Global Voices Online

Flickr, the popular photo-sharing site is being blocked in China since June 7th: “It seems that access to our image servers is being blocked for users in much of China. Our technical staff has looked into this at depth and determined this is not a technical issue from our end. We will keep an eye on the situation and update if we get any developments”, said Flickr CEO Stewart Butterfield on the help forum.

As Global Voices John Kennedy reported earlier, the reason of banning Flickr may be the photo-report of the Xiamen protest that made its way to flikr.

Hamed Saber, the developer of the Firefox extension Access Flickr! (see his interview with Global Voices) who got engaged in an interesting debate about the Great Firewall in China, is offering his support to the Chinese Flickr Community and a Chinese HowTo of the extension has been added.

Kenya-Byte writes about the Kenyan bank whose website was hacked recently: “Equity Bank’s website was defaced last week. Safaricom’s website is suspiciously unavailable. There is some mischief going around.
The cracker who defaced Equity’s site might not have caused serious loss to the bank apart from denting the reputations of the in-house IT team. However Bongeni Jo (let’s baptise him so - after one of his calling cards), exposes a security lapse that would have had more serious implications.”

Afromusing blogs about the launch of Believe-Begin-Become program in Tanzania: “The programs’ goal is to support the youth in entrepreneurial pursuits by providing training, networking, and mentoring through technoserve and in partnership with the government. The plans they are looking for through business plan competitions in Tanzania, ought to be fundable and workable.”

Thinker's Room defines insanity as Paris Hilton vs. Darfur conflict on Google: “That’s right. There is almost FIVE TIMES as much content about some nebulous nobody than one of the biggest tragedies every to befall this earth. We pay more attention to issues of nuisance value than serious catastrophes that we could avoid but don’t.”

Bongoland II writes about Innocent Galinoma, a reggae artist from Tanzania living in the US: “His message is real and genuine, which you quickly pick up on when you talk to him. For example upon hearing his hit song “KILIMANJARO”, one could think that the message is about the famous majestic mountain in Africa…but paying more attention you quickly realize that there is a heavy message with references to oppressive governments, corrupt officials and starving children. The song takes you to the highest mountain in Africa with visions of all atrocities going on underneath.”

Lam Chun Chew remembers their kampong barber Mr. Low from his childhood days “He had another skill that enabled him to clear sand or small particles which got in his customer’s eyes by accidents. I saw him on one occasion lift a guy’s eye-lit, picking out a sand particle using a chrome pincer deftly. While doing his job he would engage his client in small talk, usually on whose children did well or not in their studies. This was his pet topic, probably because his elder son did quite well in a Chinese language medium school” . Kampong is the Malay word for a village or small settlement and Singapore used to have several kampongs before the urbanization in the 70s and 80s.

VietPundit is offended by people who think of US as a racist country. “The truth is that there’s less racism in America than anywhere else on earth. Just from the little corner of Asia where I came from: the Vietnamese hate the Chinese, who can’t stand the Japanese, who despise the Koreans, who of course loath the Japanese, and you can complete the circle yourself.” (via Balderdash)

The blogger at monsoonmaritimeservices recalls the late 70s encounters with the Vietnamese boat people. “During those time, those of us on merchant ships plying the South China Sea would have seen these decrepit boats overloaded with hundreds of “boat people” - We were in a dilemma, do we risk taking onboard these refugees knowing that most neighbouring countries including Singapore will not allowed them to be landed ashore?”. The “boat people” were the escapees from the communist regime in Vietnam following the Vietnam war.

5XMom read about a two-timing man on friend's blog who justified his actions by assuming that “woman is capable of just sleeping around without emotions involved”. The blogger cautions her readers “Classic. Grow up. Remember. Men have sex due to lust. Women have sex due to being fooled into thinking there is love involved. How the fark I know so much? I watch movie, read books, read blogs and I see them with my own eyes. Now, is this entertaining or what?