Arena Magazine articles from October 2007

Arena Magazine archives from October 2007

On-message, turning a blind-eye.(EDITORIAL)
October 1, 2007... It is always disarming to hear a heartfelt capitulation, a recognition of a past wrong now owned up to. If the Left has believed anything it has been that people's behaviours are socially formed, and are therefore open to reconstruction--indeed...

An alien's guide to the Australian federal election.(Cartoon)
October 1, 2007... TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER! [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] WELL, THAT'S A BIT DIFFICULT AT THE MOMENT. WE'RE IN CARETAKER MODE SO POTENTIALLY WE'VE GOT TWO. AND COSTELLO MAKES IT THREE. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "IN AUSTRALIA WE HAVE A...

Coercive reconciliation.(AGAINST THE CURRENT)
October 1, 2007... This has been a significant year for Aboriginal communities throughout Australia. It has seen many important anniversaries for Aboriginal and Islander communities: a celebration of past stories which we would have hoped marked a positive...

Undressing for APEC.(AGAINST THE CURRENT)(Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation)
October 1, 2007... Nobody epitomised the spirit of the APEC protest in Sydney more than the two blokes who strode among the 10,000 marchers wearing nothing but socks over their genitals and a placard to cover their buttocks. 'We have come from the future with a...

The politics of the pronoun.(AGAINST THE CURRENT)
October 1, 2007... Australia's Defence Minister, Dr Brendan Nelson, was interviewed on ABC radio (2 August 2007) in relation to injuries received by Afghan children as a direct result of the actions of Australian troops. In this interview, Nelson seemed...

Dealing the drink.(AGAINST THE CURRENT)(liquor stores' license)
October 1, 2007... In June, a Melbourne municipal council won a case against a liquor retailer's license application on the basis of the harm it would cause to the community. This was a landmark judgement since National Competition Council (NCC) requirements...

Mortgage mayhem.(AGAINST THE CURRENT)
October 1, 2007... Housing speculation has created skyrocketing prices. The June 2007 quarter saw yet another increase in the average price of a first home, bringing the median price for houses in Sydney to $520,000 and in Melbourne to $420,000. Speculation is...

Time immemorial.(John Howard and Stephen Harper)
October 1, 2007... Perhaps one day prime ministers John Howard and Stephen Harper will grimace from rock art and wood carving to amuse future hordes of tourists to Aboriginal national territories in Australia and Canada. One can imagine how their reputations as...

Mining the Philippines.(bites: BRIEF NOTES ON NEWS AND VIEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD)(OceanaGold's overseas mining)
October 1, 2007... Australia's mining sector is booming, with some companies raking in multi-billion dollars profits. Everyone from shareholders to the national treasury stand to reap a reward in the mining bonanza. But have some Australian miners been driven by...

Turning our backs on indigenous rights.(bites: BRIEF NOTES ON NEWS AND VIEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD)
October 1, 2007... In September I awoke with a deep sense of shame in my country. Not only was Australia one of four countries to oppose ratification of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples, it led the pack in doing so. The 144 countries that...

The vanishing American vacation.(bites: BRIEF NOTES ON NEWS AND VIEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD)
October 1, 2007... In 1882, New York clamoured for an appearance by the champion of laissez-faire capitalism, Herbert Spencer, who provided Charles Darwin with the phrase, 'Survival of the fittest'. Spencer agreed to meet the captains of American industry,...

Little Briton under water.(bites: BRIEF NOTES ON NEWS AND VIEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD)(floods)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... We're up to our necks in mucky water here at the moment. Apparently it's the Jet Stream we have to blame. However, as little Britons, we automatically blame the government, the foreigners we've let in, the builders who built our flooded houses,...

Oil culture: John Hinkson reflects on the cultural meaning of the oil crisis and the end of growth.(Essay)
October 1, 2007... Over the last sixty years of the Age of Oil, oil crises have mostly been the outcome of political ruptures between nations. Even the gravest crisis was essentially political. The emergence of OPEC in the early 1970s, initially as a political...

Power intellectuals in the Howard era: Guy Rundle examines the role of a powerful group of commentators who have sought to reconstruct Australian political culture. Will this election mark the end of their era, or its ultimate triumph?(ESSAY)(John Howard)
October 1, 2007... Australian intellectual life changed when Murdoch--Rupe or Lachlan (remember Lachlan?)-- sacked Paul Kelly as editor of the eponymous national broadsheet, and moved him sideways to be editor-at-large. Under Kelly's editorship, the one-time...

CDEP and the people of the sea: Stephen Johnson asks what does the end of the community development employment projects mean for a remote community in the south-west Gulf of Carpentaria?
October 1, 2007... The Yanyuwa people call the Sir Edward Pellew group of islands, coastline and surrounding rivers home. So too do many other people. Some five years ago increasing concern over the activities of miners, fishers and other visitors to the region...

Balochistan, the invisible war: Merrill Findlay explores the murky world of politics, land and terror in this remote province.(Country overview)
October 1, 2007... Even my Pakistani friends warned me about Balochistan, and not without reason. In the days immediately before I was to catch the train to Quetta, the provincial capital near Pakistan's borders with Afghanistan and Iran, 'terrorists' detonated a...

Big pharma--bullies in the PBS: Hans Lofgren shows how US pharmaceutical companies are undermining the PBS.(Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme)
October 1, 2007... The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), one of the enduring legacies of the Labor social policy reforms of the 1940s, is administered by the Commonwealth Department of Health to allow 'equity of access' to necessary prescription drugs. In the...

Stacking the ABC: Alan Knight investigates the Howard strategy.(ARTS AND CULTURE)
October 1, 2007... The ABC Board has been packed, rather than just stacked, with intellectuals from right-wing think tanks hostile to government enterprises, just like the ABC. This is part of a moral campaign waged by John Howard, a crusade aimed at those seen...

Representing 'goodness': Valerie Krips on the trouble with virtue.(ARTS AND CULTURE)
October 1, 2007... It is more or less generally agreed that, in the largely secular West, we are disenchanted with ideas that imply order and continuity in the universe, or with frameworks held in common. So we cannot, like Plato, define goodness in terms we...

Poems from Amo te solo.(POETRY)(Poem)
October 1, 2007... Poems from Amo te solo You whispered in my ear. You wanted me To touch you somewhere new, And while one hand was roaming round my thigh Your other one took mine And led it like a child around your waist To...

Cutting a figure: Baracchi, Love and Communism.(Communism: A Love Story)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Communism: A Love Story (Melbourne University Press, 2007) by Jeff Sparrow Jeff Sparrow's very readable Communism: A Love Story, and more particularly what I saw at the launch of his book, set me rethinking the history of Australian...

What good is a song?(Stand Up and Shout)(Turning the Tide: Voices for a Living Planet)(Sound recording review)
October 1, 2007... Stand up and Shout (Rouseabout Records RRR43) and Turning the Tide: Voices for a Living Planet (UM records TTT001) What good is a song? There is a commonsense idea, perhaps part of the identification of the musician as social outsider, that...

Liquid fear.
October 1, 2007... Liquid Fear (Polity Press, 2006) by Zygmunt Bauman; Politics of Fear (Continuum, 2005) and Culture of Fear Revisited (Continuum, 2006) by Frank Furedi; and Fear and Politics (Scribe, 2006) by Carmen Lawrence I don't think T. S. Eliot had...

At the limits of creative culture.(COOPER'S LAST)
October 1, 2007... The shift from citizen to consumer has occurred alongside a rise in populist politics: the ordinary individual is celebrated at the same time as their rights and freedoms are being hollowed out or removed altogether. From the celebration of the...