Global Voices

English

The world is talking, are you listening?

China

East Asia

New Mongols, under the guise of a complaint about a Chinese museum of Mongolian culture, takes a close look at patriarchal Chinese attitudes towards Mongolia.

An in-store McDonald’s ad has been accused of insulting all Chinese customers, reports Danwei. Like many similar stories that have come out of China, I suspect that there’s more to this story than meets the eye.

Bingfeng looks at the return of Confucius in modern China. Historically, the Chinese have turned to the old masters in times of change and crisis with mixed results.

After receiving publicity in Western press, two Chinese websites have been shut down by the authorities recently. EastSouthWestNorth wonders if there was a causal relationship…

Found on an message board: An eye-opening collection of Korean children’s anti-Japanese art.

Photograph by Janice Lo

The Middle East

The final round of voting for the Lebanese parliament has concluded, with the ultimate result being a solid majority for the anti-Syrian “opposition.” About Lebanon states that it’s time for differing factions to set aside their differences and work together, an idea strongly seconded by Pulse of Freedom.

The Beirut Spring has a great graphic breaking down the membership of the new parliament.

However, the Lebanese Political Journal asks some tough questions about voting irregularities.

More fallout from the Iranian Presidential election results: Mr.Behi calls on the forces of reform not to give up: “But this wall is our last to protection. If we show up little, they will cheat again and make the most logically impaired people to become the owners of our destiny and they will cut all the trees we raised in these years with our words and ideas so that under they shadow we can have better living and a more free society despite the barren desert of dictatorship around us.”

In addition, Hoder notes that election-related text-messaging (SMS) has been banned by the authorities.

The Big Pharaoh gets into a lengthy political conversation with some bookstore employees… and discovers that they didn’t complain once about Palestine or the USA. Perhaps the Egyptian political elite cannot deflect criticism with those two hot button topics anymore.

Egyptian Person comments on Farouk Kaddoumi’s recent statement calling on resistance groups to stop targeting Palestinian civilians: “But I think that Kaddoumi … did not have the courage, or perhaps enough wit, to include in his list of wrongdoings by the Palestinian groups other kinds of attacks against civilian Israeli targets …

Saudi Jeans on the rituals of the teenaged Saudi male:“During summer, large number of young men in Riyadh go to Jeddah to have a good time, because they are not allowed to enter entertainment places, such as shopping malls, in Riyadh, unlike Jeddah, which does not have this kind of boys-phobia.” Unfortunately, as the blog reports, some of the malls in Jeddah have been changing their policy on unaccompanied young men…

Mahmood’s Den has a simple explanation for why some Bahraini protesters were beaten badly by police: “That’s because they protested in front of the Royal Court.”

In less political news, the recent Jordan blogger meetup “was one big success,” writes AquaCool. She says that “I enjoyed every moment, I didn’t feel like a stranger, I felt I’ve already met the bloggers before and having an interesting, and a fruitful conversation with all of them couldn’t be easier!”

Latin America

MTYBlogs.com has a great English-language roundup of blogs from Monterrey, including this great guide to podcasting in Spanish.

Exhausted from the excitement of the Bolivian presidential resignation and change of power, Barrio Flores settles for doing a roundup of the past week in Bolivian blogs.

Blog From Bolivia thoroughly disassembles an Economist article about Bolivia’s economic troubles.

Bolivian legislatures are attempting to collect compensation in the event that the Congress is dissolved; MABB is understandably outraged: Never mind the 126 million dollars it would cost, how about the fact that they have been completely unable to deal with the crisis currently affecting the county.

South Asia

Kiruba Shankar, in the context of a podcasting meet-up, needs to know what the best way to connect some remote visitors…

Rashmi Bansal at Youth Curry uses the question—“So, when are you having another baby?”—as a starting point for an essay on the nature of the modern Indian family.

In sports news, a jubilant 3rd World View
is collecting news reports about Bangladesh’s massive upset cricket victory over Australia.

Photograph by Pyo

South-East Asia

Jeff Ooi writes about some positive press coverage that Malaysian blogs have been getting, and reminds his readers that there’s a Malaysian blogger meetup this week in Kuala Lumpur…

Jakartass is relieved to know that Indonesia’s antiquated foreign marriage laws will be reformed soon: “Er Indoors and I should be able to complete the marriage procedures started 15 years ago.”

Macam-Macam notes some interesting disparities in Indonesian drug penalties and concludes that, as in many things Indonesian, the rules for the haves and the rules for the have-nots aren't always the same.

Europe

It’s graduation season these days; colleges and high school seniors get dressed in robes and funny hats and face their future. San Francisco-based Irish expatriate Dervala takes the occasion to reminisce about the Irish college entrance exam: “In Ireland, we didn’t get to prove our “scholastic aptitude” with a multiple-choice test of our parents’ ability to pay for Kaplan prep. Instead we faced the Leaving Certificate, a national examination that would, we sincerely believed, determine everything in our future except the color of the curtains.

In Hungary, Pesticide explains why turnout at a meeting celebrating 60 years of Russian-Hungarian brotherhood might have been a little low; it also details the link between nice weather and rising eviction rates in Budapest.

Africa

Ethiopundit write a long post about the government that rules Ethiopia: “Ethiopians are in the tragic position of being ruled by an undemocratic government that actively hinders their economic and social development and indeed values their suffering for the aid money it attracts.” The post also has a detailed roundup of blog posts about Ethiopia.

Apparently recovering from a back injury, the author of Black Looks uses her time to do a quick pan-African blog roundup.

Central Asia

The Carpetblogger discovers that mourning in Azerbaijan involves much more ritual than in the West.

From Registan.net, a report about a 20,000-strong opposition protest in Azerbaijan. Taking their cue from another former Soviet republic, the protestors have picked orange as the color to symbolize their fight.