David Sasaki

Korea: Korean Beef VS Non-Korean Beef

The best of Korean beef is also the best of gifts for Korea’s upcoming Moon Festival. But recent issues of food safety, meat importation, and lingering worries of Mad Cow disease have local bloggers criticizing their government.

All out war in southern Philippines

War is raging in the southern island of Basilan as government troops retaliate against Abu Sayyaf rebels following the beheadings of 15 marines last month. The military offensives have displaced thousands of families and imperiled the peace negotiations between the government and other Muslim rebel forces, writes Mong Palatino.

Egypt: Complaining for Change

“Something I love about Egyptian blogs,” writes D.B. Shobrawy, “is our tendency to complain. Firstly because we’re Egyptian and its our nature and secondly because we have so much to complain about. Among our complaints this week: international scandals, intellectual persecution, the Egyptian Legal system (or lack thereof), the question of beauty and, as usual, religious persecution rounding out the group.”

Turkey is Typing….Wordpress Still Blocked

In a followup to Sami Ben Gharbia’s initial coverage of the WordPress.com block in Turkey, this week Deborah Ann Dilley examines what Turkish bloggers have to say about it. She writes, “There is anger, resentment, and sense of utter amazement at the absurdness of the situation. And yet, there is a powerful spirit of strength in combating this ban.”

Sierra Leone: Blogging the Elections

Last month’s presidential and parlimentary elections in Sierra Leone markes the first peaceful excercise in democracy after years of civil war. None of the presidential candidates won at least 55% to prevent a run-off, which is set for September 8th, 2007. Vickie Remoe-Doherty brings us the first-hand experiences of bloggers in Sierra Leone before, during, and after the voting.

Brazil: Tired of Philips

“There is a popular saying in Brazil, writes Paula Góes, “that goes like this: ‘Say whatever you want to and you will hear what you don’t.’” In the era of massive cyber-commentary, that proverb is truer than ever as Philips’ president for Latin America, Paulo Zottolo, recently discovered.

Ukraine: Crimea

To round out the last day of August, Veronica Khokhlova presents us with a translation of LiveJournal user drugoi’s photo report on his trip to Crimea, one of the favorite summer tourism destinations in Soviet times, now facing fierce competition from resorts in Turkey and Egypt.

Roundups

Kroll report on corruption in Kenya leaked to internet, an update on the investigation of Anna Politkovskaya’s murder, Ukraine’s richest man … and lots more in today’s Global Roundups.

August 31 is a special day in the blogosphere. Not only is it Cindylu’s birthday (hence her awesome 31 collection), but it is also International Blog Day. (The idea is that 3108 - 31st of August - sort of looks like “BloG”)

So, for Cindylu’s birthday, I present you with her patented cara de fuchi:

And for Blog Day, I present you with five bloggers from Phnom Penh:

Sopheap blogs at ifocus with the tagline “three dimensions of life.” She is the Advocacy and Public Relation Officer for the Cambodian Center for Human Rights and her passion for human rights comes across in her blog. As soon as you meet her you’re overwhelmed by both her kindness and her ambition. Preetam says she’ll be Cambodian Prime Minister within 10 years.

Pagna was the MC of the Clogger Summit. She did a really great job summarizing each session and finding threads between the various topics to give a sense of cohesiveness to the conference. Her blog, At a GlAnCe is much less serious … and it’s a lot of fun to read. She is a fan of Jane Eyre, comments on regional politics, and, like many young Cambodians, is active in promoting change in her country. Her birthday is coming up in a couple weeks and rumor has it that the gift she really wants is that one special guy.

Virak writes at KhmerAK* | a Phnom Penh Geek. As you can probably tell from the beautiful design of his blog, he’s a web designer “focused on clean, beautiful and standard-based development.” He was also the main organizer of the Clogger Summit. According to his About Page, “When he’s not haunted over a computer, Virak enjoys sporting, outdoor, music, movie, television and a good night out on the town or if none of those you probably found him at the coffee shop.” He also has a great Flickr page and, as of yesterday, he is now Cambodia’s first video blogger.

Lux, who writes at CAMBODIA BLOG, hardly needs an introduction for anyone with even the smallest knowledge of the Cambodian blogosphere. Long ago Tharum posted an article to Global Voices describing all the work Lux has done to spread blogging throughout Cambodia. Beth also interviewed Lux a couple years ago. Even Wired Magazine has written an article about him. A lesser known fact about Lux is that he is an avid Republican. In fact, it was thanks to Lux that the International Republican Institute was one of the main funders of the Clogger Summit.

Tharum Bun is another familiar name for anyone aware of the Cambodian blogosphere. In fact, he should be somewhat familiar to readers of this blog as well. Tharum is really the epitome of a great guy and a great friend. I first met him in London two years ago and then we got to hang out in Delhi last December. I hope that over the next decades we keep meeting up at least once a year. He blogs at http://tharum.info/, posts photos on Flickr, and always writes impressive articles on Global Voices.

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