Antony Loewenstein

During my recent visit to the country, not a day passed when a land-owner or NGO didn’t complain about the negative effects of Western corporations on daily lives; exploitation supported by a corrupt political elite.

Some recently released documents via Wikileaks provides a grim picture. Both are written by Australian journalist Philip Dorling.

The most recent in Asia Sentinel:

When Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister, Sir Michael Somare, was unceremoniously removed from office last August, the private US intelligence company Stratfor was desperate for inside information to pass to its clients, especially international companies with interests in PNG’s burgeoning resources sector. 

Stratfor had one well connected operative who could provide insight on PNG politics, a Brisbane based consultant closely engaged in business in Port Moresby. “Source CN65” was quickly tasked and his subsequent reports, released by WikiLeaks, provide a direct insight into the chaotic and often corrupt PNG political scene. 

CN65 didn’t mince words about PNG’s new Prime Minister, Peter O’Neill. In an email to his Stratfor “source handler,” CN65 suggested the new prime minister had a keen sense of personal financial interest. 

“Quite corrupt. I know him. … O’Neill is not any more pro-Western than anyone else up there. As long as he makes money for himself (he has significant business investments in mobile phones, among other things), he couldn’t really care less.” 

Asked what the new Prime Minister would want from Australia, CN65 gave a succinct reply: “He’ll be interested in just one thing – money. He will be wanting increased aid from Australia, and untied aid, i.e. direct budgetary support as opposed to aid tied to particular projects and administered by Australia.” 

PNG is Australia’s largest recipient of foreign aid and with more than A$480 million allocated in 2011-12. 

Stratfor’s Source CN65 was revealed by WikiLeaks last week to be the former Australian Senator, Bill O’Chee. A Queensland National Party Senator from 1990 to 1999, O’Chee was the first ethnic-Chinese Australian to serve in the Australian Parliament and was also the youngest person to serve as a senator. He remains active in the Liberal National Party in Queensland. 

…

Reporting on PNG’s international relationships, O’Chee expressed the view that domestic political turmoil was unlikely to have much effect. Asked about PNG’s growing ties with China, he observed that “the links between PNG and China won’t be changed by who is in power, as China already has a substantial foot in the resources sector – Ramu NiCo and Marengo Mining, for example, as well as sniffing around PNG LNG.” 

“The main factor limiting China’s ability to reach into the country is the inability of the PNG politicians to be efficient in receiving aid offers. For example, most of a US$200m loan facility remains undrawn because they can’t work out how to utilize it. The thing about Melanesia is that politicians are not pro-active, and certainly not policy active. They are instead led by people from outside. The factors that determine future direction are: first and foremost, how Australia throws aid around; and what other countries put on offer.” 

More broadly O’Chee concluded: “The real challenge for PNG is that it is too corrupt to develop efficiently. … The standard of the political class is clearly lower than it was 15 years ago. The old guys got corrupt and lazy, and outdated. The newer guys have been obsessed with personal wealth, and lack the respect for the offices they hold, which the previous generation had. This, at least, was the view presented to me privately … by one of most senior diplomats.”

Wikileaks Cablegate from last year in the Sydney Morning Herald:

Papua New Guinea is trapped in ”Ponzi politics” being practised by deeply corrupt politicians who have enriched themselves on resource revenue and Australian aid , according to US diplomatic reports.

Australian government officials are reported as saying generational change in PNG politics following the departure of founding father and former prime minister Sir Michael Somare was a ”false hope”, and the PNG government was a ”totally dysfunctional blob”.

The damning assessments of political and economic life in Australia’s nearest neighbour are contained in confidential US embassy cables leaked to WikiLeaks.

In a November 2008 briefing, the US embassy in Port Moresby noted that resource revenues and Australian aid have served ”more to enrich the political elite than to provide social services or infrastructure. There are no large-scale local businessmen, but numerous politicians are relatively well off.”

PNG is Australia’s largest recipient of foreign aid and in 2011-12 will receive more than $480 million from the country.

Anxious to avoid diplomatic offence, Australian government ministers and officials rarely talk openly about corruption and maladministration in PNG, preferring to speak of ”strengthening governance” and helping ”institution building”.

…

The leaked US cables are ambiguous about Sir Michael’s financial interests and their effect on political decisions and public policy. However, they noted a ”strange” shift in PNG government policy that potentially increased its financial exposure in legal action being taken by Bougainville residents against company Bougainville Copper. ”Given the way things are done here, the general suspicion is that PM Somare has been given a financial incentive to reverse the previous government’s position on the case. Certainly, it would be very typical of Melanesia if what the government saw as in its nation’s interest also redounded to the individual benefit of its leadership. It is worthy of note that Paul Nero (sic, Nerau), a plaintiff and the current PNG [consul-general] in Brisbane, is very much a Somare man.”

The US cables confirm that, privately, Australian officials have no illusions about the state of the PNG government. After a mid-2007 discussion on political and economic developments with Australian high commission staff in Port Moresby, the US embassy reported: ”One Australian analyst described generational change as a ‘false hope’, while other Australian officers described the PNG public service as a ‘totally dysfunctional blob’ that is great at planning but appalling at implementation.”

As one of Australia’s richest and most influential men, Frank Lowy deserves far more scrutiny than the political or media elites give him.

The Power Index profiles him and features some quotes from yours truly:

It’s no surprise Lowy is a passionate supporter of Israel, telling the NSW parliamentary inquiry into the Orange Grove affair in 2004 that, “the state of Israel, to which I am fully committed, is more important for me than to do a job.”

The shopping centre magnate was explaining to parliament why he had spent one of his two meetings with Bob Carr talking to the NSW premier about Middle East politics, and drawing his attention to a paper dealing with Israel, rather than talking about his business rivals.

Despite his passion for the Promised Land, few would accuse Lowy of being a rabid Zionist. He does not barrack for illegal Jewish West Bank settlers, as Joe Gutnick regularly does. And his Lowy Institute, which is run by a 12-person board that includes him and his three sons, is generally regarded as moderate. It also studies plenty of things apart from Middle East politics.

Nevertheless, Frank founded and still chairs Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, which, according to journalist Antony Loewenstein, author of My Israel Question, “produces research that pushes a hardline, Zionist line on the Israel/Palestine conflict”. 

According to Loewenstein, the INSS advocates “refusing to give up illegally-occupied territories in Palestine due to ‘security’ concerns,” and “warms to the idea of an Israeli military strike against Iran”.

The INSS, Lowy Institute and (Lowy-linked) Brookings Institution in Washington also support an American role in the Middle East and advocate close ties with Washington, Loewenstein tells The Power Index.

So has Lowy used his money and power to shape the political debate? Almost certainly, yes.

So finally we learn, via the Sydney Morning Herald, that the Obama administration wants to crush Julian Assange and Wikileaks for the “crime” of revealing a litany of wrongs committed by Washington. And here’s the irony; after demanding answers from governments in America, Britain, Australia and elsewhere about the legal status of Assange, it takes a Wikileaks release to discover the truth:

United States prosecutors have drawn up secret charges against the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, according to a confidential email obtained from the private US intelligence company Stratfor.

In an internal email to Stratfor analysts on January 26 last year, the vice-president of intelligence, Fred Burton, responded to a media report concerning US investigations targeting WikiLeaks with the comment: ”We have a sealed indictment on Assange.”

He underlined the sensitivity of the information – apparently obtained from a US government source – with warnings to ”Pls [please] protect” and ”Not for pub[lication]”.

Mr Burton is well known as an expert on security and counterterrorism with close ties to the US intelligence and law enforcement agencies. He is the former deputy chief of the counter-terrorism division of the US State Department’s diplomatic security service.

Stratfor, whose headquarters are in Austin, Texas, provides intelligence and analysis to corporate and government subscribers.

On Monday, WikiLeaks began releasing more than 5 million Stratfor emails which it said showed ”how a private intelligence agency works, and how they target individuals for their corporate and government clients”.

The Herald has secured access to the emails through an investigative partnership with WikiLeaks.

…

The Stratfor emails show that the WikiLeaks publication of hundreds of thousands of US diplomatic cables triggered intense discussion within the ”global intelligence” company.

In the emails, an Australian Stratfor ”senior watch officer”, Chris Farnham, advocated revoking Mr Assange’s Australian citizenship, adding: ”I don’t care about the other leaks but the ones he has made that potentially damage Australian interests upset me. If I thought I could switch this dickhead off without getting done I don’t think I’d have too much of a problem.”

But Mr Farnham also referred to a conversation with a close family friend who he said knew one of the Swedish women who had made allegations of sexual assault against Mr Assange, and added: ”There is absolutely nothing behind it other than prosecutors that are looking to make a name for themselves.”

While some Stratfor analysts decried what they saw as Mr Assange’s ”clear anti-Americanism”, others welcomed the leaks and debated WikiLeaks’s longer-term impact on secret diplomacy and intelligence.

Stratfor’s director of analysis, Reva Bhalla, observed: ”WikiLeaks itself may struggle to survive but the idea that’s put out there, that anyone with the bandwidth and servers to support such a system can act as a prime outlet of leaks. [People] are obsessed with this kind of stuff. The idea behind it won’t die.”

Stratfor says it will not comment on the emails obtained by WikiLeaks. The US embassy has also declined to comment.

This week Wikileaks launched a massive new treasure trove and Mother Jones assesses what it says about corporate power in the modern age:

Coca-Cola asked about stability problems in China in advance of the Beijing Olympics. Northrup Grumman asked—twice—about the possibility of Japan getting nuclear weapons. Intel asked about Hezbollah’s presence in Latin America “and their general ability to blow things up.” And the owner of the Radisson Hotel chain inquired: ”[D]o you have an expected completion date for the Militant Islamist Perception Report we ordered?”

The 200-plus emails that have been released from WikiLeaks’ cache of “Global Intelligence Files“—more than 5 million messages lifted from Stratfor, a private “global intelligence” firm—are a comical mix of breathless geopolitical intrigue and workplace chitchat, equal parts Tom Clancy and Office Space. But the trove also offers insights into the business of corporate intelligence, showing how multinational companies paid Stratfor tens of thousands of dollars to watch global hotspots, cover their competitors, and even monitor pesky activists.

It was all part of Stratfor’s “Global Vantage” plan, a subscription-based program for companies to obtain personalized intelligence briefings. Launched in 2006, the service became an overnight success: Organizations as diverse as Coke, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, the Marine Corps, Duke Energy, and Georgetown University plunked down $20,000 or more a year to get their hands on tailored sensitive information. As Stratfor’s leaked master client list shows, major military contractors were well represented, as were Big Oil and agribusiness.

Internal documents show how Global Vantage helped build the reputation—and the 300,000-strong client list—of Stratfor, a Texas-based private intelligence company. In an email last year, CEO and founder George Friedman told his employees that the CIA saw them as direct competitors: “Everyone in Langley knows that we do things they have never been able to do with a small fraction of their resources. They have always asked how we did it. We can now show them and maybe they can learn.” After Osama bin Laden was killed, Stratfor’s vice president for intelligence (a former State Department security agent) claimed in an internal email, “I can get access to the materials seized from the OBL safe house.”

Sometimes it’s time to talk about issues apart from politics (even for me).

I was the guest on yesterday’s ABC Radio National’s Common Knowledge:

What’s behind the kooky ad campaign featuring two delivery girls on a tandem bicycle and with golden plaits and the faces of bearded men? Who is it targeting and what is the surreal imagery signalling?

Alcohol marketing has come a long way since glory days of John Meillon’s velvet tones and the ‘matter-of-fact-I’ve-got-it-now’ Victoria Bitter ads.

And why are beards so prevalent on younger, fashion-conscious men? Is this extreme retro trend harking back to Ned Kelly chic? Or just bone-idle laziness?

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How’s this for hysteria? Such hyperbole masks a deep insecurity. Israeli occupation of Palestine continues. Daily threats against Iran continues. Apartheid grows in the West Bank. But the real threat, people, is this damned BDS!

This story, in Murdoch’s Australian today, shows one thing; bullying is the only way the Zionist lobby and its political and media courtiers know how to play; and they are losing public opinion, finally:

Israel’ representative in Australia has abandoned normal diplomatic language to slam “vigilante local councils” in inner Sydney that have pursued boycotts against his country.

Ambassador Yuval Rotem, a former chief of staff to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told a gathering at NSW parliament on Tuesday evening that supporters of the boycotts, divestment and sanctions campaign held a “schoolchildren’s view of foreign conflict” and had suffered a “humiliating public defeat” at the state election last March.

However, Mr Rotem reserved his strongest words for Fiona Byrne, the former mayor of Marrickville in inner-western Sydney, whose position on the BDS was widely credited with costing her a seat in state parliament for the Greens. Marrickville Council adopted BDS as official policy under Ms Byrne, but abandoned it a few months later following public condemnation.

“The candidate for Marrickville, Fiona Byrne, tripped over herself in many public statements, confused that her Utopian vision of a world with a weakened Israel was poorly received outside the confines of her urban hamlet,” Mr Rotem said.

“BDS in Australia has since become a media byline, like the S11 and G20 protests before it, for another failed movement of radical activists which, shamefully, attached itself to a municipal council for a few months.”

Mr Rotem also hit out at Ms Byrne’s federal Greens colleague, Lee Rhiannon, a former prominent supporter of the Soviet Union who marched alongside controversial Islamic cleric Taj Din al-Hilali at an anti-Israel demonstration in Sydney in 2010. “Where Lee Rhiannon’s Greens looked likely to pick up a cluster of seats in the NSW election, they left demoralised, finishing behind Labor on primary votes in the only seat they ended up winning,” Mr Rotem said.

“When we hear about BDS now, it’s not coming from the mouths of prominent politicians and mayors or respected journals of record. It’s being shouted from poorly attended protests or from the back of police cars or from the former communists who stayed with Stalin even after the (Berlin) Wall fell. One year on, and the movement in NSW to economically undermine the Middle East’s only democracy is as dead as Fiona Byrne’s brief career in international diplomacy.

“The concern throughout NSW that arose during the BDS debates was expected: common sense does not comply with vigilante local councils wreaking self-imposed economic sanctions on one nation which is locked in a struggle for peace.”

Mr Rotem was speaking at the relaunch of Parliamentary Friends of Israel, a group including Labor and Coalition MPs, along with one Green, upper house MP Jeremy Buckingham.

Mr Buckingham has emerged as a leader of the “deep-green” or conservation-focused section of the party in NSW, which has pushed back at the hard-Left faction associated with Senator Rhiannon. He successfully led a push last December for the state party to abandon BDS.

In his speech, Mr Rotem said: “I thank those Greens MPs and candidates who stood tall and opposed BDS, citing their own values of principle and justice, for which some of their colleagues have no tolerance.”

Co-convener of the parliamentary group, Labor upper house MP Walt Secord, told The Australian: “The ambassador gave one of the toughest speeches I have ever heard from a diplomat in my more than 20 years observing and participating in Australian politics. Further, I agree 100 per cent with the ambassador’s observations on the Greens . . . Their tactics were schoolyard foreign affairs and almost borderline anti-Semitism.”

Ms Byrne would not comment.

During my recent visit to Papua New Guinea, I constantly heard complaints about the absurd number of Western advisers who were coming to the country telling locals how to live their lives. It’s a form of neo-colonialism. This is therefore good news:

Australia’s international aid agency says it has now saved more than $US90 million by slashing the number of advisers it employs.

The Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd has been reducing the amount of money AusAID spends on technical advisers and contractors.

The agency says more than 320 adviser positions have now been cut.

AusAID’s director general Peter Baxter says the cuts and the cap on adviser salaries have saved substantial amounts of money.

“All up a bit over $90 million so it’s a serious amount of money and we’re re-investing that money into programs that provide more direct assistance to the poor,” he said.

“So PNG, we’re cutting the most number of advisers, so we sit down with the PNG Government and say where do we allocate this, to health, education, or elsewhere.”

I was recently interviewed for a global series about Wikileaks called Did You Have Any Idea? (part one is here):

My following investigation appears in Crikey today:

The story led the business pages in Papua New Guinea’s Post-Courier in early February. “Analyst: PNG on verge of change” screamed the headline. British-based market analysts Bdaily Business Network praised the $US17.3 billion Exxon-Mobil led LNG project. “[It] is the most important single development in the history of PNG”, it stated, coming online for overseas markets in 2014.

But the reality away from corporate spin is a simmering conflict. A source close to the Southern Highlands land owners, the site of the major LNG project, predicts civil strife in the coming years. Locals are starting to collect weapons and grenades for the coming fight. Sabotage and attacks on pipelines are likely. Weapons are being smuggled in from Indonesia, including West Papua and Thursday Island near Australia.

“I fear what is coming unless something changes soon,” he says at a local Chinese restaurant covered in Coke-coloured wallpaper. “We are not being heard and feel we have no choice. We know we will be out-gunned, and Exxon, being an American company, may receive US government support, but this is about dignity and our rights.”

Stanley Mamu, editor of the LNG Watch blog, fears a Bougainville-style war over resources. It is almost inevitable, he argues, unless Exxon and the government listen to the grievances of the local people. Tensions are already high after a deadly landslide in January was blamed on nearby mining blasts.

LNG project managing director Peter Graham told Radio Australia last year he was satisfied with the “extraordinarily consultative process” with the landowners. That would be news to most of them.

A story in PNG’s Sunday Chronicle in mid-February highlights their anger. Two landowner chiefs demanded Exxon “fulfil relocation” plans previously agreed to. They complain about Exxon-hired private security firm G4S — the company has implanted itself in the highest echelons of the national government, I am told by countless NGOs — and local police using excessive force to re-open a key access road to the LNG project. They warn that other residents will heed a call to join them in resisting the development.

A former commander in the PNG army during the Bougainville “crisis” of the 1990s warned in 2010 that the presence of a foreign militia company such as G4S heightened the chances of another conflict: “They [G4S] have no appreciation of the local customs, culture and the people.”

I recently travelled to Papa Lea-Lea, about 30 minutes from downtown Port Moresby, to investigate a key LNG hub of the project. Driving through impoverished communities living alongside the shore, we pass small villages along the cracked road — small houses built of stilts to keep them from sinking. “They would have to move if a cyclone hit,” an Oxfam PNG staff member who accompanied me says matter-of-factly.

Passing a roadblock — our driver is forced to pay a small bribe to a policeman because he doesn’t hold a driver’s licence — we soon see kilometres of high fences behind which sit LNG facilities in various stages of completion. Security guards watch us drive past. On one side of the road is the beaten-up land of the project, the other is lush, rolling hills. Oxfam tells me some landowners have done deals with Exxon for the use of their property while others complain they aren’t properly consulted before work has begun.

Oxfam recently released a report on the LNG’s impacts in the area after engaging an LNG Impact Listening Project. The results were decidedly mixed and explained how alcohol abuse by men and women was leading to a spike in HIV infection, domestic assault and infidelity. One woman from Porebada said that road construction caused excessive dust that affected the growth of bananas, mangoes and paw paws. “Every time we go to find our gardens polluted.”

The current Peter O’Neill government supports the LNG project as strongly as Michael Somare’s. Australian billionaire Clive Palmer recently announced his likely entry into the LNG race, saying: “If we find gas, we develop it and make billions of dollars out of it.” During my visit the re-entry of Shell into PNG was also warmly embraced as a key driver of LNG opportunities.

Australia still pours millions into the country as a supposed insurance policy against imminent collapse. Former foreign minister Alexander Downer recently wrote in The National that his government “rebuilt PNG’s economy” and “helped end the Bougainville crisis” when in reality — as Crikey has reported —  the Howard years entrenched the rot that has continued under the expanded Labor aid program (much of which goes on “boomerang aid”).

My time in Madang with the progressive NGO Bismarck Ramu Group (BRG) was a welcome change, one of the few organisations in the country that believes the only sustainable way forward for PNG is to reject all Australian support and find alternatives to mining and forestry projects, such as agriculture.

BRG’s Rosa Koian tells me there were countless examples just in her province — a polluting Chinese-owned Ramu Nickel mine and an equally polluting Filipino-run cannery — that show how corporate giants can mislead locals. Poor communication was a factor so BRG’s community workers take locals being romanced by corporations to areas where such firms have set up. “We have had 250 years of failed capitalism here,” Rosa says.

Terry is a key losing litigant in a recently completed case by landowners against the Chinese-owned MCC, which runs the Ramu Nickel mine in Madang. He claims violent intimidation by the company and has witnessed pollution in the water near his village. “Every day I hope the world comes to an end,” he says to me in despair. The top courts, ministers and federal government are all colluding to support the mine, he says.

MCC advertising in the local press claims the company is “ready to deliver”. But perhaps not for the people in Madang.

*Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist currently working on a book about vulture capitalism. Read here his first PNG report from Bougainville.

Thoughtful piece in today’s Sydney Morning Herald by Peter Manning. At a time when Israel is increasingly accused of apartheid, and many Western hacks continue visiting the country with the Zionist lobby, the average citizen is smarter than we think:

…Polls now show that while Hawke might have reflected Australian attitudes in the 1980s, in the 21st century Rudd and Gillard certainly don’t.

Individual polls can be misleading. It’s the trend of polls that matters. Occasional polls on Israel-Palestine were conducted by a small number of companies between 1946 and 1990. Over that 40-plus-year period, they tell us that: Australians were evenly divided on whether Palestine should be partitioned at all in the late 1940s; Australians supported Israel by a large majority in 1967 when it defeated Egypt and invaded and occupied the Palestinian territories; and Australians were pro-Israel in 1974, again by a large majority, following the 1973 war with Syria, Egypt and Jordan.

This support continued into the 1980s. A McNair Ingenuity poll in 1981 asked, “Are your sympathies … mainly with the Jewish people? OR mainly with the Arabic people? OR are they more or less equal?” (Results: Jewish people 28 per cent; Arab people 4 per cent; Equal 55 per cent; Don’t know 13 per cent.)

At least seven reputable polls have been conducted in the past decade touching on the question of Australian attitudes to Israel-Palestine.

In 2003, 35 per cent agreed ”with American policy on Israel and Palestine”, while 39 per cent disagreed.

In two polls in 2006, sympathy was almost evenly divided between the two sides, with two-thirds in one poll saying their sympathies were ”equal”.

But in 2007, after the Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon, 68 per cent had a negative view of Israel and, in 2009, after the war in Gaza, 24 per cent sympathised with Israel, 28 per cent with the Palestinians and 26 per cent with neither.

In 2010, 55 per cent described the conflict as ”Palestinians trying to end Israel’s occupation and form their [own] state”, while 32 per cent preferred ”Israelis fighting for security against Palestinian terrorism”.

And last year, while sympathies were almost evenly divided, 63 per cent were against settlers building on occupied land and 51 per cent thought Australia should vote ”Yes” for Palestinian statehood at the UN, compared to 15 per cent ”No” and 20 per cent ”Abstain”.

I am listing here only polls from private polling companies with established reputations in the specialist field.

The overwhelming trend shows a sharp swing since the 1980s against Israel’s image and actions among ordinary Australians.

The fact of the current disjunction between government policy and public attitudes on the Israel-Palestine issue receives almost no publicity, unlike polls on Afghanistan. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to hide.

My following investigation appears in Crikey today:

The rusted air vent is deafening and a whoosh echoes around the pit. Copper-polluted water sits in a pool nearby and trees are starting to take over the graded hillside. Rocky, uneven ground is where locals pan for gold, hoping to find a few grams to make some money for families living in nearby villages. Seven kilometres wide at its broadest point, the Rio Tinto-controlled Bougainville copper mine in Papua New Guinea hasn’t been in operation for nearly 25 years, yet still dominates the local landscape.

Dozens of massive trucks lie inoperable. Oil drips from their engines and runs downstream. A loud, machine-like sound is heard in the pit. The vent is sucking air directly into a pipe that takes water outside the mine itself. It is this device that allows the mine not to fill up completely with water when it rains constantly during the rainy season. It has been making this booming sound 24 hours a day for the past two decades.

The island’s brutal war from 1989 to 1997 caused the death of many thousands, maimed countless others and involved Australia arming, training and funding Port Moresby to oppose the rebellion. Former PNG leader Michael Somare accuses Rio Tinto of violently suppressing rebels opposed to the mine during the “crisis”.

Bougainvilleans may have won the war but the peace has left years of inertia, and a province desperately in need of rehabilitation.

The town closest to Panguna mine, Awara, feels stuck in time, old buildings are devoured by lush jungle, Shell and Mobil service stations decay on the side of the road. The locals are used to the poor infrastructure and housing and there are few active services for the dwindling population.

“The mine was never really closed,” says Josephine, manager of the Arawa Women’s Training Centre. “Workers and the company just fled.”

Rio Tinto refuses to properly clean up its mess. Kilometres of tailings — waste dumped by mine operators — have caused a once clear river and land to be turned into desert.

“I remember when this used to be all green back in the 1960s,” says Willy, in faded polo shirt, grey shorts and bare feet, a former leader in the Bougainville Revolutionary Army who accompanies me to the area. “We used to tell the mine owners for years that they were polluting everything but they ignored us. We had no choice but to fight for our rights over the land.”

The local community is divided over whether to try and reopen the mine as a healthy source of income before a planned independence referendum in the next years or develop adventure tourism and sustainable farming.

The owner of the mine, Bougainville Copper Limited, has a website that claims its future is bright. Peter Taylor, chairman and managing director of Bougainville Copper, told Radio Australia in 2011 that he was ready to reopen the mine but he made no comment about cleaning up the ecological disaster his company created last time. He blamed some “small but strong [local] pockets of opposition” to his firm’s re-entry.

The only person I meet who adamantly opposes any kind of mining is the man who protects a checkpoint that every Westerner has to pass to enter the mining area. I visit “Commander Alex” the day before my visit to explain the purpose of my trip and obtain permission. A $100 fee is paid, and an invoice issued, to prove I am there for the right reasons. He says he will stay at the checkpoint until compensation is fully paid to all those deserve it. He lives at the checkpoint 24 hours a day.

Willy’s fears reflect many people’s that I hear. He worries about further ecological catastrophe if Panguna re-establishes itself but is torn between dual desires; supporting a young population who are currently experiencing a baby boom while also providing adequate compensation for the former fighters and families who suffered during the “crisis” (the only word I hear used to describe the bloodshed).

Nobody has faith in politicians in either Bougainville or Port Moresby and Willy knows Canberra talks about avoiding “failed states” on its doorstep. For this reason, he worries Australia will not support independence for the province. But perhaps China will, he suggests, and exert influence as they are currently doing in East Timor, Mongolia and beyond.

A man in his early 60s who lives in a decaying weatherboard house on the outskirts of Awara, Willy told me he hasn’t seen his young grandchildren for five years because they live in an inaccessible area near town and he can’t afford to hire a truck to get there.

Individuals in Bougainville acknowledge the economic weakness of their position if they want independence. They need investment, trust and foreign capital. One of the former leaders of the Bougainville revolution, Samuel Kauona, is upbeat, however.

He tells me about his vision for the island, namely independence and sustainable mining. He talks about the 500-year history of foreign powers, including Australia, not allowing Bougainville to exercise autonomy. For him, keeping the massive mineral wealth in local hands is essential: “This is why we fought the war.”

Samuel is shortly to present to the Bougainville Autonomous Government the first mining exploration since the end of the “crisis”, a desire to examine land that he believes contains gold and silver (conservative estimates I hear claim that billions of dollars worth of gold, copper and silver remain undiscovered in the province). Only then will overseas companies be allowed to assist locals in exploiting the resources but Bougainville landowners will be the primary driver of the projects.

He explains how his insurgency beat the PNG army, its patron, the Australian government and Rio Tinto in the “crisis”. His men knew the terrain and opponents were no match for their guerilla tactics. Kauona says that the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan faced the same adversary but arrogantly believed they could win with counter-insurgency tactics.

Perhaps Samuel’s most provocative suggestion is to cut Australia’s aid budget to PNG (Canberra currently gives close to $500 million annually). “I would stop all the aid tomorrow,” he says. “It’s not making people self-sufficient.” He has little time for the influx of old men in parliament in Moresby and Bougainville. “We need young people to lead [a not too subtle dig at Michael Somare, a man for whom I find no support on the island].”

Samuel would not be pleased with a view I heard in Port Moresby from some local NGO employees who say they hope and pray Australia reclaims control over PNG and teaches them to properly manage the nation. I respond by saying I can’t think of any other example globally where the formerly colonised request the coloniser to control them again. “Things are desperate here,” one responds tartly.

These sentiments are not universal. Bougainville hotel manager Josephine, a strong figure in her ’50s with fuzzy black and blonde hair and blue-and-red dress, explains that her vision is for Western tourists to come and hike around Bougainville and a robust agricultural sector flourishing in the fertile ground. The record of Panguna mine is so bad, she says, that it is almost unimaginable for it to return.

*Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist currently writing a book about vulture capitalism

A worrying development in Australia (courtesy of the Greens):

Minister Joe Ludwig, representing the Attorney General in the Senate, confirmed in Question Time today that the Australia Federal Police monitors coal seam gas protesters and that the government outsources some intelligence gathering to private consultants.

“Farmers in Queensland trying to protect their land from coal seam gas mining, and parents concerned about their children’s health, will be understandably outraged that they may be under surveillance by the Australian Federal Police,” Australian Greens Deputy Leader, Senator Christine Milne, said.

“What an extraordinary use of taxpayers’ money to spy on legitimate protesters in order to protect the commercial interests of polluting companies.

“State Premiers need to indicate whether their police agencies are working hand in glove with the AFP and energy companies to maximise penalties for protesters and increase surveillance on citizens trying to defend their properties against coal seam gas developers.

“Is it true that energy companies and the police are working together to maximise charges for protesters? Are Anna Bligh, Barry O’Farrell, Ted Bailleu and Martin Ferguson working together to maximise surveillance?

“Minister Ludwig confirmed today, in response to my question, that some surveillance of protesters is being outsourced to a private agency – the National Open Source Intelligence Centre.

“I encourage people, as Minister Ludwig did, to put in FOI requests to the AFP and state agencies for any surveillance files being kept on them.”