Global Voices Online

Sergei Makedonov at OpenDemocracy discerns an increasing foreign policy split between Russia and Belarus and explains why.

The Reference Frame reports that Czech President Vaclac Klaus has vetoed a parliamentary anti-crisis bill and presents his own thoughts on the matter.

“No one with the authority seems to want to make a definitive decision as to how to progress the sugar cane industry”: Barbados Underground is convinced that “the value is no longer in the sugar but now in the sugar cane” - especially bio fuels and bio plastics.

Guyana-Gyal says that CARICOM is “just a free lunch”.

Nouvelle Europe discusses [FR] the economic crisis in Latvia, with widespread wage cuts and imminent collapse of the financial sector, indicating no apparent way out of the crisis in the foreseeable future.

The decline in remittances from Salvadorans living abroad which has been making up 1/6 of the country's economy is a big threat writes Tim Muth.

Blogging from Trinidad and Tobago, This Beach Called Life makes the connection between the King of Pop and ethics: “While people mourn Michael Jackson’s death they illegally download his music. We in the dotty Third World crave to be First World and use any means possible to appear to be by playing the same music and mourning in the same fashion, even if it means acting unethically, if not illegally.”

Stunner's Afflictions reports that “after months of searching, proposals, negotiations it has finally happened. The pride of the Jamaican skies, the cash strapped Air Jamaica has been sold.”

“We badly want to see…what the State has spent on Alutrint, what it will spend, and what it will gain”: A Trinidad and Tobago-based anti-smelter blog is concerned that “the citizens of the Republic will be paying Alutrint’s costs…this will amount to tens of billions of dollars, not even taking into account severe health and ecological costs.”