Oceanía (Continuación)

MundoOceanía,

Sydney Morning Herald columnist Annabel Crabb has conjured a cutting ditty to describe the predicament facing the Australian prime minister, John Howard, in Saturday's elections. "Oh voters: if you really care/Elect a man who won't be there!/Vote for him on Saturday/It's guaranteed he'll go away."

The poem is a reference to Howard's Blair-like pledge to hand over the PM's job to his deputy, the treasurer Peter Costello, some time during his next term.

But as opinion polls unanimously indicate, the 68-year-old Liberal leader's descent into oblivion after 11 years at the top may come much sooner.

With the opposition Labor party of Kevin Rudd poised to sweep to power, Howard's wished-for fifth term looks like a wet dream.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOceanía,

Among his many achievements, John Howard is sometimes credited with the invention of "dog whistling" politics - whereby, without any objectionable or racist idea being directly stated, the dog hears exactly the message meant.Whatever the truth of such claims, throughout his long career the Australian prime minister has left himself open to the accusation of racism. From questioning Asian immigration in the 1980s to initially welcoming the racist comments of the far-right MP Pauline Hanson, Howard was widely perceived to play the race card to great effect.

He won the 2001 election after dramatically ordering troops to stop a Norwegian container ship, the Tampa, landing on Australian soil hundreds of refugees it had rescued at sea.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOceaníaEuropaUnión Europea, , , ,

Beyond the blue whale, the dinosaurs and the crocodiles, the Natural History Museum has a fundamental commitment to advance the understanding of the natural world through science. Behind our public and educational faces lie research laboratories, libraries and science staff who care for and develop a collection of more than 70m items from across the world. This work places the museum at the heart of the debate about science in society today, as well as cementing our role as custodians of knowledge for the future.

The natural world is not limited to rainforests and coral reefs: we want to satisfy our innate curiosity about mankind.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOceanía

The Australian writer Donald Horne meant the title of his celebrated book, The Lucky Country, as irony. "Australia is a lucky country run by second-rate people who share its luck," he lamented in 1964, describing much of the Australian elite as unfailingly unoriginal, race-obsessed and in thrall to imperial power and its wars. From Britain's opium adventures to America's current travesty in Iraq, Australians have been sent to fight faraway people with whom they have no quarrel and who offer no threat of invasion. Growing up, I was assured this was a "sacred tradition".

But then another Australia was "discovered". The only war dead whom Australians had never mourned were found right under their noses: those of a remarkable indigenous people who had owned and cared for this ancient land for thousands of years, then fought and died in its defence when the British invaded.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOceaníaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional,

Australians are sometimes accused of being direct, even blunt. But this way of going about things seems to have worked well enough when dealing with the threat of radical Islamism Down Under. Its approach is worthy of close examination — not least in Britain. And what has been accomplished so far, though controversial, has been done with a high degree of bipartisan co-operation.

Like other predominantly Anglo-Celtic nations, Australia is a tolerant and accepting society — in spite of what some members of the domestic left intelligentsia and the civil liberties lobby proclaim. While not without racial tensions, Australia has a relatively low level of ethnically motivated crime and a relatively high level of inter-marriage between the numerous ethnic groups.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOceanía,

Education ministers from across the Commonwealth gathered in Cape Town last week to discuss, with the world's leading experts, how to change the lives of the millions of children denied schooling. Conspicuous by its absence from this important conference was Fiji. The Pacific island nation was suspended from the councils of the Commonwealth on December 8, following a military coup, the country's fourth in 20 years. The nine countries currently in the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group agreed that it could no longer have a voice in our 53-nation family, nor receive any new technical assistance, for as long as it remains under the control of a military regime.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOceaníaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, ,

Resumen

En los años posteriores al 11-S, los diversos paquetes de reformas legislativas han llevado a un aumento progresivo de la capacidad del Estado australiano para inmiscuirse en la vida de los ciudadanos de a pie y detener y enjuiciar a individuos sospechosos de llevar a cabo actividades relacionadas con el terrorismo sin tener en cuenta las debidas garantías procesales que han caracterizado a la democracia australiana durante más de un siglo. Y aún así, lo que más reafirma los temores de los defensores de las libertades civiles, los socialdemócratas y los miembros de la comunidad australiana tan diversa étnicamente es el discurso promovido en paralelo por el Gobierno de John Howard, en el que el terrorismo se identifica prácticamente con el islam.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOceanía

By E. J. Dionne Jr. (THE WASHINGTON POST, 25/08/06):

MELBOURNE, Australia -- A battle over the future of the past broke out here last week. The fight explains a great deal about how Australia's conservative prime minister, John Howard, has hung on to power for a decade.

Pay attention to Howard. His approach could be a model for how parties of the right -- including Republicans in the United States -- manage to build majorities in turbulent times.

Last week, Howard organized a "history summit" to call attention to the decline of Australian history as a subject in high schools. In most states here, history has been subsumed within (and thus displaced by) a broader social studies curriculum focused on "studies of society and the environment."…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOceanía

By Jamie White (THE TIMES, 07/08/06):

NEW ZEALAND is a little, South Pacific version of 1950s England. People are friendly, trustworthy and hard-working. You can leave your front door unlocked when you go out. Women can safely walk alone at night and, if you drop your wallet, someone will deliver it to your door the next day.

If you share this common view, then you are probably wrong about 1950s England and you are certainly wrong about contemporary New Zealand. On Thursday my home country made a rare appearance on the non-sports pages of The Times. In her farewell speech, the departing Governor-General of New Zealand, Dame Silvia Cartwright, lamented the country’s “dark secret”: we have an appalling amount of domestic violence.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOceaníaEuropaUnión Europea, , , ,

By Helena Kennedy. Baroness Helena Kennedy QC is a human rights lawyer and British Museum trustee (THE GUARDIAN, 28/03/06):

Two bundles held by the British Museum, made of kangaroo skin and closed by a drawstring, are unremarkable, but contain human ash gathered from a cremation fire by Tasmanian Aboriginals in about 1830. They are extremely rare physical traces of a population nearly exterminated during European settlement in the 19th century. This genocide, in which the indigenous people were shot for sport by farmers, was one of the most shameful episodes in British colonial history. The last full-blood Tasmanian Aboriginal died in 1888, but the original population continues to exist in the form of Tasmanians of mixed Aboriginal and European descent.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión EuropeaDefensa y SeguridadMundoOceaníaInternacionalOrden Mundial, , ,

La adaptación de las Fuerzas Armadas al nuevo entorno de seguridad. El caso de tres "potencias medias": Australia, Países Bajos y Noruega. Por Roger Cabrera, Universidad de Saint Andrews (REAL INSTITUTO ELCANO, 16/03/06):

Tema: Este documento ofrece una visión general de las políticas militares diseñadas e implementadas por tres países de tamaño medio en el contexto del actual entorno de seguridad internacional.

Resumen: La “transformación” de las fuerzas militares en herramientas modernas y eficaces para garantizar la seguridad en un mundo cambiante es una preocupación clave de Estados y organizaciones internacionales. Algunas “potencias medias”, con recursos limitados pero dispuestas a contribuir a la seguridad, están adaptando sus fuerzas armadas para hacer frente a nuevas y desafiantes amenazas y a las exigencias de una mayor cooperación en el seno de alianzas y coaliciones.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOceaníaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, ,

Por David Wright-Neville, catedrático del Departamento de Ciencias Políticas de la Universidad de Monash, Australia (REAL INSTITUTO ELCANO, 19/01/06):

Tema: Este ARI analiza el enfoque australiano sobre el antiterrorismo.

Resumen: A diferencia de muchos de sus homólogos occidentales y vecinos de la región Asia-Pacífico, hasta hace poco Australia había tenido poca experiencia directa del terrorismo. Sin embargo, los acontecimientos del 11-S sacudieron a este país, haciéndole salir de su autocomplacencia, y desde entonces la lucha antiterrorista ha ocupado una posición central en los debates políticos nacionales. Canberra ha adoptado un enfoque a dos niveles con respecto a dicha lucha. A nivel internacional la piedra angular de sus políticas antiterroristas es la alianza militar de Canberra con Estados Unidos.…  Seguir leyendo »