Global Voices Online

Indonesia Matters points to a new book on Anti-Chinese violence that took place during the mid to late nineties in Indonesia.

Dili-gence comments on the Reporters Without Borders findings on press freedoms in East Timor and explains why he has no sympathy for the journalists who were in Timor from May to July last year.

Sabahan uses the blog ranking service at Technorati.com and comes up with a list of top 50 influential Malaysian blogs.

Togolese origined France-based blogger Kangni Alem comments on a recent series of workshops on collective knowledge and practices in Africa organized by the Africa Centre in Cape Town, South Africa (Fr): “The Africa Centre is a project which foretells the future hegemony of South Africa on the rest of the continent. A project entirely funded from within while elsewhere funders would have been international. … In the rest of Africa the selfishness of the rich forbids such practices, correct me if I'm wrong!”

Belizean - The Belize News Blog publishes an article by Godfrey Smith analysing the benefits for Belize of establishing diplomatic ties with China rather than Taiwan.

Robert Miller at Haiti Innovation sings the praises of Haiti's famous Barbancourt rum, and quotes from an article which notes the role of Barbancourt in voodoo rituals.

Geoffrey Philp marks the birthday of Jamaican novelist John Hearne: “He had to tread carefully, I suspect, as a white Jamaican who did not sound Jamaican, in a society that was changing rapidly and in which the privileges, which a generation before a person in his situation would have taken for granted, were disappearing.“

In spite of the fact that five Jamaican policeman have been killed in as many weeks, bassChocolate finds it hard to empathise.

Francis Wade completes an 125-mile bike ride in Jamaica as part of the qualification process of the Paris-Brest-Paris race.

Guadeloupe Attitude highlights (Fr) the story of Alexandre, a 6-month old Guadeloupean infant who passed away recently from dengue fever (one of two in the last month) and adds: “Authorities fear a resurgence of the dengue virus, chikungunya version. Transmitted by female mosquitoes, it is not mortal in its primary form but in its secondary form provokes grave hemorrages on older people and infants especially … The fight against mosquitoes should become a priority on the island through an outreach campaign.”

Charly Morales Valido reports (ES) on the US government's refusal to grant US cyclists travel permits so they could contest the XXXII Vuelta a Cuba race, which takes place later this month. The 2003 edition of the race was won by American Todd Herriot.

Blogger Joshua Landis, writing in Syria Comment, informs us that ABC News' Diane Sawyer was back in Damascus where she interviewed President Bashar Al-Assad.

Bahraini blogger Mahmood Al Yousif has appointed himself the official parrot paparazzi. No sexually active parrot is safe from his prying eyes.

Or Does It Explode..reports that 20 people were sentenced to jail and lashes in Saudi Arabia for attending a party.

Why do citizen have to put up with poor services in the same time when a very large part of the (Saudi) national budget is supposedly directed at healthcare?, asks blogger Saudi Jeans.

Creative Commons Chile announces [ES] the new website [ES] launch of the Library of the Chilean National Congress. All of the content on the site is published with an “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Chile” license.

“About an hour ago, the State Department released the broad outlines of its 2008 aid request. Its so-called “Function 150″ document gives us a rough, but pretty fair, estimate of what the Bush administration is asking Congress to give Colombia next year.” According to Adam Isacson of the Center for International Policy, that amounts to “Nothing new for Plan Colombia 2.”

From Global Labor Strategies: “What happens when a group of workers take over their workplace and try to run it without private owners, professional managers, or the government? 10,000 workers in 200 workplaces in Argentina are trying to find out.”

Elizabeth explains toilet training in Tajikistan.

Katy of Caracas Chronicles translates a statement by Costa Rican President and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Oscar Arias criticizing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's “democratic dictatorship.” Meanwhile, the Latin America and Caribbean blog of the Overseas Development Institute compares the leadership and policy making differences between Bolivian President Evo Morales and Chavez.

Lots of blog postings centered on Oaxaca this morning including Boz's update on the anti-government protests that have persisted - albeit more calmly - throughout the winter. The Narco News Bulletin announces the new book by contributing writer Nancy Davies, who has covered the conflict from mid-June up until now. Finally, Oaxaca resident Mark in Mexico pulls out his Celsius to Fahrenheit converter and concludes, “Hot As Hell.”

“Megan la Mala” on Mexico's first legal same-sex civil union in the state of Coahuila.

Azarmehr writes that some Iranian MPs want to reduce female student numbers in universities.The blogger writes The percentage of female to male students for the university entrance exam is now 60/40 in favour of girls. He adds “Fatemeh Ajorloo, one of the few female MPs, is one of the supporters of the bill. She says that if we allocate the university places according to the nature of the course and the physical ability required, then it is better for society as a whole. We should not refer to this bill as gender allocation, but gender limitation.”

Oneworld Multimedia rounds up recent posts from Armenian and Turkish blogosphere about Hrant Dink

Sean Roberts wonders if one can speak of “pulling a Kazakhstan,” that is, performing successful but sloppy nation-branding. Registan.net has a related post discussing comments by a nation-branding specialist comparing Montreal to Kazakhstan, leading to a quite undiplomatic debate.

KZblog discusses what about the internet is and is not useful to people in Kazakhstan.

Blogrel reports that officials in Armenia are incensed at a performance by a British dance artist who wrapped his nude body with the Armenian flag and danced on it. Officials are calling it an insult to Armenian national dignity and suggesting that the performance was criminal. Harmick, the author of the post, points out that Armenian officials should be far more worried with many other more ubiquitous insults to Armenian dignity.

Heartcrossings on the retired husband syndrome. “The women had always been aware of the mental distance and the loss of emotional closeness with their husbands but it turns out the men were too busy being workaholic to notice anything was missing. Like the article says, they can't imagine their 24/7 presence could be so repulsive to their wives that it makes them physically ill.”

Kabul Diary reports from the scene of an extremely popular sport in Afghanistan, dog fighting.

black and gray with another interview. This time with Anita Rau Badami. How can one not read it when the first questions asks “Why is satire, feminine and at times strangely seductive, so important to you or your work?”

Rezwan on what it means when the powerful and rich in a country finally get arrested, and why transparency must be maintained. “It is said that the ill-equipped and staffed judiciary always favor the wealthy and the influentials. So arresting big names like ex ministers, political leaders and VIPs are quite rare in the country.”

Even as United We Blog! has a post on journalists getting beaten up “Unruly activists had beaten journalists in Tankisinawari yesterday while collecting news about a peaceful rally. “, Nepali Voices points out that those who were online could have easily gotten ahead of the newspapers. “We concluded online media has every chance to topple newspaper in Nepal and that could have had already happened had Nepal’s online media understood the power of being online.”

Food enthusiast Manivan Larprom has the recipe and video instructions for cooking the Thai/Lao dish of stir fried water lily.

Unspun wonders what kept the trade minister from organising relief for the people affected by the floods in Jakarta. “Four days after the massive floods begin, nearly 200,000 made homeles, huge logistics problems regarding food and water distribution and the Minister is finally holding a meeting to get information? Did she have to wait until Monday?”

Diligence looks at recycling, pollution and rise in sea level from the point of view of East Timor. “The locals at the lower end of the income scale find themselves unable to contribute much to CO2 footprints. While the well-heeled foreigner probably is at the other slothful end most of the time.”

The Daily Brunei Resources has a post on the history of postage stamps in Brunei.

J. Otto Pohl has posted an “imaginary” syllabus for the Introduction to the History of the Soviet Union class. Here's why he is doing this: “Since I have never taught any courses all of the syllabi I have submitted for job applications along with my CV are purely imaginary. That is they only exist in paper form and have never been executed in a classroom setting. Since only one of the more than 100 institutions I have applied to has ever given me an interview I think that I am probably not providing the selection committees with what they want to read. […] I am going to start posting a few of them here in the hopes that maybe somebody can offer me some constructive criticism.”

The beatroot and his readers discuss crime in Poland.

The beatroot and his readers are discussing the resignation of Poland's defense minister Radek Sikorski: “So it appears that the government will be losing the only internationally respected politician it has.”

Adventures in Moldova posts essays that his Moldovan students wrote for the English Olympiad held at their school and explains why the kids shouldn't be blamed for their not-so-good English: “When taken as an aggregate, my school has some of the worst performance in English in the county and Moldova. This can't really be faulted on the students though, since the school went five years or more without a true specialist in English. The problem is that if you're a good English speaker, you probably don't want to waste your time working for peanuts in a village school. Until teachers are paid a decent wage, schools will get worse and worse.

Adventures in Moldova writes about “two village kids from the poorest country in Europe” who did extremely well at the judo “Olympic Hopes” tournament in Kyiv, Ukraine: “In Eugen and Mihail's under-46 kg weight class, there were 34 boys. Our boys not only made our village proud, but they should make the entire country proud; Eugen was the only Moldovan in the entire tournament to win gold.”

Mihai Moscovici doubts whether an average Moldovan would feel the reported growth of the country's economy.

Leila of neweurasia.net writes about one of the four Green Party ministers in the newly-formed Czech government - Dzhamila Stehlikova, an ethnic Kazakh born in Almaty, Kazakhstan: “Appointed as a minister without portfolio, pani Stehlikova is responsible for the policies in the sphere of ethnic minorities and human rights.”

The annual Dubai Shopping Festival is making headlines around the world .. but Secret Dubai seems to be turning green with some of the publicity he is seeing in his own turf.

Barbados Free Press views the manner in which the Barbados government plans on “ramming through” some last-minute legislation permitting foreign nationals to become part of the security apparatus being put in place for the 2007 Cricket World Cup as a warning sign “of a corruption of democratic principles that - if allowed to grow unchecked - will threaten our individual freedoms and the very heart of our democracy.”

Looking for a job in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates? Perhaps you should read this first.

“Where can you find video logs, unusual commentary, rare links of articles you never came across, and really creative Arab students all at the same spot?,” asks Bahraini blogger Esraa, who leads us to an interesting site by Arab Vloggers.

Bahrain-based blogger Haitham Sabbah raises the alarm about the presence of genetically engineered food, which is not labelled, floating about in the markets of Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE and even Bahrain.

MediaCritic notes a bias against Indo-Guyanese culture in a newspaper column purporting to report on Guyana's cultural scene.