Australia and Oceania news and discussions

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Climate-threatened Tuvalu holds election closely watched by China and Taiwan

Fri January 26, 2024

Voting began on Friday in the tiny Pacific island nation of Tuvalu in a national election that is being closely watched by China, Taiwan, the United States and its ally Australia, amid a tussle for influence in the region.

Tuvalu, with a population of about 11,200 spread across nine islands, has campaigned at international conferences for greater action to help low-lying nations address climate change, because science shows its capital Funafuti risks being inundated by tides by 2050.

Most of Tuvalu is forecast to be flooded by high tides by 2100, says the United Nations Development Programme, which is working with Tuvalu to bolster its coastline.

A contest for influence in the Pacific between China and the United States has seen Tuvalu courted, with Washington recently pledging to connect its remote population by undersea cable to global telecommunications for the first time.

Tuvalu is one of three remaining Pacific allies of Taiwan, after Nauru cut ties this month and switched to Beijing, which pledged more development support.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/26/asia ... index.html

[caltrek]

Australia vs. Rupert Murdoch
by Sean Kelly
January 29, 2024

Introduction:

(Mother Jones) Six years ago, Australia held a nationwide vote on gay marriage. During the brutal campaign, Sydney-based author Benjamin Law published a long essay accusing Rupert Murdoch’s media empire of stoking a “moral panic” over a program safeguarding queer kids from bullying. Then he waited for the blowback. He knew it was not a question of whether the operation would retaliate but how. Soon after, he got an email from a journalist at one of Murdoch’s papers, asking for his reaction to a story they were writing about him. He felt dread. “You know that things are going to get really hairy.”

Around the world, Murdoch’s publications are known for maliciously pursuing their enemies. The technique is known as “monstering,” and the British journalist Nick Davies has likened it to the way “muggers in back alleys use their boots, to kick a victim to pulp.” Sometimes, these targets have earned attention by doing something egregious. Just as often they have simply picked the wrong side of a culture war. The simplest, most reliable way to signal you have made this regrettable mistake is by publicly criticizing Murdoch or his outlets.

As far as News Corp is concerned, it is merely holding people to account, the way other media companies do. This seems hard to square with how little pretext is required to justify the attacks. In Law’s case, he had recently tweeted, as a joke, “Sometimes find myself wondering if I’d hate-f*ck all the anti-gay MPs in parliament if it meant they got the homophobia out of their system.” Murdoch’s national broadsheet The Australian contacted members of the government for their reactions to the tweet, published their scathing comments, and editorialized against Law. Meanwhile, some of Murdoch’s biggest tabloids ran columns slamming him; one described him as a “bottom-feeding blogger.” The predictable onslaught had its predictable effect: “Just being a minority person in the public eye, you’re going to get threats and harassment and abuse,” Law told me. “That’s par for the course, but it really ratcheted up in terms of volume and intensity.” He worried for his safety. There was shame too: Law was privately criticized by allies who blamed the tabloid reporting for hurting the gay marriage campaign.

Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2 ... ominion/

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