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Bush Arrives to Protests in Sao Paulo; Uruguay Gets Ready

David Sasaki · 17:05 · Americas

lingua → zht · zhs · fr · zht

Brazilian photoblogger Tatiana Cardeal was more prepared with her lens than São Paulo's Military Police Force was for the protests against US President George Bush's visit. The photograph's caption:

São Paulo's Military Police Force yesterday, who decide to explode gas bombs in a crowd of almost 10.000 people at the World March of Women and anti Bush protest, causing panic and hurting people, because a few “punks” and protesters, not more than 15 young, tryied to close the avenue lying down in front of some cars and provoking disturbs.

Lots and lots of blog posts on Bush's visit to Latin America. Colin Brayton provides some useful translations from local bloggers and Indymedia. Erwin Cifuentes has compiled a list of various links in “Dubya south of the border – U.S. prez arrives in Brazil to start tour.” Journalism professor Marc Cooper puts down some of his typically polished commentary. Leftside rattles off with some lightly less-polished analysis, including an incredible photograph of a slum in front of the Hilton hotel where U.S. President Bush is now staying. Made in Brazil takes a break from bikinis to mention the arrest of 25-year-old model Janaína Bueno who, according to Brazzil Mag, “ended up being charged with indecent exposure after a suspicious policeman ordered her to show what was under the big green-yellow flag and found very little.”

We can also be sure that Jose Murilo Junior's weekly batch of translations from Portuguese-speaking bloggers tomorrow will include first-hand accounts and analysis of the protests and the outcome of Bush's visit. We can also be sure that Uruguayan police are working overtime.

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Bahrain: Bloggers Consider Starting Official Society

Ayesha Saldanha · 13:00 · Middle East & North Africa

Bahrain bloggers restarted their monthly gatherings after a break of some months. This get-together was organised by Mahmood Al Yousif as usual, but with more structure than previous sessions:

It was a good turnout in the end. We had 11 bloggers in there and a good amount of interest in the presentations. The “featured presentation” was to a visiting friend from Ireland - Mohammed Al-Kabour - who talked to us about his experiences in activism and lobbying and showed how we might adapt and adopt some of the tried and tested methods in our own endeavours.

Although it seems that having some structure to the meetings is a good idea, everyone agreed that five presentations were too much to take in.

We ended the session by my floating the idea to form a Bloggers’ Society and register it with the Ministry of Social Affairs. … The basic premise is that we would like to have an infrastructure that legally can support a blogger should s/he fall in trouble because of court cases brought against them and indeed to provide a legal entity that can organise various activities normally not possible outside of that realm.

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Gargoyle: Channeling the African Blogosphere

Ndesanjo Macha · 12:23 · Sub-Saharan Africa

In November last year, Africa Media blog had a post about the blog, Black Looks, winning Best of Blogs (BOB) award for best English language blog. The post concluded thus:

Sokari's terrific blog is — unfortunately — one of the handful of African blogs to turn up in the top 10 (sometimes top 15) blogs in a Technorati search of their blog directory when using the search word “Africa.” Instead, get this, what comes up are some white American guys including a rightwing radio talk show host, a couple of Manhattan “media girls” traipsing around the Third World, and my favorite grass-roots African voice, The World Bank. Silly me, why in the world would I expect to find African blogs when searching for “Africa” in a blog directory?

Black Looks reacted to the post with her own observations and suggestions:

So in the first 20 there are actually just 6 blogs from the African blogosphere listed - check out who the remaining 14 belong to!

I am not an expert on how Technorati works but scrolling through the list it seems the more blogs that link to your blog the higher up you will come out in the search - ok that makes sense BUT thats clearly only part of it as “Samurai Soapbox” is listed and he doesnt even have a category “Africa”? As I was saying a couple of weeks ago we in the African blogosphere dont really link to each other and especially do not build on each other’s conversations so its no wonder that we remain relatively invisible in the mass of millions of blogs out there. I am not sure some sort of “TECHNORATI.COM BOMB” (as in google bomb) type exercise with the tag AFRICA + add your country tag irrespective of topic on every single post for the next 6 months might work? Could work but then again maybe it just doesnt matter and who cares a toss anyway?

In a post titled, Thoughts on African media and blogosphere, Grandiose Parlor joined the conversation with two key words: infrastructure and collaboration:

Basically, Africans should not only be able to tell their own stories via several media outlets, but able to fund/build/implement/manage the infrastructure needed to nurture and support these media structures, and the best way to achieve this is through collaboration.

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Kazakhstan and its Women

Leila Tanayeva · 11:50 · Central Asia & Caucasus

lingua → zhs · zht

International Women's Day is a public holiday in Kazakhstan, and while happy bloggers-office workers get a break from their offices and blogs, congratulate their mothers, wives and daughters, we are presenting the latest roundup of blog entries by women and about them.

On Beauty

Slavoyara, a blogger and photographer from Pavlodar, has won the title of the most beautiful woman among the owners of Livejournal in a competition organised by blogger megakhuimyak. Congratulations!

She writes (RUS):

I am strict when in comes to assessing a woman's beauty: yes, there are physically attractive and non-attractive women. But this is not a criterion for assessing personality… Beauty is just a promise of happiness, as someone said.

On Work

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Pakistan: Blog-o-hiding

Omer Alvie · 03:07 · South Asia

I'm writing this post from the confines of my newly acquired underground bunker. The reason for opting for a subterrestrial crib is not because I am paranoid about an impending Middle East conflict turning nuclear (although that is a pretty good reason) but because my blog popularity has soared for measly fan following of two to a colossal following of 3 and half. The half represents a three-legged Dachshund fascinated with my sad attempts at political satire. With such a large group of fanatical admirers of my blog, I have decided to go into hiding in my new secret grotto, so that I shall not be inundated with requests for autographs.

Today's round-up includes an interesting mix of Pakistani blog posts, which includes the written word, podcast and video commentary. We'll start of with the latest hit piece from the Fountainhead detailing the fall of the Roaming Empire.

Nothing can be sadder than the fact that a country that welcomed to its bosom victims of the abuse of other powers for centuries, finally became the greatest abuser of power itself. And in so doing, wrote its own epitaph.

The Glasshouse remains optimistic faced with the seriousness of the US-Iran conflict.

These days I often come across people who seem apprehensive about the possibility of war between the US and Iran. Your Blogger, being a habitual optimist, likes to believe that what we are witnessing is no more than another example of the Bush Administration’s predilection for sabre-rattling.

I have to tell you that my new cavernous residence is rather palatial. It includes an underground lake, two huge power generators, a computer with 24-hour internet access and 2 years supply of spam and Twinkies to address my special dietary needs.

Suspectpaki, one of my oldest blogger friends, unfortunately due to ill health cannot currently do much writing for his blog due to problems with his eyesight. He has opted to do a podcast instead, providing an off-the-cuff rant which (more…)

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