Global Voices Online

The news of the death of the King of Pop was like an earthquake felt around the world. The shock wave reached the French Caribbean, where bloggers from Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guiana, all pay homage to the late artist.

Guadeloupean Mycho blogs [Fr] about her doubts concerning the “Estates General of the French Overseas Departments” to re-think the status of its distant departments, while bloggers Anba pyé mango-la and indiscrétions [Fr] also report on developments.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has finally met with elected representatives of French Guiana, Martinique, Guadeloupe and Réunion, regarding the crisis which has been shaking the French West Indies for the last month. Martinican bloggers Imaniyé and blogde[moi] are dissatisfied and note that his TV address raised two questions: Why was the speech exclusively broadcast on RFO: the French overseas media network and why was it only 10 min. long?

It has often been said that l'Ile de France (Paris and its surroundings) is the Fifth French Overseas Department, due to its huge population of French Guianese, Guadeloupeans, Martinicans and Reunionese. In this announcement published by CaribCreoleOne, a group called Continuité LKP [Fr] invites the diaspora to march in Paris to support the strikes in Guadeloupe and Martinique.

le blog de [moi] writes about the launch of a new, daily news website for the French Antilles[fr],  featuring the latest from Guadeloupe, Martinique and Guyane: “What joy!  Yes, pure and simple joy, because it was really ridiculous not to use [the internet] at a time when everything is going digital, if only for the Antilles Diaspora spread all over the planet.  A big “AT LAST!'”

The general delegation for the French language and languages in France, a branch of the Ministry of Culture and Communication recently published a report on the use of the French language in the digital world. The objective of the delegation is to promote the use of the French language in international communication and multilingual projects in general (Fr).

In French Guiana, it's the season for noni and for turtles. Cafe Creole has pictures (Fr).

En Guyane posts [Fr] pictures of a mangosteen, a local fruit originating from Asia. She calls the fruit “sweet and strange”.

A general strike in French Guiana caused interruptions in power and transportation services, but no disruption of the French presidential campaigns since all campaigning must stop several days before the ballot (Fr).