Global Voices Online

Faryadeh Sabz (means Green Cry) has published several photos of a homeless family in Tehran.The blogger asks other bloggers to talk about this story and find a solution for them.They have been in street for about ten days.

Mahmood Al Yousif from Bahrain links to a story from Australia which shows why camels do not make good pets.

The Glory of Carniola writes about the Slovenes' indifference towards genealogy.

Prishtine: Independence and Kanun posts several aerial views of Kosovo.

Belgrade 2.0 offers a few tips on how to have a good time in Montenegro.

Vincent Maher is live-blogging from Africa Media Leadership Conference 2007: “Daka, telling the personal narrative of his radio station, emphasizes that audience research is the most important thing in starting a new radio station. In the rural areas, he jokes, if a man doesn’t own a radio and a bicycle he won’t find a partner for marriage. The research they did in the beginning helped developed the business plan.”

Anegdote writes about a football game that the team of Serbian parliament members lost to the team of Russian Duma deputies.

Hooghoghe Bashar (means human rights) blog says[Fa] that mass expulsion of Afghan refugees is not a solution for Iranian high unemployment.The blog explains that Afghans always did very difficult jobs and were underpaid.According to this blog many educated Iranians are jobless and they are not going to replace Afghans.

Anegdote shares a joke on the default SMS templates localized for Serbia; here's one item: “Turn on the news, a war is starting.”

The Macedonian Tendency links to the site of the Second Annual Macedonian Film Festival to be held in Toronto on Oct. 13-14.

Wu Wei attempts to study some Albanian grammar and concludes that Albanians “must spend a lot of time dreaming or writing poetry.”

Balkanizer believes that in the Balkans, “it is the youth that should be at the vanguard of social revival and instead they are the most passive part of the society.”

Hesam Firouzi,medical Doctor and human right activist, writes[Fa] “I was condemned to one year prison.”He was accused of “impeding national security”.One of his charges was informing media about bad conditions of political prisoners.He was behind bars for 18 days in January 2007.Global Voices has already published one part of his prison experience.The blogger was given a one-year suspended prison sentence.

The Balkan Yankee awaits the world's reaction to Libya's acknowledgment of torture of the recently-released Bulgarian medics.

Voice of South on children learning on boats. “From a single boat in 2002, that provided very basic education to girls who had never been to school before, the project now has about 35 boats where both boys and girls can study up to the third grade.”

Indi.ca on cops visiting at early morning hours and privacy.

Metroblogging Islamabad on the impact of the Lal Masjid fiasco on the younger generation.

Al Mawaali recently moved his blog about Oman to a new domain.

Wagle Street Journal on building houses in Kathmandu, and on observing “unskilled” labour.

Sama Oman wonders about what gives the US the right to accuse Oman of trafficking in persons.

Unheard Voices on rising prices and an explanatory note on food inflation.

The Arabist links to an article on Tunisian democracy here.

The Big Pharaoh, from Egypt, gives us a sneak preview of his life in Luxor.

Egyptian Zeinobia updates us on the case of a 12-year-old boy, allegedly tortured by police to death.

Dubai-based Seabee gives us a list of who's who, who have made Dubai their homes in recent years.

Ben ng criticized the design of Screen-style buildings in Hong Kong from the view point of right to Sunshine. In recent years, Taiwan and China have passed law to protect such right (zh).

The Designer of Olympic Stadium (so called Bird nest), Ai Wei Wei, announced that he won't attend the Beijing Olympic Opening because the Olympic has turned into a political propaganda (zh). - more from Chen Lei gang.

Aunt Najma from Iraq writes about how much she misses college in this post.

Tan Wei Shan blogs some pictures from a disaster in Shandong, where 172 workers was disappeared in the flooded Mine (zh). The news was banned and he could not carry on the reporting.

Josie Liu from China in Transition blogs about the documentation of new web vocabularies by Ministry of Education. However, many netizens found themselves nearly illiterate in front of a list of new vocabulary.

Recently Shenzhen's stock market' value has reached RMB20,000 billions. Mr zhang pointed out that within 2 years, the market has increased 6 times and last year China's GDP was just RMB21,000 billions. All the figures are pointing to an overheated market. Worse still, the market is comprised of only 30% individual stock holders, which means a large amount of stocks are concentrated in the hand of institutions (zh).

Mary Ann O'Donnell blogs a weekend party among independent films makers in Shenzhen. There were six independent films presented in the “old man party“.

The collapse of bridge near Phoenix (Fenghuang) town (a touristic site in Southern China) has leaded to the death of 47 rural workers. It is believed that the disaster was deal to the corruption of local authority. News report has been banned. AHQ Weekly is spoofing the story to protest against the ban: haven't the government and party leaders come to rescue? The 47 rural workers asked for their own deaths! Stop saying anything on this! (zh)

ESWN has translated an article from Tianya on about reporters got assaulted from the Bridge collapse coverage.

Ouriel Ohayon wonders why Hebrew Israeli blogs “are not working well or not working at all with Firefox.”

In 1997, the daily salary of metal workers in construction site is HKD1,200 (USD150), today it is less that HKD600. Workers from Southeast Asia are even less. More than a thousand metal workers have been striking for 13 days to demand for an increase of daily salary to HKD950. Citizen reporter, Mandy from inmediahk.net did some interviews in one of the protest strikes (zh).

Geoffrey Philp's Blogspot reports that Jamaicans living in South Florida are preparing to “rush donations and other relief to the island” in the wake of Hurricane Dean.

According to Barbados Free Press, the blogosphere is “going wild on ‘Castro Dead' rumour”, while Blog For Cuba says, “If you want us to believe he's alive, prove it.”

“I would hate to be a 12 percent American Indian in a debate about indigenous issues with a 13 percent American Indian,” writes Maximilian C. Forte of The CAC Review, as he tackles the issue of DNA testing to determine indigenous cultural identity.

Even as the storm heads towards the Cayman Islands, My Barbados Blog has a comprehensive updates on Hurricane Dean and its impact on Jamaica, while Notes from the Margin estimates the closest approach of the storm.

Gallimaufry reports that “The Anglican Church in Jamaica is proposing the addition of songs by Bob Marley and Peter Tosh to its hymnal.”

Barbados Underground thinks that Jamaica's political landscape could be affected in the aftermath of Hurricane Dean: “It will call for collaboration between the PNP anf JLP at a time when emotions are close to flash point.”

Khorshidkhanoum writes that Said Mortazavi, Tehran’s Chief Prosecutor, called the families of Ehsan Mansouri, Ahmad Ghasaban, and Majid Tavakolli, the three imprisoned Amir Kabir University students, and told them angrily and authoritatively: “We warned you several times not to speak anywhere, not to interview, not to distribute the news about inside ward 209 of Evin prison, and not to meet anyone, but you didn’t listen and did your own work. Now I have transferred your children to solitary confinement again, and unless you change your approach, you won’t be able to visit them or talk to them on the phone… We haven’t tortured them yet to make you understand what torture means!”

If you can make a movie in Dar es Salaam, then you can make a movie anywhere: “First there are production and logistical issues. The production issues were easily resolved because we had anticipated those and planned for them. What we did not anticipate are the issues beyond our control…traffic jam in dar, cons whose main intentions were to make sure we spend all our money to the ground so that they can blog that the production “run out money”. We were overcharged most of the times whether we were renting a place to shoot or buying water for the day…”

Are there writers in East Africa?: “For many years we were made to believe that East Africa was a literary desert. Taban lo Liyong said it and regional publishers vindicated him. And they kept him vindicated for many years but we all knew it was an excuse to invest solely on text books.”

Ringplay Productions and Now is Wow acknowledge the passing of television personality, artist and educator, Ian Ali.

Bahamian Nicolette Bethel posts a great piece on self-publishing.

Despite her love of waves, Arubagirl says: “I think I join everybody living in the Caribbean when I hope that the hurricane season will PLEASE be over soon.”

KZBlog reports that the ruling Nur-Otan party of President Nazarbayev has reason to celebrate their landslide in Kazakhstan's parliamentary elections while the opposition is refuting the poll result.

Following the suspension of Hossein Derakhshan’s blog (aka Hoder) by the U.S. based hosting company, Hosting Matters, an online petition has been launched by The Eyeranian in support of Hoder’s right to freedom of speech: “Hoder, like all of us, has a right to express his opinion. Opinions expressed in a personal weblog are just that; the writer’s personal opinions. Limiting such right without due process is unethical, and even illegal. We should all fight for his right to speak, since it is also about our own right to speak,” the initiator of Let Hoder Speak! petition said.

Mirsulzhan Namazaliev shares some of his thoughts on the SCO summit which took place in Kyrgyzstan last week.

Vadim and his readers at neweurasia discuss the racist murder video which appeared on Russian websites last week (GV reported).

Uzbekistan stands out to loose most if Tajikistan was to go ahead with the construction of new hydro-power plants. The two rivers in question, Syr Darya and Amu Darya, provide most of the water for Uzbekistan's cotton sector. Jamiyat wonders about the potential consequences.

After the alleged Russian attack on one of its radio stations, Georgia seems determined to move the case up to the UN, reports Joshua Foust at Registan.net.

Onnik Krikorian visited the opening ceremony of the 4th Pan-Armenian Games, in which 2,500 competitors from communities in Armenia and the Diaspora compete (more photos here).

5Xmom says its harder to talk about politics with kids compared to talking about sex. The blogger offers some suggestions to the parents on balancing their kid's independent thinking and political correctness.

Indonesia Matters reports on a unsuccessful plan by a local government to give virginity tests to teenagers after several sex videos that had high school students in them started surfacing.

Singaporean blogger Oikono meets a North Korean tour guide who shares the blogger's interest in Economics.

Cowboycaleb comments on a rap video that a Malaysian student in Taiwan uploaded on youtube. The video has the Malaysian national flag as the backdrop. Malaysian police are contemplating charging the student under the country's sedition charge.

Khabgard reminds[Fa] us that Yaghoub Yadali, an award winner writer, is going to be judged in court because of his novel “The behavior of unrest”. This story was published two years ago with permission of Iranian authorities and won a couple of awards.It seems some people complained against some sentences in this book.The blogger says it was the first time in Iranian history that such a thing happened and it will have negative consquences for country's writers.Yadali had already been in jail, for the same reason, for 40 days.

Touristic patrimony is often fragile, writes Jorge Gobbi of Blog de Viajes [ES] in reference to the destruction of some of the natural formations in Paracas, Peru.

Juan Arellano of Globalizado [ES] took a stroll down to the Plaza de Armas in Lima and snapped these photos of Lima residents collecting goods for the earthquake victims.

Qué Joder [ES] is upset at the female stereotypes portrayed in La Prensa Gráfica newspaper and provides examples of other alternative female profiles that might be used instead.

Music from many different genres is being used for campaign purposes and Elecciones Guatemala [ES] provides some examples of song lyrics.

For BlogHer, Liz Henry provides an update of “mommyblogs” in Argentina.

Pospost [ES] writes about lost cultural treasures due to the Peruvian earthquake, such as damaged churches and destroyed museum collections.