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!

Africa

The Kenya Democracy Project applauds the growing independence of the Kenyan judiciary.

Thinker’s Room wonders just how exactly will Live 8 help actual Africans?

Hacktivate has a brief rundown on why politics in Malawai are weird.

East Asia

We’ve been alerted that Blogsome, a free WordPress-based blogging service, has apparently been blocked in China (Chinese language link).

Lalaoshi, a western journalist living and working in China, blogs about his encounter with the Foreign Affairs police in the northern Chinese city of Qinhuangdao.

How well does Henry Kissinger know his Chinese history? The blog Mutant Frog Travelogue thinks the answer is “not well at all”, as does Bingfeng Teahouse.

SimonWorld puts on its thinking cap and wonders what shape government might be in a post-communist China.

New Mongols points us to a useful resource for the Temujin enthusiast: Tim Spalding’s Genghis Khan On The Web. On a more contemporary note, the comments on one of their posts started a discussion of modern Sino-Mongolian relations, a conversation continued in this post.

Japanpundit on the possible return of women’s sumo. One wonders if it could take off the way that women’s boxing has in the United States.

Danwei looks that the furor kicked up by China’s latest blogstar; this leads him to look at the 10 most popular personality searches on Baidu, China’s most popular search engine. Interestingly enough, the top five are all female bloggers. Mao Zedong, somewhat embarrassingly, comes in 8th.

Chatter Garden says that Hong Kong Chief Executive-to-be Donald Tsang will, in a symbolic move, order the gates at the main Government offices in Central to be taken down. However, as the blog notes, this will have little effect on Tsang himself, since his offices are up the hill at the Governor’s Mansion.

ESWN reposts and translates a photo essay about a Shanghai drug bust. However, what’s really disturbing is what happens after the dealer is arrested and then released on bail. Here’s the Chinese original. Some of these images are very graphic and disturbing.

Photograph by Janne Moren

Latin America

Fernando Flores, co-author of Disclosing New Worlds: Entrepreneurship, Democratic Action and the Cultivation of Solidarity, writes that tomorrow in the Salón de Honor de la Universidad Católica in Santiago, Chile, Law Professor Lawrence Lessig, Chilean Education Minister, Sergio Bitar, and WIPO representative, Richard Owens will be speaking on copyright law and Creative Commons licensing.

Havana Journal has uploaded a satellite image of Havana [en] using Google's new software, Google Earth. They also anticipate a House vote on ending the travel ban to Cuba in the upcoming week [en] and encourage civic participation.

Chica Regia describes her very traditional and very “Northern” quincenera [es], a female coming of age celebration here in Mexico. Complete with photos.

Juanson contemplates on yesterday's decision by Mexican legislators to allow Mexicans living abroad to vote in the upcoming 2006 election [en].

Gemma [es] and Antonio [es] have released the results of their Second Survey of Webloggers and Weblog Readers. The data is available in both text and xml formats and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.1 license.

Tonight, beginning at 7 p.m., is the first Ecuablogs Convention “About and For Weblogs.” It will take place at the Auditorio de Expoplaza in Quito and the cost is three dollars.

Venezuela News and Views covers Fidel Castro's visit to Venezuela [en] and what it means for Chavez's foreign relations.

The Latin America roundup was compiled by David Sasaki (el Oso).

South-East Asia

Philippine President Gloria Arroyo, in an attempt to deflect some of the pressure arising from the “Tapegate” scandal, announced today that she’s exiling her own husband from the country. Cranial Cavity suggests that customs officials give “Mike” Arroyo a thourogh search before he leaves the country; Inside PCIJ compares the President’s speech with one of her political rival’s and finds Arroyo’s talk to be wanting.

Jeff Ooi is reporting that Maybank, Malaysia’s largest bank, had a severe network crash today. Unfortunately, today also happens to be payday for most Malaysians.

Graham Holliday, the writer behind the Vietnamese food blog Noodlepie, has posted an updated list of Vietnamese blogs. The list is growing by leaps and bounds. He also points us to a Vietnam slogan competition being run by the Ministry of Tourism; taken the time to highlight some of the more unique entries in the contest.

Beth Kantor, blogging at Cambodia4Kids, passes along the news that former King Norodom Sihanouk has promised to stop blogging about politics.

ThaRum’s Web recalls the impact that having an overseas sponsor had when he was in elementary school.

The Middle East

In Egypt, opposition leaders are calling for the state press to cover anti-regime rallies, reports the Arabist Network.

The Beirut Spring is underwhelmed with the opposition’s apparent plan to oust Lebanese President Lahhoud.

Saudi Jeans points at the Saudi Arabia page on the brand-new 43 Places site.

South Asia

Chapati Mystery points to a CNN.com article that says that internet service for most of Pakistan was out Monday and Tuesday due to a fault in a cable. It seems, though, that not everyone buys this explanation. This may explain reduced posting from Pakistan bloggers recently, though we have seen posts from some Pakistani-based bloggers during the affected time frame.

Central Asia

Prague Watchdog is a Czech-based online service that keeps a very close eye on on-going conflict in Chechnya. Hat tip to David McDuff of A Step At A Time.

Europe

A Fistful of Euros looks forward to elections in Albania, a country that unfortunately gets often ignored in discussions of Europe.

Back Seat Drivers posts a reminder that the next Irish blogger meetup is this Saturday in Dublin.