Global Voices Online

Peru Food describes the new restaurant in Pachacámac village by renowned chef Cucho La Rosa.

“Friki [ES],” defined by Wikipedia as someone interested in or obsessed by a topic, is a must-know word for the reader of Spanish-language blogs. As Eduardo Arcos points out [ES], it's also one of the most searched for words on Technorati. And who is the friki of the year?

“Just when you thought nationalism had nothing good to offer the world, along comes a wonder like El Chaltén. A town with no conceivable economic or geographic purpose other than sticking it to the nearby Chileans, El Chaltén (Spanish for The Chaltén) is an accidental hikers' paradise in what used to be one of the most inaccessible parts of southern Patagonia.” Maciej Ceglowski describes the mountainous border region between Chile and Argentina with typical skillfulness.

Yesterday was Día de la Patria in Argentina, which From Bmore to BA explains commemorates the end of Spanish rule. Jeff Barry describes the rally held in the Plaza de Mayo as “clearly a pro-Kirchner political rally paid for by the government” and even remarks that “according to the news, these bus trips for yesterday’s event were subsidized by the government.” Conservative blogger Rubén Benedetti takes a stab [ES] at Kirchner's call for “more plurality in Argentine politics. Javier has a thorough review of the day [ES] from all over Argentina's blogosphere. Lovers Go Home offers up the Argentine National Hymn for download to commemorate the day and Martin Varsavsky says [ES] that good old Peronism has returned to the Plaza de Mayo.

The blogger at Vietnamese God visits Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and compares it to Hanoi - the city where he lives. “Each time I come here it brings me a different feeling. It seems always new and things are changing very quickly which is good. I love wandering around the old part of Saigon and walking down to the zoo where I can see lots of beautiful old French style buildings and old trees along the street.”

As consistent as the sunrise, Boz has this week's Friday poll numbers.

“Yet another tragedy in Fort-de-France! [Martinique's capital]” says (Fr) Bien Vu. “Two 20-year olds get in a fight over a debt! Of 10 Euros! The borrower did not hesitate to pull a knife and stab the [lender] several times. End result, the young man has been in the coma for 24 hours. (…) These are really rough times.”

Today Trinidad and Tobago hosted the fourth match in the current West Indies vs India One Day International cricket series. Francomenz didn't make it to the Queen's Park Oval in Port of Spain to watch the match, but she followed it on the radio. “Too exciting!!!” she wrote when West Indies captain Brian Lara made a half century. When Lara was caught out, she wondered if she'd jinxed him. But in the end the West Indies won the match and the series; Francomenz explained just why this victory is so important.

Free Mana (Persian) is a new blog which reports all news about arrested cartoonist, Mana Neyestani.
Mana drew the cartoon which provoked riots among Azeri community.

Kingsley takes a closer look at Office 2007 and comments on User Interface, features and quirks.

Rezwan has a very comprehensive post on the Garment Industry Riots - tracing the reasons why it started and links to various sources that have insights and resources on the issue.

With Nepal deciding to go secular - what does it mean in terms of intersecting interests of religion and politics? Further, what role does India play in all this at Nepali Netbook.

Consultations, negotiation and a code of conduct may show the way forward for peace in Nepal says Bahas. “Members of the government and Maoist negotiation teams have agreed to a 25-point code of conduct late Friday to be observed by both the sides during the period of ceasefire.The talks ended at 10:15 p.m. after more than six hours of closed-door negotiations between the two parties at Gokarna Forest Golf Resort in Kathmandu.”

The proposed exhibition of MF Husain's paintings in London has caused a security fear. Pickled Politics on the threats of fundamentalists. The comments space yields an interesting debate and discussion.

Blogging Bugs has stopped asking students studying accounting a particular ethical question because she fears the answer might be something she may not want to hear.

Unspun explains why it is both heartening and depressing at the same time to see Indonesia's major Muslim organisation asking the president to crack down on thugs who use religion to justify violence.

The blogger at Manilastreetwalker introduces “wickedly-sweet” Filipinos he encounters in his travels in Spain.

Bridget in Malaysia talks about Malaysian politicians and their confidence in running scams. She gives a recent example of a member of parliament who asked the Malaysian Customs to “close one eye” and let in an illegal consignment of logs from Indonesia to Malaysia

Bermudan MP Renee Webb's private member's bill proposing the amendment of the Human Rights Code to include sexual orientation has just been defeated in the House of Assembly, reports Christian S. Dunleavy. “The Bill was defeated in committee, therefore there was no formal vote in the House and therefore — no names. Profiles in courage indeed.” Yesterday, A Limey in Bermuda had attempted to contact all the MPs and find out how they planned to vote. “Don’t be a coward and absent yourself from the vote,” he appealed. This afternoon the Limey reports on the sequence of events inside the House of Assembly: “The difference between a committee vote and a vote in the House seemed pretty academic … it was all the MPs who were present that were voting. Unfortunately some … were in the back room listening to the debate on the radio when the committee vote was moved. As a result, they did not participate in the vote.”

Dana of My Czech Republic Blog reproduces an exasperating phone conversation about a heater that seemed to be broken.

annabengan of Tirana-based annasblog posts photos from her recent trip to Belgrade: “We went to Serbia a week end to visit Belgrade. Cheap tickets from Tirana, leaving early Saturday morning and coming back late Monday night (May 1st).”

Romerican writes about a Romanian band called Sarmalele Reci: “Sarmale is a traditional Romanian dish. Basically, it’s rice, pork, and spice rolled into cabbage leaves and baked. We can haggle over recipe details another day. Sarmalele is the articulated plural form of sarmale, yet they are pronounced the same way. Reci is the word for cold, when speaking about inanimate objects. The band’s name translates as “the cold sarmale (plural)” which, of course, no one would want since sarmalele should be hot.”

Mat Savelli of Roma Roma notes two documentaries on Kosovo, one of which is a must-see: “Easily the best documentary produced on ex-Yugo that I have ever seen, the film covered the issue from a broader regional perspective, i.e. correctly.”

Dan McMinn of Orange Ukraine has started a Ukrainian book section of his blog: “[…] a list of good (or at least popular) reading material about Ukraine or involving Ukraine. The section includes a number of useful links and things for each book, and categorizes the books a number of ways, but is only six books large at present. Of course I intend to increase it whenever I hear about books to add.” Suggestions are welcome.

“The one thing that is being wasted in this country more than money is the minds of our young people,” argues aka_lol of Trinidad and Tobago's Initiative Against Crime. “There has never been a government in our history who promoted local technology beyond their lips…. This country will continue to see a brain drain of its best minds because it has not figured how to create wealth, but only how to drill for it and pollute with it.”

TOL's Belarus Blog writes about an interview with the Russian ambassador published in the Belarusian edition of a Russian paper: according to him, “Russia […] is firmly determined to take away the gas pipe (Beltransgaz) from Belarusans and have it under Gazprom’s control.”

David McDuff of A Step At A Time translates an article about a recent protest in Grozny, where about 30 local residents accused of a federal police unit of human right violations and demanded its removal from Chechnya. Prime minister Ramzan Kadyrov wants the same, only for a different reason.

Geoffrey Philp reminisces about Struie, the small village in Westmoreland, Jamaica, where his mother grew up, and provides a “Jamaican-Miami” version of a traditional family recipe for cold-curing chicken soup.

Aruba Girl summarises a busy week in Aruban politics: a member of parliament from the opposition AVP resigned, the justice minister said he would resign next year, and then the government announced that import duties on many goods would be doubled or tripled. “Now that … our national debt is reaching dangerously high proportions, that the private sector grew with a very anemic 1.6% in five years, now the government wants to introduce measures that will increase the higher cost of [living] and worsen our tourist market position.”

A post earlier this week commemorates what Politics from Taiwan blogger David sees as ten years of democracy on the island off China's eastern coast:

“By my reckoning, today marks the 10th anniversary of Taiwan's democracy. On 20th May 1996 Lee Teng-hui gave this speech at his inauguration. The election (two months previously) was the first time that Taiwan's president had been democratically elected. Of course, there was some democracy before this—there had been increasingly democratic elections for the legislature and the national assembly in the years before it, but this marked the final point when Taiwan could finally call itself a democratic country.”

A post today on Raymond Zhou's Not only movies blog looks at the lives of the largest group of foreigners in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou's expatriate community: African and Arab traders.

The Barbados Labour Party (BLP) has started a blog, notes Titilayo; she wonders “how much of the impetus … came from the establishment and growing popularity of Barbados Free Press”. Meanwhile, Barbados Free Press itself compares the web presences of the country's three main political parties, and asks why the BLP site “displays photos of Barbados citizens who are only of one specific race”.

For a country ruled by Communists, China has its fair share of churches—eleven in the Southern Chinese city of Guangzhou alone, as photoblogged today at Frances D'Ath's Supernaut:

“Guangzhou is home to at least eleven notable historic churches, built between 1850 and the early 20th century, but of these, 石室圣心教堂 or Sacred Heart Cathedral is a geographic anachronism, as strange as finding a Ziggurat in St Kilda. Compared to the other churches, all of modest size and understated, being organic parts of their districts, 石室 is a monstrous, colonial behemoth that would not be intimidated next to any overwrought flexing of religious catechism on the alluvial banks of the Limmat.

“Local drag artist Mark Anderson joined Bermuda's Heritage Day parade [on Wednesday 24 May] despite a Government prohibition,” reports A Limey in Bermuda. “Good for him…. Mr. Anderson is a gay Bermudian and homosexuals are as much a part of Bermudian society as majorettes and the Bermuda Regiment.” Christian S. Dunleavy agrees, and rejects the government's argument that a drag queen doesn't “reflect Bermuda's heritage or our 'social and cultural mores’.”

neweurasia reports that Mongolia's textile exports to the United States have suffered tremendously since quotas on textiles were lifted in 2005.

Although no clear timeline has been set by Beijing, an invasion of Taiwan is not a matter of ‘if,' says political analyst-blogger Confidential Reporter at China Confidential, but when:

“Notice we said ‘when,' not if, because it is becoming increasingly clear that unless Taipei eventually, well, surrenders to Beijing, there will be a war in the Taiwan Strait.

“This is not inside information. On the contrary–officials in Beijing are disturbingly open about their government's intention to finally finish off a bitter rival, whose de facto independence since 1949 has been seen as a humiliating, festering sore on the hide of an awakening dragon.”

Onnik Krikorian says that the popular A1 has been again denied a broadcast frequency, a decision Onnik says is “yet another blow to press freedom” in Armenia.

Luke Distelhorst reports that Mongolia's controversial windfall profits tax on mining is now law and he carries the reaction from Ivanhoe Mines, a major investor in the country's mining sector.

International news agency Associated Press has opened a bureau in the North Korean capitol of Pyongyang, blogs Asiapundit's myrick, making it the third to do so after China's Xinhua and Russia's Tass:

“It will be interesting to see what sort of copy the local staff will produce for AP. But as this is a country that jails cheerleaders, AsiaPundit is not expecting it to be be of much news value.”

Ben Paarmann notes that Kazakhstan plans to boost its spending on education.

Welcome news on Danwei today of Technorati's announcement of a partnership with public relations firm Edelman which will see an increase of the blog aggregator's services to include five new languages. While Chinese is one of the languages on the list, a focus on mainland users brings with it some problems, writes Danwei blogger Jeremy Goldkorn:

“Technorati's website is blocked in China, so they will have to come up with a new solution for the PRC if this new product is based on data from their public access blog search engine.”

Sotho has a roundup of news from Lesotho for the month of May.

The Sudanese Thinker reports that Sudan has finally agreed to a UN Assessment Mission to go to Darfur

African Unchained points to the “Afrobarometer” an independent,nonpartisan research project that measures the social and political and economic atmosphere in Africa

Singing South Africanness comments on the rampant DVD and CD piracy that takes place in South Africa and asks why the original disks are so expensive and beyond the means of most SA…”if some people can produce pirated CDs and DVDs at such low prices, why can't the originators of these products.”

Zambian blog, Real Life of a Journalist writes on “the undeniable fear of men by women“Men that inflict suffering through pain or other forms of abuse on women only show their level of fear of womens power over them. Most abusers are cowards and liars, wanting to project an image to the world but still knowing the truth.”

Jangbalajugbu-Homeland Stories writes that cyber crime really does pay in Nigeria….”We have wasted a lot of time. This is the time to take action against Cybercrime. From Government to individual citizens. What we see today is that foreign news correspondents who are short of stories to publish on Africa now cook up stories about what we are not. And yet, we simply keep quiet”.

Afrofunkycool has a short piece on South African Jazz from Abdullah Ibrahim to Bheki mseleku

Marians Blog posts an appeal made by Somali women in 2004 - reminding us once again of the impact of conflict on women and the role women play in nation building but still remain disenfrancised.

Cry My Beloved Zimbabwe comments on the MDC faction led by Mutambara who he sees as a ” an over-ambitious, opportunist. When he was recently interviewed on SW Radio Africa he failed to answer where he was for the six years since MDC's formation to suddenly surface and think he is better because of his professorship”

The Bearded Man reports on the Zimbabwean asylum ruling in the UK...”According to Home Office figures on Tuesday, Zimbabwean asylum-seeker numbers jumped 96 percent to 755 from January to March against the previous three months.”

Satisfy My Soul comments on the alleged blocking of blogspot by the Ethiopian government…”In any case, now that it’s official that bloggers (and now chatters) have been added to EPRDF’s long list of “enemies of the constitution”, what’s to stop them from rounding us up (of course, those of us blogging form mother land)? What are the chances that the fact I can post this entry with out a problem but can’t read blogger blogs is a trap?”

Enough is Enough is a drama ” on the implications of the family law for the new migrants and refugees.” The play is supported by the African Communities Council in Australia and the Legal Services Commission of South Australia - from African Refugees.

Hanif Mazroi, Iran based blogger & journalist, says George Clooney's Syriana was broadcasted on Iranian Channel 3. Mazroi, who had already seen movie in English version, adds that in Persian version, dialogues have been changed so much that we thought Clooney and others are playing a new script written by Islamic Republic (Persian).

Karmand writes about bribing system in Iran. This blogger says if you are an employee either you get bribe or you keep silence about it. Blogger adds in country everybody is in competition to become rich and there is no rule in this competition (Persian). According to blogger humanity & dignity are the words that make laughed people. The blogger says not only as employee you get bribe but you should bribe your boss to get promotion.