Global Voices Online

Justin Delacour links to an article on Upside Down World about the international press' reaction to Bolivia's nationalization of gas resources. Jim Shultz reminds readers to ” not lose track of the big picture: At the end of the day Bolivia will develop its gas and oil through some kind of partnership between the Bolivian government and foreign oil companies.” Boli-Nica on Bolivia takes a look at how the gas nationalization could affect the federal pension fund.

Tanya Hernandez, focusing on Brazil, asks “is There Racism in Latin America and What Does That Mean for Race Relations in the United States?” One commenter responds, “If I must choose my poison (racism), I'll choose the American brand. Latin American racism is made more pernicious by the fact that it is unacknowledged.” Randy Paul tries to get to the bottom of a rumor that US president George W. Bush once asked Brazil's former president, “Do you have blacks, too?” And finally, Risa - who says she wants to take photos of racist advertising in Ecuador - posts an ad from Vogue Latinoámerica that she calls “disturbing.”

ICT for Peacebuilding has a feature on women and ICT. “ICT4Peace needs to embrace this rich texture of gender dynamics in the development of cutting-edge ICT solutions for strengthening peace processes.”

Windy Skies on the hawkers in Bombay who call themselves medicine men and sell remedies by the street.

Mezba remembers an afternoon spent with her family tracing her family tree in a notebook when on a vacation in a village in Bangladesh.

According to a local legend, the falls at Salazie, says (Fr) Audrey at Reunion Passion, are shaped like a bride's veil because a runaway bride once fell along the mountain's side. The blogger posts breathtaking pictures.

As high school students in St. Vincent gear up for the CXC exams and observe last-day traditions such as the signing of each other's school shirts, Abeni waxes nostalgic about her own school leaving. With employment at more than 20%, however, she finds it hard to feel optimistic about the future of the current crop of school-leavers.

At the Trinidad & Tobago World Cup blog Stacy-Marie Ishmael parses some of the mixed reactions to the new West Indies anthem, which was sung for the first time at yesterday's Trinidad & Tobago v. Peru football match in Trinidad.

Frances at Supernaut describes the choreographing process in preparation for her co-produced death metal Cantonese opera set to show this weekend:

“I'm working in a way that is far more satisfying choreographically, and profoundly more interesting and involving as a performer and as an audience, but quite inimical to the idea of temporal, procedural and mechanical choreography. So there is a barely-conscious, long-term attempt to actually choreograph, that is, to make concatenations of movement using specific vocabularies in a way that has this pre-historic ballet intellectualisation of body-as-(Baroque)-machine, and do it in a way that owes more to present-day methods of doing things, that is to say, executing code.