Global Voices

English

The world is talking, are you listening?

Postage stamps featuring some of Kyrgyzstan's wild mushrooms – edible and non-edible. Images taken from ianbek.kg, used with permission.

“Never eat overripe, clammy, flabby, wormy or spoiled mushrooms,” writes Ian Claytor, translating advice from Kyrgyzstan's Department for Disease Prevention and Expertise in his blog, Postcard from Bishkek. With the mushroom picking season underway in the former Soviet state, the Ministry of Health have come up [ru] with guidelines to help pickers enjoy the pastime safely.

Chinese police have caught a gang of traders who bought rat and fox meat and sold it as lamb. When the scandal was featured in Chinese newspapers and websites, it caused outrage among consumers who have been hit by a series of food scandals in recent years. TeaLeafNation has translated[zh] some online comments from Sina Weibo.

Chengdu Living has an interesting post on the potential disappearance of relatively free weed smoking atmosphere in China as the police has recently started to crack down on Marijuana trade.

Saying no to bad food will benefit the economy and the happiness index of the country.

aka_lol explains.

Hesham Qandil, Egypt's Prime Minister, is an illustruous expert in healthcare issues as attested by, e.g. his insightful comments about ‘dirty boobs breastfeeding’. The Prime Minister delivered another priceless advice to Twitter users, this time about a healthy diet:

“Doctor Smurf prescribes cakes, pies and smurfberries as part of a healthy diet.” Screenshot from Qandil's tweet

Renewable energy, permaculture and green building, along with local traditions and eco-tourism: welcome to Tribewanted – an online community launched in 2006 based on the idea of “global citizenship” and harnessing the energy of social media to meaningfully connect and practice positive behavior change. Thanks to crowdfunding strategies, the project plans to build 10 eco-villages around the world: after Vorovoro (Fiji Islands) and John Obey (Sierra Leone), a new village just launched in Monestevole [it], in Umbria, the heart of Italy. Connect with Tribewanted people via web, Facebook or Vimeo.

Barry van Wyk from DANWEI highlights a local report that shed lights on the floating dead pigs in Shanghai river by investigating into the problem of illegal pig farms in Hubei province.

Beshbarmak (Image from Vox Populi, used with permission)

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Alia from China Beat blogs Chinese netizens’ reaction on Hong Kong government's new restriction which limits tourists from taking more than 1.8kg infant formula milk across border everyday. The policy is meant to stop the outflow of baby formula from Hong Kong to mainland China and prevent the shortage of local supply.

Here in Kazakhstan, especially by Kazakhs, horse is considered to be a normal meat/edible flesh, in the same way as chicken, beef or fish is. Although horses bred for eating are treated very differently, and indeed look different, to those destined for racing or transport on the steppe, a horse is just another animal that serves a purpose.

Afreaka blog [pt] pays homage to food from central Mozambique, from Zambézia Province. They write, besides spice, the secret is “lots of coconut milk, made fresh, grating coconut into hot water”. They describe five unique dishes made with coconut.

MyWeku compiles a list of 10 best African food blogs for 2013: “There are seemingly a million food blogs out there, but only a handful showcase African food. Even so it has still been a struggle to pick 10 of our favourites for this year (2013).”

Two Barbadian bloggers discuss the arrival of a fast food franchise on the island.

The news about anti-Chinese sentiment in Australia, Germany and the Netherlands as a result of the shortage of infant forumla milk is widely discussed in Hong Kong. Dictionary of Politically Incorrect Hong Kong Cantonese has collected the reports and the online discussion on this anti-Chinese sentiment.

Qurutob, a traditional Tajik vegetarian dish. Image from Caravanistan, used with permission.

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The Beer Belly original logo, voluntary contribution by @dasaf

The “Beer Belly” blog celebrated [mk, mk] its first anniversary. Its author @Twibi thanked members of the Macedonian Twitter community who have been bringing him beer samples from their trips all over the world to review. So far, he has made 198 posts about beers from 20 countries, including Kenya [mk], thanks to the local GV Summit 2012 participants – @ieli and @bjasari.

Vietnam is a wonderful world of sauces… At Hanoi's bia hơi establishments, for every four or five dishes ordered there will be a corresponding number of sauces coming to table, too.

Mark Lowerson or @stickyinhanoi introduces Vietnam's popular dipping sauces.

The international Film Festival on Organic Farming was held in Satta Hall at Hosei University in Tokyo, December 16, 2012. One participant ama_san [ja] commented on Twitter:

Yesterday I went to the International Film Festival on Organic Farming. I was surprised to learn about the power of soil. This day and age, we are too removed from the earth. At the end of the day, it all comes down to earth, the birth place of everything. I was very moved.

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The Association for the Protection of Malagasy Lands and its representative Mamy Rakotondrainibe bemoans [fr] the manner in which the Tozzi Green group is approaching the development of jatropha exploitation over 100 000 ha of lands in Southern Madagascar. Local farmers are quoted as saying [fr] :

We, small farmers, are forced to leave the land by armed people. The lack of lands for our Zebus to feed on have already caused the deaths of our livestock. They have also already desecrated the holy land where our ancestors were born with their tanks.

Tozzi Green Group strongly denies [fr] all the accusations stated by the farmers association.

Screenshot from Delvino's video post

Delvino Funetii, Angola's young video blogger who has been entertaining people for a year on Youtube, posted his first video in English. He first complains about stereotypes of African men as repair superheroes, and goes into a diatribe about the sudden price increase of his neighbor's cakes by four times. (Luanda is notorious for its cost of living.)

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Off Beat China highlights an ethnic conflict between Uyghur nut cake sellers and Chinese customers which had developed into a mass fight. The compensation of RMB 200,000 to the Uyghur sellers have generated a lot of resentment among Chinese on the ethnic policy.

Desert locust in the South of Madagascar by christopheandre on flickr license CC-BY-NC

A national security warning has been issued in Madagascar over the invasion of locust in the southern region [fr]. WFP estimates that 10 millions dollars are needed to counter the upcoming food crisis from the damages.

Using the slogan “Agorazo Kypriaka” [Buy Cypriot products], the University of Cyprus website hosts an announcement by Rector Constantinos Christofides himself. Amidst the general economic crisis, University of Cyprus supports initiatives against unemployment and actively contributes to the cause, initiating a promotion campaign to encourage people to buy local Cypriot products while shopping.

Servindi [es] published Bulletin N°3/2012 [es] by the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC) [es], where they report that the organization will go to the International Criminal Court to denounce that numerous Indigenous people -including several children- are dying of malnutrition or as victims of anti-personnel mines due to the conflict between legal and illegal groups in their territories.

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Screen capture from YouTube video: ‘”The League” 3 Penis Wine Infomercial’

A netizen (Derek) has introduced the Chinese tradition of medicinal alcohol online, in particular the three-penis alcohol that apparently enhances a man's power.

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Charlie from Chengdu Living listed five major differences in lifestyle and inter-personal interaction between China and the U.S.A, including: traffic laws, table menu, taste (of chicken), use of diapers and weight's comment.

Maddy writes about the recent developments of vertical farming considering the demand for more agricultural lands in India and elsewhere.