Global Voices Online

Blogger and social activist Sakiyama Nobuo [ja] (see earlier coverage) picks up a number of recent news stories and predicts that it may not be long before Chinese filtering policy is no longer thought of as “another country's problem” [ja]. He points to the launch of the Mobile Alliance against Child Sexual Abuse Content, which he argues could put sites on a blacklist simply because they are “illegal” according to national laws, and points to a case in Finland where something similar has already happened.

Armenia and me posts an account and photographs of what is a rare sight indeed — 150 Scandinavian running through Yerevan's Victory Park as part of a World Wide Orienteering Promotion. Arriving in the country from Iran, the blog reports that local onlookers were at first shocked to see so many foreigners racing through a public space, but soon warmed to the idea. “The concept of tall blond Scandinavians in tights seemed to be quite attractive,” concludes Trygveu.

Vilhelm Konnander writes on how Boris Yeltsin had nearly sold Karelia to Finland.

“But why waste so much energy on that relationship with diminishing returns?” writes Itching for Eestimaa about Estonia's relations with Russia, and continues with an overview of Estonia's relations with other countries.

Itching for Eestimaa browses through the Time Magazine archives “to discover how those two loaded terms, Baltic and Nordic, were used in the 1920s and 1930s.”

Belgrade 2.0 posts a video of a press conference with Marija Serifovic, who won this year's Eurovision Song Contest in Helsinki, at which she makes the following remark about Finland: “erm, the country didn’t particularly suit me, and I don’t like those yellowish, “see-through” people… I despise them…” Bloggers discuss whether Serifovic was being ironic, racist or just silly.

A Step At A Time links to a recording of a Finnish song for Anna Politkovskaya.

David McDuff of A Step At A Time writes about forest fires in Russia's Leningrad region and in Estonia.

Bonjour l'Estonie compares Finland to Estonia: “Many Finns expected Estonia to build a Social-Democratic style welfare state, and were surprised and to some degree miffed that Estonia, which they wanted to regard as a little brother, chose to model itself after America rather than after Finland.”