Global Voices Online

Bosnia Vault writes: “Over a decade later, the Markale Massacre; and the allegation that the shell was fired upon by the ABiH forces in a ruse to gain public sympathy; has become the lynchpin argument of those in the Balkans and in the West who have unapologetically thrown their support to the likes of Karadzic and his ilk.”

“Lada against Hummer” in Moscow - at Two-Zero's.

Ukraine List writes about Yaroslava Surmach-Mills, a Ukrainian-American illustrator.

Foreign Notes explains what Yevhen Kushnaryov's death likely means to Ukrainian politicians.

B.art hacks an article from the personal productivity blog Lifehacker about ways to become politically involved to make it relevant to a Jamaican audience.

The Golden Road to Samarqand writes about the LDS church in Central Asia.

Tolkun calls a new law on the media in Uzbekistan “high-level hypocrisy.”

Onnik Krikorian examines why it is so difficult to get an accurate picture of unemployment levels in the South Caucasus.

At neweurasia, “night_eulen” discusses a new law governing foreign NGOs in Uzbekistan which he says is a façade to make Uzbekistan look better to the outside world.

Onnik Krikorian says that though Armenia recently received fairly high marks for its legal framework governing investments, the failure to enforce the laws is holding the economy back.

Yulia translates a Russian-language post on the popularity in Kyrgyzstan of a two CD set of electronic texts called the “Big Pocket Library.” The author is dismayed at the popularity of the texts, which include, among other things, bomb-making instructions.

Legofish compares a photo from an Iranian woman in a fashion show in Tehran with another photo from a western fashion show.The blogger says Iranian show was called the women of my land.

Blogrel's Burnell writes that 2006 was the year that cellular phones ended up in everyone's hands in Armenia, and wonders what is coming this year in telecommunications in Armenia.

Tahiti Litterature, Musique posts various excerpts of Tahitian music.

Le Blog du Congolais summarizes the post-election landscape as follows (Fr): “The general trend is to wait and see. People are giving the President the benefit of the doubt . He is far from making people secure so persistent is the question mark on his competence, his good faith, his origins and the circumstances that led to his intruding on the political scene… People dream of the millions with which the West will flood the country to support right hand men which they succeeded in putting in place through predetermined elections.”

Says Africa 2.0 (Fr): “Copyright infringement is killing African artists without any intervention from authorities. I was reading an interview of Beko Sadey this morning who was saying that she had two albums ready but would not release them because of bootlegging. How sad! … Can't we explore technological solutions to fight bootlegging such as Digital Rights Management?”

Says Atout Guadeloupe (Fr): “To this day many Guadeloupeans believe in magic and go to “quimboiseurs” and “gadezafe” [i.e. magicians] to take care of private business and disputes with third parties! Guadeloupe still has many magical sites.”

Drishtipat points to a report on diaspora returning to Bangladesh, and an interesting conversation in the comments space follows.

With events unfolding by the day, Rezwan has an update on Bangladeshi internal affairs. “There have been some positive developments in Bangladesh. People are finally finding peace at home with the actions of the new caretaker government.”

Primalsoup associates memories and places with food, and urges the people she tags to do the same! “Me and my family like any other bunch of foodie people, associate most of our socialization and relationships around food. I especially, equate almost everything with food.”

The racism controversy surrounding the reality TV show in UK - Big Brother finds a lot of blogs picking up the issue. Pickled Politics has a thriving comments thread with reflections on racism and bullying, and Shoefiend says “While they’re definitely being ignorant, stupid and mean, the fact that the person on the receiving end of all this is brown adds a racial undertone to the entire thing.”

The weblog of the North American Congress on Latin America has a translation by Teo Ballvé of an article authored by Raúl Zibechi on what Latin America's new political scenario means for the region’s social movements.

Dili-gence introduces the candidates who will be fighting the upcoming elections in East Timor.

Timorsunshine, an active bloggers from East Timor is currently in Lao and she is trying to learn Laotian. The blogger talks about the similarities in sounds between Laotian and some Chinese dialects.

Professor Zero puts up some YouTubed archival footage of the 1973 bombing of the Palacio de la Moneda in Santiago dubbed with the final speech of President Salvador Allende who was killed in the coup attack. An English translation of that speech is also available.

Competitive Malaysia has links to the blogs that are talking about the Malaysian Budget for this year.

Eating Asia takes us for a meal in Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur's Myanmarese enclave.

Several Singapore bloggers attended the Web Standards Meetup organised by Singapore Web Standards Group. The Rambling Librarian attends the event as a newcomer to web standards and blogs about what he learnt.

Abeni holds out hope that the merger between the Caribbean airlines LIAT and Caribbean Star result in “an improvement on what obtains at present” — but only because she has little alternative: “If this proves to be unattainable we may as well stock up on gravol and go back to the the days of inter-island ferry service.”

Philippines4Men is asking readers to help expand the wikipedia entry on Prostitution in Phillipines. “My intention for the entry was to provide people certain facts about the illegalities of prostitution in this country and the steps to curb prostitution. I know it may sound hypocritical since this site is about the adult entertainment scene, but facts are facts and any information is better than no information at all.”

China Trade News reporter Lang Chengchang went to a coal mine to conduct interviews and was beaten to death by unidentified thugs. The local media did not report the case after learning about it, because they supposed did not know whether this was a reporter or extortionist and the city government tried to argue that Lang was a “fake reporter” to excuse for thorough investigation… ESWN translated a few articles on the issue.

Lee in Tokyo Times explains the design of fire fighting flower.

Robert Koehler from Marmot's Hole puts together debate related to a novel used as an English text in U.S. middle schools which contains description of abuse and rape of Japanese by Koreans during the closing stage of Japanese imperialism: And for the record, I have no idea how many American schools are using the book, but it does seem like a rather odd choice—even if the history presented in the book were true, I doubt very strongly that middle school kids—especially American ones—could appreciate the complexity of the period, especially if it's being presented in a biased way.

Kangni Alem writes (Fr):” In a book titled Les Sorciers Blancs [The White Sorcerers] which will be launched Jan.17 by [French publishing house] Fayard, L'Express reporter Vincent Hugeux shows how President Wade tried to bribe Thierry Oberle, a journalist for Figaro.”

Jamie in Two Koreas updates his readers about the recent labour movement activities in South Korea, including 20th anniversary of the June 1987 Democratic Uprising, anti FTA protest, etc.

Matt explains what is haejangguk: Haejang means to eat or drink something in the morning to relieve a hangover and guk means soup; and shows what kind of food is served in haejangguk.

Asiapages retells some weird things happened to her boy friend and herself in South Korea.