Arena Magazine articles from October 1998

Arena Magazine archives from October 1998

THE NIGHT OF THE MACHINES.(Australian political parties)
October 1, 1998... AND THE MOURNING AFTER It was quiet in the street on Sunday morning. All the `No GST' posters had been ripped down from the cyclone fences of the local primary school. Isella's milkbar was open, as it always is except for two days of the...

MORE OF THE SAME.(Australian elections)
October 1, 1998... WHAT IS NEEDED IS A POLITICAL REINVESTMENT IN COMMUNITY, ARGUES BILL BAINBRIDGE. We never seem to cease having `the most important election since Federation' -- just as we always wake up the following day and find things much as they were,...

TAX WARS AND GLOBALISATION.
October 1, 1998... OUR POLITICAL PARTIES ARE WHISTLING IN THE DARK. Only two months ago the stunning challenge to Australian politics mounted by the rebellion of One Nation supporters seemed to have no peer in indicating the irrelevance of the mainstream...

TRUTH AND THE ACADEMY.(ethical issues in education)
October 1, 1998... A QUESTION OF WHERE AND HOW TO ACT At a recent discussion at Arena on the fate of the university, several comments were made about the `cowardice of academics'. It seemed that here was a special version of cowardice. I have also heard it...

BREAD, BUT NOT BY BREAD ALONE.(subsistence economies)
October 1, 1998... A MERGING OF NEW AND OLD CAN HELP SHAPE A THIRD WAY. Most people have taken on board the occasional press references to Russian workers not being paid for months on end. The miners especially figure in these reports, no doubt because they...

AS BAD AS IT GETS.(urban culturalism)
October 1, 1998... As Australian youths continue to imitate the style, dress, and language of African American youths in shopping malls and train stations, we need to be reminded that Afro-American attitudes are often borne out of poverty, violence, anger and...

ROBERT MANNE: COLD WAR HANGOVER?(political commentator)
October 1, 1998... Robert Manne has established himself as a leading commentator on Australian politics and social affairs. Though an avowed conservative, the former editor of Quadrant in recent times has taken some quite progressive positions. Most notably, he...

TRAUMA ON THE HOME FRONT.(sociopolitical inconsistencies)
October 1, 1998... HOW RELAXED AND COMFORTABLE DO YOU FEEL RIGHT NOW? Ever since that young couple impetuously decided to leave on their road trip directly after the late shift (only to nod off and crash into the side of a semi-trailer) I have been a little...

FRIENDLY FASCISM.
October 1, 1998... LETTER FROM LONDON 2 As the nations of Europe prepare to commit themselves to a common currency -- with the United Kingdom once again hedging its bets -- attention is being turned to their common problems, the foremost of which is the...

ASIAN VALUES.(human rights issues)
October 1, 1998... OR THE DENIAL OF UNIVERSAL RIGHTS? This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It sees the declaration accused of representing Western values in its emphasis on individual rights. Some Asian...

We Live in Time So Little Time.(poem)
October 1, 1998... But is the harried moment of diary or digital the one fabric with rollover seasons that recirculate leafage, its hue and dryness? The same cloth cut longer? And is it again the selfsame...

A QUESTION OF VIOLENCE.
October 1, 1998... I read Alice Bailey's article `A Question of Violence' (Arena Magazine June-July 1998) with a mixture of fascination and abject horror. Bailey raises many interesting questions in a dispassionate and objective manner. Although engaged in the...

INVESTING IN CHILD PSYCHIATRY.
October 1, 1998... In the United States -- under a managed-care system of health similar to the system being introduced by stealth in Australia -- the number of children aged six to twelve who were prescribed Prozac quadrupled from 51,000 in 1995 to 203,000 in...

HALF-BAKED BUT STILL COOKING.
October 1, 1998... Helen Irving is correct in her evaluation of the outcome of the recent Constitutional Convention (Arena Magazine No. 34, April-May '98). Despite the interest the Con Con captured and the genuinely passionate nature of the debates, the model...

ON SINGER ON DARWIN.(response to article by Simon Cooper, Arena Magazine, vol. 36)
October 1, 1998... Simon Cooper's commentary on Peter Singer's Darwin lecture (Arena Magazine 36) is unfair. Cooper writes that Singer ignores `the way culture and society give expression to the human tendencies he identifies'. However in his preceding...

NEW APPROACH NEEDED FOR BURMA.
October 1, 1998... The options of engagement and isolation with regard to global `pariah' states are often presented in the context of `either-or'. This simplistic notion operates on the assumption that there is no gap in between. Recently, the Thai and Filipino...

THE NORTHERN TERRITORY FUTURE.
October 1, 1998... On 11 August the Prime Minister announced that Northern Territory (NT) statehood would commence on 1 January, 2001, to celebrate the centenary of Federation. For good measure he said that this move `will be applauded by all but the mean in...

THE IDIOCY BEHIND BRUTALITY.(detention in Myanmar)
October 1, 1998... SIX DAYS DETENTION IN BURMA The treatment accorded to the eighteen foreigners -- six Americans, three Thais, three Indonesians, three Malaysians, two Filipinos and myself -- who had handed out innocuous pro-democracy cards, was not in...

ELITES...AND THE POLITICS OF AUSTRALIAN NATIONALISM.
October 1, 1998... AND THE POLITICS OF AUSTRALIAN NATIONALISM One of the most disturbing aspects of current political discourse in Australia is the dominance of versions of elite theory -- whether paranoid or sophisticated -- as a means of explaining complex...

A TOWN LIKE PORT KEATS.
October 1, 1998... A COMMUNITY SETS OUT TO ADDRESS ITS PROBLEMS. This is the third in our series `A Town Like...'. Earlier articles dealt with the Victorian towns of Moe and Donald. We welcome contributions which deal with the complications, joys and...

Have a Nice Day.
October 1, 1998... Have a perfectly rotten day, Septic, may all your gold teeth fall out, your hair moult, including the eyebrows, may you shed your thick skin like a snake, may that custom-made Mustang convertible explode, may an eagle...

STAKEHOLDER SOCIETY.
October 1, 1998... POLITICAL COMMUNITY, MARKETING AND CONSUMPTION The success of Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party in the Queensland election, the ensuing mountain of media analysis, pronouncements by political representatives, and debate among community...

A COLLECTIVE HISTORY OF ONE.
October 1, 1998... SYBYLLA FEMINIST PRESS 1989-92 These are notes towards an investigation of socialist-feminist praxis within the context of Sybylla Feminist Press 1989-92. Some of the issues raised here wilt inform a chapter in a forthcoming publication...

Elegy for the Sparrow.
October 1, 1998... What's the point, the sullen boy asks, of learning their names? Bird should do. The indistinct grey of wings against concrete, droppings on the faded fence. And in spring, a racket at dawn, nuisance of yellow gum,...

THE LAST WAVE.
October 1, 1998... MEDICAL PRACTICE MUST RESPOND TO CULTURAL CHANGE. Being a doctor ain't what it used to be. Nor is being a patient. As a hospital clinician looking back, I see forty years of practice fall neatly into halves. From 1958 to 1977 was a period...

REVISING THE REDS.(Review)
October 1, 1998... Stuart Macintyre, The Reds, Allen and Unwin, 1998. It is a handsome book. It is easy to read, as it is written in a limpid style interspersed with human interest stories and quiet jokes which lead easily from chronicle to analysis. Yet, as...

CASUALTY OF THE CULTURE WARS.(Review)
October 1, 1998... Andrew Riemer, Sandstone Gothic: Confessions of an Accidental Academic, Allen & Unwin, 1998. Andrew Riemer's contribution to the genre of the academic memoir is professedly modest. It falls under two high Victorian subtitles: `A...

POETRY IN OUR TIME.(Review)
October 1, 1998... Allen Curnow, Early Days Yet: New and Collected Poems 1941-1997, Auckland University Press, 1997. Curnow's `critical writings 1935-1984' are collected in Look Back Harder, Auckland University Press, 1987. A book on the political novel...

The Abject of our Desires.
October 1, 1998... I remember once chuckling outside, our local newsagent at the leader-board headline for one of those interchangeable women's magazines -- Closmo, Cleopolitan, whatever. `Special Sealed Section,' the blurb enticingly began. `Our Guide to the...

As bad as it gets.(plight of United States poor)
October 1, 1998... As Australian youths continue to imitate the style, dress, and language of African American youths in shopping malls and train stations, we need to be reminded that Afro-American attitudes are often borne out of poverty, violence, anger and...

Trauma on the home front.(Australian television advertisements about social and political programs)
October 1, 1998... HOW RELAXED AND COMFORTABLE DO YOU FEEL RIGHT NOW? Ever since that young couple impetuously decided to leave on their road trip directly after the late shift (only to nod off and crash into the side of a semitrailer) I have been a little...

Friendly fascism.(European fascist politics are concealed by appeals to traditional values)
October 1, 1998... LETTER FROM LONDON 2 As the nations of Europe prepare to commit themselves to a common currency -- with the United Kingdom once again hedging its bets -- attention is being turned to their common problems, the foremost of which is the...

On Singer on Darwin.(Peter Singer, Charles Darwin)(response to Simon Cooper's response to Peter Singer's lecture on Darwin, Arena Magazine 36)
October 1, 1998... Simon Cooper's commentary on Peter Singer's Darwin lecture (Arena Magazine 36) is unfair. Cooper writes that Singer ignores `the way culture and society give expression to the human tendencies he identifies'. However in his preceding...

Statement of Apology.(to Australian aborigines)
October 1, 1998... Danielle Celermajer has sent us the apology to the stolen generations of Aboriginal people given at a public meeting Bowral last December, which she referred to in her essay `A Sorry Nation' Arena Magazine No. 36. Eds We, the...

The idiocy behind brutality.(punishing political reformers in Burma)
October 1, 1998... SIX DAYS DETENTION IN BURMA The treatment accorded to the eighteen foreigners -- six Americans, three Thais, three Indonesians, three Malaysians, two Filipinos and myself -- who had handed out innocuous pro-democracy cards, was not in...

Elites ...(Elite theory and Australian politics)
October 1, 1998... AND THE POLITICS OF AUSTRALIAN NATIONALISM One of the most disturbing aspects of current political discourse in Australia is the dominance of versions of elite theory -- whether paranoid or sophisticated -- as a means of explaining complex...

The Reds.(Review)
October 1, 1998... Stuart Macintyre, The Reds, Allen and Unwin, 1998. It is a handsome book. It is easy to read, as it is written in a limpid style interspersed with human interest stories and quiet jokes which lead easily from chronicle to analysis. Yet, as...

Sandstone Gothic: Confessions of an Accidental Academic.(Review)
October 1, 1998... Andrew Riemer, Sandstone Gothic: Confessions of an Accidental Academic, Allen & Unwin, 1998. Andrew Riemer's contribution to the genre of the academic memoir is professedly modest. It falls under two high Victorian subtitles: `A...

Early Days Yet: New and Collected Poems 1941-1997.(Review)
October 1, 1998... Allen Curnow, Early Days Yet: New and Collected Poems 1941-1997, Auckland University Press, 1997. Curnow's `critical writings 1935-1984' are collected in Look Back Harder, Auckland University Press, 1987. A book on the political novel...