Stilgherrian – Page 337

04 June 200904 June 2009

20 years after Tianamen

It’s been 20 years since the Tiananmen Square massacre. Of the many things I’ve seen commemorating it, one of the most powerful was John Birmingham’s simple blog post of that day’s diplomatic messages from the US Embassy in Beijing.

Cable, From: Department of State, Wash DC, To: US Embassy Beijing, and All Diplomatic and Consular Posts, TFCHO1: SITREP 1, 1700 EDT (June 3, 1989)

PLA MOVES ON TIANANMEN, CASULATIES HIGH. EMBASSY BEIJING REPORTS THAT TROOPS USING AUTOMATIC WEAPONS ADVANCED IN TANKS, APCS AND TRUCKS FROM SEVERAL DIRECTIONS ON TIANANMEN SQUARE JUNE 3. THERE WAS CONSIDERABLE RESISTENCE BY DEMONSTRATORS, AND THE NUMBER OF CASUALTIES APPEARS HIGH.

Please read them all and, as I did, take a moment to reflect.

According to Wikipedia, “There were early reports of Chinese Red Cross sources giving a figure of 2,600 deaths, but the Chinese Red Cross has denied ever doing so. The official Chinese government figure is 241 dead, including soldiers, and 7,000 wounded.”

NATO intelligence puts the death toll at 7,000. Some other estimates are even higher.

China has blocked access to most social media sites such as Twitter, search engines, and many others. Yes. Let’s just stifle conversation and pretend it didn’t happen. Cowards.

I’ll wager this photograph of artist Him Lo, taken in Hong Kong yesterday, won’t be seen across the Middle Kingdom either.

[Photo: Tank Man, taken on 5 June 1989 by photographer Jeff Widener, depicts an unknown man halting the PLA’s advancing tanks near Tiananmen Square.]

02 June 200902 October 2009

ActionAid Australia website launched

ActionAid Australia logo: End poverty. Together.

The new ActionAid Australia website went live some time overnight. So, in this Brave New World of the Internet, that’s what makes the change from Austcare official, eh?

As part of Project TOTO we’ll be inserting a blog or blogs in there somewhere. That’s the next conversation — or at least one of them. How do we include the voices of our Tanzanian friends in there as well as the Australians?

There’s lots of other things to consider too, and I hope to post more later today.

01 June 2009

Um, yes, Episode 48 has been online for ages

Oh this is shocking! It’s 10 full days since Stilgherrian Live episode 48 was broadcast, and I’ve failed to tell you that it’s online for you viewing pleasure.

Well, it is.

We had another tie for “Cnut of the Week”. Australian banks, who charged record levels of bank fees despite the global financial crisis, were in 4th place (13%). US Senators, for failing to vote for the finding needed to close the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison were 3rd (17%). And in equal first place (35%) were Catholic power-brokers for failing to act on allegations of child sexual abuse, and Michael Lynton, CEO of Sony Pictures, who reckons nothing good has come from the Internet, period.

Congratulations to Sean the Blogonaut, who won a t-shirt from our friends at King Cnut Ethical Clothing — and a big raspberry to Sheila who would’ve won if she were watching the program when her name was drawn from the Cocktail Shaker of Integrity.

The program also included an interview with ActionAid Australia CEO Archie Law about our forthcoming Project TOTO.

I’m hoping that Stilgherrian Live will return at 9.30pm Thursday night, though that’ll depend on how hectic things get.

28 May 200930 May 2009

Skipping a week, again

There will not be an episode of Stilgherrian Live tonight. I’d more or less made the decision earlier anyway, because I’m short of decent sleep thanks to unrelated insomnia. But late this morning I discovered that I’m in the 2% to 10% of people who get flu-like symptoms in reaction to the Yellow Fever vaccination, starting 3 to 9 days after the injection. It has been 8 days.

27 May 200926 August 2020

Look, about that damn topless gnome…

“The greatest challenge to implementing social media within any organisation is the willingness for that organisation to accept the cultural change that will ultimately occur. And occur dramatically and at a rapid pace. Social media holds a mirror up to an organization from the external customers/clients/constituents that shows an authentic, and sometimes unexpected, face.” — Nick Hodge

“I’d add that that face is almost always unexpected.” — Mark Pesce (in private conversation)

Clearly I’m not going to get anything else written until I respond to The Gnome Situation. I’ve been reading the comments and mulling possible responses for days. It’s getting in the way of actual, productive work. So here we go.

No. I will not be removing Gnaomi from my desk.

Discussing an issue as important as rape through the proxy of an anthropomorphised piece of clay seems, to me, a poor tactic. Nor will I compromise the actual or perceived independence of my media output, no matter how worthy the cause.

There’ll probably be people at ActionAid who won’t like or understand that outcome, so here’s the long explanation…

Continue reading “Look, about that damn topless gnome…”

25 May 200902 October 2009

Tanzania hit by global warming

Crikey logo

Tanzania’s climate seems to be shifting dramatically. Reporting from a World Meteorological Organisation meeting, attended by meteorologists and climatologists representing 187 countries, freelance journalist Amanda Gearing writes in Crikey today:

More rainfall seasons have been failing since the 1980s, severely affecting food supplies of people who are mostly subsistence farmers on small farms.

“If (the short rains) fail it means their survival is threatened and this becomes worse when the second rain fails because it means the whole year is a total failure and weâ€™ve had the government intervening more often to give food assistance to the people,” Tanzanian principal agro-meteorologist Deusdedit Kashasha said. “They produce on small farms which may not be enough for a year in a good season so if they donâ€™t even have that small amount produced it becomes pretty dire.”

Australians are meant to know about drought. We’ll see soon enough, I guess.

[Update 26 May 2008: Quite a few commenters have decided to tear this article apart. Some are “the usual suspects”, sure, but others…]