Archive for May, 2009
« Previous EntriesBislama Bons Mots
Sunday, May 31st, 2009In Bislama’s most common usage, the laughing, chaffing repartee that punctuates our daily exchanges, it’s good-natured, inventive and cheeky, strikingly similar to the bawdy discourse in a Dublin pub on any given Friday.
My point – and I do have one – is that visitors ignore the nuance and linguistic flair inherent in Vanuatu discourse at their peril. No one can truly say they understand Bislama until they’ve grasped its vividly metaphorical, highly contextual fluidity and made it their own.
Go With the Flow
Saturday, May 30th, 2009Widespread distribution of once-scarce information and the changing nature of expertise will inevitably present some challenges to Vanuatu society. It will always be in the interests of some to limit access to certain kinds of knowledge.
This tendency needs to be resisted. No matter what we may feel about certain kinds of information, we cannot afford to act in ignorance.
Now, we as a society might decide collectively that we don’t want to access some information sources. That’s perfectly fine; every society does this. Indeed, the inflationary effect of common knowledge is negated when we pool our collective intelligence and will and apply it to a common cause. It was the universally held idea of independence, after all, that created Vanuatu in the first place.
But when we delegate access to information itself to others, no matter how well-intentioned they may be, they will inevitably come to realise that, the more they enforce scarcity on the information economy, the more their own power is reinforced.
40 Dei Ramble
Sunday, May 24th, 2009I need to say a few things about Wan Smolbag as an artistic institution, and the only way to get there is to indulge in a deliberate bit of hand-waving that runs the risk of belittling the dozens of non-theatrical activities they manage. There’s a small mountain of data out there expressing in very finite terms just how effective this group is.
My point, I guess, is that no matter how good that makes them – and they are very good indeed – there’s more to it than that. And that’s what I want to write about today.
I’m not going to attempt to structure this in any useful way. This really is as much a personal exercise as a public one: If I succeed in conveying a sense of what makes Smolbag so unique to you, I might understand it better myself….
The Devil at our Shoulder
Saturday, May 23rd, 2009Anybody who’s opened a newspaper in the last few years will recognise the characters and events portrayed in 40 Dei, Wan Smolbag Theatre’s latest stage production. Smolbag’s greatest gift to us is its ability to show us our own world. The play is populated by the same reprobates, righteous hypocrites, prostitutes, politicians and just plain folks as we find in any neighbourhood in Port Vila.
We all walk with the Devil at our shoulder. Without surrendering to dogmatic, moralistic finger-wagging, 40 Dei confronts us with the knowledge that the most insidious enemy to Vanuatu society lies within it, not without. Until we recognise that there are no easy answers to the complex afflictions of a society in transition, until we accept that prostitutes, prisoners and penitents alike are all our family, until we recognise our own weakness in the face of venality and ambition, we will never completely be whole.
In the words of the immortal Walt Kelly, “We have met the enemy and it is us.”
Masters of our own Domain
Saturday, May 23rd, 2009The role of a ccTLD administrator is not to arbitrate public morals. While simple rules can be set concerning appropriate use of the domain, they need to be kept to a minimum. The approach we need to take is a minimalist one. There are some terms, for example, that do little or nothing to enhance the public dialogue. Swear words, for example.
But that does not mean that a domain administrator should have any direct role in defining what topics can or should be discussed in the public sphere.
A ccTLD administrator is neither pastor, policeman nor politician. It does not exist to make rules about public morality, nor should it be given powers beyond the minimal set necessary to ensure the smooth operation of its part of the Internet Domain Name Service (DNS).
Vanuatu has laws, and everyone has to respect them. A national domain administrator has a responsibility to uphold those laws, and to the extent that it’s reasonable to do so, it should ensure that those laws are upheld by its stakeholders and clients.
A domain administrator’s role is primarily technical. Most of what they do is make the registration of domains by multiple parties practical, simple and conducive to the conduct of a public exchange of information, for whatever purpose.
A New Page
Monday, May 18th, 2009There’s been a lot of concern of late over the apparent impatience shown by Australia and New Zealand to engage with their Pacific Island neighbours on the PACER Plus round of trade talks. Local commentators have had little good to say about the prospects, and speculation has been rife over what’s really at stake.
The strongest fear expressed by commentators throughout the Pacific is that New Zealand and Australia will use their foreign aid to the region as a stick to bring the small island states into line. Having witnessed the drubbing that Fiji and PNG took in their Economic Partnership Agreements with the European Union, it’s understandable that they wouldn’t want to see their economic health similarly threatened.
This week, Pablo Kang, Australia’s new High Commissioner to Vanuatu, published a surprisingly intemperate letter to the Editor in this newspaper. He was rightly chastised for the distinctly un-Melanesian tone he took in confronting nay-sayers. Vanuatu has spent years assiduously cultivating a cordial, solidly two-way engagement with its development partners that allows it to assert its own priorities. This week’s pronouncements reminded some of a repeat from the Howard/Downer show.
But, lest the baby exit with the bath water, it needs to be said that one key observation that High Commissioner Kang shared with us in undoubtedly true: As things stand right now, PACER Plus is still a blank page.
Protecting our Children
Saturday, May 16th, 2009Over the last two weeks or so, there’s been an animated and quite fascinating discussion on the VIGNET technical mailing list. VIGNET is a mailing list service provided by the Vanuatu IT Users Society (VITUS) in order to contribute to a public dialogue about all things to do with technology. With over 220 subscribers, it represents a significant number of people working in IT in Vanuatu.
Following the roll-out of Digicel’s GPRS mobile Internet service, concerns have been raised about children and youth in Vanuatu having access to unsuitable content, especially pornography, through their mobile phones.
With nearly 100 messages from dozens of different contributors, the discussion was illuminating, intelligent and remarkably respectful, especially given the delicacy of the topic. What follows is a small but representative sampling….
Who We Are
Tuesday, May 12th, 2009A society is defined by how it treats those in its care. In Vanuatu, that often means that community rights trump the individual’s. In the Western legal justice system, individual rights are paramount. This creates a tension that subverts the ability of the community to police itself. In Vanuatu’s case, it erodes the chief’s mandate with regard to justice and social order, placing police and legal justice in his place. If they fail, the entire system fails.
More than anything else, kastom’s continuing influence has kept Vanuatu from falling into the same pit of lawlessness and disorder as PNG and the Solomons.
It is not, therefore, the mere idea that the VMF beat and killed Bule that I find troubling. It is the fact that, by allowing some to act without restraint, without any rules whatsoever, we as a society are moving further towards a culture that sanctions lawlessness. We have only to look at Port Moresby, with its rampant, uncontrollable violence and its often deadly law enforcement, to see where Port Vila will be in a decade.
If, that is, we don’t take steps now to bring our troublemakers back within society’s grasp.
The Supply Problem
Saturday, May 9th, 2009The Internet operates in an economy of plenitude and nothing is ever going to change that. Finding a place in it will be an uncomfortable and sometimes disappointing exercise for many – but not all – print publications.
The solution, if they choose to recognise it, is not to stand like Canute among the waves and order back the tide. The secret is to find news, analysis and insight that is in short supply, and to add it to the flood. This is something that our local publishers a uniquely positioned to do.
Kastom and Reconciliation
Sunday, May 3rd, 2009[Originally published in the Vanuatu Daily Post’s Weekender Edition.] Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s April 30 arrival in Honiara, Solomon Islands marked what everyone hopes is a historic beginning of a new era in Solomons – and Melanesian – politics. When the Nobel Laureate first posited the idea of Truth and Reconciliation, it was, for South Africa [...]
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