Global Voices Online

Jamaican Simone Champagnie links to What does That Mean, “a free, user-built dictionary of English idioms, buzzwords, and catch phrases from around the world”. The site includes entries from North America, the British Commonwealth, Italy, Japan and South Korea.

Fojrega posts (Fr) the nationalschedule of baccalaureate exams in Cameroon.

The Limey cites several examples of equivocation on the part of Bermuda's MP's over their failure to debate an important amendment to the Human Rights Act last week, and reports that a rally is being organised to protest the lack of debate among the MPs. Christian Dunleavy reproduces on his blog his op-ed from the Royal Gazette analysing the reasons the bill failed.

On his freshly launched blog, Jamaican novelist Marlon James weighs in on the New York Times “Top Twenty-Five American Books”. Barbadian blogger Titilayo singles out a few notables from TIME magazine's “list of “100 men and women whose power, talent or moral example is transforming our world”.

Jdid, a Barbadian immigrant living in Toronto, has very mixed feelings about the protests against the deportation of illegals which took place recently in Canada. “I feel badly for someone who built up a life here and then had it cruelly plucked from beneath them but at the same time you came here illegally. You broke the law and at some point you did know it could or would come back to haunt you,” he says, while also wondering whether he might be “a sellout doing the man's job for him. Shouldn't I be showing solidarity with my immigrant brothers and sisters?”

Barbados's incumbent Barbados Labour Party seems to have taken to blogging like a fish to water — at least for now. Four posts in the last four days, on topics such as why the “two major media organizations” in the UK and the USA contacted blog Barbados Free Press for a story about the Barbados Labour Party blog instead of contacting the party directly, an online poll, and the deficiencies of the rival political party's newly launched web site.

Residents of a small community in the Bahamas vote against a proposal which would have helped “preserve the character of local communities”. Larry Smith says the proposal's “scope, bureaucratic complexity and level of detail” may be to blame, “and, of course, we should not overlook the ever-present influence of party politics in small communities.”

Luke Distelhorst writes that Mongolia's parliament had quite a hard time making any progress on their anti-corruption bill as they got bogged down in trying to define corruption.

Sohrab Kabuli writes about the bloody riots in response to a road accident involving US military forces and includes some first-hand reporting.

Onnik Krikorian asks whether or not Montenegro's vote for independence is a precedent for Nagorno-Karabakh.

Edil Baisalov, a Kyrgyz opposition leader, takes issue with negative coverage of last weekend's protest in Bishkek (Russian) that characterized the event as a failure that took the wind out of the opposition's sails. In his opinion, that the protest took place makes it a success.

CXW of neweurasia has a report on last weekend's protest in Bishkek calling for the government to enact reforms and combat corruption.

The death of a friend's father is a shocking reminder of the fragility of life in Sri Lanka for Indi. “The people dying aren’t youthful revolutionaries or radicals, these are just normal people. They have families and responsibilities and hundreds of people that depend on them in countless ways.” An incredible discussion is developing in the comments space.

Kiruba on the other side of LTTE - “Back then, they were the good guys. The village folks were sympathetic towards their struggle and generally gave them good support. They were mainly looking for shelter and food and there was never a shortage of that in the village.”

Shirazi on a town that has held the fort and been a passage of sorts. “Dipalpur is famous in the history as an outpost that has played a significant part in the defence of Delhi kingdom against Mongol invasions in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.”