WE ARE SO CLOSE, BUT SO FAR APART
The Australian and Indonesian leaders are friendly, but the people need to get better acquainted, writes Yuli Ismartono, in the National Times (11/3/10). Yuli Ismartono is executive editor of the English edition of TEMPO, an Indonesian weekly news magazine: Australians, it seems, remain suspicious of Indonesians. In the words of one of my Australian colleagues, "public opinion still sees Indonesia as a dark and dangerous place". Perhaps Indonesia may no longer be seen as a threat, which we find rather laughable given a realistic assessment of our limited military capabilities. The negative perception Australians still hold of Indonesians can upset goodwill achieved at the leadership level, although it does not help that Indonesians tend to be reactive, defensive and overly nationalistic when their country is criticised in the Australian media. As much as many journalists and other informed Australians understand Indonesia and its problems, when it comes to reporting and writing, many journalists admit they are hostage to the news of the day. The tendency is to report what is negative about Indonesia, rather than what it is doing right. Conversely, reactionary reports in Indonesia can trigger protests that can have a cyclical effect. Yet the media can and should play a vital role in changing public opinion.
ARTICLE: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/we-are-so-close-but-so-far-apart-20100310-pz74.html
INDONESIA DEFIED DOOMSAYERS TO BECOME A SURPRISE SUCCESS STORY
Many countries are going badly. Indonesia was always going to be one. Or so we thought. It's turned out to be one of the surprise success stories, Peter Hartcher writes in the Sydney Morning Herald (9/3/10). For Australia, Indonesia was always the dark zone of dread, where bad things happened with worse to come. This wasn't entirely baseless. Sukarno's communist demagoguery was real. The brutal repressiveness of Suharto's military dictatorship was no figment of the imagination. But when Suharto's regime fell and the Indonesian economy collapsed simultaneously in 1998, it seemed to be the worst-case scenario. A new Indonesia, the child of chaos and violence, was supposed to arise. These were the dominant scenarios that Australian Indonesia-watchers sketched out, usually in private, sometimes in public.
ARTICLE: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/indonesia-defied-doomsayers-to-become-a-surprise-success- story-20100308-psm9.html
UN MUST STEP UP FOR THE WOMEN OF BURMA
Australian women should never settle for anything less than full equality and equal pay for equal work. On International Women's Day, we should also cast our minds to the unsatisfactory fact that there are not nearly enough senior women managers, chief executives or directors of our large corporations. But we should also look beyond our shores. All Australians should reflect on the lives of women who are permanently marked by deep and deepening tragedy and injustice — women such as Aung San Suu Kyi and countless thousands of Burmese women, writes Lucy Turnbull in the Sydney Morning Herald (8/3/10). As lord mayor of Sydney, Lucy Turnbull awarded Aung San Suu Kyi the keys to the city in 2003. For decades Suu Kyi, her Burmese sisters and ethnic minorities have undergone systematic cruelty — political persecution and imprisonment in her case, and in the case of her Burmese sisters, acts of criminal brutality: torture, rape, and displacement at the hands of the military dictatorship. There will be ''elections'' in Burma this year. But we should not be fooled into believing they will be free or fair. They will be a sham and will further entrench the military at the heart of power.
ARTICLE: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/un-must-step-up-for-the-women-of-burma-20100307-pqhv.html
SHOULD TOURISTS RETURN TO BURMA?
On the boat to Mandalay the same thoughts kept turning in my mind. The red orb of a full moon appeared, casting streaks of gold across the placid water of the Irrawaddy river, but even this beauty failed to displace the questions that haunted our two-week stay earlier this month. Why were we in Burma? Was our trip giving comfort to the country's military dictatorship, by common consent one of the world's worst regimes? Writes Jonathan Steele in the London Guardian (15/2/10). Burma never has been a popular destination, and after the bloody suppression of the monks' protests in September 2007 and the government's delay in helping hundreds of thousands who lost everything in Cyclone Nargis the following May, the tourist trickle almost dried up. Only 47,161 people came from Europe last year, mainly from France and Germany, making Burma the country least visited by British people anywhere in Asia (with the exception of North Korea). So was our party of visitors wrong to buck the trend?
A FEMALE APPROACH TO PEACEKEEPING
When darkness comes to Congo Town, women in crisp uniforms take the streets, patrolling with Kalashnikov rifles and long, black hair tucked into baby-blue caps. The brisk sergeant in command, Monia Gusain, matter of factly calls them “my men.” But the stern Indian women facing her are actually wives and mothers who wage peace for a living on the rutted dirt roads of Liberia, reports the New York Times (5/3/10). The women — part of a special female United Nations police unit from India — lead dual lives: stamping out street crime by night and standing guard under the steamy equatorial sun outside the Monrovia headquarters of the Liberian president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. When they retreat, home is a military barracks where they tell bedtime stories to their toddlers via video conference calls.
IN COLOMBIA, DEMOCRACY IS STIRRED BUT NOT SHAKEN
There is plenty of pessimism about democracy these days, and autocrats seem to be on the march on every continent, write Robert Kagan and Aroop Mukharji in the Washington Post (9/3/10). So we should take note when democracy triumphs over autocratic temptations. That's what happened in Colombia recently. President Álvaro Uribe hinted for some time that he might run for a third consecutive term, despite the constitution's two-term limit. Last summer Colombia's House and Senate, controlled by allies of Uribe, passed a bill to change the constitution. The final step was a popular referendum to endorse Uribe's re-election. If that sounds familiar, it should. It was by popular referendum that Venezuela's Hugo Chávez installed himself as a virtual president-for-life. But late last month Colombia's constitutional court rejected the bill. The referendum is dead, and Colombia's democracy lives.
ARTICLE: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2010/03/08/AR2010030803294.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions
WHAT MADE BUSH’S BRAIN TICK?
Listed under the heading, What Made Bush’s Brain Tick, the Washington Post (7/3/10) publishes a book review by Steven Levingston of Karl Rove’s ‘Courage and Consequence’: Karl Rove's partisan bloodlust flowered early. At age 9 - and already a political nerd -- he became a spirited supporter of Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential smackdown against John F. Kennedy. So intense was his devotion that he landed a coveted Nixon bumper sticker and displayed it proudly on his bicycle basket - until a little girl in his neighbourhood who favoured JFK beat the stuffing out of him, bloodying his nose and ego. "I've never liked losing a political fight since," Rove writes in his memoir. Hard-nosed and obsessive he is, this steely political genius who orchestrated George W. Bush's climb, first to the Texas governor's mansion and then to the White House. But the figure who emerges in these pages has another side. In unexpectedly tender prose, Rove tells a poignant family story.
ARTICLE: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2010/03/05/AR2010030502249.html?wpisrc=nl_pmopinions
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