Global Voices

English

The world is talking, are you listening?

Armenia

Onnik Krikorian reports on a hunger strike in Yerevan to protest the seizure and destruction of homes in the center of the city.

Russia

Scraps of Moscow continues its “End of the Line” series with photos from the southern end of Moscow's green line, Red Guard station.

Hungary

Pestiside.hu reports that the government has launched an investigation into an “egg mafia” (that may or may not actually exist).

Saudi Arabia

Sabbah wonders if Fox News can stand for their slogans, specially after hearing the influence of the Saudi Prince, Al-Waleed Bin Talal, on changing the channel reports of the Paris riots. “Within 30 minutes, the title was changed from Muslim riots to civil riots”, Al-Waleed said.

While talking about media, a recent report by Committee to Protect Journalists ranks U.S. Sixth among countries jailing journalists.

Bahrain

Today marks the 34th of Bahrain independence day. While Silly Bahraini Girl sees it as a time for fun and parades and fireworks and … rallies.. and demonstrations.. and the sound of explosions… chaos… anarchy.. the ugly smell of fear; Mahmood hopes that the 35th anniversary would be happier if Bahraini’s concentrate on few things.

Algeria

Nouri bin Ziri is asking us to put the city of Annaba and the surrounding area in our prayers, so that they may recover rapidly from the floods (French). Many schools, houses and other structures have been ruined or destroyed.

United Arab Emirates

The UAE's telecoms regulatory authority has blocked the blog Sorry Dubai, following a post that criticised the monopoly state telco Etisalat. The blog also attacked Etisalat's blocking of popular Internet telephony website Skype. UAE bloggers are in a nervous mood after this.

The blog, written by someone who goes by the name of FeedYourHead, has since deleted his blog, some of which can still be found in Google's cache. His posts were often very negative and always very spirited.

China

The Paper Tiger wonders whether the violent crackdown on peasant protesters in Dongzhou represents a turning point for the Chinese government.

China

Sinosplice discovers Douban, a successful Chinese book-sharing site that now has an English (Flickr-like) beta. “The site allows you to share what books you are currently reading, what books you have read, and what books you’d like to read.”

China

Talk Talk China goes after China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC, pronounced “see-nook”), which changed its “no-compete” promise to investors who bought shares in its New York and Hong Kong publicly listed subsidiary CNOOC Limited. The pledge was meant to assure investors that the state-owned parent wouldn't steal away the publicly-held subsidiary's lucrative business. Now it can.