Textor's Twitter Farce Follows Revelations of Australia Spying on Indonesian President

"...we now have #Textor’s Law: the most social media savvy spin doctors are only 140 characters away from their inevitable brain snap. It has something to do with wishing you could eat your words."

My latest post for Global Voices looks at the extraordinary twitter moments of Mark Textor
Twitter Farce Follows Revelations of Australia Spying on Indonesian President:

It has taken a “conservative political and communications strategist” to catch the imagination of netizens during the current diplomatic standoff between Australia and Indonesia over spying revelations. Indonesia's president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has tweeted to protest phone tapping by Australia's Defence Signals Directorate, which included his and his wife's phones in 2009.

On 20 November 2013 Mark Textor, pollster and political tactician for Australia’s ruling Liberal Party, experienced one of those twitter moments: ‘Apology demanded from Australia by a bloke who looks like a 1970s Pilipino porn star and has ethics to match’. [The misspelling is his own.] It was an apparent reference to the Indonesian foreign minister, Marty Natalegawa.

His deletion of the offending tweet did not save Textor from embarrassment.

[Reactions from the Oz twitterverse...]

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Sorry I won't be around to tell 'em I told ya so.

For those who are still interested in the state of climate change science, a concise video from the IPCC Warsaw COP19 meeting:

For more please see: The actual probability of Earth going to hell in the next few decades

I know we are constantly being told that we will not persuade anyone with evidence or with scary stuff. So do what's recommended and use narrative. Tell them the one about the big bad denier who huffed and puffed...

Global Voices' Andrea Arzaba has a tale from Warsaw worth sharing: COP19: Fasting For The Climate:

Yeb Saño, leader of the Philippines delegation at the United Nations Summit on Climate Change in Poland (COP19), has decided to stop eating until he sees real solutions from negotiators at the summit. He wants the process to bring “climate justice to the poorest countries,” and links Typhoon Haiyan, which has left more than 4,000 people dead and 4 million displaced, to climate change.

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Tony Abbott Downplays Sri Lankan Torture Allegations

From my latest post for Global Voices Online:

Australians have been flabbergasted by the contrast between two conservative Prime Ministers over Sri Lanka’s human rights record, namely their own PM Tony Abbott and the UK’s David Cameron.

Cameron put Sri Lanka on notice over war crimes allegations. PM Abbott was far more conciliatory:

"The Australian Government deplores any use of torture. Sometimes, in difficult circumstances, difficult things happen. The important thing is to act as quickly as you can to bind up the nation's wounds."

Many onliners took these remarks at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Colombo [CHOGM] to be tacit approval of human rights violations including torture.

More: Australian Prime Minister Downplays Sri Lankan Torture Allegations

Climate Action Rally - Melbourne 2103

According to The Age, "Up to 30,000 Melburnians gathered in Treasury Gardens on Sunday to call for stronger action on climate change" on Sunday 17 November 2013.

A glorious solar day at Treasury Gardens.

Jeremy Bird at #Progress2013: 'Brick by Brick' Organising

Jeremy Bird's talk to Progress 2013 at the Melbourne Town Hall on 8 Nov 2013: 'Brick by Brick' The Nitty Gritty Organising Work That Turned Out Obama's Coalition

Jeremy speaks about the Democrats grassroots campaigning in 2012. It was based on neighbourhood team leaders organising local volunteers in 5177 locations across the United States. "They turned out voters that they knew."

He emphasised the importance of both using innovative online technologies and reaching individuals face-to-face. Community campaigns must invest in organisers on the ground and in their training.

He stressed why winning matters. It is "about the people we are trying to serve, to organise; about the world you are trying to leave to your grandkids." "Too many organisations rely on broadcast media and treat voters as consumers of a product." It should be about real relationships and talking to people individually.

[I represented Global Voices Online at Progress 2013.]

Wrap Up Video: I'm In! - Progress 2013

Thanks to Digital Storytellers, we had I'm In!, the wrap up video of the Progress 2013 conference, before it was over.

The Centre for Australian Progress and a thousand strong crowd sourced from Oz and OS gave us a great couple of days in Melbourne to plot our collective, organisational and individual futures.

Snapshots of the first day are on Storify.
More later.

My ‘Top’ Ten Tweets from #Progress2013 Day One

My quick picks from the hundreds of tweets from Day 1 of the Progress 2013 conference on 7 November at Melbourne Town Hall:

@JaneCaro welcomes the liberals, the lefties, the tree huggers and the femi-nazis, among others, to #Progress2013

— Rachael Vincent (@rachaelvincent) November 6, 2013

Scott Rankin: It's harder to hurt someone if you know their story #Progress2013
— Hugh de Kretser (@HughdeKretser) November 7, 2013

The space of political ideas is not elections - Anat #truth #stilldepressing #Progress2013
— Holly Creenaune (@hollycreenaune) November 7, 2013

If we want social change we need to make invisible issues visible #Progress2013
— Avis Mulhall (@avismulhall) November 7, 2013

Never underestimate the ability of the legal profession to complicate a relatively simple concept, says Peter Cashman #Progress2013
— Alicia Patterson (@AliciaMarie1970) November 7, 2013

There are many things beyond our control. 1 of the things we can control is how we communicate. We need to get better at that. #progress2013
— David Hood (@DavidAHood) November 7, 2013

'For climate change messaging: Generate sense of urgency, not crisis. Freak people out & it will make them more conservative' #progress2013
— Amber Carvan (@ambercarvan) November 7, 2013

I look forward to a day when people don't have to rely on charity because they can rely on justice. @VinniesAust's @JohnFalzon #progress2013
— David Hood (@DavidAHood) November 7, 2013

Use the base - the true believers - to energise and persuade the middle (rather than fight the opposition. Makes sense. #Progress2013
— Alicia Patterson (@AliciaMarie1970) November 7, 2013

Wilkinson: Health and social problems are worse in countries where economic inequality is biggest. #progress2013
— timhollo (@timhollo) November 6, 2013

Day 2 awaits.

Will Family Planning Remain Fertile Ground for AusAid?

Two articles from Kenya's Daily Nation, both published on 30 october 2013, highlight the challenges for developing countries in addressing the link between family planning and population growth:

Kenya has one of the highest fertility rates in the world with a total fertility of 8 children per woman.
Contraceptives uptake reduced due to fertility awareness

The headline is a bit confusing but the content of the story is clear.

Worldwide, 7.3 million of the births are by girls between the age of 15 and 19 years of which two million births of this are by girls under the age of 15. Of the two million births, 90 per cent of them are already in marriage, revealing that girls are being married off at very tender age.

Kenya contributes to this percentage by having 103 in every 1000 pregnancies being attributed to girls between 15 and 19 years.
Teenage pregnancies: Kenya's alarming statistics

[Thanks to Facebook friend Javin Ochieng from Mathare, Naoribi for the links. We met at the 2012 Global Voices Summit.]

This news comes at a time of cutbacks to Australia's overseas aid. Coincidentally, on the following day Tanya Plibersek, newly elected deputy leader of the Labor opposition, raised related issues at the Australian Council for International Development. The former Health minister told the 2013 ACFID Council: Driving Change Post 2015:

We believe that a society as wealthy as ours has an obligation to advance the development of the poorest people, communities, and nations, and assist them to a better life.

Tanya warned the new Liberal/National coalition government about its $A 4.5 billion cut to overseas aid:

On coming to government we first abolished the Harradine amendment which prohibited Australian aid money going to organisations which delivered family planning services. Most recently we doubled aid funding for family planning services.

Let me say this very clearly – I will fight any effort by Tony Abbott to strip aid from family planning services in developing countries.

Tanya spoke on the day that AusAid ceased to be a separate entity following its controversial integration by the Abbott government into the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

AusAid's FAMILY PLANNING AND THE AID PROGRAM: GUIDING PRINCIPLES, published in 2009, seem very middle of the road at first:

Improving access to appropriate, affordable and safe contraceptives and products is an important component of effective family planning services. By ensuring women and men have access to comprehensive family planning services and advice, Australia aims to reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies and thereby minimise the need for women to resort to abortion.

However, they clearly sanction abortion in the implementation criteria:

The Guidelines support the same range of family planning and reproductive health services for women in developing countries as are supported for women in Australia, consistent with the national laws of the partner country concerned and in line with the ICPD Programme of Action [International Conference on Population and Development 1994}. The Guidelines place a gestational term limit on abortion of up to 20 weeks.

'Driving Change Post 2015' focussed on 'How can the Australian development sector respond to people living in poverty and help them drive positive change?' The conference title, of course, referred to the UN Millennium Development Goals whose target date is 2015.

In 2000 the United Nations established 8 ambitious Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for the Developing World:

GOAL 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

GOAL 2: Achieve universal primary education

GOAL 3: Promote gender equality and empower women

GOAL 4: Reduce child mortality

GOAL 5: Improve maternal health

GOAL 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

GOAL 7: Ensure environmental sustainability

GOAL 8: Develop a global partnership for development

The elephant goalkeeper in the MDG game has always been population control. The recent BYND 2015 Global Youth Summit in Costa Rica included this in its declaration:

We seek tools to better inform us about healthy lifestyles and health concerns, which help us act on that information, especially in areas of sexual and reproductive health, and in dealing with issues of disability, including knowledge to reduce problems of stigma and fear associated with many diseases

Let's hope that family planning aid does not become a partisan issue in Australia as it has been in the United States with the global gag rule enforced by Republican administrations and reversed under Democrat presidents. Family planning and sexual and reproductive health programs that mention the 'A' word [abortion] or sometimes even just the 'C' word [contraceptive] do not get funded when the rule applies.

The ACFID has over 100 non-government members working in the international aid and development sectors. Some of them will be attending Progress 2013 conference on 7-8 November in Melbourne to further discuss issues and share strategies. A number of the organisations are faith-based and may have their own concerns with family planning projects.

[My posts for the 2010 European Journalism Centre's Th!nk About It - Developing World blogging competition range over many of the issues related to population, family planning and sex education.]