Weblog Awards, Part Eight

Read all our endorsements here:

Sorry for the break, but life happens.

Tonight, we’re going International with all of our picks for the Top Blogs in the International Categories:

Australia or New Zealand:

Honorable Mention:

It’s a Matter of Opinion is well-written and also to my surprise and happiness had a Christmas contest.

I loved Cattalaxy. A good lot of posters there who find some truly interesting stories.

Winner:

Sir Humphrey’s is a solid, well-designed group blog. They cover a wide variety of Oceanasia and International news. I truly enjoyed their site most among all those I visited in this category.

Middle East/African Blog

This is Zimbabwe shines a light on the crimes of the current administration in Zimbabwe. Good blog and necessary work.

Isreallycool is doing a blog awards for Jewish/Israeli bloggers.

Voice in the Desert is maintained by a British missionary in Burkina Faso. For me to vote for him, he’d really need to post more, but he’s got a REALLY good excuse.

In the same vein Jared’s Mozambique Adventure is by a Mennonite boy in Africa working for the Mennonite Economic Development Associates. A Mennonite blogging from Africa? Who knew?

The Religious Policeman is a Saudi Muslim living in the UK who is exposing the truth about the Religious police in Saudi Arabia. He’s taking a blogging break for vacation, and has to be very hush, hush about his true identity because if its revealed it could cost him his life.

Regime Change Iran is another brave blogger, this one telling the truth about the regime in Iran.

Dishonorable Mention:

6000 Miles from Civilization is the first finalist to go after another in a case of poor sportsmanship.

Winner:

Iraq the Model: 4,000+ hits today. These guys are groundbreaking Iraqi bloggers who provide a lot of perspective not found in the coverage of the Iraq War. They’re also the defending champs from last year with good reason.

Best Asian Blog

I’ve got to tell you that as much as I tried, I couldn’t get into any of the blogs. Some of them seemed cool, but the language barriers seemed more pronounced than in other categories:

Xiaxue is probably going to win the award. I don’t get the appeal, but she’s found some way to end up the 38th highest ranked site on Earth on Technorati just talking about hanging out with her friends and posting (non-pornographic) pictures and getting around 15,000 visits. Well, good for her. I just honestly don’t get it.

Winner:

Asia Pundit had some stories that were fairly interesting including a good one on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That’s enough for me to vote for her in this category.

Best European (Non-UK) Blogs:

No Pasaran: A French conservative blog that responds to anti-American parisian cartoons.

Vitriolica draws pictures of people she sees as she travels Europe and posts them on her blog.

Winner:

I’m going to go with The Right Nation finds some pretty interesting news. They get the nod because they’ve had trackback parties and they also have an English mirror site.

Movin on to Best UK Blog where I should be able to at least understand the posts provided they’re not written in a thick cockney accent:

Melanie Phillips posts somewhat sporadically but when she does its gold.

Biased BBC keeps an eye on England’s greatest source of Television news and bias.

The Winner:

Samizdata: Half Photo Blog, half political screed. A little more Libertarian than I but I really like the design of the site. Its excellent.

So, I’ll be back with 5 more pics for tomorrow.

Weblog Awards.

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