Global Voices Online

Azerbaijan might still be a predominantly Muslim country, but Scary Azeri in Suburbs says that many of the trappings of Christmas in the West can be observed in its New Year festivities. The blog details how the holiday is spent in much of the former Soviet world.

Many young Indonesians are expressing their nationalism through art.

“Hatta Yoichi” (八田與一) is a Japanese animated film about a Japanese engineer who was responsible for the development of irrigation systems in southern Taiwan. Sponge Bear comments on an article discussing how Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou has used the release of the movie to improve relations between Taiwan and Japan.

On the 15th November Portuguese language blogger, Timor Lorosae Nacao, posted disturbing images of the corpse of Major Alfredo Reinado undergoing an autopsy in Dili in February 2008.  Major Reinado led a group of armed men to the house of Timorese President Jose Ramos-Horta on the morning of 11 February 2008.  Reinado was killed during this encounter.

Cuba's Generation Y sends a questionnaire to U.S. President Obama “with some of the issues that keep [her] from sleeping” and publishes his responses.

“There are a good number of ministers still under sixty, but the largest share of power is concentrated in the hands of septuagenarians and octogenarians”: Cuba's Generation Y suggests these veterans are unable “to hear the new generation knocking at the door, coming like a whirlwind to dismantle everything.”

Kamla Bhatt reviews a documentary of Sarah Singh (New York), The Sky Below, which looks at the partition of the Indian sub-continent in 1947 and “how it impacted the people and communities on both sides of the border: India and Pakistan.”

More on the Hungarian reactions to Imre Kertész's Die Welt interview - at Hungarian Spectrum. (Marietta Le's GV post about it is here.)

On Nov. 17, the Czech Republic and Slovakia are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, and The Czech Daily Word lists “most frequent stupid arguments and errors” of those who believe that “the era of communism was better than the post-revolution times.”