Little Birds of Paradise

Happy Birthday Papua New Guinea

Beautiful Papua New Guinea

Land of the Unexpected

35 years of Independence 
and self determination. 
Through good days 
and bad days,
this land has been our mother. 
Ples bilong yumi stret.
Bai yumi tok wanem?
Kolim nem blong em tasol
pairapim ol garamut,
winim ol tavur 
na paitim ol kundu.
Papua New Guinea.
Ples bilong singsing
lap na bikpela hamamas.
Wanbel Stap..!

What is Development?

Part 1: Medicine

We have all been thinking and talking about the definition of 'Development' especially within the dilemma we find ourselves in, in Papua New Guinea regarding this question. 

There are many controversies and contradictions concerning not only the ideal path we wish to follow, but also our development choices, the advantages of certain choices and also the negative aspects of some of our choices. 

For sure we cannot all be happy about the various development choices we have to make, but one of the crucial considerations of development lies in the nature of the acquisition of collective consent about our national choices, goals and objectives. 

Every society, every country requires a systematic procedure towards arriving at collective consent. Many traditional societies in Papua New Guinea could offer our national governments so many models of seeking, negotiating and acquiring community consent. In our traditional philosophies we even have names for many of these methods. Yet like every other democracy on earth, Papua New Guinea's democracy struggles with acquiring public consent for our national decisions.

We have maybe too often heard the rhetoric about 'development principles' but often the actual principles behind the choices we make as a collective entity, fail to manifest themselves in the form of collective human satisfaction and harmony. 

The effort it takes for any country to arrive at collective consent on any development issue is very difficult to attain. As a result, as we see in Papua New Guinea, and even in the United States of America, the fine art of acquiring collective consent is often avoided altogether. 

Some members of parliament like Moses Maladina, try to invent policy loop holes that can help Parliament to avoid the task of acquiring public consent, but rather seek to bulldoze laws through parliament without public information, debate and collective decision making. Others spend their time in parliament as specialists in filibustering while others, our 'yo-yo' members, spend their time crossing floors and just playing the numbers game. So it happens that we can very easily make a mockery out of our systems of state and thus we also see our country committing a major failure in one of the crucial principles of national development: the achievement of collective consent. 

And let us not forget: the true art and objective of politics and parliamentarianism is to seek to acquire public support for public proposals and programmes - not to just be in government.

Why is it so difficult to acquire collective consent? I may get back to this at a later issue. Today I want to deal with one of the crucial ingredients of collective consent:

The recognition of Common Values. 

In Papua New Guinea Tok Pisin, we call this 'Luksave'.

I will take the example of Health and Medicine for this first installment because this is one of the things our rural people cry out for when they want 'Development'. Rural people all over Papua New Guinea are signing away their rights to their natural livelihood on the land because they want schools, roads and hospitals.

We all want good health. But at what point can we as a country arrive at the common recognition of this value - in a way that we can approach our health development programmes in a systematic manner, without too much argument and fuss along the way, about what our priorities are, what are the standards, what are the best medicines, what is the best medical equipment and technology available on the international market, what kind of facilities to build first and where, how do we maintain our existing facilities, and at the end how do we build a reliable health system in which all our people and cultures may have faith?

My good friend, an Egyptian doctor working in Goroka in 1994, Dr. Adel El Mezin Ibrahim, told me once that: "Medicine is common sense".

So today I look back at our country, floundering with indecision, and sometimes suffering from a seemingly lack of commitment to the perseverance needed for establishing the right health system for Papua New Guinea. And I ask myself how we may, on our own, with our own human, material and financial resources, run, manage and maintain for a long time, a sustainable health system, until the very culture of proper health care and awareness becomes an internalised part and action in the psychology of all our people?

Everywhere I go, I'm always befriending medical doctors, medical researchers, anyone that can give me a clue about the riddle that riddles our people. I have flown from many very rural places in Papua New Guinea accompanying sick people who do not know their way to an urban hospital from the airport, offering to take them there myself - some of them so sick and suffering from things like tropical ulcers that the whole aircraft could smell like there was a very large dead animal on board. My heroes are those pilots who fly those little aeroplanes into the clouds of the various PNG mountains, some of them never to return.

Like many fellow Papua New Guineans, I have seen the look on many people's faces in the last hours before their death, I too have carried the bleeding and I feel that sometimes the blood leaves permanent marks on the back of my shoulders. I still hear the voice of the last person I tried to rescue in Goroka: His last words to me were: "Martin, mi no nap pilim wanpela samting long nek blo mi igo daun long lek. (Martin, I can't feel anything from my neck down to my feet). 

So I can understand our urgency, our strife and our cry for development. But it would be detrimental to consistent development in one were to proceed and to operate in crisis mode. We need to be systematic. We have to use our common sense. But we have to recognise our needs and to act appropriately and accordingly. We have to strive to create an environment of collective comfort and benefit for all our people. Then at one point in the future we may find that we can actually walk together.

Last week I was talking to a medical doctor, Dr. Wagner and his wife in Rottweil, Germany. We were talking about super bugs, and other medical considerations that I get curious about. Eventually, I ventured to ask Dr. Wagner, where we are as humans in our advancement in medicine. And together with his wife, they told me something that I felt was worth reflecting upon and sharing with all our people.

Dr. Wagner: In the last one hundred years, the greatest advance in medicine came in two main areas: 

1. Recognising that we must separate our drinking water from our sewage water. This recognition led humanity to successfully combat Cholera and many other diseases caused by the contamination of drinking water.

2. The second was recognising the fact that we have to separate our rubbish from our living environment. This recognition led to a cleaner living environment, free of infectious diseases that spring from the accumulation of waste.

I was quite surprised and happily shocked by the simplicity of his deduction. So I thought I'd probe further. I asked Dr. Wagner about the medical advances and research into, the identification of various kinds of bacteria and viruses and he agreed, but insisted that these advances cannot overshadow that medical advancement in the two areas he had mentioned.

And so what about penicillin I asked him... 

Dr. Wagner: The industrialised mass production of penicillin was perfected around 1945. Yes penicillin was an important discovery... at this point, Frau Wagner cut in to offer an explanation:

Frau Wagner: Penicillin cannot make a big difference to human health if we do not organise in order to avoid the danger of continuously re-infecting ourselves.

And there it was from Frau Wagner: a reiteration that even the great medical discovery of penicillin could not overshadow those two great steps mankind had taken in the advancement of medical science which her husband had spoken about.

Sixteen years after my conversation with Dr. Ibrahim, Frau Wagner was telling me again that chemical advancement alone, cannot replace common sense in Medical Science. So I was transported back in space to Papua New Guinea and the ample rhetoric we have heard over the years about development and health care, asking myself the same questions we ask over and over again about the state of our health system. 

Back to our dilemma of development and the acquisition of collective consent in development directions, I think it is time that our people stop accepting to be led blind by rhetorical slogans. We should require that our public officials give the public the basic confidence and belief, that we can endeavour, to achieve collective vision and progress. They need to challenge, to prosecute and to continuously debate reflections on the public good, and derive from those reflections, information that they themselves trust, so that they may be clear about what they want to say to the public. We need to be better informed collectively, so that our common sense can inform and facilitate our collective consent. 

Sapos yumi olgeta i kamap long wanpela luksave, em bai yumi hariap tasol, bai yumi wanbel long wanem kain plan yumi laik bihainim.  - The secret to collective consent lies in first achieving common recognition of shared values. 

Dilemma of Leadership and Governance

The Pacific country of Papua New Guinea has come to another crucial crossroad in its development considerations. This week the discussions and controversies surrounding the Ramu Nickel Mine in its coastal province of Madang flared again due to the recent National Court decision not to lift an injunction on the Ramu Nickel Mine.

The fear of the Madang people is about the mining tailings and the waste management of tailings because the mining company proposed to dump mine tailings directly into the sea. This is a genuine fear and really should have been taken seriously by the government of Papua New Guinea, respected by other Papua New Guineans and the Chinese mining company as well.

Cart before the Horse? photo: http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/cart-before-the-horse.png

Instead, the government of Papua New Guinea went to unnatural efforts to silence the voices of its own people. It made amendments to existing and legitimate laws in order to facilitate the mining contractor's exploitation of the nickel mine and it acted in many ways to hinder the powers of its own state departments tasked with policing mining and other large scale resource extraction practices. But worst of all, the government of Papua New Guinea even proceeded to remove the basic rights of its own people which had been enshrined under the National Constitution.

Mining is responsible for the greatest strife in the history of Papua New Guinea when it caused a civil war to erupt on Bougainville, a former province of Papua New Guinea, in 1989. Bougainville has now gained its own autonomous rule and government, but the cost of human life was great for a small country which saw a civil war that went on for almost three times the length of the second world war, claimed more than twenty thousand lives and shocked a nation which had never imagined its army pointing guns at its own people. But after more than fifteen years of civil war, this blemish now stands to forever be a stain in the history of a once hopeful nation.

Now thousands of Madang people are greatly concerned about their own livelihood and the future state of its unique marine environment and the sea on its coastline into which a Chinese mining company plans to dump the nickel mine's tailings waste.

Papua New Guinean government officials say that the delay in these mining plans will affect the national economy and future investment. Criticism from the government aimed at NGOs especially those issuing from the Honorable James Pundari who wants to create a government body which polices the activities of NGOs should also be taken seriously. These statements should be considered from many perspectives. 

Two things perhaps should be first recognised and considered amidst the frustration of government leaders and officials: 

One, that the country has not had an effective opposition since the passing away of Sir Yambaky Okuk. Papua New Guinea misses such a leader today as Sir Yambaky. Although he himself was not free of political controversy, he was notorious worldwide as being one of the most effective and fiery leaders of the opposition of any modern democracy.

The second question concerns the intentions of the Papua New Guinean government to create a watchdog tasked with watching NGO activism in the country. NGOs and civil society in today's Papua New Guinea, form one of the few effective oppositions to a seemingly "dictatorial" democracy, which itself is active in trying to silence its own Ombudsman Commission by formulating policies which hinder the Ombudsman Commission's roles and activities.

Herein lies a dilemma and perhaps the hypocrisy of a governmental regime concerned with silencing opposition to the excesses and errors of its own political practice while at the same time active in its policy efforts to create loop holes that could advance unaccountability. Many people see Papua New Guinea's politics to now be on a path to creating super individuals out of leaders elected by ordinary citizens into public office. This indicates that our politicians are assuming the ordinary mandate to public service to mean a licence to wield absolute and oppressive powers.

The Ombudsman is the legitimate watchdog that watches all forms of public leadership. NGOs countrywide respect the role of the Ombudsman Commission. A couple of years ago NGO leaders of Papua New Guinea even pointed out to our Ombudsmen and Ombudswomen during an NGO leadership gathering with the Ombudsman Commisioners, that in the future, there may be a need to explore the idea of an extension of its functions to include the scrutiny of corrupt practices in our own NGO leadership. We wanted this to also include the scrutiny of the leadership of church based organisations where corruption has also been experienced by many of our communities. This point concerning governance and leadership is about the conduct of people who are elected to posts of public responsibility and their abuse of that public trust and the abuse of whatever public office to which they are elected or employed to serve a community.

At this juncture, it is probably time to look at our national dilemma of leadership and governance and to look at the pretexts offered to ordinary Papua New Guineans as the grounds and reasoning as to why it is necessary and rational for politicians to require next to absolute powers while at the same time, trying to hinder the powers of any legitimate opposition to and scrutiny of the nature of their practises. 

Our politicians and government officials express that they carry on as they do under the duress of legitimate concern for the national welfare and development aspirations of Papua New Guinea. But what really is this development that they seek for Papua New Guinea? Ordinary people require some evidence of a systematic drive at least to manage and maintain existing public assets and infrastructure prior to undertaking new and more demanding tasks. People need to witness a consistent and explicit investment in our children's education and in our health facilities. They need to see their government investing a greater effort in the business interests of our rural people. If our politicians really believe that a mine is an activity in which surrounding communities can fully participate in and benefit from, then they should show the people what causes our leaders and public officials to have such a strong faith in mining. They should provide and show financial flow plans where royalties from mines would actually be found to improve the local people's livelihoods. They need to show us a single mining community on Earth which had a vibrant economy after the end of a mining activity. Yet, this is not at all the issue that the Madang people are facing.

The people of Madang are simply opposed to the proposed method of mining waste management. They reject the mining company's proposal of dumping mining tailings directly into the sea for the next decades of the life of the Ramu Nickel Mine. The government and the mining company should accept this concern and invest a considerable effort in finding better alternatives, instead of concerning themselves with destroying the people's democracy and the national constitution which protects our basic human rights and legitimate wish to survive in a comfortable environment.

Bombing Nuclear Power Plants

Implications of Bombing a Nuclear Power Plant.

The plan to bomb nuclear power plants in Iran by Israel and the United Stares of America is a very dangerous idea. But just how dangerous? I've been snooping around for some opinions and estimates of the danger this plan imposes on our planet.

The first extract is taken from an article written in April 2008, by Floyd Rudmin in the website of the Centre for Research on Globalisation. The extracted parts are presented in this colour.

The US is said to have 10,000 targets in Iran.  Primary among these are all nuclear facilities, including the nuclear power plant at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf coast near Kuwait, and the nuclear enrichment facilities in Natanz near Esfahan.  Bushehr is an industrial city, with nearly 1 million residents.  As many as 70,000 foreign engineers work in the region, which includes a large gas field.  Natanz is Iran’s primary enrichment site, north of Esfahan, which also has nuclear research facilities. Esfahan is a world heritage city with a population of 2 million. 

Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor has 82 tons of enriched uranium (U235) now loaded into it, according to Israeli and Chinese news reports.  The plant is scheduled to become operational this summer, producing electricity.  The Natanz enrichment facility is operating a full capacity, enriching uranium for use in reactors according to IAEA reports.

According to the Center for Disease Control, the uranium 235 used in nuclear reactors has a half life of 700 million years.  As nuclear reactor fuel is used, it turns into uranium 238, which has a half life of 4.5 billion years.  These radioactive isotopes are dangerous to health because they emit alpha particles and because they are chemically toxic.  When inhaled, they damage lung tissue.  When ingested, they damage kidneys and cause cancer in bones and in liver tissues.  According to a recent review of medical research, uranium exposure causes babies to be deformed or born dead.

Never in history has it happened that nuclear power plants and nuclear enrichment facilities have been deliberately bombed.  Such facilities, everywhere in the world, operate under severe safety conditions because the release of radioactive materials is deadly, immediately and also long after exposure.  If the USA or Israel deliberately bomb a fully fueled nuclear power plant or nuclear fuel enrichment facilities, containment will be breached; radioactive elements will be released into the environment.  There will be horrific deaths for families in the surrounding vicinity.  The Union of Concerned Scientists has estimated 3 million deaths would result in 3 weeks from bombing the nuclear enrichment facilities near Esfahan, and the contamination would cover Afghanistan, Pakistan, all the way to India.

Reactors and enrichment facilities are built of extra strong concrete, often with multiple layers of containment domes, often built underground.  Bombing such facilities will require powerful explosives, earth penetrator war heads, maybe nuclear warheads.  The explosions will blow the contamination high into the atmosphere.  Where will it go is a question that is difficult to predict.

During the January 1991 Gulf War, many oil wells in Kuwait were set afire. According to the US State Department, “black rains were reported in Turkey, and black snow fell in the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains”.  The radioactive plumes from bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities would reach the same destinations, in the same weather conditions.  But the radioactive plume might go north, into Europe.  During the March 2003 invasion of Iraq by the USA, UK, Australia, and others, armour piercing shells and bombs tipped with depleted uranium (U238) were used.  It took 9 days for uranium particles from these weapons in Iraq to reach England, where air sample filters showed a 300% increase in uranium particles attributable to the war.  The weather patterns at the time that carried the particles to England passed over central Turkey, the Ukraine, Austria, Poland, Germany, Sweden, and Denmark, to England, then over Norway and Finland to the Arctic.  This was reported by The Times, summarizing a study in European Biology and Bioelectromagnetics.

The nuclear fallout from bombing Iran will have a half life of 700 million years.  That is a duration difficult to comprehend.  Jesus Christ was preaching a mere 2 thousand years ago.  In the evolution of humans, our earliest ape-like ancestors were walking upright a mere 5 million years ago.  The Bush administration and its Israeli advisors are now planning to contaminate the planet for 700 million years.  From the rhetoric of Presidential candidates John McCain and Hillary Clinton, they, too, think that is a good idea.  The US media seem to applaud.

Either Americans do not understand what it is they are preparing to do, or they think themselves immune to the consequences.  The planet is not large.  What goes around, comes around.  Smoke from the Gulf War oil fires went around the world and was detected in South America.  Radioactive fallout from bombing a nuclear reactor will also go far, especially considering that it has millions of years to make the trip.

The Persian Gulf nations of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran have more than half the world’s known oil reserves.  The 1981 study by Fetter and Tsipis in Scientific American on “Catastrophic Releases of Radioactivity” estimated that bombing a nuclear reactor would cause 8600 square miles around the reactor to be uninhabitable, depending on which way the wind blows.  Bombing the Bushehr reactor will mean half of the world’s oil is instantly inaccessible.  Bombing Iran means that Americans will not be driving cars any where, any more, for a long, long time.  The American Way of Life will be finished.  An economic collapse unimagined by Americans will follow.  Mechanized farming and food transport will be finished.  Famine is a possibility.  Food riots are a certainty, in the land of plenty, with the fuel gauge on empty...

It's hard to imagine why this idea of a destructive bombing of Iran's nuclear plants would make sense enough to be considered by these two countries. We know that the Zionist lobby in America is able to sway Congressional and Presidential opinion. Also America may in fact believe that Iran is too far away, such that the effects of a nuclear fallout in the USA be negligible.

But what might the psychology be of this Zionist State which has harboured a besieged mentality since 1947? Could Israel ever be free of its chosen manner of existence? Has Israel become so tunnel visioned that it cannot possibly imagine a peaceful process out of these very grave circumstances?

Some people have speculated that Israel is perhaps a suicidal state. I do not want to pursue that idea here although it is difficult to comprehend its actions and especially the constant danger to which it  subjects its citizens and the rest of the earth. Here are some opinions suggesting that Israel maybe a suicidal state:

Letter from Israel: Can Israel be seen as a suicide bomber?

From The American Conservative: Israel’s botched raid against the Gaza-bound humanitarian flotilla on May 31 is the latest sign that Israel is on a disastrous course that it seems incapable of reversing.

From the New York Times: "The Golem" seemed painfully apt: its central concern is the self-destructive consequence of Jews resorting to violence to defend themselves.

From the Haaretz - Israels daily newspaper in English: If there is one person who someone feels that our international situation is getting worse and another who thinks we are behaving like a suicide state, they should think again.

But what about the option of negotiation and a respectful dialogue between Israel and Iran with America and the rest of the international community as fair observers? Why is that not possible?

The next extracts are from the Asia Times:

Brazil steps between Israel and Iran

By Pepe Escobar

Talk about a Via Dolorosa. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is the first Brazilian president to visit Israel officially. Lauded for his charisma, swing and formidable negotiating powers - United States President Barack Obama refers to him as "the man" - little did Lula know that to engage his hosts this week he would have to give the Prophet Abraham a run for his money, no less. 

In the end, he stood his ground. He made no concessions. And unlike United States Vice President Joseph Biden last week, heeven managed not to be publicly humiliated by his hosts.

Lula is no stranger to tough neighborhoods. Former bouncer turned hardline politician Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's foreign minister, boycotted Lula's speech at the Knesset (parliament) as well as Lula's meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The reason: Lula did not visit the tomb of Zionism founder Theodor Herzl. But neither did France's President Nicolas Sarkozy or Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi when they visited Israel. 

Brasilia - as much as Paris and Rome - knows very well that a visit to the tomb is not mandatory on presidential trips. Yet a choir of the Likud/settler hardcore Zionist faction in Israel carped that this would fatally wound the Brazilian government's drive to become a mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

After being grilled in the Knesset - including by Netanyahu - for his policy of non-confrontation and dialogue with Iran, Lula did not flinch. He condemned both the Holocaust and terrorism; he reminded his hosts of Brazil's and Latin America's stand against nuclear weapons; he stressed "dialogue" and "compassion" to solve the Middle East conflict; he defended a viable two-state solution for Israel and Palestine; but he also did not refrain from criticizing the expanded colonization of East Jerusalem. He received a standing ovation and, according to some members of parliament, "more applause than [former US president] George W Bush". 

The tropical prophet

Not even at his Abrahamic best would Lula have been able to mollify Zionists and assorted hardliners. Anyway, Lula told the Israeli daily Ha'aretz what every serious player in the Middle East already knows; the "peace process" is going nowhere, and bringing new mediators such as Brazil to the table is the only way forward. 

And the same applied to the Iranian dossier: "The [world] leaders I spoke to believe that we must act quickly, otherwise Israel will attack Iran." Lula is convinced that further sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program are counter-productive. And this quote is bound to resonate globally, "We can't allow to happen in Iran what happened in Iraq. Before any sanctions, we must undertake all possible efforts to try and build peace in the Middle East." 

The official Brazilian government view - echoed by much of the international community (that is, not the exclusive club of Washington and the usual European suspects) - is that everything is still to be negotiated with Iran over its nuclear dossier. Lula is adamant: Iran has a right to develop a peaceful nuclear program in terms of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to which it is a signatory. 

Brazil is currently a rotating member of the United Nations Security Council. As much as China, it will not support new US-driven sanctions on Iran - regardless of US Secretary of State Robert Gates spinning that the US has enough backing to advance a fourth, tough round of sanctions, with Saudi Arabia finally persuading China. China will never vote against its own national security interest - and Iran is a matter of Chinese national security. Lula will be in Tehran in May and will meet - again - with President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. Hardline Zionists are - what else - fuming.

Lula knows very well that so-called "smart sanctions" that would apply mainly to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) - in charge of the bulk of economic and political power in Iran - would also affect millions of civilians connected to IRGC-controlled businesses, and thus the population at large, which is already paying the price for the current sanctions. The IRGC controls at least 60 ports in the Persian Gulf. Preventing Asia from doing business with Iran would imply a naval blockade - and that's a declaration of war. 

How not to push Iran 

Lula has hit the Middle East at a crucial juncture - just as Netanyahu's government has decided to build more settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, even to the detriment of crucial US support on the Iranian front. 

Ironically, it's on the economic front, rather than geopolitics, that Brazil is managing to seduce the Israeli establishment. Israel signed a free-trade agreement (FTA) with Mercosur [1] - the fifth-largest bloc in terms of gross domestic product in the world - much to the chagrin of Palestinians, who identify the FTA as a powerful boost to the Israeli military-industrial complex. 

And this when it is clear that Brazil is strictly in favor of a viable Palestinian state according to the 1967 borders. This FTA carries a key strategic provision - it allows the transfer of weapons technology to Mercosur members. Thus weapons responsible for the repression in Gaza will soon be available in South America. 

On a parallel front, bolstering Brazil's role as mediator, Israeli President Shimon Peres personally suggested to Lula that Brazil could make two visits - by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and by Netanyahu - coincide on Brazilian soil. Assad goes to Brazil this year, and this week Netanyahu also accepted an invitation. A tropical, informal Syrian-Israeli summit might be ideal to break the ice. Lula and Netanyahu have adopted a bilateral system of meetings between heads of state and top ministers every two years. 

By what about the US in all this? An official US-Brazil strategic agreement is also now in place, implying two foreign minister-level meetings a year, one in the US, one in Brazil. Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim has a very close relationship with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. On her recent visit to Brazil, Clinton pressed both Lula and Amorim to support tougher sanctions on Iran. The refusal was polite but firm. 

Clinton was left to complain at a press conference about how Iran is "using" Brazil, Turkey and China to evade sanctions. Amorim for his part is always fond of remembering the Iraqi disaster: "I was an ambassador at the UN during the critical moments of deciding about Iraq. And what we saw was a big mistake." 

Lula could not be more specific: "It is not wise to push Iran against the wall. I want for Iran what I want for Brazil: to use nuclear energy for peaceful ends. If Iran goes beyond that, then we will not agree with it." Roughly, that's the same position as China's. 

Lula and Obama had seemed to be in synch on Iran, starting from their meeting on the sidelines of a Group of Eight plus five meeting in L'Aquila, Italy, nine months ago. Then, Obama even encouraged the Brasilia-Tehran dialogue, as long as Brazil pressed on Iran the commitment to a strictly civilian nuclear program. That's exactly what Lula told Ahmadinejad when they met in Brazil. It is the Obama administration's position that has substantially hardened. 

Brazilian diplomats insist that Ahmadinejad never closed the door to negotiations. In discreet, bilateral diplomatic talks, US officials even admit to their Brazilian counterparts that Ahmadinejad himself is not inflexible, nor is Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In a February 19 speech at the naming of an Iranian destroyer, Khamenei once again denied that Iran was after nuclear weapons and stressed that they were illegal according to Islamic law because they killed large numbers of innocent civilians. 

The problem has been amplified by much American and European media hype. Defusing the sanctions drum rolls, even Clinton, in a moment of candor during her South American trip, was forced to admit that sanctions could take "several months" to be adopted, if at all. 

Even before Clinton's visit, Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki had already admitted to Brazilian media on the record that Brazil could be a "bridge” between Iran and the US/European Union front, because of its "realist" position. Mottaki does not see Brazil as a "mediator" - but rather as "acting to facilitate consultations", as Tehran does not believe that any country should speak for its (Tehran's) own interests. 

Neither did Brasilia explicitly ask to be a mediator. Mottaki has revealed he's developing substantial "telephone diplomacy" with Amorim. Tehran obviously sees the benefits of establishing a dialogue channel to the industrialized West via a key developing country. 

Blessed are the peacemakers - for they shall inherit the earth. - from the book of Mathew.


But where are the peacemakers?

 

Tribute to Cheb Hasni

Orane disappeared one night,

Orane, Orane Orane, Orane

Orane it's me who loves you so,

Orane, Orane Orane, Orane

Orane, I'm nothing without you

Orane, Orane Orane, Orane

If you're walking in Paris on the 29th of September, spare a thought for a man known as the Prince of Raï. Cheb Hasni died on the 29th of September 1994. He was killed in his native country of Algeria in Northern Africa. Assassinated by Islamic fundamentalists in his hometown of Oran.

Photo of Cheb Hasni taken from: http://en.hibamusic.com/

I didn't hear the news of his death, partly because ten days earlier, volcanic eruptions had destroyed my home town of Rabaul. I and thousands of others, were in shock at finding ourselves so far away on the mainland of Papua New Guinea, while our homes were being destroyed and our families in grave danger on New Britain. The eruption of two volcanoes in the Rabaul harbour, Vulcan and Tavurvur, forced the evacuation of residents, had buried our airport and had collapsed most of the buildings in our beloved city. In that destruction was the demise of an emerging, very beautiful modern culture that was quite unique even in Papua New Guinea itself.

So the event of a murder in far off Algeria was lost to me in those days before the internet. But I guess, if I had heard this news, it would have been part of the many life changing events that were taking place in my own life at that moment. Thirty days earlier, on the 11th of August 1994, my son Jannis had been born right on the anniversary of my own father's death thirty years earlier in 1971. So I named him Toku, the name of Jannis' great grand father, my father's father. My life was full of turbulence, the birth of my son, the death of my city... In fact everything for me had always been rolled into one and this was just another of those repetitions. 

Six years earlier in 1988, I had discovered Cheb Hasni. I was about to turn 25 years old and I was making my second film in the city of Paris. At this time, there was a surge of a certain cultural movement that Cheb Hasni was a part of, which was moving right throughout France, across the Mediterranean and into Algeria itself. This movement was: "Le Mouvement Beur".

Pronounced as it is, this would seem to mean "The Butter Movement". But in fact it was a huge anti fascist, anti racism movement that saw the liberation of the dignity, integrity and pride of Arabic and Magrebian immigrants living in Europe. It was a time when I often found myself right in the middle of millions of people packed into public concert spaces right within Paris and in its suburbs. In fact I even found myself filming in Raï concerts near the Mediterranean.

"Arab" prior to this movement had been a dirty word on the lips of racists and fascists. In the "verlangue" a kind of French popular slang, where the pronunciation of all words are inverted, "Arab" then becomes "Beur" and "Beur" was a derogatory term for these particular immigrants. 

"Verlangue" itself is not a racist language. It is just an underground language that is now quite popular. The "langue" in the name "verlangue", may fool some people into thinking that it comes from the French word for "tongue" or "language". But it doesn't. It comes from the reverse of "reverse" which the concept of the language is based on. The language is really called "Verlan" - the reverse of "à l'envers".

"Le Mouvement Beur" was borne on the waves of that musical genre called Raï and drew its force from a rejection of a racist derogatory term. "Beur" itself became a term of Arabic pride in Europe up to this day. This reversal of a racist term and the rejection of racism itself had taken root and by 1988, had caught fire. The flame of this pride was carried onto numerous music and concert stages throughout France by musicians such as Cheb Khader, Cheb Mami and Cheb Khaled. 

But it was Cheb Hasni himself who drew the fury of Islamic fundamentalists back home in Algeria, when together with Chaba Zahouania in 1987, they wrote and recorded a very provocative song by Algerian standards called "Beraka", gaining much popularity with the youth of "Le Mouvement Beur" in Europe but also in Algeria where teenagers had bought about a million cassette copies. 

This drew deadly attention and a fatwa, a death warrant issued by fundamentalist Islamic leaders for Cheb Hasni to be put to death.

Cheb Hasni was born Hasni Chakroun on the first day of February, 1968. Hasni is his first name - not Cheb. Cheb just means young man in Algerian. This man loved to sing and he had a beautiful voice, with which he could do that. They say that when he was a younger boy growing up in Oran, he would sing all the way to and from school with his school bag slung over his shoulders.

Raï music, the chariot that carried the liberation of Arabic pride in Europe, is itself rooted in the Bedouin musical culture of the African, nomadic, desert people. In particular, it is rooted in the traditional music of the Kabili people of Algeria. The ancestors of these people are the Berber Africans, who had been invaded by Arabs during the Islamic conquest. By the 80s, modern musicians sought to modernise Raï using various modern influences upon the traditional Kabili music. It became something one could call pop music with Arabic styled vocals and rhythms. 

The murder of Cheb Hasni was a double tragedy for the Berber, whose original African culture was instrumental in restoring and elevating the pride of all "Arabic people" in Europe. Once again, their cultural spirit was attacked in such a ruthless manner. He was shot by gunmen as he sat drinking coffee in a café at 11:55 am, on the corner of the street where he lived with his parents.

Many Rai musicians now live in exile in Paris and elsewhere in France, no longer safe to walk in their original homeland of Algeria. For many of them Oran has finally gone away.

I have never taken my son Jannis, back to Rabaul because of the circumstances and also because when he was small, he told me that he did not want to go to Rabaul because of two things: volcanoes and sharks. Now he is older and he knows that volcanoes do not erupt everyday.

Religious fundamentalism can be very hard on people's cultures. My mother according to Catholic teachings told me to avoid films. Yet today, I'm a filmmaker and my mother passed away knowing and accepting that I had become one. She even became a star in one of the films we made. How could she avoid being an artist? She was an actress in one of the earliest women's comedy theatre groups in Papua New Guinea: the "Kivalar String Band". 

She taught me about the theatre and I spent time with her preparing the scenario for a theatre play that the two of us were to present at the Tolai Warvagira, the East New Britain cultural festival. We never did. One day maybe. Or maybe it is just the spirit of creation that she wanted to give me, which is what counts.

But I still remember the plot of that story after so many years even though we never once wrote it down. We were more concerned with the props and how to build stage objects that we could easily and quickly put up and dismantle once it would be our turn. There were theatrical competitions and prizes in those days in Rabaul. In our story there were two characters: A bad guy: me, and a good guy: my mother. My mother made me understand why each of the two characters had to go through their own part of the story and why that was important to each character.

As Jannis was growing up, he insisted that I tell him and his elder brother Leonard, a new and original story every single night. "No Reading", "No Legends" and "Not one we've heard before" was the basic command. So every night, for more than ten years, no matter what had happened during the day, I had to tell an original bedtime story. I still do not know where those stories came from. Now many years later we have seen some of our themes come out in "Harry Potter" and in that other story about the "Storybook". Why did we never record our own stories?

Anyway Jannis, I have always wanted to tell you a legend but you didn't want legends. 

So now that you are 16, I thought I could tell you the story of a legend. The Legend of Cheb Hasni. A modern hero who was killed because he made people think for themselves and made people break out of the chains of outdated ideas, oppression and ignorance. Never be afraid to be like him. He just let the flame of his own candle burn as bright as it could during his one life, doing the one thing he loved the most which was singing.

Now that they have killed him, people who feared his gift of music think they have silenced his song. Yet Oran itself will always give us the undying spirit and songs of human liberation and freedom. 

And even as the volcanoes have always buried our own people on Rabaul, we too will always rise again to sing.

The first mention of Oran for many of us was in a song which now seems to have been a prophetic foreboding of Hasni's death. The group "Les Negresse Vertes" - "Green Negro Girls" had recorded the song "Orane" in 1988.

Oran, now it's over. Oran, I shall start my life all over again.

Orane, maintenant c'est fini, 

Orane, je refais ma vie,

The resistance and the political movement for the cultural survival of the Berber people continues. In 2003, the Berber language was finally recognised and officially adopted, as a second Algerian language next to Arabic.

Standing

A conversation took place this morning. Actually, it was an earlier exchange that prompted the conversation.

Taking the vows to officially wed a couple, the registrar of civil marriages was taken aback by an unexpected question that she apparently seems to have elicited from the groom. This was at the point in the proceedings when she needed to ask the couple whether it was their free will to appear before her to be wedded. 

The exchange : The groom interrupted the ceremony to ask the registrar: Excuse me but are you actually married yourself?

Visually and physically, the celebrant is younger than the bride and groom who are in their 50s and today, as usual, was dynamically dressed. She wears a diamond stud in the left one of her top two middle teeth and her silver hair pin is studded with little diamonds. Her long hair is a combination of black and blond streaks. Okay, she also has a cheeky, friendly smile which gives her cute dimples on her cheeks, but she doesn't wear that when she is presiding over weddings. She carries the dignity of her office normally.

What a moment, conducting a ceremony where the groom felt it necessary to interrupt proceedings and to ask her, the celebrant, if she was married herself. She answered in the affirmative. Then after some laughter from the witnesses and guests, the ritual proceeded to conclusion.

When that was over and the registrar came out to the adjoining office, although she was in her usual beaming self and smiling, she immediately recounted the incident.

It is not really normal what the man had done. The registrar's office does lend itself to the public and allows for wedding couples to express themselves naturally, as long as the celebrant at the end, is satisfied with the information that is vital to the state's recognition of a marriage. So we sat there and eventually laughed it off, but we did talk a little about the incident.

What was the man thinking? What was the nature of his question? What would have been the effect of his question had the registrar replied that she was not married? 

Does an unmarried woman have the right to officiate over a civil wedding ceremony? What constitutes authority for the groom?

Perhaps he was satisfied with her answer. Perhaps he was only trying to be smart before his bride, and their guests. Maybe he just wanted to be cool. But what if he really has no recognition and belief that an unmarried woman can, and has the right to hold high office, to the point where an older man should render himself under the authority of her office and presidency during his wedding?

Something was not right in his thinking. Because further along in the ceremony when the registrar had to verify personal details, maiden name of the bride, the new name she would now acquire from her husband, their new permanent address... here, the man felt it funny to equivocate about whether the address they had given to the registrar's office was accurate. So the registrar again had to enquire as to why the husband was uncertain about his own permanent address. To which he replied that if he should win the Lotto at the weekend, his new address would be in Monaco. This conversation was going on in the middle of the official proceedings of a civil ritual - the man's own wedding ceremony.

He may have felt that this was in good spirit and he may have been acting in jest. Whatever his reasons, this man had a mind, to be disrespectful to a registrar and to show contempt for her office in that way. 

As he was already in his stride, he also felt that he should ask the registrar why she had not  asked them, the couple, if they would love and respect one and other, in good times and in bad times, till death do them part. To which the registrar replied: We don't do that. We are a civil office not a church. We do not preside over moral considerations. We concern ourselves with the basic rights, expectation and injuries of citizens.