Arabisc: Arrested Blogger Released and the Civilisation of Terrorism

Egyptian blogger Ramy Siyam – aka Ayoub – is out of jail, after spending an eventful 108 hours being moved from one detention centre to the other. According to fellow blogger Alaa Abdelfattah: “He was arrested in a sweep in downtown while securing the area for the President's visit to...

The Week that Was – Bolivian Blogs

On Tuesday night, the Bolivian Senate suddenly found itself with the needed quorum. Several opposition Senators had refused to meet in protest of several law proposals put forth by the ruling party MAS. Three substitute opposition Senators decided to attend the session to vote along government lines. Cries of foul...

China: Queer blogs for the straight eye

There hasn't been a terrible lot happening in China lately that could be filed under ltgbq news. There's been stories of a lesbian hotline in Beijing, the opening of the country's first university campus queer club, and the usual excitement over pro-gay marriage politician and public intellectual Li Yinhe‘s latest...

Kurdistance: It's Quiet Out Here

One of the hardest things about reporting on various blogospheres is the natural ebb and flow of people's writings. The past two weeks in the Kurdish blogosphere have been strangely quiet, the kind of quiet that is found before a great storm. Hiwa from Hiwa Hopes writes about the rampant...

Image from Tahiti: Market of Papeete

Serbia: Kragujevac Stories

You would have to find out by yourself how it feels to be in this southeastern European country, but in the meantime you can read words from different online spaces talking about those legendary cars produced in Kragujevac, the city's traditional bistro aura and some glances at its past. First,...

Interview with Kosoof, a leading Iranian Photo Blogger

Arash Ashoorinia is a leading photo blogger whose blog, Kosoof, won the Reporters Without Borders prize in the BOBs (Best of the Blogs) competition organized by German broadcaster Deutsche Welle. Arash's photos have been published all over the world in publications and on web sites such as the Washington Post...

On Blogging Conflict Regions

Ethan Zuckerman, one of the founders of Global Voices, once said in an interview that to care about a far away place that gets little media attention requires empathy. Empathy for a place can come through from having close friends who grew there, or by traveling there yourself. Sometimes, it...

Ukraine: Famine Recognized As Genocide

Kyiv, Nov. 25: Remembering Holodomor (Famine) Victims – by Veronica Khokhlova At the Holodomor Remembrance ceremony held in Kyiv on Saturday, Nov. 25, a big board listed the countries that have recognized the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33 as genocide: Australia, Argentina, Georgia, Estonia, Italy, Canada, Lithuania, Poland, USA, Hungary. Next...

Pana-Blogs Report

#1: From Chiriqui Chatter: El Desfile de los Bomberos en David , a very colorful report on a traditional  firemen parade that takes place in most large cities in Panama to commemorate the  independence festivities of the country. In this case Don shares a collection of photos and even a...

The Blogoma retaliates while Blaise LLorca calms the angry e-crowd

Moroccan bloggers under fire! The Moroccan blogosphere (Blogoma) is very angry. Why? Well a Moroccan blogger qualified the Moroccan blogging as being still in the “teen aging period”(Fr). Mohamed Lachyab, a Moroccan journalist who's decorating his blog with …his own pictures, gave an interview(Ar) to the Moroccan newspaper Almasae, and...

Voices from Zimbabwe

With the rainy season now underway in Zimbabwe, most of the nation's time and attention is given to pontificating and prognosticating what the agricultural prospects have in store for us. Like many other agro-based economies, the measure of a good (or bad year) is based on the nation's agricultural production....

Text Theft in Caracas

On November 17 Venezuelan architect and blogger, Guillermo Amador, jotted down a post titled “Traffic and Civilization” in which he criticized the Chief of Transit in Chacao [a neighborhood of Caracas] for claiming that the capital city's ever-worsening traffic problem had no solution. “Just because he doesn't know how to...

Lebanon: Minister Pierre Gemayel Assassinated

Lebanon witnessed this week the brutal assassination of its minister of industry and trade. This terrorist act overshadowed all other events and topics in the Lebanese blogosphere. Nevertheless, the posts were as varied and different as the political inclinations of the Lebanese themselves. Here is a sample of what they...

Ethiopia's bloggers disappear again

The bulk of Ethiopia's bloggers disappeared from Ethiopian computer screens for the second time in seven months this week. All sites hosted by the popular Blogspot platform stalled when internet users tried to log on to them through their Ethiopian Telecom Corp dial-up connections. The small stable of anti-government blogs...

Haiti: Impunity, President Preval and Farah Dessources

On November 15, Farah Dessources, a 20 year old first year University student was kidnapped and killed despite the payment of part of the ransom by her mother. Saturday during her funeral, a demonstration took place in Port-au-Prince, demanding that the Preval government do more to stamp out insecurity. There...

Tanzanian bloggers’ virtual conference

Tanzanian bloggers held their first virtual conference on November 18th, 2006. The aim of the conference was to discuss various steps to be taken to make the community more effective and expand its reach. Most bloggers feel that there is an opportunity for blogs to be a tool for critical...

Voices from Central Asia and the Caucasus

Astana (Kazakhstan) – Waiting for a bus – photograph taken by Richard Messenger (Many more bus stops here) While we're waiting for the bus, why not check out some of this week's highlights from the Central Asian and Caucasian blogosphere, brought to you bi-weekly by neweurasia? Web 2.0 in Central...

Arabisc: Bahraini Elections, Dying Children and Confusing Freedom!

Bahrain held its second Parliamentary elections in its modern history this week, with about 300,000 voters going to the polls. Amongst them was Bahraini blogger Haythoo, who hoped his ‘party’ would emerge victorious. أنا الأن متوجه لتغطية العملية الأنتخابية.. أتمنى أن يحالفنا الحظ و نفوز بأكثرية نيابية.. يجب أن نعمل...

China: What pols blog, where subways end

Hexun blogger Guan Jiantao on a city in eastern China's Jiangsu province, where twelve senior government leaders were told to take up blogging, in their own names, following the flood of feedback to municipal Party Secretary Zhang Shixin's recent blog post, in which he criticized the hygiene, spitting, littering, picking...

The Week That Was in Bahrain

More than 300,000 Bahrainis went to the polls on Saturday to elect 40 Municipal Councillors and another 40 Members of Parliament. This is the second time Bahrainis vote in their modern history, after sweeping reforms initiated in 2002. According to official records, seventy-two per cent of the eligible voters took...