Save Humanity! In 30,000 AD! With Crypto!

Simon Cooper

3 May 2024

What is ‘good’ or of ‘value’ is a complex question, one radically narrowed by the utilitarian, quantitative approach, which assumes that what is good is what can be measured.

The Mask of Curfew in Alice Springs

Arena Online

Lora Chapman

3 May 2024

The recent execution and looming possibility of a reinstated youth curfew are unlikely to quell well-established divisions between the town’s Aboriginal and settler-Australian populations.

Reply to Robinson on ‘Degrowth?’

Arena Online

Anitra Nelson

3 May 2024

Disturbingly, the inference is that Robinson believes in economic development, growth and technology, even consumptionism.

Degrowth and the Technocratic turn?

Arena Quarterly no.17

Scott Robinson

Mar 2024

Despite its claim to de-naturalise economic growth, environmentalism’s reliance on naturalist metaphors obscures a technocratic thread, which risks obviating its stated political commitments to democracy.

Los Alamos to Neuralink

Arena Quarterly no.17

Timothy Erik Ström

Mar 2024

Albert Einstein issued a dire warning: that we were living under threat not only from the atomic bomb and the spectre of extermination in nuclear war, but also from a second weapon, one he considered just at dangerous for humanity and the planet—‘the Information Bomb’.

It’s the voice of ‘rural nullius’ on ABC’s Jim Crow Country Hour

Arena Online

Brian Burkett

18 Apr 2024

Farmers in the south of Israel were granted nearly as much ABC air-time in the four weeks before the Voice vote as all the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations across all of Australia.

Israel as the Abyss: On Antony Loewenstein’s ‘The Palestine Laboratory’

Ned Curthoys

11 Apr 2024

The reality of Jewish suprematism, the grind of occupation and the constant harassment and humiliation of Palestinians by Israeli police generated shame as to what was being done in his name as a Jew.

New Zealand’s AUKUS Capabilities

Arena Online

Samuel Hume

5 Apr 2024

The agreement may have locked the country into an alliance with the declining superpower for decades while taxpayers subsidise its massive ‘national security’ budget.

Much More than a Mirror Man: John Pilger’s life of truth-telling, remembered

Arena Quarterly no.17

Binoy Kampmark

Mar 2024

Pilger’s lengthy career marked the high-water mark for a certain type of journalism that could still at the time make it into various mainstream outlets. This eventually altered.

Mongrel Mobs? The Gang Crackdown in Aotearoa

Arena Quarterly no.17

Alister McKeich (Ali MC)

Mar 2024

Emerging out of postwar state- and church-run institutions, early gangs were a social and cultural response to shocking abuse perpetrated predominantly upon Māori and Pacific Islander children.

From the Archive

Green Pathways to a People’s Future

Arena Quarterly no. 1

Adam Bandt

‘Fire’ may be an appropriate way to think and talk about the climate-change emergency, not just because we are literally dealing with a burning world but also because it does not bring with it the concerns associated with ‘rule by emergency’.

From the Archive

The Tip of the Democracy-Sinking Iceberg

Timothy Erik Ström

There is a curious and seldom-told backstory and parallel story to the high-profile Cambridge Analytica scandal, one that makes the notorious firm seem like the tip of the democracy-sinking iceberg.

Monsters from the Id: On ‘Forbidden Planet’ (1956)

Arena Online

Robert DiNapoli

5 Apr 2024

The luminous sheen of progress and technological advance, which promised the Krell an endlessly ascending future, was undermined at last by atavistic impulses, sprung from roots sunk in their evolutionary past.

Editorial: Prometheus Unhinged

Arena Quarterly no.17

Guy Rundle

Mar 2024

The announcement that Elon Musk’s Neuralink Corporation has succeeded in implanting a microchip capable of working with a human brain has hit the news just as I write this editorial. By the time you read this, it may have vanished again into the news-ether, or it may be all anyone is talking about. It is […]

Perpetrators: Israel under The Zone of Interest

Arena Online

Marcelo Svirsky

19 Mar 2024

Where were your grandparents during the war? The question sits upon my tongue when I meet a German. Israelis will soon find that a similar gaze will descend upon them.

Damned Rivers: Chronicling the Murray-Darling Basin Region

Arena Online

Scott Robinson

13 Mar 2024

The whole frame of the region as a Basin system may need to dissolve; it has been too caught in the lingering perception that the Murray is a ‘purposeful’ river, a gathering force that can be harnessed for the nation and capital.

Silence and the Social Order

Arena Quarterly no.17

John Hinkson

Mar 2024

It is not merely a matter of not knowing; it is knowing actively being suppressed by multiple mechanisms. In this respect Australia is an example of the role silence can play in making the formation of a certain kind of nation state possible.

Where does Value Lie?

Arena Quarterly no.16

Alison Caddick

Dec 2023

As Marx unfolded the ‘hidden abode’ of the capitalist market to reveal the true nature of capitalist accumulation, so Fraser moves behind that abode to find another.