Global Voices Online

Tongan native Samiuela LV Taufa compares the Australians with the Tongans on their respective ideas of nationalism and belonging. “As I understand Tongans, we're only truely nationalistic when it is to contrast/combat another national. Whereas we seem to identify much closer to our inner community (township, school.) Of the Australians I grew up with, they would identify themselves closer to their ‘nationality' than with their township.”

Recent Links also in Oceania

With Fiji’s government cracking down on outlets selling pirated DVDs, L. Cass pens a piece in Failed Paradise criticizing these “cheating” retailers but also lamenting their downfall

A second journalism school has opened in Fiji, this one at the Fiji Institute of Technology. But given “the climate of censorship and media paranoia in post-putsch Fiji,” media educator David Robie in his Café Pacific blog argues the standards of these new programs should face heavy scrutiny.

Jonathan, the writer of the blog Oceanic: User Experiences from the South Pacific reports on a consumer complaint against his Fiji-based advertising agency stating that his advert for a local ISP attempts to benefit from the Swine Flu epidemic (now called H1N1) by misleading consumers into thinking internet service “is like a prescription drug.” He wonders how people can protest against his work, while much of the local media prints “sensationalist” and “inaccurate” headlines about the flu scare.