Word: solomonic
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...chinese covet nike's Swoosh. America loves the iPod. Australians are hooked on a TV show called Idol. And Solomon Islanders have the cult of ramsi. An intervention force may seem an unlikely thing to swoon over, but the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands has pop-star appeal across the 992-island archipelago. The freshly minted brand has gained the status of savior and sorcerer with a long-suffering people, who utter the acronym in respectful whispers or with toothy smiles. From the streets of the ragtag capital, Honiara, to remote villages that the modern world has barely touched...
...close watch of foreign advisers, the mission's youthful bureaucrats are taking charge of battered economic and development institutions. The economy has gone steadily backward: per-capita income has fallen 50% since independence in 1978. The ethnic tensions and brutality of 1998-2003 masked a chronic illness in Solomon Islands, for which there is no off-the-shelf cure. "Our leaders have not lived up to the expectations of the people that have put them into power," says Central Bank governor Rick Hou, one of the country's most respected officials. "It's a pity the Solomon Islands Parliament...
...country's lackluster political class still oversees a system of corrupt and malign decision-making that has failed to meet the most basic needs of its 500,000 citizens. Trust in the public sphere is virtually nonexistent, and by almost every measure of well-being, Solomon Islanders are the region's poor relations, their natural resources sold cheaply or stolen. "It's like Solomon Islands fell down a well," says Johnson Honimae, until recently general manager of the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation and now head of the government's information unit. "We are hurt, the water...
...Intervention no longer has the stain of neocolonialism," says an Australian diplomat. The Howard government estimates it will spend $A200-300 million a year for perhaps a decade on Solomon Islands - providing basic services, security, funding aid projects and ramsi's salaries and equipment. "It's a major commitment by Australia," says a ramsi figure. "Not only in dollar terms - the Howard government has placed an enormous investment in Kemakeza personally, and his government. It's working. But if Kemakeza falls, where does that leave the reform process?" Prime Minister Kemakeza declined requests for an interview with Time...
...great civilizations in the western hemisphere. Besides being accomplished engineers, farmers, architects and traders (and, of course, soldiers), they displayed a highly developed artistic sense. Just how highly developed can be seen in an exhaustive, starkly beautiful exhibition that opened last week at New York City's Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum...