Global Voices Online

World of Pablo is congratulating the builders of Blogging Nation, a new blog directory for Brunei bloggers.

Diana, a Singaporean meets a person from mainland China on a boat journey in Cambodia and talks about the lives of an overseas Chinese and a mainland Chinese. “Her generation is debating these issues and trying to understand what it means to be Chinese. I told her it’s the same for me, trying to figure out what it means when I say I’m Chinese. In Singapore, I consider myself Chinese first and Singaporean second, but when I’m overseas, I think of myself as Singaporean first, and Chinese second.”

Israeli blogger Rahel literally shows us where women stand at free bar mitzvah services at the Western Wall, offered by the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, here.
“The Western Wall Heritage Foundation offers free bar mitzvah services at the Western Wall. Nice of them. What do they offer to girls who want to celebrate their bat mitzvah? Zip, zero, nada, nothing,” she writes.

Today it is Abdel Karim - tomorrow it could be you!, warns Israeli blogger SnoopyTheGoon. “This is another case when an oppressive regime takes a petty revenge on a blogger. This is another case when all bloggers, no matter of what race, age, gender or political affiliation must spread the word of protest,” he writes here.

Israeli Blogger, from Thoughts from Israel, describes the latest escalation between the Arabs and Israelis over Al Aqsa as a “predictable misunderstanding.” “And so, once again, a stupid and inconsiderate action of some office in the Israeli government is perceived by Arabs as warmongering, thereby causing Arab panic and violence, which is in turn interpreted by the Israeli public as proof that Arabs are terrorists,” he writes here.

Tim Newman of White Sun of the Desert posts photos of winter in South Sakhalin - and gets interviewed by Siberian Light.

Israeli blog One Jerusalem gives us a virtual tour of Israel's nuclear plant in Dimona here.

Siberian Light's interview with La Russophobe turned out to be quite a hit: read the heated discussion in the comments section as well as a note from Andy on why he decided to do this interview.

Sean's Russia Blog posts a transcript of the briefing by a high-ranking Russian migration service official: “As I’ve already indicated, the adoption and enforcement of the January 15 migration law has caused confusion among administrators, police, officials, and foreigners alike. Nothing points to this confusion more than the following transcript of Vyacheslav Postavnin’s briefing with the American Chamber of Commerce on February 8.”

Scraps of Moscow translates three episodes of Vladimir Vladimirovich™ that “deal with last week's promotions of Sergei Ivanov and Ramzan Kadyrov.” Also, see photos of the Soviet-time soda machines taken in Moldova and Uzbekistan.

Copydude - and Vilhelm Konnander, in a comment - discuss the House of Soviets in Kaliningrad, Russia, the Resurrection Church in Kaunas, Lithuania, and Konstantinov’s Central Post Office in Skopje, Macedonia, as well as a few other “dubious” architectural monuments.

Arloo has a post on a Bangkok based student and actress who was asked by her university to do community service for 15 days after she appeared in Thai film awards ceremony in a “sexy” dress.

Ivan Ushkov, a St. Petersburg artist, had his computer and some of his work confiscated by the police; officers threatened to shut down his photo business located on Nevsky Prospekt. Both the Russian blogosphere and the media are abuzz about this ongoing controversy. Ushkov's work can be viewed here; English Russia and Carpetblogger write about it in English; the Russian-language commentary can be found here and here.

At Ailleurs Vu d'Ici, Roody Edmé cites (Fr) a recent International Crisis Group report on the Haitian judicial system as “underlining the weakness of our judicial culture when it comes to judges' ethics and responsibility” and adds: “Legislative proposals are being announced in the Haitian Parliament that seek … to reinforce judicial independence. This independence should be guaranteed not only vis-a-vis the executive branch but also vis-a-vis all coersive forces including that of monetary bribery.”

Education in Malaysia writes about the dean from the business faculty of a top Malaysian public university who goes around looking for female students in improper attire.

Olechko makes this observation on the way Ukrainian women dress: “Kyiv fashion may either scare to death or wildly inspire newcomers.”

Olechko posts pictures from the beautiful Carpathian Mountains.

Ok-Lah in Malaysia comments on the jailing of an Egyptian blogger.

Stefan Falke posts some spectacular photos of the moko jumbies–or stilt-walkers–of the Dragon Keylemanjahro School of Arts & Culture's presentation for this year's Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago.

Alice Backer has praise for the Haitian government's efforts to encourage Haitians living abroad to return to Carnival in Haiti this year, but asks: “why can't it secure the country the same way it did during the 3 “fat”days of carnival all year long?“

Keith Francis posts the results — “as many as can be found” — of the 2007 Carnival competitions in Trinidad.

Kia pays tribute to the recently deceased Henry Fowler, founder of Jamaica's exclusive Priory School, “an old-school Jamaican of colonial days, the sort of person that it is now fashionable to blame for all our ills.”

Alpar reports that Baztab, a conservative site, was filtered by order of Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.The blogger invites all bloggers and internet users to resist against this illegal act [Fa].

Democracy For Nepal on the state of affairs in the Terai and the Himalayan double standard. “The political border of Indo-Nepal has divided a single piece of land on globe, but this has not been able to create fence between other spheres of life. The recent family tie-up of “Who is who” of Nepalese with Indian, especially among ruling circle has reiterated the same truth. “

Indi.ca on the psychology of flaming. “Towards that end, I’ve been trying to figure out ways to engender civil discussion without excessive comment moderation. Moderation is necessary for large blogs, both for spam and flames, but it’s time consuming and annoying. Plus, especially vituperative flamers will post again and again and again.”

Things Asian on kiteflying and Basant in Pakistan. “A man flies a kite at sunset after a day-long kite flying festival, locally known as ‘Basant', in Pakistan's eastern city of Lahore, 09 February 2003, as officials said around 100,000 people from inside and outside the country had arrived in the city to celebrate the occasion.

Nepal gets a new headache called inflation says United We Blog!. “While former autocrat Gyanendra and Maoist Guerilla are stealing all the attention for all bad reasons, here comes yet another bad news for Nepal. The central bank says inflation stood at seven percent in the first six months of the current fiscal year where as the economy is expected to grow by 3.8 percent.”

Vadim notes that a new opposition party has appeared in Tajikistan, threatening to overthrow the president in a popular revolt if he does not resign by the spring. Vadim says that this is quite unlikely to find much support among Tajikistan's citizenry.

The Armenian Libertarian-Socialist Movement blog notes the appearance of a new movement calling itself “The Alternative,” and examines whether or not the movement lives up to what it claims to be.

The new Kyrgyz government must turn around the economy says Kyrgyz Report. They ask whether or not Prime Minister Isabekov can pull off the task.

At neweurasia, Yulia discusses reports saying that Kyrgyzstan has the freest media in Central Asia, saying that bad always looks good compared to worse.

You have heard of the cold war and you know what a civil war is. But what is a cold civil war? You need to read about it at Mustapha's The Beirut Spring here.

Bahrain-based Palestinian blogger Haitham Sabbah was instrumental in making a children's blogging project see light. Read more about the project, which aims to bridge the widening gap between children in the West and East, here.

Saudi-based American blogger Nzingha shows us how it would take a miracle to change her camera to a magic wand here.

Bahraini blogger Mahmood Al Yousif had to endure a flight from Kuwait to Bahrain in a “duct-taped” airplane. To understand what I am talking about look at this picture here.

Bahrain-based blogger Bint Batutta attends two women-only functions in Bahrain and recalls her experiences here.

Ethan Zuckerman's reaction after watching The Last King of Scotland: “I saw The Last King of Scotland last night and had been prepared to be pissed off about yet another Africa film with a white protagonist. But Forest Whitaker gives an absolutely extraordinary performance as Idi Amin.”

Afroshangai Blog posts an article about Chinese interest in Africa, “China, unlike just about every other country in the world, has a clear African strategy which is being implemented with military precision. President Hu Jintao’s visit is the third by a senior Chinese leader in twelve months…”

Mzalendo: Eye On Kenyan Parliament has a short piece about websites designed to cover the general election in Kenya later this year, “It seems like there will be a plethora of websites cropping up to cover the 2007 elections. ”

Photoblog de la Guyane Française posts (Fr) a picture of women in tree costumes taken near the end of capital Cayenne's carnival.

Malaysian blogger Rocky who is being sued by a Malaysian newspaper says he does not feel that he is fighting alone anymore.

Unspun writes about another accident that involves the private airline Adam Air where one of it's plane was forced to do a hard landing resulting in structural damage. Last month another Adam Air plane went missing over the ocean.

Vutha in Cambodia is following the news from a village where more than 400 people fell sick after consuming the water from a pond. “Villagers have not now been allowed to use the water and catch fish from pond. By the way, ministry of health also sent water for running test in Japan.”

Our Awesome Planet lists some of his favorite celebrity blogs from the Philippines. “I admire celebrities who blog and don't let their celebrity status get in the way of self expression. Most of the time I find the celebrities who blog are smart, witty and able to convey what they think clearly without being afraid of what others would think. It is also entertaining to read their blogs and let readers/ fans have a sneak peek at their lives.”

Robert Koehler from Marmot's hole blogs about a study of the regional particularities of Joseon-era beauties through the drawing of faces in folding screen by professor Jo Yong-jin.

Today (Feb 22) is Ohmynews' 7 years birthday, Jay Hauben writes an article reviewing the discussion about the impact of citizen journalism in the past few years.

Edo from Pink tentacle blogs about a new model of robot that equipped with a set of olfactory sensors specifically tuned to detect the odors of smoke and ash.

Neomarxisms blogs about the rhetorics of the Japanese Association of Music Enterprises in defending the portrait rights of people they own: Scientifically speaking, we know that photography steals the subject's soul. Let's leave the soul stealing to the management companies, OK?

JP from Japundit blogs about the sudden resurgence of lice in Japan: Experts are unsure of why body bugs are thriving here, but some believe it is due to global warming while others claim the lice were brought in from abroad somehow.

DANWEI posted two interviews by the oral historian Sang Ye about the spring festival in rural area and city in 1961 china.

Fang Zhen-ning blogs some photos on the disappearing Xian Yu-kou Hutong in Beijing because of urban renewal project.