Global Voices Online

In the Afghan Local Radio blog, a Pashto speaking Afghan in a letter talks about a request from Afghan leaders: Help our schools.

Morgan describes what it is like to be caught in a cloud of tear gas after riot police retaliated against protesters who hijacked two buses in anger over a proposed hike in bus fare from 25 to 35 cents. (Ecuador uses the U.S. dollar)

Otto Boye y Arturo Durán introduce (ES) the Digital Andean Library (ES), which makes available to internet users various studies, books, and documents from the Andean countries of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela.

Adam Isacson gives a detailed description of his weekend visit to Venezuela's second largest city, Maracaibo; where he says that McDonald's, Pizza Hut, and Citibank are more evident than pro-Chavez propaganda. Isacson also notes that the price of gas in the petroleum exporting port is around US 25 cents a gallon. Meanwhile, Solana Larsen says that World Social Forum organizers in Caracas issued a statement to distance themselves from Chavez's administration.

The Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) is looking into sugar cane waste as a source of renewable energy says Bob Glass.

Bachelet Digital (ES) is a newly launched weblog by incoming president, Michelle Bachelet, which will serve as a measuring stick for her “Digital Agenda: 2006 - 2010″ program. The blog - with the tagline, “four years to digitalize Chile” - so far, concentrates on themes like internet access, open source software, and Creative Commons licenses.

United We Blog! is the Nepali website of the year! It's well deserved. In a region full of conflict, UWB has been bringing us excellent coverage of politics and dissent.

Desicritic.org is being launched tomorrow and plans to target a South Asian audience. We wish them the very best!

Rezwan and other bloggers are trying to arrange the first ever blogmeet in Bangladesh.

Highlander says that the Libyan city of Ghadames is renowned for its unique style of architecture, traditions and culture. Amongst these interesting traditions is the one found in a typical Ghadames home where a small peephole is made into the front door. A visitor would look through it inside the house at a reflection in a mirror hung on the wall opposite the door. This mirror reflects the picture of an oil lamp placed on a shelf.
There are 6 positions for the lamp, and these positions inform the visitor of what’s going on in this home and so help him to act/decide accordingly. Have a look at an artist's drawing and a brief explanatory text of what Highlander is talking about.

Jakartass comments on Indonesia's new broadcast law, which bans local radio stations “relay”-ing foreign news programs. “I cannot determine the reasoning behind the new Broadcast Law, although I suspect that it may be an attempt by the Suhartoist élite to hang on to their ill-gotten gains,” he writes. “If so, we must guard against any attempts to censor points of view which challenge those vested interests.”

Samudaya.org has a feature on migrants from Nepal who come to Malaysia to work in various sectors to be able to save some money.

Metroblogging Islamabad reports that “International Islamic University Islamabad (IIUI) will establish center of Research for Development and Policy Studies (CORDAPS) to improve public and private sectors’ response to challenges like poverty, urban decline and regional and global integration“.

We now have a novel site whose author would like us to think that he is doing us Bahrainis a huge favour by “exposing” activists with an agenda. Activists which he describes as not only as cowardly traitors, which it seems he can put up with, but much more disgustingly to him as Shi'a, Mahmood said.

Mszansi Afrika asks why the tremor in Johannesburg is being reported as an earthquake which was 3.2 on the Richter scale. Anything under 3.5 is “generally not felt but recorded”.

east of Johannesburg is being reported as if it were….well an earthquak

This is Zimbabwe explains the condition of “normality” in an abnormal environment….”When did you last feel free to discuss the political situation with a stranger in an Emergency Taxi? (Instead we hide what we really think, and just complain in private”

Africa Blogs asks Who will join the Committee to Protect Journalists to defend Journalists?….”The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists did just that this evening in a letter reproduced here; CPJ protested to Uganda's Museveni over his regime's refusal to accredit a Canadian journalist and reducing the accreditation of a British journalist who has spent four years in Uganda from a year to only 4 months”

South African blogger Moral Fibre reports on a SABC programme discussing whether Jesus was a myth or not.….”One intelligent member of the audience suggested that Africans should evaluate Christianity in an historical context - that of an oppressive European cultural ideal infecting Africa on a massive scale. She pointed out that we should look at who, exactly, wrote the Bible and how their personal agenda may have interfered with the transferal of the “inerrant word of God”

Jeremy of Naijablog has a number of posts on homosexuality in Nigeria and publishes a section from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which would make the proposed law banning homosexuality and campagining on the issue illegal.

Kikuyumoja uses metaphor to highlight the fact that corruption is not just in Africa……”The conformity between both cultures, and hence the point where the story becomes interesting, is that people are eating meat in both countries and having their share of corrupt politicians while in the end of the day, nothing really changes (1, 2) (to the better)”

African Eye asks some questions about tolerance and what he calls “bullet proof beliefs”…..What's the point of saying we believe in a religion/faith that preaches love, tolerance, kindness if we are then consistently dismissive of and inconsiderate to others? What's the point? There does not even appear to be any INTENTION to follow one's belief. It's like we say we believe what we believe so that we : 1) convinve ourselves that we won't go to hell, 2) make ourselves believe we're really a nice person or 3) can impress others.

The Passion of the Present announces three different Action items on Darfur and Sudan, all in February which is a month of action.

Meskel Square points to a report by Reporters Without Borders on the British jounalist expelled from Ethiopia, Anthony Mitchell.

Jangbalajugbu-Homeland Stories is reading “A Whole New Mind” by Daniel Pink. He shares his thoughts on the book and on “abundance”…..Though he acknowledged that “Offcourse, material wealth hasn’t reached everyone in the developed world, not to metion the vast numbers in the less developed world. But abundance has freed literarilly hundreds of millions of people from the strugle for survival…”

Abtahi (Persian), cleric blogger and former vice president, says filtering BBC is a weird action, because people get information from BBC radio broadcasting. He adds filtering political sites is similar to censorship in North Korea or Saddam's Iraq, where people even can not listen to non governmental radios.

007 in Africa introduces us to Bruce the mask seller…”He used to work for the Art Museum that shut down during civil strifes, roaming the country far and wide to find nice antique pieces for display. All the art pieces have now been locked in storage, occsionally plundered by various people who sell them for money.” She has included some photos of her own masks.

I'm Your Huckleberry describes what “peace” means in the restive Indonesian region of Aceh: 24-hour city transportation (so no more curfews), people returning to work the paddies and coffeeshops open again until late at night.

Matthew Stinson explains how media censorship in China is uneven, using the example of a provincial TV reporter, censored by his bosses, who put up his story as a videoblog, which then got picked up by a Shanghai network that ended up broadcasting its own story based on it.

Bingfeng Teahouse has a New Year's resolution he hopes his countrymen will adopt: have a set of personal chopsticks so that he can stop using disposable wooden ones. China cuts down as many as 25 million trees to produce and export disposable chopsticks.

Macam-macam writes about Nhem En, the Khmer Rouge photographer who documented the inmates at Cambodia's infamous Tuol Sleng prison.

Yasmin the Storyteller from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia meets two Chinese steel men in Mumbai, and engages them in a revealing discussion about which is better - India or China? She explains her answer.

Both MediaCritic and Guyana-Gyal are temporarily deprived of internet access due to the breakdown of the Americas II fiber optic submarine communications cable.

“It is estimated that there are as many Guyanese living overseas as they are in Guyana,” goes the headline of the Guyana Diaspora blog, which launched on January 23. Among those profiled to date have been a Toronto-based cookbook writer, a US-based women's soccer coach, a US Army Staff Sargeant who lost a leg in Iraq and an opera singer.

Monologist speculates on the shape the new Guyanese telemarketing industry is likely to take, given the country's cultural peculiarities. But she resists being thought of as a “Guyanese blogger”.

The former leader of Barbados' opposition party crosses the floor, compelling Titlayo to blog about politics for a change.

“Politics in the Bahamas continues to be attractive to precisely the
wrong kinds of people partly on account of the aggressive displays of
power that it involves,” writes Andrew Allen in his analysis of Bahamian political psychology, probably striking a chord with the citizens of many a nation.

Registan.net reports that Kyrgyzstan is pressuring its large NGO community and asks whether or not the new government is trying to protect itself from what it might perceive as a source of power that contributed to the fall of the last president.

Mongolian Matters wonders how long it is until almost everything in Mongolia is named for Chingis Khan after hearing that the capital's airport is being renamed for the 13th century emperor.

p3 reports on the new jerseys for the Polish national soccer/football team. These new jerseys incorporate more than just the colors of the national flag to give players a bit of the “spirit of 1683.”

In the midst of Uzbekistan's very cold winter this year, fur-lined underwear have become popular. This has alarmed the government, and they have banned the underwear for fear the soft fur may inspire erotic fantasies, reports neweurasia.

The Glory of Carniola weighs in on the side of James Randi and the scientific method on the news that Slovenia may accept homeopathic medicine as as legally registered treatments.