Blogs & Ecology

Brain Black from China Challenges blogs about the impact of global economic downturn on job security in China.

As “Raúl Castro reaffirmed the idea of ending subsidies”, Generation Y observes: “Between the symbolic price of a pound of rationed rice, and the enormous 'slice' of our salaries taken by those who govern us, we are more the givers than the receivers of subsidies.”

In the previous post (Southeast Asia: Newsmakers of 2008), I wrote about the major events that took place in Southeast Asia. In this article, I will highlight other stories which became controversial as well. Another objective is to gather and categorize the linkposts on the right side of the Global Voices, pertaining to the region.

Uncommon Sense links to an article which suggests that US President-Elect Barack Obama seems prepared to lift limits “on how often Cuban Americans can visit family members on the island and on how much money they can send them”, a move which the blogger says would end “one of the more ignoble and inhumane aspects of American policy towards Cuba.”

The Bajan Dream Project reports that “a further BDS $100,000 is missing” from the Central Bank of Barbados' vaults.

Barbadian Cheese-on-bread! and Trinidad-based Caribbean Beat Blog talk about the uncertainty surrounding US billionaire Allen Stanford's continued involvement in Caribbean cricket, following the dissolution of his West Indies 20/20 Cricket Board of Legends.

In mid-October, Global Voices published a roundup of Anglophone bloggers' views on the financial crisis in Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Serbia and Ukraine. Below is another installment on the effects and the likely consequences of the crisis in Russia.

Edward Hugh of Eastern Europe Economy Watch examines the figures and concludes that “Russia's macro data starts to confirm the severity of the downturn”:

“An issue which seems to be troubling the government over their decision to reinstate the death penalty, is the worry that foreign governments will stop making aid contributions”: Jamaica Salt explains.

Ukrainiana writes about a Ukrainian judge “who claims to have borrowed — and harvested — the nearly $2M plus Hr. 2M” - and is now at large.

Abdymok reports on the sorry state of the Ukrainian currency and president Victor Yushchenko's inadequate response to the crisis.

A roundup of Ukrainiana's December posts: Ukraine and NATO; the math of the Russian-Ukrainian relations; ex-defense minister on “martial economic law”; Ukrainian PM's Chanel necklace and the First Lady's Chanel handbag vs.

Nimr, from America-Palestinian Kabobfest, discusses the issue of migrant workers in the Gulf - and how their governments are not fending for their rights thanks to the millions of remittance payments they send back home every month.

Bahrain is distancing itself from the impact of the economic crisis rocking the world economies, writes blogger Khalid in this post [Ar].

Adoration of the Golden Calf

With the recent spate of inertia that hit the Libyan blogosphere a few months ago (and continues to do so) and which a reader on Highlander’s blog calls LDS (for Libyan Disappearing Syndrome ). I did not think that there would be much blogging this Eid. But glancing through Khalid’s ‘All Libyan blogs’ aggregator I was heartened to notice a few posts cropping up here and there to break the dry spell.