Arena Magazine articles from June 2007

Arena Magazine archives from June 2007

Rudd's party-less democracy?(Kevin Rudd)(Editorial)
June 1, 2007... In her regular spot on Late Night Live with Philip Adams, the Australian Financial Review's political journalist Laura Tingle observed that for most of his speech to the ALP national conference, Kevin Rudd appeared to be talking over the heads...

[Cartoon].(Cartoon)
June 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] We are considering giving support

Letter from America: Hillary and the honey bees: Mark Wagner sees a curious lesson in markets and politics.(AGAINST THE CURRENT)(Hillary Rodham Clinton)
June 1, 2007... We live on five acres of wood, weeds and wetland; in the middle of our field I keep a couple of hives of bees. We use the honey on toast and in cooking, and the bees help the garden. And while keeping bees is not a fun hobby, it keeps me in...

Poor Britannia: child poverty under scrutiny: Dan Read explains why Britain is one of the worst places in which to grow up.(AGAINST THE CURRENT)
June 1, 2007... February turned out to be yet another month of controversy for British politics. Although he has since resigned, Prime Minister Tony Blair was a seasoned expert when it came to deflecting the ire of those both inside and outside the Labour...

The monthly (June 2007).(MAGWATCH)
June 1, 2007... Eric Ellis profiles the wife of media mogul Rupert Murdoch and her role in News Corp in the latest Monthly. Eric Beecher tackles the problem faced by quality newspapers: how to offset declining print sales and the rise of internet-advertising...

New Internationalist (June 2007).(MAGWATCH)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... Darfur is the focus of NI's June issue. Four years on since conflict first erupted, the people of this rural region of Western Sudan are still engulfed in terrible suffering. The world said 'never again' after Rwanda. Yet the UN, Western...

Chain reaction (July 2007).(MAGWATCH)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... Chain Reaction (Friends of the Earth's mag) is celebrating its 100th issue with a retrospective, including the 1976 highlight when a whistleblower alerted FoE to a global uranium cartel. Also featured is a critical analysis of carbon trading...

Climate change: within Cooee of the 2050 generation: the seriousness of climate change has become unavoidable. Nonie Sharp asks if it will be enough to stir us into action.(AGAINST THE CURRENT)
June 1, 2007... '... most of us find it hard to get an intuitive feeling for the real seriousness of the threat that climate change poses.' Robert May, Former Scientific Adviser to UK Government Will the misdeeds of today's leaders come to haunt the...

All smoke and mirrors? Carbon trading in Australia: Peter Christoff applies six tests for the proposed carbon trading schemes.(AGAINST THE CURRENT)
June 1, 2007... Climate change is high on the political agenda in the run-up to the 2007 election, carbon trading is all the buzz, and politicians are trading 'hot air' in increasing volumes as the year wears on. John Howard opposed carbon emissions...

Climate change and human health.(CONFERENCES)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... The Department of Human Services is seeking expressions of interests and abstracts in themes related to climate change and health. There will be particular interest in current and future Australian practice, including research. This conference...

Greenhouse 2007.(CONFERENCES)(Greenhouse 2007: The Latest Science and Technology)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... Following the highly successful Greenhouse 2005: Action on Climate Change, CSIRO is hosting Greenhouse 2007: The Latest Science & Technology. In late 2007, there will be a watershed in climate change understanding, with the release of the...

Lucky miles (MA15+).(FILM)(Movie review)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... It's 1990 and an Indonesian fishing boat abandons Iraqi and Cambodian refugees in a remote part of Western Australia. While most are soon caught by officials, three men with nothing in common but their misfortune and determination escape arrest...

Whatever happened to reconciliation?(LECTURE)(School of Philosophy of the Australian Catholic University)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... Australian Catholic University's School of Philosophy presents the Wednesday Free Public Lecture Series for 2007, with reconciliation the big theme. June 13: Peter Sutton June 20: Mick Dodson June 27: Raimond Gaita July 4:...

The unsatisfactory ending to the case of citizen Hicks: after the outrage over David Hicks' detention in Guantanamo Bay, Victoria Stead asks why we're prepared to accept similar injustices at home.(AGAINST THE CURRENT)
June 1, 2007... So Hicks is home. After pleading guilty to the relatively minor charge of providing material support for terrorism, he has been sentenced to seven years in prison with six years and three months suspended. And now he's back in Australia serving...

Drought.(Poem)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... DROUGHT A pall of grey grips the land lying dormant in its coffin unable to sustain and give succour drained of all life and possibility. Imbalances of the natural world destroys capacity to love or comfort ...

More troops in Iraq than reported.(//bites: BRIEF NOTES ON NEWS AND VIEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD)
June 1, 2007... The US government uses a number of deceptions, definitional illusions and euphuisms to drastically undercount the number of US forces involved in Iraq--including counting only 'combat forces' and 'military personnel'. There are actually at...

New songs.
June 1, 2007... 'Changed, changed utterly...' has to be the verdict on UK perspectives following Tony Blair's departure. W. B. Yeats' words were for the Irish Easter Rising of 1916, but apply no less today. Terrible beauties are once more being born, without...

Green lessons from labor's past.(//bites: BRIEF NOTES ON NEWS AND VIEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD)(Green Party)
June 1, 2007... Over their political career the Australian Greens have suffered hostility not just from right-wing commentators but from what counts as the left wing of the commentariat. After the 2004 federal election Shaun Carney complained that Bob Brown...

Dream large.(University of Melbourne's research ethics)
June 1, 2007... The crosshairs pivot, bringing the target into focus. Seconds later the earth jolts as the building explodes into smithereens. It's the kind of footage that US military commanders show at briefing sessions to boast the smarts of smart bombs. In...

Poor track record on climate change.(Australia)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... Suddenly, the Howard Government asks us to believe it is committed to action on climate change; but their questionable record looks something like this: 1996 denial of the existence of climate change and refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol....

Kyoto flawed or personality flaw?(John Howard on Kyoto Protocol)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... Howard's rationale for failing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol has been that it is 'flawed'. But the biggest flaw has been its deliberate sabotage by Australia and the US operating unilaterally and in tandem--just as they did in the Iraq war. ...

The horror of assimilation: zombies and bio-capitalism.(COOPER'S LAST)
June 1, 2007... Now that the Victorian government has given the green light to stem cell research the hype over the possibilities of 'regenerative medicine'--the idea that biotechnological research will allow the growth of human cells and eventually body parts...

The budget circus and democracy: federal budget processes are increasingly kept from public scrutiny. Boris Frankel takes a closer look.
June 1, 2007... For many years after the presentation of the annual federal budget, I would run a class where students were asked to bring in copies of any newspaper reports or other material on the budget. The aim of the class was not to criticise particular...

From here to eternity? In the second instalment of a two-part essay, Geoff Sharp explores how the technosciences are contributing to an illusion of social continuity by creating unprecedented discontinuity.(Essay)
June 1, 2007... After working on the draft of this article, which follows on from its first half 'From Here to Eternity' (Arena Magazine, April-May issue, no. 88), I happened to read an account of how, for Jewish survivors, the searing recollection of the...

The Howard-Bush coalition's agenda on climate change: if Australia's greenhouse gas emissions are really 'on track' why won't Howard ratify Kyoto?(John Howard and George W. Bush, Kyoto Protocol)
June 1, 2007... In less than a year, we have seen the release of The Stern Review; poll results from the Lowy Institute putting 'dangerous' climate change at the head of the list of public anxieties; and two more in a series of reports from the International...

Who is Bennelong? Looking into the Bennelong Society, Eve Vincent draws a portrait of an intellectual sub-culture.
June 1, 2007... 'Who was Bennelong?' asks the Society named after him. 'Bennelong the Man', according to the Bennelong Society's website, was 'easily the most intelligent and helpful of the Aborigines that had come into Sydney Cove'. Governor Arthur Phillip's...

Which economy, stupid?(economic condition)
June 1, 2007... My bank recently offered to double my credit rating. Though somewhat flattered by this fine act of selfless generosity, I knew it was nothing personal, as this ploy is now so common that one elderly pensioner recently complained on talkback...

Reconciliation Constitution for Northern Territory?
June 1, 2007... Amid the national outpouring of comment, get-togethers, and discussion forums in late May 2007 around the anniversary of the 1967 Aboriginal Constitutional referendum, another constitutional event almost slipped below the radar. On May 28 the...

Christopher Scanlon on the more things change ...(Real World Nuclear Deterrence: The Making of International Strategy)(Book review)
June 1, 2007... David G. Coleman and Joseph M. Siracusa Real World Nuclear Deterrence: The Making of International Strategy (Praeger Security International, 2006) In the early 1980s, with the nuclear arms race in full swing and the Doomsday Clock ticking...

Matthew Ryan on rehearsing the end of the world.
June 1, 2007... Cormac McCarthy The Road (Picador, 2006) The squatters paint a mural of a Mexican girl with fifteen cans of spraypaint in a chemical swirl, she's standing in the ashes at the end of the world, four winds blowing through her hair. So...