Arena Magazine articles from October 1999

Arena Magazine archives from October 1999

MORE MASSACRES IN EAST TIMOR.(Brief Article)
October 1, 1999... JAMES GOODMAN QUESTIONS THE IMPLICATIONS OF AUSTRALIA'S RELATIONSHIP WITH INDONESIA. In the last few weeks the world has borne witness to a genocidal massacre in East Timor. The East Timorese people have faced several such massacres over...

UPDATES ON WEST PAPUA.
October 1, 1999... IN THE SHADOW OF EAST TIMOR, AUSTRALIA HAS TURNED A BLIND EYE TO ANOTHER HISTORY OF GENOCIDE. The deeply held spirit for independence of the `forgotten peoples' of West Papua has been evident since colonisation early in the nineteenth...

WHEN IT'S NO LONGER FUN.
October 1, 1999... WWW.JEFF.GONE? The way Jeff Kennett handled Paul Lyneham and the Sixty Minutes team the Sunday night before the State election (12 September 1999) is perhaps indicative of why he has been so popular, especially with the youth vote. Like a...

SO WHO'S THE WRECKER THEN?
October 1, 1999... THAT NIGHT THE PREMIER WENT TO THE THEATRE AND THE AUDIENCE APPLAUDED HIS COMING. It's easy to get carried away, we've all done it at some time or other, but when the Mayor of Mitchell hoiked the Premier of the State up into the cabin of...

WHAT FUTURE FOR LAND RIGHTS?
October 1, 1999... In August 1996 Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory joined with their supporters to mark the twentieth anniversary of the passing of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (ALRA). The celebrations, held at Old...

RUNAWAY WORLD OR RUNAWAY WORD?
October 1, 1999... ANTHONY GIDDENS MISSES THE POINT. In the recent BBC Reith Lectures Professor Anthony Giddens presented a series of lectures on globalisation in different cities around the world. Giddens' presentation held an interesting parallel with the...

COURTING THE WIRED WORKER.
October 1, 1999... OR TAKING A LESS GLAMOROUS VIEW OF CLASS In contemporary mainstream social and political commentary the concept of class, if it is spoken about at all, is usually as an anachronism from a distant and soon-to-be-forgotten past. Commentators...

THE SKURATOV AFFAIR.
October 1, 1999... MONKEY BUSINESS IS POLITICALLY COMPLEX IN MOSCOW. The NATO air campaign against the Milosevic regime displaced the Skuratov Affair and the surrounding political intrigue as the hot topic of conversation in Russia. For now, Kosovo...

A SHARED SPACE FOR ACTIVISM.
October 1, 1999... Activism or protest is not necessarily restricted to the so-called corridors of power, to parliaments, council chambers and lobbyists' offices. We know that political activism takes place far away from these venues. Even as we acknowledge that...

STUDENTS STRIKE IN MEXICO.
October 1, 1999... BEATING UP STUDENTS WILL NOT STOP THE REVOLT AGAINST NEO-LIBERALISM. A mass student movement has emerged and developed in Mexico City since March 1999. The movement has developed into a sustained and large-scale student mobilisation and...

KOSOVA AND THE LEFT.
October 1, 1999... The war in Kosovo has split the Left. Leading figures in Australia and overseas have vigorously opposed NATO's bombing campaign, claiming it merely mobilised humanitarian concerns to cloak the extension of American hegemony in the Balkans. This...

WAR, MASSACRE, HUMANITARIANISM.
October 1, 1999... In the last issue of Arena Magazine, Rob Watts contributed some words `Intellectuals and Their Bright Ideas', which referred to my own writing in Arena Magazine No. 41 on the US/NATO crusade in Serbia. While it is clear enough that Watts is...

SIGNS OVER BELGRADE.(Brief Article)
October 1, 1999... Geoff Sharp, reviewing the Kosovo conflict for Arena Magazine No. 41, cites the Lacanian philosopher Slavoj Zizek. In his view contemporary American military intervention is a fusion of `the new notion of war as a purely technological event,...

BRIDGING THE INDIGENOUS GULF.
October 1, 1999... The debate over suitable indigenous recognition in a future preamble to the Australian Constitution is a classic study in bridging (or not bridging) gulfs between indigenous and non-indigenous realities. On the one hand are the pleasant...

THE CARS THAT ATE MELBOURNE.
October 1, 1999... CITYLINK IS HERE, AND SO IS A ONE-WAY `NO TURNING BACK' CULTURE OF SPEED. The Transfield-Obayahsi Joint Venture's twenty-two-kilometre privately controlled CityLink project has opened to the public, and certain tolerances of Melburnians...

GIVE THE LIVING THEIR DUE.
October 1, 1999... THE YORTA YORTA AND THE TIDE OF HISTORY Whether the Australian Government should or should not apologise to Aborigines is a politically charged issue. So too is the symbolism of Australia Day. Commemorating the landing of the English and...

PATHWAYS TO NOWHERE?
October 1, 1999... RISK-TALK AND CRIME PREVENTION In The Country of the Lost Child, Peter Pierce argues that the themes of child loss and abandonment have become metaphors for many of the great uncertainties in Australian society. They reflect `the rending...

TOXIC EXPOSURE.
October 1, 1999... CHIQUITA'S LATIN AMERICAN BANANA PLANTATIONS Chiquita Brands International is a transnational fruit producer, employing more than 36,000 workers and selling its fruit in forty countries including Australia. The company deals in fruit...

Shelter.(Poem)
October 1, 1999... Prince Edward Island, 1998 Shelter's nevus: a mass of cormorants on Cabot Beach, an engorged lung from a mile offshore; it presses the ribs of surf with the swelter of tar. They sense the tribunal of thunder, the splash of...

Textures of Domesticity.(Poem)
October 1, 1999... I. With drang and clack, aim for the dry cochlea, some deadened chrome home-iron, its burn-drooled pressingboard cornered in a closet. II. Suffused with lilaciate stench, tempered with...

Green Bans, Red Union: Environmental activism and the New South Wales Builders Labourers' Federation.(Review)
October 1, 1999... Meredith Burgmann and Verity Burgmann, Green Bans, Red Union: Environmental activism and the New South Wales Builders Labourers' Federation, Sydney, University of NSW Press, 1998. In 1973 the New South Wales branch of the Australian...

The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture: Gender, Shifting Boundaries and Global Cultures.(Review)
October 1, 1999... D.P. Martinez (ed.), The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture: Gender, Shifting Boundaries and Global Cultures, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998. This book brings back memories of an essay titled `Manga, Women and Aesthetics'...

A STANDARD AMERICAN HISTORY.(film "American History X")
October 1, 1999... American History X, a film depicting a young American neo-Nazi skinhead's rejection of his past, opened in Australia when racial and ethnic hatred and violence were painfully evident in contemporary headlines. It was released within weeks of an...

Labor Without Class.(Review)
October 1, 1999... Michael Thompson, Labor Without Class, Annandale, Pluto Press, 1999 Is this the debate the Australian Labor party had to have? I was talking with an organiser from one of the building industry's powerful trade unions the other day and...

WAR IS HELL.
October 1, 1999... Any production of Henry V must confront the dual questions of nationalism and war. The play has been put to the service of both militaristic patriotism and anti-nationalist pacifism. These themes take on a special contemporary significance in a...

FACING EAST TIMOR.
October 1, 1999... It was the first time I'd seen my mother so concerned about my father. Our family was long accustomed to him flying off to remote jungle airstrips, but then, as a nine-year-old, I sensed Mum's unease. `Where's Sukarnapura?' I asked. ...