This past Friday the UN once again made history. Heads of State and other High Officials from 175 states added their signatures to the Paris Climate Agreement, the largest number of states ever to sign a UN agreement on any single day.
The opening ceremony was mostly a lovefest and not without reason. To create this consensus agreement was a truly massive undertaking, one that required states to overcome latent climate skepticism while working through some intense political considerations, including the concern that states finally finding their economic footing are being asked to break their carbon habits while the large states make only modest efforts to combat their own carbon addictions. That states were able to overcome (or at least overlook) these and other obstacles to reach this agreement will go down as a truly historic undertaking in this age of climate trouble. People outside the UN can only imagine the degree of difficulty associated with bringing a large number of diverging state interests together in an agreement of this complexity and magnitude, albeit with its multiple, notable limitations.
The ceremony was not entirely about hugs and congratulations. There were warnings as well from inside and outside the UN. In addition to the seemingly endless "we must move to action" yearnings, several more pointed critiques were made. For instance, Bolivia was noteworthy in calling attention to the root causes of the climate crisis which in the mind of its president are linked to individualism, greed and militarism and which will allegedly require a thorough re-acquaintance with indigenous lifestyles if the Paris agreement has any chance to succeed. Special guest Leonardo DiCaprio was equally blunt in urging states to "leave the carbon in the ground," and transition more rapidly than at present to a more sustainable energy matrix.
Beyond UN confines other warnings abounded, often with greater intensity. While the ceremony was taking place in the UN General Assembly hall, twitter was exploding with images of melting ice caps, "bleached" coral and other difficult – if-not-impossible problems to reverse. The Stimson Center in Washington DC was referring to our oceans as "the world's largest crime scene." As I'm sure was the case with many others, our twitter account was engaged by groups far from New York weighing in on the "temperate" measures being suggested by UN member states for a planet besieged by massive storms and droughts, a planet now thought by many in the scientific community to be at a dangerous tipping point.
Indeed, early on, the negotiations for the Paris Climate agreement exposed an uneven sense of urgency, as large industrial (and polluting) states hedged their bets, newly developing states sought to continue their growth trajectories, and small island states sought to counter what for them is more akin to an existential threat, even in the very near term. And despite urgings on Friday from French President Hollande for states to overcome what remains of "narrow interests," there is legitimate concern about how much agreement implementation will actually be able to transcend the rhetorical and self-referential. During the opening ceremony, it was only Canada's Trudeau who specifically called for special support for the most vulnerable states, the states which, as a group, bear the least responsibility for the climate mess we now find ourselves in.
During the daylong activities, several states – quoting from the Secretary General's climate agreement assessment – also noted that "the unthinkable has become the unstoppable." As I watched the ceremony, I thought about what is needed – beyond the agreement itself – to keep up our sense of urgency to reverse current trends and replace climate crisis with climate health. And as is often the case, my mind wandered to concerns that are mirrored in more common human practices.
For instance, in counseling it is common to speak of "bargaining," clients who agree to make changes that are not so terribly important while escaping responsibility for the more fundamental changes that they really need to make. This tendency to focus on what matters less in order to avoid commitment to what matters more occurs in many contexts and creates numerous, well-documented problems for families and communities.
In the context of the climate agreement, bargaining by states might well spell the end for life as we know it, substituting carefully-crafted by largely token gestures for the more fundamental shifts on which, as Italy and others noted, the existence of our children and grandchildren depends. The gifted Tanzanian youth who spoke to the assembled UN dignitaries made clear the stakes of the moment noting, almost as a warning, "I am not alone." If the climate agreement is to meet its full potential, states (and other stakeholders) will have to suspend all vestiges of bargaining and be willing to live with some of the highly inconvenient consequences of a climate challenge created largely on our watch.
It is also important, as several states noted during the opening ceremony, that climate health is seen as a full-spectrum responsibility and not merely one of state and even corporate concerns. The refrain from within the UN of "common but differentiated responsibility" can be put in somewhat more familiar terms – unless we get many more capable and committed hands on deck, this "ship" will take on more and more water, agreement or no agreement.
Easily said, but there are many obstacles to filling this deck – including deep, well-cultivated habits of consumption and media distraction that impede both the development of skills that can contribute meaningfully to address the current crisis, and the strength of character to push us to continue contributing through disappointments and setbacks. Much like teenagers behave with parents, it is just too easy for all of us to externalize blame on to states and other stakeholders, eschewing the full-spectrum engagements and commitments that bring into sharp relief just how difficult and complex the climate mitigation task actually is. Reversing habits that threaten our survival is every bit as energy and time consuming as forming those habits in the first instance. There is no time like the present to get started on this difficult but life saving work.
At one point during the opening ceremony, the Secretary-General noted that "we are running behind schedule," thus delaying the actual agreement signing. For some, this seemed almost metaphorical – a response to climate threats that many fear might be just a bit too little and just a bit too late. Others commented on the "footprint" of the signing ceremony, a huge UN room full of officials and their entourages who chose, yet again, to fly in rather than Skype in to express their climate concerns. Like citizens and their governments, the UN also has habits to address, habits that motivate some to turn their backs on a problem we simply cannot solve without them. People – skeptical and otherwise — need to know that the policy community, too, is willing to wrestle with and amend our habits for the sake of our common future.
As the Prime Minister of the small island state of Tuvalu made clear at the UN, climate impacts are now a global phenomenon. Sea waters in every ocean are rising, storms are intensifying, drought and flood zones alike are expanding, traumatized climate refugees are desperately seeking safer ground. We're all in this now. We must all be in this now. GA President Lykketoft specifically cited the role of civil society groups (like our own) in keeping states on track regarding their climate responsibilities. Clearly, we on the non-governmental side also have our own, long road to walk on climate impacts before any "all clear" signals are likely to be heard.
The aggregate message conveyed on this Climate signing day was simple and clear: This is going to be a hard task. The hour is getting very late.
Like many people in the US (and certainly in other parts of the world) I am beginning this morning by switching on the weather forecast. In so doing, I discover that it is going to be a warm, wet and windy January day in New York, but also learn about the deep freeze in the center of the US and Canada, ongoing drought in southern Africa and Central America, un-seasonal tropical depressions in the Pacific, and much more weather-related information that is of interest to some and a warning to others.
In the temperate zones, our weather adjustments are largely confined to manageable temperature and precipitation variations, though there are also increasingly dangerous weather configurations that command our interest and even our awe – hurricanes/cyclones along the coasts of states large and small; tornados, lightning storms and other violent and erratic weather systems; major shifts in surface temperatures, sometimes during the course of a single day; patterns of drought punctuated by torrential rains creating flooding in areas where parched soil is simply incapable of absorbing so much water; rising tides caused in part by melting ice caps.
Weather can be a significant social leveler within states though not necessarily between them. Funnel clouds don't know to avoid wealthy neighborhoods and massive ocean weather systems do considerable damage to the largest (and smallest) shoreline homes. Our growing collective fascination with challenging weather patterns also transcends social class limitations, though we cannot emphasize enough that levels of resilience regarding weather's effects vary dramatically, sometimes to life threatening degrees.
This past Thursday, the UN convened an event to help assess and address some of the effects of the El Niño system and its warming ocean waters that has scrambled any and all of our comfortable assumptions regarding weather patterns and their seasonal variations. Chaired by USG and UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O'Brien, and involving representatives from the World Meteorological Association (WMO) and administrators of UN country teams in Guatemala, Lesotho, Ethiopia and other affected regions, the meeting was designed to bring more international attention to, as the representative of Fiji put it, "the slow onset disaster," set in motion by this particularly robust iteration of El Niño.
For their part, the UN country team representatives focused less on what is coming and more on the damage that has already taken place, from looming malnutrition in Ethiopia and disease outbreaks in Fiji to fresh water scarcity in Lesotho that is having profoundly negative implications for health care in that country. At the same time, Guatemala's UN field representative cited factors such as inequality, corruption and "institutional discrimination" that continue to impede otherwise critical efforts to respond to the country's current, weather-related vulnerabilities.
As the representative of WMO demonstrated, this El Niño event will not last forever. Apparently, there will likely be some return to "neutral conditions" mid-year, after which we are likely to have to cope with La Niña impacts. But it was also made clear that El Niño impacts, perhaps even the most severe of them, have not run their course, and thus significant, sustained attentiveness at UN level to emergency response preparedness is more than warranted.
As is so often the case in this world, it is the poor and marginalized who generally suffer most from chaotic, dangerous weather systems. The UN, specifically USG O'Brien, is to be commended for holding this briefing and for fully integrating perspectives from both weather scientists and officials from already affected regions. However, given that so many states are, indeed, "already affected" by current weather emergencies, we urge UN colleagues to find ways to get further ahead of the weather curve; helping to ensure that all of us – especially the vulnerable, the disabled and the politically marginal — are sufficiently prepared to cope with a range of potentially deadly (albeit at times fascinating) weather threats.
For those of you who follow US baseball, the "Dog Days of August" represents that time when (now mostly overpaid) players are on the field virtually every day, in the hot sun, with no prospect of time off, let alone occasions for mountain hikes or naps by the pool. It is a time when tempers are short, thoughtfulness is largely absent and trust in humanity (let alone in umpires) is at a premium.
A UN version of "dog days" might refer to this current time between the energy-draining but successful adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals outcome document and the frenzy that is sure to characterize the September opening of the 70th UN General Assembly.
Despite a relentless (and sometimes frustrating) workload this year and given the longing that some might have for family picnics and time at the beach to read something other than policy briefs, the UN is still very much open for business. Nigeria's August presidency of the Security Council promises to keep diplomats in their seats as events in Mali, Central African Republic (CAR), Yemen and elsewhere require vigilance, the recent resolution to investigate culpability for chlorine and other chemical weapons use in Syria seeks operational clarity, and important work continues on establishing more trusting relations with regional security mechanisms.
Outside the Council, the UN has been wrestling this week with ways to integrate (and provide full access to) global geospatial data, a key element in assessing shifts in land use patterns, waterfront erosion, climate patters and other matters essential to successful implementation of the recently-adopted Sustainable Development Goals. Attacks on UN peacekeepers by "spoilers," murky elections in some host states, and unresolved scandals involving soldiers who are duty bound to protect civilians provide ample fodder for consultations and response planning. And annual events dedicated to youth and indigenous people are reminders to all of us that equal rights to health care, education and other necessities remain elusive for millions, and that the legitimate needs and goals of future generations are still being compromised by too many short-term decisions made by the current generation of authorities.
And for many, thoughts in August turn to Japan and the annual ritual surrounding those whose lives were ended now 70 years ago in a flash – two flashes actually – from nuclear explosions authored by US authorities. As the surviving Hibakusha and their direct testimony depart this world, we are left with endless arguments about the necessity of weapons use as a means of ending WWII. More importantly perhaps to current and future generations, we are also left with nuclear stockpiles that are decreasing in size at a snail's pace while having their capacities modernized at a rapid one.
GAPW closely follows the work of groups such as the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy and thus we leave most of the policy advocacy on these weapons to them. But given that UN headquarters failed to hold a ceremony on Hiroshima Day for the first time in recent memory, and that Nagasaki day falls (today) on a Sunday, a few comments from our own security policy vantage point seems appropriate.
After 70 years of production, threatening gestures and now deliberate, expensive modernization, nuclear weapons remain for most possessor states an addictive element of their national security doctrines. Like alcoholics recovering from a drinking binge and pledging never to drink again, there is episodically bold talk among nuclear weapons possessors of "getting to zero," of eliminating these weapons once and for all. And yet, disarmament structures and treaties designed to facilitate elimination are routinely ignored or even deliberately undermined. Moreover, modernization processes for nuclear weapons are underway (as far as we know) in all current national arsenals, with a price tag according to some reports significantly exceeding a trillion dollars.
Here is a trillion dollar tip: States don't modernize weapons if they plan to rid themselves of them.
As many nuclear weapons activists worldwide have noted repeatedly, the consequences of detonation of such massive weapons would be enough to permanently disrupt, if not existentially threaten, life as we know it. Such detonations would be sufficiently destructive such that survivors might well envy the dead; that the "dog days" following such blasts would make most survivors long for anything approaching normalcy or basic sufficiency, even those hot, sticky, low-energy August days around UN headquarters. Despite the "humanitarian consequences" aptly described over several generations, we continue to play with this nuclear fire, keeping the nuclear threat at or near the top of a deadly list of self-inflicted "wounds" which much of our species seems unwilling to heal, let alone bind.
And here is another trillion dollar tip: The almost inconceivable amount of money that we waste on nuclear and other weapons systems continues to rob future generations of funds to achieve sustainable development, reverse climate impacts, and guarantee health and educational opportunity for themselves and their own children.
The too-often horizontal, addictive and narcissistic dynamics of our defense and security policies are a source of discouragement and even anger for many, as a spate of news stories from Nagasaki and around the world today make clear. It is almost beyond imagination that smart, caring, savvy adults can consistently craft policies that might succeed in easing a bit of global pressure but that fail to provide longer-view leadership for anxious people – including the young and indigenous persons who will fill the UN this month – who properly cringe at the thought of inheriting an overheated, bio-compromised, politically-polarized and overly militarized planet.
As ice caps melt, ocean storms intensify, areas of severe drought expand, specie extinctions accelerate and groups armed with second-hand weapons show first-hand contempt for the governments that have too-often neglected their interests, nuclear weapons in their current or modernized iterations represent one crisis waiting to happen that we simply can live without. The lingering justifications for maintaining (let alone modernizing) these weapons are quickly eroding. Only the policy addictions (and their high price tags) remain intact.
In these "dog days" of August it might be wise for all of us still at work at the UN to spend a bit of time inside this week's events focused on the needs, aspirations and skills of youth and indigenous persons. These people, by tradition or generational temperament, demand a longer view on security and development policy, something wiser and less addictive than merely responding to the next alarm bell. By indigenous standards, we have long since failed the "seventh generation" policy test. Perhaps this month,on nuclear weapons and other global threats, we can find more of the wisdom and means needed to at least pass the "next generation" one.
Among the features of this week's events, in addition to momentum-gathering efforts to counter what the Secretary-General referred to as a "snail's pace" of urgent UN action on climate health, was the high-level presence of policy leaders from the Small Island Developing States (SIDS).
Despite this growing awareness, progress on firm, remedial measures remains stilted. In the General Assembly, Kiribati's President Tong cited a "loss of hope" from telling the same story over and over and wondering if anyone is listening. As noted by Palau Minister Beck in the "One Ocean" event, whether we are prepared or not, the dire predictions of last generations' climate scientists appear to be coming true. And as Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Debrum prodded the Council (which had last taken up climate 2 years ago), "what has really changed" in our collective response? The answer echoing through all the week's events was, clearly not enough. As DSG Eliasson lamented with a good deal of off-the-cuff passion, "we are not at peace with nature." We have not, as Sweden shared in the Arria meeting, done our part to "supplant national red lines with nature's red lines" nor have we fully grasped, as noted by Poland, the full relationship between the health of oceans and other ecosystems and the success of our development efforts to eradicate poverty once and for all.
And while some states wondered if the Council should be heavily invested in climate issues apart from interactions with ECOSOC and other relevant UN agencies and programs, the peace and security implications of climate were also laid bare. Lithuania was one of several states which highlighted the degree to which a damaged climate can be a "driver of insecurity." And Chile provided its own thoughtful statement that underscored climate's role in bringing otherwise latent conflicts, especially over water access, into the open. In this context, Chile wisely reinforced the human rights and gender dimensions to any Security Council or other UN actions designed to counter or even reverse climate-related security threats.
All of this discussion – in the Council, in ECOSOC and the General Assembly, in some extraordinary side events – was welcome if perhaps a bit late in the game. But all of it also pointed to another 'climate' dimension, the climate we have created within our diplomatic and UN walls, a climate that equally needs attention and even healing if we expect the global public – and especially younger generations – to trust our 'strategic sincerity' to manage this planet-threatening crisis.
Why indeed, many wonder, is it taking so long for the international community to respond to what is such an obvious external threat, risking an overheated and contaminated bequest to future generations of which we should be at least alarmed and probably also ashamed? We have our own analysis, but many of the answers lie in the words of the diplomats whom themselves are authors and products of an interior version of our 'climate' challenge.
Part of this struggle of internal climate is related to the habits, some helpful some destructive, that we dutifully cultivate but rarely interrogate. In ECOSOC it was Romania's MP Borbely who noted how the most "beautiful" sustainability plans are undermined by our "stubborn mindsets." South Africa chimed in at the same event, noting our collective consumer culture that has gotten "out of hand," a habit that is difficult to break but which must somehow be tamed if we are to convince skeptical publics that UN climate policy can truly inspire altered behaviors on the scale needed.
Then there are the other messages we send, often incidentally, that undermine public confidence in our internal climate and the decisions that proceed from it. For instance, in a discussion in the Security Council this week on Darfur and the International Criminal Court, as is protocol in such matters, the Sudanese Ambassador was given the final word, attacking the professionalism of Prosecutor Bensouda and allowing those who were witness to the statement to come away thinking that the Sudan government was a victim of a witch hunt rather than a perpetrator of abuse on a mass scale. As is their habit, the Council members had already spoken. None came to the defense of Bensouda's mandate amidst the Sudanese assault, and protocol granted no permission for her to come to her own.
The next day in the Council's monthly 'wrap up" session the UK's Ambassador Rycroft called attention to another sometimes dispiriting aspect of our institutional habit – the endless reading by officials of policy statements, largely in impersonal and dispassionate tones. His concern seemed to be in part with presentations that are repetitive, abstract, do not respond directly to other state positions and are, as New Zealand noted during the same meeting, a means of "scoring points" rather than solving problems in places like Yemen, Syria or Palestine. Such failures of political resolve, as Malaysia noted, undermine confidence in a fundamental responsibility of the UN system, and this confidence is eroded further as states address in monotone while onlookers seek some passion. As someone new around the Council table Amb. Rycroft's statement suggested, perhaps against hope, that Council members can communicate a more personal, caring and even urgent engagement in their dealings with each other and with respect to the billions of people living at the edge of our policy decisions.
The sometimes tired, habitual and even mean-spirited messages that can be experienced in many UN meeting rooms may seem unrelated to climate policy, but such messages can collectively undermine public confidence in our ability to adjust institutional habits in constructive ways to fit the world's urgent circumstances. If we at the UN — people of education and privilege — cannot (will not) shift the energy of the structures and protocols of our institutions and their (in this instance) climate-related decisionmaking, there is little reason to believe that the more modestly situated will be able and willing to do so. Especially on climate, it is discouraging at best to see stakeholders fussing over ice cream that is seconds away from melting on the floor.
Back at the General Assembly event, the Secretary-General virtually begged delegations to "quicken your pace and raise your ambitions." That an existential threat such as climate change would require such a plea is perhaps more telling than the plea itself. We understand full well that science-generated data sets alone do not drive policy, let alone its consensus. But the circumstances to which this data points will require all of us one day to answer for any and all vestiges of our stubborn neglect. By not changing our messaging and (more importantly) our policy content on climate, we risk being roundly scorned in our absence by another generation that will be forced to cope with a crisis that may no longer be able to be resolved.
In that same General Assembly event, President Tong of Kiribati expressed his longing, one day soon, to be able to say to the world's children "you don't need to worry anymore" about climate health. Getting to this 'peace of mind' (not to mention 'peace with nature') will take more compassion from all of us, as Elder HE Mary Robinson explained during a recent side event; but also an institutional commitment to "prioritize the most vulnerable and least responsible." In other words, we must commit more to encouraging that hopeful combination of less change in our external climate, and more change in our internal one.
Editor's Note: This piece by GAPW's Human Rights Fellow, Karin Perro, explores the growing sustaiinability, human rights and climate implications for the health of indigenous communities. In many UN commissions and conference rooms, including the current Forum on Forests, respect for indigenous rights is growing in promience as are the worldviews that ground indigenous communities. As Perro makes clear, no successful post-2015 development strategy can neglect the aspirations and contributions of indigenous peoples.
As winter relinquished its final hold on UN Headquarters, springtime's colorful cherry blossoms and tulip buds vied for attention with the vibrant hues and textures of traditional native attire embellishing UN corridors. The UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues kicked off on April 20, 2015 under the capable leadership of Australian Chair Megan Davis, who began the fourteenth session urging full participation of indigenous representatives in shaping the Forum's agenda.
In his introductory statement DSG Jan Eliasson eloquently set the Forum's tone, calling for a collective embrace of indigenous peoples' visions and aspirations while reaffirming the UN commitment to indigenous rights, including the right to health, education, land, and self-determination. Imploring a global 'peace negotiation with nature' and respect for all living things, Eliasson invoked (for many) indigenous spiritualism as embodied by an inviolate 'Mother Earth', and emphasized the need for safeguarding the world's environmental health that is so vital to both indigenous community and global development.
The right to ancestral lands was a tenuous thread woven throughout the Forum proceedings, with significant indigenous clamoring for 'free, prior, and informed consent' in matters of land rights and development initiatives. And rightly so – depletion of land fertility, dumping of radioactive waste, deforestation, and contamination of waters by extractive industrial processes are all byproducts of multinational corporations' circumvention of prior and informed consent mandates, too often with state complicity and ineffective regulation enforcement.
There are, of course, other social and environment forces at play that adversely impact indigenous land rights and usage, beyond the prescience or control of well-meaning governance bodies or human agency. Natural disasters, climate change, and soil and water defamation due in part to illicit crop cultivation leave indigenous people dispossessed of land and land-dependent livelihoods, reduces tourism revenues, and decimates traditional medicine and food resources. As the Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Issues noted, indigenous peoples compromise 5% of global population but 15% of the world's poor. Eradicating indigenous poverty, hunger and malnutrition can only be attained if proactive measures are funded and enforced to protect vulnerable lands, forests, oceans and coastlines and halt all forms of environmental degradation.
Increasingly the UN has recognized the undeniable connection between natural resources, environmental health and sustainable development. This is good news for indigenous communities that rely on local natural resources for subsistence and food security. However, potentially irreversible environmental consequences lead many disaffected indigenous youth to abandon traditional practices and seek alternative employment beyond ancestral territories. Assimilation erodes the link to cultural identity and knowledge, as limited opportunities for traditional livelihoods encourage youth migration to urban centers. Once there, pervasive discrimination and inadequate education create barriers for entry into the mainstream workforce.
Consequently, the damage inflicted upon the collective indigenous psyche is staggering. According to cited research reports, rights curtailments and the continued denial of self-determination has led to an alarming acceleration in youth self-harm, suicides, and alcohol abuse. Substandard or scant mental healthcare facilities are often ill equipped to provide culturally sensitive care, treatment or support. As a result, indigenous youth representatives expressed feeling disaffected, disempowered and 'spiritually broken'. Hopelessness now thrives where once pride and dignity proliferated, rooted in a spiritual connection to nature that engendered vibrant culture diversity and a richness of cultural heritage.
For many, past injustices still inflict fresh wounds and reopen unhealed scars. Proud indigenous representatives condemned the persistent remnants of colonialism, casting an uneasy (and in some corners unwelcome) spotlight on the insidious legacy of Western dominance, born from arrogance and greed, and fed on ignorance and fear. Treaty violations, unfulfilled promises, contested spaces, political exclusion, and cultural genocide remain stubbornly resistant to the implementation of fair and equitable policies. Where fragile incipient democracies struggle for survival, dormant seeds of dissention now sprout and propagate largely unimpeded, supplanting rule of law and strong governance. Many of the world's indigenous are now perilously caught in the chaotic interstice between regional armed conflicts and nationalism, xenophobia and ethnic cleansing, forcing their displacement and threatening their cultural existence.
In spite of the identifiable commonalities within the global community of indigenous peoples, there are also substantial distinctions among and between groups that preclude a one-size-fits-all policy approach. The Forum's kaleidoscopic cultural display often reflected the diverse – and often divergent – grievances expressed by indigenous participants. If too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth, will too many diverse indigenous issues on the Forum's platter undermine their fully realized inclusion in the upcoming post-2015 sustainable development goals?
For indigenous activist leaders seeking commonality of causes within the indigenous movement as a means of pooling resources for greater political leverage, a force-fitting of group-specific goals into overarching umbrella targets may inadvertently create policy vacuums for already isolated or less vocal indigenous groups. Many smaller indigenous communities already have societal burdens too great to shoulder without also having to contend with the 'double-whammy' of additional marginalization within an already marginalized community.
That said, aligning indigenous interests with other rights-based groups, particularly those having garnered significant visibility and influence, could prove useful in gaining an indigenous foothold in the pre-September 2015 scramble to endorse a set of SDGs. Indigenous solidarity may well increase pressure in international forums to comply with their general demands, but pressuring of regional and national institutions will still be crucial in promoting singular or specific needs-based targets unique to discrete indigenous communities.
To the outside observer, there was a noticeable (if unsurprising) unwillingness to acknowledge the competing needs of coexisting, non-indigenous groups suffering from the same (or similar) inequities that require redress in both developing and developed states. Impoverished indigenous and non-indigenous populations often compete for the same limited financial aid, social programs, and government resources. State obligations to uphold the respective rights of all citizens often lead to internal conflicts of interest that can be difficult to reconcile.Moving forward will require clear targets and enforceable monitoring, and transparency mechanisms. Also troublesome is state non-compliance with UNDRIP and other non-binding international instruments. The UN system suffers from inadequate mechanisms to enforce what is ultimately a state responsibility to its people, including state duty to consult with indigenous peoples on policies and legislature that directly impact their maintenance of traditions and cultural heritage.
The UN is (arguably) at its best when providing aspirational goals and normative frameworks and (it is hoped) creating concrete policy guidelines; less so in their implementation and financing of those goals and frameworks. As reiterated in the Forum, indigenous rights are human rights. Civil society and private sector stakeholders, in unison with governmental agencies and institutions, will ultimately be tasked with implementinguniversal development goals. To date, scant mention has been given to indigenous concerns in the post-2015 SDGs. If we truly envision an inclusive human rights based development agenda, we must ensure indigenous issues are fully addressed by member state governments. States must be held accountable for inclusion of indigenous people in data aggregations to formulate more inclusive national action plans that provide fair redress to legitimate grievances and close socio-economic gaps. For its part, the UN and other international governing bodies must fully integrate indigenous rights within the human rights based SDG framework. Only through a conscious (and conscientious) cultivation of fair and equitable policies will indigenous societies be allowed to re-establish their cultural roots and assure their survival.
Far from the inspiring stories, crowded hallways and rhetorical flourishes of the Commission on the Status of Women, the UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (WCDRR) is now taking place in Sendai, Japan (http://www.wcdrr.org/conference/programme/documentation).
We don't normally comment on events where we aren't physically present, but this United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) event is highlighting issues germane to virtually all UN policy priorities. Moreover, several of the disasters featured at the conference are related to dangerous shifts in climate health which has become, rightly if belatedly, a major focus of UN concern.
The backdrop for the WCDRR event is a high-profile natural disaster which, as reported by Al Jazeera and others, is well underway after Cyclone Pam tore through Vanuatu early Saturday, "packing winds of 168 miles per hour, and leaving a trail of destruction and unconfirmed reports of dozens of deaths." In quite an irony, the President of Vanuatu, Baldwin Lonsdale, found himself stranded at WCDRR along with some of the country's top disaster management officials while a state of emergency had been declared back home.
Also lingering in the background are the still-unresolved effects of the 'triple whammy' that affected Japan's Fukushima, not far from Sendai – earthquake followed by tsunami, followed by radiation leakage. Such multiple disasters seem hard to fathom but are actually becoming more and more plausible as levels of human damage to the planet rise.
On Sunday (Japan time) a WCDRR session was held to introduce the 2015 Global Assessment of Disaster Risks Report. The report provides "an update on global risk trends and patterns based on results from the first ever probabilistic risk assessment covering the world." Participants were informed about current and emerging risks and projected economic losses associated with exposure and vulnerability to hazards, including cyclones, earthquakes, floods, landslides, tsunamis and volcanic ash.
This is quite a list which doesn't even specify concerns like drought and the forced social mobility this causes. These are all concerns we would do well to avoid but, failing that, to prepare for with sufficient urgency and thoughtfulness.
When I was younger, I lived in a part of the US that frequently 'welcomed' tornadoes. While most failed to hit the ground, many uprooted trees, tore off the roofs of barns and houses, and greatly damaged homes and property, often in working-class neighborhoods that could ill afford the losses.
A feature of those times was that the most effective response was often in the aftermath of disasters – insurance agents processing claims, the Red Cross serving soup and assisting with health emergencies, crews helping to restore communications and navigable roads, police providing a reassuring presence.
But we soon realized that rebuilding capacity was not sufficient, that we needed more time and resources to prepare better for what, in some years, was literally a 'parade' of funnel clouds. And, indeed, the focus slowly shifted, not away from disaster response but to more balanced approach that brought science and civics to bear on local preparedness. Weather-related technology was able to warn us in time of impending crises so that authorities could be mobilized and valuables and loved ones protected.
In such circumstances, many of us would want to know: Where were the weather forecasters? Where were the warnings? Where were the preparations that could have provided more resilient options to 'weather' the coming storm?
If we know anything with certainty, it is that the 'holiday' from disaster that Vanuatu apparently experienced is unlikely to be repeated soon. Between increases in tropical depressions, widening areas of drought, flooding from land whose forests have been denuded, the erosion of shorelines, and other hazards – and this on top of the more obvious human-made disasters from armed violence, trafficking and other calamities – trouble is brewing in far-flung corners of the globe.
People facing such the prospect of such disaster need reassurances at two levels. First, that there are competent professionals able and willing to respond when disaster strikes; and second that all possible efforts have been made to warn residents and promote resilience before trouble strikes.
Forecasting that 'trouble' can be tricky business. But we have suffered greatly in the security sector from assistance – in the form of peacekeepers or military response to mass violence – that arrives too late to stem the violence in its earliest stages. Disaster relief that arrives too late can also jeopardize lives needlessly. As noted in the literature of the HOPEFOR initiative (Qatar, Dominican Republic, Turkey and others) to which GAPW has been attentive, when crisis response is needed, timing is always of the essence (http://hopeforinitiativedr.org). Given extraordinary improvements in disaster technology, improved forecasting must be an integral part of any disaster response.
Not all disasters can be averted. There are some tornadoes in the south of the US so massive that resilience is almost futile. Earthquakes and tsunamis can devastate communities and landscapes in what seems like an instant. And, as noted by several experts in Sendai, technical warnings can fail to reach the right people, or reach them in a way that is confusing in terms of preferred responses. Or people can choose to ignore warnings (as we in the US sometimes do with hurricanes and floods) or simply have no viable response options to looming threats.
Indeed it could well be.
Disaster response is in part about running several races against time almost in tandem. We need better forecasting and more quickly. We need funding to support greater resiliency and more viable options for communities in the face of disaster. We need more civilian-based response services on high alert to get to the scenes of crises rapidly and even before any crises unfold. But most of all, we need dramatic diplomatic movement on climate health and other human interventions to give hope to communities suffering from disasters of a magnitude that they simply could never manage alone.
The UN is well positioned to help states meet the challenges, changes and resource needs for highly competent, trustworthy Disaster Management. Such management is no substitute for a political agreement to reverse climate damage. But at least until such an agreement is forthcoming — hopefully soon in Paris — and made fully functional, disaster management must maintain this high priority for states and the international system.


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Cyclocephala camachicola är en skalbaggsart som beskrevs av Ohaus 1910. Cyclocephala camachicola ingår i släktet Cyclocephala och familjen Dynastidae. Inga underarter finns listade i Catalogue of Life.

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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Simple answer…protection. Why not add a an inexpensive layer of protection if you are presented with the option? In addition to the additional layer of protection, OpenDNS also offers web filtering! That's right. You could block any site you want, and monitor internet usage. That may be worth it alone!


Add some elegance to your off duty style with this maxi dress from Ruth Erotokritou, exclusive to Zee & Co, perfect for taking you from beach to bar this season. The dress comes in a black textured knit base and features a rounded neckline, button up fastening on the nape, cold shoulder detailing and a straight hem. Made from 100% viscoe.
Exclusive to Zee & Co!


Thanks to the fundraising efforts of the TELUS Ride For Dad events, the Prostate Cancer Fight Foundation has donated more than 13 million dollars to the fight against prostate cancer!The goal of the Prostate Cancer Fight Foundation is to award research grants for new and innovative breakthrough science; research that can make a difference in prostate cancer.
Your support is helping to make a difference in prostate cancer reasearch!
The Ride For Dad and the Prostate Cancer Fight Foundation are supporting critical research in connection with the Ottawa Hospital's da Vinci robotics program that will forge new ground in robotics research not being explored elsewhere at this time. Click here to read more about this exciting project!
"The Ride For Dad has been extremely generous in their support of the fight against prostate cancer" Jennifer Van Noort, Vice-President, Major Gifts at the Ottawa Hospital Foundation.
Thanks to our generous supporters, over the last 3-5 years, scientists at the BC Cancer Agency's Vancouver Island Centre have made two major findings by studying how the immune system responds to prostate cancer. In the first study, approximately 30% of patients who received standard hormone and radiation therapy had a positive immune response against their prostate cancer. In a second study, utilizing a mouse model for prostate cancer, researchers discovered that this type of immune response to radiation and hormone therapy unexpectedly caused a detrimental outcome – that is, mice succumbed sooner to their prostate cancer.
Based on this research, the lab is launching a new study to determine whether immunotherapies can be administered to reverse these poor immune responses and ultimately improve overall survival rates of prostate cancer. Their researchers are now embarking on a pre-clinical study to use a clinically approved drug that stimulates the immune system, anti-CTLA4, combined with standard hormone and radiation therapies. The success of our work will then allow us to launch the first human clinical trial with anti-CTLA4 at the BC Cancer Agency's Vancouver Island Centre within the next 2-3 years.
The study will determine whether small genetic variations have something to do with the development of adverse side effects in some prostate cancer patients who choose radiation therapy.
Some men who undergo radiation therapy develop toxicity, and other side effects which really lessen their quality of life while they're being treated, there could be a genetic cause for this. This study will to try to find it, and determine which prostate cancer patients are best suited to radiation therapy. The goal is to make treatment for prostate cancer more effective and less stressful on the patient.


STAFILE is the name of the external stations file. See Section 3.3 for the required formats. If STAFILE is not specified, it defaults to $SCHED/catalogs/stations_RDBE.dat. If STAFILE='none' is specified then no external catalog will be read.
This must be specified among the first scan inputs since SCHED will read the station catalog while setting up the first scan. If STAFILE is not specified with the first scan's inputs, SCHED will read the default catalog. This is done because, while reading the scans, SCHED needs to know some station information (like codes in case you choose to specify them for the STATIONS input).
Under unix, environment variables may be used. For example, if SCHED is defined to mean /users/cwalker/sched, the base area under which all sched stuff is kept (substitute your local directory), then one can specify the station file with STAFILE = $SCHED/catalogs/stations_RDBE.dat. Use the setenv (c or t shell) or export (korn shell) to set environment variables.
Options: Any valid file name or none.


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1300 783 303 Menu
Wartime History
Our Treks
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Kokoda History Trek
Charlie's Premium Kokoda Campaign Trek
Kokoda Enduro Trek
Why Adventure Kokoda
Our Philanthropy
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Pre-Trek Preparation
Clothing and Equipment
Personal Carriers
Arrival in Port Moresby
Safety - Safety - Safety
Our Meals and Snacks
Your Tent
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Following your trek group on Facebook
Village Protocols
Departure from Port Moresby
10 Hot Tips for Kokoda
About PNG
The Kokoda Campaign
Kokoda Television Documentaries
Before time . . .
Mystery clouds the human story of New Guinea and the origins of the vast majority of the people who now inhabit it. No one can say for certain whence or when they came, but the probabilities are that the big island and its smaller neighbours were colonised by successive waves of migrants from lands to the north and west.
The first men in New Guinea may well have been ethnic cousins of the aborigines of Australia, the Dravidians of India and the Sakai people of the highlands of Malaya. They arrived when there still land links between New Guinea and parts of Asia. They were eventually displaced or absorbed by newcomers who also crossed before the land bridge disappeared. Just when the migrations began and over what period they extended is at present an exciting guessing game for ethnologists. In time, scientists may collect enough information to change speculation into accurate deduction, but probably the pioneers were a woolly-haired Negrito or pygmy type believed to have originated in Malaysia or Indonesia.
The next waves of immigrants are thought to have been tall dark-skinned, curly-haired negroid people with prominent noses who were classed thirty years ago as 'true Papuans'.
In the third migratory wave were the Melanesians – a vigorous, seafaring people who, in their wanderings over the Indian and Pacific Oceans by outrigger canoe, had picked up by intermarriage a confusion of physical traits including while range of skin tints and some resemblance to both the mongoloid races of South-East Asia and the negroes of West Africa. They almost certainly arrived after the bridge with Asia had been cut.
The three basic racial types did not, however, remain separated. They intermarried by some degree and thus acquired such an extraordinary mixture of race characteristics that it is difficult today to say any one New Guinea tribe is predominately Melanesian, Papuan or Negrito. The ethnological picture has been further confused by the discovery in recent years of tall, light-skinned, mountain people who don't seem to fit at all into any combination of Melanesian, Papuan and Negrito.
The peoples of New Guinea are not, therefore, of any fixed, definable type. They are an almost incredible agglomeration of racial types which have remained only imperfectly mingled because of the extreme difficulty of moving about freely in the New Guinea terrain. Thus a New Guinea native's skin can be any colour from pale biscuit brown to blue black. His hair can be almost straight, woolly, frizzy, curly or wavy. His natural stature can range from a strapping six-foot to a freakish four foot three inches. The shape of his nose can be flat, semitic, straight or aquiline. And he can be round-headed, broad-headed or long-headed. At the extremes of difference one New Guinea tribesman can be as unlike another as an Eskimo is unlike a Hottentot, or a Laplander unlike a Sicilian.
The almost limitless variety of physical dissimilarities is paralleled by language differences. In the Australian half of the island, more than 500 mutually unintelligible languages have been officially listed among a population of about 2,000,000 – and the list is growing in the last areas unknown to Europeans are being explored. Before the Dutch handed over West New Guinea to Indonesia in 1963, they had listed in their territory more than 200 languages among about 500,000 people of a total population estimated at 700,000.
In coastal regions it is rare for tribal groups speaking a common language to number more than 5,000 people – although the Tolai language of the Gazelle Peninsula of New Britain is no spoken by about 40,000. In the more densely populated highland valleys, however, there are several language groups numbering more than 30,000 – but in the most rugged and inhospitable regions tribes of a few hundred have a distinct language of their own and no knowledge of any other.
The Spirit World . . .
The primitive religions of all the diverse New Guinea tribes are fundamentally similar. They believe that the affairs of this world and the lives of the people in it are very largely managed by the inhabitants of a spirit world. The inhabitants of the spirit world are various – sometimes of superhuman extra-terrestrial origin, sometimes superhuman but terrestrial, but more often simply that ghosts of the dead. All the tribes seem to ascribe to the individual soul persistence, either permanent or impermanent, after physical death. Furthermore, all the tribes seem to believe that communication between the material and spirit world is possible in a number of ways, and that the behaviour of the spirits can be influenced by the behaviour of living people. There is also a practically universal belief that some spirits are good and friendly, others are bad and unfriendly, and all spirits can be placated, propitiated or circumvented by ritual actions.
Close resemblance between tribal or regional religion does not go much deeper than this; but a great majority of the people believed, and indeed still believe, that accident, illness, death, defeat in combat, and such disasters as freakish floods or crop failures, are caused by the intervention inhuman affairs of hostile supernatural forces. Since the actions of living people affect the actions of the spirits, a man's enemies are primarily responsible through the agency of sorcerers or magic rituals for the ills that befall him. The primitive New Guinean believed absolutely that systems of efficacious sorcery and magic (and of counter-sorcery and counter-magic) were necessary for survival. Without that belief, the paradoxes of his environment would have confounded him utterly.
Discovery . . .
Except for the Amazonian province of Brazil, New Guinea resisted European penetration longer than any other habitable region of its size on earth. The maze of offshore reefs and shoals made its approaches perilous for all but the most skilled seafarers in the smallest of landing craft, its terrain blocked efforts to explore the hinterland, and the reputation of its savage tribesmen was so forbidding that even the treasure-hunters of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries gave it a wide berth.
Historians believe that the two Portuguese navigators, Antonio D'Abreu and Francisco Serrano, were the first Europeans to sight the mainland in 1512 on a voyage of exploration from the East Indies. In 1526-7 another Portuguese, Jorge de Meneses, looking for route from the Malay Peninsula to the Spice Islands, landed on the shores of western New Guinea and called it 'Ilhas dos Papuas' – the land of the frizzy haired people. Ten years later the crew of a Spanish ship out of Peru mutinied and murdered their captain, Hernando de Frijalva, shortly before the ship was wrecked somewhere on the north coast. They were taken prisoner by the natives and those who survived were liberated after years by Portuguese traders from the Celebes. In 1545 Ynigo Ortiz de Retez, a Spaniard from tidore, landed in the extreme west and claimed possession for his country of the territory which was later to become Dutch New Guinea. He named the place New Guinea because he thought it resembled the Guinea Coast in West Africa. But Spain made no attempt to consolidate Retez's claim.
During the next three hundred years practically every great maritime explorer of the Indian and Pacific Oceans touched New Guinea and mapped parts of its coast. Torres discovered the Loiisiade group and charted Milne Bay and parts of the north-east coast in 1605. Jansz, Le Maire and Willem Schouten made voyages along the north coast. In 1642 Abel Tasman reported that he believed the island had agricultural and trading possibilities. Will Dampier named New Britain in 1700. Cartaret, Bougainville, Cook, Hunter and McCluer all sighted and examined sections of the New Guinea coast and filled in blank spots on the charts of their times. But it was not until 1793 that the British East India Company, acting on a report by McCluer that there were possibilities for the spice trade east of the Moluccas and Ceram, made a half-hearted attempt to establish a settlement on Geelvink Bay. Captain John Hayes, in the warship Duke of Clarence, raised the flag at Restoration Bay and built a small fort which he named New Albion, but the annexation was never confirmed and the post soon abandoned. For political reasons the British decided to allow the Dutch a free hand in the area, and in 1814 recognised the ancient claim of the Sultan of Tidore to overlordship of the West New Guinea tribes. As the Sultan himself owed allegiance to the House of Orange, this was tantamount to ceding sovereignty to the Dutch, but it was a surrender of small significance in those days.
Tidore's claims to rule West New Guinea dated back to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, but with little practical substance. A few Indonesian sailing canoes had irregular contact with Papuan coastal communities in the western half of the island, but at no time were those communities brought under powerful or permanent Indonesian influence, and much less were they conquered or governed by the agents of the Sultanate. New Guinea and its people were a combination which for hundreds of years resisted the expansionism of both East Indian princelings and European empire builders alike. Until the middle of the nineteenth century even the coastal tribes had little contact with the outside world of either East or West, and the inland tribes had virtually no contact at all.
The first white men to seek prolonged contact with coastal New Guineans were not explorers but maritime traders based in Australia. By the middle of the nineteenth century small sailing vessels, usually out of Sydney or Auckland, were making more or less regular expeditions to the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. It was a time of rapid commercial expansion in Oceania. The colonial empires of the British, Dutch and French were well established in Asia and Australasia, and the Americans were colonising and developing their own West Coast. The Pacific Islands had become the new frontier – a frontier pioneered, as usual, by individualists who were rugged indeed and who sought fortune and freedom beyond the ordered preserves of the great trading companies.
In 1870 a naturalist, Richard Daintree, submitted to the Ministry of Public Works in Queensland a paper suggesting that the gold-bearing structures in North Queensland continued across the Coral Sea and would be encountered again in south-east New Guinea. Three years later the observations of Captain Moresby indicated that such a geological continuity did, in fact, exist. In 1877, a discovery of trace gold near the future site of Port Moresby started a minor rush of excitable prospectors who were soon to regret their rashness in challenging a country far more formidably hostile than north Queensland. None found gold in payable quantities. Many died of malaria and exposure or were murdered by the natives.
Colonization . . .
The colonial powers of France, Holland, Germany and Britain were increasing the interest and influence in the Pacific. The Queensland Government was increasingly alarmed by rumours that the Germans planned a land grab in New Guinea, and early in 1883 the Premier, Sir Thomas McIlwraith, instructed the Resident Magistrate on Thursday Island, Mr H.M. Chester, to annex the Easter half of the mainland in the name of the British Crown. This Chester did on 4 April 1883, at Port Moresby; but the British Government promptly repudiated the action. It wanted no further expansion of the Empire that might precipitate trouble with Germany and it was doubtless influenced by the opinion of the pioneer missionaries, Lawes and Brown, that Queensland's interest in annexation largely stemmed from a desire to ensure continuity of recruited labour for the northern sugar and cotton plantations.
There was immediate and excited reaction in the colonies to the British Government's repudiation. In November and December 1883, an Intercolonial Convention in Sydney unanimously urged the United Kingdom to annex New Guinea and agreed to contribute £15,000 a year to the cost of administration. This time the colonies' clamour was too loud and angry to be pigeon-holed. In August 1844 the British and German Governments held informal discussions and Britain announced that it would declare a protectorate over the territory lying between the agreed Dutch boundary and the 145th meridian. Germany protested strongly, and the British accordingly agreed to confine their claims to the south coast. On 6 November, Commodore J.E. Erskine declared the British protectorate. Ten days later Germany proclaimed its protectorate, naming the whole of the north coast and the islands of the Bismark Archipelago. It was Britain's turn to protest and Germany compromised by setting its boundary at the 148th meridian on the north coast of the island. Island frontiers between the two protectorates were later negotiated and the partition was ratified by treaty in June, 1885.
Australian reaction to these arrangements was again antagonistic. The States were agitated because Germany had now gained a footing in the strategic area and felt that Britain had been humiliatingly outsmarted – at the cost of Australian security. For the first time the Pacific colonies were solidly unified in disapproval of British policy and some historians see here the germ of the federation of the Australian States achieved about twenty years later.
At long last the occupation of the Pacific no-man's-land by Europeans was a political and legal reality, but many years were to pass before political and legal reality had much practical effect on the majority of the native inhabitants.
It should be remembered that the complexity of events leading up to the establishment of the British and German protectorates in New Guinea did not in any sense imply that there was already massive contact between native and European as there had been in Oceania. Some thousands of coastal tribesmen had been affected by the activities of a handful of white traders, recruiters and missionaries but there were hundreds of thousands inhabiting the hinterland who were untouched. This is an important fact to bear in mind when evaluating the early European influence. A large proportion of the mainland population was not to experience white civilization for more than seventy years after the proclamation of the protectorates.
Independence . . .
The formal path to independence began in 1964 with the establishment of a House of Assembly with 64 members. This was followed by internal self-government in 1973 and full independence on 16 September 1975.
Today . . .
Today PNG has a population of 7.5 million people with a population growth rate of 1.75 percent. The country is rich in resources but lies at the bottom of the scale on international social indicator rankings[i]:
The University of PNG is ranked 5168 in the world (ANU: 19)
Birth rate: 24 births/per 1,000 population (Australia: 12.1)
Death rate: 6.5 deaths/1,000 population (Australia: 7.2)
Maternal Mortality Rate: 215 deaths /100,000 live births (Australia: 6)
Infant Mortality Rates: 37.4 deaths/1,000 live births (Australia: 4.3)
Life Expectancy: Male 65 years – Female 69.5 years Australia: 79.8 and 84.8)
Total Fertility Rate: 3.1 children born/woman (Australia: 1.77)
Physician Density: 0.06 physicians per 1,000 population (Australia: 3.27)
Children under age of 5 underweight: 27.0 percent (Australia: 0.2 percent)
Literacy (age 15 and over who can read and write): 64.2 percent
Population below the poverty line: 37 per cent (Australia: 12 percent)
According to the 2016 Oxford Business Report:
'Culturally one of the world's most diverse countries, Papua New Guinea is widely considered to be one of the last frontiers for tourism and business opportunities – the island of New Guinea hosts 6-8% of the world's species, one-sixth of known languages and rivals Borneo, the Amazon and the Congo in terms of biodiversity. The country is an important exporter of natural resources (gold, copper, oil and natural gas) as well as agricultural products, with its cash crops including coffee, oil palm, cocoa, coconut and to a lesser extent tea and rubber. PNG also became a major exporter of natural gas in 2014, significantly increasing the size and strength of its economy, and the $19bn PNG Liquefied Natural Gas project was completed ahead of schedule and within budget.
'The economy of Papua New Guinea is decelerating, with the GDP growth rate expected to fall by half in 2016 to 4.3% and by nearly half again to 2.4% in 2017. A combination of the end of the construction phase of the PNG Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project and an unexpected drop in energy prices has resulted in a significant decline in business activity and state revenues. The PNG economy is in for a rough few years as it adjusts to the drop in LNG prices and awaits the start of the next major project. However, barring any further dramatic declines in energy prices, growth will remain positive and the government will be able to bring its spending closer in line with revenues.'
Papua New Guinea is the last adventure – a land of the unexpected within a parliament of a thousand tribes. It is a land of fascinating cultures, breathless landscapes and some of the friendliest people in the world. The most common observation from young Australians who have shared the pilgrimage across the Kokoda Trail with them is – 'they have nothing but they have everything!'
They have uninhibited humour, provide unconditional care and sing with a harmony that stays in your head for months.
Recommended Reading List:
Orokaiva Society
F.E. Williams. Oxford University Press, 1930
Savages in Serge
J.G. Hides. Angus and Robertson. 1938
Drama of Orokaiva: The Social and Ceremonial Life of the Elema
F.E. Williams B.Sc. Oxford at the Claredon Press. 1940
Prowling through Papua
Frank Clune. Angus and Robertson. 1943
The Papuan Achievement
Lewis Lett. Melbourne University Press. 1944
Papua: Its people and its promise - past and future
Lewis Lett. F.W. Cheshire Melbourne. 1944
New Guinea and Australia
John Wilkes. Australian Institute of Political Science. 1958
Doctor's Wife In New Guinea
Margaret Spencer. Angus and Robertson. 1959
Patrol into Yesterday: My New Guinea Years
J.K. McCarthy. F.W. Cheshire. 1963
New Guinea: The Last Unknown
Gavin Souter.Angus and Robertson. 1963
Parliament of a Thousand Tribes
Osmar White. The Bobbs-Merrill Company Inc 1965
Assignment New Guinea
Keith Wiley. The Jacaranda Press. 1965
Justice Versus Sorcery
Justice R.T. Gore, CBE. The Jacaranda Press,1965
The Lineage System of the Mase-Enga of New Guinea
M.J. Meggitt. Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh, London. 1965
The New Guinea Villager: A Retrospect from 1964
C.D. Rowley. F.W. Cheshire Melbourne Canberra Sydney. 1965
Time Now - Time Before
Osmar White. Heinemann London Melbourne. 1967
Hubert Murray: The Australian Pro-Consul
Francis West. Oxford University Press, 1968
New Guinea: Our Nearest Neighbour
J.K. McCarthy. Cheshire. 1968
Fashion of Law in New Guinea
B.J. Brown. Butterworths Sydney Melbourne Brisbane. 1969
New Guinea: Problems & Prospects
Peter Hastings. Cheshire, 1969
New Guinea Journeys
Jack McCarthy. Rigby. 1970
The Blackbirders: The Recruiting of South Seas Labour for Queensland 1863-1907
Edward Wyberg Docker. Angus and Robertson. 1970
Selected Letters of Sir Hubert Murray
Francis West. Oxford University Press. 1970
The Politics of Dependence
A.L. Epstein, R.S. Parker and Marie Reay. Australian National University Press. 1971
Exchange in the Social Structure of the Orokaiva
Erik Schwimmer. C. Hurst & Co, London. 1973
Readings in New Guinea History
B. Jinks, P. Bishop, H. Nelson. Angus and Robertson. 1973
Anthropology in Papua New Guinea
Ian Hogbin. Melbourne University Press. 1973
Beyond the Village: Local Politics in Madang
Louise Morauta. The Athlone Press, London. 1974
Papua New Guinea: Moment of Truth
Ian Todd. Angus & Robertson. 1974
Papua New Guinea Portaits: The Expatriate Experience
James Griffin. Australian National University Press, 1978
The Leaders and the Led: Social Control in Wogeo, New Guinea
Oral Traditions in Melanesia
Donald Denoon and Roderic Lacey. 1981
Taim Bilong Masta: The Australian Involvement with Papua New Guinea
Hank Nelson.ABC Books. 1982
Kiap
James Sinclair. Pacific Publications, 1981
Pathways to Independence: Story of Official and Family Life in Papua New Guinea From 1951-1975
Rachel Cleland. Self-Published. 1984
First Contact: New Guinea Highlanders Encounter the Outside World
Bob Connolly & Robin Anderson. 1987
Sorcerer and Witch in Melanesia
Michele Stephen. Melbourne University Press. 1987
Last Frontiers: The Explorations of Ivan Champion of Papua
James Sinclair. Pacific Press. 1988
Queen Emma: The Samoan-American Girl Who Founded an Empire in 19th Century New Guinea
R.W. Robson. Robert Brown & Associates. 1994
Missionaries, Headhunters & Colonial Officers
Peter Maiden. Central University Press. 2003
Black Harvest: Warfare, film-making and living dangerously in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea
Bob Connolly. ABC Books . 2005
A Short History of Papua New Guinea
Professor John Dademo Waiko. Oxford University Press. 2007
Tales of Papua New Guinea
Retired Officers Association of Papua New Guinea. 2001
Building a Nation in Papua New Guinea: Views of the Post Independence Generation
David Kavanamur, Charlies Yala and Quinton Clements. The Australian National University. 2003
[i] CIA Country Year Book – PNG and Australia
Why Trek with Adventure Kokoda
Our primary goal is to lead you safely across the Kokoda Trail and ensure you have an unforgettable wartime historical and cultural experience.
Charlie has led more than 90 expeditions across the Kokoda Trail over the past 30 years.
He previously served in the Australian Army for 21 years. During this time he saw active service in Vietnam; was assigned to the joint Australian, New Zealand and British (ANZUK) Force in Singapore/ Malaysia from 1970-72, and as an exchange instructor in Airborne Logistics with the United States Army from 1977-78. He is a graduate of the Army Command and Staff College.
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The dearth of experienced teachers limits the career's capability to respond incisively to challenges and lead the way to raised quality training. We undertake education analysis and analysis and monitor training sector capability and viability. These areas are: the quality of lecturers; quality of schools and educational establishments; student achievement and success; participation in schooling; and the quality of put up-secondary schooling.


You'll find more wild, untrammelled land on the Sonoma Coast than towns, shops or services—and that's why it's so appealing. Unplugging is easy here—after a few minutes gazing at the Pacific's endless rolling waves, your mobile seems irrelevant. But the action is always 'on' at 17-mile-long Sonoma Coast State Park, a protected string of isolated beaches separated by grassy headlands. Wind-whipped waves crash against offshore rocks. Murrelets, cormorants, pelicans and gulls soar above the surf-splashed headlands. The shimmering Pacific extends as far as you can see.
On the park's north side, the seafaring hamlet of Jenner clings to the cliffs above the Russian River. Here, the river ends its ocean-bound journey, forming a massive sand spit at its mouth, which serves as the breeding ground for hundreds of Pacific harbour seals from March to July. To see them, drive to Goat Rock, a bulky offshore outcrop accessed by a narrow, paved road. Then park your car and stroll along the powdery tan sand, gaining views of neighbouring Arch Rock's perfect crescent of sandstone. From Goat Rock Beach, you can observe the seals' antics—a mish-mash of barking, slumbering, basking, swimming, mating and raising their young.
During the seal pupping season, volunteers set up spotting scopes and binoculars on the beach. You can walk within 50 metres of the seals, but if you want to see them even closer, paddle a kayak. On a guided tour with WaterTreks EcoTours, even beginners can get up close to the fascinating wildlife of the Jenner estuary.
After your paddle, you'll need sustenance. Head to Café Aquatica for a Dungeness crab sandwich or a steaming latte. If the weather's nice, sit outside and watch the kayakers float past. Wander into the Jenner Visitor Center next door, set in a worn-shingled boathouse, where guides provide information on the area's natural history. A few steps to the north, the River's End restaurant serves up outstanding local cuisine and breathtaking Pacific sunsets. Book in advance to reserve a coveted window table.
Jenner's accommodation options include Wright's Beach campsite, which offers beachfront sites on a long stretch of sand ideal for kite-flying. Or reserve a cosy bed at the mid-century modern Timber Cove Resort, perched on a cliff. For a memorable splurge, book a king room with a private hot tub at Fort Ross Lodge, then scan the sea for passing grey whales as you soak.
The Palace of Fine Arts is an extravagant neoclassical icon—a faux palace surrounded by an idyllic pond, its reflective surface graced by snow-white swans. It's one of San Francisco's most popular spots for wedding photos and has appeared in countless fashion shoots and Instagram shots.
The Romanesque structure was designed by architect Bernard R. Maybeck for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, a world fair that celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal—and gave San Francisco a chance to shine after its devastating 1906 earthquake. The Palace's domed rotunda, filled with more than 12,000 works of art, was one of dozens of monuments, temples and pavilions constructed for the nine-month-long expo.
When the grand affair ended, all structures except the Palace were destroyed. San Franciscans couldn't bear to tear down their glorious tribute to the arts, but since it was built to be temporary—made from plaster, wood and burlap—the structure slowly crumbled. In the early 1960s, a wealthy philanthropist donated money to save the decaying ruins by recasting them in more enduring concrete. Today's Palace duplicates the original, with a soaring colonnade and bas-relief urns, a domed ceiling with allegorical paintings, and Corinthian columns topped with female figures draped in togas, their weeping faces turned away to symbolise 'the melancholy of life without art'. The Palace's 1,000-seat theatre, added in 1970, hosts cultural events, live performances, film festivals and theatre productions year-round.
Marvel at this Beaux-Arts wonder, then head over to the woodland-dotted parklands at the neighbouring Presidio, which served as an Army post until 1994 and is now a National Park. Take the free shuttle bus or just use your feet—24 miles of trails lead to scenic viewing points, many showcasing the glorious Golden Gate Bridge.
In a city full of must-see architecture, the Presidio Officer's Club is a gem. With adobe walls dating back to 1776, it's San Francisco's second-oldest building and houses a history museum and the Arguello Restaurant, a bistro run by award-winning chef Traci Des Jardins. Nearby, visit the Walt Disney Family Museum or let the children burn off energy at House of Air, a trampoline park in an aircraft hangar. View the public art at Tides Converge, a non-profit workspace with two community galleries. Further along the corridor, Café RX serves authentic Latin American pupusas and tamales, or, if it's not yet noon, Sessions at the Presidio nails the perfect outdoor-patio brunch with its cardamom beignets, avocado toast and Belgian crêpes.
Three miles south of Pismo Beach you'll find Oceano Dunes Preserve, one of the most expansive coastal dunes left in California. The Preserve offers rare opportunities for on-the-sand activities—you can camp on the beach and in the open dune area, go horseback riding and drive right onto the beach. In fact, it's the only California State Park that allows vehicles to do so (four- or all-wheel drive recommended).
Start in the Southern California/Baja Gallery where you'll find the 536,000-litre, three-storey-high Honda Blue Cavern that features ocean inhabitants found off the coast of Catalina Island. You'll also want to visit the Seal and Sea Lion Habitat and the Ray Touch Pool. Highlighting habitats in and around the Bering Strait, the Northern Pacific gallery features a collection of graceful jellies, four playful otters in the Sea Otter exhibit, and the largest species of octopus in the world, the giant Pacific octopus, which can grow to more than 6 metres long!
Then head to the warmer waters of the Tropical Pacific Gallery and the largest exhibit in the aquarium—the 1.3-million-litre Tropical Reef Habitat, which can be viewed from three locations and holds thousands of colourful fish, coral and sea turtles, and two kinds of sharks. Don't forget to stop by the seahorse and sea dragon exhibit to see if you can find these camouflaged creatures hiding among the seaweed.
In addition to the three main galleries, the aquarium also features outdoor exhibits, including an interactive Shark Lagoon, the Lorikeet Forest aviary, the penguin habitat, and a horseshoe crab touch lab.
If you're looking to dive in further, the aquarium offers many educational, exclusive and behind-the-scenes experiences. You can get up close and personal with animals such as stingrays, sea lions and penguins, or dive right into an exhibit (certification required). If your children have dreamed of staying overnight next to a gigantic fish tank, you can do that too.
Opening in spring 2019 is Pacific Visions, a brand-new wing that will help aquarium visitors better understand the challenges the ocean faces and the opportunities it holds. The expansion will include a state-of-the-art interactive theatre, a larger exhibit gallery with live animals and an art gallery.


ART GLASS SUCCESSFULLY BETWEEN 1869 AND 1885 IN HIS STUDIO. OUTSIDE PARIS, IN THE VILLAGE OF VAUCRESSON/SEINE et OISE. IN 1885 HE JOINED AND LATER TOOK OVER THE GLASS STUDIO FOUNDED BY FRANCOIS EUGENE.
LEVEILLE WAS A VERY WELL. KNOWN GLASS DESIGNER OF HIS TIME. WERE NOT SIGNED UNTIL 1885 ALTHOUGH THEY WERE HIGHLY. COMBINATION OF GILDED FLOWERS AND RED AND BROWN CONTRASTS.
THIS VASE IS OF SHOULDERED RECTANGULAR FORM, WITH DIMPLED KNOCKED SIDES BELOW. NECK, IT IS ACID CUT WITH GILT STYLISED FLOWERS AND FOLIAGE. PICKED OUT WITH RELIEF GILDING OVER A CLEAR. CRYSTAL GROUND, WITH MOTTLED RED AND. BROWN INCLUSIONS AS WELL AS SNOW-FLAKE DROPS BETWEEN TWO LAYERS OF CRYSTAL. IT MEASURES 19cm HIGH X 15cm WIDE. IT WEIGHS 1.515 KG. IT IS IN WONDERFUL CONDITION. NO CHIPS, NO SCRATCHES, NO DAMAGE WHATSOEVER. EXTRA INFORMATION ABOUT THIS GLASS WAS OBTAINED FROM "HARTMAN GLASSMARKEN LEXICON". SUCH A STUNNING SHOW PIECE! PLEASE: FOR BUYERS FROM ASIA AND AUSTRALIA CO.
The item "ERNEST BAPTISTE LEVEILLE SPECTACULAR ART NOUVEAU GLASS Ca. 1880" is in sale since Friday, October 14, 2016.
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After starting his football involvement with south Fremantle in the under-age years of World War II, Merv Cowan forged a legendary career as an East Fremantle player and official and has long been regarded as the "voice" of Fremantle football.
It was 1942-43 when Cowan notched just 24 games in those under-age years to herald the start of seven decades of involvement with the sport. After serving with the Royal Australian Navy, Cowan resumed his playing career with East Fremantle, captaining the side in 1953-54 and then being part of the 1957 premiership side on his way to a club tally of 169 games before his 1957 retirement. But then the real action started as far as Cowan was concerned as he turned his attention to the administrative side of football.
After a one-year stint as coach of the East Fremantle reserves, Cowan was honoured with Life Membership and also became foundation secretary of the licensed premises at the Moss Street headquarters. From 1960-67 he was secretary of East Fremantle, moving also to a higher level as a Board member of the WA Football League.
From 1960-82 he served football in a variety of roles at League level, including being on the Finance and Executive Committee, the Subiaco Oval Ground Development Committee, the Country League Committee and was a State selector for five years. With his many duties over-lapping, Cowan served as East Fremantle President for 12 years, from 1970-82, during which time he was also a football critic on the ABC Television panel.
Appointed a Life Member of the WAFL in 1971, he was convenor of a 1988 joint committee of East Fremantle and South Fremantle delegates who set out to obtain the Fremantle Football Club license to play in the AFL. The early 1990's saw Cowan as vice-chairman of a special sub-committee that finally achieved that license in 1995 and he served on the Fremantle Board in 1996. At the same time he was a Commissioner of the WA Football Commission and chaired the committee that investigated the granting of a license to a ninth WAFL club, ultimately working hard behind the scenes to see the establishment of the peel Thunder football Club in 1997.
As the Town Clerk of East Fremantle from 1964-80, Cowan was instrumental in many sporting groups obtaining improved facilities and he played a leading role in the district's advancement.
His own sporting days also included stints as captain of the Fremantle A-grade cricket club and a foundation member of the Melville Water Polo Club (playing for the State) and the WA Water Polo Association.


Crystal Cove State Park is hosting a free sea glass jewelry making activity Wednesday's in 2018.
This is a Crystal Cove Free Family Friendly Art Class from 10:00am to 4:00pm.
Learn how to turn sea glass into a one of a kind creation.
The workshop will be held at the Education Commons in the Historic District at Crystal Cove State Park.
Crystal Cove State Park is located at 7549-7653 E Pacific Coast Highway.


Fantastic FISHHAWK RANCH home available in Egret Landing. NEWER David Weekley home with modern finishes and a BEAUTIFUL POND VIEW. The spacious interior features an open kitchen with an over-sized island with granite counter tops and walk-in pantry. Off the kitchen is the breakfast nook and family room with surround sound, creating a great space for family or entertaining that overlooks the gorgeous backyard pond views. The downstairs also features a separate OFFICE/DEN for flexible space, and a guest bath. Upstairs, the home features a split bedroom plan, separated by a LARGE BONUS LOFT, also with surround sound. On one end, you have the MASTER SUITE with spacious master bath, including separate shower and soaking tub. Off the master bath is an over-sized walk-in closet. On the other side you have 3 spacious bedrooms and a second full bath. Upgraded insulation and dual a/c units contribute to energy efficiency. Close to all the great family amenities of Fishhawk Ranch, this home truly has everything you are looking for. From resort style pools, trails, playgrounds and parks, to sports and great schools, you truly get Florida living at it's best. Schedule a private tour today to see what you've been missing!


text: Overflowing with attitude, energy, and hooky guitar figures, PUP are a punk rock band from Toronto, Ontario, Canada whose debut album made them one of the acts to watch on the Canadian music scene. Featuring Stefan Babcock on vocals and guitar, Steve Sladkowski on guitar and vocals, Nestor Chumak on bass and vocals, and Zack Mykula on drums and vocals, all longtime friends who met in elementary school, PUP was formed in 2011 under the name Topanga.


Brant Financial Group and their parent company, Assante Wealth Management, have a high standard for brand compliance. TDG enjoyed the challenge of maintaining this standard and still providing an effective way for Brant Financial Group to stand out from the rest.
TDG Marketing and Brant Financial Group have rolled out a video campaign to introduce each of the advisors and show the audience how much they truly care about their clients. This was achieved with one on one interviews with each advisor and having them answer questions that a potential client may ask.
The goal of this newsletter was to provide potential clients of Brant Financial Group, another opportunity to gain some insight on the advisors. This was accomplished by having a balanced mixture of informative articles about the industry, as well as personal articles about the advisors.


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If It's For My Daughter, I'd Even Defeat a Demon Lord
Teasing Master Takagi-San 2
AKA: ハル ; Haru
Genre: Romance/Sci-Fi
Length: OAV, 60 minutes
Distributor: Currently licensed by FUNimation, also available streaming on Crunchyroll.
Content Rating: 14+ (Mature themes)
Related Series: N/A
Also Recommended: Stories involving non-humans learning to relate to (and love) humans would be good here; I'll suggest Alice and Zoroku, but there are many more.
Notes: Directed by Ryotaro Makihara
WARNING: SPOILERS! Because this show's "alternative facts" are so important to its story, AND because they are also the source of most of my complaints.
When one of a pair of young lovers is killed in an air disaster, a robot is made into a replica of the deceased and sent to the survivor, to help them work through their feelings of trauma and guilt.
Hal is set in a future of both humanoid robots AND pastoral scenes, and some of those scenes are absolutely gorgeous, particularly scenes set in a Japanese garden, and in a park at dusk. Our leads, Hal (Haru in the Japanese version) and Kurumi are also both attractively rendered. I've absolutely no complaints about the art.
Plotwise, though, I had issues. I've noted before that some shows leave too much unexplained, and Hal seems to me one of the worst offenders. It only runs an hour, and yet it prioritizes things strangely for such a short OVA, spending considerable time on things like the securing by Hal of an unwieldy gift for Kurumi, and also spending some extended time with some elderly women in a care facility. (Some of the ladies are drawn in what I felt to be a grotesquely caricatured style, but maybe it's only my sensitivity as an older person myself.) But other important and/or interesting details get short shrift. I was unclear about the whole thing with the "buttons" (other than that they were some kind of wearable tech), and especially about exactly what Kurumi's "value added" was with them. I didn't have the slightest idea what Hal and his "friend" Ryu were supposed to be DOING in the "dirty job" we see them forced to perform in a flashback. (Though it's interesting that, as Hal explains, humans, NOT robots, are given the most dangerous jobs here because "robots are expensive." Apparently this future Japan also still has the practice of debt inheritance.)
But there's that whole issue of the show's eventual dramatic change of perspective. While ALL fiction necessarily involves selective reporting- since we're only looking at events related to particular characters' relationships, etc.- we nevertheless still normally expect a writer or director to be at least somewhat objective about what we're being shown, which is why we're so easily fooled when we're presented things in a deliberately deceptive way (e.g., The Sixth Sense.) Hal doesn't engage in THAT sort of biased reporting- in fact, there's one careless remark by a character that gives us a hint of the "truth" long before it's revealed- but I kept wondering if spending so much time on seemingly incidental issues is the show's way of keeping us from figuring out things too soon. Still, even during these "incidental" happenings it becomes clear that things are not being left to pure chance; there's deliberate (if subtle) manipulation going on by the people Hal meets, for the purpose of getting the robot replica and the human into a relationship. But if the "alternative facts" are correct, the people around Hal aren't just being less than completely honest with him- they're actually part of a deep conspiracy of deception.
And that brings me to the core of what's bothering me here: the story does NOT work equally well "both ways." As noted, much deeper conspiracy has to be involved if it's one way rather than the other. One version of the "truth" requires highly sophisticated acting by a party we'd normally expect to be very naïve; the other version doesn't. And there's the whole thing with Ryu- he has very little reaction when he sees Hal with Kurumi. It's surely not because HE'S part of the conspiracy too; I just felt that the show here couldn't show an honest reaction from him because that would immediately give away the game, so it avoids it. And what's with Ryu's big change of heart later? The first impression I got of Ryu was as a "user" who's seeking out Hal to get him out of a jam with some pursuers; the latter are presumably those amoral "dirty jobs" guys who want to press BOTH boys back into service in their horrid enterprises. So not only Ryu, but THOSE guys as well, all suddenly turn altruistic and magnanimous? REALLY?
I've said a really good ending can save a show I'd otherwise tend to be dismissive of, and sure, the ultimate denouement here is, at least, encouraging; but I STILL felt a bit "used" (AND shortchanged) at the end, somehow.
It's just too spare to suit me, and what storytelling there IS seems strangely skewed, even if that IS part of the setup for the 180-degree switch later; but then that switch" didn't work for me either. It's a VERY pretty show though, and the leads are nice kids- or at least ONE of them is... — Allen Moody
Recommended Audience: Mature themes, including a tragic death. (I assume that "body" in the box/coffin is just a hologram, since, given the circumstances of the accident, I wouldn't expect much of the actual victim to be left at ALL.) Rightstuf suggests 14+
Version(s) Viewed: Streaming on Crunchyroll.
Review Status: Full (1/1)
Hal © 2013 WIT Studio
© 1996-2015 THEM Anime Reviews. All rights reserved.


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Celtic and Rangers on alert amid claims European Super League 'could be running by 2024'
Celtic and Rangers will be watching on with interest following claims that a new European Super League with no permanent membership could be up and running by the 2024-25 season.
By Angus Wright
19th Oct 2022, 11:21am
Bernd Reichart has been hired as chief executive by A22 Sports Management, which was formed to sponsor and assist in the creation of the proposed 12-team breakaway league in April last year, in a bid to revive the failed project.
Reichart's first remit is to initiate talks with football stakeholders across Europe and while he is aware discussions can continue without input from England's big six, he is hopeful they will engage.
The German media executive also believes the Premier League's club-run model is a good example for the European Super League – now expanded to 20 teams – to follow.
Asked if the 2024-25 season was the earliest the failed project could start up again, Reichart said: "That might be the first reasonable and realistic call but there are so many variables that I can't actually foresee. That is probably the first realistic call."
The launch of the European Super League in 2021 quickly collapsed after Premier League clubs Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham pulled out in the face of criticism from their own supporters in addition to other key figures across the sport.
Celtic and Rangers were restricted to the role of onlookers with Scottish football's big two among a number of major European clubs left on the outside of the discussions.
In the end Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus are the only original members still signed up to the project, but they insist learnings have been taken from the failure of 18 months ago.
A new European Super League could be up and running by 2024, according to the chief executive of the company behind the failed project. (Photo by Angel Martinez/Getty Images)
New chief executive Reichart added: "First, yes, there has been an important reassessment and the concept is spreading out about openness and taking the permanent membership off the table.
"I can say the three clubs have credibly reassessed and taken some learnings from the first approach. I believe there is no reason not to engage in an open dialogue but we shall see.
"I am aware of what the English clubs stated a year and a half ago but I hope the whole football community is appreciating the approach to continue to care and try to come up with solutions.
"Initially the dialogue can work without them (English clubs). I will talk to clubs in other countries but this is not an exclusive initiative at all, it is an inclusive initiative.
"Of course the situation of the English clubs and the Premier League is a strong example of how attractive a club-run competition could actually look like and what difference it makes if you have the best playing each other week after week in a way.
"I would love to have their point of view as well, let's see. Let's kick it off today."
Reichart is also not against dialogue with UEFA despite the looming European Court of Justice date.
December 15 will see recommendations issued in the case from A22 Sports Management, which argues that European and world football's governing bodies, UEFA and FIFA, abused a dominant position under European competition law in first blocking the league's formation and then in their effects to sanction the clubs involved.
A resolution is expected for by spring time in 2023 but Reichart insisted: "My message (to UEFA) would be an invitation for dialogue as well.
"We did send them a letter. I think, just like a year and a half ago, it will remain unanswered but let's see if they understand that dialogue is necessary and that we are not against anybody, but in favour of a lot of things. We are open to pick up their phone call.
"We believe that there has to be a new landscape, regulatory landscape.
"We believe that clubs who are bearing all the investments and running the industry have to have a say about their competition. They have no direct vote as of today.
"There are two (votes) out of 20, via the ECA (European Club Association), which is in a way tied into UEFA anyway. This is something that is not right.
"It is logical that clubs, who actually on a domestic level are part of a diverse model of self-governance are raising their hands saying we need to do better, we can do better and we should have the serenity to run our own destiny."
European Super LeaguePremier LeagueArsenal