This is a photo of me in a session with the High Command of OPM/TPN in a recent operation into the jungles of West Papua. Politics is the art of the possible. West Papua now braces for a humanitarian intervention, however it is defined, to arrest a 'man - made disaster‘ authored by the powers at play to alienate the New Guinea Savage. Then they ate..and Melanesian blood flowed for 60 long years. Inap nau. West Papua kirap...yu tu man yah.
Change We Can’ read US President Barrack Obama’s slogan during the US Presidential Election Campaign in 2008…it was the audacity of hope for a colossal assignment, but precedent been set in history and Obama knew he was challenged to do what needed to be done. Obama, Lenin, and Jesus Christ according to the Gospel of Luke, took the calculated risks involved in the assignment and emerged winners both in life….and death as with Jesus Christ who was also God. I will speak for Lenin. During his life nothing was more alien to Lenin’s way of thinking than draw a distinction betweenthe ‘hero’ and the ‘crowd’. Even if the hero loves the crowd he cannot but look down on it. The shaping of an inate mass depends entirely on it.
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Those who knew Lenin noted with surprise his complete lack of self – importance. Angelica Balabanova : ‘…externally he seemed to be the most colourless of all the revolutionary leaders’. Bruce Lockhart, British Consul in Moscowin 1917, when he first saw Lenin after the October revolution: ‘..at first glance, he looked more like a provincial grocer than a leader of men’. Clara Zetkin tells the story of his reception of a delegation of German communists. Accustomed to the marxists of the Reichstag with their frock coats and self – importance, these Germans had expected something else. She remembers that ‘…Lenin kept his appointment so punctually, entered the room so unobstrusively, and talked to them so naturally and simply that it never occurred to them that they were meeting Lenin’. One old Bolshevik recoreded in his memoirs, published in 1924: ‘The impression he made on me, and probably not me alone, was at first ambigous. His homely, at first sight common, appearance, did not impress us very much’. Maxim Gorky describedhis first impression of Lenin thus: “I had not expected Lenin to be like that. For me, there was something lacking. He rolled his “r”’s and stood with arms akimbo, somehow poking his fists under his arm pits. In a way he was too ordinary. He did not give the impression of a ‘leader“.
Another observation was that Lenin was personally very unassuming. There is the case of him filling in a party questionaire, dated 13 February 1922, as follows: ‘Spoken language: Russian. What other languages can you speak freely: I can freely speak none”. Actually Lenin read and spoke German, French and English fluently, and could read Intalian as well. This became evident during his participation during sessions and committees of the international forums at the time.
Besides Jesus Christ, who was also God, Lenin was the only other human being who changed the course of human history by his strong position on human endeavour to direct change and not wait for it. He said: ‘Philosophers interprete the world, the point is to change it’. Jesus Christ was also a revolutionary for the misfits, and a change advocate for a misfitting system, and his death is testimony of an an unfinished project. This is the challenge for humanity, and therefore all the science and technology that comes with all the song and dance, and ceremony…the point is to be with the crowd and get on with the task of doing what needs to be done.
Yesterday.
I dedicate yesterday today, my Mama Karim Day to the civil resistance movement in West Papua. May God bless you next year, if not already this year, 2012.
