Well well! On this glorious Friday let us hope that people like the Grand Master of Evasion, Mr Tiensten will happen upon this article and see what concerns people halfway across the world have with experimental seabed mining!

Seems like some bright people share the same concerns we do about the issue...

Deep Sea Mining the Next Frontier for Sudan and Saudi Arabia?

Source: Green Prophet

Source: The National

ILLEGAL land grabbing activities involving foreigners should be properly scrutinised by the government, former MP and minister Andrew Mald says.

“Papua New Guineans are being forced into entering into deals with local landowners in Port Moresby and elsewhere to build their homes because they are unable to buy state land,” he said this week.

Wednesday (Jan 23^rd) a little board room in the Institute of National Affairs was humming …if you’d been listening from outside the room that is.

If you were inside, a part of the audience like me, you would’ve first seen the back of a lot of heads at first. Bald ones, frizzy ones, long haired ones and blonde ones too.

As a nation we don't take up that much space in the world in terms of land and sea area but out of the 6900 spoken languages of the world almost a quarter of them are spoken in Papua New Guinea! It's quite uncommon in the world (especially in the so-called 'developed' world) to grow up speaking at least 3 languages.

A story in Radio Australia News today sent tremors of disbelief, horror and disgust all throughout my conscience.

The below report from Radio Australia News goes one step further in emphasizing the point that we have been trying to make. If only those that we appointed to represent us in that prime Haus Tambaran over at Waigani really paid attention and really did their research they wouldn't be fooled so easily.

 Special Purpose Agricultural Business Lease or SABL

In case you are in the dark what an SABL is, as the name implies is a special lease that was provisioned for under Section 11 of the Land Act (1996)

 ‘the Minister may lease customary land for the purpose of granting a special agricultural and business lease’

This lease was supposed to give traditional landowners economic benefits from the rent and employment opportunities created by those businesses that leased land from them.

Source: SciDev.net

by Jan Piotrowski