Bernard Narokobi, one of the finest of Papua New Guinea’s politicians and thinkers, passed away earlier this month. There have been many tributes to him on various PNG-focused websites which speak better and more fully than I can here about how important he was to the country and how remarkable he was as a person. [...]
I am coming up on my first full week in Port Moresby — the weather is (relatively) cold and (relatively) wet. I’m staying with a host family in Port Moresby who are welcoming, accommodating, and fun to be around. (I’ve been typing the word ‘accommodate’ repeatedly the last couple of days for some reason and [...]
The National is running a piece called “Let Cops Stay Longer”:http://www.thenational.com.pg/050809/nation4.php, which quotes Pakiru Pundi as urging the government to extend the state of emergency in Porgera and that the house burnings reported last week were not serious. His concern appears to be that illegal miners and non-ethnic Porgerans are colonizing the valley. Some of [...]
Good lord: “Barrick-recommended military force burns down hundreds of homes in PNG”:http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/04/30/18592070.php And this from the Post Courier: “Porgera locals to sue government”:http://www.postcourier.com.pg/20090501/news01.htm Update 1 May 09 17:30: Here’s a roundup of some more links. Some of these pages are being edited while live so sometimes the content changes. Radio New Zealand: “PNG Denies Paper [...]
From “The National”:http://www.thenational.com.pg/042409/nation4.php
For some reason, the wikipedia page on “Chinese people in Papua New Guinea”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_people_in_Papua_New_Guinea is unusually good.
The hydrocarbon industry in Papua New Guinea is moving so quickly at the moment that I usually don’t bother posting all the interesting articles I read. However, “this new article in Euromoney.com”:http://www.euromoney.com/Article/2173612/CurrentIssue/71519/Papua-New-Guineas-pipeline-to-change.html?ID=71519&p=1 is pretty in-depth and helpful for discussing what is going on macroeconomically in the country.
I’ve been following the deployment of the Papua New Guinea Defense Force to Porgera for a while but here is some info for the record: First, ABC’s main piece with an interview with Ila Temu: “PNG Troops Deployed to Curb Highlands Lawlessness”:http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/pacbeat/stories/200903/s2505288.htm As well as a shorter piece in the national from, I believe, 13 [...]
“Lihir has stopped production for the time being for landowner issues”:http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssPreciousMetalsMinerals/idUSSYD39339920090126. Ouch.
Somehow with Taiwanese politicians having their careers ruined over PNG diplomacy scandals and egregious witchcraft killings in the highlands and developments with PNG’s big hydrocarbon projects you’d think I’d have something else to say but in fact the one newspaper article I have to blog about or else I’ll forget it is in fact that [...]
The Globe and Mail is running a longish article on “Papua New Guinea and China’s New Empire”:http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081231.wyorkchina0103/CommentStory/International/home. The piece begins with a description of China’s ‘new empire’ and its use of soft power, especially in Africa, and ends with a discussion of the Ramu nickel mine. It is an interesting piece, although not as interesting [...]
I’m always interested to see what sort of images and models people use to understand rural Papua New Guinea — tribes, clans, peasants, etc. So I was thought this recent article about “warring hill tribes in the Southern Highlands”:http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/programguide/stories/200810/s2384715.htm was pretty interesting. “Hill tribes”? That’s not one I hear very often. I think of Tari [...]
PNG is not as susceptible to analyses of neoliberalism that way that other places are, but the living edge of privatization and all its ambivalences is the phone system and Digicel. There’s a nice new article on “Digicel and BMobile”:http://www.islandsbusiness.com/islands_business/index_dynamic/containerNameToReplace=MiddleMiddle/focusModuleID=18199/overideSkinName=issueArticle-full.tpl in Island Business that is worth reading to keep up on current trends.
Mike Manning, chair of Transparency International and a major player in the “Institute for National Affairs”:http://www.inapng.com/ “died Saturday in Rabaul”:http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/news/stories/200808/s2344888.htm?tab=pacific. Mike was a naturalized citizen of Papua New Guinea and he epitomized a certain sort of crusty, cynical Australian expatism that is such a strong — and ambivalent — part of PNG’s history.I did not [...]
It’s been a long time coming, but it looks like “Kuk is now a UNESCO world heritage site”:http://news.trendaz.com/index.shtml?show=news&newsid=1241417&lang=EN. If you don’t know about Kuk you can “read more about it here”:http://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5059/
Some random links and news relating to PNG: “Motu Koita people want compensation for colonialization”:http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23968054-16953,00.html: one unexpectedly interesting thing about this article is its avoidance of the terms ‘tribe’ or ‘indigenous’ — ‘tribe’ is mentioned once but stays out of the headline, and the Motu Koita spokesman uses the term ‘landowner’ once. Instead ‘people’ is [...]
Ther PNG blogosphere is actually pretty active although I have to admit that I don’t follow it as much as I should. Two new recent blogs by anthropologists working on PNG are worth noting, however — “Politics of Nature”:http://politicsofnature.wordpress.com/ by Jamon Halvaksz and “The Melanesian”:http://themelanesian.org/ by Andrew Moutu. Jamon’s has been around for a year [...]
So “Koiari apologize for killing sevende missonary”:http://www.stanet.ch/apd/news/1841.html — a very different invocation of PNG’s past then that detailed in Lindstrom’s excellent “review article on the concept of ‘kastom’”:http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a794152470~db=all?jumptype=alert&alerttype=new_issue_alert,email.
“Bad times at Wafi and Hidden Valley”:http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jFPbETQHAXvVa1AUtcUKChU00v2g
“The new Jared Diamond piece in the New Yorker”:http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/21/080421fa_fact_diamond Note to self: I fact-checked this.
An article on “tourism in PNG”:http://www.smh.com.au/news/papua-new-guinea/the-last-frontier/2008/03/13/1205126091209.html from the Sydney Morning Herald.
According to Inmet “the Ok Tedi strike is over”:http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssIndustryMaterialsUtilitiesNews/idUSN1439327920080314 and over at the “Sydney Morning Herald”:http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/png-pm-to-step-down-after-40-year-career/2008/03/15/1205472171792.html Michael Somare says he is stepping down. I do not keep my finger on the beating pulse of PNG politics, but my bet is that he’s figured out that it will be easier to rock the cradle when he’s [...]
Workers at Ok Tedi Mine are “on strike”:http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/12/business/mine.php. Sounds like OTML’s attempt to retain engineers in the face of growing demand and low supply ended up upsetting everyone else.
In my recent trip to Australia I was bowled over to find what a superb job the Australian government has done of digitizing its archives. Now you don’t need to trek out to the Australian War Memorial (which has a “blog”:http://blog.awm.gov.au/) — You can now view, digitized, the “ENTIRE ANGAU WAR DIARY”:http://www.awm.gov.au/diaries/ww2/folder.asp?folder=288 as well as [...]
Check out this fancy new site for “Milne Bay Tourism”:http://www.visitmilnebay.com/ — very nice indeed.
After earlier issues with a temporary closure it looks like “Lihir is back on track”:http://www.news.com.au/business/story/0,23636,23131449-14334,00.html
I knew about the “ASOPA website”;http://www.asopa.com.au/ for some time, but didn’t know there was a “blog”:http://asopa.typepad.com/asopa_people/ as well. Awesome.
Another illegal miner has been shot in Porgera — there is coverage at “The National”:http://www.thenational.com.pg/010208/Nation%205.htm and “The Age”:http://news.theage.com.au/illegal-miner-shot-dead-in-png/20080102-1jun.html
Just in case you missed it, while I was away PNG has faced one of its most major natural disasters in years: “tropical cyclone Guba”:http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601081&sid=amp_W1VamMGs&refer=australia In other news “macroeconomic indicators continue to look good”:http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2007/11/19/afx4353296.html
Here’s a PNG story that has been making headlines recently, “malaria climbs into highlands PNG”:http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/12/09/asia/AS-GEN-Bali-Climate-Quiet-Scourge.php. Mostly its a write up of some PNGIMR research. I appreciate the fact that it lacks the usual “ooohh ahhh they’re cannibals” extremism that too often populates news stories about PNG. It even gets myths of malaria right — in [...]