#Campaigning

Russia has had some incredibly disturbing instances of human rights abuses over the last few years which appear to be getting worse rather than better. Journalists assassinated or silenced, whistleblowers punished or marginalized and known police abuse or outright torture ignored or covered up. Love this ad from AI France about not letting this go unchallenged.

Our Moscow office was always one of my favourites when I was Amnesty’s IT Director because of the dedication of the people working there and fact they were on the front lines of the human rights fight (Hey Yuri!)

Great ad. Can’t say too much so as not to give it away, but it’s very well done, clever and environmental.

The recent changes in Facebook’s privacy policies are civil rights eroding and a maze of complexity in my personal opinion. Even being careful, using this bookmarklet showed me I was still leaking information despite my best intentions at plugging all the holes. So, if you value your privacy I really advise using it to make sure you’re sharing only what you want to share (and particularly now that your friends can inadvertently share information about you you wouldn’t want being shared).

GetUp! has been campaigning for months with the nocleanfeed and EFA coalition to kill off Conroy’s Internet filter (read: censorship) initiative. Rudd has blinked and taken it off the cards for the election and is on the defensive. We just sent this rather epic video to our awesome superhero-like membership to thank the ones who took action and to urge everyone to keep up the pressure to pull the plug completely.

Also, if you haven’t seen it, check out our original CensorDyne spoof ad which started the campaign.

Really like this simple, clever campaign video.

And as an extra bonus, it must’ve been really cheap to make.

Leveraging the total and well justified outrage at the banks over their massive bailouts, The Robin Hood Tax project rebrands the Tobin Tax idea (and prior to that Keynes’ idea of a tax on all financial transactions) to try to divert bailout money and questionably speculative activity (rather than wealth creation) to assist in social causes, combatting climate change and other social priorities.

Totally love this idea, even as a former economist. I’d love to see it pushed despite practical difficulties. Oh, and absolutely fantastic performance by Bill Nighy in the Curtis directed short (and how can you not love seeing the Gherkin in the background?).

Want to really make those politicians and bureaucratic weasels suffer as well as making their attempts to pass stupid legislation as costly to them as possible ?

Read Keane’s guide on letter writing your pollies - love the stuff about throwing in random extra issues or questions on unrelated matters so they have to expend resources and can’t use canned responses, cut and paste mail merges or have to pull on resources from other departments.

Incredibly moving and such a fantastic sentiment. Bonne dimanche.

The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect."

This is a fantastic ad out of Ireland: What if you had to ask everyone in a country whether you could marry someone ?

BTW, watching this ad makes me very proud to be Canadian (even if I’m down here in Oz), since gay marriage is legal in the True North Strong and Free.

One of the more exciting things about the new gig is the full-on focus on campaigning. This video was shot in one day… yep, one day with the bulk of the post-production work done that same day by the amazing guys who we shot it with. Absolutely great experience and learned loads.

Want to help get this ad seen and create a sustainable future for Australia? Please donate to get this aired in the same marginal seats the coal lobby is targeting.