Global Voices

English

The world is talking, are you listening?

China

We're always looking for new ideas and good stories to write about. If you have a story or a blog post that you think would be a good fit for our daily roundups, email us with the link and a short blurb about what it's about!

Africa

The Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa has been hit with anti-government protests and a resultant government crackdown; news reports indicate that at least 22 protesters have been killed. Andrew Heavens, a freelance photographer for Reuters, has been covering the violence on his blog. Andrew’s Flickr feed has more photographs, including eerie images of armored vehicles in downtown, the wounded being treated by doctors. Ethiopundit suggests that perhaps Ethiopia is on its way to a Ukranian-style peaceful revolution; in a separate post, he suggests that the massive gain made by the opposition was actually a fig leaf designed to divert attention from even more massive electoral fraud. Global Voices’ own Ethan Zuckerman has a more detailed update on the situation.

Afrotecnik reports on a rural network of small, solar-powered community radio stations in Niger.

South Asia

A new cricket blog—that’s cricket, the sport that’s cousin to baseball, not cricket, the arthropod—called Fourth Umpire has arrived on the scene. Though the author is based in Manhattan, the blog focuses on cricket in the sub-continent.

Niraj points to a really informative post about the Biharis, a class of stateless people created when Bangladesh became independent in the early 1970s.

Photograph by Steve Evans

The Middle East

Gateway Pundit reports on a candlelight vigil in Cairo that protested violence by government-backed thugs during last month’s elections. In addition, Manal of Manal and Alaa’s bit bucket actually attended the protest; her report includes photographs of the protest.

Al-Ghad, an Egyptian opposition party, has circumvented the state’s control of the radio waves by launching a radio station over the internet, reports *The Arabist Network. The internet stream, which can be found here, seems to feature mostly talk shows with occasional musical interludes.

The biggest news in the Iranian blogosphere today is that Iran beat Bahrain in soccer and thus advanced to next year’s World Cup. What could be bigger than that? The fact that a group of about 30 women entered the stadium for the historic game and cheered their team on to victory. Hoder’s take includes pointers to pictures; Brooding Persian translates the Farsi statement of one of the women; Under Underground celebrates both the soccer win and the advance in women’s rights.

In Iranian election news, Hoder reports that the reformist candidate Dr. Moin (also romanized “Moeen” by some) has the most to lose by a low turnout in the election. And a specialized Flickr group dedicated to the election has been created, featuring images of campaign posters, both en toto and defaced…

In Lebanon, The Lebanese Blogggers has a lengthy post about trust, governance, and it’s application to Lebanon particular and the Middle East in general.

East Asia

Asiapundit notes that the New York Times has picked up on the “China Requires Bloggers to Register” story.

Tokyo Times reports that Tohoku University has managed to develop a ballroom dancing robot. The robot itself seems like a bright pink vision straight out of Metropolis.

Latin America

In La Paz, MABB continues to follow the saga that is Bolivian politics; in its latest update, Congress has accepted President Mesa’s resignation but has not yet appointed a successor. The post has a handy chart comparing and contrasting the three major candidates for the position. As a side note, the Bolivian constitution has a line of presidential succession laid out; the debate over the next president has more to do with the forces that forced Mesa out and less to do with following the letter of the law.