Arena Online

Anti-Semitism in a Zone of Ambiguity

Should the university sector acquiesce to such policies, it would become another link in an institutional chain producing semantic ambiguity and confusion about what anti-Semitism actually is, thereby implicating tertiary education in the spread of actual anti-Semitism.

How Sam Altman learned to stop worrying and love advertising

The story of the internet is a tale of how new technological possibilities have been shaped to meet the demands of its most wealthy and powerful customers—the marketers who pay top dollar for our attention

The Narrow Straits of Consumption

Few have understood, the degree to which we have passed, in the last four decades, from a world in which a certain modesty of life was assumed, to one in which global production has given a vast range of people access to the elective and luxury goods of the world at affordable prices. All it has taken to throw that into ever-greater uncertainty has been a partial war around one waterway.

The limits of social cohesion

The idea that social cohesion is something that can be built through proscribing particular expressions, or “turning the temperature down” on debate, is this kind of politics in a nutshell.

Contradictions and Complicity at the Berlinale

In 1970, the Berlinale fell apart amid the stench of hypocrisy and napalm fumes when the Jury tried to cancel a Brechtian docudrama about an atrocity committed by US soldiers in the Vietnam War atrocity from the program.

Payola Laws: The Gilding of Golden Tonsils

Instead of steely, firm analysis of demagogy and corrupt conduct on the airways, a production line of clichés befitting a gouty monarch or mafia don was in the offing.

Fractious friendships, fractious families

The horizon of awareness so constructed, tolerance and compassion, let alone personal accountability, are effectively ostracized.

The Fallacy of Analogy: Gaza, Nazis and the Problem of Historical Comparisons

Referencing Nazism to criticize Israel’s conduct in Gaza is problematic for both pragmatic and moral reasons, particularly if one accepts that what happens in Gaza amounts to an attempted genocide

TWO HOURS OF DESPAIR

All of this adds up to a visceral experience, there is nevertheless something slightly unconvincing about the documentary Orwell: 2+2=5.

New Zealand follows Australia to bolster the US military-industrial complex

New Zealand’s new military industry strategy aligns with Washington’s ambition to bolster the US ‘industrial resilience’ with allies and partners in the Asia-Pacific region as part of its provocative China-containment policy.

Synagogue Killings: Colonialism’s Victim Arithmetic

‘Double standards’ resulting in a pro-Israel hierarchy of victimhood is clearly something its lobby has been trying generate.

The Amazon storms the COP30 Climate Summit

The appropriation of Indigenous lands has always been at the heart of capitalism and its parasitic relationship to the lands it colonises.