Rule Without Law: "Australia is Nauru's paymaster"

From my post for Global Voices Online Rule of Law Overturned in Nauru:

The Australian government has been slow to react with some on twitter accusing it of complicity...

Barrister and human rights advocate Julian Burnside also took to the web, criticising several recent governments who have supported the Pacific Solution... "Australia is Nauru's paymaster"...

Many on twitter have been calling on the Australian government and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop to take strong action such as boycotts imposed on Fiji in similar circumstances...

Hell is soon to be unleashed in Nauru. https://t.co/cDuW908PON

— Nauru Observers (@NObservers) January 22, 2014

More

WikiLeaks Party's Shock Visit With Syria's Assad

From my post for Global Voices Advocacy- WikiLeaks Supporters Shocked by Visit With Syria's Assad:

Despite John Shipton and Wikipedia indicating that the delegation also met with the Syrian opposition, details have not become available yet. Accompanying journalist Chris Ray did not mention the meetings in his post.

...Doubtless, Shipton and other delegation members will face many questions when they return to Australia.

More

Anita Heiss: Is She Black Enough For You?

Given Tim Wilson's new career, reading Anita Heiss' memoir Am I Black Enough For You? turned out to be very topical.

My review can be viewed here.

We Are Global Voices! We Bring You the World

We Are Global Voices! from Global Voices on Vimeo.

The world is talking. Are you listening?

The video says it all!

Make a Pledge for Asylum Seekers on Human Rights Day

A video from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre for Human Rights Day 2013:

Make a pledge:

"I pledge to fight against cruelty to asylum seekers. This means:

• no splitting up of families, when they arrive by boat, into different groups
• no pregnant women should be forcibly separated from her husband and children and sent away to have her baby alone."

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...]

More

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.

More