Arena Magazine articles from October 2004

Arena Magazine archives from October 2004

Easing out and squeezing in: this election is a vote against Howard, not for labor.(editorial)(Editorial)
October 1, 2004... Mark Latham's rise to the Labor leadership sent a ripple of hope through the centre-Left and small 'l' liberals. And with good reason. A third Howard Government would ensconce a Government whose actions more often than not resemble those of a...

Unholy family.(editorial)(Editorial)
October 1, 2004... Two men walk into a bar. You would think the first man would warn the second. This old, bad joke is appropriate to what many feel is rapidly becoming the old, bad joke of Australian political life. One of the advantages of being in a country...

Heinrich Hinze.(Comic)
October 1, 2004... THE COMMUNITY MENTOR LISTEN SON... YOU CAN'T JUST RUN AROUND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD VANDALISING PUBLIC SCHOOLS & BLAMING "SOCIETY".... SOONER OR LATER, YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO TAKE SOME PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY!... [ILLUSTRATION...

Elections 2004: crossroads or labyrinth?(Special Section)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... Elections at home and abroad are imminent at a crucial stage in the political life of this country and the world. Yet neither could be said to offer the clear choice between life and death, between the confirmation of an unquestioned global...

Terror, power and the new culture of death: in the wake of the Beslan school massacre it is clear that the new rationale for global war is being assembled.
October 1, 2004... One of the most comprehensive building projects of the Second World War was the creation of a replica Germancity in the Nevada desert. The aim was to perfect the fire-bombing capacity of the Allied raids on German cities and so German...

Putting out the fire with gasoline: the Iraq war reveals a deeper crisis whose monumental affect has not yet registered in the consciousness of the electorate.
October 1, 2004... While all elections avoid difficult questions and the 'politics of the possible' is about avoidance behaviour, the 2004 federal election takes the cake. After the ruptures brought about by the global market that emerged 25 years ago, we now...

War culpability: the Australian media's uncritical acceptance of Washington's line on Iraq is undermining the public's trust in accurate and transparent reporting.
October 1, 2004... The role of the Australian newspaper in pushing the Iraq war agenda was essential. Like every other Murdoch newspaper around the world dutifully pushing their master's wishes, the mogul said in early 2003: 'We can't back down now, where you...

Iraq: hidden casualties as policy: the toll of death, injury and madness in Iraq is being vastly underestimated as a reflection of the privatisation of war and the militarisation of the media.
October 1, 2004... The Gruesome Tally In Fahrenheit 9/11, director Michael Moore steers a difficult course between highlighting some of the questionable practices of the US military, and the impact of the war on combat troops. Moore makes plain the fact that...

Sado-workism: the new culture of work in Australia: since the late 1970s, Australia has witnessed the reinvigoration of a type of sadism in the workplace as decision-makers have restructured key socioeconomic and cultural institutions and practices.(Excerpt)
October 1, 2004... There are important moments in history when people say 'fuck work' and assert their right to be lazy. The late twentieth century French anarchists understood this well. They were combating the tyrannies of the new factory system and the...

Equity and the impact of the Nelson reforms: gender equity has no place in the latest restructure of higher education.
October 1, 2004... When the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) was introduced in 1987, the main argument used to justify it was one about equity. The dominant view amongst key Labor policy makers in the mid-1980s was that only a few privileged people...

Habeus corpus: ATSIC is gone but the problems it was not allowed to address remain.
October 1, 2004... With the Federal Government having affectively abolished the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), the future for the delivery of Aboriginal policy and programs is at a crossroads. John Howard was in opposition when...

Re-imagining the ABC: remodelling aunty means finding a third way between elite agendas and uncritical consumption.(Company Profile)
October 1, 2004... Despite extreme pressure on funding and political intimidation from a hostile conservative Government, there have been some fine achievements at the ABC in recent years. For example, in TV current affairs, the insightful and amusing Insiders;...

Building a peace: Palestinians, Israelis and internationals join together to rebuild demolished homes and a lasting peace.(against the current)
October 1, 2004... Here in the open fields the caterpillars don't become butterflies yet another family's dream, dies bulldozing hillsides, one house at a time singing all the while, "this land is mine" Palestinian Bedouin wander...

Do you know something we don't?(rope)
October 1, 2004... 'Now, she needs the dive of her short life...' Australian Olympic commentator, as 16-year-old Chinese diver Lao Lichi took to the board, 23 August 2004

But doesn't the op shop accept last year's? Ohhhh noooo!(rope)
October 1, 2004... 'I thought the baby would just be a fashion accessory.' Clair Jennifer of Wombat Enterprises, quoted in Amanda Gome and Emily Ross, 'No Holding Back', BRW (Young and Rich edition), 16 September- 13 October 2004, p. 34.

Parliament-funkadelic are helping police with their inquiries.(rope)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... 'Papa Wemba, the world music star known as the King of Congolese Rumba Rock, will be tried in France in October for allegedly smuggling at least 150 people into the country by claiming they were members of his band...'

People's Nepal vs Royal Nepal: there is far more to the struggle in the mountain kingdom than a simple tale of Maoists versus Kathmandu.(against the current)
October 1, 2004... To label as Maoists the rural revolutionaries steadily wresting Nepal from the grip of feudal monarchy conceals as much as it reveals. The revolutionaries proudly call themselves Maoists, short for the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist or CPN-M....

So long as they're not British.(rope)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... "... beaches are places where normal rules and authority do not apply. Beaches are ordered without being controlled. There is no one in charge. They rely on mass self-organisation. They are also largely beyond the reach of corporations, the...

After the white-out: indigenous policy post-Howard.(against the current)
October 1, 2004... Someday soon the Howard era will end. Discussion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait issues will again be possible without cascades of furious denial and obfuscation from on high. The holiday from national responsibility will be over. I imagine the...

Paddy? Crikey!(Bites: brief notes on news and views from around the world)
October 1, 2004... Was it a joke? An early intervention by the CNNNNN/ Chaser gang? Apparently not. Readers of Crikey, the site for political analysis, gossip, inconvenient facts etc. etc., clicked on to the familiar brush-head logo a couple of weeks ago to find...

Whose life?(Bites: brief notes on news and views from around the world)
October 1, 2004... George Bush's policies on abortion and his invasion of Iraq can be seen as part of the same ideology --one based on his professed belief in the sanctity of human life and America's role as its protector. Bush's expectation that the Iraqi people...

The ballad of Rene Rivkin.(Bites: brief notes on news and views from around the world)
October 1, 2004... Rene Rivkin, the 'flamboyant' stockbroker is only part way along the roller-coaster ride of his nine-month jail sentence, negotiated through what appears to have been a fog of deep depression. Following a suicide attempt, he has now decided to...

Breaking the ice--for a saner world? A new climate in popular culture and politics is reshaping our view of nature, writes Nonie Sharp in the third of a four-part series on nature writing.
October 1, 2004... The ending of May, a strange week with shades of winter. It began with questions given shape by Bob Brown's thoughtful book Memo for a Saner World (Penguin, 2004). Are we following a course towards world catastrophe, the destruction of the...

Magwatch.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... Theory, Culture & Society--June 2004 Jonathan Bach and David Stark chart the co-evolution of NGOs and the interactive technology that has allowed them to flourish, noting that "the media" now consists of two opposing models: mass...

The water mandarins: turning water into global money.
October 1, 2004... About a billion people world-wide do not have access to reasonably clean water. Many of them live in the mega-cities of the developing world. While water is often readily present in abundant quantities, millions of people are embroiled in daily...

The truth about terrorism: Nicolas Jefferson-Lenskyj.(comment)(Critical Essay)
October 1, 2004... Igor Primoratz's essay on terrorism is a peculiar contribution to a magazine of 'left political, social, and cultural commentary' because it either ignores or dismisses key premises of the left: that structures and communities, not just...

Accounting for war: what can an 'embedded' description of war tell us about life in civilian societies?(Cooper's last)(Critical Essay)
October 1, 2004... In our hyper-visual culture, where the hidden lenses of reality television shape the domestic lansdscape, where even cruise missiles have cameras attached to them, what significance can we afford to a written record of wartime combat?...

John Langmore on war preparations.(Book Review)
October 1, 2004... Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack Simon and Schuster, New York, 2004 Plan of Attack offers both the fascination and repulsion of power. Bob Woodward, a Washington Post editor made famous for his investigation of Watergate, tells the story of the...

Pia Smith on Somersault's burden.(Movie Review)
October 1, 2004... According to Terry Lane (Sunday Age, 19/9/04), the protagonist of Cate Shortland's debut feature film, Somersault, is 'a masterpiece of a metaphorical representation of the good old Oz--a character who is ready and willing to have sexual...

Geoffrey Boucher on moving beyond the 'cultural left' versus the 'social Left' polarisation.(Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange)(Book Review)
October 1, 2004... Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth (eds), Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange London and New York, Verso, 2003 Redistribution or Recognition? opposes two of the world's leading exponents of Critical Theory,...

Korea's new wave: does the phenomenal success of South Korea's highly protected film industry offer timely lessons for Australia?
October 1, 2004... In January 2004, around 5 million Seoulites went to the movies, almost half of this modern metropolis's population. By any standards that is pretty impressive. More striking is the fact that 3.24 million of them paid to watch Korean movies....