Global Voices Online

Islandbaby in Papua New Guinea blogs about the West African nation Liberia's president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and tells why her younger sister's middle name is Monrovia - the capital of Liberia.

Kevin at theory.isthereason.com links to another blog post at WebSG that talks about the online efforts of some governments agencies to engage the citizens.

The blogger at beyond.sg meets the founder of popular travel guidebook company Lonely Planet and talks about the start got in Singapore for their guidebook business.

In a city obsessed with shopping malls, Mike at bangkok.metblogs introduces the latest addition.

Funck Chen at CCB.2.0 blogs about the cultural history of mobile coffee house. The first coffee car appeared in 1999, and now becomes a national landscape and the drivers of moible coffee house are usually the best tourists' guides (zh).

Michael Turton blogs about the coming Taipei Mayoral election, which reflects on the political effects of the anti-president campaign.

Brian Chan in China Media Project reports on another censorship case. This time it is about a ban on all coverage of an incident at a county school in China's western Gansu Province where the principal was allegedly found to have drawn blood from scores of pupils over several years to “cure” them of diseases.

Fang Jun at mindmeter blogs about China Entrepreneur Summit 2006. This year the them is “Chinese business ethics at the age of Globalization” (zh).

Will from imagethief have ten recommendations on how to improve Beijing's quality of life.

Law Prof blogs about the comments of Amercian Chamber of Commerce on the draft of Chinese labour law.

Li Yin-he argues for the decrminalization of sex worker, including prostitutes and “second wives” (zh).

Lyn Jeffery introduces great blogs and forums about Chinese food.

Onnik Krikorian reports that Vostan Hayots, the “Armenian Metallica,” is reuniting for a few shows.

Leila writes about the long and accidential history of ties between Japan and Central Asia.

Ben takes a look at Kazakhstan's pledge to boost research and development spending to 5% of GDP by 2012 and says that for the spending to have its promised impact, it will have to be accompanied by structural reforms.

The latest edition of “Ask Carpetbogger” informs readers on how one gets to Afghanistan. As an added bonus, there's a post on buying carpets in Kabul that also discusses the deteriorating situation in the country.

At A Year in Mongolia, Alexa discusses an impressive-sounding World Bank proposal for increasing access to and affordability of water in Mongolia only to find out that the same plan tried elsewhere achieved little.

Unsurprisingly, the inaugural day of Venezuela's new inter-city passenger rail service has Oil Wars touting its achievements and Miguel Octavio lambasting its failures.

Nick Buxton has been busy lately organizing the International Day of Action in Solidarity with Bolivia, which aimed to “call on the US to notify and extradite former President of Bolivia, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada (known as Goni) and two of his Ministers from the US.” In a related note, Aldo Orellana guest-blogs at Blog from Bolivia about the third anniversary of the October 2003 “gas wars” massacre and the effort to bring Sánchez de Lozada to justice.

Don Ray recommends Dixon Hamby's photographs of Panamanian children.

Eduardo Arcos highlights a comment on his post about the return of Amprofon, Mexico's version of the RIAA, which is using scare tactics to discourage the use of P2P file sharing networks. The commenter, Alex Zvook wonders why the authorities are going after those who download music in their homes and not the mafia in charge of distributing pirated CD's in the streets. He compares the situation to the drug problem in which small time drug users are prosecuted, but not the major distributors.

This weekend Panamanians will decide on the fate of their country's famous canal. As Boz writes, “most elections only directly affect one or two terms of office and can be reversed in future elections. The decision made by Panamanian voters will decide the next century of economics and politics in Panama.”

Liz Henry gives a guided webcam tour of Latin America's volcanoes.

Feedorama [ES] is a new aggregator of Ecuadorean weblogs broken down into thematic “channels.” Mouseover the headlines to get a summary of what each post is about. There is also a metablog [ES].

NHL player Anze Kopitar is Slovenian, not Swedish, writes The Glory of Carniola, correcting the media's unfortunate mistake: “Another opportunity for Slovenia to get some press, down the drain.”

Romerican writes about “alien eggs” and Romania's hopes to join the EU.

Our Man In Gdansk writes on the writings of Marek Nowakowski: “dirty realism.”

The beatroot comments on Poland's new coalition government: “It's probably better just to ignore them.”

Strangers to Ourselves writes about Anna Politkovskaya's and muses on her own role as a Croatian writer living abroad.

TOL's Belarus Blog writes about a pro-Iranian documentary recently broadcast on national TV.

Finding Karadzic writes about Turkish troops and Radovan Karadzic in Montenegro.

Former Peruvian president, Valentín Paniagua passed away early Monday morning. Juan Arellano has compiled a list of Peruvian weblogs paying tribute to Paniagua [ES] and, later, some accompanying photographs. Living in Peru has two English-language posts on Paniagua's death.

Recursive Hypocrisy links personal finance, blogging and the health of the economy. “We compare ourselves with others to measure growth. Not just a linear comparison, but a skewed one. “

WA comments on the issue of veils in the UK. - “If we decide integration is the way to go, how far does one integrate into the society? If I go to work in a saree, no one is going to question me, they might be surprised but it won't raise a furore on the other hand a veiled woman makes the situation awkward.”

Annie writes on the covering of heads and bigotry. “I can understand the temptation to call for a ban, because, sometimes it seems as if that is the only way to protect women from a forced tent-ization, to divorce their clothes from their rights and duties. Yet, I would like to reserve the right to wear a burqa, as and when I choose to.”

Indian Muslims reflects on why terrorists from other religions don't have labels attached to them. “Two days back LTTE suicide bombers attacked a naval base in Sri Lanka killing at least 103 and injuring another 150, a news that did not find much prominence in our mainstream media.” While it might have something to do with the motives of those who engage in conflict, do they have a point?

A Land like No Other on the peace process in Sri Lanka. “But, here I appreciate their effort to bring this confusion to an end, without being engaged in any sort of violent activities like they did in 1988 to oppose the merger of two provinces and the Indo Lanka pact.”

What does one call the Pakistani dessert made of Carrots? More on Ramadan-Kareem - a blog dedicated to Ramadan as observed all over the world.

Pakistani Abysmal Ramblings on NGOs in Pakistan. “Pakistan has hundreds if not thousands of registered NGO's that have tax free status and are allowed to collect Zakat for their projects, but most of these NGO's are fronts for politicians who want to portray their dedication to the masses before elections or for businessmen who use these NGO's to save their taxes.”

France-based Togolese writer Kangni Alem writes (Fr): ” African literature book fairs in France are, by and large, rarely satisfying. They don't always actually sell your books, they don't feed you right, and worse you have to follow the law of star writers who bore you too death when they attempt to talk about non-literary things.” However the writer confesses having enjoyed meeting Blaise N'Djehoya, the controversial author of the novel Le Negre Potemkin at a recent such event in Lome.

Yon Ayisyen (Fr) laughs at the thought that some in Haiti want to start an investigation into founding father Jean-Jacques Dessalines' death 200 years after the fact but adds: “However I might sign a petition to ask that we stop celebrating the death of Dessalines. Not that the day off is not welcome but I don't understand why it is his death that we celebrate. Aren't we saying year after year that those who killed him did a good thing?”

Bahamian Sir Arthur Foulkes is highly critical of the Nassau Institute's anti-Kyoto Protocol stance: “it is quite foolish of them and others who are similarly inclined, to sling the charge of “anti-Americanism” against Bahamians who dare to criticize the policies of the US Government.“

A blog post by a fellow Bahamian causes Nicolette Bethel to consider questions of representation: “How do we collectively decide who represents our nation? When we choose people to send abroad to represent us, what criteria are foremost? And do we use different criteria for different arenas?“

The Caribbean Beat Weblog launches a “Where in the Caribbean?” photo quiz.