Global Voices

English

The world is talking, are you listening?

Brazil

Russia

Foreign Policy's Passport blog reports that “The eXile, Moscow's venerable English-language alt-weekly, is under investigation by the Federal Service for Mass Media, Telecommunications and the Protection of Cultural Heritage and may be shut down.”

Estonia

A Step At A Time writes about “Memories Denied,” a 2006 book by Estonian filmmaker and journalist Imbi Paju, about the Soviet-time “cultural genocide” waged by Moscow against Estonia.

Brazil

Rodrigo Alvares [pt] publishes an amusing picture of a banner in support of Ivan, The Terrible for São Paulo's council. Note the mention of Orkut, YouTube and other social media tools. With heavy sarcasm, because of the latest developments of elections regulations that saw bloggers having to delete banners, the Brazilian blogger says: “I want to see the Justice fining or censoring this one”.

Poland

Polandian writes about the Warsaw Ghetto and the Podgórze Ghetto in Krakow

Poland

Kasia in Kazimierz asks Jewish tourists to not come to Poland “to be angry”: “Rather, come to learn about the past and perhaps about your family’s heritage. Come to learn from Poland’s diverse Jewish community, a community who really understands what it means to look after one another. Come to meet with non-Jewish Poles who really do care about restoring the memory of the Jewish community which was wiped off their map. Come to understand the true complexities of Polish-Jewish relations.”

Bosnia Herzegovina

Srebrenica Genocide Blog writes about detention of two alleged war criminals in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Bermuda

Bermudian bloggers are abuzz about the Speaker of the House reversing his ban on questions to Ministers from an old Parliament. Vexed Bermoothes: “In doing so he lays bare the tampering being undertaken in Bermuda’s institutions to avoid transparency and accountability in our Government”; A Radical In Bermuda: “We have to do all we can to stop this government from inching ever closer to non-transparent pseudo-fascism.”

Kenya

White African spots two new East African websites: “Bongoza is a new search engine for Tanzania. I’m intrigued by this idea of a niche search engine by country. Usually I would think that the big search engines would do an adequate job for any area, however it might be different if there’s a human helping to index uniquely Tanzanian content, especially as much of it is in Swahili.”

Bahamas

“What is it about us and trees? It would appear that beauty — and oxygen and serenity and shade — are not a premium in our city any more”: Nicolette Bethel beseeches her fellow Bahamians to think about living in an environmentally responsible way.