The Looking Glass

Haus Tambaran

Facebook post by the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea.

Begins-

“Looking forward to attend UBS inquiry tomorrow (060320). Time to expose people and companies and banks who use PNG as their play ground to make money!!

They have moved on or about in affluence but my country PNG still remains in man made sinkholes.

Tomorrow will be first of many of my formal submission sessions to the COI.

For public noting, this COI has not stopped police or Ombudsman from doing further research, investigation and prosecution on those of us who have been named in the OC report.

The relevance of the COI is to look at this transaction in totality and asses the criminal culpability of both individuals and companies involved in the transaction.

PNG lost around K3billion ( if Iam not wrong ) and if COI affirms crime then penalty and restitution will naturally be sought for PNG against those that COI establishes as having committed offenses.

Goodnight and I don’t claim to be a saint but this sort of things must be done to secure a safe future for our children.”

PMJM!

-Ends.

He read the blog post from a journalist in PNG,it was carte blanche a face book post by the Prime Minister of PNG, now he had no idea if this was intentional by the journalist or a Julian Assange Wiki Leaks style dump.

The post was about an inquiry into banks, companies, and entities who have allegedly essentially defrauded the state of PNG of three billion dollars.

The Prime Minister, previously the finance minister, as Prime Minister attempted to refinance an eleven point eight billion dollar loan from the Chinese Government.

Now he didn’t know if there were any checks and balances into where that eleven point eight billion dollars went but it just seemed to his uninformed mind bordering on hypocrisy.

An insinuation that Papua New Guinea’s financial woes are the result of foreign and local entities rather than blatant mismanagement by the governments previous and probably current.

During his formative years he’d heard his relatives talk about downstream processing, the appropriation of vast tracts of traditional land by various Christian missions turning them into cocoa and coconut plantations, and government corruption.

That is the elephant in the room in PNG politics,

Corruption!

Now various relatives had said to him previously in conversation to look at Singapore.

They said to him how could Singapore be so successful financially with no natural resources and yet they said PNG had oil, gas, copper, gold, nickel, fisheries, coffee, copra, coconut, oil palm, sugar, tea and talented people and PNG was still essentially a third world nation.

He eyed the offending post again,

Maybe he ran the country better than he could construct a sentence.

It was all fodder for misplaced Papua New Guinean nationalism the sort that stifles dissent, accountability, debate, partly blaming PNG government impotency on alluded to foreign interference and foreigners.

A real vote winner.

The Morning

He got out of bed and automatically walked to the kitchen as he had done as long as he could remember.

Thinking nothing he clicked the switch on the electric jug.

Another day, he hadn’t done a blog post for days he thought as he patiently waited for the jug to boil.

He remembered his excitement at receiving his first follower and the Christmas joy of having visitors from around the globe, salad days.

After gulping down his coffee he went out onto the balcony and shut the sliding door and sat down on one of the two chairs there.

He had memories and knowledge good and bad but unfortunately he just couldn’t think, he just couldn’t access them.

It was as if someone had come along and locked up his brain, and all he could do was function like a zombie going through his days on autopilot.

His family had long ago lost their patience with him as it had been so long this way.

“You can’t sit there and do nothing and wait for a miracle to ooze through the walls!”

“Why don’t you get a job with the council” and others he couldn’t remember.

He just wanted to feel contentment for what he had,

A roof over his head, running water, electricity,

A flushable toilet, food, a fridge, medication, healthcare,

A mobile phone, a computer with access to the internet, a television,

An air-conditioner, washing machine, a nice neighbourhood,

Access to public transport and a stable country in which to live.

It’s not so bad.

Ink From a Madman’s Pen

What is the point of being a good person?

What is the point of doing good deeds without anyone seeing?

What is the point of going to church when there is no one else around?

It’s a secret life that does nothing for you it’s all about being seen probably before time immemorial, you see Jesus was seen, Buddha was seen, the Prophet was seen.

Now I’m not here to cast aspersions on any of the major religions but it just seems that it is all about being seen being holy, being religious, doing good for others and things.

There in my opinion is no more selfless action than doing something for someone or reflecting on something in a holy place without no one knowing or seeing.

I am a good person but it does me no good in this overexposed world, rather it is an impediment, people tend to assume that you are a confidence artist or some kind of drug addled psychotic.

After all who would be stupid enough to be honest and good in today’s world of ‘reality’ television, multiple story lines, plot twists, cat fishing, stalking, fundamentalism, dreadfully finite consequence and trolling in overexposed ‘reality’.

Let me tell you something, if you want to be good and not seen or acknowledged,

No one wants to know you,

one because they won’t believe you and two who knows what good you have done spiritually morally or behaved in an altruistic manner because no one saw you.

Gandhi said “Be the change you want to see in the world” (note the emphasis on seeing)

Maybe if we all secretly did good deeds for others and things unseen the world would be a place of wonder again. Me.

Clutching At Straw’s

I am of Papua New Guinean and white Australian decent, I was brought up in my Aunties village in East New Britain Province, PNG, until I went to primary school.

I was educated in International schools with a lot of other Melanesian’s as well as the children of expatriates and children like me in PNG until I was brought to Australia at the end of year eight in the late eighties.

I began year nine at a boarding school in the Central West of New South Wales at a town called Bathurst.

I never really thought about racism before although I had experienced a little bit in PNG as some didn’t think that much of ‘half castes’, ‘mixed races’ and people of Chinese heritage.

While going through the rest of my higher school education experienced racism from fellow students and some teachers, so for the first time in my life I was called black cunt, nigger, black shit, coon, boong and oddly enough a derogatory South African word, kaffir.

I didn’t think much of it at the time, you see one generally goes through negative experiences first and then deals with them later and I did make some friends eventually socialised and had girlfriends.

You see I look back now and think even if half of it was joking they were really insulting my Melanesian heritage and mother.

Then I left high school and had the odd trip up North to PNG where I first became aware of native Papua New Guineans denigrating the racism that mixed race, half caste and people of Chinese heritage had with racism while at school in Australia.

They were saying our experience was to gain sympathy, a form of weakness and therefore invalid.

So I had a conversation with an acquaintance of mine who is also of Papua New Guinean and White Australian heritage and he was saying now one of the catch cries on social media in PNG was that we benefited from our white heritage through white privilege.

My friend was quite upset and I told him that it basically stemmed from ignorance and jealousy, there were a lot of pure blood Melanesian’s that we went to school with down here.

The children of politicians, high ranking public servants, businessman, middle class and well to do Papua new Guineans and truth be told, they had more means and money than I or my family did for that sake.

I have not benefited from being of white heritage I have benefited because of who I am as a person, a citizen of a country that knowingly or unknowingly takes care of it’s citizens like me and my friend and all the others like us.

Saying that we are where we are because of white privilege is just another form of clutching at straws reverse racism from the citizens of a country whose government doesn’t take care of them like it should, look at yourselves.

I mean what do they expect to achieve by bringing out that hoary old label that probably originated in the United States, they just want to discriminate, they just want to be racist.

The Dark

Darkness a comforter, blanketing the hard edge’s of the day, thankfully blurring what was plain to see.

That hurt my eyes, not wanting to see more but imprisoned in the harsh daylight, twitching and hurt.

The sun like a blade shining in its rays.

Glistening like reason as it excised hope, the day lost to a strength without hope of conquer,

Lost and home in the darkness.

But Wait!, There’s More!

Pathos, banality, pithy sentiment, poorly thought out opinion, sweeping generalisation, verbosity and attempted prose awaits,

All you have to do is click on a post on my homepage, scroll down to the bottom to where it says published by throsmbos and click on view more posts within the bottom of the paragraph beneath..

The Nightwatchman

The vivid,disturbing nightmares like watching a deeply upsetting movie on repeat, the opiate like reassurance of waking up in silence and barely recalling them, around three in the morning.

This hemisphere of the world still asleep or working he wondered why he had nightmares and thought they were a result of a lack of control,unconscious fear and repressed uncomfortable memories.

The silence broken by a muscle car revving loudly, some hero on the roads surrounding the flat accelerated his supercharged four wheeled extension of his penis past,at this hour?

I mean you have to wonder about the mentality behind such actions, is it an attempt to score chicks but I mean they are all asleep I just don’t know about some people, some people have no sense of decorum.

After five in the morning and the avian world sing their songs to the coming sun, ushering in a new day, he felt a little better after purloining some of his flatmates tin of coffee to make a cuppa.

The sun outside slowly lightened the sky, ‘what will happen today’ he thought, ‘nothing!’ he answered himself ‘but what you make of the day’, A siren sounded off in the distance slowly getting louder then abruptly ceased.

A Thousand Miles

There is an old I assume is Chinese saying, ” A journey of a thousand miles begins with a simple step.”

Step..

Inside and sit comfortably on my couch.

While I was out having my morning smoke on the balcony earlier, a lady wearing sunglasses came into my field of view.

She stared at me as she walked by on the footpath to the bus stop at the bottom of the road.

Probably wending her way to work.

I get stares every now and then on the balcony and I always wonder why.

You see I perceive a stare as a sign of hostility.

Usually annoyed I just disregarded it, she doesn’t know me, the trials and tribulations that I have been through, the privations of my daily existence.

I have things I have to do today.

I guess she is employed.

Probably angered that I’m not, that is the gulf between us.

The towels dry on the clothes pony in front of me.

My coffee should be ready to drink.

I think of that Hoodoo Gurus song, a thousand miles away.

To Blog or not to Blog?

I guess its what you want to achieve when you start a blog,

Some people want to build a brand and have thousands of followers.

For me it’s the quality of the interaction.

I like to learn like the rest of us about whatever damn fool topic that piques my interest.

So what do I do when I follow someone, I read their latest post and go from there but what do I want ?

Someone to read all my blog posts without realizing that I should do the same in return.

Someone has to be interesting to me for me to delve into their archives.

And there’s the question, what makes me more interesting than someone else for people to do that?

I never thought that I had an ego but there it is.

I actually think that I am more interesting than other people.

The raindrops hit the metal roof..

I guess I am no more interesting than anyone else,

I just like playing with words like a child plays with Lego.

It keeps me thinking,

I also like reading about other ideas and interesting topics.

I guess it’s a learning curve, a process,

You have to extend the parameters of your knowledge, imagination, curiosity.

The raindrops stopped, silence, the sound of a fan in the other room,

The squeaking of my office chair groaning under my my weight,

The almost deafening tinnitus.

Fundamentalism…

I have a friend who is a practicing Mormon who I occasionally go to for advice, he’s lived an awful lot of life in his years before adhering to his faith, being one year older than me, which is why I seek and value his counsel.

He was relating to me a discussion he once had with an acquaintance about principals, and he was saying that God’s laws are an absolute whereas principals can be manipulated and corrupted by people.

I heard what he had to say and agreed with his premise, disregarding the alarm bells in my head that go off when I am exposed to fundamentalist thought.

I agree if God’s laws are adhered to in their purest form, they can be seen as an absolute but how often have God’s laws been adhered to?

That is not to insinuate that it does not happen but people are weak, that is both the frailty and wonder of the human condition.

Now maybe Mormon’s are different and strictly follow God’s word as in their Book of Mormon and I am not seek to denigrate their faith, I mean they are the one of the healthiest, cleanest, upwardly mobile and sharpest looking groups on earth,

But…

I guess it is not for me at this point in my life but on the other hand have we only seen the ugly discriminatory side of fundamentalism like radical Islam’s treatment of women and other faith’s and Israel Folau’s stance against homosexuality, fornicators et-cetera and not seen the good side of fundamentalism.

You see we are sensitised against fundamentalism in the news on one side Islamic fundamentalism and the other Christian fundamentalism.

I think for us to respect fundamentalism, fundamentalism has got to learn to respect and coexist with everybody else and realise that people have freedom of choice.

I wrote that because people are free to make up their minds and the fundamentalists of all religions should be satisfied with having a guaranteed ticket to Heaven, Jannah,Nirvana or be reincarnated as an ant and let the rest of us be free to choose our own paths.

That is not to say I won’t listen to my friends religious views or anybody elses for, as in any faith there are pertinent points of view on many subjects and it is refreshing to know and understand how they came about.

He may be totally religious now and I a total Philistine but at least I respect his point of view.

Money

Money, you can’t live without it in this consumer society.

We are all programmed from birth to depend on it even if we end up despising it’s power over us we still need it to survive.

A whole world of billions of people minds are all focused on one thing, how to get money.

Even if you have nothing of material value someone somewhere will try to make money out of you.

I think the cult of money devalues the free flow of ideas and information that could make an incalculable difference in peoples lives.

Idea’s such as how to get a better yield out of your crops, how to take proper care of your livestock, how to purify water and practical healthcare.

All the money and information are at the top of this money and information pyramid so by the time it gets down to the base, where the bulk of the worlds population is, it is of negligible value, superseded.

As he lay dying from terminal cancer Bob Marley said to his son Ziggy,

“Money can’t buy life.”

Maybe instead of fighting over the scraps at the base we just simplify our lives and stop being so selfish and self involved and be more giving within reasonable limits.

Unfortunately in this day and age you have to try to take care of yourself as no one else will because they are so obsessed with money.

If it’s not a obsession over earning it, it’s an obsession over keeping it

How rich do you have to be?