Thursday World Blog Roundup

Tomorrowposter
Southeast Asia:
Kennysia in Malaysia speculates on an upcoming Singapore bloggers’ meeting this summer, with some great programming suggestions and hilarious graphics! (Featured on mock poster: Mr. Brown and Xiaxue. ) How come nobody ever made these for the BloggerCons???

Mack at Brandmalaysia discusses Malaysia's “worst managed company.”

Sarasonteh points out that the Thai government is trying to discourage the international media from reporting about ongoing violence in predominantly Muslim Southern Thailand. (Incidentally, the International Crisis group thinks it's an important story.) [UPDATE: the blog's author has posted some clarifications in the comments section here.]

Disni in the Philippines has a long critique of the Business Software Alliance's report on software piracy worldwide, which claims one third of the world's software is pirated.

Republic of Free Cyberspace:
Meanwhile, Turkish Torque points out that a Beykent University student has developed a free flash editor for Linux users. Yay Beykent!

South Asia:
Uzz Buzz at “United We Blog” describes his recent audio conference on disinformation in Nepal.

Vantage point is enthusing about a movie… and it's NOT Star Wars.

East Asia:
Japan Window Photo Blog has great pictures and a long account of the Design Festa in Tokyo.

Are you feeling blogger-burnout? Gen Kanai has found a great new tool: Autoblogger. Be sure to watch the quicktime video…

Congratulations to Dottocomu for well-deserved praise from PC Magazine.

Marmot and Oranckay on how the scars of the 1980 Gwangju massacre remain raw.

Chattergarden reports that Hong Kong is cracking down on users of BitTorrent.

Danwei thinks China's state news agency, Xinhua, is obsessed with hot babes.

Central Asia:
Two Uzbekistan-based Peace Corps volunteers with blogs have reacted differently to a Peace Corps directive telling them not to talk about the political situation. Working Definition has decided to keep blogging but avoid giving any more analysis on the Andijon situation. Wanderlustress has decided to stop blogging.

Scraps of Moscow has more on the Uzbekistan situation, thanks to his continued translation of Russian media reports.

Eurasia:
Workhorse in the Ukraine writes about the Crimean Tartars, who were deported by Stalin 61 years ago and still seek justice.

Orange Ukraine takes a look at Ukraine's economic problems, and suspects Russia is overcharging Ukraine for oil.

The Russian Dilettante says there are too many cars with St.Petersburg license plates in Moscow these days…

Siberianlight has an interesting post on the Eurovision song contest in Kiev, pointing out that the Russian lyrics seem somewhat anti-American.

Europe:
Barcepundit has been translating (here and here) material from the Spanish press on what is now being called “Spain's Terrorgate.”

Africa:
Wayne Wides at South Africa's Commentary.co.za gives President Mbeki some advice on how to make the economy grow faster, but wonders if Mbeki is willing to really do what it takes.

Black Looks reports that Nigeria is the first African nation with professional womens’ football (soccer).

Latin America:
Venezuela News & Views holds forth on the “neglected Venezuelan provinces.”

Middle East:
The Angry Arab describes being photographed for an LA Times profile. He has also written a silly song about Lebanon's Hariri.

JordanbloggersWe have reports on the 3rd Jordanian bloggers’ meetup from “And far away…”

Semitism.net now has streaming audio.

Kurdistan Bloggers Union has an interview with a Syrian Kurd.

Hammorabi discusses newspaper reports that Syrian forces have joined insurgents against U.S. and Iraqi forces.

Iraq the Model defends Spirit of America and Friends of Democracy against critics.

In Iran, Syamak Moattari is scared about the prospect of a U.S. attack.

Mr. Behi has done his first radio interview, available online. …and, by the way, it was done with Skype.

Iran Scan lets us in on what Iranians are saying in taxis… and what the newspapers are saying.

Mahmoud was interviewed by the BBC from Bahrain.

5 comments

  • As the author of Sarasonteh, I would like to make a clarification regarding my post about Thailand that you link to:

    Anand Panyarachun is not a member of the Thai government, but rather the chairman of independent National Reconciliation Commission, which has taken a *very* soft line since it was set up to lead the touchy-feely approach in dealing with violence in the Deep South. Personally, I don’t think it’ll solve the problem, but acknowledge that there may be public relations benefits, both domestic and international.

    A look at the ICG statement you also link to, however, suggests that even that may be too optimistic. The “Insurgency, not Jihad” headline sounds like a debunking, but whom is it trying to debunk? The word “jihad” has never entered Thailand’s public consciousness (most Thais either don’t know what it means or don’t appreciate its significance). All officials from the prime minister on down steer clear of the word “terrorists”. The Thai-language media calls Southern bombers and murderers “Southern bandits” informally and “perpetrators” and “people who cause disorder” formally. To the extent that anyone talks of “outside interference”, they more often mean the loathed United States (CIA, Pentagon, grad students, whatever) than anything else. (Here’s the URL if the link doesn’t work: http://sanpaworn.vissaventure.com/?id=104)

    I hope most people will recognize the ICG narrative as a boilerplate that those so inclined could and usually do apply to any country with militancy problems without any real insight or investigation. What you may not realize, however, is that this formula has already been copied, pasted and distributed widely among the supposedly cowed Thai media, both state-owned and otherwise.

    Let me be very clear here: I wrote my post (and indeed started my whole blog) precisely to challenge this sort of clichéd, uniform, and uncritical coverage about Thailand by the international media, NGOs, and Thailand’s own press. The irony I sometimes employ may not be obvious for new readers of my blog, but it’ll become clearer if you’d just look around and follow a few links.

    PS The Global Voice admin may want to fix the link, which currently points to my main log as opposed to the post in question.

  • Thanks for continuing to mention the work I’ve been doing on the Uzbek situation. So that people don’t get the wrong impression, I should mention that the post to which you linked actually contains a large block of text from RIA Novosti’s English-language website, i.e., I didn’t translate that one myself. The target of my translation efforts yesterday was an commentary from the Russian newspaper Vremia Novostei – my translation and comments (and lots of links to other related sources) are available here.

    Also, Registan continues to provide excellent analysis of and exclusive material on the aftermath of the Andijan events.

  • Tom,
    Thanks very much for the clarification. Fixing link now.

  • […] .) [UPDATE: the blog’s author has posted some clarifications in the comments section here.] Disni in the Philippines has a long critique of the Business […]

  • Thanks for the link. This is the first time I’ve seen this site. It looks great, so I’ll be back.

Cancel this reply

Join the conversation -> Andy

Authors, please log in »

Guidelines

  • All comments are reviewed by a moderator. Do not submit your comment more than once or it may be identified as spam.
  • Please treat others with respect. Comments containing hate speech, obscenity, and personal attacks will not be approved.