Global Voices Online

The Cambodia blog has a post on Ta Mok, one of the top killers during the Pol Pot regime. Ta Mok died in a hospital today. The blogger is disappointed that the killer did not pay for his crimes. “Why the world is so unfair for thousands of innocent people who were executed by Ta Mok? Who can bring an acceptable answer to us? The answer is God know!!”

Asri talks about her love for Mount Merapi. Merapi located in Central Java, Indonesia is one of the most active volcano on the planet. The bloggers shares night time pictures of the volcano.

Bunnywunny blogs about a discussion she had with her hairsylisht. The hairstylist argues that insecure men make the best boyfriends and lovers.

Mayvelous is glad that some one took up the challenge to build a Buglish convertor. Burglish is burmese written phonetically in Latin script. The software converts the Latin script to Burmese alphabets.

Tropical Storm Bilis hit southern China over the weekend, killing over 200 people, flooding major cities, sweeping away houses and cutting railways, power and water supplies. There are more reports from China BBS than mainstream media, Lyn Jeffery in Virtual China has a summary of the netizen reports.

Frog in a well traces the history of physcial education in Korea: “the school physical culture was militarized from the late 1930s onward“. The blogger introduces a scholarly paper “The Militarization of the Physical Education and the Forced Healthiness”, which relates the military culture at school with the colonial and post-colonial politics.

Japanese troop returned from Iraq. Adamu in Mutantfrog says that Japan should just admit it didn’t accomplish anything in Iraq.

JP in Japundit reports that a teacher at a public junior high school in Hokkaido was suspended for sending a photograph of his genitals to a male student using his cell phone.

In the political spectrum, Japan and South Korea are in conflict; however, Ampontan in Japundit points out that there are much cooperations and friendship among the Japanese and Korean.

After the July 1 rally, Anson Chan continued to promote democratic reform in Hong Kong. T-salon puts together her speech on discourses on Hong Kong's Democracy and Financial Times comment on her recent move.

July in the Chinese Lunar Calendar is the ghost month. In Taiwan, municipalities are searching for ways to reduce the air pollution from thousands of people burning ghost money at the same time. Micheal turton from A view from Taiwan suggests to introduce ghost credit cards.

In light of the report that only 19% of black Bermudians supported a recent bid to ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, the Limey wonders about the roots of black homophobia.

Linda Thompkins reports on Exclusive Caribbean Cotton Inc's plans to process Barbados's home-grown Sea Island cotton — “one of the most valuable and pricey cotton varieties” — at home instead of exporting the raw material to the US.

Pac MacLaurin posts a photo of three Cuban store clerks and comments on the country's labour inefficiencies: “A friend of mine once told me that when he was working in Havana as a press photographer there were two people in the elevator of his hotel at all times. One person asked “What floor?” Then, the other person pressed the button.“

Guyana-Gyal wonders whether her nosy yet unfriendly new neighours — a group of men — might be in “purdah”.

As a result of general comments made by a government minister about blogs and accountability, Barbados Free Press pre-emptively defends its right to exist: “Welcome to the new century - where ordinary people can now own a press on the internet. We can think of no more healthy development for democracy and for Barbados.“

Vadim has a roundup of news and blog posts concerning Tajikistan.

Yulia translates a Russian language post on the difficulties disabled Kyrgyz citizens have in receiving support and how NGOs are making up for inconsistency from the state.

Notes from Hareinik reports that Armenia is offering refuge to anyone fleeing Lebanon.

Nessuna links to a video about elections the Armenian way. She reports that those who made the short film were instructed not to make anymore such videos if they wished to graduate from their university.

Le Blog du Congolais writes (Fr):” Kinshasa, June 3oth Boulevard, Tuesday July 11th 2006. The Congolese police, trained and equipped by the European Union, unleashed itself against the 19 presidential candidates to the July 30 elections and the demonstrators of the Front to Defend the Congo (FDC) led by UDPS. Indeed, police repressed demonstrators with its legendary brutality thanks to tear gas, real bullets and grenades one of which severed the hands of demonstrator Didier Bongeya who caught the grenade sent his way hoping to propel it back to its sender.”

Certain cities have so many stories to tell. Metroblogging Lahore on Garhi Shahu. “But who would have ever thought that an area that came up to accommodate a most learned man never kept his name, and a complete scoundrel managed to keep his name alive because he was a genuine ‘qabza group' leader. Strange are the twists of fate that we see in Lahore, for every brick has a story to tell.”

Greenhornet.lk looks at neighbour India's blogspot block and reflects on lessons for those online in Sri Lanka. “Preservation of free speech should be the Sri Lankan Internet community’s number one priority in the coming months, since the loss of the tool itself is a far greater loss than ANYTHING that the tool may produce.”

Aishwarya outlines the fundamental problem with the government blocking any site. “What matters is that our government believe they have a right/duty to protect us all from anti-national activities, and “anti-national” covers a wide range of activities and includes both terrorism and whatever offends us.”

iFaqeer reproduces a letter that went out from a Pakistani blogger to Indian bloggers on a discussion list.

Majid Mohammadi, a US based scholar says new wave of imaginative speculations about Ganji's agenda outside Iran reminded me of the literature and approach of Iranian security agents who connect and interrelate everything and everyone, without any evidence or empirical support, to disqualify whoever they do not like or reject any action they do disapprove.

Abdymok updates Ukrainian ‘who is who in politics' list - old names, new positions. He writes: “there is no point theorizing about coalition configurations and broad coalitions when criminals and political thugs [read: yanukovych, azarov, pyskun, kivalov, dziha, moroz, symonenko, etc.] are running the show.” And: “if the president decides to dissolve parliament, ukraine will split in two. if he does not, baboons will run the country.”

Jesse of Bored in Brno writes about renaming of streets in Brno.

Doug Muir of A Fistful of Euros writes about changes in the Serbian government looming ahead: “So, elections in Serbia, probably this autumn, almost certainly by early next year.”

Owlspotting writes about his native town: “[…] my hometown of Targu Mures (also called Targu-Mures, Tirgu Mures and more recently Tirgu-Mures; the latter is the spelling used by city officials).”

Edward Lucas, the Central and East European correspondent of The Economist, writes about the Captive Nations Week and its relevance today.

Caracas' number four metro line is now in service. Oil Wars is a fan of the paint job. Huguito, who posted a couple dozen photos of the new line to his Flickr account, is happy that the stations are well marked (ES).

The first Photographic Exposition of Flickr Monterrey will be held this Saturday evening at Café 13 Lunas says Ocho Cuartos.

Massimiliano Cali is surprised to read that, shortly after the nationalization of the natural gas sector, “the Bolivian government is set to approve a US$ 2.3bn bid by two Indian companies to extract of one of the world's largest untapped iron ore deposits.” Meanwhile, Boz notes that India also began free trade negotiations with Peru as well as trade agreements in Ecuador. Says Boz: “If this was the US, the anti-globalization crowd would be up in arms over the imperialist economic moves. With India, nothing to see here folks, just keep moving along.”

Professor Matthew Shugart posts an excerpt of his interview with Mexico Watch on the Mexican elections. Professor Michelle Dion is skeptical of a “statistical analysis of the 2000 election votes in Mexico.” Mark in Mexico says that things aren't looking good for Lopez Obrador in the case of a recount. Finally, Goleech is worried about political intolerance both online and off (ES).

Leandro Zanoni, journalist, author, and blogger thanks the attendees who came to the presentation (ES) of his newest book, “Vivir en los Medios: Maradona off the record.”

The Wolf Report has reached post number 10 in the series, “The Importance of Being Ecuador.”

Melo Bichuetti calls São Paulo “the city of racial diversity.”

Nouri Lumendifi says that this new crisis in Lebanon-Israel has opened a new opportunity for American politicians to attempt to win Jewish votes. He adds that the way that certain American polticians have been using this conflict to advance their own agendas at the expense of the Lebanese people is disgusting.

Bahraini Rants the new superman movie: “… it was cool, but it brought about a lot of superhero movie talk.. Would it kill Superman to use his powers for a little personal betterment.. if you had superman’s powers, how would you use them? Would you go out and risk your life day in day out to save those in need?“

Mama says, “freedom means free to kill,democracy means you have the right to leave the country.”

Due to the war in Lebanon and Palestine, Jeresh festival 2006 will be suspended until further notice, Ibrahim Owais said.

Zeid Nasser report that this is, probably, the first business news podcast service in the Middle East. Also he points out that more Arab bloggers are podcasting now.

Weichegud! calls for action urging the U.S. Congress to vote for the H.R. 5680 bill, “To encourage and facilitate the consolidation of security, human rights, democracy, and economic freedom in Ethiopia.”

Girl in the Meadow has a few complaints about the performance of Kenyan stockbrokers.

Voice of Somaliland Diaspora and Ethioblog take note of a BBC news report that Ethiopian troops have been seen on Somali soil.

“The past week's events in the Middle East,” writes Zimpundit, “have confirmed Zimbabweans' fears that in eyes of the world some lives are intrinsically more valuable than others.”

Timbuktu Chronicles notes the “Wireless Ghana” initiative, an affliate of the CUWIN project. The project's prime goal is to make Internet access in rural communites a reality, he writes.

Black Looks “stands in solidarity with the people of Palestine and Lebanon against the wanton frenzy of destruction unleashed by Israel in yet another act of collective punishment.”

Andishe No says there are several reasons why he does not like Iranian President. The blogger considers Ahmadinejad's prayer (Namaz) in the middle of a tunnel with several cameras filming him, as a hypocrite act. The blogger criticizes Ahmadinejad's very costly visits in Provinces and his aggressive Foreign Policy (Fa).

Kroush Alyani says contrary to what a Tehran based analyst writes for BBC without reading reliable sources about Lebanon conflict, people in Israel do not like this conflict and war on two fronts (Fa). The blogger who had lived in Lebanon gives a link to several Israel based bloggers to prove his point.

Pisey at Cambodia Blog is urging the readers to explore the North East of Cambodia. “I would recommend you to come here if you are looking for a fantastic place for your tour. There a lot of places to discover: numbers of waterfall not just one, lakes, spending time in indigenous village if you want to study about them, walking in the forest…etc. ” The blogger also reminds the would be visitors to respect the culture of the local people one of which is “just drink at least a little bit of wine if they ask you to drink.”

The blogger at malaysiandaily.com writes about the curiousity of people in Penang city. “Each time, there's a road accident on one side of the road, the other side of the road's traffic will be terribly affected. Every driver would slow down to view the accident scene. There are a few theories behind such behaviours. Some claim that Penangites are a caring lot. That's the reason they stop and have a look. While other parties seem to think that Penangites are heavy “4D” investors. The number plate of the vehicles involved in road accident is your passport to wealth”. 4D is a type of lottery popular in Malaysia and Singapore.