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When the Traditional Governance and Customs Facilitation Bill wasfirst introduced a few months ago, there was ahuge outcry from the public opposing this Bill and the shallow policy or no policy at all behind this Bill.
There was an obvious lack of in-depth knowledge of the country’s customs, groupings and units that exist under our various customary laws and practices of our existing traditional governing structures.
Of notable concern was the fact that the Judiciary, Law Reform Commission, Bar Association as well as other significant key stakeholders were not consulted.
Where consultations were carried out, it was superficial and of a few chosen and rushed leaving traditional leaders and rural communities confused and left out.
Women were completely sidelined despite the fact that the main thrust of the bill is land and 80% of land matrilineal.
Again, a Bill has been brought into the parliament that most certainly does not include women’s views thusgender bias and all efforts done to bring about gender equality and equity in our country will again be eroded.
Despite the public’s view, after a short period of so-called consultations, this Bill was brought before the Bills and Legislation Committee in early September 2018.
The Chief Magistrate openly said the drafting did not meet the required standards.
The government has decided to ignore its people’s concerns and go with its advisor’s recommendation, a non-indigenous person.
This in itself is a slap on the learned people of Solomon Islands face, and their views.
During the Bills and Legislation Committee enquiry, again the public’s view on this Bill was reiterated as various key stakeholders made their submissions to the Bills and Legislation Committee.
The majority view was to withdraw the Bill. Submissions were received from the legal fraternity, prominent leaders, and representatives from the provinces and provincial governments, Houses of Chiefs, women and youths, NGOs and CSOs as well as representatives from both the Public and the Private sector.
Transparency Solomon Islands has from the beginning clearly made its views known with regards to this Bill.
These views were also submitted to the Bills and Legislation Committee.
TSI is of the view that this is a ‘Half- cooked Bill’ and joined the public in calling for the withdrawal of this Bill.
Unfortunately this Bill is now in its second reading. This is a clear indication of the government not listening to the cries of the people of Solomon Islands.
Our views are based on what we see in the 40 plus constituencies that we visited, and the issues raised in our office by those affected by chiefs decision who are in the pocket of the loggers.
It is even alleged that the Customary Land Appeal Court, the clerks where these chiefs sit is also in the pocket of the loggers, so here we are going to legalize the most corrupt set up without any disciplinary or monitoring provisions.
The Traditional Governance and Customs facilitation Bill, if it becomes an Act, will gravely undermine the very system that this Bill is supposedly proposing to recognize and protect.
The leadership systems and traditional structures in rural Solomon Islands, a leadership system that is inclusive and appropriate for the communities, tribes where these are accepted by them according to their traditional practices.
The Bill does not cater for the women when it comes to land.
There are quite a number of provinces in the Solomon Islands that still practices matrilineal system and the Billdiscriminates againstwomen in decision-making over lands.
The Bill will also give all the resources to the government and resource owners will have less power over their land and resources.
Transparency Solomon Islands understands that whilst the national government is trying to push the Bill through its second reading, people of Solomon Islands sees no importance in it.
TSI reiterates its call on the Solomon Islands Democratic Coalition for Change Government (SIDCCG) to withdraw the Bill and to listen to the voice of the mass populace.
Decisions made must reflect what the people want and not what a handful of people behind the push for this Bill want.
There are more important and pressing issues to discus and debate in parliament than the Traditional Governance and Customs Facilitation Bill, a “Half-cooked Bill” that will obviously shatter our existing unique traditional governing structures, culture and customs.
Transparency Solomon Islands on behalf of the resource owners and voiceless citizens call on you Prime Minister Rick Houenipwela, do the right thing for your people in the dying hours of this house as you have done with the Anti-Corruption Acts.
We ask you to withdraw the Half-Cooked TGCF Bill. What are you fearing?
The house is going to be dissolved and Kadere Party who pushes this bill will no longer threaten the stability of your government.
Please do the right thing for the people and by the people of Solomon Islands, withdraw the bill and send it for further and wider consultations.
You have an Institution of the government that can do this work for you as they did with the Anti-Corruption Bills.
That is, the Law Reform Commission and base way forward on the findings and recommendations based on their findings consulting with people.
The passing of this Bill will indeed create the breeding ground for corruption.
* NB: Government withdrew the bill on Thursday afternoon following oppositions from a number of MPs. This article was writing and submitted before the bill was withdrawn.
"It was a great series," wing Josh Anderson said. "That's the way we want to play."
Steven Stamkos, Cedric Paquette and Brayden Point scored for Tampa Bay, which never led in this elimination game. The Lightning tied it at 3 on Point's goal late in the second period, but Oliver Bjorkstrand scored 54 seconds later to put Columbus ahead for good.
I am writing in regards to the Nov. 16 article by Alex Burness regarding New Era Colorado’s activities, and the letters to the editor that have been published in response.
We live in a time when the Supreme Court allows unlimited spending by unaffiliated political action committees. Representative government is under assault through gerrymandering, abuse of party primaries, voter disenfranchisement, and a host of other problems. Increasing numbers of American voters are increasingly disc...
I don’t want to unfairly fault any county or school employees, but the campus polling location was horrendously inconvenient and difficult to find. This represents a form of voter disenfranchisement that New Era worked to combat, and regardless of whether we agree with their stances on specific issues we all owe them o...
WASHINGTON—U.S. warplanes have carried out hundreds of airstrikes in Iraq in the past two years, bombing and strafing insurgent fighters and targets almost daily. And the air war, which has gone largely unnoticed at home, could intensify once American ground forces start to withdraw.
Since Iraq doesn't have a working air force, U.S. jets are expected to provide air cover for Iraqi troops for at least several more years.
Some analysts have raised questions about how effective air power can be in a counterinsurgency war. A key fear is that Iraq's mostly Shiite Muslim and Kurdish army will use American and allied bombing missions for revenge attacks on the Sunni Muslim Arab minority, which provides most of the insurgency's fighters.
"If we allow that to happen, then in essence we'll be doing the same thing we accused Saddam Hussein of doing," said Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA and State Department official. "We'll just be substituting one tyranny for another."
Bombing alone can't defeat Iraq's insurgency, said Johnson, the former CIA and State Department official.
"There's nothing in history you can point to where air power has been the deciding factor in a counterinsurgency campaign," Johnson said. "The essence of counterinsurgency is who controls the ground ... and we don't have enough people on the ground."
It's already difficult for American troops to distinguish friend from foe in Iraq. To wage a counterinsurgency campaign solely from the air would be virtually impossible.
According to Bahler, the public affairs officer, roughly 45 U.S. and allied warplanes operate daily over Iraq, not counting the helicopters flown by the Army, Marines or special operations forces.
No U.S. planes have been shot down, but insurgents have shot down a number of American helicopters.
Sixteen U.S. soldiers were killed when a CH-47 Chinook crashed west of Fallujah in November 2003 after being hit by a surface-to-air missile. An insurgent missile took down a Royal Air Force C-130 north of Baghdad last January, killing 10 British soldiers.
Most airstrikes in Iraq have taken place when American and Iraqi troops were fighting insurgents. Air attacks also have been used to destroy suspected guerrilla safe houses, bunkers, vehicles, weapons caches and roadside bombs.
Most have taken place in north-central and western Iraq, where U.S. and Iraqi troops have been engaged in daily combat with guerrilla fighters. Airstrikes also were used against a month-long Shiite rebellion in southern Iraq in 2004.
"Most missions respond or are prepared to respond to `troops in contact' situations where the precision firepower of a combat aircraft may be required," Bahler said. "Often, these missions don't require actual weapons deliveries, but rather a mere `show of force' a combat aircraft produces."
Most strikes are carried out by Air Force F-15 and F-16 fighter jets flying from bases in nearby countries and by Navy F-14 and F/A-18 fighters operating from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf. Most involve precision-guided bombs or strafing runs with 40 mm cannon fire. Unmanned Predator drones, first used in Afgha...
British Royal Air Force Tornado GR-4 and GR-7 attack jets also provide air cover to coalition ground troops.
In 1954, Photoplay, the doyen of fan magazines -- it had been around since 1911 publishing feel-good stories written by publicity agents -- printed an article about the early love lives of Jeff Chandler and Susan Hayward, who were childhood friends. The article was flattering, but Chandler, the magazine said, thought i...
Quaint, no? We have traveled so far from that moment in the evolution of fame that the poll seems to belong to another civilization. By the mid-50's, with the rise of gossip sheets like Confidential, the American public was already demanding a price for fame. The line between public achievement and private pathology wa...
Now there isn't even the expectation of public achievement as a requirement for fame, just the capacity to be humiliated publicly.
A typical Modern exhibition this is not. Several galleries of the museum are crammed with 19th-century daguerreotypes, cartes de visite, publicity stills, newsreels, movie trailers, old tabloid newspapers, modern supermarket glossies, Wheaties boxes and excerpts from television programs and advertisements, including Pe...
I don't mean that the show is alarming because we dislike and disdain what's in it. I mean the reverse: it's irresistible. We meet people like Peggy Hopkins Joyce, the Lady of the Orchids, as she was called. In 1931, Vanity Fair, then the grandest of highbrow celebrity magazines, published one of Edward Steichen's glam...
We meet other equally ridiculous characters from the last century and a half whose celebrity, fleeting and otherwise, coincided with the rise of photography and the media that succeeded it, namely film, television and the Internet. The exhibition's argument, not original but cleverly presented, is that change in pictor...
So the proliferation of hand-held cameras let photographers catch people off guard and paved the way for paparazzi. Halftone printing, by which daily tabloids could publish pictures alongside text, increased the public's appetite for news-maker snapshots, which created a need for fresh photographs and new faces each da...
When television brought celebrities into people's living rooms in the 50's, it added the illusion of intimacy to the situation. One of the television clips in the exhibition shows Jack Paar chatting with Fidel Castro, the two of them sitting side by side talking about their children as if at a cocktail party. It's an e...
After all, to be famous, that is, to be a celebrity, increasingly meant to pretend that you were like everyone else, a fiction that gradually caused the entire population of the country to believe it could (should) be famous. Programs like Mr. Paar's and ''Person to Person'' hastened what we could call the banalization...
This is the crucial matter: fame stripped of its everlasting value, its promise of a life after death, at least for one's reputation, has lost its spiritual underpinning. Historically speaking, it used to be a spiritual matter, and it retains certain aspects of its spiritual character while no longer necessarily attach...
Hence the vocabulary of fame still borrows from religion: charisma, idol. We still collect and revere pictures of the famous as if they were icons, whether they're baseball cards or rock star posters. And what is an endorsement, in the end, but the sanctioning of something by the sanctified, the famous person's lending...
Then there is St. Augustine's paradox, which confronts every famous person today. Augustine said that to be purged of the sin of pride, a person must also purge the pride that comes from being humble, ''the desire,'' as Leo Braudy once put it in ''The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History,'' ''that an audience witness...
Fame in the ephemeral sense of celebrity certainly existed in the past. But the point of the exhibition is that photography brought with it a whole new range of social effects. Before photography, most people obviously didn't even know what their public figures looked like. The mid-19th-century craze for cartes de visi...
Famous people had to adapt to the new medium. The standard example is Lincoln, the homely hayseed, who with a little retouching became a handsome statesman through Mathew Brady's lens. But soon everyone, not just public figures, learned how to pose. Then came moving pictures. It's sweet to look at some of the early new...
We didn't really need this exhibition to tell us that fame eventually came to attach itself to those who learned the tricks of the camera best, people whose celebrity derived from the fact that they looked good in photographs and on film, but we see many lively examples of it here. Billy Wilder's great remark about Mar...
True, to a degree this had been the case from the beginning of photography; a century ago, P. T. Barnum sold pictures of his performers and paid them royalties. But today we think we know who Cindy Crawford and Kate Moss are just because we've seen their photographs. They're famous for being photographed. No wonder peo...
The show's unspoken question is whether something that has become so commonplace is still meaningful, beyond its value as a commodity. Fame analysis is a growth industry: countless magazines and television programs have arisen during the last decade to dissect the sources of fame, the ways in which fame is produced and...
We must return in the end to the issue of spiritual value because you might say that without it, fame has been reduced to a plunging stock. The exhibition charts a trajectory from the world of Queen Victoria to that of Kato Kaelin. Now that everyone is famous for 15 minutes, is anyone really famous any longer?
''Fame After Photography'' remains at the Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53d Street, Manhattan, (212) 708-9400, through Oct. 5. The show received financial support from Camera Works Inc., a West Coast nonprofit foundation.
Spice up a white sofa in an instant with colorful throw pillows.
A white sofa is a practical and versatile furniture choice for a living room but can quickly become boring and stark without accessories. Fortunately, you can change the look of favorite comfy sofa with a few colorful accent pillows. Go from clinical to cozy by using throw pillows rich in color, texture and pattern to ...
Use colored throw pillows that complement your wall color with added intensity. If the colors of your walls are neutral, you will have more options in choosing the colors of your accessories. Colors can affect mood, so choose accordingly. Cool tones like blue, green and purple create a calm and soothing effect, while r...
You don't need to be a professional decorator to play with patterns. Layer throw pillows in gingham, toile, stripes, florals or damask, and stand back to look at the big picture. As a rule, patterned pillows shouldn't compete. If one pillow has a bold pattern, the one nearest to it should be more subtle and subdued. So...
Textured fabric creates added flavor to accent pillows. For a rich, elegant feel, use fabrics like silk shantung, velvet and faux fur. Add a casual or rustic look to your sofa by using pillows made of muslin, burlap or linen in muted neutral tones. If vintage style is what you are looking for, try using embroidered or ...
One of the most gratifying things about having a white sofa is having the option to instantly change your decor. Keep extra pillows and throw blankets on hand for a quick makeover during a change of seasons or for the holidays. Dress up your neutral sofa with red and green pillows at Christmas or use elegant silver and...
Kaboos, Andrea. "How to Decorate With a White Sofa and Colorful Throw Pillows." Home Guides \| SF Gate, http://homeguides.sfgate.com/decorate-white-sofa-colorful-throw-pillows-57080.html. Accessed 22 April 2019.
This beautiful home gives you the acreage you need and the space you want along with the shop and storage to keep all your toys with you! Super nice RV parking with extra room and then the shop or apartment space. Home is in Immaculate condition with open floor plan and gigantic living area! Wonderful back patio with l...
“CLEAN COAL,” U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted ahead of a Tuesday trip to coal country in West Virginia. Trump was expected to promote the plan as making good on his campaign pledge to bring back the coal industry, which is being hit hard by market forces that make natural gas and other cleaner fuels cheaper and mor...
“Today we are fulfilling the president’s agenda,” acting EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler told reporters.
The proposal dismantles former president Barack Obama’s 2015 Clean Power Plan, one of his administration’s legacy efforts against climate change. The Obama rules, which have been halted by court challenges, would have increased federal regulation of emissions from the nation’s electrical grid and broadly promoted clean...
Michelle Bloodworth, president of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity — a trade group that represents coal producers — called the new rule a marked departure from the “gross overreach” of the Obama administration and said it should prevent a host of premature coal plant retirements.
When health costs from air pollution — soot and smog killing people, increased asthma and heart attacks — are factored in, the repeal of the coal power plan would cost the country $1.4 billion (U.S.) to $3.9 billion annually, according to the agency.
Tuesday’s move opens a public comment period on the proposal before any final approval by the president.
Obama’s plan was designed to cut U.S. carbon dioxide emissions to 32 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. The rule dictated specific emission targets for states and gave officials broad latitude to decide how to achieve reductions.
The Supreme Court put the plan on hold in 2016, following a legal challenge by industry and coal-friendly states, an order that remains in effect.
INDONESIA - Carstenz Pyramid is one of the 7 Summits of the World. The summit ridgeline has a series of roped traverses forcing climbers to perform a high altitude ballet.
The climbing team included Colorado's Jon Kedrowski joined by the More Than Just Mountains Foundation (MTJM) members Tommy Danger, Mark Nolan, and John Burkett. They trekked 8 days through thick, wet, and muddy Indonesian jungle to reach the summit. It rained almost every afternoon.
At 16,024ft Carstenz Pyramid is one of the 7 Summits - that is the highest peak on each continent. Most teams helicopter into basecamp to avoid the long jungle trek.
Summit day was made more challenging by new snowfall. Rain down lower had fallen as snow higher up on the mountain. The entire team made the summit and down safely.
The More Than Just Mountains Foundation does these climbs to raise awareness for Cystic Fibrosis and other causes. For more information on the MTJM Foundation please visit their website.
Photo courtesy: Northern Command, Indian Army.
The newly appointed General Officer Commanding-in-Chief (GOC in C) of Udhampur based northern command of Indian Army, Lieutenant General Ranbir Singh is likely to have a bumpy ride amidst steady cross border infiltration and unrest in the valley.
An infantry soldier, Lt Gen Singh has replaced Lt Gen Anbu, who has taken the charge of vice chief of the Indian Army. Lt Gen Singh, has a long experience in carrying out counter insurgency operations.
The general had hogged the limelight after announcing the news of Indian Army’s surgical strike in across the Line of Control into Pakistan in September 2016. The government had asked Lt Gen Singh, the then Director General of Military Operations (DGMO), to address the media, against the usual tradition of giving this ...
It is learnt that Lt Gen Singh had played a phenomenal role in preparing the blue print of Indian Army’s planned surgical strike operations after Pakistani terrorists sneaked into an Army base of garrison town of Uri and killed 18 soldiers on September 19, 2016. India took it seriously and pledged to avenge the killing...

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