#IAmWatching Manus

Journalist Behrouz Boochani is constantly updating from the detention centre on Twitter. As I type this he has recently reported the promise that a doctor will be sent to the camp; that IHMS has refused to treat the suspected heart attack victim, who requires overseas treatment; that a refugee with "severe kidney stones" has been "crying with pain"; and that that a second refugee has returned from the new accommodation.

Manus is the most confronting place I have seen – but I still needed to go back (GA, 6 November 2017). Journalist Matthew Abbott published photos of refugees beaten by a local mob on Manus last year and was stopped at the airport last week on his way back to report on the current crisis.

PNG warns services can't be reconnected at Manus Island centre, urges detainees to move (SMH, 6 November 2017). Papua New Guinea's Supreme Court will rule tomorrow morning on whether cutting off services breaches the country's constitution.

Manus Island refugee crisis and the Australian media (Al Jazeera, 3 November 2017) - ponders why Phoebe Crane's hunger strike hasn't gained the Australian media's attention.

ETA: Has Jacinda Ardern failed her first international test of leadership? (New Zealand Herald, 6 November 2017). "Instead of putting pressure on the Australian Government to allow New Zealand to take refugees from Manus Island, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern seems to have capitulated entirely to Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on the issue." NZ could make its own deal with PNG and embarrass Australia and PNG both.

On Tyranny

Partly it's just the usual hormonal swinging of my mood (which is the real me?), but I felt energised and hopeful after reading historian Timothy Snyder's little book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Written in response to the election of You-Know-Who, it not only concisely spells out the warning signs of oncoming tyranny, but how tyranny can be and has been resisted. It's all good, ranging from the most courageous actions to the simplest and easiest: even a social anxiety penguin like me can give a Muslim a friendly smile, although the advice to make friends and build civil society are more of a challenge. One I mean to adopt at once: "Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone else is saying." How much ground have we already ceded to dangerous opponents when we use their catchphrases - or, for that matter, our own? (There's a reason I already avoid buzzwords like "problematic".)

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder – review (Guardian, 20 March 2017)

20 ways to recognize tyranny — and fight it (Washington Post, 24 February 2017)