disputed forests at a Timber Communities Australia (TCA) rally in Launceston. He was cheered by a...

Galbraith: the conscience of economics: John Kenneth Galbraith's death was quickly followed by debate about the significance of his contribution to economics and politics--a debate he would have approved of.(In memoriam)
June 1, 2006... The obituaries for John Kenneth Galbraith demonstrated the breadth of his impact. For his admirers, his influence was seen as extraordinary and enduring. For many of his detractors, it is inappropriate even to call him an economist. ...

Post-communism explained.(rope)
June 1, 2006... Occupations What do you do? Cu ce va ocupati? I'm unemployed. Sint somer. Lonely Planet Eastern European phrasebook (Footscray, 2001), Ch. 8, Romanian, p. 364.

Rooting for the vandals: a routine house inspection has made a permaculture garden in a Melbourne suburb the setting for a debate about the politics of food production.
June 1, 2006... On 24 April this year, following a routine house inspection, the tenants of a house in suburban Melbourne were issued with a Breach of Duty notice ordering them to restore their garden to its original condition within fourteen days or provide...

The revolution will not be uploaded.(MySpace.com Inc.)
June 1, 2006... Andy Warhol's prediction of fifteen minutes of fame for all is steadily counting down to being literally rather than proverbially true, with the success of MyTube. MyTube is the site where people can upload videos they've made--whether on...

Something old, something new.(same sex marriage)
June 1, 2006... A friend of mine recently recounted a story about some friends of hers, a lesbian couple, who had had a falling out with some friends of theirs, a gay male couple. The two couples had fought because the men were planning to marry. If the ACT...

The Da Vinci lode.(Dan Brown)
June 1, 2006... Perhaps it was inevitable that the film version of The Da Vinci Code would fail to pack the punch of the five-hundred-page book on which it is based--an excitingly paced, well-executed, cliche-heavy, essentially ludicrous romp through a brace...

'Sleep no more': is sleep the newest casualty of late capitalism?
June 1, 2006... Is something like sleep essential to our sense of being human? What would it mean to go without sleep, or to reduce our sleep needs to a couple of hours each night? What kind of culture would regard this as desirable? These questions arise...

The cultural contradictions of Christian fundamentalism: many have been caught unawares by the re-assertion of Christian fundamentalism. Guy Rundle looks at the rise of a religious form uniquely suited to contemporary cultural mores.(Critical essay)
June 1, 2006... Writing in the months before he was executed by the Nazis for his part in the plot to kill Hitler, the priest and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer noted that he was finding it increasingly difficult to deal with ostentatiously religious people,...

Australian Author (April 2006).(Angelo Loukakis)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... In April, Australian Author welcomed new editor Angelo Loukakis, celebrating Australia's writers reporting in some of the world's most volatile climates. The magazine pays a special tribute to the life and work of Donald Horne. Peter Manning,...

Chain Reaction (Number 96, Winter 2006).(Magwatch)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... Despite a large proportion of the world's disadvantaged ethnic communities being directly affected by the actions of wealthy nations, these communities are given few opportunities to get involved in the environmental campaigns that could...

Eureka Street (Volume 16, May-June 2006).(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... After fifteen years in print, Eureka Street has released its final print magazine before launching a new online format on May 16. In the final edition, Frank Brennan challenges our role as citizens in a democracy to hold our politicians to...

Inside Indonesia (Number 86, April-June 2006).(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... The labour movement in the Indonesian workplace was looking stronger than ever after the resignation of President Suharto in 1998. In Inside Indonesia, guest editor Michele Ford questions what ground the nation's workers have made and whether...

The reality of TV: television isn't to blame for every social ill but neither is it neutral.
June 1, 2006... When anthropologists Don Kulick and Margaret Willson took cinematic equipment into the remote village of Gapun in the Papua New Guinea Highlands in 1991, they encountered some interesting responses. While many Gapuners had 'heard stories' about...

Great achievements and wasted opportunities: Martin Mulligan and Nelum Buddhadasa compile a balance sheet on Sri Lanka's post-tsunami recovery.
June 1, 2006... Well over a year since the tsunami swept away the lives of some 40,000 Sri Lankans and left many thousands clutching at the memories of stolen loved ones and homes now destroyed, sections of the island's extensive coastline resemble scenes from...

When small isn't beautiful: Gyorgy Scrinis cuts through the hype surrounding nanotechnology.
June 1, 2006... Nanotechnology--a new range of techniques for engaging with and reconstructing nature at the atomic and molecular level--is being hailed as the basis of the 'next industrial revolution', or at least as the next technological revolution or...

Terror and the law: law and transgression are two sides of the same coin.(Critical essay)
June 1, 2006... It is sometimes forgotten that terrorism actually began as state terrorism. 'Terror' in the sense that we now use it--political terror--was born in the French Revolution and is therefore twinned at birth with modernity itself. It was originally...

Stanley Milstein, Furlough 55 (Perceval Press, 2005).(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2006... Before enlisting in the US Army in 1955, Stanley Milstein had seen nothing beyond his small Brooklyn neighbourhood. Fifty years later, his son Hugh has compiled this book of 'amateur' photographs taken by Milstein as a young man leaving his...

Richard Sennett, The Culture of the New Capitalism (Yale University Press, 2006).(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2006... Based on the Castle Lecture in Ethics, Politics and Economics, which Sennett gave at Yale University in 2004, The Culture of the New Capitalism offers a glimpse into the contemporary culture of work and its effects on personal identity, social...

Barbara Ehrenreich, Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the Corporate Dream (Granta, 2006).(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2006... Mirroring her best-selling portrait of life on the minimum wage in the US, Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich goes to the other end of town, to see how white collar workers are faring in a corporate jungle overgrown by downsizing, outsourcing and...

Steven Poole, Unspeak (Penguin,May 2006).(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2006... 'Climate Change' rather than 'Global Warming'; 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' and not 'America's War on Iraq'. So goes the language of what Steven Poole calls 'Unspeak'. Poole looks at how the spin of politicians, corporations and military agencies...

Barry Jones (ed.), Coming to the Party: Where to Next for Labor? (Melbourne University Publishing, July 2006).(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2006... Emerging from the wake of The Latham Diaries, this collection grapples with many of the questions raised by Latham's attacks on what he calls the 'poisonous and opportunistic culture' of the Australian Labor Party. Can Labor present a vision...

Fisk's war: Jorge Sotirios interviews Robert Fisk about Osama bin Laden's sense of history, reporting war and a public stoush with John Malkovich.(Interview)
June 1, 2006... Robert Fisk is the Middle East correspondent for the Independent newspaper in the UK. Recipient of the Amnesty International Press Award, Fisk is a highly regarded journalist who has written incisively on war, giving voice to the victims and...

If you don't like black coffee, you can go without tea instead.(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... Breakfast & Dinner A Romanian breakfast consists of a selection of the following foods with tea, milk or black coffee. bread piine butter unt cheese brinza jam jem marmalade ...

Iraq, or the last piece of the mask: the repercussions of US occupation for Iraqi women represent the final unveiling of hypocrisy.
June 1, 2006... I am a woman Islamist, an intellectual and a citizen of the world. As a consequence, my reaction to the Iraqi tragedy--a tragedy occurring at a Dante-esque scale--is three-dimensional. I am a woman, a human being naturally destined to give...

Women: Canaries in the Coal Mine of International Foreign Policy.
June 1, 2006... The treatment of women by a particular society often renders them canaries in the coal mine, foretelling the prospects for a range of human rights issues from child welfare to freedom of association and dissent. In the current geopolitical...

The Road Through Legri.(Poem)
June 1, 2006... The Road Through Legri If you ever go to Parma Take the mountain road through Legri And stop in the shade of cypress trees And bathe in the rush of the mountain stream Cradling the south slope of the road. I...

Folly Field Beach.(Poem)
June 1, 2006... Folly Field Beach With dark glasses, fisherman's hat, arms and legs hidden, I walked in the blaze of the lowcountry sun, fixing east upon cooler water. Yet the boy's eyes sought mine, a stranger's, his smile...

Foxes and hedgehogs in Canada: waiting for statesmanship in indigenous relations and recognition.
June 1, 2006... The populist Right government of Stephen Harper, elected on 23 January 2006 in Canada, has many clever ideas, while the Aboriginal peoples (Constitutionally defined as Indians, Inuit, and Metis) have one big idea. The latter want to continue...

Karen Halasa on Syriana.(Movie review)
June 1, 2006... Variously described as a 'hyperlink text', geo-political thriller and an example of Hollywood's shift to the left in times of war and crisis, Stephen Gaghan's Syriana is a sweeping, at times confusing, coalescence of contemporary issues that...

That's the end of his career.(rope)
June 1, 2006... 'Morrissey has 40087 friends.' From Morrissey's myspace website http://myspace.com/morrissey, 12 April 2006.

Out of the hands of babes: beating the killjoys.(Red Herrick)(childhood woes)
June 1, 2006... Back when apron strings were longer and kids didn't orbit their parents so tightly, almost from the moment I could walk I was free to roam our neighbourhood. Our dead-end street had been freshly gouged into the virgin slopes of Strathmore...