Global Voices Online

Andy H of Csikszereda Musings writes (here and here) about the problems faced by the Polish migrant laborers in Britain - and whether the same awaits Bulgarians and Romanians.

The beatroot writes about the upcoming Miss World contest (to be held in Warsaw Sept. 30) topless mermaid controversy: “Not want to attach what to the Miss World contest? Erotic? Oh, I see. It's a contest that is without any sexy bits at all - it's a contest to promote the capital. Now I remember.”

Jo and Ants The Tukkers of Tuk to the Road share their impressions of Odesa, Lviv and Poland, and the Ukrainian traffic police: “We’d been warned that the police here could be even trickier than the Russian or Kazakh ones -who turned out to be more nosey than tricksome – but so far we have been stopped only a handful of times. On most occasions they look so flabbergasted as we drive past that by the time they’ve composed themselves enough to wave their baton and stop us its too late.”

Robert Mayer of Publius Pundit returns from a trip to Ukraine and Belarus and launches a discussion on the “varying degrees and intensities of tyranny.”

TOL's Belarus Blog translates a reading of Aleksandr Lukashenko's hand published in a Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda.

TOL's Belarus Blog presents its first podcast featuring an interview with John Dunn, author of “Setting the People Free: The Story of Democracy.”

Metroblogging Lahore presents a History Tour - installment number 19 - this time “Naulakha Pavilion, built by Shah Jahan in 1632, is located on the western side of the Shish Mahal courtyard. It consists of a single rectangular room in marble with a typical convex roof in the style of a Bengal hut. It has three openings in front, one on each side, and a perforated marble screen at the back.”

A Bengali in TO talks of reading the Quran during the month of Ramadan and how its important to understand what is actually being read.

William Wong Garay introduces (ES) his newest initiative, Floréame (ES), a Peruvian-focused, Digg-like community which uses the same open source code as Menéame (ES). It has also been integrated on the BlogsPeru (ES) portal.