Global Voices Online

Le Renouveau Congolais posts pictures [fr] of UDPS Belux's (Belgium-Luxemburg branch) celebration of the party's 25th Anniversary. UDPS is the main DRC opposition party.

Matts has a nice post about the Seoul city plan in cracking down street vendors.

Asiapages explained why South Korea’s attempt to create a Chinatown near Incheon is seriously missing the point.

Cameroonian Sanaga Peregrinations writes [Fr] of Nigerian Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel Purple Hibiscus: “Important questions are raised in this book, between respect of tradition and conformity to christian teachings, does the fight against sin justify damnation on earth through corporal punishment?”

The government of Uzbekistan has blocked access from Uzbekistan to the blog Registan.net.

At neweurasia Tolkun posts a translation of a post about the meanings of the mahalla (small community or neighborhood) in Uzbekistan.

Safrang discusses the choice between reconciliation and accountability in Afghanistan, asking why the country cannot have both.

Vadim says that Tajikistan's electricity woes are getting worse.

Onnik Krikorian takes readers on a photo tour of a market in Kutaisi, Georgia.

Pestcentric and Further Ramblings of a N.Irish Magyar report on the violence in Budapest as Hungary is celebrating the 1848 revolution.

Rozmaregi [Fa]says that Nasser Zarafshan,human rights activist and lawyer, after being in jail for 5 years,is out of prison today.

London Sevdah writes about a very special coffee grinder: “My mum brought this one over from Bosnia when we were excaping the country as refugees - it was one of the few items that made it into the few travel bags which we were carrying our belongings in.” In Sarajevo today, coffee grinders “are made from empty (used) grenade shells” - an act that, to many, “symbolises converting evil into good by reusing evil resources to serve and promote long term positive purpose of tradition.”

Bosnia Vault compares Mississippi of the 1950s and 1960s to the Balkans of today.

“Between the Milosevic memorial service; and a rock-n-roll concert/b-day bash for Mladic; a few people in Belgrade are having quite a busy week!” writes Bosnia Vault. “Yes but sadly you forgot Djindjic's anniversary which is being spoken of much more than the Milosevic service,” responds Bg anon.

Wu Wei travels from Ljubljana to Croatia and, on a Slovenian train, to Venice; writes about her trip to Trakai, Lithuania, and shares her thoughts on Vilnius; posts photos from her three trips to Lake Bled outside Ljubljana; - and eats “dandelions for lunch” at “Klub Preserne Zdravlice” restaurant. (All posts have pictures.)

Neretva River reports on an alleged robbery: “the Croatian Generals Assembly, an association of HV generals, had their offices broken into. No money or valuables were taken during the robbery; however, documents related to Operation Storm and the defense of Ante Gotovina were found to be missing.” In an update, the blogger wonders: “Was there a theft or did someone misplace a few documents and just doesn't want to admit it?”

Neretva River writes about Japan's two Croatian restaurants.

Ed Alexander of Balkan Baby finds himself in the middle of a controversy over his recent entry about “a restaurant owner in Mitrovica who seemed to believe that he was the incarnation of Adolf Hitler”: “All of this, whilst perversely interesting, has led me to the conclusion that I am happy to have finished writing about the part of my journey I spent in Kosova and that I am nervous about what will happen once I write about Srebrenica, the massacre that some people would want us all to believe never happened.”

View from Iran says Iran is a society filled with thoughtful and outspoken individuals. Only the bravest or the most desperate have the nerve to organize. The rest exercise their freedom of speech in taxicabs and butcher shops; at parties and swimming pools; in poems and through blog posts. There is no dearth of conversation and debate here

Sibiltala[Fa] invites Iranian to take part in anti war demonstration in front of USA Consulate in Toronto, Canada. The blogger says usually there are a few Iranians who participate in this kind of demonstrations.It is organized by the Toronto Coalition to Stop the War.

My Life on the culling of street dogs in Bangalore and how the dogs better treatment. “Once when I was returning home from Bangalore Central to my home near the airport by bus, I had to walk around a kilometer at 11pm. The streets were deserted and there were a number of stray dogs; a couple of them started growling at me, but I never looked in their direction and just kept walking as if I had not felt their presence.”

Sepia Mutiny on inter-immigrant solidarity in the US. “There are many layers of solidarity here: Islam, immigration, and a lot of professional overlap, particularly in the taxi and livery cab sector. Choudhury told me that Islam teaches that whenever there is tragedy in the community, anyone who is in a position to do so must come out and show solidarity…”

Unheard Voices on the hope felt for the future of the country when in Dhaka. “You give the people of Bangladesh some opportunity to prove themselves, some financial backing, a roof to work under; they will bring about great things, they will make impossible things look very easy.”

groundviews on the rise of peace professionals in Sri Lanka. “At the initial phase that began in the late 1970s and ended in the late 1980s or the early 1990s, many peace activities were supported by the trade unions and the church (through the church some foreign assistance was given). “

A Voice in Colombo develops cricket fever! “Now the wait is over for the Sri Lankan cricket fans, and we are playing our first match of the tournament today.”

Bloggers and free speech activists living in Paris, France, turned out en mass to demonstrate against the imprisonment of Egyptian blogger Kareem Nabeel Sulaiman opposite the Egyptian stand at the World Tourism Trade Fair.

Following the recent political turmoil in Guines, what will the future of Friends of Guinea be? “As mentioned in an earlier statement, FOG is not going anywhere. While we all hope for the Peace Corps' re-insertion into Guinea as soon as is practicable and safe, FOG will remain active organization regardless.
Guinea is not the first country from which the PC has been evacuated. I will be in contact with Friends of Liberia, Friends of Sierra Leone and Friends of Côte d'Ivoire to see how they managed the transition.”

More than 20 demonstrators, including two bloggers, have just been arrested for taking part in a demonstration protesting against amendments to the constitution in Cairo, according to Egyptian blogger Ala'a Abdulfattah.

Jailed Egyptian blogger Kareem Nabeel Sulaiman has won the 2007 Hugo Young Award for Journalism at the 7th Annual Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards Ceremony, according to Free Kareem, a website dedicated to his freedom.

On a program by Brazil's Ministry of Culture to use hip hop as a way to keep kids in school, Made in Brazil writes: “I had not read about the program before even though it was conceived by minister of Culture Gilberto Gil in 2003, but I highly agree that the government needs to open its eyes to finding new and improved ways of giving a chance to kids and teenagers growing up in empoverished areas.”

Uri Ridelman shares a video of Gilberto Shedden Graham, better known in Costa Rica as “Tico Tarzan”, and his domesticated crocodile, Pocho.

Federico Fuentes of Bolivia Rising translates an article by Pablo Stefanoni about a debate over the presence and conduct of Bolivian UN troops in Haiti and the Congo.

Pasa en Buenos Aires, the official weblogs of Buenos Aires, says that metro lines B, C, D, and E will have free Wi-Fi access [ES].

As promised, Rob Rivera has published a detailed first day account of his carnival adventure. “February is a very contradicting month: not only do you have the annual opportunity given to you by Hallmark to tell the person you love that you do (and if you didn’t then oh noes!) but right a few days later you’re granted to a 4-day holiday fueled by debauchery and lack of self control where you’ll drink you face off and chase as much tail as you possibly can… “

“During 1945 and 1946 some 14 million Germans from Central Europe and the Balkans permanently lost their traditional homelands due to a ruthless campaign of ethnic cleansing,” writes J. Otto Pohl in a post about this neglected post-war crime.

Edward Lucas posts “another unpublished and polemical draft piece on what may be a systematic Kremlin campaign of murder and intimidation–but of course may just be groundless paranoia.”

Blogger Tim Seah lists the URLs of the blogs and websites being threatened with closure in Egypt here. “Since a court has yet to rule on whether these are libelous, archiving them in Egypt may be risky. So people outside of Egypt who might be interested in hosting mirrors, here are the urls. They include the sites of some of the most prominent human rights organizations in Egypt,” he writes.

Issandr El Amrani, writing in The Arabist, links to a story about the recruitment of someone who barely spoke Arabic to work as a translator in Iraq.
“Yet another story of greed, corruption and incompetence in the privatization of the US occupation of Iraq,” he exclaims.

Writing for The Arabist, Issandr Al Amrani links to a newspaper article which says that Egypt has named its first female judges.

Egypt-based blogger Tom Gara is wondering how big a threat is militant Islam. “For me, it just isn't that big. Islamic terrorists, if they are lucky, will manage a couple of medium profile bombings of tourist sites each year, and maybe something larger (New York, London, Madrid) every few years. This sucks, and our security services should relentlessly hunt down these people and take them out of the game. But is it really that much of a threat to the world?” he writes.

Bahraini blogger Silver links to a newspaper article which says that Bahrain refused to grant an Iranian artist an entry Visa into the country here.

“Chávez and Castro are always on the phone (ever heard of email?). Chávez would never admit it, but I wonder if he gets tired of Fidel constantly calling,” writes Vivirlatino's Jennifer in the preface to a post reproducing a portion of the transcript of a telephone conversation between convalescing Cuban leader Fidel Castro and Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez.

“I am quite convinced that this parliament doesn’t know why it was actually voted in. Apart from the sectarian overtones in almost every thing they do, they cannot distinguish between parliamentary work from that of the pulpit,” writes Bahraini blogger Mahmood Al Yousif about the way his Parliament functions.

Marta Darby posts an image of the Cubana Aviación plane ticket that brought her, as a small child, from Cuba to the US in 1961, plus a video comprising home movies set to a Celia Cruz song: ‘When we encounter other Cubans wherever we are, there's always a sweet recognition. Then comes the interview: “Where are you from? How long have you been here? Do you still have family there?”‘

Izzy Mutanhaurwa is utterly disgusted, “I am disgusted, completely utterly sickened by the attitude of South Africa. I do not know why they are against regime change in Zimbabwe? The latest ploy by South African ambassador to the UN is nauseating , its garbage diplomacy that should be laughed at rather than taken serious, if the incompetent United Nations does not refer the issue of Zimbabwe to the security council this time it will have failed then it will confirm the obvious that its not fit for purpose.”

According to Kamangir, an Iranian family, a mother with two children, who stayed for nine months in Moscow airport,got accepted as refugees in Canada.You can see their photo here.

Maverick Indonesia writes a tribute to Morgan Mellish, an Australian journalist for a financial newspaper. Mellish lost his life along with 21 other passengers when a Garuda Boeing 737-400 plunged off a runway at Yogyakarta.

Details are Sketchy reviews a North Korean restaurant in Cambodia.

An Australian Age story on East Timor argues that East Timor was better off under Indonesian rule. Living Timorously counters the points made by the newspaper. East Timor was a former Portuguese colony that was forcibly integrated into Indonesia in 1976.

Ampontan translates a post written by Kiyotani in response to the recent debate about Abe's claim that there was “no evidence” that the recruitment of “comfort women” had been “forcible in the narrow sense of the word”.: I really wonder why no one is talking about the Japanese comfort women. If there was organized prostitution under state management through the use of military comfort women, isn’t it reasonable to assume that a majority were Japanese (not counting the Taiwanese and Koreans as Japanese)?

Simon comments on a recent survey that Hong Kong is becoming an ever-worse place for expats, slipping behind Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney and Sierra Leone as a place to live. What's the reason behind?

Ai Weiwei transforms a deleted post in Sinablog into photo files. The post is written by a police Wu Yuo-ming from Wubei, who gave detailed account of his experience in “stopping” people from Shangfang (visiting the higher authority to file complaint). The police pointed out that such kind of practice would not only waste money but making the situation worse (zh).

Jeremy Goldkorn from DANWEI introduces an Euthanasia blog written by a 28 years old woman, Li Yan, who has been suffering form cancer since very young age.