Global Voices

English

The world is talking, are you listening?

Kenya

East Asia

Over at Big White Guy, Randall van der Woning writes about an expat Tiananmen protestor who climbed atop a giant TV screen in downtown Hong Kong and stripped off to reveal a Spider-Man costume. As Mr. van der Woning notes, activists are starting their June 4 protestors early this year, since June 4 itself falls on a Saturday.

Glutter reports that Hong Kong legislator Leung Kwok Hung (aka “Long Hair”) just called Chief-Executive-Apparent Donald Tsang “a shoe-shine boy”.

Photograph by Jessica Lim

Africa

The Black Star Journal raises the alarm on the hunger emergency in Niger.

The problem of violence against women in Nigeria is highlighted by Black Looks.

The Thinker’s Room profiles typical Kenyan MP, Jack Arse.

Congo Girl found a gallery of photographs of Kinshasa—or Leopoldville, as it was known at the time—from the 1950s. It’s remarkable how many of the buildings could be exchanged with their colonial counterparts in Hong Kong, Hanoi, or Kuala Lumpur; there seems to have been a certain sameness in the architecture of empire.

Friends of Ethiopia has coverage of election protests in London as well as Berlin and Atlanta. They also point to a lengthy profile of Elias Wondimu, a Ethiopean-born writer and publisher who is trying to raise cultural awareness of East Africa in the US.

Middle East

The Lebanese Blogger Forum reacts to the murder of Samir Kassir.

On the growing influence of Lebanese pop stars: not only are they selling out tours all over the Arab world, but they’re also causing the downfall of a “generation of Arabs”! If memory serves, weren’t the Beatles and the Rolling Stones supposed to cause the collapse of Western Civilization?

In more serious news, Mustapha at Beirut Spring tries to analyze what the Kassir murder means for Lebanese politics. There good discussion in the comments, too.

Latin America

Riots in La Paz: reports from Life in Bolivia and Miguel Centellas’s Ciao!. Because this is a story that’s completely ignored flown under the US press radar, you might want to check Google News for background.

Babalu Bloglooks at the potential for Castro’s brother to succeed him in Cuba and doesn’t like his chances.

Central Asia

Blogrel has found an Armenian-language blogger!. Unfortunately, Global Voices lacks an Armenian-speaking staffer, so we can’t tell you what he’s actually blogging about. In more serious from Blogrel, it notes that Armenia Today is running a series of articles about World Children’s Day.

Registan is reporting that Israeli Embassy staff and families are being evacuated from Tashkent. Doesn’t look good for Uzbekistan right now.

Europe

A venn diagram that distinguishes between England, the UK, and the British Isles.

And, in Ireland, Piaras Kelly observes that Budweiser has been sponsoring rock concerts… but the only beer available for sale at those concerts is, you guessed it, Budweiser. Given that Ireland is the land of Guinness, Harp, Kilkenny, and all manner of good beer, that’s a business decision that just doesn’t make sense….