Global Voices Online

Nareg writes about celebrating the new year — both of them — in Armenia.

Keith Francis does some background research on Bernard Kerik, the former New York police commissioner who has been invited to Trinidad and Tobago by the country's opposition party to consult on solutions to the crime situation.

The Limey laments the lack of Bermudian blogs are supportive of the ruling party: “This decentralised model of debate cannot work. . . unless there are blogs offering all perspectives. That’s what’s missing in Bermuda today.”

Barbados Free Press announces the winner of the Piggies at the Trough awards, and tells the nominator of the winner that the US$1,000 prize money was “dropped off earlier tonight and it is waiting there for you right now.”

Proudly African writes about Africanpath.com, “The thrust of this blog post is to introduce to you a new website that is poised to aggregate news and blogs from Africa.”

“Meet George. He repaired our punctured tyre in less than 20 minutes without hydraulic tools, and hand pumped it to exactly the right pressure with no guage,” writes Extra Extra.

According to Jomhour, Ahmadinejad in a speech in Ahvaz,in Khouzestan province, predicts that western countries will be destroyed [Fa].The blogger adds Ahmadinejad says after talking with ” scientists” who attended Holocaust conference in Tehran, he found out that there is no freedom of expression in the western countries.

White Sun of the Desert posts pictures of Yuzhno-Sakhalinks following a severe snowstorm - as well as pictures of the New Year's ice carvings.

Snowsquare posts a whole bunch of Moscow photos: of Holiday Moscow Streets, and of St. Basil's Cathedral, and of Red Square New Year's Preparations, and of Manezh Square, Hotel Moscow and Stolichnaya, and, finally, of Last-Minute New Year's Shopping (one, two, three, and four).

Pestcentric posts a preview of Hungarian politics in 2007.

A new law is likely to wipe out some of Belarus' small businesses, reports TOL's Belarus Blog: “Beginning at January 1st, 2008, individual entrepreneurs will be able to hire only family members and close relatives. It can end up closing half of small businesses in the country.”

Further Ramblings of a N.Irish Magyar spends winter holidays at Lake Balaton: “But, most of all, what I really found attractive was the complete and utter silence round most of the place. No screaming children, no fireworks, no teenies half-cut on their first glass of pezsgo, no brainless TV presenters twittering on in the background, no tuneless mass-renditions of the national anthem at midnight….”

Traveling Life writes about corruption among Polish post-Communists.

The beatroot explains how Polish politics works: “Polish PM Jaroslaw Kaczynski is not a central European version of Margaret Thatcher. If they met he would call her an economic ‘liberalizer’ (a dirty word in Polish government circles) while she would give him a sharp whack over the head with her handbag and accuse him of being a bit of a [whisper it] ‘socialist’.”

Csikszereda Musings posts some hilarious local EU-entry-related pictures.

Csikszereda Musings writes about the two-day New Year's partying ordeal: “Crumbs is this: The next day after a party, in the afternoon, you all go back to the house of the party to have lunch, and basically reminisce about the night before. Lunch, of course, being all the leftovers from the party. That's basically it.”

The Glory of Carniola re-learns to use Roman Candles.

Petro visits Odesa's 7th Kilometer open-air market - and attends a performance of Ukraine's two top Bandurists.

According to Ukraine's president, he, the parliament and the government “are close to a mutual understanding,” Foreign Notes reports.

Political predictions for 2007 in Ukraine - from Foreign Notes.

Dili-Gence comments on the newly installed traffic lights in Dili, the capital of East Timor. “You can drive across Dili in 15 minutes and apart from the odd traffic snarl due to either an accident, breakdown or sudden road closure, I can not recall ever thinking that traffic was a genuine problem.”

FijiBuzz posts a video released by the military that features a representative of the winning party and an Australian financial backer of another party that seemingly points to the rigging of elections held in 2006.

Moju points to a possible case of discrimination against Tamil students. “Tamil students who were denied admission to Law College staged a token hunger strike in Colombo outside the Law College on Wednesday morning at 10:00am protesting against discrimination in admission process.” There is an interesting discussion in the comments space.

Even as roads are built and infrastructure is improved, the hazards on the roads sometimes get worse as Metroblogging Chennai points out. “Ongoing traffic moves on an average speed of 40 KMPH with some times no cops to facilitate the traffic, people who want to cross the road take charge and create great difficulty for the ongoing traffic”

Velachery Balu has photographs from the Mylapore Festival in a flickr set.

United We Blog! on the quarrels between political sides in Nepal. “All the wrangling, quarrellings and mistrust between the Maoists and Nepal government strongly indicate that the election of constituent assembly will not be held on time i.e. by Mid July 2007.”

Qtpd.com has an incredible look back at 2006 [ES] in the world of Venezuelan blogs.

Panamanian blogger Jorge Arango has some good news to close 2006.

Sadiq M. Alam on instances of pluralism in Islam. “As explained by Muslim historian of the eleventh century, Al Biruni, the Sabians were believed to have been remnants of the Jewish captivity who chose to remain behind in Babylon and practiced a combined religion of Judaism and Zoroastrianism, and claimed descent from Enoch.”

It's not what you'd find in most lost-and-founds, but “La Gringa” says the Honduran government is finally getting ready to auction off a private jet after failing to locate its owner.

It's not what you'd find in most lost-and-founds, but “La Gringa” says the Honduran government is finally getting ready to auction off a private jet after failing to locate its owner.

Alan Patrick has put together yet another comprehensive Buenos Aires Blog Roundup, this time to close out 2006.

“After a cravenly noisy Friday night, Saturday night was strangely quiet. It was as if all the neighbors, and all Chile was preserving its chi for the following day, the explosion of 2007.” And so began Chileno's foray into 2007.

Bodhi's Hop on Saddam's execution. “News channels (most of the English ones being either American or British) are tireless in showing file pictures of Saddam's statues being pulled down and people celebrating with fire from AK47s, while quietly forgetting the anger and resentment evident in daily bomb attacks by armed Iraqi militias.”

After showcasing the phenomenon of online citizenship in the USA and France, Haiti-based Haitian blogger Roody Edme relates (Fr) an example of Haitian “netizenry” (Fr): “In Haiti too … recently our email accounts were flooded with a protest note by “citizens concerned” by insecurity, a new way to proselytize on the net.”

Bob Green's Anguilla News posts a photo of Anguilla's first ever escalator, along with the caption: “After it had been in operation for a short time, a sign appeared on the new escalator: “This is not an amusement ride.”

The Nightshift Chronicler notes the appointment of Haitian journalist Michele Montas, widow of the pioneering journalist and broadcaster Jean Dominique (who was assassinated in Haiti in 2000) as spokesperson to the new UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Says Blog Politique du Senegal (Fr): “Looks like the PDS congratulated President Wade for his gift of 7 billion to Senegal. It's very nice of him to return Senegal's money that Taiwan gave the country for social projects and that somehow lost its way into a private account! The only remaining problem is that the money is still not in Senegal since it's stuck in a Cyprus bank. Oh well, it's the thought that counts…”

Positive solution blogs about 10 things that he missed about internet because of the internet cable disruption after earthquake.

Lyn Jeffery from Virtual China summarizes a recent court case against Tecent, the parent company of QQ.com of of instigating Q coin robbery schemes.

William long introduces some free proxy servers via Japan and South Korea to get around the broken internet cable in order to reach the other end of the Pacific Ocean.

Kai comments on the recently release data about the 22% increase of tax income in China in 2006. The increase is 12% higher than GDP. There are three possible scenarios: 1. the revenue department managed to collect tax from unpaid sectors; 2. most of the economic growth fell into the hand of the rich, and they were subject to higher tax; 3. there was a structural adjustment of the country’s economy (zh).

Wang xiao feng writes about the need to cultivate the understanding of citizen rights by commenting on recent news about 10 prohibition phrases in a Nanjing district judiciary department and Li yin he’s recent debate about right to different kind of sexual practice. (zh)

Blogclues points out to the readers that sina.com has published a book on “Why we blog?” The book is a introduction to blog and a collection of local blog posts.