Global Voices

English

The world is talking, are you listening?

Bolivia

Miguel Centellas and Jim Shultz joined economist, Jeffrey Sachs to discuss “Latin America’s New Socialism” on Radio Open Source. The show has amassed an impressive amount of comments from bloggers and readers all over. Eduardo Ávila has a thorough look back at the top ten Bolivia stories of 2005.

Malaysia

Melissa, a chef from Panama - whose blog, Cooking Diva is recommended only if are not hungry - had the excellent idea of hosting a New Year's international recipe swap amongst food bloggers. Feel free to salivate over the submissions. Countries represented include Oman, Italy, Spain, Canada, India, England, France, Portugal, USA, Greece, Argentina, Malaysia, and of course, Panama. We hope she does this again and that even more regions are represented.

Venezuela

Oil Wars has an interesting and well-photographed geography lesson on Caracas and the mountain chain that separates it from the sea.

Venezuela

Aleksander Boyd of Vcrisis and George of The Real Cuba were both interviewed on Clandestine Radio durring the week between Christmas and New Years. The audio interview is available for download.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Egypt

UN Human Rights Council is proposed to replace the existing 53-member Human Rights Commission, which has been criticized for routinely granting membership to governments with questionable rights records, including Cuba, Libya, Sudan and Zimbabwe.

US ambassador to the United Nationas John Bolton said he hopes to block the worst human rights violators from using posts on the Human Rights Council to deflect or prevent criticism of their rights records.

Freedom for Egyptians says, in a no surprising move, International Herald Tribune and New York Times reported that UN diplomats singled out Egypt and Pakistan as countries that were leading the resistance to the proposed council.

The absence of such a Council will give the opportunity to the Egyptian regime to continue the killing series, Freedom for Egyptians said.

Iraq

Raed Jarrar says, at a time when the US army is spending more than ONE BILLION DOLLARS every single week in Iraq alone, the United States government doesn’t have enough money to go ahead with basic development and infrastructure projects.

The billions of dollars wasted by the war adminstration should be spared to be used for better purposes. This money should be spent in fixing the many mistakes committed in Iraq, and for enhancing the qaulity of life in the US.

Jordan

They flipped the switch and the toot went live. How they toot it? They spend the day plowing through a diverse list of blogs representing a sample of the most interesting blogs they find in Arabia. Then, they share with us the most interesting ideas, posts, and conversations of the day, making sure that toot is sweet and colorful every time you check it out.

Sounds tooting!

Guyana

Writing from Trinidad, Taran Rampersad weighs in on the global challenges faced by the Caribbean.

India

The debate on the politics of extending reservation to the private sector is a heated one. The Acorn has an excellent post - with a great discussion in the comments section.

India

Gawker has a run-in with a tomato seller on the streets, and after their interaction, reflects -
“I feel the vapid selfish glow of satisfaction people from a privileged background like me usually feel, when they bestow an act of charity on someone less fortunate in order to assuage the biting guilt they experience for living a life that is so vastly different from theirs.”