Global Voices Online

A new group blog, The Sumate Files has been set up with the purpose of: “compiling the most important articles appearing anywhere on the net and in English mostly. Our objective is to help Sumate resist the witch hunt that Chavez and his followers want to subject Sumate directors to. We will publish mostly articles favorable to Sumate but we will consider negative ones.” Submissions are encouraged.

Picasso Dreams keeps the prolific reflections coming after recently moving to a small town in Nicarugua.

ALT1040, Isopixel, and eCuaderno all write their initial reflections on the first annual weblogs.communication conference that took place in Mexico City on Friday evening.

The Sassy Lawyer (featuring a nice new redesign) notes that the famed ‘parliament of the street' has lost its credibility.

Humanitarian Hijinks, the anonymous blog of a relief worker in Darfur, notes that it's only a few weeks into the rainy season but it's already starting to flood–not to mention the increased mosquitoes and the attendant malaria risk.

Brand New Malaysian has a great guest post about Islam and terrorism up on his front page.

Iran Scan is reporting that hunger striker Akbar Ganji has been transferred from prison to a hospital.

Free Thoughts on Iran looks forward to what a Ahmedinejad presidency might bring and is not encouraged.

Who knew? Saudi Jeans reports that anime culture is making inroads in the kingdom.

Tim links to
people and programs making a difference in El Salvador.

Bloggers.sg, the Singaporean blog conference, seems to have been a smashing success. Mr.Brown has his intial reactions and a lengthy list of Singapore blogs commenting on the event; this trackback list from Tomorrow.sg lists more blogs commenting on the very popular event. It even spawned its Wikipedia page! Daryl Sng also put together a Flickr photoset documenting the event…

Neville Hobson reports of a new Spanish-language forum on Costa Rica started by his wife, Marie Alden, a Costa Rican living in the Netherlands.

DesiPundit has added a tag cloud reflecting recent topics of discussion; apparently they've been talking a lot about Harry Potter…

Bloggings by Boz explains La Civlovia, a Sunday morning tradition which “shuts down several major roads and allows people to bike, rollerblade and run.” Eduardo of Barrio Flores comments that a “Pedestrian Day” is held once a year in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

In beleated celebration of Bastille Day, Blogging in Paris points to some photographs of Bastille Day fireworks.

Heiko Hebig points out that 51% of German internet users used Ebay.de in the month of May. That's really amazing.

The Big Pharaoh writes about an anti-fundamentalist author who caved into death threats and repudiated his writings. Did he do the right thing?

John Guzman of Logtar's Blog has translated a poweful piece on what it's like to be displaced from Colombia. Guzman, himself a Colombian living abroad, says he relates to many of the author's observations.

One of Lebanon's major political prisoners won ammesty in the Lebanese Parliament today; Lebanese Political Journal believes that “Lebanon is on the verge of materializing a huge step towards national unity.”

It's the little things: Tunisian blogger Neila Charchour Hachicha wrote the British ambassador after the 7/7 bombings, expressing her condolences; the ambassador wrote back with a short but sincere note of thanks. Were that all western powers so careful about nurturing support in the Arab world…

Both Havana Journal and Babalu mention the an American film which was shot in Cuba thus ignoring the embargo. Babalu's post, though brief, has generated an impressive response about both the film itself and the embargo it ignored.

EastSouthWestNorth looks at the press coverage of an incident where a man held off the police with molotov cocktails for nearly 11 hours and discovers, once again, that there's more to the story than was being reported. He also translates an article about search-engine spam; it's an interesting read to see it from the Chinese perspective.

MABB does an excellent job summing up Bolivia-Chile relations as both countries approach important presidential elections.

China Herald debunks an article in the Independent about Chinese blogging. Fons, the author, says “mostly I try to ignore this level of nonsense. But in this article too much ignorance comes together.”

Chilean blogger, María Pastora Sandoval Campos, was invited to Seoul, South Korea for an OhmyNews sponsored forum on citizen journalism. You can read a piece she wrote for OhmyNews about Latin American political culture.

Khalid Jarrar's brother, Raed, continues to blog despite his brother's imprisonment: here, he condemns targeting Iraqi civilians, while here he points out that food rations are either getting smaller or just being terminated.

The Committee to Protect Bloggers points out that petition to free imprisioned Iraqi blogger Khalid Jarrar has been set up. At post time, it had more than 400 signatures.

The Bangladeshi blog The 3rd World View asks why Flickr images of the 7/7 bombings are being tagged “Muslim”.

Blogcount looks at Korea as a blogging nation, and, taking John Dvorak's lead, wonders if the blogging numbers for Korea are inflated. (via asiapundit)

Central Budapest finds the cabinet's decision to poll the public via SMS on whether or not Hungarians should be allowed to choose their child's gender to be a bit disturbing.

This weekly roundup of some of the goings-on in the Chinese-langauge blogosphere points out, among other things, that there will be a Chinese blogger confernce in Shanghai in early November.

Caribbean Free Radio has a podcast dedicated to tracking Tropical Storm Emily's damage to the Caribbean.

Barrio Flores follows up on Bolivian cinema with the recent release of “Di Buen Dia A Papa”.

Ray's Journal sums up his thoughts on the Museo de Coca in La Paz, Bolivia.

The group blog Argenautas now has a Flickr group to create a greater sense of community among Argentinians living outside their native country.

Afghan Warrior celebrates the fact that, after 11 years, 23 girls have graduated from high school in Kandahar City.

Egyptian Person asks Palestinians if they really know who their real enemies are.

The Zimbabwean Pundit is reporting that a farmer's rights group is urging its members to not cooperate with the government's proposals to return the farmers to their land.

The Uzbek blog T-Moor translates an Kazakh newspaper article about the US presence in Central Asia. It's an interesting look into how Central Asian countries view US motives and intentions.