Global Voices Online

Bermudian Christian Dunleavy links to a Royal Gazette article entitled “Have you joined Bermuda's blogosphere,” which features four of the island's most popular bloggers (himself included). Philip Wells, one of the bloggers, posts the photo which accompanies the article on his blog and runs a caption competition. “Go on, make fun of us,” he says. “You know you want to.”

Larry Smith outlines the history of the Governor General's Youth Award scheme, which teaches young people “skills outside of the classroom such as leadership, self-confidence and teamwork.”

Following on a post in which she wondered about the existence of an authentic Caribbean-Chinese cuisine, TriniFood learns of the existence of “Chino-Cubano” (Chinese-Cuban) cuisine.

Blogging at the sub-Saharan Africa Roundtable, Evan Weinberger wonders whether Cameroon is about to have free and fair elections, “After two more seriously flawed presidential elections, the last in 2004, Cameroon is getting set for parliamentary elections later this year. Civic groups, led by the Catholic Church, have pushed for significant electoral reforms, including an independent electoral commission to replace the presidential-appointed National Elections Observatory.”

Ijebu Man plans to writes a series of posts on the 2007 Nigerian elections. Here is the first one: “Its Election time in Naija in a couple of weeks and our politicians are in overdrive. Naijas must be suffering from an overload of political bullshit as the politicians try to manipulate and convince anyone who will listen that they will work for the country's interest (rather than their own).
Listening to their crap you start to notice that they use the same words all the time. Here are a few popular statements and what they really mean…”

Akin joins the debate about the Nigerian 2006 census, “The Nigerian blog boards have been rife with disputing about the validity of the 2006 census as many are derisively rejecting the returns as both a waste of money and a fantasy of figures.”

Ricardo Carreón and Greg of Two Weeks Notice come to the defense of a Texan pizza chain under fire for accepting Mexican pesos.

Ana Maria Salazar has a useful roundup of the day's news in Mexico to send us into the weekend including a note on a private meeting between Eduardo Medina Mora, the Mexican Attorney General and his U.S. counterpart, Alberto Gonzales.

Honduras Daily News has put together a bilingual post (Spanish) which accuses former state-owned telecommunications monopoly Hondutel of breaking “into TTI (Tropico Telephone and Internet) offices, in the center of downtown La Ceiba, with an army of M16’s, multiple trucks and an RPG for good measure.” There's one way of knocking down the competition.

The Guatemala Solidarity Network details a new micro-hydroelectric Project in El Palmar built by the non-profit-backed renewable energy company, XelaTeco.

Noting the big increase in expat talk about crime in Costa Rica My Dos Colones links to some recent (and depressing) stories about just that.

Beginning with a description of “the best real food I have eaten in Santiago de Chile in my three years here” and ending with the varied political obstacles facing President Bachelet and her corruption-plagued ruling party coalition, la Concertación, Tomás Dinges has put together a beautifully comprehensive look at Chile at the beginning of 2007 and how it got there.

Jim Shultz, Miguel Buitrago, and Boz on the escalating violence in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Bolivia Rising translates a note seeking an end to the conflict from the MAS website.

Assata Speaks reports that Guinea-Bissau's interior minister had issued an arrest warrant for former Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Jr. earlier Wednesday. The arrest order followed allegations by Gomes that President Joao Bernardo Vieira was behind the assassination of an ex-military commander last week. Gomes sought asylum at the local U.N. office.

The latest installment in Geoffrey Philp's “In My Own Words” series, which focuses on Caribbean writers, is a critique of the Caribbean's failure to give recognition to the arts written 30 years ago by Jamaican poet/playwright/screenwriter/journalist Olivier Stephenson. Geoffrey kicks off the comments with the words: “Although it’s sad that something you had written over thirty years ago is still timely, thank you for your contribution. . . “

Mohammad Ali Abtahi,reformist politician says outside country,news about Iran are on the first page of newspapers.News talks about sanctions againts Iranian banks and UN resolution about Iran.The blogger adds inside country there is no such news in media. He adds in information age, it is not possible to stop people to get informed[Fa].

Amir Ezati,movie director and blogger says his blog was just about cinema and movies, but it got filtered. The blogger says he lost 90 percent of its visitors[Fa].

Digital Klechinkof says the best way to impersonate the situation with Iran’s nuclear affairs is to consider a box-ring[Fa].Then, Iran and America will be two boxers (obviously with different gestures and weights!) who are the main actors of the story. Other players of the Iranian nuclear equation, namely, Russia, China, and Europe, can be imagined as referees or the guys in the background.You can read the rest of this post in English in Kamangir Blog.

Reacting to news that this year will be the 100th anniversary of novelist Jacques Roumain's birth, Collectif Haiti de Provence asks (Fr): “Will Haitians do the comemoration of the author of Gouverneurs de la Rosee [Masters of the Dew] justice?”

At neweurasia, Leila translates a post that gives a rundown of who's who in the new Kazakh government and how power balances between different interest groups.

Zarchka offers helpful advice for overcoming the aftermath of the days of feasting following New Year's in Armenia.

Onnik Krikorian says that the decision by the European Court of Human Rights to rule in favor of an opposition activist in Armenia is a landmark ruling that he hopes will encourage Armenians to stand up for their rights. He also notes that the English-language Diasporan blogging community largely ignores stories such as this.

On Jan.9, HaitiXchange wrote (Fr): “The market in Pétionville went up in flames this morning. It was in horror that we watched all of our merchandise go up in smoke. The merchants complained, since their means of making a living, and their very survival, the education of their 10 and 20 year old children, and their hard work turned into dust… While waiting for repairs to be made to the Petionville market and the eventual return of security to Haiti, we will remain trustful that the established authorities will shed some light on this drama.” The site posts photos.

Ben Paarmann reports that the Wikipedia entries for the heads of a Kazakhstan-based, UK-incorporated mining company linked to a potential 2007 IPO in London are being sanitized.

Guadeloupe Attitude writes (Fr): “Mrs. Deborah Jones, Governor of the British island of Montserrat, ordered yesterday the evacuation of the volcano's North West zone. About 50 households are involved. La Soufriere Hills began erupting about a week ago. Monday, smoke columns over 7 kilometers high seeped out of it and the volcano spat out numerous volcanic rocks, an imminent danger to neighbors. We … in Guadeloupe hold our Montserrat brothers affectionately in our thoughts.”

Zenia, in Pinar del Rio, Cuba, posts a photograph of a woman holding a postage stamp-sized photo of a man, with the caption (ES): “Zhora Zewawi, mother of a prisoner in the United State's illegal prison of in Guantánamo, denounced the tragedy of his son Omar Deghayes.” A demonstration was held yesterday at the Guantánamo Naval Base demanding the closure of the facility's prison, where nearly 400 men are being held on suspicion of terrorism.

The Glory of Carniola rejoices: “…Slovenian workers will hit the jackpot in 2007: All public holidays this year fall on weekdays.”

Marginalia remembers the events of 16 years ago that took place in Lithuania and Latvia: “In Riga, between half a million and seven hundred thousand people (out of a total population of just over two and a half million in Latvia, Soviet military personnel and colonists included) gathered on the right bank of the Daugava whilst timber and heavy machinery were brought into the city for the construction of the Barricades. Latvians, and they counted among their number not a few people from Latvia's ethnic minorities, rose to the defense of the Republic despite the bloodshed in Vilnius.”

The Hungary Years writes about the reconstruction of the “Hungarian Broadway.”

Itching for Eestimaa writes about the ongoing controversy around a monument to the Soviet soldiers in Tallinn: “Every Russian person that finds themselves the victim of Russophobia and Western mistrust today owes a great deal of their position to Mr. Djugashvili. His government killed millions, and yet very few of the war criminals in it were ever held accountable for their crimes. And so, 60 years after it was erected, some Estonians find accountability in an old bronze statue.”

Neretva River discusses the 2007 Human Rights Watch report on Croatia: “Interestingly (or troublingly) the report completely ignored the status of Roma and other more recent (and more rapidly growing) minority groups settling in Croatia, for example immigrants from China, who like Croatian Serbs, have found themselves the targets of xenophobic attacks.”

Information Policy reports on a new law adopted by the Ukrainian parliament: the Law On Fundamental Principles of Development of Information Society in Ukraine in 2006-2016.

Idland has a response to the Financial Post Passport critique of Oprah Winfrey's $40M Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa, “So next time you see someone with a Master's degree puffing out his chest and asking, “Aren't there better ways to spend 40 million dollars?”, take a step back and ask yourself, “Why are there only 40 million dollars, and why is it all coming from one person, and what does that tell us?” But if you ask those things out loud, don't puff out your chest, because there are too many people doing that as well.”

The final word in Saigon visits the hill station of Dalat and posts some pictures of the town and the surrounding nature.

Lucia Lai wonders why two articles from a recent issue of Economist were censored. She has posted links to online archive of the articles. “so i highly recommend you to go read the articles and judge for yourself how interesting the articles are and wonder what in the world made our stupid gomen censored them!!”

Stuck in the Mud of Fiji says that Fiji's Great Council of Chiefs that had initially refused to endorse the new government set up by coup leader General Frank Bainimarama has now decided to support it. Despite the support, the blogger wants to see how they resolve their difference with the army on key issues facing Fiji.

Mungkol and a friend are having a discussion on selling and buying sex. The blogger has a mini-survey for his readers to find out some of the moral and ethical issues involved.

Vutha is concerned about the spread of child pornography in Cambodia. “Presently, porn VCDs have been selling on the market and spreading throughout the country even to small distant remote village. So that, the government have obligation to take strong action against the sales and import of porn VCDs and should not allow playing pornographic VCDs at café.”

Emmagoodegg posts a photo gallery of bloggers in Brunei.

Dram_man in Marmot's Hole blogs about Samsung's response to iPhone: Although we are waiting to see how U.S. consumers will react, we are not impressed by its features.

Neomarxisme blogs about his experience in Japanese popular culture in terms of Gross National Cool: the idea is that this kind of pop cultural influence will translate into a “soft power” for Japan in international relations.

Frank Yu has a post in one millions users about the habit and culture of middle class digital consumers in China.

Brian Black from China Challenge quotes from a survey: About 85% of more than 3,400 respondents from 10 big cities in China said that job discrimination was a ‘way of life in jobs.'

Celia in China activist weekly calls for reader's support to human rights activist Guo Feixiong, who has been hunger-striking for 25 days in prison to protest against his torture by prison guards who want to extract a confession from him.

Chen Peijin in Shanghaiist has summaried local reports on the forced closure of migrant school in Shanghai: In January 5th, 300 policemen closed down. One report from the Chinese media says that the school was “unsafe” and that was the reason why it was closed.

Guadeloupe Attitude reposts an article by Claude Thiebaut concluding that (Fr) contrary to a prior theory, an 1843 earthquake in Guadeloupe did not contribute (through what was thought to be newfound solidarity in the face of the disaster) to the relatively smooth abolition of slavery in 1848.