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Bolivia: Blog Evangelism

David Sasaki · 20:00

This is a translation of post originally written in Spanish at Blogs de Bolivia.

As a result of the successful Second Meeting of Bloggers and Mundo al Reves Users held last Saturday, July 8th in Santa Cruz with a record attendance of 26 people, (mostly bloggers and blog readers), the dynamic group has launched a blogger campaign called “Crazy for Blogs” whose details, in words of one of the main actors of the movement, Sebastian Molina, are as follows:

What does it consist of?? In driving crazy those closest to you with the following: what are blogs, what is the concept, what is the world of blogs, and mainly, to convince everyone possible to start one and to update it. And then those convinced will repeat the scheme, successively, in an expansive wave.

This is “a decentralized” campaign, that will have at its center each one of blogs that wishes to take part, take hold, and be followed by mundoalreves.com. But, we must repeat, we will each take part with what we feel represents the popularization of blogs and their possibilities, from our own blogs and the spaces of circulation that we each have accessible.

So far there are several bloggers that have been joined the campaign, and from their weblogs they are in charge of spreading this initiative to which we foresee our best successes.

Blogs that already has been pledged to the campaign:

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Ukraine: Lebanon-Israel Connection

Veronica Khokhlova · 17:03

It may not seem so - but it's a very small world. To know that someone we hold dear is directly affected by what for us is nothing but a headline is one way to feel this smallness.

As the conflict in the Middle East escalates, a Ukrainian LJ user parasolya reacts to the sad news by telling the stories (UKR) of two of her friends: George, a Lebanese foreign student, and Polina, a Ukrainian-born Israeli.

Lebanon-Israel-Lebanon-Israel-Lebanon-Israel
What follows is lengthy and somewhat confusing

There were two Lebanese students at my department - a boy and a girl. They rarely interacted with each other. I think they belonged to different social strata and different religions.

The girl resembled an Italian: dark, curly hair, good-looking, dressed like a European. I think she was Muslim. When she finished the year, she got married to one of our classmates, the sweet Sean, a Canadian.

The boy's name was George, we all loved him. When I say “we” I mean the Slavic girls (Ukrainians and Russians). He was the only boy in the class, but we loved him not because he was a hot guy, but because he was really sweet. Sometimes we called him Zhora, sometimes Goga. He wanted to learn our words, was spending much time with the Slavs, used to go to museums with us. Once, when I put on a Ukrainian headscarf, he said it looked a lot like the headscarves worn by women in his country. and he was about to order a batch of these headscarves for his mama and sisters :). He was a very good friend. He looked a bit like a character out of [a famous Soviet film] “Mimino” - like someone from the Caucasus. He liked to brag. The way we brag about [brothers] Klitschko or Milla Jovovich, that they have a direct link to Ukraine - and he was bragging about Shakira like this :). He was Christian. Used to tell us about his country, said that Christians constitute nearly 50 percent of Lebanon's population. Was wondering why on holidays or on other occasions, the Slavs passed through police cordons without problems, but he always had his passport checked.

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French DOM-TOM Bloggers on Zidane's “Coup de Tete”

Alice Backer · 09:58

Bloggers from the French Overseas Departments and Territories of the Caribbean and Oceania had much to say about the French soccer team's performance at the World Cup Final. The French from “l'outre-mer” simply had no choice but to strongly identify with the potential glory and the shame of a team comprised mostly of Frenchmen of African, Caribbean and North African descent.

Gearing up for the France-Italy Final in New Caledonia

Caledonian Supporters of Les Bleus during the France-Portugal match. By Sebastien Merion.

Blogger Sebastien Merion gave us a taste of the pre-match excitement:

A quelques heures du coup d'envoi de la finale de la coupe du monde France - Italie, l'ambiance est à la fête et on y croit aussi de l'autre côté de la planète ! Des drapeaux se vendent sur l'Anse-Vata, la place des cocotiers est prête à retransmettre le match sur écran géant avec petit dêj offert par la Mairie et l'hôtel de la Province Sud a dressé une affiche de 14 mètres de haut sur sa façade ! (une photo de jeunes supporters que j'ai fait à l'Anse-Vata lors de la victoire de la France sur le Portugal).

A couple of hours from the start of the World Cup final between Italy and France, the atmosphere is festive and we too “believe” half-way across the world! Flags are being sold at Anse-Vata, the Place des Cocotiers is getting ready to broadcast the match on a giant screen along with breakfast served by City Hall and the headquarters of the South Province have a 14 meter long banner on its facade! (A picture of young supporters that I took at Anse-Vata during France's victory over Portugal.)

The above post came complete with a podcast of a Caledonian song made for the occasion titled Zidane Il Va Marquer [Zidane Will Score].

A commentator to Merion's blog put the match in political context:

Les Francais qui conspuaient Chirac il y a trois mois lui baiseront les pieds si l'équipe de France gagne! Le Pen en oublierait même que la France naturalise pour avoir des sportifs de talents!!! Elle n'a pas un goût amere cette coupe du monde?

The French who were booing Chirac three months ago will kiss his feet if the French team wins! [Right-wing anti-immigration French politician Jean-Marie] Le Pen might even forget that France hands out naturalization papers to have talented players!!! Is this a bitter World Cup or what?

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Arabisc: The Blazing Middle East

Haitham Sabbah · 07:00

lingua → zht · zhs

Third day after the beginning of the never ending Middle East conflict; Israel/Lebanon war, the Arabic blogsphere speaks.

Ranging between anger, celebration, condemnation and support, on both sides of the conflict, the bloggers views vary depends where they come from. Some sound extreme, others sound objective and reasonable, but all hopes that this ends with persistence peaceful and just solution for all, soon.

From Bahrain, Ali glorifies the Shia't Hezbollah operation and call them ‘the most honored arab,' yet condemns Sunni's conspiracy against Hezbollah. He said:

نجح حزب الله الشيعي في ثالث عملية أسر لجنود صهاينة غاصبين محتلين، وبسحر النسيم وقوة العواصف انتشر الخبر في كافة الأرجاء وبدأت التهليلات والأفراح ، ولكن الحكومات العربية سكتت وايما سكوت
على الفور سارعت الدول الكبرى وهيئة الامم المتحدة والمنظمات العالمية والمحلية إلى التأييد أو الإدانة، ولكن اين هم العرب، فبعد صمت قارب نصف يوم خرج الأمين العام للجامعة العربية ليقول نحن نرتب لاجتماع عى مستوى وزراء خارجية الدول العربية جميل جدا ايها العرب وأيضا خرج وزير الإعلام اللبناني ليقول ان الحكومة اللبنانية لا تتبنى، لا تدعم، لا تعلم، لا تتحمل ؟؟!!؟!؟! لاءات جيدة جدا أيها
وحكومة البحرين التي ادانت التفجيرات الهندية الإرهابية كما اسمتها ستلتزم الصمت بالتأكيد تجاه عملية حزب الله
ونظرية المؤامرة تدخلت في تثبيط وتهميش ما قام به حزب الله الشيعي ، ، فمرة أنه لضرب صيف لبنان الذي يذر أموالا طائلة على الاقتصاد اللبناني، ومرة انها مسرحية وغيرها من المتخيلات العقيمة
لا أعرف لماذا أحس ان المشكلة هي مشكلة تشيع حزب الله وليس أي شيء آخر، لا أعرف لماذا تنتفض كل قوى التسلط السنية ضد اي شيء شيعي، والمشكلة أن هذا الشيء الشيعي “حزب الله ” يحرج ليس الفشل السياسي للسنة فقط، بل حتى الفشل المذهبي وكانهم يتناسون ما تقوم به حركة الجهاد الإسلامي الفلسطينية وبعض الفصائل الطائفية السنية الاخرى

The Shia't Hezbollah succeeded in third operation of capturing an occupier Zionist soldiers. Like a magical breeze and a big storm, the news spread everywhere, cheering and celebrating, but the Arabian Governments kept quite. Meanwhile, immediately the Super Powers, United Nations, National and International Organizations, either went on supporting or condemnation, but where is the Arab? After a half day silence, the General Secretary of the Arab League came up to inform us that a meeting for the Arab Foreign Misters is arranged, very nice Arab, and the Information Mister of Lebanon comes out to say, “we don't support, we didn't know, we are not responsible?!?!” Only new “NO's”, very good, and the Bahraini Government, which condemned the ‘terrorist explosions' in India as they called them, but kept quite against Hezbollah operation.

And the conspiracy theory popup to marginalize and depress what the Shia't Hezbollah did. First they said, its aim is to ruin ‘Lebanon Summer', which pumps a large sum of money to the Lebanese economy, and then they said it is a ‘play,' and many other useless imaginary stories.

I don't know why I have the feeling that it's because Hezbollah is a Shia't party, nothing else. I don't know why all the Sunni power uprise against anything Shia't. The problem is that this Shia'a thing called ‘Hezbollah' is embarrassing them. Not only the Sunni political failure, but even the Sunni as faith, and as they pretend to forget what the ‘Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement' and other Sunni parties are doing.

From Jordan, Rami simply lay few unanswered questions, he said:
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Links

LEvko of Foreign Notes writes about three different ways in which, according to experts, the situation in Ukraine may develop. “But you never know” seems to be the key phrase now, however.

Eastern & Central Europe

Alwyn Thomson of Our Man In Tirana reports on a recent protest rally that took place in the Albanian capital on the initiative of the opposition parties: “Whatever the points in dispute between government and opposition, however well -or badly - both are handling those disputes, it is worth remembering that staging peaceful political protests is not something to be taken for granted. Even in Western societies, public protests are often burdened with the potential for conflict and violence. So it was good to see that the demonstration was well-organised, well-managed and well-policed.”