The Change We Seek

Dan McGarry

Every ni-Vanuatu knows what it means to be discriminated against in one’s own country. They know the trials, the travails and above all the tedium of building that more perfect union. Barack Obama’s election is not just a victory for people of colour, it is a victory of human ideals.

[Originally published in the Vanuatu Daily Post’s Weekender Edition.]

“This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change.”

President-Elect Barack Obama spoke these words to nearly a quarter of a million people in Grant Park, Chicago, Illinois on a night that I will remember as one of the highlights of my life.

Reporting on the event, even the normally sober Economist Magazine could not avoid tingeing its account with giddiness. Shyly, almost ashamedly, the anonymous author recounts how American and international journalists lost all semblance of restraint when CNN called the race. They came tumbling out of the media tent en masse to join the multitude of revelers.

How could they not be affected? Each and every one of us was changed personally, individually, by this event.

But it would be disingenuous for any journalist to declare from the pulpit of their own column, that – just this once – they’ve forsaken their dais to speak as woman or man. I will not do that. I will instead sit down on the steps to this poor podium. Indulge me while I speak from my own experience….

Read more “The Change We Seek”

A Plausible Man

Dan McGarry

Outside the hotel the city was black, reflective. In the lobby, a Miles Davis number quietly contemplated heroin. The whole town was in fugue. Rain before and snow to come; nothing now but cloud and calm.

Aidan stepped out smartly as the Jetta rolled up.

Outside the hotel the city was black, reflective. In the lobby, a Miles Davis number quietly contemplated heroin. The whole town was in fugue. Rain before and snow to come; nothing now but cloud and calm.

Aidan stepped out smartly as the Jetta rolled up. He was at the driver door before the occupant finished shifting into park. A fast Young Republican type, Brooks Brothers aspirant, tossed Aidan the keys, his eyes already scanning the entrance to the lounge. As if dodging a tackle, he swung smoothly round the quarter panel.

“You scratch it, I fuck you up,” he said, as if to the world in general.

Impassive, Aidan lowered himself into the driver’s seat, engaged the gear and slid away.

Read more “A Plausible Man”

The Price of Freedom

Dan McGarry

Australia’s Labour government recently announced that they would be implementing a two-tiered, national content-filtering scheme for all Internet traffic. The proposal as it stands is that people will have a choice of Internet connections: The first will block all Internet content considered unsafe for children. The second will allow adult content, but block anything deemed illegal under Australian law. People can choose one or the other, but they must choose one.

As with all public content-filtering schemes, this idea is well-intentioned, but fatally flawed.

Australia’s Labour government recently announced that they would be implementing a two-tiered, national content-filtering scheme for all Internet traffic.  The proposal as it stands is that people will have a choice of Internet connections: The first will block all Internet content considered unsafe for children. The second will allow adult content, but block anything deemed illegal under Australian law. People can choose one or the other, but they must choose one.

As with all public content-filtering schemes, this idea is well-intentioned, but fatally flawed.

National content filtering is an inefficient and fundamentally faulty technical approach that deputises the nation’s Internet Service Providers to the role of neighbourhood sherriff, something they’re not at all comfortable with. Second, and more importantly, it creates a dangerous legal and moral precedent that is difficult to distinguish from the infamous Great Firewall of China, which is regularly used to stifle social and political dissent.

Indeed, a spokesman for the online rights group Electronic Frontiers Australia recently said, “I’m not exaggerating when I say that this model involves more technical interference in the internet infrastructure than what is attempted in Iran, one of the most repressive and regressive censorship regimes in the world.”

Read more “The Price of Freedom”

The Happiest Place…

Dan McGarry

So there we are. There’s any amount of things that I could moan about, and not without cause, either. But when I start to, I’m forced to admit that yes, we are behind, but yes, we are making progress. Sometimes it’s not enough and it’s never fast enough, but step by step, like the little engine that could, Vanuatu keeps climbing up that hill.

[Originally written for the Vanuatu Daily Post.]

There should be a trenchant, thought provoking column in this space, but I find I have nothing to gripe about. For today, at least, we live in the best of all possible worlds.

Sure, Vanuatu faces innumerable challenges. It’s still miles behind in education, health services, infrastructure, wealth… you name it. The rights of women are neglected, often criminally. The cost of living is going up, and the financial world is crumbling all around us.

But everywhere I look, I see problems worse than ours.

Read more “The Happiest Place…”

Flickr: Flunkr

Dan McGarry2 Comments

About once a month or so, I’m tempted to dump 25 bucks on Flickr to upgrade to a ‘Pro’ account, just so I can plop more than 200 photos into that particular bucket. I admit I’ve been on the cusp a couple of times.

But I never do. The plain fact is that Flickr is a terrible photo viewing interface.

About once a month or so, I’m tempted to dump 25 bucks on Flickr to upgrade to a ‘Pro’ account, just so I can plop more than 200 photos into that particular bucket. I admit I’ve been on the cusp a couple of times.

But I never do. The plain fact is that Flickr is a terrible photo viewing interface.

Read more “Flickr: Flunkr”

Form and Function

Dan McGarry

As a computer geek, I’m supposed to be suffused with enthusiasm and excitement over the features of the latest software. By rights, I should be the one carrying the techno-tablets down from the mountain, telling you how the latest in frobnalising effemitry is going to change everyone’s life. I’m the one supposed to show you where to sign up and what to do with it once you’ve got it.

I have a confession to make: I hate most software.

[This week’s Communications column for the Vanuatu Independent.]

[Yes, it’s a re-hash of this rant. ed.]

As a computer geek, I’m supposed to be suffused with enthusiasm and excitement over the features of the latest software. By rights, I should be the one carrying the techno-tablets down from the mountain, telling you how the latest in frobnalising ephemetry is going to change everyone’s life. I’m the one supposed to show you where to sign up and what to do with it once you’ve got it.

I have a confession to make: I hate most software.

90% of software is crap. As author Theodore Sturgeon famously said, that’s because 90% of everything is crap.

I save a particular loathing for word processors. For any but the simplest tasks, their interfaces are utterly ridiculous. I haven’t liked a word processing interface since WordPerfect circa version 5, which ran on DOS (remember DOS?). If I had my own way, I’d still be using it.

Read more “Form and Function”

What Heroes are Made of

Dan McGarry7 Comments

Right to the core, Alfredo Reinado was a soldier. He used the only tools he knew to wrest concessions from a world that was too subtle, too fundamentally impure to allow his dreams of liberation to survive.

Timor-Leste’s tortuous history since the mid-1970s is a sad chronicle, alternately agonising and enraging. Even its high points seem to be characterised more by pride than joy. None of them end very well, and those few that do… well, one senses that they are unfinished, unresolved.

One of the most striking individual stories is that of Major Alfredo Reinado. Respected by all and lionised by many, he died during a 2008 firefight that erupted at the residence of President Jose Ramos Horta. The President was gravely injured during the attack and spent months convalescing in Australia.

On the same morning, Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, riding in a three car convoy with his security detail, was shot at on the road to Dili. This attack was perpetrated by Alfredo’s second-in-command,  Gastão Salsinha.

Reports of the incident characterised it alternately as an assassination attempt, an abortive coup and as a meeting between the rebel leader and the President that went tragically awry.

Hundreds of people attended the Major’s funeral. Ramos Horta publicly forgave him and, far from vilifying him for his role in the turmoil that displaced as many as 150,000 people, most people remember him as a patriot and a hero.

Read more “What Heroes are Made of”

Tales of the North Atlantic

Dan McGarry1 Comment

[Originally published in the Vanuatu Daily Post’s Weekender Edition.]

Tawi blong mi;

I write to you from the enthralling, magical island of Manhattan. This jewel of the North Atlantic is a marvelous place. It is visited by all the races of the world. They are drawn by its legendary abundance and wealth. Here, one can achieve one’s every desire. One has only to learn the curious local rituals to gather a bountiful harvest.

The Manhattoes – as they’re known – seem peculiar to us, but we should not judge them based only on a passing glimpse of their kastom and tabus. We can’t expect everyone to be like us.

The people of this lovely island have a peculiar cargo culture in which they equate meaningless numbers with material goods. I confess it’s a difficult concept to grasp. Let me explain….

Read more “Tales of the North Atlantic”

Our Greatest Wealth

Dan McGarry

A number of recent developments have moved us closer to having computers in the home than ever before. Cost reductions in broadband Internet combined with the availability of more robust, low-power computers are finally putting everyday Internet within reach of at least 30% of population of Vanuatu. And things are only going to get better from here.

[This week’s Communications column for the Vanuatu Independent.]

“Being rich is having money. Being wealthy is having time.”

Vanuatu is rich in time, if little else. Everywhere you look, you’ll see people loitering, chatting, sitting together, wiling away the hours.

Doug Patterson’s Kranke Kona cartoon contrasts the Vanuatu way with the outside world’s hurry-up approach to life brilliantly: Two amiable men, sitting under the coconut tree, see an expat scurrying by, briefcase in hand, mobile phone pressed to his ear. They ask him why he’s in such a rush. He replies that if he works without respite every day, some day he’ll be able to slow down and enjoy life.

I sympathise more with the two brothers under the tree than I do with the expat. But the real humour lies in the juxtaposition. As enamoured as we all are with having the time to do things well, time is, nonetheless, a finite resource. And while it’s easy to say that time is money, we need to ensure that we don’t focus too much on its price and not enough on its value.

Read more “Our Greatest Wealth”

A Flower in the Dust

Dan McGarry8 Comments

Timor-Leste is saving its own life, with little insight or assistance from the outside world. But like a bright flower in an arid land, this sudden outburst of life is an arresting sight. Or would be, if the world would stop to look.

[This feature appeared in a somewhat shorter form in the Weekender edition of the Vanuatu Daily Post.]

After decades of violence and suffering, Timor-Leste begins to bloom

Bougainvillea

There is no view quite so striking in Timor-Leste as a bougainvillea in full flower on a dusty plain. Almost every village house has one, as if to put an exclamation point on the landscape, not simply to announce but to cry out, “I’m here, I’m alive!”

After more than 35 years of violence and catastrophic suffering, at their own hands and those of a cruelly indifferent world, it’s nothing short of a marvel that the Timorese can smile at all. But on September 21st, the world’s youngest nation did just that, and more. For the first time in the country’s history, they gathered to celebrate Peace.

Read more “A Flower in the Dust”