Arena Magazine articles from October 2006

Arena Magazine archives from October 2006

A question of balance.(Editorial)
October 1, 2006... Freedom, Truth, Honor--you could rattle of a hundred such words and behind every one of them would gather a thousand punks, pompous little farts, waving the banner with one hand and reaching under the table with the other. Hunter S....

Lead graphic.(Comic)(Cartoon)
October 1, 2006... Admit your jihad is against our values!

New rich, new poor: as Australia gets richer, younger generations are failing to scale the ladder of opportunity. Stuart Braun investigates the plight of Australia's new poor.(Against the Current)
October 1, 2006... A decade of economic growth has been good for many Australians. House prices have doubled. Wages have spiralled. Equity markets continue to ride record highs. Ordinary Australians have grown rich. But others have missed out altogether. In...

Stormclouds build over black Australia: Graham Ring investigates the current political hysteria around violence and Indigenous communtities.(against the current)
October 1, 2006... Earlier this year the town of Wadeye hit the headlines. This remote Indigenous community 400 kilometres to the south-west of Darwin was the subject of breathless media accounts of rioting, gang warfare and impending anarchy. There were...

The valley of ashes: popularity is waning on all sides as US elections loom.(against the current)
October 1, 2006... Along the Connecticut border, housing developments have made incursions into the Woodstock farmlands, which have been farmed since the early 1600s. 'McMansions' cluster cul-de-sacs like oversized playtoys, price tags dangling off their cheaply...

Migrant rights: a new social movement? While irregular migrants in the US are mobilising en masse to demand new legislation, Anne McNevin describes how less ambitious campaigns are radically challenging the boundaries of citizenship.(against the current)
October 1, 2006... A New Social Movement? In March, April and May of this year, hundreds of thousands of irregular migrants and their supporters demonstrated in dozens of cities across the US. One of the largest public protests since the Vietnam era,...

New Internationalist (Issue 394, October 2006).(Magwatch)(Periodical review)(Brief article)
October 1, 2006... Turning its attention to Europe, the cover of this edition of New Internationalist proclaims 'Europa! Resisting Corporate Design'. Both Richard Swift and Susan George mount an argument against the corporate takeover of the European Union,...

State of Nature (September/October 2006).(Magwatch)(Periodical review)(Brief article)
October 1, 2006... This edition leads with a feature interview with Noam Chomsky,'On Media', by Cihan Aksan and Jon Bailes. Chomsky critiques the history of US relations with Iraq saying: 'I've been searching to see if I can find anyone who will mention the fact...

Eureka Street (Volume 16, No. 15, October 2006).(Magwatch)(http://www.eurekastreet.com.au.)(Periodical review)(Brief article)
October 1, 2006... Running with their easy-to-navigate, new online format, Eureka Street leads with an editorial comment supporting the stewardship mentality of New Zealand's water conservation campaign,'4 Million Careful Owners'. In the international feature...

Trading away our rights: Sharon Beder on the latest developments in negotiations for a General Agreement on Trade.(against the current)
October 1, 2006... There used to be a time when regulations were put in place to constrain business activities in order to protect the public interest. But in the brave new world of globalisation, regulations have to be 'disciplined' to protect business...

The global trading system at risk? Nicole Boldt assesses the 'crisis' of the Doha Delevopment Round.(against the current)
October 1, 2006... In late July 2006, the General Council of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) supported the recommendations of Director-General Pascal Lamy to suspend the latest round of multilateral trade negotiations indefinitely. Lamy made the...

Natural History: photographs by Beverly Veasey.(Photo Feature)(Brief article)(Photograph)
October 1, 2006... This work depicts a domestic animal in an artificial environment Increasingly we live in urban societies where we are detached from the natural world. The encounters with animals that we do have are often in zoos or museums. This work seeks to...

A childish view of history.(bites: BRIEF NOTES ON NEWS AND VIEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD)
October 1, 2006... Education Minister Julie Bishop's Australian History Summit in August, with its 94-page transcript on the Minister's website, and its dozen recommendations about what ought to be done, are already well chewed. The tricky bit is 'how'. The...

On China and Chinese-ness.(bites: BRIEF NOTES ON NEWS AND VIEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD)
October 1, 2006... Less than two months ago I received a forwarded email from my cousin circulating a petition 'against the planned banning of the Chinese traditional (or longer) form written characters'. With my usual propensity for cynicism, I regarded it as...

Comment.(Arab-Israeli conflicts)
October 1, 2006... Western views of the Israeli-Arab conflict are increasingly becoming polarized between a simplistic pro-Israel version emanating mainly from conservatives, and a simplistic pro-Palestinian version emanating principally from the Left. The latter...

Eve encounters the internet.(Poetry)(Poem)
October 1, 2006... Eve Encounters The Internet Some animals have the (to us) unpleasant habit of everting their stomachs to digest their food Squeamish about the physical ungeneric man has no qualms about everting his brain ...

On the omnivore's dilemma: our challenging relation to food indicates more profound challenges for the future.(Cooper's Last)
October 1, 2006... Food is central to human existence, but in the West this relationship has undergone a transformation. On the one hand, our increasingly marginal relation to the food we eat means that we often do not know where our food comes from, or the...

Bringing globalisation home: the global outsourcing of domestic labour to live-in maids and caregivers is reconstituting family, home and work. Pei-Chia Lan talks to some Filipino, Vietnamese and Indonesian domestic workers about their experiences working for newly rich Taiwanese employers.(Domestic Labour)
October 1, 2006... The household order in developed economies is increasingly built on outsourcing domestic duties to cheap labour forces in the form of live-in maids and caregivers. Domestic employment challenges the straightforward divisions between workplace...

Places to be.(conference, documentary movies and art exhibition)
October 1, 2006... CONFERENCE 'Sex 'n Drugs 'n Shifty Roles': European and International Perspectives on Corruption, Organised Crime and Illegal Immigration Focus on the issues of human smuggling, people trafficking and drug trafficking in Europe and...

The Ilisu Dam story: the creation of a new dam is causing the displacement of an entire Turkish village and its cultural heritage.(Displacement)
October 1, 2006... It's 4 August 2006 and a crowed has gathered at the remote historical town of Hasankeyf in southeast Turkey, to oppose the construction of the Ilisu Dam. It's a controversial project that resulted in the UK construction company Balfour Beatty...

Your call is important to us: in the early 1990s, call centres were hailed as a saviour for communities hit hard by the re-structuring of the manufacturing sector throughout the 1980s. Nicky Welch talks to workers in Bendigo's call centres about the reality.
October 1, 2006... Imagine you are working as an in-bound call centre representative for a large telecommunications company. Your workplace was once a supermarket and has been converted into a 300-seat call centre. You are in a space of one metre square, in a pod...

Separating the wheat from the chaff: Christopher Doran delves into the relationship between Iraq and Canberra.
October 1, 2006... We knew we were dealing with a brutal force prepared to impose its will without regard for human suffering. From the beginning, we were left in no doubt that the US and its allies had come to take control of our oil resources... We reject and...

Hurricane Katrina.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... Hurricane Katrina Dust clouds > Krakatoa Thunderstorms > 35 knots 12 after shocks > 5 the whole Earth > the (sum of its) parts Estimated magnitude > 8 on...

Local food, global benefit: Helena Norberg-Hodge critiques the practice of transporting food across the world and back again.
October 1, 2006... It is very inspiring to see the changes that have been happening in Australia since I first started coming here, about seven years ago. I was giving talks about local food systems, and starting farmers markets, and there was very little...

Globalisation and empires of mutual accord: globalisation and global empire are not one and the same.
October 1, 2006... Wishing in the spirit of good and mutual accord to regulate the conditions most favourable to trade and civilisation in certain regions of Africa and to assure to all nations the advantages of free navigation on the two chief rivers of Africa...

Comment.(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2006... Congratulations to Arena on an excitingly thoughtful and well-written selection of contributions in this latest edition of the magazine. As a subscriber and reader of Arena for well over two decades, I cannot remember such a consistently high...

All the rivers run red: the blood-soaked Gulf Country and its McArthur River is sacred land.
October 1, 2006... A river is a powerful presence to anyone who has grown up with it, its local culture and economy. It follows one around, lifelong. It runs through one's being. The Aboriginal river land- and waterscapes of the southern and south-western Gulf of...

Matthew Ryan on cinema's new role of making it more real than real.
October 1, 2006... We are in a strange state of war. The 'war on terror' is one that requires, from the government and media, regular reminders of its existence. War, as everyone in the global North has known since about 1950, is not what it used to be. Even so,...

Jennifer Power on local solutions to global wellness.(Third World Health: Hostage to First World Wealth )(Book review)
October 1, 2006... Theodore MacDonald Third World Health: Hostage to First World Wealth Radcliffe Publishing, Oxford 2005 In the 1970s, the now well-known Whitehall Studies investigated the prevalence of heart disease and mortality rates among British civil...

Andrew West, Inside the Lifestyles of the Rich and Tasteful (Pluto Australia, 2006).(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2006... The first instalment of Pluto's NOW Australia series, this book by journalist and author Andrew West lays bare the great Australian myth of egalitarianism to observe the customs, privileges and pre-occupations of the nation's upper middle...

The Chaser, 50 Golden Years of the Chaser: 1955-2005 (Text Publishing, 2006).(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2006... A rehash of articles from their fortnightly satirical newspaper, 50 Golden Years of the Chaser is the latest offering to hit bookstores from The Chaser team, makers of The Chaser s War on Everything and CNNNN. With highlights including,'Word...

Frank Brennan,Acting on Conscience: How Can We Responsibly Mix Law, Religion and Politics? (University of Queensland Press, 2006).(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2006... As the divide between church and state becomes ever narrower in the Australian political landscape, Frank Brennan moves beyond the question of whether law, religion and politics should be mixed, to address the question of how. Offering a...

Clinton Fernades, Reluctant Indonesians: Australia, Indonesia, and the Future of West Papua (Scribe, 2006).(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2006... Clinton Fernandes, author of Reluctant Saviour: Australia, Indonesia and the Independence of East Timor, casts a critical eye westwards to examine how Australia's diplomatic relations with Indonesia have become increasingly strained by the...

Henry Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier (University of New South Wales Press, 2006).(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2006... First published in 1981, Reynold's portrayal of relations between indigenous Australians and European settlers is arguably just as challenging to prevalent understandings of Australia's colonial history now as it was fifteen years ago. Amidst...

Tristan Ewins on building a 'new' Left tradition.(Beyond Right and Left: New Politics and the Culture Wars )(Book review)
October 1, 2006... McKnight, David Beyond Right and Left--New Politics and the Culture Wars Allen and Unwin, NSW, 2005 It seems, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been an almost indecent haste to pen 'the final epitaph' of socialism. David...

Road to revolution: battles with car culture.(cyclists vs. motorists)
October 1, 2006... The daily war on our roads now has one more active battle-front: guerilla combat between motorists and cyclists. Like it or not, talkback radio is the most accessible medium for expressing emotion on any subject, and the level of ire directed...